The Answer is Blowin' in the Wind

Lately we've been twirling the dance floor of spring severe weather with a dance partner that won't let us take a break and sit one out. It seems that the outbreaks have occurred either to disrupt the school day or to disrupt a night's sleep. Being a mild weather geek who lives in a garden home with no basement, this has given me no shortage of anxiety. I'm almost ready to call an end to spring and let's just get on with the heat wave.

Last night was no exception. Moderate severe weather category from the SPC (whose terminology is somewhat confusing: "Slight" risk is not really so slight and "Moderate" risk is not really so moderate.), midnight dew point in the 70s, and a peek at radars to my west added up to a big "Oh, crap," as I waited from wall-to-wall severe weather coverage from the battling meteorologists. My NOAA weather radio went off a dozen times for various warnings. When things got cranked up it was a doozy. The squall line was almost due west to east and the whole thing seemed to be rotating. We got the kids up and went to our safe place, lightning bounced them out of bed another time, and I got whiny with Joan, who wouldn't let me go out in a lull to check my rain gauge. It was a fun night.

But the party ended a little after three and we all got up a few hours later to clear skies but ferocious wind. We got ready for worship and as the service began I was reminded what today is in the church year: The Feast of Pentecost, of course.

As I lay down to rest after lunch, to try to make up for some of the rest I lost last night in the storm, I heard the wind screaming through the trees in my backyard. I captured a brief moment, and in celebration of Pentecost, and the Spirit, and rest, I give you, "The Wind:"



"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

"When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance."

Come, Holy Spirit, come. Amen.

Million, Billion, What's the Diff?

These days, it doesn't take long for numerically-themed discussions to reach the stratosphere: the thousand-thousand, or million, and beyond.





Consider these numbers:

1. Birmingham's mayor wants to spend almost one million dollars to provide [irony]free[/irony] bus rides for the summer.
2. Jefferson County's sewer system is over three billion dollars in debt, threatening to bankrupt the county.
3. President Bush has asked Congress for seventy billion dollars for the war on terror, bringing total expenditures since September 11, 2001, to more than eight hundred billion dollars.

John Archibald had an interesting column in the paper this week. He says that numbers like million and billion are tossed about with little regard because we don't have a meaningful standard to compare them with. Given a recognizable scale, such as time, puts the differences in stark perspective.

Consider:

• One million seconds: 11 1/2 days
• One billion seconds: 32 (are you ready for this?) years
• One trillion seconds: 317 (hang on) centuries

Pretty soon, we're talking about serious money...

With this ring...

If you are going to invite people to your wedding you ought to make the thing memorable. I've been to several weddings where this advice was not heeded. I would tell you some things about them, but I don't remember.

I went to a wedding one New Year's eve. The pastor pronounced the couple man and wife at the stroke of midnight. They are now divorced, but I still remember.

I went to an engagement party that turned into a surprise wedding. That was memorable.

One memorable couple provided washtubs filled with iced Dr. Peppers at their reception. They divorced, but you can't beat a cold Dr. Pepper.

One December I went to three straight Saturday weddings. I only remember one. They served shrimp at the reception.

One couple held their reception in one of those big antebellum houses and served some killer sweet tea. I remember the tea. I also remember the bride's father on the sidewalk yelling, "I paid for this wedding and I can't get a damn parking space in front of the building!" after a considerable hike to said antebellum home from somewhere up the street.

I've been to a couple of weddings where the bride and groom faced the audience. One of the couples, alas, is divorced.

My grandmother went to a wedding once and I sat in the truck and listened to the radio. I was about ten. I don't remember why I wasn't wedding-worthy.

I wore a leisure suit to a wedding when I was twelve. Yes, I have photos. No, you can't see them.

When Joan and I were dating, she was in a wedding. On a Saturday morning. At 10:00 a.m. Lewis Grizzard once quipped that you should never get married in the morning because it ruins the whole day. This couple should have listened to Lewis. Divorced.

I went to a Jehovah's Witness wedding where the pastor preached a sermon before the ceremony and everyone stood up the whole time.

I went to a Catholic wedding with full Mass. I needed to shave again before it finished.

I went to a wedding with a sit-down dinner for about one hundred. Counting Joan, the kids, and me, there were four white people.

I was in a wedding once. It was my only experience in a tuxedo. I would tell you how it turned out, but you can probably guess.

One of these days I'm going to tally up the weddings I've attended and see how many stuck. Or maybe not. I'm sure the count would exceed the number of times I've typed "weedings" while composing this post, and that would be sad.

I went to a wedding today. Another reception at an older home (I started to say antebellum but 1880 doesn't qualify). What I will remember?

• The bride's shoulder tattoo peeking through the back of her veil.
• Bride and groom pouring different colored sand into a glass tube.
• Young ladies are doing very expressive things with cleavage nowadays.
• A huge salad completely topped with rings of fried green tomatoes. Yes, you read that right.
  

My wedding? There were three people there. One of them is dead. The other two of us are still married.

I'm Sorry

I embarked on a journey through The Chronicles of Narnia this week, and I thought I'd read them in chronological order rather than in published order.

Apparently that is wrong. Very, very wrong. So I'll just pretend that I don't know where the wood for the wardrobe came from or how the lamp post got there or who Digory Kirke grows up to be.

Please accept my apologies if I've offended anyone. I'm sorry. I didn't know.

O, the shame...

INTJ

I'm taking a six-week course on spiritual formation. The text for the class is Robert Mulholland's Invitation to a Journey: A Roadmap for Spiritual Formation. Mulholland's definition of spiritual formation is "the process of being conformed to the likeness of Christ for the sake of others." Part of his approach to spiritual formation is the idea that we all tend to "do" spiritual formation according to our strengths. We miss out on opportunities to grow because we ignore those spiritual disciplines that are associated with our weaknesses. For example, an introverted person would normally jump at the chance for a silent, solitary retreat, and benefit greatly from it. On the other hand, the introvert might be prone to pass up a small group setting, thereby missing out on wisdom, experience, and insight of others.

To that end, Mulholland writes in-depth about personality types as defined by Carl Jung, the pioneer psychologist. To Mulholland, knowing our personality types helps us define our areas of weakness so we can compensate from them, experiencing a well-rounded spiritually formed life.

Corresponding to that portion of the book, our class took the Myers-Briggs personality type instrument. I had mixed feelings about my test. Some of the questions dealing with schedules and calendars sounded appealing to me and I marked them so. Some, however, sounded appalling to me, and I marked them so. I felt like I was all over the map on some of the questions, but apparently not, for my result couldn't have been clearer.

I am an INTJ. In a nutshell that means:

• My energy comes from Introversion (the inner world of thoughts and ideas), as opposed to Extroversion (the outer world of people and things).
• I perceive things through Intuition (gain insight through understanding and theory), as opposed to Sensing (gaining insight through hands-on experience).
• I make decisions by Thinking (giving weight to impartial principles and impersonal facts), as opposed to Feeling (giving weight to personal and human concerns).
• I live my outer life by Judging (a lifestyle that is more structured and geared toward closure), as opposed to Perceiving (a lifestyle that is more flexible, adaptable, and open).

As the results were being explained to the class, the only section I felt fuzzy on was Intuition/Sensing. I felt I could go either way with them at the time, but the results said Intuition and as I read more about it I see that as clearly correct.

Read more about INTJ here. It is eerie how dead-on me it reads, at least from my side of the fence.

NSoC 39: The General Dance

See Notes on this series...

Merton suggests that God made the world so that he could become man and commune with his creation.

The earth is not some penal colony for those he has rejected, but the jewel of his creation. Merton cites the first verses of Genesis as a poem of God's garden where God would fellowship with his creatures as creator and dwell among them as brother. He did this because he wanted more than to be adored from afar. For when that happens, men tend to imitate the far-off God, becoming god-like themselves (as in the Babel story). But no, he came to us, as friend, counselor, servant, brother. It was for us he said, "Kill me, it doesn't matter."

He took on our weaknesses, our sufferings, our insignificances. In return, he gives us his "power, immortality, glory, and happiness." Evil and death affect our outer selves, but they cannot touch our inner selves if we are one in him.

Merton declares that God's presence in the world as creator is at his own whim; his presence as man is up to us. The incarnation is set as fact, but we decide in large part how his incarnation affects our part of the world. Do we wear the mask of the external, or take up the internal self?

The external self is not evil in itself, Merton says. It is just poor, and deserves mercy. If we believe in the incarnation, then "there should be no one on earth in whom we are not prepared to see, in mystery, the presence of Christ."

God invites us to a "cosmic dance" but often we misunderstand his intentions. What we see as important he sees as trivial, and vice-versa. If we weren't so sold on our idea of the meaning of it all, we would see him in the migration of birds or in children at play, or in the poetry of nature.

The music is all around us. "[W]e are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance."

Quaff:
What a wonderful final chapter. And so appropriate on this final day of Lent. The incarnation's purpose is revealed in the resurrection. What a savior! He is risen! Hallelujah! Let's dance!

NSoC 38: Pure Love

See Notes on this series...

Penultimate chapter, long, and one last one over my head.

Merton begins by outlining three modes or beginnings of contemplation: the rare "sudden emptying of the soul," the "desert of aridity," and the "quietud sabrosa," or "savor, rest, and unction."

He goes on to describe the idea of "presence" in these modes, and how the feeling of God's presence is not really his presence as long as we are are somehow still aware of ourselves. Or something like that. Then he talks about the inner self and the outer self, their differences and conflicts, and their role in the whole reality of contemplation.

Part of the problem is pride, and it remains as long as we remain in the mix. Where there is only God, there is no pride. Where there is no pride, there is pure love, and then we can begin to exercise the first commandment: Love God with all our being.

NSoC 37: Sharing the Fruits of Contemplation

See Notes on this series...

The title of this chapter is sort of misleading, because the point Merton makes is that contemplation really can't be effectively shared.

As the things of this world fade away, we experience God in contemplation, but this not for ourselves but for others. However, there is a paradox for the contemplative: as much as he desires that others know the joy he's experienced in God, it loses some of it's effectiveness if he tries to talk about it. The possibility of "mistake and error" are almost as great as the benefit of testimony, Merton says. The problem lies in those who feel the need to teach contemplation. Big mistake. Only God can do that. All the contemplative can do is express to others what is available in God.

A big risk in sharing the contemplative experience is that other people might not be receptive to the contemplative's experience or point of view. The contemplative must be careful that he doesn't overstep his bounds and get in the way of God leading someone else into contemplation. He must be a willing vessel but sensitive to God's timing and direction.

Quaff:
What an interesting point of view, as seen by one who's done time in evangelical circles where the entire vocation of man is to open wide and broadcast "what God has done in his life." I've always felt I was to be a disciple first and a witness second, and Merton seems to support this view. I know a few people with the gift of evangelism who would beg to differ, though I'm not sure they or Merton are speaking about the same things.

Naturally Kneeling or Stubbornly Standing?

Holy Week and Spring Break coincide for us this year. I took today off to spend with Joan and the kids. We ate at our favorite Mexican place for lunch and then bowled a couple of games. (If you ever get a chance, watch old people bowl. They may barely be able to walk but they can flat out fling that ball and pick up spares like a road gang picks up litter.) We went to the library while Evan took his drum lesson and then we headed to church for Maundy Thursday worship.

This is our first Maundy Thursday as Anglicans so we didn't know what to expect, but I kept answering the kid's queries with, "Pastor John will preach about the upper room, we'll observe communion, and that'll be that." Pretty safe bet, I thought, right along the lines of every other Maundy Thursday service I'd ever attended. But when we entered the worship room I saw that wasn't the case.

Situated in front of the altar was a chair and a big wooden basin, three glass pitchers of water, and a stack of towels. My spirit sank. Of all things to emphasize from the Upper Room Discourse: the foot washing.

I get the symbolism of the foot washing. I get the idea of the savior who was servant and who seeks followers to do the same. And I believe I could wash feet with the best of them. I'm very flawed but I believe I regularly wash the feet of my family, though not always in ways they desire or understand. I know the story backwards and forwards, but still, like Peter, in my heart I said, "No, you'll not wash my feet." Unfortunately, I don't have to think too hard to know why I felt that way. Having someone wash your feet requires an intimacy and a humility that I'm afraid I don't have much of. As John expounded the scriptures, contrasting Jesus who naturally knelt versus Peter who stubbornly stood, that lack of humility scared me. Pride is a very dangerous thing, and mine screamed at me from that empty chair in front of the altar.

John explained that the invitation to have our feet washed was voluntary, which cracked the door just enough for me to talk myself out of it, but I felt like I'd take a tremendous step backward if I did. So somewhere in the midst of the observance, I slipped off my shoes and socks and walked to the chair.

I understand there to be two scripturally recognized sacraments: baptism and the Lord's supper. But tonight, I experienced a third as Zeb poured out the water of God's grace on my feet.

NSoC 36: Inward Destitution

See Notes on this series...

Alrighty. I think Merton is talking about the poverty of our beings here. I think. He begins by describing the sad realization our inadequacy provides when compared with our lofty God. We are powerless, even without our sin natures, but factor those into the equation and we are pretty miserable creatures indeed. But there is a certain peace to be found when we hit rock bottom and acknowledge our poverty before God and rely on him to do something about it. For his love "like a river springing up" and flowing with "life and goodness and strength." Peace is found by riding the current of his will; refusal drowns us in the flood. All our hardships, difficulties, and pains are caused by our rebellion against God's love for us.

Quaff:
At least I think so. Short chapter but one of those my mind didn't click with.

Speaking of water, listen to Tal Prince's Lenten Sermon from Cathedral Church of the Advent for today, March 19. "I thirst."

Holy Week kicks into high gear now. Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday. Then Good Friday. But Sunday's coming!

NSoC 35: Renunciation

See Notes on this series...

Merton champions the routines of "work, poverty, hardship and monotony" that ties together the vast majority of the world's population. He reminds us that Jesus did not surround himself with mystics who sat on mountaintops and chanted the day away, but with working men who were the antithesis of the "professional holy."

He says that love of the poor and of poverty are necessary elements of contemplation, and that we would all do well to relate to the poor as best we can. We do all we can to avoid poverty, discomfort, and hardship rather than looking for God in poverty.

We don't have to be miserable and disgusted to enjoy the benefits of thrifty living and depending on God. Thin patched clothes and the haphazard harvest of the field is a good place for anyone to live, but "destitution" is taking things too far, for it is hard to contemplate amidst illness, hunger, and other physical struggles.

Merton further defines humility as "a dedicated acceptance of one's duty in life." If that means being learned in order to instruct others, then so be it. There is no humility, he says, in feigned unlearnedness, or "intellectual snobbery turned inside out."

A true contemplative, Merton says, knows how to mind his own business. He should fight the urge to reform those around him. "Pay as little attention as you can to the faults of other people and none at all to their natural defects and eccentricities."

All sanctity depends on renunciation but not just avoidance of sin or obvious faults. True renunciation goes to the core of our faults which are not obvious to us. We must rely on God for this for after we've dealt with our obvious faults we tend to blindness toward our "secret" faults. Our tendency is to stop the process when we reach the limit of what we ourselves can fix, and it is here we need God to help us continue. We must renounce "pleasures and possessions," and "even your own self," and let God "do some work."

Quaff:
Wow, what a chapter! This is the most practical chapter so far and one of the clearest in quite a while. I love Merton's attempt to balance the knowledge of poverty while advocating the debilitating potential of destitution. What a hard lesson. I've experienced it trying to teach my children about poverty and how most of the world has to live. I've experienced it in reentry mode from mission trips.

But what is harder still is dealing with the blind spots of my fallen nature. I know well my faults, but how much of what I think I'm doing well is really a blind spot?

NSoC 34: The Wrong Flame

See Notes on this series...

Merton warns against misguided emotion, or what he calls "sensible intoxication," here. These "indifferent" emotions can be used for good or bad, he says, but they are a hindrance to contemplation until they can be ignored.

The problem is that these "burst[s] of spiritual exuberance" are no better than other physical stimuli for long-term effect, but spiritually and psychologically they are dangerous because of our tendency to legitimize the religious experiences that we feel them attached to. First comes a spiritual sentimentality, then a hunger for visions, and ultimately the stigmata.

This desire for experience, states Merton, has shipwrecked many a would-be contemplative. This rocky coastline exists even within the cloistered communities.

What to do? Realize the fruitlessness of these emotional episodes, knowing that they do not provide worthwhile information about God or one's self. They do not nourish or provide holiness but deceive and lead astray. Passions are not to be avoided outright, but they must be "pure, clean, gentle, quiet, nonviolent, forgetful of themselves, detached, and above all when they are humble and obedient to reason and to grace."

Quaff:
Wow. How many evangelical pastors would be out of work if they had to rely on methods other than stirring up emotions? How many people have "walked the aisle" while "sensibly intoxicated," and what happened to them when the buzz wore off? I've heard pastors preach that the church shouldn't be out of control but it should be out of coma. Where is the middle ground? I suspect Merton is on to something, simply by the truth that the passions of eros are not able to sustain a marriage relationship long-term. Until a relationship is governed by will instead of emotion it is on shaky ground. I know that any religious experience of mine that is dependent on emotion for fuel is doomed. But that's just me.

Quibble:
I've known some evangelicals who strove for emotionalism in their spiritual life but I've never known one to desire a stigmata. Must be a Catholic thing.

NSoC 33: Journey through the Wilderness

See Notes on this series...

The promised land waits for those who allow God to lead them through the wilderness without letting the hardships turn them aside.

Merton reiterates here that contemplation is not merely the absence of activity. Rest, passivity, and emptiness lead to a hunger and thirst for God but they are more than a dead mind and a petrified will or lazy prayer that "degenerate into torpor and sleep."

Merton points to the helpfulness of scripture and books to start the mind, as well as pictures, trees, "fields and hills."

Merton says there is no such thing as prayer "in which you do absolutely nothing." True prayer is a concentration on God, intent, absorbed. It may look inactive, but it is anything but. It is a journey, full of the risk of trust, for Merton says we must be willing to lay aside all in order to achieve joy.

Tomorrow, the last feast day of Lent. Palm Sunday. Hosanna! Holy Week and the last six chapters await. Til Monday.

NSoC 32: The Night of the Senses

See Notes on this series...

Merton cautions that the contemplative life rarely begins with a vivid, light-bathed experience with God. More often it is a gradual build-up over time. Those who wait for the flash of lightning will likely be disappointed and waste a lot of time. In those cases when the flash does come, that does not guarantee contemplation; contemplation is acquired essentially by habit, not sudden enlightenment.

Contemplation, he goes on, is found "through a desert," harsh, dry, and barren. A wilderness seemingly absent of a path or of even the presence of God sometimes, against our expectations of joy and comfort. Many turn back to the marked path where their travels seem to be making progress. Prayers, sacrifices, readings, and devotions substitute for the suffering of the wilderness.

Merton says that when God does shine the light of knowledge into our spirits, often the feeling is one of defeat rather than triumph, darkness rather than light, filled with eerie shadows and silence. God seems distant, and the darkness frightens us. Others, though are drawn further into this darkness, as something draws them to trust and be still. Merton says as perplexing as this seems, here is where the will of God, or even God himself, is found.

Quaff:
I'm not particularly fond of the dark. Some of my most fearful and depressed times are triggered by darkness. Huddled beneath the covers of my childhood bed, the shrill siren of an ambulance pierces the air, utterly terrifying me. In the evenings in late fall, after the time changes and darkness comes before I leave work, hopelessness surrounds me. Deep in the woods, miles from the trailhead, as the sun slips behind the bluffs above and darkness descends on the camp, a deep longing for morning invades my soul. It is hard to be still in the dark. It is hard to think clearly in the dark. It is hard to concentrate in the dark. Send your light, Lord, lest the darkness swallow me up.

NSoC 31: The Gift of Understanding

See Notes on this series...

God created us, says Merton, for contemplation, that is, knowing and loving him through supernatural means. There ought to be a familiarity to it, since we were designed for it.

Merton says that the clearest experience of natural awareness is like being asleep compared to the supernatural awareness as we see God in his reality and we begin to live in the reality of who we are.

God has a gift for us: himself. We can't do anything to conjure up this gift, speed it along, deserve it, or procure it. We must wait until he reveals himself to us, and Merton advises that we must take that as it comes, freely, with thankfulness and gratitude, not interrupting God or compelling him further, but in silent acceptance rather than hollow words. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." When we enter that "joy of emptiness," Merton declares, where there is only God's limitless truth and the light of Christ, there true understanding is found.

Quaff:
Long chapter, a little beyond me, I think. I like his opening definition of contemplation: knowing God as he is, and as only he can reveal himself. That has been my understanding of revelation. I never thought of it as contemplation, though.