Category: Faith
Discomfort
While still in my pajamas yesterday morning, I carried the laundry downstairs, holding Tuga in my hand. His rigid little ears poked into my fingers and palm. I tried to shift him to a better spot but it was impossible to carry the basket and the bunny without a little discomfort.
“Could you just not?” I asked him, but he didn’t answer.
The lesson was easy to see. Sorrow is uncomfortable.
In today’s society, we are fairly averse to discomfort. We desire to be always at ease.
Have a headache? Take some ibuprofen.
Are you cold? Grab a blanket or a sweater, or turn up the heat.
Too hot? That’s why God invented A/C.
Plastic rabbit ears poking your hand? Put the silly thing down. It’s a dumb exercise anyway.
C.S. Lewis, in The Problem of Pain, said,
Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We ‘have all we want’ is a terribly saying when ‘all’ does not include God. We find God in an interruption.
Tuga is an interruption. He interrupts my day to remind me that there are people in pain all around me, if I would only open my eyes to them. Maybe this discomfort of my own will remind me.
I set Tuga on top of the dryer while I threw the clothes in the washer. An hour later I remembered him. See how I am?
Tuga is a mindfulness prop.
I know people who carry special coins in their pocket and I’ve given my own children fidget-toys to carry, but Tuga isn’t just for fiddling with when I’m bored. He’s there to remind me of the sorrow in this world, the sorrow people carry unseen in their hearts, the sorrow I carry in my own heart.
I’d say he’s doing a good job.
Lessons from Tuga
“I suppose I should take a picture of you,” I said to Tuga, pulling him out of my pocket yesterday while I walked around town.
He said nothing, which felt almost like a dare. I dare you to take pictures of a plastic rabbit. Won’t you look foolish!
Ah, but I knew better. I was on the last leg of my walk, going down the path. Nobody walks on the path, especially after it rains because of the mud and it had just rained. I doubted anyone would see me photographing my plastic bunny.
I set him in a dry patch of grass.
He laid his ears back and didn’t look happy.
Oh, wait, his ears are always back.
He’s not supposed to be happy.
“Tuga,” I said, “you’re supposed to teach me something this Lent.”
I was hoping for a little more cooperation.
“How about you look out at the river?” I said, moving him a little and stepping back. I was thinking of the scene from Watershed Down where the rabbits must escape across the river.
But the blue sky with its big puffy clouds reflected so beautifully in the water that I took another step back to include it. Tuga, my little sorrowing bunny, all but got lost in the shot.
It struck me — isn’t that the way it is with sorrow? In the bigness and busy-ness of life, the sorrowing one can get lost.
I picked him up and tucked him in pocket, knowing I would have to ponder that a little more.
When I reached the stone bridge, I set Tuga on a parapet.
He looked rather lost in there, too. So small.
That’s when I saw the man on the stone bridge talking on his cell phone. We briefly made eye contact before I grabbed Tuga and stuffed him in my pocket again, hurrying on down the path.
Once again, I was struck by the picture of sorrow. How often do sorrowing people stuff their emotions away because they’re embarrassed or self-conscious?
If nothing else, Tuga is teaching me an awareness for the sorrowful. In my own busyness, I may pass them by, or, in their self-consciousness, they may hide their feelings.
Lord, make me more aware!
Tuga and Aleluja
A few months ago I made an impulse buy at Target — two plastic rabbits. I set them on my bookshelf to remind me of my “rabbit” friends — an affectionate term for the people I know through The Rabbit Room and Hutchmoot (tickets go on sale today, by the way).
A fellow blogger, Manee, posted pictures of her flamingo in February, calling it Flamingo February. I found myself looking forward to Fancy the Flamingo’s adventures — splashes of pink in an otherwise drab month.
I also started looking around for something I could use to follow suit, and caught sight of the rabbits. I hesitated, though, because March marks the start of Lent, and that’s not a time for silliness. Lippity-lippity Lent sounds goofy — even though I love Beatrix Potter’s descriptive words for a rabbit’s slow hop, and I really want to slow down even more during Lent.
This morning I brought the rabbits downstairs with me for my quiet time. I set them on top of my Lenten devotional. They stared at me, unblinking.
“How can you help me with Lent?” I asked them.
My devotional is a study of Isaiah. The theme verse is Isaiah 43:1
… I have called you by your name; you are mine.
It reminded me of a theme that ran through Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga — the importance of names.
I decided to name my rabbits Tuga and Aleluja. Tuga is the dark-colored rabbit, and Aleluja is the white one.
Tuga is Croatian for sorrow. I’m going to carry Tuga with me throughout Lent.
Aleluja means, as you probably guessed, Alleluia.
I hid Aleluja away this morning, burying him as it were.
On Easter morning, he’ll emerge again.
This morning I went for a short walk with Tuga in my pocket. I patted my pants, making sure he was there. I could feel the hardness of his plastic ears poking against the denim.
He will be my companion for the next 40 days. I imagine he’ll show up here a time or two.
Today, especially, he’ll share my sorrow as I remember Stewart’s passing.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
The Last Hallelujah
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday.
Three years ago, Ash Wednesday began with an early phone call from my sister telling me that my brother had died unexpectedly. It brought a whole new depth to “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Now the two events are forever linked in my mind — Ash Wednesday and Stewart’s death. Somber and sad.
This morning I was looking for a Collect for Shrove Tuesday and stumbled across a website where I would like to spend more time: Liturgy It’s the work of Bosco Peters, an Anglican priest in New Zealand. On his Shrove Tuesday page, he said,
This is the last day of the “Alleluias” until Easter. This day may even involve the burying of the Alleluia.
I loved the idea of making today a day of Hallelujahs, the last day of Hallelujahs before Easter.
I looked out the window and saw a little chickadee hopping around on a tree and imagined it chirruping Hallelujah. I could hear the stream in the basement (not a good thing, but a sign of spring) and saw the clear blue sky with puffy white clouds. Before I knew it, I was writing a little Hallelujah poem.
My day will be filled with Hallelujahs. Will you join me?
The chickadee hops from twig, branch, to limb
Chick-chick-a-dee hallelujah
The gurgle of water as snow melts to spring
Burble-splish-splosh hallelujah
10X sugar piles on robin’s egg sky
Azurean cerulean hallelujah
Mud-luscious earth, spikes of green occupy
Plant-sprouting-spring-shouting hallelujah
Brisk breeze brushes cheek in a chilly embrace
Shiver and shudder hallelujah
Remembering the quickening, tender touches of grace
Life, light, and love — hallelujah
Tomorrow hallelujah dies from our lips
We walk with both Jesus and Judas
Today we rejoice, putting darkness aside —
Come sing! Come shout! Hallelujah!
Amy
One thing is for sure about Amy — she knows how to rejoice.
Easter with Amy is a joyful celebration complete with silly string, confetti, streamers, caterpillars-turning-to-butterflies, and the Hallelujah Chorus. It’s like glitter.
Anyone who has ever worked with glitter knows how impossible it is to clean. The tiniest bit used in a craft project will show up for the next week on the table, on hands, on clothes, on faces — everywhere!
But Amy — my heart was broken to learn that Pastor Amy is moving on to a new church.
When Bud and I made the decision five years ago to move from the non-denominational church we had been attending to the United Methodist church in town, we sat down with the pastor at our current church to let him know what we were thinking and doing.
“You know,” he said, “Methodist pastors only stay in a place about 7 years. They move them around.”
Pshaw, I thought.
That was not what I was thinking last night.
I can remember the first time I saw Amy. It was at Helen’s Baccalaureate service. Amy was put in an awkward position and handled it with such grace.
Get to know her, God whispered in my heart.
Um, God, maybe you didn’t notice — she’s a woman. A woman pastor? I responded.
Sometimes it’s funny the things God doesn’t notice.
Still He niggled at me — about Amy.
It was probably close to two years later that we started attending the church she was pastoring.
Can I be honest here? Amy and I probably don’t see every issue the same way.
But Amy is like glitter. She got on my hands and in my heart.
I see little sparkles in the darnedest places where Amy has left her mark.
I see many issues differently. I understand them differently.
I am more compassionate because I’ve known Amy.
My pshaw has turned to aww… to sadness. Sadness for a church that will feel her absence. Sadness for me because I like things to always stay the same, and I don’t like change, and I don’t want Amy to ever leave ever ever ever — even though we’re staying in Cooperstown most of these days and don’t even go to the church in Greene. I just want Amy to stay where I knew her forever.
But glitter.
It spreads. It sparkles. Spreads and sparkles, spreads and sparkles — showing up everywhere.
I guess it’s important for Amy to move on. Throw a little glitter around somewhere else.
I, in turn, will not try to get the glitter in my heart cleaned up.
I’ll proudly display it like a Grandma Moses snow scene — sparkling and joyful.
For Amy.
Show Me Something Cool
I was clicking through all my pictures and almost clicked past it.
Another blurry picture, I thought.
I’m an expert at the blurry snapshot. In the days of film cameras, that talent was especially frustrating. I’d get back a whole roll of nothing but blur — and have to pay for it.
These are the kind of pictures I often take. I think this was supposed to be the reflection of the moon in a puddle. It was sandwiched in with a whole bunch of other moon pictures. I remember that evening walk, seeing the moon’s reflection in a roadside puddle, taking the picture, knowing that I didn’t have enough light.
Karl is playing tennis somewhere in this photo. In the days of film cameras, I would have thought that I somehow double-exposed, but I don’t think I can do that with my phone. I don’t know how it happened.
At least in this blurry shot, there’s a sense of what the picture was all about. We were setting up the family photo at Christmas, arranging people on the stairs, and I snapped this. I love to catch my children laughing, and they were laughing at something here. Something blurry.
This is the one I almost clicked past, but I paused and looked at it. It was a little ironic, because that’s what I did the day I saw it.
I remembered the day I had taken a walk in town. I parked in front of the library and before I started out, I prayed a little prayer Andrew Peterson had talked about once at Hutchmoot — Lord, show me something cool.
Because I walk the same route over and over, even though it’s Cooperstown and beautiful, I start missing the beauty and wonder of it.
Lord, show me something cool — and half a block later, there was this decapitated, one-legged Lego man, half on the curb, half in the street.
I stepped over it, barely noticing, and took about three more steps. Did I just miss something cool?
I walked back, took the not-blurry picture, and continued my walk, turning that little dead Lego man over and over in my mind. Should I have scooped him up and thrown him away? Should I have scooped him up and found a head for him? Should I have left him there for the street cleaner or another passerby, maybe even a child?
I did leave him there — but he didn’t leave me.
He reminded me of the hurting world we live in — a world of poverty, not just of material goods, but of the soul.
Where we fail to think of the other person.
Where we hoard all the things with which we should be generous.
Where we forget whence we came.
Lord, show me something cool.
Cool things come in unexpected shapes and sizes and places. A broken toy in the gutter can become a whole sermon.
Prayer of Deprecation/Comprecation
Holy God,
Replace in me
My conceit with humility.
My envy with mercy
My anger with patience
My overindulgence with self-control
My coarseness with decency
My distractions with contentment
My lukewarmness with readiness
Amen
Adapted from The Private Prayers of Lancelot Andrewes
Blatherings about Birches and Flexibility
I drove into town this morning for a Bible study but the church was locked up. I felt a little irritated. No one had let me know that it was cancelled. Or postponed. Or whatever happened. Although I had only attended once before, I felt like someone should have told me.
Hmph.
I expected them to be flexible with me in my sporadic attendance, and yet I was not being flexible with them.
In my heart, I mean. This was all taking place at a heart level. I wasn’t really that upset. I was being stretched.
Bud and I used to get a little irritated at the Christian-ese expression of “being stretched.” When someone was undergoing a trial, the “Christian” response included glib statements like, “I guess the Lord is stretching you” or “me” or “him” or “her” or whoever.
I guess I’m growing up. And growing more flexible.
But there’s still so much more room for improvement. Will I ever reach a day when I’m not irritated by a small inconvenience?
My father planted white birch trees along the north border of his lawn.
Over the years, some have grown quite tall. One bends quite low these days, showing the resiliency and flexibility that is its nature. My father comments on it every time he looks out the window.
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Robert Frost says the birch is “the only native tree that dares to lean” — and lean it does. Its pliancy and resiliency are remarkable.
I’ve been going for long walks lately, and I feel the tightness in my legs. Yesterday I told myself that I need to start stretching again. As a coach, I’m aware of the different types of fitness: muscle strength, muscle endurance, cardio endurance, and flexibility. Flexibility takes the longest to gain, but it also is the slowest to lose.
In our muscles. In our lives.
My friend, Alyssa, wrote about aspens, their frailty, their humility, the way their leaves tremble in community. I remember the day I first read that post. I wept because my brother’s death was still fresh and painful, and I knew she was telling me of a community weeping with me.
This morning I looked at the birch and knew that it had lessons for me, too.
To bend and not to break.
To keep working to develop that flexibility that will stay with me for a long time. The more I exercise it, the more flexible I will become.
I found myself grateful for a missed Bible study.
Threshold
Embattled as we are, we sound retreat
Sometimes we need a respite from the storm
To step away is not to cry defeat
Embattled as we are, we sound retreat
To solitude, to quiet oh-so-sweet
To limestone that the sun has warmed
Embattled as we are, we sound retreat
Sometimes we need a respite from the storm
Threshold at Laity Lodge in Texas is one of my favorite places in the whole world.
I’ve been there to watch the sun rise, and I’ve been there to watch the sun set — and I’ve been there at all hours in between.
It is peaceful and strong and restful and restorative. Who knew that a piece of art could do all that?
I probably have hundreds of photographs of Threshold — from close-ups of insects climbing on the limestone to all-encompassing shots taken from a distance as I walked around it to shots taken with her walls.
In Threshold, I recognize Psalm 48. I have numbered her towers – one – and considered well her ramparts. It’s not Zion, but it points me in that direction.
