On & Off the Road

Normally, when I write, I begin by reviewing my previous posts. Especially during this Lenten journey as I attempt to post daily, I’ve been going over all my previous posts this Lent. Something triggers a thought I can write about. But today, this can’t happen. I’m at work with a network that is completely down, no internet, no access to my servers, no access to my previous writing. IN short, I’ve been trying to figure out some way to occupy my time for the past 2 hours. Things with our system are worse NOW than they were 2 hours ago!

So, I know you are asking yourself, how did you post this then? Well, here’s what’s going to happen. Once I’m done writing, I’m going to see if the internet is up. If it is, great. If not, I’m going to copy this file over to my Nook Color. Then, when we go to church this evening for Scott’s band practice, I’ll connect via the church’s wifi and post from there!

But first… first, I have to come up with a post about my Lenten journey.

Some years ago, my walk with God went through a particularly dark spell. By that I mean that I lost clarity in my journey… it’s hard, really to explain. I lost faith in God. But I didn’t. As I’ve written elsewhere in this blog, I operate under a certainty in God’s existence that not all people are capable of. I KNOW God exists, but I have had periods when I wasn’t sure how to express or experience that knowledge. I wasn’t really sure just WHAT God is.

I remember in seminary that we covered this kind of thing in one of the classes I took. I really remember very little of a specific nature, but I remember talking about the stages of belief, how we begin by believing because we’re told to believe. It’s a bit grey as I say, but I remember that they spoke of having to come to a place where we were no longer certain of the faith we had brought with us to seminary, and then to begin to rebuild our faith based on our own experience and knowledge of God. I think that bests describes what was going on. I know that, to some degree, that occurred for me at St. Meinrad.

Then I returned to Omaha, and the church I belong to here encouraged a different type of faith in me. I don’t really want to categorize it as one thing or another because I don’t wish to diminish what it was… it was right for me at that time. But I’ve always been on and have always experienced my life as a spiritual journey, seeking God, Who God Is, What God Means to me. I read voraciously of many different spiritual masters. And then I read a book wherein the author (a very good, and Godly man by all repute) “deconstructed” my traditional understanding of God. Had I read this man’s writing under closer guidance from my own spiritual director and others who could have held me accountable, that would have been better, but as it was, I read his stuff alone, and held myself superior to most of my associates… I, after all, had graduated from Seminary! Well, the writer deconstructed my understanding of God. And then, I stopped reading his book. So, I never discovered how or even if he reconstructed an understanding of God that I could identify with.

My orthodox christian view of God crumbled. Along with that image of God went belief in original sin, replaced by a conviction that God created us all in Original Beauty and Grace. Therefore, I questioned the reason behind Jesus death and resurrection. And then, my understanding of what heaven is also disintegrated.

I’ve struggled ever since with the aftermath of that effort. For a long time, I questioned my faith, but never that knowledge that has been deep within me that God is. God IS. My walk with Jesus didn’t really suffer too badly, I prayed daily. I continued to acknowledge Jesus as Friend, Brother, Savior (though how that worked itself out, how Jesus saved and from what did suffer.) And in the midst of all this, with my understanding clouded as it was, and my ability to comprehend heaven and what heaven is severely challenged, my mom died.

How to put God back into a context I could identify with seemed always just out of grasp. I didn’t really know who to turn to. But I worked with my pastor, a good man, perhaps better for this task because he was somewhat unorthodox, or at least so I perceived him to be.

I’d like to tell you now that all of that is behind me, but that would be a lie. It’s not. I still am unsure of God, but now I’m at peace with being unsure of God, because I STILL KNOW that God IS, and I am experience that God daily in my walk and in my life, and so it’s okay if I can’t return to my original belief. Jesus and I still walk daily. I share with Jesus my struggles and my doubts and my confusion, and because I know He Lives, I can still rely on Jesus, even though I don’t know what it is I believe about his death and resurrection (and yes, I believe those things.) I’m okay in spite of my lack of understanding what life hereafter is. Will I see Mom & Dad again? Will Scott and I be reunited in heaven after our lives here are finished? Heck, is there really a Rainbow Bridge where my pups gambol on the shores of some river waiting for me to come and collect them and walk on with them into our rewards? I don’t know. I don’t care! I know this: Whatever happens, God’s got my back, and that is all I care about.

This much I have shared. I’m not sure what beyond this I am capable of sharing, how much I want to talk about this or anything. Putting this out there where people I love… and here I especially mean my brothers… is taking a lot of courage for me. Though, just maybe, depending on how things go, I might relate tomorrow WHY I brought this up. Or today’s post may just serve as a referrent now and again in the remaining days of Lent.

I awakened this morning with a low grade headache.  It’s a headache of the sinus variety, I’m thinking.  The kind that makes any degree of higher-level thought unwelcome.  It’s the kind of headache that entices me to seek out an “off-the-radar” kind of day.  Does that make sense?  If I were home today, I’d nap, and then if the headache were still present, I’d probabaly spend the remainder of the day watching TV (at low volume), the only effort expended being the effort not to drool.

Instead, of course, I came to work and have spent the day  hoping against hope that my servers would all behave themselves, and not require me to diagnose problems.  I was certain that if everything went smoothly I’d be able to avoid over-taxing my brain, and might even be able to come up with an awesome post on the topic of my lenten journey.  Not to be the case, I fear.  The procedure I wrote on Wednesday last week, worked fine on Thursday, and fine on Friday, and then on Saturday worked in a less than desireable fashion.  So it had to be reworked.  That meant using my head.  And my head does NOT appreciate being used today.  But, enough of headaches.

The majority of you who read this blog are Christians.  And I think it is probably true to say, then, that you might understand me when I say that there are times, and those times are not anywhere NEAR as infrequent as I would like them to be, when God “convicts me” of the need to repent of a thought pattern.  Back in the day, and here I refer to that far off golden time known as “The Seventies”, when Mom & Dad & I were active in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, which is how I met Kathy, there was a comedian by the name of Mike Warnke (wow, I just discovered he’s still in an active ministry!)  He refered to such moments of conviction as God’s reaching down and BAM! hitting him with a 2 by 4… “He touched me…”.  I guess you’d have to be there.  It’s funny, trust me.

Today, for me, is one such time.  I think I’ve probably made it clear to the point of nuisance, that I have issues with people who identify as Christians, and probably especially with clergy, in spite of the fact I consider myself Christian, and one of my best friends is clergy, along with several other friends who might not quite qualify as CLOSE friends.  It’s easy to get into a trap of thinking a particular way.  Heck I’ll even confess that maybe it took on a comforting effect “Well, wouldn’t you know _______ displayed <insert offensive, bad behavior here>.  What do you expect from a Christian/minister/whatever.”

It’s true that I have come to expect bigotry and hatred from people I shouldn’t expect it from.

But today’s conviction of truth came about as I realized that perhaps one such comment may have been misconstrued by a friend as a reference to him.  And then, as I attempted to clarify that it was not, I became worried that I was just digging that hole deeper.

And then I realized that I know so many wonderful Christians and Christian clergy and how dare I… yes, HOW DARE I… conflate that evil that I have seen spewed by a tiny number of Christians with that which can be expected from ALL Christians?  And even if that “tiny number” is far, far larger than it should be in my opinion, I still have no right “paint in such large strokes” my opinions.

In my heart, I know what I believe God wants from each of us… to walk upright in God’s sight, to love one’s neighbor, and to acknowledge what Jesus said of our neighbor… they’re ALL my neighbor… and to love God with my whole heart and soul and mind and strength.  I can only control my own efforts, how ridiculous of me to worry about what others do.

So, to all my Christian clergy friends, and to all my Christian family & friends, while I’ve always been careful in my own mind to distinguis YOU from… those OTHER people… I am sorry.  And I’ll try to remember this little lesson today, and to paint with finer lines, and more delicate hues.

Do you know the words to the One Hundred Fifty First Psalm? 

Of course, there is no 151st Psalm, and yet there are words to it, did you know that?  We all know that, during World War II, in those lands conquered by the Nazi regime, the Jewish people were rounded up and sent to concentration camps.  Some populations made an effort to hide Jews, but they were only minimally successful.  In one country, Holland, there was a thriving underground that attempted to hide Jews and smuggle them to safety.  The German units charged with rounding up the Jews knew of this effort, and so would try to put undercover agents in to the underground.  It is said that in the so-called “Safe Houses” a test used to ensure a Nazi spy wasn’t in their presence was to ask people seeking assistance to pray the “151st Psalm”.  The appropriate response, I understand, was to pray the following:

 Praise the LORD.[a]
   Praise God in his sanctuary;
   praise him in his mighty heavens.
 Praise him for his acts of power;
   praise him for his surpassing greatness.
 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
   praise him with the harp and lyre,
 praise him with timbrel and dancing,
   praise him with the strings and pipe,
 praise him with the clash of cymbals,
   praise him with resounding cymbals.

 Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

   Praise the LORD.

Blessed is the one
   who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
   or sit in the company of mockers,
 but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
   and who meditates on his law day and night.
 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
   which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
   whatever they do prospers.
 Not so the wicked!
   They are like chaff
   that the wind blows away.
 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
   nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
   but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

For those of you who are knowledgeable in scripture recognize the first half of this is the 150th Psalm and the 2nd is the 1st Psalm.  Interesting story isn’t it?  Yesterday I wrote, briefly, about Prayer, Study, Action.  This was a story that embodies all three, don’t you think?  What a beautiful prayer!  Think about this… first we praise God… in ALL things we should PRAISE God first… and then words of encouragement to a people oppressed, a people hunted, and in fear for their lives.  What powerful action, to put ones own life in jeapardy on behalf of those oppressed, hunted, fearful people.

One of my favorite verses in the bible (I have lots) is Psalm 51.  There’s no trick here, Psalm 51 is a “Conversion” psalm.  I first heard this verse nearly 30 years ago, while living in Newport News, VA.

 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
 Cast me NOT away from your presence
    and take NOT your Holy Spirit from me.

This Lenten season, as I seek to take on a spiritual discipline of Prayer, Study, & Action, this verse will be close to mind at all times.  For who of us, no matter how close our walk with our God, is exempt from the need to pray “Create a NEW and PURE heart in me, and RENEW my SPIRIT, my God”?

Go ahead, friends, go read ALL of Psalm 51, and let it speak to your heart.  If you don’t own a bible, you can read it right here:

Psalm 51, NIV 

I woke up this morning thinking about what I wrote last night.  I suggested I would take these 40 days to pick up some new spiritual discipline.  So my first thoughts other than the rather mundane first thoughts of morning (taking care of “business”, taking care of dogs’ “business”, turning up the heat, getting the coffee pot going) was “just what new spiritual discipline do I want to take up, anyhow?”

The first one I thought of was fasting.  After all I thought, I can stand to lose some weight.  I immediately ruled that out for two reasons:  first of all, one might fast to lose weight, though that’s not a healthy idea, generally, and secondly, if one is taking up a spiritual discipline it should be for the purpose of deepening one’s relationship with God, not losing weight.  Besides, as a diabetic, I’m already watching carefully what I eat, and fasting would adversely complicate that.  (And that diet IS working… my average daily BGL is dropping steadily AND I’ve lost ten pounds.)

So, being the technophile that I am, I pulled up our friend, Google, and started doing a search for “spiritual disciplines for lent”.  Going to the first blog I saw, I was initially surprised by the fact that it was on WaPo!  And in the second sentence was my answer.

Do you recall that the week before Lent began, I wrote a serious of posts about Excel International de Colores, the retreat program I was involved in 10 years ago, or so?  Each of Excel’s four programs has as it’s basics a “tripod” theme… three topics that are the underpinning for that program.  Alas, I fear that I don’t recall all of them for each program.  But as a member of numerous “Excel 101″ teams, how could I forget the three basic concepts of that program?  And each of them is a “Spiritual Discipline” in and of itself.  Without these three spiritual disciplines, without these three basic elements in our Christian walks, our lives are out of balance… or so I personally believe… it is for this reason that the way we most often choose to visualize these three concepts is with a 3 legged stool.  Try sitting comfortably on a 1 or 2 legged stool!

So, what are these three elements, these three spiritual disciplines upon which I believe our Christian walks depend?

My fellow Excellers who read this blog… please respond appropriately, either in comments to this post, or an email to me which I will then put in the comments to this post.

The three spiritual disciplines are:

Prayer — Study — Action …………. I’m waiting, Jerry & Karla…

Prayer: taking time each day to communicate with God, to share with our Creator what is happening in our lives, to thank and praise God for God’s presence and blessings, and most importantly to calm ourselves and quieten ourselves to listen for God’s response.

Study: taking time each day for reading scripture and other works of spiritual nature to deepen our walk with God, to mature in our belief and our faith in Him.

Action: to actively move out from focus on self to recognize our interrelationship and interdependence on all of God’s Creation around us.  ”Whatsoever you do to / for the least of these, you do to / for me.”  Or, as James would tell us “be doers of the word and not merely hearers…” and again “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”  The whole discourse throughout the past several centuries has treated this topic as either or “Only by faith is one saved” “Only by works is one saved”.  Both statements are, in my opinion, myopic and, on their face, ridiculous.

As James states, if you have faith, but do not act on that faith, what good is it to you?  What does God care about that?  God says time and again throughout the entire collection of scripture that He doesn’t really care all that much for our sacrifices to Him (our faith)… what God wants is our justice and righteousness… our care for the oppressed and the poor and the stranger amongst us.

So this is my spiritual direction for the remainder of Lent… Prayer, Study and Action (I’m still waiting!)

What will I do each day to grow in prayer to God?  What will I do each day to grow in knowledge of my faith and my God? What will I do each day to act on my faith, to bring God’s justice to life for those around me?

Stick around, perhaps you’ll find out in the days ahead!

Now, let me ask YOU:  What, if anything, are you doing during Lent this year to draw closer to God? Are you taking on any new spiritual discipline?  I’d love to hear!