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The Body of Christ, Broken

September 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I kneel at the altar, palms cupped. “The body of Christ, broken for you,” the priest says and presses the wafer to my hands.

I look across the table, across the pulpit and see the body of Christ, broken yet redeemed and being redeemed and being redeemed, one by one kneeling, eating, drinking. Love overwhelms, overflows for these people who come every Sunday to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, and despite our frustrations with this church that make us consider leaving and despite a music style that sends me into epileptic seizures (think SNL church singers), there is love. There are people in this church who know me. They know me and love me, and maybe that’s enough.

The cup is at my lips, and I drink and cross myself, accepting this, God’s grace, God’s sacrament.

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The Silence and the Dance

August 4, 2011 By 3 Comments

This is harsh, I think, this servant working in the fields only to come home and prepare and serve dinner and does he deserve praise for doing his job, you ask. Not just hard, but harsh. For what about meaning and significance? Can they be found in the fields, in the kitchen?

all rights reserved via flickr

I want to save my life, so I lose it every day, but what does this mean? To deny myself as wife, mother, writer? I type at computer, dancing with these characters, not enticed by award or money but pushing aside meaning and significance and dance and know that he is God. Does one have to be still to know? Can one dance? I put on vinyl, to life, to life, L’Chaim, and dance with my son, life has a way of confusing us, blessing and bruising us, drink l’chaim, and my son laughs, and we dance harder. Then my husband comes home and he takes up the dancing while I leave the fields and enter the kitchen to chop vegetables from my co-op basket and my garden and is this denying myself? This joy?

But later the evening comes, the silence except for the doubts and the question that lingers after Apollo returns his horses to their barn, for what of these characters? What of these words? Do they mean, do they signify when the widow and the orphan and the depressed and the alcoholic and the lonely and the starving? Is the dancing enough?

And I know you, my master, that you do not merely repose, that you do not withhold Well done, good and faithful servant.

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The Untended Garden

July 29, 2011 By 1 Comment

The basil withers while the weeds thrive. It’s past tomato season in my garden, and the bell peppers were less than stellar. I lost the squash to drought. At least I still have mint and oregano.

All rights reserved, used by permission via flickr

My flower garden doesn’t fare much better. The rose bushes bravely suffer through without adornment. Undergrowth lends a mysterious air to the bushes, which grow fairy tale wild, arms reaching for maidens in distress on dark nights.

This is the year of neglect. No one could blame me. When your son is born in the last days of February and you spend the prime planting season in Texas trying to remember which is night and which is day (and figuring out if distinguishing the two even matters), no one whispers about your wayfaring garden.

But when night and day resume and you look out your window to chaos–oh, how quickly the chaos commands!–discouragement spreads much like the miniature oak trees littering the garden from the work of squirrels.

I pretend it’s the Year of Jubilee, a year of rest and recovery for worker and fields alike, but the thought consumes me, all that work undone.

It differs little from the state of our home–office a mess of piles, laundry heaping on pool table, spiderwebs weaved in corners–and, I fear, it differs little from the state of my soul.

Still, hope grows in small spaces, like the mint, picked often for a cool refreshing treat, and I borrow nourishment like baskets bought from a local co-op. Someday I will tend to the weeds in my spiritual garden. Today, I rest in grace.

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All the king's men will serve scrambled eggs again*

February 7, 2008 By 6 Comments

Buckle up. It’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

 Yesterday (or maybe the day before–who can keep track?), Mark said something about the perception of Christianity being boring.

I wish. 

Clearly those who believe that have never tried Christianity. I could bring to the court my missionary experiences, or better yet, others’ missionary experiences. I could present to the court the artistry of the ages inspired by Christianity. But I’ll settle for a one-inch window of my life.

Exhibit one: my life, specifically the past couple of weeks. Most of you know that I’m on the writer’s journey. A yellow-brick road that never ends. I’ll be honest. I’ve been discouraged. My motivation wanes. I could use a little waxing.

Then last week, in prayer, God gave me this assurance. Not the assurance I wanted, mind you, but an assurance that gave me a greater joy and peace.

It doesn’t matter. The publishing and the speaking. Not in themselves. What matters is what He’s doing in me and what He’s doing through me.

Yes! That’s right! My primary purpose is to enjoy Him forever and to let that spill out into my neighbors.

Yeah, and then the next day came. And the day after. And the day after that.

Which meant discouragements. I won’t enumerate them. That would be boring. I’ll just tell you that it put me in a funk. In funks, it’s easy to twist God’s words.

Well, God, if it doesn’t matter, than I might as well go to bed with a good book.

Nothing kicks that in the butt like a good Lenten season. 

Chris and I have recently become Anglican, which means following a church calender. In the past, we’ve observed Lent, but last night was my first Ash Wednesday service. It’s a service of repentance.

And when I say repentance, i don’t mean, "I’m sorry for all my sins." I mean together, as a congregation, we confess specific sins: failure to love God and our neighbor wholeheartedly, deafness to His call to serve, pride, hypocrisy, impatience with our lives (wham, wham, double wham), self-indulgent appetites, exploitation of other people, "anger at our own frustration" (oy), envy of those more fortunate, love of worldly goods and comforts, dishonesty in daily life and work, negligence in prayer, unfaithfulness, blindness to human need and suffering, uncharitable thoughts to those different from us, prejudism, waste and pollution of His creation.

Yeah, try coming away from that feeling like you deserve anything, much less demanding that God do things your way in your time. 

The imposition of ashes is "a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior" (The Book of Common Prayer, 265.) As the priest imposes the ashes, he says, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

And then you move from the ashes to communion, where as a communion you remember the Gift God gave us, in your heart you feed on The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven and The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.

And you know you’re forgiven. Even if you didn’t come to be forgiven. Even if you came in your disgusting self demanding answers or wanting to beat yourself instead of accept God’s forgiveness.

You leave these ashes in the shape of a cross on your forehead. From that point on, in the bathroom, walking past the foyer mirror, they reminded me that I’m marked by God.

Which means that nothing else matters.

Until I take up this burden again and decide that I’m too important to wait.

Oy vey.

*Lyric from "Nothing Is Innocent" by Over the Rhine. 

Filed Under: memoirs, spiritual journey