One in the can...

Well, I finished Catch 22!  And I'm glad I did -- it turned out to be a much better (and different) book than I anticipated.  When I began to read it, I thought it was basically just going to be a funny book.  I also found it incredibly confusing, keeping track of Major this and General that and who the heck is ex-PFC Wintergreen again?  However, as I continued to read and got deeper into the book, I discovered that this is anything but a superficially funny book.  There are characters who seemed funny at first, whom I came to hate by the end of the book (Milo Minderbender especially).  There are scenes so horrible that they practically made me sick, particularly because they are so shockingly juxtaposed to some of the humorous scenes in the book.

Catch 22 is a book that caught me off guard -- and I think that's exactly what Joseph Heller intended.

Next up: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

Be ready

It's Advent.  Not Christmas yet -- Advent first.  This year, I've not been very good at entering into the spirit of Advent -- the waiting, preparing, anticipating the birth of Christ.  I've been too caught up in the "churchy" things I've had to do, the things I do so that others in my congregation might enter into Advent more fully: a Lessons and Carols service, Sunday morning worship, teaching on spiritual practices that can be helpful in deepening our faith as we "prepare the way of the Lord."

Today, I was reading the passages assigned to today in the Daily Office lectionary, and one of the passages hit me -- Revelation 3:14-22.  Specifically, these verses struck me: "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.  Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me" (vv. 19-20).  For perhaps the first time this season, I asked myself the question, "Would I be ready... if He came today?"

The answer is simple: nope.  It's so easy for me to get caught up in the daily churchy things I do as part of my job, to the detriment of my own devotion.  So today, I take in the words of our Lord, "Be zealous and repent."  Lord, may I be ready for you.

BBC Book Challenge

I have always loved to read.  In fact, I won my very first trophy when I was still homeschooled -- kindergarden or first grade, maybe -- for reading over 10,000 pages in a certain amount of time.  My parents often read to my brother and me before bed, classics such as "Robert the Rose Horse" and "Goodnight Moon," along with the Bernstein bears and my personal favorite, "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb" ("Dum ditty dum ditty dum dum dum!").  When I got a little older, my mom still made the effort to read with me.  I remember reading through the Chronicles of Narnia together, Tuck Everlasting, a Wrinkle in Time, the Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings.  I also remember that I got so caught up in the Hobbit (while still in elementary school), that I "cheated" and read ahead without her...  I just couldn't wait to find out what happened!

Eventually, of course, I got too old to be read to -- but my love of reading remained.  Literature classes were always my favorite classes, and I relished the opportunity to read fun books as part of class!  I fell in love with Cry, the Beloved Country, Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, All Quiet on the Western Front, Lord of the Flies, Great Expectations, even The Old Man and the Sea.  And, of course, outside of class I read for fun:  Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys stories, a lot of Agatha Christie novels, the Babysitters Club books, later Dorothy Sayers, other mysteries, plus reading my favorites over and over and over... (yes, I wore out my copy of The Lord of the Rings).

Now some of you Facebook fiends might remember the BBC Book Challenge that appeared in many people's notes a few weeks ago.  The notes listed 100 books of which the BBC thinks most people will only have read about 6, and it asked people to look through the list and highlight which ones they'd read (discussions appeared other places too: check out this link as an example).  When I first saw the notes, I'd read a little over 40 of the books -- woohoo!

However, I was captivated by this list of books I haven't yet read.  In fact, since the lists were first published, I've read two more of the listed books (The Handmaid's Tale and Brave New World).  So, I've been thinking...  why not just work my way through the rest of the books?  I love fiction -- no non-fiction to deal with here, thankfully -- and I love finding new things to read, so why not go for it?

So I'm going to go for it.  Today, I begin my quest to finish all 100 books on the list.  My next project: Catch 22.  I've started it, but never gotten into it.  So here goes nothing!

In case you're curious, here's the complete list -- the ones I've not read are in black, the ones I've read are in grey:

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. The Lord of the Rings
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling  
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee  
6. The Bible -
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurie
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaet Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Inferno – Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables — Victor Hugo

Think positive

So in my counseling session the other day, I managed to come up with an analogy that really blew away my counselor (C.B.).  We've been talking off and on about how I tend to dwell on the negative aspects of my life so much that the positive elements are almost disqualified from "counting."  So, in describing the effects this can have on my outlook, I came up with this analogy:

Imagine you were to take a movie and fast-forward through all the happy/positive parts.  You'd be left with a very different movie!  And your interpretation of that movie would be completely different -- and, in fact, distorted.


That's what it's like to dwell on the negative in life and skim over the positive -- distorted.  Somehow, coming up with this image has helped me describe an imbalance I'm trying to correct.

It's true -- life will always have its downsides.  However, as I'm learning, the goods/positives are just as real as the negatives, and just as worthy of lingering.  So, I'm trying to learn to linger in the beautiful moments too, rather than taking them for granted.  I can already tell: it's a worthwhile exercise!

I'm back... I think...

So....  it's been awhile since I've posted, eh?  Life has been full -- in a good way.  I'm hoping to get back to blogging (I know, every blogger says that... and then many of us disappear for a year again).  But really, I'm hopeful.

The wedding was amazing -- one of the best days of my life!  Here's one of our many pictures from the day:

Lately, I've been thinking through wrestling with some big questions.  I suppose they're abstract questions, but they have very concrete implications.  Questions like...

• What does it mean that God is the Healer?  How is it that we can pray, and pray, and pray for healing and not seem to see "results" -- or at least, the results we're looking for.  Does God desire to heal instantaneously, or does he heal primarily through non-miraculous means such as doctors, counselors, etc.?  This particular question has struck me over and over lately, particularly as I walk alongside several people who have chronic health problems.  "Lord, I know that you are the healer -- so why does it seem like you're not actually healing?"
• Why is life so hard, and why doesn't God make it better?  Maybe I'm losing my youthful idealism, I don't know -- but I'm certainly coming face to face with the fact that some things in life just stay hard, and some people seem to have a harder time than most.  Why have I been blessed with a wonderful relationship when others who long for it more than I did remain alone?  Why do terrible things keep happening to the same dear people?  Why doesn't God cut them a break?
• What difference does faith make in life?  Faith obviously doesn't make all our problems go away, guarantee that we won't get cancer, ensure that our loved ones will be protected from pain, etc.  I know the "right" answers here -- faith gives us hope, God sustains us, God provides, God delivers us -- but I'm wrestling with to what extent those truths I "know" correspond with what I see in the world.  

The bottom line is that there are a lot of things about God and about life that I've been taught through the years, and which I believe -- but there's a way in which I want these truths to become more real to me.  I want to believe with my whole heart that God is who I say he is, and who I've been taught he is.  It's a scary thing, to open up oneself to real questions like this -- but I trust that God will bring me through the questions into greater trust, and maybe even greater clarity.

It doesn't scare God when we wrestle with questions -- particularly when we include him in the dialogue.

"God All-Sufficient"

This is a prayer from a wonderful little book of Puritan prayers (The Valley of Vision).

"God All -Sufficient"

O Lord of Grace,
The world is before me this day,
    and I am weak and fearful,
    but I look to thee for strength;
If I venture forth alone I stumble and fall,
    but on the Beloved's arms I am firm
    as the eternal hills;
If left to the treachery of my heart
    I shall shame thy Name,
   but if enlightened, guided, upheld by thy Spirit,
    I shall bring thee glory.
Be thou my arm to support,
       my strength to stand,
       my light to see,
       my feet to run,
       my shield to protect,
       my sword to repel,
       my sun to warm.
To enrich me will not diminish thy fullness;
All thy lovingkindness is in thy Son,
I bring him to thee in the arms of faith,
I urge his saving name as the One who died for me.
I plead his blood to pay my debts of wrong.
Accept his worthiness for my unworthiness,
    his sinlessness for my transgressions,
    his purity for my uncleanness,
    his sincerity for my guile,
    his truth for my deceits,
    his meekness for my pride,
    his constancy for my backslidings,
    his love for my enmity,
    his fullness for my emptiness,
    his faithfulness for my treachery,
    his obedience for my lawlessness,
    his glory for my shame,
    his devotedness for my waywardness,
    his holy life for my unchaste ways,
    his righteousness for my dead works,
    his death for my life.


Amen.

Psalm 145

Not my poetry, for a change. :)  I've italicized a couple of the verses that are particularly meaningful to me.

Psalm 145:8-9, 13b-18

The Lord is gracious and compassionate,
     slow to anger and rich in love.

The Lord is good to all;
     he has compassion on all he has made.
...
(13b) The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises,
             and faithful in all he does.

The Lord upholds all who fall,
     and lifts up all who are bowed down.

The eyes of all look to you,
     and you give them their food at the proper time.

You open your hand
     and satisfy the desires of every living thing. 

The Lord is righteous in all his ways
     and faithful in all he does.

The Lord is near to all who call on him,
     to all who call on him in truth.

Another angsty poem

I walk along the narrow way--
border stones straight, even--
until I clear the intersection
temptation, broad and dreary--
but the narrow road leaves no doubt.
Beyond the intersection
the borders begin to fade,
the road becomes a lane,
then a path,
then an overgrown rut,
then grass.
Narrow road now open field,
flowered with shoulds
and expectations
and desires
and somewhere a right way?
Where the anxiety over choice
dissipates to trust
and secure footing.
Does the narrow path still exist
somewhere beneath the weeds?
Or in this fallen field,
do we just do the best we can
to wander toward the sun?

9/21/09

Two old poems

Sometimes it's fun to look back at what I've written and realize that some of my big questions now have answers. In perusing an old journal, I found two poems: one wrestling with the idea of vocation, the other wrestling with my then-single state. I now feel that I know my vocation, and I am engaged... but I still enjoy reading the old poems. So, selfishly (as befits a blogger), I am going to post them here.

1. "Vocation"

Life would be easier without vocation.
Simpler.
Like slip-on pumps
for eye-hooks on patent leather
or velcro on your tennis shoes.
Life would be easier without that inward force,
Passion,
earnest knowledge that I am made for something--
For something.
Not anything.
A single key
jagged edges purposefully carved
does not open every door,
but some doors.
And maybe only one door.
Somewhere.
That key -- does it know?
the purpose of its edges,
significance of its grooves,
does it dream of that blissful moment of niche-dom --
ultimate fulfillment,
joy?

Yes, life would be easier without vocation.
I could watch old reruns
and eat bon-bons
and go to culinary school
and travel to Greece, and Paris, and South Africa,
and work so I could travel again.
I could try everything once--
a professional dabbler--
poetry, piano, chef, photography,
wife, mother, flirt, scholar,
missionary, pastor, cantor, priest,
Pour out this passion abundantly,
freely, lacking purpose--
A rainstorm and not a garden hose--
in every direction, like a storm
sweeping down over the Rim,
I could be free to fling passion
like buckets of paint at an immense canvas,
and energy at one pursuit at a time
or three or ten or twenty
or none if I didn't feel like it.

But

I am not my own.
Funny--
I seem to have the control of limb and tongue and mind
Divine illusion?
I am suited for something.
Not just anything,
I think.

2. "Paul's Gift"

Will my time come?
My time to squeal like a toddler
meeting her first wriggly puppy,
My time to look at a cloud, a bush, a rake,
and think of him
and know he thinks of me.
Time to live the oldest story of all
before the Fall,
for the trite to become the truest true.

Will I be sappy?
Saccharin?
Susceptible?
Will I know from the start? Will we part
reluctantly, lingering in dusk
as the heavens expand and we grow small?
Will I resonate with radio tunes,
relish chick-flicks without skepticism?
Will my inner clock tick louder
than my ambition?
Will it strangle my call?

That call -- clear as vodka,
triply intoxicating--
will he store it in a cabinet
for a rainy day,
or for his own amusement,
or to bring out at parties?
Will I suffocate in someone else's dream?
Or
is Paul's gift bewitchingly,
perplexingly,
my own?

The prodigal, retold

Imagine how different the story would be if the prodigal son refused to accept his father's grace...

"The Prodigal Retold"

My father
Looks at me across the table--
which groans from the weight of so much meat
and bread and cake and wine--
past the laughing faces of
the other servants, who revel
in the wonder of my return
and the impromptu feast.

His eyes are sad.
They ask why I choke down bread crusts and
sip at stale water and
pass over the richer treats.
Is my meat not good?
Is my wine not to your liking?
I offer you my bounty--
why do you not receive?
This is my body, given for you--
take and eat!


I cannot.
I must not.
It is too painful to receive that which
I do not deserve, that which
I have not earned.
So here I sit--
hungry
guilty
mourning
fearing
rejecting the feast
as I reject
my self.

I am preaching tonight. I just printed off the hard copy of my sermon, which is always a relief!

This is the first sermon I've preached in church that is completely new material -- the only other sermon I've given so far (last Thanksgiving) drew heavily from a sermon I wrote for a seminary class. So I'm excited -- but also nervous.

You see, this sermon will not be a "textbook" sermon. I was trained in an (über-) evangelical seminary that has VERY strong opinions/beliefs about what makes a good sermon -- or even what makes a "real" sermon. In two words: consecutive exposition. Line-by-line exegesis of the biblical text. A clear outline, with a clear "proposition" offered, preferably at the beginning of the sermon. Each main point anchored in the text, backed up with illustrations and explanation. Highly linear.

Well, I just couldn't force my sermon into that kind of rhetorical corset this time around. Part of me wanted to -- the part that says, "People will judge you if you don't give a technically excellent sermon -- especially since you're a girl." I'm still a bit scared that I will be dismissed tonight because my sermon is more fluid than linear.

But I just couldn't do it. My sense is that what God wants to do tonight, through the texts, music, liturgy, and sermon, is to move the congregation -- for the significance of good Friday to sink into hearts, not just enter into minds. You see, sometimes exegesis keeps us at a distance, comfortably removed from the text, under the illusion that we can approach God objectively and cognitively. But God wants more than (though not less than) our minds.

My congregation is well educated and well churched. And that's good! But it can also numb us to the impact events like Good Friday ought to have on our hearts. So tonight, I'm taking a risk -- and I pray that God will use it.

Yes, I'm alive...

Apparently I unofficially decided to take a sabbatical from ye olde blog. I've been juggling a lot of different things in the past few months, and frankly feeling overwhelmed much of the time! I'm thankful for what I have on my plate right now, but I'm also struggling to break free of old, old patterns that drag me down and hold me back. Freedom is coming, I think -- but it comes at a the price of hard work, intentionality, and tears.

I wrote this poem (yes, it's angsty, as my poems are wont to be) a few months back. It expresses a bit of my grief at realizing the damage I've done to myself through some of the mental habits I've held onto for so long, as well as my sense that the time is coming when those habits will no longer keep me in their stranglehold.

And the pain floods in again from my very core.

These tears are Real, an expression

of a very real part of me

A child I have carried inside for so long

and fed with guilt

and nourished with abuse

and coddled with half truths

about who I am.

It sits like an iron ball on my stomach

and the time to shed this weight draws near.

The labor pains are upon me

I must learn to live life without

this parasite masquerading as my child--

for I am the child--

terrified

lonely

vulnerable

fragile

weak

ashamed

desperate

insecure

cowering at projected

rejection.

Yes, I am the child here.