I hate clocks and watches - they become a prison for me that I can’t escape. I become obsessed with, “what time is it” and “being on time” and meeting “dead” lines. For me living by the clock or watch makes me “times” prisoner rather than a means to “keep” time. In fact clocks and watches often prevent me from entering fully the precious moment I am in– as I am always trying to grasp the next moment to come (playing “beat the clock”). Many years ago (about 10) I gave up the “wrist manacle” and began to live free from a time keeper.

In light of that… I have stopped watching watches and offer the following little bits and piece I have picked up over the years on the mechanical ticking that can tie us up.

“Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” ~William Faulkner

“…being attentive to the times of the day: when the birds began to sing, and the deer came out of the morning fog, and the sun came up. The reason why we don’t take time is a feeling that we have to keep moving. This is a real sickness. We live in the fullness of time. Every moment is God’s own good time, His kairos (gk. for opportune time). The whole thing boils down to giving ourselves in prayer a chance to realize that we have what we seek. We don’t have to rush after it. It was there all the time and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.” ~Thomas Merton

“One act is required - and that is all: for this one act pulls everything together and keeps everything in order… This one act is to stand with attention in your heart.” ~Theophan the Recluse

“Nevertheless I am alway with you: for you hold me by my right hand.” (Psalm 73.23)

That last verse from The Book of Psalms is one that I like to keep in mind - when I “instinctual” want to look at the clocks time - to remind me - no watch on my right hand, but God is with me! So enter into the NOW - for “there” is where time is full and God is present.

Writing is tough! I think the greatest thing a person can do in helping them become a better verbal communicator is to work harder and more intentionally at writing. It doesn’t stop there, that is if you want to become a better writer - to become a better writer one must become a more diligent reader (reading good books, journals, and articles).

So, if you want to speak well, write well; if you desire to write well, read well.

In view of that…

A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people… Len Sweet

As the old saying goes: Writing is easy. You just stare at a blank page until drops of blood form on your forehead. – Marshall Shelley

Peace.

I am trying to learn a new word. Not in the sense of when I was a kid and you had a new vocabulary word and the goal was spelling it correctly or using the “new term” properly. You remember, don’t you? You had an every week assignment where you had to write out definitions and use the “new word” in a sentence, etc., etc. (to be prepared to correctly spell the word on the end of week spelling test). I was pretty good with learning new words in that fashion, but learning to embody a new word or practice a new word, that is a different matter.

At least I am finding it difficult to embody one particular new word I am learning. It is a demanding and relentless concept that for ages I am sure has stumped or tripped up many who have been caught by it’s allure.

Don’t get me wrong this is no mean or nasty word - it is helpful; just downright hard.

The word is a Greek word that was a common word. It had a regular old meaning and I am sure was thrown about regularly back in the day - but that meaning has been infused with fresh and even greater intensity by those Eastern Desert Monks. They also began to use this term regularly as the antidote to so many sins and pitfalls in living out the life of Christ.

Jesus, also, used the word (at least Luke records such in 12.37).

The word means, “be alert” or “be sober!” It means control your attention on the matter at hand. (That alone is a tall order.) As I mentioned though - the monks of the desert infused this with a spiritual bent - giving this word the meaning to focus ones attention solely on God.

This is what I am trying to learn.

This is what I am finding very difficult. To practice this word, this Greek word, Nepsis.

Most mornings I head to the barn to feed and turn out the horses (from mid-Fall through early Spring). It was a cold morning this past winter when I was heading through my routine - I walked the 250 feet from my back door to the barn past the front pasture; I fed the horses their grain; I broke the ice off the watering trough; I put out flakes of hay for the horses to graze on in the front pasture and I was turning my wife’s swedish warmblood out into the front pasture when I heard my wife’s voice (over my iPod) and saw her frantically waving (that by the way was not part of our morning ritual). My wife was trying to get my attention - because apparently as I went through my morning routine I failed to notice the 30 foot tree that had fallen through the fence in our front pasture (25 feet of it, at least, was IN the pasture on the ground).

What, was I blind?

How could I have missed it - once I saw it - I couldn’t see anything else?! I had walked past the fallen tree, I had been in the pasture filling the trough and putting out hay - yet I had never opened my eyes beyond my own footsteps to see what had transpired in the night. Going through the motions with little to no engagement. Unaware and distant from the moment - can you say, “not present.” I wasn’t blind; I was just lacking any awareness and attentiveness to my surroundings (or is that the very definition of being, “blind”).

After that incident, (after coming to terms with, “How didn’t I see that!”) I began to reflect on, how often am I “going through the motions” and how much do I miss?

I am working on living in a more alert fashion. I am trying to slow and to live with a greater appreciation for the present. It is a slow process. It is sort of ironic that next month I am leading a spiritual retreat for folks on this very topic. I think I am learning that God often leads me to such opportunities - not because of what I can offer - but because it is how he can teach me.

I hope to hear and obey the words of Benedict in the Prologue to his Rule:

“However late, then, it may seem, let us rouse ourselves from lethargy. That is what scripture urges on us when it says, the time has come for us to rouse ourselves from sleep. Let us open our eyes to the light that shows us the way to God. Let our ears be alert to the stirring call of his voice crying to us every day: today if you should hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” [St. Benedict’s Rule, A New Translation for Today, Ampleforth Abbey Press, 1997. p. 11]

I struggled with lent - starting well; finishing not so well. This year lent has exposed to me how difficult it is to sustain the same activity for forty days (a habit I didn’t make). Life is so loud and my drive to be a part of doing what I want, when I want overtakes Lent’s call to slow down, simplify, and surrender. Lent is countercultural even in a recession - it is a call to participate with Jesus in dying to self, walking in God’s will and pursuing a path of penance. Our culture while it may recognize these as noble pursuits is more suited toward materialism, consumerism, consumption, individual determination and pragmatism… and this year I became aware of just how influenced I am by my culture.

It is no surprise that an individual would be lured and formed by the dominant culture in which they live; but at the same time we can talk ourselves into being “above” such influences or striving toward a counter-cultural alternative. I admit - I am neither. My hope is that it will change.

I was only in to the third or fourth day of Lent this year when I was struck with how communal the guide I was using was, and I knew this was a missing aspect in my observance. Lent (the Christian Faith for that matter) is not meant to be observed by individuals, it is a season for a community. The Celtic Saint Brigid warned: a Christ follower without a soul friend is like a body with no head. I went into Lent be-headed.

My desire to follow the Christian year and to practice a more traditional liturgy has made me make some hard decisions - my family and I are going to be joining a new Christian community which can help us in these areas of our faith. It will be difficult to leave our current church (to a degree); but at the same time this realization has been a long time coming. So this Sunday (or Saturday Night) we will worship with a new portion of God’s family as we remember and rehearse Jesus’ last time entering Jerusalem for Passover.

So to recap - Lent 2009:
-Eye opening.
-Lent is not a solo sport.
-I am addicted to more and better.
-I can talk well about surrender but living it… not so much.
-Finding a soul friend is not a mere suggestion.
-(Sorta) said, “Goodbye” to one community in order to walk toward another that can help us be formed by liturgy (in all its forms: liturgical year, liturgical prayer, liturgical practices and traditions).

Peace.

I have probably bored my readers to death with tales and mentions of cutting down trees and stacking firewood - so either ignore the following or endure my foolishness.

The following are lessons I have learned as I have stacked firewood; and when I say stacking firewood - I mean from dropping the tree to covering the finished product (this past weekend included two “marathon” sessions after a week of two or three half-marathon sessions of cleaning up a 120 or so year old white oak that I downed early this year). By the way the lessons are not going to be explicitly applied - glean whatever you glean - this is all about “reader response.”

1. a splitter will reveal any weak points in a log… pressure has a way of pointing out flaws

2. when falling a tree foresight and forward thinking are not optional

3. stacking firewood is not a solo sport

4. good firewood that makes for efficient fuel is often not easy to split

5. if at all possible… read the grain and go with it

6. every piece of wood has a story to tell… a tale of age and location; a tale of hardship and visitors - it is worth taking the time every once in a while to stop and listen

7. from tree standing to firewood stacked - it takes a lot of individual handling!! (more than I care to actually count - sometimes mystery or ignorance really is best)

8. from my wife - don’t short circuit all the handling by carrying multiple pieces - the carrying of each individual log multiple times from place to place helps remove the foreign matter

9. finding a logs niche in the pile is both serendipity and art

any other wood stackers out there? any other lessons learned?

I stumbled across a great illustration of why ritual and symbols are such helpful religious practices that I want to share today. The picture comes from Gertrude Mueller Nelson in her book, “To Dance With God.”

She writes, “Watch how children, frightened by the vast and powerful surf at the ocean, tame it; they scoop a small hole in the sand near where the waves break and let the water fill the hole. In essence, children respond to the vast sea by creating a mini-sea, which they can control and manage. They had created a hole, to catch something of the transcendent. In the same way we cannot head straight into the awe of the Almighty. Like the child before the ocean, we turn our backs on what is too much and slowly create the form that will contain something of the uncontainable…. The power of the Almighty needs, sometimes, to be guarded against but it also needs to be beckoned, called forth and wooed.” (p. 25)

So how do we relate to the God who is so vast, so great, so holy, so perfect - that when John (the Apostle whom Jesus loved) saw The Mystery he fell down like a dead man? How do we capture something of the greatness of God in a way that is “safe?” For years people have done so with rituals (think alters, ceremony’s, special dress, special rooms, special furniture, special postures, etc.) and symbols (crosses, icons, statues, medals, etc) - do you have any ways (rituals, practices, symbols) that help you confront the ocean of God as you sit upon the beach?

Lent is an anglo-saxon word which best defined means Spring. The Spring was greeted by another season of the Christian Year the time of Lent (just as Winter sees the beginning of Advent; Pentecost leads us into Summer and Autumn - Ordinary time). Lent is definitely the most solemn of the Christian seasons. A time for serious reflection, repentance and thus renewal. As I have reflected during this first week of Lent and journeyed with the Lenten Guide (Journey Into Wholeness by Christine Sine) it has pushed me to look at my self. It is never pretty.

I don’t often plan well. This lenten season though I had decided to observe an old lenten practice of praying The Litany at least once a week (The late Robert Webber suggested Saturday’s were the tradition in his book, The Prymer, so I said, “why not?”), and that was just what I needed this week.

The Litany is a L-o-n-g prayer. It is really a kind of prayer service. I used a protestant version (without the invoking of the Saints) from An English Prayer Book (published by Oxford as a potential Alternate Alternative Service Book!?). In this version of the Litany it is a seven-fold prayer moving from Inviting God to hear to repentance (personal) to petitions to intercessions to the Lord’s Prayer to corporate repentance and to benediction.

A wonderful prayer. A needed time this past Saturday. It helped me repent. To change my way of thinking. To see with new eyes. To feel like I found my position and place again. This Lenten practice, setting aside and taking time to reflect and repent is something I realize I don’t naturally move toward. I am more apt to “keep going” and put things behind… Lent calls us to put some of life aside and reflect on who I am becoming and how am I living. This is good. The Litany helped me in facing some of that. I look forward to this and it is good.

At the same time I feel strangely alone.

Lent is meant to happen in community and the Litany is written to be said in community (I guess I will be exploring this theme throughout my Lenten experience) but my current Christian community doesn’t observe Lent, so I am observing it solo.

Today’s wisdom comes from Thomas Merton’s The Wisdom of the Desert. Two thoughts that seem to be rightly connected as they follow one another in Merton’s anthology.

Abbot Ammonas said that he had spent fourteen years in Scete praying to God day and night to be delivered from anger. (pg. 33)

Abbot Pastor said: The virtue of a monk is made manifest by temptations. (pg. 34)

Temptations by Michael D. O’Brien

Have you ever been asked, “What time is it?” Stupid question or maybe I meant it as a rhetorical question. Of course, we have all have been asked, “What time is it?” Lately I have been tempted to respond, “The time is now.” Not to be a “smart-alec” or a “wise guy” but to make a person pause and think.

Round my parts we have traded in the rakes of fall for the shovels of snow fall; and last night as I walked up from the barn crunching the new fallen snow and watching a light flurry in the moon light - well time didn’t matter. It was one of those “time standing still” moments; when the past is forgotten and the future stays distant and now absorbs the whole person (mind, will, emotions and spirit). Unfortunately this is an all to rare experience. We are often so absorbed with “time” (in a chronological sense) that we never enter the now (When is “now,” if we are always responding to the past or preparing for the future?).

During one of my earliest New Testament Greek lessons I discovered the two primary Greek words that convey the idea for time: Chronos and Kairos. The former conveys as you can probably tell the idea of chronological time (which we desire to measure with preciseness with watches and clocks that can click off hours, minutes, seconds and nano seconds); the latter conveys another type of time - time as opportunity.

Kairos, is the “fullness of time,” time beyond deadlines and “time is money” embracing instead each moment as an opportunity to enter into NOW. Now is where we can be. Now is where we are present to God’s activity; the words of another; the beauty or tragedy of the created order and where we live “to the full” (in our senses, our divinely created purpose and to our potential as human). It has been observed that Heaven will be an “eternal now.”

My desire is to be able to enter more fully in to the time that is now. For it is only in the present that one can be (in the past I was and in the future I may be…).