intercession [disciplines for the inner life]

Today I imagined my inner self as a place crowded with pins and needles. How could I receive anyone in my prayer when there is no real place for them to be free and relaxed? When I am still so full of preoccupations, jealousies, angry feelings, anyone who enters will get hurt. I had a very vivid realization that I must create some free space in my innermost self so that I may indeed invite others to enter and be healed. To pray for others means to offer others a hospitable place where I can really listen to their needs and pains. Compassion, therefore, calls for a self-scrutiny that can lead to inner gentleness.

If I could have a gentle "interiority" -- a heart of flesh and not of stone, a room with some spots on which one might walk barefooted -- then God and my fellow humans could meet each other there. Then the center of my heart can become the place where God can hear the prayer for my neighbors and embrace them with his love."

-- From The Genesis Diary by Henri J. Nouwen

God has been transforming me in my ability to embrace the tensions of emotional honesty and Christ-like compassion. It may kill me.

I'm not even kidding.

My understanding of intercession is elementary and cloddish. I imagine long to-do lists of People To Pray For and complex systems of remembering them all. I've at least learned not to tell someone I'll pray for them if I don't really want to do that. Better to risk appearing unaffected by another's plight than to perjure myself.

The holiest, most common, most necessary practice in the spiritual life is the presence of God, that is to take delight in and become accustomed to His divine company, speaking humbly and talking lovingly with Him at every moment, without rule or system, and especially in times of temptation, suffering, spiritual aridity, disgust and even of unfaithfulness and sin. We must continually work hard so that each of our actions is a way of carrying on little conversations with God, in any carefully prepared way but as it comes from the purity and simplicity of the heart. -- from The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence

Brother Lawrence's journey toward practicing the presence of God began when he was captured by the image of a barren oak tree. I like the symbol -- although I'm not sure for the same reasons as Brother Lawrence. When I was a little girl we spent much of the warm weather months at my grandparents' cottage on a little pond in the middle of the country. On walks we'd disappear into the forest across the road and up a gravely pathway. At the top of the foresty hillside -- just after walking from the cool leafy darkness of the trees into the bee-buzzing sunlight -- was an ancient, towering tree overlooking a black-berry bush infused field and a small lake. I loved this tree. It marked the top of a climb, yes, but also it had presence. I often would pause my hike long enough to sit against its bumpy trunk and journal or read or wonder. During my sixteenth summer I sat down in the presence of the aged tree in the angsty throes of a teenage romantic break-up. Years later when I took my children on walks around the lake we played games of spotting the tree way up there on top of the hill.

This is not some kind of pantheistic sonnet. Just a symbol of strength and comfort in the presence of something unmoveable and ancient. I think this is what I was supposed to learn about intercession. Well, that and one other: intercession is not about warm fuzzy words for the people we like, but I'll come back to that.

Nouwen's words pierce me. I am quite skilled at providing an external image of warm, hospitable empathy but much, too much of the time my interior self is as the priest states, crowded with pins and needles. This makes true intercession nearly impossible. There is no space to bring another with me into the presence of the Father. There is no place to intercede, to remember anyone outside of my own immediate concerns and preferences. No soft spots for another to stand barefooted in my remembrance.

This is where intercession becomes a discipline. I have no problem remembering people. Or maybe that should read: I have a problem remembering people. I think about, worry about, stew over and stress about people all the time. It's the remembering to the Father part that makes this a discipline. It's kicking the clutter of my soul out of the way to create a clear path to take that person to the Father.

"Will you pray for him?"

Prayer. An act of love, Mother had said.

"Of couse," Grandfather replied.

"How do you pray for someone like that?"

Grandfather held out his open hand, palm up. "There are many different ways. I simply take him into my heart, and then put him into God's hand." Again he smiled. "That sounds like rather an athletic feat, doesn't it? Nevertheless it's as close as I can come to telling you."

-- from Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle

With that truth learned, intercession becomes about all who come to my mind and all I allow to enter my mind and heart. Not just the loved and the lovely; the lonely and the whole, the sick and the well, the wounded and the wounder, the friend and the enemy, the faithful and the faithless. With a gentle interior I am able to make space to bring many with me into the presence of the Father for His care and His judgment and His healing.

A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. ...This is a happy discovery for the Christian who begins to pray for others. There is no dislike, no personal tension, no estrangement that cannot be overcome by intercession as far as our side of it is concerned. Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day...Intercession means no more than to bring our brother into the presence of God, to see him under the Cross of Jesus as a poor human being and sinner in need of grace. Then everything in him that repels us falls away; we see him in all his destruction and need. His need and his sin become so heavy and oppressive that we feel them as our own, and we can do nothing else but pray...To make intercession means to grant our brother the same right that we have received, namely, to stand before Christ and share in his mercy. -- from Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Bible is full of hearty examples of saints disciplined in intercession. Numbers 14 tells an account of Moses interceding on behalf of the Israelites who were busy with the task of slandering him and grumbling against him. Moses did not intercede out of some twisted sense of self-preservation; he interceded with the goal of God preserving His own Name and reputation in front of all the nations.

In 1 Samuel 12, the prophet admonishes the people for their sin of rejection of God as their king (you guessed it, slandering and grumbling and wish-dreaming for their ideal leader again). He then performed a sign of rain in the dry season to prove God's displeasure. The people begged Samuel to pray for them to not be killed by this God. Samuel assured them and instructed them this way: God, simply because of who He is, is not going to walk off and leave His people. God took delight in making you into His very own people. And neither will I walk off and leave you. That would be a sin against God. I'm staying right here at my post praying for you and teaching you the good and right way to live. (I haven't yet learned the discipline of calling down rain, but certainly I'm capable of staying at my prayer post!)

In Genesis 18 Abraham literally stands in God's way and confronts Him about His plans to to deliver harsh justice to Sodom. Abraham displays a holy blend of boldness and humility - confronting with persistence and frankness while at the same time acknowledging his frailty as a man before his Master. God seemed pleased with Abraham's behavior and consented to his requests.

It is amazing that a poor human creature is able to speak with God's high majesty in heaven and not be afraid. When we pray, the heart and the conscience must not pull away from God because of our sins and our unworthiness, or stand in doubt or be scared away. When we pray we must hold fast and believe that God has heard our prayer. It was for this reason that the ancients defined prayer as an Ascensus mentis ad Deum, "a climbing up of the heart unto God". -- Martin Luther

Intercession as climbing, confronting, remembering, staying, imagining, bathing, welcoming --athletic feats indeed.

Worship & Arts at the Center: A New Model and a Renewed Liturgy [part 1 of 8]

Between the week of July 12 and August 30 the Worship & Arts team at Union Center will be working through eight lessons that focus on the specific actions we peform together in worship each Sunday.

While my hope is that the team will do most of the commenting here as a way of adding to the conversation and engaging with the material, if you are reading this post I'd love to have your comments, too!

Ready? Here we go!

Week One: A New Model and A Renewed Liturgy

Why Does This Converation Matter?

One of many important reasons this conversation matters is that the way we worship (intentionality) forms our view of God, each other and ourselves.

A simple evaluative technique I use in parishes is not whether they get the rite right. That's easy to evaluate; I can go down a checklist. Real evaluation of our liturgies, our worship in our parishes, can only be analyzed five, six, seven years down the line when we look at our corporate personality as a parish or a congregation and either do or do not see growth. If we do not see growth, we need to ask ourselves, what are we doing? If we see growth, then we have to thank God, because it's God's doing. -- Joyce Zimmerman

Definitions of worship

• shachah = to prostrate oneself as a subject to a master; to bow down and stoop (Ps. 66:4, Nehemiah 8: 5,6)
• proskuneo = to prostrate oneself; to do reverence; to kiss towards
• Worship is organized and directed action toward God through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and through the power of the Spirit.
• Worship is orchestrated action that we do in community. Worship is work. (Story of a seminary professor who often said: It’s time for chapel. Let’s go get God worshipped.)
• The OT and NT contain words that suggest worship is work.
• Abad = the work that the priests and Levites do in order to “get God worshipped”. (lighting lamps, burning incence, preparing animals, sweaty, messy, dutiful things)
• In the NT, Greek counterpart: leitourgia = service, work , ministry (Romans 12:1, Hebrews 9:21, Luke 1:23; Hebrews 8:1,2)
• koinonia = participate, fellowship, partnership (Phil. 1: 4,5)
• Worship is to do something, to become active, to invest in an enterprise, to roll up our sleeves, to bow, to serve, to light lamps…

{notes from an online presentation of The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship; presentation given by Dr. Constance Cherry, professor of Worship and Christian Ministries at Indiana Wesleyan University }

Forms of worship

We have one term in English language that has to do a tremendous amount of work. We have one term to mean three different things.

1. Worship of God in all we do in life (Romans 12:1)
2. Worship as an assembly
3. Worship in private moments of adoration

{notes from Transforming Culture Symposium, John Witvliet, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, 04/08}

While worship as a lifestyle and a devotional discipline are significantly intertwined with the corporate expression of worship, this conversation is focused on the weekly gathering(s) of worship at Union Center Christian Church.

A new model

Based on the belief our elders have communicated that Union Center has what it needs in our current resource and personnel to get God worshipped we propose a team-led rather than a personality-led approach to our weekly worship gathering(s). This flattened model would best steward the talents, personalities and gifting of our current musicians and artists and would increasingly blur the lines between the team on the platform and the team in the pew.

A renewed liturgy

We feel that the corporate worship expression at Union Center has not grown up with the rest of our ministry learnings (formally and informally spoken). One example of this could be our covenant value of prayer. How much time is spent in our service order doing the work of desperate prayer together? Another example is our covenant value of freedom. How much time in our weekly 75-minute service order is spent hearing stories of freedom or celebrating specific freedoms experienced in our congregation, or the opposite of that—mourning the brokenness in our community?

Combining both the positive and negative factors of worshipping in a non-denominational church under a leadership that encourages us to pursue a broad spectrum in worship, the vision drift under a variety of worship leaders and the influence of a consumer-based para-church subculture we are a generation of shallow, uneducated, unformed, doctrinally and biblically illiterate worshippers. The question can not be whether or not we use liturgy. Liturgy happens on its own with any group that gathers together to worship on a regular basis. The question instead is whether the liturgy we employ is intentional or unintentional? If worship indeed forms us we would propose a sturdier, historically and biblically-grounded order for our weekly worship gatherings.

The term liturgy is another English word that must do many jobs. The following definitions and descriptions are intended to aid in this conversation:

Definitions of liturgy

1. a form of public worship; ritual
2. a collection of formularies for public worship
3. a particular arrangement of services
4. a particular form or type of the Eucharistic service
Dictionary.com

A worship that will have staying power is a worship that is firmly grounded in the old, yet aware of and concerned for new ways to respond to the old, old story. -- Robert Webber, Worship Old & New, p. 18

For the purposes of this conversation, we are really looking at two forms of the word liturgy. We consider the larger sense from the biblical definitions of worship as a work of the people (corporate), as the work that goes into getting God worshipped. We also consider the more specific definition of liturgy as a particular arrangement of services.

If we, in fact, value an emphasis of the corporate over the individual in our weekly worship gatherings we see worship as a true work of the people. If we, in fact, desire the worship expression at Union Center to connect with the historic Bride of Christ and the global church, then we treasure its common expressions, or liturgy. (e.g., the Lord’s Prayer, the Lord’s Supper, etc.)

Excerpt from Eugene Peterson

Liturgy is the means that the church uses to keep baptized Christians in living touch with the entire living holy community as it participates formationally in Holy Scripture. I want to use the word ‘liturgy’ to refer to this intent and practice of the church insofar as it pulls everything in and out of the sanctuary into a life of worship, situates everything past and present coherently as participation in the revelation written for us in Scripture. Instead of limiting liturgy to the ordering of the community in discrete acts of worship, I want to use in this large and comprehensive way, the centuries-deep and continents-wide community, spread out in space and time, as formed by the words in this book – our existence understood liturgically, that is, connectedly, in the context of the three-personal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and furnished in the text of the Holy Scripture…

Liturgy gathers the holy community as it reads the Holy Scriptures into the sweeping total rhythms of the church year in which the story of Jesus and the Christian makes its rounds century after century, the large an easy interior rhythms of a year that moves from birth, life, death, resurrection, on to spirit, obedience, faith, and blessing. Without liturgy we lose the rhythms and end up tangled in the jerky, ill-timed, and insensitive interruptions of public-relations campaigns, school openings and closings, sales days, tax deadlines, inventories, and elections. Advent is buried under ‘shopping days before Christmas.’ The joyful disciplines of Lent are exchanged for the anxious penitentials of filling out income tax forms. Liturgy keeps us in touch with the story as it defines and shapes our beginnings and ends, our living and dying, our rebirths and blessings in this Holy Spirit, text-formed community, visible and invisible.
When Holy Scripture is embraced liturgically, we become aware that a lot is going on all at once, a lot of different people are doing a lot of different things. The community is on its feet, at work for God, listening and responding to the Holy Scriptures. The holy community, in the process of being formed by the Holy Scriptures, is watching and listening to God’s revelation taking shape before and in them as they follow Jesus, each person playing his or her part in the Spirit.
It is useful to reflect that the word ‘liturgy’ did not originate in church or worship settings. In the Greek world, it referred to public service, what a citizen did for the community. As the church used the word in relation to worship, it kept this ‘public service’ quality – working for the community on behalf of or following orders from God. As we worship God, revealed personally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our Holy Scriptures, we are not doing something apart from or away from the non-Scripture-reading world; we do it for the world – bringing all creation and all history before God, presenting our bodies and all the beauties and needs of humankind before God in praise and intercession, penetrating and serving the world for whom Christ died in the strong name of the Trinity.

Liturgy puts us to work along with all the others who have been and are being put to work in the world by and with Jesus, following our spiritually-forming text. Liturgy keeps us in touch with all the action that has been and is being generated by the Spirit as given witness in the biblical text. Liturgy prevents the narrative form of Scripture from being reduced to private, individualized consumption.

Understood this way ‘liturgical’ has little to do with choreography on the chancel or aesthetics of the sublime. It is obedient, participatory listening to Holy Scripture in the company of the holy community through time (our two-thousand years of responding to this text) and in space (our friends in Christ all over the world). High-church Anglicans, revivalistic Baptists, hands-in-the-air praising Charismatics, and Quakers sitting in a bare room in silence are all required to read and live this text liturgically, participating in the holy community’s reading of Holy Scripture. There is nothing ‘churchy’ or elitist about it; it is a vast and dramatic ‘story-ing,’ making sure that we are taking our place in the story and letting everyone else have their parts in the story also, making sure that we don’t leave anything or anyone out of the story. Without sufficient liturgical support and structure we are very apt to edit the story down to fit our individual tastes and predispositions. -- Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, p.20

Forms of liturgy

Studies of worship throughout every era of God’s people doing the work of worship together provide rich resources for our learning and encouragement in this era at Union Center Christian Church. We find our heritage from the Old Testament Hebrew tabernacle and temple traditions, the New Testament churches, the Byzantine ceremonial traditions and love for the aesthetic, the Roman simplicity in symbol and love for architecture, the Reformation and free-church movement’s focus on the preaching of the Word and evangelism.

But for this conversation it would be more helpful to focus on the modern and postmodern church’s response to this rich heritage. The following represent three attitudes, responses or stances taken by the church:

1. First, there are the traditionalists who want worship to be as it was. These are the people who resist change or are so deeply committed to a particular historical model of worship that talk of incorporating new styles of worship is intolerable.
2. Second, there are those who wish to jettison traditional worship as irrelevant and go in search of a worship that is contemporary. Contemporary worship is difficult to pinpoint since there are so many forms of creative contemporary worship, ranging from the guitar mass to entertainment models of worship.
3. A third approach…blends both the old and the new, a worship that respects the tradition yet seeks to incorporate worship styles formed by the contemporary church…refer to this approach as worship old and new.

{Taken from Worship: Old & New by Robert Webber, pp. 12, 13}

If we have heard Pastor John and our elders well and have presented accurately the vision and values we have heard from them, we believe the best way to get God worshipped at Union Center is not only with a new model but with a renewed liturgy. And we propose this renewed liturgy be formed by a solid understanding and skilled practice of the worship old and new described above.

Discussion Questions

1. What is another way to say that "the way we worship forms our view of God, each other and ourselves"? Comment on Joyce Zimmerman's quote at the top of the lesson.

2. Consider the statement: Worship is to do something, to become active, to invest in an enterprise, to roll up our sleeves, to bow, to serve, to light lamps… What does this kind of "rolling up our sleeves" look like in our modern day worship assembly?

3. What are some of the benefits and challenges of a team-led approach to worship leading?

4. List a common service order or liturgy at Union Center from the past several years. What elements seem intentional? What seem unintentional?

5. Tell me your favorite part of Eugene Peterson's excerpt. (the premise is that everyone will have a favorite part!)

6. What are some clues that "contemporary" liturgy has faded into "traditionalist" liturgy?

7. Give me your best idea of a service element that blends old and new forms of worship.

Rules for Commenting

This is intended to be a conversation that happens over time. (eight weeks to be exact!) Please limit your comments to the subject matter of this post. (in fact, I would be delighted if you used one of the questions as a prompt)

It goes without saying, that your comments do not need to be in total agreement with the content in the post but they do need to be respectful and civil!

This is intended to be a conversation that involves many people -- no lurkers allowed! If you are uncomfortable using the comment feature on this blog, you can email me your thoughts at tmurphy@unioncenter.org

What are you waiting for?? Click on the "comment" button and start writing!

mixtape monday [summer vacation edition]

We're on vacation this week -- at home. Two days in and I'm loving every minute! Yesterday my latest title from BOMC2 arrived. I'm probably not going to get to that until fall because of the reading challenge all six of us have undertaken. It's all about reading the right titles from now through August; my apologies to Anne Rice but since she's not {yet} on a classic literature list she has to wait until September.

Books:

Every summer I try to give us a reading theme to rally around. One of my favorite, favorite, favorite things about summer is the less-scheduled pace which means lots more time for fun reading. My kids are older and I'm not getting dumber with age so this year I attached a cash incentive. Brian and I are even paying ourselves!

For a couple of years now I've been compiling lists of classic literature and this summer that is our goal in the Murphy house -- to get some classic literature under our belts. Want to join us? Check out the list (but don't expect me to be handing you any cash)!

With my vacation time I've completed two-and-a-half books in the last couple of days (oh, the joy)...

Solomon's Grave by Daniel G. Keohane

You may or may not realize that this book is quite a distance outside of my normal taste. But my friend Kevin Lucia has been educating me on the suspense/horror/pulp-fiction genre and this is one of the titles he loaned me. I had speed-read another title that, honestly, was not one I would have wanted to spend much more time than the quick browsing I gave it. But this book was different.

One of the reviews on the back cover reads: A fascinating occult suspense novel, fluent to read, for all those who prefer subtle suspense and finely woven characters over bloody murders and hardcore action...

Based on my clear preference of this work over the first I'd guess I'm one who "prefers subtle suspence over bloody murders". In many ways the plotline and characters reminded me of those I've read in one of Frank Peretti's novels. The main character is a young pastor in a small town wanting to do right by his faith, friends and family but, unwittingly, finds himself in the middle of supernatural clashes between good and evil forces.

Although I did get caught up in the book -- twisting my hair and turning pages as quickly as I could -- the characters were not as convincing to me as those Peretti created and I did not find myself wanting to hide underneath the covers as I did reading This Present Darkness while I was up in the middle of the night feeding my newborn. But I read them a long time ago and I could just be a little bit harder to please now. Either way, I'm glad Kevin is helping me to learn a new genre and I am convinced that we do not tell the whole truth in any artform that does not convince us that evil exists and must be fought. I applaud Kevin and his ilk for pursuing this genre with gusto!

Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle
Moving from occult suspense to this title from one day to the next should have given me some sort of literary whiplash! But moving back and forth between genres is half the fun in reading for me and this author and this book rank right up near the top of my packing list for that day I get stranded on a deserted island and can take only one book.

This morning all six of us (plus Kendra's girlfriend Kaitlyn) walked the two blocks to the neighborhood library - summer book lists in our hands. I had decided to read from the poetry category and looked up Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare's Sonnets. But I could not resist going back to my reading roots with this series. And, within 12 hours had the first title completed.

You know that feeling, right? When you go back to one of your favorite childhood books and it's almost as comforting as if you were actually curled up in your old bedroom, surrounded by your stuffed animals and other assorted adolescent bric-a-brac. During this re-reading I may have realized for the first time how much of my own parenting dreams have been formed by the ideals held by the Austin parents, Victoria and Wallace. I had to also fight the temptation to be discouraged by how little I've matched those ideals. I mean, honestly, how could I be feeling discouraged when I had spent the morning with all of my children scouring the shelves of our little library? Surely the Austin family would approve. Now if we could just have a bushy-eyebrowed grandfather that lived surrounded by books in a renovated stable on a quaint island near (I'm guessing) Nova Scotia surrounded by coastline and beaches where we'd cook hotdogs and make sandcastles and play leapfrog and....[sigh].

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor by Brad Gooch

I've read more about the storied southern-born, Catholic-bred author than read her actual stories. I've read The Geranium (in a collection of short stories) and The Violent Bear It Away...that's it. And, while they both affected me with their gritty, defiant characters and mythic tone, I wouldn't say they are my favorites. But the woman -- or at least the stories about her -- intrigues me. I thought, perhaps, if I read more of her life-story I would gain more insight into her novels and short stories.

This book is growing on me. Biographies normally do. (but I've mentioned that before, haven't I?) I am fascinated by the way a life and a work come up from out of a stew of circumstances, genes, opportunities and choices. The backstory of O'Connor's growing up years in the south during the days of Jim Crow laws and World War II and later in the almost-legendary Writer's Workshops at Iowa State University are as interesting to me as the stories the author has imagined into existence in the pages of her work. I'm not sure I would have liked O'Connor too much if we had been classmates -- she was anti-social and often bitingly sarcastic. But her contrarian, ironic persona and her clear focus and determination to write and write and write and write, are teaching me about this craft and those who pursue it. It is also teaching me about myself and my fears and my continued deference to the status-quo that I don't like to look at very much. If her writing does not have any further impact on me, than hopefully her life-story will.

Films:

Perhaps to counter-balance all the quality reading we're doing as a family this summer, we've decided, in the movie department, to crank up the melodramatic and the kitsch -- you guessed it... 1980's films!

This idea formed during a seemingly-innocent conversation with our friends Paul and Margaret. We were on our way home from dinner at another friend's place and were just making conversation, really. But as we poked into the fog of our near-forty-year-old brains and shouted out one 80's title after another the idea to flood our Netflix queue with every title became too good to ignore.

We're starting with the quintessential drama of teenage angst (The Breakfast Club)and then moving right-into the testosterone-laden romantic glamour (Top Gun). Our kids really aren't too excited about this and Brian and I just can't figure it out. How could they NOT want to take this trip back to our glory days with us? Don't they want to understand better the culture that formed their parents?

Romancing the Stone is coming later this week, and Pretty in Pink after that. What titles would you pick?

Music:

Speaking of the 80's, last weekend Brian and I shared a blast from the past at an outdoor Huey Lewis concert. Who'd have thought I'd love his live music even more than my cherished copies of Fore! and Sports? Between Meet the Austins, The Breakfast Club and Huey I may just be entering some sort of mid-life crisis. (actually I think it's just a much-needed vacation for my head) But, dang, did I need a reminder that there is some feisty girl still kicking around underneath this aging skin! And, in a freaky week of deaths, it was a good reminder of the power of pop music.

You might say, the heart of rock and roll is still beatin'....

Links:
And, speaking of freaky news, you gotta check out this comic strip... (thanks to Jeffrey at Looking Closer for the link)

I'll leave you with this video of my son drumming during his youth group's end-of-the-school-year worship service. It has been a while since Brian and I have been able to watch him play and when I got to watch him in his space I was kind of overwhelmed by the knowledge that he has only one year of highschool left. That Brian and I get to help him channel this passion and energy into the next phase of his life are thoughts that are almost devestating to me.

The kid can rock...

petition [disciplines for the inner life]

My friends Lori and Chris are great dancers. First hand I've seen them swing, waltz and polka. For my birthday gift this year they demonstrated for us a polka to the tune of In Heaven There Is No Beer. They had us roll up the rug and move the furniture in the living room and then gather round to observe before it was our turn to give it a whirl. We watched and clapped and laughed along. Then we tried to dance and *some* of us did a pretty decent job.

Some of us, not so much.

I realized -- quickly -- that watching Chris and Lori dance was not nearly enough to teach me how to dance. I would probably only figure it out by following their example and then doing it like them. (and Chris was so kind to give my two left feet a whirl around the room to Roll Out the Barrel). The apostle Paul tells us that being united with Christ is putting Him on like putting on new clothes. Recently my friend David Taylor told me a story of how he learned healthy confrontation from his brother-in-law Cliff and now when he finds himself in a similar circumstance he chooses to put on Cliff because Cliff is so excellent at healthy, productive confrontation. In other words, if I find myself in a polka match some day, in order to even come close to looking like a dancer I would likely put on the stellar skills of Chris and Lori.

And what the heck does this all have to do with the discipline of petition, you might ask? Well, I'm getting to that: In the same way as I've been studying and meditating on the inner discipline of petition I have stumbled on many saints (ancient and contemporary) who know how to pray. I studied passages about prayer -- Matthew 7:7-12, Psalm 5, James 5, for example -- and I read profound insights about prayer from Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Albert Day. But out of all that the best example I had was a brief, simply-written biography about the life of famed prayer George Muller: The Guardian of Bristol's Orphans.

The man knew how to pray, but even more importantly knew what to pray and when to pray. He chose to put himself in a place in life where he could not rely on anything or anyone more than on God. He did not surround himself with crutches, escape hatches, door #2's or plan b's. He did not take one moment of his time away from rescuing orphans and teaching underprivileged children and pastoring a church in order to raise funds. But he did take many, many moments to pray. [and it would be appropriate to laugh at that last sentence as a major understatement!]

He knew what his purpose in life was and it wasn't because he spent years reading books about how to find his purpose or attending classes about his purpose; he prayed about it and then made choice after choice after choice that left him solely dependent on his Creator for everything he and his family and his church and his school and his orphans needed. When God didn't meet the need he was praying for he simply knew he needed to change course. The man lived in desperate situations (including experiencing the death of a child and two wives) for his entire ninety-two years on earth.

Desperate prayer is one of our covenant values at Union Center Christian Church : God doesn’t answer prayer; he answers desperate prayer. That doesn’t mean we contrive a constant state of anxiety. It means we have a clear understanding of what’s at stake, and we’re aware that without God’s blessing, wisdom, and direction, we’re a mess. A covenant commitment to prayer means that there are times we refuse to accept that God is done answering us, and we’re bold enough to wait and wrestle with God until he answers.

But, after reading about George Muller I'm not sure I have any idea at all what desperate prayer really looks like. I'm thinking I need to put on Muller when I'm petitoning God but also when I'm making choices that will eliminate crutches, escape hatches, door #2's and plan b's in my life. What good is desperate prayer when I've surrounded myself with so many options and ideas and comforts? I can't even pray intelligently because I haven't figured out what I'm truly desperate for.

You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions (James 4:3). To ask rightly involves transformed passions. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God's thoughts after him: to desire things he desires, to love the things he loves, to will the things he wills. -- Celebration of Discipline, Foster

And this bold statement from Foster makes me think of that beautiful line Liv Tyler's character gives to the self-absorbed rocker who breaks her heart in That Thing You Do: I have wasted thousands and thousands of kisses on you. .. Shame on me for kissing you with my eyes closed so tight. [Man, do I wish that movie had come out when I was a teenager! I could definately have put on Faye in a few of my own break-ups.] I wonder how many prayers I've wasted on my own passions. Prayers that felt desperate because I hadn't decided on what God was asking me to spend my desperation.

Shame on me for praying with my eyes closed so tight.

At the end of his life, George Muller had provided care for over ten thousand orphaned children. He went from being a con man and petty thief in his youth to being a man whom God trusted to steward a fortune. He supported Sunday schools and regular schools around the world, printed Bibles and supported missionaries [at one time he sent his friend Hudson Taylor enough money to support all the missionaries of the China Inland Mission!] But history remembers him most as a man who, in his very own lifetime, rescued and cared for over ten thousand orphans.

So when I enter the discipline of petition I choose to put on George Muller both in the times my eyes are shut tight in desperate prayer and my eyes are wide open in desperate living.

mixtape monday [father's day edition]

I have a strong suspicion that the summer mixtape posts will be filled with lots of photos and fewer words. That's just the way summer rolls around here -- lots of Kodak moments and much less time to be quiet long enough for words to form. Today the Kodak moments are captured more on video than film; either way, you get the point.

I have just a couple of titles for today's mixtape, but they [just happened!] to form around the concept of fathers and father's day. Enjoy!

Links
Another Mustache Mayhem production, Grandpa's Santa letter-reading goes awry.

While you're at that page (yes, it's my brother, and, yes, my two sons were part of the editing genius of this masterpiece) check out the secret film footage of my parents' reaction.

While they were in one room of the house creating sacreligious patriarchal homages, I was in another room creating this ...

Have I ever mentioned that Brian and I had our four children before we turned twenty-eight years old? Several of our friends have had babies recently and watching them go through the early, exhausting stages of parenthood reminds us of our first days. The first night after Andrew was born and Brian had left me and his first-born son at the hospital and had gone back to get some rest in our west side apartment, he had a full-blown panic attack and ended up driving to his mother's apartment in Johnson City to spend the rest of the night in his old bed. Parenting is just a pretty big deal and Brian has risen to the occasion like a pro for the last [almost] eighteen years. That's why he is my hero.

Films

Gran Torino

I've been thinking a lot recently about the difference between grandfathers and fathers. Maybe I'll write about it more on another day, but for now I'd have to say that Clint Eastwood captures some of the essence of the contrast between the two in the machisimo peppered with tenderness in his portrayal of Michigan retired auto-worker Walt Kawalski. There is something about his ferocity in protecting the vulnerable that allows us to forgive him his lack of parenting skills evidenced in his self-absorbed, materialistic, milk-toast sons.

And there is something about his no-nonsence approach to mentoring a fatherless teenage boy that makes us think we'd be willing to suffer the same abuse as Walt doles out if it meant we'd get to experience the same affirmations he offers. This, in spite of the fact that he can't even tell his own son that he's dying and that he really does love him.

In the end, though, I think the most poignant contrast between father and grandfather shows up when the strong silent member of the so-called greatest generation indulges his one and only luxury -- a shortage of days left to live -- by committing a selfless and thorough act of justice that protects the vulnerable, stops the atrocities of the evil and slaps the wrists of the mediocre.

As a film, it's quintessentially Clint without losing tenderness and nuance. Oh, and the car is great too! (as is the song of the same name co-written by Eastwood and his son, Kyle) We watched with our friends the Graveldings and as the credits rolled Scott was memorizing lyrics and Coleen was weeping. It's really that good.

Photo of the Week In honor of Father's Day, a vintage pic of my Daddy and me (1971) ....

playing at words

For the summer, Tuesday nights are for art workshops at Andy's house. I don't make the kind of art that you can dab onto a canvas or sketch with a pencil, but I didn't want to miss out on the fun of being artsy in one of the many cool spaces on his property. So I decided that Tuesday nights will be my time to play with words. In the treehouse.

I'm still stabbing at that 250-a-day goal but I've noticed that those words end up being serious words. Words that talk about discipline and learning and teaching. I want Tuesday nights to be about words at play.

First, you have to picture me walking to the top of this hill and climbing the ladder into that tree with all my stuff spilling out of my big ol' leather purse. And me in flip-flops. Next, you have to imagine me checking the time and trying to do the math of how long I had to play before the bats come out. And how long it would take me to skedaddle out of that tree.

So, here's some words. They are just playing. Don't be too hard on them; I haven't made them straighten up and fly right yet. I just put my pen down on the yellow pad and this is what came out.

I realize this is an impossible plan. Writing up here in this tree. Sitting on planks with mosquitoes bobbing up and down on my pantlegs.

I like the aloneness, though. If I have to trade mosquitoes for people bobbing up and down with poisonous small talk, I pick this.

What are red, scratchy welts on my feet and scalp and hands compared to the pricks and stabs of the platitudes and cliche of meaningless conversation?

At least I have Calamine lotion for the bug bites.

Perhaps it would be helpful to apply some sort of pastely salve on each spot I am bitten with babble about the weather in NY or prattle about your busy schedule.

Better yet, a polluting aerosol to spray upon my head when I see you coming. Perhaps the scent of it would magically change your words to poetry.

Or some sort of chemical reaction would take place mid-air so that all your words would be about Annie Dillard or Bob Dylan or Degas' dancers.

Or even Dr. Suess.

Now picture me making a note to stuff a can of mosquito spray into my purse next week.

Voice.

I must have one. I'm pretty sure God did not forget.

What I can't figure out is the sound and shape of it.

Soft and flowing like a warmly-lit woman or clipped and spiky like a queen of renown.

Perhaps it's squashed and sullen like a cuss. Or hollow and pleasant like a bank teller or a receptionist.

I'm not particularly impressed with any of these options. And I'm jealous of (almost) all of them.

I'd like to be able to curse like a prophetess and judge like a queen.

I'd like to whisper like a lover and sing like a Siren.

Mostly I'd like to know the voice when it comes up from my chest and over my tongue. I'd like to be able to recognize it as my own.

Connected to the truth stitched into the core of me.

I am so homesick for the taste of it. I've forgotten what it sounds like.

This got me on a roll about voice.

I think I change my voice on purpose.

I make the decision how to sound by what I'm hearing outside my head instead of what I'm hearing inside my head.

It's like a giant sponge fills up my belly all the way to the back of my throat.

When I hear sounds it's like tiny seeds fly through the air into my mouth, between my teeth, across my tongue and drop into the nooks and crannies of the giant sponge.

The sound-seeds put down high-speed, quick-growing roots and send out flowers of their own kind.

The leaves crowd out the air inside of my mouth and the blossom forces it's way through my lips leaving sticky sweetness on the backs of my teeth.

Then the people I'm talking to pick the flowers and pin them to their collars like a boutonniere.

Even for play, this one got a little silly so I'm sparing you the sequel.

That and the one about my mother that I'll have to publish posthumously.

In plenty of time to avoid the bats I climbed back down out of the tree, purse slung over my shoulder like Mary Poppins' carpetbag. Flip-flops askew and toenail polish dented. But, dang if it didn't feel good!

I'll leave with you with a few snapshots of my artist friends at work in Andy's house of art.

Beau channeling Frank Lloyd Wright in the kitchen.

Linda and Dawn in the open-air studio loft. Mary in the plain old open-air.

Join us if you're in the area!

Tuesday nights through September, 6-9 PM

Andy Palmer's house: 506 High Street, Lisle

monday mix tape

i made a mix tape for you of all my favorites this week!

Links: Dialogue / Design for Mankind

File this under the category of "reading outside my tradition". I am pretty much ignorant of the world of design but love the way that blogger and magazine editor Erin Loechner celebrates art and design/artists and designers. I recently stumbled on these short vignettes of a variety of artists talking about the real-life, every-day kind of stuff they deal with. Click on any that interest you; so far, my favorite is "overcoming artist's block":

Design For Mankind - Dialogue Episode 5 from Design For Mankind on Vimeo.

Books:

Finished reading Homer's Odyssey this past week (Fitzgerald translation). Also Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Way. Both have been on my reading list for a couple of years. David Taylor booted my backside during the talk he gave about disciplined disciples during our Worship & Arts retreat.

I enjoyed both. Certainly The Odyssey is more like the thrill of watching an action flick (filled with romance, monsters and reconcilations, of course). Feeling pretty impressed with myself, I sat around the campfire of last weekend's Memorial Day trip reading the centuries-old story. That is until my seventeen-year-old boy said, Oh, Odyssey. I had to read that in ninth grade. Well bully for him, then.

The Violent... like a disturbing, yet gratifying, thriller. That woman can write and I can't wait to dive into the biography I picked up from the new release shelf of my corner library. It's so crazy how a good author weaves words to describe characters that I can identify with -- even, temporarily, to become -- while our circumstances are nothing alike.

For example, this description of the schoolteacher, would-be guardian, Rayber:

He had kept it from gaining control over him by what amounted to a rigid ascetic discipline. He did not look at anything too long, he denied his senses unnecessary satisfactions. ... He was not deceived that this was a whole or a full life, he only knew that it was the way his life had to be lived if it were going to have any dignity at all. He knew that he was the stuff of which fanatics and madmen are made and that he had turned his destiny as if with his bare hands. He kept himself upright on a very narrow line between madness and emptiness, and when the time came for him to lose his balance, he intended to lurch toward emptiness and fall on the side of his choice.

I suppose it's a topic for another day, but most days I'm pretty certain I'm made of the same stuff as Rayber.

Films: UP

If you haven't seen it yet, just go now. We celebrated a rare Saturday that all six of us were home by heading to the theatre and we celebrated even further that all six of us loved it, laughed out loud and (most of us) cried, too. Rare, indeed.

Music: Best of Bonnie Raitt

Another outcome from that Memorial Day weekend campfire? My friend Lori talked a bunch of us into seeing the classic Bonnie Raitt in Philly this summer. I'm way rusty on her music and gosh-darn determined to catch up enough to make that ticket worth every penny. If you can't sing along on a few tunes, what good is the show?

Memorial Day boating. Daughters....

...& mothers (yeah, we don't quite got the hip-ness)