Spiritual Disciplines: Meditation

I am reading through Richard Foster's book Celebration of Discipline, and this week I focused on Chapter 2: "The Discipline of Meditation."  I honestly can't say that I was looking forward to this chapter.  I enjoy meditation about as much as I enjoy it when Jack convinces me to play a video game with him, which is to say, I don't like it at all. 

I am horrible at meditation.  The truth is, my head doesn't empty.  It just doesn't.  My head is constantly spinning.  I am lucky when I can forge a path through the dizziness, so last Sunday I opened my book with a sigh.  I was drawn in, however, by the first paragraph:

"In contemporary society, our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds.  If he can keep us engaged in 'muchness' and 'manyness,' he will rest satisfied.  Psychiatrist Carl Jung once remarked, 'Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil'" (15). 

Noise.  Hurry.  Crowds.  Muchness.  Manyness.

Noise: My children arguing, with each other, with me.
Hurry:  "We can't be late for school!  Get your shoes on, Jack!  Hurry!!"
Crowds: (I try to avoid these as much as possible.)
Muchness:  You should look at my to-do list.
Manyness:  My calendar is full--too full--of commitments, games, practices, appointments, and on and on and on. 

Noise.  Hurry.  Crowds.  Muchness.  Manyness.

Sometimes, I feel like I am drowning.

This week, I still floundered about, gasping for breath, at least 85 percent of the time.  But there was about 15 percent of the time that I was gliding upon the sea of my day rather than thrashing about in it. 

I can thank meditation for that 15 percent. 

I was surprised.  Maybe I shouldn't have been. 

Here is what I discovered:
I discovered that I didn't have to empty my mind to meditate.  Instead, I had to focus on something.  I just needed to gather up all that mess in my brain and wrap something--just one thing--around it to think on for a bit. 
Early Monday morning, as I sat in front of my fireplace with a cup of hot coffee, my Bible, and my journal, I chose to focus on Psalm 51:10, using The Message: 
"God, make a fresh start in me; shape a Genesis week [day, moment] out of the chaos of my life."
I had to insert the words day and moment, because quite frankly, the idea of a new beginning, a Genesis, for a whole week is way more than I can take on right now.  I need a fresh start approximately every 5 minutes. 

So this week, when Jack had collapsed on the floor in agony, again, at the mere mention of homework or a bath or dinner, I mumbled to myself, "God, make a fresh start in me; shape a Genesis moment out of the chaos of my life."

When Amélie was using her best big sister/teacher voice to teach Jack a lesson regarding his cranky behavior, which of course resulted in even crankier behavior and sometimes bodily injuries, I shut myself in the bathroom and whispered, "God, make a fresh start in me; shape a Genesis moment out of the chaos of my life."

And in the middle of an argument between my exhausted, overwhelmed husband and his exhausted, overwhelmed wife, I forced myself angry heart to plead, "God, make a fresh start in me; shape a Genesis moment out of the chaos of my life." 

This week looks like the week before and the week before that. 
My kids are going to argue.
Matt is going to work more hours than we want him to work.
Sometimes I am going to snap and cave and crumple into a mess on my sticky kitchen floor.
But perhaps this week, yet again, I will also find myself dropping to my knees and begging,
"God, make a fresh start in me; shape a Genesis moment out of the chaos of my life."

Spiritual Disciplines and a New, Exciting (Terrifying) Project

Superficiality is the curse of our age.  The doctrine of instant gratification is a primary spiritual problem.  The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.  ~Richard Foster

I have been flirting with the idea of spiritual disciplines for quite some time.  There is something about spiritual disciplines that tugs at my soul and draws me down into its depths.  There is also something about "the doctrine of instant gratification" that, in much the same way, tugs at my soul and draws me into the ease of its shallow waters.  I am constantly drifting between the shallow and the deep.

Some days, I splash around in the shallow.  It's easy.  The sun is on my back.  Facebook is on my phone.  If my brain gets too quiet a friend is just a text away.  A quick fix.  An easy fix.  An empty fix.

Some days, I venture into the deep.  It's not easy.  The water down deep is chilly.  Complex texts need to be digested.  People need to be heard.  There is no fix.  But I feel whole. 

My tendency is to skirt the edge of the deep.  I dip in a toe.  I read a book.  Or part of a book.  I might even blog about my quest.

And then I get chilled in the depths.  Or maybe the newness wears off.  Or maybe I get overwhelmed.

And I quit. 

Enter: opportunity. 

This year's opportunity: to take part in a project sparked by the vision of Joanna Harader over at Spacious Faith.  She is starting a blog called Practicing Families (you can follow the link, but there's not much there yet), and I am going to be a part of an amazing opportunity to write about practicing spiritual disciplines with my family. 

I am excited.

I am terrified.

Some days, I don't even pray with my kids.
Most days, I mess up with my kids.

Besides, this is the opportunity I have always known would happen: I am going to be exposed as a fraud. 
I'm not creative, really. 
I can't write, really. 
I'm a total mess, really and truly. 
But as I have done before, I welcome you to my mess. 

I'm not sure what this mess of practicing spiritual disciplines is going to look like, exactly.  I am reading Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster and Celebrating the Disciplines: A Journal Workbook to Accompany Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster and Kathryn Helmers and Spiritual Disciplines for Children by Vernie Schorr Love.  I may use the guidelines in Celebrating the Disciplines and make this a methodical, yearlong venture.  Or I might veer off the course of a book and write about my wanderings.  I don't know yet. 

I just know that I am excited.
I am terrified.
I am diving into the deep.
And I am exactly where I need to be.

Why I Celebrate Advent

Today I was surprised to read someone's prickly remarks about Advent.  Their remarks watered the sacred tradition of Advent, its candles and liturgy and reflections, into the spiritual equivalent of weak tea.  I was startled.  And confused.  And I felt myself burn with the malevolent wish to offer some prickly comments in return. 

Once my boiling brew of anger had settled down to a slightly less agitated simmer I asked myself the obvious question: "Why do I celebrate Advent?" 

I celebrate Advent because I believe this crazy story that an angel came to Mary and told her she was going to have a tiny, helpless baby, God's baby, whose name was to be called
Wonderful Counselor
Mighty God
Everlasting Father
Prince of Peace
Jesus

I celebrate Advent because I believe this crazy story that angels lit up an inky black sky in tiny Bethlehem and proclaimed to some scared, gaping shepherds, "Do not be afraid.  I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord."

I celebrate Advent because I believe this crazy promise from Isaiah long ago:
"Unto us a Child is born."
 

I love the sacredness of Advent.  Amidst the crazy shopping malls and hopped up frenzy of a so-called "War on Christmas," I love Advent's quiet waiting, its muted anticipation.  I don't need to shout "Merry Christmas!" over the beeping of a cash register to fulfill my duty to Jesus during Advent. 

I need to play Handel's "Messiah" over and over and over again. 
I need to buy coats for cold children and gloves for frigid fingers and food for hungry bellies and soft blankets for the chilly laps of nursing home residents.

I need to gather around my piano with my husband and children and play and sing the beautiful hymns celebrating this season of anticipation. 

I need to sit in the quiet morning stillness with my cup of coffee and my Bible and my book of liturgical Advent prayers and my thin book of thick Advent essays. 

I need to sit around my dinner table in the evening with my family and light our Advent candles, our candles of promise, of light, of hope, of love. 

I need to lie in bed at night and rest my hand on my belly and imagine what it must have been like for Mary as she waited for this baby, this promised one. 

 

Tonight, I wish for you, I pray for you, the quiet longing, the aching joy, of Advent.  As these days unfold I will light my candle of promise, my candle of light, my candle of love,  my candle of hope. And I will pray that you, too, will feel the warmth of promise, of light, of love, and of hope.

 

For unto this world, this world that is creaking under the weight of its grief, this world that is heavy with sorrow, this world that is splintered with evil...unto this world, a Child is born.

 

Unto me, a Child is born.

 

Unto you, a Child is born.

 

disconnect

 

disconnect

disembodied from spirit, passion, love

con(n)stricted to the convex of soul

ectogenesis...life outside of life

 



 

I stole this post from my old blog. 

And I am not sure what else to say about it. 

Except to say that my play on words has lately been my playbook on life. 

 

I haven't been blogging.

I haven't been journaling as much as I need to journal to keep my soul connected to my body. 

I have squirreled myself away in hiding a bit. 

I decided to take an October break from my project of disciplines.

This morning I have no idea where my book of liturgical prayers is tucked away.

 

My therapy this month has been good books: I re-read The Great Gatsby and for the first time treated myself to Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and Catch-22. 

 

I just feel a bit disjointed, is all, as perhaps you can tell by my disjointed, flowless (is that even a word?) collection of words. 

 

Tomorrow is November 1.  A new month.  A new discipline?

I am not sure.  I am not sure what it would be. 

Perhaps I should swallow my snarky disdain for clichés and make my project a month of gratitude.  Perhaps gratitude could be my reset button.  I shake my head even as I type. 

It's not that I am not grateful.

But sometimes I just want to wallow a bit. 

And I don't want to be grateful in November when everyone else is spouting gratefulness.  (Go ahead and roll your eyes at me.  I am rolling my eyes at me, too.)  But I want to be grateful in March or something, when I am convinced that spring is never, ever going to appear.

But gratefulness would be good for me. 

Obviously.



 

In the words of the person I am not voting for this election season...

 

..."Hope is not a strategy."

I have been obsessed with this quote for the past week.  If you have had a conversation with me, there is a good chance that I used this quote in our conversation.  If I did not use the quote, then I was probably thinking it at some point while we were talking.

But here's the thing:

If hope is not a strategy, then I have neither hope...
nor a strategy.
Sometimes...
hope is my only strategy. 

Compost

This is a picture from inside my compost this morning.  It isn't very pretty. :)  The reason there are whole apples in there is because Matt thought that the bag of apples I had on the counter, with which I was going to make a second batch of apple butter today, was compost, so he dumped it in there.  (I-love-him-I'm-going-to-kill-him-I-love-him-I'm-going-to-kill-him).  And while I might consider pulling them out of the compost, what you can't see in this picture is that my compost is teeming with what appears to be...ugh...maggots. 

 

This is an essay I wrote for my church a couple of years ago, and I posted it on my old blog way back then.  I am re-posting it, however, because I used this essay as the basis of a talk I did last week, and some people requested that I posted it here.  It's good for me to re-visit this idea anyway, especially in light of the maggots that are currently teeming in my own soul's compost. 

I am slightly obsessed with my compost. A few moments ago, I trekked out in the steamy heat to the Darth Vader-looking compost bin beside my house, and I dumped in a fresh bucket of rotting food. Sometimes the discarded food looks almost pretty. Some days I have bright green watermelon rinds, purple-stained onion peel, or bits of green and red strawberry hulls. Today, though, the food I dumped wasn’t really that pretty at all. There were brown egg shells, white cauliflower stems, some slimy peach pits, and a few yellow, wilting parsley leaves. As I stood over the bin and emptied my bucket, a sour smell arose from the bin’s acrid depths, and gnats and flies, disturbed from feeding on the rotting carnage, buzzed in annoyance around my head.

I suppose I can’t say that my experience of dumping compost was particularly pleasant, but it was immensely satisfying, and it was also comforting, for reasons I didn’t fully understand until a few weeks ago when I spent a little time meditating on my compost obsession.

Compost, as I am sure you all know, is rotting food. It’s the stuff that is discarded, ugly, smelly, moldy, decomposing. Most of us stuff our compostable food down the garbage disposal or scrape it off of our plates and into the trash. Some of us, though, are slightly obsessed with our compostable food, perhaps because we feel some affinity to it.

Compost is, to me, a bit of a miracle. The bacteria present in the rotting flesh of a bruised strawberry can nourish next year’s strawberry patch. The vitamins in those discarded green edamame pods will break down into rich, black dirt that will make next year’s tomatoes that much sweeter. I know this, which is why, every couple of days year-round, I lug out wilted spring greens, bright watermelon rinds, orange pumpkin shells, and the leafy tops of winter root vegetables. And then, in the spring, I watch as Matt tills the compost into our garden.

It’s amazing, really. Our trash becomes a treasure. This year, with the rotten food we have tilled beneath the ground’s warm surface, we our nourishing watermelon, cantaloupe, sugar snap peas, peppers, tomatoes, basil and various other herbs, lettuce, beets, beans, corn, sweet potatoes, eggplant, and onion.

This is life. Extracted from death.

I feel such affinity with my compost because my soul is just like that compost. It is life. Extracted from death.

The compost bin of my soul is even more unsightly than the Darth Vader version we have in our back yard. It’s ghoulish, really. Monstrous. There is so much that is rotten that I have tossed into my soul’s compost bin.

Honestly, I don’t want to tell you what is there. If I tell you, you might not want to visit my garden. You might assume that the garden of my soul is as wretched and putrid as that very same soul’s compost bin.

But if I don’t tell you, then you won’t truly understand the miracle that is compost. You won’t understand how something so rotten can become so beautiful.

Let’s open the lid and poke around a little.

Almost daily I toss in some insecurity and impatience and snarkiness. Sometimes I dump in a lie or a handful of pride or a sprinkling of gossip. There’s some big stuff in there, too, that is going to take awhile to break down. There’s the mold of perfectionism I press myself into. Many days I wonder if it will ever really break down into rich soil. There is also a large pile of ugly things I have said and ugly things that have been said to me. Then there are some things too painful to talk about here, really. If you dig deep enough you will find more grief and shame than I really care to sift through.

It’s ugly in there.

But here’s the thing: I can take that putrid mess, and I can dump it in my trash, where it will then go compost in a landfill, but it will not nourish anything but the trash around it.

Or, I can take that compost in all of its rottenness and ugliness and stench, and I can work it back into the soil of my soul, where it can nourish my soul and become something beautiful. I choose to believe that God, as the gardener of my soul, will help me till the soil and tenderly nourish the fruit that is all the sweeter for the garbage that has mixed with the sun and the rain.

Today, I invite you to visit my garden. Feel free to poke around in my compost, but also please enjoy the ripe offering I hand you, the sweet fruit nourished not only by the sun and the rain, but also by the tears, the sadness, and the shame. And when you go home, take care of your own rotting compost. Work it into your soul and into the souls of the community surrounding you, and know that you and God can turn all that is bruised, rotting, and ugly into something truly beautiful.

To rest, go to the woods...

You know, I would love to write a blog post today.  I would love to sit out on my porch, soaking up the sun, with a cup of coffee beside me.  But today, I don't think that's possible.  Today, I can't finish a complete sentence, a complete thought, a complete anything.  I just sent an email that was two days overdue.  I don't really know what I said.  I don't know that it was coherent.  I don't know that the flippin' thing was even in English. 

But it is a new month, a new discipline, so I need to reflect on last month and tell you what I am doing this month.  Thankfully, on Sunday evening, I managed to escape onto my porch and actually wrote something that was in complete sentences.  That's what you get from me today.  Here you go:

Here I find myself at the end of another month.  I think I need to repeat the Sabbath.  Or at least try to continue it.  It's been hard to feel close to God on the Sabbath, because it's been hard to feel close to God.  Period.  But that's my fault.  I have failed at fixed-hour prayer and sometimes at solitude and mostly at Sabbath.

I'm burning incense right now.  That's something.

Today I have been mostly cranky.  But I did play under the blankets this morning with the kids and Leia.  And I connected with God during Eric's sermon.  And I exchanged out my summer and winter clothes.  And I spent nearly two hours, alone, working on my talk for MOPS on Thursday, and that is mostly crappy but I think it's a tiny bit OK.  And now I am journaling.  Tonight I can believe, at least partly, that God loves me.

Tomorrow is October 1, and I think I will focus on nature.  I think I will read Wendell Berry and spend thirty minutes outside a day.  Um, yeah.  Let's see how this works.  I claim to love nature, but I hole myself up inside.  How am I going to pull this off?  I guess I will take afternoon walks with the kids.  And maybe take them to the park.  And maybe try to hit up Kansas City's nature centers and trails.  Does the zoo count?  I just remembered that I spend 40 minutes outside every weekday morning walking to and from kindergarten.  Does that count?  Probably not.  I don't know.  I'd rather not think about it. 

So October's focus is on nature, because I sure do not want to spend the winter focusing on nature, what with my crazy aversion to cold and gray days and all.

One of my favorite poems is taped to my great grandma's buffet in my dining room.  My graduate-school-therapist-turned-friend sent me this poem several years ago for my birthday.  I love it still.

To rest, go to the woods
Where what is made is made
Without your thought or work.
sit down; begin the wait
For small trees to grow big,
Feeding on earth and light.
Their good result is song
The winds must bring, the trees
Must wait to sing, and sing
Longer than you can wait.
Soon you must go.  The trees,
Your seniors, standing thus
Acknowledged in your eyes,
Stand as your praise and prayer.
Your rest is in this praise
Of what you cannot be
And what you cannot do.
  ~Wendell Berry, "The Farm," IX, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems: 1979-1997