The Contemplative Cottage

Mondays are for gratitude…counting to 1000 and beyond…

“We never know where God hides His pools.  We see a rock, and we cannot guess it is the home of the spring.  We see a flinty place, and we cannot tell it is the hiding place of a fountain.  God leads me into the hard places, and then I find I have gone into the dwelling place of eternal springs.”  Streams in the Desert, July 5th

The past three weeks have been full of wonders and many things to be thankful for as I moved into my new apartment (aka The Contemplative Cottage) and spent time with friends.  Looking back on my worries about leaving Boston and then the fears about choosing this apartment, I can’t believe I doubted! The above quote from one of my favorite devotionals captures my feeling now as I sit at my desk.  God knew exactly what place I needed to embark on the next and final stage of my PhD.

206. Wonderful furniture from friends, rides for moving stuff, and shelves for my books.

207. Fourth of July beauty shared with friends.

208. Little Sarah.

209. An afternoon on a mountain river without a clock or email or cell phone (not having reception was a great Sabbath stop!).   Forever inspired by nature artist Andy Goldsworthy (a lovely excerpt from Rivers and Tides here), I tried my hand at building a cairn…

…and discovered water bugs that look deceptively like little twigs–until they start walking around.  Yes, what you think are pieces of bark are really three life forms!

210. Camping fun with friends.

211. Exploring mossy woods with my young adventuring friend.

212. A sunlit glen hidden off the trail.

213. After giving myself a break the past few months, I finally had the feeling on Saturday, “It’s time to begin again,” so I stacked the main books for a dissertation chapter on my desk.  I had worried that the academic push of the last 5 years had permanently ended my love of reading and writing and even theological study, but each day I’ve been finding evidence that there are still embers of this vocation glowing, which God is gently fanning back into flame.

214. A lovely afternoon at Kimberlee’s twinfant shower.

215. Black-capped chickadee enjoying a feast.

216. Bible study books are not usually satisfying for me, but Cynthia Heald’s Becoming a Woman of Excellence has really opened my eyes to some life-giving insights. I’d love to go through it with a small group.

217. It seems that the twinfants have decided to stay put until they are full term.

218. For the Word’s challenge and the Holy Spirit’s conviction this week,  and the hope that God provides the heart’s treasure.

220. Matt Maher’s song “Hold Us Together.”  On July 4th, Pastor Dan told the congregation that he was leaving Bethany in November and taking a position in California.  He has been our senior pastor for 11 years.  It was the last thing I expected, but I’m trusting that we can walk this path because Bethany is a community of people who love Jesus and love each other.  God has a plan, hope, and future for Dan and Anne, he also has one for the Bethany community.

You can listen to the full song one time here: http://bit.ly/ck52Tc

Hold Us Together

It don’t have a job,
It don’t pay your bills,
Won’t buy you a home
In Beverly Hills

Won’t fix your life
In five easy steps
Ain’t the law of the land
Or the government
But it’s all you need..

Love will hold us together
Make us a shelter
to weather the storm
And I’ll be my brothers keeper
So the whole world will know
That we’re not alone

It’s waiting for you
Knockin’ at your door!
Every moment of truth
When your heart hits the floor
When you’re on your knees then…

Love will hold us together
Make us a shelter
to weather the storm
And I’ll be my brothers keeper
So the whole world will know
That we’re not alone

This is the first, day of the rest of your life
This is the first, day of the rest of your life
‘Cause even in the dark you can still see the light
It’s gonna be alright, gonna be alright

Peace and Joy to you this week!

My recent posts have centered around two themes: gratitude and memory, the two areas I believe God is leading me to focus on for 2010. In this time between Christmas and Epiphany, the traditional twelve days of Christmas, I have been working on a gratitude journal where I’m recording both my One Thousand Gifts list (an edited version is on-line here), and memories of joy which come to mind as I review my life.

Just in the short time of making the list, I have found that I’m beginning to look forward to the time I spend reviewing the day.  Sometimes it is easy, sometimes it takes a little digging.

Making the Journal

I selected some magazines for images and patterned craft paper my dad gave me to decorate the cover and each page:

(My own tastes lean toward nature photography, flowers, and victoriana, but a journal could easily be crafted differently.)

During the course of the afternoon, my mom came in to see how it was coming along.  One magazine, The Girlhood Home Companion, had some paper dolls in the back, which led to my mom delightedly telling me about her afternoons as a child (before Barbie) cutting out paper dolls.

And the finished journal:

Winter Morning

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” John 10:10

A year ago I stumbled upon a blog called A Holy Experience. The captivating poetry of Ann Voscamp’s writing, photos of her life on a farm, and the background music of David Nevue’s piano playing, created a soothing and healing world. It was one of the blogs which inspired me to start The Contemplative Cottage.  Yesterday, as I took some time to lose myself in its many pages and Advent meditations, I discovered Ann’s gratitude practice, One Thousand Gifts, which has created a “gratitude community” of folks and bloggers who have taken up the practice themselves.

The practice is simple: list what you are thankful for and thank God for them.  Keep adding to the list over time until you reach 1000.  List 10 things a day or spend a quiet morning or a Sabbath day making a longer list once a week.  Take the nearest scrap of paper and start writing.

What brings you joy today? Makes you laugh? Whose presence are you thankful for? What beauty do you notice and take delight in? Who or what touches your heart and mind?

Ann describes these gifts as God’s “I love you” and our grateful response as a practice of worship.  She says that making the list made her want to look for more of these grace-full experiences.  Knowing from my own practice of paying attention to the beauty in nature, intentional looking leads to seeing more and more of what would have been unnoticed.

The word that comes to mind is abundance.  Rather than seeing a glass half full or half empty, this practice suggests that the glass is overflowing, just waiting to be noticed.  I am going to take up Ann’s challenge and start making my list.

“When in all gifts we find God, then in God we shall find all things.” George MacDonald.

photo: Susan Forshey

Good Morning

I often wish I knew how to respond with life-giving and healing words, so as I read through Colossians the past two days, Colossians 4:6 jumped out at me. During lectio divina, a key moment is when a word or a phrase seems to come off the page and my own heart answers with a little flutter, “Yes, I want to know more.”

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.

The English translation is curious, because the direct suggestion “Let your speech…” seems to be followed by an effect, “so that you…”  This didn’t make sense to me—how could I practice a certain kind of speech that would in turn provide knowledge about how to speak?  But looking at the Greek, I realized that I was interpreting “gracious” as a human quality,  akin to cordial or courteous, or hospitable. These are good qualities for conversing, yet knowing how to practice them appropriately in a given situation is tricky.  

Gracious in this context is actually grace, or charis–a divine influence upon the heart.  For me, grace is not an obligation, or something earned, or a gold star for good behavior, but the gift of God’s own presence saying, “I love you.”

The text suggests that the first step of speaking is my heart listening to God’s love for me and for the person with whom I am conversing; that speech flowing out of conversation with God, flowing out of a heart itself salted by God’s “I love you,” will be life-giving and tasty.

Silent All These Years by Susan Forshey

The irony of my life-long interest in prayer is my constant wrestling with prayerlessness.

At times it has been simply the result of not making time or taking time–which really means just being focused elsewhere without bringing the “elsewhere” into prayer.

Other times it has been due to the loss of a name for God, feeling that the three-letter word was too small, too human, too burdened by centuries of baggage.  Prayer at these times began will an abyss of absence, where God’s name should be, which I couldn’t cross, so I didn’t pray.

For the longest time, prayer has been weighed down by a reaction against personal petitionary privilege–why should I pour out to God my fears and desires for such and such, when three billion people have trouble finding food and clean water?  Why ask for healing when others ask and are not healed? What then do I do with scripture which encourages me to bring my whole self and requests to God?

And then the harder times when prayer has simply not made sense, beyond a sort of self-therapy, because it suggests that there is a loving Someone who is not only listening, but who also cares to listen and act in response.

This past summer, I realized that these reasons not to pray would never go away, and the only way through the difficulty was either to decide that prayer was unimportant or to live as if…live as if prayer and life are better when integrated, as if the abyss of who God is can be crossed by prayer, as if God does care about my fears and hopes (and also the other six billion people on the planet, and all life forms everywhere), and as if there is a God, and not only one who listens with love, but can act and does act through my prayer in daily life.

In trying to live as if, I have realized how theology-laden prayer is.  Practices of prayer bear an internal theology, answering certain questions–who God is, how God acts, how prayer works, why pray in the first place.  Living at the intersection of  worldviews and theologies in contemporary theological education, I am seeing how prayer practices cannot function divorced from the theological worldviews which nurture them, and may not be able to be practiced at all if their practice-specific worldview is lost.  In the Christian tradition, this is not a new insight by any means.  The early theologians talked about lex orandi, lex credendi, a Latin phrase meaning as you pray, so you believe.  It can also mean the reverse: as you believe, so you pray (or don’t pray).

So I now am asking these questions:  In what theological worldview did my prayer practices once function?  How has my worldview changed and how have these changes affected my prayer practice? What images of God and humanity (and their relationship) affirms prayer? How can practices of prayer function (and be nurtured) in academic theological education, at the intersection of multiple worldviews and theologies?

Birch by Susan Forshey

If spring is hello, autumn is thank you.

After a particularly long four weeks, walking sometimes gently and  sometimes stubbornly with  personal and academic fears, I sensed this morning a still small nudge to the Tuesday morning Eucharist at my church.  My keys seemed to place themselves into my hand and I was out the door without much thought.   I went closed and distant, but during the prayers, we were asked to speak out something for which we were thankful.  The stunning leaves of gold, orange, and red, came to mind and speaking the words aloud shifted my attitude, widening my heart just a little.   The message of thankfulness then went much deeper as we remembered in prayer a marriage of six decades.  After Eucharist, a lovely woman spoke about her husband, her gratitude hugging every word and every detail of memory in the midst of the pain of her loss.

Leaving the church, I saw again the autumn colors, and the crunchy leaves at my feet.  Winter is close, and soon the colors will dim and disappear to browns and frost. The leaves which had greeted the first touches of  spring warmth with nuanced greens and yellows, are now flaming in the crisp chill with thankful beauty.  They seem to say, Thank you, sun, soil, rain, wind.  Good-bye for now.

Winter Song / Emily Smith

The leaves are falling from the trees
Farewell for now warm summer breeze
Weather has been good this year
Now the winter will soon be here
The nights are drawing into shorter days
I hear the old folk and the country people say
Don’t fear the dark, nature has it all in hand
Time to reflect and renew the tired land

So we’ll stoke the fire and light the lamp
Turn our backs in from the damp
Settle down beneath the starry sky
Endure the winter passing by

I see the frost etched upon the glass
In the morning sun he soon moves fast
But he’ll be back to claim the frozen ground
With each clear day he surely will be found
The geese fly south to find a warmer home
While the weary bull he soldiers on alone
Children’s laughter it crackles in the air
Sparks fly high and they catch them if they dare

So we’ll stoke the fire and light the lamp
Turn our backs in from the damp
Settle down beneath the starry sky
Endure the winter passing by

With carols sung, the trees been taken down
We’ve passed a dram and the bells no longer sound
Snowdrops rise with promise of the spring
There’s talk and wonder
At what the year might bring
The blackbird starts to thicken up her nest
While the early lamb, he takes a snowy step
But the north wind’s grip it tightens with his chill
And holds the buds closed against their will

So we’ll stoke the fire and light the lamp
Turn our backs in from the damp
Settle down beneath the starry sky
Endure the winter passing by