February 6, 2008

God Remembers

Miraculously, I got up early enough to attend the 7 a.m. Ash Wednesday service. The words, "You are dust and to dust you shall return," came with me into the chapel.

There was that stirring reading from Joel, strong verbs of command to gather the people, proclaim the fast. Phrases that, even in translation, are poetic and reach across the millennia. And then, a surprise.

The psalm appointed for the day is not Psalm 51. I really love the part that goes:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with your free Spirit." (LBW)

It has often been what I meditate on in Lent, but not today.

Psalm 51  does appear in the service, but not here.

Instead, From Psalm 103 I heard: "... [God] knows how we are formed/he remembers that we are dust." The reading ended there.

In reviewing the psalm later, I see that it is a psalm of praise, acknowledging God knows and forgives our sin because it is God's nature to be loving and to desire to reinstate us in God's good graces. But this pairing of knowing and remembering.-- God does not forget my mortality, my finiteness. This  makes the imposition of ashes more about a reality check than a death sentence.

It always astounds me: God chooses what God remembers and what God forgets. In Isaiah and Jeremiah and elsewhere, I think, God announces God will no longer remember sins or days of old. "I will not remember or call them to mind," God says. The Jeremiah passage is quoted in hebrews 10 which may be read on Good Friday. I am so used to computers. You can save information so it will never be lost, never be forgotten, yet God elects to forget and presumably, there is no backup disc somewhere. When God forgets, it is truly gone forever.
 
This service is softer than some I have experienced over the years. There is hope here, hope and promise. God desires for sinners to repent, God would rather forgive than punish. God models for me how God wants me to live and to be.

I left the service with a much more positive attitude, uplifted and ready to deal with the day.

My appointment at the doctor's office had good and bad news. The good news--the muscle is relaxing. The regimen I've been on has accomplished that. Bad news: to achieve this end, I have not strengthened my muscle more; in fact, I've lost ground. So I am to exercise a bit more and see what happens. I am anxious that the time of the treatment is just about up and I don't know where I go from here.

I'm having trouble bringing God into this arena. Of course, God is always present and knows what is going on. However, I'm not making the connection among God, the medical situation and me. I don't have a holistic approach or attitude. I am very compartmentalized about the whole thing.

I do attend the Thursday healing service so I have another opportunity right away to try to pull it together, to ask for prayer not only for the healing of the muscle but the expansion of my awareness of how the interplay between God and the "real world" takes place.

The word "invocation" comes to mind. I need to let God know I am expecting God to play an active role here. I am reminded of this because when I went to find the psalm on my player, it started reading Isaiah 64, a wonderful chapter where the prophet says, "Come down and do something!" Stir things up. Get something started here, God. That's what I want to be comfortable doing.

To relate this to the father of the boy possessed by a spirit, I just don't trust that God will listen to me so I don't call out to Jesus. If I were Bartimaeus, I'd still be sitting on the side of the road. God Remembers podcast.

February 5, 2008

You Are Dust

OK, I'm starting this journal early, but after I came home from church Saturday night, I've felt on the brink of Ash Wednesday. I probably won't finish this entry until tomorrow and by the time I record it and publish it ... Well, Lent will have officially started.

It feels like Ash Wednesday today. It's gray and rainy. I remember one Lent it rained every Wednesday and basically no other time during the season. If it's raining, it must be Wednesday, it must be time to go to church.

I'm quite anxious, about this journal and about my health.

I'm anxious about this journal because it's public and I am always anxious about public failure. Someone asked me yesterday how I could fail with a journal? It is what it is. It isn't the journal itself that scares me--just keeping up with it and with the podcasting. It's what the journal will contain. I may not be successful. I may not get healed. I may not have wonderful things to report. I may not feel God's presence or believe God even cares about what is going on with me. What if, with the emphasis on passionately spirituality at ST. Luke's, I can't report: I tried this and it was great?

I am also anxious about my health. I think I've said that before. It's not life-threatening. It's just, well, inconvenient. It affects my life style. I go to the doctor on Ash Wednesday and see someone new. The good news: a new perspective. The bad news: someone with whom I do not have a relationship, a total stranger.

I've been doing these exercises. I've prayed some, like God, do something. Anything I have to do several times a day is a shaky business just on the face of it. When I'm struggling, when I am not accomplishing the task, either doing the exercises themselves or reaping their benefit, I am quickly discouraged. Having done the exercises, I want results, and I am not getting them.

This leads me to consider the possibility that this course of treatment will be unsuccessful and something else might be necessary. I think this is the first time I've had to consider that the problem may not be fixed. Surgery might be necessary. NO fix might be the outcome.

This brings me back to contemplating Ash Wednesday. "You are dust and to dust you shall return," is one of those Ash Wednesday things. It's just a part of the service. But it's true. I've always known it was true. I will not live forever. That is the human condition. That is what happened when Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden, the origin of the words, "You are dust and to dust you shall return." Now I don't believe in a literal garden and the literal existence of Adam and Eve, but I do subscribe to the point of the story. We are finite. We come to an end. I am finite. I will come to an end.

And how will that happen? By one thing after another breaking down without a fix? Is this the beginning of a inevitable decline? Is this how it starts?

I basically have longevity on my side. I don't expect to succumb any time soon. But "You are dust and to dust you shall return," sounds far more real this Lent than it ever has before.

Here is the audio for blog posts dated January 5 thru January 13, 2008. Daily Writings 3

Father Eric and I had a podcast conversation on Scripture last week.

Well, let's see how well the feeds behave today. Here are my Daily Writings for December 27, 2007 thru January 3, 2008. No need to listen if you have already read the posts here.

Here's an audio version of my intentions for 2008 and other updates on me. You can hear my dog chewing on his bone, too.

Revmerrill_20071231

revmerrill

Here's an audio using synthesized speech to read my last week of posts. Daily Writings for December 19 thru 24

Sadly, another cross posting. I have a backlog of podcasts to do for the church so I want to get them done before I do something new here. I am started to blog here, however, so there is some new content. Contemplative Prayer Cross Posting 

nanowrimo is taking my time and there's been lots of activity at The Voice of the Winged Ox so I'm cross-posting yet again. I hope you enjoy Conversation on Healing

This is a cross posting. This podcast is also available at The Voice of the Winged Ox I'm calling it Scripture and Me