8 posts tagged “spiritual life”
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.
Here's an audio using synthesized speech to read my last week of posts. Daily Writings for December 19 thru 24
I just realized today is the winter solstis. I have been so focused on other things I didn't stop to notice the light or think how solstis celebrations have often brightened my spirits at the darkest time of the year. "It is cold and dark this year ... " began the one shred of liturgy I knew as a child.
It was, in fact, a wintry day but above frezing. The snow and ice are melting. Elwood and I have had two sucessive days in which we have been able to take a walk. The river walk is surprisingly clear. I did think we would run into some sort of vehicle today and actually stepped off the path. It turned out the train was passing on the other side of the river Oa grand name for the Chataquine, not the right spellingP at this point. I think it is more of a brook at this point. Or at least it is not extremely wide. People can canoe on it and it is navicable, or at least it was, in the old days up to Jamestown. Boats came from Pittsburgh.
I have been focused on getting another podcast done for the church which required a good deal of editing and getting a loaf of whole wheat bread to come out properly in my bread machine. In surveying people, some have good luck with bread machines while others do not. According to Google answers, you have to experiment with your own machine to find the right combination of salt, sugar and yeast. Somehow I had the idea I did not have to have yeast-temperature water and that room temperature would be sufficient. I guess I thought the machine would take care of this. It doesn't. My loaf today had some edible parts to it. I guess my next step is to lessen the salt. That is the first troubleshooting technique apparently. I'm glad I'm only trying to make a 1-pound loaf. I'm going through a lot of flour. Oh well. When I get it to work, and I will get it to work, it wil be a good loaf of bread. I've found a nice recipe for it.
I do have a lot of cleaning up to do which is taking time and time away from other pursuits. I suspect my podcasting friends will think I have given up on the task. I haven't. I just have other responsibilities.
I talked with someone today after church I hope I can connect with after Christmas. I think it will be a beneficial relationship.
The world is gray. Western New York is gray. December is gray. The light fails. Tomorrow is the darkest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Darkness has a certain quality about it. It can be scarey. It can be ominous. It can be cool, cold, is can be exciting or quiet and welcoming. THere is a quality to darkness. Gray, on the other hand, is cloying. It presses down on the spirit and the soul. It is damp and sucks the life right out of me.
Advent is a time of darkness but I have been in a time of gray. It makes waiting, being ready, expectant difficult. The tasks of life become all important, getting through another day the only goal. Frustrations like being unable to have the new bread machine make a loaf of bread properly becomes an all-consuming priority along with laundry and tonight's supper. Gone is the joy of expectant hope. I'm just trying to get through another day.
What brings this malaze on? Perhaps it is the gray. Perhaps it is a culture that has structured is economic well-being around Christmas shopping. Perhaps it is expectations of what merriment ought to be.
Along my street there are speakers which have blasted out inane Christmas songs. They have added to the sense of disconnection I have rather than drawn me into a communal sense of anticipation. Not being a party goer, the flase sense of happiness this municipal contribution to the season has isolated me even more.
Soltis, therefore, seems more real to me than Incarnation. The promise of the return of the light is concrete, measureable and can be expected with the certainty of the calendar and the chronometer. Jesus, on the other hand, is less tangible, less predictable and therefore less real in this very gray place in which I live.
Lest you doubt my faith in Jesus, let me assure you, and myself, that Jesus is real and that his return is expected and certain and true. It's just that, in the gray place, certainty becomes more about wishful thinking than hope.
I'm writing this on my PDA and bluetooth keyboard. It won't allow for proper tagging or any kind of advanced editing, but it will allow me to keep to my commitment to write daily on a spiritual subject.
When I posted yesterday, I knew I had omitted to talk about Mary and the annunciation. That came to me as I was reading L'engle because of course she had to talk about it and the coming of Jesus. When the angel first greets Mary, she is puzzled. After receiving his announcement, Mary agrees. Whether she had a choice or not in God's plan is open for debate. Buechner says yes. The commentator in the Women's Bible Commentary says no. I like the idea of God inviting Mary to participate in God's plan of salvation. On the other hand, God often compels people, especially reluctant people like Elijah, Jeremaih and me. What Mary says to the angel is this: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it to me according to your word." Luke 1:38
This scene was the reading this morning at the healing service. We were invited to meditate on the scene and identify with one of the characters. As this verse had already come to me, I tried to focus on it but I could not put myself into the scene. Instead, I heard Lisa singing Marty Haugen's Halden Evening Prayer. "I am the servant of my God. I live to do your will."
I live to do many things. To be the handmaid and to do God's will is not exactly a new thing, but it is The Thing, as Karen has put it, that I am to do now.
It also occurs to me, as I write, that what Sheila told me still applies: Be well. Stay grounded. Live free. I'm still working on being well. I was pleased that my local grocery store sells vital wheat gluten for making whole bread bread. I have not been successful making bread in my bread machine on my own. People's mileage varies apparently. Kathy suggested I let the yeast warm up before adding it to the machine. I will try a diferent basic whole wheat recipe tomorrow.
A funny thing tonight. I wanted to do a quick dinner. I had a chop to broil, vegetables very to heat up in the microwave. I went in search of couscous. I had a box recently and it was unopened. I knew there were boxes of something that could be couscous on the shelf. The first attempt turned out to be cream of wheat. Too little water and olive oil caused it to be discarded as the starch for dinner. The next box turned out to be brown rice. I didn't have time to cook that. I opened the new box of couscous and voila--wonderful grain for a change with dinner.
I've never been an orange eater. I've been doing okay with tangarines. I decided to buy two valencia oranges. I will try one for breakfast. I've always found oranges quite messy and, since I was a kid, I've found citrus pits unnerving.
People find it curious that I am "still" ashewing goodies at breakfast after the Thursday morning service. I've only been at this six or seven weeks. People tell me I look good. Great. I need to look better.
I also committed to the next Tai Chi class. Maybe Tomorrow Elwood and I can get out. The temperatures are above freezing during the day so a lot of the snow is melting which is a good thing. It gets nasty in the city after a while.
ON BEING A WRITER
This is not a new idea for me--to be a writer. Nevertheless, it came to me so clearly yesterday afternoon--a mouthful of Black Bean and Butter Squash chili in my moth, the spoon in my hand, Madeleine L'Engle's Miracle on 10th Street playing on my Victor Reader Stream.
"I can do this," I said to myself. I knew it was an answer to the call I have been sensing God is initiating in me. "I CAN write about my life, spiritual matters and I can draw the two together.
Advent, L'eNgle writes, is about listening. I have been at a loss to know how to listen to what God wants me to do precisely. I know Jesus has called me to follow but where? How? Scripture keeps coming into my mind:
"Therefore, bring forth fruit worthy of repentance." Matthew 3:8
"Tell those who have a fearful heart, 'Be strong. Don't be afraid.'" Isaiah 35:4
These texts have jumped off the pages the Gospeler has read on successive Saturday evenings. Yes, true enough. I have been afraid. I know I am to do a new thing, but how shall I bring it forth?
Bringing forth is biblical language for birth. How is this new direction, repentance, to be brought to fruition in my life?
Yesterday I made contact with a blind woman in Italy. She shared links and web sites to make accessing the Hebrew text of the Old Testament possible. What did this mean for me? To learn, to grow, to become reacquainted with these texts I love so well. I spent the morning downloading different chapters of the Tanak and listening to them, my Hebrew so poor I could only pick out the words Israel, Lord, God, child, earth or land. The word one or alone kept coming up. I turned to Deuteronomy:
"Hear, Israel: the LORD is our God; the LORD alone. Deuteronomy 6:4
"You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." Deuteronomy 6:5
Theresa of Avila said, in her fifth mansion, that the contemplative must love her neighbor as herself because that is the way she demonstrates her love of God.
Didn't L'engle say, quoting John of the Cross, that our judgment will consist only on whether or not we loved?
The author of the Cloud of Unknowing calls contemplative prayer the way of love.
So the path leads, not to Italy as a friend suggested, in jest I think, but to the contemplative life. I knew that before. I just didn't want to face it. That way will consist in listening to God, in writing and in loving God and neighbor.
NANOWRIMO now makes sense. I needed to demonstrate to myself that I could consistently write. One day I wrote over 9,000 words. In the span of three days I wrote about 15,000 words. They weren't pretty words. The writing was quite tortured, designed to generate word count. However, I can do it.
I also learned that I can write every day and when it is a good time for me to write. I write most consistently after dinner and the dishes are cleaned up.
I have expanded this essay today. It is still a shaky undertaking. It is more suitable for blog posting than for inclusion in a book. Nevertheless, it is a beginning.
