Morning Prayer – Friday
When the light of a thousand moons
wasn’t enough to peal the skin
from our vexing thoughts,
help us recognize ourselves in you,
gazing back at us in the mirror
of the young sky.
Category: Christian spirituality
Maidin Paidir – Déardaoin
Morning Prayer – Thursday
Lord, sometimes we laugh.
And our chuckles of contentedness
are just tall enough to reach the table
upon which is spread
a riotous meal of grace.
Where all laughter begins.
Maidin Paidir – Céadaoin
Morning Prayer – Wednesday
When the light of a thousand moons
isn’t enough to peal the skin
from our vexing thoughts,
help us recognize ourselves in you,
gazing back at us in the mirror
of a young sky.
Maidin Paidir – Máirt
Morning Prayer (Tuesday).
There is a place, O God,
not yet slandered
by our second guesses
and self-generated projections.
Take us to that place.
Leave us there to memorize the stones
of this graveyard, empty of dreams.
Then, re-soil us.
Maidin Paidir – Luain
This title is not so cryptic (or shamelessly hipster) as you might imagine. Rather, it is the not-so-original title of this new series entitled simply, Morning Prayer in Gaelic. This is of course, Luain, or Monday.
On this grey, rain-damp morning in Yakima – a rare, but gratefully received, occurrence in this geography – I offer up a new series of simple, daily morning prayers.
My intention for these prayers is that goodness, grace, and presence may result, if only long enough to bridge our awake-ness with awareness.
May just enough grime from the windshield of our lives be wiped away by a few words to the God who sees us through and in spite of it.
I
God of first things,
don’t stay in the queue we impose on you
to accommodate our tiny desires.
Erase our pages of want,
if only to satiate the thirst
we didn’t know we had.
Off-the-Rails or On the Wrong Train?
My thoughts have been troubled of late. They take turns volleying between self-abasement and self-awareness. The dizzying heights of self-knowledge are fleeting, never staying as long as I need them to in order to affect any real change. The easily derailed choo-choo that is my brain isn’t always the engine that could. Often, at least in darker times, it is the train that won’t!
As I’ve alluded to elsewhere, in January of this year, I experienced what I might call a “Spirit-induced glimpse” into the possibilities of anxiety-free living. Following an emotional breakdown, God granted a 12-day “deliverance” from a deeply embedded fear. A veil was lifted, if only for a time, just long enough for me to smell the better air above the clouds of my oft-stormy psyche.
It was a gift. One that would not last but which I eagerly received.
I saw no angels. I did not speak in tongues. The back-of-my-neck hair stayed still. And, I had no beatific visions. What I did have however was a new appreciation for the glorious mundane as it appears to an uncluttered mind at rest.
I made decisions. I cleared detritus from my schedule – a schedule unrealistically packed full of the vicissitudes of one reaching anywhere for validation.
As I am learning, adoptees suffer more than others with fear of rejection and of taking risks. Our need for deep connection, protection, and nurture runs far deeper in us than it might in others. It has led me to waltz too easily, regularly, and with little forethought across boundaries into the space of others.
I become unrealistic in my perceived need of their attention, their support; their endorsement. When it becomes too stifling and they pull away, I panic and up the ante, making things worse. I grab for ankles from under the water, threatening to pull the poor buggers down with me.
It is the price of my intensity. And, it has chased away more than one friend. It is a lonely existence. Those like me generally vacillate between the ache of loneliness and the ache of shame – an unwelcome tightrope to be sure.
Usually about now is when the psychologists offer a word or two about healthy boundaries. Very good. However, my own experience suggests that merely living within prescribed boundaries isn’t always enough. Helpful, yes. Necessary in fact. And, it can be protective of further damage to be sure. But, for me at least, it was still only symptomatic of deeper reasons that gave rise to over-extended living in the first place.
As an adult adoptee, I suffer from off-the-charts fear of abandonment. Until recently, it drove the bus of my life. It was the track upon which this train moved, with or without my conscious permission.
Biblical language would suggest the term idolatry lying at root of this harrowing ill. But I confess that even that was never deep enough to pull out any roots. I was always left treating symptoms: lack of boundaries, fear of risk, inability to delegate, fear of failure/rejection, etc., etc.
Instead, it was God who needed to reach in and pull out this lifelong fear (or, at least point it out), which lay at the root of many little idolatries. In other words, I only think, act, and live wrongly because of much deeper reasons – reasons of pain rather than peace.
Now that some real healing has begun, the blessing of a transformed consciousness has opened the door to limitless other possibilities for new life – one grounded in grace, rather than just scrambling after “idolatry-free” living. All that ever does is give rise to, and fuel, a life off-the-rails. The gardener knows to pull the root and many of the rotted branches begin to fall away. Heal the plant, and the leaves will follow.
Or, in keeping with our metaphor, we stoke the deepest fire and the core is given strength to move and guide as it should. The engine of spiritual health promises a more unified train pulling in one direction on well-laid track. This is God’s doing.
It’s not always that we’re off-the-rails. Sometimes we’re simply on the wrong train.
Help me to forgive you, God
This was first posted on my other site http://www.robslitbits.com in response to the initial wave of horrendous actions in Syria. I thought it good to post here as well, particularly as more and more pictures of broken and damaged bodies find their way to our eyes. Perhaps we can stare into the abyss together and find the pin pricks of light needed to show people the way home and bring about justice and peace where it is so desperately needed.
I recognize this is not the first of its kind. Others have also shared just such things in the wake of the recent, horrific atrocities in Syria. I feel impotent to change much of this. But I can write. And I can pray. Here, I do both. Join me…please.
Lord, they did not ask for dusty feet
sandaled and sore
to walk over the flesh and bones
of neighbors and friends,
of brothers, sisters and parents.
They didn’t ask to be brought before
someone else’s tribunal on imagined
charges of being what they should not be,
what you created them to be.
They did not seek out this desperation
that found them huddled, fearful and crying.
To see the bloated bodies of fellow pilgrims
floating down the river, under bridges,
stuck and floating on rocks jutting out
and shaking bony fists at you for justice,
is to see a God too…
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“Trip to Bountiful” – so, what now?
We’ve been back in the US from Britain a little over a month now and I don’t even know where to begin to wrap up these reflections on our sojourn. Mental-emotional exhaustion for me. Some book research and visits with relatives for Rae. A need to return home to our roots for both of us. And so, I reflect the best way I can: I write.
* * * * *
The fast-paced ennui of the many gorgeous, young, cell-phone-hooked yuppies of London.
Studying for hours, cumulatively, the labyrinthine London underground laid out like concrete intestines, carved deep in her belly.
The lazy daylight square of Parsons Green, equally home to business professionals, babies in prams, and teens with ‘tude.
Buskers. So. Many. Buskers.
Abbey Road Studios.
Dozens of progressive-meets-traditional pubs and coffee shops in which to write.
The art of the leisurely stroll.
Great coffee utterly ruined by the British obsession with milk-enhancement rather than cream as is the custom of the gods.
Those sublime secondary roads that snake their way through rural Britain just wide enough for making memories.
Red phone boxes.
Box-y black cabs.
Old souls in older cemeteries in still older ground.
Castles, cathedrals and crypts, each more inspiring and complex than the one before.
The casual shrug with which many Britons waft in and out of their own history, thousands of years in the making.
The jarring juxtaposition of dozens of duck-like tourists in full obedience to their tour master waddling in and out of view and my grumpy expectation of thin place moments.
The incredible food (yes, you heard that right.)
The surprising ease of conversation with strangers.
The equally surprising willingness of officials and total strangers to help with directions.
Being charged to take a piss.
Outlandish entry fees for…well, everything.
Quiet rambles in Ambleside; a place for writers.
Wales…ah, Wales.
Welsh roads best described as stone hallways.
The literary orgasm that is Hay-on-Wye.
The British genius for fitting lots in a little space (every man’s dream).
The Lake District (except for the tourists).
Tourists treading on ghosts in Lindisfarne.
Mead.
Mead…
Scotland’s insistence on its own canvas of new green framed with old stone.
The sleepy, but deceptively hip, Dunbar.
Portobello Beach. Bright sun. White Scots. Take sunglasses.
Edinburgh – an evening of good beer and better tales: literary pub tour.
Pitlochry, in the bosom of the Highlands.
Playing bagpipes where no one is surprised at the idea. Yawn, another piper.
In a word, Skye.
Epic concerts.
The many dear souls who drew us there, would keep us here, and call us back.
All of the above with the love of my life who gets it whenever I speak of the same.
We’re now back in a home needing repairs, jobs needing our attendance, a financial picture a little less rosy than before, and people needing our presence and attention. Admittedly, I’m left with as many questions as I had weeks ago. What does my soul most need right now? How do I best heal from wounds both new and old? What is, for me, home? Should I ever find that, what do I do about it? What, if any, are the things I should be asking of myself?
It should come as no surprise, but I’m not the only person asking these questions! In fact, even many of those with whom we shared time and friendship find themselves at similar crossroads. I dare say that the old adage, “home is where the heart is” offers little respite in the complexities of a soul seeking the Sabbath-rest of home. It is far too kitschy and hallmark to provide the foundation upon which to build one’s life. It is dismissive of the not-so-hallmark realities of daily survival and the attendant responsibilities thereof.
And, it doesn’t quite reach the more exalted notion of Christ’s own exile from all he once knew to come among those longing for home. His “homelessness” brought me back home – in all places, at all times.
As I grow older and, in glacial terms, wiser, I am led ever further down a path of acceptance of whatever is. It is not the hiraeth-angst of what was and can never be again, or the wishful thinking of what could be. One’s deepest reality in which is held the greatest potential for satisfaction is in the minutiae of these moments, this breath, that one.
This was so much more than merely a trip to bountiful for me, adventure of a lifetime for Rae. Britain was like walking through our front door into a well-known living room. Plunking ourselves down in a favorite chair that perfectly knows our shape, our habits, our proclivities, our favorite beverages, and hands us a book. It was Mom calling from the kitchen that dinner is ready. It was listening to up-to-the-minute gossip at the church bake sale.
But it was still more. It exposed an ongoing work of God, leading me toward full acceptance of my own search for home in order to help others begin that same journey. Now, it is being utterly content to remain in discontent for the sake of those around me. It is to be like Christ, the exiled and abused one, whose only way back home was to suffer the pain of our homelessness.
Home is wherever I am willing to acknowledge my deepest home, the heart of God. In which case, I’ve always been home.
I just didn’t know it yet.
“Trip to Bountiful” – part 12
As mentioned elsewhere, part of our reason behind this trip was for my wife, Rae, to engage in book research for her novel, “Miss-Adventured.” Why tap the Internet when it’s so much better to simply go, right?!
#AdventureofaLifetime at the #headfullofdreams tour
Without premeditation, Rob and I find ourselves involved in near daily misadventures. Our trip to the Coldplay concert was no exception.
Thanks to over-vigilance at our bank who blocked a car-rental drop-off charge they marked as fraud, we couldn’t access our funds. We had zero money to take the tube home from Wembley to Parsons Green. Panic set in but was overridden with some across-the-pond creative communication on Facebook and email. Our friend, Rosemary, contacted the bank and by 4:30pm London Time, the doors opened to the stadium, and the cash machine pooped out a few hundred pounds.
For twenty-eight years, I’ve been a stage-spouse/parent tooting my horn about the artistic achievements of the three staggeringly talented musicians in my family who overshadow me. My artistic accomplishments include a group folk dance performed in a Grade 5 school assembly. I confused my lights and refts, danced in the wrong direction and toppled over the oncoming circle of dancers like dominoes.
Or, the choir teacher telling my mother what I lacked in singing talent was made up for in enthusiasm, despite strategically hiding me in the back where my voice wouldn’t force others out of tune. My youngest child once told me, “Mum, even with autotune, you’d still sound like a goat.”
His brother kicked him under the table offering mumbled advice against reverse brown-nosing.
At this concert, as 75,000 people waved their lighty-uppy bracelets and stadium-anthemed along with me, “I, oh, I, oh, I..” to the tune of Hymn for the Weekend, I was gob-smacked by a revelation.
We were here because of me. My accomplishment. Something artistic I created. It was a first. Tears flowed.
I was overwhelmed. I thanked God.
At my day job, I work with maps and computers (Geographic Information Systems or GIS). My protagonist, Brynne, works in Geographic Intelligence. Through the forty-plus versions of my first draft I wasn’t sold on my antagonist’s motive.
My co-workers Cindy and DD patiently listened as I tossed about antagonisty ideas. One day I demonstrated Brynne’s spy-bling on the office carpet – Gravity Grip shoes. I can’t blame them for being leery of book talk after I TRIED THIS AT HOME WEARING SOCKS ON HARDWOOD FLOORS. (The not-so-subliminal message: don’t try this at home, unless your romantic fantasies include six burly men showing up in your bedroom with drugs to whisk you away in an ambulance.)
DD reads several books a week. I’m leaning on my crutches as she suggests, “Since Brynne is music-obsessed why don’t you use the cities on a concert tour t-shirt for the plot.” I flipped for the idea.
“But what currently touring band’s music is known among the 14–65 demographic?” I asked. The three of us stared blankly at each other and returned to work. An hour later, Cindy yells over my cubicle, “COLDPLAY!”
As I fired up Spotify and listened to Coldplay’s biggest downloads, Aidan, my male lead twinkled his blue eyes at me and whispered in my ear, “’I crossed lines I shouldn’t have crossed.’ Can you picture the scene?”
“Vividly, in double-vision,” I quivered. Forwarding to the next song, Fix You, Brynne bangs it out on the piano, lamenting the aftermath of a calamitous choice.
To experience those songs live at Wembley stadium was one of the premier moments of my life. As I sang every note and clapped every beat, I thanked Brynne and Aidan for bringing me to a sold out concert to see Coldplay as I waved my bracelet in their names, experiencing all of this through their eyes.
These characters have changed my life, our lives, and I can’t wait for you to read Miss-Adventured and experience Brynne and Aidan’s #amazingday.
* * * * *
When will Miss-Adventured be on the shelves you ask? It’s off to the editor at the end of September, then to the agent once I’ve screamed a lot and incorporated the suggested changes.
Learn more about Miss-Adventured here.
“Trip to Bountiful” – part 11
What I learned looking at Skye
Previously, I had recounted my experience of hiking the Quirain Ridge on the isle of Skye in Scotland. Here’s the exciting (one can only hope) conclusion…
* * * * *
What I recognized of the way here only lasted about an hour before I began to experience that hollow feeling in one’s gut that one is not where one should be. I looked ahead to a sheep gate with small steps designed to carry people up and over. I had recalled such a thing on my way here. Just not this one.
But there was still a trail and I was happy to be on it, so onward I went. Another hour passed and anything resembling a trail had faded into a maze of boggy grass, rivulets of water flowing down from the uplands downward to one of the many smaller bodies of water lower down. Before me was the ocean in one direction, the hills from whence I’d come in the other.
Both were equally baffling.
Did I chance the eastward march through the middle of nowhere, aiming to eventually meet up with the shoreline and hopefully, the A455? Or, did I retrace my steps back upwards and seek out the original trail? The decisive guy I am, I decided to walk in circles for another hour and a half becoming increasingly frantic in so doing.
Finally, I made one last attempt back up to the rock faces that had formed my right wing on my initial route. And I saw them. A young couple who, also lost, were so evidently besotted with each other that it mattered less to them than to me, a soaking wet, sweaty, panicking fifty something.
We introduced ourselves. Then, I proceeded to recount my sob story of late middle-aged geographic retardation and we came up with the following game plan. We could try to find the eastern trail that would lead back to the motorway where was my car. Or, we would turn the other direction and hopefully find our way back to where their car was parked on the western side of the island. One would then drive the other back to their respective vehicle.
I successfully made the case that I had already been lost for two hours and would provide little in the way of reliable directions back to anything, let alone my car. So, the decision was made to retrace our steps with the intention of finding our way west across the island. As it turned out, over two hours later it was happily clear that this had been the right decision.
Many sheep, loose stone stairways, close-cropped trails clinging tightly to precarious cliffs, and heartbeats later and a glorious sight awaited us: the parking lot. We had made our way to something recognizable from which we could then regale others with the very tale I now tell.
How metaphoric this is of the spiritual life. Broad, open vistas at one turn, sheltered inland waterways at another, all make way for more rigorous upland turns leaving one out of breath and struggling. Our better curiosity about the intricacies of the abundant life comes with a dash of danger, and much that is unknown. But it is precisely for that reason that life’s best lessons are never served up on china or crystal but in clay pots and dirty goblets better fitted to the task.
Of all the stories I tell of our trip to bountiful, this is the one that stands out most. It represents something more than the expected stops of the run-of-the-mill tourist. There is a wildness here. A particularity of incarnational wonder peppers my experience of being lost on Skye. And now, removed from the imminent danger and fear of the event, it is the most memorable. And, dare I say, formational.
My connection to Skye was both immediate and profound. It bled me from the start, leaching itself onto my spirit with ferocity and tenderness in equal measure. She is a wild, unkempt, treeless wonder, at once spell-binding and succulent. I was hooked.
But more so, I had touched something primal within me, the place of raw, untested faith, eager for challenge. As a man not generally given to risk-taking, it was exhilarating. It was liminal in all the best ways and will provide rich fodder of burning peat fires of faith still needed for the days to come.
And after all, that’s much of the reason I came in the first place.
innerwoven 