My heart shall become your heart.

“So in the same way, none of you can be my disciple without giving up all that he owns.” -Jesus

He stilled the storm to a whisper and quieted the waves of the sea. Then they were glad because of the calm and He brought them to the harbor they were bound for. Psalm 107:30

The Lord is my shepherd and nothing is wanting to me. In green pastures He has settled me. THE SHORT BREVIARY

And the thing is, He is my green pastures.

He is my harbor that I was bound for.

That is the point of all.

Giving up all, lest we be lured by some lie from the enemy that anything else satisfies or offers real comfort.

Pouring out every last drop, so that He might fill me up.

Yep, like a happy horse returning to his warm stable, my thoughts gallop back to Lewis, as he delineates the promise and delight of “all.”

“Give me all of you. I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want you, all of you. I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to kill it. No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out. Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them all over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self---in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.” –C. S. Lewis

The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning; only to prepare me for the gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound. -C. S. Lewis

For the LORD God is both sun and shield; He will give grace and glory; No good thing will the LORD withhold from those who walk with integrity. O LORD of hosts, happy are they who put their trust in You! Psalm 84:10-12

Early in the morning I cry out to You, for in Your word is my trust. Psalm 119:147

And the gospel reading this morning was about Simeon. And he was able to praise God for His trustworthiness even though I am quite sure that the baby Jesus wrapped up in humble human love was not what he was imagining after all those years of praying for the restoration of Israel.

Wait upon the LORD and keep His way. Wait in His glorious presence.

Yesterday all day long I sang under my breath, My Glory and the Lifter of My Head.

This glory thing is not about my glory as in, Wow, aren’t I swell? but it is all about He is My Glory. Which is a big difference.

Every Sunday we sing Gloria Patri all together, lest we forget: Glory be to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, so it is now and so it shall ever be, world without end. Alleluia. Amen.

He will give grace and glory; His presence is glory. Let me take off my shoes and bow down.

And wait.

Wait upon the LORD and keep His way.

These days I am curling off to sleep with Til We Have Faces. May I walk through my dreams with its truths. Part One is Orual’s accusation against the gods, and Part Two is the tearing away of the veil that she has worn all of these years.  And Part Three? Part Three is in the process of being revealed: Some far greater matter was upon us.

... The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself making it was to be answered. Lightly men talk of saying what they mean... When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years... you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

So be it, LORD.

From a glorious and awful deepening of the blue sky above us... or from a deep, doubtful, quaking and surmise in my own heart, I knew that all this had been only a preparation. Some far greater matter was upon us. The voices spoke again..."He is coming," they said. –C. S. Lewis

Let me take off my shoes and bow down.

Good, bad, or ugly. Let them transform me into Your image.

August 14-17, 2016

 

You can't see seeds once they are planted.

For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. 2 Corinthians 4:17

Nondual knowing is living in the naked now, the “sacrament of the present moment.” This consciousness will teach us how to actually experience our experiences, whether good, bad, or ugly, and how to let them transform us. Words by themselves will invariably divide and judge the moment; pure presence lets it be what it is, as it is. –Richard Rohr

So I rode up Sentential Peak again Sunday morning. For the first time in like over six months. Slowly. So slowly that this guy passed me, running. But at least I didn’t stop. But it would have been okay if I had. But I didn’t. And I did pass a bunch of people, walking. But that doesn’t matter because they were walking forward. Forward and up.

And really those morning thoughts, and yesterday’s morning thoughts and today’s morning thoughts were framed by The Incredulity of St. Thomas by Caravaggio. And a line out of Randy Reynold’s sermon Saturday night sermon, You can't see seeds once they are planted, as we wait through the hard winters for the bright green sprigs. And a question one of my nephew’s asked his dad, my brother: “I don’t know if I really love God, Dad.” The statement fell flat in his bedroom. Sixteen years of careful (and conservative) Christian education, replete with twelve years of ABeka-anchored elementary homeschooling, obligatory Sunday school attendance, and fairly consistent daily mealtime devotions slowly drained from the room. He continued, “I mean, how can you truly love someone that you never have really met—someone who has never made it beyond something-that-you-study or read stories about?” And a conversation with Cameron and Alan at Kimche Time about people who are headed off to the pig trough and what can we do about it. Not much. Wait for spring. 

And I was thinking a lot about that because I taught Sunday School that morning, twice. Once to the little kids and then again to the big kids. And I told them the story of the Prodigal Son and the Father of Love who waited, eyes squinting into the setting sun, for even the slightest shadow of the repentant beloved leaving the knee-high muck of feeding pigs. And Jack my helper said I did a good job of describing that mud. I guess I have lots of practice doing what C. S Lewis describes in his sermon on the weight of glory: We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

And besides the reflection of big question of whether these stories are true to my little circle of listeners, or simply another version of the Minions and Frozens that populate their imagination. Last week Everette explained to me that Jesus does magic.

I mean, how can you truly love someone that you never have really met?

How can you believe if you have not thrust your hand into his side and stuck your fingers through the nail-pierced hands?

And in my heart I can sort of understand that the Holy Spirit abiding in Christ-followers could show the world Who He Is. Could, in that we have the power. But would we Christ-followers walk so closely in His footsteps that others would not be led astray?

But my head looks around and sees the Church wandering around in all directions, see us stumbling about in the shadows, very like those whom Christ prayed would receive the full measure of joy and complete unity from the Father, but whom He knew would shortly be scattered all to their own homes, leaving Him alone.

Yet He was not alone, because the Father was with Him.

Until that last forsaken moment.

But we cannot see the seeds planted, before they have sprung up with new life. We see through a mirror darkly, not as things truly are.

Simone and Everette are with Nona this morning, which gave me time to read and reread the parting words of Jesus to His followers in the gospel of John. And He repeats Himself a lot, the same way I repeat myself all day long to not-such-good-listeners about independent variables and strong leads and progressive reforms, lest they forget, lest they don’t understand, lest they don’t believe Him the first time.

Lest I don’t believe.

You will be prosecuted. You will suffer.

Ask anything in My name, and you will receive it.

That you might have joy and peace.

And most of all, that we might know the love of God that is within us, so that the world will know that Jesus is the One.

Thus, today, Dear Father, let me live in what is true, Your true presence, this weight of glory, this glory that you gave to Your son Jesus, and which Has given to us, His friends. His chosen friends appointed to go bear fruit.

And Audrey Assad sang again and again this morning, under the billowing sunrise:

O happy fault that gained for me the chance to know You, Lord

To touch Your wounded side and know the joy of my reward

I know, I know, and I believe You are the Lord

I know, I know, and I believe You are the Lord

Help my unbelief.

Help my unbelief.

In the silence of the heart You speak. -Audrey Assad

I call with my whole heart; answer me, O LORD. Psalm 119:145

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

We try; God transforms. Richard Foster, Devotional Classics

Embrace. Ann Voskamp, “When New Year’s Resolutions Seem Hopeless”

So yesterday, following the Voskamp’s Joy Dare, I was supposed to be grateful for three things I overheard. Which reminds me tons of Gideon, my go-to-guy who follows God in spite of his very much I-believe-help-my-unbelief sort of faith, and when he was looking for a little courage as he prepared to battle the Midianites and Amalekites and all the children of the who were like grasshoppers for multitude, and their camels were without number, as the sand by the sea side for multitude, he and his buddy snuck down to the camp and overheard a conversation between two soldiers about a dream and a barley loaf.

And Gideon’s response was worship.

The battle had not even taken place yet, but it was the LORD’s.

Wholly.

Which is a pretty cool word, if you look at it for very long. All His. Consecrated. Hallowed. Sanctified.

Everything.

And I didn’t really overhear anything yesterday. Even though I tried.

But all eyeballs were on me as I stepped into The Iron Fist.

·       And the principal sat with the kiddos (lots of them) during lunchtime detention so I could get a little bathroom and pizza break from ten hours with weary seventh graders.

·       And just as I was about to cave in at the very end, a teacher came and stood next to me and whispered words of encouragement.

·       And all of my phone call homes were to very supportive parents.

·       And Meg. Dear Meg. She read my little billowingsunrises musing about not even knowing what was for dinner and when I got home there was a crockpot of chili with corn and noodles and meat and beans and a packet of sharp cheddar cheese and a dozen cornmeal muffins waiting for me.

And so may I enter into thanksgiving before this day begins.

Worshipping the God Who Is Not Bound by Time, and Who knows the rest of the story.

The One Who Whispers “Embrace” every time my soul is quiet.

Splish, splash, to overflowing.

No holding back. 

I know all about waiting.

Their secret country was real. They had already visited it twice; not in a game or a dream but in reality. C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I sought the LORD, and He answered me and delivered me out of all my terror. Psalm 34:4

Who me? Yeah, you.

I sort of breezed over this verse the first time. But it is the Refrain for the morning lessons, so I paused through it again and again. And it hit me: Yes, I am terrified facing this new year. While on many hands I could count and recount ever-so-much blessing, there is that trembling hand lifted up as well, yes, the one I see in the back corner.

Yes? And the step out the front door is a hard one. The last year was chock-full of humbling and painful and unresolved mysteries. And I am still sorting through the questions of What did I learn? and Why? and How? and Where am I headed?

And I get that really they are exactly the same questions that each of us, in taking no thought for tomorrow because today has enough problems face, but nevertheless, they are indeed my questions.

And my co-teacher is home nursing a chewed-up-by-two-pit-bulls dog, so I will be teaching straight through this first ten hours of a day in the new semester, and I have big new procedural plans of becoming A Teacher Who Will Not Be Manipulated, and my principal’s response was tepid. She doesn’t think I can pull it off.

I don’t even know what I am going to make for dinner tonight.

But yesterday was my day to watch Star Wars. We all marched over to El Con and ate Panda Express mushroom chicken and slid ourselves into those big cushy chairs and watched my generation’s narrative archetypes. And that Rae is just going about her daily business. And the moment-by-moment isn’t that big deal, and actually is pretty dusty and disappointing a lot. And there is some background pain that we have only had the tiniest glimpse about, but we can make some pretty good guesses. I mean, her very name denotes her calling. But the point is, that every day she grows stronger and wiser and more full of grace, preparing for what Unknown lay ahead.

And the Force is with her.

And as I step out the door, I push my soundtrack of courage into the cd player in the little black Rabbit, a Christmas gift from Cameron, Fortunate Fall by Audry Assad.

I know, I know, and I believe You are the Lord

I know, I know, and I believe You are the Lord

Help my unbelief.

I sought the LORD, and He answered me and delivered me out of all my terror.