This morning I woke up and immediately began complaining in my mind about some things that rubbed me the wrong way the night before. Suddenly I realized that I have a choice: I can choose to continue every morning remembering the ills of the day before, and thus starting the day unhappy with some people; or I can choose to begin a new day fresh, using Love as my tool to create an environment that is healthy for not only me, but for my family and all we come in contact with as well.
So I wrote a little poem:
In the morning
I take Love
As my companion,
My goal,
My judge,
My guide,
My rule.
Yesterday is gone and passed,
Tomorrow is a dream that won't last.
Today is what I have to fill,
Fill it with loving is what I will.
Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth,
How can I keep from singing?
Amen
When I reached the last lines, taken from a beloved hymn, I realized that much of my exhaustion and disinclination to work hard at singing comes from my dissatisfaction with life. I am going to try an experiment, and I wonder if you would like to try it too. I am going to start each day by praying this prayer and living by this rule, hopefully, throughout each day. I want to see if I have more energy and more desire to sing my songs, and perform this concert that is coming in one week from today.
I bet I will. What do you think? If I'm not putting so much energy into stewing in my own juices, but expending it in loving through life, will it be something like exercise? Will it be that the more I give away the more I have? I'm thinking it's kind of like the old Pioneer Girl song:
Love is something -
If you give it away,
Give it away,
Give it away.
Love is something -
If you give it away,
You'll end up having more!
It's just like a magic penny:
Hold on tight, and you won't have any!
Lend it, spend it and you'll have so many,
They'll roll all over the floor! Oh!
Love is something -
If you give it away,
Give it away.... etc.
That was one of my very favorite songs, especially as it had hand motions with it. So I've never forgotten it. Unhappily, though, I had not learned its lessons as well as one would hope. I'm glad I remembered it today. So I'm thinking, is it like exercise? Do you grow more energy the more love you expend?
Let's find out, shall we?
Along with the necessary increase in exercise at this age, I'll add a little increased exercising of the love muscle. I'm expecting the joy of childhood singing to be there next weekend.
After all:
Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth,
How can I keep from singing?
I first heard the hymn when I joined others of the Chorale in helping our director mourn the loss of her mother at her funeral. I had not known her, so it was not difficult for me as some other departing services have been. But when the last hymn was sung, then something got to me. It was this: I did not know the hymn, and so looked around a bit at the congregation as I listened. Pall bearers came forth and lifted the coffin from its resting place at the front of the sanctuary, and reverently carried it, very slowly, down the aisle and out the door to the waiting hearse.
This is a difficult thing for someone who was raised Baptist. We never spent time discussing or thinking on funerals or memorials, as our belief that the soul had gone either to heaven or hell already was uppermost in our teachings. Add to that Paul's conjunction in a letter to one of the early churches to not "mourn like the heathens do", and we had a zealous tendency to stuff it at times of loss, when others honestly and simply cry. We hadn't learned how to mourn.
As I watched the coffin make its slow way down the aisle, my eyes fell on my director in the front pew with her Presbyterian minister husband. She was finally crying too. She had been strong for our last concert, while her mother lay dying in her hospital bed at home. I had caught only one tiny tear during "All Poor Men" in our Christmas line-up. But now it was time for her to say good-bye forever to a woman who had been such a beautiful Christian role model for her daughter and son-in-law, besides simply her own good mother. That's when I nearly lost it.
My faith had taken quite a beating during my education years and beyond, and now I was 3,000 miles away from my own faith-filled mother, from all my family and my life-long friends. I had a hard time with funerals at any time usually, because they seemed to shout out a final answer: "THERE IS NO HEALING!" This death-knell to faith in prayer was quickly followed by the question, "So is there no resurrection too?" This question surfaced again as I watched the coffin retreating.
But then on my ear fell the words of this hymn I had never heard before. "Jesus lives, and so shall I. Death! thy sting is gone forever." The words were so strong. Where I doubted, each word of this hymn answered with no wavering, the tune lines strong and undefeated. My attention became riveted on it as I watched that evidence of death's victory receding further and further, until it finally was loaded and out of view, driven away, and the doors to the church closed on death.
That was not the final answer. This is:
Jesus lives, and so shall I,
Death! thy sting is gone forever.
He who deigned for me to die,
Lives, the bands of death to sever.
He shall raise me with the just:
Jesus is my hope and trust.
Jesus lives and reigns supreme;
And, His kingdom still remaining,
I shall also be with Him,
Ever living, ever reigning.
God has promised: be it must;
Jesus is my hope and trust.
Jesus lives, I know full well,
Naught from Him my heart can sever,
Life nor death nor pow'rs of hell,
Joy nor grief, henceforth forever.
None of all His saints is lost;
Jesus is my hope and trust.
Jesus lives, and death is now
But my entrance into glory.
Courage, then, my soul,
For thou hast a crown of life before thee;
Thou shalt find thy hopes were just;
Jesus is the Christian's trust.
Lyrics ~ Christian F. Gellert, 1715 - 1769
Trans ~ By Philip Schaff, 1819 - 1893
Music ~ Johann Cruger, 1598 - 1662
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmMKD3PmLW0
It would have been much clearer for us if God would have placed directional signs in our paths: This way-> education, this way-> start a family, this way-> take that job, this way-> retirement now, this way-> buy a house..... It would have been ever so plain as the noses on our faces. But He didn't. He buried all knowledge and wisdom about Himself in an old Book we scarcely understand most of the time, and in people's hearts and minds. But it's up to us to decipher the Book, and up to us to heed the words of wise people, and also to figure out just who is and isn't wise in this world. Why?
It sure leads to some dark doubts. Is God really there? How can I truly know He is guiding my life? Why, if He is there and guiding my life, didn't He guide the lives of those children who died in Haiti, crushed under their own houses right next to their parents who survived, or vice versa? Is He watching us and laughing or frowning at our puny efforts to see the way He so clearly knows?
What pitiful beings we can become when we give way to the darkness and wallow in our uncertainties! But it's easier sometimes, really. I mean, when you look at it as jobs we have because we're humans, then it gets simpler: Because we have brains, we have to make choices about what we're going to think. We use our senses to gather information to make these decisions. What we allow our senses to pay attention to is our choice, being humans. The animals don't have these choices. They are stuck in their instincts. What are our instincts? Pretty similar to the animals, except we've got blunted senses that don't convey instinctual directions to our motor memories the way theirs do, just a "fight or flight" quickened heartbeat and heightened adrenalin, which mainly makes us sweat.
So, to keep to the point, our choices are myriad daily. Not only that, but we're born or develop, whichever you choose, with this sense of guilt when we make the wrong choices, which triggers our one left-over instinct and makes us sweat, and so our decision-making is hampered from the get-go.
This morning I came upon one of those times when my lack of animal instincts and my human responsibility collided to created something I can only call a mini-episode of the dark night of the soul. Considering yet again what direction I should put my whole self into, as I've been putting only bits and pieces of myself into anything ever since the kids were born, I once again had to admit there is no clear path in this life. Others seem to find one, but down the road a ways they always find it wasn't such a clear path after all. So I shouted to God to put some road signs already!
All I ended up with was a prayer in a hymn, learned by many listenings to a cassette tape recording of a concert by our school choir about my freshman year of high school while I spent summers painting by number in my room by the open window filled with a box fan against the Southern California heat:
Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;
wean it from earth; through all its pulses move;
stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art,
and make me love thee as I ought to love.
I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
no sudden rending of the veil of clay,
no angel visitant, no opening skies;
but take the darkness of my doubt away.
Hast thou not bid me love thee, God and King?
All, all thine own, soul, heart and strength and mind.
I see thy cross; there teach my heart to cling.
O let me seek thee, and O let me find.
Teach me to feel that thou art always nigh;
teach me the struggles of the soul to bear.
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh,
teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.
Teach me to love thee as thine angels love,
one holy passion filling all my frame;
the kindling of the heaven-descended Dove,
my heart an altar, and thy love the flame.
I never quite understood those words in high school days, except for the words of the second verse: I didn't want to see visions, no sir! I was petrified by my mother's constant discussions of Satan and his ways, of people's having seen him and others having seen spirits. I did not ever, ever want to see anything but the physical world, unless it were Jesus Himself. I didn't want to hear voices and I didn't want to speak in tongues. I never wanted anything but the things I could see with my normal, human eyes and things I could pick up and handle, and people I could hug or sing with. I wouldn't mind Jesus, because I knew no matter what form He took it would be filled with love and peace, not ghostly scariness.
I also didn't understand, then, the darkness people's souls got into sometimes. I had a simple, child-like faith I wish I'd never educated myself out of, and I knew with total certainty God was not only there, but holding me in His hand every minute of every day. That didn't keep me from falling into human, everyday fears, but I always had my faith to hold me up.
Then, as I said, I grew up and went out into the world, where things weren't answered anymore by the Book and my parents words, or the words of my pastor and church founding members. They were answered by men and women toiling through their days to the answer, with great difficulty. Sometimes the Book was consulted, but usually it wasn't. In fact, most often in the world outside my little ivory tower the answers in the Book were scoffed at and explained away, even when they provided a direction, a clear path, and thus a way to inner peace.
My search for knowledge and beauty led me so far astray from where I began, I didn't even remember who I was anymore. I continued attending services in churches, and truly believed the faith I had learned as a child, but more and more it became a choice of the will, not a fact of the heart.
I continue in this way daily. Each day I deliberately choose to follow the God whose ways I love. Each day I sift through facts and fictions of the faith I profess with all my heart. Each day I find myself praying along with John Donne:
BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason, your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
I was once privileged to sing these words with the Susquehanna Chorale. I have never forgotten them, because as my doubts multiplied through the years they have been the only words that do justice to my soul's prayer. They were where I began this morning in my journal. I don't want this responsibility, this job of choosing daily the right way, this labor of the mind I brought on by choosing to be a child of the enlightenment, someone who uses my own, God-given intellect to learn new, interesting things and make decisions about where I live and who I go through my days with. By sharpening my mind I opened a Pandora's box of unanswered questions that just won't meekly go back into the box and stay quiet when I tell them to.
This is my point, though long in my getting to it: I believe that this very difficulty proves the answer, that it is much easier both to blindly believe in God and to blindly not believe in God, but that to remain relevant and discern daily duty to Him is the most difficult task a human can attempt. And thereby He is proved. As Tolkien wrote in The Lord of the Rings (from the recent movie):
Merry: [to Frodo] How do we know this Strider is a friend of Gandalf?
Frodo: I think a servant of the Enemy would look fairer and feel fouler.
The prophet Isaiah says the same of The Suffering Servant, for-telling Jesus:
He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes we are healed. (53:2-5)
The world wants an easy answer. It's human nature to want things to be simple. Life is hard as it is. If someone professes to bring peace he darned well better make it simple and easy, or no one's going to listen to him. But Jesus just plain and simply doesn't do that. He is not pretty. He is, in fact, ugly. We don't want to look at Him still hanging on the cross. We don't like it, it ain't a purty sight.
Jesus said, "Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Have you ever been in the hospital or bedroom of someone dying of prostate cancer? It ain't a purty sight, and even worse when it's your beloved father. How is that burden easy??
Thanks be to God that Jesus came as an ugly outcast and died a hideous death on a cross meant for you and me!!
That takes the darkness of my doubt away. That makes Easter Sunday possible amidst the ruins of our lives. That makes us able to sing the great Alleluia! with the huge congregation crammed into the pews, as the trumpets blast for all they're worth and the kettle drums sound the announcement - "He is risen!"
Thanks be to God, He didn't make the answers easy for Jesus either. And because of Him we live through this life with difficulty, but oh joy in the morning! At the end of it is the great Alleluia with the angels, but better yet, with our loved ones gone before who suffered through to their reward.
No woman ever grows up planning to live all on her own with no one to share life with, unless she is messed up in the head. Not my dream, this. But who ever said God gives us our heart’s desire? Oh yeah, only King David, right….. And Solomon, the wisest king who ever lived. But have I done what’s necessary first? How does the Psalm go?
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart,
And lean not unto thine own understanding;
In all thy ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct thy paths.
And again:
Delight yourself in the Lord
And He will give you the desires of your heart
Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him
And He shall bring it to pass.
Yes, David and Solomon said it. So, I have been expecting me to receive the desires of my heart without me having delighted myself in the Lord – is it that? But I do so delight myself in the Lord! Or maybe they meant delight only in the Lord….? Is God that picky?
Do I trust in the Lord with all mine heart? Good question. I don’t think so. I think I trust in Him with just a tiny bit of my heart and none of my mind, leaning most often unto mine own understanding.
Do I acknowledge Him in all my ways?Just what does it mean to acknowledge Him? And do we ever do anything in all our ways? Or what does that phrase mean? And what is it exactly that He shall bring to pass? My desires? My dreams? My plans? Just my stinking schedule for this day alone?! Please!
Commit your way to the Lord – commit is a scary word. I shy away from commit. I don’t like commit. Commit means forever you are going to have to do this, even when your heart calls you elsewhere. Commit is a word not found in the ADDers dictionary. Commit, if done at all by the ADDer, is only done at his or her own prompting. And when it is done it is called Focus, and it is done entirely, completely, whole-heartedly and unswervingly. Commit does not exist by that name for me. So let’s use the word Focus. I love Focus.
I Focus on sewing and quilting and crocheting and knitting very well. When I do beautiful things emerge eventually. But I can’t Focus and make beautiful things and be a good wife and mother at the same time. So I don’t Focus anymore. But right now I guess I am Focusing on this Scripture. So maybe I can do this thing.
But now that I’ve examined that tangent, I must admit that my Focus is not the same as David or Solomon’s Commit. My Focus is self centered, coming from my own mind, emanating from my own ideas, directed only by me. David wrote of committing all that to God. I think he was trying to say I have to give up that autonomy, which is why I run from the word commit so immediately and like lightening.
ADDers don’t give up their autonomy, ever, because we’ve found ourselves stuck in boring, creativity-crushing places all too frequently because of a mere commitment of our autonomy to somebody else. And we honor our commitments.
I don’t want to commit anything to You, Lord – let’s be honest here, because You know anyway. I don’t want to commit – give up to You – anything in my life. I have seen how You devalue people, how You toss away lives like chaff or dust. I have watched You throw away programs and beautiful things already in place that help people, nurture them, create a space for those who have none – and all after those who made these constructs committed them to You. I can’t trust anything to You. Not my ideas, not the desires of my heart, not my life’s dreams, certainly not my children!
Because You don’t really care about them like I do.
In my world I am god, not You.
I can trust myself.
Far better than You.
And that’s exactly why my dreams lie in ruins all about me; my children struggle daily with things I took completely for granted growing up in the playland I did; my family lives in chaos more often than not, not one of us feeling as valued as we really are; and I look back with regrets over a life that didn't turn out at all as I planned it.
So, Lord, thank You for listening to my little diatribe. I guess I don’t make a very good god for myself or my family. I guess I’ve done a completely rotten job of introducing them to the real God, the One who truly can carry their sorrows and light their way in the world. Please help me commit my way unto Thee. Help me acknowledge You in all my ways. Because I want You to bring “it” to pass, whatever “it” may be, as only You know what that is and whether “it” is good for me and mine.
Oh, it's not sad news about any of my family, or anyone extremely close to me, really. It's not sad in that someone died. It's just sad, and it's news, and it's about two very wonderful people who have already had more than seems their fair share of troubles. But it was in my Inbox, and it makes me sad.
To one I returned a prayerful message of support. To the other I did not yet, as the news came via a mass mailing generated by our church choir director. I will send this person a message when I have something better to say besides, "How sad!".
That's why I'm here right now. I've come here to process this news and this feeling, and hopefully come out of this time with peace and words of support for my friends. Already I have a starting point, a verse which came to me as I typed the message to one friend.
"The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song." Psalm 28:7
I love this verse. I am a singer from birth. When I'm happy, I sing. When my heart is hurting, I seek a song to express it. When I doubt, or strive in prayer for words, it's the words of songs that I think of first. I thought first of this hymn:
"When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
"It is well, it is well with my soul."
From there words simply flowed, from the Spirit to the page, and I found myself typing a prayer just thought up on the spot that fit the circumstance perfectly. These were not my words, I am a bumbler when it comes to words, which is why I sing - somebody else can think them up much better than I! I guess Somebody did.
So just now, while attempting to remember why I thought I had to type this in here, on the Oprah show my son was watching in the next room there came a singer who performed the "Hallelujah" from Shrek that I've loved for years. How right for my mood, how perfect the words for my friend's situations! I once had a pastor who preached an entire sermon on this song. That was before I ever saw Shrek. I can't hear it now without crying at some point. I've learned what "it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah" really means.
And I think I know why that pastor took the entire sermon slot to expound upon a pop song not many had yet even heard. His point, if I remember right (and that's debatable), was that the singer kept on singing "Hallelujah". He kept on singing it, over and over. He said that's the life of faith, that someone decides that his praise is broken, his life means nothing, his hope is dead - but he keeps on singing "Halleujah". Doesn't stop. Goes on and on, singing this one word: "Hallelujah".
This word is Hebrew הַלְּלוּיָהּ. In our favorite church Latin it's Alleluia. Means the same thing. From Wikipedia:
In the Hebrew Bible hallelujah is actually a two-word phrase, not one word. The first part, hallelu, is the second-person imperative masculine plural form of the Hebrew verb hallal.However, "hallelujah" means more than simply "praise Yah", as the word hallelin Hebrew means a joyous praise, to boast in God, or to act madly or foolishly.The second part, Yah, is a shortened form of the name of God YHWH, sometimes rendered in English as "Yahweh" or "Jehovah". in Hebrew means a joyous praise, to boast in God, or to act madly or foolishly.
So, praise God. Praise God when your daughter's upcoming marriage dissolves and simultaneously you're summoned to defend yourself in a court of law - you, a fine, upstanding citizen and humble Christian. Praise God when you've walked with a family member through their own personal hell, then buried one of your best friends, then your wife gets breast cancer. Praise God. Praise God when you receive your notice this time that your job is being cut, and you just put your daughter in an expensive college because it's the right thing to do for her. Praise God. Do this mad, this crazy thing, and do it in a joyous way!
Not because we're happy. Not because we think if we do God will remove the horrors and the heartache from us. Not because we're good mules and do what we're told. Not because we just always have so we always will because we're creatures of good habit. Not because we're afraid if we don't we'll go to hell when we die of this thing.
We praise God in horrible times because we praise God! We praise God in terribly sad times because we praise God! We praise Him alike in good and in bad, knowing exactly what's coming next and knowing nothing about tomorrow; anticipating good things and fearing the worst. Praise God!
We can't hold it together, folks. We try and we try so hard we break with trying to hold all the pieces in place long enough to take one crummy picture to remember the moment by. But we can't do it. We're a cold and broken people, and if we don't realize it and start foolishly singing a cold and broken Hallelujah, we're going to disappear entirely, because we're not strong enough to exist in and of our human selves. Nope. Sorry. Can't do it. We're not magical beings, and all our amazing brains are only piddly compared with the universe God created.
So we choose to praise, instead of curse. We choose to walk in faith alone, when there is nothing under our feet resembling solid earth, when the rug has been pulled, when the pit of our stomachs are turned to quivering water.... because He is God, and we are His people and the sheep of His pasture, and that's what God's people do.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
We praise Him because we're His sheep and He is the Good Shepherd, who knows the sheep and just what makes us tick. He knows what we need before our requests are even on our lips, He has already answered them, provided exactly the right thing, filled the order to perfection, better than we can ourselves because He knows so much better what we truly need.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Sing praises to the God of your life, who is still the God of your life whether you feel happy or sad, secure or scared to death. Praise Him with singing, and praise Him with dancing. No sitting in the pew praise, this! No mumbling behind a hanky! Stand up and hit that high C! Make a spectacle of yourself, already! Go ahead and break the family rules, draw attention to yourself, stick out like a sore thumb, I dare you! Just see what singing a resounding Hallelujah! can do for your outlook.
If you think I'm talking a lot of hot air, just know that I have tried this, and I cannot describe the balm that came over me in the midst of a heart-breaking Thanksgiving celebration while my father lay wasted away in his bed down the hall and the family joined in proclaiming Psalm 136 in chorus, whether they thought I was crazy or not. Dad died the next December 29, 2002. He is now singing forever:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Someday I'll join him in harmony, but I join him every time I sing down here while I live out this life I've been called to sing through.
In the morning
Love is something -
