Live Radical...Pick the Flowers

“It’s really a radical thing in today’s world,” he says. “Every day we are inundated with tons of information and we can become desensitized in our relationship with Jesus.”

We are in a classroom just off the rotunda in this hotel in Pittsburgh—a rag-tag bunch—coffee cups cradled just under our chins. His hair is all standing up in the back but something in his voice…in his eyes…speaks calm.

We’ve come to read scripture together. It’s a workshop on Lectio Divina and it’s the only one held at 8:00 A.M. While most of the conference attendees sleep in or laugh over coffee in the hotel café, we pull inward…quiet our thoughts.

“Lectio Divina,” he says. “It means sacred reading. We are not deconstructing or analyzing. We are enjoying the beauty of the words for themselves…”

He gives us a handout and we take it in turns to read through the description he has put together from this book. When we get to the last step, he says it again.

“This is a deeply counter cultural activity we are engaging in today,” he says.

He tells us a story about a friend who is in medical school.

“As an exercise to deepen compassion, one of his professors made the students go to an art museum and stand in front of a painting for an hour. They had to study it…notice all the details they could. For an hour.”

He smiles at me. I smile back—thinking how it would be to stand in front of this painting…let its colors and story and light draw me in, become part of the compassion in my soul. Let its beauty become part of the framework that I live my life through.

We come to the last step on the handout—Contemplatio—and beside the word he has simply typed “Be”.

“Think of having a great meal with a great friend and then sitting in silence after wards…”

I silently re-read the last lines of the description he gives of Contemplatio.

Facilitate your re-entry to your day by using a florilegium, a notebook used by monks to record what God said to them through that day’s passages. In Latin, it means “picking flowers”—preserving the beauty of what God gave you that day.

So that’s what I’ve been doing in my old yellow notebook. I feel a bit of awe inside as I think of words as flowers—as I think of my bouquet.

And when we go through the exercise…I pick a couple more. And as I turn them around and around in the light of my mind, I feel it:

Radical.

And here are a few more flowers I've picked...this week's memory verses. You can download this James scripture memory card here. Last week's scripture memory card is here. You will find a link on this post for a complete set of scripture memory cards of the book of James.

with the amazing Jen:

and dear Michelle too:

Playdates with God: Hunger

I left hungry.

I was up early to finish the book club article, but between checking out of the hotel and Lectio Divina…there isn’t time for breakfast. In Marcus’ workshop, Nancy tries to give me a trail mix bar, but I am thinking about yogurt so I decline. But then there is morning worship and the last two speakers and time to say goodbye comes too soon. I drive out of Pittsburgh at 12:45 p.m. with a hunger that food will not fill.

It’s always this way after the mountain top, this I know, but at Jubilee I worship and learn with over 2000 college students and the energy along those corridors and in those rooms is a living thing. I am reminded what it is to be young and have your entire life before you. It doesn’t make me feel old—it makes me want to live deeper and when I feel a pang of regret—only once—I remember what my spiritual director said just last week about God’s timing always being perfect. After all, I have more life before me too.

So I drive down I-79 with this aching hunger keeping me company and my Lord and I—we feast. All of the little pieces of heaven that were sprinkled down over the weekend flood the space of my minivan and it’s not until four hours later when I pull in my driveway that I remember I am hungry.

And then the fullness of family grips me and wraps me in its warm embrace. And going away is all the sweeter for the coming home.

How this fills. How this fills…

How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. Grab my button at the bottom of the page and join us:

The Playdates button:

 

Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also: 

Permission [not] to Waste Time

I have become a master of time.

Over the months and years of mothering and working and searching for beauty, I’ve developed little tricks to accomplish the things that must be done. For instance, I can unload the dryer, re-load it with fresh soggies AND put a new load of dirty clothes in the washer all in the two minutes it takes my oatmeal to cook in the microwave (folding is another story). I usually scrub down the shower while I’m taking mine. I have all manner of disinfectant wipes and cleaners tucked away in the nearest drawers…every available surface is always an arm’s length away from a quick scrub down.

When a girl has dreams, for Pete’s sake, she finds a way to fit it all in. She gets up at 5 a.m. to write a blog post; she skips lunch to go for a run; she stays up way too late leaving traces of her DNA all about the house and into the never-realm of cyberspace.

The problem? These past couple weeks I haven’t felt like mastering time. These past couple weeks I have wanted to savor it instead.

In church on Sunday, my pastor preached about Naaman. Naaman was a master of many things—one of which, I suspect, was time. I’m guessing Naaman did not like to waste time. But after hearing about the prophet Elisha’s miracles, Naaman rode a long way to ask if the man of God would cure him of his leprosy. When Elisha told Naaman—the great commander of armies—to wash in the river Jordan seven times and he would be cured…well, Naaman was angry. He thought it would be a waste of time.

When I read Naaman’s story, I started thinking about all the things I have seen as a waste of time. How, these past couple weeks, these time-wasters are the only things that seem to make sense. It’s the long walks under the moon, the whispers under the covers at night, the looking him in the eye when we say goodbye in the morning. It’s the sitting with, and the slow touch, and the taste of chocolate. And it’s how I’ve been thinking about what makes people happy and knowing it’s not sterile countertops and two-minute laundry marathons. And I think about the boy who left us and I look at mine and it’s the way they still let me rub their backs, pull them close when we sit in the pew at church.

And I think about Naaman dipping seven times in the river Jordan and I know. It’s the dipping into these things, seven times, seventy times, a million times…this dipping into the things that feels like a waste of time—if we are willing—that usher us into the presence of God.

It’s all these things that seem like a waste of time that make us clean.

For who, when these things are taken away, wouldn’t trade all that she has to have them back again? To fold the socks, to wash the bowl, to tuck the covers in tight around the sleepyhead?

There are things that need doing—why not dip in with love? I’m trying to hold on to this, friends. Before it slips through my fingers like so much muddy water from the Jordan River.

with the amazing Jen:

and dear Michelle too:

Let them Eat Cake and a Valentine's Gift

After I read this study yesterday, guess what I had for breakfast this morning? That’s right. Go ahead. Seems that having something sweet in the morning may help suppress similar cravings throughout the day. Who knew? Seems an appropriate way to start this sweetest of days.

And speaking of temptation, how is your memorization going? I printed up this week’s memory verse on a carrying card with the image of my Valentine’s sweet on the background because there is nothing sweeter than a love letter from the Lord. You are welcome to indulge in this sweet too, just click here to download! 

For a copy of scripture memory cards for the entire book of James.

The sweetest of all days to you, my friends!

Playdates with God: When Old Love is New

I curled my hair and put on that red blouse. They weren’t real pearls, but their lustrous sheen in the light of my kitchen glowed translucent against their ivory frame. It was more than the situation called for, more than expected. And to a girl who’s always felt…less than, this was a new skin.

This can be our Valentine’s dinner, I whispered in his ear.

It was a crowded affair with hardly room to pirouette. I didn’t try. Frocked tables and men in hats bumped together in narrow passageways. At dinner, we sat with dear friends and made new ones. The clink of glass and murmur of steady conversation were the music of the evening. I leaned into his song—listened, rapt, to the voice I know so well become new again.

And when his fingers found mine under that white tablecloth I felt beautiful. I felt loved.

How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. Grab my button at the bottom of the page and join us:

The Playdates button:

 

Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also: 

Moonbeam Cascade: Poem Gift

Sometimes light surprises in the midst of the dark...

chatoyant moon—round

pool of light, pour your

moonbeam cascade into

the dark sea of mourning.

I am water spilling over

each golden crevice—

my heart, a spoon,

scooping great folds and

waves.

Listen to it:

And with kd who is graciously filling in for Em:

Playdates with God: Rugged Landscape

This morning our valley is laced with frost, and the hills shed into an alabaster sky. When she awakens, the sun’s touch is like Midas and the meadow shimmers with pearly gold.

How rich we are.

The hardest of things are just a wee bit easier to bear when the golden touch of love breaks through white grief. So we try to be good friends. And we open our arms and our doors and our hearts to help in the hefting. 

And on a rainy day in February we stand in the garden with he and his family and listen to the priest proclaim a life blessed, watch as he lifts his arm to heaven and commits this soul to our good God. 

I study the cluster of colorful umbrellas bundled close in front of me and I wonder how we navigate this thing. How I always say the wrong the things and despite the tangled tongue how grief is a stitch that binds us together in the hem of life. The thread is pulled tighter here in the garden. 

How do we do this? How do we journey over the rugged landscape of sorrow? 

I remember David Brooks and the story he gives about the gobiid fish. 

These tiny fish live in shallow tidal pools and they are known for navigating during low tide by jumping from pool to pool. Scientists have been amazed at the accuracy with which this little fish is able to traverse its environment. Their precision is astonishing considering they have no way of seeing where each tidal pool is. What is happening, Brooks tells us, is that during high tide the gobiid fish wander around absorbing the landscape and storing maps in their heads. Then when the tide is low, they have a mental map of the landscape, and they unconsciously know what ridges will be dry at low tide and what hollows will be full of water. 

Human beings are good at accumulating this sort of wanderer’s knowledge as well, Brooks says. 

And I think about the landscape of grief—how the touch of a hand, a cheek pressed against a cheek—how these things have traversed the long road of time. 

And plunging into grief can feel like this faith-jumping—taking flight with only a memory to guide. 

But the Lord inhabits the prayers of His people and we land in the soft water of His love. 

And as we file back into the church—me, bare-headed in the rain—I notice that the pointy finger of the daffodils are breaking through the wet soil.

How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. Grab my button at the bottom of the page and join us:

* Today I'm also reflecting on The Social Animal by David Brooks as part the book club at The High Calling.

The Playdates button:

 

Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also: