dancing in the minefields

I see you, the way you curl your knees toward your chest and clench your elbows to your sides. I wonder, as I watch from under my eyelashes, if you were just told too many times when you were little to keep your hands to yourself, or if you spent too much time in middle school tripping and crashing into things with your new height, or if you are so unconsciously conscious of some flaw that you spend your physical energy trying to hide everything about yourself.

You aren't always like this. What is it that makes you try to fold all your limbs into your body, drop your eyes, bow your head?

I wish I knew.

I feel something stir in my heart, and I want, more than anything, to rise from my seat and raise my arms and twirl and spin and take your hand. I wish I could pull you to your feet and help you spread your limbs as wide as mine, and let the rhythm of the music pull us away from this place where we're afraid. I ache to let my spirit unfold in the center of my chest, to let it breathe and expand to touch your spirit, to let them soar and weave together.

What are we so afraid of? Is it the dance, the arms-wide vulnerability, the possibility of being seen?

I think so.

the season of bright sadness

When, two or three years ago, I first started "doing Lent," it was quite poorly done. I was actually fasting just to prove I could. And, secretly, I hoped to make God like me more, to impress Him with my own piousness, attract His eye, and hold His ear close to my prayers.

I've been learning, slowly, that fasting doesn't work like that. It's not a gimmick to attract attention, nor a simple exercise in self-discipline. So what is it? What does it mean? And why do I desire to practice it, since I know that there is nothing I can do to attract the favor of an impartial God?

I've struggled through this over the past few years, gone through stages where I flatly refused to fast at all because I was pretending not to be prideful. Obviously, that was a rather strong backlash, and not biblical either.

Perhaps the best explanation of fasting I've found is, not surprisingly, given by God Himself.
On the day of your fasting, He accuses His people, you do as you please [. . .] You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself?
Clearly not. However, God proceeds to explain exactly what He requires of fast-ers. Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice, and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

I hate self-denial, really strongly hate it, and I am really really bad at it. But if fasting gives me more time . . . or energy . . . or new perspective . . . and gives me extra space to pursue God's presence and implement His will in my own heart and in the world around me, then yes. I'll do it.

Last Sunday, our priest spoke on fasting, in preparation for the Lenten season. The crux of what he shared was this. Fasting is denying ourselves so we can more clearly hear the voice of God, putting aside an activity or object temporarily to make specific space for our hearts to be quiet and listen to the Spirit, refraining from a legitimate pleasure in order to gain the superior pleasure of the presence of the LORD.

In short, giving up the good for the best.

So, whether you observe Lent (February 22-April 8 this year) or not, whether you give up Facebook or meat or plastic or smoking or sweets or bathing on Fridays (please don't), whether you practice weekly meal-fasts or not, whether you are involved in a liturgical denomination or not, here is to a life of fasting--to living as people who defy injustice, who reach out to the needy and oppressed, who do whatever it takes to hear the voice of God, who change the world.

Good Lent.

boushk

They are three, one each with her hand on my knee, one with her hand pressed underneath my right shoulderblade. They are praying for me, strong prayers, standing up because I cannot, and like the first time, I am crying, tears trailing down my cheeks and onto my jeans.

Then she is speaking to me, her hand tightening on my knee, and she is telling me renounce it, tell it yourself. And I open my mouth and try to speak and I am shaking, shaking harder than I have ever shaken in my life and I am afraid. I am afraid of what I know I need to say, I am afraid I will sound foolish, I am afraid I am wrong, I am afraid to never be good enough, I am afraid I cannot breathe.

The hand on my shoulderblade presses harder, and the voice beside my ear is whispering words I don't understand straight to God, and I am still shaking, but I am breathing and I am speaking, and I tell it leave now, you have no place, I am bought with His blood.

And I stop shaking, but I am still crying, and they step in where I fall off and they pray until I stop weeping. Then she says, to me again, talk to Him now, tell Him you know it was wrong.

So I do and it is nearly harder than the first thing. I am not shaking, not with the same violence of sobs and breathlessness, but I have nothing to say, no words that are enough to speak to His glorious face. I manage to open my mouth, to let my heart speak its remorse and its worship, and I don't know what exactly I say but I do know that suddenly . . .

I am not afraid.

The full moon over snow
      is a better prayer
   that I could compose
          over the span of eternity.

on silence

  sometimes

     life is more beautiful when it is kept out of print

                                             and tucked deep into hearts.

You see

There is a wild beauty to the names of God given Him by primitive tongues. When He met Hagar in the desert, and promised her that her son would not only survive, but thrive, what was it that so amazed her?

It wasn't the promise. It wasn't the meeting. It was something completely surprising.

He sees me. So floored by this, she called Him a name to reflect such awe.

L'chai Ro'i--the God Who sees.

No one told Hagar what to expect, or how God worked "in our time." Presumably, she wasn't deemed worthy of religious instruction. So when she encountered God, she was not disappointed, nor suspicious.

She was, however, exceptionally amazed.

He sees me.

In that one phrase, she cried a beautiful declaration of faith, of awe, of hope.

You are the God Who sees me.


May this be our cry.