"He Walks with Me, and He Talks with Me, and He Tells Me..."

And the word of the LORD was precious in those days; [there was] no open vision...I Samuel 3:1

Sounds like now, and like it has been for many years in this world, I'd say. So, when clarity of vision begins to return, how do we know we're not just dancing with lunacy? "Be my witness, not my attorney," Rick Warren reminds...so I'd answer that question as a witness...as someone coming with a story rather than a dogma.

Several years ago, when I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I went through a period of time where pain and weakness ruled my life, dictating nearly every choice I made. It was a time of profoundly sad list-making: lists of all the things I'd "likely never do again." One particularly gloomy day (another symptom of fibro is depression) as spring approached, it hit me I would surely never garden again. I began to literally weep as I considered that even if we ever moved someplace where a backyard garden was an option, I'd never have the strength to maintain that level of physical labor again. Based on my stature right then, it was a realistic expectation. But even as I cried, I "sensed" laughter around me. Giggles, like ones restrained by those who know of a fabulous suprise awaiting a dear friend, but must keep it a secret. That was what I sensed bubbling in the unseen realm nearest me.

"What are you spooks laughing about?" I finally said aloud, and a spiritual dam broke. The giggles burst into outright guffaws, all around me. It was so contagious, and I was so mystified by it, that I left off my crying and grinned through my tears. I was much like a little child drawn away from grief into a reluctant smile. I went quiet inside about gardening, about a lot of things that were on that "expected losses" list. Maybe something different was in store for me. I began to hope.

I went outside to water my garden this morning...it is in its third year of productivity; and church bells rang as I stood spraying the glittering arcs that refresh the dry ground. I was reminded that many places are holy places. My garden is one of them.

Did I expect such a wall-less sanctuary to ever be mine again? No. Was I told to expect something more, that a higher consciousness saw more for me than I saw for myself? Yes.

If it is lunacy, then sun and water and a morning wind sent to carry a sacred song are all celebrating.

What Do You Call Prayer?

...and more pointedly does prayer "work" in the context of this world?

I've thought on this a lot lately. A postulate I should present a integral to my own evaluation, if you will, of prayer is that I tend to pull away when I look at this question...viewing prayer as a composite tapestry rather than as a collection of individual stitches. You can certainly point to this particular stitch or that one to evaluate the whole, but I think that is a disastrous method to decide prayer's effectiveness and thereby one's participation in it. So how does one rise up and see the whole scene? How does one pray, as Nouwen puts it, within a balance where prayer is personal enough to risk one's faith but broad enough to allow God room to move and create as He so pleases?

I look to one anecdote from my own experiences that defines for me the meaning of God "changing His mind" even within the context of His having perfect omniscience--for this is the rub for many thinking people. The example has to do with bubbles.

I've dreamed bubbles several times. Once I dreamed of a woman in a magnificent gown of bubbles, another time of churches filled with bubbles I was sent to observe (in this case it was more a foaming than a bubbling up) wherein I was pleased to announce to God that this foaming action was dissipating. And I dreamed of sleeping pigs locked in an almost solid foam that absolutely had to go away. What am I to make of all this bubbling imagery sent from God? Why is some good and some bad, almost in equal proportion?

Here is the crux of the matter. The bubbles are the omniscience; but their meaning and their playing out in my life, my actions and reactions are where changes and decisions--even on God's part--can occur. It all has to do with what the bubbles can mean based on the "word" God has given for the sake of interpretation.

Jude 1:13 addresses false teachers, those whose lives are self-centered, as being"Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever." The foam is bad. On the other hand, Psalm 145:7 says "They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of thy righteousness." Here, the word for 'abundantly utter' is more literally translated as 'bubble forth' so the image is good. Bubbles are the constant, but the interpretation is open to interpretation. Some would call this a dog chasing its tail, but I think it exemplifies the most primitive beauty of man, the most elemental elegance of the dance God makes with him.

As Neo in the Matrix so aptly puts it when his adversary finally raises the ultimate question: why do you keep fighting when you know it ends with your death? Neo says, "Because I choose to." Or as happened in another of my crazy dreams, one in which I was a chicken, of all things, in a crate on a truck. The devil asked me, "Why are you so happy? You know you're just headed to the slaughterhouse?" And I answered as I gazed out the airholes on the side, gazed at the fields passing by, "Because the view is so beautiful on the way."

Of all creation, we are the ones gifted with the largest access to the concept of choice, therefore we are the ones most susceptible to deception on that front. We've been given a broad umbrella under the rain of God's omniscience in the context of time and chance, but many choose to perceive themselves as clowns on bicycles, running around under mini-umbrellas. But then, this, too, just proves my point: the choice is ours.

Life Is Like a Box of Baseball Cards

Often when my husband and sons peruse old boxes of baseball cards in the storage nooks of our house, a conversation evolves about their value. Invariably, my husband makes the comment, "They're only worth what someone will pay for them." This morning in my prayer time, I enlarged that idea to encompass a box of faith, a box of sacrifice, a box of redemption. What will one person pay for it?

The price is self-awareness in its meanest state. Be a "beneficiary of God's grace" I read recently. A beneficiary generally receives something good; but a beneficiary also often pays a price...a cost, like an insurance premium over time or the loss of the loved one who left an inheritance. Rarely but in old fiction is someone the completely oblivious beneficiary to a secret fortune.

What is God's box of baseball cards worth? The stone on the balance weighs our courage, our courage to face ourselves in all our raw beauty and treachery. It's why, I think, the first thing on the laundry-list of sins that lead to the "second death" of Revelation 21 is cowardliness, followed closely by unbelief. It's why the deepest love is closer to death than it is to affection, as my pastor stated last Sunday. The deepest love costs you yourself. Jesus said, before you take up your own cross, count the cost.

God has a box of cards, with a cross on every one. Each of us offers what we can in terms of that courage of self-awareness, that is if we seek a card at all. My hope, my prayer is that through this life I've been given, I'll up the value of those cards again where it has fallen.

Defining Your Mission

Shame on the minister last Sunday for preaching a sermon about extending your family's sense of corporate purpose, becoming missional in a larger way than just the idolization of the family unit. How dare he preach this during little league! (chuckle)

But he struck a chord with me, and on the drive home, I broached the subject with the family. We're not as missional as we've been in the past: singing in church choirs, serving on committees, doing youth group events, attending retreats, etc. The only retreating we've done is into our family shell, I admonished. We should get more missional. More outward focused.

Husband's response, "I'm just not feeling it."
Kids' response. "What? Hey, can we go to the batting cages this afternoon if it stops raining?"

Sigh.

But in time, I began to consider broadening my definition of being missional. Another significant point in our family's corporate life lately has been exploring this concept of our response to big-business as it relates to providing our food. We've decided we want to commit ourselves to supporting the part of the food industry that offers healthy meats and vegetables. The part that is still free, though small. The part that strives nobly to stay in business despite big business trying to put them out of business! Suddenly I realized, this could be our mission-call!

Now missional is defined (by Wikipedia anyway) as follows:
"...a local church is missional when it intentionally pursues God’s mission for His glory among all peoples by following His patterns and His ways of expanding His kingdom."

So I'm thinking if we are counted as Christ's friends when we give meat to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, etc. then we're sort of being missional with this thing . If we're told to be stewards of the earth, we're sort of being missional. (I know it's a stretch, but I'm consoling myself that this at least starts our family toward some purpose beyond its own bloating!)

The next step, however, is twofold. The first part involves consistency. I admonished on this point, too, as my husband and I drove home from the grocery store, plastic bags of quickly-purchased sale steaks in the back seat as we raced to do some impromptu barbecuing.

"We've got to get more consistent with this goal of only purchasing local, healthy-grown meat!" said I.

"If you looked up consistent in one dictionary, and then looked it up in another one. Do you think the definitions would be basically the same?" he responded.

I decided a matriarch can't afford a sense of humor. It is her Achilles' heel.

And of course there's step two: look for the good in the "failures" of life. For instance, I read all the time how crucial it is for a family to sit down at the table and eat dinner together. It is about the only insurance that children will grow up sane and well-adjusted. It's also the only insurance that your children will even remember they have families and come back as adults to occasionally visit.

Our family only does this on major holidays. Instead, we watch the news--or maybe Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader--every single night as we eat. Sometimes, I try to move us all to the table, but mostly some of us eat at the table and others on the couch nearby for a better view of the TV. One thing, though, I can say. Our children know our opinion (and we know theirs) on just about every current event. Our mouths stuffed with food, we comment and they question on everything from foreign affairs to the weather. Our way wouldn't make a cover-story headline in Redbook magazine, but I take comfort in this final analysis of our dinner hour habits.

As I pick muddy radishes from our backyard garden while my youngest walks the "balance beam" of timbers surrounding it, I remind myself small steps are still steps. And, big steps take planning. Much failure to accomplish goals spring from lack of patience through the small steps. And, maybe from forgetfulness.

I hope we remember that we're planning to split a grass-fed cow with the neighbors this summer.