Reading again...

I read another chapter in Robert Benson's "Living Prayer" tonight.

This time it was perhaps the most simple and helpful and deeply profound thoughts on intercession that I've ever encountered.

When he talked about it, so many of the things I've experienced this last year made sense.

And I love an author who can write about such a profound topic as intercession without using the word intercession or intercessor every other sentence. I think he maybe only used the word intercession twice in the entire chapter.

Plus, I love an author who admits to stumbling and bumbling his way towards the answers. Most of my favorite authors write like that. I'm not interested in reading the ones who pretend to have it all together. Having it all together seems like such a false way of living.

Anyway, here are a couple of the many favorite quotes I marked in the chapter I read tonight:

If we pray, and if we believe that God listens to our prayer, then to spend that audience on behalf of someone else is an act of selflessness that is larger than it seems. At some level, our prayer - spoken or unspoken, written or read aloud, experienced in silence or lived out in the work of our hands and feet - is all that we have to offer each other. And it can be the best that we ever give each other as well. (pg. 131)

Perhaps God does not need me to pray for myself or for others because He needs help figuring out what to do or needs some degree of persuasion on our part before He is willing to do good for somebody. Perhaps God needs me to pray so that I can be about the business of laying myself and the people and places and things I care about on the altar. It is okay if I do not know what is to happen next. I just need to be laying them out on the rocks - with hope, with faith, with diligence, with attention, with compassion.

Then I need to listen, listen for the prayer of God that is rising in my heart, perhaps for the prayer that I should be praying rather than the one that I am praying. (pg.133-134)

Daily

In an effort to balance out some crazyness in my life, and to be better at self-care - not a strength for a woman who was in many ways raised to believe that anyone and everyone was more deserving of her time and attention than herself - these are some of the things I'm making a daily priority right now:

• writing a blog post of some kind. writing helps me process life. writing on a blog on a daily basis forces me to be accountable to show up at something regularly. It's not hard and fast, it's just something that works for me. If I miss a day, ok. But I'd rather not.
• Writing in my paper journal. As I said, writing helps me process life. But it's good to do it on paper. There's something therapeutic for me in picking up a pen and recording what I'm thinking about, and what went on in my day - internally and externally.
• taking vitamins.
• getting rest. because I don't sleep very well, or in long chunks, this means that I need to be in bed earlier than I (as a night owl) would prefer. It means I need to be horizontal, even if I'm not asleep, because it really does mean I'm resting.
• spending time in scripture. see my post below for thoughts on how what you read can impact your spiritual life. I'm learning (again) that scripture works on you if you let it. that it forms and changes your heart, and draws you closer to Jesus.
  

I think that's it. Those are the big things that I do on a daily basis at the moment in an effort to care for myself. There are other little things - buying myself flowers, stuff like that. But for the moment, I'm just glad to have some big things in place.

What you read has power

I've been having an ongoing conversation with a couple different friends about the impact that reading can have on a person. I've actually had to stop reading certain genres of books for the moment (some favorites, which hasn't been easy) because of the effect they've had on my whole being, and the way they've contributed to some of the spiritual, physical and emotional lows that I've been trying to regulate and level out a bit this last while.

Anyway, I've been reading this fantastic book titled "Living Prayer" by a man named Robert Benson lately. (I posted a while back about another book of his - "Between the Dreaming and the Coming True" which was also hugely powerful, and think I may have to read everything of his that I can get my hands on, judging by the two I've read so far.) And, in the midst of "Living Prayer", in a chapter on the impact of what we read on our spiritual and prayer lives, I came across the following paragraph or two, and was profoundly affected by them. (And annoyed, too, because they absolutely confirmed a point that a dear friend has been making to me, one I really kind of wanted her to be wrong about, while being simultaneously absolutely certain that she was right.)

Benson writes:

I know for a fact that there is an absolute and direct relationship between what I read and what I write. I also know that I cannot pray and I cannot be centered and I cannot do the work that has been given me to do whenever what I am reading is not conducive to such.

I got hooked once on a set of murder mysteries. The good news is that I enjoyed them all immensely and I finished the entire set. The bad news is that there are seventeen of them. For months, I was reading stories about murder and deceit, about betrayal and abuse. (It was a little like reading Genesis, now that I think of it.) The whole time, I was wondering why it was that my spirit was so thirsty and my prayer was so dry. I was starving myself and wondering where my strength had gone.
(Living Prayer, pg. 116-117)

Thoughts from Henri

It's been a little while since I posted some thoughts from Henri Nouwen, but here are two that I've received via email recently.

Restored to Eternal Life

One thing we know for sure about our God: Our God is a God of the living, not of the dead. God is life. God is love. God is beauty. God is goodness. God is truth. God doesn't want us to die. God wants us to live. Our God, who loves us from eternity to eternity, wants to give us life for eternity.

When that life was interrupted by our unwillingness to give our full yes to God's love, God sent Jesus to be with us and to say that great yes in our name and thus restore us to eternal life. So let's not be afraid of death. There is no cruel boss, vengeful enemy, or cruel tyrant waiting to destroy us - only a loving, always forgiving God, eager to welcome us home.

The Renewal of the Whole Creation

Our final homecoming involves not just ourselves and our fellow human beings but all of creation. The full freedom of the children of God is to be shared by the whole earth, and our complete renewal in the resurrection includes the renewal of the universe. That is the great vision of God's redeeming work through Christ.

Paul sees the whole created order as a woman groaning in labour, waiting eagerly to give birth to a new life. He writes: "It was not for its own purposes that creation had frustration imposed on it, but for the purposes of him who imposed it - with the intention that the whole creation itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God" (Romans 8:20-21). All that God has created will be lifted up into God's glory.

Pearl Harbor Day

Okay, so the history geek in me can't let today go by without a quick mention of Pearl Harbor Day. The anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was today (December 7, 1941) and it became an important turning point in the Second World War.

Just thought you all should know how much of a history geek I really am!