Like fragrant oil...

Yesterday was a day that I don't know how to describe. There aren't really words, because I don't really understand the dynamics that were obviously in play around me.

I spent a large chunk of the day fighting back panic. Heart-racing, seconds from losing it, melt-down at any time, way amped up panic. Now, I'm not known as the most emotionally calm and stable person on the planet, but this was unusual, even for me. I don't think most of the people I work with had any idea, but from about noon on, my body was physically in overdrive as I worked to tamp down the panic.

And yet, in spite of all that, at the end of the day, as I was reflecting back on what had been, my mind was drawn to an odd sort of blessing with which I began the day.

A few years back, in a quiet moment, someone who at the time I hardly knew but who is now a very dear friend, poured oil over my hands, and marked the sign of the cross on my forehead in a moment of deep prayer that remains just a bit blurry for me. Since then I've seen her pray with oil in many places, and was not particularly surprised when it became a way that I prayed as well - oil poured out.

At Christmas this year, the same friend gave me a tiny sealed cylinder attached to a key ring, and a vial of oil with which to fill it. Oil of frankincense and myrrh. The fragrant burial spices presented by the magi to Jesus. I attached the filled cylinder of oil to my keys and carry it with me nearly everywhere I go.

Yesterday morning, before all the panic set in, I drove as usual to work. Instead of listening to music as I drove, I had opted for silence, and spent some time praying. My work environment can be challenging at times, and yesterday, as I parked, I paused for just a moment in my car to ask Jesus to walk with me through the day.

I have two sets of car keys, one on my main key ring, and a spare set on another ring. I'd used the spare set in the car yesterday, and my main key ring was in the pocket of my jacket. As I paused in the car to pray, I slid my hand into that pocket, encountering the keys. I pulled them out and noticed that the vial of oil attached to my key ring was strangely warm - more warm than it should have been from simply being tucked in my pocket in my cold car.

I had an immediate mental image of warm liquid pouring over me, of Jesus meeting me as I touched the warm cylinder. I twisted the top from the vial, tipping just a little onto my fingers, and quietly marking the sign of the cross on my forehead, lips, heart. Dabbing just a little of the fragrant oil on my wrist, where I knew the scent would linger through the day. And then, as I tried to seal the vial back up, it overflowed. Maybe I tipped it wrong as I was twisting it back together, or maybe I didn't, but in any case, as I rejoined the two parts of the vial, there was an excess of oil. Struck mostly by the need to mop up the excess before my keys could be returned to my purse, I rubbed it on my wrists, and absorbed the rest with my mittens.

I climbed out of my car, and headed into what proved to be a very difficult day.

And yet, simple as it seems, last night, and through today as I reflected back, I find blessing in that moment spent alone in my car. Blessing in the warmth and comfort of the oil. A reminder from Jesus in the sudden and unexpected overflow. Meaning in the scent of burial spices that carried with me through the day.

And I am grateful, that at the beginning of what proved to be a very trying day, a day full of attack and confusion and fear, Jesus met with me tangibly for just a moment. That in that moment I could nearly feel the warm oil pouring over my whole being, and not just being marked in the shape of a cross on my forehead, lips and heart. That he reminded me of his love poured over me and shielding me. Of the overflow of that love - it's abundance and fragrance.

I didn't know all those things in the moment. It's really only in looking back over the day that I realized that he met and prepared me for what was to come. But I'm so grateful that he did.

Subtle Shiver

This song has been playing through my head the last few days... can't quite explain it, the events, but here are some pictures, and the words that underlie them in my head...

Subtle Shiver (by Diana Pops, recorded by Steve and Sarah Bell on "Sons and Daughters")

As I walk through this field in the fall time
Leaves become a red carpet as I pass by
Don’t know why but the world’s in its prime right now

As I walk the prairie skies are vacant
Pick up stones the river hasn’t taken
The firefly that danced with the frost silently dies

I hear traces of old familiar songs
The cold wind blowing helps to rush me along
And here I found You in your glory
On that cold October morning
In this clearing by the river
I felt a subtle shiver
I know You waited for me

Every wave on the water it is dancing
Looks as though summer never happened
The trees o’er my head sway as the sky starts to blaze



I never thought that You’d give me a love song
Never saw it’s been here all along
I close my eyes to cover a tear
That’s made it down my cheek and now I hear
Your voice it speaks so soft and clear…
You’ve seen Me everywhere

Up and Down Day

When I finally settled in to pray yesterday, it was a very good thing. For an hour and a half or so I paced my home, and had a conversation with Jesus. We talked about a lot of things - about dreams, about promises he's made, about the things I've been struggling with lately, about the many fronts on which I've been encountering opposition in the last several weeks. I walked away at rest - peaceful in the things He spoke to me.

It's a lot easier to rest in those things when you're not at that moment in the midst of the opposition. That's the lesson I began to learn today. Work was horrendous. By noon I was feeling equally exhausted to the way I had felt going into the weekend. I left for a few minutes to collect myself, and came back to discover an email from a very dear friend inviting me to dinner with her tonight since she was coming into the city. I think that email got me through the rest of the day - the promise of relief and enjoyment with a friend.

Time with Kari was relieving. We talked and she managed to encourage me, maybe without even trying. I went into the rest of my evening with restored peace and energy.

Funny how that goes, and how perspective can be so quickly gained and lost.

I'm working to learn to rest and live in the promises of protection that God has spoken to me both personally and through dear friends. This morning as I woke, the Lord gave me a picture of myself being clothed in a cloak, having it wrapped around my body, and then a hood pulled up over my head. The comparison that came to mind is the invisibility cloak from the Harry Potter stories. An ability to walk unseen in enemy territory. I think Kirk said something about that to me on the weekend. I went to work with that assurance, but quickly lost sight of it in the face of the opposition and tensions that have become commonplace there in the last few weeks.

So tomorrow, I'll try again. Again to rest in the promises of the armour of God, in the promise spoken to me from Genesis that He will be my shield and my reward, in the words of Psalm 91. I'll wrap the cloak of His protection around me and walk unseen in enemy territory - and this time I'll work to remember that though I can see and hear the enemy, I cannot be harmed, my peace cannot be snatched from me, the lies cannot affect me.

Continuing yesterday's Henri Nouwen Theme

Two more bits from Henri Nouwen this morning, continuing the theme from yesterday...

Protecting Our Hiddenness

If indeed the spiritual life is essentially a hidden life, how do we protect this hiddenness in the midst of a very public life? The two most important ways to protect our hiddenness are solitude and poverty. Solitude allows us to be alone with God. There we experience that we belong not to people, not even to those who love us and care for us, but to God and God alone. Poverty is where we experience our own and other people's weakness, limitations, and need for support. To be poor is to be without success, without fame, and without power. But there God chooses to show us God's love.

Both solitude and poverty protect the hiddenness of our lives.

Clinging to God in Solitude

When we enter into solitude to be with God alone, we quickly discover how dependent we are. Without the many distractions of our daily lives, we feel anxious and tense. When nobody speaks to us, calls on us, or needs our help, we start feeling like nobodies. Then we begin wondering whether we are useful, valuable, and significant. Our tendency is to leave this fearful solitude quickly and get busy again to reassure ourselves that we are "somebodies." But that is a temptation, because what makes us somebodies is not other people's responses to us but God's eternal love for us.

To claim the truth of ourselves we have to cling to our God in solitude as to the One who makes us who we are.