I am hungriest for God

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35)

I woke up this morning, crawled out of bed, and realized, with a sinking sort of feeling, that this was the day I’d set aside this week to observe a fast of some sort. I generally work to avoid the idea of fasting, and particularly fasting related to the consumption of food, but during Lent, I try to set aside one day per week where I in some way abstain from food.

This morning, I decided on what I thought would be the easy way out. I would do a fruit and vegetable fast. From the moment I woke up, until the moment I woke up the following day, the only food I would consume would be fruits and vegetables. I could give you all of the justifications for choosing this over a complete abstaining from food (I was exhausted, and would need energy for work etc.), but I’ll be really honest. I wanted to be able to say that I’d practiced the discipline of fasting this week, without really giving up food. I like fruit and vegetables – I eat them in fairly large quantities on a daily basis. It seemed like a healthy idea to eat only fruits and vegetables for a little over 24 hours. What I neglected to take into consideration in my bleary eyed morning decision making process was exactly how much starch and bread based products are also part of my daily diet. How many things I eat for the quick “energy boost” or “sugar fix.”

At about 1:00 this afternoon, as I was sitting at my desk, waiting patiently for our bookkeeper to return from her lunch hour and take over answering the phones, giving me my own lunch hour, it hit me. I didn’t want carrots, or snap peas, or a kiwi fruit or mandarin orange. I didn’t want another glass of water, or a cup of roiboos tea. I wanted bread. Badly. Or maybe a cracker. Something in the starch and grain based food category.

I couldn’t shake the thought. I “needed” bread. Now. There would be no waiting until tomorrow morning. It must be now.

I tried reasoning with my body. “you don’t really ‘need’ bread. You just want it, because you’re used to it. Because you love it, and I indulge you by feeding you the thing that you love on a regular basis. You can live without it for another 18 hours.” Nothing doing. My body would not be satiated with rational arguments.

I tried to distract it by feeding it other things. “Here’s some baby carrots and snap peas, fresh from the farmer’s market. Or maybe a kiwi, would you like a kiwi? An orange? A sip of water, or a cup of tea?” It wouldn’t be distracted.

And somewhere, in the midst of the reasoning, and the attempts at distraction, I became aware of a voice whispering in the background, “I am the bread of life…”

Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath, and a convert from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity, describes a conversation she’d once had with her rabbi, arguing that she was more likely to focus on God on a high feast day if her stomach had be satiated. She writes:

Rabbi M. did not roll back thousands of years of rabbinic instruction and tell me to eat a bowl of Chex on the morning of Yom Kippur. Instead, he said the hunger was part of the point. “When you are fasting,” he said, “and you feel hungry, you are to remember that you are really hungry for God.”

And that has become my litany, my chant. When I sit at my desk on a Friday afternoon and wonder whether one little blue corn tortilla chip with a dab of black bean spread would really hurt, I say the words out loud: I am hungriest for God, my truest hunger is for God…

Rabbi M.’s words make clear that, like the liturgy, the fast accomplished a repositioning. When I am sated, it is easy to feel independent. When I am hungry, it is possible to remember where my dependence lies.

And so, I began to pause and listen to that voice. “I am the bread of life.” A friend and I have been having an ongoing discussion this Lenten season about hungering and thirsting for God, for deeper things of God.

I chose a fruit and vegetable fast this morning out of laziness and obligation. A desire to say I’d practiced a discipline, without the sacrifices that should generally accompany the practice of a discipline. I spent my afternoon realizing a deeper hunger. A desire for bread.

The craving for bread remains. I am anticipating with great eagerness the moment tomorrow morning when I will break my fast with a hot crossed bun from an excellent local bakery. But as I passed through the afternoon, and my body continually reminded me that it would really appreciate it if I would stop ignoring it’s request for bread, I was reminded of my own, much deeper hunger for God, for the satisfaction Jesus promised when he said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

A Couple Things I Liked

This was the kind of day where a pair of shoes that normally fits perfectly suddenly decides not to fit, and you get home and end up having to bandage bloody blisters. Yes, it was that kind of day.

But, here are a couple of things I liked in the midst of an otherwise somewhat miserable day...

This cartoon, at "The Naked Pastor" made me laugh. I've felt a little "dragged" at times lately.

This poem at Brian's "Curious in Ibiza" blog made me pause. I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about the role of the church and the pastor. Never a chameleon. I liked that.

Some Random Facts About Me

I'm in an odd mood tonight, and am quite convinced of the fact that, if you are to continue reading this blog, and understand me, you must have the following vital (if random) pieces of information.

• I love popcorn (though I don't eat it nearly as often as I did when I lived with my parents.) I can easily eat a whole bag of the microwave variety by myself. Easily. This is an inherited trait from my mom's side of the family. They eat popcorn like no family I have ever seen. The popcorn bowl at my mom's house is a stainless steel number, that my dad purchased at an auto supply store (I think the actual declared purpose of this particular stainless steel bowl, according to the auto supply store, is as a drainage pan for changing your oil). It's well over a foot in diameter, and there is nothing that makes our family quite so happy as when mom fills the bowl with freshly popped corn (of the non-microwave variety) lightly buttered and salted, and hands out cereal bowls (which can then be refilled from the giant bowl) full of the product of her labors.
• I am absolutely, first and foremost a bookworm. I own probably 3000 books. When I purchased tenants insurance for my home, I had to make a special stipulation on the contents value of my belongings to include approximately 10,000 dollars worth of books.
• I own (and am very proud to own) a pin that reads "Reading is sexy." Someone once asked me if that meant that I was sexy because I read, or that a guy who reads is something I consider sexy. My answer? Yes.
• I am sentimental. Most of the things that lie around my space, and look like trash or trinkets have specific meanings. I am also terrible (generally speaking) at throwing things away. This means that my space can get slightly cluttered at times.
• I am hopelessly attached to the seasons of the church calendar, though I attend a church that generally pays only a very little bit of attention to the seasons of the calendar, marking instead the most high, holy days like Christmas and Easter.
• I get ridiculously excited at the prospects of being able to attend a good lecture. There is a possibility that I can go with my dad to attend a series of lectures on the life and theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer next week. This is a thrilling concept to me.
• I would as a general rule much rather use email, or other electronic modes of communication, than pick up a telephone. There are certain people that are exceptions to this general rule.
• I am the oldest child, the only girl, and the shortest sibling.
• My baby brother dwarf's the other two of us.
• I do not generally dye my hair, preferring my natural color to those created in a salon. I do get red low-lights and blond hi-lights put in once a year or so. And I am currently contemplating a short, two-week, wash-out stint as a red-head - something I've done once before. Just as a little change of pace.
• I do not have a tattoo, but I really want one. I'm just working on finalizing the design with some artist friends.
• I do have a pierced nose - a tiny diamond-like stud in my right nostril. It took me a year to get permission from my office to have a piercing. I work for Mennonites. They can be a little up-tight about things like tattoos and piercings. I was finally granted permission with the comment that at least it was my nose. The nose was the least offensive of the possible facial piercings.
• Lately, I have cocooned myself in my own little world. I'm still recovering from and processing my travels. I'm mostly avoiding other human beings.
• Because I have cocooned myself, my social schedule is the emptiest and most life-giving it's been in ages. I'm kind of enjoying that.
• I find myself craving far more silence than usual, and slowness.
• I am looking more often for the deep things, and will avoid the things that don't suffice.
• I vote in every election, but don't generally have a strong opinion. I voted in a provincial election tonight. Mostly I vote out of duty.
  
• I have much stronger opinions about the American election process and candidates than I do about the Canadian process and candidates.
  
• I am a dual American and Canadian citizen, but, because I reside permanently in Canada, I vote in Canadian elections rather than American ones.
• I am working on some writing pieces for the blog that will have a great deal more substance, but really couldn't move forward on them until I gave you all of this random information.

Enjoy!

Love, Powerlessness, and Covenant - Henri Nouwen

Received several great thoughts from Henri Nouwen the last few days, linked together by topic and train of thought, and decided to share them here as well.

Being Free to Love

Jesus came to us to help us overcome our fear of God. As long as we are afraid of God, we cannot love God. Love means intimacy, closeness, mutual vulnerability, and a deep sense of safety. But all of those are impossible as long as there is fear. Fear creates suspicion, distance, defensiveness, and insecurity.

The greatest block in the spiritual life is fear. Prayer, meditation, and education cannot come forth out of fear. God is perfect love, and as John the Evangelist writes, "Perfect love drives out fear" (1 John 4:18). Jesus' central message is that God loves us with an unconditional love and desires our love, free from all fear, in return.

God's powerlessness

Jesus is God-with-us, Emmanuel. The great mystery of God becoming human is God's desire to be loved by us. By becoming a vulnerable child, completely dependent on human care, God wants to take away all distance between the human and the divine.

Who can be afraid of a little child that needs to be fed, to be cared for, to be taught, to be guided? We usually talk about God as the all-powerful, almighty God on whom we depend completely. But God wanted to become the all-powerless, all-vulnerable God who completely depends on us. How can we be afraid of a God who wants to be "God-with-us" and needs us to become "Us-with-God"?

God Covenant

God made a covenant with us. The word covenant means "coming together." God wants to come together with us. In many of the stories in the Hebrew Bible, we see that God appears as a God who defends us against our enemies, protects us against dangers, and guides us to freedom. God is God-for-us. When Jesus comes a new dimension of the covenant is revealed. In Jesus, God is born, grows to maturity, lives, suffers, and dies as we do. God is God-with-us. Finally, when Jesus leaves he promises the Holy Spirit. In the Holy Spirit, God reveals the full depth of the covenant. God wants to be as close to us as our breath. God wants to breathe in us, so that all we say, think and do is completely inspired by God. God is God-within-us. Thus God's covenant reveals to us to how much God loves us.

God's faithfulness and ours

When God makes a covenant with us, God says: "I will love you with an everlasting love. I will be faithful to you, even when you run away from me, reject me, or betray me." In our society we don't speak much about covenants; we speak about contracts. When we make a contract with a person, we say: "I will fulfill my part as long as you fulfill yours. When you don't live up to your promises, I no longer have to live up to mine." Contracts are often broken because the partners are unwilling or unable to be faithful to their terms.

But God didn't make a contract with us; God made a covenant with us, and God wants our relationships with one another to reflect that covenant. That's why marriage, friendship, life in community are all ways to give visibility to God's faithfulness in our lives together.

Full Heart

Today did not start off all that well.

I woke up with the compulsion to clean. To order my world. This is not generally a good sign, because, while I am not by any means a messy person, I am not the world's tidiest person either. A compulsion to clean and bring order generally means that there is something in my world which is chaotic, and which I cannot control, and, since I cannot control whatever that thing is, I control the chaos that is within my reach, and I clean.

(The compulsion to bring order to chaos has been coming to me quite a lot since returning home from my travels - you'd almost think that there are things on my mind that are making me a bit frazzled or something!)

I accomplished quite a lot of cleaning and organizing before church this morning.

Church was well, church. I taught Sunday school. We talked about John chapter 10, where Jesus refers to himself as the Good Shepherd and says that his sheep know his voice. Good stuff, generally speaking. As per usual, I pushed the girls I teach to give answers to my questions that went beyond the surface. (I'm not a big fan of the "sunday school answer.") As per usual, they whined that I made them think too hard, and then gave great answers.

A quick grocery shopping trip with my roommate followed immediately on the heels of church, and then, as I was unloading my groceries, a friend showed up to pick me up for a previously scheduled date.

We went together to the farmer's market, picked up lunch, she bought her groceries for the week (I bought mine there yesterday). We followed that up with a quick stop at starbucks, and a local bakery, and then headed for the park to walk and talk. I am continually amazed at the way our hearts are being drawn along parallel paths - the situations we occupy in life widely varied, but the direction of our hearts the same. It's always fun to walk and talk and share Jesus stories with her, to catch up on our weeks, and share prayer requests for the week ahead. I am finding myself in awe of this growing relationship that the Lord has given us. This tiny taste of community within my own city.

After she dropped me back at home, I returned to my previously scheduled cleaning and organizing compulsion (and am actually quite satisfied with the results.)

I ended up chatting for a while with a dear friend from out of town. We talked for a long time about the scripture passage that tells of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. She had some beautiful insights into the story, and as we talked I found myself wondering why, since we talk so regularly, we don't discuss scripture more often. We talk all the time of prayer, and of spiritual things, but don't often talk of scripture (though we both love the scriptures). The things we talked about challenged me deeply, have my heart racing and hungry to spend time studying that story over the course of this next week. (A bonus for me, as I'm teaching that story in Sunday school next week!)

As that conversation drew to a close, my best friend, M. showed up at my door. We don't get to spend nearly as much time together as we'd like, and right now we're savoring any time we get. In just over a month she will leave to spend the next year and a half overseas, working as a nurse in a tiny hospital for women and children in Pakistan.

We decided on pizza (we rarely get together without sharing a meal) and picked it up on our way to her apartment. For the next two hours we had a long, rambling, beautiful conversation. Catching up on the things going on in each of our lives. Sharing about the things the Lord has been working in us. Talking about deeper things than we often do. We talked, too, about Lazarus. About fear. About peace. About joy. About relationships - those with boys and those that aren't with boys.

When I write it out like this, my day sounds really mundane. Full of people and places to be, but nothing out of the ordinary. But I write with a full heart. I encountered Jesus today, and not in the really expected places. Not so much at church or during worship. I met him walking in a park and developing a growing friendship. I met him talking about his word with a friend. I met him eating pizza with my best friend, laughing at her nursing stories (did you know that Santa is not so much for clothes in the off season? also, he doesn't sleep in beds - he prefers the floor.), and praying for each other for a while, sitting in her car in the dark, in front of my house. M. is maybe one of the only people in the world with whom I am comfortable praying aloud - we started doing it together a few years back, because both of us were increasingly finding ourselves in situations that required praying aloud, and we both hated it! So, we began to practice each time we were together. We'd sit in her car and pray for each other, and for the people and things around us. We don't do it as often anymore, but it's still something I treasure, and something I'll miss while she's away.

My heart is full. Today I was gifted with heart connections that I didn't even know I was longing for. And it was so good. Thanks, Jesus.