While digging through Susan Isaacs’ archives, I found this gem about writing as a sacrament. It got me thinking about sacraments, about sacred and healing things that happen in life. If, as The Book of Common Prayer says, sacraments are “an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible Grace,” it almost seems as if the word is too big to be limited to things like communion and confession and baptism. Those are otherworldly holy things that are deeply, beautifully grounded in earthly vessels: bread, wine, water. But outward and invisible signs of inward and invisible Grace? Those are the very earthly things I cling to on a daily basis: the mystery of bread that rises, the beauty of a snaggletooth grin, the feeling of sand between your toes.

I am not a writer by profession, but I identify with what Susan Isaacs says in that post. There are times when I feel that something bigger than what I know is being said through my own words. As if I am the vessel of something larger than myself, which is what I believe it means to be a Christian: to carry the message of Christ in and through my body. I also think that there are times that putting pen to paper is like confession. Whether anyone sees it or not, it helps me to work out what I am thinking, to loose the knots in my chest that form during a frustrating day. For me, that is an outward sign of the grace that is present in my life. You might be an artist or a surgeon or a tennis player, but, like Susan Isaacs said, I think that those gifts that keep you honest with yourself about what is really going on inside you are a sacrament. It is one way to work through and clarify what you believe, growing the faith to go on.

Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard says, “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.” To live in that way, to have that faith, is to let yourself believe that the beauty of daily life matters and that the things that are so confusing will one day be made clear. For me, believing that what happens here matters is one of the most difficult–and therefore sacred–beliefs of all.

“Barter” by Sara Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And childrens’s faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstacy
Give all you have been, or could be.

This is the week that we have our state-mandated testing at school, so I expect that I will not have a lot of energy when I get home. I might be rather thin around these parts until all of that is over. This poem is a peace offering of sorts. An apology for not having interesting thoughts this week. It was one of the ones I handed out on Poem in Your Pocket Day, and it is the sort of thing that is helpful to remember when the only thing you expect to see all day are the emphatically non-lovely gray walls of the library workroom. Working hard to make sure that a child has every opportunity to show what he knows and how much he has learned is a beautiful and noble thing. I will try to remember that when I am looking at those workroom walls.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes.

If you share my affection for Madeleine L’Engle, it is possible that you have read The Arm of the Starfish, in which this stanza of “Two Tramps in Mud Time” was quoted (as you can see above). I didn’t have any idea what an avocation was when I read it. I think I had to ask my mom.

Several years later, at the end of my college career, I had to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I thought about what I am interested in and what I care about, my values, the things that are important to me. And I realized that I would not be happy taking my marketing degree and simply working for a company to promote and sell their products. I guess there’s a little bit of Lloyd Dobler in me, although I didn’t know who he was in 2001. With the idea of uniting my avocation and my vocation, I took the leap into library science. My master’s degree and my career are some of the things in my life that I am the most proud of. My job is certainly not play for mortal stakes, but I do like to think that some of what we do in the library is soul-shaping, and that the connections students make with books and ideas have something to do with heaven and the future. I would like to thank Robert Frost and Madeleine L’Engle for teaching me how important it is to do something that you would truly care about whether or not it was your profession. I am glad this is mine.

Are you carrying a poem today? Have you posted about it? Share it (or your post) in the comments and help celebrate Virtual Poem in Your Pocket Day here!

Washington, DC is a weird combination of idealism and cynicism all at once. Or maybe I am the only one who feels that way. Our country was founded with beautiful words on beautiful things, but politics these days is such an ugly mess. Visiting DC, though, brought out my most patriotic and idealistic side, the part that cries at the words on the Lincoln Memorial, at the stars representing the dead on the World War II memorial, at the veterans we saw rubbing names on the Vietnam Memorial.

Mike did not get to take his kids to DC this year like they usually do. They ended up making another trip to a closer location, and he came back from that and mentioned that the students might have gotten more out of the trip they ended up taking rather than the DC trip. I get that, because I went when I was in 5th grade (20 years ago, yikes), and when we went and saw the Constitution, I was like, “Oh.” However, looking back, I think of that like this: “I got to see the CONSTITUTION. Of the UNITED STATES. That is SO COOL.” (For those of you who were wondering if I was always this nerdy, apparently the answer is no. Wait until you see how nerdy I can get in 20 more years.) Even though I just barely remember the Lincoln Memorial from 20 years ago, I still think it would be good for him to take his students if possible, just to give them the chance to experience it. So when they go as 30-year-olds, they can be amazed at how much smaller the names look on the Vietnam Memorial, how much more of Lincoln they are able to take in. So they have a foundation from which to appreciate it even more.

I am not good at wringing meaning out of every moment. I am not sure that’s even possible; sometimes life is just about the living rather than some big thing we are supposed to be getting from it. But I would like to believe that it is possible that one day I will look back on the things I am struggling with now as a foundation that helps me appreciate my life. I might not be getting everything I can out of what I experience. But when I look back, I hope the pain, like those names, is much smaller than I remembered.

This, for me, was the pertinent quote:

When I’m with somebody who talks zealously about faith, about Jesus, about the Bible, after a while, I find myself wondering whether or not their faith is strong at all. For instance, if I were with somebody who kept talking about how much they loved their wife, going on loudly and profusely, intuitively I would wonder whether or not they were struggling in their marriage. I would wonder whether they were trying to convince me they loved their wife, or if they were just trying to convince themselves. Faith in Christ, for me, is similar. It’s intimate and private. I’m not comfortable giving loud prayers. I’m more comfortable giving quiet prayers, intimate prayers. Often alone, in fact. Of course there is a time for proclamations, but that’s the key, isn’t it? There’s a time. I love that the New Testament is mostly intimate letters written to small groups of people who met in homes. I like the quiet authenticity of our faith.

I have never thought about the New Testament like that before, but I like it, too. Of course there are times and places for being bold and taking a stand. But more often than not, faith is about what you do and how you act in the quiet.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too. -Frederick Buechner

I used the first part of this quote back at the end of November, but I decided I wanted to go ahead and post the entire thing (luckily I reserved the right to revisit it). I have been thinking some more about the idea of writing a story with your life, and I am challenged by the idea of reaching out and taking the gift of grace. Maybe that’s not too surprising, since I tend to hold back. To keep from being rejected. To keep from being embarrassed. Because it hurts. Because I have all these holes in my life and there seems to be no way to fill them. Because I am afraid.

But part of the story I want to write with my life is about taking the offered gift: the hand of friendship, the time, the kind word, the beautiful day, the way words turn into sentences and sentences into stories. Of those, the only ones that I ever accept without reservation are the stories that I can take in without having to share myself with anyone else. We just celebrated Christmas, and I have been overwhelmed with what Jesus gave up to come and be with us, what he shared with us, and what he offers us. I don’t always know what to do with strong emotion, and what emotion could be stronger than the love of God that compels him to come to earth as a baby?

The confidence that enables people to accept gifts graciously always seems like a gift in itself, and one that I admire and envy. But looking at the quote makes me wonder . . . if those are the things that the grace of God is offering to me, what business do I have to be afraid?

—

Don’t forget, today is the last day to enter to win a mix CD!

When I was in high school, we did a section on Thoreau and Emerson. I found nothing to like about them, and in my reflection, slammed them quite a bit, calling them self-centered and self-important. I still have very little use for them, but I have come to appreciate what they were doing a little bit more than I did then. I have also come to realize that it was maybe not the place of a junior in high school to determine whether Thoreau and Emerson were as great as they thought they were. Or whether they were great at all. Students like me are the reason I am glad I don’t teach high school English. I doubt my work was revealing any heavenly lights.

I ran across this quote over my winter break, which seemed convenient since the new year is always a good time to think about where changes need to be made. The past few weeks, as 2009 was winding down, one thing that I began to realize is that, in the busyness of life, I have let too many things slide, especially when it comes to relationships. It is difficult for me to balance working full-time with much of anything else, and I have had quite a lot else going on. When I come home from work, I really just want to put on my pajamas and relax. I do not want to leave my house. I do not want to pick up the phone. I do not even really want to get on email. The Bible is very clear on the idea that we need people. I am less clear on how to make that happen when life is wearing me out. I am lucky that I have such good, patient friends and family, because they have put up with a lot.

I don’t really do resolutions, but I enjoyed this post by Don Miller in which he talked about living a good story. I haven’t read his latest book, but I love the idea of giving your goals a narrative context so that you know the kind of story you want your life to tell. I want my life to tell a story of rich relationships, of people I trust and can turn to. This year, with the extra time on my hands, I want to invest in the people around me. I want them to be more a part of the story of my life.

In order for that to happen, it’s not enough to write a blog post about feelings and motivation. It takes time and effort and some of that aforementioned humility to go with hat in hand and apologize for being unavailable, for being unable to prioritize. I have more respect for Mr. Thoreau than I used to. I hope he’s right about those heavenly lights.

Don’t forget to enter to win a mix CD if you haven’t already done so! If you need more examples of my mix CDs to entice you, here’s one I made for Alisa and here’s one I made for a CD swap. Oh, and here’s the left-handed mix I made last year.

“The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.” — Frederick Buechner (A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces)

Happy New Year!

Our Advent series at church this year is about Mary, the first disciple. When you talk about something every year, it is always a challenge to hear it in a new way. This morning I was struck by one of the comparisons that our pastor made: by bearing God into the world in the form of Jesus, Mary made it possible for all of us to bear God into the world ourselves. Mike and I talked about it later, this idea that we can carry God into the work that we do, his light into the world, his presence and comfort into difficult situations. We are all given the opportunity to be disciples like Mary, to choose to be the handmaiden (or handmaster?) of the Lord and receive the gifts that we have been given. Make no mistake, they may be challenging gifts indeed, if Mary is any indication. The Christmas Mystery points this out, too: “There’s no point in believing what’s right unless it leads to helping people in distress.”

If we focus too much on all the (wonderful) trappings of the holiday, we will miss part of this heavenly glory: God, incarnate, who dwelt among us so that now his Spirit can live within us. And all the beautiful, difficult, messy, glorious things that means.

As we move into Advent we are called to listen, something we seldom take time to do in this frenetic world of over-activity. But waiting for birth, waiting for death–these are lightning times when the normal distractions of life have lost their power to take us away from God’s call to center in Christ.

During Advent we are traditionally called to contemplate death, judgment, hell, and heaven. To give birth to a baby is also a kind of death–death to the incredible intimacy of carrying a child, death to old ways of life and birth into new–and it is as strange for the parents as for the baby. Judgment: John of the Cross says that in the evening of life we shall be judged on love; not on our accomplishments, not on our successes and failure sin the worldly sense, but solely on love.

Once again, as happened during the past nearly two thousand years, predictions are being made of the time of this Second Coming, which, Jesus emphasized, “even the angels in heaven do not know.” But we human creatures, who are “a little lower than the angels,” too frequently try to set ourselves above them with our predictions and our arrogant assumption of knowledge which God hid even from the angels. Advent is not a time to declare, but to listen, to listen to whatever God may want to tell us through the singing of the stars, the quickening of a baby, the gallantry of a dying man.

Listen. Quietly. Humbly. Without arrogance.

In the first verse of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” we sing, “Word of God, our flesh that fashioned with the fire of life impassioned,” and the marvelous mystery of incarnation shines. “Because in the mystery of the Word made flesh,” goes one of my favorite propers, for it is indeed the mystery by which we live, give birth, watch death.

When the Second Person of the Trinity entered the virgin’s womb and prepared to be born as a human baby (a particular baby, Jesus of Nazareth), his death was inevitable.

It is only after we have been enabled to say, “Be it unto me according to your Word,” that we can accept the paradoxes of Christianity. Christ comes to live with us, bringing an incredible promise of God’s love, but never are we promised that there will be no pain, no suffering, no death, but rather that these very griefs are the road to love and eternal life.

In Advent we prepare for the coming of all Love, that love which will redeem all the brokenness, wrongness, hardnesses of heart which have afflicted us -Madeleine L’Engle

I posted this passage a couple of years ago during December, when I posted a thought or poem by Madeleine L’Engle or Luci Shaw for Advent each day of December. You can see them here. As this is the first Sunday of Advent, I thought I would repost one of the passages, and this is the one that stood out to me. I have been thinking about good things and bad things and suffering lately. If there is some kind of scale for how well people can handle adversity, I would be on the low end of that scale. I think that somewhere along the line I developed a twisted, fearful idea of what it means to face adversity. I have been emailing my pastor about this, because it’s something I want to start dealing with so that I have life’s struggles in a more appropriate perspective. In his last email to me, he said:

I believe it is God’s speciality to bring good from evil. God works with us to bring good out of all the stupid and evil things we do, and God is so good at this alchemy that people think God planned it. I don’t believe that.

I love that word, alchemy. That’s what Madeleine L’Engle is talking about, too, this surprising redemption that we celebrate during Advent. And so I am going to take her advice and try to listen this year. Our Advent theme at church this year is about Mary, the first disciple, and I am looking forward to hearing her “old familiar story” again, letting it wash over me anew.