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Monthly Archives: September 2013

Weak back, strong God

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I’m lying on my back writing this. Sitting up is very tiring because it is painful. But I still want to write. I have my Kindle to write with. I can prop it up on my chest. At this angle I can type with two fingers. It works, albeit a little more slowly. It is like texting, but longer, and hopefully more meaningful.

When I was at the chiropractor’s office yesterday, I asked what caused my slipped disc. The doctor sat down and drew me a diagram. He was very patient and kind and made sure I understood everything. He is also Christian. It is obvious from not only the signs around the office but also in his demeanor.

When he was drawing the diagram he said that God made the front part of our body strong, while the back part is weak. I asked him why God made it that way. He smiled and said he could ask God when he gets to meet Him, but he suspects he’ll have other questions to ask then. He was talking about when he died.

I said we can ask God now. We don’t have to wait until we die. God is always with us, always available to us.

God is present to everybody, regardless of education or training. You don’t have to be ordained to talk with God. Every person has a direct line. It may take a while to get a clear connection, but it is always there. You strengthen the connection by daily Bible reading and prayer. It is just like exercise. It takes effort and work and diligence. You get better at it the more you do it.

I think this is one of the biggest differences with the Christian faith. God came down here, to be among us, to live and die as one of us. It isn’t so much about us having a personal relationship with Jesus, as it is about God through the incarnation of Jesus having a personal relationship with us.

God loves us all the time, everywhere, and however we are.
God wants to connect with each one of us right now.

So I prayed. I asked God why our back muscles are designed to be weaker than our front muscles. The answer I got back is that it is for the same reason we don’t have eyes on the back of our heads. It is to make us have to depend on each other.

“No man is an island.” We aren’t built to be independent. We must learn how to rely on each other. We are stronger when we work together. We are better off when we share life together. We are better off when we ask for help instead of trying to do everything on our own.

Think of emperor penguins. They huddle together to stay warm and alive in the cold arctic winds. When the couples have an egg, one has to stay with the group, crouching on the egg to keep it warm while the other goes to get food. Then they switch. They can’t do it alone.

We are taught by society to be independent, but God constantly teaches that we are stronger if we are interdependent. God constantly teaches us that we must rely on each other. We have to reach out. We have to ask for help. We can’t do it alone.

Thankfully we aren’t alone.

Thankfully there are always people who are willing and able to help. They might not be who we expect, or who we want, but that is also part of the learning process.

Thankfully we also have a loving God, who constantly teaches us, who eternally loves us, and is always available to us.

Praying in the storm.

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I’m trying to be calm. I’m trying to be accepting. I’m trying to not fight what is happening.

I know that all things work for good, for those that believe in God. This doesn’t mean that it is awesome all the time. Sometimes it is pretty awful. Jesus didn’t have it that great – beaten, flogged, crucified, abandoned by his friends- not a day in the park, there. But it had to happen. It had to happen that way.

I know that the more we fight what is, the harder things get. I know that the more we have to define things as “good” or “bad”, the harder it gets. I’ve learned that anger and grief are both just symptoms of not accepting the situation as it is.

It is easy to think such calm thoughts when you aren’t in the middle of the storm.

I’ve had a pretty stormy time the past week. I just had to spend $1700 on my car on unscheduled repairs. Yes, I’m grateful to have a car that works. I’m grateful that I have that amount in savings. I’m grateful that they were able to take 20% off, saving me $350. I’m grateful that they were able to provide me with a loaner car while it was being fixed. But I was trying to save up some money. I don’t like running things close to the edge financially. My parents did that. They were great teachers for what not to do.

Then I got stung by a yellow jacket. They’ve built a nest near my front steps, and spraying them has seemingly created even more of them. There is no easy way around them, so they have to be dealt with. I’ve called the professionals. This will cost $200.

Then my back went out. I exercise daily, so I thought I was basically guarding against such problems. Maybe I was just delaying the inevitable. Turns out I have a slipped disc. Turns out this is even more money for the doctor and for the x-ray. The money I saved on the discount for the car is going to be quickly used up.

I’m trying to be like Jonah. I’m trying to praise God in the belly of the whale. It is really hard. But I want to, and that has to count for something.

I think when Jesus was here, he came to understand how hard it is to be human. He came to understand that we are distracted a lot by pain and loss. It is hard to be grateful when you are miserable. But I think that is the secret. I think that we have to look around and see what we do have, instead of what we don’t have.

It is really hard.

Sometimes it is easier to be thankful for what isn’t – I’m not incapacitated. I’m not out even more money.

But this isn’t really a healthy path.

So I try again. I’ve got a husband who loves me and looks out for me. I’ve got a house that is cozy and comforting. I’ve found a new doctor who is kind and was able to help. I’ve got a doctor’s note so I can take the weekend off to heal some more.

And pain, strangely enough, is a reminder to pray, and that is always good.

“Do no harm.” On televisions and junk food in doctor’s offices.

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Must there be a television in every doctor’s office? Must it be on Jerry Springer or Fox News? Must it be so loud?

Most people who come into a doctor’s office are sick, right? They already don’t feel well. So high energy, high hostility television only makes things worse. The commercials are not only not a respite, they are even louder, even more insistent, even more unsettling than the show itself.

I feel tense when I watch TV. It is like drinking a Doctor Pepper and eating two chocolate bars in ten minutes. I feel all hyped up, unsettled, anxious. It took me a long time to realize that this isn’t a normal way to feel, and that television was a big cause of my unease. It took me a long time to wean myself from the addiction that is TV. I’ve not watched broadcast television for five years. I use the television, sure, to watch movies on DVD. But I don’t watch anything live. And I certainly don’t watch anything where people are yelling at each other.

So going into a place that is supposed to make me feel better and being confronted by something that makes me feel worse feels like an assault.

I understand how people like TV. It is numbing. It is distracting. It takes their minds off their pain. Plus, many people are afraid of silence. They don’t know how to be with themselves. They don’t know how to entertain themselves. So the TV in the doctor’s office makes sense, in a strange sort of way. But while it is soothing to them, it is really disturbing to me, and there really is no middle ground.

I think I’m going to call around for a new doctor and ask if their waiting room has a TV. If not, I’ve found my new doctor.

I wrote this while waiting to get an X-ray for a slipped disc. I wasn’t in the chiropractor’s office, but a separate one. It wasn’t far. Because they do radiology all the time, their prices were cheaper, so he sent me there. I noticed that they had complimentary snacks for while you were waiting. Soda. Chips. Nothing healthy. Even their water was fake. Why not have fruit and nuts? Why not have spring water and fruit juices? Why would you offer people things that are harmful to them?

Perhaps it is because that is what people want.

Doctors need to give you what you need, not what you want. We want quick relief but we don’t want to know how to take care of ourselves. We want to keep on eating badly and smoking and not exercising. And we want to be well. We can’t have it all.

Doctors don’t work around this. Either they don’t know to, they don’t know how to, or they don’t care. Maybe they are frustrated, only treating the symptom and not the cause. Maybe they are stuck thinking the usual way is the only way.

I’m saying that a doctor that gives you bad things isn’t really a doctor. A doctor who treats only the symptom and not the cause isn’t really following the pledge of “Do no harm.”

“Clean your plate!”

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I’m having to retrain myself how to eat. I was taught to “clean my plate” so I often would end up overeating and being miserable. I would also eat fast to make sure I’d eat everything on my lunch break. I’d get the signal that my stomach was full way past the point that I should have stopped.

My trick has been to take whatever it is and cut it in half. I’ll half a frozen dinner after I cooked it and put it in the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch. Then I’ll eat slowly, chewing each bite well. I aim for 20 chews for each mouthful. I’ve heard with macrobiotics you should aim for 100, but that seems excessive. 20 chews is still far better than the grab and gulp mentality of the way I and many other people usually eat.

I try to get less at buffets. Just because it is all you can eat doesn’t mean it is all you should eat. Sure, you’ve paid for as much as you can eat. But there is a hidden cost. If you eat 4 plates of food, you are going to gain a lot of weight.

For some people who are trying to be mindful about their weight, buffets are impossible. They are too much temptation. I like going because there is a lot of variety and a lot of vegetables.

I try to eat slowly at buffets, but it is harder because I haven’t halved my food. When I notice that I’m looking at my plate and thinking that there is still a lot of food left that I have to finish, I take note that I’ve gotten too much and try to get less next time. I’ve also noticed that when I push back from my plate, I’m full. I find I do this unconsciously. I’m trying to notice this sign from my body as a clue it is time to quit.

I’ve heard it takes 20 minutes after you are full for your brain to realize that. In twenty minutes you can shovel a lot more in. Then you’ll feel terrible. But by cutting the food in half the and eating slowly you have a good chance of getting the signal in time. Also, it doesn’t matter if you “feel full” yet or not. You know you have just eaten a whole meal, so quit.

This all takes a lot of unlearning to do, because we have been taught badly.

Finished. Are we there yet?

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People want wine but they don’t want to harvest the grapes.

People want to be a best-selling author but they don’t want to take the time to write.

People want to be a famous artist but they don’t even want to doodle.

People want to be healthy and slim but they don’t want to go to the gym.

Everything worth having requires work.

Everything worth doing is worth doing well.

Nothing is easy at the beginning. Nothing is beautiful at the start.

Even Mozart wrote some bad songs.
Even Shakespeare wrote some lame plays.

They won’t all be winners.

But keep going. Keep trying.

Every day, work.
Every day, walk
toward your goal.

Have patience in the process.
For it is from humble beginnings
and great effort
That “overnight success” awakens.

Isaac – on the relay race of faith.

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Imagine what it must have been like to be Isaac. His father, Abraham, takes a whole different turn from everybody else. He starts hearing the voice of God. He starts following this one God instead of the myriad other gods that people followed those days.

This was a radical departure. This was way out there. This alone would mark your family as weird. This alone could cause Isaac to not carry on his father’s plan.

Then his father tries to kill him. His father continues to hear this strange voice, this unusual voice, and it says to sacrifice his son. This is his son who has been promised to him in his old age. This son who is promised will be the source of all his descendants. He’s told to go kill him, and he obeys. It is only in the last moments that there is a reprieve and Isaac is spared.

Isaac had to be terrified. Here’s his father acting stranger than normal, binding him up and laying him on an altar, holding a knife over him.

If I were Isaac, I think I’d run away from home at the nearest opportunity.

Yet Isaac is responsible for the continuation of the faith. This whole story could have ended with Abraham. Isaac could have shrugged it off as a bad story of a bad childhood and forgotten it all.

But he didn’t.

Abraham is amazing, for being brave enough to go against the norm and following the one God. He trusted God even when God asked him to do some crazy things.

But Isaac kept the message going. Isaac kept the faith and the word that there is one God. And then every generation since then has kept the faith and the message.

It is like a relay race. At any point the baton could have been dropped, and the race would be over. At any point the word of the one true God could have been lost and forgotten.

Every new thing needs people brave enough to take that first step outside of the lines that society has drawn. But it also needs loyal followers to keep it going. Let us remember and praise Isaac, and all of the others who carried this message to us.

One – Moebius strip

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If, as Carl Sagan says “The cosmos is also within us, we’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” (Cosmos)

And as we read in Luke 17:20-21 “ One day the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the Kingdom of God begin?” Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God isn’t ushered in with visible signs. 21 You won’t be able to say, ‘It has begun here in this place or there in that part of the country.’ For the Kingdom of God is within you.”

And Jesus also says “I and the Father are one.” in John 10:30,

…does that mean when we are praying, we are talking to ourselves?

Kindergarten 9-18-13 Yellow jacket sting and rules.

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I missed kindergarten last week. My car wouldn’t start. Nearly two thousand dollars later I’m back, ready to try again. Then just before getting ready to go I got stung while doing yard work.

There are small yellow and black stinging bugs on the way into my house. I think they are yellow jackets. They are right next to the steps to the front door. There is no easy way around them since they are directly on my path into my house.

The ivy has grown up nearby and I need to trim it. They think otherwise. They think I’m threatening them. I got stung twice before, about a month ago. I’ve found I’m not allergic to their stings fortunately, but they sure don’t feel nice.

I went inside and doctored up my sting. I’d gotten stung on my earlobe. It could have been worse. I should have worn a headscarf like I’d thought I was going to, but I didn’t. I shouldn’t have waved around at the bug when it got near my ear, but I did.

When it was time to leave about thirty minutes later, I walked carefully by them. I was terrified. If these things read fear I was an encyclopedia. But I kept walking. I prayed, afraid, but I kept walking. I think there is something to this. It isn’t about not being afraid. It isn’t possible to not feel fear all the time. But I didn’t let it stop me. I kept praying, and I kept walking.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you are feeling. It matters that you just keep going.

So I got to school and I had V. again. I could tell she just wasn’t into learning today. Maybe she just isn’t ready for school yet. Her Mom thinks this too. It took a bit to figure out if she was playing or just wrong. She would count two cars as 6 by going over them again and again. This happened a lot. I’m only able to be there for an hour so I told her we were done and went to the next person on my list. Quality over quantity, after all.

It was J., a boy I worked with briefly the first week I was there. He was very eager to show me how much he knows, and bragged about it. I was ready to be dazzled after the first student. He was fabulous with his numbers. He put everything in order and did it quickly. He’s still counting on his fingers but then again so do I sometimes.

Then he wanted to show me that he could write his name. It is a long name and he did well until the end. He wasn’t sure what the last letter was, and wanted me go to his desk where his name was written for a prompt for him. It took me a little bit to understand what he wanted. I’ve since confirmed that he is in speech therapy. I realized he wanted to see his name written so I wrote it for him on the white board. He was very surprised that I knew how to write his name.

Then we started to work on matching capital letters to little letters. This did not go as well as the counting did. The biggest problem was that he likes every letter in the alphabet that is in his name, but not any of the other ones. Now, all told that is a fairly large percentage of the alphabet, but still it’s not going to cut it. You have to know them all.

I went to find the wooden alphabet board and we worked using that. There are a lot of different tools to use, and I’ll try them all. It was interesting to watch him work. He had very specific ways of doing things and ways he expected things to be. It turns out that he is having problems making friends because of his need for rules.

Sometimes rules get in our way. Sometimes we use rules to make things make sense. Sometimes our home lives don’t make sense so we cling to rules. Then the rules start to strangle us.

People don’t always follow rules. We all do things a little bit differently. Some things need to be the same, otherwise we will have chaos. We can’t arbitrarily decide what letters look like for instance. But some things have wiggle room.

So it was slow going. I’ve asked to work with him again. He reminds me of my husband. I want to save him. I want to rescue him from the pain of these rules. I can see a certain sadness in his eyes. I can tell there are a lot of rules at home, and they don’t always make sense.

But then am I helping, really?

That pain of being stung this morning gave me a valuable lesson. I’d learned about walking through my fear. I’d learned that it was ok to be afraid. Perhaps this pain is something he needs to walk through too. I can be there to cheer him on, and guide, but I can’t rescue him.

Sometimes pain is our greatest teacher.

Praying at a football game. On inclusion and good witness.

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If Mary, the mother of Jesus, came to take Communion at a Catholic church, she would be refused. She wasn’t even baptized as a Christian. She was Jewish.

If she showed up as a potential church member, an unwed mother, she would be shunned in most churches. Tongues would wag.

How many times have we as a church turned away someone because they didn’t measure up to our standards? How many times have we not acted in a Christ-like manner because we think someone isn’t acting “Christian” enough?

It isn’t for them to act Christian. It is for us to. And Christ was radical about inclusion.

I recently mentioned about Mary not being able to take Communion in a Catholic church and a Catholic friend stopped and thought about it and realized I was right. She’d never had to think about this before, had never even thought about the exclusionary rules. Of course not. She was in. The rules don’t affect her. She hadn’t had to think about it.

This reminds me of when I attended a public high school and the majority of my friends weren’t Christian. They were either Jewish or Hindu. I felt so awkward for them when we had prayers before football games. The principal of the school would come on the intercom while we were in the bleachers and pray to God and Jesus before a football game.

I noticed that he never did this before tests or anything else that really mattered.

I’ve never understood public prayers before football games. Sure, it is good to be mindful and hope that they play safely and with respect. But not everybody there is Christian. It is strange for the principal of a public school to pray to God in a situation where everybody has to be there. We didn’t have a choice. It was mandatory attendance at these gatherings. It isn’t like it was just for the Christians, or those who chose to be there. I felt bad for my friends. They couldn’t leave. I wanted to leave as well, and I was Christian. This guy, this authority figure, didn’t represent me. It just didn’t feel right. It felt like some line had been crossed.

What would parents have said if the principal had been Wiccan and said a prayer before the game? This is important to consider. If you feel there is a difference if it is one faith or another, then think about that for a moment. Why is it different?

Remember, this was a public school, not a faith-based one.

I can hear one of my coworkers now saying “If they don’t like it, they can go back to where they came from. It is our country.” She says this about us having a Christmas tree set up in our public library. I’m opposed to that too. If we have one image from a faith, we need to have all of them, or none.

She says “our” country quite possessively. She gets very defensive about this.

The problem is, it isn’t “our” country if “our” only means one group. “Our” means all of us. Remember how the Puritans came over the sea to America to have the freedom to practice their religion as they wished? Remember the first sentence in the first Amendment to the Constitution – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

This also means we have freedom from religion. We don’t have to practice anything.

For Christians to force their viewpoint and their faith on others or to force them to listen or participate in public prayer isn’t Christ-like. Jesus never did this. It is insensitive.

I don’t care if they think they have “it” right. When Christians do this, they are doing it wrong.

Sure, you can pray in a public school. Nobody is taking away that right. Anybody can pray. You just can’t pray in a way that forces other people to participate. You can pray privately. You can pray with a prayer group. You can pray with your friends. You just can’t pray over an intercom to the whole school, or pray in a classroom to the whole class.

Not everybody is on the same page. Not everybody shares the same belief system. And that is OK. In fact, it’s not only OK, it is wonderful. It is part of what America is supposed to be about.

Forcing your belief system on someone else isn’t going to turn them into converts. In fact, it is going to turn them off. It does the exact opposite of what you want. It says that Christians are more interested in sharing a message than in having a relationship. It says that Christians are more interested in talking than listening.

The best way to get people interested in the message of Jesus is to live like Jesus. Be kind. Be loving. Welcome the stranger. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick. Work for justice and peace.

Let your life be your testimony.