On to a New Space

It's Thursday again.

Thursday means I'm on to another spiritual discipline.

I learned a lot about prayer last week. Mostly I learned how easily I am drawn AWAY from prayer. I experienced something new, fresh and clean in my exploration of true prayer. I swam through new waves and perched on new cliffs.

And what I walked away with is a deep realization that nothing, not even prayer, depends on me one bit. We walk this very fine line of what is OUR work to do and what is GOD'S work to do. We read scriptures that tell us to work out our salvation. We have lists, and entire books of the bible, telling us how to live right. We spend most of our lives trying to sort out the tangled caverns of our souls. We weigh love against truth and salvation against human nature. And what are we left with?

Striving. Pushing. Breathless, hopeless worthlessness.

Because it isn't up to us. It doesn't depend on us.

Because the bible ALSO says that it doesn't depend on our desire or effort.

Because Jesus himself said that everything hinges on love.

And love is a free gift. Not bought. Not earned. Not conjured up.

Free. Complete. Whole.

So, in my weak attempts to truly pray - to glue myself to the Spirit (thanks Cali!) - I've found that I am a total failure.

And if it were about failure or success then I would leave this week feeling hopeless and discouraged. But it has never been about MY work.

Whether or not I get myself up to pray every day will never affect the matter of my salvation.

I have been saved. I have been rescued. I have been set free.

Nothing can ever alter that concrete truth. Nothing can stand in it's way.

Because my salvation came from love.

And everything hinges on love.

Prayer will simply change the way I view my Rescuer.

Prayer determines the softness and stillness of my heart.

Prayer allows me to live out my salvation with joy and laughter.

And true prayer keeps me clear enough, aware enough, to cease my blubbering tendencies to DO rather than BE.

Prayer keeps me focused. But that is not my work. Prayer is HIS work.

He's opened the door and allowed me in. He's invited me to sit comfortably, drink a green smoothie (cause he knows i LOVE them), and uncover life together. He laughs with me. He cries with me. He listens to my small understanding of scripture, people, and my own inner workings. He patiently listens to the long list of things I hate about myself - knowing that my battle is not really about getting out of my mess, but allowing him into it.

After a week of attempting to touch the great mystery of conversation with the Beloved, I'm setting foot on new ground.... well, on very ancient ground.

This week my intention is meditation, silence and solitude.

I'm especially drawn to the meditation used by the Desert Fathers called Hesychasm.

In a nutshell the Hesychastic practice involves acquiring an inner stillness and ignoring the physical senses.

But it is deep. It is full. It is organic and full of breath and life. It centers on this simple heart cry, "Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

I am excited. I'm already feeling a strong pull to go sit on the mountain by my house, soak in the sun, and open my heart to this beautiful form of meditation.

I'll let you know ;)

To Crave By Meditating....

I've missed a few days of blogging, but I haven't missed any time with prayer as my intention.

This has been really interesting. I've been really battling a weird tendency to"babble" - praying just meaningless, empty words. My temptation is to just say anything to God for the sake of saying something.

So, I've had to tell myself to shut up. Repeatedly.

I've been really reflecting on Luke 11:9
"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. "

Here's the breakdown:

ASK: aiteō. to ask, beg, call for, crave, desire, require.

SEEK: zēteō. to seek [in order to find out] by thinking, meditating, reasoning, to enquire into.

FIND: heuriskō. to find by enquiry, thought, examination, scrutiny, observation, to find out by practice and experience; to see, learn, discover, understand; to be found i.e. to be seen, be present; to be discovered, recognised, detected, to show one's self out, of one's character or state as found out by others (men, God, or both).

Hmmmmm....

To beg and call for by thinking and meditating.

And then to find out by practice.... to show one's self out.... to be found out.

Crave by meditating and it will be found in you.

This is different.

Prayer is a practice of life. It is a craving with feet.

We want something; an answer, a provision, a healing, a deliverance....

So we think. We meditate.

No babbling allowed. No small, forgotten prayer.

But we practice. Who we are, at the core, is revealed.... found out.

We PRAY without words. Prayer comes from the heart, from the mind, from the soul. It is the lived out expression of our desires. It is truthful and unreserved. It is the honest conversation in which we find the mystical and unfathomable God listening and watching with complete and captivated attention.

Prayer is not the answer. Prayer is the process. It is the unveiling of this small, screwed up little heart. Prayer is the opening.

Prayer can never be a formula or a recitation. True prayer is a gushing, spilling over, explosive revelation of self in the presence of the Rescuer.

There is no trick to getting God to listen.

There is no right way of praying.

But there is a true way of praying.

So, this blog is my prayer. It is an exposed and revealed piece of what is churning and changing inside of me....

I like it.

Prayer

This is my son, Judah.

Tomorrow is his second birthday and I have spent the day reflecting on his little life.

Judah was conceived, and born into, an incredibly chaotic time in our lives.

Joe and I were in this a really ugly space. I found out that I was pregnant not long after finding out about Joe's massive pornography addiction. Things were strained, my man was lost in selfishness, and I was completely consumed with the sense that I wasn't good enough. I was lost in self loathing. I was just lost.

Not long before I peed on that stick I had done a bible study by Beth Moore called "The Patriarchs".

A good portion of this bible study centered on what was happening between Rachel and Leah - Jacob's wives. They were sisters, married to the same man. Only Jacob loved Rachel.... and not Leah.

Rachel was barren. She wanted children, but couldn't have them. But God looked at Leah and saw that she was unloved and he opened her womb. She had son after son. while Rachel remained childless.

And each time she had a son, his name reflected the utter lostness of Leah's heart.

Because something stood in the way of her husband ever really loving her.

Someone else held her husband's attention. Leah was invisible.

She named her sons after her heartache, "the Lord has seen my misery, maybe my husband will love me now," "because the Lord heard that I was not loved he gave me this one too," "now at last my husband will become attached to me because i have born him three sons."

And then she had a fourth son and she said, "this time I will praise the Lord."

And she named him Judah, which means praise.

Like Leah, I was overwhelmed with the "Rachel" in my life. Something else stood in the way of me ever being loved.

And, for some reason, God had chosen to fill my womb.

And, like Leah, I had come to realize that my only hope of joy rested in the arms of my Husband; my Jesus.

So, instead of misery, I blessed that little man in my womb. I prayed blessings over him.

When my son was born we named him Judah Ezekiel. "Praise. God Will Strengthen."

Judah was born, after 27 hours of hard and painful labor, to the sound of my beautiful friend Tassie singing praise and hope to the Lord. The first sound he heard was praise.

And, that is what I pray over Judah today. This is the first day of making prayer my intention and there is no better way than to pray over my beautiful son. He is more than a reflection of God's love for me in the darkest time in my life. Judah is, every day, a reflection of hope.

So, this is what I pray for Judah....

But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more.
Psalm 71:14

Last Day!

This was the laaaaast day of our cleanse. It's only been a week, but it feels like a year. Seriously. This is why I never fast. It's not fun.

However, like I've said, this was unbelievably good for my soul. It was necessary.

I had an incredible lunch with my girlfriend - all fresh, organic veggies and greens (straight from her local farmer's market) thrown into a yummy salad. We sat on her back patio while our kids played and it turns out that I really needed that patio, and that fresh air, and that salad, and that friend.

I came home energized. I'm not even really sure why. I think I was just able to relax and enjoy the last day of detoxing. Plus we were Holy Yoga brainstorming and that always gets me fired up....

And then I ate a huge Italian meal at my mother in law's house for family dinner. And it was gooooood.

Here is my big, resounding "Yep! I like food again." :)

This week of cleansing is actually a part of something much bigger for me. At the next Holy Yoga retreat I am teaching on spiritual disciplines.... mainly fasting, prayer, meditation: silence and solitude, community and communion, and the little way.

I figure, since I just finished the experience of fasting, I am going to spend a week living with a deep intention in each of the other four disciplines.

I am also going to blog my way through it. My girlfriend, Cali, is going to do this with me and I am just going to open it up to anyone else who feels called to this little experiment.

Starting tomorrow I am placing my intention on prayer. I think I'm going to start with the Lord's prayer.... not just repeating it for the sake of repeating it, but getting a surrendered grasp on WHY we are called to pray so simply, and yet so fully. I am going to set aside specific times to pray without distraction and I am going to give myself reminders to pray throughout the day.

Really, my hope is to just stay in constant contact with God.... to keep my gaze from shifting away.

So, if you feel a stirring, then pray with me, my friends!

Overwhelming and abounding freedom to you all!

Day Six!

It has been pouring rain the last few days. Rain is a seriously beautiful thing in our desert. We rarely get this much free water.

I took Aravis out to get party supplies for Judah's 2nd birthday and, just walking up to the store, she was up to her ankles in water! I'm sure it needs no explanation since she is 4, but we had a lot of fun running through the rain to get to and from the truck. :)

This has been a soup filled day. I've actually been having a lot of fun trying new vegan soup recipes and there is nothing like warm soup on a cold night. Yummmm....

We ended our day with the most delicious minestrone soup (made by my loving husband while I soaked up some Jesus on my Holy Yoga Master's call).

I've learned a lot about my own ickiness this week. It makes me think of a story I read once by St Anthony, who was one of the original desert fathers (don't hate me if I don't remember every word...). He was talking about what happened when he first sold everything and entered the desert to be alone with God. His experience was that the great abyss of his humanity opened up in front of him and he was confronted with his anger and greed. He became aware, in that vast and lonely space, that he was a mess. He had to stare his messy self in the face before he could ever be free from it.

Yep. In a very small way, I am St Anthony in the desert this week. Let me tell you, a great abyss of my own humanity has opened up in front of me and I don't love what I've seen. But if I never looked it in the face, wouldn't it always hide just under the surface in me, affecting everything I said, did, and thought?

My own anger and self loathing have dictated the culture of my life. They shape the way I believe Jesus looks at me. They tell me how others look at me. They consume how I look at me. And all of that affects how I look at God. Mostly because I am too busy looking at me to look at Him. I'm seeing God through the filter of me, rather than seeing me through the filter of God.

This cleanse was so much more than I had expected. I've discovered something new about who I am, physically and spiritually. I can be stretched much farther than I had thought.

And I am still this messy, selfish, prideful human being.

I face a crossroads here....

I could so easily lay down the law for myself. I could dive into rules that would force me to be something new. I could find ways to use my self loathing to create change in me.

Or I could settle on one thing....

That everything hinges on the love of God.

I could fall back.

Messy and gross and mean.

I could just be what I am and trust that God will keep his hands all over me, shaping me as the wheel of my life spins.

After all.... He is the potter ....

I am the clay.

That's plain enough, isn't it? You're no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You're no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He's using us all - irrespective of how we got here - in what he is building
Ephesians 2:19

Day Five!

I woke up this morning with a sore throat. It makes sense I guess. My body IS pushing out toxins and such.

Nevertheless, I really don't want to get sick.

So, I downed some vitamin D, vitamin C, and some Wellness Formula tablets and headed out (in this rare, yet glorious rain) to get my yoga on.

I took a class at a local studio called At One. Definitly NOT Holy Yoga, but I love it when I get a chance to take a class there. They heat their rooms (not Bikram hot, but hot enough) which loosens up my muscles and even helps me breathe better. So, I spent an hour and twenty minutes sweating and breathing it out. It was fabulous.

I felt immediately better.... the wonders of yoga!

I'm clear headed, calm and easing out of this ugly detox funk. Good thing, cause I was starting to irritate myself.

I've spent the day eating soup, drinking juice and lots of water. I decided to take a day off from my usual stuff - like cleaning the house, etc. Although, I did pick up and clean the kitchen later on in the day. I couldn't help myself.

For the most part, this has been a very restful day.

Overall, this week, I think I am really starting to see how fleshy I am.

When I started to deprive myself of something I became even more aware of what resides in me.

I've also learned that, on the road to getting healthy, you sometimes get sicker first.

So, I'm ending today with some hulu and a warm bed. I'm rested, I'm more centered, I'm hopeful. Tomorrow will be new.

Be prepared. You're up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it's all over but the shouting you'll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You'll need them throughout your life. God's Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other's spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.
Ephesians 6:13-18

Day Four!

So, I'm not as angry today. BIG sigh of relief!

I think it helped that I finally told my man why I'm mad at HIM. Now it's out. And he is gracious.

Day four is supposed to be the peak detox day; meaning only fresh juices and detox teas. I think we all know by now that I am making up my OWN cleanse as I go...

So, today was juice, tea and SOUP. Ah, soup.

We made two soups from scratch: tomato and potato. MMMMMM.....

Soup never tasted so GOOD!

Some fantastic things happened today. Soup was one of them. :)

The other fantastic thing is that Joe cleaned the carpets. This is a BIG deal.

Our dogs have mistakenly assumed that every carpet in this house is a giant piddle (and poo-poo) pad. And, for a germ freak like me, this is bad news. Last night I told Joe that I wont live here anymore if the smell doesn't go away. So, in true white knight fashion, he rented a carpet cleaner and lifted that horrible smell right out of my house!

I am currently enjoying the free, clear air in my bedroom and thanking God for such a kind husband.

All of this to say, things are lookin up....

Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church - a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ's love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They're really doing themselves a favor - since they're already "one" in marriage.
Ephesians 5:25-28