himself

I started this morning with a good cup of coffee and a friend, discussing the way we can know God’s direction and once we’ve known to be reassured of it as we walk in it.

It was a two-hour conversation, but the best I could come up with was something about taking a step at a time; walking together.

Following requires trusting the one you follow.  It doesn’t require comprehension of path or destination.  It doesn’t require unwavering righteousness or advanced skills.  Trust.  And maybe some patience.

At mid-day, while running on a treadmill, I enjoyed my usual dose of Law & Order and Cold Case, alternating between the two during commercials.

I was shocked and affected strongly by the story presented about a desperate, threatened, victimized single mother who jumped from a window with her daughter to avoid the perpetrator of violence at her door.  Her daughter died in the fall.

With visceral instinct, I cursed at the screen, at the fear and bondage and hopelessness, more in the violent prayer mode than the taking-the-Lord’s-name-in-vain mode.  Then prayed more fervently and appropriately, “Oh, Lord, have mercy on us.  Please, Lord, come quickly.”

I recognized that my prayer for his coming was much less about his coming in the typical manner we think of it, and more in the “please be here with us, please be near to us” manner; though I long for that reality in both ways, I’m sure.

I’ve ended the day with two things that have rounded out these others:  tea and conversation with my oldest daughter, Katie, and a few pages from Frederick Buechner.

Time with Katie is a gift that I treasure.  Hours such as these are an endangered species.  Through conversations about her friends and teachers, her plans and hopes, her opinions and faith, her pursuit of truth at the risk of temporal alliances, she gives me hope for the future; a wish for a long life, so I can be a witness to as much of the beauty of her experience and influence as possible.

And somehow, the passage from Buechner comes with his powers of alchemy, when I’ve had all of the day I can take, and rounds this out, and draws it together, and makes, of the many experiences, one:  fruitful in reflection and powerful in recognition.

Christ never promises peace in the sense of no more struggle and suffering.  Instead, he helps us to struggle and suffer as he did, in love, for one another.  Christ does not give us security in the sense of something in this world, some cause, some principle, some value, which is forever.  Instead, he tells us that there is nothing in this world that is forever, all flesh is grass.  He does not promise us unlonely lives.  His own life speaks loud of how, in a world where there is little love, love is always lonely.  Instead of all these, the answer that he gives, I think, is himself.  If we go to him for anything else, he may send us away empty or he may not.  But if we go to him for himself, I believe that we go away always with this deepest of all our hungers filled.  (“The Breaking of Silence” from The Magnificent Defeat, by Frederick Buechner)

So, from lessons learned on a Thursday, I offer a fervent and simple prayer:  May we know Christ, the breaker of bonds, the narrow way, the fulfillment of all our deepest and highest hopes and desires.

remaining

[Thanks to Pastor Alan, whose sermon this morning inspired the title, at least, to this post, and may have subconsciously contributed to its content, and to Wendell Berry, whose books about his imaginary town, Port William, Kentucky, have definitely contributed to the improvement of my soul, and to Jesus, who said, in John 15,  "Remain in me, and I will remain in you." (NIV)]

I caught myself thinking today, standing next to friends in our kitchen, that I can comfortably imagine myself with these people, in this place, 30 years from now.

We will be white-haired and our edges will be well-rounded, like stones after spending years at the bottom of a stream, and we will have rich histories to recall together.  Deep roots will stretch beneath us, and the legacies of our lives, whatever they will be, will surround us, and the days ahead will be valued as great treasures to be cherished just because they are days ahead, and because there will be fewer of them than we’ve had in our youth.

I was comforted by that notion today; by the soft nature of its approach and the warmth of it wrapping around me.

I can imagine even being in this old, worn-out house in those years, with memories of earlier generations whispered from its walls.

I can imagine doing dishes in that sink, and falling asleep in an easy chair in the evenings, after the house has been emptied of grandchildren and white-haired friends, and being awakened by Renee as she herds me to my bed.

I’ve seen myself take pleasure, in those visions of future years, in simple things like tending the roses in the flower beds by the garage - greatly neglected as a lower priority than most everything else today -  as van doors open at the end of our driveway, and children come running to my side yelling “Grandpa.”

Maybe all of that seems drab and silly in some moments of some of my days now, and maybe it really is just that, and maybe it’s just an imaginary world I’ll never see.  Maybe.

Today, though, the images are welcome here, and I’m grateful for a life that allows the possiblity for such imaginary things to be desirable.

Remaining.

I can’t know whether remaining in Him will enable such dreams or prevent them.  Either way, though, remaining will produce the intended, treasured fruit and that will be more wonderful than all of my dreams.

on the surface

I was thinking recently of the expression “still waters run deep” and finally realized the meaning of it.  I’m sure you know, but for my sake, let me spell it out:

Water that appears to be still (calm) on the surface is probably moving (running) in swift, strong currents deep under the surface.

I used to think of that as something about how waters that are still tend to be deep.  But that doesn’t make sense, because a puddle can be still.  Then I figured out that “run” means they move under the surface, rather than “tend to be”.  Maybe that only seems interesting to me.

It’s funny to me, about me, that a simple expression that I’ve known all my life, it seems, requires deep thought at middle-age to grasp.  That’s actually happened a lot to me in recent years.

For example, do you really get the expression “burning the candle at both ends”?  I won’t explain it, since I’m sure you do get it, but I didn’t really understand it correctly until recent years.  Hmm.

Things are seldom what they seem.

Anyway, I discovered a new blog this week:  I Stare At People which has fascinated me, and apparently a lot of other people like it too.

It’s written/presented by an artist who does oil paintings of random people seen in coffee shops – very fast oil paintings, done remarkably well, considering the subjects are typically in motion and frequently unaware they are being watched so carefully.  Sometimes they realize, or are told, they’ve been the subject of a painting, but more often than not, they are unaware.

That’s fascinating to me because I’m a people watcher.  When I was in Junior High, some girls gave me the nickname “Cow Eyes” because I was always staring at people.  I’ve learned to be more discrete, but I can’t deny it happens.

An oil painting of an unknown subject, completed while they’re in motion, within a few minutes, can only capture so much about the person.  Even so, you can learn a lot by looking carefully enough at someone to capture the essence of their look in a few minutes, especially, if you’re a practiced starer, as I am.

I’m not an artist, but I think I frequently paint a mental portrait of people I see, and then draw some conclusions about them based on that view.  I’m a lot less harsh or certain about what I see, as I get older, but I’m probably just as frequently wrong.

This morning I discussed the movie, Avatar, with some friends.  We talked about how the movie is very pleasing to the eye – amazing graphics and presentation – and the story is definitely entertaining and compelling.  But, the characters are fairly transparent, the plot is fairly obvious and predictable, and the violent conflict in the climax is stereotypical battle fare (with twists of course).

We wondered about whether movies like that, and like the Twilight series, are a measure of the American and/or other cultures’ ability (or inability) to appreciate complex stories, like the real lives of all of us today – full of subtle emotions and innuendo.  I liked those movies, for the record, although I’ve only seen the first Twilight movie, so far, but you have to admit, the complexity of the plot, if there really is any, is mostly surface-level, stereotypical stuff.

Interestingly, though, one of the best ideas from the movie Avatar comes in the form of the main character saying, “I see you,” and meaning that she sees the heart of the other person.  It’s really beautiful, and a fantastic statement, which draws all of us into the emotion of it.

We all desire to really see and to be seen.  We all really want to be known and loved in spite of the knowledge.  We want to be measured and found adequate, genuine, and loveable.

But, the question seems legitimate to me:  Do we look closely enough at anyone or anything to really see?  Could we paint an accurate portrait, more than just superficial, of anyone we consider close to us?

I know from my experience with many relationships – especially at work and many at church - we seem to have traded the deep for the superficial, and seem to have forgotten the possibility or need of anything more.

Still waters run deep.  I see you.  It’s a hard row to hoe.  I’m burning the candle at both ends.

a christmas story

From the essay, The Annunciation, tucked humbly among the pages of many more like it in the collection, The Magnificent Defeat, by Frederick Buechner, an author who continually articulates the thoughts and intents of my heart - a place only Christ is supposed to know so well – with words I’ve never been able to assemble in similar fashion:

. . . The world waits.  History waits and labors.  Something draws near, and we love its being far away there rather than here, among ourselves.  Except, of course, that it is here among us too and within us as we wait for the story to begin, the story whose end we already know and yearn to know again and wish we did not know; the story whose meaning may be our meaning, as we wait for the child to be born.

For this is what Gabriel comes to announce, and Mary stands there as still as life in her blue mantle with her hands folded on her lap, and the terrible salutation is caught like a bird’s wing in the golden net of the air – Ave Maria gratia plena.  Dominicus tecum.  And then she hears him say, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name . . . “  But she knows his name before Gabriel says it, just as we also know his name, because the child who is going to be born is our child as he is her child.

He is that which all the world’s history and all of our own inner histories have been laboring to bring forth.  And it will be no ordinary birth but a virgin birth because the birth of righteousness and love in this stern world is always a virgin birth.  It is never men nor the nations of men nor all the power and wisdom of men that bring it forth but always God, and that is why the angel says, “The child to be born will be called the Son of God.”

Here at the end let me tell a story which seems to me to be a kind of parable of the lives of all of us.  It is a peculiarly twentieth-century story, and it is almost too awful to tell:  about a boy of twelve or thirteen who, in a fit of crazy anger and depression, got hold of a gun somewhere and fired it at his father, who died not right away but soon afterward.  When the authorities asked the boy why he had done it, he said that it was because he could not stand his father, because his father demanded too much of him, because he was always after him, because he hated his father.  And then later on, after he had been placed in a house of detention somewhere, a guard was walking down the corridor late one night when he heard sounds from the boy’s room, and he stopped to listen.  The words that he heard the boy sobbing out in the dark were, “I want my father, I want my father.”

Our father.  We have killed him, and we will kill him again, and our world will kill him.  And yet he is there.  It is he who listens at the door.  It is he who is coming.  It is our father who is about to be born.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.  Come quickly.

ghost stories

[For Tim]

“Yes, Ethan, what’s the matter?”

The boy stands, hesitantly,

Back to the door, hand on the knob,

Having just closed it behind him,

An inquiring, uncertain look

Fills his eyes.

“There are ghosts on the TV show.

It’s scary.”

He is not sure he should admit this.

He is not sure his parents,

Having their own privacy interrupted,

Will offer comfort or admonition.

“It’s okay, Ethan.

There are no such ghosts.

It’s only pretend . . . costumes.”

He is unconvinced.

He has seen the evidence himself.

Right there on TV,

And elsewhere, maybe.

“Oh, maybe they’re gone, now!”

He rushes from the room,

Having received unlikely comfort -

Disinterested, and dismissive -

Yet comfort, nonetheless,

From his parents,

By their mere presence,

And from his ghosts,

By their lack of it.

too much is just a little more

From: Renee Pratt
To: Dale Pratt
Sent: Fri, January 15, 2010 3:06:15 PM
Subject: Re: “The Kress Cinema and Lounge” sent you a message on Facebook…

Wow, that is all you are asking for?

Big surprise here, this made me cry.  It’s nice to be recognized for the things that I do, even though I hadn’t really thought of it as things I do.  You also have quite a list as well.  Thank you for that.  I would start listing…but my brain kind of feels fried at the moment.  

Thanks for noticing, 

I love you,

Renee

---

From: Dale Pratt
To: Renee Pratt
Sent: Fri, January 15, 2010 2:08:58 PM
Subject: Re: “The Kress Cinema and Lounge” sent you a message on Facebook…

no, tis not.  i ask only that you manage my 11 children while i’m sitting in my quiet office for 10 or more hours per day, then out with your biggest children, and best helpers in the evening, or one of my friends for a movie or a cup of coffee, or out on a long run, for which I possibly spent your grocery money as an entry fee.  then i ask for you to do my laundry, the cooking, the money management, my ironing, the housekeeping, the shopping, and most of the well-done social engagements and maintenance activities, while dealing with my constant and drastic mood changes, temper, discontentment, and general melancholy, not to mention my weird and socially unacceptable religious views and absolute financial stupidity and mismanagement of the money I earn while away from you, and meeting my expectations and needs for marital intimacy in the middle of the night or other odd hours when you should be sleeping because you were up half the night with nauseous kids while nursing a new-born, changing diapers, and caring for your facebook friends’ needs.  That’s all I’m asking for.

---

From: Renee Pratt
To: Dale Pratt
Sent: Fri, January 15, 2010 12:20:47 PM
Subject: Re: “The Kress Cinema and Lounge” sent you a message on Facebook…

You told me last night that you don’t ask for much.  Tis true. 

---

From: Dale Pratt
To: Renee Pratt
Sent: Fri, January 15, 2010 9:43:19 AM
Subject: Re: “The Kress Cinema and Lounge” sent you a message on Facebook…

why?

---

From: Renee Pratt

To: Dale Pratt
Sent: Fri, January 15, 2010 9:23:50 AM
Subject: Re: “The Kress Cinema and Lounge” sent you a message on Facebook…

If you want to go with Phil and/or others, it’s fine with me.  

---

From: Dale Pratt
To: Renee Pratt
Sent: Fri, January 15, 2010 8:23:42 AM
Subject: Fw: “The Kress Cinema and Lounge” sent you a message on Facebook…

I’m not sure I’m highly motivated for this.  Too much is too much, but I do want to see this movie.  What do you think?  Wait for the DVD?

 

comforts

I’m just fortunate enough to be watching the sunrise this morning with 3 of the most beautiful girls in the world – my 3 youngest.

Meghan and Ayda are curled together as I’ve nested them under a comforter eight times larger than themselves on the sofa opposite me, taking turns reading a board book to each other about two puppies named Sally and Lucy who have just become friends.

Gwyneth lies here in the crook of my left arm, swaddled tightly in a receiving blanket, having finally worn herself, and a pacifier, and her mother out.    On occasion, she squirms and sticks out her tongue, then squeaks a bit, just before letting out all the sigh you could find in her tiny lungs.

How could God come to terms with making people so dependent on so much comfort?  He seems to enjoy our discomfort in some ways enough to bring it so continually, only so he can have the joy of seeing us comforted again.

Maybe it’s bit more complicated than that.  The evidence is fairly convincing though that we do love our comforts, as simple as they are.  Thank God for them, and for the longing for them.

With my free hand, I’ve been reading Wendell Berry’s book, A Place on Earth, a simple story about simple people that will all at once create a yearning inside you for writing, and for home, and for loving more deeply – loving what you’ve got more than what you’ve thought you wanted.

It comforts me almost effortlessly, along with 3 pairs of dark brown eyes peering out of their warm places.

Good morning sunshine.

a birthday gift

Today is my birthday.  I’m 43 years old.

I received the first gift to honor the occasion at 12:54 a.m.

My 11th child.  My seventh daughter.

I’m certain I’ve never received a birthday gift that is more precious, nor one that more truly defines the word “gift”.

I don’t know her name, yet.  She hasn’t been awake much, and when she has been, she hasn’t wanted to talk about it.  It must not be so important to her as it is to us.

We thought she would be Samuel, believing we have been “heard of God”, but that seems inappropriate for someone so pretty and petite and feminine.

It seems likely God has heard us, anyway.

big deal

Why is that we all are so annoyed by people who act like they are a really big deal, even if it’s only an occasional act, while wishing we were big deals, denying that we want to be big deals, acting like we believe that wanting to be a big deal is just wrong, trying to figure out how to become a big deal, and being frustrated that we haven’t become a big deal, yet?

Not to mention, that we admire people who are a big deal, at the same time we despise them, and we consume every bit of gossip we can about them from every vanity magazine and television show and website, and gossip-monger we can find, then criticize them for every misstep and flaw, while secretly acknowledging how much of a big deal they are, and wishing we could be their friends, just so we could be a little bigger deal based on the association.

Why are we all driven to be a bigger deal than we are, envying those who really are a big deal, while declaring to everyone who will listen, that we couldn’t care less about being a big deal – that in fact, we’re so relieved we’re not a big deal – while hoping secretly that we’ll become a really big deal before it’s too late for anyone to notice or care?

What’s the big deal, anyway?

I don’t know.  Maybe it’s just me.

C.S. Lewis was a big deal, apparently, based on the number of people who quote him (so they’ll seem like a bigger deal because they know what Lewis said), and he said something about none of us being mere mortals; we just have incomplete, flawed perspectives.

Maybe, we’re all really big deals, or at least bigger than we suppose, or we’re intended to be bigger deals, or we’re big deals in God’s view.  Maybe that’s why we have such an overwhelming desire to be big deals, and to deny it in the meantime.

Maybe it’s just me.  I’ve always wanted to be a big deal, but I’d never admit it.  It’s so non-big-deal to have any desire for it.

Oh, the games we play.

Truth is, to a very small group of people, myself included, I am a big deal.  Not the biggest, but fairly big.  But, if we’re all big deals, then, I’d rather not be one, just so I could be different.  If we were all big deals, being a small deal would be far more attractive.  Wouldn’t it?

I mean, it’s no big deal to me, of course, but I was just wondering how you see it.

[P.S.  The t-shirt in the picture, and many more with humorous insights, can be found at www.snorgtees.com.]

years between commas

I get stuck in the first few verses in Matthew.  My mind wanders at each comma and paragraph break.  There are years of lives lived in those pauses for punctuation and format.  The spaces are thick with years:

. . . Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab,

Boaz begot Obed by Ruth,

Obed begot Jesse,

and Jesse begot David the king . . .

. . . Uzziah begot Jotham,

Jotham begot Ahaz,

and Ahaz begot Hezekiah . . .

. . . Josiah begot Jeconiah and his brothers about the time they were carried away to Babylon . . .

Lives lived.  Some lived well, others by a thread.  Days weighed in the balance, tipping the scales.  Years between commas.

Death, heartache, excruciating joy in an “and”.

Needy people eating, cleaning, doing laundry, taking out the trash, talking, crying, breaking, healing, planting, cultivating, falling, rising, loving, hating, flirting, laughing.

Living.

Questioning.

Searching.

Yearning.

Waiting.

Grieving.

Hoping.

Miracles.

Tragedies.

Divine intervention.

Oh, God, why is it so heavy today?

God flows through our lives and our world like underground water pipes, and overhead electrical wires, and sound waves.  Air.  We only acknowledge him when we turn on the faucet, or flip the switch.  Or listen.  Or breathe.

He is an underground spring.  He is the wind.

We live and die and struggle in between the commas and paragraph breaks, looking for him.