Broken Lent

I broke my Lenten discipline. I mean this literally—the Rosary I decided to wear during Lent snapped in my sleep. I have always flirted with Catholicism and Orthodox spirituality. Catholic and Orthodox mystics are more interesting than most Protestants I have run into.  We are so concerned with written words that we forget that we have five senses to drive us into the presence of the divine.  We are allowed to use images, icons, beads, and candles. Really, it’s ok. I've learned to try anything that might help me learn how to pray, even a Rosary. I rarely prayed through the Rosary in one sitting, but every time I noticed the cold beads pressing against my skin I was compelled to throw a prayer dart to heaven. It worked until it broke. I am not surprised that it has been around for a few hundred years.

I didn’t “Hail Mary;” at least, initially. I used the Jesus Prayer in lieu: “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Sometimes, I prayed through virtues or fruits of the Spirit.  Strangely, a few days later I found myself praying, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Maybe it was for the thrill.  It felt perilous, or at least mischievous, for a Protestant to utter ‘hail Mary, full of grace.’ After a while it has become cathartic. It’s been nice to know that Mary is waiting to intercede on my behalf when I falter.  I ask my friends to pray for me—so why not ask the theotokos, the mother of Jesus?  She’s lived it all—lowliness, joyfulness, sorrow, loneliness and regret.  I won’t discriminate; we are the body of Christ, the communion of saints. Any words will do when I have none.  

We memorize liturgy and prayers so that we will have something to say when words disappear. What do you say when you sit at the bedside of a loved one or gather at the Jordan River? We say things like, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Written prayer is therapy.  Unfortunately, Methodists are not taught to memorize prayer or Scripture.  I haven’t memorized nearly enough Psalms.  I am learning that I need to have resources locked away when my heart isn’t communicating with my mouth.  Nor are Methodists encouraged to ask a saint for prayer.  Where are we supposed to turn when we forget how to pray? We're out of luck.

Our individualized culture supposes that the best prayers must come from our own hearts.  Or, if we can’t think of the words ourselves then something must be wrong. I am reminded of a story that Lauren Winner shares in her book Still. She writes,

“A four year olds notion is that a prayer is about God, rabbits, deer, Santa, and turkeys. At seven, prayer is when you ask for something you need, like water or rain or snow, then at twelve, the child begins to speak theologically: prayer is how you communicate with God and even ask God for forgiveness.

Older children understand that prayers come within themselves. The older child knows that the child is the author of his own prayer.  I realize I am supposed to think that this is an advance from the younger child’s idea that prayers come from God or from heaven.  But I do not think it is an advance. I think it is something those children will unlearn, later, if they keep praying. I think they will come to know that the youngest children are right. I think they will come to know that their prayers do not, in fact, come from within themselves. I can participate in prayer (or not) show up to pray (or not) but I am not the author of my prayers; when they come, they come from God (76-7).”

Lately, I haven’t been the ‘author’ of many prayers.  I’ve used prayers from Scripture and prayers from saints. Most of the time Scripture and tradition have already said what I want to say with more eloquence, poignancy, and honesty.  This Lent, I am relearning the notion that I must be the author of my own prayers. And that's ok because sometimes the well has run dry. Maybe you’ve never been vacant and empty, but one day you probably will. And then you’ll learn that prayers in a book and intercession from Mary are still prayers because all prayer comes from God.  

A Book Review: Still by Lauren Winner

I read Lauren Winner’s new book, Still, last week. I finished it in two days and picked it up again later in the week to meditate on some of the vignettes.

Still is a book about living in the middle of the spiritual life.  It is only coincidence that Winner picks up the motif of the middle, especially since it has been on my mind over the past six months.  For Winner, the middle is a wilderness—it is not a good place to be, but it is not particularly bad, either. It is definitely a hard place to be. It’s a place where the things no longer make sense the way that they used to. The novelty and enthusiasm of conversion has slowly worn off and the faith that was once exciting and fresh has unexpectedly become stale.   Still tracks the baby steps taken when the Jesus butterflies have left your stomach.

Spirituality is not easy in the middle—and God, if not absent, is hiding. In the preface Winner notes,

“Some days I am not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt or whether, graciously, my doubt is riddled with faith. And yet I continue to live in a world the way a religious person lives in the world; I keep living in a world that I know to be enchanted, and not left alone. I doubt; I am uncertain; I am restless; prone to wander. And yet glimmers of holy keep interrupting my gaze.

Still is a journey that moves from a full-fledged faith crisis to a place of consolation—a place where glimpses of the holy are enough. The text does not follow any linear narrative and offers little in the form of a conclusion.  It is simply notes during a time of spiritual gloom. Still is structured in three parts: “Wall”—a place where God is completely absent; “Movement”—a place of exploration; and “Presence”—a place where God is intangible but where the glimpses of holy are consolation enough.

Along the way, the book delves into Winner’s personal life—her marriage is coming to and end and she is still coming to terms with her mother’s premature death. The book does not dwell extensively on the crises; they are background images that co-exist in her spiritual desert.  Still, they are fitting to the telling of her story.  She is brutally honest and her imperfections invite her readers to feel at home.

The story moves from desperate and frantic attempts at finding God through new books and music, to seeking advice from friends, and to finally receiving glimpses of God through the liturgical practices of the Church.  They are the practices that she once chose when she converted from Judaism to Christianity, but now they are choosing her. Winner describes a moment she meets God in the midst of Holy Communion. At the service Winner serves communion to an elderly couple and she watches as the woman eats the bread and wine for her husband, whose physical condition restricts him from eating. She writes,

“There at the Communion rail, I don’t know what illness lies behind this gesture, I know only the couple’s hands and mouths, and that I am seeing one flesh. I have read about this, heard sermons about a man and woman becoming one flesh; and here at the altar, I see that perhaps this is the way I come to know such intimacy myself: as part of the body of Christ, this body that numbers among its cells and sinews an octogenarian husband and wife who are Communion.”

God may have been hiding from Winner, but she made God present to the rest of us with her prose and illustrations. I recommend this book to anyone that is in the middle of their faith journey, anyone who is serious about spirituality, and anyone who is bold enough to admit that God sometimes feels absent.  

Winner tells a story of a young girl who was about to be confirmed in the Church, but started having second thoughts.  She didn’t know if she could really believe her whole life, so she went to her father.  Her father, who was also the pastor, told her.  “What you promise when you are confirmed is not that you will believe this forever. What you promise when you are confirmed is that this is the story you will wrestle with forever.” 

 Somehow, the wrestling leads Winner (and all of us) to a deeper place and to find God once again. God might look different from the middle, and the middle might last a really long time, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.

Explanation

This New Year I am deciding to write more.  I don't know how often I will write, but I wanted to have a space to do so when I have time. 

It's customary to make the purpose of one's very first blog an explanation of one's title, right? You might think that the title, “in the middle” is a reference to my being a middle child, but thats really not that important. 

“In the middle” is a reference to a concept in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work; I was very much influenced by Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall and Christ the Center in seminary. It has shaped my goals for ministry more than most books I have read.

I offer two caveats: My blogs will not always be this long or this detailed and this summary of Bonhoeffer’s work is not in any way exhaustive.

For Bonhoeffer, there are two senses of the middle:

First, Bonhoeffer notes that humankind finds itself at a middle point after the fall. We are between creation and consummation. Bonhoeffer says, “Humankind no longer lives in the beginning; instead, it has lost the beginning.  Now it finds itself in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning” (CF 28).  Humankind does not have knowledge of the beginning—creation—or of the end—where we are going.  We are purposeless and directionless in life. But, with the Scriptural story, humankind is able to realize the beginning and locate their place in the middle. Scripture becomes a directive for those of us living in the fallen middle.

More importantly for my purposes, Bonhoeffer also imagines the middle in another way.  Humankind is also at a middle point in a circle without a center as a result of the fall.  Adam and Eve seize the center through the fall, where God stands as the source of life, freedom, and truth. In short, Humanity chose to leave creaturely freedom and the limits created by God in order to become Master—self-sustained and unlimited in boundary. At this middle point, there is no center but ourselves.

Without limit, humanity enters a new state—sicut deus (like God). Bonhoeffer succinctly summarizes, “Sicut deus—humankind like God in knowing out of its own self about good and evil, in having no limit and acting out of its own resources…bound to the depths of its own knowledge of God, of good and evil…the creator-human being who lives on the basis of the divide between good and evil” (CF 113). God no longer mediates our relationships, but humanity seeks to rule over all its relationships in seeking to be like the Creator.

            However, Christ invades the middle and becomes the center of the circle. Christ becomes the center that was lost through the fall. By becoming incarnate, God constitutes a limit to human personhood. In Christ the Center Bonhoeffer notes that, “Christ is at one and the same time, my boundary and my rediscovered center. He is the center, between ‘I’ and ‘I’, and between ‘I’ and God. The boundary can only be known as boundary from beyond the boundary” (60). Importantly, Christ becomes our mediation to God, oneself, one’s neighbor, and creation.  As the new center, Christ reminds us of our creaturely existence, liberates us from self-sustainment, and restores its freedom for God and one another.

It is precisely this last point that has been central to me. The idea of Christ as the mediator and middle has stayed with me during my six short months of pastoral ministry. I keep this quote in the back of my head to guard and shape my interactions and relationships: “Christ is at one and the same time, my boundary and my rediscovered center. He is the center, between ‘I’ and ‘I’, and between ‘I’ and God. The boundary can only be known as boundary from beyond the boundary” (CC 60).