The gift of sabatical is primarily the gift of time. I read more than 30 books during this last 6 months, read them cover to cover, and smaller portions of many other books and articles as well. They covered a wide range of genres and subjects from books on spirituality and renewal to books on ministry, to poetry, to all kinds of fiction including mystery, fantasy, and historical novels.
When people ask me which of these books I would most recommend, it's almost impossible to answer, given their range. But I almost always find myself referring to the impact of Ronald Rolheiser’s Forgotten among the Lilies on the way I see myself, my expectations for life, and my place in the world. Rolheiser takes his title from the last line of St. John of the Cross' poem, The Dark Night of the Soul, "I have left all of my cares and anxieties, lost among the lilies." It has helped me lean into love as my sole foundation and goal and into my identity as a beloved.
James Houston, ex-Oxford don and founder of Regent College has challenged me to identify and give up the false self and find my true self hidden in Christ in a series of essays collected in the book Joyful Exiles (IVP 2007). Its not the kind of book one picks up casually to read for a few minutes, but what I am reading there is staying with me.
Limburg's Encountering Ecclesiastes was my first serious study of Qoheleth, and I am forever endebted to the way he has changed my opinion about this author, and forever grateful for his example of realistic faith.
And finally, an unpretentious reflection on the love of God by Floyd Roseberry, given to me by Tom Parsons, became God's whisper to me throughout my sabbatical. Living as God's Beloved is essentially a reflection on a series of quotes from Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Evelyn Underhill and many other spiritual writers on our life as a beloved of God. I went back to this photocopied stack of pages again and again.
Each of the more than 3 dozen books that I read have become part of me in different ways. In some cases, their points, like gourmet meals presented on fine china, live vividly in my memory. Others, I digested more like good, everyday fare. They nourished me without standing out or being noteworthy. Granted, some went through me fast. Thankfully, none made me constipated.
With seven days left to this magnificent, 6-month Sabbath, I might have room for a few more. Any suggestions?
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Build Something New
Tina will tell you that I hate anything having to do with maintenance, repair or replacement. After all the work and sweat and expense, you basically have what you had before. But give me a wall to rip out, a change to make, an upgrade to install, a room to renovate and I'm all over it.
This makes the current sound drifting in through my open screen this morning like sweet music to my ears. Just down the alley, on one of the many empty lots in the neighborhood, a new house is going up. The asymmetric pounding of hammers, the whir of skill saws, the rhythmic cadence of nailguns, Mexican workers calling to each other contrasted with the unlikely Tom Jones CD in their boombox (who knew?) all combine to make me feel hopeful, excited, even joyful.
It's the same emotion I experienced when walking into my friend Steve and Sheila's 108-year-old house in Lowell earlier this morning to see the once damaged, wide-plank, Douglas Fir floors being sanded and re-finished. The honey-colored beauty under my feet produces something inexplicable in me. The floors unify the rooms; they speak a language of restoration and generational connectivity, but also of hope, of opportunity, of progress, of the future, and again, of joy.
Have you noticed, the subject of building, of architecture, of design, of physical structures comes up time and again in the Bible and in teaching of Jesus -- a farmer building a grain tower, the architecture and decoration of the temple, the tower of Siloam, the parameters of the New Jerusalem. Certainly, Jesus used the common places of life as a vehicle to convey truth, including where people lived, worked and worshipped. And we are to, like Noah, look forward to taking up residence in a city one day, whose architect and builder is God. The description of Heaven is of a luminous city made of precious materials, with God himself as the source of light -- a place with a definite wow factor.
Here, in the waning weeks of my sabbatical, as I prepare for resuming ministry, I find myself longing for that kind of hope regarding the future, the hope of progress, the sights and sounds of building something new, of making improvements, of seeing change. I do not want to simply maintain what has been built in my work over the last decade. I guess that means that God has done his work in me, the work that I prayed would happen on this extended sabbath. He has sanded the floors of my soul, ripped out a few false walls in my spirit, and improved the infrastructure of my will. Now, God, make me into a builder.
Does anyone have a Tom Jones CD I could borrow?
This makes the current sound drifting in through my open screen this morning like sweet music to my ears. Just down the alley, on one of the many empty lots in the neighborhood, a new house is going up. The asymmetric pounding of hammers, the whir of skill saws, the rhythmic cadence of nailguns, Mexican workers calling to each other contrasted with the unlikely Tom Jones CD in their boombox (who knew?) all combine to make me feel hopeful, excited, even joyful.
It's the same emotion I experienced when walking into my friend Steve and Sheila's 108-year-old house in Lowell earlier this morning to see the once damaged, wide-plank, Douglas Fir floors being sanded and re-finished. The honey-colored beauty under my feet produces something inexplicable in me. The floors unify the rooms; they speak a language of restoration and generational connectivity, but also of hope, of opportunity, of progress, of the future, and again, of joy.
Have you noticed, the subject of building, of architecture, of design, of physical structures comes up time and again in the Bible and in teaching of Jesus -- a farmer building a grain tower, the architecture and decoration of the temple, the tower of Siloam, the parameters of the New Jerusalem. Certainly, Jesus used the common places of life as a vehicle to convey truth, including where people lived, worked and worshipped. And we are to, like Noah, look forward to taking up residence in a city one day, whose architect and builder is God. The description of Heaven is of a luminous city made of precious materials, with God himself as the source of light -- a place with a definite wow factor.
Here, in the waning weeks of my sabbatical, as I prepare for resuming ministry, I find myself longing for that kind of hope regarding the future, the hope of progress, the sights and sounds of building something new, of making improvements, of seeing change. I do not want to simply maintain what has been built in my work over the last decade. I guess that means that God has done his work in me, the work that I prayed would happen on this extended sabbath. He has sanded the floors of my soul, ripped out a few false walls in my spirit, and improved the infrastructure of my will. Now, God, make me into a builder.
Does anyone have a Tom Jones CD I could borrow?
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Dominus Illuminatio Mea
I think it began with the sunset. As I descended Highway 50 over the El Dorado Hills, there it was, this magenta orange explosion of the horizon being swallowed by a distant peak. It was a gift, which 30 seconds later I would have missed. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata had begun on the radio, and I smiled at the symmetry of it; sun and moon in the same thought.
Or, it could have begun with the pensive wave and intentional meeting of the eyes with my father from his porch as I drove away, moments earlier. Nowadays, every gesture, every glance from his 89-year-old frame seems pregnant with meaning, or potential, or sometimes a gnawing feeling of something missed. My mother was in tears at seeing me go. She’s in tears a lot these days, the confusion of dementia, the hardness of life at 87. Perhaps something about this parting made me susceptible to being stunned by the magenta-orange spectacle around the bend, which, with the brooding music roused something in me. I instinctively prayed to the God of Spectacle – heartfelt prayers for my parents whom I had just dropped off, for each member of my family, for our future.
But perhaps, actually, it began nine hours and 450 miles earlier that morning, with the hymn I sang with my father and mother and my wife at the ocean. I Cannot Tell Why He, sung to the Irish melody known popularly as O Danny Boy, had stung me with its simultaneous acknowledgment that there are things we don’t understand about the story of God yet there are things we hold in surety, His love for us, his sacrifice for us, our future with Him. I began to weep as I sang, providing a spectacle of my own for the moment. But they accepted my tears at these words. In fact, words have been the only things I have ever seen to make my father cry, most often the words of a poem. I think he understood.
So now on the road with dusk descending and the Sonata ending I continued on my three-hour journey home, when I was blindsided by the “it.” A full, yellow moon rose at three times its normal size, through Halloween clouds that lay in horizontal lines before it. It was interesting, but I have seen this before. Every few minutes I checked it out through my left window as I headed south. On the radio the music had been replaced by a reading of the book of Ephesians, no commentary, just the poetry of the King James translation read by someone with a voice that made you realize how true and beautiful the text was. As the night deepened the moon ascended above the clouds and brightened and then strangely took up residence dead center in my front windshield. At first this was a mere curiosity. How long would the straight road allow this? But after twenty minutes of driving into the moon the bewilderment of Spectacle returned. I hardly looked at the road. The truth of the text and the brilliant sphere illuminating my face – like a Mag Light in the teeth of God – stirred something in me and I found myself pouring out my condition to God as one does a doctor. As if God had said “open” I let Him look inside me with his lunar scope, let Him see what I was I longed for most. Holding nothing back I prayed urgent prayers of confession and the depth of longing for focus of one who has felt pulled in a thousand directions for too long. Through new tears I prayed that for the rest of my life, for the rest of my children’s lives, we would center on Christ, make Him our single-minded focus, sense His illumination, seek Him through our wind shield wherever we go. And I knew, as the brightness of moonlight blurred and refracted through tears, that the doctor was listening.
The moon shifted slightly after that, the curve of the road moving it left or right, still always dominant in my view. I was breathless for the rest of the trip home. It is impossible to express how focused and unique this encounter was, but I felt both examined and heard and healed.
When did "it" begin, this encounter with a God who took a thirty-minute, loving look at me? With the hymn? With the wave from my Dad? With the sunset and Sonata? Or perhaps, when my mother pushed for the last time and the doctor said, “it’s a boy.” Has there ever been a time when His light has not been on me, even if I am unaware?
Dominus Illuminatio Mea. The Lord is my light.
Or, it could have begun with the pensive wave and intentional meeting of the eyes with my father from his porch as I drove away, moments earlier. Nowadays, every gesture, every glance from his 89-year-old frame seems pregnant with meaning, or potential, or sometimes a gnawing feeling of something missed. My mother was in tears at seeing me go. She’s in tears a lot these days, the confusion of dementia, the hardness of life at 87. Perhaps something about this parting made me susceptible to being stunned by the magenta-orange spectacle around the bend, which, with the brooding music roused something in me. I instinctively prayed to the God of Spectacle – heartfelt prayers for my parents whom I had just dropped off, for each member of my family, for our future.
But perhaps, actually, it began nine hours and 450 miles earlier that morning, with the hymn I sang with my father and mother and my wife at the ocean. I Cannot Tell Why He, sung to the Irish melody known popularly as O Danny Boy, had stung me with its simultaneous acknowledgment that there are things we don’t understand about the story of God yet there are things we hold in surety, His love for us, his sacrifice for us, our future with Him. I began to weep as I sang, providing a spectacle of my own for the moment. But they accepted my tears at these words. In fact, words have been the only things I have ever seen to make my father cry, most often the words of a poem. I think he understood.
So now on the road with dusk descending and the Sonata ending I continued on my three-hour journey home, when I was blindsided by the “it.” A full, yellow moon rose at three times its normal size, through Halloween clouds that lay in horizontal lines before it. It was interesting, but I have seen this before. Every few minutes I checked it out through my left window as I headed south. On the radio the music had been replaced by a reading of the book of Ephesians, no commentary, just the poetry of the King James translation read by someone with a voice that made you realize how true and beautiful the text was. As the night deepened the moon ascended above the clouds and brightened and then strangely took up residence dead center in my front windshield. At first this was a mere curiosity. How long would the straight road allow this? But after twenty minutes of driving into the moon the bewilderment of Spectacle returned. I hardly looked at the road. The truth of the text and the brilliant sphere illuminating my face – like a Mag Light in the teeth of God – stirred something in me and I found myself pouring out my condition to God as one does a doctor. As if God had said “open” I let Him look inside me with his lunar scope, let Him see what I was I longed for most. Holding nothing back I prayed urgent prayers of confession and the depth of longing for focus of one who has felt pulled in a thousand directions for too long. Through new tears I prayed that for the rest of my life, for the rest of my children’s lives, we would center on Christ, make Him our single-minded focus, sense His illumination, seek Him through our wind shield wherever we go. And I knew, as the brightness of moonlight blurred and refracted through tears, that the doctor was listening.
The moon shifted slightly after that, the curve of the road moving it left or right, still always dominant in my view. I was breathless for the rest of the trip home. It is impossible to express how focused and unique this encounter was, but I felt both examined and heard and healed.
When did "it" begin, this encounter with a God who took a thirty-minute, loving look at me? With the hymn? With the wave from my Dad? With the sunset and Sonata? Or perhaps, when my mother pushed for the last time and the doctor said, “it’s a boy.” Has there ever been a time when His light has not been on me, even if I am unaware?
Dominus Illuminatio Mea. The Lord is my light.
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