breakme

On those all-too-short,
All-too-infrequent afternoons
When I find myself
Surfing waves of insight,
Drenched in sweet splashes
Of clean, steadily flowing code,
When I encounter distractions,
I drop this breadcrumb
Reminding myself to handle
A mundane or difficult detail
At some later point:

breakme

It has neither decorator nor punctuation,
No class, no ancestors, no descendants,
Nor, indeed,
any
syntactic
validity
whatsoever.

It is a placeholder chosen
For the express purpose
Of forcing my poor compiler to its knees.

It is the rusty length of rebar
Thrown into the gears
Of my carefully maintained machine,
The mandatory full stop
Designed to keep me
from forgetting.

Prayer of a Weak Man

Save me, O Lord, from my odious pride,
From the fleshly lusts that encircle me,
From the evils of false piety and resigned apathy.

I need Your strength, for I cannot stand,
Your grace, for I wander astray,
Your life, for the stench of death overwhelms me.

May my mind be fixed on the stuff of heaven,
My heart on Your grace and truth,
My will on building Your earthly domain.

Amen.

Things I Want at 3 a.m.

1. To go back to sleep.
2. Someone to understand my inner turmoil.
3. Understanding of my own inner turmoil.
4. To undrink that pot and a half of coffee I had during Les Miserables tonight.
5. To make something beautiful that will last beyond my fruitfly lifespan.
6. A life full of grace and meaning, and devoid of fear.
7. An empty inbox.
8. Reassurance that I matter to someone. (Anyone.)
9. Deep, reliable relationships.
10. Did I mention sleep?

Insomnia is cruelest when it happens on the one night in the past month when it would be OKto sleep past 8 a.m. :-(

Love, Weakness, and Repentance

Note From the Blogger: I found this in my Drafts folder. I started it in April 2009, and just got around to finishing it today. Sorry and you're welcome.

I've always been uneasy about observing church festivals. This is probably because I am not from a very conservative liturgical tradition.  In the churches of my youth, we were "Bible-believing Evangelicals" who followed the doctrine of sola scriptura to the point of iconoclasm (and sometimes anticlericism).

To my ilk, Ash Wednesday had a dangerously Roman feel. We had read Jack Chick's tracts; we knew Catholicism was a slippery slope. One day you're smearing ashes on your forehead, and the next you're sprinkling water on babies and buying  papal indulgences. Who knows how far you'll go once you take that first step toward idolatry?

So I suppose it's strange that I have been practicing intentional self-deprivation since Ash Wednesday. And that I intend to do so until Easter Sunday. Almost sounds like... Lent.

How did I get here from there? What changed my iconoclastic mind about the spiritual value of ancient liturgical traditions? I attribute it to two main elements.

Firstly, as a history major in college, I became enchanted with monks. I loved the idea of a life devoted to purity, piety, and praise. At one point, I briefly considered trying to live my life by the Rule of St. Benedict. While I didn't take the leap, I am still fascinated with the idea that pious practices can help to mold my mind, heart, and life to be more like Christ.

Secondly, in recent years, I have come to believe that it would be a grave error to ignore two millennia of church tradition. I don't believe that tradition has the same weight as scripture. However, that doesn't mean tradition is worthless. To observe the seasons of the liturgical calendar is to join with billions of other saints, both present and departed, in their faith walk.

In my mind, Lent is one of the most beautiful and valuable observances in the church year. Traditionally, Roman Catholics give up meat during Lent.¹ However, common practice today (especially for vegetarians or those who don't eat much meat anyway) is to simply give up something that matters to you. (In case you want to read more, here is an excellent post about Lent, written by a friend of mine who is an Episcopalian priest.)

So, what do I hope to gain from this commitment to self-denial? Here are a couple of lists I made to clarify for myself why I was (and wasn't!) observing Lent:

Observing Lent Will Not:

• Increase God's love for me. Since before the foundation of the world, He has loved me with an immeasurable love. The person of Jesus Christ is the inarguable earnest of that love.²
• Enhance my worthiness. By myself, I am an unholy, rebellious, sinful person who deserves no more chances. Out of His great love, God chose to call me from death into life. He didn't do this because of anything I have done or could do; He did it because He was pleased to do it.³
• Make me more righteous. My righteousness comes from Jesus Christ's substitutionary atonement for my sins on the cross.⁴

I Pray That Observing Lent Will:

• Increase my love for God. As I focus on Him and what He has done for me, may my gratitude and love overflow in response. 
• Remind me of my weakness. When I fail to keep my commitment, either in letter or in spirit (as I have many times during this season), I am reminded of my frailty and need for a savior. With the crowds in Jerusalem, I cry out to Jesus, "Hosanna - Save me now!" How desperately I need His power to pull me out the terrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock. 
• Make me more repentant. I am surrounded by sin. So often, my concept of Christianity is to avoid sin, rather than actively turning away from it and going the other direction. I have not been called from darkness into nothing; I have been called into the glorious light of God's son. I pray that this Lenten season will help me to wholeheartedly reject my sin and fiercely pursue an active, positive righteousness.

So what about you, dear reader? Are you Lenten, or Un-Lenten? Any thoughts to add to mine? I'd love to hear about liturgy's role in your faith walk.


Notes:

¹Why meat? And why is fish OK? If you're going to make people give up things they don't want to give up, why not make them give up alcohol, for instance? I'm glad you asked. As he so often does, St. Thomas Aquinas has an appropriately hilarious answer for you:

[F]asting was instituted by the Church in order to bridle the concupiscences of the flesh, which regard pleasures of touch in connection with food and sex. Wherefore the Church forbade those who fast to partake of those foods which both afford most pleasure to the palate, and besides are a very great incentive to lust. Such are the flesh of animals that take their rest on the earth, and of those that breathe the air and their products, such as milk from those that walk on the earth, and eggs from birds. For, since such like animals are more like man in body, they afford greater pleasure as food, and greater nourishment to the human body, so that from their consumption there results a greater surplus available for seminal matter, which when abundant becomes a great incentive to lust. Hence the Church has bidden those who fast to abstain especially from these foods ...

Three things concur in the act of procreation, namely, heat, vitalspirit, and humor. Wine and other things that heat the body conduce especially to heat: flatulent foods seemingly cooperate in the production of the vitalspirit: but it is chiefly the use of flesh meat which is most productive of nourishment, that conduces to the production of humor. Now the alteration occasioned by heat, and the increase in vitalspirits are of short duration, whereas the substance of the humor remains a long time. Hence those who fast are forbidden the use of flesh meat rather than of wine or vegetables which are flatulent foods.

² See Rom. 5:6-8.

³ See Rom. 3:10-12.

⁴ See II Cor. 5:21.

Ash Wednesday: Thoughts From a Friend

So this is great.

My Hutch-friend Jen has some great thoughts about Ash Wednesday - the liturgical celebration as well as the poem by T. S. Eliot. Here's a snippet.

Lent begins again this week. I’m going to give something up. I’m probably going to fail too. And yet, I still want to come, ash marked, to lay my own tiny sacrifice on the altar of grace. 

This is the tension. Teach me to care and not to care.

Read more over at Greener Trees.

Who to Blame

In case you didn't know, a bad man killed a lot of people (including 20 children between preschool and 4th grade)  in Connecticut yesterday. This was an abhorrent act, perpetrated by a strong man in the prime of his youth on some of the weakest people around.

Of course, cable news networks being what they are, the "experts" started coming on within minutes of the event, making intelligent-sounding noises for as long as the show's host would allow them to. They claimed to have the answers for the questions each viewer was asking: Why did this tragedy happen? Where does the blame lie? How can we fix this?

It seems like heartbroken people are most easily comforted when they can pin the blame down. That way, at least you have someone or something to direct your anger toward.

You would be at least partly right to blame any of these:

• People who insist on having the right to obtain and keep deadly weapons, regardless of how this right (or these weapons) could be misused
• A culture that doesn't take mental illness seriously ("If I can't see it, it doesn't exist!")
• Parents who get divorced when they discover that marriage is hard, leaving their children with gaping emotional wounds
• A media establishment that glorifies violence until it actually happens in the real world, at which point it becomes, of course, an unthinkable tragedy
• News shows that run stories with headlines like "Inside the Mind of Evil," trying to define what makes "those people" different from good, normal, upstanding folk like you and me
• A community that doesn't engage people, connect to their places of greatest need, and bring them the deep and abiding healing of true fellowship

As you listen to the "experts," you'll notice a pattern. Most of their ideas involve legislative fixes to perceived problems. 

This is true for the rest of our culture, too. We feel that if we can all just agree on the problem and the solution, then we can simply change the law, and voila! No more problem. So we lobby for stronger gun-control laws, for more mental health funding, for better security systems in schools.

But regardless of how hard we work to fix them, the problems keep recurring. No matter what laws are made, we can't seem to get past the fact that people do terrible things to each other.

So who do we blame for the deeper problem here? The one we can't seem to solve? Here's what I believe: 

The light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed. (Jn. 3:19-20)

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what should not be done. They are filled with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice. They are rife with envy, murder, strife, deceit, hostility. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, contrivers of all sorts of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, covenant-breakers, heartless, ruthless. Although they fully know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but also approve of those who practice them. (Rom. 1:28-32)

 Making laws, starting committees, and working for social change might have some effect on the world, just as a properly applied piece of gauze might have some effect on a gushing carotid artery. But this patient is going to need surgery if we're going to keep him from bleeding out.

That's why the story of the school shooting is a perfect accompaniment to Advent. It is yet another example of the pain, sorrow, and utter brokenness that Jesus Christ was born to heal.

In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s trespasses against them, and he has given us the message of reconciliation. (II Cor. 5:19)

I haven't shot 20 children in cold blood, but my sinful heart is capable of such evil. And so is yours. He came to right our wrongs and to bring wholeness to a people sickened unto death. He came to heal the rift between God and man -- a rift that we feel most keenly in tragic circumstances.

His death and resurrection on our behalf offers redemption and restoration to you, me, and others just like us whose faults are more evident (and seemingly more tragic).

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.