seems like more than you can manage

At the moment, life feels borderline of what I can manage. I'm trying to squeeze in at least 2 visits a week to my Auntie Mary's - bringing groceries, encouraging her to eat and do her own physio. This is on top of my Dmin studies, spiritual direction, student ministry, and campus chaplain responsibilities. Yet I'm still feeling some real satisfaction and real sense of the guiding hand of God. Both Bible studies yesterday seemed to be exactly for them: they scratched where they were all itching.

But at the moment I have a deep desire to make music again and I long to play the cello and am looking forward to an opportunity for a Good Friday service. Music has incredible power to touch and reach parts of the human psyche. It has that power to create community and bind people together when used well.

Heart's capacity

I continue to be struck by the awesomeness of God.

I've been meditating on Psalm 103 for a few days now. The poetic paraphrase I've been using began "My soul is for your blessing". I struggled for a long while because it effectively states I exist or am made to be blessed, my purpose is to be blessed. Personally I find this is extremely difficult to accept! I fought with this idea for sometime and especially when the normal translations say "Bless the Lord, O my soul!"

But David Dickson in his commentary (published in the 1650s - yes 350 years ago) wrote:

In the prophet's stirring up of himself to praise God, learn[ed] 1. The sense of God's goodness to a believer is very blessedness felt, flowing from God, the fountain and cause of blessedness. 2. When a believer is satisfied with God's goodness, he cannot satisfy himself in the expression of his sense of it, or of his discharge of thankfulness for it; but stirreth up his own dull spirit to the work of praise. 3. In praising God special care is to be had of the sincerity of our heart and affections.

As I sat in silence this morning I felt the need to really draw a response and the image comes from this time. Words don't really express things sufficiently for me, this picture is closer. Yesterday I expressed this another way in my spiritual directors together meeting. It's like a analogy but similar to the feeling when you inflate a balloon with one breath, except its going in rather than coming out. All I can say is thank you God.

in the spirit

This morning in my prayer time I was reminded of this image I drew in my journal on July 28 2005. I was meditating on Is 57:15, and this drawing came in response to Isaiah. I wrote then "Reaching out but not noticing the closer, nearer one. God with me in the moment, not looking for the movement."

This morning I remembered this image while I read from Psalm 103, a very poetic interpretation speaking of God:

Who awakens the spirit So that time's refreshed And grows back like an eagle's feather ... And acts in the lives of strugglers

The last 30 hours I have had a huge sense of the awesomeness of God. Instead of even searching for God it has been a personal learning about openness and being willing to receive the presence of God. It is about lingering and savoring the moment. These lessons need to return again and again. God in the moment is enough. God can change the very nature of time that it can grow back like a eagle's feather, for time itself to soar.

For this is what the high and lofty One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15

feeling small

When you're weary, feeling small, When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all; I'm on your side. when times get rough - And friends just can't be found, Like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down. Like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down. Simon & Garfunkel

Sometimes I feel very small. Very insignificant. Sometimes I wish I could simply disappear and not exist. Sometimes it is other people's words, sometimes it is situations and sometimes it is simply a vastness of reality. Not my reality but the immensity of it all.

Sometimes I just want to stay in my bed and hide. Sometimes the darkness of the night is better than the reality of dreams Sometimes it simply does not make sense, and I don't want to make sense of it. Sometimes I really don't want to think just feel. Sometimes I just want out of it all. I want to lose myself.

Sometimes I feel I'm not good enough. Sometimes I feel there is not enough. Sometimes I realize I am not enough.

In the moment of paralysis I must trust, I seek. In the moment of stillness, I hear the little words of encouragement. In the moment of consciousness, I find hope and a reason to go on.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Luke 11:9

darkness, suffering, and dark night

I am beginning to wonder both from reading and experience whether suffering is a necessity for spiritual growth or just an accelerant. Suffering may be ill-health, life crisis, depression or mental illness, self-induced or externally applied.

This last week I have been very aware that our weakness, in my own weakness is really the only opportunity to experience the grace and strength, the power and mercy, the love and assurance that only God can give.

I was reminded again of that in watching the second night of the New Year Special for Nodame Cantabile. Her professor asks Nodame, Why do you play the piano? and Nodame can't answer. She experiences a dark time with streaming tears as she quests for meaning in it all. Initially she is reminded eventually that it is her love and desire to be married to Chiaki is why she is studying piano, but as she rises above that and gives a recital she rediscovers the joys of having others listen and also be inspiring. Her piano performance moves her friends to reach for greater things as well. It takes having things stripped away from us to realize what is important. For us, to lose all is only to find ourselves.

Music and spirituality have a lot in common. We need authentic lives to inspire other, only with knowledge of the darkness can we walk with those in darkness.