Friday, March 27, 2009

Batter My Heart


Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

My Book of Numbers


The land is rich and full of promise, green, alive with fruit. From atop the mountain I survey its wildness and feel that old longing for adventure begin to stir again. It's everything He said it would be, vast and beautiful.

But there are giants. Milk and honey, honey and milk, He said, but no mention of giants. Surely He never intended me to wrestle my inheritance from these ugly mountains of flesh! They skulk about menacingly, throwing rocks, beating the air, and a terrifying clump of them has me in their sights.

Ingratitude, Discontent, and Hopelessness lumber toward me, their message clear: you're trapped, there's no way out. Complacency camps out nearby, his fire inviting, his eyes hungry. Clutter and Chaos, those mischievous twins, dance in my peripheral, freckle-faced boy giants with relentless energy. And a puny ogre looms large before my eyes, blocking my vision of anything else. He introduces himself as Distraction, but he's just being polite - his real name is Idolatry.

Dull eyes bulge and meaty lips drip drool as they consider me, a mere morsel to be divided and devoured. Stubby fingers point, but not at me - they point at my God, and accusations slither from their tongues. "He promised, but He won't deliver! Sure, He's big enough to do it, but quite frankly, He doesn't care! Give up now - you can't win. Did He really bring you here to die? Forget about Him - pursuing intimacy with Him is like chasing a mirage. He isn't going to speak to you anyway. Just fill your life with Things and you'll be fine. And what's this 'peace that surpasses understanding' you're looking for? Impossible! You've got too much to do, and He'll never let you rest. Go back where you came from! Remember the good old days?"

And with that I awake from the trance of their lies. "Remember the good old days?" Oh, yes - I remember. True, we had food - enough to keep us alive and working hard. And we had houses to live in - but no freedom to leave them! I remember the weight of the burden, the sting of the lash, the bark of the slave-driver. I remember new life from my womb being ripped from my arms, my dreams drowned, my hopes buried. I remember my labor that was never enough.

And I remember - oh, I remember the blood of the Sacrifice that spared me from death! I remember how He brought me through the water unharmed, provided exactly what I needed for each day, went before me in the wilderness to guide and protect me, fought every battle to deliver me from my enemies. I remember how He made a way for me to relate to Him - me, the unclean, made right with Him, the Holy!

Go back? Never! So help me, I'll not waste a drop of that precious Blood! My steps may be feeble, but I'll advance - I'll go forward wherever He leads me. He's never welched on a promise before, and I believe Him - I believe! - when He says He never will.

I'm not alone. We're shoulder to shoulder. We raise our wobbling swords, and He - He rushes in,
and does the rest.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Happiness is...


...a Sunday afternoon nap.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Saturday Brunch


There's a delicious breath of freedom in the phrase "Saturday Brunch." First, it's Saturday - sleeping-in Saturday, lounging-around Saturday, do-nothing-unless-you-want-to Saturday - twenty-four hours of unscheduled bliss. And then it's brunch - like breakfast, my favorite meal of the day, only later and bigger and friendlier.

That said, here's what I made for Saturday Brunch:

Grain and Nut Whole Wheat Pancakes
As usual I kind of did my own thing - you'll notice some imprecise measurements.

  • 1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oatmeal (ground up in my coffee grinder - only I left a handful of oats whole)
  • 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
  • handful of chopped walnuts
  • smaller handful of whole flax seed [Edit: have since learned that I should grind flax seed, as it won't digest otherwise. Don't ask me how I discovered this.]
  • lots of cinnamon
  • little bit of nutmeg
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda (or thereabouts - the box was nearly empty so I just dumped some in)
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup plain yogurt
  • 1 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup honey (Tip: a touch of olive oil inside the measuring cup keeps you from wasting the honey remnants that stick to the cup. Although those were always fun to lick out anyway.)
  • 2 eggs
  • a few generous drops of vanilla
You know the drill - mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, stir together just until blended (the biggest mistake people make with pancakes is over-stirring!) I always cook pancakes in real butter, and I spread these ones out a bit because they get too dense if they're too thick. They're also quite filling, so I make them a little bit smaller than usual.

Top this yummy, hearty deliciousness of a flapjack with real maple syrup, real organic whipped cream (sweetened with agave nectar and a touch of vanilla), and a sprinkling of cinnamon, and you'll forget there was ever such a thing as a five-day work week in your recent history.

Also on the table: strawberries and blueberries with more of that real whipped cream, a French press full of fresh-ground Sunergos Sumatra (I saved some heavy cream from a whipping to put it in my coffee, unsweetened), some Bolthouse C-Boost juice (mango, cherry, and apple...and apparently camu camu fruit and maitake mushroom? what?), and bacon (which I avoided, but it did make the house smell like a Southern mama lives here rather than a passel of single females with varying degrees of domesticity).

Top this off with a dollop of quality conversation with Hannah, for whom I am increasingly grateful, and Saturday Brunch becomes a true Sabbath of rest, remembering, and celebration. One might call it a Gospel Brunch and only be half joking.

This was plenty of food for me and Hannah to eat our fill and various housemates to roll out of bed and shuffle through the kitchen to fix their plates. (Although some did insist on defiling my healthful whole-grain pancakes with fake pancake syrup - and not just any pancake syrup, but generic, lite pancake syrup. Lite!)

And there are leftover blueberries and whipped cream, giving me something to look forward to - that and a Saturday afternoon that, according to the sunshine outside my kitchen window and the forecast on my homepage, seems promising.

Friday, March 20, 2009

"We Sell Greeting Cards"


"Everyone has their purpose," said the man in the airport. He was middle-aged and middle-class, average height, average build, and there I was talking to another stranger on another layover over another cup of coffee.

He'd seen me reading and asked if I was a student, so I told him the path I'd chosen. That's what elicited his statement. "Everyone has their purpose." My radar went on the alert at the prospect of having A Conversation of Significance.

"What's yours?" I asked.

"We sell greeting cards."

"Oh!" Outwardly I smiled and nodded while he went on about trying to undersell Hallmark. Inwardly I raged.

A means, perhaps - an element of one's purpose. But nobody's purpose is to sell greeting cards. Nobody's.

A Thought


"Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night." - Numbers 14:1

How often is my sorrow the result not of my circumstances but of my own unbelief?

That was the case in this story.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

First Violet


This morning I discovered the year's first violet.

She wasn't a very brave violet, probably because she was alone. She had hardly opened up, and I almost missed her crouching there by the sidewalk in Missy's front yard.

The first violet of spring is like a gift to me. Some years I look for it, going from house to office and office to car and car to classroom with my eyes for once in the present, scanning any patch of grass for a glimpse of purple. Other years, like this one, the first violet sneaks up on me, startling me with hope.

Every year the violets come. Every morning the sun rises. Some winters seem to last forever, but eventually snow gives way to sunshine every time. And my God is forever as sure as the dawn.

I know I ought to let them live full, happy lives, but for years the first violets have found new homes between the pages of Psalms or Hosea or Song of Solomon. Today's violet may read less truth on her wallpaper, but it seemed fitting to slip her between my hand-written ramblings of hopes deferred, of promises certainly coming but yet to be fulfilled, of longings that linger like a Wisconsin winter.

Journal Excerpt

Tues, Jan 13, 2009
Chennai, India

"Then the Lord took note of Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as He had promised."
-Genesis 21:1

Oh, Father, your promises never fail! You always fulfill what you have spoken. As I've been reading about Abraham and Sarah waiting for a child - and waiting, and waiting - laughing at the promise because sometimes you have to laugh so that you don't cry - I've been reminded of my own unfulfilled promises. Certainly I haven't waited as long, and although at times they do seem impossible they are not so impossible as a 90-year-old woman having a child! "Is anything too hard for God?" he asks - and the angel who visits Mary, whose Child fulfills the ultimate promise both to Abraham and to us all, echoes the question, but with confidence: "For nothing will be impossible with God."

You, my God, are a fulfiller. You give good gifts to your children. You will provide. You always do.

Thank you for the greatest Promise of all, that you fulfilled long ago and you fulfill every day in Christ your Son. "In the mount of the Lord it will be provided", they said of the mountain where Isaac wasn't sacrificed. Abraham called you Jehovah Jireh that day, and for the first time today I saw the true significance of that name. You provided a replacement sacrifice for me. You provided what I needed the most - what I still need every day: salvation by grace through faith.