Lent for Everyday Life

Ash Wednesday and Lent haven't grown old, but they have lost their personal novelty. Having come from a tradition that was more perplexed than pious about people walking around with dirt of their foreheads, I came to Ash Wednesday a few years back for the first time at a retreat and have thus experienced it the last two years in my church community. But this year, while I'm excited about this season for our church life, I'm approaching Lent differently.

Maybe this perspective comes with growing in experiences and while I'm admittedly young, I'm beginning to realize that most of life with God is made up by the quotidian, everyday, common, boring stuff. And it's in the common, familiar, boring, and comforting places that God waits for us. It's also in our common, familiar, everyday routines where we grow casual, tired, and blind to how God plays in our living rooms, laughs over our experiences, graces our dinners, suffers in our pain, and plays house with us in brokenness. It's there in the boring, old parts of life God's Spirit is waiting to dance with us or just sit with us.

With the thought that God is in the boring routines of my life, this year I'm only adding a simple practice to Lent. Knowing that I have a penchant for novelty, the temptation for me is to only search for God in new and often temporary ways. It's a lot easier to find God in a stranger for some reason than the homeless man I see everyday waiting outside our church. It's easier to be hear God speak through a friend than it is to hear God speak through my wife. It's easier to worship with new music at a retreat than with familiar hymns with our church week in and week out. It's easier to find God in someone else's teenager or youth group than my own.

The reality is that God is there in our boring routines, we're just blinded by our familiarity.

So not only am I adding a simple practice, but I'm adding something I had given up since shedding my fundamentalist garb. Not only is this practice old and familiar, it is mixed with odd and uncertain feelings from a legalistic past. This year for Lent, I will be simply praying over my meals. That's it. And in this practice I hope to settle more into life as it presents itself through typical routines and find that God has been with me in all these places I've overlooked.

Marriage & Spirituality

Tim Keel, founder and pastor of emerging church Jacob's Well has some very helpful words for couples who are seeking to practice some kind of spiritual practice together. I know for myself his words are helpful and wise, because we have failed in so many areas to have a consistent discipline that is "super" spiritual. Here's the meat of his post:

"That is a good question, and not one that I am sure that I have a good answer for. Most couples I know have struggled to find a good way to answer this question. I do know a few people that have navigated these waters successfully, but I know many more who have tried and wounded one another significantly. Mimi and I do not have common devotional practices, besides sharing public worship and service to our children. I once had a pastor share with me that doing such things is very difficult because we are often attracted to someone who is very different than we are and as a result the way in which we experience and practice the presence of God, and express it in our personalities, is likewise different (at best) and threatening (at worst). That can be good or bad, but it is always challenging emotionally because our spiritual lives are such a place of intimacy and thus, vulnerability. That is not to say it shouldn't be undertaken but rather to say it should be attempted with gentleness, low expectations, and humility. I do think the spiritual practice of conversation can be a really good one to develop, especially if you will listen to one another as you talk about your own journey, what you are learning, and how you experience God, etc. Also serving God by serving others together can be a really healthy way to engage one another, and it also sets the relational precedent that you are focused not just on your own inward life in God, but how that inward life gets express outwardly as well. Reading a book together can be good, but likewise challenging if one is a reader and the other is not. Anyway, I guess my counsel is to try a few things, have fun, laugh, and do it all with a recognition of God's presence among you. I hope that helps."

Praying Bitterness Out

Prayer is participation in willing God's will.
-Marjorie J. Thompson

To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.
-Richard Foster

And I had a third quote, but I lost it so here's a paraphrase (if someone can correct and point me in the direction of the author, I'd appreciate it):

Religion is knowing that there is more than just the facts that we see.

I thought these quotes were appropriate in the face of my last post. Sometimes in the face of jaded and embittering situations, all we can do is pray. Prayer though is so much more than all we can do.

Praying the Hours

Since my trip to New Mexico to pray with monks in the desert, I've been drawn to rhythmic, orderly prayer. Tim Keel, pastor at Jacob's Well has posted some excellent resources for praying the hours. Tim says this,

The discipline of fixed-hour prayer is a challenging practice for most people to begin to engage because for many of us it is such an alien orientation to a spiritual practice that has largely been individual, spontaneous, and self-directed.

Hope this help in some way. I highly recommend fixed hour prayer, although I suck at it. There is something about moving in and out of prayer towards work and life, instead of the other way around.