Our God is an Awesome God

This is one of those times when words are not adequate. In fact, we risk the very real possibility today that my words will only get in the way. So I will be brief.

The First Presbyterian Garland women had our annual retreat last weekend. There really aren't many funny stories to tell except when Margaret ran her canoe, including her passenger, into a tree. Or when Jamye claimed one of our Christian sisters was a “butt” and someone broke out singing,  “They’ll Know We are Christians by Our Love.” There were plenty of laughs and love to go around.

I think this was the busiest retreat ever with more activities than you could take part in. We had nature walks, morning prayer by the lake, evening Taize by the fireside, S’mores and a campfire singalong. We had talks on prayer and/or mission trips. You could learn yoga and Zumba. You could get a massage or a facial or both. In between we had a great speaker and great food.

The retreat was also marked by what was not there. Among the sisters who should have been with us were two friends who couldn’t make it for very sobering reasons. Renee’s husband was in the hospital and his cancer was only sounding worse. We could only imagine how hard this is when you've got teenaged kids. And Sister Debbie was still out of commission since she was quite literally, and in the most horrible way possible, run over by a truck. I can’t remember a retreat without either of these ladies and even though we know they will be with us next year, it was not the same without them. On the bright side, I also heard from Sandy that her son, who we all watched grow up, is now able to wear prosthetic legs after he lost them both in Iraq.

Sometimes life is not all fun and games. How do humans operate with the hardness of life playing as background music all the time? I think you just pray your guts out, love each other and enjoy whatever good life sends you. Christianity is the only religion in the world to experience the exhilaration of an empty tomb, who focus on what joy is possible when you have faith..

Now for the good part: We had the best music ever. And I’ve got video to prove it. And this is only the stuff I recorded.  There were another couple of bands and singers I didn’t get on camera. Plus, we never even got to hear Sue Ellen play the dulcimer.  That's a good reason to start planning next year's retreat now.

We had classical music:

The Greatly Modified Angel Band with Kat's sister filling in for Debbie and Shirley

And as a Grand Finale, Bobbie Snider. We ended with Kirk Franklin and his church singing Our God is an Awesome God. I didn't get any video because I was too busy dancing. Gracias Senor.

Flat and Emerging

I think I may be starting to understand the new Flat World. Lord knows I’ve read a boat-load of books lately on the way the world is changing, from the Emerging Church tomes to Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat. I had begun to suspect that reading so many books on the subject would only confuse me. But yesterday it hit me upside the head and became crystal clear.

To start with, we had rain, sleet, snow and, finally, sub freezing temperatures. There was nothing to do outdoors and the house was about as clean as I was going to get it. I barely left my easy chair and spent time sitting in front of the television and reading one or another of the books I have bought on the subject of the latest re-formation of the Christian Church.

Their theory is that every 500 years or so the Christian Church re-forms itself. Our last reformation was around 1500 so we’re due for another re-arranging of the way we do things. The term for this one is “Emerging” and I found myself thinking in hushed , almost embarrassed whispers, “Oh, my, I think I’m emerging!” The old way the church operates may be on the way out.

So here I was: homebound and emerging all at the same time. I started surfing the internet. And since I had an abundance of time I decided to try out some of the new stuff on the internet I had not had the opportunity to explore, including Twitter.

While I surfed, CNN sifted through the situation in Egypt. They’ve been looking for one solitary leader they could focus on. It makes things so much easier, dontcha know, if they can just interview one person and get the whole story instead of sprinting around and crouching between parked cars or around corners to whisper what’s happening in the streets.

Yesterday they seemed to have found a leader and I think everyone was relieved. One guy who could explain what was happening, who would admit the demonstrations were planned and who was willing to speak plainly and in English. Who claimed he was willing to die for this cause even though he has a wife and family he loves.

That guy was Wael Ghonim. He is a 31 year old executive at Google who was arrested briefly and let go. Young but not wild-eyed. My interest perked. This might make it easy to give a damn. I could relate to this guy. He wasn’t one of those religious fanatics. He spoke not only in English but even sprinkled around few americanisms, using the term: “gonna” a couple of times. He was easy on the eyes and ears. I could listen to this guy.

The way he described it, their desires were pure, simple and shared by all humanity. They just wanted a voice in how their lives were organized. They just wanted what all of us want: food on the table, decent schools and regular trash pickup.

I wanted to know more about this guy. So I Googled him. Then I discovered he was on facebook. Well, you might just as well have told me he lived on my street. I spend a lot of time on facebook. I looked the guy up and found him. Then my fingers sat poised over the enter button. Should I friend him?

Could the world have actually become that small and that efficient that I could gain access to someone in Egypt with the press of a key on my laptop? Was it that easy to gain access with someone in the dead middle of a revolution? It was a little like crossing the Delaware with Washington but wearing a warmer coat.

But did I really want to enter this relationship? This would put me on record as connected to a guy living in a dangerous part of the world, who the bad people wanted to get rid of. Theoretically, dangerous people could find me if I connected with this guy. I knew this was a really far-fetched idea. I’m certainly not an international person of any interest to anyone. But I knew it was technically possible to find me if anyone wanted to badly enough. What exactly was the risk to my safety or reputation if I claimed any kind of relationship with Wael Ghonim?

Curiosity beat out fear and I finally hit the enter button. The computer told me he already had too many friends and didn’t have room for another. I was a little relieved, to be honest.

At that moment it all came together for me.

Now I knew for sure that this was the guy the TV was talking about. And I realized how close I had come to having access to his message in a very personal way. I could even imagine him sitting in his living room setting up his facebook himself while his wife cooked dinner in the kitchen and his kids played at his feet. Not really so different from me sitting here in my own living room. The only thing limiting my relationship with Wael Ghonim was the limit of technology, the number of friends facebook can handle. And we all know those limits can be worked out. The middle man of television reporters was eliminated. I could now get my news directly from the source.

The world got much flatter for me and everyone else.

So I started watching the live stream from Al Jazeera TV in the middle-East. Talk about getting your news from the source. At this point I’m sure some of my conservative friends are upset with me for maybe being a tool of brainwashing. I doubt they have watched the reports by Al Jazeera. In the interest of fairness, I tuned into Fox briefly and found it to be more than a bit alarmistic. The word “Alert!” kept scrolling across the screen like there were hoards of swarthy militia clenching knives between their teeth and crawling on their bellies across the White House lawn. They warned me of an Islamic terrorist state even though CNN has shown people live on camera saying very calmly that this is not a religion-based movement. This is a movement toward Democracy.

You know what I’m starting to think? I’m starting to think people are just getting tired of religion. I think the more involved folks get in their religious beliefs the more they gussie it up to prove how important it is to them. They come up with lots of rules and regulations then find words in their scripture to back up their positions, even while there are just as many scripture words that say the opposite. God is clever that way. We have to pick what we believe. And I think people are getting tired of using religion to stir the pot. In the words of that great American philosopher, Rodney King, “Why can’t we all just get along?”

The world changes quickly now. And the rate at which it changes is getting faster. In just the last 15 minutes, as I was writing these words, Mubarak resigned and the whole country of Egypt started celebrating. CNN was able to find my friend Wael and talk to him. And Wael said he credits facebook with the successful resolution of this whole scenario. I rest my case.

Everyone on earth can have the same information at the same time. The world is flat. And a new way to live is emerging. Someday Wael Ghonim will be my friend.

Weather Issues

I’m finding it very hard to settle down to line the words up tonight. We’ve got Guatemala fever here and it’s very distracting. We’re thinking of taking two weeks of language school and joining the annual church trip for a third week to practice. We’re trying to get another joint study together. This would be a week of bilingual bible study and just an awesome way to pick up the language. Beaven’s already figured out that the trip wouldn’t cost us all that much. We would almost save money going to Guatemala just by keeping me out of Walmart.

Once we’ve done the math I’m usually set for the trip. Beaven has gone into deep research and won’t come out until we get off the plane. He’s got three guide books on his lap right now. We think we have the language school picked out but he’ll surf the internet for a couple more weeks until he’s read about each of the approximately 187 schools in Antigua alone and decided to go with the one we picked out tonight. I’ve finally learned to pace myself in this marriage.

In other news, it was a beautiful day today and I played outdoors as much as I could because the weather is supposed to get bad again tonight. I hope I have enough food.

We had about four days last week when the weather broke records for deep snow and low temperatures. The schools were closed and the roads deserted. Four days within which people not only never left their house but also ate their own cooking instead of going to MacDonald’s. After four days everyone had eaten the contents of their refrigerators right down to the last bit of moldy cheese and shriveled celery.

Then the temperatures rose, the ice melted and we all emerged cautiously to grab the car keys and head to the store.

I have never seen the stores so crowded. It was like Christmas shopping on steroids. Inside, the milk shelf was bare. My daughter had to go to three stores to find eggs. Then, before the checkout ladies could catch their breath, the Super bowl arrived and cleaned them out of chips and salsa.

The bad weather also flushed out wild animals looking for any warm place to stay. Last week we had a visitor in our huge metal storage building that we call the barn. We have a lot of junk that we can’t bear to throw away but don’t want to live with. So we have a storage building that is actually bigger than our house. You can’t imagine the array of boxes and accoutrements we have piled in there. I think when Beaven croaks I might open a hardware store just by offering all his stuff for sale. I could make a tidy bundle and wouldn’t even have to acquire an inventory. It’s all right here. He has a classic Ford tractor that sits in pieces waiting for him to rebuild it. A couple of riding mowers. A tree mulcher and a leaf sweeper. A welding rig. I could go on but I don’t know the names of the other things. Except that I know half of the stuff either doesn’t work or Beaven doesn’t want to use them.

Anyway, back to the critter in the barn. It must have been big because he knocked a bunch of heavy things off the shelves. I want to set a trap out to catch him. (Incidentally, we already have a live trap so it wouldn’t be that hard to do. It’s on the shelf next to the box of spare parts for the disposal in a house we owned two houses ago.) But I would have to figure out how to set the trap. And then deal with whatever we caught. And since I can barely deal with catching a catfish that might be problematic.

I have a sad suspicion that it might be a possum. And those are just about the nastiest and ugliest creatures God ever made. I know. I washed one in my washing machine once.

Obviously, it was entirely by accident. The critter probably jumped into the machine and I must have thrown clothes on top of him and started the machine without knowing it was there. God is merciful that way sometimes. The next morning when I went to move the clothes over to the dryer I opened the lid and was met by a horrible odor. When I looked inside I saw what I perceived to be either a huge rat or an incredibly ugly cat. Naturally, I slammed the lid shut and left the mess for Beaven to deal with. I think I wrote him some sweet note about how much I loved him and would he be my hero yet once again. I probably drew some happy faces on the note and left for work.

He called me later to tell me he had dispatched the possum off to possum heaven but I would want to re-wash the clothes a few hundred times. Was he all mangled, I asked. No, Beaven said. Just Real Clean.

Getting Peaceful

We were snowed in yesterday and this made for a quiet, if boring, day. The taste of warm weather just a few days before convinced Beaven and I that spring was just around the corner so we spent some time outside on Saturday clearing brush around our creek. I finished radiation treatments on Friday and was happy to be back to normal life. It felt good to run the chainsaw again, to pull tree limbs out of tangled vines. Never have sore muscles felt as good as when I got out of bed the next morning. It felt like an honest tiredness.

But yesterday we were confined to the indoors. We spent our time watching the cat watch birds at the bird feeders. He was all but drooling around the whiskers wishing he could get his paws on one of those fluttery things. He watched them through the window for a while then went outside to watch where he at least had a chance to grab one. Then he came inside and ran around the house for about ten minutes. It’s good that at least someone gets some exercise around here.

I’m all about being peaceful now. A couple of weeks ago I went to a retreat to learn how to get peaceful so I feel quite the authority. Almost every year my New Year’s resolution is something about getting peaceful if it kills me. As I age and slow down physically I realize I’m going to have to figure out how to be successfully sedentary if I want to stay sane.

One of the first things we found out at the retreat was that our meals would be eaten without talking to each other. I wasn’t so sure I would be able to handle it. Everyone knows what a talker I am. Breakfast was to be silent. We would get our food from the dinner line and take it to an upstairs room where all 16 of us sat and ate without speaking.

This idea came from the retreat leaders, our pastor and her husband. Anne and David had recently spent a week at a monastery in New Mexico where meals were spent in silence.

A couple of people who know me joked about whether I could do this and it really wasn’t a joke to me. I really did wonder how being silent would make me feel. Just the thought of it made me anxious. I prayed and journaled about it. To my surprise I woke the next morning feeling rejuvenated. I couldn’t wait to get to breakfast and try this new technique. Yes, I manage to do it. And I felt good doing it.

Lunch was eaten again without talking but with some scripture read to us while we ate. For our evening meal we had Vivaldi’s Four Seasons playing in the background. The music was fairly peppy and we found ourselves eating in time to the music, in other words, fast. We finished in silence alright but also in record time. Apparently, talking can slow you down sometimes.

Oh, and the tomahawk throwing….. the retreat was billed as “Spiritual Practices.” David wanted to demonstrate the concept that you have to practice something to get better at it. Lord knows where he came up with the idea of throwing a tomahawk but he found stuff about that art on the internet and bought three of the things. So, we all lined up outside and started throwing hatchets around.

Bet you never did that at church camp, did you?

The retreat was a wonderful mix of learning new things and spending some time being quiet. We had time in the middle of the second day to just sit around and do whatever we wanted. For the couple of pastors with us it may have been a rare experience to have free time. We set up two tables full of books we could read in our spare time. Some people put together a jigsaw puzzle at odd moments of the day and late into the evening. I took a short nap.

So, now that I’ve been formally trained in how to be peaceful I just knew I could put all that to work on a day when snow and ice shut down the world outside my window. Not a chance. Neither one of us knew what to do with ourselves. Beaven had the police scanner going all day listening to calls for wreckers. One sheriff reported being hit by another car when it spun out of control. I did not find peace in being cooped up against my will; with our constant monitoring of CNN and Egypt’s unrest. There was no peace to be found there. Nor did I found it in the television pictures of icy roads around the nation.

I only found peace when I went to bed before Beaven, shut the bedroom door and spent time alone and listening in silence.

I can attest to this: that after living out here in the country with only the most nominal of neighbors, I have gained a new appreciation of silence. The book table at the retreat had a lot of books on silence. And I read them at this point in my life not for clues on how to find and embrace silence but as affirmation of its value.

Silence in the midst of other people at the retreat felt new and strange but it wasn’t nearly as hard as I feared it would be. I could probably learn to be good at it with some practice. But I do know that I’m already pretty good at silence when I am alone. I find peace best when the world is quiet, when I leave room for God to speak.

I gained no insights or revelations last night. Only the reassurance that God is there waiting, always waiting, for me to listen.