e100 Day 45: Proverbs 16:1-18:24

Questions for e100 day 45, Proverbs 16:1-18:24

If you were writing a few "proverbs," what would you say?
What wisdom have you gained from your experiences in life? Your relationship with God?

Negativity

I'm feeling too negative right now to post anything useful. I'll come back when I can.

Prayer for patience

Dearest my Lord, I find that I no longer have the patience that I once had. I am struggling with this relatively new tendency to lose my temper over things that I could have overlooked with a smile in the past. Help me to keep a peace within myself that cannot be disturbed by the words and actions of others.

Guilt corrodes, love heals

I am reminded this morning that so much of what I do in the present moment is affected by my feelings of guilt about what I have done or failed to do in the past. How many friendships have I ruined because I felt guilty about failing someone, so I withdrew entirely from the friendship and made the abandonment worse? I know I'm not the only one.

It's easy to say "let go of the past and the future, celebrate the present moment," and much harder to DO it. I guess that's where prayer comes in, and good friends who show me the way.

Playing to lose is no better than playing to win. It's so much better to stop playing the game of "this happened, this will happen" and just be here now. Easy to say, tough to accomplish. I need God's grace and help on this one.

PRAYER: Dearest my Lord, guide me this morning and always to set aside my guilt and my anger against myself, and to recognize that each day is a new day, and that love is not about keeping score.

Of anniversaries, internet drama, death watches and the hope of spring

Today would have been the wedding anniversary for two of my friends, both of whose spouses were murdered before they could reach this anniversary date. Remembering the day isn't really about them any more, for me; it's about remembering how fortunate I am that I still have my husband with me, despite all predictions, and remembering that the little irritations of marriage don't really matter when one looks at the bigger picture.

A friend reports that she received a text message from our mutual friend Lois this morning, so Lois is still with us, and she tells me that she sent along my love. I keep wanting to find something more significant to say to Lois than "I love you" and "thank you" but really, there isn't anything more significant than that, is there? I just want to keep saying it, anyway. I won't know what to say to her husband either when she is gone. That same mutual friend has just reminded me that their first anniversary is coming up within a few days.

I spent most of yesterday sleeping (wasn't feeling well) and dealing with drama at an online community I moderate. I'm in the process of extricating myself from that situation. The drama is not good for me.

The sun was shining brightly this morning. It would have been a perfect day to start my new routine of walking to the nearest Catholic church for morning mass on those days when I don't have anything scheduled at 9 AM, except for the fact that I was feeling crappy yesterday and I didn't want to take a chance on going out this morning. It won't be too much longer, though, before I start doing that. I'm even hoping to borrow my housemate's stationary exercise bicycle and use that on the mornings when walking isn't an option. Will that ever really happen? Right now I think the answer is yes, it will happen. I will embrace the arrival of spring and start exercising. I won't write off that possibility because I wasn't feeling well yesterday. Yes, it's true, tomorrow really is another day.

PRAYER: Dearest my Lord, on this day when I remember those who have lost their spouses, help me to keep my gratitude always in mind and in my heart, and to appreciate and cherish what I have, before it is too late.

Contract with the other or covenant with not-other?

I was grateful to learn this morning that my friend Lois is still with us. I still don't have anything more to say beyond the same "love you" and "thank you," but maybe it's OK not to have anything else. Maybe there isn't anything else to say.

Yesterday I was able to get my stepdaughter to watch part of the lifechurch.tv online service with me, but they lost both of us when the theme shifted to a traditional fundamentalist understanding of "wives, submit to your husbands." Perhaps we signed off too soon, and there may have been more to the message that we would have enjoyed, but I have a sore spot about the idea of taking Paul's letters as creating a new law. If someone had said to Paul, "You know those letters that you're writing to encourage the churches around the world? You're creating a new Torah, and your words will be used as scripture to bind believers to obey a new law," he would have totally flipped out. What would be the point of substituting a new Torah for the old one? The point was supposed to be grace, God's love and forgiveness instead of law, after all.

The theme of the message was about marriage as covenant rather than mere contract, as an irrevocable commitment rather than a document carefully negotiated by lawyers to allow each party a reasonable way out when the going gets rough, and that's a theme which resonates with me. The Henri Nouwen meditation for today is also about covenant, God's covenant with God: God for us, God with us, God within us. I think it's that "not-other" part which carries the most emotional weight for me.

Just as a spouse in a good, healthy and long-lasting marriage becomes "not-other," part of oneself rather than an opponent to be conquered in daily battle, so the journey of scripture and faith is also about the transition of God's relationship with us from other to not-other. In a marriage between two human beings, if it's not "mutual submission," if there is a winner and a loser, then both lose. In a spiritual journey informed by the mystical tradition, as we read and meditate upon scripture, we begin with the traditional "You're God and I'm not," with God "out there" making rules and punishing those who disobey, but that's not the place we hope to end. We hope to end in a place where God becomes a part of us and we are a part of God. Then again, mysticism and the metaphor of marriage have always gone hand in hand. :-)

PRAYER: Dearest my Lord, help me to remember today that it's not about winning, not about finding the right thing to say, not about saving anyone or changing the outcome, but it is about changing my attitude. Loving others means no longer treating them as adversaries. The more I can learn to love my husband, family and friends and accept their right to love me back, the more I can also learn to love and accept love from God.

Given to me by love

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1 (NIV)

The NaBloPoMo theme for March 2009 is "giving (up)," and as I begin this morning, looking at a prayer bible given to me as a gift by my husband twelve years ago and a blank journal which was given to me several years ago by my friend Lois, I am thinking about that phrase and about the interaction between "let go and let God" and being able to give to others. It's the kind of mystery that does make sense, because how can we give to others what we ourselves don't have?

I'm feeling particularly empty-handed right now, not knowing what to say to my friend Lois as she fights for her life in a hospital in Israel, passing along messages like "I love you" and "I'll pray for you" and "thank you," most of all that last. I'm grateful for what Lois has demonstrated for me in action over the past few years, by her choice to be my friend, by her fight to stay alive despite a lifetime of pain, a devastating car accident and an illness which by its nature is ultimately terminal. I suppose that in a way, life itself is always a process of dying, but looking at it that way overlooks that it is also a process of living despite death. Lois has lived and loved in defiance of death. So has my husband. I don't know why either of them would choose to have anything to do with me, but I need to learn to accept that being loved isn't about being worthy of love, it's about love itself.

The Purpose Driven Life devotional for March 1, 2009 which was shared at Facebook yesterday re-tells the story of a returned missionary who taught a lesson about prayer. When one young man said, “Lord, I just need strength; please give me strength,” the returned missionary looked up and said, “Young man, God does not give us strength. He is our strength. Now pray it right.”

When people like Lois and my husband choose to live in the face of death, and to love in the face of human unworthiness to be loved, I am tempted to say that it is because they are stronger than I am, superior to me in every way. That's an easy, selfish answer because I write myself off as weak and try to avoid my responsibility to become more than I am, not out of my own strength, but out of the knowledge that I am loved, by people and by God. That's not my own strength, and it doesn't change the fact of my weakness, but I can still use it.

Lois wrote, "People's love is like lifelines holding me." Stephen Covey writes about being neither dependent nor independent but interdependent with other people. We are not limited by the limits of our own strength. I need to learn that none of us is all alone in this world, not even me.

My prayer for today: Dearest my Lord, remind me that You re-create the universe every day, and that I and those who love me are part of that wonder of creation, renewed each morning. Remind me that it is not about what I can do, but about what You have done, are doing, and will continue to do, in others and in me.