A handful of you have asked me about my three words for the new year. Years ago, when I read about this idea on some guy's blog, I became intrigued and motivated to do this kind of high-arching goal-setting exercise. Rather than write down a list of specific goals and resolutions each year, which quickly annoy the heck out of me, I instead contemplate the stage of life I am in and create a framework of words that become a filter for my choices. I post them around the house so they stay on my mind. Admittedly, after a few months, they blend into the scenery, but every now and then, they jump out at me and remind me to ask...how's it going?
These are the three words that have bubbled to the top of my thoughts over the last few weeks: LIFT, PRAY, NOURISH. (Kind of like Eat, Pray, Love, but hopefully not so self-serving as Ms. Gilbert's approach.)
I'm not sure why LIFT is my word of choice, but it seems to encompass two personal values...physical strength and serving others. I want to be able to lift heavy things, from furniture and dumbbells to medicine balls and toddlers running around church. I want to push myself in the area of weight training at the gym. My husband loves when I buff up and frankly, I've gotten a little soft over the last few years.
I also want to LIFT the burdens of others when I can, using my gifts and resources and heart. This is all about noticing needs, listening to God, and responding to that holy nudge. It can hurt and be messy. It can mean sacrifice and expense. But it is a charge from God himself. So I pray this song: "Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee," powerful words from one of my favorite hymns.
PRAY is simple and direct, but it is oh so hard for me. I think on God a lot, but the talking/listening part gets pushed aside, and I always feel the void in my spirit. So I came up with an idea...nothing novel, just new to me. I am keeping a prayer journal and spending each day of the week praying for important people and issues in my life. Each person in my immediate family has a day dedicated to him or her. Friends and extended family have a day. I have a day to pray for personal needs. And the world in general has a day. As soon as I sit down with my coffee and Happy Light, I open my journal for focused prayer. Then I read scripture from the online Revised Common Lectionary and meditate awhile on it.
NOURISH is a word that sings in my ear. It's about feeding myself and family nutritious foods and pouring love and grace into my relationships. To me, this word is a pearl among all healthy living and psychology terminology.
So there you go and here I go. Welcome, sweet new year of opportunities to grow and do better.
I admit I feel squeamish looking for signs from God. It can feel mystical or new age or dare I say, a little desperate. But Jesus' last days were ripe with them...roosters crowing, veils tearing, miraculous healings, bleeding prayers. Jerusalem was a hotbed of signs and wonders with hundreds of prophecies violently, joyfully fulfilling in a single God-man and his supreme act of love. How could the earth NOT quake?!
Witnessing signs is akin to the tearing of the veil in the temple. Maybe not as dramatic, but still a moment where God allows me to glimpse his glory, to taste a bit of his power this side of heaven. But I rarely think to ask. Or look. Or attribute.
You see, Jesus contrasted the ready faith of the Samaritan's with the restricted faith of the Galileans, who demanded signs and wonders to believe. He said irritably in John 4:48, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe." Paul confirms in 2 Cor 5:7, "We live by faith, not by sight." So I mostly don't ask.
Yesterday, I did. I was wrestling with something that I needed to figure out, embrace, and submit to. The day was beautiful and I had 20 minutes of spare time waiting for my daughter to finish bell choir practice at Assisi Heights, the glorious Catholic convent imposingly perched on a hill in my town. Thanks to its Roman architecture and castle-like quality, I had my kids convinced for years that it's where the princess of Rochester lives.
On the hillside of the beautiful grounds is a quiet niche surrounded by sandstone walls crosscut with gnarly oak roots. At the far end, a shrine of Mary. I have visited the open sanctuary many times and have always sensed it to be a sacred spot, not because someone ordained it to be sacred, but because it becomes holy ground to me when I enter.
I went there requesting a sign. I specifically asked God to lead me to a rock, something I could hold as a reminder that I was living out my calling and was committed to spiritual growth. I walked slowly along the curving wall, enjoying the playful squirrels, when one of them knocked loose a stone, which rolled to my feet. I picked it up with a smile and held it in my hand, studying it. Yes, it was the product of nature and gravity and weak sandstone and busy squirrels, but it was, in that veil-tearing moment, a sign which filled me with wonder.
I spent the last 20 hours either sleeping or battling the stomach flu. Oy! I missed church and small group, grocery shopping, and weekly planning and now I'm starting the week out with a residual headache and a sense of being behind already.
But as I sat on the front porch this balmy morning, sipping coffee and chatting with my husband who is in China, I though about the value of being emptied (sorry for the visual.) Letting go of schedules and duties and commitments is not easy for me, but there is spiritual discipline in both fulfilling and withdrawing from them.
Jesus, in his final hours, both fulfilled and withdrew.
But I'm learning we can develop the art of simultaneous fulfilling and withdrawing. Life can be lived in synchronized work and worship. In my favorite book on the devotional life, A Testament of Devotion, Thomas Kelly writes
"At the first practice of inward prayer is a process of alternation of attention between outer things and the Inner Light. Preoccupation with either brings the loss of the other, yet what is sought is not alternation, but simultaneity, worship undergirding every moment, living prayer, the continuous current and background of all moments of life."
This, I feel, is my highest calling: to "walk and talk and work and laugh with your friends. But behind the scenes, keep up the life of simple prayer and inward worship." -T. Kelly
