These days...

These have been good days, much needed time with family and friends apart from the stress of work and school. On Christmas I made sweedish pancakes for breakfast, a tradition that has been in the family since I was 5 or 6. Papa taught me to make them and we would do them together each Christmas morning until he passed away 2 years ago. I have tried to carry on the tradition, though I doubt they will ever turn out as good as his. Christmas was small this year with all my grandparents now passed away and Maegan in Turkey. I have been spending a lot of time reading, mostly it has been the EMT textbook but I have found time to finish reading Brueggemann’s “Praying the Psalms” and Lewis’ “Weight of Glory.”

Last week Ryan and I hike Mt. Bierdstadt, a 14,060 ft. mountain just west of Denver (see pictures below). It was breathtaking. We had to snowshoe to the foot of the mountain, but decided to rough it up the rest of the way though it involved a lot of slipping and careful stepping. The icy snow came in handy on the way down when we slid down snow field after snow field, the longest of them being about 200 ft.

Mom goes into surgery on Thursday for her breast cancer. I can’t accurately express all the emotions and thoughts that daily go through my head on this issue. She hasn’t looked at all well this week, which has brought the cancer to the forefront of my thoughts. It is a reality that we live with as a family now. Between the alkaline diet, the oxygen treatments and the unthought-through, well-meaning words of those around us it becomes impossible to pass a few hours without the realization that mom has cancer. It makes me pray differently, makes me think differently, and constantly serves to remind us of how fragile and momentary life is. Running the other day I watched the sunset for a long time and was again reminded of the sheer gift of life.

Our longings are chasms which we don’t know how to bridge, they are reflections for the things which won’t be lost, or taken, or destroyed. There are moments where the present awe of a thing, an image, molds with the secret longing lying dormant in our hearts and ALL OF US BECOMES WAITING, from “the bottom of our toes to the edges of our fingertips.” God works in our life with images and we are wont to revel in them alone, failing to see that the glory is not IN them, rather it comes THROUGH them. I am guilty of this. That is why when I read Donnes “Batter My Heart” I am deeply moved by the line “Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me” but fail to bring it into actuality because I’m not sure I’ve ever been “ravished” by God. Perhaps I am still waiting. I love the words, the idea, but fail to understand them.

Lewis says,

“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you – the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually happened in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.”

Does this “betrayal” come through in how you pray?

Have you been “ravished”?

I’m not sure I’ve “allowed” God this – the ache for it is there, but so is the fear.