Tag Archives: Faith

Renewal and re-dedication

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The very idea of a fresh start has a way of filling me with anticipation and hope. I tend to get rather unrealistically excited as each New Year celebration approaches, and I’ve had to learn to hide that excitement around most people in my life, especially those who will tend to remind me, “Yeah, you were all excited last year and had all these supposedly wonderful plans, but how many of them did you actually carry out?”

Maybe that’s why I need fresh starts so much — I tend to get off track, don’t stick to things, and need to get back on track, re-orient myself, and re-commit to what is truly important.

I was thinking of this as September 1st was approaching. It’s the beginning of our church year in the Byzantine Catholic Church, so I was using this as a time to re-assess some things in my devotional life, as well as in my life in general. As usual, the process was encouraging and motivating for me.

On Sunday, while I was still filled with the heights of fresh start excitement, there was a baptism during Divine Liturgy. Someone had once told me that baptisms are a wonderful time for us to renew our own baptismal promises, to remind ourselves yet again of what Christ has done for us, and to recommit to following Him. That is so true! As I was driving home, I was reminded of all the many opportunities the Church gives us to renew and refresh, and to re-dedicate our lives to God. I don’t need to wait for New Years, or for a baptism, or for some special event like a retreat or conference.

In our parish, the sacrament of confession is available before every Divine Liturgy, and also by appointment. This gives me ample opportunity to obey, and receive the promise of, James 5:16. “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. A prayer of a righteous person, when it is brought about, can accomplish much.”

Every Divine Liturgy, whether I went to confession beforehand or not, is a time for me to repent, to profess my faith, and to receive Christ anew and afresh. It is so powerful… and it’s my own fault if I fail to truly mean the words that I am saying and singing.

Friends of mine begin every day, before they even get out of bed, with some version of a morning offering prayer that includes words like, “I offer You my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day.” I tend to stagger out of bed in a sleepy stupor, but I am without excuse if I don’t dedicate my day to God once I’ve had my morning coffee.

Some of my friends also do an examination of conscience, or examen prayer, every evening before bedtime. I think it’s a wonderful habit… maybe I will manage to make it mine some day.

Our monastic tradition has given us diverse resources to “pray the hours”, following the example of King David: “Seven times a day I praise You because of Your righteous judgments.” (Psalm 119:164). The Liturgy of the Hours revolutionized my prayer life years ago, and various other prayer books have taken their place during various times in my life. But I don’t need to lug one of my prayer books everywhere in order to pause and pray during the day.

A simple way of praying the hours

In fact, as valuable as these resources are, what I really need to do is to remind myself to pray, and to take every time available to re-connect with God. Eventually, maybe I’ll even get to the point where I am “praying without ceasing”.

In the meantime, given life’s many distractions, and my proneness to wander, I am thankful for all those times, seasons, and opportunities for renewal. I am thankful for the reminders to examine myself prayerfully, to repent, to purpose to amend my ways, and to re-dedicate myself to taking up my cross daily so that I may follow Jesus more closely.

Truth, beauty, and goodness

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To say I’m not a philosopher is an understatement. Back in my long ago schooldays, I managed to say something semi-meaningful and thoughtful, which promoted my wonderful teacher to loan me his copy of Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy. He thought I would enjoy it.

I was utterly and completely lost. I did somehow inadvertently fool him once with a coherent comment or two about Plato, but I probably gravely disappointed him after that. I never could finish the book.

Instead, I daydreamed my way through school, wrote angsty poetry in Algebra, got grades accordingly, and only became a serious student in Latin class. I’m still not sure why that subject commanded my attention.

By some weird quirk, I somehow got high SAT scores — maybe because I didn’t take the whole thing seriously enough to get nervous. Then I took some achievement tests, laughed my way through the absurdly easy German one, and was admitted to UCLA on the basis of my test scores alone, ignoring my scandalous grades.

My college career wasn’t any more successful than my junior high and high school careers had been. I finally dropped out after a couple years.

I never took a single philosophy class. But I did hang around Kerckhoff Coffee House with some grad students, discussing “deep things” , and somehow I must have uttered a semi-profundity or two, because they kept me around and even solicited my opinions.

But classically educated I definitely wasn’t.

Fast forward a bunch of years, when I was questioning why cultural relevance was more important than beauty, and why our church at the time should, according to the new pastor, abandon our usual worship space, meet in our fellowship hall instead, and make it look as un-churchy (and hence as devoid of beauty) as possible. Apparently, since I was already approaching 50 years of age, I was woefully out of touch.

Only it wasn’t just my age. In my 20’s I had voiced similar concerns in a different church, about the topic of music, and had jokingly dubbed myself a young fuddy-dud.

Years passed and stuff happened and, in a flash of insight, I told someone, “I’m starved for beauty. It’s as if I’ve been keeping myself on hunger rations.”

I attended a small conference about truth, beauty, and goodness — most of it way over my head because, again, I am no philosopher. I’m not really an artist either, and I haven’t written an angsty poem in years. But I was starved for beauty.

Then my dear daughter-in-law sought refuge with us during COVID, bringing beauty (and my son and granddaughter) with her. She didn’t just pile food haphazardly on a plate; she arranged it artfully. She didn’t just grab a snack and head outdoors; she created a lovely scene that belonged in a painting from long ago. She didn’t just toss on jeans and t-shirts; she dressed herself and her daughter as if clothes actually mattered. It was inspiring.

Gradually I began bringing little bits of beauty back in my life. I began opening my heart wide to even more beauty.

In the meantime — between my young fuddy-dud days and a couple years ago — I had been on quite the spiritual and theological journey, and I’ve got the books to prove it. (Well, not all the books… I’ve gone through three major cullings of my personal library in the past two decades.) In the past year or so, while visiting my daughter, I said something to her priest about truth, beauty, and goodness. He probably thought I was more profound and philosophical than I am, and said something in return about transcendentals… and I had to look it up later.

Turns out cultural relevance is not a transcendental.

You can’t just go where the beauty is, I had told myself sternly. But God kept drawing me with beauty. Also with truth and goodness, to be sure, and He was wooing and pursuing me with love all that time — and it was the beauty that, at least for me, illuminated all the rest.

After my first reading assignment from my priest, when I returned to my next meeting with him, I enthused, “It’s written so beautifully!”

I was discovering Byzantine Catholicism.

Since my priest is classically educated and didn’t daydream his way through most of his education, he tried to explain something about the role of beauty in revealing the nature of God, drawing us to Him, and glorifying Him in worship.

In a culture that assaults my sensitive nature with so much ugliness — not just the ugliness of its sin but its architecture, art, home decor, music, entertainment, and ideas — God has drawn me into beauty. Every Sunday I experience a beautiful, glorious foretaste of Heaven as we step outside of time, and worship God in spirit and in truth.

Every Divine Liturgy, I taste and see that God is good, that He is really and powerfully more than I could ever hope, and that He is all that is true, beautiful, and good.

Faith Journey | Daddy, my greatest influence

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Today, the 15th of June in 2023, marks the second anniversary of my father’s death. While clearing things out of his desk some months ago, I ran across something I’d written back in 1986, as part of a Fathers Day tribute in light of Psalm 1. [Comments in brackets were not in the original.]

Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
2 But his delight is in the Law of the Lord,
And on His Law he meditates day and night.
3 He will be like a tree planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season,
And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever he does, he prospers.

4 The wicked are not so,
But they are like chaff which the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the wicked will perish.

My very earliest memories of my father: either he was not home, or my mother was whispering, “sssshh, he’s studying” or “sssshh, he’s sleeping”. [Note: he was a seminary student at the time.] Despite being so busy and tired, he still tucked us into bed every night, read us Bible stories, and prayed with us.

Later, the pastorate placed high demands on our family. He had been taught that the family was to come last, after God and church. There were pressures on him as a pastor, and on us as a family. Daddy had to miss many of my activities, like concerts on Wednesday nights, etc. [In my early adulthood, my father asked me forgiveness for this, and told me that he deeply regretted not prioritizing us.]

What Daddy did give me is even more precious than time. He taught me the law of the Lord, and he showed me by his example what it means to delight in it. Ever since I can remember, Daddy has arisen at an extremely early hour to spend time in prayer and meditation on the Word. Having a father who starts out every day like that is a rich blessing — having our own resident Bible Answer Man was like icing on the cake.

Daddy does more than just start the day with Bible reading; he carries the Law with him throughout the day. Children see their fathers in every possible light. I have seen my father tired, hurt, disappointed, frustrated, angry — I have even seen him near death — but I have never seen him violate or compromise his strong beliefs.

Whether they want to be or not, fathers are teachers. Daddy is a good one. There are many important lessons he has taught me, but the most important one, the lesson that matters throughout eternity, is who Jesus is. How can I help but love the man who introduced me to Jesus?

Daddy has always worked so hard, many times too hard. Yet he took time to make me feel special and pretty and important. He disciplined me with love. He gave me lots of hugs and kisses, and wiped away many tears. [And he mopped up my vomit… bandaged up literal wounds… and straightened my nose after I broke it.] He loves my mother deeply, and treats her with the utmost kindness. He has never ceased praying for me. He has always been terrific in a crisis, responding in the best possible way. His sermons are still my favorite.

I’m proud and very blessed to be the daughter of a man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but instead delights in the law of the Lord.

Holy Week and Death

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What I thought was exhaustion and jet lag upon returning home from Thailand and Nepal quickly turned into fever, cough, malaise, and weakness. I spent three days in bed, emerging only for trips to bathroom and kitchen. The trips to the kitchen seemed grueling in my weakened and dizzy state; after getting something to drink and some other basic necessity, I’d collapse into a recliner to rest up for the trip back down the hallway and back to bed.

Most of the time, I slept.

Until I got sick, I had had two priorities for that time: to rush to my mother’s side and make up for the time together I’d missed while gone, and to ready our house for a visit from my daughter and her family. Neither was to be.

This was supposed to be an extra special time, something I’ve been eagerly anticipating. Last year, after Pascha, I had determined to make this Holy Week even more of a priority; I’d marked it off on my calendar so as not to inadvertently schedule anything else during that time. Among other things, I was looking forward to joining local parishes in an annual 15 mile Stations of the Cross walk on Good Friday.

As time went on, the significance of this year grew even more — three people I deeply love will be entering the Church during the Easter Vigil at the local Roman Catholic parish, the same one where my daughter and her family had entered the Church.

But my best laid plans were being upended. When it was growing very close to the time that my daughter and family were to begin traveling here, I was still very sick. We agreed that it would be best if they didn’t come. In the meantime, all my efforts were going towards recovering so that I would be well enough to visit my mother and not put her and her entire care home at serious risk.

I spent Palm Sunday alone at home… Not being at church was eerily reminiscent of 2020, during the COVID lockdowns.

On Monday of Holy Week, I was feeling much better and considered donning an N95 mask and visiting my mother. Her nurse, hearing me cough over the phone, urged me to stay home.

On Tuesday of Holy Week, the nurse suggested I come. I quickly got ready and was on my way out to the car when I got the phone call from one of my mother’s caregivers.

My mother was gone.

Somehow I managed to drive. I managed to try to make two phone calls while I was driving — using my silly little dumb phone and praying I wouldn’t crash. One person answered, and somehow I managed to deliver the sad news and drive at the same time and not run off the road and not crash into anyone.

I worked at a hospital in my early 20’s. I watched some people die. I saw dead bodies. Years later, I watched my brother die. More recently, I watched my father die.

But nothing, nothing on earth, could have ever prepared me for walking alone into my mother’s room and encountering her still warm but lifeless body.

I sat vigil at her bedside. I prayed. I did the typical thing we tend to do when our loved ones die and we feel compelled to speak to them as if they are still there. I searched for her Daily Light but both copies of her favorite devotional book had managed to disappear from her room in my absence. I prayed some more.

In between, I had an awful moment of collapsing on the floor in profound grief.

I made a few phone calls. I answered some. It is in moments like these, in the depths of pain and sorrow, when I am always so profoundly awestruck by those people in my life who somehow know how to love me well, who show me Jesus by allowing Him to shine through them. If I were to sum up my “testimony”, my faith journey thus far, it’s that — as I often say these days — “God wooed and pursued me”. And He often used people to do so. Some of those people were God’s hands and feet and voice yesterday, when I needed that tender loving comfort most of all.

My husband arrived just in time so that we could watch them take my mother’s body off to the mortuary.

I lost my beloved Opa shortly before Holy Week of 1977, and celebrating the Resurrection in the midst of grief seemed oh so profoundly glorious. In the years since, and especially now that I celebrate the liturgical calendar more deeply and fully, Holy Week has become much more significant and meaningful — and the Resurrection tremendously more triumphant and joy-filled.

There is no better time, it seems, to be so exhausted, so wracked with grief and loss, and so at the end of oneself than now, this very week.

Some more thoughts on the Jesus Movement

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Since my previous blog posts on this topic, I’ve had some interesting discussions, online and in real life, with people whose experiences during that time were far more positive than mine. Putting that together with discussions that I’ve had over the years with pastors and leaders about how to be better prepared for the “next Jesus Movement”, here are some things I’ve been mulling over, in no particular order of importance:

People are far more important than things.

Chuck Smith was willing, if necessary, to sacrifice the church carpet in order that hippies would feel welcome. What are we willing to sacrifice? What if it was our church’s elaborate sound systems, multi-media, and smoke machines? What if it was wasn’t so much things but our church programs? What if, for example, in order to reach a certain subculture, we needed to welcome large families with children of all ages into our church services, instead of practicing age segregation?

Before and during the Jesus Movement, it seems like we spent a lot more time at church.

On Sundays, we went to Sunday School, and then the morning service. Later, we went to the evening service, followed by youth group or an “afterglow service”. The evening service was more informal, and “testimonies” were an exciting part of it. When my father was pastoring in Big Bear, he formed what he called a “combo” (a sort of precursor to worship bands) that practiced Sunday afternoons and then led the singing during the evening service, which was soon filled with young people.

But church and related Christian activities didn’t just fill our Sundays. There was Tuesday night prayer meeting and Wednesday night Bible study. In Big Bear, a young couple from our church held a youth Bible Study (I was too young to attend) that literally overflowed their home one night a week. Once we moved, many of our Friday nights were youth nights at church. The Bible Rap met on a different night. Spending five or more hours at church on Sundays, and three evenings a week at church or related activities was not at all unusual.

Would we be willing to prioritize our time like that today? Which of our current activities would we be willing to sacrifice? How important do we believe it is to assemble together as the Body of Christ? Are we gathering now to pray for the next Jesus Movement?

The “Jesus People” were enthusiastic about personal evangelism.

That enthusiasm was so catching that weird, shy, social misfit me handed out tracts and “Jesus Papers” at school, took part in a door-to-door witnessing campaign, and tagged along with other people sharing their faith. I knew kids who “went out witnessing” at least once a week.

What are we doing? What are we willing to do?

Testimonies are powerful.

The reason many of the Jesus People so eagerly talked about Jesus is because He was active in their lives. We may not all have dramatic initial conversion stories but our lives should be stories of ongoing conversion as we follow Jesus and allow Him to change us.

I have a lot of theories as to why so many of the kids that I knew “fell away”, and there might be almost as many reasons as there are kids, but I think a lot of it has to do with relationship — not just relationship with God but with His people.

During the roughest parts of my life, including the times in which my relationship with God was truly faltering, there were people who stood in the gap for me — people who prayed for me and loved me even when I was not the nicest person.

New converts need discipling and mentoring. Jesus gave us the example — the crowds that gathered about Him came and went, but He continually taught and equipped the twelve disciples. Eleven of them went out and changed the world.

Who are we pouring our lives into?

It’s usually not a good idea to give new converts a platform or leadership role.

In fact, the Bible warns against this. Common sense tells us that a teacher should be catechized, instructed, and taught how to teach, and a leader should likewise be taught and mentored. Jesus’ disciples didn’t just “go to school” for three years; they lived and ate and ministered with the perfect Rabbi — God incarnate — for three years.

Christianity is extremely “incarnational”.

God became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus resurrected bodily, and still exists in bodily form. We believe in our own bodily resurrection, and thus we should believe that our bodies, and what we do with them, truly matter.

When I was an evangelical, I gradually became both puzzled and amused at how disembodied our worship was. We would sing “let incense arise” without incense. We would sing “Come let us worship and bow down” without bowing, and “let us kneel before the Lord our God” without kneeling. Somehow we thought we were doing these things without actually doing them, and supposedly what our bodies actually were doing wasn’t so important. People got annoyed at me if I brought up this disconnect.

As human beings, we are not spirits inhabiting bodies, but both body and spirit. As those whom Christ has bought with a price, we are one with Him and one with His Body. It is a mystery to be sure. But our faith, our worship, our obedience, everything we do — it needs to involve all of us. We aren’t disembodied spirits worshipping God merely in some spiritual sense. We are living sacrifices, and our bodies belong to the One who saved us. Holiness involves our entire being.

That’s how we need to live.