Prayer Beads for the Forgetful and the Distracted

Rosaries always fascinated me because they were forbidden in the religious tradition I grew up in. They were one of those Catholic trappings, like incense and processing with a cross that smelt of idolatry, like one might just rely too much on them to get you on the good side of God when we knew only Jesus could do that. Of course, anything outlawed becomes what you want. So in high school, when I stayed with my best friend who was a devout Catholic and who slept with her Rosary, which entangled us during the night, I secretly fingered her beads and wondered about prayer. Did God hear us if we used a prop?

I don’t know much about the history of the Rosary, but I know that traditionally it included praying The Lord’s Prayer and saying The Apostle’s Creed which are pretty universally believed among Christians. I could see it being a cross-cultural help to many. Like, what if you didn’t know how to read? If you loved God, you would be happy for something that framed and directed your prayers to him.

Whether it’s my age or the pace of modern life, I don’t know, but the least thing can distract me from prayer. An Asian beetle crawling on the ceiling. My grocery list. The tag on the back of my shirt, and somehow I’ve leapt across three continents and an ocean to a Greek Island in the Aegean Sea. When a friend gave me a set of Anglican prayer beads, I was interested. First, their beauty pleased me – he made them out of jade and onyx. Second, their smoothness is calming, holding something physical in my hand helps keep me from wandering off to who-knows-where?

So the other day a friend contacted me. She had purchased several sets of prayer beads as Christmas gifts and wondered how I used them. She wrote, “I would love to include your suggestions for use. The ancient prayers that came with them just didn’t seem right for these particular friends.”  Somewhere in my murky past I had written about them, but I couldn’t find it, so, oh well, I started over and came up with this which I thought I’d share. You know. Just in case you are the friend who gets a set.  

Prayer Beads for the forgetful and the distracted.

There are four sections of seven beads each separated by a larger bead.

The larger beads, I use to frame my prayers. Beginning with the cross and moving around the circle, for me, the cross is, of course, obvious – we send all our troubles to the cross. We begin with the cross and end with it. (How appropriate!) The larger beads represent some aspect of Trinity – for example the desire of the Holy Spirit to comfort us. Or the Father to protect us. The Savior to rescue us. Sometimes I might have read a section of the Bible or a daily reading of some kind that reminds me of some characteristic of God and I use that large bead to thank Him and to ask for some of that holiness to be seen in me.

The first section of seven represents the world – what’s out there – outside my personal world and family. Crisis, tragedies in other countries, friends who may need prayer for something specific. I recognize my finiteness in trying to remember EVERYthing,  so this at least helps me to be focused outward and whoever or whatever comes to mind gets assigned a bead even if temporary.

The second section represents my primary family members. Some of them get their own bead!

The third section is me. All seven beads.  I always have a lot to pray about regarding myself. My work, my calling, my attitude, my body, etc etc. But the other sections help me not to be COMPLETELY self-focused.

The fourth section is Thanksgiving.  Each bead represents something I am thankful for.  I think of Phil. 4: 6-7   “Do not be anxious for anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

This is all purely my own invention. Nothing particularly sacred about it.

Hope this helps as you come to God with all your baggage and mess knowing he will receive a humble heart.

A loving vine-dresser

Today we read together the Common Prayer for June 27 and were awed by words so appropriate to our present circumstances.

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser.”  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Today is a  last-day-before-your-life-changes day. Tomorrow our teenage granddaughter arrives to make her home with us until whatever time she is ready to launch into the world. She has one year of high school left. Her life is full of change and unknowns. So is ours.

We are excited and a little nervous. So is she. We have talked a lot about what this could look like, but do we really know? No. What we do know is that she wants to be with us. We love her and she loves us even if I can’t listen to her music that vibrates my ribs and stuns my ears. Yeah. I used to, but those days are gone along with some of my hearing. Give me a little Mozart adagio and I’m happy. There are a lot of details to look forward to. Like Dr. Who episodes and driver’s education and a part-time job and new paint for her room. My only stipulation was – sorry, not black. It’s too hard to cover if you want to change it some day.

This isn’t what we imagined for this stage of life. But isn’t that often how things turn out or don’t turn out? And don’t we wonder if only we could skip the hard parts and fast forward to the place where outcomes are certain and wouldn’t that be just be so sweet? We believe there will be sweetness in ways we don’t know. That in adding to our family – we are doing exactly what God has in mind for us. And for her. And that his work in our lives is a long, slow process. At least that’s how it’s been for me.

Come away with me

Henri Nouwen once said in a sermon:

When you are able to create a lonely place in the middle of your actions and concerns, your successes and failures slowly can lose some of their power over you. For then your love for this world can merge with a compassionate understanding of its illusions. Then your serious engagement can merge with an unmasking smile. Then your concern for others can be motivated more by their needs than your own. In short: then you can care. Let us therefore live our lives to the fullest but let us not forget to once in a while get up long before dawn to leave the house and go to a lonely place.      (Sermon text: Mark 1:32-39)

The past 48 hours I have been alone in a “Monk’s Quarters.” With comforts, I add. It belongs to friends who loan it to friends who need a come-away-spot. It is a gift I love – not only for the place itself, but because Denis encourages and supports my being in a place here where I find renewal. Even when I’m not even sure I’m doing the right things to make renewal happen. Like HOW early do I need to rise? Is sleeping in allowed? How much time in prayer? How many pages of serious reading before I can pick up that NYT Best Seller? Can I just stare over the balcony listening to bird song for as long as I want?

Tracking spiritual growth is difficult. Maybe we’re not meant to “track” it as though it were the Prime Interest Rate. Becoming more holy seems to happen when we’re not looking. Like the tiny wood anemone I saw yesterday as I sat on a bench in the woods. It is so diminutive it is barely noticeable. Suddenly your eyes focus and there it was all along.

Despite my shotgun approach to time away, God meets me with kindness; my successes and failures do lose some of their power and I can smile at them, letting them go. Then, for a while at least, I am ready to crack back into everyday life.

I wish I could give the same experience to so many of you who have little choice, being where you are with your obligations. But if the chance arises. Don’t hesitate! Grab it. Thanks for stopping by and for thinking along with me. Hoping/praying you have strength for days ahead.

Wood Anemone, Root River. Among first forest flowers to bloom in spring.

Wood Anemone. About 1/2" in diameter.

Corn for our seeds

     In today’s Common Prayer – February 22 – we read this prayer:

“Lord God, extend our faith so that even when we fail to see the fruit of our planted seeds, we may have the assurance that every inch of soil overturned will lead to a harvest some day.”

     Last summer our organic farmer friends gave Anita bag of seed corn that was a year old. Joe and Becca said plant however much you want, we can’t risk low germination from old sweet corn seeds. They also generously gave her space for six 100 foot rows. It has always been her dream to grow enough sweet corn for eating delicious golden kernels all winter. The thing is, you might have a good harvest off the ten to twelve corn plants you put in your small urban garden, but that’s still only three ears per corn plant? Three dozen ears altogether? Unless you have room for a lot, it’s a waste of time and space. So the possibilities of corn through the roof had her hungry-eyed.

     This is what happened. We had so much corn we could have begun a factory farm of feeder hogs. We raved over the sweet, tender ears, we ate them like chainsaws – sawdust flying, protective goggles over our eyes.

     It had reproduced itself five hundred fold with wild energy. We ended up freezing 46 quarts and giving away at least 20 dozen ears. For the first harvest we picked three or four wheel barrels full and pushed it up to the yard where we set up a little canning factory. Anita picked, Denis shucked, I cut the kernels off the cob, and together we heated it to boiling point on a camping stove and then put it all in zip lock bags. Tato, the dog ate cobs as he could and all the leftover greens and cobs were dumped over the fence to the chickens and pigs. And that was just the first picking. It’s almost March and we still have plenty of corn to eat.

     thought a lot about that harvest and everything that had to coalesce under sunny days and warm nights to make it so darn good. This rarely happens in life. Sometimes. But rarely. You invest and invest and once in a blue moon you get to see where that seed went and what it did. The prayer above is mostly how it is. Maybe years later you get a facebook message thanking you for all the pizza you served the youth group and how they’ll never forget listening to Purple Rain and thinking about Ferris Buellers Day Off in your living room. We need to keep stumbling down the row year after year because you never know when the corn will come home. But even if it doesn’t, we are assured by God that he grows a great harvest that will overflow all our wheel barrels and burst our freezers. 

Anita and I picked the first load.

 

Denis did the shucking while I began cutting it off the cobs.

Anita took a turn with the knife while I began blanching the corn.

The Chickens feasted on all the leftovers.

   

We made a huge pot of corn chowder on the camp stove in the yard and ate it with Joe & Becca and all the interns. All fresh - even the milk came out of the Jersey cow that morning.

Waiting

We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage – almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recounting of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.    - Thomas Cahill

In the aftermath of the earthquake, stories emerge from the rubble of Japan. Strange stories of grace that break our hearts but give strange hope. Each day we wake and we think to pray for the people of Japan. We know as they face another day, nothing will ever be the same for them. We pray that out of this catastrophe there will be arms to enfold them. That Jesus will give them rest. That he will call many to a glory that will be eternal. Our brothers and sisters.

Last night our small group studied Psalm 130. A short Psalm that begins in the depths, crying out to God. Then comes the waiting and waiting and waiting in the dark feeling both weariness and fright. We are assured of both God’s forgiveness, his steadfast love and his plan for “full redemption” of which we have a taste, but we haven’t eaten the whole thing yet.

I picture full redemption being like the rolling back of the tsunami. In one of the most painful videos we’ve seen, people are watching from an air terminal as it comes across the land, rolling  the parking lots, pouring over the walls, sweeping over the walls, tumbling cars, trucks and people. And you hear the mounting cries of terror and lament. Full redemption will reverse the destruction of life. It will be pulled back and back to restore the earth to something better and more beautiful.

We are going to Chicago today on our own small mission of helping our daughter move. I’ll be away for a few days, but will be back soon.

Pilgrim Food 2011

Going slow the last two weeks. Not a convenient time to be sick or diminished. You know, at Christmas when you want to take care of everyone? Feed them, love them, give them brilliant gifts.

I have a lot of scraps stuck in my Bible; yesterday one I hadn’t read in a long time fell out.

Pensees from a NYC church bulletin:

I am a poor wayfaring stranger,

While traveling through this world of woe.

Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger

In that bright world to which I go.

I’m going there to see my Father;

I’m going there no more to roam.

   I’m only going over Jordan,

   I’m only going over home.

                  - folk spiritual

  

Everyone is on one sort of journey or another: failure to recognize this is to fail to be human and to suffer great deprivation. Walker Percy, the late novelist and metaphysician, once said in conversation, “I have learned that the most important difference between people is between those for whom life is a quest and those for whom it is not.” The vision of a quest confers meaning on our lives. It enables us to see all that happens as moving us closer to or further from our goal, and to make distinctions between what helps and hinders us in our journey.

                 -  Diogenes Allen Spiritual Theology

Christ has planted his Table like an oasis along our pathway, in order that when we become weary with travel, weak and hungry in our souls, discouraged and wounded because of our false steps, stumbling and failing, we may then enter there and be refreshed with the living Bread of Life.

                  -  Carl Olof Rosenius (1816-1868). A Lutheran lay preacher on the Eucharist as the viaticum, the pilgrim’s food

In joy, in adversity, in this new year may you be nourished and blessed by God's good hand. Thinking of many of you I know who stop here for a minute or two. 

That’s not FAIR!

From Sunday’s prayer of confession:

 …we have coveted blessings you wisely and righteously gave to others.

I recall a friend handing out M&Ms to her children and mine.

All six of them stood around their little hands cupped and lifted as she dumped a few into each one from a big bag. As soon as they landed in her son’s palms he counted them and looked furiously at the others’ estimating they had more. He began whining about how unfair and without missing a beat his mother took them all away and said, next time don’t count. He didn’t,  but I saw him stealing glances.

Margie needs to stop counting.

Leaving. Leafing?

After days of rain and gray and even a day in which four inches of snow fell last week, (it’s all melted now) the sun has made the trees on our street blaze with glory. In a strange letting go the above maple tree often drops all its leaves at once. On a windless day in less than three hours it can cover everything beneath it with a layer of radiant yellow. I marvel every time and Denis and I yell at each other to COME LOOK! Then the tree recedes to gray to dead black for winter. Until one day in March, or maybe April, we will waken and notice what didn’t seem to be there just the day before, the faintest haze of color, a sort of burgundy from thousands of buds that wakened while we slept, and then we realize they were sneaking up on us, resting, growing all the while.

Denis has been in Lake Zurich for a week staying with our daughter and Aunt Ruth. I’m going to them tomorrow, hoping to bring a bit of “home” with me. It’s been a hard week with unwelcome sorrows for them. What am I saying? Is sorrow ever welcome? It’s during such times, even though I reject the prosperity gospel, I’m most tempted to pray that God will bring health, wealth, and personal happiness to our immediate family and everyone I love. But in countless ways I’ve found this to be not the pattern or desire God has in mind for us. Again and again, God comes to us in the wilderness, when things look dead or dying, when we are without hope or a way forward, he comes saying, I am your “hiding place from the wind, a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry place.” And as if all this comfort is not enough, and in case we don’t really GET it: He ends with, to you I’ll be “like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.” (Is. 32:2) It fascinates me that each of these scenes represent precarious, uncertain, life-sucking, unwelcoming places. So we turn to Him certain, that in our own sinful and saddened dispositions we will find shelter and hope, and it may not be the kind of shelter or rescue we expect, but we keep reminding ourselves that one day, one day, everything will be restored to the glory God intended for it to have. Just like that maple tree that is fiercely blazing its heart out my window today. Only, it’ll be forever. I like that.

Living with blind spots

It is no longer “OFFICAL.” It’s been fixed and it was so easy. I just let our webmaster know and he changed it. He took the word out. So look at the top of the page. You are reading “The Blog of Notes From Toad Hall.”

My daughter-in-law sent a message the other day. Subject: “call me dumb.” (No, she’s not dumb. Nor am I. I don’t think…)

“So, I was looking at your blog today and something has always looked a little funny to me. I finally figured it out today. In your title the word "official". You have it spelled “offical.” Is that an alternate spelling or intentional? More curious than anything.”

That would be “ah-fickle” rhymes with “ah-pickle.” Why has no one told me til now? For almost two years?! (See how I can make this your fault?) This has to be a case of the brain seeing what it wants to see. I think it’s also called scotoma or blind spots.

I prefer to think it has nothing to do with stupidity, but I can’t be sure of that. I’m uncertain because it is rare when I notice my own impairments and personal flaws. It’s shocking to be told, you are frowning. No I’m not. You are. I don’t feel frowny. I’m not frowning. So I sneak a look at myself when I’m not looking and sure enough. That’s my default pose. But I can explain, it’s just my serious concentrating look, I’m not mad at you.

Every Sunday we are led through confession. During that part of the service, I try to be present – though I can drift off, thinking about who knows what – maybe we should ask Ron if we can borrow his live squirrel trap, or some other weird thing – and suddenly, arrgh, I’ve missed that part of the service altogether. But when I stay present sifting my heart, listening and looking, not only for the OBVIOUS, but for blind spots - I know it’s not quite the same as letting the webmaster know there is a misspelling in the title of your blog, but, okay, there’s some faint connection - that in talking to God about all the stuff I do that I can’t even name cuz I’m not even in touch with it (lurking as it does in my blind spot) God can and DOES have enough mercy to spread over me. I’m relieved that even in my know-nothing condition, I don’t need to completely despair or obsess about it - I have forgiveness and confidence in the mercy of God. I’ve learned it from coming back again and again to this piece of knowing Jesus:

“Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we

may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:14-16).

Sabbath gifts

This evening Denis and I sat on the back porch for a little while, each with a cup of hot tea. There are frost warnings out for northern Minnesota tonight and it was already chilly enough that I wrapped up in an afghan. We sat recounting our weekend -- I was here and he was in St. Louis. A rabbit settled beneath the hedge and closed her eyes, but her ears still twitched. A humming bird came to the feeder right in front of us and we could hear his feathers give a tiny rumble as he downshifted to hover mode. Denis said he's like a semi that does jake braking. He drank, sat on the clothesline, drank again, sat back down, scratched his ear with a leg. Flashed to the nasturtiums, ate a couple gnats for protein then, gone. A bird with a “Purpose Driven Life.”

We pray to receive the coming week as from God’s hands, to be as content with our limitations, work, pleasures, finiteness as the creatures we witnessed tonight.

O God without, within, above

Morning prayers for the 17th day of the month.

…O God above me, God who dwellest in light unapproachable, teach me, I beseech Thee, that even my highest thoughts of Thee are but dim and distant shadowings of Thy transcendent glory. Teach me that if Thou art in nature, still more art Thou greater than nature. Teach me that if Thou art in my heart, still more art Thou greater than my heart. Let my soul rejoice in Thy mysterious greatness. Let me take refuge in the thought that Thou art utterly beyond me, beyond the sweep of my imagination, beyond the comprehension of my mind, Thy judgments being unsearchable and Thy ways past finding out.
…and so let me in all things obey Thy will, through the grace of Jesus Christ my Lord.

Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie.

Use Protection

Often I am to blame for trouble in marriage, friendships, failures of measuring up, the practice of patience or any you-name-it virtue, I know this. But I forget that Satan also has a sniffing devouring interest in tearing us away from security in our Brother and Protector.

We cannot claim with certainty that every one of our sufferings and hardships is the devil’s work, for there are many sources of troubles in this world: our own sins, the sins of others, the hostility of the world, the brokenness of our universe because of the curse, the Lord’s discipline. But even though we cannot with confidence accuse the devil of being the source of all our troubles, we can be sure no matter what the source that Satan will be actively using our sorrows to discourage us and to undermine our faith. He is always going around like a lion to devour us. He is always lying, accusing, and murdering. This is his nature, and his purpose is to seek to tear us away from our security in Christ. Therefore, we must always pray against him, no matter what the source of our particular sorrows.
- The Heart of Prayer by Jerram Barrs

What's in the bag?

Went to a bridal shower for a niece last Saturday and contemplated the rituals women must enjoy or endure when we marry. Perhaps it depends on how you look at it or how much freedom you have to insist on this or that. It was held in a church fellowship hall. My niece was looking beautiful and hardly more than a day old, though I happen to know she was nervous. It’s hard to keep from it when everyone is lookin’ at you. Each gift must be greeted with smiles and thanksgiving even if it’s a crocheted toilet roll cover. My lively, beautiful sister sat beside her, repressing some sort of mischief as usual. I loved seeing my Mom who wanted to sit in the back row so we could yak - talk at length about trivial or boring subjects (to you maybe). There were four rows of folding chairs in a semi-circle in a room full of women (all ages) around the bride and the mothers. Beside them was a table loaded with gifts. But first. It’s been a long time since I played shower games – a feminine tradition I hoped had been lost to history. Unscramble common words from the wedding ceremony. Like: mogro. I didn’t win. You’d think otherwise, since I’m a boggle queen… Then there was the famous “What’s in your purse?” game. You got major points for things like a to-do list and tweezers. My mom almost won having both of those and a lot of other stuff, too. And then we guessed the number of jelly beans in a jar.

I totally perked up during the devotion when the lady suggested we learn to pray for our husbands using body parts as a guide. She included a scripture reference for each one. She began well with the head, moving on to the eyes and the ears. But right after the mouth, inexplicably, she dropped to the feet, and I was left curiously wondering what she did with all those major body parts left out of the list. I’ll bet I could find Bible references for every one of them. But…another time, maybe.

Shortcuts

In his book on prayer, Jerram Barrs writes about Jesus’ temptation and his response to the devil when he said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test:

Jesus knows that there is no shortcut to serving his Father, no easy way to gain the support of the people, no quick and spectacular resolution to this ministry. There is rather faithfulness, doing his Father’s will day after day, trusting him in the troubles that come along, believing in his care when times are tough. Any other way is the way of presumption and pride.

Not much in our American cultural life prepares us for this way of thinking and living. I don’t mean to blame the culture. I know quite well that I can find trouble all on my own. I’ve given plenty of thought as to how I might get through please-fill-in-blank with spectacular results and without pain or bother.

Jesus will not hear us better

Reading through Jerram’s book on prayer, I hear his kind voice intoning this advice. Good for the soul like crusty bread and fine cheese. I’m often corrupted by either pride or despondency, so in hearing this I say to self, “Now, EAT this.”

“…discipline in prayer has to do with reminding ourselves, moment by moment, how much we truly need the Lord. It is a matter of developing a consistent mealtime pattern of saying “thank you” to the Lord; a habit when we rise in the morning of telling him we love him and need him; a routine when we walk by the way (or drive along the way) that we long for him to guide and direct us; a custom of when we meet people of asking him what we should say or do; an instant recognition that when we face temptation we must turn to him for strength; a glad remembrance at the end of each day, when we lie down at night that we are thankful for his support and sorry for our failures. This is the discipline we need.

“…Yet a word of caution is needed. Personal discipline in any area of our life has value. But legalism (making a set of rules that measure how well we are doing in praying regularly) because it almost always leads to either pride or despondency: pride because we are keeping the rules and we congratulate ourselves and become puffed up about how spiritual we are compared with others or with our previous practice; or despondency because we are not keeping our rules, and so we feel unspiritual, useless, and condemned. The Lord desires neither pride nor despondency from us.

“We are always to remember that the Lord will not hear us better because we have observed our disciplines. This is a truth we need to have engraved on our hearts and minds. Nor will the Lord hear us less well because we have not kept to the letter of our disciplines for prayer. He is our completely loving Father who does not condemn us or turn us away because of our lack of spiritual discipline. [my emphasis] It is just because he loves us that he desires that we set aside time for prayer…he longs for us to show him how much we love him and how much we are aware that we need him. [from The Heart of Prayer: What Jesus Teaches Us by Jerram Barrs]

Panic Prayers

Last week after Dad’s funeral I stayed on with Mom for a few days following. On Monday I drove her minivan into Baudette to check email and pick up a few groceries. Hardly anyone who lives up there locks their vehicles or even takes the keys out of the ignition, so when I got out I debated. Should I? With my computer on the front seat? I don’t care how little crime there is. I reached in grabbed the key and locked up. Moments later I was back and dug into my bag only to see I’d somehow lost the key off the ring. Everything else was there – all the buttons including the panic (which I hit a few times), but no ignition key. I began searching. The floor, under the seat, dumped my purse, tramped back and forth to the store scouring the snow and ice. Went inside and asked if a car key had been turned in and the clerk looked so suspiciously at me and pointed to a pay phone that I said no problem, I’ll call my brother if I have to… and I don’t know why I felt compelled to add, my brother is the county sheriff, you know. Dallas Block…and she looked at me then like I was really crazy since I was obviously not local. I felt even more embarrassed.

I don’t know why on that day it seemed such a huge crisis. It was so cold. And the wind was blowing. And aren’t our emotions sometimes so close to the margins we haven’t room for anything extra? I sat for a while resting my forehead on the steering wheel cussing at myself and praying a stream of nonsense, though I’m sure God could knew what I was saying. I didn’t want to walk over to Dallas’ office. Further humiliation. (Oh. THAT’S his sister?) Getting out my cell, I called his home hoping Marijean, my sister-in-law, could put me in touch. I explained my problem and she instantly knew what was wrong.
I had the KEY all along, I just didn’t recognize it. What insane engineer decided to design an ignition key that looks something like a flash drive? I was so relieved I almost cried. I’m not going to figure out the moral of the story…but one thing’s sure, I’m never going to buy a Chrysler. Irrationally. As if I’d have the chance…

Eat me

Life is full of surprises, some of them unwelcome, revealing, unintended consequences. Today I made a salad for lunch, and when it was all prepared with the right amount of dribbled dressing it was pretty perfect. I thought I would sprinkle a little pepper on top, make it special, you know, as if. Without thinking or checking, and must I check the lid every time? I gave a shake and dumped, oh maybe three tablespoons on top. The lid was unlatched and the ring in the pic is what was left after I removed the bowl, although I didn’t think to take a shot of it just then. You can imagine how much fell in the center.

This is too much like life. (You know how I love metaphor.) Some little surprises. Some forgetting to close the lid and some needing to do a bit of cleanup if things are going to be spared the dump.

I’m beginning to read Jerram Barrs’ The Heart of Prayer and earlier came upon this as he reflects on the simplicity and effectiveness of the Lord’s Prayer.

“Because we can come to the Lord without fear we should also come to him honestly, acknowledging the particular areas of sin, of coldness of heart, and of lack of faithfulness that make up our lives. Where am I failing to love God with my whole being and failing to love my neighbor today? Just considering our shortcomings with regard to those two great commandments would make for a long list! We should remember that the Lord wants us to be specific, for it is only as we face up to the practical reality of our failing to love God and to love our neighbor that we begin to see the seriousness of our sins. Sin is a nasty and ugly business – the truth is that every day we grieve the Lord and we hurt the people around us.”

All true. And what’s good about this process of confession is we get rinsed. Like the salad. I thought of rinsing it in a strainer. Holding it under the faucet as streams of black pepper washed down the drain, and with another bit of dressing I ate the whole thing and it wasn’t bad. I’m in need of rinsing and it’s not as easy as we’d like to think, that getting ourselves to the faucet.