Food Blessing Me

Local beef and veggies--the sourdough didn't make it into the photo!

Since moving to North Carolina in June, I have had the good fortune to become acquainted with many people. I’m grateful for friends I’ve made through church, through reconnecting with Young Harris College, and several groups I’m participating in. As an introvert, I knew I would need to find points of connection and that it would require me to step out of my comfort zone to meet new people and become part of a new community.

One of the great joys and surprises has been getting to know local people who are providing much of my food. I found a local farm offering CSA shares and most of my vegetables come from Zach and Ilana, the first-generation farm couple who own Levity Farms, grow amazing food and are also just delightful people to know. While I normally pick up my weekly CSA share not far from me, it’s fun to drive the extra thirty minutes to their farm, where I’ve walked the fields to see what’s growing. They have an especially cool bamboo tunnel you walk through to get from the produce coolers to the fields!

Brasstown Beef @ Ridgefield Farm is only about fifteen minutes away. They raise cattle and sell beef. In addition to being animal welfare certified and certified pasture centered, the farm has also placed a large portion of its land into a conservation easement that protects it from being developed for housing. For a number of years, I have sought to avoid purchasing factory-farmed meat, because of the inhumane way the animals are raised. To drive by the pastures and see the cows that are able to live as they were meant to live makes me happy to purchase beef from this farm!

A young couple the next town over from me bakes the most wonderful sourdough bread! Every time I pick up a loaf from them I enjoy conversation and seeing the progress they are making on opening a storefront on the town square. I also enjoy talking with their children, who are so comfortable with all the folks dropping by to pick up bread. I’m excited to visit The Firefly Café in Hayesville, and look forward to supporting them as they build their business.

I still do make trips to the grocery store, but I relish the fact that I know where much of my food comes from, and know the people who are making it possible, and that the food and the providers are local! In addition to supporting local small businesses, I feel like every purchase I make from any of these folks is putting my own roots deeper into this community I now call home.

While many of us will be saying a blessing over our food this Thanksgiving, I can turn the table and say that my food in this new home is blessing me! To live in such close proximity with people who are providing what I eat is nourishing both to body and soul!

Reshaping the Heart: A Lenten Journey

 

I wrote Lenten devotions for my church. You can access a digital copy here. It takes a little while to download, so consider it an opportunity to cultivate patience!

This video introduces the resource and talks a bit about Lent.

A Thanksgiving Prayer

 This morning I rose from a bed,

drank clean water from a faucet,

ate breakfast in my home.

Thank you, God.

I have a toothbrush, soap and clothes,

friends, family and love.

Thank you, God.

My heart beats, my lungs swell,

my mind works, I hear birds.

Thank you, God.

Your colors surround me,

your love sustains me,

your peace fills me.

Thank you, God.

A Prayer to Know Myself

“. . . your Father knows what you need before you ask.”  --Matthew 6:8

You know me, God, inside and out,

better than I know myself.

You know my needs, and though I am often

blinded by wants,

you see clearly.

Draw me closer to you so I may see myself

as you know me.

Help me to parse wants from needs

that I may be content and grateful.

I want my prayer to be a song

sung to your secret tune for me.

Let my life follow your melody,

let my spirit resound with your song.

Community

Needing community

the Spirit interceded,

bringing me to

where I am seen for

who I am,

I put down roots and bear fruit in this

place of welcome,

receiving.

Community’s gift—being seen,

being known,

being accepted—

being a part

rather than

being apart.

Belonging to the Truth

Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth. This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts in God’s presence.      

    1 John 3:18-19

Love well demonstrated happens when we belong to the truth. We belong to the truth when we know how much God loves us. When we know how much God loves us, we can love ourselves. When we love ourselves, we can love others. When we love others, we demonstrate love with both action and truth. The coupling of action and truth is important because our actions demonstrate love to the extent that we belong to the truth.

Belonging to the truth is different than saying you don’t tell lies. Belonging to the truth is a way of being, a permeating presence, the awareness that one is deeply rooted in, and drawing life from, the heart of Christ. When we are confident of God’s love for us, we dwell in the truth and our actions flow from that truth. There is integrity between inner and outer—inner truth and outer action.

Belonging to the truth is not moralistic. It is not incidental, that is, based on telling the truth in particular incidents. You can tell those who belong to the truth because their entire way of living emanates love. Moralists, on the other hand, emanate pride, which is fearful, judgmental and arrogant, highly concerned with controlling the perceptions of others. Moralists are focused on what others think of them and are often vocal about how moral they are. Those who belong to the truth are focused on God, acting out of their love for God, unconcerned about how they are perceived by others.

This story from the sayings of the desert fathers that illustrates the difference between belonging to the truth vs. not telling a lie:

It was said about one brother that when he had woven baskets and put handles on them, he heart a monk next door saying: What shall I do? The trader is coming but I don’t have handles on my baskets! Then he took the handles off his own baskets and brought them to his neighbor saying: Look, I have these left over. Why don’t you put them on your baskets? And he made his brother’s work complete, as there was need, leaving his own unfinished.

In this example, the compassionate brother said the handles were left over, when, in fact, they were not left over, but the ones he needed to make his own baskets complete. A moralist would say he told a lie, and yet he demonstrated compassion and showed he belonged to the truth. To have given the handles to the brother, telling him they were his only handles, would have been prideful and made the despairing brother feel worse than he already felt.

Those who belong to the truth know that they belong to the truth by grace alone, not merit, so they are humble and can extend grace to others. Because they aren’t concerned with what others think of them, they are free to act out of love for God and love for others, actions that come from a heart of love that is confident of God’s love for them. There is congruence between their inner being and outward doing—they belong to the truth because love permeates both their inner being and outward doing. They aren’t perfect; they still fall short, but because they know deeply God’s love for them, they can humbly acknowledge their failure and receive God’s grace with gratitude.

Moralists, who are often quick to tell you that they don’t lie, are actually living a lie because there is not congruence between their inner being and outward doing. While their outward doing may appear “correct,” it comes from a heart of fear, pride and self-righteousness. It is a façade that masks their inner fear.

May we know the truth of God’s love for us, and live lives of congruence that demonstrate our belonging to the truth.  Such a life is a life of compassion, freedom and joy!

Exuberance

Jeremiah 31:2-13

Grace in the wilderness!

A foretaste of freedom, of life

abundant, new, filled with surprise!

God-sized gifts, deepest longings met,

my heart bursts with love and praise.

Loved with a love that lasts

forever. Forever! Home—

extravagant garden of God’s heart.

I dance and dwell in gratitude,

laughter my song of joy!

Signs and Wonders

Daniel 4:1-8

Generous God, I cannot begin to name

all the signs and wonders you have shown me,

especially in the recent past. Kindnesses

sent when I was at my lowest, surprises when a

word read affirmed or clarified an earlier thought,

opportunities more abundant than I could have imagined.

Some were truly improbable—

the red bird that crashed into a window beside me.

As it lay on the ground and drew its last breath, I was given

the answer to a troubling question. The dream that revealed

something I could not have known any other way.

The weight of unseen hands on my head, blessing me

for a journey I didn’t know was coming.

You are a God who constantly surprises.

Thank you for all love’s expressions, for the way

you reveal yourself time and time again. Amen.

Bless the Lord

Psalm 78:1-4, 52-55

Bless the Lord, O my soul

for God, the faithful

does not leave me alone,

but is always with me

through storms and sunshine.

Bless the Lord, O my soul

for God, the nurturer

led me through my darkest hour

so I could endure my trial

and emerge with stronger faith and love.

Bless the Lord, O my soul

for God, my advocate,

who knows the truth of who I am,

and surrounds me with friends who know this truth

so I can claim it for myself.

Bless the Lord, O my soul

for God, the merciful,

who does not hold my failures against me,

whose memory of my sin is short

and whose love is long and generous.

Bless the Lord, O my soul

for God, the playful,

who fills my life with laughter,

who revels in relationships

of mutuality and depth.

Bless the Lord, O my soul

for God, the creator

of coffee, chocolate and wine,

of sunrises, oaks and sparrows,

of color, music and mountains.

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Advent Musings with Mary's Magnificat - Week 2

Mary said,

“With all my heart I glorify the Lord!
     In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.”             Luke 1:46-47

Oftentimes a different voice helps us to hear something familiar in a new way. Reading Mary’s song from the Common English Bible presents a phrase that has had an impact on how I see Mary, and gives me new ears to hear her song.

“In the depths of who I am” is how the CEB renders the more familiar phrase “my soul.” The different wording provides a glimpse into who Mary is and why she was chosen. For Mary, praise is not limp, hollow or perfunctory. It is uncontainable and irresistible.

Is that true for us? How has your worship, your praise, been expressed this Advent? Is it irrepressible or is it imperceptible?

What is important about our praise is that it come from the depths of who we are. Expressing our praise will look different for each of us. Some of us are naturally more demonstrative and exuberant. Others of us are naturally quiet. Connecting with our deepest being connects us to God, which then leads us to praise. When I am moved from the depths of my being, praise gets expressed with tears, enthusiastic singing, and an uncontrollable smile.

Rejoicing from the depths of who we are is not confined to an hour in the sanctuary each week. It is a way of living every moment of every day. It is a thanksgiving way of living, being grateful for what is. It is having eyes that see God in all life’s circumstances. It is being aware of God’s presence always.

This Advent, can you rejoice in God from the depths of who you are? I imagine that is a gift God would love to receive!

Celebrating What Is

It’s a week where we are reminded to be thankful. Many of us will gather with family or friends to share a meal (or two or three). There will be laughter, stress, tears—a whole gamut of emotions. Maybe we’ll go around the table and ask folks to name something for which they are thankful. The responses will vary, and some will be predictable.

Being grateful is easier sometimes than others. But gratitude should not hinge on the acceptability of our circumstances. Gratitude is a way of being. When we are grateful people we see the world with different eyes. Grateful people still see the pain and suffering in the world and in their own lives. They feel it deeply. They hurt—both for themselves and for others. In fact, because they are grateful people, they can more acutely hold pain and suffering than those who blind themselves to their own hurt or that of others.

Grateful people are faith-filled people. They can hold the pain because they know there’s a bigger picture, a larger scenario than the pain they know. It is those who deny, numb, or ignore pain and suffering who cannot truly be grateful. When you numb yourself to pain, when you pretend it doesn’t exist, you cannot be fully present to great joy and gratitude.

To be truly grateful is to celebrate what is, to live fully in the present moment, whatever it brings, with faith and trust and thanksgiving. It is to recognize that being human means being present for all of life. Habakkuk captures beautifully what it means to celebrate what is:

Though the fig tree does not blossom,

and no fruit is on the vines;

though the produce of the olive fails,

and the fields yield no food;

though the flock is cut off from the fold,

and there is no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord;

I will exult in the God of my salvation.

Habakkuk 3:17-18

The Unspoken Implications of What We Say

Recently I heard someone talk about a pleasant surprise she had experienced. She was making a large purchase and discovered when she was about to settle the transaction that a significant discount would be applied to her purchase. She said it was a blessing. I wanted to say “No, that is not a blessing. It is good fortune, but hardly a blessing.”

Some Christians attach the word “blessing” to capitalistic, materialistic, self-promoting ventures. I do believe we are blessed, but not when we get a bigger house, a better deal, or an award. We are fortunate to receive such things, but not blessed.

If we call these fortunate events a blessing, then what do we call it when our house is foreclosed, when the car repair costs more than we expected or when we are passed over for a promotion? Do we say that God is cursing us? That God does not find favor with us?

The other expression that carries the same weight is “It’s a God thing,” as if God really cares that we got a better interest rate than expected on the car loan for our new Lexus. God is not Tinkerbell, or Santa Claus, or a genie who grants our wishes. I think most of us know this, but we still debase who God is through our choice of words and the weight they carry.

I had the privilege of hearing someone talk about the way her faith had grown through the years. She used the word “blessing” but not to describe some fortunate turn of events. Instead she said that although her first husband had been an alcoholic, there was blessing in her circumstances because she learned to cling to God through the difficulty. Years later, she says that had she not had the struggle of that painful marriage, she would not have the faith she has today.

I’ve heard similar stories from cancer patients, from those who are financially destitute and from people who have suffered in other ways. I don’t think God causes these difficult events of life. I don’t believe the unexplainable and unexpected pain of life is a barometer of God’s favor.

What I know is that my faith has to be like the roots of a tree, firm and grounded in the heart of Christ. Seasons change, storms blow hard and break us open, sun shines and life takes fortunate turns. I’m no less blessed in the storms than I am in the sunshine.  It is not the presents of God that bless me, but the presence of God. To be content with who God is—that is a blessing for me and a blessing for God.

Assets

This week I am sharing a piece I wrote in 2014 for the newsletter of my former church:

Assets matter in our culture. Power, prestige and possessions measure our success and achievement. Our lifestyles testify that we believe the one who dies with the most toys wins.

When I graduated from college, I wanted to be the best CPA in Macon. I threw myself into passing the CPA exam, working long hours, community involvement, and eventually, building an accounting practice that received both local and state awards. I was involved at Mulberry, holding positions of leadership within the church. From the outside looking in, one might think I had achieved success.

Richard Rohr says that we only begin to glimpse our True Self through experiences of great love or great loss or failure. In most cases, it is loss or failure that causes a shift in priorities, but even in loss many people never relinquish our culture’s priorities. They measure their worth in terms of assets.

These things were my assets, but I wrote them off as a loss for the sake of Christ. But even beyond that, I consider everything a loss in comparison with the superior value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have lost everything for him, but what I lost I think of as sewer trash, so that I might gain Christ and be found in him. (Philippians 3:8-9a)

Through a series of losses and failures, God began changing my priorities. I began to see my assets as hollow and meaningless. They distracted me from knowing I was supremely loved by God, not because I achieved anything or served on church committees or even raised my children in the church. God loved me through all my hypocrisy, pride and arrogance. God loved me when I was addicted to busyness, status, and the approval of others. When I realized that I didn’t have to meet expectations, say the right words or do the right things to gain God’s love, I could rest, knowing I am beloved by God.

Writing this brings tears, tears of contrition for my utter ugliness and tears of joy for God’s unending grace and love toward me. Luke tells of a woman who came to Jesus while Jesus was eating at a Pharisee’s home. The woman, crying, wet Jesus’ feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfumed oil on them. When the Pharisees criticized Jesus for allowing the woman to touch him, Jesus said “her many sins have been forgiven; so she has shown great love. The one who is forgiven little loves little.” (Luke 7:47)

Love this great holds nothing back. Jesus held nothing back, giving himself that we may know with certainty that we are God’s beloved. With overwhelming joy and gratitude, I want to hold nothing back from my Beloved.

The Dangers of Having

“You are enslaved by the verb “to have”. . . The very mainspring of your activity is a demand, either for a continued possession of that which you have, or for something which as yet you have not: wealth, honour, success, social position, love, friendship, comfort, amusement. You feel you have a right to some of these things: to a certain recognition of your powers, a certain immunity from failure or humiliation. You resent anything which opposes you in these matters.”

                                                --Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism

In this season where gift-giving and receiving is the subject of almost every advertisement and many conversations, it may seem antithetical to consider that “having” is something to beware. If you have children, you may at least be aware that it is dangerous to fulfill their every desire to have, but there are more subtle aspects of having, which Underhill mentions, that may escape our notice.

We are a discontented culture. That discontentment not only manifests in our consumerism but also in our voracious appetite both for experiences and self-improvement.

Back when I had an accounting practice, I remember reading a book that advocated for creating customer experiences, because it wasn’t enough simply to satisfy customer expectations. Business owners needed to craft a unique experience, something to thrill and excite those who came into contact with your company. We see how this is manifested in the growth of extreme sports, in worship that places an emphasis on entertainment, and in restaurants that create thematic atmospheres of jungles, medieval banquets or island beaches, to name a few.

Underhill says we feel we have a right to comfort, amusement, honor and love. We don’t enjoy failure or humiliation, but do we have a right to be exempt from these?

What if we were to see failure and humiliation as gift? If we could welcome the disappointment of not having, and see it as good? What if our appetite for having was replaced with reliance on God and the recognition that Christ alone is enough for us?

If we can begin to see everything as gift, then our compulsion to have diminishes. We can celebrate all of life, even the hurts and failures, recognizing that in all things, God is present with us, sustaining us, holding us, bearing the pain with us. We are never alone. That’s the best comfort, the best experience of all!

Gratitude and Miracles

A recent discussion of Luke 17:11-19, where Jesus heals ten lepers and one returns to thank him, has caused me to consider the connection between gratitude, attentiveness and miracles. In this healing story, the lepers are told to go and show themselves to the priest and as they are on their way, they are healed. I wonder if the healing was gradual, happening as they traveled to be declared clean by the priest.

How often do we notice gradual healing as a miracle, a gift from God? When healing happens over a period of time, do we end up acting like the nine lepers who didn’t return? Do we chalk up our healing to good medicine, good fortune or our own self-care?

Attentiveness gives us the ability to see just how miraculous is life itself, as is the world in which we live. God’s activity in all of it is right out in front for us to see, touch and taste. Each breath is a miracle. Each flower is miraculous. It’s a miracle that the rain that falls is the same rain that fell on Noah, and that flows through aquifers, to be drawn up from water wells by my friends in Guatemala and El Salvador. What we may see as mundane is actually miraculous, and this way of seeing cannot help but make us grateful.

Gratitude is the key that opens us up to love God and others, that unclenches our fists to share what we have with others, to die to self, to give ourselves away. If we are ungrateful, we live with a mentality of scarcity. Gratitude grows when we recognize the abundance of every moment. Gratitude takes our action, our service for God and others, and infuses it with love. Action without gratitude does not honor God.

Every moment of life is shot through with miracles. If you have a hard time seeing them, start by paying attention to your heartbeat, which happens without any effort on your part. Learn to appreciate these small but important miracles that flood our lives with love and light!

Free To Be Joyful

What makes a sunrise or sunset memorable is the presence of clouds. Clouds capture the purples, pinks, oranges and gold of a sunrise or sunset. Because of clouds, we can be stopped in our tracks by the breathtaking beauty of dawn or dusk.

In life, however, we prefer an unclouded sky. The clouds of difficulty, disappointment and loss aren’t something we welcome with gratitude when they show up in our lives. And yet, those clouds are what make the good times especially sweet for us.

I believe that is what happened on Friday of our week in Guatemala. We were in the village an extra day, drilling a second well after the first well failed. While water poured out of the new well with vigor, praise poured out with equal vigor from Estella, the homeowner who had donated the land for the well and who had endured all of us using her latrine, filling her yard with mud, gravel and equipment, and the constant noise and activity of the drilling project. After experiencing the disappointment and possibly wondering what she had gotten herself into, Estella was a picture of pure, unbounded joy, soaked in fresh water from head to toe! Seeing her joy was the best moment of the trip for me.

The freedom to express praise and joy must make God happy. Children are quick to express their joy but I confess I haven’t always been as free in celebrating God’s generosity toward me. Something about the week in Guatemala seemed to flip a switch within me, for even before Estella’s joyful celebration on Friday, I found myself more willing to discard “appearances” to simply be fun and have fun. That freedom seemed to bubble up from my heart, leading me to think that maybe I was catching a glimpse of what it means to have the uninhibited faith and joy of a child.

Estella’s unbridled joy was the exclamation point on the nudges toward freedom I experienced during the week. By Friday, I wasn’t simply wading into the water of joy and freedom; I was soaked in it along with Estella!

Psalm 36:7-9 expresses a life freed for joy: Your faithful love is priceless, God! Humanity finds refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the bounty of your house; you let them drink from your river of pure joy.

Estella drank from the river of pure joy the Friday we finished the well. God’s faithful love should be sufficient cause for me to live a life of pure joy.

Baptism Remembered

 I have remembered my baptism when gentle mist dampens me as I walk in the morning. Instead of church music, I hear the sounds of bugs singing in chorus. I’ve remembered by baptism at the Academy for Spiritual Formation by dipping my fingers in a bowl of water before entering the worship space. The “music” greeting me is the smell of fresh baked bread as I prepare to share the Lord's Supper within a community sharing life together. There are even days when I remember my baptism while taking a shower and a routine daily activity becomes an offering of praise to God.

In Guatemala I remembered my baptism by having a bowl of water from the new well poured on my head. The praise that greeted me was the laughter of children as they played in the fresh clean water. A muddy sugarcane field was transformed into a glorious sanctuary, rivaling the most magnificent cathedral! Worship didn’t look like it does at Mulberry on a typical Sunday morning, but as we laughed, splashed each other with water, and drank from the pipe that poured fresh water into the sugarcane, the muddy field became sacred space. We were standing on holy ground, our laughter an offering of praise to God, who was literally making blessings flow. I thought of a verse from Psalm 107: God can turn the desert into watery pools, thirsty ground into watery springs.”

Elizabeth Canham, author of Heart Whispers, notes that much of our education encourages us to move from contemplative wonder into the world of rational thought, which causes us to lose touch with the child within us “who wants to observe, play, and live fully into the marvelous world of God’s making.” When we are able to recognize the child within us, we can also recognize the “robust playfulness of God (who made Leviathan ‘for the sport of it’ (Psalm 104:27).”

On Friday, in that sugarcane field, God was at play, celebrating with the children of Monte Cristo and our mission team. In remembering my baptism that day, I was able to remember and celebrate the child within me, unburdened by rational thought, propriety or any need to “act my age.” I don’t really care if heaven contains streets of gold and mansions. I hope heaven is a lot more like a muddy sugarcane field in Guatemala, where God, children and adults splash and play and laugh “for the sport of it.”

Hope That Doesn't Disappoint

Momentum can be deceiving. When life appears to be clicking along smoothly, one can get lulled into thinking that expectations will continue to be met.

But life really isn’t predictable, even when all indicators point in a certain direction. Palm Sunday turns into Good Friday. Good Friday becomes Holy Saturday. Holy Saturday is jolted into Easter Sunday. Highs become lows, and lows can unexpectedly become highs. The best way to handle life’s wild or even not-so-wild swings is simply to find God’s presence in every moment, low or high, and be grateful.

Our water well project in Guatemala seemed to be going according to plan on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday morning it appeared that we would dedicate the well the following day. Our translator, Blanca, and I went to the school on Wednesday morning to teach what we thought would be the final hygiene lessons. We told the principal that the dedication was planned for 10:00 a.m. the following day and she said the whole school would attend in their school uniforms. It promised to be a great day of celebration for the community of Monte Cristo!

But when we arrived back at the drill site following the dismissal of school at mid-day, we were greeted, not by anticipation and excitement, but by worried expressions and long faces. There was no water. The well that had seemed oh-so-close to completion was not producing water. It was a difficult afternoon and the ride back to Antigua in the van was the quietest hour and a half of the entire trip. We did not know what the outcome of our week would be. While we knew the community would get a well, we did not know when that would happen. I grieved for the families, for the children who would show up in their uniforms on Thursday, for Estella, at whose home the well was sited, and for the folks on our team who had put so much effort into drilling the well.

That night, I woke up during the night and was thinking about the turn of events. A phrase from scripture popped into my head: hope does not disappoint. I held onto that phrase, a gift and a promise from God.

In a marathon day on Thursday, a new well was begun. Word had travelled through the community and when we arrived at the school, the children were not in their uniforms (which was a relief to me). We taught more lessons, primarily about how to have a healthy community. I could not help but think that one way a community is healthy is by bearing one another’s burdens. In our shared disappointment about the first well, the village sustained each other and us.

On Friday morning, when fresh, clean water poured out of the new well, it was glorious! I think we were even more excited because of the disappointment we had felt two days prior. Hope did not disappoint us!

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.(Romans 5:3-5)

Becoming What We Do

Cynicism, criticism and negativity—it seems to me that these are the predominant attitudes I’ve encountered in groups of adults recently. Even when these are not directed toward me, the aura of these can feel like a heavy coat on a hot day. The sad part of these attitudes is that they are contagious—one cynic in a group suddenly becomes a handful. One critical voice can suddenly be a dam breaking forth, causing every other voice in the group to take up the banner of criticalness.

When did it get to be so popular to be a naysayer? Do folks think it is a sign of maturity to point out every possible flaw in people, plans or organizations? This morning I was reading in the book of Numbers, about how the Israelites complained that the only food they had to eat was the manna that God gave them daily. All they had to do was go outside and gather it up off the ground. It was pure gift to them, a miraculous food supply! And yet, they whined and complained to Moses because it wasn’t what they wanted to eat.

It seems to me that gratitude, encouragement and hope are absent when cynicism, criticism and negativity are present. It’s hard to be grateful for the opportunities and people around us when we are making fun of them or criticizing them.

As we increasingly focus on the negative, it gets harder and harder to see the positive. Douglas V. Steere, Quaker author and professor, says we become what we do. So we can’t make a habit of cynicism without becoming cynics. We can’t regularly criticize without become critical people. Consistent negativity makes us into bitter people.

As a frazzled young mother, trying hard to meet the insurmountable expectations I felt I had to meet, I remember three older women in my church who embodied for me what I wanted to be as I aged. They were positive, encouraging and magnanimous. They smiled a lot. They never had the attitude that they had “done their time” but continued to show up, cheering our children on, and interacting with younger folks at church. To me, they were ageless. And did I mention they smiled a lot?

Now that I am the one with the gray hair and grown children, I realize that I have a choice to make. I can choose to be grateful, cheerful and hopeful or I can criticize, nitpick and complain. I can encourage others or I can tear down what others are trying to build. Knowing that my individual choices in every circumstance become who I am, I pray that I will choose what is hopeful and life-giving.

Approaching Lent Realistically

I am about Lent like some folks are about Christmas. I begin thinking about it weeks in advance, gathering and considering various ideas for what I may give up or take on as a discipline during the weeks leading up to Easter. The discipline of laying aside or taking on offers a constant reminder that Jesus laid aside his divinity and took on the cross and causes me to worship more honestly during Lent.

I approach Lent with expectancy, for I know that if I am faithful and have the right attitude about my Lenten discipline, I will have the opportunity to deepen my relationship with Christ, and possibly make a permanent behavior change that removes an obstacle to intimacy with God.

Last year was likely one of the most difficult seasons of Lent for me in recent years. I committed to several different practices, thinking I had “progressed” in my growth sufficiently to “succeed” with a larger commitment. Even though I was faithful outwardly, my attitude was horrible! I complained almost daily. I provided a new example for Paul’s list in 1 Corinthians 13:1-2: If I give up many things for Lent, but have not love, I am just a whiny complainer that no one wants to be around.

Looking back, I realize that I had an inflated view of myself. Last year’s Lent showed me how feeble and weak I really am. I began Lent with all the bluster of Peter when he said he would never desert Jesus and ended up feeling more like Peter when the cock crowed and he realized his failure to be faithful.

Psalm 103:14 says:

For he knows how weak we are;
                     he remembers we are only dust.

God knows I am weak. The question is: will I recognize and accept my weakness? For when I truly recognize my weakness, what Jesus did as a fully human being takes on greater significance. This year, I come to Lent a bit more humble than last year. I hope that I will remain faithful in my discipline, but more than that, I hope I will practice my discipline with humility and gratitude and love.