Advent

The four weeks of Advent leading up to Christmas is all about preparation for Jesus’ coming. It is a seasonal reminder of the work we should be about all year long. We are preparing for the coming of the Christ – the One who ushers in God’s Kingdom here on earth. We are in a life-long season of Advent as ones who are living between Jesus’ first and second comings.

This preparation takes some hard work that is done with unwavering hope that Jesus is coming; God’s Kingdom is coming, that we will be restored in our relationship with God, with each other and with the earth.

These are all big concepts that I’m talking about. But Advent is a big thing.

If I were to take a picture of what I think Advent looks like, it wouldn’t be of a heavily-pregnant Mary, a donkey, or even a stable. It would be this image here. I took this photo a few years ago in Darfur. It’s the tail end of the dry season and everything is as dusty, hot and dry as it gets. Yet, the farmers are plowing the earth and planting seeds in spite of the seemingly impossible.

These farmers in South Darfur have stuck their fingers to the wind and studied the signs of the weather. They know that the end of the dry season is near its end and the life-giving rains are soon to come. So they are preparing what seems like barren ground for a fruitful harvest. In a few months this field will be full of millet, stalks heavy with grain that is a staple of the Sudanese diet.

This is the real story of Advent. Trusting God to do his good work and making way for it to happen.

Seismic Shift

What causes this seismic shift?
When certainty turns into a precipice
Some small thing and feather light tips the balance
And doubt looms large

What turns the future into a question mark?
When those things set in stone disintegrate
Some crack appears in the solid plan
And confidence dissolves

What happens when the trap door opens?
When the rabbit hole is long and dark
Some expectation is blown to bits
And true north cannot be found

What keeps the tree standing tall and full?
When the winds of change are unrelenting
Some small rain is yet to fall
And the taproot of faith sustains it

Enjoy the Ride

I have figured out that I spend anywhere from 2-4 hours a day on average riding the NYC subway. Sad, but true. I’ve been doing this for nearly 5 years, now, and have developed some solid coping skills.

One thing that’s hard when you depend so heavily on something that you have absolutely no control over is the unknown: When will the train come? How crowded will it be? Can I get a seat? Why is the F train running on the A train again? Will I make the transfer?

You get the picture.

I get stuck worrying about the wait instead of enjoying the ride. And that makes me a miserable person. I can literally feel the weight of each wasted second adding to the scale of my impatience.

However, when I set aside my worry and try to accomplish something during my ride, it goes much smoother. When I read, write, listen to music, or even enjoy the garden of people around me, the time flies by.

I learn things from kids, “look Mommy, the pterodactyl and Pink Panther can be friends!” I take in the beautiful Manhattan skyline from the bridge. I enjoy mariachi music. I get a chuckle out of teenage angst, “did you hear that Tom told Claire that I said Linda likes Marc?” There’s a lot to take in on a New York City subway.

I got to thinking that life’s a lot like this. There can be a lot of worry in the waiting and it makes time pass slowly and painfully while we wonder when x, y, or z will come to pass.

And then there’s enjoying the ride. When life gets lived with confidence that the next thing will happen. It’s not ignoring that the work needs to get done, but just living with the knowledge that we’re not the ones driving this train.

Here’s to no more worrying about the wait and enjoying this ride we’re all on.

Ode to Savasana

Yesterday I had a beautiful yoga class. The boundaries of my body are moving outward inch by inch and I can feel myself getting stronger. When it came time Savasana—the pose where you lay there like a corpse and just breathe—I was in my bliss.

In a Bikram yoga class, Savasana comes at a time when you are sure you are going to either spontaneously combust from the heat or drown in your own sweat. It is at that near breaking point that mercifully you get to stop, lay down for two minutes, and just breathe.

It’s harder than you’d think. You want to fidget, bend your knees, wipe sweat out of your eyes and do a dozen different things, but that is not your job in that moment. Your job is to lay still and breathe.

My Savasana yesterday was incredible. The sun was shining and through my sweat-clouded eyes everything was sparkly and I just breathed deeply and . . . relaxed. So good.

If I could paint, I would paint that moment. But, alas, I am not a painter. I am a writer. And so I offer this: a haiku in honor of this most minimalist pose.

Oh Savasana
My sweat-stunned body rests, at last
I have found my breath

Patience

God’s been working on my patience since probably birth. There has never been a shortage of “time challenged” people in my life. It is typically those closest to my heart who make me wait, turning me into a slightly less crazy and more patient person—at approximately the same rate as water carves through rock.

Over the years I have developed certain coping mechanisms like lying about starting times and inching clocks ahead a few minutes . . . I don’t want to give away my whole bag of tricks here, let’s just say it’s a very large and deep bag.

So . . . I sometimes think God sent me to the city because, well, you can’t manipulate a whole city. The bag of tricks isn’t big enough to goad 8 million people to do things on schedule. I can’t ensure that a sick passenger in the train ahead of me doesn’t stop all the trains on the route. I can’t make the hordes of tourists make way for a late local. I can’t fix the fact that it takes me about an hour to get anywhere on public transportation from my “affordable” neighborhood in Brooklyn.

I think I’m a few iotas more patient than I was when I moved here five years ago, but I still get caught up with the rush. I forget about God’s timing.

I foolishly think that I’m still in control. That, if it’s perfectly reasonable in today’s society to have 24 hour customer service, then why can’t God just get on with it and give me what I’m asking for? It’s not a whole lot, just a husband, 2.5 children, a well-balanced work and home life, and financial freedom . . . seriously, I’d be happy with one . . .well maybe two or three items on that list.

Some of it— possibly all of it—will come to pass. But it won’t be on my time or New York’s time, but in God’s time . . . kairos time. It’s when some minutes are made up of agonizing seconds or when whole days and years seem to go too fast with too little to show for them. But, it’s also the fullness God’s perfect timing—something that those of us who can’t gain perspective on all of eternity know nothing about.

Patience . . . Michelle . . . Patience . . .

Prayer

I was at a meeting in Mexico this last week. A prayer attributed to Sir Frances Drake was shared that really made me think. I thought I'd share it with you:

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst for the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture to wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future in strength, courage, hope and love.

All I can say is, Amen to that!

Sandcastle Lessons

My family went to the beach for a week almost every year of my life. In fact my parents still do and any of us kids and our various appendages be it husbands, children, friends, or significant others are welcome to join them. These were sun-filled weeks of sleeping in, lounging around, eating what felt like decadent lunches of grapes and Muenster cheese. Mom even bought Pringles. The memories of all the summers run together like so many watercolors. Even after all these visits, the ocean still is a place of great comfort and fear, of mystery and familiarity.

I love the beach still.

I’ve learned some of life’s biggest lessons at the beach—sandcastles wash away, holes get filled in, everything changes all the time, the sun burns, the water will eventually make you cold, and no one will love you or hurt you more than family. I learned how to ride waves, find the surface after wiping out, to dive under rough waters.

One thing I learned was that no matter how big and how sturdy I made the sandcastle and no matter how deep the moat, it would all wash away with the tide.

To get around this, I tried to make sandcastles with security systems. Sometimes to make them last longer I would dig a deep moat. That way the waves that reached the castle edges would pour water into the moat, instead of washing away my hard work. But deep moats reach the water table. The water eats away at the surface, filling in the hole and destroys the castle faster than if I had just left it moatless and vulnerable to the waves.

Another option would have been to build a castle higher on the beach—out of the water’s reach. However, the sand there isn’t good castle-building sand. It’s dry, coarse and just won’t hold together. To build a good sandcastle you have to build it down where the sand is fine and moist. You have to build down where the waves will reach it when it’s time.

Ultimately, I learned that nothing worthwhile is either easy or permanent. Fighting these two facts is futile.

You have to take risks for beauty. You have to build near the water.

Blessing

The other day I was walking through the hustle and bustle that is Chinatown. I had heavy bags and I was growing weary. It had been a long week and I was carting home a bunch of work for the weekend.

I was beginning to feel like people were bumping into me on purpose—as if their goal for the day was to annoy me. I was growing a bit smug in thinking how much more courteous and better human in general I was than those who seemed to be part of a grand conspiracy to ruin my day: take “my” seat on the subway, jostle me, block me at the turnstile, etc, etc. Around the time I was beginning to enjoy my wallow in the puddle of self-righteousness, I looked up and saw an unusual piece of graffiti. Scrawled across a storefront under construction was the word, “blessing.”

Blessing. It was written in black script across some worn plywood. The word made me stop in my tracks.

It was as if the voice of God – the one that can crack the cedars of Lebanon—had cut clear through my heart. Snapshots of my day flashed before me. All of those moments when I forfeited my opportunity to be a blessing came to mind: holding an elevator door, a smile, an extra dose of understanding, some money for the street performer.

It’s so easy to be a blessing to someone else—to extend a little grace in a city teeming with millions of people in need of a simple act of kindness. Yet, how often do I let these opportunities pass me by? I’m no better for it in the end. It’s the days when I do extend myself a little bit more that are always the best.