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Archive for February, 2009

The Tongue

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

The tongue is a small organ with great power. I love the many references to the “tongue” in the Bible, particularly in Proverbs. Proverbs 15:4 says, “The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.” (NIV). Proverbs 10:19 says, “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.” (NIV).

More than once my tongue and its words have gotten me into trouble. Sometimes when I need to deal with one of my character defects, like “speaking first, thinking later,” I write poetry. It’s usually pretty bad from an English teacher’s perspective, but the writing is cathartic. Often it feels like a prayer of confession.

I’ve discovered the poetic form called a cinquain. It’s a five line poem with a pattern that doesn’t require much eloquence or skill. Below is the ”almost” cinquain I wrote in response to shooting my mouth off and regretting it.

The mouth
An open and festering sore
Foul odors, foul words
Assaulting, infecting, offending
Shut it

Tags: cinquain, Proverbs, tongue
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Lenten Reader

Friday, February 27th, 2009

I really do like Lent. It gives me permission to set aside time for prayer and study. Not that I don’t always have permission, but I’m more intentional during these forty days. I don’t feel like I need to justify to anyone why I am spending so much time reading and being quiet.

This year I have a new book of daily readings. It focuses on Paul (See January 25, 2009) and is called To Live Is Christ: A 40-Day Journey with Saint Paul by Peter Celano. The book uses themes from Paul’s life and Scripture passages for daily refelction.

yhst-38174537758215_2043_574990-paul

Tags: Lent, Paul, prayer, St. Paul
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Calendar for Lent

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

One of the ways I practice Lent is by drawing (or doodling) on a calendar. Each day I pray for a person or meditate on a passage from Scripture. Doodling while I pray invites my body into the prayer and helps me to concentrate better. My mind wanders less and my body complains less. I get quiet on the inside and listen for what God might be saying to me. After the drawing and prayer are finished, the image sticks in my mind and comes back to me during the day.

I like to use calendars with enough room to write a name and draw. Here is the template I created for this year using a table feature. The boxes are about 1 1/4″ x 1 1/2″.

Here is a piece of my calendar from Lent 2008:

Tags: calendar, Lent, prayer
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Ash Wednesday

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

In the very Roman Catholic town of Baltimore where I grew up, just about everyone recognized a black smudge on a person’s forehead as evidence of attendance at an Ash Wednesday Mass. In the southern city where I now live, people are less familiar with the practice. A well-meaning colleague or stranger might say, “Excuse me, m’am, but you’ve got a big spot of dirt on your face.”

The first time I received the imposition of ashes I was an adult. With the previous year’s burned palms, the minister rubbed his blackened thumb in the shape of a cross on my forehead and said, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” What I remember and can still feel is the sensation–I shuddered. It was a whole body, creepy realization of my mortality and my sin. So, in a way, the person who points at the smudgy mark on my forehead is right. The ashes are symbolic of the dirt on my face, of my failure, and of my frailty.

But that’s not the end of the story; the smudge is also a different kind of brand. It reminds me of my baptism. “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom 6:3) So the ashes remind me that my sin is alive and well and living in Memphis, Tennessee. But sin is not the last word; Jesus is.

Tags: Ash Wednesday, ashes, Lent, sin
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Lent Redux

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

As a Protestant kid, I watched with suspicion and curiosity as my best friend Marian, an Irish-Polish Catholic girl who lived next door, prepared for the forty days of Lent. Her whole family gave up desserts for the six or seven weeks before Easter. Marian gave up Bazooka bubble gum–a true sacrifice. By five or six, I had been trained to think that all things Catholic were superstitious and scary. But in some mysterious way, I was jealous of the specialness and the rhythm of the Lenten season. Marian’s family was a community on a 40-day journey to the cross. I was left behind.

As an adult I have come to love the liturgical calendar. (See February 2, 2009) I no longer see it as just something that Catholics do. The liturgical year creates a framework for my study of God’s word and for my prayers. When Protestants rejected Rome and Catholic practice, we threw away some valuable tools for prayer and praise. Now we are reclaiming them. Baptist, Presbyterian, and non-denominational Christian churches in my city post signs for Ash Wednesday services and Lenten preaching events.

So this year, as for the last twenty, I will try to practice a Holy Lent. I’ll read the story of Jesus’ ministry and Passion. I will give up something, not because God demands it, but because I want to walk in solidarity with my spiritual ancestors and their journeys–Moses’ forty years in the wilderness, Noah’s forty days and nights on the ark, and Jesus’ forty days in the desert. “And he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and the angels attended him.” (Mark 1:13 NIV) I will set aside these forty days for prayer, fasting, study, and self-examination. This is a journey I take alone but also in the company of millions of other Christians on their way to Calvary and Easter. Maybe even angels will attend us.

Tags: Catholic, forty days, Lent, prayer
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