Days in the Desert

As part of my Lenten observation this year, I'm taking a break from writing new blog posts and updating and re-posting earlier material. Today's post was first shared on February 19, 2012. 

Desert with a Papelillo Tree, Lon&Queta, Mexico, 2007
Flickr Creative Commons

You, God, 

   are my God,
   earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
   my whole being 

  longs for you,
in a dry 

   and parched land
   where there is no 

   water.

  (from Psalm 64)

The season of Lent is meant to remind us of Jesus’ forty days in the desert, in preparation for his ministry. It also echoes other desert passages: among them, the Israelites' forty years in the wilderness before entering the promised land, Elijah's forty days of waiting in a desert cave.

The theme of desert runs through scripture: Abraham’s desert years, between promise and fulfillment of an heir. Moses, running from Egypt, resigned to nomadic life far from his people.

Some deserts look a little different: Jacob’s fourteen years laboring for his father-in-law Laban. Joseph’s years in a dark prison cell.

Part of the desert experience is deprivation: the loss of comfort, familiarity, people we love, places we feel safe. 

But even more, the desert is a place of question: what did God have in mind? Why did he say I was chosen, only to be left here in this dry, desolate place?

The Israelites, facing the desert, wanted to go back to slavery in Egypt.

 Abraham took matters in his own hands: pretending Sarah was his sister, fathering a child by Hagar. 

The desert is a place of testing: what does faithfulness look like, when nothing is as we had hoped or imagined?

Our practice of Lent, giving up chocolate or dessert, fasting a meal or two each week, doesn’t get us far in our experience of desert. But for me, the season of Lent is a reminder to press in to that knowledge of desert we all carry with us.

We set out on this journey expecting life would be easy. Trusting God would meet every need. Certain our fellow travelers would support and encourage us along the way.

And then things took a turn. Our prayers seemed to go unanswered. Our struggles grew greater, not less. A trusted friend – a fellow Christian - betrayed us. Those we turned to for help looked the other way.

The wilderness, the desert, is part of this life of following Christ. It’s reassuring, even comforting, in a strange sort of way, to spend time each year remembering this. We sometimes think, in our desert times, that God has forgotten us, or that we must have imagined what we know to be true. Yet Jesus himself, God’s beloved son, was led into the desert by an angel.

David, “a man after God’s own heart,” logged plenty of time in the desert, and left us his desert songs to remind us:

Hear my prayer, Lord;
   let my cry for help come to you.
Do not hide your face from me
   when I am in distress.
Turn your ear to me;
   when I call, answer me quickly.
 For my days vanish like smoke;
   my bones burn like glowing embers.
My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
   I forget to eat my food.
In my distress I groan aloud
   and am reduced to skin and bones.
I am like a desert owl,
   like an owl among the ruins.
Psalm 102

Desert Scene, Mahatma4711, India, 2006
Flickr Creative Commons

The desert leads us back toward humility: we don’t have the answers. We aren’t in charge. We are small people, held in the hands of a mighty God.

I love the story of Elijah’s meltdown: he faced off the prophets of Ba’al and wicked king Ahaz with amazing boldness, then ran off to the wilderness and collapsed beneath a broom bush, saying: “I have had enough, Lord. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” 

God sent an angel to feed him, and then Elijah traveled on for forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God, where he had a rendezvous with God. The full story is in 1 Kings 19. It’s an encounter with mystery, with power, and a reminder that God is in charge, has a plan, and that Elijah is not alone: God is with him, and there are others who are faithful.

It helps to share our own stories of desert, to hear other’s stories, and to be reminded: the desert is part of the story. Not the start, definitely not the end. Psalm 107 encourages us: 

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
   his love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story—
   those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
those he gathered from the lands,
   from east and west, from north and south.
 Some wandered in desert wastelands,
   finding no way to a city where they could settle.
They were hungry and thirsty,
   and their lives ebbed away.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
   and he delivered them from their distress.
He led them by a straight way
   to a city where they could settle.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
   and his wonderful deeds for mankind,
for he satisfies the thirsty
   and fills the hungry with good things. 

The desert isn’t the whole story, but it’s an important part. And in our desert times, we do well to remember: we don’t have the answers. We aren’t the ones in charge. We’re called to be faithful, and to wait in hope, even when waiting is hard, and hope seems impossible. Lent leads to Good Friday, and beyond that, to the resurrection. 

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

 You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
       (T.S. Eliot, East Coker III) 

Desert(ed), Jarjan Fisher, Jordan, 2012, Flilckr Creative Commons

In what ways have your own desert experiences led your closer to God or to others?

What spiritual practices bring comfort or wisdom during your desert days?

 Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Leaning into Lent

As part of my Lenten observation this year, I'm taking a break from writing new blog posts and updating and re-posting earlier material. Today's post was first shared on February 19, 2012.

My childhood church tradition had no interest in Ash Wednesday, or Lent, or any of the seasons of the liturgical calendar. The idea of giving up something as a spiritual practice seemed superstitious: does God care if I eat chocolate or not?

Elijah icon, 

Yet, in a dry, thirsty time of my life, I was deeply fed by my encounter with a deeper liturgical practice, and after thirty years now in the Anglican tradition, I look forward to Lent the way I look forward to an hour of quiet at the end of a long, hard day.

Lent is an ancient practice – an attempt to approximate in some way the forty wilderness years of the Israelite people, the forty days in the desert of the prophet Elijah, and the forty days of fasting and temptation of Jesus at the start of his ministry. 

The examples of Moses, Elijah and of Jesus highlight the tension between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God. 

Moses and his people, newly escaped from slavery in Egypt, wandered in the desert – some wanting to go back to life under Pharoah, Moses insisting that God would provide. 

Elijah, after defying bloody King Ahab, and with Queen Jezebel on his trail, ran for his life to the desert, where he collapsed under a broom tree and begged God to take his life, then spent forty days traveling to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. 

And Jesus himself, after forty days of fasting, was confronted with an offer of “all the kingdoms of this world and their splendor.”

Lent offers us a time to examine our own allegiances as we travel between kingdoms of earth and heaven. Small sacrifices are one way to help us focus, to shake free from what holds us. Some of my friends choose to fast one day a week, or give up Facebook, wine, dessert, coffee.

The point isn’t the small sacrifice. Rather, the sacrifice helps us set the time apart – a small, regular reminder of Christ’s sacrifice for us. 

But it’s also a reminder of our deep complicity in kingdoms we don’t understand, our hunger for the tastes of the old ways, our willingness to find comfort in material things rather than hunger and thirst for a deeper knowledge of God.

In Ephesians 4 Paul urged the church in Ephesus to “put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

That work will never be done, but Lent is a time to pause, and to ask: What should I be putting off? Where have I given control to things, to habits? What have I been feeding myself? Where am I headed? 

detail from Christ in the Wilderness,
Briton Riviere, England, 1898

It’s a time to look more deeply at my own attitudes. I usually give up sugar, which also means I give up coffee. In the withdrawal from both sugar and caffeine, my underlying attitudes surface quickly: Irritation. Impatience. Discouragement. Self-protection.

Lent can sound depressing, but I don’t find that to be the case. As addictions and harmful attitudes surface, I can acknowledge them, address them, and set them aside, ready to put on something new.

It’s a bit like retooling a computer. Over time, unused files, dumb downloaded games, the backload of cached internet files slows the system down. It takes time to erase unused programs, delete files no longer needed, adjust the start menu, optimize disk storage. It takes time, but it feels good to get it done, and the system runs better freed from the weight of digital detritus.

That sounds a bit mechanical – an analogy, but not a good one.

Because Lent, while it’s a time to confront our evasions, our half-believed lies, our self-protective inner story, is even more a time to draw closer to God.

The Israelites, out in the wilderness, experienced God’s presence in manna, in cloud and pillar of fire, in the tent of meeting.

Elijah, on Mount Horeb, experienced God’s presence in a new way, and heard God’s word of encouragement and instruction. 

And we, setting aside distractions, distortions, determined to shed whatever deceives us, prepare to know God better – in the sacrifice of Good Friday, in the joy of Easter, in the countless little ways that God’s grace meets us in moments of hunger, or prayer, or waiting.

There are lots of ways to approach Lent.

Tearfund and the Church of England offer The Carbon Fast:

Consciously adopting carbon-saving behaviours is sacrificial and provides a wonderful way to engage with the Lenten concerns of temptation, denial and salvation. We are called to change the world, but cannot do so without the Spirit.

• We believe God is the Creator of the world and that we are entrusted with its care;
• Lent is a time for sacrifice as we prepare to celebrate life in Christ at Easter;
• Christians love the world and want to influence it for the good.

Christ in the Wilderness, Ivan Kramskoi, 1872, Moscow

Hearts and Minds Books offers an ambitious list of books for Lent, including On The Way to the Cross: 40 Days with the Church Fathers  and A Place at the Table: 40 Days of Solidarity with the Poor by Chris Seay.

Many churches and organizations offer their own Lenten resources: daily readings, weekly videos. Mustard Seed Associates has put together an exhaustive list of ideas, resources, and other Lenten materials. 

My own Lent will be a little different this year. I'll be traveling more than usual, and busy in a strange mix of ways, so plans to give up sugar (my fall-back practice) won't work. 

An article about an eight hour daily fast from Facebook and email has encouraged me to limit computer time (aiming for two hours a day) while another article about fasting not just from, but to, has me thinking about ways to listen better, pay deeper attention, find more in less. 

In all of this, I'll be praying for a life deeper than the surfaces where we so often find ourselves living.

Looking for a way to move beyond the flood of words I often find myself washed along in.

Watching, and waiting, for something new.  

Lord, You searched me and You know,
   It is You Who know when I sit and I rise,
          You fathom my thoughts from afar.
   My path and my lair You winnow,
          and with all my ways are familiar.
   For there is no word on my tongue
          but that You, O Lord, wholly know it.
         .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
Search me, God, and know my heart,
         probe me and know my mind.
And see if a vexing way be in me,
         and lead me on the eternal way.
   (The Book of Psalms, 139, translated by Robert Alter)

What spiritual practices will you be exploring this Lent?

What resources would you recommend to others?

Please join the conversation: just click on   __comments below and add your thoughts.  

Lenten Sweetness: Tasting Towb

Grape Harvest, Joaquin Sorolla,
1986, Valencia, Spain

I drank at every vine.

The last was like the first.

I came upon no wine

So wonderful as thirst.

(from Thirst, Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Our culture is addicted to sugar. Global sugar consumption has tripled in the last fifty years, with Americans leading the way. Current US sugar intake is up to 20 teaspoons of sweetener per day – hidden in everything from fruit drinks to ketchup.

Recent studies show what I’ve found in my own experience: sugar is addictive. The more we have, the more we want, and the more difficult it becomes to say no. And sugar is closely interlinked with our emotional histories in ways that fuel our cravings. In my own family history, sugar is closely linked with nurture, belonging, fun. It’s the approved mode of dealing with stress, the accepted ingredient of any party, the secret reward for any sacrifice.

Which is why, every Lent, I give up sugar and artifical sweeteners, completely. Which has come to mean I give up most processed foods as well, anything with sugar/fructose/dextrose/sucrose or that ubiquitious corn syrup in the top three ingredients. So no ketchup. (Sugar is ingredient # 2). No Honey Nut Os. (#2 again). No barbeque sauce.

Since I can’t drink coffee without sugar, I also give up coffee. The caffeine withdrawal headache lasts a day or two. The sugar withdrawal takes longer.

So is the point to punish myself? It feels that way for a week or two. Then something wonderful happens. I start to taste food in a new way. I find myself appreciating the subtler sweetness of real flavors: carrots, walnuts, bananas, red peppers. Raisins are almost too sweet. A single date is a delicious dessert. A cold glass of water has flavors I’d forgotten.

Sugar, in the quantities we normally eat, clouds our palates, shifts our blood chemistry, puts our energy levels on a roller coaster, and contributes to illness and emotional instability. Yet we consume more and more, searching for that happy high the soda and energy drink ads lure us toward.

Vineyards with a View of Auvers, Vincent Van Gogh, 1890, France

I find myself thinking of Isaiah 5, a beautiful, troubling song of accusation. It starts this way:

I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. 

The prophet recounts God’s provision on Israel’s behalf, and Israel’s insistence on twisting the good gifts given, craving more and more, wanting things that are neither healthy nor wise, manipulating people and abusing the earth to fulfill desires that yield nothing but sorrow.   

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. 

Looking at old Hebrew words for “sweet,” I came across this word: towb. Occasionally translated “sweet,” it’s more often translated as good, pleasing, right. As with some of the other ancient Hebrew words I’ve come across lately, we have no word that stretches as wide as this one. Towb is good in the broadest sense: beautiful, agreeable to the senses, morally right, pleasing, pure, splendid, sweet, happy, delightful, precious, gracious, full of grace.

The “good” of Genesis 1 is towb: not just good as we understand it, but beautiful, sweet, delightful, harmonious, full of grace. Woe, says Isaiah, to those who lose their taste for towb, who substitute other things for the real sweetness we’ve been given.

This goes far beyond sugar. I recently spent the day with several preteen children who had decided that “good” and “fun” were defined in entirety by video screens. As we headed out of their house for the day, I suggested they leave laptop and handheld video game behind. They objected, strongly, and I cheerfully insisted: they were going to experience a screen-free day. And they would survive.

Summer Afternoon, Edward Dufner, 1916, New York

After a short stare-down, they grudgingly complied, and off we went, to a day that included some very different games, time at a local farm greeting goats and sheep, and a happy hour on a sunny spot of land between a pond and stream. I could see in them something like the process in me as sugar leaves my system and I learn again how to taste real food. They raced around the pond, looking for fish and frogs, foraged along the stream for smooth, round stones, then practiced skipping them across the open water. In the unseasonably warm weather, we all soaked up the sun, ending our time by the pond sitting and talking together on a bench, enjoying each others' company and the sweetness of the day. For a few minutes, we tasted towb together.

I tasted towb again just a few days ago when my husband and I sat together at the end of a long hard day, talking quietly before dinner over a small glass of chardonnay. He had been catching up from a week of travel, preparing for another season of travel and speaking in the weeks ahead, with some difficult complications thrown into the mix. I had spent the day registering voters at a nearby high school, then helping a friend in the middle of a challenging move.

Tired as we were, we were thankful for the grace to engage in the world in real and significant ways, for the chance to sit and reflect at the end of a busy day, for the sweetness of wine before a simple dinner. For towb: shared glimpses into God’s gifts of harmony, beauty and goodness.

We are masters at deception, lying to each other, but most often to ourselves. We tell ourselves we can have it all: sweet with no calories, non-stop video with no loss of life skills or real relationships, all the goods and services we want, with no impact on the globe, no harm to our own inner selves. We spend our time reaching for more: more food, more fun, more stuff, more money, telling ourselves just a little more will give us that sense of satisfaction we’ve been hungry for.

“Seek towb,” God tells us through his prophets: be still, slow down, deny yourself. That craving can’t be filled by sugar, or by anything else bought or sold on the market. We’re hungry for the gifts already given: goodness, harmony, graciousness, beauty, a sweetness that lingers, with no bitter aftertaste.

But we can’t taste it until our palates are clear, our hearts alert and quiet. Fasting is a good way to get there: fasting from sugar or tv, from wanting our own way, from the full closets, cupboards, schedules that dull our senses and scatter our attention. Slow down, be still, then taste and see. 

Taste and see that the Lord is towb: 

sweet, good, pleasing, gracious.

Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.

Fear the Lord, you his saints, 

for those who fear him lack nothing.

The lions may grow weak and hungry,

but those who seek the Lord 

will not be lacking in towb:                                                                                                sweetness, harmony, grace, goodness, beauty. (Psalm 34)

This is the fourth in a Lenten series: 

     Looking toward Lent, 

     Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham.  

     Lenten Silence: Charash, be Still

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Click on the  _commentslink below to open the comment box.

Looking Toward Lent

My childhood church tradition that had no interest in Ash Wednesday, or Lent, or any of the seasons of the liturgical calendar. The idea of giving up something as a spiritual practice seemed superstitious: does God care if I eat chocolate or not?

Yet, in a dry, thirsty time of my life, I was deeply fed by my encounter with a deeper liturgical practice, and after almost thirty years now in the Anglican tradition, I look forward to Lent the way I look forward to an hour of quiet at the end of a long, hard day.

Lent is an ancient practice – an attempt to approximate in some way the forty wilderness years of the Israelite people, the forty days in the desert of the prophet Elijah, and the forty days of fasting and temptation of Jesus at the start of his ministry. During the seventeenth century, a period of reformation and liturgical revision, an Anglican priest, Anthony Sparrow, wrote a defense of Lent which appealed to church histories going back as far as the time of the apostles:

A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer
by Anthony Sparrow, D.D.

London, 1672.

---

THe Antiquity of Lent is plain by these Testimonies following. Chrysol. Ser. 11. Chrys. in Heb. 10. 9. Ethic. Cyril. Catech. 5. August. Ep. 119.  . .                        That forty days should be observed before Easter, the custome of the Church hath confirmed. . . One Fast in the year of forty days we keep at a time convenient, according to the Tradition of the Apostles. . . . 

This forty days Fast of Lent was taken up by holy Church in imitation of Moses and Elias in the old Testament; but principally, in imitation of our Saviours Fast in the New Testament, Augustin. ep. 119. That we might, as far as we are able, conform to Christs practice, and suffer with him here, that we may reign with him hereafter. . . . 

The examples of Moses, Elijah and of Jesus highlight the tension between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God. 


Moses and his people, newly escaped from slavery in Egypt, wandered in the desert – some wanting to go back to life under Pharoah, Moses insisting that God would provide. 


Elijah, after defying bloody King Ahab, and with Queen Jezebel on his trail, ran for his life to the desert, where he collapsed under a broom tree and begged God to take his life.

And Jesus himself, after forty days of fasting, was confronted with an offer of “all the kingdoms of this world and their splendor.”

Lent offers us a time to examine our own allegiances, our own journey between the kingdoms of earth and the kingdom of God. Small sacrifices are one way to help us focus. Some of my friends choose to fast one day a week, or to give up facebook, wine, dessert, coffee.

The point isn’t the small sacrifice. Rather, the sacrifice helps us set the time apart – a small, regular reminder of Christ’s sacrifice for us. But it’s also a reminder of our deep complicity in kingdoms we don’t understand, our hunger for the tastes of the old ways, our willingness to find comfort in material things, rather than hunger and thirst for a deeper knowledge of God.

In Ephesians 4 Paul urged the church in Ephesus to “put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”

That work will never be done, but Lent is a time to pause, and to ask: what should I be putting off? Where have I given control to things, to habits? What have I been feeding myself? Where am I headed?

Christ in the Wilderness, Briton Riviere, 1898

It’s a time to look more deeply at my own attitudes. I usually give up sugar, which also means I give up coffee. In the withdrawal from both sugar and caffeine, my underlying attitudes surface quickly: Irritation. Impatience. Discouragement. Self-pity.

Lent can sound depressing, but I don’t find that to be the case. As addictions and harmful attitudes surface, I can acknowledge them, address them, and set them aside, ready to put on something new.

It’s a bit like retooling a computer. Over time, unused files, dumb downloaded games, the backload of cached internet files slows the system down. It takes time to erase unused programs, delete files no longer needed, adjust the start menu, optimize disk storage. It takes time, but it feels good to get it done.

That sounds a bit mechanical – an analogy, but not a good one.

Because Lent, while it’s a time to confront our evasions, our half-believed lies, our self-protective inner story, is even more a time to draw closer to God.

The Israelites, out in the wilderness, experienced God’s presence in manna, in cloud and pillar of fire, in the tent of meeting.

The Israelites in the Wilderness Preceded by the Pillar of Clouds
William West, Bristol, 1830

Elijah, in the cave where he found refuge, complained that he was the only faithful follower left, God invited him out onto the mountain, where he experienced God’s presence in a new way, and heard God’s word of encouragement and instruction.

And we, setting aside distractions, distortions, determined to shed whatever deceives us, prepare to know God better – in the sacrifice of Good Friday, in the joy of Easter, in the countless little ways that God’s grace meets us in moments of hunger, or prayer, or waiting.

There are lots of ways to approach Lent.

My favorite online bookstore, Hearts and Minds, offers a mix of resources for Lent.

  

World Vision, Relevant Magazine and Intervarsity are partnering to promote their Relentless ACT:S of Sacrifice – six weeks of exploring sacrifice on behalf of global justice. 

Tearfund is inviting Christians around the globe to take part in a Lenten Carbon Fast – with facebook messages every day suggesting actions and prayer.

Lots of churches give out Lenten readings. This morning I picked up a copy of our new rector, Richard Morgan's "A Cross Centred Life," with readings, prayers, and some questions to consider. 

My own plan is to give up sugar (and, sad to say, coffee), to explore both the Acts of Sacrifice and Carbon Fast, to work through the readings from our church, and to experiment with some new, or rather very old, approaches to prayer, fasting, and stillness. 

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts - especially about Lenten practices that you've found helpful, or resources you recommend. 

Lord, You searched me and You know,
   It is You Who know when I sit and I rise,
          You fathom my thoughts from afar.
   My path and my lair You winnow,
          and with all my ways are familiar.
   For there is no word on my tongue
          but that You, O Lord, wholly know it.
         .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
Search me, God, and know my heart,
         probe me and know my mind.
And see if a vexing way be in me,
         and lead me on the eternal way.
   (The Book of Psalms, 139, translated by Robert Alter)