Psalmody Psunday: 83

It appears, in looking at my last couple months' worth of posts, that PsPs is all that's keeping me blogging these days.

Ya know what? Good 'nough. At least something is. Maybe I'll go do a Five-Minute Friday next, just to round myself out...

This Week's Psalm: 83

It's something magical--yes, I'm going to use that word--to be in a certain place emotionally/spiritually, and open up a "random" psalm (Jenny picks them!), only to be greeted with words that were written millennia ago, but speak directly from your own heart, right now.

Especially when, say, BibleGateway is set on KJV.

Keep not thou silence, O God; hold not thy peace and be not still...

Well. Hi, there, Jesus. I didn't see you come in.

I'd just finished journaling, pleading with God to show up in a situation where He seems to be keeping a back seat, waiting for something. I had confessed how in a (sadly) not-too-deep place, I am convinced I could handle this better than He is. I know this is wrong... but there is no hiding one's heart from Him, so might as well be blunt. He's the maker and savior of the world. He can take it.

...For lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head...

Occasionally there comes a circumstance where only borderline-archaic words dating from the fourteenth century will do. 

tumult, from the Old French tumult (12th century), from the Latim tumultus: commotion, bustle, uproar, disorder, disturbance.* 

That pretty much sums it up, yes. Tumultuous. It's huge and small at once--a tempest in a teapot. It is massive and thrashing, subversive and unspeakable. And the Enemy is involved, just see if he isn't. Given an eighth of a chance, he lifts up his head like he has a right to look down on anything.

I'm not sure I'll even move any farther in this psalm. From here we get into a list of Israel's enemies, which doesn't really suit me for the moment--I have no beefs with Edom or Midian, and the only Endor I'm attached to contains a civilization of warrior teddy bears. <-- comic relief

In fact, let's just skip to the end--because this, too, is where I ended in my journal moments ago: that though I can't see these attacks coming, and can't pinpoint how to hold defense, the Warrior God is awake and aware, and while He may be waiting, while He may be preparing me by refining me, He does not slumber or sleep.

Let [the Enemy] be put to shame, and perish: That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.

Praise You, praise You, praise You, God, for being so much larger than this. For seeing more than I do, for feeling each injury and slight with a far more personal pain, and for counting each tear. Thank You that there is no debate on who wins at the end. Keep me strong, and clinging only to You, until that day.

----------------------------

Verses cited, in order, and in NIV for less word-nerdy minds:

1: "O God, do not remain silent; do not turn a deaf ear, do not stand aloof, O God."

2: "See how your enemies growl, how your foes rear their heads."

17b-8: "May they perish in disgrace. Let them know that you, whose name is the LORD--that you alone are the Most High over all the earth."

* Thanks, Online Etymology Dictionary! What would an Information Age English major do without you.

Psalmody Pwhat Day Is It Again: Psalm 19

[Drafter's Note: Why do I go weeks or months with no post, and then twice in two hours? ...Do other writers not sway to a standard never-rains-but-it-pour drumbeat?? I'm confused...]


My sister-coz and I are competing for Most Sporadic Blogger of 2014. Your votes are appreciated.

I'm going to "catch up" tonight--which is to say, I think this will bring both of us up two 10 days behind, which is (in case you were wondering) that same as being caught up, because who is to say that Palm Sunday was a Psalmist's day off??

Ahem.

Psalm 19 (read it here)

"Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults."    v. 12, KJV

You're joking, right? SECRET faults?? All the sludge in my soul, all the boarded-up windows and locked drawers, those are only what's on file? There's more??

I know this is truth--a glimpse into that dark tells me there are hallways that resist even the intrepid and myriad angles and dead ends defy the stubborn--but it's no less defeating. "I am a hopeless case," sayeth the psalmist. "Send help!"

But even in the same thought, a moment earlier, the laws (what King James' friends termed the judgment) of the Lord is "sweeter than honey, even honey dripping off the comb" (v. 10). This is an image that works for me--my uncle had a little bee colony for a while, and the geniuses of Mssrs. Reese, Hershey, Whitman, and Stover have never some close to that goodness. So how is law, how is judgment, so good as that? Do I crave law like I crave Ben & Jerry's? Do I get in the mood for discipline that way I could go for a frozen Take 5 right now?

But "the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul" (v. 7)*. This is a process, and each season where the discipline of God smarts hard across me, I appreciate it more. Rarely at the time. And not, I would say, in the same way as I appreciate my mom's snickerdoodles straight from the oven. But as I dwell on this, I take our psalmist's point. Even the things that are hard, painful, unending processes with God have a sweetness to them, and maybe it's just the knowing that it's not in vain, that it is for our good, that it is covered by and made of his love and so--to borrow from a future psalmody--while the pain lasts for a night, joy comes with the morning.

Let the words of my mouth,

and the meditation of my heart,

be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,

my strength and my redeemer.

v. 14

* Am I driving someone crazy by walking backwards through this psalm? Certainly. Is that someone me? Likely.

Calling out among the scoffers: A Good Friday

Aside from the occasional remembrance (only present for the hiccup in my otherwise slothful Friday schedule), I wouldn't know the day as any different. The dim awareness that Sunday will be special--a service at the oceanside, scheduled time with family instead of impromptu--is dimmer still as life's frustrations and uglinesses have gotten to me more than usual lately.

The day is nice enough for April in Maine and I have a coupon for iced coffee, so the bus is traded in for a walk along the Green Belt, where the reality of living against the ocean with my sweet little city perched quietly across the harbor is once again accepted as normal, taken for granted, forgotten. A call to my mother--the marrow-deep familiar tones of her voice, the intimate reflection of myself--also normal, also taken as unremarkable.

Arriving, coffee in hand, I get to work, correcting grammar and aligning text, explaining busyness away as service, even ministry. Only mildly grateful for a restored voice after sickness, I lose myself in songs that trigger an emotional response, but even this I recognize for what it is: surface-level, nicks and scrapes on the hard rock that I plaster myself with. Verses are read, more songs are sung. Truths recited as normal, taken for granted, forgotten.

And then she comes forward to read, my sweet friend who only stands to my elbow, whose stature and quick laugh and self-deprecation don't hint at the depth and the strength of her. Even knowing her as I do, I assume she won't be able to get through this, one of the hardest descriptions in our holy book, where he is flogged, pierced, facetiously robed, mocked, slapped, jeered.

She speaks it, every word with its own comprehensive intonation. She feels every word, but her voice doesn't crack, doesn't wobble. From practice or grace, I don't know. She nears the end, her voice strong and clear and just as I start to turn away, she chokes on, "carrying the cross by himself."

And this is where I break, too. Every mention of "scoffers" in those songs has hung a little heavier over my neck, and this is where I fall to my knees from the weight. Because I can't help him. Two thousand years ago he walked those streets, but we purposely stop on a Friday night in the spring to remind ourselves of this: that we didn't help, wouldn't help, can't help. We don't sing the fourth verses that talk about victory and new dawns and torn veils because, if for just a couple hours, we need--I need--to remember this scene:

He didn't help me out. He didn't catch me when I almost stumbled. He didn't pinch hit for me. He carried my cross by himself. At best, I was nearby--but even in that, I cannot be heroic: "Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice / Call out among the scoffers." This is why we pause, why we dwell with death for a day of the calendar, because otherwise our story is over-softened, and Jesus is somehow shaped into a sidekick, a helpful buddy who pats me on the back and justifies my wrongs.

But even while I walked through my day nearly unthinking of him--ungrateful for what He's graced me with, unnoticing of the pain and hurt that surrounds me, too distracted by my own paper cuts and stepped-on toes--he still takes on my brokenness and carries it. By himself. Not as a pack mule, not as a bit player, but as the One who saved my life and saves me still. How is it easy to forget that, to paint it as a minor subheading in my oh-so-busy life?

In the traditional celebrations of Passover, the youngest asks, "Why is this night different from all the others?" There's no reason to believe a close friend of Jesus didn't ask the same question at their Passover table hours before he would take that cross for himself. What makes tonight different?

It isn't. It's the same--I am the same, and so is He. But for one night, this night, we remember. We don't skim, we don't turn the page. We hold, just for these few hours. And even though our story reminds us of his wounds, he comes still, even now, to heal.

Just as I am, without one plea
but that Thy blood was shed for me
and that Thou bidst me come to Thee!
O, Lamb of God, I come. I come.

I come broken to be mended.
I come wounded to be healed.
I come desperate to be rescued.
I come empty to be filled.
I come guilty to be pardoned
by the blood of Christ the Lamb,
And I'm welcomed with open arms--
Praise God--just as I am.

Just as I am, I would be lost
but mercy and grace, my freedom bought.
And now to glory in Your cross,
O Lamb of God, I come. I come.



The specific scripture referenced is John 19--a shocking, painful, awful narrative... And how terrifying that I can read it nearly without feeling if I'm in the right mindset.

And if reading song lyrics was a little lacking, Travis Cottrell can help.

Psalmody Psunday (errr, Ptuesday) -- Psalm 71

So Jenny and I have started this new bloggy thing--full explanation here. And yes, I'm posting two in one night, but I wrote the first at Jenny's kitchen table two weeks ago, and the second two days ago, waiting for my plane out of LAX, so I'm not quite as much of a slacker as it might seem. (And we did allow that while the alliterative fun of Psunday was too good to miss, we'd give ourselves all week to write, just in case.) 

Just in case you wanted to verify the facts.

This Week's Psalmody Psunday:
Psalm 71

I love how human this psalm is. A silly thing to say, I suppose, but I try to remind myself as I read Scripture that it is God-breathed but written by plain old normal humans. In this psalm (and many others), you can nearly see the shake in the psalmist's hand as she wrote. (Yeah, I said it. Prove me wrong.) I love the psalms for this reason, perhaps above all: that they come from a human--and thus broken--place. (That's not to say they don't speak truth!) And maybe I say this only because I have written this psalm in my head and out loud a hundred times, and all-too-easily recognize the pendulum swings:

      1) Brave--but surface-level--hope: "You alone are my hope. I've trusted you, O Lord, from childhood..." (v. 5)       2) Gut-wrenching--but honest--fear: "Don't set me aside. Don't abandon me when my strength is failing." (v. 9)      3) Deeper-than-gut promise: "But I will keep on... All day long I will proclaim your saving power" (v. 14-15)      4) Quiet, residual rest: "Then I will praise you...because you are faithful to your promises, O God." (v. 22)


This is a pendulum I know well. So well it might seem I carved it myself: scraping it down with fingernails, varnishing it with tears. I know this psalm because I have lived it, and because I still do. Like the psalmist, I've known of God since early childhood, and have every reason to rely on him wholly. But this fear, this certainty that at some point You will run out of rope for me, that I will exhaust You, become too much or not measure up, still lingers. I can point to my history and see too many places where this has been true, where human hands have lifted and left. And with hindsight I know Yours have remained--but the fear is there, too. And the fear can rip through me, can rupture me until I don't even remember where it started--like leaving an empty island only to be overwhelmed by open sea. But a simple prayer--a psalm--and the waters calm, lower, part. Sometimes I can cross them back to home on dry land, sometimes I have to swim, flailing, but every time the pendulum falls: fear will swell but faith soothes--because faith stands rooted in truth. It is the sea floor. It is the path home. The waters recede, and like Noah, like the psalmist, I find music is the only thing that hopes to answer well enough. A soul-cry of praise--this truths started with remained through the fear. I start to say the truth was immovable, but that is not at all true--it came to seek me, find me, save me.


[Drafter's Note: I wrote this psalm before I got some gut-wrenching news. Nothing to be shared on the blogosphere, but as I reread and edited this, I was washed over by this psalm again. Swing, pendulum, swing.]

Psalmody Psunday: Intro, and 86

Perhaps I've mentioned my amazing sister-coz Jenny once or thirty-two times before--having spent a week with her and her kiddos (and husband, and some mutual friends), I am amazed all over again And not only is she an awesome wife and mom, but she comes up with awesome-amazing ideas, such as this one.

"So," she says, a nerd smile playing on her face. (We are soaking in being together, across this very same kitchen, hearing tone and seeing facial expression accompany our words--a seemingly newfound form of expression for we who have never lived within a thousand miles.) "I have a proposition for you that I think you're going to say yes to. Part devotional, part writing challenge, part blogger accountability."

"I'm in," I say gleefully, before she's quite finished the last word. Allen, already on his way toward the door, seems to pick up his pace to escape us before the nerdery truly descends. We are not unused to this--and not unamiable to the solitude. :)

So here's the challenge--having done this once in person, we quickly agreed to make it a weekly thing. Each week, we'll randomly pick a psalm, read it, and take 10 (ish) minutes to write/reflect/muse on it. Dissection, interpretation, or inspiration--wherever it leads. This first time, we attacked different psalms, but going forward we'll do one at a time. (Now that we're back to being thousands of miles apart, the likelihood of cheating off each other is so greatly reduced...)

Read Jenny's awesome thoughts on Psalm 123 here.

Last Week's Psalmody Psunday:

Psalm 86 (NLT) -- read it here

"O Lord, You are so good,
   so ready to forgive,
      so full of unfailing love."   v. 5

A whole psalm of praise, of truth, and this leaps out like flight, like shower water bursting cold. You are so ready. As usual, Your truth catches me when I am still in the entryway, at the gate, behind the door. Preparing. Readying myself. "Chandra's busy with another god right now, but if You'll just take a number..."
You are so ready. I can nearly see Your face, smiling sadly as a Father whose love is once again, always, misunderstood. Sold short. 

"Stop getting ready," You whisper. "This isn't the love story of the prom date: you perfecting yourself upstairs while I wait sweaty-handed and expectant. This is a different story...
We have been long-married, though I knew love for you long before you knew Me, befriended Me, loved Me. That's never been a burden, my love--only a banner for you to unfurl: "Unforgotten. Ever-loved."
But though long-married, you have been drawn away, and not for the first time. (I say it's not the first, but not because I keep score. But you take longer each time--longer to see it, longer to be grieved, longer to wish you were back with Me.) You have not protected your heart as I warned, and you slipped and fall, the gravel hillside ceding eagerly to your foot. And rather than turning back to Me, than leaning against my banner and letting Me prove its truth, you stumbled farther and further. And now you call back to me, hiding, telling me you're preparing yourself, that I should wait just one minute more. But I told you, this is not that story.
This is the story: You are so certain that this was the last, that we are done, that I am done pursuing--and you have every human reason to believe it's true. I have seen the others quit the pursuit, and have sat with you in the quiet they left. Seeking to hide, you find yourself in the very place you've found sanctuary before--your legs stretched out on red carpet, your head unable to bring your eyes heavenward. You are sure that, at best, I will bide my time, that I will make you patch your wounds alone. 
But here I am. Willing. Ready. Not waiting. I wipe streaked mascara from your face--what god told you that you looked better with it? My eyes, far from waiting in the ceiling, seek yours out, and my arms have already forded the river you thought impassable. You are the lost, and I am the finder--always. 
That wind you hear is My breath, the ripple is my banner. The words are unchanged. 
My love is utterly unfailing--it does not have a word for abandonment--and I Am it. 
I am so ready to forgive.

You learned English? / Just in cases. ... A treatise.

[Drafter's Note: I'm resisting the temptation to explain away my absence--especially in light of certain resolved notions. And while I should be working on some official word work for my ekklesia, what better warm-up than writing about words? ...And why else have a blog if not to use it for base procrastination?]

    -    -    -    -    -

"Chandra doesn't make fun of you for what you meant to say," some friends like to say. "She makes fun of you for what you actually said."

    -    -    -    -    -

"Beautiful Aurelia, I've come here with a view of asking you to marriage me. I know I seems an insane person--because I hardly knows you--but sometimes things are so transparency they don't need evidential proof." (Richard Curtis, Love Actually)

    -    -    -    -    -

I found myself distinguishing myself from her in college: I wasn't the snippy English Major who told you that you really meant lay, not lie (donttellmewhatImeanttosay), I was the nice English Major who would correct your papers (and silently, and with only slight eyebrow activity, judge your grammar).

    -    -    -    -    -

Ya know, it's hard out there for an English major. 

Nobody's written an Academy Award-winning song about it, but it's true. (I'm sure the same principle applies to anyone and their particular specialty/obsession/fandom, but I was an English Major and this is my blog so that's what we're talking about today.) This isn't meant to be defensive or reactive--just a little trip inside the mind of your favorite word nerd...

A) This Is Just the Way My Brain Works. Your eyes give you away, but it's not true: I'm not trying to show off (...most of the time) or make you feel foolish, but when English is misused my brain makes a little tweaky sound, like when you're overzealous in cleaning a mirror. It's jarring, and, particularly when the error is in writing or in some other way official, frustrating. I don't tally up how often I've caught errors from this person or that organization, and I don't have an internal maniacal laugh when I suggest that we know how to spell "mannequin" prior to using it in our PowerPoint. I just want you to sound intelligent, and I want the poor and ever-shifting English language to be treated as nicely as possible as long as we're at it. (Part A-2 is I Don't Actually Correct Everything--the times I speak up are only the times when it's particularly problematic or, admittedly, when I'm predisposed to get annoyed... Or, yes, show off...)

B) I Don't Talk the English Perfect-like, Either. Case in point, just as I started writing this post, I texted my friend Anna and used your instead of you're. In proofing this, I caught the wrong principal/principle in the opening paragraph. There will be something else I inevitably will miss until after I've clicked Publish. I make stupid mistakes as consistenly as anyone else, and have occasionally had the, "I've been mispronouncing that word for 15 years" moment. (I learned only a couple years ago that the expression was not "up and Adam"--I didn't know how that made sense, but I used it anyway--but "up and at 'em.") And I trip over my own simple words endlessly: favorites include "Kia Chat" instead of my coworker's Chia pet cat, and "baple macon bar" in place of Voodoo Donuts' slab of divine deliciousness. And while I'm quick to make fun of myself on this score--the aforementioned "Chandra Doesn't Make Fun..." rule works both ways, after all--I'm equally amused by others' reactions, frequently rendered in all-caps. My hold on this language is faulty at best! So let this be a place of public confession: that most recent time you saw me epically fumble this beloved language of mine? It won't be the last time...

C) The Newly-Learning Are Awesome. "He would drive you crazy," she says, describing a friend of hers, "English is his third language, so all his sounds are mixed up." I'm hurt by this--and do my best to correct her assumption. As someone who spent 6 years in French classes only to have, at her peak, a vague competence with the accent and a toddler's range of vocabulary, I am awed and amazed at anyone actively gaining mastery of a second language. (This extends to learning a first language--I don't snag small children by the ears and correct their subject-verb agreement, I swear.) I am, in fact, in love with the beauty and confusion of shifting language to language, and I find learners' errors and missteps fascinating and endearing rather than upsetting. Some of my fondest memories of my six weeks in Argentina include helping English learners to refine and understand the strange hiccups of any language, particularly ours. I can't imagine I'll ever be able to think of this and not see Euge's scandalized face when she heard me say "schmooze" and though I meant "smooch." And yes, our English lessons included the occasional dollop of Yiddish. Naturally.

D) In Which I Try Awfully Hard Not to Be My Grandmother. There are many wonderful things about my paternal grandmother, so please don't misunderstand, but she was nothing short of infuriating in her defense of The English Language As It Was When She Was an Undergraduate. One of the things I find most fascinating about language is its life. Each generation shifts tone and emphasis, adding their own words and labeling others with an italicized "Archaic." Each infusion of peoplegroup brings with it a smattering of new vocabulary.  And I am of the same stock as my grandmother: it's difficult not to lurch into lecture, to demand that the old ways--which are really quite new, so, more accurately, your ways--are respected and bowed to. (She's been gone 5 years and I still can't say "short-lived" without feeling her distaste in my allowing the short i rather than the long. I still say it,but I feel the judgment.) At only 30, I already blanch with seasickness as my language shifts beneath my feet: "nu-kyu-ler" becomes an acceptable (albeit secondary) pronunciation for, and the next ten years--possibly five--will see "irregardless" earn a Websterian stamp of approval. I will want to insist that these are wrong, I will want to detail how simple it is to be right--but I will try very hard to recollect an 11-year-old self, already in love with language and rolling my eyes at Gramma. This love of mine is a living thing, and I must let it move and breathe and renew itself, as it did before I learned to speak, and will long after my lips are dust.

I love language, and more specifically English (though to be fair, aside from French I haven't given anybody else a shot)--and like any love, I take it personally--probably too much. I don't get defensive about many things, but using words well is one of them. If my defensiveness has ever proved offensive to you, I ask forgiveness in the spirit of the unrequited frustration of a woman and the words that cannot love her back.

Tribute Tuesday: Nina

My awesome cousin Jenny has started a link-up, Tribute Tuesday, which is A) an awesome idea and B) something that's been on my brain a lot lately. I love this concept of taking a few moments to give tribute to someone--not just a thank-you, but a on honorarium, a memorial of their grace, love, sacrifice. And nothing like a little public pressure to actually ensure I do it--whether or not I do it on a Tuesday...

-  -  -  -  -  -  -

[Okay, Jenny, I tried to used your amazing linky sticker deal, but all that appears, published or no, is HTML gobblydeegook...]

Tribute to Nina

You would not need to spend much time on this blog of mine to figure out that I love stories: reading them, sharing them, hearing them, passing them along, making them up. When you think of a story--your own, or a favorite--you likely think first of the main characters, the major plot arcs, the larger themes. And this is true of me, but I love, almost as much, the little pieces. The tangents. The minor characters. [Cue English major diatribe. This is why Dickens drives me insane: the man doesn't believe in minor characters. The old woman you bumped into on the street in Chapter 2 is also the bookshop owner in Chapter 17 who ends up being your wealthy grandfather by the book's conclusion. CRAM IT, Charles, real life isn't like that.]

Ahem. Finding the track again...

I find myself understanding a story better for its little tangents and minor characters--minor in number of lines or time spent on the stage, but not necessarily in importance. And every time I find myself telling my story--the central one, the one that matters, the one of how God came and found me and continues to bring me to Himself over and over again--every time, I find that it has to include Nina.

And Nina is a minor character in my story. (I don't think she'll take offense to me saying so.) She was my music teacher when I was very young, and my mother's friend, and I've seen her just once or twice since she moved away when I was 8. But like I said--sometimes the minor characters aren't so minor at all.

I was 4, and my dad had left for reasons no one--maybe not even him--fully understood. My mom tells this part of the story simply: we were in her classroom after school as we always were. Matt was likely doing homework; I would have been knee-deep in Legos. "Kids," Nina says in the story, "Grab your stuff--you're with me tonight. Peggy, I'll have them home before bedtime." And she took us, and allowed my mother a few hours to be something other than a swamped single mom. I don't know what my mom did with those hours--knowing her, she was cruising the bars or getting yet another graphic tattoo.* (Just a moment of comic relief, people. For those who don't know my mother, this is the untruest statement there ever was. Just to set the record straight...)

This is my story, so I can only relate what I've heard from others, and tell what I remember. And what I remember is sitting next to Nina on the hard black bench, pressed as close as I could be without compromising her army's range of motion across the black and white keys, and looking out at a dark room that sang back to me. The choir in the dark knew the words, but they were still new and foreign to me, and have long since fallen from memory. But in those first few Wednesday nights I caught my first glimpse of God, however unaware I was at the time: beautiful and unknown; mysterious, but in a nice way. 

What started as Nina getting us out of our mother's hair for a few hours each week (because from then on, each Wednesday afternoon brought her to our door) molded into something much larger and lasting: my mother's return to the Church after years away, my brother and I growing and finding father figures and extra grandparents, our family learning that what is broken and rebuilt is more beautiful, and certainly more interesting, than the perfect and pristine. By the time Nina moved a few years later--acting as another saving grace in another woman's story--we were ensconced in a fellowship of shared lives. All of us have left that place now, moving hundreds of miles away in different directions--but members of that family remain close, and we have found new fellowship-families in our new places. My mother quilts love and grace into the lives of people, some she doesn't even know; my brother (and sister-in-law) prepare a house for study, reflection, and prayer; I encourage and love and pray with women of all ages and walks of life who come through our doors.

Is this all because a woman stopped by her coworker's classroom and took the kids out for Roy Rogers and children's church? Of course not--thank God, He is weaving too great a masterwork to be dependent on us. But when He calls us to step into someone else's story (even briefly, minorly) and we answer and go, He works simple wonders and small miracles. 

Am I a follower of Jesus Christ, am I a part of a grace community, do I minister to women because of Nina? No. 

But when I sit across from a newly-single mom, two cups of coffee and an ocean of brokenness on the table between us, Nina floats across my mind--not every time, but most. My prayer is always that I would be Jesus to this woman--but having no better face to put to such a prayer, the one I see is Nina's.