What I’m Listening To: Dry Bones

The album I’ve been listening to on repeat lately is called The Blood & The Breath: Songs That Sing the Story of Redemption by Caroline Cobb.  The songs trace God’s big story from Genesis to Revelation.  They thoughtfully bring scripture to life—even some texts that aren’t often sung.  My favorite song is called “Dry Bones,” based on Ezekiel 37.  I don’t know many songs based on this strange passage (or Ezekiel in general), but this song has helped me see the beauty of life coming from dry bones.  And it gives me hope that situations that seem dry and hopeless can be revived by the Spirit of God.  The words are good, but to get the full effect you should go to Caroline’s website, listen to the song, and download the album.
Dry bones
Hearts of stone
Slain and left
In the valley of death
Been dead so long
All the flesh is gone
A mass grave
No one can raise

But you said “live”
And the ground it gives
The bones start to rattle
And the darkness lifts

You give them blood and bone and
Hearts of stone to flesh
You give them muscle, skin
And life within the breath

Open graves
Bodies raised
The living breath
Reversing death


Written May 2011 for The Scripture to Music Project
Words and music by Caroline Cobb
From Ezekiel’s vision in Ezekiel 37:1-14; 36:26,27
Photo by _ChrisUK, used under a Creative Commons License.

On Sacred Rhythms

Life has rhythms.  The rhythm of leaves budding, growing, coloring, and dropping.  The rhythm of people growing up, leaving home, marrying, having children, raising children, retiring, and dying.  The rhythm of the sun coming up and sun going down. 

And the spiritual life has rhythms, too.  The rhythm of advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and ordinary time.  The rhythm of baptism, profession of faith, serving the church.  The rhythm of prayer and Bible reflection. 

Ruth Haley Barton wrote a book called Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation.  It is a book about what are classically called spiritual disciplines.  We might also call them spiritual practices or spiritual rhythms.  They are the practices that give a rhythm to our spiritual life.  Sometimes that rhythm is imperceptible, or we wish that we had a faster rhythm.  But even when we’d choose a different rhythm, God works through them.

Another one of my favorite books about spiritual practices is called Flunking Sainthood.  The author, Jana Riess spent a year focusing on a variety of spiritual practices.  She starts the year as a “lighthearted effort to read spiritual classics while attempting a year of faith-related disciplines like fasting, Sabbath keeping, chanting, and the Jesus Prayer” (pg. ix).  Each month she picks a discipline, reads some spiritual classics related to that discipline and attempts to practice it.  And she struggles, even fails, with all twelve. 

After a few months and a significant life experience, she found that “Although I didn’t see it while I was doing the practices themselves or even while I was writing the chapters in this book, the power of spiritual practice is that it forges you stealthily, as you entertain angels unawares” (Flunking Sainthood, pg. 168).  God used both her attempts at these different practices, and even the process of failing, to shape her to become more Christ-like and more able to reflect Christ to the world.  She, like thousands of Christians before her, discovered the power of spiritual practices, sacred rhythms, to shape Christian life.

Growing up, I don’t remember hearing about spiritual disciplines or spiritual practices as a group or term.  And yet, we had plenty of them.  We read Bible story books or other devotional material after dinner.  My dad sang to us before we went to sleep.  We went to church twice on Sunday.  My parents taught me to tithe.  We took an extended family spring break trip to do hurricane relief in South Carolina.  There were Christian rhythms in our life.  They shaped my Christian life and how I practice my faith. 

As I grew up, some of my rhythms have developed and changed. They have shaped the rhythms of my life as a single woman.  Like Riess, I have certainly failed some.  Over the summer, I’m going to be reflecting on some spiritual practices that have been important in my life, or that I would like to experiment with.  I have plans to explore writing prayers, meeting with a spiritual director, keeping the Sabbath, and doing justice, among others.  I hope that I, and my readers, will learn new rhythms and that those rhythms would shape us to become more Christ-like.  

Drum picture by Martha Riley, used under a Creative Commons License.

Praying hands picture by C Jill Reed, used under a Creative Commons License.

Easter Chives

We are coming into the end of the Easter season—this Sunday is Ascension Sunday, the last Sunday of Easter.  During the last five weeks the church has been celebrating the resurrection and the new life that we have because of the death and resurrection of Christ.  I love Easterseason.  We didn’t celebrate it in the churches I grew up in.  We just got the glory of Easter’s morning and evening service.  Then things became rather non-descript until 40 days later, Ascension Day comes along.

At Church of the Servant, we celebrate Easter for the whole season.  Our art is white and gold and full of joy.  I get to wear my white stole.  We sing hymns about the resurrection and its impact on our life.  It is all about new life from death.  We were dead to sin but alive in Christ (Romans 6:11). 

I was reminded of this miracle by the neglected pots on my balcony.  I neglected them last fall.  I just let the plants die.  I never cleaned the pots.  They have been there, brown and shriveled for months and months.  I was dreading cleaning it all up and considering not planting anything this summer.

A couple of weeks ago we got rain and more rain and more rain.  Some of it managed to get onto my covered balcony and into at least one of the pots.  The weather slowly warmed past the freezing mark.  And I noticed something remarkable.  There was a dash of green sprouting from those shriveled dead leaves.  The chives that I grew last summer had come back to life.  It was a little resurrection. 

That bright burst of green coming up gave me hope.  It reminded me that my God says, “See, I am doing a new thing! / Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? / I am making a way in the wilderness / and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:19).  I don’t know exactly what new things God is doing and will do in my life. I do know that God is doing a new thing.  Just like my Easter chives.

Personal photo of my Easter chives, May 2013.

Singleness is Sanctifying, Too

I’ve often heard that marriage is sanctification.  Sanctification is the theological word for becoming holy or becoming like Christ.  In a good marriage, people learn about themselves and getting along with others.  There is no denying God uses marriage to help people grow in their faith and become more Christ-like.  The problem is that every time we say this, it implies that you can’t really be sanctified if you aren’t married.  It reinforces the notion that serving God as a married person is better than serving God as a single person. 

Sanctification does not require marriage.  There are many ways that God sanctifies us.  Even more, marriage is not necessarily a better or quicker way to sanctification.  In fact, singleness can be part of sanctification, too.  Being single is a different training ground, but I truly believe it too can be fertile soil for becoming Christ-like.    

 One area of fertile soil is identity and trust.  Without another person, I am forced to deepen my identity in Christ.  I am not tempted to think that my boyfriend or husband is able to complete me.  I am who I am not because of my relationship status or who I am connected to.  I am a baptized daughter of God.  This is true of all of us who are in Christ, but being single takes away a temptation to find identity elsewhere. 

I have learned to trust God in different ways than if I was married.  I don’t have another person to rely on.  If I don’t have a job, there is no one else to support me.  If I have a stressful meeting, no one is waiting at home to comfort me.  If I need to make a decision, there is no one to help make the decision.  Instead, I live by faith.  I am learning to trust that God will provide for my needs.  I am learning to trust that God hears my prayers and binds up my broken heart.  I am learning to trust that God leads me and guides me in decision making.  Being single is fertile soil for sanctification in trust.     

This might sound counter-intuitive, but I have found being single to be a place to learn about community and hospitality.  You have to be intentional about developing community, when you don’t have built-in community with your spouse (although I would argue you still need to develop community with others when you’re married).  It takes work to maintain relationships.  There’s a learning curve to relationships—I have had to learn how to be vulnerable and let others in.  But those relationships can be sweet, friends that are family.  They are a community that has walked through some dark valleys, empty desserts, and sun-filled meadows with me.  I am better at all of the one-anothers we find in scripture because of this community.

 

The really awesome empty tomb cake my mom made for our Easter celebration!

Being single is also an opportunity to offer hospitality to others.  Before even offering hospitality, being single has given me a different insight into what it is like to be at the margins.  I don’t fit into what society expects, and it has made me more conscious of other people who might be feeling a bit out of place.  I want my life to be one that welcomes people in and gives them a place to feel at home.  What I desire to offer isn’t the stereotype of hospitality: dinner parties for couples or huge family dinners.  There is freedom associated with singleness and the type of hospitality I can offer.  I don’t have to figure out which family I’m going to spend holidays with.  This year, my parents came to celebrate Thanksgiving at my apartment with some of the refugees I work with.  At Easter, I took a family to my parents’ house for dinner.  I still have lots to learn (sanctification is a process, after all), but it is definitely a way that God is forming me.   

Getting married is not the only way to become sanctified.  There are plenty of sanctifying experiences and situations that come along with being single.  And so for all of us—whether married or single—my prayer is that we will “grow in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church” (Ephesians 4:15, NLT).


Personal photos taken on Iona, Scotland and at my parents' house in Michigan, taken in January and March 2013.

Sunday Afternoon Prayer: A Prayer of Resurrection

It has been a long winter for me, and a friend knew I needed some beauty in my life.  She gave me Mary Oliver’s newest book of poetry, A Thousand Mornings: Poems.  In this book I found a poem that gave me an image and a prayer for my life.  It points to the hope of resurrection, which makes it a good prayer for today.

Hurricane

It didn’t behave

like anything you had

ever imagined.  The wind

tore at the trees, the rain

fell for days slant and hard.

The back of the hand

to everything.  I watched

the trees bow and their leaves fall

and crawl back into the earth.

As though, that was that.

This was one hurricane

I lived through, the other one

was of a different sort, and

lasted longer.  Then

I felt my own leaves giving up and

falling.  The back of the hand to

everything.  But listen now to what happened

to the actual trees;

toward the end of the summer they

pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.

It was the wrong season, yes,

but they couldn’t stop.  They

looked like telephone poles and didn’t

care.  And after the leaves came

blossoms.  For some things

there are no wrong seasons.

Which is what I dream of for me. 

              

On the Church Calendar

When I lived in China, I went shopping with a teammate and some students for Christmas decorations.  As we went from booth to booth, sorting through the over-glittered window decorations and artificial Christmas trees, I saw an artificial wreath.  I was struck with an idea, “I can make an advent wreath!”  We always had an advent wreath at home when I was growing up, and my mom found various devotionals for us to use during the season.  Once I tracked down some purple candles, the advent wreath helped me to focus on the season.  In the morning darkness, I would like the candles and be reminded that “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2).  That was a particularly dark season of the year for a variety of reasons, and the simple candles gave me hope and peace in the midst of it.

Advent is just one season in the church calendar, the way that the church tells time.  Growing up, although we did observe Advent, we really only paid attention to some parts of the church calendar.  But as I have lived with the church calendar longer, it has become an important way for me to order my life.  A Lutheran source says, “People order time in various ways, often based on the rhythms of nature. The church organizes time by the church year. It tells the story of God, who is beyond time, acting in history – above all through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”  

This way that the church organizes time shapes us.  It doesn’t happen overnight, but through the years we are oriented to get the full view of God’s work in the world.  Instead of organizing our life by when we get to take vacation from our work or have to buy lots of gifts, we organize our life by Jesus life, death, and resurrection.  Instead of being forced to be happy all of the time, we have a variety of seasons with different timbres.  The church calendar is countercultural.  It continually points us towards Christ and helps us to meditate on his work.

And the church calendar is a good teaching tool.  It is simple enough for kids to learn.  The colors associated with each season give us a visual way to engage the story.  It tells God’s story.  This past Sunday was Christ the King (or Reign of Christ) Sunday.  We were reminded that Jesus reigns and that all parts of our life are under God’s authority.  What better message on a weekend of obsessive consumerism? 

This Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, I will remember the start of the church year.  The way God sent his son to earth.  And I will remember again that the “people walking in darkness have seen a great light.”  I am thankful for the church calendar that helps me to pay attention, to remember, to focus on Christ.   

 

Calendar image copyright © 2011 Michele Quigley, http://www.family-centered.com/living/2011/11/printable-liturgical-calendar/, accessed 27 November 2012.  

Used under a Creative Commons License.