How Much Time?

by Julia Graves

I think of Sunday as the day I refill my coffee pot of life. By the end of the week I am physically, emotionally, and most of all spiritually drained. I am in dire need of a recharge. This is one of the reasons I attend church each week. To give thanks and to get my batteries recharged. Without this renewal I feel lost and without direction.

When I walk through the front doors of the church and into the sanctuary I feel connected once more, connected to something much bigger than myself. I feel the desire to be reverent, quite my heart, give thanks for my many blessings, and to ask for help and guidance.

This past week I found myself pondering a question: How much time to I truly devote to God? For all that God has given me, what do I give in return? An hour a week? How many of us even give that? When we are in church are we focused on God, or on other things? Can we leave the hustle and bustle of life behind for 60 minutes a week? Turn off the cell phone, ignore that text message, and forget about the sports score. Can we slow down and think about nothing but prayer, about God?

This is a poem by Ken Canedo that I think of when my life gets too busy.

Be Still

I searched for God
in my avalanche of
emails and voicemails,
IMs, CDs, TVs and MP3s,
but the Lord was not in the electronics.

I searched for God
in the drone of endless conversations
that permeate the hurried pace of
my daily routine,
but the Lord was not in the clatter.

I could not find the Lord,
though I searched in vain
through all that surrounds me!

And then, I heard a gentle voice.
"Be still."

There, within the silence
of my own inner peace.

I found God.

Exit This Way

by Kyle Wiseley

One morning this week my cell phone woke me with a sound it had never made before – just a short melodic trill, then silence. In checking, I found that the battery was completely drained, the phone completely dead. I had never let it get that low before and for some reason it triggered my sometimes evil sense of humor. I assume that others sometimes ponder their own demise and what the circumstances might be around that event. Once in a while my own whimsy takes me to that inevitable scenario and I wonder how it will be. I suppose any accident that would simulate the splat of a bug on a windshield wouldn’t be bad except for the final micro-second which would be unpleasant but mercifully brief. Although passing in one’s sleep seems easy, it also seems like the coward’s way out. I think I would miss the details of the transition. Of course elements of violence and terror and enormous pain are to be understandably dreaded, but I don’t think I’d mind if I lingered a bit. I wouldn’t want people fussing over me. Perhaps just be lying peacefully in bed with as little pain and as much sharpness of consciousness as possible, with my faithful dog curled up beside me and just be able to observe the event from within, as it were.

There is an organization that will provide a harp and player to accompany one’s passing. Now I don’t particularly mind harp music and I think it was used to outstanding effect in the musical “Les Miserables”, but at my deathbed I think I would find it ludicrous and intrusive. One of my favorite cartoons was two panels: in the first was St. Peter greeting newcomers at the Pearly Gates with a hearty, “Welcome to Heaven! Here is your harp.” The second panel pictured Satan ushering newcomers through the gates of hell with the words “Welcome to hell! Here’s your accordion.”

Although I hold little affection for accordion music, the image of shuffling off this mortal coil to the rousing sounds of “Lady of Spain” has more than a small appeal.

I hope you aren’t offended by a light-hearted look at end of life scenarios. Such an attitude is possible and appropriate because of the Easter Season which we are celebrating. The agony and terror of Good Friday and the sealed tomb was not the end of the story, but there was great joy and celebration because Jesus did reappear and the concept of resurrection and eternal life became real.

So without fear or dread I hope I can make my final exit with the melodic tinkle of mirth on my lips and perhaps the rousing strains of “Lady of Spain” in the background.

Tending the Spaces

by Judy Bevilacqua

“Stir up in me the flame of love, O all-consuming fire...

Stir up in me the flame of love, O all-consuming fire...”

For over a year, I have been praying these lines as I use my Anglican rosary. That I’ve come to use and love a rosary at all, is such mystery to me. But here I am, letting my fingers do the walking! I wasn’t raised in a tradition that used rosaries. In fact they were a source of silent scorn: a superstitious incantation, a counting device for quantity not quality, a crutch for those who didn’t know how to pray. I’ve learned a lot since then, mostly about myself. I’ve swallowed a lot of deep-dish humble pie. And I now find these same beads a source of comfort and mobility. Especially when I am “prayer-alyzed” -- you know, experiencing the occasional spiritual inertia. The rosary also quiets and tames my inner world when my outer world is yelling and distracting me, which is fairly often.

It all started when I found a small sack on a table at church. It contained a rosary made of humble knotted black string and a folded prayer to use. It was from Africa, and it was free! With such low risk, it was a perfect way to experience my first Anglican rosary. I loved it. My husband loved it. We eventually took our worn “string-beads” to a bead shop in Sellwood and conscripted the owner to make us two Anglican rosaries. She was fascinated! We carefully selected each bead. Later, foraging at Goodwill turned up two cool wooden boxes to store them in. Oh, how we love paraphernalia! But I am way off-subject. I wanted to talk about the prayer, not about the vehicle of prayer... though it is a fine vehicle!

That little folded up verse that came with my African beads, has remained my favorite. It is called A Transfiguration Prayer. “Stir up in me the flame of love, O all-consuming fire...” Over every smooth sphere between the cruciform beads, I pray that prayer. Over each of the 28 days of the weeks beads... my inner voice, mumbling like river water over stones, is carried in silent pilgrimage, more a passenger than a prayer.

“Stir up in me the flame of love, O all-consuming fire” – here is the inexhaustible fuel to discover God as the source of all creative energy. The dunamis – power. He is heat and light. How eagerly I take refuge in the warmth of His comfort. But I also must endure the dangerous and exciting process of Hisrefining fire: watching my own impurities surface, as He turns up the heat in my life. I confess, I sometimes become a “firefighter,” both praying for AND resisting this summons to be made purer, more integrated, more grateful, less acquisitive. What a mystery is fire... an inextinguishable, mesmerizing, burning bush mystery!

On a cold, snowy day last January, I attended a day retreat. The retreatants were all asked to meditate on a poem by Judy Sorum Brown, called Fire. Its opening lines opened my eyes:

What makes a fire burn

Is space between the logs,

A breathing space.

Too much of a good thing,

Too many logs

Packed in too tight

Can douse the flames

Almost as surely

As a pail of water would.

So building fires

Requires attention

to the spaces in between,

As much as to the wood...

Creating space - breathing places. This revealed to me my integral part in the refining process. I need to find and tend the spaces. To move aside things in my life which are packed too tight. To simplymake room for silence, for rest, for meditation and the breathing rhythms of my rosary prayer. I cannotsanctify myself, but if I tend my spaces... the flame of God’s love will do the rest: “stir up in me the flame of love, O all-consuming fire…” Amen.

(Photo courtesy of www.freefoto.com.)