Ode to a Missing Beard

In honor of St. Patty's Day I offer this limerick:

There once was a curious servant,
who shaved all his beard for Lent.
He was caught by surprise,
by cheeks of great size,
and said "Razors are money ill-spent!"

Grinding Flour

Big, heavy, deep, sobs shook him, making it difficult for him to pray. Each word came gasping out, pulled laboriously from deep inside. My wife and I held his hands, guiding him, helping him find the words.

My heart ached for him, and it grew a little larger.

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I wasn’t really in the mood for church today. I got there early, as usual, and went in the prayer room. I lit a half dozen candles. I sat down. I prayed. I waited.

It was a good service today. Before the service there was an invitation to come forward and pray. I did. It helped a little.

The worship songs were well chosen. In singing them I felt my heart lift a little... but not like I usually feel.

The message was good (I'd already read the notes before hand when I posted them here).

Even at church I am busy. Tasks to do between services. Set up for a Sunday School class... There were a number of people I needed to speak with. A woman who wants me to do a small painting for her son, a state legislator who is going to appear on my students’ tv show, a buddy who agreed to repaint the prayer room, my spiritual mentor to verify tomorrow’s meeting, a guy who can help me with a wood surface for a painting I am starting after Easter... and... Oh, I almost forgot... Jesus.

My life is too busy. It is getting busier.

I have an interview tomorrow with the district’s superintendent and the personnel director for a team that will design the philosophy, pedagogy, and curriculum for our school. Important stuff, plans that will affect our school and thousands of children for a very long time. Worth the time and effort. Very exciting. But it is one more task. My life gets so busy I feel like I am on some sort of treadmill.

I’m too busy. Aside from work and my prayer times I have three after school programs, and more importantly, a family that needs my attention.

Frankly, though I try really hard, I don’t understand women. Sometimes I wonder if some people are gay just so they don’t have to try to live with the opposite gender. (Fear not, I'm not going into a battle-of-the-sexes frustrated-male monologue today.) But I recognize that I need to slow down, care for her as the most important human in my life, because she is.

She is a good woman. I love her very much. I wouldn’t hesitate to give my life for her, do almost anything to make her happy.

The house needs my attention. That is a whole other treadmill. The bedroom door needs fixing, the floors are peeling, and the toilet plugged up yesterday. Even when the plug seemed to be cleared it still wouldn’t flush properly. The water was draining, but the bowl wouldn’t fully refill. I finally pulled the toilet out and dragged it into the back yard to see if there was something still stuck somewhere in its innards. I tried to run a plumber's snake through it, and a garden hose...

My mother in law was here, sick because she had spent a couple of days last week watching Jeremiah when he was sick. She needed to use the only other restroom every 20 minutes. That was a frequently occupied room.

And Brenda was having a bad day.

In the most positive moment of the afternoon I reminded her of the evening out we had the other night and how she was having a good day. She said: “A good day is when I’m not screaming on the outside.”

It made me feel sad, and tired, and old.

So I was at church with a heavy heart. I slapped on a plastic smile. I prayed fervently. I tried my best to think of others and how I love my Lord.

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After church I fed the kids and went back to wrestling with a toilet.

While I worked I got to thinking. I was thinking about bread.

We had communion this morning and I was thinking about the last supper, the first communion. I was thinking about that loaf of unleavened bread.

I was really thinking about the donkey.

You see that meal, the Last Supper, happened in Jerusalem during passover. In a city like that, and for travelers such as Jesus’ group, the bread was probably purchased from a professional baker. The flour for that bread would have come from a source of wheat able to feed a city full of pilgrims.

Wheat was ground at a mill, a donkey walking around a tight circle, rotating a mill stone.

That donkey probably worked there for a long time. It would spend most of its life there. A lot of grains of wheat poured between those stones while it ground those kernels into flour.

Most of that flour fed regular folks regular meals.

But that week something unusual happened. During that particular week it produce a sack of flour that would be touched by the hand of God. That loaf of bread was broken before twelve close associates and passed around in a symbolic meal that would multiply itself through the ages, like a timeless feeding of thousands from a few loaves, until I reached this morning to pick up a small piece of cracker and place it in my mouth to consider its dryness and how I am far less than my Lord wishes me to be.

That donkey walked around in circles for a long, long time, working, working, working...

Sometimes that is all I can do. Even when I am weary, I need to just keep moving in the circuit He has placed me in and pull that stone.

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This afternoon, born of the frustration of unresolved plumbing issues there was a break through with Jeremiah.

Something gave. His heart cracked in a way I have not seen before, and the fears and grief and anguish he has been feeling since the fire came choking out, sobbing out, in a prayer before his mommy and his daddy.

We are tired, and the work is often tedious. But in the mundane work of our lives something unusual can happen. So we are surprised when the result of our labors has a divine purpose.

Where Does Creativity Come From?

I wish I could play a musical instrument. It would be so cool to pick up a guitar or sit at a piano and have music flow out of me. I have a huge audio collection. I love to sing in worship on Sundays. Unfortunately those around me probably don’t have the same enthusiasm to listen to my singing. But it would be wonderful to have such skills.

Ah well. I have other talents.

One of them is art. I took a couple of years of art design and art history in college, and I grew up around it (my mother is an artist). I tried to make a living at it (read: “starving artist”).

It’s been a while since I was serious about doing art on a regular basis. I think the purpose of art comes from within. I needed something to express. I needed something to say.

A couple years ago our church took the Lenten season seriously. We dedicated a room for prayer. It was stocked with candles, a CD player, soft lighting, and interestingly, some Sharpie pens to write prayers and thoughts on the walls.

This place of prayer has been a tremendous refuge for me.

Writing on the wall was weird at first. But as others did it I felt more comfortable. We wrote passages of scripture, favorite verses, psalms and such... little prayers. Everything anonymous. It was exciting seeing how other people thought, how they prayed, what was important to them.

Slowly pictures began to appear. A broken loaf of bread with a goblet of red wine. Pictures of the cross. I reproduced a Gustave Dore’ depiction of the crucifixion in crayons.

And that is where it began. I was looking at other pictures of Dore’s and a sketch of Jesus’ face. It stayed in my mind. And one day, while in a prayer session, I went to the spot behind the door and sketched that face in pencil. The eyes were level with mine. I came back another day and sketched it in with a fine point black Sharpie.

I came back again and penciled in His body. And all the while I thought about the movie The Passion and His great sacrifice. I started writing the words of the prayers I was thinking in the folds of His clothing in various colored Sharpies, working around other prayers that had been written on the wall.

Soon I was praying there a lot of the time. Praying and writing and drawing. I bought every color of Sharpie there is and brought in many colored pencils and acrylic paints.

I did the Lord’s Prayer, twisting around the figure of Jesus and over the door and around other scriptures written on the walls. I did a grape vine climbing up the corner and twisting out, using passages about Jesus as the vine to give the bark texture. One branch was the list of Jesus' heritage. I put sparrows in the vines, flying in to settle near grapes with passages about how He loves the sparrows and how much more He loves us.

Before long a year had passed and Easter was coming again.

I was uncomfortable at how some folks would talk so much about the pictures, as if they were something of worth in themselves. They aren’t. Their only value, for me anyway, was in the prayer I was praying when they went on the walls. So as Easter approached I convinced a reluctant pastor to let me paint over the walls for Easter.

What a shock for folks.

But then I began again. This time I planned the life-size image of Jesus from the start. He is the Good Shepherd, a lamb across his shoulders. He is wearing a crown of thorns, but there are no holes in His hands. He is looking purposefully outward, and a careful eye may notice that a shadow in the shape of a cross is falling across him. He has begun his final mortal walk, carrying His sheep, and resolutely moving onward. The entire thing is done in fine point colored sharpies, the lettering so small in places for shadow that I could not see the letter myself, I just knew the shape I had made formed them.




I did another version of the Lord’s Prayer. A large circle: a never ending prayer.



I painted a golden sword on one wall in acrylics, a reminder of a dream I had received when things had gotten a little rough this past year (post:November 12, 2005).

The prayer room is a place for prayers, and that is all that these are.

And in a couple of weeks it will get painted over again.

There are folks who are dismayed that it is going to get painted. I’m glad they will be gone. They were done for the moment, not for anything else.

I suppose some people see art where all I see is a time of meditation and prayer that marked a passage for me. I will be glad for new canvas.

But I have an idea. If folks want these images so much (some have even talked about cutting out the sheet rock to preserve them), I have a plan.

This year I will do most of my prayers on canvas and wood and hang those on the walls (I'm excited about redoing the Lord's Prayer!). Then the following Easter we can have a silent auction and folks who want them can have them. The money can go to the fund the rebuilding of our church from the fire.

I’ve said all this for two reasons. First, I would like to promote the idea of churches having a place where people can go to pray; let them express themselves in anyway that seems fit to them at the time they are praying.

The second reason is a little trickier to articulate.

It is the idea of creative prayer. I’m not sure what to say about it, but when I approach a creative project something organic happens. I’m not exactly sure what is coming when I start, I am simply a tool for Him to use.

Have you prayed earnestly and for a long period of time and have felt the prayer take over? It becomes something outside of yourself.

I did a writing experiment once where I let a character in a short story begin to respond to what I was writing as I wrote it. I soon found myself arguing with a character I was making up as I went along. It was unsettling, especially since he got in the last word.

Art can be like that. Last Christmas morning I stepped up to a blank canvas on the stage of our church while the congregation sat to hear our pastor speak.

This is what I was thinking:

“Uh oh! I don’t know what I am doing!!! What color should I use?! Everyone is watching! I better get started... Now. NOW!! NOW!!! Uhhhh... what color? What color? Uh, WHAT COLOR?!!! Come on... pick a color!!!! OK.... Uh.... BLUE!!!!!!”

I didn't know what I was going to do. I had set myself up to let the Lord lead me at the last possible moment.

"If you know exactly what you are going to do, then what is the point of doing it?"
-- Pablo Picasso

Then I stopped and thought about Tim’s sermon. It was on Mary’s song. the Magnificat.

Here is a woman, no one special, a girl really, and of all the people on the Earth, among all the mighty cities, this girl in a tiny town was going to be the tool the Lord used to step into mortal existence. She sang a song of praise.

So I painted a picture of a tiny figure among enormous buildings, bathed in the light of grace and love and divine selection.

Suddenly I find myself drawing and painting. And with each stroke of the pen, or brush of acrylic paint, or rubbing of chalk, I think about the prayer in my heart that is finding expression outside of myself.

And there is so much going on in my heart. I ache to be nearer my Lord, whispering prayers that are spontaneous and liturgical, rote and creative.

That is the second point I wish to make, aside from encouraging others to create prayer rooms. I want to encourage others to find new ways to communicate with our Lord. If He has given you a talent, can you use it to express a prayer? Can you write? Can you sing or play an instrument?

We fill our lives with nonsense: TV, movies, silly human politics. I believe we too often overlook the things within all of us that are divine; where else could creativity come from than from The Creator?

Prodigal

I’ve a very good friend. He has consistently prayed for and with me through many difficult times. He was the first to come when my son died. He took me out for coffee at 3 a.m. when Jeremiah was arrested last June. He has encouraged me so much.

He is also my pastor.

He has had challenges also. And, on occasion, he has permitted me to help.

He promoted a monthly prayer chain, 24 hours once a month, in a room we have set aside for it. And in that room I have enjoyed many blessings. One of which is exploring prayer through my art (which is the subject of an upcoming post).

Out of that exploration my friend invited me to try my hand at painting a prayer during the service on Christmas Morning.

I chose to paint Mary’s song of praise: the Magnificat.

In January this good friend of mine went home to be with his brother who is dying of cancer. There is a powerful story there and I am tempted to tell it. But I want you to hear it from my friend, who gave a message on it today.

But I would like to share this. This man has accepted the Lord, after many years of rejecting faith and family, living homeless.

While my friend was there I prayed for him and his brother, and as I have learned to do, I prayed while doing art.

While sketching out this image I got the news of his change of heart. Here is that picture: “Prodigal”.

A heart of stone has rolled aside to make room for the Lord.

Ash Wednesday

I’m looking at a jar of charred wood. It is from an eave of my church, near the spot where my son was playing with fire.

Within a year or so a new building will rise where the old one stood. Something new out of the ashes.

I watched The Passion last night. My children did not come with me. That is OK. I am humbled once again at the enormity of God’s love. I will watch it again on Good Friday. I am humbled that out the greatest horror, the greatest of sins, when men had the audacity to lay hands upon God incarnate, the Lord made something wonderful happen.

Humbled that He would do that, and include me in that grace.

I’m reading a passage from the Bible tonight...

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. --Philippians 2:1-3

There has been discouragement this past year, and encouragement. Discomfort and comfort. There have been tears and joys.

Most of this passage is pretty easy to take. But that last part... “...Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.”

That’s a little tougher.

I have tried to be humble. In fact, I think I am a little proud of my humility.

How’s that?!

I call myself Curious Servant. That is how I want to be known. Look at me! See how humble I am!

I’m sitting here with a cross on my forehead, made of the ashes from our burned church.

I strut through my life, trying to be great, and it’s all foolishness. I want to help shape the new look of our school. I want to run my tv show and after school clubs and lead a Sunday school class... and why is that? Is it all because of a desire to serve? Or do I crave attention?

Is there anything I have that I should be proud of? Is there anything I do, or think, or create, or make, or feel, that makes me special? Or is everything I have a gift from my Lord? Isn’t all I have, when it is at its best, at its purest, at its most wholesome, of God and not of me?

This isn’t going to be long post. I don’t want to put a lot of lovely words together.

I want to just record a few thoughts tonight before I go to bed.

God loves me despite my arrogance, despite my pride. He is pleased most when I use His grace to honor Him.

That is all. That is everything.

I want to be an honest servant.

I need to seek opportunities to quietly wash feet.