Thoughts on my Psalm 139 reflection

Psalm 139 begins with a description of a God, who is very difficult to escape. Tracking our location, movements, thoughts, and words which we are preparing to speak. This ancient text could compare with those who speak out on the tracking of Facebook, Google, credit card companies, and the NSA.

Is God like the NSA, impossible to escape from so that we will get caught if we do wrong? Is God selling our personal info to maintain pearly gates? Is God an overly obsessed lover, who ignores any restraining order we try to place upon him?

Or maybe God wants to have a conversation with us. Ignatius was big on conversations with God and all of creation. Knowing someone greater by intimate time, leads to greater love. God just may be with us at all times so that we can become more intimate. Through prayer, spiritual direction, jazz, art, and flower gardens; I get to know God and God gets to know me.

But Psalm 139 is meaningful for me for the next line which was not part of the daily reading last Sunday.

Verse 13. You created my inmost self, knit me together in my mother's womb.

My spiritual director suggested I read psalm 139 as I entered into my first 8 day retreat. It was at a time when I was exploring how a youth filled with visits to a urologist had affected my life. For 8 days God and I wrestled with a rather poorly knit urthrethra. Not what I was expecting when I drove to the Jesuit Center, but it was a long over due conversation.

Verse 14. For so many marvels I thank you; a wonder am I, and all your works are wonders. You knew me through and through,

OK, so maybe God gave me a poorly knit urinary tract, but I got to be awed by the hands he gave me. On the 4th of July, I sent out this image asking my Facebook friends to be careful while handling fireworks.

15. my being held no secrets from you, when I was being formed in secret, textured in the depths of the earth.

God wants us to share our secrets. I told no one about those doctor visits, which began when I was four, until I was in college. God was there when I finally told my story and has been encouraging me ever since. We are called into a life of intimate relationships fueled by conversations. God would rather not miss one.

 

 

Creeping Back to a Well Kept Garden

Creeping thyme overhanging white wall

Summer school has arrived and though I enjoyed the three week break, the garden took advantage of the time to run in its own direction. Weeds. Dead blooms. Plants in need of support.

So it is a good thing that I asked for more horticulture time this summer and that the temps have stayed low enough to get some gardening in at the school. But back to back to back horticulture classes following a pre-school day weeding session, had me a bit tired out. Each class brought a set of fresh legs while mine grew less fresh. When it was over I drank some water and walked up the hill to some creeping thyme.

I'm not sure why but of all the blooms encountered the last two days, these small flowers asked the most for my attention. Saint Ignatius would say God was conversing with me when those blooms caught my eye so deeply. The desire to respond to a garden in need of attention is a much greater call that I find difficult to ignore. It gets me to the school early to rid the flower garden of weeds and helps me to keep going as those fresh legs enter into my classroom.

A Starting Place For Jazz in My Church

 

I had posted a link to my acceptance that jazz in my church would be a journey that could not be predicted. One friend thought that action was needed, not just examens, and another friend offered up a suggestion on Facebook. The suggestion: Jazz playing in the background at an adult discussion that I am leading. I don't want to to that, but the suggestion led to imagining a series of adult discussions that centered about a jazz standard and reflections on spiritual writings that are connected to the standard. This could happen quicker and easier without the scheduling and planning that a bigger event would require. I'm not big on those two things. Eventually my desire for jazz in my church could grow and expand.

We will see. Maybe it will start with Willow Weep For Me, a tune that touched me this summer in the midst of silence.

 

My answer begins in Consider the Birds by Debbie Blue

I left my examen hopeful that it was a start to answering the questions about jazz in my church, but clearly without answers. That is when I picked up the book I am reading, Consider The Birds. Here is the second paragraph I ventured into, then stopped, and reread, then stopped and read outlook to Mosaic Woman.

There's no logical or geographical reason for it to take forty years to get from Egypt to the Promised Land. We sometimes believe the shortest path is the best one, but maybe (God knows) there is a need to wander. There is unmapped territory that needs to be explored -- desires to be let go of, renounced, or transformed. God's seduction is not a crass come-on, nor is it smooth. The path to intimacy may be long and complicated.

Indeed...

 

Time to examen my simple desire, jazz in my church

 

One of the seven desires I carried with me from my week of silence this summer is jazz in my church. It may have been born the night Andrea Wolper sang at my church on the evening I chose to celebrate turning 50. But what does that mean and is now the time to figure it out.

For nearly five months it has been on my lips when I pray, and though the other six desires are thriving, I am at a loss of how to proceed and where would it be that I am headed if I proceeded. What is this desire?

To have concerts. To have vespers on a Saturday evening. Or to do something else.

Why is this important? It was important enough that I felt moved to spend a weekend traveling to Cleveland to a conference on jazz and worship.

I can feel the desire to create a liturgy immersed in jazz. Yet I wonder if I really want to do it. So I have avoided prayer to avoid the confusion. Maybe it is time to venture into my chair of contemplation and examen this that and the other thing.

 

Lent is over, will the news begin ~ Commuting with Bruce Cockburn's Pacing the Cage

So do I go back to the news? Mainly do I go back to listening to NPR on the way to and back from work? I am not sure I want to.  I do miss aspects of it, but can I get that in other ways.  So tomorrow, we will see.

My final commutes during Lent was with Bruce Cockburn and the song which struck a cord was Pacing The Cage from his Charities of Night CD.  The opening image is powerful to say the least.  

Sunset is an angel weeping

Holding out a bloody sword

No matter how I squint I cannot

Make out what it's pointing toward

But then these words really got me~

I've proven who I am so many times

The magnetic strip's worn thin

And each time I was someone else

And every one was taken in

Powers chatter in high places

Stir up eddies in the dust of rage

Set me to pacing the cage

 For 26 years I have taught and been judged worthy to teach another year.  The schools have changed. I have changed. The supervisors have changed.  And yet I must do it again this year.  My supervisors get a quick glimpse of me.  Swipe my magnetic strip. And the system continues. 

I understand pacing the cage.  I have seen it in caged tigers, students in my classroom, and tonight in myself as I was finishing up an IEP.  I call it caged tiger syndrome. I briefly thought I had deleted a lot of an IEP from the online site. I paced the cage ready to face my supervisor.  So I called a colleague, who stopped the pacing, well most of it.