Mrs. Baker's Neighborhood

That's the thing with fruitfulness... Life requires death, wealth requires sacrifice.The kernel falls to the ground to become a full stem of wheat. The grape is crushed for sweet savoring. Good things require a yielding, a giving way.

I was encouraged recently reading a newsletter we receive from Times Square Church in New York City; it's the church founded by David Wilkerson, the missionary pastor in the incredible story "Run, Baby, Run" about gang leader Nicky Cruz and Wilkerson's redeeming work with the youth of inner-city 1960's New York. I'm always impressed at their letters, always real, often addressing brokenness, the downhearted, the down and out, and how God meets the broken ones whose seed has fallen to the ground in need of re-birth. So different from the message of suburban mega-churches, it seems. And why wouldn't it be? They're smack in the middle of one of America's most tumultuous, confused, and self-absorbed cities. Each day on their very church step, a block off Broadway, they encounter every painted color of depravity, violence, and hubris you can imagine, a vivid spectrum from Park Avenue to park bench.

This single phrase from the letter caught my attention, and it re-plays itself in my mind often as the days pass: "Drink deep the cup of salvation." Yes. Drink deep. I long for it. And I believe I do, to the extent that I am able. (Drink deep, that is.) I smile and wonder if God laughs at my child-like desire to take the fullness of his cup. "Are you certain?" He says, amused. A chill quickly passes over the arch of my neck, tiny hairs standing on end. "Well, maybe not the full cup," I think to myself. I suddenly see a little boy, one of my two maybe, holding a goblet to small lips, taking a broad gulp, immersing his young palate in the complex and adult nature of fermented vine. He emerges, sputtering, confused at the bitterness and strength in the juice. No, he's not ready. There's yet time. And small doses. But still he reaches out to receive what he can. As do I. God only gives what we're able to bear, and whatever He gives is good. Faith.

So we drink deep.

No matter the sting, no matter the stain, drink deep... as red wine flows from His cup to ours, life-giving blood to parched, constricted veins.

Drink deep, unabashedly, knowing the only one who truly sees is He who poured it.

Drink unashamed as the Vintner's own sacrifice marks the well from which the cup is drawn.

Drink gratefully as mortal flesh yields to divine glory.

Drink deep the cup of salvation.

And here's the thing... I feel like Christians are even hesitant to talk about these kinds of issues in worship because they're so sensitive about crossing lines - as if words like "body" or "lover" are dangerous swear words never to be uttered in church or relationship in fear of hellfire. Yet intimacy issues are, in my opinion, all too relevant to our relationship with God and worship thereof. In a sex-crazed generation, we are a intimacy-deprived church, the very intimacy this generation seeks without knowing it. Too few are brave enough to venture into these waters. I'd like to grow more in my ability to tackle these issues better myself.    

Last week in church, I was thinking again about the American tendency (or maybe it's more of a Northwest tendency) to be body-conscious, body-bound. We're physically stifled as a people, nervous about how we look, restrained in our affections, and hesitant to be physically demonstrative in displaying our emotions. And it carries into our worship. Each Sunday we exercise heart and mind, soul and spirit, but "body" seems somehow neglected in our endeavors. We're encouraged primarily to focus on freeing our hearts to sacrifice, our minds from the pressures of the week, and our wills from the struggles of sin that hinder our relinquishing pure praise... Focus. Center. Throw off anything that entangles. Our minds pause to savor the lofty ideals set forth in hymnbooks written centuries before. Our hearts leap in joy at God's goodness or melt in sorrow at our depravity and pain. And then, when it seems the stars align, we seize some nugget of truth in the music before us, and we worship. Our mouths open to release praise. Moments of pure worship, truly.

But all the while, and too frequently it seems, the bodies (of the Body) stand dormant, unmoved, staunch and seemingly anchored to the ground. Or if we do worship physically, perhaps, we fall into the same predictable cycle of the same old comfortable mechanisms each week: Sit during Verse 1, stand at the Chorus, lift one hand second time around, lower it in Verse 2, (never ever lift both at the same time), etc., etc... That can be almost just as binding as doing nothing at all. The body is a God-given instrument to be unleashed to worship God freely as only flesh and bone can! There are too many things hands and feet can do that a heart or mind can't do alone. Who knows what things that kind of praise can unlock in a person, what it can communicate to a God who became flesh himself and danced among us? Isn't there a reason God gave a physical manifestation of love between a man and a woman? Can you imagine a relationship with a husband or wife where only heart and mind were exchanged and no body-love? Much would be profoundly lost! And while our relationship with God is compared to the relationship of the Lover and the Beloved, we worship frequently stifled. Hm. I can't get away from thinking sadly that overall, as a God-worshiping people, we are still pretty much body worship-depraved. It seems to me that in this way, at least, we have much to learn from ancient cultures and tribal people groups.

I feel it more in some churches than others, and every once in a while, I feel it in a church that I wouldn't even expect it. Why can't people release their hands, arms, legs, torsos, as freely as they release their mouths? What is everyone so afraid of? I guess it is a little more awkward if you're the only one moving in an entire section of people, but enjoyment is contagious. Maybe you're the spark that someone else needs to be brave. What might happen if we just wait expectantly each week to worship spontaneously, freely with all that we are and see how our bodies want to worship naturally on their own? I think when your body wants to move, you should let it lead you. (And I'm not excluding leading you to be still either. I just think we're pretty good at that already, purposeful or not.) When that toe feels like tapping and you find yourself doing it unconsciously, or your center of gravity takes over and starts swaying to the music all on its own, you should just let it. Or maybe you're so bound up, you need to start with just giving all those digits permission to move at all. Just maybe. I'm not so sure we're destined to end up maniac Pentecostals dancing in the aisles if we let our bodies lead, as it seems so many fear. That's not my experience so far anyway. But who knows? I've got a long way to go, so the sermon's as much for myself as for anyone else. My husband is my inspiration; I can always rely on him to be just a little more crazy, a little more spontaneous, a little more body-un-conscious. (Thankfully.)

It's kind of funny actually that sometimes the easiest thing I find to do in worship anymore is to participate physically. We've visited so many churches in the past couple of years where the worship songs are entirely unfamiliar. But do my feet know that? No. They start to kick around anyway, and it's worship. Do my hands know the words? No, but they move and speak praise without word or spoken thought, even in meditative and slow songs. It may not be traditional, but it's comforting to me, and I know it's glorifying to God. It's a way I can worship when I don't know how, a way to worship when there is no word.

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I went out to get the mail a couple days ago and stumbled on a beautiful surprise... this fully-blossomed holiday rose. (Just in time for Thanksgiving!) It faded fast once I brought it inside, but I stole a memory of it before it escaped. I bought this bush two summers ago for it's unique color of petals. The bud starts out blood red, then quickly opens to a very light, flushed skin tone bloom that varies across the face of the flower, sometimes a diluted champagne color and others an almost grayish pepper white. It's tough to see here, but it's likely the strangest and most delicate colored rose I've ever seen.

A savory excerpt from Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art (p. 96) that I read this morning. Mm, mm, good...

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Lewis Carroll was a story-teller, an artist as well as a mathematician, and artists often have a more profound sense of what time is all about than do the scientists. There's a story of a small village (about the size of the village near Crosswicks) where lived an old clockmaker and repairer. When anything was wrong with any of the clocks or watches in the village, he was able to fix them, to get them working properly again. When he died, leaving no children and no apprentice, there was no one left in the village who could fix clocks. Soon various clocks and watches began to break down. those which continued to run often lost or gained time, so they were of little use. A clock might strike midnight at three in the afternoon. So many of the villagers abandoned their time-pieces.

One day a renowned clock-maker and repairer came through the village, and the people crowded around him and begged him to fix their broken clocks and watches. He spent many hours looking at all the faulty time pieces, and at last he announced that he could repair only those whose owners had kept them wound, because they were the only ones which would be able to remember how to keep time.

So we must daily keep things wound: that is, we must pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain.

We may not always be able to make our "clock" run correctly, but at least we can keep it wound, so that it will not forget.

Justice asked me again this morning (this is the second time in the last few weeks): What means "early," Mommy? As if I should know. I found it funny that he felt the need to ask, because that's one thing I'm realizing about this whole motherhood thing - I did not sign up for this. What I did sign up for is diaper changes and bandaged wounds, broken sleep and broken bones, packed lunches, packed punches, lots of tears - both mine and theirs, but never once did it occur to me, not once, that I would for what feels like the rest of my prime adult life be obligated to wake up before the crack of dawn to drag two reluctant boys out of bed five days a week to get them to school on time, dressed, fed, awake and alert, nurtured oh so carefully in a patient, loving cloud of sweet motherliness. I know for a fact this was not in the contract. How could I have missed this? Seriously. How? I need my sleep, people.

Maddox, like his daddy, is happy to dance and sing in the morning while Justice, we're finding out, is more like me in this way. More like me in that he hates mornings, it seems. The two of us were standing in the kitchen last week one school day looking on where Jeff and Maddox were flaunting their early-morning capriciousness, singing some wretched song and shaking their booties shamelessly while Justice and I stared on in a haze of sleepy discontent, Justice sucking his physical thumb and I, my metaphysical one. All of a sudden, Justice did what we both were thinking; he took his stuffed sleeping toy, Shyee, and threw at Maddox. Hard. All the while he stared, sucking, sucking, sucking. We continued to look on in silence. Unfortunately, Jeff is himself my own stuffed sleeping toy, and well... I can't really throw him at himself, now, can I? I would have if I could.

The bright spot is that it is, amazingly enough, getting a little easier for all of us. I read somewhere recently that if you can get out into the natural light in the morning, 20 minutes of light is enough to trick your body into waking up. That's the good part; it seems to work somewhat for me. By the time I get back from dropping off Justice, I'm not really sleepy anymore. I still can't say, though, that it's changing my opinion about mornings. (And my husband just asked me what I'm going to do when it gets dark out in the mornings. Darn him anyway.)

Thought this was an appropriate time to post an old cartoon I've been holding onto for years, probably since college. This one goes out to all the early morning haters...

Early Bird

Maddox recently slammed his finger in my car door. (No, I didn't do it.) He actually did it himself, which seems virtually impossible to me, but he did. He was slamming his own car door and was so excited to get moving, he slammed it on his own finger. It was dark out, and I couldn't see whether it was broken or not, so I was relieved to discover it wasn't once we got in our friends' house where we were visiting. The thing that triggered my memory was that he lay there afterward on the couch, ice on finger wailing, "But Mommy, I didn't know this could happen.... I didn't know." There was something familiar about the cry, but I didn't place it until the next day. He had said that same thing a year or so before when he'd slammed his finger in our sliding glass door - "I didn't know that could happen." It seems to me that's what fear is all about - knowing that it could happen - whatever "it" is. Seems there's a point in our lives where we didn't know, then suddenly we do. The pain hits, the trauma, the wound, and suddenly, we know. What's strange about this incident is that he did know. He'd done virtually the same thing a year before, slamming his finger in a door. That's noteworthy in some way, too, I suppose. One can forget.