understanding

The Most Un-Epic Blog You Will Ever Read

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I am sitting here with my lap top and my lap cat snoozing contentedly away (the lap cat is sleeping, not the lap top). All is well.

I didn’t wake up today with the super spiritual powers of ultimate patience, unending mercy, and unconditional love. Honestly, I didn’t feel like getting up at all so I set the alarm clock on my phone back 30 minutes before I finally rolled out of bed.

I still get angry too easily and I still am not very good at taking those thoughts captive. Sometimes, I have a terrible attitude and even blame God every now and then that my life isn’t what I think it should be.

But I can see that I’m a little more patient, a little more kind, a little more understanding, a little more ready to forgive and not plot revenge in my head.

I am a little more trusting in God’s plans for me and a little more willing to wait patiently and silently. I’m a little more at peace with unanswered questions and unfulfilled longings and desires.

The life of faith for me is the baby step by baby step version (did anyone else just think of Bill Murray in What About Bob? ‘Cause I sure did).

Somedays it’s 4 steps forward, 3 steps back. Some days, it’s 2 steps forward, 3 steps back. Overall, I am moving forward, ever so slowly, but ever so surely.

Sometimes you get the Charleton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea moments, but more often than not, you get the quiet moments when you’re waiting for the still, small voice.

For me, my life of faith is less like an action movie filled with CGI and exposions and sometimes scantily-clad women and more like a quirky independent comedy-drama with complex yet endearing characters, a scenic backdrop, and a quiet ending with an epiphany or two in it. Maybe with subtities, maybe not.

By the way, the lap cat is purring, so that probably means she approves this message. And so do I.

My prayer (as prayed by Henri Nouwen)

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nouwen

“O Lord Jesus, you who came to show the compassionate love of your Father, make your people know this love with their hearts, minds, and souls. So often we feel lonely, unloved, and lost in this valley of tears. We desire to feel affection, tenderness, care, and compassion, but suffer from inner darkness, emptiness, and numbness. I pray tonight: Come, Lord Jesus, come. Do not just come to our understanding, but enter our hearts– our passions, emotions, and feelings– and reveal your presence to us in our inmost being. As long as you remain absent from that intimate core of our experience, we will keep clinging to people, things, or events to find some warmth, some sense of belonging. Only when you really come, really touch us, set us ablaze with your love, only then will we become free and let go of all false forms of belonging. Without that inner warmth, all our ascetical attempts remain trivial, and we might even get entangled in the complex network of our own good intentions.

O Lord, I pray that your children may come to feel your presence and be immersed in your deep, warm, affective love. And to me, O Lord, your stumbling friend, show your mercy. Amen.”

From A Cry for Mercy: Prayers from the Genesee by Henry Nouwen