A Prayer as I Grow Older

There was a time when I would have prayed this for others…now, I'm beginning to see that I need to pray it for myself. I just want to be like my Grandma Morrison when I grow up (okay…old)…the Lord granted her what this dear saint prayed:

Lord, thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older and will someday be old.

Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion.

Release me from craving to straighten out everybody's affairs.

Make me thoughtful but not moody; helpful but not bossy.

With my vast store of wisdom it seems a pity not to use it all, but thou knowest Lord that I want a few friends at the end.

Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point.

Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing and the love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by.

I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others' pains, but help me to endure them with patience.

I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessening cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others.

Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.

Keep me reasonably sweet; I do not want to be a saint - some of them are so hard to live with - but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil.

Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people.

And, give me, O Lord, the grace to tell people about it.

For all our sakes,

Amen.

~ A Mother Superior's Prayer

Green Dolphin Street

I just posted on my friend Sarah's new blog that I had reviewed Elizabeth Goudge's Green Dolphin Street here, and then realized that I actually hadn't, only thought I had (not very uncommon for me these days). Anyway, in my current Elizabeth Goudge binge, I read this book for the first time. I think I started it years ago, but it didn't grab me, and I put it aside. Now I can't imagine why or how it didn't. I truly loved this book and would recommend it without hesitation. Like most of Goudge's books about marriage and family life that I have read, it is about real the demands of true, gritty, Christ-like love in unexpected ways and places, and in a self-sacrificing way that is definitely not hip or cool today, even among most Christians. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

Here are just a few of my favorite quotes:

"…what the world sees of any human creature is not the real life; that life is lived in secret, a reality that moves behind the façade of appearance, like wind behind a painted curtain; only an occasional ripple of the surface, a smile, a sudden light or shadow passing on a face, surprising by its unexpectedness, gives news of something quite other than what it is."

"There's much that goes into the makin' of a man or woman into somethin' better than a brute beast, but there's three things in chief, an' they're the places where life sets us down, and the folks life knocks us up against, an' – not the things ye get, but the things ye don't get."

And a most insightful quote on the ongoing battle with habitual and indwelling sin:

"By this time next week, such was her selfishness and pride, she might find herself once more a changeling, strayed again from home, with the door to unlock all over again. Yet once you had been home, surely, it was easier to get home again, and each fresh fight to get back to the water brook would bring one nearer its source, and that final coming home would be the satisfaction of every longing and the healing of every pain."

Who Shall Deliver Me?

God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.

I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?

If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run ! Death runs apace.

If I could set aside myself,
And start with lightened heart upon
The road by all men overgone!

God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease and rest and joys

Myself, arch-traitor to myself ;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
My clog whatever road I go.

Yet One there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me
Break off the yoke and set me free

~Christina Rossetti

A Book of Comfort, by Elizabeth Goudge

My friend Linda Dean introduced me to the novels and writings of Elizabeth Goudge years ago. Yesterday I pulled this anthology of poetry and prose from my shelf to peruse again. I love this quote from her preface, describing the comfort which books give us…

"…What are the sources of comfort to which we turn in what Saint Augustine…calls "our mortal weariness"? The answer is that our existence is as light with comfort as it is weighted with weariness. The sources of our comfort are legion, and cannot be counted, but if we attempted the impossible and tried to make a list most of us would place books very high indeed, perhaps second only to faith, for reading is not only a pleasure in itself, with its concomitants of stillness, quietness and forgetfulness of self, but in what we read many of our other comforts are present with us like reflections seen in a mirror. If the light of our faith flickers we can make it steady again by reading of the faith of the saints, and hearing poetry sing to us the songs of the lovers of God. In the absence of children we can read about them, and in the cold and darkness of midwinter, look in the mirror of our book and see flowers and butterflies, and spring passing into the glow and warmth of summer…"

I also like her "categories" of comforting things (from the table of contents):

I. We Are Comforted When We Consider the Glory and Wisdom of Creation

II. The Comfort We Have in Delighting in Each Other

III. The Comfort of Faith

IV. Comfort of Tribulation

V. The Comfort We Have in Living in the World of Imagination

Elizabeth Goudge (1900-1984) was the daughter of a clergyman of the Church of England. You can read more about her here, and see the extensive bibliography of her works. A couple of my favorites are The Dean's Watch; a trilogy about the fictional Eliot family: The Bird in the Tree, The Herb of Grace (also published under the title The Pilgrim's Inn), and The Heart of the Family; and her children's fairy tale, Linnets and Valerians, which I read for the first time last week, and which I thoroughly enjoyed!

Spurgeon: “Looking unto Jesus.”

…looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

It is ever the Holy Spirit’s work to turn our eyes away from self to Jesus; but Satan’s work is just the opposite of this, for he is constantly trying to make us regard ourselves instead of Christ. He insinuates, “Your sins are too great for pardon; you have no faith; you do not repent enough; you will never be able to continue to the end; you have not the joy of his children; you have such a wavering hold of Jesus.” All these are thoughts about self, and we shall never find comfort or assurance by looking within. But the Holy Spirit turns our eyes entirely away from self: he tells us that we are nothing, but that “Christ is all in all.” Remember, therefore, it is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee—it is Christ; it is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee—it is Christ; it is not even faith in Christ, though that be the instrument—it is Christ’s blood and merits; therefore, look not so much to thy hand with which thou art grasping Christ, as to Christ; look not to thy hope, but to Jesus, the source of thy hope; look not to thy faith, but to Jesus, the author and finisher of thy faith. We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, or our feelings; it is what Jesus is, not what we are, that gives rest to the soul. If we would at once overcome Satan and have peace with God, it must be by “looking unto Jesus.” Keep thine eye simply on him; let his death, his sufferings, his merits, his glories, his intercession, be fresh upon thy mind; when thou wakest in the morning look to him; when thou liest down at night look to him. Oh! let not thy hopes or fears come between thee and Jesus; follow hard after him, and he will never fail thee.

"My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness:
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus' name."

(Morning and Evening, June 28)

Prince Caspian?

I don’t pretend to be a movie critic. I’m not even a big movie fan. I’d rather read a book. But there are some exceptions, like To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck was the perfect Atticus, and there was little not to like in the movie.

Having read Prince Caspian (and all of Narnia) numerous times (say 15?) since I was twelve years old, the bar for me is admittedly pretty high. Overall, I liked The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and thought Adamson did a reasonably good job with it. So I was cautiously optimistic about Prince Caspian. I really wanted to like it. I did. Honest.

There were a few things that I really liked:

The river god was cool, very cool.

The trees “waded” through the earth admirably.

The scenery was awesome.

The last line was accurate: “I’ve left my new torch in Narnia!”

(Deep breath here) Now, with apologies to my friends who liked the movie, here a few of my many (to put it mildly) disappointments:

The very cool river god was never explained at all. If you hadn’t read the book, what in the world were you to make of that whole thing?

Reepicheep as a thinly veiled Puss-in-Boots from Shrek…Reep deserved better.

Aslan as a totally absent and detached diety (can’t even say Christ-figure), who has to be fetched by Lucy -- as opposed to followed by Lucy, as Lewis wrote it.

Peter as a sullen, angst-ridden, obnoxious teenager.

Caspian as a sullen, angst-ridden, obnoxious teenager.

Susan as a pouty heroine with a come-hither look, who would NEVER have actually been allowed to fight in a battle by Lewis, only to lead the archers, away from the fray. Lewis didn’t subscribe to the idea of women in battle. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Father Christmas says as much, “…battles are ugly when women fight.” That line, of course, was axed in the first movie.

Trumpkin never did bow and truly submit himself to the Lion, he just gave Aslan a surly and half-hearted look. Trumpkin…one of the most noble characters in the book…where was he? In the book, Trumpkin was Chesterton’s “jolly atheist”…you couldn’t help but love him. Volunteering for a mission which he believed to be in vain, Trumpkin stoutly answered Caspian’s inquiry as to why he was willing to go and look for the expected help from the high past when he didn’t even believe the old stories: “No more I do, Your Majesty. But what’s that got to do with it? I might as well die on a wild goose chase as die here. You are my King. I know the difference between giving advice and taking orders. You’ve had my advice, and now it’s time for orders.” A noble fellow…nothing like the snide and surly character I saw on the screen yesterday. Trumpkin without “Cobbles and kettledrums!” , “Thimbles and thunderstorms!”, “Wraiths and wreckage!”, “Crows and crockery!”??? Only heard one “bedknobs and broomsticks!” or some such…the kids said he did say that same line one more time but I must have missed it.

Worse still, where was the real Caspian, the boy king in whom the old nurse and Dr. Cornelius instilled a love of the truth and the “old things” by telling him the stories of old Narnia, giving Caspian a sense of mission, and giving him the authenticity to make the old Narnians trust him and recognize him as Aslan’s chosen deliverer and rightful ruler? In the movie, I couldn’t help but wonder why in the world the old Narnians would trust such a jerk.

I was fairly certain one of my favorite lines from the book would be left out, but nonetheless, was disappointed to find it gone. Aslan to Prince Caspian, after Caspian voices his shame on learning that he is descended from a race of pirates: "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

My overall impression is that this movie succeeded admirably in being just what Lewis repeatedly criticized in his essays on literature -- a postmodern retooling of the author’s story, thinly veiled chronological snobbery: ”We know oh so much better than Lewis could how to “reach” teens and tweens…our new ways are so much better than your old fashioned ways.”

My teens’ and young adults’ descriptions of this movie mostly involved the word “lame”.

And all of us, quite crestfallen.

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

Or Learning Website Design As I Approach Middle Age

I did it, and I am so proud of myself. Never mind that it has taken practically every spare moment for the past 6 months. It is a nice feeling to see it up there and running. And it stays done, unlike laundry, meals, and cleaning. :)

Take a look and see what you think.

And now maybe I can resume posting once in a while.

HAPPY 490TH CELEBRATION OF THE REFORMATION!

This is my pastor’s letter of encouragement today. It was just what I needed today…everyday! I am so grateful for Pastor Biggs’ faithful teaching and shepherding of his flock, of which I am privileged to be a part! For more of Pastor Biggs’ excellent teaching, visit A Place For Truth.

Are you despairing of your own righteousness today, realizing that you are more sinful before God than you had thought before? Are you realizing that when all is said and done you just are not righteous before God? Or perhaps you are thinking more highly of yourself and your good works before God?

If you are doing either of these things, you are looking to yourself and your own righteousness to affirm and assure yourself before God. When you look to yourself you make null and void the work of Jesus Christ (Galatians 2:21).

If you have sought your salvation and righteousness in yourself, and you have realized the depth of your sins before God in words, thoughts, and deeds, then you know how Martin Luther felt when he cried out to his friend John Staupitz, saying: “Who can abide the Day of the Lord’s coming? And who shall stand when he appears?!” (Mal. 3:2).

Luther knew that if he were to be judged before God based on his own merits, then he would be damned and condemned and so his soul was not able to find peace.

Even when we find our righteousness and hope in Christ through faith, we need to daily be constantly reminded of Christ’s righteousness and merits for us- -not our own righteousness as the motivation for all we do. Our best works and good deeds before God are as filthy rags the Bible says.

When Luther was in despair, his friend Staupitz loved him enough to say these words:

“Why do you torment yourself with all these speculations and these high thoughts of your works before God? Look at the wounds of Jesus Christ, to the blood that he has shed for you: it is there that the grace of God will appear to you.

Instead of torturing yourself on account of your sins, throw yourself in your Redeemer’s arms. Trust in him- - in the righteousness and merits of his life- -in the atonement of his death. Do not shrink back; God is not angry with you, it is you who are angry with God.

Listen to the Son of God not your own thoughts; meditate on His Word to you. Jesus became man to give you the assurance of divine favor. He says to you: You are my sheep; you hear my voice; no man shall pluck you out of my strong hand.” ~John Staupitz to Martin Luther, ca.1509.

Be reminded of the truth of God’s grace and righteousness for you found in Christ alone today! This is the simple gospel that God restored in the Reformation and why it must be continued to be preached in the Church today! Do you believe the gospel?

HAPPY 490^TH CELEBRATION OF THE REFORMATION!

^ESV Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

In Christ,

Pastor Biggs

Stop Tinkering

“Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God, we do not see ourselves--blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One.”
... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God [1948]

I need this relief. Badly.

O For a Closer Walk With God

In today's bible reading, this lovely and haunting hymn by William Cowper was juxtaposed in the Book of Life with Jesus' high priestly prayer for his disciples (and all believers!). I thought it was interesting that the authors would make this connection...which seems so appropriate to me, as it is so often my own experience. I especially like the verse that begins with "The dearest idol I have known"...

O for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame,
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb!

Where is the blessedness I knew,
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul refreshing view
Of Jesus and His Word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.

Return, O holy Dove, return,
Sweet messenger of rest!
I hate the sins that made Thee mourn
And drove Thee from my breast.

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee.

So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.

Jane Austen on the "mega-church"

In Mansfield Park, chapter 9, Fanny and Edmund are discussing the importance of the clergyman with the disdainful Miss Crawford. Miss Crawford has just observed that don’t have much influence over their congregations, even if they preach “two sermons a week, even supposing them worth hearing, supposing the preacher to have the sense to prefer Blair’s to his own (my footnote says that many preachers of that day would read the well-known and eloquent Rev. Hugh Blair’s sermons rather than preach their own...nothing new under the sun, hmmm?)

Edmund supposes she is speaking of large congregations in London, while he is referring to the rest of the nation.

“We do not look in great cities for our best morality. It is not there that respectable people of any denomination can do most good; and it certainly is not there that the influence of the clergy can be most felt. A fine preacher is followed and admired; but it is not in fine preaching only that a good clergyman will be useful in his parish and his neighbourhood, where the parish and neighbourhood are of a size capable of knowing his private character, and observing his general conduct, which in London can rarely be the case. The clergy are lost there in the crowds of their parishioners. They are known to the largest part only as preachers…”

Twenty Years Ago...

Last month...



My prayer my sweet sons today:

As he pursues his heavenly journey by Thy grace
let him be known as a man with no aim
but that of a burning desire for Thee,
and the good and salvation of His fellow man.
~Divine Support, The Valley of Vision

Give him a desire to show forth Thy praise,
testify Thy love,
advance Thy kingdom.
~New Year, The Valley of Vision

Solemn Vows

Josh and Abby asked Jack to use the Book of Common Prayer wedding service, and I was struck by how few references there were to feelings (love, joy, etc), and how many there were to "solemn vows". Truly, for all the joy and smiles and laughter, it also was a solemn occasion, as Josh and Abby vowed lifelong commitment, and all in attendance vowed to support them in that commitment.

A related item… Wes Callihan had this article in his Scholegium newsletter today.

COGITEM -- Liturgy as a Language

Our pastor recently remarked that there is a liturgical reformation occurring (he's thinking primarily of reformed protestant churches) and it set me thinking about why that should be so. One reason surely is that liturgy is a language that allows us to express ourselves. If you have never learned to play the piano, you cannot simply sit down to one and express the innermost depths of your soul with great overhand swings at the keyboard, Rachmaninoff-style, no matter how passionately you feel like the desire. But if you've studied and practiced and learned the language of piano-playing from those who have gone before, you can express yourself with great freedom. That freedom came from submission to a tradition, the tradition of How To Play The Piano. If you have never learned to speak Spanish, you cannot suddenly start communicating freely with the person next to you on the bus in Guadalajara; but if you've studied and practiced, then you can express yourself. You are freed from the bonds of ignorance and enabled to do something that you never could before, because of your submission to How Spanish Is Supposed to Be Spoken.

In the same way, the liturgies of the Christian Church are a language which, if learned and submitted to, allow us to express ourselves in worship to God in the great communion of the saints. Where did we get the idea that "worship" can be whatever we want it to be? We can't just say anything we want and expect our seatmate on the Guadalajara bus to understand us, and we can't just bang on the piano a la John Cage and expect the audience to understand what we feel, and so we can't expect to do just any old thing in church and expect it to be meaningful. Liturgy is a language that has developed (in many dialects, certainly, but one language) in the Church over centuries and if we learn it, submit to What Worship Is, we participate in a language others have for centuries and still do speak and so we join with them in worship, and we can express ourselves with much more freedom than if we just bang on the keyboard.

Dearly beloved...

Sorry this is the best pic I have of the two of them...seems appropriate that it's with their youngest siblings! Karen and others have much better pics, but I didn't have my camera so handy at the wedding. So, more later.

It was a lovely and spectacular day. It was one of the most picturesque spots I can imagine for a wedding, overlooking a vineyard, and with the Sierras in the distance...topped off by a full moonrise over the vineyard later in the evening. Bride and groom were lovely, happy, and beaming. We are so happy and blessed to have such a sweet new daughter, the perfect wife for our son! It was amazing to watch our son take his solemn vows with this godly and lovely young woman...the baby girl/toddler/child/teen/woman that we have been praying for the last 20 years. God has answered exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we could have asked or desired.

A few more of my pictures:

Groom and Best Man with cigars..

all groomsmen with cigars

handsome group...but they made me cry...where did those little boys with guns go??

Josh and Dad

the rest of us

a big treat...our dear friends (and one set of Joshua's godparents) Kevin and Laura Nary (from our early married days) came from So. CA for the wedding...we had a great time visiting and catching up...haven't seen them in 7 years!! Their grown up kiddos Megan and David (our godson) came too!

Two Kinds of Reading by C.S. Lewis

"There are two ways of enjoying the past, as there are two ways of enjoying a foreign country. One man carries his Englishry abroad with him and brings it home unchanged. Wherever he goes he consorts with the other English tourists. By a good hotel he means one that is like an English hotel. He complains of the bad tea where he might have had excellent coffee. He finds the natives quaint and enjoys their quaintness…In the same way there is a man who carries his modernity with him through all his reading of past literatures and preserves it intact. The highlights in all the ancient and medieval poetry are for him the bits that resemble – the poetry of his own age.

"…But there is another sort of travelling and another sort of reading. You can eat the local food and drink the local wines, you can share the foreign life, you can begin to see the foreign country as it looks, not to the tourist, but to its inhabitants. You can come home modified, thinking and feeling as you did not think and feel before. So with the old literature. You can go beyond the first impression that a poem makes on your modern sensibility. By study of things outside the poem, by comparing it with other poems, by steeping yourself in the vanished period, you can then re-enter the poem with eyes more like those of the natives; now perhaps seeing that the associations you gave to the old words were false, that the real implications were different than you supposed, that what you thought strange was then ordinary and that what seemed to you ordinary was then strange.

"...I am writing to help, if I can, the second sort of reading. Partly, of course, because I have a historical motive. I am a man as well as a lover of poetry: being human, I am inquisitive, I want to know as well as to enjoy. But even if enjoyment alone were my aim I should still choose this way, for I should hope to be led by it to newer and fresher enjoyments, things I could never have met in my own period, modes of feeling, flavours, atmospheres, nowhere accessible but by a mental journey into the real past. I have lived nearly sixty years with myself and my own century and am not so enamoured of either as to desire no glimpse of a world beyond them. As the mere tourist’s kind of holiday abroad seems to me rather a waste of Europe – there is more to be got out of it than he gets – so it would seem to me a waste of the past if we were content to see in the literature of every bygone age only the reflexion of our own faces."

~C.S. Lewis, "De Audiendis Poetis", Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature