What I am learning as I give up social media for Lent…

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#1 – I seek praise, sympathy, solidarity through social media.  The smallest, most insignificant thing could happen and my first instinct is to post it so that other people will comment and respond.  It is attention-seeking behavior that often slips into a self-centered focus.  Having to constantly fight the urge to post has led me to wonder what I’m getting out of those posts… and what others are as well.  Sometimes, it is an authentic search for community and others to share the journey with.  Sometimes it is  race to see who has the biggest sob story or frustration of the day.  These past weeks have reminded me of my insignificance.  No one  really cares what I had for breakfast or about a stubbed toe or that I shared an article.  I’m just not that important.  And I shouldn’t be.

#2 – Most of my news comes from social media. When I hear of breaking news, I search for the topic on twitter instead of turning on the television.  The variety of sources, the mix of images, video, stories, personal reflections, global perspectives is amazing.  I just don’t get the same depth of information watching one news channel go on for hours at a time about a single event, and when you flip stations between the networks, the information is often similiar with only slight colors of perspective.  As Ukraine and Russian and the Malaysian flight disappearance have made headlines, I have largely been out of the loop of what is happening in the world.

#3 – Many of my conversations with close, personal friends, happen on Facebook.  While texting is part of my communications toolbox, I rarely call or email these individuals.  I never realized how much I rely upon Facebook groups for keeping in touch with a circle of friends – whether they are colleagues or my girlfriends.  I had to write a clause into my lenten discipline that allowed me to continue using the Messenger part of Facebook (which meant I had to download the app), because I realized I would be completely out of the loop on conversations about health, upcoming events, and personal struggles.  Not being on facebook and able to follow posts on group pages has left me feeling fairly isolated from those I am most connected with.

#4 – I pray a lot through Facebook.  Whether they are shared prayer concerns among colleagues or simply reading the everyday struggle and hopes of friends, family, and colleagues, I am frequently moved to pray as I interact with posts and snoop on people’s lives.  Not having that source of prayer material at my fingertips, however, has led me to pay attention a bit more to the people around me… the guy sitting on the park bench, the people in line.  I find myself wondering what their story is, what they hope for…  I haven’t worked up the courage to ask yet, however.  I’m not sure if I’ve always been an “overhearer” of people’s lives or if this is something that a social media culture has developed in me and others around me.  And sometimes I wonder if that extension of ourselves into the public space is good or not.  I hesitate to lift up a prayer out loud on the bus, but I don’t when I’m commenting on a friend of an acquaintances post.  It’s something to ponder.

#5 – I enjoy watching sports with social media.  I enjoy the quick stats and the commentary that is often far better than what is on the television.  I like the sense of solidarity in amazing plays and in bad calls.  Yet, with the Iowa Hawkeyes basketball team being told to stay off of twitter because of the criticisms, I also recognize how brutal it gets out there.  The things we yell at the television in the quiet of our own homes now are the things we post online in public in the heat of the moment, without tempering our emotions and remembering it is, after all, just a game. 

#6 – I’m following the practice of celebrating Sundays as “little Easters” and not fasting from social media on those days.  In the past two weeks, I’ve largely used those days to dump pictures and a quick narrative of the highlights of my week, as well as to quickly skim my group pages, catch up where I can with friends, and have left very few comments.  I might have spent a total of 2 hours on facebook between those two days.  The time I spend in my typical week on social media must be astounding.  I’m sure there is an app somewhere to monitor it, but I’m afraid to look. 

#7 – I use Facebook and social media equally for work and for personal matters.  Conversations with friends and co-workers happen simultaneously.  I’m more aware of that fact as I try to occasionally use it for work-related items (like updating our facebook page for Imagine No Malaria), but the distinction is so blurred that I have tried to avoid it or batch post.  I think it would be worth it to do some hard work of creating new lists on facebook to better discriminate what I post and to whom so I could use it for both in a better way. 

#8 – this is NOT going to be a permanent fast.

Prayers from the kitchen sink

We must — at some point along our Lenten journey — be candid about death. Lent begins with the reminder of our mortality, with the ashes from which we are knit together, and the season reaches its climax in the crucifixion of Jesus… Even Jesus, praying at Gethsemane before his death, asked his friends to keep him company. “Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here and stay awake with me.'” (Matthew 26:8, NRSV)

Lord, tonight as I stood at my kitchen window washing dishes I thought of my mom and dad.

I’m excited to be traveling with them soon and I can’t wait to see the joy as they hold their newest grandson in their arms.

But to say I don’t worry about them would be… well, untrue.

It surprises me that I feel old somedays.

I know things change and life moves and sometimes it just moves way too fast.

And a scary realization is that if I’m getting older… if I’m an “adult”… then my parents are getting older, too.  (sorry, mom.)

Between Brandon and me, we’ve had lots of conversations and what-ifs about our parents lately. 

Help me to slow down, God.

Help me to take a deep breath.

Help me to not take so much for granted.

In Your last nights, You asked your friends to stay by your side.

The ones who had traveled with you.

The ones who knew you so well.

All you wanted was time. company. love. relationship.

Why is it so hard for us to make time for those things in our daily lives? 

We know we want them.  We know how important they truly are to us.

But the phone call isn’t made.

We fill our schedules instead of our hearts.

How on earth has it been this long since I talked with my dad?

We hurry and work and sweat and stress… and for what?

What if we lived as if we were dying?

That’s a silly cliche, I know.

And to be honest, God, if we moved beyond the trite statement and really took your words seriously…

well, I fear that if I truly died to my self and lived for you that everything would be different… and that’s scary.

You ask us to die… and you ask us to love… but what if we love so much that we don’t want to die?

What if we love people and don’t want them to go?

What if we don’t want things to change…. or if we want them to change in ways that might require less time for the work of ministry so that we can spend more time with family and the very companions you have brought into our beautiful messed up lives?

Help me to understand how to love… and live… and what it might really mean to die.

Prayers from the ego

Jesus and the devil have a contest of wills in the desert (Luke 4:1-13). At one point, “the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority.'” (4:5-6, NRSV)

… the devil said to Jesus, “All of this can be all about you.”

In your prayer-writing today, wrestle with God against the temptation to see life as “all about you.”

Breathe in God.
Breathe out my tendency to waste time.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out my doubts and regrets.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out fretting over my figure.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out the dirty dishes on the counter.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out the successes I had this week.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out my ambitions.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out tunnel-vision of a busy day.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out a selfish definition of “busy”

Breathe in God.
Breathe out time spent talking when I should have been listening.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out the stuff that fills my cupboards.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out goals and dreams.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out tomorrow’s to-do list.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out what I want people to think of me.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out me.

Breathe in God.
Breathe out me.

Gradually,  may I be filled with what you desire.  May I decrease as you increase.
Breathe in God.
Breathe out me.

Prayers from the silence

Psalm 62:1 & 5 (NRSV): “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.”

After waiting on God, write a prayer that arises from the silence.

God, I’m trying to wait for you.
I’m trying to focus on you.
But I am so easily distracted.

The cats are playing in the bathtub. (yes, the bathtub)
My husband has fallen asleep watching an e-sports match and is snoring.
The screen is too bright and I should have shut it off.

For God alone my soul waits…
Heck, I can’t even get the silent part right.

I have a feeling, Lord, that you wait for me more than I wait for you.
I know you are my hope and salvation.
But I take it for granted.

Clear the chaos and the clutter
Clear my eyes so I might see
All the things that really matter
Help me be at peace and simply be.

Prayers from the wreckage

I’ve been following the Lenten prayer prompts from Faith and Water for these forty days.  I’m a bit late and doing some catch-up, but the spirit is there.

Isaiah 10:21 (NRSV): “A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.”

Life breaks us into pieces. To those seasons of our lives, Isaiah brings amazing good news: God only needs pieces to rebuild the whole.

Holy God. Whole-ly God.
There is a shattered place.
A land at war.
A house divided.

Brother turns against brother.
Neighbors who are anything but.
Broken remnants of relationship are all that remain.

God, I know my part.
I know my silence.
I know my anger.
I know my action and my inaction.
I have watched it fall apart and have felt helpless to stop it.

Maybe what I’m feeling is what the sons and daughters of Jacob felt so long ago.
Broken.
Confused.
Angry.
Scared.
Looking at all the land… crumbling around them.

A remnant will return.
Pieces are enough.
Whole-ly God, you take our broken pieces and make us whole.
You take this broken world and create life.
You speak good news into our midst.

Help me, O God, to hear a word of hope.
Help us to see light in the darkness.
Help us to pick up broken pieces.

Show us where to begin.

Prayers from the dust

On my knees
Laid low
I am nothing
I am but dust and ashes
I am the stuff of the earth

And yet somewhere in me there is a spark.
A spark that dares
A spark that yearns

When Abraham dared to seek You, Oh Lord God Almighty
was he really humble
Or did he feel that spark, too?

We are but dust.
But You breathed life into us.
You are present in us.
Stirring… calling… pushing.

Is the fast You choose for us to bow low?
Or are You waiting for us to stand…
Stand and speak out.
Stand and act.
Be hands and feet in this world of hurt and pain and death.
Cry out for justice.
Do something.

I know I am dust, Lord.
But help me to understand what it means to be yours.

I Am dust and ashes

Landon Whitsitt had a thoughtful post about how we engage with Lenten disciplines today: Giving up chocolate and beer for Lent is not what Jesus had in mind. In it, he reminds us about the basics of spiritual practices surrounding Lent: prayer, fasting, almsgiving. He reminds us that it is not about us at all.

I have realized that most of the times I have given something up for Lent or taken something on, it was for my own benefit.  It was so I could do something for God – sacrifice something I cared about so God would be more pleased with me.  The practices were hoops I jumped through.  Sometimes they were rigorous disciplines, sometimes they were difficult, and they have helped me to focus on God… but it all revolved around me.  What I could do, what I would gain, how I was living out my faith.

If Lent is truly about dependence on God,  if it is about our time in the wilderness, our discovery of who we are and whose we are… then Lent is about letting go of “me.”

In the anthology, Speaking of Silence: Christans and Buddhists in Dialogue, there is an interesting discussion about what it means to be “me.”  What is the self?  What is its relationship to the divine? To briefly summarize the conversation, Lodrö Dorje begins:

The Buddhist path is therefore primarily concerned with the question of how to see through ego, how to tame it, and how to let it go.  (pg. 157)

Father George Timko responds with an analogy:

When you put it [a sugar cube] into a cup of tea or coffee, the sugar dissolves, and yet it is still there.  It is there in a completely different way, in a different dimension: it is no longer there as a cube.  So, as Gregory of Nyssa would say, “We have to be dissoved and to be in Christ.” You are no logner there as an “I,” as an individualized center or self. There is no “you.” You are dead, as Saint Paul experienced…

We just simply don’t want to completely let go of that self, so we say, my true self is there. There is no such thing as a true self or a false self.  There is only the self or the no-self. And as Saint John Chrysostom said, “He alone truly knows himself, who knows himself as nothing.”  (pg. 158-9)

As the conversation continues  Joseph Goldstein adds:

I could play the Zen role here a little bit, and ask whether it really is a question of dissolving anything, or whether it is just that in a moment we see that the self never was.  I think we could speak from both perspectives.  Really there is nothing to dissolve, because the self was never there in the first place. (pg. 164)

to which David Steindl-Rast responds:

But how so many Christians have been stuck in this imaginary projection!  How they have clung tenaciously, thinking that the Christina way is based on promoting the ego from the level on which it is now, to some super-level in heaven!

Goldstein:

Well, it is an appealing idea, Brother David!

It is an appealing idea.  We want to please God and be faithful and follow the rules and reap the rewards.  We want to hear the call and respond.  And it is SO difficult to not focus on that individual achievement and to instead let go.

As the Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert, they were forced to lay aside their past, to stop forging gods with their own hands, and to embrace a life of dependence upon the one who is the creator of all.  They were shaped not as they desired, but as God desired.

As Jesus wandered for forty days in the wilderness, he let go of what he could be, denied the temptation to achieve all the amazing things he could have, in order to accept the call to die to self and live in God.

And as I enter this time of Lent, I am challenged to stop focusing on myself and what will benefit me spiritually and what I can do to please the Lord and instead place my life into those hands.

Lent is a time to die to oneself… or maybe to realize that your “self” never was.

I am nothing.

I am a dissolved sugar cube in a cup of coffee.

I am dead and in the tomb.

It is Christ who lives in me. It is the Spirit who has given me breath. It is God who has enabled me to love.

Ashes to Ashes… Dust to Dust.

Sometimes… God’s will can kiss my @$$

This week started out rough.  I thought I had an inkling about something very amazing about to happen – but it was going to bring a whole lot of added stress into my life as well.  I spent three whole days psyching myself up about it – so much so that I had pretty much accepted it was going to happen and was excited.

I had a moment however on Monday night when I realized I should pray about it.   I realized that just because I, personally, wanted this to happen, did not mean it was the best thing in the world for me or my ministry or my family.  And that’s kind of what I preached about on Sunday, so I figured I had better take my own advice.  or Paul’s advice.  whichever.

So… I committed to not only praying about it, but that the next morning I was going to ask the small group at the church to pray with me that God’s will would be done in said situation.

Tuesday morning at 8:45, the news came.  It wasn’t going to happen.  The thing I had suddenly been excited for wasn’t going to work out.  End of story.

(I know I’m being cryptic here… but bear with me… sometimes we can’t tell all of our secrets!)

 

I wrestle at times with making firm statements about God’s will.  John Piper has recieved a lot of flack this past week for claiming that the tornadoes that ripped through the lower midwest and southeast were God’s will.  I tend to hesitate when making proclamations about nature.  I hesitate when one person who prayed fervently was spared and another who prayed fervently was killed.  I do believe that God acts and moves among us.  I do believe that God is present with us in every situation.  But do sometimes things just happen?  Does nature just run its course sometimes?  Our sinful decisions have consequences and sometimes we have to blame ourselves rather than God.

But then there are all of these places in the scriptures where God brings out the battering ram and thunder and lightning and seems to lay the smack down.  I would not for one minute say that God doesn’t have the power/ability/just reasons to unleash holy terror.  Heck, I try to be benevolent and good and sometimes I want to call down a thunderbolt or two upon my youth!  (just kidding… I love you guys… most of the time!)

All of that to say, I never know what to do about God’s will.  I don’t know when to claim something was God’s will or not.  I am not always sure how to discern God’s will.

In our weekly lenten study, I shared that one the greatest tools we have available to us in the Wesleyan tradition are the means of grace: prayer, bible study, christian conferencing, communion, tithing, visiting the sick and in prison, etc…  But we have to DO them in a way that really focuses our attention to God.  We can’t go through the motions.  For an example: When I put my money in the offering plate, I have to say to God – I’m giving this to you… I’m trusting you with it… I’m trusting that you will help me to be faithful with it and all of my resources.  It’s not just about doing our “duty” – its about learning to truly depend upon God.  It is about aligning ourselves with God’s will.

And I have been trying to do that.  I have been trying to trust and pray and listen a whole lot more intentionally lately.

So when I decided Monday night that I truly wanted God’s will to be done… I meant it.  And I meant it that I was going to ask others to pray with me.  I truly wanted to know God’s will.  I wanted that to be the guide for this situation.

And on Tuesday morning… I didn’t like the answer I got.

In other times in my life, I wouldn’t have even thought about God.  I would have thought about how dumb the situation was. I would have had a little pity party for myself.  But because I was trying so hard to listen, the simple reality of God’s will smacked me upside the head.

I don’t like it.  I’m not sure I completely understand.  I wish the answer would change.  And part of me really does want to say, “kiss my @$$,” and go do my own thing.

But if anything, this time of Lent has taught me, personally, that our lives are not our own.  If I want to follow Jesus – I have to follow him all the way.  And that means there are some really good things in this world that I don’t need.

Tonight, we sang in worship a really upbeat version of  – “I have decided to follow Jesus.”  It can be sung SO slow, but Lent has been all about joy, so we just owned it and sang it with some gusto.  It was a reminder that I may not like God’s will, but I have decided to follow.  I have decided to keep the cross before me.  And I’m not turning back.  I can do this with God’s help.  I truly believe that God will help me.  So be it.  Amen.