September 12, 2003 Morning

Yesterday, was a hot, dry day here in Ottawa. I worked several hours on the computer, ate a big salad outside in the garden where I noticed a red dragon fly sitting atop one of the scraggly baby cedars that form our “Charlie Brown” hedge.

When my eyeballs were beginning to hurt from the glare off the monitor downstairs, I rode my bike down to the club. Though there is a scenic way to get there through the woods, I’ve always been reluctant to bike in the woods by myself, and since the recent murder of Ardeth Woods, I’m even less inclined to go alone. So I biked along a busy stretch of a four-lane road, not dawdling as I am likely to do when I’m savoring the smell, the green, the play of light among the leaves and the crunch of dried leaves on the bike path as I ride through the woods. So, I got some half decent cardio in, pedaling to make the noisy ride over with as quickly as possible.

Then, I went for a swim in the outdoor pool. Imagine, swimming in an outdoor pool in Ottawa in mid September. The sky was pale blue, white along the horizon, with the most impressionistic of clouds, light, insubstantial, and only a few of them.

The water temperature was the bracing cool of the ocean in PEI in the summer. It was wonderful. The pool isn’t full of chlorine, so the water smelled clean and fresh. Sea gulls wheeled in the pale blue sky. Golf carts rumbled on the path nearby, the dry green hills of the golf course, the cedar Muskoka (like Adirondack) chairs around the pool and the fountain gushing in the artificial pond were my view as I swam. I thought about how fortunate and blessed I am with such physical comfort. How could I possibly have anything to complain about?

Last night, I was so tired while doing Evening Prayer that I mostly just focused on the readings. I’m looking forward to when I will find this extra exercise energizing rather than enervating. But, sometimes it seems that starting any new discipline is difficult for a while. They say that any new habit takes six weeks to develop. Let’s see what’s shaking with this blog and my morning prayer in six weeks. And, let’s see how the weight training is going, whether I feel stronger and more invigorated.

In about fifteen minutes, I leave to go to our sung Morning Prayer at the Cathedral.
Psalms today are: Morning 62,63,64
Evening 65,66,67

After Mattins, those of us who attend, a handful of people including several priests in their black shirts and clerical collars, go out to a little café for coffee. Sometimes Fr. Carl uses the time to get the new priests to expound on some area of Church history or theology. They get assigned and then explain. Maybe there I can find out about some of these peculiar Anglican words like suffrages.

A friend of mine, a chiropractor, is going to hook up with me after that today. He’s asked me to go with him to pray for the daughter of one of his patients. She has a severe chronic illness. We’ll drive down south of the city for this. It’ll be a good time to catch up on his news.

The chiropractor is spending his morning today “adjusting” the homeless at a shelter downtown. He ended up doing this because he was driving by a particular mission and had the impression that he should ask if he could do this. Believing that silent impression was from the Lord, he called this mission, arranged for a meeting and now on Fridays he brings his portable table.

He and I used to be in a small group where we were committed to practicing praying for the sick. So, we used to practice praying for each other by laying on of hands every week and it was probably the most amazing experience from week to week. So often in small groups, when we pray together, we pray for the neighbor down the street, or some difficulty that is not cutting edge for us where we’re really challenged. I’ve seen few groups where there was real opening up and accountability.

This group was different because when you sat “in the chair” or the “hot seat” and asked for prayer, you asked for yourself those things were your present moment struggles. What was amazing was how powerful those prayer sessions were and how lasting the sense of God’s grace and presence and strength for victory over sin was and how it would overflow into the week.

We tried to arrange to make the occasional “house call” or visit to the hospital to pray for someone else, and each time we did, while I can’t recall the physical healings of which there were some but not of major illnesses, always God was present and faithful to leave whoever we prayed for in a state of peace, a state of joy in Him.

Over the past few years, until the last six months or so, I tried to make a practice of building in time in my schedule to make a hospital visit or to pray for the sick at least once a week. It was always an effort to go, always there was something else I’d rather do with my spare time, or, as I started my home business, other things that were competing for my time.
But, after going, and forcing my flesh to get in the car and do it, the blessings and freedom in the Spirit and joy were unsurpassable.

It’s funny though how the joy of the Lord is unlike the ecstasy provided by drugs or romantic love or other lures of the world. It’s not addictive. You don’t crave it, you aren’t compelled to seek it. You have to in fact go against the grain of your natural self. The joy of being confident you are in His will, doing what He’s calling you to do, “on assignment” in the midst of the good works He’s prepared for you in advance is like nothing else on this planet. But it’s an after effect of obedience. It comes after you obey a summons like my chiropractor friend did that seems a little crazy to you, but you follow through because you don’t want to risk His never asking you again.

Sometimes it’s not all that easy to know what God’s will is for you. Oswald Chambers today (www.ccel.org) writes about the times our spiritual lives are in confusion, when the friendship of God seems shrouded, when the Fatherhood of God is shadowed, when God’s faithfulness seems strange, unkind or distant.

I have found that doing something like praying for the sick is one of the best ways for me to pierce through that confusion. I know I’m in His will when I pray for the sick, feed the hungry, visit the prisoner.

I must post this and get on the road for Mattins. Will report on today later on.