September 15, 2004 Morning

I’m having a hard time getting started this morning, even balking against writing this blog, something that has given me great joy to do in previous days.

If I look at this morning from a cause and effect standpoint, I can trace my sluggishness and vague sense of disquiet to yesterday, Sunday, a day which could have been a wonderful day in praise and worship of the Lord, but wasn’t.

It started out wonderful. The service at the Cathedral was, as usual, a high point of the week. When the service ended, though, I gossiped a little with a good friend and said some negative things about some other people. At the time I didn’t think it was a big deal, but in trying to retrace my steps this morning to see why there might be a wall between me and the Lord, that’s what I think it might be.

Shortly after I got home from church, I had an attack of a sudden sense of disquiet, a hollowness, a gnawing emptiness that made me want to chow down with a big bowl of hot buttered popcorn or a bag of rosemary and olive oil potato chips and an icy cold beer or diet cola. I try not to keep these things in the house because I have been prone to these cravings. I also felt this sense of wanting to do something, to not waste the day, but there was nothing that I particularly wanted to do. Time seemed to be slipping away, the nice weather going to waste. I wanted to go on a bike ride with my husband, but he wanted to watch a movie. At the first violent scene in the movie, I went over to the nearby computer to play Spider Solitaire, which always makes me think to myself as I play, “This is a colossal waste of time. Why are you doing this? Stop! No! Don’t re-start the game. Oh, for crying out loud. What’s wrong with you?”

I eventually sat in the chair upstairs to do some centering prayer, and the doorbell rang. Someone my husband works with brought a computer for him to look at. That was it for any attempt to connect with the Lord for the rest of yesterday.

The afternoon slipped away. I cracked open a bottle of organic red wine and made a little plate of cheese and olives and lay around reading old magazines. I made supper and ate such copious amounts that it seems the digital read-out on my scale this morning jumped three pounds.

After I’d already stuffed myself, Cheryl came over with some of her pigeon pea pilaf. I poured us both some wine and ate a couple of bowls of this wonderful combination of chicken, pigeon peas, coconut milk, rice and spices, sinking down into my senses even more.

Never did my evening prayer. Never planned my week. Didn’t do the little routines that the Flylady suggests you do the night before, such as lay your clothes for the next day, routines that if I do them, help me to hit the ground running with zest instead of fogginess the next day.

I skipped an important weekly routine as well. If I want to have a productive week, I will write down my goals for the week on Sunday. If I want to have a super productive week, I will not only write down the goals in every area, spiritual, mental, physical, work, social, and so on, I will write down corresponding affirmations, written in the present tense about how wonderful it feels to have accomplished these goals, how I have God-given creativity and ability to “do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. When I do this, I get an amazing amount accomplished, including a better record for the week of actually doing my prayer routines.

So, here I am, paying the price for neglecting that little bit of forward planning, that time of mentally visualizing the week and sculpting it.

It’s quarter to nine and I’ve read Oswald Chambers for yesterday and today, and read the Venite for Morning Prayer, and the language chastens me.

Yesterday’s “My Utmost For His Highest”, Oswald writes: “The tiniest thing we allow in our lives that is not under the control of the Holy Spirit is quite sufficient to account for the spiritual muddle, and all the thinking we like to spend on it will never make it clear. Spiritual muddle is only made plain by obedience. Immediately we obey, we discern.”

Then, today’s: “Have you ‘renounced the hidden things of dishonesty’—the things that your sense of honour will not allow to come to light? You can easily hide them. Is there a thought in your heart about anyone which you would not like to be dragged into the light? Renounce it as soon as it springs up; renounce the whole thing until there is no hidden thing of dishonesty or craftiness about you. Envy, jealousy, strife---these things arise not necessarily form the disposition of sin, but from the make-up of your body which was used for this kind of thing in days gone by.”

Okay! Okay! I confess. Mea culpa.

I confess the little pleasure I get in carrying negative reports about people. I renounce it. I confess my rebellion against the routines that I know are wise and sensible for me and help keep my fleshly self from hindering my ability to walk in the Spirit. I confess my tendency to use food and drink to dull the ache that I should only seek Jesus to fill. I renounce it.

Now to the Psalms for the day: Psalm 75, Psalm 76, Psalm 77
(Tonight’s is Psalm 78)

For the readings tonight, check the Ordo in the Sept. 9 entry on the blog.

“Thy way, O God, is holy: who is so great a God as our God?” (Psalm 77:13)

I take time out now to listen in silence and to pray inwardly for forgiveness and cleansing in the Blood of Jesus. I pray inwardly as well in thanksgiving that Jesus’s death on the Cross has made it possible for me to do this. As Bishop Robert once said, “We have a barrister, which is another name of Advocate…..and that Barrister is Jesus Christ who is continually arguing our case before the Father. And, not because the Father is against us, because it is the Father’s will that Jesus be making the case for us.”

How much the Holy Trinity wants to open the doors of heaven to us, to lift us into communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, into relationship, into the experience of divine love.

Father Peter’s sermon on the Holy Cross yesterday mentioned a lament of St. Francis of Assisi (I’ll have to check the reference) who grieved for the fact that “love is not loved”. When I say negative things about people, I am not loving love. I want to believe that I love love. But sometimes, I sure act as if I don't.

First reading: 2 Kings 15:71-end. Lots of examples of kings who "did what was evil in the sight of the Lord", and mentions of high places to other gods not torn down.

Second reading: Gal. 4:1-5:1

“But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage.” Gal. 4:9

Even though the readings are giving me a stern lecture this morning, it awes me that God, the Creator of the universe, is speaking to me, directly, specifically this morning through Scripture and through the Holy Spirit.

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1)

What I am thankful for is that I can stand fast in that liberty. And that God can restore that liberty to me right now.

The readings from Isaiah in yesterday’s Evening Prayer: Isaiah 42:1-12 are like healing water this morning.

As I was filling in my goals for the week, and seeing a pretty blank week ahead, I hope to get a lot accomplished on my second novel. I also hope today that I can be of some service to God and in the increasing of His Kingdom.