Christianity/Spirituality

Light for Dim Eyes

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Psalm 102 was my lectio devina this morning. You may remember the verse: For my days pass away like smoke, / and my bones burn like a furnace. / My heart is stricken and withered like grass; / I am too wasted to eat my bread. / Because of my loud groaning / my bones cling to my skin. / I am like an owl of the wilderness, / like a little owl of the waste places.

I have a friend who is in a fight with Cancer. Heavy doses of chemo and radiation leave her with burning bones and the extreme fatigue of being "too wasted" to do anything, let alone eat.

But "fight" is my word. She wrote to me a few weeks ago and said that in fact her cancer is something like "an answer to prayer". She immediately added in her own unique and lighthearted way, that I would now be able to confirm that, "she's finally lost her mind." 

You need to know this about her. For years she has asked that she would, "…really feel God's love", because she, "…wasn't sure what love felt like, never mind God's." Her quest was God's love. Our little group knew this was her grail, we talked about it on a weekly basis.

She writes, "So I got both the cancer and the love and it is well worth it – although last week when I felt so bad and when I start to again that isn't quite so easy to say. But it is wonderful. Now I finally understand JOY.  Incredible!!!"

It is tempting for me to question her on this. My pain for her doesn't want to see her with Cancer. I don't want her to suffer or die. And I'm trying to choke back these words but I don't care if it's adding something profound to her life. In our little group we would occasionally remind each other that we were all doing the best we could with what we had…but that we could always improve if something was added in. Well, this kind of adding in is too much. Too costly. I want to go back to talking about it, I don't want it to happen…like this. But my own words bring me up short. This says much about me and my faith and my twisted and childish love.

I also resist the connection between her prayer for experiencing God's love and her contracting cancer. But neither can I answer this for her. She is the one in the throes of the thing. She can see further than me into the mystery of what shape truth takes here.

But while I don't believe that God works this way, I do believe, as does my friend, now much better than I, that God is not distant. That God is intimate, and in love with her, and wherever and in whatever place she occupies, she will know this love-supreme from the inside.

Ending her letter, she writes, "I have two verses (of course I don't know where they come from) that are my mainstay right now.  "Who by worrying can add a single hour to their life?" and, "nothing can separate you, neither…. (you know the long list) from the love of God." How blessed we are. Thank you so much for your prayers."

The psalmist says toward the end of the poem, "Let this be recorded…so that people yet may praise the LORD."

Thank you my friend for being this recording for me. You bring back a message of a depth of love that I have yet, or may never be able to plumb, as you have. You are a gift of mercy, shedding more light for dim eyes.

Dear friend, I know you'll warm to this verse. (It's from the next Psalm and ended my morning's lectio.) "Bless the LORD, O my soul, …who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy."

Christianity/Spirituality

The Mercy to be Ordinary

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

At the next table are two young lovers occupying one chair. (You see more of this on Friday's) Oblivious to decorum or public protocol (Is there such a thing?) they are making sure they will somehow linger upon each other throughout the day.

Whatever average might mean, they are not an average couple. They are attractive in a quintessential Hollywood way. Everything in place, every article fitting right, every accessory coordinated, and the overall effect speaks hip, maybe just a touch ahead of hip. They are the image of the kind of couple, that in our shallower moments, at some time in our lives, we all secretly wished we were, or at least wondered what it would feel like to be. Of course I've made a judgment based on appearance. They may in fact be sterling in character. But then, there's the exhibitionist thing…hmm

It's hard to be ordinary. Hard to want to be ordinary. But think about ordinary this way: Ordinary people are self-aware. They have come to know their dependence on others and their dependence on the forgiveness of others and of God. In this experiential knowledge they are free…not occupied being the "lonely hero". They're not locked into being "unlike" everyone else and so being like everybody else.

Ordinary people are unique. They know they can be easily sucked into desiring and so being ruled by what's, well, hip. They also know that fashion is a trivial idol. That fashion is just an easy diversionary target for those of us prone to be governed by subtler idols.

Do you see how the mercy of Jesus opens up for us this self-awareness? Do you see that in the forgiving presence of Jesus we can afford to be terribly ordinary? And do you see how this change in desire is a gift for those around us?

Spirituality

Hand to Hand Contact

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

I taught myself to type while working in a grain elevator in Spruce Grove, Alberta. It was the summer my son Lucas was rescued by an emergency-response-team helicopter after an eight hour search in the thick boreal forest of Long Lake. And I needed to write about it. I had been journaling longhand for years but I thought that the momentous drama of the incident required something more then my cursive script.

Across the tracks and across main street from the Alberta Wheat Pool elevator was a second-hand store. They had a typewriter–a sporty blue Corona. Computers had hit the market but were still the size of filing cabinets.

I used a computer for my work. It didn't have a "word processor"–still a foreign term. I used it to enter data on grain weights and grades under peoples names. All of its bulk–with its spinning 14k hard drive discs the size of dinner plates–was in the basement. On my desk on the the main floor sat a 12 inch green-screen-monitor and keyboard. They were connected to the humming monster in the cellar with cords the size of garden hoses. The small blue Corona on the other hand was portable. I could throw it in the back seat and drive to Chickakoo park, find a picnic table, and peck away with the birds.

But the pecking seemed eternal. The flow came hard. I used a book, learned what fingers belonged to what keys. But I typed and whited out and typed some more, and slowly, I typed out the story of Lucas getting lost.

Years passed, we got a 286 IBM personal-computer. I met Mavis Beacon, installed her and she scored my typing speed on the computer monitor. The day came when I got to 30, sometimes 40 words per minute, this was fast enough for me and I left Mavis to strike out on my own.

I like keyboards. I like the sound and feel of them. I'm getting picky now. I could never go back to the half-inch key stroke of my old Corona, but I do miss it.

Author Madeline L'Engle was once asked how she wrote all her stories, all her wonderful prose. She replied, "With my hands." I knew instantly what she meant.

For me, it's all about the keyboard. All about hands and fingers on keyboards. All about a tactile experience.

Yesterday, Andrea, an Acupuncturist, gave me a hand massage. She began with my left. She rubbed oil into my forearm and wrist and then drew it out to the tips of my fingers. With her thumbs she applied pressure beginning at he centre of my palm, slowly relieving any tension in the bones and ligaments in my hand.

Then she took a pencil-like instrument with a round silver tip and began to slowly trace things on the back of my hands. Pictures maybe. With variable but steady pressure, she inscribed things into the palm of my hand. She used punctuation, lots of semi-colons, commas, and periods. She wrote a paragraph on the heel of my hand and a chapter along my fingers. And it felt like I was getting reconnected from within.

Now, this morning I can't help thinking how important a hand shake is. I mean a genuine hand shake. Today I know better why it is that people on the street who approach and ask for money, more often than not, before extending their hand palm-up, put out their hand signaling a hand-shake. It's an semi-conscious human desire for connection. Human and spiritual connection.

Christianity/Religion/Spirituality

Consider the Poor

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Happy are those who consider the poor; …they are called happy in the land. (Psalm 41)

I’m still thinking about the “Poetry Night” last Friday. And now I recall this journal entry from a morning in March:

Kitty-corner from my morning lookout sits a commissioned inspiration. The artwork looks like giant panpipes. The piece has stood there, according to my memory, for over two years. I have never heard the pipes make a sound even on the days when you have to lean into a wind as you cross 109th.

But upon closer inspection I see that every pipe has a diagonal opening cut close to its top, making the pipes look more like very large penny-whistles. So unless by some meteorological anomaly the wind bears down from above with gale-speed, these poor vertical pipes will remain mute. As art, interesting to some, curious to others, and an abstraction to the rest.

Such is the lot of the first-nations man I now see crossing Jasper. He’s wearing a donated varsity jacket brown with age and blue jeans shiny with street-silt. He walks by using the weight and momentum of his torso to throw each leg out in front of him by turns. The limbs don’t seem to belong to him. People pass by. He’s interesting to some, curious to others, and an abstraction to the rest.

Happy are those who consider the poor…