This Day

Discussing "The Knight's Tale" and "Sir Gawain" with high schoolers has brought the lingering clamor of jousts and duels into my daily reflections.  Ultimately, I have concluded it is not a bad thing to have an epic perspective -- as long as it doesn't addle my head.
For some time it has been dawning on me the term "The Lord's Day" can feel like a misnomer.  Frankly, the first day of the week seems to belong a bit more to the opposition.  Although the phrase evokes a soft haze synchronized to background music, the reality is often a starkly jarring contrast.  When we had small children, shoes would disappear, water furnaces would cease to heat, cars would refuse to start...Sunday mornings.  Innumerable (but probably not to my children) days I lingered in the car, ashamed to follow my family into church because of the tannin that had come out of my mouth, out of my heart as we hurried to get our go-to-meeting-selves to worship -- on point and on time.  Godliness was in short supply.

Perhaps I shouldn't have set myself up for failure right at the outset with phrases like "Day of Rest" and "Best Day", appropriated from how-to books with sunny yellow covers and watercolor smiling families.  Possibly, warrior terminology would have been a better choice.  Weapons and armor were more vital than Mary Janes and bowties, but I have always been a slow learner when my pride obstructs the view.  These days my vision is slightly clearer.  I anticipate an ambush.

After battling my way to church a few weeks ago, I struggled to submit to words of God's love and provision and kindness and truth.  Because lately there is not much evidence of those things in the world around me.  Still I stayed, and I bowed before the One who created the whole world out of nothing and is not limited in power or knowledge.  It had been impossible to get there.  It was incomprehensibly difficult to remain.  But there was hope in the message.  There is always hope in the message.  It comes through scriptures rich with healing and reconciliation and redemption for angry and broken and hurting and helpless people.  For all of us.  For me. 

I don't know much -- in fact, fewer things than I ever thought I knew.  Still, I think these Sabbaths on earth are less a foretaste of the eternal rest to come, and more an echoing back through the battle lines that cry of triumph from the front.  The victory is certain, but now is not the time to put down the sword.  It is not the day to rest from the fight. 

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints...

O Lord, You Know

People give me blank books. Beautiful covers, heavy paper stock -- lovely, lovely books. On the shelf closest to my desk I have soft Italian red leather, an imprinted Klimt, embossed calfskin, raw pressed pulp, classic black, and whimsical quotation adornment. And I, an ardent devotee of the written word, thrill each time someone who loves me makes a gift of such a treasure.
I look the giver in the eye and state, "It's perfect." Because it is.
I align it with others, shuffle the order a bit -- by color this time instead of size. Occasionally, I pull one from the pile and put it closer to the upholstered easy chair so it is within reach. I never leave the arrangement without a last look and an inward nod of assent. 
And there they remain, blank and perfect. 

Although I scribble everywhere on everything (two weeks ago I used the back side of a paycheck), tucking similes, meditations and fragments of observation into every available pocket of my life, I don't even mar the perfection of those tomes with my name on a flyleaf. I am waiting for contents worthy of such an elegant embrace. They will come. And I will use one of my many precisely tailored pens on those pristine pages -- filling them with the handwriting I so prefer over any font from a keyboard. 
I am waiting to write my fairytale. 

It's an attitude that flows from my heart as I often find myself expecting unicorns and rainbows just around the river bend. As if joys were in a separate book from the sorrows.
Life contains many hard things, broken-hearted things, heavy things that the calendar doesn't bring to a satisfactory sitcom close before the credits roll. And this metaphor ushers conviction as I shamefacedly confess my bitterness with the producer and director who decreed "To Be Continued..." at the end of December. I want something that fits neatly between two embossed covers.
I want a happy ending, and like Veruca Salt -- I want it now.

Today brought a new perspective for those blank pages. Ezekiel's vision of bodies being clothed in muscle and tendon and flesh and animated with the breath of life is meaningless without his first glance at a dry valley filled with dead bones. Beauty out of ashes. Mourning into dancing. A shoot growing out of a dead stump -- bearing fruit. The story of life woven through the detritus of death is in fact worthy of the most extravagant of covers.

The basic black has a wraparound band and a silk ribbon bound into the spine. I think I'll begin there.

And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry.
And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”
Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”