The Power Struggle of Fasting

Our church is doing a twenty-one day fast, and we are now in the home stretch. My wife and I gave up dessert, and watching Stephen Colbert’s showcase of his Ben & Jerry’s ice cream a couple of days ago was tempting us to break the fast a few days early. But we have stayed the course.

For us, this fast has been about discerning the new direction God is pushing us in. We have felt the Spirit’s movement the past three years to seek out a new direction for our family in service for his kingdom, and we have struggled to discern how this is supposed to happen.

This year though, we have felt the Spirit tugging at our hearts. This is the year of our change. This fast has been about discerning how that will happen.

Nothing has been answered during the fast.

Zero.

Zilch.

Nothing. It’s still a relentless ambiguity. Praying for discernment has the common feeling now of running into a cinder block wall. I have become used to not discerning any response except to be hopeful.

But hope only last so long. We are human, remember God?

This is the power struggle of fasting we are facing. As we continue in hopefulness and patience, the desire to circumvent discernment and just do something—anything—has become a serious temptation. We just want to make a change in our lives. Stir up the waters. Make something happen.

It’s in that selfish desire that fasting helps. Fasting has offered us no solutions. To the outsider, it appears to have no benefit except weight loss. But for me, the simple, selfless act of giving something up reminds me that I need to give up my power and will as well.

Not my will but yours.

I hate that prayer so much. But I need it.

Not my will but yours.

Making Memorizing Beautiful

I don’t really have much Scripture memorized.

I remember a lot of Scripture. I have a paraphrasing-style mind. I can tell you when Paul discusses the trumpets sounding and the world breaking forth into an eternal splendor and death no longer has any sting is 1 Corinthians 15, but to say it word for word—verbatim—is challenging for me.

I have one piece of Scripture memorized very well, mostly because of sentimental value. It was given to me on an index card by a mentor who said, “memorize it.” And I did. I wanted to show this person that I could actually do it.

In high school I had to memorize the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. I still remember it to this day. I love the sound of the language. It’s beautiful. And my wife thoroughly hates it. She thinks when I recite it I’m showing off, but I really say it because Middle English is this lilting, hardscrabble language that hearkens back to days when we even our very words were more attached to the earth (pardon the English major moment).

I think that is the challenge for me as I memorize I John. It’s not about my spiritual maturity, my advancement, my pride—so that I can say I have a whole book of the Bible memorized. It will be worth it when I can memorize it because it is beautiful.

Which Kingdom Will You Choose?

At a pep rally in Alabama, some Mexican kids were sitting in the front seats, and other students started chanting, “Mexicans to the back!”

At a local church in Alabama, a woman commented that because she is Hispanic some people don’t want to pass the peace with her anymore at church. (This American Life, Act One: Alien Experiment)

Both of these situations are infuriating, hateful and cruel.

But the most despicable is the scene in the church, when people united by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ choose to let the kingdoms of this world, with its own laws and distorted sense of fairness and love, divide Christ’s kingdom.

We are given a choice, every day, to choose which kingdom we will grant our allegiance to.

Which kingdom will you choose?

Prayer for the Fourth Week of Epiphany

God Alimghty,
you have confronted evil, darkness and suffering
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Confront the evil, darkness and suffering
in my own heart, and give me the joy
of your salvation.

Amen

Writing Update: Rutherford and Country Music

On Everyday Liturgy I try to have a moderate, temperate voice. It’s how I feel most comfortable talking about matters of faith and spirituality. But there is another side of me. A side that rants (it did make a rare appearance on Everyday Liturgy when I briefly discussed a certain bridge).

I ranted a bit on the topic of country music over on The Curator‘s blog in “A Lament for Country Music.” It got a bit out of hand, and became a bit verbose:

“Country music was founded on lyrical proximity to the grit of the earth. Now it is just dressed up in poser cowboy boots and abhorently bad musical renditions of arrested development, binge drinking, adolescent love, pseudo-Christian ideals and bad Shakespearean puns.”

You can read the rest of the essay here. I would also like to invite you to help choose the Top 20 country artists making music today by nominating three country artists in the comments of “Help Us Curate: Good Country Music.”

I also wrote about the town of Rutherford, and my general lack of knowledge about it. It’s a place featured in Wendell Berry’s book William Carlos Williams of Rutherford, and I explore how Rutherford’s proximity to me doesn’t mean I really know anything about it. An excerpt:

“I don’t really know Rutherford that well. I have frequented the Western store in Rutherford upon occasion. I went and watched Fourth of July fireworks there seven or eight years ago. But I haven’t actually stepped foot on Rutherford soil in at least four years. I just glide right through it on the train, at least 30 times a year.”

You can read the rest of my essay “Thomas On Glynn On Berry On Williams On Place” on The Master’s Artist.

Memorize Scripture With Me!

Though I may not admit to it very often, I do have a few flaws.

One of them is memorization.

I am awful at it.

I have drifted toward more experiential styles of Bible reading like lectio divina or meditation because it doesn’t require the kid of memorization I am so bad at.

Thankfully, Kimberlee Conway Ireton is spearheading an effort to help people memorize Scripture, and I reluctantly/joyously signed up for it.

You can join us in memorizing I John this year by following the instructions on Kimberlee’s blog: “Reach“.

As an added bonus, I am giving away two copies of Kimberlee’s book The Circle of the Seasons to the two people who A) join us in this exercise and B) share in the comments how memorizing Scripture has helped you in the past or your worst memorization disaster. Simply leave a comment that you are going to participate along with a brief (2-3 sentences) recounting of how memorizing Scripture has led to triumph or ruin. I’ll pick my favorite two to receive the book and contact the winners to write a longer version of what they shared for publication on Everyday Liturgy.

I’m looking forward to memorizing along with many of you and reading your comments!

The Simplest Way to Raise an Animal Ethically

This is the fifth post on the subject of Animal Care, one of the five spheres of a Christian ethic of eating. This post is a bridge between thinking about eating meat to dealing with the thorny issue of sacrifice, which will take several posts to unpack. After a discussion of sacrifice we will move into a discussion of a “rule” to eat ethically.

In the ever burgeoning world of farm-to-table food, there is a growing desire for ethically treated meat. This, as discussed before, can mean different things to different people. The important thing about the ethical treatment of animals is not as much the meaning of “ethical treatment” but recognizing the choice we all have to eat ethically every day. When we cultivate an ethical conscious it begins to shape our food choices in profound ways.

The how-to of ethically treating animals is fundamentally simple. The simplest way to raise an animal ethically is to follow the golden rule: treat the animal the way you would want to be treated if you were in the same position. Now there is some divergence here, for this is the point where vegans (people who have decided to not eat any food that comes from an animal, including dairy) would say “you don’t want to be killed, do you? So why would you eat animals at all?” It’s a valid question, and one I will discuss in a later post (have to keep you reading, don’t I?”), but suffice it to say that my stance on the issue is that humans and farm animals have entered into a symbiotic relationship, like the one Michael Pollan illustrates happens with plants in The Botany of Desire. Domesticated animals, like domesticated plants, enter into a contract with us for mutual preservation: we keep the animals alive, provide a consistent food supply for them, let them reproduce and enjoy a happy life, and then at the end of their life we eat them.

The way to raise animals ethically then, is simply to use common sense for the most part. Chickens naturally want to be outside and peck. It would be ethical then to allow them to do this. Pigs want to wallow in mud and eat slop. It would be ethical then to allow them to do this. Cows want to walk around a pasture or barn. It would be ethical then to allow them to do this.

What becomes unethical is to treat an animal like it is a commodity. Most big farmers, the ones who shove pigs into crates, cram chickens into cages and jam cows into confined rows, are thinking about animals as part of an industrial production unit. This line of thinking sees animals as not part of a farm but as part of a factory, churning out animal products like computers by any means necessary, which does undue harm to the animals, our environment and ourselves. Large commercial farms lose sight of animals as sentient beings, which allows them to treat animals like parts in an assembly line instead of living, breathing things. It’s human nature to numb ourselves to the plight of a person or thing if it makes us money. Modern day slavery, sweat shops, suicides in technology manufacturing, and animal cruelty are all rooted in the same darkness.

To treat an animal ethically is to allow it to live a life that is both natural and humane. It is to choose a symbiotic relationship with the animals on the farm and to honor an animal for their intrinsic value as a fellow creature and, eventually, a source of food.

In the next post we will discuss why the ethical treatment of animals is so important for Christians.