“Mary went with haste to the hill country…’ 

I love that verse – even though the only time I think of “hill country” is LBJ stealing the votes of west Texas. Mary thinks, but she doesn’t over think. She receives the Word and she acts on it.
 
One thing I really like about yoga class is the language “the practice of yoga.”  It’s intentionally NOT about achievement or arrival and more about just practicing everyday. I vote we should stress the practice of faith more than the moment of time we came to faith. Maybe less talk about “when I gave my heart to Jesus Christ” and more about “I’m practicing today” would help change our mindset from thinking we’ve arrived to being more cognizant of the journey.

Maybe we would start moving with haste on the word that is constantly coming to us as Bonhoeffer says.

The summer of this year was a struggle. 

I was really tired, yet wasn’t acknowledging it; I was already beginning to grieve the impending “loss” of my first son to college; I was aware (and therefore guilty) of the gap between the haphazard summers of my childhood and the conscripted summers of my own children; the church was moving to our ministry building while a 6 month renovation project had started…Lots of reasons for life to be difficult in Scott Peck’s words.

In late August we took a dive trip to Bonaire and for the first time I reread my journal entries. Three times it looked like the Spirit had given me a Word, three times I had ignored it. But sitting on the beach at sunset in Bonaire was the ticket. The Word was “Work Less. Pray More.” 

That was it. No flourish or exceeding comfort. No parenting or pasturing guide.  Just “do less of your own action and pay more attention to my action.”

So since the first week of September that’s how I’ve tried to order my life. I get up earlier to just sit. I don’t have an agenda; I’m not trying to work my way through a book or study guide. I just get up while it’s dark and quiet. Sometimes I open my Bible and journal but sometimes I don’t.  And I just say “Here Am I. May it be done to me according to thy Word.” 

It’s changing my life.

There is some distance that is beginning to form between my actions and me. My ego investment is lessening and my anxiety and fear is ebbing. Not all the time. But slowly I am beginning to live what I’ve been preaching: that saving the world is God’s business; we just get to tag along.

I attended a wonderful presentation by Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest who runs the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico. I’ve liked him for several years now. His writing on male and female spirituality is some of the best stuff I’ve read about negotiating the transitions of life.

His recent presentation was part of his newest book called, Things Hidden. The search for things that are hidden yet right under our nose. The self is always defended – our ego is protected by the elaborate protection system we have put in place. If we don’t engage in practices that deliberately open the self to new things  - then we continue to only let in those things we already agree with. We have a feverish need to defend our opinions – some of us spending enormous energy defending some things we don’t actually believe.

What Rohr is saying is right on. The only way metanoia happens, literally turning, or seeing again, is through having our inner beliefs disturbed. Until we have a way of letting things IN, then we continue to only have an external belief instead of an inner authority.

I think of how many times I approach the scripture text unconsciously expecting it to simply validate what I know. BEWARE! When the text confirms my suspicions, then that’s my cue to spend some more time in it.

The other day at my daughter’s piano lesson, her teacher heard the screen porch door open and someone walking to the back door. As he turned around from the living room to greet who he thought was me, he then heard the door slam again – as if someone had run out.

The incident caught me because a few weeks ago a neighbor confronted an intruder in her darkened home in the late afternoon. He ran away after seeing her.

I’m anxious for Burnley. What if Burnley had been alone? The door had been unlocked? I think about the deep uncertainty that most people live most days and I remember my friend Zebediah in Tanzania who said, “If God doesn’t come through for us, then we have nothing.” When you have nothing but God, you must expect God to act.

I’ll pray for God’s protection. And I’ll make sure the doors are locked.

At the Rohr conference I picked up the book Radical Grace, a year of daily reflections. I only stick with these sorts of books for a couple of months, but I generally enjoy using them through the seasons of Advent and Lent especially. I think it’s because I’m always trolling for sermon nuggets, although it’s kind of pathetic to put it that way.

Today Rohr had a good insight into the immediate action of Mary upon receiving the word of the angel Gabriel. Mary goes “immediately to the home to the hill country” of her cousin Elizabeth. Mary recognizes that this is not the moment for contemplation – life itself, Rohr notes, is to give her the next cues.

Mary’s immediate action reminds me of Abraham’s activity in the wake of God’s word. Time after time, as soon as Abraham gets a word from God - he acts. He picks up and leaves; he takes his son Isaac; he moves. There is a sense that THIS is the role of the sojourner, simply to act in accordance with the Word that comes to us. Genesis contrasts Abraham’s activity to his nephew Lot’s passivity, nostalgia, and overall lack of responsibility.

“Let it be done to me according to thy will!” Mary says…”Behold the handmaiden of the Lord.” Mary shows me the active engagement of saying YES to God.

In short, following God is going to require something of us – but it will always be God who’s giving the Word, calling the shots, asking the questions.