TOSRV 2006

How wonderful to accomplish a challenging task. Even though it was my third year doing this two-day, 210-mile bike ride, there is still a great sense of having risen to the challenge once again. It's kinda' nice to be a veteran, and to see the newbies gain their own sense of accomplishment.

Each year presents its own challenges. This year we didn't get the forecast rain for Saturday, but Sunday made up for it. We encountered a fair number of flats, including one for me on Saturday and at least two or three to others on Sunday. The lengthy lunch break on Sunday while we waited for the late arrivals, who did admirably in the face of their own adversity, ended up putting us in the rain for an hour longer than we'd have encountered otherwise. But the rain wasn't nearly as torrential as at the Seagull century in October, nor the wind nearly as strong. And for once we all finished pretty close together.

Go Team Dog!

Other "dirty" thoughts

More thoughts rooted in the dirt under my nails on Saturday:

Yes, the more we nurture a relationship, lavish healthy care on it, the more beautiful it becomes, just like a well-tended garden. But in our relationship with God, it is always he who is tending and nurturing us. Unlike the flowers in my garden, though, we have a choice to make concerning whether we will be tended.

Now, carrying that thought onward and linking it to the previous post, too often we choose to tend and nurture weeds in our lives. They respond fabulously, too, growing to the best of their ability, overrunning the garden. So again, we must choose what we feed carefully. We will fail to achieve the beauty which God wants to reflect off of us if we don't allow him to weed and prune us, to keep us in line.

We shouldn't expect God to contribute to the garden's growth when we're promoting the weeds. And we should be aware, just as the workers in the field in that parable about the wheat with the weeds, that we don't always recognize the weeds in our lives. We need to trust God's tending even (especially) when he seems to be nurturing something in us other than what we think needs to grow.

We sometimes tend to think of ourselves as weeds or as flowers, in a judgmental way. It is more helpful for me to think of my life as a garden (a vineyard?), made up of both types of plants. It is really important for me to allow the Diving Gardener to tend me!

Gardening insights

Yesterday morning I was planting a few gladiolus corms and pulling weeds from the flowerbed. I've never been much of a gardener; we've lived in this house for nearly thirteen years, and only over the last few have we planted anything. Three years ago I planted a few tomatoes and some zucchini for the first time, along the side of the house. A year later I cut down several yew bushes in front of the house to make room for some flowers. I've put in a few vegetables and annual and perennial flowers each year since.

It occurred to me yesterday that gardens are like relationships: the more you invest in and tend them, the more precious they become. They take on more beauty, and become increasingly worth investing more effort into.

A little while later, while planting some trumpet vines in the back, a further thought struck me: the more we invest in something, the more worthy of pursuit we perceive it to be. Whether we pursue relationships, gardening, money, possessions, power, sexuality, physical achievement, or any number of other interests, the more we invest ourselves into them, the higher we value them because of our investment. It makes me remember how important it is to be careful about what I choose to invest myself into.

Balanced fear?

I had a very tense night last night, one that challenged my trust in God.

My wife had a significantly risky surgery on Tuesday. On the one hand, it was somewhat routine, but on the other, contained a small but real risk of death. She needed to have a section of her colon removed, and there was (is?) a significant chance that the remaining sections would not heal together properly. So after two plus days of post-surgical nausea and vomiting, when she developed a fever last night, I came face-to-face with the possibility of life without her. It wasn't a pleasant prospect.

It took me a long time to start appreciating and loving my wife as she has always deserved. After 25 years of marriage, we finally have the kind of relationship of which (I think) every couple dreams at the outset of their marriage. I can't possibly convey how little I deserve to be in this kind of relationship, the many and extreme ways I nearly destroyed it. That is part of why our marriage is such a sacrament to me, an embodiment of God's love, which none of us can ever deserve, either.

So when she began running a fever last night, after two days of nausea and vomiting, a complex issue became an important one to me:

Do I really trust God to provide for my (and my wife's) every need, in this life and beyond it?
Do I really value God's love more highly than everything else in my life, including every other relationship?
Do I really believe that life in Christ is worth living, even if I am called (as I still might eventually be) to live it without the earthly relationship that matters most to me?

For now, I am relieved that my fears for my wife's health were unfounded, that her recovery is in fact on track. I'm grateful for the opportunity to consider such questions. And I'm thankful, and must be careful not to be excessively so, that I can consider them in the security of an earthly relationship which I treasure and which has been preserved.

Thank you, God, for my wife, but even more, thank you for my life in you.

More Triduum unpacking

Holy Thursday:

How nice to see the families that came forward, children washing and drying the feet of their parents, their siblings. I hope we gain the insight we're supposed to from this ritual. It is the mundane and, if you will, highly unpleasant task that we are called to undertake in love. I'm not opposed to this ritual, by any means. I just want it to mean all it should for us.

But, like the sacraments, I believe there can be a grace at work in such acts that far exceeds our awareness of it.


Good Friday:

Fr. Dave's reflections on the Stations of the Cross during our celebration of the Passion of the Lord was a wonderful bridge to this form of prayer which is practiced in many parishes on Good Friday.

I hope people are engaged rather than put off by our chanting of St. John's passion narrative. I know it engages me, but as a participant, it had better! The odd thing is, I find I can relate to everyone whose words I express, in some way. And I know that my role in Jesus' crucifixion is at least as great as any of theirs.


Easter Vigil:
Wow! The joy of sponsoring him is beyond words. To have walked these past months with all of these newly baptized and confirmed members of the church is priceless! And Teri was thrilled to be able to distribute first Eucharist to so many of them.


Easter morning liturgies:
It was such a joy to be able to participate in music ministry. I missed that aspect of the vigil service, though I would not have traded in my role for anything! I didn't expect to be at both Easter morning services, but then Teri decided she was going to 10:30 mass after all, so there wasn't any point in my staying home.
The brass was fabulous. The handbell choir did a great job! But my favorite addition had to be Julian, who did a great job with the percussion in general, and the timpani in particular. Easter Alleluia was fabulous!
I hope we truly helped people gain a closer sense of the joy of the resurrection, and of the rejoicing we have in store for us for eternity.

Both in the vigil and morning liturgies, Fr. Dave talked about little George, who after running into the bedroom wall early in the morning on his first day of school, guessed it was because "I still have too much dark in my eyes." Fr. Dave, if the mark of a good homily is that it leaves us chewing on it for a while, then this was certainly was one.

In addition to the darkness of self-centeredness and hedonism, I think there is a darkness of pride. Maybe it was the first darkness in creation, and maybe every other darkness really has it its roots there. I sense that a lot of folks think that a little religion is okay, as long as you don't go too crazy with all of it. Don't, like, expect me to sit through a bunch of extra stuff at liturgy, especially week in and week out. And don't expect me to actually interact with someone undesireable, either because they are beneath my social peer group, they're too plain, they've done something disgusting, they smell, they're not very bright . . . basically, their faults are outside my comfort zone. BTW, I'm not picking on others, here. This message is hitting me where I live. And it ought to. I have Christ living next door to me, and I don't bother helping him shoulder his cross. And the reason I don't is because of my pride.

I'm not beating myself up over that, just recognizing that Jesus wants that part of me to die so that he can resurrect it into something wonderful.

Christ is risen, Alleuia! And he's going to make sure that I'm fully risen in him.

What difference does it make?

That's the real question for this weekend, isn't it?

What difference does it make in my life?
What difference does it make in the lives of those around me?

I know I'd have no hope without it.
I know every decent thing I do is because of it.

How about you? What difference does it make?

"Shout with joy to the Rock who saves us"

More from adoration. I'm amazed at how, no matter how much I've prayed, reflected and written on Ps 95, it keeps providing new inspiration, new insight. [I think this is part of why I believe in Scripture: I've enjoyed works of fiction that were well-written, that I've read passages of over and over again. Eventually, they reach a point at which each reading is a reminiscence, and there is no new real discovery. Scripture remains fresh. I know I've prayed this psalm over 100 times, including on previous Tridua, yet there is ever new applicability.]

We are to "shout with joy" to you, O Lord. Yet we need not shout for you to hear us, so why do you tell us to shout? Is it merely so that the assembly may be emotionally uplifted? Or might it be a shout that is to bear witness of your love and glory to the downtrodden, the empty, the seeking, the lost?

"He holds in his hands the depths of the earth, and the highest mountains as well."
The depths and the heights of my own life, as well. They can seem, to me, to be so great, though they are nothing compared to the depth of your love, Lord.

"Come then, let us bow down and worship, bending the knee before the Lord, our maker."
How much more should I humbly worship since our maker has borne the punishment I deserve! O, angels of God, minister to him who bears my burden. (Another eternity moment - the prayer of each believer who offers this is answered in the Garden this night.)

"We are the flock he shepherds." Through the betrayal, judgement, more beatings, taunting, spitting, crowning with thorns, scourging, condemnation, Via Dolorosa, crucifixion, and grave, to Resurrection, you shepherd us Lord! ["I am the good shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep."]

"Today, listen to the voice of the Lord," and hear him cry out "I Am," "Anyone who is of the truth hears my voice," "I thirst," "Today you will be with me in paradise," "Here is your mother," "Father, forgive them," "Eloi! Eloi lama sabacthani," "Why have you abandoned me," "It is finished."

[Hear him speak one or more of these words into the circumstances of your life. - an experience I was having with each of them, then an approach Fr. Dave mentioned in his Passion homily]