LifeSpace Humanity

News Feed

2009-07-18T10:53:00.002-05:00

I am now using Google Reader to share news stories about human rights, peacebuilding, and related issues with those who are interested. Check it out here. The stories will be updated several times each week.

Bob

Far Neighbors' Faces

2008-12-22T00:08:00.007-06:00

Our families were privileged to serve together this summer in Burundi and Kenya, where we participated in disability ministries in both countries.

Bob's son Steve, who has Down Syndrome, was the center of attention at the disability center in Bujumbura. Several young men instantly recognized him as their brother, and they embraced him with delight.

In Kenya, we partnered with Cyndi Bauer and the ministry of Kupenda. We taught deaf children, visited other children in their homes, conducted a pastor's workshop on disability, and participated in a community-wide disability awareness day. We saw the faces of our far neighbors, and we saw the light of glory shine.

Skin

2008-03-17T09:40:00.002-05:00

Glancing from the kitchen to see four guffawing faces on the couch, mugging in front of i-chat on the computer. The recipient of such silliness: a college friend reporting back from spring break spent swatting baseballs in the Florida sun. Distance bridged by technology. Five tethered humans connecting with four skin-to-skin and one across the electronic divide a thousand miles away.
Hot chocolate cookies come out of the oven. Hilarity ensues as the four try to upload a cookie to the hungry boy yearning far away. He swears he can smell the aroma wafting through the computer.
The laughter dies. They all stare at the screen with the screen staring back at them. Eyes meet in acknowledgement of what is and what is not. Better to see the face and hear the voice than to experience the void of absence. Better still that all five could sit on the couch tasting a mother’s offering. Real trumps virtual every time. Joni

The Shining

2008-01-07T21:45:00.000-06:00

Many lighthouses use a French “Fresnel lens” to send a stream of light over long distances. The lenses are made with layers of crystal stacked upon each other, allowing the light beam to be refracted infinitely. Essentially the light is multiplied over and over. This lens is the largest “double clam” type in the world. Ships look for its signal 20 miles away. Airplanes can see it for over 90 miles.

I think about our reflection of God’s image whenever I see a lighthouse. Imagine refracting the love of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God, the patience of God infinitely. Imagine people looking for the light from miles away. God is the Light and in God there is no darkness. What an amazing privilege to be part of the Shining. Joni

Proud Mary

2007-12-12T21:12:00.000-06:00

Last night was the annual Christmas program for the Notre Dame School. It is our favorite event of the season for a very personal reason. After forgettable experiences elsewhere, our oldest son has thrived at this little school in the shadow of downtown Dallas. They have treated him with respect and have expected the same in return. They have encouraged him creatively, understanding his disability and believing in his humanity. They have loved him with enthusiasm. The Christmas program typifies all that. Steve and the other students have a chance to shine. And they seize it! Joy runs wild.
When Sister Maureen finalized the cast, she might have guessed that Mary and Joseph would wave to the audience. Lots of kids do. But who could have foreseen their spontaneous burst of pride? And who could resist when Mary waved, pointed to the baby doll in her arms, and mouthed words to the audience? Who could have doubted, when she flashed a proud thumbs-up, that there was ever a more exuberant Mary, enjoying a more fully human moment of celebration?
When in the future I read Mary's words from Luke 1, "My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior," this is the face I will want to remember.

Bob

Micro-Finance in Tanzania

2007-09-12T02:17:00.000-05:00

On our recent trip to Tanzania, Celestin and I witnessed the life-giving world of micro-finance. Our hosts Justin and Anna, who work with us in ALARM, introduced us to Peter. "He was a thief and a drug user," said Justin, "but now he is a Christian businessman." The words of the gospel had marked the first part of Peter's transformation. No longer a thief and a drug user, he was the friend of God. But a ten dollar loan continued the dramatic change. Peter used the money to start roasting and selling peanuts, a process he is describing in this picture. Within a few weeks he repaid his loan, borrowed a little more, and began buying and selling other kinds of merchandise. Peter now employs a couple of young helpers and helps support needy families in his church.

We met another participant in the loan program, a mother of two whose husband had forced her and the children out of the house when she refused to convert to Islam. With a five dollar loan, she started selling tea at a local truck stop. When we visited, her business had become a tiny restaurant. She paid rent on that building and on a home for her children. She was also employing two women, paying as much in daily salaries as she initially borrowed just a few months ago.

I offer no grand claim that the carefully planted mustard seeds of micro-finance will change the continent of Africa. But I have seen hope and dignity restored to a handful of people made in God's image, and I am most grateful to have seen their faces.

Bob

Straddling Joy and Sorrow

2007-07-23T06:33:00.000-05:00

Our families participated once again in the Joni and Friends family retreat, where we always make new friends and reconnect with what is really real in human experience. The theme of this year's retreat was Joy, and we emphasized in our teaching that in this life joy is always interlaced with sorrow. Each defines the other, but the boundaries remain constantly in flux.

Each participant wrote words on one mask describing joy and on another describing sorrow. Their identities remained private, but the masks were posted on a wall of tears and laughter. Doctors' diagnoses, financial circumstances, and church experiences populated both kinds of masks, sometimes in the same hand. Neither mask could tell the whole story.

Richard, pictured here with his friend and attendant, Tony, and his wonderdog, Troy Aikman, understands the straddle between joy and sorrow. During the singing of a closing song of praise, Richard shook with tears. Two young boys looked his direction. One asked, "Do you think that man is crying because he is sad? Or is it because he likes the song and is happy?"

The other boy thought a moment and replied, "Yeah."

"With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord: ‘He is good; his love toward Israel endures forever.’ And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away" (Ezra 3:11-13).

Two Kinds of Joy

2007-05-26T01:15:00.001-05:00

Pastor Edward Simiyu understands life's hard realities. His church, City Harvest, meets in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi. Perhaps as many as 1.5 million people live there in an area about the same size as New York's Central Park. Visiting with Edward at City Harvest's HIV testing center, I asked him how the church is able to help those who have the least amount of power in society. Posters feature smiling women and the word "Abstain." What do you tell the victims of spousal abuse or others who do not have the power to refuse?
"That is the whole point of micro-finance and micro-business," said Edward. "These programs empower women to negotiate and to create for themselves a new future."
Later, when he introduced some of the women being served by City Harvest, the tears on Edward's face evidenced a genuine pastor's heart. He rejoices in the creation of new futures.

The little boy who kept grinning at me during church was too young to understand the things that made Edward weep. He was full of spunk and innocent exuberance. For me, the sighting of delight was in seeing both their faces. The realistic pastor, no less than the giggly child, can smile and laugh to the glory of God.

Bob

Open Chested

2007-03-29T20:26:00.000-05:00

Annie Dillard's historical novel, The Living, tells the story of several generations who settled in the area of Bellingham Bay, Washington. Those familiar with her Pulitzer Prize winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek will recognize a similar pattern here. Looking closely at the details of life in all its beauty and brutality, Dillard offers her Yes to the collective package. Lots of people die in the book, continually reminding us that this life belongs to the living. We are called to turn toward that Life open chested as the Spirit of God lifts our gaze from the soul's incurvature upon itself.

Our friend, Eva, understands what it is to live open chested, and she is a big fan of The Living. That is why she and her husband, Josh, took a side trip to Bellingham Bay, where she struck her "grace pose." Maybe this will be the first in a growing collection!

A Bright Light

2007-02-17T11:57:00.000-06:00

Julie and I met Lesley Myers and her father, Dan, at a Joni and Friends Family Retreat almost ten years ago. The retreat was designed for families with disabilities, and Dan and Lesley fit right in. Lesley was a teenager, bright eyed and happy while managing CP. Dan was her primary caregiver. They found life, hope, and community at Camp Allen that summer, and they have attended every camp since, usually with other members of their family. They are on our short list of favorite faces.

But now we grieve with them, because Lesley died on Valentine's Day.

Lesley had a hard time speaking, but those who allowed her time to find the words on her voice computer knew that she was funny, smart, and a willing participant in the conversation. She was also a delightful, willing participant in life.

This summer I enjoyed watching Lesley go for a ride on horseback. It is hard to imagine a family retreat without that smiling face, easy to imagine what that smile must look like in the presence of her Savior.

Bob

Communion

2007-02-16T23:27:00.000-06:00

On top of a granite mountain in west Texas, seven of us gathered around the elements signifying our shared communion in Christ. The bread and the wine, taken for centuries in remembrance of Christ's death and in anticipation of His coming. It reminds us that the Son of God shares our humanity through the Incarnation, taking even our mortality upon Himself. Having died for us, and having been raised from the dead, He remains accessible to us through the Spirit until that day when we commune with Him face to face.

These powerful symbols of the faith lay before us in a grandmother's best china, resting on a colorful cloth brought home this summer from Kenya. Partaking of the sacrament brings families, friends, near neighbors, and far neighbors to the common table, at which Jesus is our Host.

Body Worlds

2007-01-06T13:06:00.000-06:00

Our local science museum is hosting an exhibition of Gunther von Hagen's Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. You can go to their website to see pictures and learn more, but the gist of it is fairly simple. Donated human bodies have been made into plastic in a process they call "plastination," then displayed with cavities or parts laid open for inspection. It sounds gruesome, but the use of these bodies is not different in principle from the real skeleton that hung in my high school anatomy class or the cadavers my dad examined in med school. They have just found a way to preserve more of the body and have made the study more widely accessible.

That is not to say that it will not make you squirm. This is not a wax museum, nor is it one of those "Visible Man" models you assembled as a kid. These are bodies that lived and loved, bodies with personal histories of knowing and being known. We could never look at them objectively. But we could not take our eyes off them, because they were absolutely amazing.

An exposed arm showed off every muscle and tendon. An open abdominal cavity revealed the size, location, and texture of various organs I had previously known only by name. Nerves were bigger than I had expected, the pancreas smaller. I knew the muscles would look like meat, but they really looked like meat. And I think I know faces pretty well, but I always forget about the sinuses just behind them.

Picture a ball of cotton, stretched out just a bit so it starts to become transparent. Color it red, and that's what your blood vessels look like when they are preserved all by themselves.

After spending an hour and a half walking through the exhibition, I saw my own body differently. It did not feel separate from me, but I was less able to take its functions for granted. I saw faces differently--like Clark Kent exercising flashes of X-Ray vision. I felt a greater appreciation for breath and movement, perhaps because the "plastinates" were so obviously frozen in place. And I think I saw more clearly the glory of God, the One who created human bodies, animates them by the Spirit, and is determined to receive glory by their very existence. "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, since you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created!" (Rev. 4:11).

Bob

Eye to Eye . . . and more

2006-11-21T18:08:00.000-06:00

In the previous post, we noted Karl Barth's argument that we must look one another in the eye. That is the first of four conditions which, according to Barth, must be fulfilled for our engagements with one another to be fully human.Again, the first condition is that I must look you in the eye. When I do that, I also allow you to see me in the eye. Eye to eye, we are not afraid to be known; nor do we refuse to know one another.

Second, there must be mutual speech and hearing. We cross the "frontier of mere visibility" when we express ourselves to one another. "As we can look past people, we can also talk past them and hear past them. When this happens, it always means that we are not in encounter and therefore inhuman."
Third, we must "render mutual assistance in the act of being." We recognize that no human is self-sufficient and we place ourselves at one another's disposal. "My action is human when the outstretched hand of the other does not grope in the void but finds in mine the support which is asked."
Fourth, and finally, we must engage in this encounter with gladness. "We gladly see and are seen; we gladly speak and listen; we gladly receive and offer assistance." "This," wrote Barth, "is the secret of the whole."

(All quotations from Church Dogmatics, III.2)

Eye to Eye

2006-10-22T00:51:00.000-05:00

For a recent class assignment I asked everyone to bring artwork or photographs that revealed the dignity of humans as those made in the image of God. The results were truly stunning. We had ourselves an art gallery. As I joined the class in studying the images and reading the students' brief explanations of them, I was struck by two things: the number of pictures that had been taken on mission trips, and the prominence of eyes staring right at the camera. Here is one of ours, from pastoral training in Rwanda.

Karl Barth said that for an encounter to be truly human, I must look the other person in the eye. If I look past the other, I do not see her or him as a human being. Conversely, Barth observed, my looking the other in the eye also means that I allow that one to look me in the eye. It has implications for electronic communication, does it not?

The number of images from mission trips suggested an additional challenge, one that I have tried to remember since. May I take the time to notice neighbors, coworkers, and even strangers on the street the way I notice the locals while on a mission trip. May I see their eyes, and let them see mine. May our encounters be truly human.

Bob

An Expansive Image

2006-09-11T09:17:00.000-05:00

Gerard Kelly has written a wonderfully expansive description of the image of God for the Bless Network. We reproduce part of it here. The full version is available on the Spoken Worship website. It is meant to be read chest open.

In the Image of My Father
Made in the image of my father:
Breath-filled:
His will to live Kindling my life,
His call to be Driving my being.
My heart is sparked By his heart;
My mind is fired By his imagination
My animation Is his declaration:
Because he is I am.
Made in the image of my father:
Able
Artful; articulate
Created to create
Pulsing with potential.
Designed to design;
Invented for invention,
Made to make.
Through His eyes I see possibilities
Through His ears I hear harmonies
In His heart beat I feel life's dancing rhythms . . .
Because of his dreams I have promise
Because of his promise I have dreams
Ushered into extravagant existence;
Tumbling into time
Fumbling
Falling
Free -
I am human
I am dependant
I am able
I am breath-filled
I am made
In the image of my Father

Delighting in My Neighbor

2006-08-26T19:16:00.000-05:00

A recent visitor to our website sent an email to suggest an area of disagreement. Referring to our description of Community on the Concepts page, he wrote, "Only when human beings are born-again and are walking in the Spirit can it be said that they 'spur delight.'"

I could not disagree more.

All humans are made in the image of God, created to reflect His glory (Genesis 1:26-28; 9:6; James 3:9). We are created "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." That calling will come to its greatest fruition when we are in the presence of Christ, but it brings meaning and dignity to every human life even now. More than any other part of creation, we have been formed for His glory, created to see and enjoy the display of His glorious attributes (Isa. 43:6-7).
Some theologians define the image of God in terms of capacities. Rationality, free will, creativity, and morality are the usual suspects. But if we manifest God's likeness only through particular abilities, many severely disabled people would have to be regarded as less than human. We cannot go there. A definition of the image of God that excludes some humans cannot be true. Fortunately, it is not a question of what we are, how we behave, or what we can do. We have been created to glorify God uniquely by sharing His affection for Himself. That purpose lends dignity to all humans regardless of their present condition or capacities.

That means that we should expect flashes of God's glory in all of our neighbors. We can celebrate Oprah's spirited generosity without questioning her motives. We can join in the One Campaign without worrying about who else might participate. We can return a smile, share an embrace, maybe even see more in people than they can see in themselves.

Bob

If You Had Known Who You Were

2006-08-15T23:25:00.000-05:00

It is difficult to regard as a sighting of delight, but it certainly speaks to humanity. This sign, outside the Nyamata church in Rwanda, reads, "If you had known who you were, and who I was, you would not have killed me."But they did not know, as the mass graves behind the church bear witness.

The sanctuary, which the victims had hoped would be a place of refuge, is now a memorial. Multiply these pictures by 50, and you will have a better sense of its proportion. Its bloodstained altar remains a testimony to what happened here, when humans forgot their humanity.

"A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud wailing, Rachel weeping for her children, and she did not want to be comforted, because they were gone" (Matt. 2:18).

It is good that forgiveness does not require forgetting; otherwise it would not be possible. But forgiveness does call for a different kind of remembering. We remember that we have determined not to seek revenge. We remember a suffering Savior. We remember that those who forgot their humanity are themselves human. We remember that we have promised grace. We remember to breathe deeply the breath of life.

Bob

Joni and Friends

2006-07-12T13:30:00.000-05:00

Last week we once again served with our families at the Joni and Friends Family Retreat. (Yes, it is the same spelling, but it is a different Joni--Joni and Friends is a ministry founded by Joni Eareckson Tada.) The family retreat is for people with disabilities and their families. It offers a fabulous vantage point from which to witness the glory of God shining through human faces.

We led LifeSpace lessons each morning with a special focus on seeking God and being found by Him. Recognizing that we are not expected to abandon our humanity but to fulfill it, we talked about glorifying God in the tensions of embodied life. We pondered the fact that Christ remains, even after His glorification, fully human and fully God. We celebrated the presence of the life-giving Holy Spirit.

We have long used a picture of our friend Jennifer while teaching on the Spirit as God's breath. Paralyzed by a spinal cord injury, Jennifer moves about in a wheelchair and breathes through a ventilator. But she loves life and does not take it -- or breath -- for granted. Here is an updated picture of Jennifer, horseback riding at last week's retreat. She is receiving the breath of life, given by the Spirit, through the hand of a friend with a breathing bag. Faces shine. Life is sweet. Glory abounds.

Grieving and Witnessing Grief

2006-06-24T08:08:00.000-05:00

One of my sons' baseball teammates was killed this week. On Father's Day, Ian and his mother were shot by his father, who then killed himself. We will never be able to explain it, because evil never make sense. We can only grieve.

The boys had a baseball game the night they learned about their friend. They all decided to show up. A few talked about what Ian would have wanted, but I think they just wanted to see each other and do something that made their reeling world feel normal again. We parents cried with them when they gathered for a pregame prayer, then again when they left Ian's catcher position open as they took the field.

Last night about 150 people gathered at the baseball field for an informal service of remembrance. Standing in a circle with candles, Ian's friends told favorite stories of his kindness and humor. We recited the Lord's Prayer. We stood in silence. We sang Amazing Grace. We told more stories. As the candles burned low, we began placing them in the dirt behind home plate. The baseball team pulled into a tight circle around that spot, talking quietly among themselves until each flame flickered out.

Others began to drift toward their cars, but the teammates did not want to leave. They went from home plate to the dugout, then to center field, sharing grief and laughter, celebrating presence.

I had forgotten that the last entry in this part of the forum speaks of death bringing perspective to life. Our experience this week adds another dimension, something that the kids have seen clearly. Life is meant to be shared. In joy or grief, we need desperately to see the faces of our friends.

Bob

Bodies in Motion and at Rest

2006-05-14T00:02:00.000-05:00

At a recent writing conference we had an opportunity to hear Thomas Lynch, a funeral director and writer from Milford, Michigan. He was very funny, especially given his occupation. A book of his poems is titled, Still Life in Milford. For Lynch, however, witnessing death lends perspective to life. In his Bodies in Motion and at Rest, he writes,

There is nothing like the sight of a dead human body to assist the living in separating the good days from the bad ones. Of this truth I have some experience.
Many's the day I would awaken in gloom--a darkness left over from a dream or the night's drinking or a dread of the day I was awakening to. The moments spent before the mirror while tending to my toilet did nothing to lessen the lessons that Time is certainly not on our side, nor does it heal more wounds than it opens. The ever-retreating hairline, the whitening of one's beard and mustache, the bleeding gums, the basal cell carcinomas, the boils and blisters and bags under the eyes, the belly gone soft, the withering member, the hemorrhoids and hematomas, the varicosities and local edemas, the puff, the paunch, the wrecked version of one's former self that presents itself most mornings, are enough to render most sane men suicidal. And whilst a fresh shave, a dose of toilet water pour homme, a pressed suit, new shirt and knatty tie, added to a cup of coffee and a toasted bagel, might quicken in us the will to live, it falls well short of a joie de vivre. And many's the morning I would leave home for the long walk across the street to my office at the funeral home bearing the gloom with the round shoulders of the sluggard and poltroon, waiting for the worst to happen. It was there, in the parlors of the funeral home--my daily stations with the local lately dead--that the darkness would often give way to light. A fellow citizen outstretched in his casket, surrounded by floral tributes, waiting for the homages and obsequies, would speak to me in the silent code of the dead: "So, you think you're having a bad day?"
The gloom would lift, inexplicably. Here was one to whom the worst had happened, often in a variety of ways, and yet no word of complaint was heard from out the corpse. Nor did the world end, the sky fall, nor his or her people become blighted entirely. Life, it turns out, goes on with or without us. All is well. There is at least as much to be thankful for as wary of.

Winging It

2006-04-26T08:32:00.000-05:00

Last night my son barely remembered his orchestra concert. Still wearing his baseball uniform, he jumped from the couch, checked his schedule, and hurried off to change into his tux. "I forgot my music," he said on the way to the car, "but I'll just look on someone else's."

That sounded workable, but the other bass players apparently had the same plan. When the concert started, all four of them were lined up behind empty music stands.

What do you do in that situation? Slip out the back door? Stand slackhanded and stare? Go through the motions while only pretending to play? One boy made the safe choice, moving his bow back and forth while keeping it away from the strings.

My favorite musician chose to wing it. Smiling broadly, he started with the notes he knew and improvised the rest, boldly and at full volume.

I am not sure what the director thought, but I was proud as could be. Yes, my son forgot his music. But in a situation in which I might have felt sick to my stomach, he rose to the occasion with confidence, creativity, and poise. What's more, he enjoyed it. Attaboy, kid.

Bob

There's a vanity to candor...

2006-04-13T08:55:00.000-05:00

An entreatment from playwright Richard Greenberg..."Be civil. Do not cherish your opinion over my feelings. There's a vanity to candor that isn't really worth it. Be kind."

The Beauty of Laughter

2006-04-11T22:24:00.000-05:00

In Gilead, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Marilynne Robinson, Rev. John Ames describes a sighting of delight:

I really can't tell what's beautiful anymore. I passed two young fellows on the street the other day. I know who they are, they work at the garage. They're not churchgoing, either one of them, just decent rascally young fellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped against the garage wall in the
It seemed beautiful to me
sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They're always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline I don't know why they don't catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see that in church often enough. So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.

Sleeping for Lent

2006-04-04T09:50:00.000-05:00

Joni here, reporting from the field.

I do not come from a Lenten tradition. As a Baptist, it was those Catholic folks across town that participated in such suspicious, potentially cultic rituals. Ashes on your forehead. Incense up your nose. Water sprinkled about. We advocated one good dunking that almost drowned you! Thankfully God saved me from myself and my ignorance.

I joined our daughter in observing Lent a few years back. Gave up sodas. She was grateful to have a companion in her sacrifice. I still feel guilty. While I have a soda here or there, I am not a big fan. The real sacrifice would have been chocolate. No need to mention that at the time. I was only a Lenten companion.

Bob mentioned that I took Lauren Winner's Books and Culture article on sleep seriously. Lauren stated that sleeping was a radically counter-cultural act for a follower of Christ. I approach each day as a possible 24 hours of production. Sleep is a subtraction from the equation. I take great pride in my productive capacity. Of course I am highly effective at 2:00 a.m. Isn't everyone? I feel a perverted sense of accomplishment when I am the last one in all my communication loops to send an email. If you stay up all night, then you get a jump on the next day...well...because...it IS the next day.

My Lenten practice this season has been a pledge to sleep. To admit that being human is an embodied experience that is enhanced by rest. To lay down my pride and say, "I will do that tomorrow. Enough for today. It is time to sleep." There are moments when this practice has been excruciating. Leaving the reading of a friend's manuscript until tomorrow. Saying no to that evening lecture in order to find my bed before midnight. Turning off this computer (OH NO!) at a pre-determined time. Interestingly, no one seems to love me less. No one is disappointed in me. No one questions my sanity. Nothing cataclysmic has occurred. The sun rises each day and sets each day.

There seems to be less yelling around our house. Amazing how patient I can be with two teenagers when I have a night's sleep under my belt. Curious how much more lucid I am in the work I do. The fog of my exhausted mind has strangely cleared. We have become reacquainted, my pillow and me. It is a lovely friendship. I am toying with the belief that God will allow me to take my pillow with me to Heaven.

Pride goeth before a fall. This includes falling over due to lack of sleep. You still have several days before Easter. Join me in taking up rest for your Lenten discipline. Then let the resurrection message spur you to embrace the gift of rest given by the God of love.

Joni

Sleep as a Spiritual Discipline

2006-04-01T12:10:00.000-06:00

In a recent issue of Books and Culture, Lauren Winner offers a suggestion for Christians seeking to be countercultural. Get some sleep. She writes,

The unarguable demands that our bodies make for sleep are a good reminder that we are mere creatures, not the Creator. For it is God and God alone who "neither slumbers nor sleeps." Of course, the Creator has slept, another startling reminder of the radical humility he embraced in becoming incarnate. He took on a body that, like ours, was finite and contingent and needed sleep. To push ourselves to go without sleep is, in some sense, to deny our embodiment, to deny our fragile incarnations--and perhaps to deny the magnanimous poverty and self-emptying that went into his Incarnation.

Yesterday a room full of people laughed when Joni said her Lenten discipline was to get more sleep. They thought she was kidding, describing an indulgence rather than a discipline. But sleep is a discipline. It is a confession of finitude and humanity, an expression of faith in God's ability to manage the world without us for a few hours.

"Why are you sleeping?" the disciples asked Christ. It is not a sign of Christlikeness that people are more likely to ask me, "Why are you so tired?"

Sleep well.

Bob