Life with Jocelyn

Jocelyn Larsen

“God bless”es

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Sometimes when it is time to pray around our dinner table, we take turns “blessing” the people who were involved in the meal we’re eating. In some instances, “God bless” may be cliché, but it doesn’t have to be. For me and my co-travelers at the mealtime table, “God bless” is a dual way of saying “thank you.” First, thank you to God. Second, thank you to each of the persons involved in our meal. Since too many degrees of separation prevent us from doing it ourselves, we ask God to bless them for their work on our behalf.

We ask for God’s blessings while we eat, letting mouthsful and slurpings contribute to the general sounds of praise. Plus, when you’re five years old (as is our youngest member), it’s much easier to be thankful for something while you’re experiencing it than while you’re anticipating experiencing it (and watching it get blubbery cold).

“God bless dad for baking the bread.”
“God bless Helen for making the salads.”
“Thank God for the sun that grows all the plants.”
“God bless Wynn for setting the table.”
“God bless Sloane for peeling the carrots.”
“God bless mom for grocery shopping.”
“God bless the inventors of the slow cooker.”
“God bless the dairy farmers who fed and milked the cows to make milk and butter.” “God bless the goats who gave us the milk for the goat cheese.”
“God bless the butchers who cut the chickens’ heads off.”

Spinoff comments and questions join in the praise, too:
“Mom, how does water get to our sink?”
“It’s actually pretty amazing that some people just grow onions for a living.”

The “God bless”es have, in turn, blessed me for several reasons:
They last a lot longer than the usual perfunctory prayer, sometimes a good distance into the meal. They set an honest and uplifting tone for the entire meal conversation.

They are simple. We tend to pray at the level of the youngest common denominator, which I used to think was “lowest,” but have found is actually “highest.”

If we’re in a silly mood, the “God bless”es have a way of blossoming rather imaginatively.

“God bless the workers who dug out the city water system.”
“God bless the scientists who figured out how to make water treatment systems.”
“God bless the people who invented pasteurization.”

Maybe my favorite thing about the “God bless”es is that “God bless” is not a request but a strong suggestion. It strikes just the right chord: confident humility. Confident because we are already co-workers with God in this world, and therefore, God just might take our suggestions seriously. (Especially when they suggest blessing another person –- now why on earth would God refuse such a suggestion?) And humble because to be reminded of how many lives, hands, work hours we depend on each day is to be reminded of our creatureliness.

And at the end of the day, what is more Love-ly than to enjoy a simple meal as a simple creature of God?

God bless you,

Jocelyn

What kind of power do you have?

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One way I’ve been thinking about injustice lately is through the lens of power. Injustice is many things, and just one way small way to think about it as the inequality of power.

In a perfectly Just and Good society, power would be shared and borrowed and given. It might not be exactly equal, but only because some people with more of it would choose to give large amounts of it away until they ended up with less than others. Like Jesus did over and over again.

What is power? Agency to act in the best interest of self + community. Freedom to make choices for oneself. Access to a healthy range of choices. Education about those choices. Energy and will to act. (Can we say that the opposite of power is vulnerability?)

As a side note: Years ago I heard Andy Crouch speak on authority and vulnerability; I’ve never been able to get his ideas out of my head. This is a tiny blip of a similar talk: https://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2014/september-online-only/andy-crouch-authority-and-vulnerability.html And I haven’t read it, but I’m almost positive his book Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing is based on the same ideas.

When I think about power, it is forever tempting to compare my power with that of others. Which inevitably leads to my finding how much less power I have, pitying myself for it, and then grabbing at power wherever I think I can get it. But comparison of power is mostly unhelpful. Comparing only produces Good when it leads to my seeing how much more power I have than others, letting it lead me to gratitude and reflection on how I can be generous with my power.

What kinds of power are there? The quick answers are: Physical strength. Political voice. Possession of the biggest guns. Skin color. Gender.

But there are other kinds of power as well: Woo. Good looks. Well-dressed. Self-confidence. Relationship. Network. Rapport. Education – the higher, the more power (usually). Emotional fortitude – and its evil twin sister emotional manipulation. Articulateness. Persuasiveness. Influence – an audience or platform. Nice house. Hospitality. Parenting. Respect of others. Money and means. Generosity. Service.

This week I’ve been thinking: What kind of power do I have? How can I use them for the greatest Good of self + community? Here are a few of my ideas:

As a parent, I can demand rote and unquestioning obedience or I can give my kids power by listening and reasonably considering their thoughts and ideas.

As a social contact / friend, I can hoard my network and relationships to myself or I can introduce others and multiply connections.

As a superior at work, I can bully those below me like a buffoon or I can put them in leadership positions (even over me!) so that they can grow and learn.

As a person with more assertive self-confidence, I can brush past less-confident people in order to secure what I want or I can bring them alongside me to make sure both our needs are represented.

I can’t say I’ve done any of the above Good on behalf of anyone else. But I thought of them because they’ve all been done for me at one time or another – other people sharing and lending me their power.

What kind of power do you have? How can you use them for the greatest Good of self + community? Who do you know who has less power than you do in a given category? How can you share and loan and give away your power – especially to those with less power?

uplifting thoughts… on violence

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I’m reading Eugene Peterson’s Earth & Altar (1985). Just passing along an excerpt from it — words that have kept me thinking and praying in the midst of the violence I see and feel in our world and within me. Thinking and praying when I don’t know what else on earth I can do…

In case the picture is too fuzzy or to small for you to read, here is the text:

"...violence can neither be escaped nor wiped out...
prayer... makes a difference.
Prayer is not so much a way of dealing with what is wrong in the world or myself as a way of dealing with God in the world and in myself.
Prayer frees us from the assault of brute experience by setting us in the energies of grace experience.
In the process, the violence itself is changed.
Praying people have been successfully doing this for centuries in every part of the world, and they continue with incalculable impact. That journalists do not report their actions or their effects does not diminish the strength of their persistent peacemaking.
Violence is taken seriously but kept in perspective. God requires my attention even more than the violence; in attending to him, I see his city taking shape in the catastrophe."

a poem for a glorious night

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The moon's face says it all:
"Oh gosh,"
as it looks down on us.
It tries to look away 
but can't.

"Everything's fine," counters Sun.
"In fact, everything is grand.
And whatever isn't will be
on another turning.
Just look at it - 
all glorying around!"

I stare into Sun with closed lids.
To my mind rush all of the dear ones
for whom tonight cannot be
a glorious night
because of intervening contingencies:
death, sorrow, pain, loss.
And the fact of this night's glory
intermingles with prayers for mercy
and my heart picks up a corner
to share sorrow's load
interconnected as I am, as we are
to beg mercy
to hoist up hope
while the night turns over,
glorying all around.

daily prayers

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Life sure is full of the daily, isn’t it? It must have always been this way, but somehow a global quarantine has a way of drawing extra attention to it. My days feel different from what they were. But at the same time they feel more similar to one another than they have, perhaps ever.

One of my daily tasks is watering plants. We have a modest vegetable garden, three potted herbs, a handful of houseplants, a tree on the mend who needs extra attention, and a lemon tree and two laurels on the front porch.

It sounds like a lot, but it really only takes me ten minutes to walk around the house to every plant and back and forth, filling up my watering can between. I do it first thing in the morning, and being outside helps wake me up.

But then there’s the cutting garden. For you non-gardeners like me, a cutting garden is just a flower garden intended to be cut into bouquets, when the time comes. Cutting gardens are easy to seed-start, so they’re simple, but need babysitting. (Just like risotto.) They need babysitting because baby wildflowers need to stay moist. Mine is a wildflower mix suited to our zone: 6b. Desert. So no reliable help from the skies around here. Which means the cutting garden beds need at least three or four waterings a day. And so, I carry water.

We could put some of these on a drip system, but there is something daily and inefficient about carrying water that I’ve come to love. Maybe it is that carrying water gives me a short break – from work, from play, from all of the other dailies. Maybe it is that carrying water has evolved for me into a daily prayer.

My Water-Carrying Prayer.

I learned about daily prayers for everything from the Celtic tradition – prayers for waking up, washing your face, lighting the fire, cooking the meat, going to bed. A few years ago I read Esther deWaal’s The Celtic Way of Prayer, and it was really inspiring. The Celtic way of praying incorporates little prayers or poems that are memorized and either spoken or thought to oneself throughout the day.

But my Water-Carrying Prayer is not only Celtic. When I carry water, I think of all of the water carriers throughout the world. All of the people who’ve never turned a handle and seen water run from a tap. All of the people who spend a large part of each day just procuring, carrying, purifying, heating, and cooling water. All of the people struggling to survive because clean water is not accessible.

A friend stopped by yesterday when I was just finishing up my third wildflower watering of the day, and I said in passing, “…let me just finish up my little water-carrying prayer here.”

“What are the words?” she asked. She is a dear, sensitive soul with her own fervent, daily prayers strewn throughout her life. She wanted to learn the Water-Carrying Prayer.

I thought for a second. “Oh, I guess there aren’t any,” I heard myself saying. “I guess I just imagine myself as a Celtic and then I pray God-of-Love to have mercy on all the people who are carrying water right now, with me.”

Do you have any daily prayers? What daily rhythms could you make into a prayer? If you make one up this week, will you please share it with me – with us all? Yours can definitely have words if it helps!

Beauty and Love chasing after me

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It’s Psalm 23:6 in the Jewish prayer book, in Eugene Peterson’s Message version.

Your beauty and love chase after me

every day of my life.

I seem to be far more naturally aware of other things chasing me. Aren’t we all?

Work deadlines, home responsibilities, or things I ought-to be doing. Unfinished projects, a messy desk, or unresolved problems. General anxiety, personal insecurities, or dis-ease about the future. Perfectionism, unmet desires, or pressure to perform.

But today – every day! – the Truest True things that are chasing me are Beauty; Love. They never take a break. They never need a breather. They are always whisking me along, wherever I go, however I get there.

Every morning when I wake up they’ve already begun their never-ceasing game of tag. With me. Will I let them “get” me? Will I take a moment to be “it”?

Beauty and Love:

Today it is the lilacs, thrusting out their blooms and unmistakable scent, in complete denial that they have only a couple of weeks left.

Today it is the honeysuckle beginning to think about opening itself, taking over for the lilacs.

Today it is enough food in my fridge and pantry for today.

Today it is day 5 of babysitting my newborn wildflower garden – keeping them “evenly moist.” Holding out hope (maybe even talking to them a little bit) while all I see is dirt.

Today it is watching my 5-year-old watch Curious George, smiling knowingly with him when he turns to tell me, “George has good ideas.”

Today it is listening to my local classical music station, feeling grateful for the surety of never-ending Art beamed magically through the air. Art that is always present, even when I’m not tuned in to hear it.

Today it is knowing that I still have a few chapters left in the two great books I’m reading – relishing that there is still more to relish.

How are Beauty and Love chasing after you today?

Photo by Annie Spratt

waiting: if only I knew how long

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Photo by Xu Haiwei on Unsplash

I’ve learned to love to wait. Waiting is one of those things I know I’m not naturally very good at, and really didn’t want to learn, either. Cynically, perhaps, I have learned that often the dreamy anticipation of a thing brings more pleasure than the actual realization of the thing. More optimistically, I know that quiet patience-of-heart is an essential virtue for my growing soul. Practically, it saves me from bogs of unnecessary freneticism.

It has been a long learning.

I’ve realized lately that perhaps the most difficult thing about waiting is not in enduring the time that must elapse, but in not knowing how long that time will be. Waiting periods with a known, definite time limit – 2 hours til quittin’ time, 30 days until we close on our home and move out of this tiny apartment, 40 (or so) weeks of pregnancy, 15 more work days until our vacation – are often gotten-through without much trouble due to sheer grit and mental distraction. But the times when we must wait for an indeterminate amount of time? Much more painful.

How long?

It is an age-old question.

The Hebrew God, exhausted and exasperated by Pharoah’s oppressive regime, asked “How long will you refuse to humble yourself? Let my people go.” (Exodus 10:3)

The Psalmic poems are full of how long: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?” (Psalm 13:1-2)

It is the heart-throbbing of every oppressed soul, every advocate for justice, and every martyr: “How long?”

I remember it poignantly during the labor and delivery of my children: How long? I have known pain and I can endure it. I am strong. I can fight… at least for awhile. I would be so much stronger if only I knew how much longer I’d have to do it. Is there any way I can just get a ballpark estimate?

Looking back, the indeterminate times have been far more formative and strengthening for my psyche and my soul than the waiting times with a known, pre-determined time limit. The how long times require me to rest in not knowing rather than rely on the promise of the fixed end-date. The how long times require me to face my lack of control rather than keep a tight grip on the approaching end. The how long times invite me to thoroughly enjoy today – the not-yet, still-waiting day – rather than fixate on the greener grass beyond the finish line.

I’ve found that it’s really good for my soul always to be waiting for something. Patiently waiting and anticipating – in a way that makes me more awake today (a not-yet day) – not fretfully and discontentedly pining. Sometimes relishing all the lovely things I’m waiting for – cherry season, our next three-day weekend, Thursday lunch date with my husband, a long-awaited project completion – rescues me from the anxiety or self-pity or bitterness of today still being a not-yet day.

How has the how-long kind of waiting changed you? How do you see its being good for your soul? What soul-expanding things are you waiting for beyond the end of the viral pandemic?

Salvation. Spiritual Formation series, part 12.

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I have a note on the bulletin board above my writing desk that says, simply:

salvation:

deliverence

welfare

prosperity

preservation

safety

flourishing

Wherever these things are present in your life today, there Salvation can be credited, already doing its good work. And wherever they are lacking, count it also as Good.

Because in a life happy-to-the-brim, there is no room for Salvation. A perpetually warm, safe person needs no deliverance. A person who feasts at every meal has no capacity for the well-fare of the Salvation of God. An entirely contented person has no need to receive flourishing.

There is no Salvation unless there is first duress, a need for deliverence.

There is no Salvation unless there is first ill-faring, a need for well-fare.

There is no Salvation unless there is first poverty, a need for prosperity.

There is no Salvation unless there is first rot, a need for preservation.

There is no Salvation unless there is first insecurity, a need for safety.

There is no Salvation unless there is first exhaustion, a need for flourishing.

So wherever you find any of these things in your life today: duress, ill-faring, poverty, rot, insecurity, exhaustion — you can hold out hope. The Salvation of God is coming. It’s on its way. Hold on. And it is already here. Look around you. It is omnipresent, the most ubiquitous Force in the world; it is already leaking in at your seams.

Embodied spirits. Spiritual Formation series, part 11.

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We are embodied spirits, after all.

In the western world, we keep these two awfully separate – body and spirit. We tend to view the spirit as eternal, and the body as temporary. But it’s just not that simple. If you tend to believe what Jesus’ friends wrote about what happened to him after he died, as a sign of what will be the common human experience someday, then both our spirits and our bodies will last. Jesus’ body was somehow different, but still very alive. He ate. He could move through walls. In some of the scant stories about Jesus’ time visiting friends after his crucifixion, his friends could recognize him. In others, they could not. Same and different, at once.

Furthermore, we blame and shame our bodies more than we enjoy and wonder at them. We idealize and placate our spirits more than we look them in the eye to know them today.

Here’s the metaphor I’ve been letting hover in my brain today, just to keep me alive and wondering about what it is to be an alive and gorgeous, livered and engorged human today and forever. We live and grow spiritually an awful lot like we live and grow bodily.

1/ We are ignorant. Growth, renewal, and upkeep goes on continuously in our bodies – and all of us have no idea about most of it, proportional to your medical education. But even the most seasoned physicians, humbled by decades of patiently caring for patients, will admit that there is far more going on in any one body than they can deduce. Their diagnostic practice is an educated guessing game at best.

Likewise, God is at work continuously. Continuously giving, continuously intending Good, continuously Loving, continuously attending in Love. Our most epiphanic spiritual insights are the tiniest, most elementary glimpses of the Vast All that God is up to. Isn’t that great?!

2/ We are not in control. The growth, renewal, and upkeep necessary to sustain bodily life goes on not only without our knowledge, but also without our supervision or input. Yes, this goes without saying (if you don’t know about something, how can you be the manager over it?), but it behooves us to acknowledge it because it reminds us that Something Else holds our molecules together. The Laws of Physics and the Rules of Biology and the Inventor of them all. We can make a few small choices every day to encourage the good work of Physics and Biology (more spinach and less cigarettes, more movement and less sedentia), and they really can make a difference. But every body bends, slowly, to gravity and wrinkles and time.

Likewise, we can make a few small choices every day to encourage the good work of God and Love in and around us. But if we think we are immune to apathy and self-imposed-chaos, to Grace and Salvation, we fool ourselves.

3/ Death is essential. Dead skin cells form the outermost layer of the entire body, providing a physical barrier against pathogens. Cells that have lost their ability to regulate their own multiplication (cancerous cells) sense their deficiency and naturally commit suicide. Excess nutrients are passed out of the body, preventing toxic buildup.

Likewise, God plans our spiritual lives. And our spiritual deaths. Every day, God breathes life into our spirits: coffee with a dear friend; a refreshingly vigorous 10 mile, 3100′ elevation gain hike; a darling text of a darling photo of your darling 5-year-old niece; a safe and cool pillow at the end of the day.

And every day, God breathes death into our spirits – perfect opportunities for us to live and Live and LIVE:

Our work turns out to be less fulfilling and more stressful than we’d anticipated – a perfect opportunity for death to bring life. We humble ourselves and go about practicing perseverance, delayed self-gratification, and straining our eyes to see God’s Good today even when every day is a bad day.

Our marriage turns out to be rife with miscommunication, avoidance, and unforgiveness – another perfect opportunity for death to bring more Life. We humble ourselves to learn and practice communication, moving toward each other, and forgiveness.

Our kids turn out to be less respectful, less smart, less talented than we were hoping – the perfect opportunity for death to make us more alive. We humble ourselves to love without conditions and persevere in coming alongside them to become more Loving humans.

I’m sure there is more to this metaphor. Feel free to share your own thoughts below; I’d love to hear them. 🙂 And, since we’ve been watching a lot of Bob Ross at my house lately, I’ll sign off today as he does, “And God bless you, my friend.”

to look on him and pardon me

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I was singing the old hymn “Before the Throne” to my boys at bedtime tonight and one line is “for God the Just is satisfied / to look on him and pardon me.”

Some of my Christ-following friends wouldn’t give this line a second thought, not seeing a problem at all. Some of my Christ-following friends can’t even read this line without cringing inside. Let me explain.

For my friends who don’t see any problem: The “him” is obviously Jesus and the idea in the mind of the hymn-writer was probably (we never can really know, can we?) that of penal substitutionary atonement. This dogma deals with God’s wrath; it says that God was so pissed at sin that he had to unleash it on someone and that someone was Jesus and so now anytime God gets out-of-control furious with a human – phew! – he just looks at Jesus and that calms him down like a cup of chocolate milk used to calm my out-of-control 4-year-old.

For my cringing friends: I know, right? Can God really still be that childish? That emotionally immature? When Jesus wasn’t at all like that? And what about the inordinate and proliferous writings about the “steadfast love of God” that repeatedly repeatedly overcomes his wrath? In every book of the Bible. And how can that same steadfast, ever-persevering love of God and the eternal value God seems to place on humans be reconciled with one of the assumed bases of this dogma – that humans are basically pieces of dung that God himself can barely tolerate?

I know I’m only scraping the surface of this millenia-long conversation, and for the record I am not even trying to reconcile these dogmas here. But I had one thought tonight while I was singing.

For all of you, my friends: What if you’re all right? I mean what if you’re both right at the same time?

I was just thinking about a few of the people in my life who I tend to feel hopeless for. Smokers that I can’t imagine ever quitting. Obese people that I can’t imagine losing the weight they long to lose. Relationships so broken I can’t imagine ever being friends again. People so stuck in their ways I can’t imagine them ever seeing any light.

But then I look on that one person. The one chain smoker who did it, who actually finally gave it up for good. The one overweight guy that found himself hiding behind all those pounds. That one friendship that actually reconciled. That one stuck person who “came-to” and is now basking in the light. I look on them and pardon all the others. I look on them, not in disgust with all of the still-dysfunctional people, but to give me Hope for all of our still-dysfunctions. I look on them, not to avoid looking at the still-dysfunctional people who make me so furious, but to remind me of Love and Forgiveness and the steadfast Salvation of God. Still here; still winning.

Maybe that’s what hymn-writer Charitie Lees Smith had in mind when she wrote “for God the Just is satisfied / to look on him and pardon me.” You never know.