When I was learning Spanish, one of the first features of the language I learned was the difference between tu and usted. Both mean you in English, but tu is informal while usted is formal. In other words, you would address your friends and family with tu. Usted, on the other hand, evolved from vuestro merced (Your Mercy), which definitely implies that you are addressing someone more powerful than you, where perhaps there’s some social distance in the relationship that has nothing to do with coronavirus. While sorting out these forms for everyday conversation, one of my first questions was, “Which one do I use for prayer?” Think about it. God doesn’t fit neatly into either category. He is our Father, but He is also the omnipotent creator of the universe. There is no greater distance in rank than that between lowly humans and the Lord Almighty. My teachers told me (and I’m translating here, for the comfort of an English-reading audience) “You use tu. He is your father.” This raises an interesting question: are you more comfortable calling God tu or usted? We’ve talked about prayer as a relationship in this blog before, but the nature of the relationship is something that’s worth paying attention to. When Jesus first referred to God as Abba, Father, it would have shocked anyone around him because no one in the Old Testament referred to Him that way. In fact, the name of God--YHWH--was considered so sacred that it could not be spoken aloud. To this day, some Orthodox Jews show their respect by writing it G-d in English out of reverence for His name. Essentially, by calling God Abba, by making the relationship with God tu instead of usted, Jesus permanently changed the way we approach Him. He had the unique right, of course, to a level of intimacy and familiarity that we do not, for He Himself was also God. Yet He also instructed His disciples to pray calling God Abba, Father. Different kinds of people have different kinds of struggles with the nature of God and how to approach Him. Some struggle to take comfort in His almighty power, the transcendent Otherness the Jews express so well with their way of addressing Him. Others struggle with the terrifying intimacy of the personal immanence of God that Jesus invited His disciples to enjoy. In Jesus Himself, God’s transcendence and immanence are integrated. Some of my favorite songs of all time are Christmas carols that meditate on how these ideas converge in Jesus. Take for example, this line from Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, referring to the infant Jesus, “For in this space contain’d was / Heaven and Earth in little space.” In other words, Jesus was a full integration of the human and divine, a synthesis of the humility of humanity and the glory of divinity. Meanwhile, the idea of God as Father also brings these things together. A father helps bring you into this world, and cares for you even as he is an authority over you. He helps you make sense of life, and patiently teaches you the skills you need to make it in the world. He is a friend, authority, comforter, and protector rolled into one. Perhaps I’m speaking from the bias of having an exceptionally caring father who happened to also be an authority over me in a formal way in the classroom, but in the role of a father I see this same convergence between powerful authority and tenderhearted, personal relationship. Tu or usted? As you pray, consider which you feel more comfortable with for God, and ask yourself why. He is both. More than either His power or His love alone, the reality that God contains both and holds them in perfect balance is what makes my heart want to bow down in worship before Him and bask in the awe of His presence. This is a thing that the rational mind can describe, but only the heart can fully appreciate: the transcendent God of the universe considers you, personally, to be His beloved child.
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Unless you have one of those jobs that takes every federal holiday off, you may have missed the one that just happened yesterday. Columbus Day, also known as Indigenous Peoples Day, commemorates Christopher Columbus’s landing on San Salvador in October of 1492, an event that changed the world forever. Those are the basic facts, stated as neutrally as possible. Beyond that, things get complicated. The very fact that the day has two different names reflects this complexity. An old telling of the holiday has Columbus “discovering” the “New World,” while recent years have drawn attention to the fact that people had lived here for hundreds of years before Columbus showed up with his weapons and germs, thank you very much. To this day, Spain celebrates Columbus Day as the most patriotic holiday on their calendar, while here in the US, the day goes by with a certain amount of ambivalence. What makes this holiday so complicated is that it commemorates one of the first times in history that true strangers encountered each other for the first time. Think back to European history. They fought at length, but they were family. The wars between Europe and the Middle East? Those were over religions that trace back to the same family. The wars within the Middle East? Same story, different version. Alexander the Great’s sweeping wars of conquest? The people in those countries at least had an inkling he was coming. Pre-Colombian wars in the Western Hemisphere were much the same way. Up until Columbus crossed the Atlantic, feuds and relationships happened between people who already had at least some point of connection to give them context. Now, the world has grown much, much smaller and we find ourselves living alongside strangers every day. We encounter them on the internet and face-to-face. In talking about cultural backgrounds for Thanksgiving growing up, I was always a little envious of those who knew what their ethnic origins were and had a clear cultural identity--Chinese, Filipino, Mexican, Italian, whatever--because I am a straight-up mutt produced by centuries of mixing and have very little European cultural identity left. I’ve absorbed more Mexican culture from living in Los Angeles over half my life than I’ll ever know about the Ukrainian culture of my nearest immigrant ancestors. What I appreciate about this, though, is that this rootlessness makes me self-aware about being a stranger when talking to almost everyone else. Think about it. There are many factors that affect the way we see the world, and culture is one of them. Gender, language, family, and religion are also immensely important. When talking to strangers, especially on the Internet with no context, it’s very easy to misunderstand each other and build assumptions about the other person through the lens of our own experience. This problem is intensified by the kind of communication the pandemic has forced us all into. A floating head on Zoom gives less context than a face-to-face encounter. Text-based communication is the worst, as it is very easy to misunderstand without cues like tone of voice. The absolute worst is text-based communication on social media with people we barely know, where there is no prior relationship to act as a frame of reference. How do we overcome this? With a good deal of patience, energy, and time. We must take time to ask questions. We must take time to clarify what we don’t understand. Especially when language and translation issues might be involved, it can be easy to take offense when what is said isn’t what is meant. Most uncomfortably for those of us whose cultures or families favor indirect or even passive-aggressive forms of communication, we need to be politely direct and willing to restate our own point of view in words that the other will understand. Is every encounter worth this kind of energy? Of course not. There are many, many conversations on Facebook not worth engaging in. But if you are struggling with a complicated relationship with a family member, a co-worker, or a friend--someone you need or want a healthy relationship with--it’s worth the effort to seek out your shared humanity. Whatever point of contention may have driven in a wedge is only one element of this person, and there may be another point of connection. Furthermore, the point of contention may be solvable through patience and mutual attempts at understanding the other person’s side. Will the damage done by explorers like Columbus ever be undone? No. (Many of the explorers who followed him were worse.) But those encounters also left behind the beautiful gift of diversity, which may complicate things, but also brings beautiful new experiences to us all. Every culture on the face of the planet has strengths and weaknesses, and the ability to sit down and sift through what we can learn from each other builds a better, stronger future for all. One of the trickiest but most rewarding kinds of prayer to master is unceasing prayer. One form of this kind of prayer integrates an awareness of God’s presence and communion with Him into the humdrum stuff of daily life until the various tasks of the day become acts of prayer. Finding God in the clatter of an industrial kitchen, in the chaos of a classroom, in traffic, on Zoom, demands a process that is tricky, but rewarding. The first step towards this is mechanical habit. Just as you wouldn’t run a marathon without training purposefully first, you don’t just dive into trying to be with God 24/7. Take an action you do repeatedly throughout the day and start using it as a trigger for a short prayer. It could be drinking water, it could be washing your hands, it could be loading Zoom, or any one of the repeated tasks that make up your day. To make it more concrete, tie your short prayer to the action itself. When you drink water, “Thank You for being the Water of Life.” When you wash your hands, “Create in me a clean heart.” When you load up Zoom, “Make me an instrument of Your peace.” The point isn’t to do long, chatty prayers, but to repeat a simple prayer, integrated into everyday life, until it becomes second nature. The next step is to let it seep into your subconscious. Through enough repetition of the mechanical habit, you will start to change. If you pray for wisdom every time you sit down to work, you will start to notice more intentionality in what you do. If you pray for God’s peace before you start driving, you might notice yourself being kinder to others in traffic. Repetition and habit change people, and there is an incredible thing that happens when the regimented and mechanical starts to become a part of you. As a wild example, one of my first churches had a karate class as a part of its overall evangelistic strategy. (It actually worked; I’ve never seen a Muslim family willingly visit any other Adventist church.) For my own health and fitness, I attended this class and learned the various kung fu forms taught there. These forms are predetermined sequences of movements designed to teach a vocabulary of motion. After about a year and a half in this class, I dreamed that I was practicing my form, and woke up to realize that I had actually been doing it in my sleep. Apply the same force of repetition to prayer, and you get a much more spiritually enriching (and less potentially dangerous) result. I used to be better at this sort of thing than I am now, and the result was a collection of the most beautiful dreams of my life--dreams about Jesus’s all-encompassing love, dreams about the Second Coming, and glimpses of my guardian angel. These dreams, with their vivid imagery, are still a source of inspiration to me today, even though I had them over a decade ago. The third step is to let it sink into your heart. All of our content-rich prayers tend to be chatty requests, chatty praise, all very wordy and verbal expressions of our thoughts. There’s nothing wrong with that, but after a certain point, thought is meant to shape emotion. For example, the practice of praying for someone who annoys you every time you see them will start out feeling forced, become more subconscious, and ultimately change the way you feel about that person. The practice of praying for wisdom starts out as an intellectual exercise about obtaining it in everyday matters, but transforms into gratitude and joy over the God of all wisdom. (For a great example of this, check out the first six chapters of the book of Daniel.) The mind may very well be the most important governor of action, but over time, it will affect the heart and emotions. The final and most elusive step is total union with God. Few people actually achieve this, and those who do rarely attain it permanently--after all, God is God and we are sinful human beings. This is where we enter into a state of constant communion with God, receiving from Him what we need all day long and letting prayer permeate every fiber of our being. I have actually met a few people who clearly have this kind of connection with God, and they amaze me. They aren’t sinless, but their connection with God is so close that they catch the sin early and bring it to Him before it gets out of hand. They have a tangible peace that radiates from them. Their spirituality tends not to be flashy or attention-grabbing--rather, it’s such an integrated part of their everyday life that it quietly reveals itself in the small things. God is in the details, but not in the striving to master them--that’s a form of legalism. Rather, a constant communion with God creates a natural flow of decisions that subconsciously affects these small things of life and aligns them with His great purpose. Weirdly enough, mastery of the last step isn’t necessarily tied to age. I can think of both young and old in every stage of this process. The advantage of youth is less mental clutter in the way of pursuing this, while the advantage of age is greater life experience to grasp its importance. In both cases, practice is required, and no steps can be skipped. The mechanical, awkward practice of a repeated prayer while washing the dishes may not have the beauty and elegance of total communion with God, but you cannot get to the latter without passing through the former. Just as a pianist starts out as a child playing “Hot Cross Buns” long before they can tackle the soaring strains of Beethoven or Rachmaninoff, we must start with the simple things before we can move into the deep, beautiful, and complicated steps beyond. There’s a lot going on in our world right now. Every three or four days, it seems, something new and dramatic happens on the news before you’re even done processing the last dramatic event. Meanwhile, life goes on (as we say here repeatedly), which means that all of the other things in your life with the power to overwhelm you go on too. I would list some of those other things, but that would run the risk of overwhelming both you, dear reader, and myself further than we already are.
So how do you reset? We’ve talked about the need to unplug from time to time, but that’s not always possible. There are times where you actually need to be “on,” but your mind and body aren’t cooperating because of the sheer amount of, well, everything they’re processing. In this state, you will naturally gravitate towards activities that have helped you feel good in the past--which will be healthy or unhealthy depending on what they are--or you will compulsively and indiscriminately throw yourself into the fray, with impaired judgement against being able to do anything well. In other words, a modern-life version of the fight or flight response. Instead, I would recommend a two-step process. First, calm your brain down. Second, cut away any stimulus from the field that you don’t actually have to deal with right this instant. Let’s unpack these: When you get overwhelmed, your brain stops making decisions from a rational place. Literally. Your prefrontal cortex, which handles such subtleties as logic and delayed gratification, ceases to function and more primal, animalistic parts of your brain take over. Think for a moment about who you’d rather have captaining your life: a calm, rational adult or a terrified, cornered dog? This is why it’s your first priority to calm your brain down so that rationality can return. Fortunately, there are many, many great ways of going about this. One of the easiest and best is intentional deep breathing. Focusing on your breathing gets more oxygen to your brain, relaxes your muscles, and gives you something to think about other than the sixty million things that were overwhelming you. Best of all, it’s portable--this is something you can do while driving, while sitting in a meeting, and even while dealing with legitimate life-and-death situations. (Police officers are taught tactical breathing for such situations.) Along a similar vein, drinking water tends to help your body replenish whatever extra it’s losing from the stress. If you’re really, really overwhelmed, there’s another good use for water: take a hot bath or shower. It will relax your muscles, which will give your brain a cue to stop freaking out. Because of the hormones your brain throws at you when it’s overwhelmed, it can be really helpful to hug a loved one--even a pet will do. That action releases oxytocin, the bonding hormone that has the great side effect of fighting the stress hormones. The best thing of all, of course, is if you can get yourself to laugh. The act of laughter (unironic laughter) automatically shifts your brain back into a more rational gear. Now that the brain is calmed down, the second part of this process (that can only be completed after the first) is to get rid of any stimulus you don’t need to actively deal with right now. You might be overwhelmed with good reason--there are a lot of extra stressful things going on these days which can all add up.. In all cases, some things are simply more important than others. While it’s good to be a well-informed citizen, it may be wise to stop consuming the news for a while when you’re severely overwhelmed. Focus on what you can--and should--control, like parts of your work life or home life. If you are gently pulling yourself out of a state of severe overwhelm, you may have to temporarily ignore a few things that are usually important to you. For example, every job has things that need to be acted on right away and things that can be pushed to later. Some jobs even have things that can be eliminated in perfectly good conscience. Briefly putting your pet project on hold for a day or two to collect yourself and focus on your core tasks may be quite vital. There may even be one or two things you do out of social pressure, but need to drop. When it comes to your family, it can be incredibly healing to give yourself permission to focus on them and to let them know that you need help. While it would be wrong to permanently freeload off of everyone else’s efforts, there are seasons in which it is truly necessary to carry each other. Communicate with your housemates about what you need--quiet, help with meals, space, physical affection, a joke to make you laugh, room to exercise--because they don’t live in your head. Passive-aggressively expecting them to guess will only lead to hurt feelings on both sides. This is something you may do inadvertently, but to avoid accidentally coming off as passive-aggressive be careful that you clearly verbalize your needs. Depending on how overwhelmed you are, this will either help you limp to your next vacation where you can recharge more thoroughly or help you regain enough energy to attack your various challenges from a stronger place. Either way, this is a time not to add, but to subtract. This is a time to focus thoughtfully on the things that matter most, keeping in mind that this will not last forever. Deal with yourself gently, but not too indulgently. Zeroing in on your physical well-being and only the most crucial tasks will help you far more than going on a sugar binge or falling down the social media hole. To give you the wisdom to sort through this, prayer will be one of your most important tools: God alone has the wisdom necessary to cut through the clutter and focus on the important. Meanwhile, life goes on. From time to time, I enjoy visiting liturgical churches. If you’re not familiar with the term “liturgical,” it literally means “work of the people” but in this case tends to refer to a worship style that includes a good number of speaking prayers and readings in unison. Across multiple liturgical churches, certain elements crop up frequently: the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed (a statement of faith affirming the core beliefs of Christianity), a generic confession of sin and declaration of forgiveness, some version of the Lord’s Supper, and Scripture readings that are read on a three-year cycle known as the lectionary.
If you were not raised with an occasional exposure to liturgical worship, it may sound hyper-structured with little noticeable spontaneity, and you’d be right. But is spontaneity really all it’s cracked up to be? While I think that living permanently in the liturgical worship style would grate on me, there’s something to be said for leaning on the structure of something like that from time to time. How many people struggle with prayer because they don’t have the words? Pre-written prayers are like training wheels for that. Sure, pre-written prayers don’t show off verbal skill, but verbal skill isn’t the point of prayer. Relationship with God is, and we don’t stop telling our loved ones “I love you” just because it’s a stock phrase. In the same way, the ancient prayers of the Bible take on new meaning over time. The Lord’s Prayer may be the most-repeated Christian prayer on the face of the Earth, but why not? It covers so many of the things close to the heart of God and allows us to focus on those things. The Psalms are so raw and vivid emotionally that they ring with fresh truth for different life experiences even though they were written thousands of years ago. Praying these incredibly old prayers regularly, when done intentionally and with a whole heart, can be life-changing. One professor of mine would pray and think on the 23rd Psalm each night, and the peace that practice gave him showed in his interactions with his students. The serenity he brought with him into the classroom was, to be frank, incredible. My great grandmother is in the practice of praying for the fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians, and it shows. Much of what we’ve been discussing in these Friday blogs has been about increasing the variety, joy, and spontaneity of prayer. All these things are, of course, necessary. The key here is balance. If your spontaneous prayers are getting stale and self-centered, take a crack at praying through the Psalms or another pre-written prayer. If a prayer you recite regularly is feeling empty and mechanical (whether it’s a meal blessing, the Lord’s Prayer, or whatever), maybe it’s time to move to a different one for a while or to push yourself to compose your own. The beauty of these old prayers is that they’ll still be there to enrich your life in an entirely different way later on. Done well, the spontaneity and the structure enrich and inform each other, leading to new horizons of rich experience with God. Communion is probably the most important piece of liturgy practiced in the entire Christian world. This ceremony elicits some strange reactions in people. I’ve seen attendance go down in some churches when they know it is Communion Sabbath, and go up in others. Some people get nervous and bolt when the church breaks for the ordinance of humility (foot washing), and others call the church in advance, eagerly wanting to know when the next Communion will be celebrated so they can be there. For some, emotions run high about the particular details of what is and isn’t appropriate in the communion service--one of my female colleagues even reported being physically assaulted after officiating one once. Where does this all come from? A good deal of how people feel about Communion derives from how they feel about symbols and rituals in the first place. Symbols have a beautiful way of bypassing the intellectual chatter by which we avoid God through overexplaining Him, and rituals give words and practices a chance to let important things soak in properly instead of overindulging in an unhealthy obsession with novelty. As someone who has experienced Communion many times from both sides of the table, I can honestly say that each time, it both comforts me with its familiarity and reaches me in a new way. Why? Symbols, when repeated, offer up more of their meaning over time. They grow different roots into new life experiences. Having my filthy feet washed by my friend Katherine after traipsing around Leoni Meadows, a camp known for its thick red clay, changed me in profound ways. In an entirely different way, the experience of handling the emblems for the Lord’s Supper myself and praying for the congregation while the elders are passing it out moves me and humbles me each time. That experience is special to me because it’s the only time I actually get to look at the congregation’s faces while not having an action to perform. I look forward to being able to do that again whenever the pandemic clears. Symbolic layers of meaning are unlocked by layers of life experience. The same principle goes for any repeated experience, making old prayers and practices well worth revisiting periodically. The best of our oldest hymns, such as “Be Thou My Vision,” “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” “Amazing Grace,” and a large set of Christmas carols (which are some of the oldest songs in common usage sung anywhere) have gained new meanings for each generation that has sung them. The best layers of the old provide an anchor for interpreting an ever-changing world. With our world changing in dramatic ways nearly every week these days, old sentiments like “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace,” (and all that follows in that particular prayer) have become exponentially more important and relevant than even when they were first penned. And now, today I will close with a common blessing of sending in many liturgical churches: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. ;) For a long time, I’ve wanted to offer some practical help to those of you who are parenting during this pandemic. My hands have been tied, however, by the fact that I am not a parent myself and that there are truly no precedents for what we’re going through right now. At this point, though, I have had a chance to hear what different parents are doing that have helped them, and I can pass those along.
1. Treat school as close to the real thing as possible. One parent actually had their kid dress for school, put on their backpack with supplies, march out the door, and then come back in to begin. This may sound a little silly, but think about it: the process of leaving home and driving or walking to school isn’t just a practical matter, but a way that your child’s brain switches gears from “home” mode to “school” mode. Building in a concrete transition at the beginning of the day will better help them to accept virtual school as something to take seriously, rather than as a thing that’s just there to fill time. 2. Make and stick to healthy structures. Because the world outside is a chaotic mess, your kids need structure at home. This means making sure that they get sleep at consistent times, and that the household has at least one or two predictable rhythms to help the kids make sense of the week. Whether this is a daily walk (which may be rather difficult for working parents) or a family meal at the same time every week, it’s important to have something consistent in the middle of all this change. 3. Deliberately provide extra physical affection. Stress produces chemicals that interfere with the brain’s ability to think clearly. When you hug your child or affectionately pat them on the head, it releases a hormone called oxytocin, which is very effective in fighting stress. As an added bonus, its primary function happens to be bonding--this is the powerful stuff that bonds mothers and babies together during breastfeeding--which may actually strengthen your bond with your child in the long run. If they’re old enough to have a conscious opinion on the matter, though, ask for permission first--they need to learn to say “no” to unwanted physical affection respectfully with safe people before they get to a high-pressure dating situation further down the road that requires this skill. 4. Be honest, but positive. These two things may sound at odds with each other, as there are a lot of truly upsetting things going on in the world. However, information itself is neutral--whether it’s positive or negative largely depends on how you frame it. Instead of just “doomscrolling” for the latest way the world is breaking, it’s important to look for instances where progress is being made and teach the kids to do the same. Obviously, if honesty and positivity are in direct conflict, honesty wins--it does more harm in the long run to pretend that the world will be back to normal in just a week or two when you know that won’t be the case. This doesn’t mean that you have to be bleak about it, though. Kids are good enough at being bleak without the help. Consider something like this for example: “We’re not sure when you’ll be able to go back to school and see your friends, but we’re one day closer to it than we were yesterday.” 5. Mind your own emotions. One day, I was teaching the Eager Beaver (Kindergarten) class of my church’s Adventurer’s club, and nothing was working. A lesson plan that kids had loved the previous two years was falling flat. I was bored and struggled to keep the kids engaged--sweet, wonderful kids who had done this lesson plan before and loved it. When I reflected on this after the fact, I had a startling realization: they were bored because I was bored. Young children absorb and sometimes even magnify the emotions of the adults around them. If you’re stressed, your children will be downright anxious. If you’re depressed, your kids will absorb some of that even if you try to hide it. The best investment you can make in your children’s emotional health is to take good care of your own. Of course, you won’t be perfect at this. This is 2020 after all. But taking proper self-care measures for yourself will go a long way towards taking better care of your children. When you do have bad days, it can be very important to let your kids know that your mood is not their fault, that you need space to deal with it, and that it’s fine for them to go do something that makes them happy even if you’re feeling rotten. These things may all seem obvious to you, but most likely need to be spelled out for your inexperienced little ones. You will make mistakes in this area, of course, and it’s good to apologize afterwards. This gives your children an example for how to mend relationships after they make mistakes. 6. Get out of the house. It’s important to remind your kids of the world beyond the screen at least once a week (but preferably almost every day). Screens are not evil, but they do not constitute the entire world. Taking them with you on errands does a beautiful job of getting them out of the house, giving you more interesting things to bond with them over, and giving them a more realistic picture of their future adult responsibilities, too. Nature walks can soothe the tensions of adults and children alike. Giving a child the responsibility to go collect the mail or tend any outdoor space you have will give them a little sun and a small sense of accomplishment and participation. Home can feel very small after being inside it 24/7 for months, and getting each person outside can help recalibrate everyone’s perspective back to a closer approximation of reality. 7. Teach screen-free coping skills. Again, screens are not evil--they help the kids continue their education and connect with friends and family. At the same time, screens tend to involve physical inactivity and lots of exposure to blue light that can disrupt sleep if not managed well. This is where dusting off memories of your computer-free or computer-hard-to-use childhood can be helpful. When was the last time your child played with a physical toy? Or read a physical book? Or made something with their hands? Teaching kids how to wind down at night without screens and how to handle empty hours will reap huge benefits down the road. This is an especially good time to teach kids how to cook, as it is both a creative activity and a practical one. Even if the kids are too young to handle knives, they can still open packages and hand you things from the fridge. One of the biggest developmental dangers of this pandemic is uneven development: minds that stay fairly sharp but hearts and hands that fall behind in emotional and physical mastery. 8. Keep them connected to their grandparents. “Grandparents” here is really a stand-in for any number of caring adults who love your kids and are willing to support them and help them grow. One of the best ways for kids to develop social skills isn’t by leaving them alone with their peers all the time (though that is also good in moderation), but by keeping them in contact with multiple generations. Just like muscles grow stronger from exercises that are less comfortable, social skills are built from encounters with people who are different from us. By giving your child phone or Zoom conversations with people from other generations who care about them, you are giving them a safe place to develop their social skills away from the harsh, unforgiving social media zone that takes no prisoners. For social development, it could also be useful to have the kids take turns planning activities for the household. This will give them a lab for discovering what they and other people enjoy, a process that can be surprising even among adults who have lived together for years. Keep in mind, of course, that if you’re not doing all these things, it doesn’t make you a “bad” parent. There are no uniformly “good” or “bad” parents. There are just people who do the best with what they have to love and raise their kids. You are doing one of the most difficult tasks on the planet, and you deserve a medal for doing it on top of all the insanity the year 2020 has to offer. Instead of rating your parenting as “amazing” or “terrible” overall, it’s more useful to consider, “What can I do better moving forward?” I may not be a parent myself, but as a youth pastor I’ve had a lot of opportunity to consider this dynamic as it relates to aiding in the raising of kids. Trust me when I say that you can only get better at something if you focus on improving the task at hand, rather than reflecting too much on what may have gone wrong in the past. The best days are still ahead and meanwhile, life goes on. Let’s face it: for all our emphasis on resting on the Sabbath day, Seventh-day Adventists are a busy, industrious lot. In fact, the founding generation of the Adventist church was so restless, even after discovering the Sabbath, that a number of them actually died from literally working themselves to death and neglecting their health. (If you’ve ever wondered why Adventists are so big on health, it’s because so many mistakes were made in this area early on.)
That founding generation figured out the basic importance of the Sabbath: that it is a sign of loyalty to God and that it’s great to worship with God’s people, particularly on the day He designated.. However, there’s so much more to be enjoyed from it than merely transplanting the cultural norms of 19th century America’s Sunday observance to a different day. The Sabbath, at its core, is about rest. The very word Sabbath means “to cease.” This finally gets me to the implications this has for prayer. So often, our prayers are incredibly chatty things where we talk at God at length, whether to present our requests, or to tell Him how great He is, or how great things are in general. That’s fine, and a very important and Biblical component of our prayer life. However, there are times when the most valuable form of prayer can actually be to stop talking, stop verbalizing, and just rest. Why is rest so hard? So often we feel a drive to do, to accomplish, to earn our worth. There is a basic truth that if you want something to happen, you do have to take action to go get it. It’s counterintuitive for that action to be deliberate non-action, yet Jesus did this a good deal. So many lines in the Gospels describe Him leaving the crowds, leaving His disciples, and withdrawing to a solitary place to pray. I’m sure that Jesus talked through some of His time in prayer, but if He had been doing so out loud, all the time, every time the Bible mentions Him spending nights in prayer, He would have blown His vocal cords. From these gospel accounts I get the impression that much of His strength was drawn from knowing when to pause the flow of activity and just quietly reconnect with His Father. If the very Son of God, who is Himself God Incarnate, needed this kind of dedicated alone time to fulfill His mission, how much more do we? Resting in God’s presence may not feel very productive, but in the long run, it’s one of the most productive things we can do. The pandemic has created an interesting situation in which some people are getting more solitude than ever, but some are packed like sardines in isolation with their families. If the latter is you, it can be helpful to establish family rules about how a person can be respected if they wish to be alone. Whether it’s a designated chair or setting a timer, it can really improve family life for each member to get some solitude every once in a while to collect their thoughts and connect with their Creator. Even a child benefits from some time spent drinking in the quiet of Sabbath afternoon apart from media screens and constant stimulation. For some of you, trying to spend quiet time without active writing or verbal prayer may lead you to fall asleep. If so, you probably needed it; there’s no shame in seeking God and bumping into physical rest instead. He created your body, and cares about its health. Some of you may find it easier to have a restful encounter with God if you go to a pretty natural place and let yourself soak in God’s presence in nature. If, like me, you don’t really have one nearby that isn’t full of traffic noise, finding even one natural thing to fix your eyes on can be helpful. This is going to sound weird, but many times God has given me a restful sense of His presence while I’ve been looking into the eyes of a housecat. But why not? That creature is God’s handiwork, and if you struggle with learning how to rest, just look at a cat sometime. They’re experts at it. They sleep 16 hours a day, spend most of their waking time peacefully watching their surroundings, and what little time is left after that is either spent playing or yelling at their owners to feed them. Humans aren’t meant to rest quite as much as these little sloths, but sometimes we need to look at extremes in the other direction to correct our own deficiencies. The Sabbath dignifies both work and rest by separating the two and setting time aside for each. In work, we act as God’s instruments in the world, but in rest we come before Him to enjoy His presence and receive His grace. We cannot work without that rest. This Sabbath, I pray you enter that rest and experience your Creator in a meaningful way. It just occurred to me that we are many months into this pandemic, but I’ve never discussed here what to do if you or someone in your household actually gets suspected of having COVID-19. I think I’ve avoided covering this because I’ve had to deal with these procedures twice so far, and they were so cumbersome and annoying that I’ve been eager to stop thinking about them afterward. If any hard-won wisdom can help others, though, I’m willing to help. Here goes:
1. Know the signs. Unfortunately, the virus mimics many other, less serious ailments, but the ones worth paying attention to are: severe fatigue, shortness of breath, fever, cough, and loss of taste or smell. If your health insurance has a nurse hotline, that can help you sort through your symptoms to see if you have cause for concern. 2. Get tested right away. The vast majority of test sites are designed to reduce your exposure while testing, frequently involving staying in your car. Most urgent cares (not to be confused with ERs, which are way more expensive) have testing procedures. 3. Cancel your face-to-face appointments for at least the next two days. Unless your healthcare provider is truly exceptional, you will not get your results back for at least two or three days. In my experience, the turnaround time has been more like three or four. If you have any work or personal appointments that require your physical presence, be courteous enough to cancel or move them right away. It’s up to you, of course, if you want to keep working remotely; even if you actually have coronavirus, you can attend meetings with the camera off. Generally speaking, camera work is more demanding than non-camera work, so consider that as you consider your schedule for the next few days. 4. Notify your closest contacts. Don’t tell social media that you’re suspected of having coronavirus, but if you’ve spent extensive or maskless face-to-face time with anyone over the last 14 days, do let them know what’s going on. This is a long pandemic, and everyone, no matter how risk-averse, breaks social distancing every once in a while. Telling your closest contacts what’s up gives them a chance to be more careful, although they don’t need to practice the onerous procedures found in the next few steps. 5. Establish an isolated sickroom. If you share a room with someone, one of you has to move if there is anywhere the sick/suspected person can be alone. This is probably the most annoying feature of being a married person during this pandemic; one of you gets to leave the nice, comfy bed you’ve grown accustomed to and sleep someplace alien. Generally speaking, it’s courteous to give the sick person the room with the more comfortable bed. Try to make this room pleasant; the sick person is going to be stuck here. Make sure that they have a means of communication in there with them, like a cell phone, as well as an abundant supply of water and entertainment (which may include what they need to telecommute to work.) 6. Keep everything separate. Until you get the test results back, you have to treat the suspected coronavirus person as though they actually have it. On a practical level, this means using separate restrooms where possible and keeping that person out of the kitchen. If the sick/suspected person really needs to be able to cook for themselves, have them mask up every time they leave the sick room. On a similar note, whoever’s doing the cooking needs to mask up when serving food or medication to the sick person. One family I know actually used Zoom for checking vitals--the sick person had to check his own and relay it to his wife for charting. This is an exceptional level of care (the charting actually does help your doctor if they can’t figure out what’s wrong with you), but not always necessary. 7. Drink plenty of fluids. No matter what actually ails you--coronavirus or one of its many imposters--you need lots of fluids for your body to flush it out and fight it off, especially if a fever is involved. If you’re feeling queasy, take it in small sips. An anti-nausea medication from your doctor or urgent care can be immensely valuable here. If you’re struggling to keep food down, you may find that herbal tea, yogurt, broth, and other nice, bland, soft things like that help you stay hydrated and happy. You’ll know you’re starting to get better when you feel like eating the world. 8. Keep your mind occupied. This whole set of procedures is a pain for every member of the household, and it does your immune system no favors to dwell on it. If you’re really, really sick, of course, your mind has one job--to sleep. If you’re in that frustrating zone where you’re just well enough to be antsy, it is crucial that you find yourself a pleasant occupation. Whether it’s working through a TV series, a book, a game, or whatever, you need to have something for your mind to do while your body is healing. Don’t make it too demanding, though--you don’t want to frustrate yourself and exhaust your energy. Fortunately, both of the times I’ve had to enact these procedures, negative test results have come back, leading to a wonderful feeling of relief and general rightness with the world. Hopefully, that will be the case for you, too, and even if you get a positive result, my sincerest hope is that your version of the virus will be easily managed at home. Meanwhile, life goes on. Ordinarily, this would be a very easy post to write because I am in the habit of writing down five things I’m grateful for every day. Gratitude, which is a kind of adoration, is a habit I intentionally practice to get myself to pay attention to God’s gifts in my life. What makes it hard today--the day I’m writing this--is that I learned this morning that the bear that lives at Camp Cedar Falls died from the trauma of evacuating from the fires.
This beautiful bear was a charming creature I had spent considerable time watching when I would be at the camp for retreats or acting in the capacity of camp pastor. I loved watching him peacefully munch on the kitchen scraps he ate. He had a kind face. For some reason, despite all the awful things to happen in 2020 on a global scale, this one is the first one that actually feels personal. What “bear” are you mourning? A job, an event, a relationship, a way of life? I always thought that grief, while it hurts, is a form of thanksgiving, in a weird way. For something to hurt when we lose it, we had to love it first. It had to bring joy to our lives for us to care about it when it left. Prayers of adoration--both praise for who God is and thanksgiving for what He has done--are usually associated with joyful times and places, and rightly so. It’s easy to practice adoration when we are rejoicing over seeing loved ones get married, or a stunning day, or whatever. I believe, however, that these practices are even more important and relevant when times are dark and there is loss. “There is music in the midst of desolation and a glory that shines upon our tears.” This was a common funeral reading during World War I (1914-1918), which senselessly destroyed the lives of way too many young men, not to mention the civilians who also perished from the 1918 Flu Pandemic. What I love about this line is how it shows that even in the midst of pain, there is beauty. If anything, the pain reveals the beauty. Without denying the “negative” range of emotions--grief, pain, anger, etc.--times of loss can be a time for appreciating and loving what remains. For appreciating and loving what was. God gave you the person or thing you miss. He loved you enough to give you that experience. Taking time to acknowledge that doesn’t make the pain go away, but it puts it in a more constructive context than just suffering. And what remains? Well, in the case of the bear from Camp Cedar Falls, I thank God that the people made it out all right and that the firefighters are able to use the camp as a base for fighting the blaze. I thank God for the memories that remain. Gratitude is a potent weapon against despair, because even in the darkest moments, there is something to be grateful for. Praise can be a bit harder, because it’s about God Himself. It’s not always easy to see what is praiseworthy in God when you’re in the middle of suffering. There’s a reason why Job is considered kind of amazing simply for not cursing God. Even as he rants and raves in his confusion over what’s happening, though, there are little pockets of praise here and there--”I know that my redeemer lives, and yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Praise can be a beautifully emotional experience, but it can also be an intellectual one. Sometimes, we need the intellectual to carry us through until the emotions can follow. Taking time to acknowledge intellectually that God is just, that He is good, that He has good plans for us when all is said and done can tide us over until experience catches up. Experiencing praise is beautiful, though, and not to be missed. My favorite moments of praise are when I see something God made--an animal, a plant, a sunset, whatever--and my heart leaps at the impressions it gives me of its Designer. This was the gift I received from Chester, the Camp Cedar Falls bear--watching him always made me smile at God’s handiwork. It’s important to take time to enjoy these things, to experience the pleasures God has prepared for us that direct our attention to Him so that we don’t lose out on one of His good gifts. Yes, even in troubled times, God is good and we can rely on Him. He still has good things for us. They may not be the things we expect or think we want, but they are ultimately the best things for our flourishing. By taking the time to thank and to praise Him, we will enjoy more of the good things He has in store for us. So, as if we collectively didn’t have enough to worry about from COVID-19, political strife, social unrest, and the weird gradual dismantling of the postal service, those of us who live in the Golden State now get to deal with (bum bum bum) apocalyptic-looking fire skies.
The whole premise of this blog is that no matter how weird things get out there, life goes on. So here’s how to help life go on even as the very air we breathe is looking unsettlingly WRONG:
Even if, God forbid, you have to evacuate your area, life goes on. I spent three quarters of my vacation in August in an evacuee camp, and it’s astonishing how resilient people really are. Some kept working as much as they could under the circumstances. Since most of my particular camp was elderly, I was impressed by how they managed to find things to do to keep themselves positively occupied even as their homes were threatened. The truth is that when things get traumatizingly crazy, it’s more important than ever that life go on. We do not carry on despite the world’s insanity, but because of it. Early in the pandemic, I wrote about the importance of clinging to shreds of normal. As things get increasingly strange, we need those shreds of normal more than ever. These things help us carry on and deal with the shock of change by helping us cling to the things that don’t change. |
AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
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