Valerie Hess

Easter is a Season, Not a Day

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I just had a blog go live here on this topic.   msfl.arbor.edu/blogs/  Let me know what you think!

Welcoming the Stranger

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conversationsjournal.com/2012/04/welcoming-the-darkness/ This link has a couple of reflection questions below the text, which I have reprinted below for convenience:

Welcoming the stranger. I hear that and instantly think of inviting people over, opening the door to angels. Those are good and important things to do. However, as we come through Lent into Easter, a seven week season of rejoicing in Christ’s defeat of the most dreaded stranger ever, death, I have learned that I am a stranger to myself in so many ways.

What is it like to welcome myself? Many writers, past and present, talk about the dark recesses of the soul where things reside that are hard for a life-long Christ-follower to admit are there. Anger, jealousy, rage, envy, greed, gluttony, vainglory, pride: a veritable laundry list of sins reside deep in my soul. I try very hard not to get to know those foul residents, to keep them as strangers. They are forgiven and cleansed in the blood of the Lamb, I remind myself; therefore, I do not have to have anything to do with them, like a bad neighbor, I can justify ignoring. Or the old ostrich idea that if I put my head in the sand, then maybe all that gunk really isn’t there.

Not.

I am learning slowly—oh so slowly—that I need to embrace these foul residents of my interior life. Like Mother Teresa scooping desperation out of the gutters of Calcutta, I need to invite these wretched aspects of myself in. I need to face them, ask them who they are and where they come from. I need to hear from them what there is to learn from their presence in my life.

For example, anger was such a necessary protector in childhood. It kept me from greater evil. Yet, I am no longer a child. Just as I no longer get out the Barbie dolls which are still in the closet, I don’t need to get my anger out to use as a weapon of defense any more.

Or greed. I needed to hang on to material things because I was trying to hang on to myself. Inviting greed in to chat helps me see the depth of my pain and the wound that needs help and healing. I learn that Jesus is holding on to me; I don’t have to try to do it all by myself.

As I learn to welcome these dark elements in my soul, I find that I am also more able to welcome Jesus and his love, something that has been a stranger to me in functional ways. In the welcoming of Jesus’ love, I become less of a stranger to myself. I walk through each day more at peace internally and externally, more at home in my own essential being, and therefore able to be more welcoming to others.

Spiritual Warfare or Spiritual Laziness

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Here we are deep into Lent. I don’t know about you but I have a love/hate relationship with the disciplines of Lent. For me, they are like New Year’s resolutions: easy to talk about and plan for, hard to keep.

This year, I tried to listen even more carefully to what God was calling me to for 40 days. I got out my new project pad from Staples and wrote: Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving on the left side. This was going to be an official spiritual project! I was going to get it right this time. Across from the subheadings, the three disciplines of Lent, I listed one or two things to do or not do. Joy and gratitude were going to mark my time. This year, I was going to balance giving up with adding in.

Well, here we are deep into Lent and all hell has broken loose. That is one of those few sayings that always seemed like swearing to me and, yet, I have come to realize is very theologically accurate. Hell breaks loose. Relationships, work projects, health and finances, every aspect of our life becomes susceptible to temptation from the lying master of hell, Satan.

Studying the spiritual disciplines and the writings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers led me to believe that any time the going was really tough, the Dark Night of the Soul was happening. The Dark Night is when we feel closest to Jesus’ cry from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” It has even become popular to comfort struggling friends with Dark Night of the Soul noises and pats on the back. But I have come to learn that this Dark Night (a “done in secret” cleansing) is happening in all Christ-followers all of the time. It is simply and profoundly that deep work God is always doing in our souls. At times, that deep work floats to the surface of our awareness, bringing a sense of heaviness and spiritual dryness. It is like being aware of muscles we didn’t know we had after a particularly strenuous day of yard work. Those muscles have always been there and we do use them, just not at that depth.

This Lent, God has showed me that the Dark Night of the Soul is really what mature Christians experience. Me? I am fighting acedia, one of the seven deadly sins, that means sloth or laziness. This is not the laziness that reminds one of a long summer afternoon in a hammock or a mild procrastination regarding cleaning the bathroom. This is the prideful rebellion that says to God, in pouting tones, I don’t want to struggle for Christ-likeness. (Cue: stamping foot.) This hard time is the hand of God on a rebellious spirit. While it is the loving hand of a parent on a child in a full-blown temper tantrum, it has only served to ramp up my tantrum, not soothe it.

All hell has broken loose and I am tired of it, stamping my foot at God, pouting that I am not on a smooth and charmed path of “victorious Christian living.” I want to follow Christ, but as sheep follow a Good Shepherd, not as a fellow cross-hanger. I do not want to make the effort to truly turn over to God my pride, my sinful passions, my desire to have it my way. I want to carry my cross on a gold chain.

Acedia does not sound as romantic as the Dark Night of the Soul. Being called spiritually lazy does not make me feel good about myself. My project list for Lent was actually a form of acedia, things to do to make me feel virtuous, as I was too slothful to tackle the bigger sins of pride, arrogance, and narcissistic tendencies.

Yet, there is hope. I am reminded of the sermon by St. John Chrysostom (347-407) preached in every Orthodox Church at Easter. He reminds all of us that everything is from a loving God always at work in us: Conscientious and lazy, celebrate the day! You who have kept the fast, and you who have not, rejoice, this day, for the table is bountifully spread!

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Follow the tour— While there are only a couple more to post on the tour, here is where we have been if you want to go back and read ones you missed.

February 20^th

Rachel Stone: eatwithjoy.org/2012/02/20/lenten-fasting-easter-feasting/

February 27^th

Margot Starbuck: margotstarbuck.blogspot.com/2012/02/being-formed-in-grocery-checkout-line.html

March 5^th

Brent Bill: holyordinary.blogspot.com/2012/03/time-is-fulfilled-lenten-meditation.html

March 12^th

Logan Mehl-Laituri: feraltheology.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/maximilian-tebessa-lenten-abstinence/

March 19^th

Andrew Byers: abyers.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/when-salvation-hurts/

March 26^th

Valerie Hess: www.valeriehess.com/generalnews/spiritual-warfare-or-spiritual-laziness

April 2^nd

Beth Booram: peregrinejourney.blogspot.com

April 6^th; Good Friday

Chad Young: www.findingauthenticchristianity.com

Breathing Room

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Even though in Lent we focus more on our sins and make sacrifices, i.e. give things up, the ultimate goal is freedom in Christ. If our Bible reading and prayer time, our worship and Lenten practices don’t bring us a sense of more light and freedom in Christ, then something needs to change. If we are becoming more fearful of life, then we are not maturing into Christ-likeness. Someone once said that courage is fear that has said its prayers. This does not mean that we won’t be afraid; it means that fear will not be dominate in our lives or our decisions.

Breathe deeply in Christ today. Feel your soul expand with your lungs. If that is not happening, ask God to show you why.

Come to Southern California in late June to honor Dallas and Jane Willard

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www.thrivetoday.org/thrive2012Willard.html

I will be doing a workshop at this conference. It promises to be a wonderful event. Come if you can!