Guide Us to Thy Perfect Light

Adoration of the Magi Triptych by Jerome Bosch, Prado Museum

Epiphany.

We use the word to describe a sudden idea, an "aha" moment, a sudden convergence of thought and feeling into a meaningful connection, an illumination of what has been there, but hidden.

Epiphany is the celebration of the Light bursting into the darkness.

Epiphany is always on January 6th, because it follows the 12 Days of Christmas that begin on December 25th. On this day we remember the journey of the kings from the east. They saw an unusual star in the heavens which communicated to them that the King of the Jews had been born. They began a long journey, bearing gifts for the new King. They made a journey of faith to worship. This was not their family of faith, but they were being drawn in by the Star of Light. These kings usher in a new era in history. They are the first Gentiles to worship Jesus, to journey toward him, to bring Him their gifts. They follow a bright star that leads them to the Lord.

The Dürer woodcut, a lifetime impression signed with his monogram and dated 1511, depicts the adoration of the Magi.

These last few months have had their long journeys through dark nights. I have looked up into the dark sky, searching for the star that will keep me moving in the right direction. I did not think about packing any gifts for the trip. What could I give the Lord after an exhausting journey? The only gift I can possibly imagine giving is simply a yielded heart. It sounds quaint and trite and shallow, perhaps, but its true. There is absolutely nothing I could plan to pack or "put on". I came to the end of my own stamina a long time ago.

I have walked a journey of bare-bones humanity. I get up, I do what is before me. I listen for the Lord. My only gift is to simply say, "Yes Lord." My gift is to obey and trust. That is all that is possible. I see no other road. It has not been pretty. Often what the Lord says is, "Let that go." "Lack of love is making this harder for you." "Just do it." My heart has been exposed to the raw, ugly core. And still I hear, "Come to Me. Sit. Give me your burdens. I am here."

There has been no way to plan or prepare. I get up each day trusting that the next step will unfold and that the energy, love and wisdom will be there when I need it. I am amazed to say it has. What I have needed has been there. I am getting a sudden flash of Jesus sending out the disciples and saying, "Take nothing with you, no bag, no tunic, etc." This is not the kind of journey you can pack for. You just set off and trust God for provision because there is nothing else possible!

One gift I have received from the Lord during this journey has been this blog. I have felt supported, true. But its more than that for me. Nothing gives me greater joy than to learn something new, or see something in a new light and then tell someone else about it. I have enjoyed writing about this journey for my own "processing", but my heart leaps with joy when I talk with those of you who say they have been blessed by reading. I just can't believe it! That is the Lord for you. One person suffers and another is blessed through it. That is redemption. Beauty for ashes.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

II Cor 1: 3-7

I have saved this story for Epiphany because it is an example of the Light of Christ bursting into darkness. I received an email from my friend Val back in December. She told me that she had used our story as the capstone of her class, Introduction to Religion. I will let her tell you herself:

Hi Margie. I'm teaching three sections of Introduction to Religion at College of Du Page (about 90 students in all). We are almost to the end of a 16 week semester. It is a general class on religion and how it is studied, but I have total freedom to teach the class any way I want to. I've never been so happy!

Today was my last lecture, and thanks to your blog and the nifty MP3 file I had the perfect way to end the semester. We've just finished three units that were a perfect lead up to presenting your story; for the last four weeks we've been studying religious experience, meaning & suffering, and virtue ethics. Today we looked at your photos, several of the blog entries, and listened to most of the talk. Then we had a class discussion about how you and John have demonstrated each of the virtues through the way you have suffered. At the end of class I asked people to make a list of the three virtues that they thought your testimony illustrated most powerfully.

Prudence/wisdom
Justice
Temperance
Fortitude/courage
Faith
Hope
Love

Most of the students are nominal Christians, plus a few Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists and generally mixed up, sincere seekers after truth. They were TOTALLY into the two weeks we spent on the virtues, and ABSOLUTELY CAPTIVATED by your story. No one dozed off, that's for sure! Now they all want to know what happens, so we will check back in to your blog next week. I'd also like to use it next semester as I'm teaching three more sections of the same class. I could not have devised a better way to end the semester as you and John are living out the realities I've been trying to impart. For example, before we studied the virtues we studied Vicktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. He says there are four anchors that enable us to find meaning in suffering: making a difference for good, living for those who need us, the contemplation of beauty/truth/goodness, and dying with dignity. You and John would make high marks on the "meaning scale" too!

___, my most committed and thoughtful atheist, wrote in a paper that he'd never met a Christian who wasn't just as terrified of death as everyone else. It seemed to him that if Christians really believed what they said about eternal life that it should make a difference in how they died. You've given him a few things to think about.

Love,
Val

Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

This journey is not for us to rack up scores for "virtue." We came to the end of our own strength long ago. Going through the desert is tough. Writing a blog about the experience is helpful. All I have to offer is my sometimes faltering willingness to say, "Yes." But nothing could be a greater gift to me than to know that there are people out there who are hearing about the living Jesus through my life. People who otherwise would be totally in the "dark".

This is my testimony. The Lord has carried me through. He is here.

A LIGHT shines in the darkness.

Christmas Traditions

December of 1997 found me both weeping and indignant over the failed attempt at dating that John and I had experienced that year. At the time, we were both on staff at Church of the Resurrection, thus both in attendance at the annual Staff and Vestry Christmas party. This is a potluck gathering hosted by the Rector, at that time William and Anne Beasley. This party came a few weeks after John so poignantly told me, "I don't want to hurt your feelings, Margie, but I am not in love with you." Considering the way things had been going, I was not surprised, but certainly not without wound either. Here ended what we now refer to as Act I.

Act I was followed by a two-year intermission. After one year, John came to ask my forgiveness for not offering me the level of commitment I needed. To this I simply replied, "I do forgive you, but if you are hoping that we are going to get back together, that is not going to happen. I know what I need now and you are not it." (Ouch.) Another year passed before we began dating again, which was a miracle. I will have to save that story for another time. (Or you can buy a copy of the DVD of John and me telling our story at a Gathering Place event a few years ago.)

So, here we are at the Beasley's home in December '97. Everyone is bringing in their covered dishes and I am trying to avoid John at all costs. (This is how I got the nickname Frosty Margarita.) I was loving Martha Stewart at the time and prepared a fabulous new recipe from her collection called Sweet Potato Spoon Bread. It is a warm and creamy, wonderfully aromatic holiday dish. I went through the buffet line much before John, but was leaving the dining room just as he was coming around to the Sweet Potato Spoon Bread. I "happened" to watch him as he filled the serving spoon and lifted it to his nose for a sniff. I saw him put the spoon down. I was furious. How dare he sniff my food and reject it? The moment was a snapshot of our dating history.
John will you tell you that he sniffed it, loved it and even returned for seconds. This part obviously missed my awareness.

Both because I love the recipe and because it holds such fond relationship memories for us, I make it every Christmas. I am including the recipe for you if you would like to try an alternative to the sliced sweet potatoes with marshmallows this year.

The Fawcett's Sweet Potato Spoon Bread
from Martha Stewart
Serves 8 to 10

3 large sweet potatoes
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
2 cups milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp all-purpose flour
1/4 cup honey
4 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Bake sweet potatoes until soft when pierced with a knife, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool. Peel, and discard skins.

2. Reduce the heat to 350. In a medium saucepan over medium heat combine cornmeal, milk, butter, brown sugar, spices, salt and 1 cup water. Cook, stirring until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Let cool.

3. Butter a two-quart baking dish. Place cornmeal mixture, sweet potatoes, flour, honey, eggs, and cream in a food processor. Process until smooth; pour into dish. (If you do ahead, freeze at this point and increase baking time when cooked from frozen.) Bake until golden brown, about 45 minutes. Serve.

A few notes from experience:
A double recipe will fit in a 9 x 13, but increase baking time.
You can make this ahead and freeze it before baking it.
I often double the recipe, bake one at Thanksgiving and freeze the other for Christmas.

Hope you enjoy this culinary trip down memory lane.

Happy Anniversary

Today is our 7th anniversary. I will never forget our glorious wedding day. I am grateful for my husband and all I have learned from him. John is a trustworthy man of integrity. As you can imagine, this season of John's illness has brought a range of difficulties into our lives individually and as a couple. I gave a talk entitled For Better or For Worse: Facing Difficulties in Marriage at our Mom's ministry this week. If you would like to hear it, you can find it on our church's website.
Go here to hear.
For Better or For Worse: Facing Difficulties in Marriage
I think it is about forty minutes long. It tells the basics of our journey in a nutshell. If you do listen, you must imagine yourself going into a beautiful room, surrounded by friends and sipping coffee. You can hear warm piano and violin music as you taste your pumpkin muffin and relish the moments that your children are having fun in the Nursery. This monthly event opens with Morning Prayer and worship, followed by a teaching. In this talk I discuss the difficulities of learning to love in the midst of tremendous stress. I confess ugly sins and welcome the grace of God to wash and cover all of us as we purpose to grow and mature in whatever circumstance we are in.

Staying Connected in the Desert

What is a wife to do when her husband is given a chilling diagnosis?
Freak Out? I've done that.
Weep? I've done that.
Prepare myself for his death? I am sad to admit that I have done that.

I have tossed around this question in its various forms over the last two and a half years. Since August of 2004 I have replayed in my mind over and over again a phrase said to us by our oncologist, "This cancer has 80% recurrence within five years." I confess that I have spent too much time in fear about John's possible death. I have had a tremendous amount of fear that the cancer would recur. I regularly confess these fears and their subsequent sins to my prayer partners.

I am amazed to find that, now that cancer has recurred, my daily life is not as horrible as I had feared it would be. Fear is one way the Enemy robs and steals from me. Fear robs the joy of the present moment. Fear cannot access the presence of God in the future. Each day is full of the presence of God when I am actually living it. I cannot practice the presence of God in a future day, only today. In other words, when I feed a fear, my imagination of the difficult situation is WITHOUT the presence of God. Don't borrow trouble from tomorrow, for each day has enough trouble of its own.
Thank you Lord, that You are in this day with me.

So, am I to prepare myself for John's possible death in a sooner-than-later sort of a way? I have done this many times over the last two years and it avails nothing. The Lord is telling me that I am not to prepare myself for John's death. There is no way to do this. If John dies it will rip my heart out. When I have tried to "prepare myself" it leads to two things. First, I imagine my life without him. This is a dangerous place to go. It is not reality. It is fear. Second, these fearful imaginings yield an insidious fruit: disconnection. When I fear that John will not be there for me, I begin to take small steps of the heart away from him. This dishonors him and our marriage. It prevents me from staying close through the process. The Lord is calling me to flesh out my wedding vows as a sacramental conduit of His love for John.

What is a wife to do when her husband is given a chilling diagnosis?

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

Psalm 27 selected