I have a love-hate relationship with fasting. I went through a period several years ago during which I fasted one day a week for about four years. It was a fascinating experience—really, honestly fascinating. Most people don’t believe me when I say that fasting has very little to do with food. It’s true!  Fasting taught me how to say no to myself. It taught me that just because I find a wonderful book, I don’t have to buy it; that just because a Hurricane from Handel’s with peanut butter cups and Heath bars sounds great right now, I’ll survive just fine without it.  Something much more important may be calling from just beyond the craving.

I discovered there are a lot of things I don’t actually need, but that I really, really want all the same.  There is a whole lot all around us that we know full well we don’t need—we just don’t want to do without them.  We see no immediate reason to say no, so we give in. We hunger, and the first thing that comes our way that seems to satisfy the appetite gets indulged in an effort to quash the hunger.

But it turns out there is something I really, really want much deeper inside me—a living, breathing, conversational relationship with Jesus. Fasting taught me that there are all sorts of appetites competing within me for Jesus’ easy, friendly companionship.

So I was feeling restless this afternoon….

About six months ago, I felt a nudging to fast again. I resisted, though, because, well, fasting is rather unpleasant, and besides, if I tried fasting through a school day I honestly thought I’d pass out from all the effort and energy I expend through the day, and I wouldn’t be focused for my students—you get the picture.

Well, a few months later the nudging had still not gone away, so it looked like I was going to have to do something. I decided to fast through lunch twice a week. It not only went well, it went better than expected. I met God there. Sure, I got a little hungry, but the little grumbling was a good reminder of my need for God, that there’s a subterranean hunger running much deeper than the trickle of our little appetites.  And what’s more, it didn’t prove to be a distraction from my students or my teaching.

So school gets out a few weeks ago, and I decide to let the fasting go. Only the nudging kept on. But I answered the nudge and I’ve pretty much kept up with the same plan, with I think one exception. And I had decided earlier this morning to let it go today.

A bit later, I’m sitting out on the patio reading about lectio divina, a practice I heartily enjoy and strongly recommend (check out Ruth Haley Barton’s Sacred Rhythms or look it up on Bible Gateway). I was going to finish the chapter, then get up, change the laundry and get some lunch. Then I thought that, since I missed my regular devotions this morning for the sake of a (very) early elders meeting, I would look up today’s gospel passage (Matthew 16:24-28) and do a little lectio. Your first time through the reading (four times all together), you’re just looking for a word or a phrase to cry out for your attention, when … Bam!  There it is: “let them deny themselves.”

I’m willing to bet right now that you’re hearing God more clearly than I did right then! Fasting? Deny yourself? Get it, Ralph? Believe it or not, though, I went through all four repetitions of the Bible passage before it hit me that God was prompting me to fast after all.

I dug deeper into the reflections. I asked myself, “What are you feeling? What are you afraid of?”

“Well, I don’t have enough now, enough time, enough money, enough energy, enough talent.  I’m afraid!  What if I go ahead and deny myself and You take away even my ‘not enough’?”  I closed the book and looked off into the woods, then looked down and saw a blurb on the back cover:  “Make the decision to leave all outcomes to God.”

As I sat today reading Frank Laubach’s Letters by a Modern Mystic and mulling over my work as a teacher, I read about him praying for the Moro people he was serving.  As he prayed he heard God say, “The most beautiful thing in the universe for you is [the village of] Lanao stretching around this lake at your feet, for it contains the beauty of immense need. You must awaken the hunger there, for until they hunger they cannot be fed.”  Is it possible that the best thing I can do for my students is not to craft snazzier lesson plans, but to search out the means of awakening their hunger for truth, beauty, and goodness?

So it turns out the hunger I’ve been speaking of is not really about food at all!  We are hungry for all sorts of things, and most of the time we have no idea what.  But we are determined to satisfy it, so we clamor after and clutch at anything and everything that presents itself to our appetite.

Fasting, though, takes a small thing like food and uses it to teach us the best way to satisfy that hunger: listen to it.  Let it rumble, and be reminded that indeed, “one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” What do I really, truly hunger for?  Why settle for ice cream or cookies, alcohol or sex, shopping or video games when I can revel in the joyful, peace-filled, radiant immediacy of Jesus Himself, God incarnate?

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”

At a library sale a number of years ago I came across a collection of essays by Henry David Thoreau called Autumn.  I picked up a whole bagful of books for only a dollar, so I didn’t take a very close look at it until I got home.  When I did, though, I discovered something I had never seen before: several of the pages were uncut so that you couldn’t read what was inside.  Here’s a picture of what I found:

I cut a few of the pages (delightful—like unpacking a gift!), but then I thought … no.  The book was originally published in 1892, which means that as of today, June 13, 2018, the book is somewhere around 126 years old—and has NEVER been read.  All this book has ever done is sit on someone’s shelf—and I can’t help but wonder how many shelves it has sat on.

Now, being an English teacher, experiences like this immediately launch me into the realm of metaphor, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many people live their lives just like this—sitting timidly on a shelf, unread, unused, unappreciated, waiting for some chance encounter, some outside influence, to awaken what lies dormant within.  (The metaphor does break down eventually: our lives are written as we live them, though there is an Author who knows each and every story.)  All the same, what a waste, waiting to live rather than choosing to live!

I like to show this book to my graduating seniors on their last day in class.  I encourage them to take their lives off the shelf, to cut the pages and dare to show the world what a life—their life!—can be.

But this year I was able to add a twist.  In a stack of miscellaneous odds and ends teachers were discarding before the end of the year, I found this old book of Methodist Hymns held together by a rubber band (which I removed so I could show it to you).  Here it is:

I took off the rubber band to look inside and the cover and several pages fell off in my hands.  The title page indicated it had been published in 1832—186 years ago.  I was also delighted to find a name inscribed on the flyleaf:

The next half hour or so was sheer bliss!  I didn’t know what I’d find, if anything.  The hymns are just beautiful (though oddly there is no music, only lyrics).  The book was clearly much-used and, at least once upon a time, a valued possession.  I couldn’t wait to share it with Sandy (faithful Wesley lover that she is), so I carefully replaced the cover and loose pages and slipped the rubber band back on.

As I said a few moments ago, I am given to seeing metaphors in striking encounters like this. Since I had discovered this hymnal very near the end of the school year, I resolved to include it with my end-of-year senior “sermon.”

Unlike the Thoreau book, this book’s pages are all cut. As best I could tell, the pages had at least been thumbed through.  On top of it all, someone (Mary Caswell) had been proud enough of it to write her name in it, forever laying claim to it, despite the fact she certainly died long, long ago.  Frankly, the book is worn out.  And this was part of the allure!  What else might I find?  This book belonged to someone!  What might I learn about her?  Curiosity kept me looking (not to mention the beauty of the hymns themselves).

In the end, if you leave a book, or a life, sitting around unread and unlived it will likely live a pretty long life.  If you take enough interest to make it your own, to name it, if you take enough interest to identify yourself with it, you might actually make it something to be admired, even emulated.  You may even inspire someone!

As you’re living it now, would you dare leave the book of your life behind, with your name boldly and largely written inside for all to see, as if to say, “This is my book, my life—come, take a look, let me show it to you.  It’s taken rather a beating over the years, but I hope you’ll take some solace in these pages and perhaps be inspired to make such a work of your own life.”

Okay, so I doubt Mary Caswell would say any such thing, but all the same, I challenge you.  Why not?  Why not take your life off the shelf?  Why not wear yourself out in service to others?  Don’t worry about wearing yourself out, or even losing a few pages here and there—better that than wind up in Mr. Felzer’s Senior English class as an illustration of a life poorly lived.

I hear a voice I had not known:

“I relieved your shoulder of the burden;
your hands were freed from the basket.
In distress you called, and I rescued you;
I answered you in the secret place of thunder….
I am the Lord your God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide and I will fill it….

~Psalm 81:5b-7a; 10 NRSV

Life has a pace that should not be violated.

I invariably come back from my not-so-frequent-as-they-used-to-be retreats with a sense that the pace of life has gotten out of control.  Life with God is characterized by a kind of rhythm, a way of relating to Him that’s made up of a delightful blend of listening and responding.  This rhythm is not often mirrored in my own day-to-day existence.  At least it doesn’t feel that way; it feels more like dancing with someone who’s listening to a different song.  But I always leave those retreats resolved to reconcile my steps to His.

A number of common retreat images reinforce this notion of pace, of rhythm, for me: the steam rising over a cup of coffee, autumn leaves floating to the ground, snowflakes falling from winter skies, ocean waves washing onto the shore, clouds brushing across the blue dome of summer, even train whistles and ticking clocks.

All these simple beauties exist at a certain pace, by which I don’t mean “speed” at all.  They simply are, they just happen, with no sense of hurry (sure, there are extremes of wind, snow and weather of all sorts, but these are just that—extremes, not the norm).

I’m struck this morning by how much of life is dictated to us.  Or, if you prefer, how little of life seems to be dictated by us.  We are more often driven, like horses reined and whipped.  True, there will be seasons of life (such as parenting, schooling, or phases of a career) during which, for a time, we are indeed driven.  But those are in fact seasons and should not constitute the norm of day to day existence.  They should not even be the norm in parenting or schooling or career.  And the seasons will vary in length: a few years, or weeks, or even merely days.  Being attentive to these seasons is one of the arts of living life well.

A necessary balance is required here, but not so much keeping the weight exactly even on the passivity vs. activity scales, but more on the patient-waiting vs. willing-obedience scales.  The good life requires discernment, the art, beauty, and wisdom of which can be seen most clearly, I think, in Ecclesiastes 3:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.”

I quote this at length for its slow, quiet beauty.  Simply to read this is to enter into that rhythm, that pace, I have been speaking of.  But as I was sharing with my high school students this past week, the writer here is saying far more than just “Life consists of a whole variety of things that come and go in their time.”  Instead, the richness of this passage consists in the recognition that each of these seasons may be entered into at any time, but that doing so well requires wisdom.  Hence, in the course of a disagreement with a colleague or a child, “Is this a time for silence, or for speaking?”  Or when going through a deceased parent’s belongings, “Is this a time to mourn or to dance?”  And so, in your own life today, is this a time for war or for peace? to seek or to lose? to break down or to build up?  Who among us has the wisdom to know which of these is called for at any given time?  Very few, I think, and none who fail to at least reflect upon the gut-level reactions that come first to mind.  This kind of wisdom is rooted in humility and comes only to those who offer quiet attention to the small and (only apparently) insignificant things.

In the stillness, “I hear a voice I had not known.”  Stillness is not so much the absence of motion, but a state of patient attentiveness.  And if we consent to this patient attentiveness, we can find a voice carried to us on the rising steam, the falling leaves, the sounding waves, and the airy clouds.  Hidden “behind” these is the place we meet with God, the secret place of thunder.

I didn’t want to shoot my mouth off about Brexit, in part because I’m an American–what do I know about England’s problems? But also because when I do shoot my mouth off I tend to prove how little I know. Nevertheless, after thinking about it over the last week or so, I thought I’d share my own thoughts. I do spend some time on what I’ll call “the American distinction,” but fear not, I do manage to bring things full circle in the end! (And even though this topic doesn’t match the theme of my blog, what the heck, it’s my blog, I can do what I want).

I’ve said before that I’m not a libertarian, but that doesn’t mean I’m not in favor of God-given rights that are named and secured, not provided, by our Constitution (as opposed to those invented by men), personal freedom (by which I mean the right to self-determination, even if a lot of other people don’t like or agree with the self I determine), and national sovereignty.

First, ALL people have rights, not just Americans–the Declaration of Independence is an American document, but it speaks of “governments instituted among men,” not just governments instituted on the North American continent south of Canada and north of Mexico. Among those rights is the right to determine those who will govern us and to throw them out peacefully (or otherwise if they refuse to acknowledge their abuse of the people and their rights).

Second, people have the right to self-determination. This is where it really gets messy because, let’s face it, everywhere we look we see people who are making a mess of their lives and consequently messing up the lives of people all around them. On top of it all, they then expect someone else to take responsibility for those messes so they can make theirs even messier. I’ve seen a lot of this, and I’m not happy about it.

But I’m not alone. All of us–or at least the vast majority of us–have seen and even done the very same thing ourselves (this is not a simple “we’re all right–‘they’ are the problem” problem). I’ve made huge messes in my life that, through both grace and tough love (now there’s a delicate balance to strike!), I’ve managed to find my way to a very satisfying life.

And this is where we get to the third point: national sovereignty. All these messes are SO big, so weighty and complex and intertwined with other problems and messes (for a whole variety of reasons), that we’ve come, over the last couple decades in particular, to see government as the only entity big enough to address them. But government does not have the right to override the rights of individuals who choose to make a mess of their lives. [Well, that’s not entirely true: if you make a mess by stealing or murdering or other violations of other people’s rights, we (through our representatives) have determined that you need to be incarcerated for a time to pay your debt to your fellow citizens (NOT your debt to the government or the government’s laws–they’re the laws of the people, and we are a nation, supposedly, of laws, NOT men, because men will be biased and inconsistent and prone to error, and we look to our elected leaders to enforce those laws whether they like them or not; but I digress)].

And so we’ve found ourselves buying into the notion that a well-intentioned government can actually save us from ourselves. Whew! As long as they mean well, right?

I can’t help but think of something Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Convictions like this are precisely what got him elected. And In just over 35 years we sure have come full circle. We’ve bought, hook, line and sinker the idea that government is the solution. We’re too small, too powerless, too poor, to fix the problems we’re faced with. We need government experts to design more effective systems to address these problems–no, it won’t be perfect, we think, but we have to do something, and if that requires sacrificing a few of our rights (not the “big” ones, just those that get in the way of real solutions) or those of others, well, so be it.

And this is where we come back to Brexit (you thought I forgot, didn’t you?). Don’t be fooled by those who say the Brexit vote was all about racist anti-immigration folks (yes, I know, there are some of those). Immigration issues were certainly a big part of the Leave vote, but even that issue isn’t as straightforward as many would have us believe. This is way bigger than that.

The real issue here, as I see it (and I could be wrong–I’m sure you’ll let me know if you think so!) is that we’ve put all our trust in governments to solve the seemingly intractable problems of the day. And when a people decide democratically to say, “No, sorry, this isn’t working for us. You’re getting bigger and bigger and throwing your weight around; you’re not hearing us any longer; you’re not acting in our interests, and we’re the ones paying the price for it,” they’re seen as naive, gullible, racist, nationalists who can’t see the big picture, who can’t see that they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face. When all they’ve really done is say, “We want to run our own lives; we want to be England; we want to determine our own future.”

The real issue is that the Leave vote was a slap in the face to the idol of big government. The Leave voters rejected government as the solution; they rejected government as being in the best position to “make it all better.” The prevailing view seems to be that if we abandon government solutions, we’re hopelessly lost because we’re so stupid and parochial and backward we can’t be trusted to rule our own lives, let alone choose what kind of country we should have.

In my view, this is why so many people are freaking out: If government isn’t the solution, they think, what are we left with? We’re doomed!

However imperfectly they may be doing it, England’s citizens are simply asserting their rights to freedom, self-determination and national sovereignty. As we Americans well know, hard as it may be, it’s far easier to LEAVE than it is to sort out the problems of self-governance once you’ve left. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, “It’s pretty hard to un-scramble the egg.”

Once America decided to Leave, our Founders, in their genius, established a way for fallen, sinful people to govern themselves (this isn’t because they were all Christians–they weren’t–they were just readier than we are to acknowledge our inescapable foolishness–they didn’t trust themselves to govern let alone anyone else!).  Because they realized that people are fickle and prone to errors of all kinds, and that majorities can be intolerant and abusive, they established a form of government that is slow to change, (very) deliberative, and incorporates checks and balances. They also realized that democracy is the best form of government, not because we’re all such wonderful, virtuous, noble-minded, well-intentioned men and women but precisely because we’re not!  As C.S. Lewis observed (I’m paraphrasing), “I favor democracy not because I see no men fit to be slaves, but because I see no men fit to be masters.”

Will there be a price to pay for Brexit? Sure. Will everything turn out well in the end? I don’t know. There’s a good chance it won’t. But national sovereignty and self-determination are not desirable because they guarantee success; they’re desirable because they’re right.

I love watching the birds in our backyard. Because of the woods behind our house, we get a huge variety of them. Just this moment, just for fun, I made a list of the birds we’ve seen just this week. Before my pencil stopped moving, I’d come up with 14 varieties. They’re all so different. Robins hop through the grass, looking for worms and small bugs. Nuthatches hang off the feeder at weird angles. Some are almost oblivious to people coming in and out of the house. Others fly away when you reach up to scratch your head.

I often wonder how much of their activity is instinctual: nesting, feeding, foraging, mating. And then I wonder about our own behavior, and how much of it is instinctual. This is fascinating to think about because there are certainly behaviors that you engage in without ever thinking about them. You do the same thing the same way all the time. But were we born with those tendencies? Not likely. No one came out of the womb with an uncontrollable genetic urge to floss before going to bed.

You could go a little crazy sorting it all out, and it wouldn’t be healthy to try. But it is a fascinating exercise to reflect on those things that make us uniquely who we are, not just the particular traits we acquired from our parents and grandparents, but as human beings. (And a further thought in the same vein: What does it mean to be made in the image of God? A HUGE question, but alas one we’ll hold off on for another day!)

But here too, remember, I’m talking about instincts, not those habits or activities that we fall into “automatically”—learned behaviors that have become (almost) instinctual for us. There is a difference, and I want to talk today about one that I think most people think of as something they’re just not “wired” for.

This morning I picked up a book by Ruth Haley Barton called Invitation to Solitude and Silence. The foreword is written by Dallas Willard who quotes the mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal, who said familiarly that “all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own room.” And in order to avoid that solitude, we go to great lengths to distract ourselves. Everyone, I believe, knows this to be true of themselves on some level.

What I want to get at, though, is Willard’s next observation: “Pascal also observes that we have ‘another secret instinct, a remnant of the greatness of our original nature, which teaches that happiness in reality consists only in rest, and not in being stirred up.’”

Hmm. A secret instinct for quiet and solitude. And at one and the same time we find ourselves clamoring incessantly for distraction from it! What’s up with that? What could there be that would be so fearful and intimidating? Is it something in us that we’re afraid to see—some inadequacy, or sin, or fault, or weakness? Or, worse yet, could it be nothing? Are we afraid there’s really nothing there, and so we run as fast as we can in any other direction we can?

I don’t have any idea why it is that you run, but you do. We all do. What if we stopped running? Is it possible, or even merely conceivable, that the life you’ve always wanted is right there for the taking, like an apple hanging from a tree?

Deep inside I think we know that life would never be the same. And even if that life were infinitely better than life as we know it today, the fact that it’s also immeasurably different is also incredibly frightening. The best, most godly people I know are better and more godly because they’ve gone to that place. Because, even when they go through the course of their everyday activities and engage in the various casual and committed relationships, they carry that peace, that confidence, that presence with them that, even if all the clamor and distractions faded completely away they would still exist, they would still have life and meaning and purpose that transcends the noisy life most people are trapped in.

Instincts are born into us. Viruses are caught. You were made for the kind of life that Jesus holds out to you. It’s possible for us to live as carriers of life into the world, carriers of a more vital and powerful virus than Zika or malaria or the Bird Flu. As Jesus said in the gospel of John, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

They yearning for that restful life is, as Willard notes, “a remnant of the greatness of our original nature.” We can only find it by stopping, never by searching (because in the end we’re not searching, we’re fleeing). Only when we stop can it (He) find us.

Do you know someone, a carrier, of that Jesus kind of life? Someone who can or has awakened the “secret instinct” in you (or at least the desire for it)? Seek them out this week. Call them. Make an appointment with them. Find a way, any way, to get close to them and get personal. Get close enough to catch what they have and find the thing your soul craves.