Praying in Color: Borrowed from John W during Second Mile’s Week of Prayer + Fasting this year

Recommended for: Artist+creative types who love Jesus and want to pray, visual learners who want help remembering their prayer list throughout the day, fidgeters who find their fingers in need of occupation, minds that wander during sustained times of prayer

A Caveat: The author quotes a prayer that refers to God as “Father-Mother”, and that doesn’t jive with my theology of God as a loving and powerful Father (as he refers to Himself in Scripture), but that quoted prayer is not something that kept me from learning from the book and seeking to develop my own intimate relationship with the loving and powerful Father. I just think it’s important to be aware of things like that when we read books. Know sound doctrine.

So Far: I found a blank journal sitting dormant on my shelf. I wrote down the word “future”, and then found the tail of the e swirling out out out into a spiral. As I drew, I found myself adding color and realizing that the red represented where I’m at now, the yellow represented the hopes I have in my future as it lays in God’s plans, and the green near the center represents the seeds God planted for my future long, long ago. My overall impression from this prayer time was one of worship and awe because I came away with a renewed sense of God as Yahweh, I Am, the God who holds the past, present, and future, the God who knows what he’s doing with me and my life. Oh, and I also came away with a visual reminder that I picture throughout the day as I continue to pray. I am secure in my relationship with Jesus, and God has been building on the foundations he began to lay in my life when I was young.

Also: Using one of the illustrations in the book as inspiration, I drew a grid and prayed about my schedule. I want my days to be fruitful and productive for God’s kingdom, and I love the possibilities that each day brings to be different, so I drew different images (some more abstract that others) in each “day” and prayed through all kinds of ways that they could play out. In our culture, busy-ness is often somewhere between an impediment and a crutch, so this was a fresh, hopeful way to lay out my daily walk through life before God.

The Big Thing I’m Taking Away: I love random inspiration, new ventures, and general discovery; I struggle with consistent devotion to tasks. I am hopeful that this act of drawing will help me develop a more disciplined and less sporadic prayer life because it is tangible, it takes devoted time to complete a drawing each day*, and it serves as a visual monument to my conversation with God.

A Couple More Things: There were a couple of times in the book where she kind of made it sound like there was an intentional absence of thought+words, like she was allowing color and shape to be prayers. I have doubts about that, and I didn’t do that. I used this as a time to focus my thoughts and bring them to God. It was a time of discovery as I allowed the Holy Spirit to open my eyes, and it was a time of conversation as I prayed through what I discovered in the time of devotion. I even took time to write down the reflections that God brought to my mind during my prayer time about my future because I don’t want to forget them in the future.

*Each Day: Um, that is my goal. It has not happened yet. The first one was on February 5, and the second was today. But the cool thing is that I remember the images long after I finished the drawing. The book has examples of praying for individuals, for longer periods (like during Lent or Advent), and for praying through and memorizing Scripture, so there’s plenty to explore.

I decided reading Pulitzer winners would be a good idea after reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. In line at Bookman’s, I saw The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on that little table where the put the bestsellers and books of critical/popular acclaim. I thought, Hey, I’ve been wanting to read that. I bought it. I don’t remember what I was actually in line to buy.

Oscar Wao sat on my shelf for awhile. That’s what happens to most of the books I buy. I don’t know why I picked it up. It has nothing to do with anything I’ve been reading, studying, or doing at work. Maybe that’s why I picked it up.

I don’t quit books. I almost quit Oscar Wao. The only book I’ve ever quit in the middle was The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. It was insufferably bleak, plus I already knew the twist at the end. Oscar Wao is not insufferably bleak, but there is a certain bleakness (it does begin with a discussion of fukú, the notion of being cursed in the Caribbean) added to a certain rawness made of the characters’ identities in sexual behavior and abusive/broken relationships. I’ve been searching for the right phrasing for why I wanted to quit that book, and I’ve come down to this: it’s just not a hopeful book. But I didn’t quit, and I have Eugene Peterson to thank for that.

See, when I read The Contemplative Pastor, I read an entire chapter focused on Peterson advising pastors not to forget to view the people in their churches as sinners. He says some beautiful things about sinners, the foremost of which is the clarification that the term is not a “theological designation” nor a “moralistic judgment.”

He points out that it is not a term dealing in comparisons between you and me and everyone we know and hear about on the news. There is no more or less involved, no relativity at all. Peterson would have us realize that referring to someone as a sinner “is not a blast at his manners or his morals. It is the theological belief that the thing thatmatters most to him is forgiveness and grace.”

Forgiveness and grace matter to broken people. Oscar Wao is full of broken people. Oscar is an obese kid who fails in the Ladies Dept. and thus exiles himself to Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy literature, and the hopes of one day making it as a sci-fi writer. Lola, his older sister, is a runner both literally (she’s the star of the track team) and figuratively (difficulties send her away: away to college, away to Europe, away to Santo Domingo, away away away but always returning, too). Belí, their mother, is defined by abandonment during her childhood (the climax of that portion of her life involves a full-back hot oil burn and confinement in a chicken coop) and objectification from adolescence on (the men in her life only see the body that takes her from unknown to a fling with the most popular kid in town to a fling with a character we only know as the Gangster—yeah, that doesn’t end well for her).

I saw all these broken people and I challenged myself to keep going. I saw some connection to the brokenness I’ve seen in lives of people I’ve known and loved since coming to Tucson. I saw a connection to how we talk about influencing culture instead of being influenced by culture (this book is soaked with What It Is To Be Dominican). I saw a connection to what I talked about this summer: Jesus did not shrink away from coming to save broken people, which I am, a sinner, just as much as people like Oscar, Lola, and Belí.

So I kept going. I finished the book. It won’t be one I recommend to people, but I’m glad I didn’t quit it because Jesus doesn’t quit broken people, and churches are made of them, too, including ours. Reading about characters like this helps me dig into the motivations, reactions, and consequences that come up in real lives around me.

Eugene Peterson’s The Contemplative Pastor may turn out to be one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I took in these words during the most stressful period of my life, a time when I was learning how to lead a family, a church, and a classroom all at the same time.

Yesterday, on the phone, my mom described her first year teaching as “feeling like the world was spinning without me, or like it was spinning and I was just hanging on like a kite.” That’s an accurate description of what my last year felt like. It feels a little slower now that I’ve had a summer to both reflect and prepare.

The above quote comes after Peterson returned from a year-long sabbatical following thirty-some years of pastoral work. The reason they comfort me is that he returned refreshed and full, able to meet and serve and lead. This is a reminder to me that such a thing is possible. I like hearing this very much, seeing as how I’m about to dive into year two of leading a family, a church, and a classroom.

I’m adding this to my summer reading list. It seems like God is growing me in my ability not only to think and ideate, but to become more effective at rubber meeting road, eggs hatching, and general moving and shaking.

I just realized earlier this week that the next three books I want to read are all related to leadership.

I just used a Barnes & Noble gift certificate that my parents got me last Christmas on couple of new books.

I read my father-in-law’s copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years when they last visited, but I’m hoping to use it when I teach The Death of Ivan Ilyich in the fall at my new job. Ilyich is pretty dark because it’s a book about, well, his death, and he spends the book ruminating over his life. Million Miles shows Donald Miller doing similar things, only in a more positive angle (the book is about trying to make his memoir Blue Like Jazz into a movie, and shows him delving into his own story as if he were a character).

I bought Forgotten God because I read and liked Crazy Love, plus I have never read a book that focuses entirely on the Holy Spirit. Janice wants to take this one on her upcoming trip back to Oklahoma, so she’ll get the first read, which is probably best because I have a bunch of novels to tackle before school starts in the fall.

Thanks for the books, mom and dad.

My third and final thought on Robinson Crusoe has much to do with the current goings-on in the state I call home, the state where I moved to in order to help plant a church, the state I was so intrigued by because of its cultural, spiritual, and political climate.

3. Robinson Crusoe is a book about cultural intersection. Eventually, (spoiler alert!) Crusoe’s isolation ends. He finds out that the footprint belongs to a native of the mainland that Crusoe can see from the highest point of his island. This particular native is destined to be cannibalistic cuisine at the hands of a rival tribe—Crusoe’s island is apparently their reserved table for eating vanquished foes—until Crusoe comes in, muskets blazing.

From that instant on, that native is called Friday because Crusoe rescued him on a Friday. Nevermind if he had a name before that day. Crusoe also takes to referring to Friday as his “man” throughout the remainder of the story.

Crusoe later meets some Europeans: some Spaniards who crashed on the mainland and live with Friday’s tribe, and an English captain and his mutinous ship. Crusoe does not name the white people, nor does he assume they are his servants. He negotiates with them, a relationship closer to landlord and tenant than master and servant.

I can’t help but see the cultural dynamics through both the sociological lens and the spiritual lens.

Crusoe makes a big deal out of God’s providence in saving him (he and the English captain share the belief that God provided them for each other’s salvation from isolation and mutiny, respectively). He’s thankful that a sovereign God saw fit to keep him alive when other men died, and he celebrates each anniversary on the island with prayer and reading the Bible he salvaged from the ship. This is a marked change from the Crusoe we meet early in the book, a man defined by making his own way in business.

This points to a book about change on an individual, spiritual level, but there is more to it. Crusoe is shipwrecked during a trip to collect slaves for plantations in Brazil. At a fundamental level, the sort of relationship that slavery establishes between those in power and those under power implies an assumed hierarchy among peoples, in this case peoples with different colored skin.

That assumed hierarchy is still there. Crusoe renames the indigenous person and makes him his servant; Crusoe treats the Europeans as business partners and parts amicably with them once their deal is done and he is returned to England.

What bothers me about this is Crusoe’s spiritual growth didn’t extend to his view of others. He defaults to a worldview that involves tiers/castes/places, not the way God sees humanity.

On a personal level, I take this as a warning: I cannot assume that I am above the influence of the culture I live in, no matter how much I pray or read.

On a sociological level, I want to apply this to living in Arizona, where God has me now. Crusoe read the Bible on an island alone. I am a part of a church planted and growing in a diverse community where some people feel devalued by other people because of cultural heritage, where there is often debate about what language citizens should speak, who belongs here and who doesn’t, and what rights extend to whom. I want to see the people of my city the way God sees Tucson, and see good things happen because our church is willing to be God’s people outside of cultural norms.

Okay, my last post had an item marked “1.” but didn’t go on. My second response to Robinson Crusoe is that fear is no way to live.

There’s this one moment in the book, after Crusoe has spent years and years developing the island into a suitable habitat, when everything changes: he sees a footprint in the sand. After that, he moves from innovation to protection, from explorer to defender—and he doesn’t know anything more than someone else walked on the isolated beach.

He doesn’t know anything about that person, but he immediately reads the footprint as a threat to his existence and begins to let fear govern his decision-making. Before that, he is productive. He takes chances and ventures attempts. After, he lowers his risk-taking and stays inside more. He lives on an island and he stays at home. That is no way to live.

The video I linked to is from Second Mile’s Iron & Iron Retreat (thanks, Marco, for your cinematography). It shows the zipline (climb a 40ft wall, strap yourself to a steel cable, and jump) and the Leap of Faith (climb a 25ft telephone pole, stand on that telephone pole, aim for the trapeze bar, and jump). Those are fear-inducing scenarios (well, unless you’re Daniel, who you’ll see hanging upside down on the trapeze by his feet).

I remember rumblings before the retreat of guys not really wanting to risk the ropes course, but, once we got there, everybody strapped on the harnesses and climbed up whatever they told us to climb. I know I didn’t want to leave that weekend saying I skipped the ropes course, and I think I am learning something about fear because of it.

Once you’re up the wall to the zipline, they attach your harness to the cable and then explain your options.

1. You can sit on the little ledge and push off.
2. You can jump.

If you jump, you’re supposed to aim for this small pine try kind of off-center from the line itself. That’s so you don’t hit the ledge on the way out. Before the explanation, I had been trying to think of how nice the view was up there, but that was just masking the reality that I would soon leave the tower via a harness around my waist. When I heard the thing about the pine tree, I turned everything in my head off except: Aim for the pine tree.

My turn: duck under wire that serves as a rail, locate pine tree, jump at pine tree, zoom down the zipline with arms out, feeling the unfamiliar freedom of traveling via nothing but a harness around my waist.

I said I am learning something because I can see the pine tree and the zipline being applicable to parts of my life right now, but I think I’m letting fear of the unknown into my decision-making. I’m standing at the top of the tower thinking about the view, but wondering about the jump. I know that fear is no way to live, but it’s easy to see that in the pages of a book or when you’re concentrating on a real pine tree on a ropes course.

I started reading Robinson Crusoe in my 18th Century Literature class at Emporia State. I finished it a couple of weeks ago. My review: Finally.

Okay, I have more thoughts than that. I like to read fiction because of the scope the stories allow me to see. I watched a man’s life on an island in a small timeframe. Granted, it took me two attempts a few years apart to finish this book, but Crusoe was on the island for twenty-eight years. I get to learn from how he dealt with conflict without being marooned or fashioning clothes out of goatskin.

1. Robinson Crusoe is a book about work. He doesn’t spend his time whining and complaining about his lot in life; He gets down to business. This book is filled with descriptions of how he builds and fortifies dwellings, cultivate crops, hunts and breeds animals, cooks meals, hews planks and canoes, weaves baskets, throws pots, and generally transforms the island from wilderness into civilization—all by himself.

I liked that about this book. Sometimes his projects take months or even years. He’s patient and diligent. He sees that he’s a guy on an island, so he’s going to have to make living on this island work until he doesn’t live on the island anymore.

I wasn’t marooned while I read this book, but sometimes I do feel like I’m on an island and the only way to get off is by a fragile vessel I put together with meager tools.

I told Dan at community group a couple weeks ago that I felt like God reminded me that the things he has been teaching me over the past year-plus are still true, that he is still God, and that I should keep pondering the path of my feet. This part of my life is about civilizing the wilderness, providing and building and preparing for the future.

I got this book from my sister-in-law either for Christmas a year ago or my birthday a year and a half ago. I can’t remember which. It ended up on my shelf of not-yet-read books until Eric suggested that our community group read it. I thought that seemed convenient since I already owned it. Everybody else ordered theirs and I started reading it quickly to make sure I know what is coming when we all dive in together.

Here are my overall thoughts:

This is a book about things people who pay close attention to the Bible pick up on. I saw John Piper’s main theme in there, as well as the same mode of thinking that Rob Bell focused on in his first speaking tour.

I’m looking forward to the discussions because this book will challenge us in our big overarching modes of thinking as well as the small details that make up our lives.

I underlined a lot of sentences. A lot.

This is a good book for us to read now because our church is studying Acts and Crazy Love is about looking simply and objectively at what God says following him is about, which is what happens when the church starts in Acts.

I like the way Francis Chan interacts with the Bible. He comes up with little experiments or exercises while he’s reading. He’s active.

I kind of rushed through the book this time so I’d have the whole thing under my belt when we got going, but we’re going to read through it one chapter at a time so I’ll have more thoughts when I slow down and dig in to each piece.