Rejection in continuity

I work in academia and my application for tenure was rejected today. I've worked very hard and this has been the worst year of my professional life. The first two years I worked seven days a week and was given great praise. Then through a series of unfortunate events I was accused of intimidation, anti-semitism, anti-Catholicism, mismanaging State funds, sexual harassment, etc. A formal investigation cleared me of it all, except purchasing time pieces unwisely and getting red in the ears when I'm frustrated. It found that many in my staff had fabricated the accusations and outright committed insubordination. Over the last six months my work has been seen as stellar. And yet, what should have been in the bag, must wait at least another year. I can't get out of the hole.

As my boss shut his office door to tell me the news, I was thinking about the daily office. By his demeanor I knew the outcome before he said a word. This morning part of the daily office was to pray for those in authority and those who are influenced by me. I had prayed for people responsible for the tenure rejection and those who had inflicted such pain on me. God would have been on my mind during this conversation regardless, but I like that there was a continuity between the daily office and real life. I also had this tension of feeling somehow duped into praying for people that would ultimately slap me again. I'm embarrased to say that I really don't want their best right now. Not that I want ill for them, but I'm tired and feel as if my career is in the hands of vindictive humans with an ax to grind, not the God who called life of chaos. It's a fleeting feeling and something more orthodox in terms of forgiveness and love will fill the silly gap soon, but for now I'm not sure what tomorrow's prayer will look like.

It's probably not as much about tenure as the frustration of not being able to "just be" that I mentioned in an earlier blog. If doing my best continues a deficit, what hope is there?

Add a bit of audio to the mix

A little fuller depth and the Hawthorn possibility

I found myself thinking multiple times today about this morning's time with the Lord. Interestingly, it was a pretty tough day and I'm not feeling all that well. I'm not sure that I thought more often of God today, but I think the range of thought was a little fuller and perhaps the standard was raised just a tad.

In another instance, I wonder if some of it might be the Hawthorn Effect where putting concerted attention in any devotional activity would yield neat results.

Liturgy of "today" (and tongues)

Today started a new series of liturgy for the Daily Office. It was amazingly relevant and as powerful as some of the charismatic and intimate moments I've had with the Lord. I've even found that tongues can have a part in it.

I found for today a sense of creed or purpose that I am a part of. The Daily Office as work of Gospel and Paul Tillich's notion that life is a dialectic of estrangement and reunion with God work strongly in my heart today.

Daily Office as Gospel

Recently, I was at the Emergent Conversation Theological Conference at Yale with Miroslav Volf. There has been something about the Daily Office that has rang true, but I couldn't put my finger on it until this evening. At the conference, Volf talked about being "psychologized" as opposed to being presented with Gospel during many church services in his life. I've been pondering this over the last couple of weeks. I can't say I have a great definition of this, but in the Daily Office, I find an opportunity to refresh what the Gospel means as ritual and conversely experience God deeply. Almost like living out the Apostle's Creed with God touching and changing in the process.

George Guiver in the book Company of Voices connected the dots with Gospel and the Daily Office in the power of anamnesis ("remembrance... to call forth the actual presence here and now of the person and deeds commemorated...), how it helps reinforce our place in the world, helps us to not forget our beliefs, redefines our understanding of time (rather than tagging random events into a string of chronology which is out of control and featureless/helpless/hopeless, the Daily Office provides a pattern and continutity with time that connects us to God's cosmic incarnation and redemption in Christ), and as we grow in God our understanding of scripture and His ways grow. I love the section, "It (Daily Office) acts like stitching along the join between the two dimensions, each stitch forcing us to hold together both history and the eternal in our daily loves. It will not let us forget that other time - the time of... Jesus which is ever present in the eternal time of God."

Perfection and experience

So I’ve been struggling with the daily office. And I’m not sure why. The actual experience has been fantastic. I’ve found myself growing struggling, and approaching things a little different in my day-to-day life. But at the same time, I’m finding that I want to protect the time for the daily office in a similar way that I may have wanted to before as I do Bible study or any other devotional discipline that I’ve had with the Lord. And what I find it is that when I’m in that mode it’s all or nothing. So if I’m behind with time or I can’t get to the daily office first thing in the morning, I will just don’t do it. What will happen is that once I miss the first daily office, the second daily office is easier to miss and the third is even easier, and then I would easily get into this pattern of not doing them. I wonder if I need to “protect the time.” Or struggle with the sacred nice within time a bit.

I was reading in Rob Bell’s book The Velvet Elvis that our joy and God’s joy are the same thing. It gives God joy to provide us with joy. And I was thinking about how that works for the daily office or any devotion; this sense of segmenting life from the sacred ties with God. I’ve been influenced greatly by the “Emergent Conversation” and want to see how that impacts my theology and love for God. There’s a great emphasis in that movement to destroy the barrier between the sacred and the secular. In some cases I struggle with that and in others I find great beauty in it. For example, twenty minutes ago I was about to start the daily office for the afternoon and my friend Vic called. I felt this tug between the “doing God’s work through the daily office “and talking to my friend. When in reality there was this continuity with God in both those streams of the daily office and talking to my friend. So I found myself reflecting on that quote of joy from Rob Bell and taking great pleasure in talking to my friend.

So I am about to do the daily office and am about five behind on the mid-day liturgy. But, I am excited and to look forward to doing it and to have the evening daily office as well. This will be the last of the first liturgies within the Wee Worship book. I’m kind of sad because I have grown to appreciate them so much. But also see the promise of going to the second series of devotionals.

I am dictating this into my recording system and then will edit it through my Mac computer. I’m finding parallels between the process of using the voice record for journaling and performing the daily office. My first journal entry on this blog talked a little about this. But haven’t used it since and am finding that I want to perfect the process before I engage the process. And I think this is a dramatic shortcoming on my part. I feel like this same type of pattern persists with the daily office and other disciplines with the Lord. I want to have my arms around it all, the process, before engaging it. I find that God is at the center, but it’s more theoretical than experiential because I don’t want to fail.

Being, Existentialism, and silliness

Last night I chose not to do the Daily Office. I could rationalize it, but in the end, I just didn't want to. I am finding it is important to do. Not so much because it is "The Daily Office" as that it is an intentional time with the Lord. My heart cries out, "No!" I just want to be. Why can't we just be? I am squarely in the Existential camp in that our decisions and actions don't just shape our character, but essentially, metaphysically shape us. But still, I just want to be. Sometimes your head feels disconnected and you find that even a good night's sleep doesn't bring rest. I just want to be.

Pragmatically, I find that in not keeping with the momentum of continual devotions that many of the other areas of my life lack discipline. Conversely it could start in other areas and impact daily devotions. The shame in this is that these are an opportunity to converse, be changed by the living God and to find that I didn't take advantage of this is kind of silly.

Out loud

I feel odd if the Daily Office isn't participated out loud. Perhaps it is the communal feel to it or the reality that ritual should require a unique posture; at least some of the time. I am finding beauty in the structure as it foreshaddows a life of discipline. I suspect that it will help to firm up other disciplines in my life such as fasting, cleaning, reflective eating, and keeping up with homework. If kept with pace of the class, I'm not sure that I'll be able to tell how this impacts overall, but so far so good.

From evening Daily Office to bed

This is the second evening Daily Office I'm about to do. Last night I was disappointed that I didn't prepare for bed prior to it because it was such an encouraging way to fully end the day. Almost a little sanctuary seperating the activity of the day into the being of the night. But I have to admit that when I looked at the time a few mintues ago, my first response was, "Oh, I'd really like to skip."

The Daily Office is now in motion

Monday, February 20th, 2006

This is the start of the Daily Space with God journal. I’m starting the daily office exercises today. I missed the first one which was the morning liturgy and found that it was very difficult to get going. I’m also trying out the voice recorder system as a means of journaling and at least this point am feeling kind of constrained by it. I’ve been playing with the device for a week and I purchased the Wee Worship book, forth incarnation, of liturgies also about a week ago. I have found both to be exciting and yet something that I fear.

I approached the voice recognition system because generally I’ve found that journaling electronically works best for me. Part of me is drawn into the idea of a nice pencil and journal book. But I find that composing electronically is more my style generally. It allows me to compose naturally and is a medium rich in retrieval elements. I’m also toying with the idea of putting this on a blog to include pictures and maybe some of the sound recordings as well .

So why was today difficult getting started? I started reading the preface of the Wee Worship book and it had a lot of practical ideas, ones that make a lot of sense both personally and in the context of a group. These liturgies were written for group, communal experiences, but I found that they are exquisite for his personal times of reflection as well. This is the first time that I’ve done the daily office and I am finding that the Wee Worship experience is probably going to be an amazing one. Why I am a bit reluctant; there are probably more reasons than I even know (opportunities for journaling in the future), but I’m finding that it’s the preparation that is of concern to me. It is an interesting phenomenon to prepare for a quiet time or other devotional time for yourself. The idea of determining what scriptures I will use and what hymns to be sung in being intentional about these things prior to the actual experience is new for me when it comes to you personal devotions. I don’t know why it is such a struggle given that I have a similar expectation for devotion and worship services that are communal in nature such as a Sunday morning service, a prayer service, or a Bible study. But in this case I found it difficult to spend the time to prepare.

So I started with the daytime liturgy of the daily office. Which is centered on Isaiah 35 talking about justice in the relationship of the believer to the poor. I found just in going through the liturgy for the first time that it was kind of exciting. It brought up prayers about humanity that, I’m embarrassed to say, but aren’t necessarily a big part of my prayer life. As a matter fact it is with great rarity that I pray for the homeless or those in poverty or other nations in the world for that matter. So in and of itself I’ve found this exercise to be amazing already even though it’s a little bit off putting the planning.

So at some point I want to talk a little bit about the parallels of approaching the daily office and moving to this arena of using the voice recorder and transcription software. I’m finding interesting parallels and I’m not sure if they’re real or just because I happen to be doing these things at the same time but I think they’ll be beneficial.

The blog begins...

This is the entry that starts my blog/journal though it is actually the second one I have done. I think it’s important to set the tone for the blog. Presently, it is providing a venue to journal for my Hartford Seminary course, Daily Space with God: The Practices of Personal Devotion in Mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Evangelic Traditions.

The course requires us to participate in the Daily Office, Evangelical Quiet Times, and Spiritual Meditation. Each of these practices will take place for three weeks to allow us to get immersed in them. So this blog is the place where I will chronicle my journey. “Chronicle” is a bit formal, but this will be the place where I answer questions like, “Does this practice make a difference?” “Does it help me understand God as the center of my existence in new ways?” “What happens when I fail to keep up the obligations and what is the impact?” “What am I learning about God and myself through these disciplines?” “As Muslim peers are following similar disciplines and we talk about their impact on God, will my faith in Christ be strengthened and changed?”

So I invite your comments and hope that in many ways you will be encouraged or at least challenged by the journey.