Done with taxes!

Woo hoo!

We are seeing crazy things all over the world right now: uprisings and earthquakes and droughts and unrest.  All of these things bring chaos while they are happening, but let us remember the after-effects as well.


I just finished reading an update from the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) describing the desperate refugee situation as thousands of Libyans are flooding into Tunisia, overwhelming the aid infrastructure.  As we pray for peace in our world, please include the many people in Libya, in Côte d'Ivoire, in New Zealand, all over the world--currently more than 43 million worldwide--who have been left without anywhere to go. 

Books (sort of)

I was at a big chain bookstore yesterday, and there was an entire shelving unit devoted to "New Paranormal Romantic Teen Fiction" ... I didn't  know whether to laugh or cry.

I Lie in Pieces Before Thee

O God, may Thy Spirit speak in me that I may speak to Thee. I have no merit, let the merit of Jesus stand for me. I am undeserving, but I look to Thy tender mercy. I am full of infirmities, wants, sin; Thou art full of grace.

I confess my sin, my frequent sin, my wilful sin; all my powers of body and soul are defiled: a fountain of pollution is deep within my nature. There are chambers of foul images within my being; I have gone from one odious room to another, walked in a no-man's-land of dangerous imaginations, pried into the secrets of my fallen nature.

I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself; I have no green shoot in me nor fruit, but thorns and thistles; I am a fading leaf that the wind drives away; I live bare and barren as a winter tree, unprofitable, fit to be hewn down and burnt. Lord, dost Thou have mercy on me?

Thou hast struck a heavy blow at my pride, at the false god of self, and I lie in pieces before Thee. But Thou hast given me another master and lord, Thy Son, Jesus, and now my heart is turned towards holiness, my life speeds as an arrow from a bow towards complete obedience to Thee. Help me in all my doings to put down sin and to humble pride. Save me from the love of the world and the pride of life, from everything that is natural to fallen man, and let Christ's nature be seen in me day by day. 

Grant me grace to bear Thy will without repining, and delight to be not only chiselled, squared, or fashioned, but separated from the old rock where I have been embedded so long, and lifted from the quarry to the upper air, where I may be built in Christ for ever.

- "Heart Corruptions," a Puritan Prayer from The Valley of Vision

Weather!

I wish I could better describe it.

Everything that was white--that is, almost everything, from the snow-covered ground to the snow-smothered trees to our snow-coated coats to the snow-filled air--surreally suspended in purple lightning-light, just before a chest-hollowing thunderclap sounded overhead.

Thunderstorms and snowstorms.  A beautiful combination I had not before experienced.

We currently have several inches of snow and more falling...

Bread

Thanks to my Oregon-siblings gifting me with a bread-making book for Christmas, I have been baking bread like a crazy person.  I actually don't eat sandwhich-type bread too much, so in bread books I go straight for the fun and unusual ones.  Braided breads are a particular favorite, just because they're so darn pretty.

My favorite of the moment, though?  Chopped apple bread.  You make this lovely yeast dough, roll it out, fold apples and raisins and walnuts and brown sugar into it, then hack the whole thing into random little pieces and scoop the fragments into a bread pan.  The resulting bread is fluffy and apple-y and delicious.  And the hacking-to-bits part is wickedly satisfying.

I have been making it far too often.  Good thing I'm finding people to foist my baking upon.

Learning to Pray

"To learn to pray" sounds contradictory to us. Either the heart is so overflowing that it begins to pray by itself, we say, or it will never learn to pray.  But this is a dangerous error, which is certainly very widespread among Christians today, to imagine that it is natural for the heart to pray.  We then confuse wishing, hoping, sighing, lamenting, rejoicing--all of which the the heart can certainly do on its own--with praying.  But in doing so we confuse earth and heaven, human beings and God.  Praying certainly does not mean simply pouring out one's heart.  It means, rather, finding the way to and speaking with God, whether the heart is full or empty.  No one can do that on one's own.  For that one needs Jesus Christ.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prayerbook of the Bible

"Whether the heart is full or empty."  Sometimes I think we forget that prayer--being a privilege, a mystery, and an altogether crazy concept--is also a discipline.  It's something we have to practice, and to learn.  And that those times we sit down to pray and feel devoid of words or prayers to offer, we should pray anyway.  And can pray anyway, because, really, prayer isn't about us.  And it certainly doesn't originate in us.  It's a picture of grace that we get to pray at all.

I'm glad we get to pour out our hearts, too, though, when they're sighing and rejoicing and all that.  ...And that we have a really patient teacher.

Monk by the Sea

I found this painting, Monk by the Sea (Caspar David Friedrich, 1809), this week:

It's now my computer's wallpaper.

If any of you are into randomly looking at beautiful works of art, I highly recommend The Web Gallery of Art, which has high resolution images of thousands of pre-20th century pieces (with background/explanations).

When I find myself wanting to flee technology and find refuge in the unspoiled (well, relatively unspoiled) natural world of the pre-industrial age, I console myself with such things: the access we have to the world's artistic contributions--visual, literary, and musical; across time and geography--is astounding.  I suppose there are in fact privileges that come with 21st century life.  (Okay, hygienic, medical, and educational practices are a bit better, too...  And maybe a few other things.  But think of the night skies you would have been able to see.)