Tag Archives: birthday

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A Prayer at 32

For the glory of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Spirit at work among us:

For another year of life – for breath in my lungs and a pulse in my veins and a heart that beats at a tempo I do not set – I am thankful and offer my praise to you. You know better than any human how difficult my thirty-first year was. But just as you are the Redeemer, you are also the God of new beginnings. You know my struggles and my anxieties, just as you know my hopes and the inmost desires of my heart. You know that, despite all the blessings that attended me over the last 365 days, it was a joy to write “was” up above.

You are the God of my salvation, and this grace is of old. Today, however, I look to you as the God of new beginnings – the One whose mercy is new every morning, whose redemption is as steady and faithful as the sun that runs the sky. I ask that thirty-two will find me faithfully serving you in a church, growing as a father of two little girls, and as a husband to a wife who is no doubt an extension of your grace as well as your guidance. The psalmist writes, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Beautiful savior, you told your disciples “whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.” Let the delight I seek in you cultivate those desires in a manner that pleases you, and may what I ask of you each day be in genuine humility and authentic faith.

Do not be far from me, O God. As I seek to draw near to you, may you stoop low that I may glimpse your countenance and know your peace, for it is my very life – my one need in a swirling sea of wants.

You know the number of breaths my lungs will take, how may times my blood will pulse through this body, and how many beats are left for this heart. Should another 365 days come and go and I find myself still a sojourner in this world, may these words ring as true on that day as they do today.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever, world without end. Amen.

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The Big 3 … Oh!

I was thinking recently about the ramifications of turning thirty, which is happening today as I write this. A lot of people freak out when they encounter their thirtieth candle, and a few may even go so far as to begin age-denial before it is really warranted (that should happen a decade later, I think). On Friends, Joey weeps and cries to the heavens not only at his own thirtieth, but at each of his friends’. With all the trepidation and anxiety of turning thirty, one would think the transition was an excruciating transformation on par with David Naughton’s sudden lycanthrophizing in An American Werewolf in London. In reality, I don’t feel much different today, and I haven’t noticed any extra hair on my palms or the gradual emergence of a uni-brow.

I was explaining to a friend that thirty doesn’t seem so old when you avoid the big picture perspective. In other words, as long as I only consider myself no longer twenty-nine, the change seems hardly significant. However, were I to consider the cold, hard truth that my twenties – an entire freakin’ decade! – are over … well then, that might cause my stomach to lurch or compel me to curl up into a fetal position in mournful denial of what is taking place.

The other day, as I walked the dogs along the strips of grass between the plowed fields that surround the farm on which we live, I told God I was sorry for the way I lived my twenties. Specifically, I confessed that I had spent the bulk of my twenties living quite selfishly, not to mention lazily. Sure, there were good moments: the summer of ’03 before seminary, which was the last time I can remember feeling comfortable singing praise songs in the car, May of ’05 when I was ushered into the richness of the Church’s liturgical tradition courtesy of the monks at Christ in the Desert, and that one shining day in April of ’07 when I made a vow and swore to keep it. I believe these were sacramental moments, times when God and I met together in perfect allegiance. However, I have come to realize that in between these good moments are a plethora of days in which I rejected His sacramental nature, where I turned a deaf ear to His song, where I cast my eyes away from his wonder.

There were too many days lived within the bleak, black tunnel of my world, rather than the vast, rolling vista of His landscape.

I prayed to God that this new decade of life – should I be blessed with another full set of ten years – would find me turning aside from myself and falling graciously into His purposes.

May it be so for me now, on this day, and for you as well, no matter what day, year or decade in which you find yourself.

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29

Yesterday was the first day of Advent. Yesterday was my birthday. Over the last few weeks, there were times when I perceived a deep connection between these two things. Specifically, the desire to wake up from a life that has begun to run rough on the rails. As another year opens and another page is turned, and I find the story has not progressed as far as I would like, I take comfort in Advent’s provision of a deep, evolving hope in the approach of salvation. Oftentimes, as one gets older, birthdays lose their sense of wide-eyed, sugar-high celebration, and progress (or, perhaps, regress) to a sense of anxiety not over age exactly, but over the feeling that the years that came before have been wasted. I hope this is not the case. The doctrine of the Incarnation – that God has offered a way to make even the most mundane and earth-bound things holy –  is certainly a help on the inauguration of my twenty-ninth year.

Coming to Germany has put a strain on many things, most of which I unknowingly took for granted. The main one is friendship. Despite the fact that in my last few years in Houston I never felt deeply connected to one friend, let alone a group, I do recognize that I had some very close friends, both in that city and in places nearby. These were people that I could count on, who I knew to be genuinely interested in me (as I was in them), and who I trusted would seek to include me in the special moments of their lives. The tryptophan-laced vapor of the recent Thanksgiving holiday is waning, but I do wish to express, here on this blog, my appreciation for several good friends: Stevie, Jenny, Chris, Chad, Andy, Andrew, Audrey, Phil, Hazel, Austin, Bonnie, Kyle, Jenny, Daniel, Kristen, Seth, Josh, Grayson, Andrew, Sabrina, Paul, Taylor. Thank you, all, for caring.

It would seem things are not so easy here in Germany. While the prospect for strong friendships certainly exists, at times it is as if things have been dropped into a pressure-cooker. Too many people, to little time to sort it all out amidst the stresses of life in a different country, continent and culture. In truth, I do not feel close to anyone here in Germany, even though there are many gracious people here, and politeness is rampant. Yet, under the surface, I feel that things are already sectioning off, like blocks of Arctic ice breaking apart and drifting slowly and steadily away from each other, and if Leigh and I haven’t made the mad leap onto one of these floating chunks, we might be left alone on our own, and soon find ourselves far out to sea, by ourselves. Often, the most frustrating thing for us is that, while we know the responsibility is our own to take such a leap, we don’t see a lot of people offering a helping hand to pull us onto their flow, or even the consistency of a welcoming smile. And who wants to float the vast, frozen ocean alone?

We all have autobiographical songs. This is a truth my friend Grayson pronounced to me several years ago. Each person has at least one song in which the lyrics ring true, unique to his or her existence. However, there are also autobiographical songs that mean something to us if only for a season. Right now, I cannot stop listening to the Chris Thile version of The Strokes’ “Heart in a Cage.” With each passing day, the loneliness weighs heavier, and standing beneath the strain is not a position that affords much joy. In truth, I do feel as if my heart is in a cage. It beats out life, but whether through circumstances I have created by my own attitude, opinions, or social interaction, or because of the simple fickleness of others (I often assume the former), the life that is pumped in and out rattles alone in a cage. I believe the joy of community is found in the opportunity to spill our messes onto other people without grudges being held, simply because the very next day that person might very well splatter on me. However, right now, it seems Leigh and I have no one on whom we can spill.

Abraham Joshua Heschel writes of the “light in the cage,” a moment when we wake up to the reality that there is a much wider, much brighter horizon for us, and we choose to plunge into it and probe its depths. For me, a new twenty-nine year old, this is the magic of the Incarnation. I cling to this. I plunge into Advent … for dear life.

 

“Heart In A Cage”

Oh the heart beats in its cage

Well I don’t feel better when I’m fucking around

And I don’t write better when I’m stuck in the ground

So don’t teach me a lesson ’cause I’ve already learned

Yeah the sun will be shining and my children will burn

Oh the heart beats in its cage

I don’t want what you want and I don’t feel what you feel

See I’m stuck in a city but I belong in a field

Yeah we got left, left, left, left, left, left, left

Now it’s three in the morning and you’re eating alone

Oh the heart beats in its cage

All our friends, they’re laughing at us

All of those you loved you mistrust

Help me I’m just not quite myself

Look around there’s no one else left

I went to the concert and I fought through the crowd

Guess I got too excited when I thought you were around

Oh he gets left, left, left, left, left, left, left

I’m sorry you were thinking; I would steal your fire

The heart beats in its cage

Yes the heart beats in its cage