What if you could take a dose of medicine that would cure non-clinical depression, crankiness, anxiety, personality complaint disorders, feelings of deprivation, as well as love neuroses? Would you take it? Furthermore, if this medicine was free, had no negative side-effects, caused no drowsiness, did not interact dangerously with other medications, was safe for children, and could be used despite pre-existing diseases of the heart and thyroid, high blood pressure and diabetes, would you use it?

Then, what if you discovered that the cure affected by one dose had measurable impact, and that by taking daily doses, like vitamins, you could keep the cure working?

Is there such a wonder drug? There certainly is. It is called thanksgiving. Being grateful. Giving thanks. When I was a younger woman, with four small children, a husband who was an inner-city pastor, and insufficient funds to manage all this, I decided that my gratitude aptitude was deficient. So I spent three months journaling only prayers of thanks—no requests for those three months, no “gimme-gimme-gimmies”—just a growing list of things God had done for me that I added to each day. The phrase “all good gifts come from God and from Him are all things given” has become a breath prayer, begun long ago, that I repeat over and over. I find myself whispering it in my soul almost unconsciously.

What are the results of developing this “attitude of gratitude”?

The systematic study of positive emotions within psychology only began in the year 2000 due to the fact that this field was mainly focused on the negative impacts of distress. Since then, scientific research has gathered evidence from controlled studies indicating that grateful people experience higher levels of well-being. They are happier, less depressed, less stressed (were you aware that an estimated 90% of health problems doctors see are stress-related?). Grateful people are more satisfied with their lives and social connections. They feel as though they have greater control of their environments, they are more intentional about personal growth, have more purpose in their lives, can reach out for support from other people when they need to do so, and when hit by negative circumstances they can reinterpret and learn from them (this is called resilience, a substantial indicator of emotional and psychological health).

The list of proven impacts from giving thanks goes on and on, and is so lengthy we will end here (except to mention studies indicate that grateful people sleep better!).

As a personal observation, I will testify that the impact of practicing gratefulness was so tremendous on my personality, lifting me from the default position of the icky catalog in the first paragraph, that I have practiced it since every time I turn to work in my prayer journal, which except for rare occasions, is daily. I generally find at least a dozen things I’m grateful for each day. But more than a dutiful practice of developing a helpful habit, I find that now, after decades, there is an inner joy of giving thanks that seems to be going on inside me all the time that I notice only when I turn my attention inward. Perhaps this is what writer David Steindl-Rast, in his book Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, meant when he said, “Prayer is grateful living.”

So if you are really having trouble “gettin’ thru the day,” try thanksgiving. That lovely Scripture from the Psalms is short and sweet, easy to remember; “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.” Psalm 106:1b, NIV.

In order for gratefulness to have lasting effects, however, you will have to make gratitude an attitude—it can’t just be a one time dose that you take. Even pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors sometimes need a week or two to kick in before they have positive impact. Since it takes at least 30 days to break a bad habit as well as to make a good habit, begin by listing all the things you can find for which you are grateful. Try to add to your list every day. I promise, the practice of gratitude will help you defeat the demons that beset you.

Steindl-Rast talks about the person who does not believe in God. If you are in that category, please hear that gratefulness works for people like you just as it works for those who attempt to be devout believers. “Even people whose worldview does not include a divine Giver to whom their thanks can be directed often experience deep gratitude in those moments. They experience it no less strongly than others, even though their gratefulness gets mailed without an address, so to say. In any case, we know from experience that whenever we are truly awake and alive, we are also truly grateful.”

Gratefulness is a medicine that can help you make it through the days. And unlike sleeping pills, soporifics, it actually wakens the inner slumberer, the dormant sleeper, the inattentive snoozer missing the beauty in each moment and the meaning that is in all of living.

It is a medicine that, unlike some, goes down smoothly.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen Mains is part of an international team of men and women heading the Global Bag Project, a microfinance enterprise for women who live in developing areas of the world. The idea is to sell reusable shopping bags, made by Third World bag-makers, to provide sustainable income for them. Visit www.GlobalBagProject.com if you are interested in learning more.

She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Furthermore, Karen is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com, in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published.

One of the worst things that happens to us when we are in pain is that we enter into a kind of isolation room that sometimes seems as though it has no door. Terrible things may happen to all kinds of people, but the pain we feel is our own, no matter how common it may be for others.

In our own pain, we are alone. And if we will let it, that pain will become the sole sucking-force of our being, turning our full attention, our active thoughts, the very meaning of who we are, toward its focus.

Our job is to not let that happen. Sometimes, things are so bad in ordinary life, we just barely make it through the day, but when the day is filled with terrible hurt, no matter what the cause, we now have the additional task added of not letting it consume us.

What makes this worse is that where as once we had a culture that was built on community and interaction, we now because of busyness, the technologies, and the distances we have to go to connect with friends are facing a culture that is being built to enhance isolation.

In an article by Janet Kornblum, USA Today reported that Americans have one-third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago. This is something of a seismic shift. “You usually don’t see that kind of big social change in a couple of decades,” reports Lynn Smith-Lovin, co-author of the study reported in American Sociological Review and professor of sociology at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them. By 2004, that number had dropped to two confidants, and the findings determined that consequently, 25% of Americans have no one in whom to confide.

Smith-Lovin explains, “Close relationships are a safety net. Whether it’s picking up a child or finding someone to help you out of the city in a hurricane, these are people we depend on.”   

The USA Today article makes the point that research has linked social isolation and loneliness to mental and physical illness. If that is the case, can we not also conclude that our mental and physical (and spiritual) health improve when we are socially connected and not living in isolating environments?

So, here’s the thought for this blog: Do not let pain isolate you completely. Do not let it swallow you into itself. Find one friend. Search out an old companion. Join a group. Volunteer where people are present. Put yourself into a happy (and healthy) social environment. Become a member of an accountability group or a recovery program. Just don’t face this terrible season of life by yourself. You can open the door in the isolation room. Don’t stay there so long that you begin to think it’s normal, or you begin to love it.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen Mains, published author with a background in radio and television, has supervised more than 250 Listening Groups that provide a place for people to hear one another and be heard in turn. She leads women’s Retreats of Silence, is a spiritual coach to hundreds, and is the author of the best-selling Open Heart, Open Home, a book about using the home to alleviate the isolation in our culture.

She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

This blog is about—guess what?—getting through the day.

I ask people, “How ya’ doing?” And so often I hear the same response. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day,” people answer. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day.”

Believe me, I know where these folks are coming from. In some circumstances, getting through the day is almost more than any of us can do.

However, at my age (67), I’ve learned a few lessons and have advanced, for the most part, from “jes’ gettin’ thru the day” to attempting to live each day as though it is a minor work of art (some days are major works of art). And yep, some days are just plain blah!—but not many, not many at all.

After years of being in ministry, and after conversation with friends who are on local church staffs, we concluded that some 80% of the people in congregations are facing problems too big for them to handle. For these people, getting through the day is a major undertaking.

Perhaps, some of the things I’ve learned and am still learning, some of the things I’m facing and will face, and some of the life lessons I’m activating, will help that 80% who just don’t know how they’ll make it from day’s beginning to night’s end, not to mention the nights in between.

The first thing I know—I positively know—and have taught to my children, all of whom are adults now and married with children of their own, is that we all have a choice. We can make this a good day or a bad day. We can make it a good life or a bad life.

“Look,” I’ve said umpteen times during the child-raising years. “You have a choice. You can choose to make this a bad day or you can choose to make it a good day.”

As hard as this may seem for those facing horrendous situations, this is a basic interior attitude over which we do have control—we don’t have control over most of the bad things, minor and major, that happen to us. We do have control over how we will respond to it.

If you’re part of the 80% just getting through the day, how are you going to make it a good day, despite the circumstances? Do you want to choose to make it a good day? Or are you going to let all the woes, the worries, the injustices rob and cheat you of a good day and a good life?

Love to hear how some of you defeat the darkness on this most personal of levels—choosing to make it a good day.

Karen Mains
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Karen Mains is a national-award-winning author of more than 26 books. She is involved right now in helping to create a microfinance women’s pilot project in Kenya—the Global Bag Project, which seeks to sell reusable shopping bags made to provide sustainable income to help bag-makers around the world lift themselves from poverty. Her book about the refugee crisis in the world, The Fragile Curtain, won the 1982 Christopher Medal, which is awarded to works that uphold the highest values of the human spirit.

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published. Additionally, she and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Also, Karen is preparing for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreat, which is still open for registration (see the Hungry Souls Web site for more information; click "Retreats of Silence").
 

Yesterday morning, I and my grandson, Elias John Mains, skipped church. It was an exquisite September day, the ground kissed with early light; David, my husband, is overseas in Kenya. A busy week had prevented me from making time for my seasonal gathering—clipping tall swamp grass, beaded dock and fuzzy cattails that I combine with artificial sunflowers from Hobby Lobby and realistic-looking but plastic pumpkins for the arrangement on my front porch.

It’s all too easy to cram grandkids into our adult schedules and something told me that the holiest way I could pass this morning with this grandchild was to go out into the fields and gather—Elias is delighted with the natural world. “Let’s go clip cattails,” I said.

“Oh, Nina,” he said. “I love cattails!”

So we did. We found stands of tall grass, clipped enough to fill the natural wood basket I had hauled home one year from West Virginia. We found the cattail pond, stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast, then parked our car to take a walk down the Prairie Path—the old Chicago, Aurora & Elgin train line that has now been turned into a pedestrian path for strollers and joggers (and for bikers and for the few horseback riders who still exist in our area). We brought the hand-clippers and began snipping enough late summer weeds, some blooming and some past bloom, sections of curling vines and interesting branchets—field daisies, rose hips, all wild things happily living their cycle of life out in the proper season of life.

These all were for a bouquet—Elias pronounced the T. After several false pronunciations, I corrected him and explained that bouquet was a French word and in France, the consonant at the end of the world was not pronounced. “We have a lot of foreign words in our language because people have brought their words with them when they came to America,” I explained. “We think they are English words, and sometimes we speak them in English ways, but we have become so used to them we forget that they are not really English words.”

“Oh, like placate,” Elias responded. He had been studying Julius Caesar in school. “Yes, that is a Latin word, and in Latin, it would be pronounced pla-ca-te,” I explained. Who could have imagined that this walking in the exquisite morning world would have included a discussion on etymology with a nine-year old? This is why I love spending time with children; they are always so much smarter then we think they are.

We watched a flock of Canada geese fly overhead and form a V-wedge. We noticed grasshoppers hopping in the sunshine. We clipped enough for two bouquets (pronounced the French way now)—one large bouquet and one smaller. Elias is a chatterbox with many intriguing thoughts bouncing around in his mind—a startling good mind. So, I love to get him alone, relaxed, and without distractions. I never quite know where our conversations are going to go. Tracing our way back the Prairie Path, he slipped his hand into mine and we carefully watched for bikers who were now more frequent as the day aged. “Biker behind us,” Elias warned. “I saw a flash of metal.”

When we returned home we went to the back patio and arranged the larger plants in the earthenware jug and the smaller in the Chinese teapot—Elias took joy in filling the containers, and I slipped in some late summer roses from my garden.

“They look good, don’t they Nina?” Yes, indeed. Our hodgepodge of late summer cuttings looked great. I hoped I would have time to gather a larger, more spectacular group sometime in the week. “You know, Elias. Everything God has made is beautiful in its own way.” And that is true for those who have eyes to see, who take the time to attend, and who care to step in the rhythm of life, each season at its turning, each month in its appropriate calendar place, each week, each day—morning, noon and evening.

Each creature—animal or plant or human—is beautiful in its own created way.

I am a person who finds the Presence of God in the natural world. I am enthralled, filled with awe, full of praise in my garden, at the seaside, before a grand mountain and walking along the Prairie Path in Illinois with a nine-year-old grandson’s hand in mine.

It is beautiful.

Come to this dance that is life, join in the steps, join hands with others who walk beside you and sing the praises of the One who teaches us the steps. (And if you can, take a child’s hand as you do.)

    I danced in the morning when the world was begun,
    And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
    And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth
    —at Bethlehem I had my birth.
   
    Dance, then, wherever you may be.
    I am the Lord of the Dance said he,
    And I lead you all, wherever you may be
    And I lead you all in the dance, said he.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published. Additionally, she and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Ken Medema, the Christian musician, is blind. When I heard him sing this song decades ago, I was moved by the meaning of the text. I am still moved. I hope this dancing metaphor has stimulated strong images and associations for you. Today, please consider the question: Who is it who is extending the invitation to you to dance?

    She asked me to dance and I’d never tried dancing before.
    I had visions of everyone laughin’ us right off the floor.
    No, I protested, it just wouldn’t be any good.
    She gently insisted and finally I told her I would.

    Unforgettable, she was a fresh breath of Spring on a cold winter’s day.
    Unforgettable, she taught this singer to sing in a whole new way.

    Well, he asked me to dance and I’d never tried dancing before.
    I had visions of saints and angels laughin’ us right off the floor.
    No, I protested, it just wouldn’t be any good.
    He gently insisted, and finally I told him I would.
   
    Unforgettable, well, He was the coming of Spring on a cold winter’s day.
    Unforgettable, for He taught this singer to sing in a whole new way.

    The coming of Spring on a cold winter’s day…
    taught me to sing in a whole new way…

There is a moment in every Christian journey when the reality of Who is extending this invitation just hits us between the eyes. This One wants us to be in step with Him—not just pacing to theological formulations and ecclesiastical schedules. He holds us and there is rhythm in the motion, laughter in the pure joy of stepping together, love in His eyes.

I hope, if you have not, that you will reach that reality soon. Someone has extended a hand to you.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “Wannabe (Better) Writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

The film Signs, starring Mel Gibson, is a profound meditation on the loss of faith. Employing the plot device of an alien invasion (not my favorite narrative arc), the story looks at the Hess family, which has been shaken by the brutal accidental death of its mother and wife.

Graham Hess, the father, an Episcopalian priest, has forsaken his calling and no longer believes, but the alien visitation forces him to look at issues from God’s perspective. The one scene in the film I find breathtaking is where the Hess family spends a night of terror in their boarded up farmhouse. When the attic is breached by an advance alien contingent, the family of father, uncle and two children retreat to the basement. This trauma sets off a severe asthma attack in Morgan, the son. The father holds his son, the child’s lungs swelling as he struggles for breath and life. “Breathe with me,” the father says. In and out, in and out, they labor for breath together. “Don’t be afraid, Morgan. Breathe with me. You and I are the same. Together, breathe with me.”

If you haven’t already seen this already, you need to rent this video.

During a time when I was meditating on Christ’s words from John 15:4, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you,” I thought about the Apostle John with his head on Christ’s breast during the Last Supper. When your head is that close to the body of another person, you can hear the heartbeat, feel the pulse; you are aware of breath being inhaled and exhaled.

I realized that when I pray, I should be resting my head against the breast of this One. I should hear the heartbeat, feel the feathery aspiration on my face. Not only this, I remembered Christ’s words from John 14:20, “I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” When my head is on the breast of Christ (through meditation and prayer), my being tucked within His embrace, Christ’s head is also on the breast of God. The Son is enfolded within the embrace of the Father, and I within the embrace of the Son. Breathe, they say to me through the Holy Spirit. And in prayer we breathe together; in and out, in and out. You and I are the same. Don’t be afraid. Together. Breathe with me.

Sometimes life strikes blows. Terrors over which I have no control torment me. I fight for enough air. If I can just remember this sacred rhythm, one so subtle it is easy to forget, but if I can just remember to become one with Christ who is one with God, then it is as easy as breathing in and out, in and out. I have moved into the heart of the perichoresis koinonia, the theological term that infers that the Trinity is a fellowship of Three Holy Dancers; we have moved into the deepest part of the sacred Dance, where God is.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “Wannabe (Better) Writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Falling asleep each night has been called “the little death.” In a way, we practice for the final death that will eventually beckon to us all. Night after night we give ourselves to God and relinquish the failures and successes, the frustrations and delights of each day into His hands. The childlike prayer many of us once prayed holds profound meaning despite its simplicity:

Each night before we fall asleep we should prepare our souls to meet God. We tuck away the cares and concerns of the day and, like Christ, we find ways to pray, “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit.”

I have noticed that when I put my soul to bed each night (in contrast to watching videos, reading secular books in bed, or just flopping down exhausted) my rest is more tranquil. If I wake, I wake in prayer. Then I even slip into morning prayer more naturally. It is a 24-hour cycle I fight to establish and maintain.

Arthur Paul Boers writes in The Rhythm of God’s Grace, “Evening prayer is a small death; we surrender ourselves into God’s hands. The morning is a small rebirth and resurrection. We often give thanks for a new day and its opportunities. This dying and rising is relived in each daily cycle. Thus, as we observe the morning and evening rhythm, we also have opportunity to live deeply and enter into the most basic and important truths of our faith.”

A book of Daily Offices, or fixed-hour prayers, helps us establish this evening/morning rhythm. I love this nighttime prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps it will be useful to you this evening.

“Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give Your angels and saints charge over those who sleep. Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your suffering ones. Shield Your joyous ones, and all for your love’s sake. Amen”

Rest well tonight, beloved ones. Learn the sleep cycle practice of putting your soul to bed with God.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “wannabe writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Today is Tuesday. One crucial question we need to learn to ask is: How are we going to make Sunday the best day of the week? What do we need to do to make sure we are ready to observe it with a Sabbath heart? Establishing this rhythm of looking to Sunday in the middle of the week makes the whole cycle of the week richer. Here are a few quotes from the book Seven Days of Faith by R. Paul Stevens. Perhaps they will serve to frame your thinking.

“For many people, even the attempt to experience Sabbath can become work. The church unwittingly encourages the toxic mix of compulsive ministry and utilitarian spirituality. … Hardly ever is a person commended for refusing an office. Doing is considered more important than being. Sunday is often the most hectic and stressful day of the week, the least restful.”

“Sabbath and leisure have much in common: they are both personally restorative, enjoyable, non-utilitarian, and playful. But there are significant differences. Leisure is a matter of personal choice; Sabbath is a divine law (Exodus 20:8). Leisure is perceived as avocational; Sabbath is vocational—part of the response of our entire persons to the call of God. Leisure is directed mainly to self, while Sabbath is directed more to God. Therefore, leisure is more concerned with pleasure than meaning, while Sabbath is more concerned with meaning than pleasure. Both are aesthetic, but leisure tends toward hedonism while Sabbath invites contemplation. In sum, leisure is more often a diversion from Sabbath than a means of experiencing Sabbath, and this I think is reasonable to call it pseudo-Sabbath. It cannot give us a day of rest.”

“Sabbath seems to be a waste of time, but in reality it is the redemption of time.”

“In the deepest sense, we do not keep Sabbath; the Sabbath keeps us. Sabbath was intended to be the leisured but intentional experience of reflection on the source and goals of our life on earth. Therefore, it keeps us turned toward God and heaven bound. We make ourselves available to the gift of Sabbath precisely because we are not capable on our own of sustaining our orientation toward God and our heavenly direction. So we are left with a biblical irony: we must explore how to enter that rest. Some form of Sabbath is not an optional extra for the New Testament Christian. It is fundamental to spiritual health, and even to emotional health.”

My experience in attempting to keep Sabbath in a basically Sabbath-less world has taught me that these observations are true. Keeping Sabbath keeps us, but because it is such a countercultural activity, we have to keep keeping at it. This holy rhythm all too easily slips out of our grasp. How frequently myself thinking, “Oh, we’re losing our Sabbath-practice again!” So some time on Wednesday/Thursday, I remind myself to plan the weekend—not what gardening I will get done, or what event we might attend, but first of all, how we will make Sunday the best day of the week. Then all the rest can follow.


Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “wannabe writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

I like the thought that Dorothy Bass introduces in her book Receiving the Day in which she states that, for Christian women and men, part of the rhythm of stepping well in life’s dance is learning to set established times aside each day for attention to God. Doing this, day after day, she maintains, not only helps us to see life more clearly but also to discover that we ourselves are being seen. “The idea of doing something with regularity arises from the concept of the regula, or rule,” she writes. “A monastery is governed by an official written rule that serves as the basis for the covenant among community members, making possible a certain way of life and expressing the convictions implicit in that way of life. Rules do their work amid the humblest details of daily life: they direct what time to get up, how to eat, what to do when a stranger comes to the door, and more.”

Since I have been concentrated in this blog on examining the sacred rhythms in my own life, I decided to count up some of the regular practices that have become rhythms in my day. I discovered these below:

1.  Putting a going-to-bed pattern into place so that I don’t just flop exhausted
onto the mattress, but instead, close the day in God’s presence.

2.  Meeting with my husband David on the mornings he is home to read the   Divine Office and also trying to observe this at noontime and late afternoon.

3.  Memorizing Scripture and repeating it to myself when I in the middle of the night.

4.  Attending better to the moments in the world that remind me of God’s creative genius—although I am still jerking myself to awareness. I’m trying to rush less and enjoy more!

5.  Attending Sunday worship service with regula—sometimes we minister during the week in meetings where worship is a central focus. Once, we counted that we had been in 8 worship services! It is easy not to go to church on Sundays when your week has not been at all like the average churchgoers.

6.  Working to re-establish a good Sabbath practice. I’m trying to end Saturday and begin Sabbath/Sunday by attending a Vespers service a nearby church holds at sundown on Saturday. To bed early, rest well, church on Sunday. My question to myself is: How can I make Sunday the best day of the week? My intent is to gather good worship music. We’ve built the classical-music library, but I need to find that church music that stirs the soul for background to the Sabbath experience.

7.  For 38 years I have kept a prayer journal; this is a rhythm that is so familiar, it is easy to overlook it.

I think you get the idea: Intentionally looking at the rhythms in our lives helps us to see where we are “in step” and where we are “out of step.” What are the regular rhythms you have in place or need to put in place so that you can pay attention to God? It is an amazing thing to not only see Him with the eyes of the soul, but to discover that you are, indeed, being seen by Him.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently involved in a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She has just finished a cycle with six “wannabe writers” and is brainstorming the effectiveness of her “Personal Memoir Writing” curriculum with that group. She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

In Jr. High I was not allowed to take part in the social-dancing classes offered by the Physical Education department. Between the position of our church, my father’s work as a faculty member in the music department at Moody Bible Institute (considered the “West Point of Fundamentalism”), and my mother’s involvement as executive secretary to the director of a conservative mission-sending organization, everything weighted me with the preordained conclusion that good Christians don’t dance. I sat out the unit while my peers learned to do-si-do and allemande left. As classmates hastened to the gym in happy herds, I sat alone in study hall.

Several years back, I had good reason to “sit this dance out.” A backache sent me home early from the office on a Friday afternoon, and in the middle of the night, I woke with one thought original and unbidden: I bet this is shingles. Sure enough, the mirror revealed a few patches blooming on my hip, and the charming Convenient Care Center doctor confirmed that, indeed, the herpes virus had been chomping its way along a neural path on the right side of my body and was popping to the surface. She started me on antiviral medication immediately.

“Oh, we’re sorry you have shingles,” commiserated many former sufferers. “They are so painful.”

But due to early treatment (and my inexplicable early inner self-diagnostic), the patches that bloomed on my skin after the first all began to fade. (Those that popped out before medication all blistered and scabbed over and itched and sent off alarums of pain when touched.) Consequently, I tucked down into the guest-room bed, hunkered beneath a feather comforter, and drugged myself into happy slumber with regular doses of Tylenol 3. Being a good Christian woman with a life full of godly projects, endless hospitality events, mentor-writing projects and endless trips on the road, speaking and teaching, this was the best sleep I’d had in decades, and my dreams were not crowded out by a mind so busy it organizes even when I’m resting. I considered this enforced interval one of God’s good gifts to me.

Sitting on the sidelines while the dance swirls around us can be a good gift. We hear things the music often drowns out; we pay attention to thoughts that active rhythms often prohibit. We sleep; we dream. Bobbing in and out of sleep; taking Claritin, ibuprofen, the antiviral, and codeine; and dosing my skin with calamine, I heard this word: “Write. Write out into the culture.” And as if to verify this, articles began forming themselves in my mind, all slanted to a secular readership.

A friend, who has been out of work for nine months, called to commiserate with me that I had been laid low with shingles. I found myself saying, “Oh, please. I needed this rest. Maybe you should look at this period of your unemployment as a gift from God. Do in it the things you don’t ordinarily have enough time to do.”

The interludes in the dance that is our life—when the music changes, or the silence intrudes—can be life-altering. They can be inconvenient, embarrassing, annoying or painful, but after we’ve lived awhile, we begin to understand that they are never outside of God’s intents. Sometimes, we need to stop dancing.

Karen Mains
KM1-38

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Continuing to write for her new Christian blog, with topics relevant to Christian women and men in today's contemporary world. Planning upcoming mentor-writing sessions. Preparing for the upcoming Silent Retreat (see the Hungry Souls Web site for details).

Making Sunday Special by Karen Mains
(back-cover copy)
Author Karen Mains challenges readers to celebrate Sunday with a SABBATH HEART—to make the Lord's Day so special that there are three days of anticipation ... and so meaningful that it continues to nurture for three days afterward.

MAKING SUNDAY SPECIAL is brimful of creative celebrations that take the hassles out of the Day of Rest and restore "the rhythm of the sacred"—practical exercises that will help you fall in love anew with the rest day and with Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath.

Making Sunday Special is available for purchase through Sunday Solutions, the Webstore of Mainstay Ministries.

T. S. Eliot writes in Four Quartets, “Except for the point, the still point,/ There would be no dance,/ And there is only the dance.”

Due to frequent heavy travel schedules, I am sometimes not able to keep in the rhythm of deadlines for blog posts (this, my Christian blog), the free Soulish Food newsletter provided by my ministry, Hungry Souls (http://www.hungrysouls.org). I get bogged down in the comings and goings. Recovering from long trips where I have been away for more than two weeks sometimes takes me days to really get back into my daily swing. However, I am learning that there is a rhythm in presence and in absence. Each one works its own good. Much of the dance of our lives is poised in the pauses.

Henri Nouwen’s remarkable little book The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ, written for those who minister, makes the point that there is a ministry of absence as well as a ministry of presence. “Without this withdrawal,” he writes, “we are in danger of no longer being the way, but being in the way; of no longer speaking and acting in his name, but in ours; of no longer pointing to the Lord who sustains, but only to our own distracting personalities. … The more this creative withdrawal becomes a real part of our ministry the more we participate in the leaving of Christ, the good leaving that allows the sustaining Spirit to come.”

The still point in the dance is the moment when we balance on our toes before plunging into the next step. When I am unable to do what I want to do (like sending Soulish Food out on time), I must remind myself that the Lord is perfectly able to fill the pause with His Presence, and that sometimes this is not a failure on my behalf, but part of the rhythm that is in His mind. This gives me ease to know that the sacred melody to which we step is filled with pattern and emptiness, busyness and quiet, words and silence.

This is an extremely difficult year for people—and for many that is going to take some time to change—until the economy improves. All of us have friends and family who are without jobs. Despair threatens and the loss of material safety-nets is almost unbelievable. No matter how difficult, however, the circumstances of my life I am still choosing to learn the art of dancing. I have made it a point to pray for those who are facing hard choices; I pray that they will step in holy rhythm (not frantic anxiety), trusting that there is a divine pattern working in their behalf.

“If we are indifferent to the art of dancing, we have failed to understand, not merely the supreme manifestation of physical life, but also the supreme symbol of spiritual life.”
Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life

Karen Mains
KM1-34

Other projects involving Karen right now:
Karen Mains is wading through research data gathered from participants in Listening Groups. These groups are small, including three to four people only, and are based on an architecture of silence, listening and questions as response. The growth curve of many participating in these groups seems exceptional, and so Karen and a team of volunteers are looking into why. Karen has been a spiritual coach to many through her years of ministry and is excited about the replication potential of Listening Groups.

She is also eager to get back into her own writing, but is examining the possibilities for online publishing that new technologies offer. Have any creative-writing tips you might offer regarding online publishing?

Advent Retreats of Silence:
Registration is open for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreats. One of the Advent Retreats is for Christian women; the other is designed for both Christian women and men. See the Hungry Souls Web site for details.

We’ve been traveling a lot this year: France with a group of 16 “pilgrims” in October/November 2008; Hot Springs, Arkansas for a Christmas week just with my husband and myself; Phoenix in February 2009 for a working trip with my eldest son and a visit with the “Phoenix” grandkids; three weeks in Kenya in March 2009 for filming regarding the Global Bag Project; two weeks cruising up the Eastern Seaboard and down the New England Coast with grandkids; a week at our annual Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada with 22 friends who are theatre aficionados; a week in the British Virgin Islands as guests of our son-in-law’s parents; then David (without me—thank God) taking off for Kenya for more filming!

I keep hearing myself saying, “I’m not home long enough to get into any rhythm.” This morning, while talk with my adult daughter on the phone, she said exactly the same thing, “I keep getting interrupted so frequently, I can’t strike a rhythm.

It seems to me that, without knowing it, many of us are trying establish some kind of cycling regularity in our days, our weeks, our months, even in our years. We need this outward harmony in order to protect and nurture an inward harmony.

Intriguingly, Christianity is really built on establishing these kinds of rhythms—I time, in daily living, in devotional life, in our worship and friendship. There is a kind of sacred dance available for all of us who feel “out-of-step” in this disjointed world with its scary multitasking responsibilities. Many of my friends, sincere Christian women, comment on this in our Hungry Souls Listening Groups. They say, “I can’t catch my breath, I’m so busy.” “The world (the pace, the schedules) are moving so fast.” “The demands are so daunting.” They are expressing this feeling of not being able to get back into some kind of rhythm.

So let’s examine the “dance” that is life and see if we can discover any ways to be more “in step” with it. Let’s begin with reading Scripture. Many of us fail in keeping a rhythm regarding this primary tool that grows our Christian lives.

One book that has revolutionized my approach to prayer integrated with Scripture is The Word Is Very Near You: A Guide to Praying With Scripture by Martin L. Smith. I highly recommend it. Let me begin “dance classes” with two quotes taken from the book.

“It is one thing to say that prayer is a conversation with God. It is another thing to say that God begins the conversation. But it is yet something else to say that God is a conversation. … Our prayer is not making conversation with God. It is joining the conversation that is already going on in God. It is being invited to participate in the relationships of intimacy between father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is an eternal dance already in full swing, and we are caught up in to it. Prayer is allowing ourselves to join the dance and experience the movements, the constant interplay of the Persons of the Trinity.”

“In what follows we shall concentrate on the single issue of incorporating into our lives a rhythm of meditative prayer. I find the word ‘rhythm’ attractive. For some people the word ‘discipline’ has overtones of unyielding regulation and stern subjection of spontaneity, but rhythm belongs to all organic life. Without rhythm there is no beauty; without rhythm there is chaos. Unless we take responsibility for the patterning of our lives others will dictate to us how to live. In spiritual life we are not striving to subject our lives to a rigid scheme. We are seeking to find those rhythms and patterns which allow each aspect of ourselves to have its rightful place in life and its proper share of our energy. It is absurd to pretend that in the chaos of our secular environments and under the schedules imposed by our work and responsibilities this quest for balance and rhythm can be anything other than a very demanding one.”

NOW, TRY TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION:

Am I stepping in time to God’s sacred rhythms?

My prayers for you are that you will begin to dance! I pray that we will all “get back our rhythm.”


Karen Mains
KM1-20

Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

Is there anything harder to do than to leave home?

Oh, I don’t mean those life-passages that are monumental transitions—going to camp for the summer, leaving for college, moving one’s address to the first rented apartment, following a job across the country, etc.

I mean those more simple departures—getting ready to take off for a family vacation or relocating to the summer home, traveling overseas, or even going to church Sunday after Sunday. Something weird happens in many people’s psyches—nerves get jangled; we think of all the things we haven’t done, and try to get them ALL completed in the week before we travel, or the hours before we are due at worship.

It has taken me many years to learn the art of leaving home. If I’m traveling, either for several days or several months, I really don’t want to come home to a filthy, disorganized house, so I will try to leave it the way I want to find it. Moving four kids, as I often did, through a packing process for a trip will turn any saint into a harridan—and I was never very saintly to begin with. What’s more, most of my travel involved Christian trips. I was traveling on the Christian speaker’s circuit, taking airplane flights because of assignments for religious journals, teaching in small spiritual retreats, or attending board meetings of national not-for-profit religious organizations.

It seems as though my leave-taking should have been a little more filled with equanimity, repose and serenity. In addition, I always forgot something—a crucial hairbrush, toothpaste, a half-slip—which I rarely wear these days, but then, I rarely stand on a platform any more, in a circle of revealing lights in front of hundreds if not thousands of people.

Well—pre-preparation is the key. Instead of rising at 3 a.m. and stuffing clothes into the washer and dryer, and packing my clothes, frantic about not being ready in time, I have one small suitcase with my toiletries always ready to go. I use it as I’m getting dressed the day I travel, and I make sure everything is in it that I need because I’ve checked it out that morning. Now, when I return home, I make a list of what I’ve used up, put the sticky note on the bathroom mirror, and don’t store that suitcase until I’ve purchased the missing items. A Nigerian saying reminds us, “The day on which one starts out is not the time to start one’s preparation.”

For long complicated trips where I will be crossing time and climate zones, dressing formally and informally, I put out a suitcase at least a week before I go, try on clothes I may want to take, make as many of the same color combinations as possible, put out the jewelry and accessories that go with each outfit, try to eliminate two or three outfits that I think I might need but probably won’t. I have one friend, a consummate world-traveler, who only takes two pair of shoes—the shoes she wears to travel and another pair for a change. Her clothes are all one color, and she never packs more than one purse.

I have yet to reach her exemplary model, but I am adhering to my rule about suitcases: If you can’t carry (drag, hoist or haul) it yourself, it’s too big. Get something smaller. One medium-sized suitcase, one smaller bag, one purse and a satchel is the absolute limit (oh well, I might carry a coat on my arm—depending on the temperatures where I am journeying). The airlines with their carry-on fees, of course, are screwing up this hard-won plan, so I am working on discovering alternate suitcase systems.

“The venerable tradition of traveling with one satchel or bag symbolizes the fundamental philosophy of pilgrimage: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” Phil Cousineau writes in The Art of the Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred. I am not here yet; I would like to be.

Cousineau recommends (as do many other writers) that we consider every journey, every home-leaving, no matter how short (trip to the grocery store, doctor’s appointment, or a daily run) as a potential pilgrimage. One family tells how they take a half-hour to “sit on their suitcases” before departure. This calms them; they remember what they have forgotten. More importantly, they remember what they are journeying for, the purpose of the trip ahead. How many times have I rushed out of my house only to have to return for something crucial I’ve neglected to bring.

Alexander Schmemann, the Russian Orthodox priest, reminds parishioners that Sunday worship begins before they leave their houses. So do the little and big pilgrimages of our lives. The biggest aid in an equitable home-leaving is an inner attitude. Mother Teresa once remarked, “Pray before you do anything.” Journeys, large and small, are made fruitful when we pray ourselves into the way. I pray (when I remember—haste, again, is the enemy) for safety, for caution, for attention, for receptivity. You do not know who you will meet, what you will find, where you will end your journey—even if it is just out the back door (or going to church). Louis Pasteur once commented on this quality of being ready, “In the field of science, chance favors the prepared mind.”

How many times I have whizzed past something intriguing discarded in someone’s else’s garbage, a street festival, or a beckoning road and thought, Oh, I wish I had stopped there.

Leaving home for those journeys where you will certainly return—doing this well is an acquired habit, a learned art. The author Martin Palmer writes, “True pilgrimage changes lives, whether we go halfway around the world, or out to our own backyard.” Let us learn to leave home well.


Karen Mains
KM1-17

Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

This year has been filled with travel. In October of 2008, we took 16 friends to Paris for a Christian trip with the theme: God Through the Eyes of the Artist (and the Artist in the Eye of God). Because the Mainses’ extended family only gathers together every other year for Christmas, my husband David and I took a trip for the Christmas week to Hot Springs, Arkansas.

In March, we flew to Kenya with a stopover in London so my son-in-law, a video producer, could visit this city he had never seen. The rest of the time in Africa, we worked together filming a microcredit startup, the Global Bag Project, our ministry is launching in which sustainable income is provided for bag-makers from selling reusable shopping bags.

Throw in a trip to Phoenix where our eldest son and three of our grandchildren live, a cruise up the St. Lawrence Seaway with a couple of grandkids ending in a week’s stay on Cape Cod and an American history tour in Boston, and our annual tour to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, ON, and we’ve just sliced the tip off the iceberg as far as our travel plans are concerned.

Because I truly believe a person cannot be educated unless he/she travels; because in a globalizing world, we need to understand that there are different ideas, different ways of knowing and processing those ideas, and that travel that creates dialogue, that challenges our preconceptions is not just a pleasure but utterly necessary for world peace, I am amazed to discover that only 20% of Americans have passports (well, 22% now because of the recent Canadian and Mexican border document requirements).
 
Granted, the States are beautiful, our country is large and there is plenty to see here (I would have moved to Cape Cod in an instant had it been feasible), but it is the world pressing in on us that we need to work to understand.

Early on, when our adult offspring were kids growing up under our roof, their father and I decided that if there was a choice between purchasing things and buying experiences (with our meager ministry salaries), we would choose experiences.

So off they went to Peru with their aunt and uncle, who were taking a church youth group to South America. They camped through Spain, took summer college courses in Europe, taught English as a second language in China, and roamed the continents with their parents, whose curiosity for travel has never abated, even though we are aging and really don’t know how long we are going to be able to keep up with all this transiting around the world. Now we travel with the grandchildren: France with one, Scotland with another. I want them to see and not be afraid of the unusual, the unexpected, the exotic or the remarkable. I want their memories to be filled with places and journeys and bumps in the road and detours and all the stories travelers tell to one another—“When we were in Alaca, Spain…”

I have rarely been in a place I didn’t think was beautiful, or the people fascinating, the architecture amazing or the history absorbing. My life, my thinking, my wealth of being have all been enriched by journeys, friends who joined us on Christian trips, conversations with folk who were of other faiths, seeing Israel without importing my Christianity into it; meeting with refugees on five continents and writing about their courage and their despair; being hosted by ambassadors, one Queen and King, relief and development workers, and U.S. Embassy staff. Right now, my nations-visited total is 66. I am at the point of live where I think, So many countries, so little time.

I have discovered that every journey can be a sacred pilgrimage. Phil Cousineau writes in The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred, “Common to all pilgrims was the sense of awakened wonder. The long and wearing way carried them through strange lands filled with stranger people, which allowed them to experience
the wider world—probably for the first and only time in their lives. The pilgrim’s constant sense of surprise and astonishment at the ever-changing scenery, weather, and habits of others were as influential as the perils they had to overcome.”

So, I ask you the question I frequently ask of my own adult children: “Is your passport up to date?”


Karen Mains
KM1-16
keywords: Christian vacation

Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.