from Blue Ash (III)

a snapshot of my saturday nights

It's 10:47 PM and the dishwasher's running and I'm sitting in the boys' kitchen trying to think of anything of substance I can write. Here's one, a nice highlight to my day: I got to see Jessie and Tony! I like it when their visits to Cincinnati are more frequent. Jessie just got a new car, and she may sell me her old one; the whole deal with Frank fell by the wayside when he moved to Saint Louis.

Jessie, Tony and I had lots of great talks, not least on spiritual disciplines. I told Jessie how I'm making an intentional effort to deepen my communion and "walk with God" by implementing spiritual disciplines into the fabric of my life. She was really encouraging, and she brought up how the disciplines have fallen by the wayside due to our tendency to legalize them following their mode-of-practice in the Middle Ages. It's easy to turn the disciplines into a sort of sociological badge, a performance, a rite of passage, or some sort of "law" that distinguishes the real Christians from the fake Christians. That's not the point at all. The point is knowing God more, and being changed by his Spirit in us. That's really what I'm after: I'm not trying to be a "better Christian," I just want to know God more, to keep knowing him in a richer and deeper way, and to be changed by him, to be conformed to the image of Christ. 

2 Corinthians 3.17-18 is ever-weighing on my heart and mind: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Practicing the disciplines is about freedom, it's about "beholding the glory of the Lord," it's about "being transformed into the same image," it's about opening the window for the Spirit to come in and reshape you, rework you, give you life and liberty. There's an excitement to it, there really is, and I'm more eager than ever to grow in my faith and know Christ more.

I've been reading Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline, albeit slowly, savoring it, pondering it, letting the words sink in and take root. His book examines lots of the "classical disciplines" of the Christian faith, "classical" since they've been practiced since the dawn of Christianity. He divides the disciplines into three "spheres": the inward, the outward, and the corporate. The inward disciplines are what I'm focusing on right now, and these come easier to me, since I'm naturally more contemplative and "mystic" when it comes to life in general. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, and I want to take this step-by-step. Patience is a virtue here; this isn't something I want to "burn out" on.

My eyes are getting droopy.

They start to sting when I get really tired. It's annoying.

The sound of the dishwasher is soothing.

One more hour--and then I get to go home and pass out in my hobbit hole.