Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

grace

5 on Friday: Good stuff from bloggers you need to be reading

Sometimes it’s hard to wade through all the words on the Web and find the treasures among the trash.

Let me help you.

I’ve read some great posts lately that challenge and encourage and inspire me. My hope is that they’d do the same for you.

Here are five posts (and some excerpts from their posts) you should take time to read this weekend.

1. When Love is the Last Thing You Feel by Alison McLennan. I was touched by these words that challenged me to keep loving when it’s hard.

“Which is the greater sacrifice: to keep a vow when keeping it is a pleasure, or to keep a vow when keeping it takes everything you have?”

I don’t know, in God’s economy, if one is greater than the other. Certainly it is a divine gift to love with ease, to take pleasure in our work, to pour ourselves out for others and find joy in serving.

But what about when we don’t? Is it any less of a gift to labor in those things?

2. #scotus and other stuff by Erika Morrison. (the life artist) Ever disagreed with someone about a controversial issue? Yeah, here’s a good guideline for how to survive that as friends.

So this is my guideline for myself, take it or leave it; adjust and tweak if you so desire: Pray down low. Don’t move until you’ve changed. Suspend your assumptions and walk yourself to the inside of someone else’s skin and story. See that everyone is carrying the weight of their own history; an entire world riding piggy on their backs and everyone is fighting their own battles, wearing their own scars, bleeding from their own wounds, pushing through their own struggles. And move those real live people from the coldness of your cranium to the beating place between your ribs bones and share food and communion there. Look into each other’s soul-windows and watch the Messiah materialize in the image they bear. Hold hands and hug for dear life – all we’ve got is each other. And maybe from this place of kindness and safety, thoughts and convictions can be mutually shared without scathe or savagery or “you’re stupid” words.

3. I hate this day by J.J. Landis. Written in the wake of a local tragedy, J.J. is frank about how our efforts to comfort fall short.

I know in my head what I believe about how the world works. I know we’re fallen and sin screws us up. I know people die, but seriously, it really sucks.

4. Why I Don’t Believe in Grace Anymore by Dr. Kelly Flanagan. Hands-down, when Kelly writes something, I want to read it. This is one of two he wrote recently that I could have recommended.

This is the brilliance of grace: it welcomes our darkness into the light and does nothing to it, knowing that it doesn’t have to, because darkness thrives on hiddenness, and it’s at the mercy of the light. Light drives out darkness, not the other way around.

When we no longer have to push our darkness back down beneath layers of shame our darkness doesn’t stand a chance.

5. Independence by Heather B. Armstrong (dooce). (Warning: This post contains pictures taken inside brothels in Southeast Asia. They are appropriately shocking, but I don’t want them to come as a surprise.) Yes, it’s an uncomfortable subject and it’s hard to talk about and look at, but that’s one reason I’m so glad there are bloggers out there like her who do their part to shine a light on this perverse evil.

Often when we think of that freedom we immediately go to thoughts of our right to free speech, to peaceably assemble, the free exercise of religion and the right to bear arms. I would guess that rarely do we seriously reflect on some of the very basic privileges afforded to us as well: the ability to leave our rooms and homes, the ability to live with our families and the years spent watching them grow, freedom from having to sell our bodies for sex.

Read more: http://dooce.com/2014/07/02/independence/#ixzz37ftn0ZCF

What would you add to this list?

What I learned from Lent

I’ve never been very good at observing (celebrating? commemorating? participating in?) Lent. Discipline and I don’t really get along well, a relationship I keep meaning to reconcile, but well, life.

I’m terrible at persevering and following through and any time I’ve tried to give up something for the 40 days of Lent I either end up miserable, forgetful or failing. Ritual for the sake of ritual doesn’t interest me so there have been years where I’ve virtually ignored Lent because I just didn’t know what to do with it.

This year, we belong to a church that treats Lent differently than any other church we’ve been part of. For the weeks of Lent, we partner with a church in Chicago to reflect on, and inform ourselves about, a justice issue in our world. This year, it was about incarceration. Here’s what I wrote at the start of Lent.

And here’s what I can tell you now: I did not give my whole self to Lent. I read the devotionals sporadically. I wore a button … until I lost it. And while I was moved and angered and saddened by what I learned about the prison system in our country, it didn’t cause any action on my part.prison button

I mean, I wrote the blog post, I read a book about women coming out of prison and the struggles they face, and I signed some online petitions and sent some e-mails to congressmen whose votes can change the way things are done.

But does any of that matter?

What I learned during Lent, what I seem to always learn during Lent, is that I am selfish. And distracted. And busy with a lot of things that don’t matter.  I’m willing to do a little but maybe not a lot. I’m good at talking and writing about issues but when it comes to acting or doing, not so much. I don’t beat myself up too much because that doesn’t do any good, either, so I’m left with questions.

What can I do? What else can I do? What more can I do? And how?

Wearing the button on my jacket was a huge step for me. It meant that people would look at me a little longer than normal, that they might engage me in conversation, and I am more the kind of person who wants to walk quietly through her life and not draw anyone’s attention for good or bad.

Wearing a button marked me, in a way, as some sort of social justice freak or religious nut. At least, that’s what I would have thought about someone wearing the button if that someone wasn’t me.

In truth, I want to call attention to injustice. I want to stand up and fight for things that matter. That is my heart. But I am not brave. Or courageous. Or loud. Some days I have to gather enough courage to walk into the grocery store (and then spend the rest of the day reading books to recharge from the emotional toll being in public takes on me.) I want you to care about things that are important but I don’t want you to think bad of me for caring about them.

What I learned from Lent is that there are parts of me that still have to die and be transformed. Parts of me I still need to sacrifice to God’s redemption.

Now that it is Easter, a season of celebration and feasting, a time of rejoicing for God’s kingdom has come to earth, it is easy to forget Lent. Those things I learned, those passionate feelings I felt, I could compartmentalize them into the 40 days of Lent and move on with my happy, comfortable life.

Or.

I could revisit and reflect and pray and learn more. The end of Lent doesn’t have to be the end of caring and justice and “on earth as it is in heaven” kind of living. It shouldn’t be the end, I think, but the beginning.

Lent reminds me that life is about more than me, that Jesus’ sacrifice was not for me alone, and that His redemption is for every day not just a few days or a single season.

I still don’t know what this means or looks like on a daily basis.

All I know is I don’t want to quit caring about prisoners because Lent is over.

I’m curious, does Lent carry over into Easter and the rest of the year for you? If so, how? If not, what would it look like for that to happen?

I’m asking myself the same questions.