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Author: Tara Owens

A Fitbit for Prayer

Posted on by Tara Owens

I’m a sucker for measurable results. A few years ago, aware that my day-to-day routine involves a lot of sitting and listening, rather than a lot of walking or standing, I got a Fitbit. If you’re not familiar with this little device, it’s part of the family of souped up pedometers that measure how many steps you’re taking during a given 24-hour period. My fancy Fitbit also measures how many flights of stairs I climb, what my sleep pattern is like, and my heart rate. From all of that, I’m supposed to get at least a preliminary picture of my physical health.

Part of the reason I chose a Fitbit had to do with my competitive nature. According to various health organizations, a healthy adult should be traveling 10,000 steps per day in order to stay in said health. This little black band on my arm vibrates pleasantly when I’ve hit that goal (or any other step-goal I’ve set for myself.) It’s the simplest form of reward for performance.

I went a week without feeling that little buzz. I wondered if I’d gotten a defective monitor. I logged into the online dashboard where my data is stored only to find that during an average day of activity, I was only hitting about 25% of my prescribed goal. Discouraged, I put the Fitbit away for another week before I decided to try again with a slightly more modest goal.

If you haven’t noticed recently, we’re obsessed as a society with measuring ourselves against any measure we can come up with. When I logged into the wifi at Starbuck where I am writing this post, the login page read “Kiwi: Bird or Fruit?” Once I selected an answer (can you guess which?) the page instantly shifted to display the percentage of people who had chosen either. My vote was measured—I was with the majority or minority—on something as silly as my initial impression of a word.

We do the same with “likes” on Facebook, or how the outside of our houses compare to the other ones on the street. We quickly size ourselves up against other people in the office, or the way our neighbors are worshipping during service on Sunday morning. We almost instinctively rate ourselves as better or worse than everything and everyone around us, and our feelings about our value or worth fluctuate accordingly.

I was sitting with a pastor friend of mine when she jokingly referenced a parishioner’s wish that someone would invent a Fitbit for prayer. The context had been a workshop in which the participants were encouraged to spend 30 minutes in prayer each day. Everyone was reacting internally to how much work this would be when the speaker pointed out that the time didn’t have to be consecutive. Just 30 minutes in a 24-hour period. The woman referenced was looking for a way to measure the time she did spend in prayer during those 24 hours. She wanted to make sure she was doing it right.

And that’s what most of us want to know, don’t we? Am I doing it right?

I strapped a Fitbit on my arm because most of me knew that I wasn’t getting the kind of exercise that my body needs to stay healthy, especially given my heart history. It’s ironic that I was discouraged when it showed exactly what a part of me already knew. I wanted the Fitbit to tell me I was doing it “right,” when the Fitbit isn’t designed to do that. It’s only designed to tell me what is.

That’s why measuring our spiritual lives on some kind of scale is both discouraging and dangerous. We’re already living in an atmosphere clogged with do-it-right-to-be-loved. Instead of relying on a relationship with Jesus, and God’s own voice to tell us who we are and what our worth is, we’d rather find some sort of spiritual device to buzz pleasantly when we’ve done the appropriate amount of spiritual disciplines. If it threw in a few badges “Contemplative Cruiser!”, “Intercessory Intermediate”, “Wonder Worshipper” that would be great, too.

Prayer, like the rest of our spiritual lives, can’t be measured by how many minutes we read our Bibles or what kind of attention we’re paying during the sermon or how often we serve the underprivileged in our city. All of those things are good things, but checking those boxes don’t automatically result in relationship with God, or even spiritual warm fuzzies.

It’s why “How are you doing?” is the wrong question to ask when it comes to our spiritual lives. How are you doing? implies that there’s a bar labeled “mature Christian” against which we’re all being measured. And before we start waving the Jesus flag, let’s remember that Jesus isn’t a bar against which we’re measured, He’s a savior who makes measurement irrelevant.A Fitbit for Prayer

But wait… I hear you saying. How do I know if I’m following this Jesus if I don’t have some boxes to check, a spiritual heart rate to measure?

I get it, I really do. Right now my Fitbit is charging beside my computer. I’ve lowered my daily goal, which I’ve hit regularly over the past few weeks, and I love seeing the steps cumulate to a total well beyond what I used to be doing on a daily basis. But I’m not going to let my penchant for comparison tempt me into giving you a new measuring stick with which to beat (or congratulate, but I see this a lot less) yourself.

The only person who can tell you if you’re following Jesus is Jesus. And the more you seek to hear God, to be with God, to enjoy God, the more you’ll be freed from the need to figure out how you’re doing.

So, instead of a set of standards, how about I give you a few questions that might be helpful as you consider this Jesus, this God, who loves you so wildly you’ll never plumb the depths of that love? I’m tentative about this, you see, as I’m very aware of my own ability to turn absolutely everything into some kind of competition.

First, spend some time (or maybe all of the time) thinking about, marinating in, and enjoying what comes of asking, How can God be this good?

It’s a question given to me by Bill Hull by way of Dallas Willard, and one I deeply appreciate. It’s a question beyond which I’d rather not go, frankly. It centers me, returns me to what’s truest in my life with God—in my whole life—and reminds me that the God I love is better than I usually give God credit for.

The second question is a little harder, a little more prone to diverting us back into the “how am I doing” paradigm. Before I ask it, though, I’d like you to picture the people who you care most about. Really think about it. Imagine the faces of your loved ones, their struggles, their joys. Think about the last conversation you had with each of them, and the way their faces light up with they smile.

Have that picture clear in your head? Good.

The next question is How am I loving the people already around me? 

It’s really important to notice that the question isn’t “how am I doing loving the people around me?” That would lead us straight back to evaluation, and our Fitbit friend would be asking for a Fitbit for Love. Which strikes you as silly, doesn’t it? A Fitbit for Love reduces caring for others into a set of behaviors that might be considered “loving.”

Go back to the images you had in your head of those you love. Remember their smiles, the way they laugh when they are surprised?

How are you loving those people? Not yesterday, not last week, not over the past 15 years of your marriage. How are you loving those people right now?

It’s a question inviting relationship, just as the first question did. It’s a question inviting you to take the love you received from Jesus, that you continually receive from Jesus, and spill it into the lives of those right around you. It will have your own style, your own knowing of yourself and those around you, but it will look like love, and it won’t look like obligation.

There’s just no badge for that. Love is its own reward.

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Guest Post: The Journey of Grief As Pilgrimage

Posted on by Tara Owens

Christine-Valters-Paintner-I’m honored to be hosting my friend and fellow author, Christine Valters Paintner of Abbey of the Arts here today on the Anam Cara blog. This is part of Christine’s virtual book tour for her latest offering, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within. To win a copy of her book, just comment on this post, and a winner will be drawn by Friday, July 24.

 

My heart sank when I stepped tentatively into my mother’s room. She lay there connected to a complex web of tubes and wires, eyes shut. The thin skin on her face was sunken and bruised, her lips were raw. She had a serious pneumonia that had entered her bloodstream causing septicemia and leading to unconsciousness, kidney failure, inability to breathe without a respirator, and dangerously low blood pressure. The previous evening she had gone into cardiac arrest twice but they had resuscitated her.

I took a deep breath and I began to pray those feverish prayers of desperation as death whispered in my ear. When you suddenly hope the way you have lived your life somehow earns the right to a miracle even though you no longer even believe in miracles and deep down you know that’s not how the world works. I prayed that she would be able to go home. But as day gave way to night, I realized that the meaning of that prayer had shifted. Going home would mean something entirely different.

I spent the hours perched on the edge of my mother’s bed, rubbing hospital lotion on her arms and legs as a private act of anointing. Each stroke became its own kind of blessing.

“She can hear you,” the nurses kept assuring me, despite her not being conscious, and so I sang simple chants to her choked by tears. Words of longing would rise up in me and I would bathe her in song. I told her again and again that I loved her and that she was beautiful and I wanted more than anything for her to open her eyes again and gaze on me.

Five days after I arrived to that hospital room, my husband John and I were there alone with her, her blood pressure and heartbeat began to drop and I knew my mother and I were both at a threshold in our lives. The slowing beep of the heart monitor sounded as though it marched her toward death rather than merely recording the journey. And when the beeping became one long sound, I began to wail.

leaves

We returned to Seattle and in those November days I found more solace among trees than people with well-meaning, but often trite, advice about grief.

First, came the brilliant gold leaves of the bigleaf maple, then the orange Pacific dogwood, and finally the reds of the vine maple. Then the slow process of letting go and watching the leaves fall from the trees became a daily meditation.

Once the last leaf had surrendered its futile grip and drifted gently to the ground, I was propelled into winter. Bare branches. Days that grew shorter. The sun, when it was visible, dipped low along the horizon so even in daytime there was a darkness that lingered and pressed upon my imagination.

My mother’s death was a threshold and grief became its own kind of pilgrimage through my life. The seasons became witness to the slow unfolding of loss from the release of autumn, to the ache of winter, to spring’s renewal of possibility, and the fruitfulness of summer.

We live in a culture that worships spring and summer. In my own pilgrimage of healing I discovered the wisdom and depth of winter. I have learned to love it on its own terms – not just as a preparation and precursor for spring’s blooming – but for all the ways it calls me deeper into unknowing. Being fully awake and conscious in the dark days of winter can be challenging.

But pilgrimage thrusts us into these spaces of unknowing and mystery, that are so often uncomfortable experiences. We have all had winter seasons in our lives when what was familiar is stripped away and we have to hold grief and open ourselves to the grace of being rather than doing. Winter calls us to trust that fallowness and hibernation are essential to our own wholeness.

For me, making a pilgrimage is not about growing more certain about the world, but embracing more and more the mystery at the heart of everything. In a world where so many people are so very certain about the nature of things, especially in religious circles about who God includes and excludes, I believe unknowing calls us to a radical humility.

As we mature, we must engage with what our own mortality means for us, knowing that we one day enter what I call the Great Unknowing. The season of winter helps us to practice for this and naming these experiences as times of pilgrimage helps us to understand them as ancient journeys.

This is the gift that pilgrimage can offer, a way of connecting our experience to thousands of journeys that have been traveled before. Some for very long distances, and some just along the tender borders of the heart.

Connect with Christine further at Abbey of the Arts, and follow more of her thoughts inspired by The Soul of a Pilgrim. Don’t forget to comment below to enter to win a copy!

 

We Awaken In Christ’s Body

Posted on by Tara Owens

We awaken in Christ’s body
As Christ awakens our bodies,
And my poor hand is Christ, He enters
My foot, and is infinitely me.
I move my hand, and wonderfully
My hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(For God is indivisibly
Whole, seamless in His Godhood).
I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous?—Then
Open your heart to Him
And let yourself receive the one
Who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
We wake up inside Christ’s body
Where all our body, all over,
Every most hidden part of it,
Is realized in joy as Him,
As He makes us, utterly, real,
And everything that is hurt, everything
That seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
Maimed, ugly, irreparably
Damaged, is in Him transformed
And recognized as whole, as lovely,
And radiant in His life
We awaken as the Beloved
In every last part of our body.

St. Symeon the New Theologian

The Body As Sign

Posted on by Tara Owens

The following is an excerpt from Embracing the Body: Finding God In Our Flesh and Bone, and kicks off the virtual blog tour this week. I offer you this part of the book as a look into why I believe our bodies are so important, and so deeply necessary to life with God—not only for ourselves, but for bringing of the Kingdom of God here and now.

If you’d like to get a copy of Embracing the Body, you can buy it here.

virtualbooktour

 

WATCH THE SIGNS

In his pioneering teachings titled The Theology of the Body, Pope John Paul II wrote that “he body, in fact, and only the body is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it.”It is only in our bodies that we experience God at all, without them, we cease to exist. When we focus only on our “spiritual lives”—the interior realm of thought and feeling—we lack a foundational understanding and attentiveness to that which is at the center of our very lives, the only vehicle through which God reaches us and we reach others: our incarnate, bound in time, utterly beloved bodies.

When we try to split ourselves in two, to separate our bodies from our souls, we do violence and make difficult the healing of our bodies. This is something that modern medicine is only recently beginning to realize, as more and more hospitals encourage practices of prayer, meditations and silence as ways of facilitating physical healing. Hospitals have historically been places where worship or faith have no place, especially in the lives of the doctors bringing the healing work, and the split between body and soul is rigid, painful. So often, doctors and nurses burn out because they are not allowed to experience themselves as fully human—body and soul—even as they try to bring holistic healing to those they tend.

So, too, do we feel this fissure in the Church. This time from the other side, the Church insists through silence that we focus on the soul instead of the body, as if the two could be fully separated. In the Church, we insist that the body is somehow separate, not something to be brought into the life of the community, and in so doing we watch clergy and those in ministry run ragged with fatigue, living unhealthy lifestyles that lead to the slew of moral and ethical failures that grab headlines today. Whether it’s the body without soul (hospital) or soul without body (the modern Church), we’re living in part, not in full, and at the depths of us, we know it.

Sadly, we have lived with this schizophrenia of self for a long time. Bound by our bodies but told to ignore or castigate them, the lives of the faithful—mine included—have been marked by a set of false dichotomies that categorize actions into “sacred” or “secular”, “spiritual” or “physical”, as if the two are not ineluctably intertwined. We live our bodily lives—eating, sleeping, touching, weeping—with a whispering sense that we are experiencing the sacred in these mundane moments, in the way the soup tastes on our tongue or the tender touch of a friend to comfort. We intuitively feel that the aches in our joints are communicating something larger of God’s presence to us, but we are told (explicitly and implicitly) to ignore these murmurs in favor of something more spiritual, more holy.

In the midst of this brokenness, the exile from our bodies in which we find ourselves, Isaiah stands in bold proclamation:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations. (Isaiah 61:1-4, NRSV)

God is about the work of redemption, he proclaims. He is about binding up the broken pieces of ourselves. Every piece reclaimed from our hearts and souls and minds all the way through our maligned and misappropriated bodies. God is about the work of liberation from the yokes of oppression, and it is in our very bodies that we are to be free, whole, restored. These bodies of ours have been treated as ruined, lost, devastated and unable to be redeemed. And yet the Lord of all creation is coming for them, indeed, has given to each of us the work of rebuilding these ancient ruins, reclaiming the very fortress of our selves, our blood and bones and skin and muscle, from the devastations of the fall and of our mishandled attempts at holiness. God is about this work, and we are called to see it and to receive it.

 

Embracing the Body Virtual Book Tour

Posted on by Tara Owens

virtualbooktour

 

The Embracing the Body Virtual Book Tour kicks off tomorrow! I’m excited to be touring around the blogs of some of my favorite writers and bloggers, sharing in interviews, original content and excerpts from the book. There will also be a few giveaways. I’ll have some Tweetables listed here, and if you’d like to enter to with an autographed copy of Embracing the Body, all you have to do is Tweet out each of the links that you see on this post, and then put your Twitter handle in the comments. A winner will be chosen at random on June 1.

I’m looking forward to “meeting” more of you around the web this week. Come back to this post each day for links to the various stops on the tour.

With excitement and love,

Tara

The Virtual Book Tour Stops:

Sunday, May 24: Body As Sign

Monday, May 25: Emily McFarlan Miller—An Interview With Tara M. Owens

Tuesday, May 26: Abbey of the Arts—Tongues of Fire: What Our Bodies Tell Us About Pentecost

Wednesday, May 27: We Awaken In Christ’s Body

Thursday, May 28: Sarah Bessey—Embracing the Body

Friday, May 29: Emily P. Freeman—The Rest of God

How To Uncover the Gospel of Shame

Posted on by Tara Owens

This past weekend, some friends and I were gathered together over warm beverages and small people (it’s been unusually cold and rainy in Colorado recently, and our little community has been unusually fertile over the past year) when the topic turned to shame. We’d been talking about John 6:16-21, digging in deeper than the basic Sunday School answers to find some incredible treasures together. We’d noticed how Jesus didn’t scold the disciples for losing heart and setting out across the Sea of Galilee without Him, how He didn’t point out to them that in their moment of despair they turned away from instead of toward the One who wanted to bring them comfort.

Then my friend Nathan said what had been simmering beneath the surface for all of us. He pointed out that the first time he read the passage, he’d judged the disciples, and had assumed Jesus did, too. But nowhere does it say that the disciples were getting it wrong by heading to Capernaum (which Nathan pointed out means village of comfort/consolation, and can also mean village of repentance). Nowhere does it say that striking out in a direction—any direction, really—is to be despised, even (or especially?) when Jesus doesn’t seem near.

I have a mentor who says that how we judge characters in Scripture is how we judge ourselves, and I believe that to be deeply true. As my friends and I were reading John 6, we were judging the parts of ourselves that aren’t inclined to do the “holy” or “spiritual” work of waiting patiently (emphasis on the quotation marks) when Jesus is nowhere to be found and instead head out for the nearest city of comfort. It was a low-level, underlying message for most of us, something just beneath the surface that took some extreme measures to unearth.

That’s the thing about shame, though. It’s incredibly sneaky, and it works its way into our theology and our relationship with Jesus without us even noticing we’ve taken it on. Shame hides underneath “should” and cloaks itself in “righteousness” (more of those quotation marks) so we don’t see it for what it really is: a gospel-stealing usurper of grace.

“Don’t be afraid. I am here,” says Jesus to the terrified men in the boat, shuddering under gale-force winds. How we hear the tone of those words says so much about how we interpret the heart of Jesus toward us, storm or no storm. Read those words one way, and you’re free to receive the goodness of God for you, right now, as you are. Read them another, and you’re bound up in chains of performance and transaction, forced to “earn” God’s approval with your good behavior.

Want to uncover whether or not you’re living under the Gospel of Shame instead of the Gospel of Grace?

Try this simple, but radical, experiment.

Pick almost anything that Jesus says. To the disciples. To the Pharisees. To those He heals.

To the end of whatever Jesus says, add the words: “you idiot.”

To follow along with our discussion this weekend, let’s try Jesus’s words in John 6.

“Don’t be afraid. I am here, you idiots.”

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

Well, I hope it does. But for many of us, adding the words “you idiot” simply makes explicit the tone that we’ve been hearing from Jesus for a very long time. Oh, we haven’t named it outright, but it’s been there. The shaming-inducing sense that we’re missing it, and that Jesus is fed up with us, just like He’s fed up with His bumbling disciples, the arrogant Pharisees, the clueless people whom He’s saving.

If adding the words “you idiot” after anything that Jesus says in Scripture doesn’t change the tone of Jesus’s voice for you at all, you’ve been living under the Gospel of Shame for too long, my friend. It’s time to throw it off.

Because Jesus never has derision in His voice for His beloveds. He doesn’t shame His people. He isn’t exasperated with you.

In fact, just like in John 6, He’s coming for you. Right where you are. You don’t have to be different. You don’t have to feel less afraid or more hopeful or be heading in a different direction. You don’t need to have “gotten it” (whatever it is) by now, and you definitely don’t have to have life with God figured out just because He’s come for you before. The disciples, after all, had just witnessed the feeding of the 5,000. Feeling lost and alone can happen even after the most amazing events; in fact, it often does.

Jesus comes, and He comes with life and brings all of Himself to bear. He comes without condemnation or shame. He comes and He says, ever so kindly, ever so grace-full-y, “Don’t be afraid. I am here.”

And that’s enough. It’s enough to receive Him right there in that moment, or any other moment. As soon as you do, you’ll arrive, just as the disciples do, at your destination. The city of comfort. Because that’s always the place that Jesus is, wherever and whenever you are together.

So the next time you’re feeling like you’ve blown it, feeling like you should have done something different, feeling like you need to get your act together, try exposing those voices for what they truly are. Shame can’t stand the light, it lives in the darkness. Push it to the forefront by adding “you idiot” to what you think God might be saying to you, and you’ll see how quickly the real Gospel comes to drive the false away.

A Spiritual Director’s Prayer

Posted on by Tara Owens

As I read this prayer to a directee today, I realize that God had brought it to heart and mind not just for that person, but for myself as a spiritual director. Sometimes I struggle to find a way to express the “why” of what I do as a director, but this poem by Ted Loder captures at least part of the soul behind being an anam cara*.

Bring More Of What I Dream

O God,
who out of nothing
brought everything that is,
out of what I am
bring more of what I dream
but haven’t dared;
direct my power and passion
to creating life
where there is death,
to putting flesh of action
on bare-boned intentions,
to lighting fires
against the midnight of indifference,
to throwing bridges of care
across canyons of loneliness;
so I can look on creation,
together with you,
and, behold,
call it very good;
through Jesus Christ my Lord.

Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle, p. 115

 

*Anam cara is the Gaelic word for “soul friend.”

An Atmospheric Low of the Soul

Posted on by Tara Owens

I’m over at The Mudroom today, sharing on their theme of Cyclones, Storms & Squalls.

Here’s a little taster. You can click the link below to read more.

It takes a few weeks before I can name this storm. I don’t want to test the winds, to look at the lows and highs, to name this as something more than a squall. I’d prefer to call it a cyclone, really, than depression, even if I get to soften it with the more than acceptable moniker of “postpartum.”

Keep reading this post here.

Synchroblog: My Body, My Jerusalem

Posted on by Tara Owens

On March 13, my first book, Embracing the Body: Finding God In Our Flesh & Bone, officially launched.

The day before, March 12, marked six months of life for my daughter, and a huge milestone for my own body in terms of continued health and well-being.

But I haven’t written much about that, have I?

Continue reading “Synchroblog: My Body, My Jerusalem”

Doubt, Pain and Infanticide (Or Why The Feast of the Holy Innocents Is My Favorite Feast Day)

Posted on by Tara Owens
Featured image: François-Joseph Navez, Massacre of the Innocents

Today, December 28, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. As I shared with the glorious pilgrims in the Coming Home eCourse, it’s my favorite feast day of the year. It combines Christmastide and doubt, the hope of the resurrection and all of our questions, and here, with a little sneak peak into the course materials, is why:

(A Note On The Image Above: I chose this painting of all of the paintings of the massacre of the innocents because of its horrible peacefulness. Although I shied away from the more active scenes—and then ruefully noted my own inability to confront the real evil of this day—there is something so chilling and painful about Navez’s rendition, with the action off to the back and the grief front and center, that speaks to this commemoration well.)

You may think me morbid, but the Feast of the Holy Innocents is one of my favorite feast days of the entire Church calendar. It’s not because of the brutality of what it commemorates, but because of what this particular feast makes space for both in my heart and in the worship and life of the Church as a whole.

In Matthew 2:16 the Gospel writer tells of Herod’s rage at being deceived by the magi and his subsequent order to have all male children under two years (which at the time would have most likely meant age one and younger) in Bethlehem and surrounding area killed. This horrific act was completely consistent with Herod’s character (it is well documented historically that he had his own sons killed), and is a terrible reminder of the cost of pursuing goodness and life in the face of great evil.

The Church recognizes those children killed by Herod as martyrs, whether or not their parents were believers, because they themselves took the place of the one Herod was after—Jesus. Over the years, the killings grew in the imagination of the Church, with numbers being cited in the hundreds of thousands, while the reality of the population of Bethlehem and area indicates that the number of children killed was between six and twenty.

Whatever the actual number of children, December 28 is a day clothed with the horror of lives cut off, death visiting those who had lived so short a time and so deserved to be protected and cherished.

Over the years, my own celebration of this feast day has come to be quite dear to me. While God can take my rage, my questions, my anger, my lack of understanding of His ways any day of the year (and often does), it heartens me that there is a day in the Church calendar where the whole assembly of believers is encouraged to cry out the anguished question: WHY?

On this day, I set aside time to let those questions and aches in my heart have full-throated voice. I weep and cry out WHY, LORD? in the company of the great cloud of witnesses who also weep for those holy innocents who died so long ago. I let my mourning be deep and angry and real this day—as I can any day with God—because He is big enough, powerful enough, and, most importantly, good and loving enough to hold receive these questions hurled at him from me. It is a time for me to mourn and wail for those things unmourned this year—or unmourned in my soul in general—or to continue mourning those things if necessary. It is an acknowledgement both that God can take it, and that His ways are mysteriously larger than mine.

Consider spending some time on December 28 to hold these truths of God’s story and your own together before Him.

Prayer for the Feast of the Holy Innocents:

O God, whom the Holy Innocents confessed and proclaimed on this day, not by speaking but by dying, grant, we pray, that the faith in You which we confess with our lips may also speak through our manner of life. Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the message of an Angel, may by his Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of his Resurrection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.