....or actually, specifically just to me, this rainy morning.
My Lenten discipline this year has been to pray some portion of the Daily Office* every day. While I've given myself the freedom to skip some or all of the bits from the lectionary** if I'm pressed for time, I don't like doing that because a) what's prayer if you're pressed for time? It's waxy no-name chocolate vs. special dark, that's what, and b) sometimes the daily readings speak to me in such a perfect and personal way that I want to at least invite that to happen-- hence, the need to read them.
Today I only read the Gospel. I "slept in" until 7:00 because it's Saturday (Sterotypes about Parenting that Turn Out to be True #755), and I could hear tell-tale signs of wakefulness from upstairs, but I knew Mr. Milkweed would hold the cubs at bay because he's good like that. Still, I wasn't going to press my luck.
The reading was Mark 9:14-29, where Jesus casts an "unclean spirit" out of a little boy who is actually suffering from epilepsy. The boy's father asks the disciples to "cast it out" (heal him), but they can't, so when Jesus walks up and asks about all the ruckus, the father explains and says "...if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us." And Jesus is all like "If I am able?!? Whatev, Holmes"*** and continues "All things can be done for the one who believes."
And the father says "I believe! Help my unbelief."
I believe-- help my unbelief.
ME TOO. So often, in so many ways-- me, too.
I think and pray so very much about what the next few years will hold, and I've been driven lately to try and confront and examine those things in my life that deep down I knew needed to be dealt with but have not. I've also been surprised by at least one issue that I thought was resolved but was really just lying dormant.
All of these things are just kind of sitting there like really huge stones. Right now I'm walking around several of them trying to take stock of exactly how large they are and what strategies I might need to climb them, and some of them I'm climbing, and I can see the summit on maybe one or two.
And I'm not unduly upset by this-- we all, each of us, have these stones. In fact, the ones with pretty obvious footholds that I've just been to lazy too tackle before now prompt a delicious sense of challenge.
Some of these stones, though, I'll be climbing my entire life.
Climbing forever.
That's nothing if not daunting, but here's the thing about those stones-- I'm not climbing alone. There are ropes and carabiners and all kinds of safety equipment buoying me up, and I mean that in a purely physical, worldly way. I am not alone in this climb, right here in my exact situation, right here in my life, with my little family, with my friends, and with the people I am coming to know and am growing to trust.
And I will never be alone in this climb because He is climbing with me.
The illness from which the little boy suffers in the Gospel reading keeps him, in Jesus' words, from "speaking and hearing." There is one particularly ugly part of one particularly ugly stone that's making those things hard for me, too.
Jesus heals the boy, and the crowd disperses, and the disciples sidle up to Jesus and want to know why they couldn't cast the spirit out, and do you know what Jesus says?
"This kind can come out only through prayer."
Touché.
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*The Daily Office is daily worship, and I'd say the major parts are Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline (bedtime prayer). There are others, like the little bite-sized order for Noonday prayer, but I've never prayed that one because I tend to be getting hands washed /making sandwiches about that time of day.
**The lectionary is just a fancy way of referring to the readings from Scripture that go along with the various services from the Office.
*** From the NRMV-- New Revised Milkweed Version
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