Food from the Promised Land

I've always wondered what it was like to live on manna and quail for 40 years like the Israelites did during their wilderness wandering. Every day, manna and quail. Fried manna, fried quail, boiled manna, boiled quail, roasted manna, roasted quail, quail and manna sandwiches, quail salad with a side of manna, quail manhattans over manna. For all they should have been thankful for, I have to admit, I understand their grumbling, too.

And yet, the monotony of quail and manna must certainly have had its benefits, as well. When their path seemed to be leading them in circles, when the enemies from within were often more treacherous than the enemies from without, and when God seemed far and distant, knowing that every day there would at least be quail and manna must have provided some much needed consistency.

That's where I found myself yesterday evening after a very long week of uncertainty. I was tired of wondering what each day was going to bring, and when it came time to make dinner, all I could think of was vegetable soup and corn bread, old staples from my growing up days. 

With my dad still in ICU, the Pacific Ocean churning up a possible tsunamai, and my soul feeling as cloudy as the overcast sky, sauteing onions, peeling potatoes, and mixing herbs and spices felt like a taste of the promised land to me. And knowing that every time you mix cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt with an egg, some milk, and a little oil you get cornbread gave me an unusual sense of hope in this wilderness where I find myself.

Looking to the Lord for our daily bread is truly a way to exercise faith, but it's also a means of great grace. A reminder that our great sustainer has everything in his hand.

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. - Psalm 46:1-3

Who is Fasting For?

Over the past few days I have been hard pressed to maintain my multitasking fast.

As I rushed from work to the hospital on Tuesday upon hearing of my dad's heart condition, there were many arrangements to be made, prayers to request, news to be broken, and the hour and a half in the car made for the perfect opportunity to make those phone calls without delaying my arrival at the hospital.

The next couple of days, emails, meals, phone calls, conversations, text messages, and coffee-drinking all happened at the same time as we sat vigil in the hospital and tried to keep many people posted on my dad's progress. Even now that I am back home, there are many, many phone calls and emails and text messages to make and receive to keep myself and others up to date on how things are going.

I was tempted to feel guilty, try harder, make confessions, give up. You know how it goes when you're failing. But then I remembered the purpose of the fast -- to help lead me through this season of wilderness wandering -- and it seemed that the wilderness was well upon me even without it. And mostly, I just thought of Jesus and his disciples picking grain.

All of the gospel narratives recount the tale of Jesus and his disciples walking along the edge of the field picking grain when they were hungry. That's why the farmer left the edges unharvested, after all. But the problem was it was the Sabbath. And the pharisees had laws about doing work on the Sabbath.

Jesus had a message for them, though. Man was not made for the Sabbath, but Sabbath was made for man. And I think you could just as easily substitute fasting or prayer or attending church or many of the rituals of our faith. They are not an end in themselves; they all are to help us know Jesus better. When it comes down to it, Jesus would rather us just walk with him than stick religiously to our rites.

So, during this new wilderness our family is walking through with my dad, I am doing my best to continue to do one thing as a time. And the quiet that that brings has been good for my soul at times. But I also feel a lot of grace. I wasn't made for fasting; fasting was made for me.

--

Please continue to pray for my dad. This evening has been tough, and he is feeling very discouraged and fatigued. Also, there is some talk about also "installing" a permanent pacemaker.

Wilderness Mercy

I meant to write more this evening . . . there's much to be gleamed from this wilderness from the past couple of days. But I am weary, weary, and right now, I just need to rest.

But in the midst of some exhausting days, the Lord has been merciful to my family. My dad is well on his way to a quick recovery from a quadruple bypass and mitral valve repair. God has spared him graciously; it's as much a gift to us as to him.

Thank you for praying for us all.

I will continue my wilderness words tomorrow, Lord willing.

A New Wilderness

Tonight I find myself in a new kind of wilderness as I wait for my dad's unexpected open heart surgery tomorrow. It's been an exhausting day; I covet your prayers.

Fat and Marrow

Lately, rather than buy the pre-cut, deboned, and deskinned chicken that I came to love in my early 20s, I have started buying whole chickens at the farmers market and cooking them in the crock pot, using as much as possible of the bird. The large pieces of white meat are usually eaten plain, the smaller pieces of white meat find their way into a salad, and the dark meat is usually turned into soup.

My favorite part of the chicken, though, is the stock that is created when the fat, marrow and juices of the chicken cook down with a potpourri of herbs and spices into a rich liquid that can be frozen and used later. Tonight, the stock from my last chicken is quietly bubbling in a pan filled with rice and beans on the stove.

Cooking chicken this way is not for the faint of heart, as you really have to get into the meat elbows deep in order to use everything as thoroughly as possible. If you asked your grandmothers, most of them know what the inside of a chicken looks like. For most of the rest of us, though, especially those born in the last three or four decades, we haven't seen a chicken like that because we haven't been hungry enough.

--

The general fullness of my life makes truly hungering and thirsting after Jesus a bit of an empty metaphor at times. I am especially out of touch when I read of David's desperate longings from one of his wilderness Psalms, like Psalm 63.

O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly;
My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You.
In a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.
Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips will praise You.
So I will bless You as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. 

I couldn't help thinking of my chicken stock thick with fat and marrow as I read those last two lines. But I also thought of a better description of this type of satisfaction that I had just read earlier today.

I am in the middle of Greg Mortenson's second book, Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Greg Mortenson is the mountain-climber turned humitarian who has labored tirelessly to raise money and arrange for schools to be built up in the remotest parts of the Himalayas. 

Early in Stones into Schools, he recounts a meal he shared with men from two different tribes. In a land where food is scarce, especially during the harsh winters that are common in the area where heaven and the mountains meet, these men know what it means to be satisfied with marrow and fatness.

Most of the mutton had been boiled in a large pot, although a small portion had been fried into kebabs in a pan. The real delicacy, however, was the dumba, the blubberlike fat from the animals tail and its hind end. This was placed on a platter in the center of the room where it sat quivering like a hunk of golden Jell-O.

The Kirghiz inhaled this feast with the harrowing relish of men who had been subsisting on rainwater and chewing tobacco. They scooped up fat with their fists, they stripped the meat from the bones with their riding knives, and they snapped the bones in half and sucked the marrow into their mouths with moist slurping sounds. Everything was consumed and when they were through, the men took their hands, which were now slathered in grease, and carefully smeared them over their faces, their hair, and their beards.

I don't know if I'll ever be that hungry physically, but oh, how I pray, that I would hunger after Jesus like these men and their mutton. That I would never be so satisfied in anything, anyone, but him.

And may this time in the wilderness help me long for him even more.

A Prayer for the First Sunday of Lent

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

-- From the Book of Common Prayer

A "You-sized" Wilderness

A few years ago while I was living in Chicago, I made some friends from China who were in the US attending an MBA program. We met together weekly to work on their English, and perhaps more importantly, to help them become more familiar with American culture.

After several months of eating hamburgers and spaghetti, drinking tea, and learning American idioms, I decided to take them to the most American place I know: my hometown. So, for Easter weekend, the three of them joined me as we hunted mushrooms (morels) with my step-dad, ate Easter dinner at my grandparents home, and drank tea with my dad in his living room.

The one near disaster of the weekend was during the mushroom hunt when Arthur, a savvy entrepreneur from China's Sichuan province, was lost in the woods for about an hour just before dusk. We had warned him about the "hollars" (known as "hollows" or valleys outside of rural Indiana) and how easily they can turn a person around. But the warning fell on deaf ears as this curious visitor got side-tracked by his exploration.

In the end, my step-dad, who knows that little patch of woods like the back of his hand, figured out the logical direction that Arthur could have wandered, drove the pick up truck to that side of the woods, and began honking until we finally saw him emerge.

The most interesting part of the whole encounter was Arthur's version of the story. What was really just a few-acre wooded creek bed became a vast forest with unknown dangers as he told it. When he was lost in the middle of it, watching the sun sink and the shadows grow larger, that forest was as big as fear itself.

Our wilderness experiences often suffer from the same lack of perspective when we are in the middle of them. Each wilderness is the darkest, the dryest, the loneliest, the hardest. If we could see our lives from just beyond the wandering, we'd know the truth. But here, from where we sit, the sun is sinking, and our prospects look a little grim.

On the other hand, as we watch others go through their wildernesses, it's tempting to point out the discrepancy, to show them on the map that their "wilderness" is really just a stand of trees in the middle of a suburb. Like my friend Kay's young nephew who thought my neighborhood was a "scary forest" as they drove through the leafy tunnel at dusk one day last fall.

But the truth about wilderness experiences is that they are bigger than the wilderness itself. Just as Noah and his family were driven to the ark for 40 days and 40 nights of rain, just as Moses was forced to flee to Midian for 40 years, just as the Israelites were turned away from the promised land for 40 years of wandering, or just as Jesus was led by the Spirit to the wilderness for 40 days of fasting, God has a purpose for this wilderness at this time in your life.

It might not be the wilderness that others have had to pass through, and a year from now, you might look back and consider it nothing but a bumpy patch. But for today, this wilderness you are in is a "you-sized" wilderness from the hand of God to lead you on to the blessings he has waiting just beyond.

Wildernesses I Have Known

Yesterday, as I was running on the treadmill at the gym, the reality of my multitasking fast hit me with new urgency. How was I going to run three miles without the distraction of my iPod or at least reading the closed captioning on the hanging television sets?

I spent the first mile happy with this new discipline while I prayed for friends and meditated on what God has been teaching me. Mile two found me alternately praying, drinking from my water bottle, gasping for air, checking my mileage, praying, and so on. By mile 2.5, I was thinking of all the reasons I should go ahead and stop running. 

In the minute or two just before my self-discipline ran completely dry, I resorted to a mental exercise I often default to in physical stress. I pictured myself back on the gravel track that surrounded the football field of my highschool. The gravel track where I first understood what it meant to subject myself to physical training that is of "some value," as Paul would say. 

Many times in the years since I graduated I have "thought" my way back to that quarter-mile loop and counted down the laps to my goal. Even yesterday, with a half-mile left to run, I started just outside of the 50 yard line and headed south in the counter-clockwise fashion in which a track is always traversed. As the odometer on the treadmill counted down the hundredths of miles, I pictured myself moving around the track. One lap, then finally, two. And once again, that old gravel track in my memory, which has long since been paved in real life, helped me through a challenging time.

That's what this wilderness experience of ours will do for us someday. Right now, the wilderness you are walking through may seem like too much. You might be minutes away from giving up. But somewhere in the back of your mind, there's another wilderness season from your past in which you made it, where you found Jesus even through the dryness and darkness. And that wilderness in your mind will help you get through the wilderness you are experiencing now.

And someday, this wilderness of today will do the same for the wilderness of tomorrow.

 I remember the days of long ago . . . Psalm 143:5

The Sound of the Wilderness

Wandering in the wilderness is nothing new for most of us. We've all experienced seasons of deep pain when we were forced to roam the dry desert, when we found ourselves weary and thirsty, and nothing would satisfy.

We've been here before, so those vast stretches of emptiness are nothing new. We've felt the blistering heat of the sun, and the frigid chill of darkness in the wilderness before. But the thing that always surprises us is the sound the wilderness makes, the deafening sound of silence.

The past two days have been particularly quiet for me as I fast from multitasking. In trying to be present in one thing at a time, I've decided to eliminate as much background distraction as possible. So that means there is no television talking as I make dinner, no iPod singing as I run on the treadmill. The car radio is silent as I drive around the city, and my clock radio does nothing but glow as I head to bed. 

But the quiet all around me only gives way to the voices and distractions and noise in my head that I try so hard to tune out most of the time. The lies of despair I tell myself about my future and my hope, the criticisms I conjure toward anyone who doesn't do things my way, and the temptations I dangle for myself to be lazy, indulgent, and selfish all become louder as the other noise subsides.


And in the "silence" of the wilderness I can finally do the work of responding to the noise inside. I can let Jesus speak truth to the lies and criticisms and temptations. And I can find an inner quiet to carry with me when my time in the wilderness has ended and the world around me becomes noisy again.

Multitasking Fast . . . What I've Learned Already

It's just the first day of my multitasking fast, and already I am amazed at what I am learning. Here are five things I learned today.

1.) My brain is much freer to think and pray when I am doing only one thing at a time. (I decided that thinking and praying can and should happen simultaneously with any other task and don't count as multitasking!)
2.) I'm a much safer driver when I'm not eating, drinking, talking on the phone, and listening to the radio at the same time.
3.) I'm going to need to start getting up 5 minutes earlier each day to eat breakfast since I can't do it in the car anymore. (I almost had to skip breakfast since I didn't allow the extra time today; I had to scarf it down in the two minutes I had before clocking in at work!)
4.) Interruptions don't seem as disruptive since they are interrupting only one thing.
5.) My priorities are becoming clearer since I have to choose between activities to do only one thing at a time.

As crazy as this sounds, it takes a lot of effort to do only one thing at a time after years of multitasking!

The Wilderness Within

Today we begin our descent into the wilderness of Lent.

The wilderness metaphor associated with Lent refers to the 40 days of testing that Jesus endured as he began his ministry. That period for Jesus was foreshadowed by the 40 years of wilderness wandering of the Israelites between the slavery of Egypt and the wide open spaces of the Promised Land. For many of us, it means 40 days without chocolate or television.

But the next 40 days are about more than setting aside our worldly pleasures (or in my case, obsessions). They are a season of getting to know Jesus in our hunger, our thirst, our quietness, and maybe even our loneliness.

The other seasons of the church calendar focus on the glory and majesty of Jesus. The birth of the King, the worship of Messiah, the resurrection of a Savior, the ascension of the Lord of lords, and the falling flames of the Spirit all invoke awe and wonder. 

But during the 40 days leading up to the death of Jesus, those 40 days when we walk with Him through the desert wilderness and find ourselves hungry like him, we remember his humanity, and the great humbling that happened when he took on flesh.

During Lent, I often find myself looking around me to find the wilderness experiences that will help me connect to my suffering savior. But as I was looking around today, I came upon Psalm 143 and realized that it is not my circumstances that cause me to thirst the most; it's my own soul. The wilderness within.

I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all Your doings;
I muse on the work of your hands.
I stretch out my hands to You;
My soul longs for you, as a parched land.

I pray that the parched land of the wilderness within your own soul will lead you to the God-man, Jesus, today.

An Open Letter to My iPhone, Computer, Radio, iPod, Television, and DVD player

Dear iPhone, Computer, Radio, iPod, television, and DVD player --

I wanted to let you know that I won't be able to see as much of you all over the next 40 days. You know I love you all; in fact, I spend more time with you guys than anyone else. But lately, things have just gotten a little too serious between us. It seems everytime I try to have a conversation with a friend or spend a little time by myself, you're there. You're always interrupting me, and sometimes, you even try to get my attention while I'm sleeping.

Mostly, I think we need a break because even when I'm with you, I don't feel like I'm really "there," you know. My mind is in too many different places. It's not you; it's me. I need some time apart to try to get things worked out in my own life again. Then, when it's time, our relationship will be a lot healthier.

I'm sure I'll see you around over the next couple of weeks; I can't talk on the phone or blog or check my email without running into one of you. But I just won't be spending as much time as usual, and when we're together, I want it to just be one on one time. I don't want you all there at once. It's not fair to any of us.

I hope you understand . . .

Love,
Charity

--

So many of you have commented and emailed about yesterday's post, I know I've hit a nerve! I am hoping that this idea of being present will be a Lenten lesson for us all, and I plan to blog about doing one thing at a time over the next 40 days. It's already been an eye opener just paying attention to all of the things I "try" to do at once over the past 24 hours.

And in case you're interested in learning more, I heard a story on NPR yesterday about another aspect of "mono-tasking," as some call it. There's a new and still pretty small movement call "Slow Media" that is promoting a one-medium at a time approach to technology. Find out more about it here. If you're on Facebook, you might want to consider joining the Slow Media Movement page. (Yes, I'm aware of the irony!)

The Myth of Multitasking

So, it should come as no surprise to me that I have started hearing rumors of a failed philosophy that has ruled a good part of my life, albeit ineffectively. Namely, multitasking doesn't work.

One molecular biologist even suggests that multitasking actually impairs ones cognitive ability similarly to drunkenness, particularly when the multitasking happens behind the wheel of a vehicle (which is the impetus behind many bans on texting and driving).

That same scientist, John Medina, quoted in an online article by Mark McGuinness called, "Why Multitasking Doesn't Work," goes even further in his analysis to claim that multitasking doesn't even really exist. As McGuinnes summarizes, "So there’s no such thing as multitasking. Just task switching – or at best, background tasking, in which one activity consumes our attention while we’re mindlessly performing another."

These articles shouldn't surprise me because the truth of them is evident in my life. I spend most days "simultaneously" listening to the radio, checking email, answering phone calls and drop-by questions from co-workers, while also moving in and out of various software programs running queries, researching discrepancies, and tabulating results. It all appears very busy and productive, but at the end of the day, I often am not even really sure what I accomplished. And, humorously, when I have a really tough problem I'm working on, I turn the radio off so I can "concentrate."

If my work suffers from too much multitasking, though, how much more my relationships? Our lives are wired for accomplishing stuff. With all of our appliances, electronics, mobile devices, and modes of transportation, we can be getting so much done that we never interact with an actual person. And even when I am with another person, it's all too easy to try to stay productive by answering texts and email, making online orders, or updating my calendar.

I've even found myself multitasking through my time with Jesus lately, with dinner on the table, my Bible on my lap, my iPhone in hand, and the television on in the background.

The opposite of multitasking is not just "single"tasking. It's not about "doing" anything at all, but about putting all my concentration on one thing. A lot of times, that's another person. Often, it is a task that requires all of me. Mostly, it's about being present in the moment. And being present is not just something I do between other tasks; if I can't stay put for more than five minutes, than I'm still task-switching. 

I'm not exactly sure that I can completely eliminate task switching in my life, especially in a job that requires me to perform many different tasks each day. But I can work on being present in other areas of my life.

In fact, for Lent this year, rather than giving up chocolate or television, I've decided to give up multitasking. Beginning Ash Wednesday, I'm going to only do one thing at a time, be one place at a time. And in being present, I am hoping to encounter the presence of Jesus in a fresh way.

--

We are about to turn another page of the church calendar. Beginning Wednesday, I will be blogging daily during Lent, a season of wilderness wandering as we head toward Easter. Will you join me?

--

You might also enjoy this article over on High Calling about how to redeem all of our work distractions: "Hearing Christ at Work."

Despondent Foodie

For the past few weeks, food just hasn't interested me as much as usual.

For most people, eating is just a requirement for living; there's not much to be interested in anyway. But as I have explained here before, food is a passion for me. And when I don't feel excited about food, I usually don't feel too excited about life.

It all started about three weeks ago. In order to up my food ante, I decided to visit a local food group whose mission statement sounds a lot like the conversations I have been having about eating. On their website, I read about things like supporting local food growers and producers, eating seasonally, cooking from scratch, and enjoying food around a community table. Their meeting was a pitch-in, so I took meatloaf made from locally grown beef (my family's), and I was looking forward to interacting with people who shared similar food values.

As you might expect from a set up like that, my expectations were way too high. The group felt too political and extreme for where I'm at; and when one guy stood up and said that he spends all his time on food, I realized that this wasn't the group for me. I also wondered if my own interest in food and eating sounded this extreme to others who are even less interested.

When a bout of stomach flu followed on the heels of the food event, I found myself uninterested in eating. For about a week, I ate some combination of toast, applesauce, potatoes, and chai tea for most meals. 

And then I stumbled on the words of John 6:27: "Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you." I was nauseated, weak, and confused. Had my food-losophy become an idol? Was God in the process of knocking it off the grass-fed, free-range altar I had created? And what was this food which endures to eternal life that Jesus was talking about, anyway?

After a few weeks of avoiding the issue and eating around the margins of what I have come to consider healthy, I decided to perk up my appetite with some new recipes and restore my soul by coming face to face with Jesus about this food of his. So Monday night, a couple of hours after a lovely dinner of homemade shrimp lo mein I had never made before, I pulled out my journal, turned to John 6, and started reading and writing.

"O Lord, as I read John 6 and all the references to food and bread and drink and hunger and thirst and filling and satisfying, I can't help but think this chapter is a gift to me tonight. A spiritual lesson about food for a foodie--especially on a night when I had to do something different with food in order to remember what it is I love about it. So many flavors, textures, nutrients, colors. So much more than what I need; so much more than what any ingredient could be on its own."

More reading, more contemplating, more asking Jesus what this all means. Then . . .

"This food which doesn't perish is eating and drinking for the glory of God. The food which perishes is food for food's sake."

Food had become an idol when it crossed over from something to be grateful for in Jesus' name to becoming an end in itself. And it took me hearing it out of another man's mouth . . . the man from the meeting who spends all his time on food . . . to realize that I spend way too much time on food myself.

I'm not giving up on the things I have come to hold dear about eating: local, organic, homemade. And it's important to realize that food really is a metaphor here. Jesus could just as easily be saying that I should work for a hobby that doesn't perish or a job that doesn't perish. 

But because food is my thing, I'm going to ask Jesus to help me see my interest in food as another way to love him, as a way to get more of the food that never perishes.