Month: January 2009

I have been a bit off with my postings the last few days because my computer has been on the fritz. I was receiving messages that my power adapter was bad. My warranty is up, so I had to pay to get a new one. It arrived today, but after hours being plugged in, my battery had not charged a bit. Next thought is the battery, so I ordered one of those to be over-nighted to me. We have our winter retreat this weekend with 500 people attending, and I am responsible for it. Funny thing. Last year, the night before the retreat was to begin my computer crapped out on me as well! Fortunately, my techie boys pulled my hard drive out which contained all of the media for the retreat, and were able to get what we needed off of it. This year I was already planning on making sure I have everything backed up on discs and flash drives, but it’s funny how it’s happening again during the biggest event of my year. After the retreat I am requesting a long-awaited new computer. I am done with Dell! I am either going Mac – which I pray for the patience to learn (I have a Mac at home, but I gave up trying to use it shortly after we got it because I wanted to right-click and Ctrl+Alt+Del and was going crazy!) or probably with an HP. Then I can give my monstrous beast of a lap top (which I say is a laptop for a sumo wrestler it’s so big!) to the tech boys at church who will have a lot of fun with is as it is a gaming machine.

Anyways, that was a lot of rambling. The thing I was going to say is that this year I have resolved to embrace the practice of hand-written journaling. I much prefer doing it on my computer as I can type much faster, but I think there is something nostalgic about a leather journal, and it does force me to slow down a bit while writing which I believe allows me to express my heart in perhaps a deeper way. Thanks to the thoughtfulness of one of my volunteers who gave me a gift card to Barnes & Nobles for Christmas I was able to purchase a beautiful leather journal and I am enjoying writing in it each evening. I am also reading some wonderful new books that I am excited about, which I will blog about upon completion.

For the past few months I have been experimenting with different forms and expressions of prayer, especially those that are not commonly found in the charismatic tradition I have been raised in. While those who have come out of a liturgical background (many of my friends) might find liturgical prayer a real turn-off, stirring up memories of religious repetition and perhaps a level of boredom and frustration, I have found such prayer intriguingly rich, perhaps because of its uniqueness and freshness for me personally. I never thought I would be one to appreciate such forms of prayer, I have been pleasantly surprised! While on one hand I do see where liturgical prayer could digress into thoughtless, heartless words being read, I have, on the other hand, enjoyed the intentionality of the words, praying the Scriptures, the space provided by simply praying and listening without the pressure to think of new words to say, the unity that is experienced when many people are lifting the same prayer focus to the Lord, and the consistent call to prayer (e.g. The Divine Hours). I still very much enjoy and am most comfortable in an atmosphere of a trusting, free-flowing style of spontaneous prayer, but I have found that liturgical prayer does not have to be competitive or replacing, but complementary; does not have to be hollow, empty, or a rambling of words, but can be an enriching and life-giving expression of communion with God.

Just listened to a fascinating, fairly balanced critique of the book The Shack: http://www.thekindlings.com/2008/09/30/the-shack-attackpodcast-live-at-hales-segment-1-of-1/. I personally enjoyed the book and leave thorough critiquing up to great minds such as these.