Peonies, peas and prayers

Every Wednesday afternoon, just around the corner from my apartment, is a wonderful little farmers market. Tomorrow will be the last time its open for the season. It’s one of the neat things about living in this neighborhood. There’s always live music of one kind or another, someone passing trying to get petition signatures for this cause or that, and some great tamales being grilled with a side of fresh vegetables that were just bought there that day. Kids are everywhere and families lounge on blankets in the park adjacent to the market. It’s like a neighborhood festival every week.

There’s a general pattern to my wanderings there. I’ll make my first loop through to see who has what, checking the various quality between the booths, and figuring out who seems to have the best prices. I buy on the second loop. I open up one of the free cloth bags that came from this conference or that (it makes it blindingly obvious that I’m involved with church stuff, I think) and start to fill it up; beans, berries, local cheese, wine, veggies, fresh roasted peanuts, fresh bread, fresh everything, really.

I always buy the flowers, last. I’d never really bought cut flowers for myself before this year but, well, I had this glass vase I never used and they looked so good on my dining room table. . . I don’t know what most of the flowers are called. I just look for some colors that I think will look good in my apartment and enjoy them until they fade.

I’m a city kid. Although my mom grew up on a small farm and we visited there when I was growing up, I can’t say that I really paid attention to much accept grasshoppers, playing on what seemed to be the world’s largest swing set and digging holes. The whole idea of foods and flowers growing seasonally wasn’t something that clicked. I ate what was put in front of me with the exception of peas (ew). I didn’t understand that I was eating in food that was “in season.” So, now I’m this grown up kid and, when I go to the grocery store, most of what I regularly purchase I have access to year round. Until this year, I’d functionally forgotten about the idea of there being particular seasons for flowers or food (because, um, its always the season for frozen pizza). There’s a difference between knowing something and really remembering it.

The days are getting shorter and the nights are colder, now. I find myself not wanting to get out of bed as quickly and just lie there longer. It changes the way I pray. In the summers, the prayers are all in the movements of yoga and the greeting of the sun and movement of the day. There’s a clear sense of that interactive, holy presence that flows, grows and births.

These mornings start slower. I put on my thick, terry cloth robe, and start the coffee. As it brews, I might make the bed (slowly) or put away the previous days dishes (slowly) then poor coffee into a cup, sit down and just think. My hand will caress the outside of the mug that’s almost to hot to touch. My eyes may close and I’ll say a prayer full of thanks or pleas or a little of both. Or, I might just sit there and think. God sits on the couch, reading the paper or something like that. I don’t feel prodded or pushed. God is, somehow, that plush, warm robe and that cup of coffee and that quiet.

We are a seasonal people. We’re affected by the fresh berries, the sunflowers, the later sunrises and the rainy, snowy muffling of all that stuff that falls from the sky and gives life to those fresh berries, sunflowers and cups of hot morning coffee. The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote about the largeness of it (“for everything there is a season”) and we’re all wrapped up in both the smallness and the largeness. We feast, we plant, we harvest, we lay fallow. . .

"Confession" or "The Spirituality of Debt"

I felt horrible. My wife and I had split, I’d moved to Chicago and I was trying to figure out how in the world I was going to start a new life. I really, really just wanted to feel better. Somewhere along the way, I was browsing around on the internet and looked at a sit of an organization I’d always wanted to give money to but hadn’t. At the bottom of the page, they had the option to give on line so, I did and it felt great. I looked up a couple of other organizations I’d wanted to give to and sent them some money, too. This also felt good. I was on to something.

Over the next several months, I found myself being very generous. I gave away more money, I paid for dinner with friends, I helped some folks I knew out with a little money here and there. . . Now, I was making good money but not as much as I should have to be this generous. I gave away a lot of what I earned and started putting a lot of my real expenses on credit cards.

Now, there were some things I’d planned on saving up for in my new place but, life is short, right? I went ahead and put most of those things on credit cards, too. In my head, I’d figured our some way that this all made sense. I was even able to rationalize how some of these things would actually save me money in the long run. It all made sense. . .

. . . strange, vacuous, illogical sense. I got myself in the same spot that lots of people have; I had debt that was too high compared to what I was bringing in. In addition to that, I had a few late payments and, yep, it just kind of got ridiculous.

It was over a one-week period that I really began to realize what I’d done to myself and I felt stupid. Yep, I was hurting, not doing my best thinking and trying to escape from some pretty severe inner turmoil but, at the moment I realized what I’d done to myself, some of those feelings came back again with a whole different kind of force and depth. I just remember adding up my debt over and over trying to figure out how I’d gotten myself in to this mess while, at the same time, knowing exactly how I’d done it. I’m still paying some of it off. Yep, I did it up good.

Now, this next part may, at first, sound dangerously close to blaming other people for my bad decisions. I know I could have made other choices and should have. If I would have just taken some of that money and had the courage and humility to invest in post-relationship therapy – the exact thing I recommended to people I was giving pastoral care after their divorces – I would have probably avoided this. I looked around for a path, found a bad one and started marching right down it.

There were, however, a whole lot of signs that advertised that path pretty clearly. I switched my growing debt from card to card because of the better options or features they gave (while putting the worst consequences in small print). I was feeling lonely and, in retrospect, I was swallowing the whole identity based advertising and fund raising angle hook, line and sinker (they do their jobs well). It gave me affirmation and a sense of belonging. There was a split in my consciousness about all of this. I understood that this is what advertising did but, somehow, I was blind to the fact that I was being effected by it. Looking back, it’s so clear. At the same time I was critiquing materialism and the marketing of shallow feel good spirituality, I was also deeply involved in it. I really don’t blame these financially based entities for my bad decisions but I do have to say that, maybe, they make it just a little bit too easy to make these bad decisions. The cheap grace I was seeking ended up also charging interest.

As I’ve read and heard the news over the last few weeks, I’m hearing about myself in many of the stories; people who made bad decisions and were somehow convinced that these decisions would have the best possible results. A lot of the stories we hear are about people who were clearly and obviously deceived and victimized but, for many of us, we were closer to co-conspirators. We participated in this madness all the while knowing that, even if it didn’t seem like a completely good idea, it felt like one. Somehow we knew that good things come to those who wait but some part of us said, “Why wait when we can feel good, now?”

In my own life, I somehow matched the loss of peace, certainty and love with indebtedness with the depth of my false idea of charity and ownership. To make a pledge or financial promise to an organization is one thing. To go in debt means that money that you could possibly share is given to credit organizations, instead. Purchasing something with a credit card means you might have another thing in some ways but you actually end up having less, in the long run.

There is another side of this though, too. Screwing this part of my life up was, in some ways, the best thing that could have happened to me. I’m certainly not suggesting anyone do this but recognizing this part of my life was messed up helped me take a more honest inventory of many parts of my life. Not only was I overspending, I was over working. After many sleepless nights lying in bed worrying, I started to realize how much of my time and energy was being used up worrying about things I could not control. I began to clearly see what stress did to my body. To some degree, by giving money away and paying for things, I was looking for an entry in to people’s lives. I clearly began to recognize how many things are worth waiting for. The confessional tone of my prayer life became less guilt ridden, less word based and more and more of an experience of just trying to sit in the presence of God. My preaching took a more personal turn. The pattern of looking at my life through the lens of rationalization began to fall apart.

Sometimes, those things that fall apart were not as well constructed as they should have been. Sometimes, when things fall apart, it gives you the chance to build something better.

Now, of course, I still mess up around this stuff once in awhile. That's normal. I'll have this or that impulse purchase or stretch my giving a little farther than I should but it feels a lot more like an OK occasional decision as opposed to the pattern of bad decisions I was stuck in before. Its a choice as opposed to a compulsion.

Life has only become better and the "better" part hasn’t cost me a dime.