Point to Ponder: Life is a test and a trust.

Verse to Remember: "Unless you are faithful in small matters, you won't be faithful in large ones." Luke 16:10a (NLT)

Question to Consider: What has happened to me recently that I now realize was a test from God? What are the greatest matters God has entrusted to me?

I'm having a little trouble with this one. I don't think God dumps us into situations, like some kind of cosmic drill sargeant putting us through the spiritual equivalent of a Marine Corps obstacle course. I don't think God "throws things" at us, or makes bad things happen to us to test our loyalty.

I do think we face challenges. I do think we face choices. It is challenging to live faithfully in these times, and difficult to choose from among the many things that may all look like viable options (or for that matter, from the many things that all look like equally bad choices). I think God allows us to be tested, not that God designs the test like some kind of cosmic SAT for us to take and pass in order for him to love us. And I think God allows us to choose freely how we will respond to the challenges and choices we face...and continues to love us, and to gently invite us to keep growing, keep trying, keep looking.

I'm not entirely sure what the greatest matters are that God has entrusted to me. I know some of the ministries I've been given - to write, to sing; to teach, apparently, at the Hearthstone Paths conference in October in Maryland. I'm not sure we can know which matters are greatest. I think maybe it's more important to treat all matters entrusted to us, however trivial-seeming, as God's matters. Great or small, I think that matters more.

It is continually amazing to me, how what resonates in the psalms of the day is different depending on what's been going on in my life. I don't know why this should be continually amazing to me, but it is.

The psalms do not change. There are 150 of them (unless you're Catholic, in which case there are 151). In the particular Monastic Breviary, they are grouped into two weeks, and within each week into four bunches per day: a long set for Matins and Vespers, and a shorter set for Diurnum and Compline. Each two-week period visits all the psalms once. Over and over, around and around, week in, week out, Week I, Week II...

But over time I change. The part of me that meets the words changes. The part of me that needs to hear the words changes.

( today's Diurnum psalms )

...from another lovely weekend at Holy Cross. The retreat title was "Singing and Praying," something I've been doing more or less instinctively since I was old enough to sing. My mother tells me I used to sing to myself in my crib.

We explored a variety of musical forms. Of course, there is the steady, pulsing rhythm of Gregorian chant that surges through the day like an ocean tide. We did two Psalms in Anglican chant - like Gregorian in that there is no meter; unlike in that there is harmony.

( more on the psalms )

We also sang some selected Shaker hymns - of which there are probably more than most people can count! Lovely, jewel-like, sparkling little melodies - clear, simple, pure, elegant - and at least for the ones Scott chose, words that sparkled as much as the tunes.

And then Sunday the offertory hymn was #487. This hymn is a setting of the words of poem titled The Call, by George Herbert to music by Ralph Vaughn Williams. The melody is lovely, haunting, modal; the words are - to me -exquisite. It has always been - for me - an invocation, a prayer, a plea.

Sunday, singing the third verse, I opened my eyes (I tend to sing things I know by heart with my eyes closed), and sang the words looking into the eyes of the Christ on the icon cross. And it became, somehow, something more - something I'm not even sure I can or should try to describe.

All in all - a very lovely weekend.

I had that feeling this morning - the one that says, "Don't even get out of bed; it's not going to be worth it."

I am rarely wise enough to listen to this feeling.

So, for starters, I thought I snoozed the clock and turned off the alarm instead...

And then I had just "one more thing" to do and made myself an hour late to the office...

And then when I was just trying to leave, I got sandbagged by a telemarketer - from the NY Philharmonic. Now, ordinary telemarketers get very short shrift from me; they're lucky if they get something so polite as "go to h***." But the NY Phil...

And then there's the poor guy in Florida who can't get into the online time system and he's diligently submitted all his offline timesheets with the wrong project numbers and we finally got all the right project numbers for him...and we still can't upload them because nobody was ever set up as his authorized delegate...

And that's about when the fire alarm rang.

Except it wasn't fire - it was flood.

Seems the candidate for a runner-up Darwin Award (mentioned in the title) had turned on the water to the 3rd floor women's bathroom. Which would be fine, I guess, except that that bathroom has been closed for repairs for three weeks, and there are no fixtures, just pipes standing there...

So the bathroom was flooded, and the hallway, and the water was working its way into the main work area, and water was dripping down into the second floor...

So we go outside like for a fire drill, and of course all the smokers light up immediately and puff in the faces of those of us who don't smoke and would rather not...and it's cold...and some people ran without even their coats...

And a friend and I who were supposed to go out to lunch for a business project met up with our other team members and went off for lunch, and at the end of lunch one guy got a phone call that they'd evacuated the building and sent us all home because we've got no phone, no network, no lights...

So how am I typing this? At home, of course! Where it turns out I probably should have stayed, except I would have missed out on a really good Chinese lunch.
kls

Working a double shift today...very tired...

I'm headed out to Holy Cross Monastery (click the link if you want to see where I'm going and read about it), for the semi-annual Associates' Weekend. We do two of these a year now, one in February and one in July (for those who are too chicken or too cold in February).

Looking forward to seeing old, dear friends; falling back into the rhythm of the Daily Office and the chant tones; possibly getting a massage.

This is a place where - as the Celts would say - the veil between the worlds is very thin. A good place to be, right now.

Picked up this "personality compatibility" test from a friend's LiveJournal...

What I find most interesting is that, for some of the questions, I was entirely unsatisfied with the choice of answers...I found myself wanting to respond with small essays, or "some each of #1, #4, and #7."
kls

I'm an apparently intelligent, liberal, disgustingly generous, seizure-inducingly boring spod!
See how compatible you are with me!
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

Fooled me! Didn't realize the first post had really posted, until I went in through the link again...ah, well...we live and learn (slowly).