Single-Handed Theology: The Piper in the Striped Pajamas

Little boy blue, come play your pipe -
Enchanting with every step
and sound from your lips.
You pull me out of bed by your tousled  head,
catch my eye with a flutter of thick lashes,
warm me to the morning in your cotton striped pajamas.

I'm a little bit in love,
and it's a good way to begin a day.
You don't even know your magic,
and it was not yours to begin with,
but the fruit of a multiplication of love.
And now the proof is in the pudding -
you are filling my earth with the blessing of old,
and I see the blush of the Tree of Life upon your cheeks.

I did not know that such a song could stir me out of myself,
out of my sleep, and into a shining new creation.
You, little seed, are crushing my darkness.
In the chestnut-gloss of your eye
I see us all as we were meant to be.



~lg

Single-Handed Theology: Naptime Prayer

A child prays and all of heaven leans in for the whisper.

“Dear God, thank you for this beautiful boy and the house that you made. Thank you for giving Jack and me as a present to Mommy and Daddy. Bless you with joy, Amen.”

This ordained praise rearranges my thoughts and reorders my loves, renews me in a kingdom truth. This prayer uncensored becomes sweet incense in the room, suspending us all in a held breath of heaven.

She is leading me to our Father, and though I falter I need only bring my scraped knees to Him.

~lg 

Single-handed Theology: Learning to Love

She carries her Baby around wherever she goes. Now that there is a real baby in the house, Arden is all the more interested in taking care of her own. She changes her diaper. She wraps her up in a blanket. She looks for owies and bugbites and kisses them better. She feeds her, and then burps her. When it’s naptime, she wants Baby tucked under the covers. When we pray before bed, she wants me to hold Baby’s hand too. It’s so sweet, this learning to love.

Sometimes she gets overwhelmed by all that baby needs. The velcro diaper tabs don’t always stick right. The blanket doesn’t wrap around just so. Baby falls out of bed. And she’s worried about that same owie on Baby’s head that never goes away. When it’s all too much, there are tears, and sometimes poor Baby gets tossed to the floor in frustration. It’s so hard, this learning to love.

She learns from me. All she knows about taking care of Baby is copied from what I do. (Except throwing Baby on the floor!) And when she needs help, she comes to me – for assistance, for reassurance, for that extra kiss to make things all better. Gently, I show her the way. There are times I just smile wide because the love seems to come so naturally to her. There are times I’m a tad concerned, like when swaddling turns into smothering, but I know she’ll soon get the hang of it.

I look at her looking at me, a mommy mirror. I pray I am a good example.

I look at her looking at me, and I see myself again in her. I am the one learning. I am new at this too.

I pray for clear eyes to see my Father’s heart and His way with me.

I pray for ears to hear my Father’s voice and heed His wisdom.

I pray for the grace to love well.

My little girl, we will learn to love together. 

~lg

Letters to Arden - March 29, 2012

Dear Arden,

You are no longer our little baby, but our growing bigger girl. Soon you will be a big sister! So many changes are on the way . . . you too are changing every day. You are growing into the life God has given you, growing into your fiery personality, your independence, your identity as a daughter, a sister, but most of all your very own identity as you, just you. And that is how I love you. I love just you.

I am still learning who you are! Still discovering all the little things that make you sweet and hilarious and mischievous and marvelous. You are free to be just you! And though you are not like me in many ways, I will love you even when I don’t understand you. I will embrace the way God has shaped you. I will encourage you to make your own path, even when I cannot follow.

And when your new brother or sister arrives (any day now!), you will not lose your place in our love, in our lives. You will continue to be our Arden, our firstborn, our daughter, the spark of joy that first set us alight as parents.

Just you. And that will always be enough.

love Mommy


~lg

Single-handed Theology: The beginning of wisdom

“But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”
James 1:5

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
Proverbs 9:10

“Charm is deceptive and beauty is in vain,
But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.”
Proverbs 31:30

Fear is the humility to place oneself before God, acknowledging ignorance. Fear is the tears of frustration that turn to God in prayer, asking for guidance. Fear is knowing Whom to ask when wisdom is lacking.

Fear is the awe of the mystery that is both God’s otherness and nearness, His infinity and His intimacy.

Fear is the heart that trembles at the life given to my care, the heart that must love even while learning love, the heart that lives only because of love that has been poured in by the Holy One.

We know because He loves.

And this love casts out the shadow-fear, the faltering-fear of darkness and doubt.

Fear is knowing I am loved.

This Fear is the beginning of my wisdom.


~lg

Single-handed Theology - And a little child shall lead them

Maybe being a parent means being less of a grown-up.

Her dependence on me, the me who lacks so much wisdom and experience, is humbling.

It is this humility that gives me the heart of a child, breaks me open enough that I must run to my Father and say “help please!” because I cannot put the pieces together the way they should go.

She looks up with so much eager wonder, with outstretched arms and pleading eyes, with total reliance, and I see myself in her.

She is the little child leading me back to God.

(Isaiah 11:6)


~lg

Single-handed Theology - Nisi Dominus Frustra

Nisi Dominus Frustra

(An abbreviation of the Latin words of Psalm 121.)

Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labour in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.
In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for he grants sleep to those he loves.

Quite simply, without the Lord, frustration!!

How many bricks have I laid of my own accord, how many times have I propped open a watchful eye, busy into the night, laboring under the false impression that it is I who must build, guard and provide for my own house?

How many of us have taken up God’s name and affixed it to our title, stomping around in boots to big for us to fill, glorying in the justification of our own exhaustion? How many sleepless nights before it all unravels in vanity and frustration?

We chase the wind, and meanwhile the house crumbles.

So I pray,

Teach me Your builder’s craft, so every stone I lay is part of Your plan.
Teach me to align my work with Yours, so my energy is not wasted.
Teach me to trust, resting in Your provision.
Teach me to rest, trusting Your eye never sleeps,
and that Your love is at work all through the night.

You are the Builder, Watchman and Provider of this house.

Nisi Dominus Frustra.


~lg

Single-Handed Theology - Where Are the Children?

Single-Handed Theology: one hand in motherhood, one hand in theology, each inspiring the other.

Tonight, while nursing Arden before bed, all the while humming old hymns and drinking hot lemon tea, I was considering the relationship between Christ and the church. In a sacred mystery I am not sure I understand, the apostle Paul identifies Christ as the husband and the church as the wife. That got me thinking – where are the children?

We’ve got all sorts of relationships pictured in the Bible, relationships that exist among God and between God and humanity. There’s God the Father, and His Son, with the Spirit as the bond of love between them (to use Augustine's analogy). There’s Christ the bridegroom, winning a bride for Himself, the Church. The Spirit may also be seen as the chemistry, or divine electricity that draws and binds each to the other. (Of course the Spirit is also a person, not simply a force, with whom we have a relationship with as well, though He is always handing us off to Christ.)

Surely the greatest romance of all time would find fulfillment in the natural outcome of marriage, that is, offspring. We are God’s children, but the Church as she is now has borne no children.

But of course. The marriage has yet to happen. The Great Wedding is an eschatological event, and we are still the betrothed, not yet a wife, not yet a mother.

When I thought of this, a little tingle of excitement ran through me, and it wasn't the lemon tea. Sometimes when we think about the end of this world, or life after death, or eternity in heaven, we struggle to imagine what on earth we’ll be doing. (And yes, there will be a new earth too, as well as a new heaven.) Getting to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb seems like a pretty ultimate arrival in and of itself. But just think, we will be marrying Jesus, the One by whom and through whom all things were created! With such a creative husband, I wouldn’t be surprised if our union brings about some kind of new life. I’m not thinking of more human children, or a race of demi-gods, but something alive nonetheless, something that will recreate the church anew as baby recreates a woman from the inside out.

Perhaps we will experience a glorious motherhood, perhaps there will be things that need our nourishment and our love, love which has been made perfect through the fires of tribulation and resurrection. Perhaps we will be the co-creators we were meant to be. Perhaps the Spirit will birth new life in us as a surprise wedding gift. Who knows?

There is a reason a veil hangs over our faces as we look past the future into eternity. But you know what they say. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes . . .


~lg

Single-handed Theology - Baby Talk

I’ve got a little babbler on my hands. Arden is at the stage where she’s stringing syllables together, mostly “ba-ba-ba” or “da-da-da.” At this point they are random sounds, not associated with a particular concept, but they are words in an infant stage. Her favourite “word” by far is dada, and I’m trying to get her to match the sound with the reality of her Daddy.

In any language, a baby’s words for Mother and Father are simple ones – mamma, papa, dada. In Aramaic the word for Daddy is abba. Jesus taught us to speak to God as Father (pater in Greek), but we are also taught to call Him Dad, a tender term of intimacy.

Now I learned this a long time ago, but it was just this past week that I made the connection to baby talk. “Ah-ba” is something Arden says all the time. It’s one of the easiest vowel-consonant combinations there is. Before babies string consonant sounds together like “ba-ba-ba”, they will usually start with some vowel-consonant combo. Arden’s first such combo was “ah-goo”, followed closely by “ah-ba.” There’s a good reason that the Aramaic word for Daddy sounds like it does. Abba is baby talk. Anyone can say it.

The word is used 3 times in the New Testament. Jesus doesn’t use it in the presence of his disciples, at least not that we are aware of. He uses it in Mark 14:36 at a time and place of great loneliness and grief. We hear it first in Gethsemane, as he struggles to accept his Father’s will. It escapes his lips as he falls to the ground in prayer, an instinctual cry, simple syllables uttered in sorrow. It is amazing that when Jesus’ relationship with his Father is at its most strained, he uses the most intimate name he knows. It is a sound that returns to an almost pre-linguistic stage of being. This is the bond between eternal Father and only begotten Son.

We hear it again from Paul in Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6. It appears as a word we learn from the Spirit of adoption, spoken within us before it is spoken by us. We are born again as sons and daughters of Jesus’ Father, and the first word we learn in this new creation is Abba. This is the basis of our relationship with God. We are His children, sharing by adoption the same bond Jesus enjoyed by nature.

"Ah-ba." Just a simple vowel-consonant combination. It sounds like babble till we associate it with the intimate reality of our Father. In this relationship, we don’t have to learn elaborate titles or complicated means of address. A vowel-less tetragrammaton is well and good for a reverent subject, but not for a child. The Unspeakable Name has been revealed, and we are to speak it with the delight and confidence of a 7 month old in Dada’s arms. When we don’t have any other words, Abba is enough.


~lg

Single-handed Theology - Presence

Arden is lying on the couch beside me, kicking the laptop with her ever stronger feet. She’s getting tired, and it’s time for her morning nap, but she doesn’t want to be in the crib by herself. So she’s hanging out next to me, chewing her teething ring, her rattle bear, her toes. Every so often she looks over to make sure I’m still there, flashes a smile, then goes back to the conversation with her feet. She’s fed and changed. She doesn’t need me for anything in particular. She just needs to know I’m there. She needs my presence.

Presence assures her she is not alone. Presence is my gift of being, the ground of our relationship. Presence is like sonar. When she reaches out to touch me, she knows she is there.

And so amid the tasks of the day, I turn and look for God’s face. I don’t need Him to perform a task or answer a prayer. But I push into Being, and feel myself spring back. With one hand stirring the pot, playing a game, hanging the laundry, reading a book, I stretch out my fingers to Presence. In that Presence I find Father, Comforter, Friend, the assurance of my being and the assurance of my being loved. I smile.


~lg

Single-handed Theology - Parenting

Typing with one hand is a little tricky. Arden sits on my lap and watches me tap this strange little contraption. I was just thinking about God’s mandate to the first humans – He tells them to become parents. There’s a big world that needs to be filled. God could have done it Himself. He could have created a whole human population. But He gives the fun of procreating and the charge of parenting to these two inexperienced creatures. Create more life! He says. See this beautiful world? Fill it up!

Perhaps in parenting we are able to mirror God’s image in a new way. We create something that is of us, yet wholly other. We learn to love someone who will bring us great joy and great pain.

This whole parenting enterprise is part of the plan. In one sense, it is what we were created to do. Create more life. Then love it.

I keep coming back to this question for some reason. Why life at all?

It must be because participating in God’s image is something worthy. It must be because love is better than non-existence.

~lg

Single-handed Theology - I've got a craving . . .

Single-handed theology: theology inspired by motherhood and often carried out with one hand on the baby.

“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good." 1 Peter 2:2-3

Ever had a craving? Maybe for chocolate, or Frosty Treat ice cream, or a Big Mac, or that morning cup of coffee . . . mmm, I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

I have a new appreciation for the word now that I’ve seen a newborn in action. When a newborn is hungry, you’ll know. If not by the frantic rooting and finger sucking, then by the inconsolable screams that are soon to come if you don’t get the milk in her mouth fast enough. A newborn’s craving for milk is not something that can be ignored. It’s all consuming.

So when I read this verse now, I wonder if I have the same sort of craving for soul food. Do I start to get a little crazy when I miss out on spiritual nourishment? Does my mouth water when I think of the Lord’s goodness, and does it make me search desperately for more? Of course, the craving is based in the first taste. Yes, you may have been hungry before that first experience of Jesus, but once you tasted, the pure goodness should keep you coming back for more. Have you tasted, truly drank in His goodness? And if you have, do you have that all consuming desire for more?

Too often I’m guilty of pacifier Christianity. I get a little hungry, a little dissatisfied, but instead of reaching out for the good stuff, I get distracted by something easier, the quick fix. How easily I am soothed by sticky sweet pop-culture, by the endless menu of entertainment paraded before me, and my salty self-rationalization. But it’s only temporary. There’s no long term satisfaction. So why do I keep stuffing myself with empty calories, or even a Christian-flavoured soother, when what I really need is a good long feeding from the source?

It’s time to grow up. Time to get a little frantic and drink deep.


~lg