Posts Tagged ‘Dale’

by Dale Jones

“Finish strong.” I had heard this encouragement from coaches, teachers, and others as a game, season, or school term moved toward an end. Coming into the final week of Lent, I resolved to reclaim my originally-intended but oft-forsaken Lenten discipline. I would set aside that brief quiet time each day, I would get some aerobic exercise most days. So far, I have. With a few days of Lent remaining, my Lenten practice has returned to or exceeded the level of the first week. I am finishing strong.

The problem of course is what I did – or didn’t do – with the weeks in between. In the forty days (plus Sundays) of Lent, I will complete at most twenty days from the “100 Days of Integrity” devotional guide I set out to make a daily part of my Lenten practice. I went days on end without putting on my jogging shoes. Thinking of the few minutes of college basketball I took time to watch during “March Madness,” even though I am now gaining momentum, the clock will run out before I can regain the lead. Often I have rationalized my delinquency because of heavy and unplanned work demands, which seemed to commence and then multiply starting about the second week of Lent. In honesty, however, my intended Lenten practice seems like Lent “lite” – not intense enough for even the most grueling schedule to justify abandoning it so often. Clearly, I have yet to master the discipline of staying focused and keeping priorities ordered when things get fast and furious. A challenge for the days and the Lents to come.

While not claiming a “win” in my Lenten practice, the effort been more than worthwhile. If my Lenten journey has not taken me all the way to Jerusalem with Jesus, it has taken me closer than no journey at all. I am especially grateful to have been part of this blogging project, which proved as I thought initially: the reasons I was reluctant to participate were the very reasons I needed to. Blogging meant identifying a Lenten practice I could blog about, which meant I could not just wholly ignore these weeks of preparation. Even all the times I let urgencies usurp my practice, I was aware of the season, aware of what I should be doing, how I should be living. That awareness at times caused twinges of guilt, true, but more significantly it helped me acknowledge God’s presence in daily situations and settings where I would have otherwise overlooked God. Blogging also meant I read the posts of fellow bloggers, whose candid sharing invariably brought ideas and perspective that enriched my Lenten journey and helped me true up my course.

As noted in an earlier post, I became more aware of measures of grace in my life and undertakings. Words from the old hymn “Grace Greater than Our Sin” have come to me regularly over these last few weeks, almost becoming a substitute Lenten practice during the busiest and most stress-filled occasions:

Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,
Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt!
Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured,
There where the blood of the Lamb was spilled.

Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that is greater than all our sin.

Grace that exceeds flunking Lent 101, straying from the journey, letting the urgent crowd out the important. Thanks be to God. Amen.

by Dale Jones

I have been hoping no one other than me noticed my blog post was missing last week. If so, perhaps I should not have called attention to my omission. On the other hand, an old adage proclaims “confession is good for the soul,” and this soul has a lot to ‘fess up to. For starters, any semblance of my Lenten practice has largely evaporated in the last couple weeks.

If I was flunking Lent 101 before, now I was not even showing up for class.

As my schedule deteriorated from somewhat crazy to nearly insane, I failed at every attempt to write last week’s blog. First of all, with my Lenten practice supplanted by working most of my waking hours, there was little inspiring to blog about. Probably there is a spiritual dimension to short-notice trips to meet with a troubled client and the attendant preparations, but I was too absorbed in responding to these unusual, pressing needs to find the Holy. Secondly, each time I made an effort to write the blog entry – usually well past any reasonable bedtime – I fell asleep at my keyboard, awaking after some minutes to find I had typed many pages of the letter “k.” (Not a very meaningful blog entry.) After a few nights of these fruitless efforts, I decided to invoke the grace I hoped was present in a pre-Lent message to bloggers from the Communications Committee: “Your thoughts and views are what is important to us–not making sure that you keep to a strict schedule.” I conceded that blogging was just not going to happen.

Sleep-deprived and somewhat mentally spent, I decided not to cancel a weekend getaway planned weeks ago during an airfare sale. Away from the office and (most of) its unmet deadlines and impending meeting preparations, my Lenten discipline flickered back to life temporarily. I returned to Lexington, Kentucky, a former home for several years, to visit a college-student son and worship with the congregation that was my church family during those years.

Here I did find the Holy.

While many names and faces have changed since I moved from there, St Luke UMC in Lexington remains a vibrant, growing congregation, almost as exciting as Holy Covenant – and that is saying a lot! Pastor Debbie Wallace-Padgett preached poignantly about roll-coasters: her way of illustrating the ups and downs of the Israelites’ relationship with God.

“Yep,” I thought, “my walk with God is roller-coaster-ish right now.”

As my son and I trekked through Raven Run Nature Preserve down to the Kentucky River overlook, then huffed and puffed our way back up the hill, the occasional emanation of wildflowers whispered words of re-creation. This woodland trail felt like it could be the road to Jerusalem. I spent a few hours with cherished friends from St Luke church. One of my friends, at the age where he might have disengaged from church life to focus on his granddaughters and his Social Security checks, was instead pursuing licensing as a local pastor. Bob had always been effective at encouraging and leading others to deeper faith, but his new engagement in disciple-making reminded me it is never too late to begin the journey with Jesus toward Jerusalem.

Returning Monday to the Real World, my weekend Lenten revival succumbed quickly to too many tasks and too little time. There is now no doubt I must repeat Lent 101 next year. In these weeks I have been mostly flailing through the jungle rather than resolutely walking the road toward the Cross.

But from my brief times on that Road, it is clearly the “more excellent way” (1 Corinthians 12:31).

by Dale Jones

As I wrote last week’s blog post, just beginning the third week of Lent, I realized I was flunking. And I’m in only Lent 101, the introductory remedial class – Lent for the spiritually-challenged.

“There are several weeks left,” I told myself. “I will re-kindle my commitment, start anew, and do better.”

And for a few days, I did.

I packed my jogging shoes and the devotional guide I had been neglecting as I headed out of town on a business trip. With a slightly less erratic schedule, I carved out a brief devotional and prayer time each of the first two days I was away. Finding myself in a warmer clime, I went for a jog. Next day I learned I could get an aerobic workout without jogging if I walked briskly straight up Hyde Street from the bay to the crest of Russian Hill. The view from atop the hill was itself a spiritual experience, well worth the complaints from a few muscles unaccustomed to battling gravity so directly. Apparently this one-time mountain boy has been a flatlander too long.

I returned to a warmer Chicago than I had left.

“Wonderful,” I thought. “I can continue to get some exercise without the drudgery of the treadmill.”

Perhaps my Lent grade was up from F to D-. After a few more days, it was back in failing territory – deeply. No surprise that being away from the office meant my work was all the more behind when I returned. But each hour seemed to bring a new issue that needed attention – and lots of my time. Faced with days too short to get it all I done, I lacked the discipline to maintain even my modest efforts at a brief daily quiet time and every-other-day jog. By Wednesday, when I should have sent in this post for the blog, I was flunking blogging too.

Reflecting on something I once read about John Wesley – that he would pray an extra hour when faced with unusually heavy demands or full schedule – I knew there was a better way. I did not know how stay on that way consistently. Jesus summarized my problem like this: “…you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”

As I bombed in my Lenten practice and grew delinquent as blogger, I also became aware of measures of Grace in my life: co-workers who graciously rescheduled a meeting after I lost track of time and failed to show; pardon for an omission I was afraid might be tantamount to an unpardonable sin; small words of affirmation; responding to me with patience and kindness even when I acted like a jerk.

These encounters with Grace reminded me of the much larger measure of ever-present Grace I often fail to recognize. So I attempt again to lay aside worries and distractions in favor of the One Thing. God’s grace allows, even encourages, unlimited repeats of Lent 101.

by Dale Jones

After the first week of Lent, I was feeling pretty good about my spiritual practice. I had worked in a brief devotional and prayer time each day – almost. I had carved out time several days for some exercise.

In the second week of Lent, the progress that had me feeling a little bit successful went to a hot place in a hand basket. With a crazier-than-usual schedule, I skipped both my daily quiet time and my jogging session with the treadmill. My schedule, or perhaps my time management, worsened rather than improved, and I missed a second day.

Several days into the second week of Lent, my primary exercise activity had been dashing from building to building as I was late for meetings (admittedly more intense than jogging, but of too short duration for any spiritual or physical value). The closest thing to meditation and quiet time had been pondering how to recover from an inadvertent but serious omission on the job. An outsider examining my life over these several days would have doubtlessly concluded that apparently my Lenten practice was to give up these activities and traits, among others: adequate sleep, meeting deadlines, and presence of mind.

Then the time arrived for a previously planned trip to Tennessee, to work with my brother on a project we undertake about this time every year. As fate had it, the spouse of a Tennessee cousin died a couple days before I left Chicago, and so I attended her memorial service while I was there. This unplanned family occasion provided a mental and spiritual reset for me.

Brenda had struggled with multiple chronic illnesses for years, but continued to remain upbeat and to encourage those in family, her church and workplace communities. Over the last year and a half, the diseases progressed in severity, to the point of taking her life. As symptoms and pain increased harshly in her final months, her ready smile, abiding faith, and perseverance seemed all the more remarkable. Brenda had demonstrated some key truths of living even as she was dying. I realized – again – that I have a priorities problem.

So it is another week, and another chance for me to attempt to turn my sine-wave Lenten practice into a line with a more steadily increasing slope.

Grace and Peace,
Dale

by Dale Jones

It is sad to admit, but Lent might have been like any other 40-day period of my life were it not for this blogging effort. Since I could scarcely blog about blowing off Lent, knowing that blogging would mean instating some spiritual observance was, as I noted last week, a key reason to blog at all. Selecting a spiritual practice seemed a bit like raking leaves in the forest: opportunities were almost boundless. I could readily identify habits, behaviors, or attitudes to give up, and others I would do well to adopt. With such an abundance of possibilities, how should I hone in on some course that might actually make a difference in my Christian journey, yet was realistic enough I had a chance of adhering to it? Despite occasional wisecracks that I was giving up fasting for Lent, a strong sense emerged to take on something missing or delinquent in my life, rather than give something up. Two areas were obvious targets:

1) Devotional life. My daily prayer time, meditation, Bible study or anything similar had long fallen prey to schedule demands, lack of discipline, procrastination, and skill at rationalizing why I did not have time for regular pursuit of these activities.

2) Exercise. I know from experience that even a modest degree of regular aerobic exercise (usually jogging, for me) helps keep my energy level high, my mental outlook good, and my doctor from threatening to invoke cholesterol meds. While some may consider exercise a physical rather than spiritual practice, jogging can be for me as spiritual as praying or meditating – and sometimes my venue for both. Yet I was making full use of the same schedule, discipline, and rationalization deterrents to be nearly as slack in exercising as in devotional practice.

At Christmas, a friend gave me a little book of devotions titled 100 Days of Integrity for Men. I thanked her, acknowledged my need for some type of daily devotional practice, and put the book on a shelf. It resided there until last week when I decided to employ it for my Lenten practice. As I type this post, not quite a week into Lent, I have been using the book daily – almost. I am still discerning whether it is the right tool or the only tool for the spiritual progress I would like to achieve. Having tried both, I realize the greater value (for me, at least) of devotional moments early in the day rather than at day’s end. Setting aside these moments in the first part of the day, I must confess, has been a struggle.

Although never an exercise enthusiast, I can endure jogging and sometimes even enjoy it, especially in the right setting: the parks along the lakeshore in Evanston, or better, the wooded trails alongside the cypress lagoons of First Landing State Park when I am occasionally home in the Tidewater area of Virginia. I knew that jogging in daylight-shortened days of February in Chicago, however, would usually mean a treadmill in the fitness room in my apartment building. I do not enjoy treadmills. But so far, I have endured two treadmill sessions. Thanks to a weekend and slightly moderating temperatures, I also jogged along the lake – a welcome change despite the chill and some slush underfoot. For the time being, though, it’s back to the treadmill, with a prayer that longer days and warmer temps arrive before Lent departs.

by Dale Jones

When the e-mail invitation arrived from the Communications Committee to participate in the Holy Covenant Lent Blog project, my instinctive reaction was, “This is definitely not for me.” After all, I reasoned, I’ve never regularly kept a personal journal, am presently slipshod in my devotional life and delinquent in spiritual disciplines, and don’t have much to say that anybody would be interested in. Moreover, my work schedule and job demands have been heavy enough lately. I doubted I would be reliable at timely submission of blog posts. So I ignored the e-mail – for a while.

Then a Communications Committee member approached me at church the next Sunday, and I went through a litany of the reasons why I was not a good choice to be a Lenten blogger. She listened politely, but countered some of my objections and asked me to think and pray about the matter. Although confident I already had the answer, I agreed to think and pray about it.

If one does not want to risk the possibility of having a change of heart about a matter, one should not agree to think and pray about it. I soon came to realize that my reasons for declining were the very reasons I should accept the invitation. I have never experienced much personal growth from doing only the things I feel comfortable with, am experienced at, or am already good at. Further, if I have let work and other urgencies crowd spiritual practices out of my routine, what could be better motivation to restore some discipline and regimen than knowing I have to write each week about a spiritual pursuit? And what better time to start than now, during Lent?

So…we shall see. As I type these words, Ash Wednesday is upon us. By the time this post goes on the blog, we’ll all be a couple of days into our Lenten journeys. Some of my initial rationale may prove accurate: I may have little of interest to say, and I may not always be on time with my posts. My prayer, hope, and intent, however, say that by the end of this season of Lent, I will be in some way changed or challenged, my knowledge of God and of myself will be more full.

Let us move together toward these ends in the coming weeks. Amen.