Posts Tagged ‘Rob’

by Rob Rawls

Yesterday was a bad day.

Actually, it wasn’t just a bad day. It was a miserably bad day. A seconds-away-from-an-emotional-breakdown, miserably bad day. Of course, now that the work project that was hanging over me is over and I’ve had a good night’s sleep, I can see that compared to a lot of people out there (and probably in our Holy Covenant community) it wasn’t all that bad.

I went to work. I ate breakfast and lunch. I came home to my partner and my dog. I got in my car and went to small group. All of my friends and family were safe and healthy. I didn’t have to worry about where I was going to get my next meal or if I was going to be able to keep my home. So no… Not really that bad of a day.

At the time, though, I wasn’t thinking that clearly.

On my way to small group last night, one of the group members who I car pool reminded me that everything would be better in a couple of hours. “There’s not much that a potluck can’t fix,” she said.

I think she’s right.

We had a celebration dinner during our small group. We didn’t just bring food–we brought our favorite food. We drank sparkling cider and had eggplant parmesan and lasagna and potatoes and salads. We talked about the things that had given us joy over the past few weeks and the things that we could do to create more joy for ourselves and for those we see on a daily basis.

And after that, dessert. Upside down cake. Red velvet cake. Homemade chocolate candies.

Finally we celebrated communion. In a circle, we each had the chance to serve each other and support each other through the bread and cup.

Since Ash Wednesday, I have focused on intentional eating. I have avoided processed foods. I have avoided unethical foods. I have tried to support local food suppliers and small businesses instead of corporations and mass production. Most of all, I have tried to remember the blessing of food.

Last night was a blessing.

When I came home from our celebration dinner, the seconds-away-from-an-emotional-breakdown, miserably bad day wasn’t erased. In a week, though, I’ll have probably already forgotten why I had such a bad day. In a year, I won’t be able to even remember if it was a bad day or not.

I won’t forget the potluck rule, though. I’ll remember that getting together with friends, eating really good food, and opening yourself up for even just a few moments can fix almost anything.

“For these and all God’s mercies, God’s holy Name be blessed and praised; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” – A prayer before meals from The Book of Common Prayer.

by Rob Rawls

The wilderness of Lent is starting to get to me.

In this blog, I have talked about my Lenten practice of intentional eating–a practice that I have succeeded at in some ways and failed miserably at in many other ways. I have talked about my efforts to eat natural foods, eat an ethical diet, and focus in on the blessings that God gives us through food.

Not eating meat or drinking Cokes has not been my wilderness, though. In fact, in some ways, it has been my lifeline.

Over the past few weeks, I have struggled with what I actually believed and what that belief means for the ways I live out my life. Easy and vague statement. What I mean is that I have examined what I believe about many of the doctrines that we hold on to as Christians. Virgin birth. Healings and miracles. The road to the cross and the empty tomb. I have allowed myself to open these doctrines up for critical and historical analysis.

I have doubted in ways that I haven’t doubted since the rebelliousness of adolescence or the initial pain of coming out of the closet.

As children, we take the stories of the Bible very seriously. The Red Sea was parted. Jonah got swallowed by a whale. Daniel survived the lion’s den. As we get older, our beliefs and views of the stories change. We accept some of the stories as literal and others as metaphorical and we live in the tension. In fact, that tension becomes a very easy place to live.

Since returning to faith a few years ago, I have lived in that tension. The thing is, though, I have allowed my faith to become limited in so many ways in order to stay in that tension. I have kept blinders on and ear plugs in so that I could live in a safe Christianity.

In the wilderness of Lent, God has reminded me that Christianity isn’t safe. God has reminded me that I am not called to worship a collection of stories or a set of creeds. I am called to worship a living and loving and powerful God who was incarnate in the life, death, and new life of Jesus.

After they escaped Egypt, the Israelites complained to Moses about the miserable conditions of the wilderness.

“Why didn’t God let us die in comfort in Egypt where we had lamb stew and all the bread we could eat?” (Exodus 16:3 MSG)

So God gave them manna. Bread from heaven. Sustenance enough for everyone.

They still complained. “Why can’t we have meat? We ate fish in Egypt–and got it free!–to say nothing of the cucumbers and melons, the leeks and onions and garlic. But nothing tastes good out here; all we get is manna, manna, manna.” (Numbers 11: 4-6 MSG)

We think of manna as this amazing thing–a delicacy to be savored. Manna wasn’t meat. It wasn’t fresh and crisp like cucumbers or melons. It wasn’t bursting in rich flavors like garlic or onions. Manna was sustenance that got you through the wilderness.

God has used my practice (and at times, my lack of practice) of intentional eating to be my manna these past few weeks. No matter how much I have doubted, I have stayed conscious of this commitment. Even when I haven’t had the faith to pray, I have had the faith to avoid eating meat.

I didn’t know this when I started on Ash Wednesday, but intentional eating has not been about absolution or repentance or even a great connection to God. It has been about God giving me what I needed to make it through…

by Rob Rawls

As I write this post, I am sitting in a house in Key West. I just went for a bike ride through streets filled with shops, restaurants, and music. After I finish writing, I am going to sit by the pool and enjoy the sunshine and cool water. Everywhere I turn, there are decadent smells: fresh baked croissants, coconut shrimp, Cuban sandwiches, and salt water.

This is not Lent.

Lent is the dark days of Chicago. Late February snow storms and early March cloudiness. Lent is work and routine. Lent is discipline.

But here I am.

So I am faced with a choice? Do I let go of Lent for the week and give in to temptations that are around me? After all, vacation is a week of feast days. Right? Or do I stay true to my commitment of intentional and ethical eating, even if it feels excessively penitent?

I am choosing the middle ground. My family enjoyed burgers on the grill last night while I ate a veggie burger. I went to the store and bought fresh fruit and organic chips instead of my usual vacation food of Doritos and Oreos. But I’m letting some stuff go: this week, I am not going to worry about the food being organically grown or ensuring fair labor practices. Just writing that confession down makes me feel a little bit guilty…but it is the truth.

One of my goals for intentional eating was to enjoy food and not just treat it like a task that needs to be done. This week, I get the chance to sit around the dinner table with my partner, my parent, my brother, and his family. We get to drink wine and tell stories and laugh about ridiculous things.

Lenten disciplines are reminders that God is with us during the darkest of times. They should also remind us that God is with us during the celebrations of life.

Sometimes, it’s during the celebrations that we need to remember God’s presence the most.

by Rob Rawls

Intentional eating has been harder for me than I thought it would be. Actually, I thought it was going to be easy. It’s just food after all and it’s just forty days. Not a problem… Right? Not so much.

While some days have been easier than others, there hasn’t been a day in which I haven’t been challenged.  Does the restaurant have a vegetarian option? Should I support a local grocery store even if the produce isn’t locally grown?  How about the families that can’t afford healthier or locally grown food?  Like most things, I am finding that paying attention to the ethics behind my choices has led to more questions and there isn’t always an easy answer.

There have been some nice moments, though.  A trip to the grocery store that felt spiritually infused.  Baking bread. Discovering that I actually like tempeh.

And then there have been the other moments…

During the first full week of Lent, I got a cold. My partner offered to pick up some matzo ball soup from The Bagel on his way home and I told him that would be awesome. Ten minutes later, I remembered that my plan for intentional eating didn’t include chicken broth.  I ate the soup anyway.  A few nights later, we went to see a movie and I gave in to my temptation and got a box of gummie bears. Work was giving me a miserable headache last week and I decided that I needed a cold bottle of Coke.

The hardest part for me has been remembering the purpose behind my commitment. I wrote in my first post that my goal was to find ways to remember the gifts from God. I haven’t really found a way to do that yet. In fact, I didn’t offer thanks to God once before eating today.

Changing what I’m eating hasn’t changed how I’m eating yet. I am still caught up in the day-to-day during most of my meals and quick to forget the nourishment that God is providing.

As I write this post tonight, I am trying to remember that Lent is a season and not a get rich quick plan. The discipline that I’ve chosen to take on isn’t going to change my habits over night or make every moment more sacred. Disciplines don’t work that way. For now, I’ll take a moment here and there and try again tomorrow.

by Robert Rawls

“And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.” – Luke 9: 16-17

As I write this morning, I am in the process of baking bread to take with me to tonight’s Small Group meeting. (I would like to tell you that I’m kneading the dough by hand and baking it in my oven…but I’m not. I’m relying on the old bread machine that’s been tucked away in the cabinet for years.) This is the fourth loaf of bread that I’ve made since my Lenten practice of intentional eating began a week and a half ago. Two have turned out pretty good. One was a disaster. We’ll see how today’s loaf turns out.

When I went grocery shopping last week, deciding which bread to buy was one of the hardest decisions for me to make. Something so simple had become really complex. There were ingredients that I didn’t recognize as I looked at the packaging. Some were organic, but most weren’t. Mass produced and vitamin enhanced and always perfectly shaped…the bread at the store seemed so disconnected from process of making food. It was all end result.

That night, I pulled out the bread machine and baked a loaf of whole wheat bread. It was the one that I said was a disaster, but we ate it anyway.

For me, at least during this time of Lent, there is something spiritual about making my own bread. While I haven’t lived up to all of my Lenten challenges so far, taking the time to make bread gives me a few moments to live out my understanding of God’s gift of nourishment. It’s not always quick and it’s definitely not always store bought. I have to slow down and pull out all of the different ingredients: flour, water, salt, honey, yeast…

I get the chance to remember God’s presence in the process.

“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” – traditional Jewish blessing

by Rob Rawls

I am trying to correct my relationship with food.

I’m not talking about dieting or about understanding that an order of large fries and a pint of cookie dough ice cream won’t make me feel whole. I am talking about trying to correct my understanding of what food is, where it comes from, and how I should enjoy it. I want to remember that food isn’t just something that gets microwaved for three minutes or something that I ordered thirty minutes ago and where is that waiter anyway?…

It is easy for me to say that God gives us food to nourish us–physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s really hard to live that out, though. A few weeks ago, I realized that I never say a blessing before eating a meal. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to remember to thank God for the food–but I always forget. I don’t really think that it clicks in my head that each meal truly is a gift from God.

For Lent, I am taking on intentional eating. I will try to eat in such a way that I become aware of God’s presence in my life and in the lives of the people who played a part in getting that food to my plate.

In her book Mudhouse Sabbath, author Lauren Winner talks about missing kosher observance after converting to Christianity from Orthodox Judaism. She writes,

“Because I kept kosher (the word comes from the Hebrew for ‘fit’ or ‘appropriate’), I thought about the food I ate. I thought about what I was going to eat, and where I was going to procure it, and how I was going to prepare it. Eating was never obvious. Food required intention.”

That is what I want my Lenten journey to be…  I want food to require intention.

Because I enjoy a little legalism here and there, here are the parameters I’ve set for myself this Lent:

I want my food to be ethical. I don’t want the food I eat to come from the suffering of other people or animals. I have played at being a flexitarian before, but now I am trying not to eat any meat at all. I’m also looking for ways to buy food that doesn’t come from corporations that are careless about the environment or their employees.

I want my food to be real. I am trying to avoid processed food and to take a look at the ingredient list of everything I buy. (For Fat Tuesday, I bought a bottle of Coke and a bag of Doritos.)

I want my food to a pausing point in the day…not just another thing on my to do list. I am looking for vegetarian recipes and trying to plan out special meals with my partner and with friends.

Most of all, I’m just trying to remember to take a moment to be thankful for the nourishment that God provides.