I am meditating on “Empty Arms”. Tonight I was looking through an old photo album that I brought home from my grandmother’s house that had a lot of my baby pictures in it, and it also had photos from the wedding of my mom and stepfather. I’ve looked at it now about five times, but tonight, something about it took off a scab I thought was healed. I’ve forgiven my stepfather many times over the years, but it is so deeply seated in that primal place of the parent-child relationship that I know it will be with me until I die. He chose to empty his arms of me early on. I have never know what it is like to be held by an earthly father, and I never will. Empty arms.

Today, my son jumped off of his bunk bed with a stringy stuffed animal around his neck. Thankfully, all he got was a flesh wound (a nasty one). But don’t think it escaped me in how many different scenarios
he could have gotten seriously hurt, or worse. I faced the possibility of empty arms, as every mother does at least once in her motherhood. But there is Ben’s cousin, Sarah, sitting in a hospital room with her 7-year old, who is suffering with lymphoma, whose pain meds don’t even take because the chemo sucks them right out of his little body. And he is scared. He looks at his mom with pain and fear in his eyes, and she is powerless to do anything. She faces the very real possibility of empty arms.

Sisters, this world is painful. I know it with you. Whether by choice or not, our arms will ache with emptiness at least once in this world. The only thing we can do it throw them up in the air, with a raw, vulnerable heart open to the only one in whom we can take refuge: Jesus Christ, the one who allowed himself to be pried out of the Father’s arms. Oh, to think–that every mother who has ever had to bury a child, and every child who has never known a parent’s tenderness–has an intercessor who sympathizes. A Father and a Son who emptied their arms of each other in order to fill them with you and I.

And so how can we ever cause each other strife? Oh, sisters, we need to embrace each other, put aside grievances, expectations, slanders, misunderstandings, and simply…ache with each other when it aches, rejoice when it’s really good…but guard ourselves against strife and fill each other’s empty arms with each other and with Christ.

Katie Mendelsohn poses a good question.

What feeds you spiritually?

Besides Sunday morning.

I was considering this question recently and came up with a list, not just one or two things. Relationships with people, nature, study, imagination and creativity, music, helping others. . . I ws struck by the fact that I couldn’t just come up with just one or two things—maybe it helps explain why I get involved in doing a lot of different things, in order to meet all those aspects of how I find God.

I remember hearing of a young devout woman who wanted to be a nun and joined a silent order, only to find that she had cut herself off from one of the main ways that God spoke to her—conversations with others. She still became a nun, but at a different order.

And then there is the reverse question: what hurts you spiritually? I’m not including sin in this consideration—that’s a given. For me, one thing in this list is loud noise.

What about you? What feeds you and draws you closer to the Lord?

So here are mine:

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. I love Austen’s laser-accuracy with people’s inner motivations and idiosyncrasies. About two sisters, Elinor and Marianne: the former sensible, prudent and reserved; the latter explosively emotional and living life to the extreme. Their love interests bring their foibles to the fore. About halfway through. A nice, light read after my Jane Eyre addiction.

Sex God by Rob Bell. Interestingly, I bought this along with “The Big Night” on DVD, and got a good price on prophylactic supplies on Amazon. TMI, maybe, but I thought it was a funny, though unintended, combo. Heck, i’ve resolved not to be embarrassed about my love life. Though maybe a funnier combo was Big T’s and diapers. I guess it takes one to prevent the other. ANYWAY, the theme of this book is “This is about that”, meaning that sexuality has a deeper context in spirituality, and that the way the first plays out speaks volumes about the other. So far, so good.

Eat This Book by Eugene Peterson. The author of The Message on the whys and wherefores of actually ingesting the Word as opposed to merely reading it, and to reading it in light of the Trinity instead of the light of Self. I had been looking for more tangible direction in my Scripture reading since finishing the Gospels this fall, and this book about the practice of lectio divina is a real blessing. Here’s a quote:

“It is the very nature of language to form rather than to inform. When language is persona, which it is at its best, it reveals; and revelation is always formative — we don’t know more, we become more. Our best users of language, poets and lovers and children and saints, use words to make –make intimacies, make character, make beauty, make goodness, make truth.”

How about you? Submit your current reading list–title, author, one to three sentence synopsis and a quote, if you want–in the comments below. And if you’ve got a book in common with another person, comment on that!

But with Christmas upon us, the goose is getting fat, as so must we, on a plentous plentitude of Christmas cookies, pouring forth from
the horn of plenty.

So! Esther would like to let out the seams a bit on her sari…or whatever it is we wear here in Persia…and so your recipes are requested. Hey, we need something to eat with our KAWFEE.

The parameters:

1. Your traditional, must have cookie

2. The one that makes you secretly prideful with its complicated execution

3. The one that always disappears first from the open-house cookie tray

4. The weird, wacky and fantastic.

There you go! Let’s have at it.

Love,

Esther

I need your best one-dish, 30 minute meals. Especially great if they’re grain-free, but I’ll take anything. Let’s help each other get dinner on the table. I’m sure all you harem girls have a hot dinner on the table by 5 pm, but here in Esther’s place it’s PB&J or cereal about a third of the week.

Bring it on!

I’ve gathered up all my life and laid it out before me, as if packing a bag for a long trip. And I find I need nothing but you. No plans, no gifts, no talents, no obligations, no striving, no needs. Just you.

Psalm 131:2: “Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child rests against his mother, My soul is like a weaned child within me.”

Oh, that I would be one that ushers others into your rest. Amen.