Book Review: In Constant Prayer, by Robert Benson

"Get this book," my best friend told me. "I've been meaning to buy it for you--I thought of you every chapter when I read it." This is the friend who knows me better than anyone except my husband--there was nothing to do but get the book.

Benson's "In Constant Prayer" is a book about liturgical prayer, specifically about using the daily office for what most evangelicals would call personal quiet time. It's a primer on what the daily office is for people who think that is office is where you keep your desk. It's a challenge and encouragement to the Protestants to take up this ancient practice. It's a poetic meditation on beauty and challenges of choosing this form of structuring your prayer life.

It's been a long time since I read a book that simultaneously challenged, convicted and encouraged me like this one has. Here is a way to practice prayer, he suggests, for those of us who are no good at praying and aren't ever going to be on our own. It's utterly deflating and freeing. So you're not a praying artiste. You don't need to be. You don't need to reinvent "quiet time." The church throughout the ages has an easy step-by-step guide for you.

Most American Christians are not very good people of prayer. If you feel like you ought to pray more, but just can't quite seem to get it to work, try praying by the recipe with Benson and the daily office.

Five stars.

7 quick takes: volume 090724

7 books I'm reading this summer when I'm not blogging

1. The Dresden Files (Jim Butcher): okay, a whole series of books. This summer's fluff. Jim Butcher has a deft hand at weaving a lot of stock Fantasy/Sci-Fi elements with snarky humor and likably flawed under-dog characters. Plop the whole thing in a familiar setting--like an alternate-reality Chicago--and it's easy to see why Butcher's managed to land himself on top of the best seller lists.

2. Watership Down (Richard Adams): Book club book for the summer. A pleasant re-read. I must have been about seven or eight when my dad read this to my brother and me for bed-time reading.

3. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy): The other book club read for the summer. I actually read this when I was fourteen and hated it. Re-reading it at 34 is proving to be a college course's worth of insight into how our life experience informs our reading. I'm not sure if I like it or not this time round. I'm not sure I can even really compare. I feel like I'm reading a completely different book.

4. Story (Robert McKee): A book about writing screenplays that has a lot of material which is directly applicable to novels. My writing classes in college focused on structure at the sentence and paragraph level. They never addressed such things as plot arc and scene selection--those macro-structuring issues with which I've struggled a great deal in my attempts to write. This book is a God-send.

5. Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl (N.D. Wilson): My next book review book for Thomas Nelson. A philosophical, apologetic hymn of awe to a Creator-God who is too great for us to even begin to comprehend. Beautiful.

6. God's Prayer Book (Ben Patterson): A how-to devotional guide for Protestants on the spiritual discipline of praying the book of Psalms. A birthday present from my best friend. A not-so-subtle hint from God.

7. Cicero (Anthony Everitt): A biography of the great Roman orator. An overview of Roman politics that makes our current, corrupt American politics look like a model of integrity.

What are you all reading this summer?

As always, 7 Quick Takes are sponsored by Jen at Conversion Diary

Mongreloid: Happy Birthday, USA!

No, I'm not Dutch, English, Scottish, German or Swedish--though I can trace ancestors back from all those places. I'm not knowingly descending from any former slaves--but I know I wouldn't be the first white girl to be surprised on that score, and I'd be proud to have that stream represented in my blood lines. I can trace my ancestry back to 1640 and New Amsterdam, before it became New York. I need to go at least four generations back in any direction to get a first genration anything; all of my great grandparents were natural born US citizens. I'm married to a man who can trace his descent through a US president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. This is the land of my heritage. I'm proud to be American.

And if our country doesn't get everything right, I'm proud that we get it a long sight better than most anywhere else on the face of the planet. I'm thankful to God that I live in a country that is committed to the principles of freedom and rule of law, however much we may squabble about the best way to carry them out.

I love the Fourth of July. I love bright colors and loud booms. I'm not so fond of the marches of John Philip Sousa, but that probably has more to do with a high school band director who was over fond of them than with the marches themselves.

This is the place I belong to. Me and my children and parents and grandparents and generations dead now. This is the land whose history I know, whose faults and accomplishments I can claim a piece of. This is my family, my country, my ground, my birthright, my responsibility. Happy 232nd birthday, United States. May God bless America.

Warning: Seriously half-baked thoughts ahead

What does it do to us to do the right things for the wrong reasons? And what are the right reasons anyway? Is it better to build good habits while reinforcing bad motives and attitudes behind them, or is it okay to not pursue something when doing the "right" thing feels like drudgery? What are your feelings about the complex of words like "discipline" and "perseverance?"

I've lately been thinking about this grey territory . . . thinking about the attitudes that we bring to all the things that we're "supposed" to do. About pursuing God, and the paradoxical insistence of much of the church that we do that on our own strength . . . how stupid is that? It is God who pursues us and catches us and purchases at the unimagineable price of Christ's blood . . . it is God who reveals himself to us--and without that, it would be impossible for us to know him? Why do we so often act as if our relationship with him depends on our diligence?

See, we have many things we're "supposed" to do. We're supposed to eat our vegetables, limit our starches, get plenty of exercise. And I know that I, like many Americans, have very mixed feelings about all these things. I want to be healthy, trim, sexy, energetic. I want to feel good about my body. But I also want the freedom to feel good about my body even when I'm tired, overweight and ill. I don't want to get in shape out of guilt, or in order to be good enough. Fortunately, God tells me that I don't have to play the culture's game. He knows that he didn't me a body that would process a bag of Doritos effortlessly into rippling muscles . . . he tells me that I can enjoy the body that I have, and that if I choose to try to honor God with this body, that he will accept the offering and be honored by it . . . I don't have to be thin enough for the culture in order for my attitude to be transformed . . . indeed, for my attitude to be transformed, I'd best start by chucking cultural expectations altogether and starting with the recognition that this is about me and God.

I wonder how many of the same sorts of expectations and church culture attitudes we import into the exercise and growth of Christian life . . . how much of the sovereign specific of "more Bible, more prayer" for not being a "Better Christian" is like saying, "well, if they'd just exercise more, they'd be healthy."

It the thing--one of the worst things that ever happened to my "devotional" life was the unit I had in high school Bible class on "How to Have a Devotional." I was told just how much scripture to read--between 3 and 10 verses. Definitely not more. I'd miss something. Told how to think and pray and feel earnestly about it. How crucial it was to do this Regularly. We were then assigned a week's worth of devotionals to do as homework. That way. To be turned in and graded. And even though, after that week, I never did a "devotional" in that format again, it took me years to shake free of it enough to feel like it was okay for me to get to know God a slightly different way.

I want to read my Bible. I want to WANT to read my Bible. But I don't want to read it in itty-bitty pieces and then attempt to feel earnestly about it. I want to read it in great carking chunks. And yes, sometimes erratically. I want to listen to good music. To pray in the in between moments of my day, and pray while I'm playing minesweeper, and enjoy the long chunk on Sunday morning when I know that I'm not going to get interrupted with the kids. I want to throw great handfuls of all sorts of stuff into the rock tumbler in my brain--and see what comes out.

I want to build good habits to the glory of God. I want to shake free of expectations. I want to not do anything out of guilt. But I want the virtue of perseverance, whatever that means. I want to understand what it is that's shifted in my heart, so that I can start in on an exercise program and really not much care what anyone else thinks or if I lose a pound, though I would like to gain a little muscle and endurance so that I can hike that canyon. I want to teach and encourage my daughters and give them all the tools and attitudes and habits that they'll need so that they can have the lives that God wants them to have.

I want to live the life to the full, by the grace of God.

10 Things that make me happy

Tag! I'm it.

Rules . . . the usual. You know. Follow 'em . . . post 'em . . . tag more people . . . nah. If you haven't seen these on Rob's blog already you can go look at them there.

1. Coffee: Well, what did you expect to be first on my list? This includes it in all forms. Fresh-brewed. Lattes. As a mixed drink. Ice cream. But not left-over-and-oxidized-from-yesterday-and -then-reheated. That's not happiness. That's just desperation.

2. The music turned up really loud on a sunny morning.
3. A good morning with my kids.
4. A couple of hours to write
5. Worshipping together with people who are right there with me
6. My husband. I'd elaborate, but none of you really want to read my getting sappy.
7. Rereading a great book
8. Arches National Park
9. Coyote and road runner
10. Poking a stick in the campfire.

11. Rome
12. comics
13. chocolate
14. prayer
15. cats!

some toddler messes are theologically significant . . . most, NOT

What can make her think that it's a good idea to pour most of a bottle of water into her cereal? Or to then try to climb down her stool with it? Carry it half way around the house? All I ask is that until I finish my first cup of coffee, any messes she make not be ones that have to be dealt with immediately. Shouldn't even two year olds have more sense than this? Oye. Emergency prayer: oh-help-God-help-oh-help

Maybe it's just about humility

My two year old is being nearly insufferable this morning as only a two year old can. As usual, her daddy fed her breakfast with her older sisters, started my coffee, then, after I've stumbled downstairs, he left to take the older two to school and himself to work. Almost as soon as they're out the door, she starts hitting me up for second breakfast. (Yes, we're raising a hobbit--she likes her seven meals a day). "I wan cer-a! I wan raisin ban! I wan pizza!" Loudly. Demanding. Until she lands herself in time out. When she gets up, she's back at it. "I am not giving you Raisin Bran," I say. I'm thinking, I don't want to clean out yet another bowl sodden bran flakes which she's abandoned after picking out all the raisins. "Look. I'm going to have a bagel in a minute. You can share some of my bagel."

So I slice the thing and set it toasting, and immediately the litany turns to "I wan bag-uh! I wan share!" We've drilled all our kids in the forms of good manners, so on auto-pilot I say, "May I have some please?" This is the cue for our kids to repeat what we've said in words and tone, and they get what they want. But the toddler's not having any of it this morning. "I wannit!" I give her The Look. Sullen, "Peez."
"May I have some, please?"
"I wan share!"
"May I"
"may-I"
"have some please?"
"Wannit! I wan share!" Remember, she's already eaten this morning and this is my breakfast we're talking about.
Round and round and round we go, until I hear myself yelling, "If you say, "May I have some please," I will give it to you! But you need ask right!" And I think of this verse.

You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. (James 4:2b-3)

And all of a sudden it just all snaps into focus. At two years old, she has her pride. She doesn't want to ask my way. Is this what James means? I've heard intelligent adults try to figure out what's the right way to ask? What magic formula do I need to use to get what I want? Doesn't God say if I ask I can have? I want to get what I want! But maybe what God's looking for is for us to humble ourselves a bit and remember that we don't have as much of a God-given-right to whatever it is that we're demanding as we think we do. But he's still delights to share breakfast with us.

We compromise finally on "May-I-peez?" and I give her the bagel. She nibbles at it some and abandons it, mangled and soggy at the table, to go look at books. But at least her mood is improved. I'm left shaking my head, wondering how many of the things we demand of God are things we don't want that much, that are going to be abandoned, mangled and sodden within minutes or months of our receiving them. How many of those things he delights to give us anyway. Truly, our Heavenly Father is gracious to us.

We are God's Children

Many days, I wonder if he means that we're his toddlers. Nearly daily, over the last six years, my toddlers have reminded me how little I know . . . by demonstrating how little they know.

My 2 year old insisted on helping me fold laundry today. There were things that she could have been doing that would have been more unhelpful at the time, but not many. Among the things I wish I could have made her understand this afternoon, and what God might be telling me, if I would listen--or even had the capability of understanding.

1. Just because you don't recognize the difference between folded and unfolded doesn't mean there isn't one. Just because you don't see the reason, or how I'm arranging, ordering, and taking care of your life doesn't mean those things aren't there.
2. Merely shaking the shirt doesn't actually get the wrinkles out. Just because you're trying to do what you think you see me doing doesn't mean that you're actually recognizing what it is that I'm on about or accomplishing anything.
3. Wadding it up in a ball doesn't mean folded.
4. I'd really rather you didn't try to put it away yourself. There are some things that I really don't want you to try to do yourself. I need to do them. Really.
5. Don't put your sister's socks in your dresser. This isn't all about you. I'm taking care of other people too.
6. Especially not in your shirt drawer
7. And please let Mommy wash your dirty clothes before you try putting them back away at all. Things get dirty and broken. It doesn't help you or anyone to try to hide them, or deal with them yourself. I'd really like to fix it for you.

Nothing like raising a bright toddler to remind us how little we actually know. She so thinks that she has it all figured out . . . and so do we, a lot of the time. But the further I get along in this parenting gig, the more I'm convinced that an awful lot of the time we have as little clue as to what God's on about as my 2 and 4 year olds have as to what Mommy and Daddy are on about.

But here's the thing. I loved having my toddler help me with the laundry. It slowed me down, sure. But she loved being with me and I loved having her there. I loved the joy on her face from her conviction that she actually was helping. She delighted in understanding--even though she didn't . . . but she does understand more than she did last month. I love watching her grow and develop. I love watching how she learns. What are the pieces that she's picking up, and how is she putting them together? Is there anything much better than an (almost) two-year old's triumphant "Mommy! Did it!"

Lord, grant me the privilige of being in the middle of whatever you're doing whether I'm being helpful or not. I want to be whereever you are.

Making the choice that it's going to be a good day

Lord, thank you for fresh bagels and fresh coffee.
For rubber ducks and hungry caterpillars,
counting hippos and learning all the colors you've put into this world.
Lord, thank you for clear counters, happy toddlers,
spill proff sippy cups, hot showers, good friends

Thank you for the middle of the week.
No deadlines, no company, no trips, no pressure.

Lord thank you for good music and more coffee.
Thank you for a warm cat in my lap
a new magazine, and an old book.
Thank you for the unexpected gift of
expecting a good morning.