photo uploaded by Harold Laudeus

“Today I arise and thank you Father for calling me from the tomb of sleep yet again to live in the ever-increasing light of resurrection.”

There came a time in my life when I ran out of prayer. I had used up all my words. I wanted to cry out to God, but the words stuck. Sounds fell from my mouth like stones dropping into a dry well.

I’m sure this sounds a bit crazy, but as I tried to pray there were no words. Sometimes cries, moans, or wordless songs ascended from my lips.

In this desert of prayer, I picked up an Christian prayer book and began reading morning prayers aloud each day. In the weeks, months and even years ahead, ancient words rooted in Scripture shaped my cries before God. Basil the Great, Macarius, Ephraim and other Christians from the early centuries of faith taught me to pray again.

In their simple morning prayers to God, I noticed a pattern. Many of their morning prayers began with the phrase “Arising from sleep.” They consistently connected the idea of resurrection to arising from sleep. Sleep seems to mean both the night of sleep, the sleep of sin that kept me blind to God, and even the sleep of this life in light of eternity.

Every morning, these ancient Christians reminded me that I am waking in light of eternity. So every morning is like a day of resurrection, a day of celebration, a day to join the ever worshipping choirs of angels proclaiming the glory of God. In this rhythm of prayer, I began to realize that I am truly waking from glory to glory.

The Father calls us forth into life and into life and into life. The wonder His love continually opens before us in people and places where we dwell. Each new day really is a new day, really is the day of salvation. Each day we awake in light of the Day of the Lord.

In the simplicity of these “rising prayers” I began to notice the hand of the Father who had been calling, waking, leading me into life long before I had any sense of His love, His faithfulness, His ever watchful Spirit leading me forward into the fullness of His Risen Son.

Now I as look back over the last few years, I am aware of encounters, events, and experiences that seem like conversion experiences, like resurrections. The morning I watched the sun rise over the dark water, I experienced the start of a new day, and a New Day.

The stories and songs of the early Celtic Christians awoke me to the simplicity of uplifted hands in ceaseless prays. Their world centered in the bread and cup of communion Jesus serves His disciples. And in this simple meal, we discover that all of life is rooted in thanksgiving. So I join them in realizing that the place where I am standing is holy, yet I also join them in longing for the place of my resurrection.

After taking a year of creative thinking classes in graduate school, I realized something happened. During the weeks and months of the previous year, I had been changed. I woke up. I stepped into a freedom and joy that felt like entering childhood all over again. I had been converted into a child and was prepared to enter the kingdom of God.

Reading G.K. Chesterton’s biography of Thomas Aquinas, I felt the ground shake beneath my feet. Not because it was dissipating but because it seemed like for the first time in my life, I was walking on real ground, in a real world that the Father had created in love for His children. What could I do? Only fall to my knees in praise.

Each day I arise, I arise to new wonder. I arise to a new world of real people and real things. This real world is not an empty space, but all things have been created in and through the Word of God, and all things are reconciled through the Word

In this real world of real trees and real flowers and real beauty, I’ve experienced real suffering. At times, the suffering felt like death. But in the dying, I have encountered the voice of the God who raises the dead. He creates and sustains all things through His Word, Jesus Christ.

In Christ, I’ve encountered a love that passes my reason or my capacity to explain or defend. I simply rest in the faithful love of a God I cannot grasp, but who grasps me, shapes me, breathes into me, and calls me forth into life.

On this day of thanks, I lift up a voice of rejoicing, joining the prayers of my brothers and sisters across time, who’ve encountered the loving Father in the Son by the power of His Spirit poured out on us.

In the words of Basil the Great,
“As I rise from sleep I thank Thee, O Holy Trinity, for through Thy great goodness and patience Thou wast not angered with me, an idler and sinner, nor hast Thou destroyed me in my sins, but hast shown Thy usual love for men, and when I was prostrate in despair, Thou hast raised me to keep the morning watch and glorify Thy power. And now enlighten my mind’s eye and open my mouth to study Thy words and understand Thy commandments and do Thy will and sing to Thee in heartfelt adoration and praise Thy Most Holy Name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.
O come let us worship God our King. 
O come let us worship and fall down before Christ our King and our God. 
O come let us worship and fall down before Christ Himself, our King and our God.”

I am looking past the rolling machines that transport us from there to here and here to there. These metal and plastic suits of armor cover our soft, flexible bodies. Behind the machines, behind the voice on the loudspeakers, behind the badges, behind the titles are people. Wondrous, musical, breathtaking and breathgiving creations who create and commune.

Oh I could complain about the slowness of this person; the attitude of that person; his rudeness; her selfishness. Or I could rejoice and puzzle and embrace.

Richard Wurmbrand dreamed that his torturers were kind to him and because he dreamed, he learned to see them with eyes of love, and he longed to spend eternity with them. Ridiculous? Jesus looked at those who hung him and prayed, “Father forgive them.”

Might I also show a bit more grace, a bit more gratitude, a bit more wonder at the people who brush past me every moment. I’m going to listen for their stories, coax their songs, embrace their heartaches and learn, by God’s grace, to love even the least of these.

Irises by Vincent Van Gogh

I am thankful for …
- the wonder of dreams.
- the colors of Van Gogh.
- the intensity of red.
- the sound of laughter.

Thank you for the drip, drip, dripping
steady rain, soaking the soil
in liquid life.
Thank you for the splish, splish, splashing
sudden puddles, bounding out
from pounding feet.
Thank you for the whoosh, whoosh, whooshing
steamy stream, showering my body
in soothing clean.
Thank you for the gulp, gulp, gulping
icy drink, filling my belly
in cooling zest.
Thank you for the pound, pound, pounding
raging fury, storming our hubris
with a deluge of power.
Thank you for the plunge, plunge, plunging
baptismal grave, immersing us to
death in life.
Thank you for the rush, rush, rushing
hidden springs, surging over with
life and life and life.

Today I am thankful for:

1. The morning moon with a ring of glory that reigned in our dark sky when I awoke.
2. A meditation written from prison by my hero, the late Richard Wurmbrand.
3. A surprise encounter with my brother at Starbucks.
4. Cushioned chair.
5. The color green.

Instead giving me the answers, he caused me to raise more questions. And I am grateful for that holy stirring in my soul. Like Heschel, Staniloae suggests that the modern world tended to spacialize time and invert the proper order of time over space. When writing about time, Staniloae says that time is the interval between the offer of love and the reciprocation to that offer.

But maybe I better back up a moment. Staniloae introduced me to another aspect of Maximas the Confessor beyond the four hundreds texts on love. He develops the creational vision of Maximas in his writings. Staniloae suggests that when God chose to create humans (in his image), God created time and space as to planes where humans could move (in differing ways) towards love. Thus time and space provide a plane of motion for movement toward love in relationship with God and with other humans.

At first this may be a little difficult to wrap around, but I encourage to let it simmer in your thoughts and heart. It will unfold riches of the beauty of this creation. As a way of offering some glimpses into Staniloae’s writings, I am posting a segement from his little pamphlet “The Victory of the Cross.” This 20 page treasure opens in the riches of the cross in ways that most of us completely miss.

Here is the opening paragraph from this meditation on the cross of suffering in our lives:

The world is a gift of God, but the destiny of this gift is to unite man God who has given it. The intention of the gift is that it should be continually transcended. When we receive a gift from somebody we should look primarily towards the person who has given it and not keep our eyes fixed on the gift. But often the person who receives the gift becomes so attached to the gift that he forgets who has given it to him. But God demands an unconditional love from us for he is infinitely greater than any of the gifts which he gives us; just as at the human levels the person who gives us a gift is incomparably more important than the gift which he has given and should be loved for himself and ot only on account of his gift. In this way every gift requires a certain cross, and this cross is meant to show us that all these gifts are not the last and final reality. The cross consists in an alteration in thie gift, and sometimes even in its entire loss.

I am planning to put some notes on his themes on the cross soon, and I’ll post them. But I’ll pause now simply to say thank you for the gift of writing you gave. May I move beyond the gift to love God and others more fully.

Recently I listened to all the audio books again (and realized that I think I somehow skipped the Silver Chair as a youth). After all these years the stories still worked their magic. I felt foolish driving down the road blubbering at various transcendent points in the tales.

So thank you C.S. Lewis for you gift of another world. You helped to train my eyes to see glimpses of the kingdom around me and my ears to hears echoes of a new creation song.

I first discovered Von Balthasar while ambling through a used bookstore in Knoxville. I found a small, stained book with only one word on the cover: Prayer. For three dollars I purchased his classic theological devotional that wounded me with God’s love. Since then I have been enriched and mentored by many books from this man who wrote with a heart to stir God’s people to prayer.

Here is a small excerpt from this rare treasure:

“We yearn to restore our spirits in God, to simply let go in him and gain new strength to go on living. But we fail to look for Him where He is waiting for us, where he is to be found: in His Son, who is His Word….we fail to listen where God speaks; where God’s Word rain out in the world once for all, sufficient for all ages, inexhaustible. Or else we think that God’s Word as been heard on earth for so long that by now it is almost used up, that it is about time for some new word, as if we had the right to demand one. We fail to see that it is we ourselves who are used up and alienated, whereas the Words resounds with the same vitality and freshness as ever; it is as near to us as it always was. “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (Rom 10:8). We do not understand that once God’s Word has run out in the midst of the world, in the fullness of time, it is so powerful that it applies to everyone, all with equal directness; no one is disadvantaged by distance in space or time. True, there were a few people who become Jesus’ earthly partners in dialogue, and we might envy them (in) their good fortune, but they were as clumsy and inarticulate in this dialogue as we and anyone else would have been. In terms of listening and responding to Jesus’ real concerns they had no advantage over us; on the contrary, they saw the earthly, external appearance of the Word, and it is largely concealed from them the divine interior.”

Here is an excerpt from another stunning classic, The Heart of the World.

The gift of Chesterton is the gift of “eyes to see.” Our busy schedules, personal trials, and distracted imaginations can blind us to the wonder of God. Whether telling the story of Thomas Aquinas, revealing Jesus as the “Everlasting Man” or writing poems about an upside down world, Chesterton consistently shouts and sings out as the merry jester that penetrates my heart with delight in the goodness of God.

As his warm love and laughter stirred in my mind and heart, I found my clouded vision finally opening every so slightly to the marvel of creation, the wonder of life, the miracle of love that God pours out continually upon his people. Thank you G.K.

You’re words have been medicine for my soul.

Read all Thank You Notes.