hello

i had an interesting encounter with someone the other day. i was walking towards the bike rack getting ready to go home when a girl walked up to me. she had short blonde hair and was wrapped up in a long scarf and had a huge sparkly pin of a reindeer on her sweater. she said, "excuse me, do you want to join my bible study?" i said, "sure, when is it?" she paused for a long time then started giggling. i asked her what was wrong. she told me she wasn’t used to people saying yes so she was surprised. she had an accent, sounded russian. she seemed like a sweet person. i asked her where she was from, she said eastern europe and that she was presbyterian. why was she doing this? she said, "the people here are troubled." i agreed just as two homeless men walked by across the street. she struggled a bit finding the right words but i knew what she was trying to say. she told me, "i am reading romans now. i am having trouble accepting that i am saved. i feel half saved, like there is something left for me to do." i knew how she felt. i told her the biggest struggle is realizing how broken we are and how we have to trust that jesus will fix us. i told her that sometimes i wish bad things would happen to me so that i can be punished for any bad things i have done. she giggled and agreed with me that it is wrong to feel that way. we talked about the importance of our good works and how if we believe that christ redeemed us then we also have to live according to his word. it was a long conversation. she told me she was nervous about walking up to strangers and debated whether to start with small talk first, then jump into jesus. she said that's what jesus did with the samaritan woman at the well, asking her for water was just a lead-in, in a sense. we giggled and laughed and on my way home i felt like there just may be good still left in this world.

desert

"i am in the desert alone. i have no concerns with others. i have a burrow in the cracks of the hill. i have hidden my burrow. and i will leave it one day. living where, i do not know." for those of you who recognize the hymn, you know that translating it really doesn’t give it enough justice. this is one of my favorite hymns authored by pope shenouda. as you may know, pope shenouda was a desert monk before he was chosen for the patriarchy. but i feel like his heart has always been alone in the desert. sometimes i sing this hymn when i'm feeling lonely. it's quite comforting, although it doesn’t seem that way from the opening lines. it's comforting because it makes me feel like i have a direct connection with god. how so? well for one, being alone seems to really clear my mind. life is full of distractions, it's nice to get away from it for a moment and think. it's as if my thoughts and prayers are better heard by god, because they are clearer and more intimate. it's like when we say, "lord accept our prayers." to me, we ask god to accept our prayers not because some prayers aren’t accepted, like they aren’t up to code, or god has a prayer filtering machine up there, but because we are asking him to examine the sincerity of our prayers and remember them.

for me, prayer at church is one thing, but prayer at home alone, is a totally different experience. don't get me wrong, church is the basis for growth and knowledge in god, but prayer and meditation in church is often hard to accomplish. for me at least. i don't like looking at people, or analyzing their actions, or feeling like people are looking at me either. i feel like i don’t get enough spiritual fulfillment because i am easily distracted. that's why i'd rather sit in the back row, or in a dark corner somewhere. like pope shenouda in his burrow. i remember in 2000, when i was 13, we went to a service on the night of the millennium, at abouna mousa's church in boston. i guess it was a special time, being alive during the start of a new 1000 years, so during midnight, they turned off the lights in the whole church (except for a few candles) and people were praying silently. it was so spiritual. it was dark, you couldn’t look at people because you couldn’t see them. it smelled like incense and you could hear people whispering their prayers. it felt like you were part of this large force field of prayer going straight up to heaven. it was powerful. my heart was buzzing. i remember thinking, why can’t we do this every week! i wish my heart could live in a burrow in the desert even while i'm in the middle of all of these things that define our lives. it's like when i'm stressed in clinic. or when i have a bad day. i sing another hymn by pope shenouda, "my real country, is above with jesus, my real country, is above with jesus."