A Microwave is Bad for My Soul

This past week my husband and I took a heroic step towards a healthier lifestyle. We stopped using the microwave. Crazy, I know…This means that every time we have to warm up leftovers, we have to get out a pot or a pan, wait until it heats up on the stove, then put the food inside, put a little bit of water and cover it with a lid so that it steams through and spend something ridiculous like 5 minutes on the whole process! It also means a host of other small inconveniences, like using a kettle or washing more dishes, and I must confess—at least once a day for the past week I’ve missed the microwave. Something else seemingly insignificant happened this week—we ran out of green tea bags (which we use every morning) and were “forced” to use leafy tea instead. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the process of using leafy tea, you must pour some leaves in the teapot, pour some hot water in and actually wait about 4-5 minutes (vs. 30 seconds for a tea bag) until the tea seeps before drinking it. It’s beautifully aromatic and delicious, more so than the bag variety, but if I am honest, more often than not I usually reach out for the tea bag—because it doesn’t slow me down as much.

This got me thinking how much I both love and hate convenience and efficiency. I love it because supposedly it frees up more time for stuff that “truly matters”. But does it? Not in my experience. I find myself constantly finding ways to squeeze in more projects and activities in my day, and I hardly feel good about myself unless I feel “productive”. And I hate it because deep down I realize that efficiency hurts not only my mind, but my soul too. It makes it difficult to just sit and be with God without feeling “productive” in my devotional times. It makes it hard to pay close attention to His gifts—like pretty colors, or a soft feeling of bed sheets, or delicious aroma of leafy tea…It makes it challenging to be truly present with other people. It makes it…kind of hard to have joy! I am re-reading a wonderful book, Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer by David Benner, in which the he talks about the essential value of being attuned to God’s presence in our lives. Slowing down and being still form a pre-requisite for that attunement, and a pre-requisite for meaningful prayer. There are no shortcuts to intimacy with God. It’s such a simple truth but so difficult to internalize when we live lives of constant shortcuts.

I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll buy tea bags again. It was on my list to-do today, but perhaps I need more reminders to slow down. Perhaps I need more patience and more joy in my life…

On denominations, soul nurturing and art

In several of my theology classes at Wheaton, professors have used the following “get to know you” question: please tell us your name and your denominational background. My response to that is usually something like this: “Hi, I am Iryna. I was baptized as an infant in Ukrainian Orthodox church. I spent most of my growing up years in a Polish Catholic church. Ever since I came to Christ I’ve been going to various non-denominational churches as well as Northern Baptist, Southern Baptist, and Wesleyan ones. Currently I go to an Anglican church, but to be honest, I really don’t like denominations.”

As I reflect on my denominational journey, I find myself discontent with two things. First, I truly dislike the idea of denominations. I’ll go even further to say that as a Christ-follower, I find them embarrassing. I am always reminded of a poignant question that my mom, who is Roman Catholic, once asked me: “If Protestants themselves can’t agree what they believe and divide amongst themselves all the time, why should I listen to them?” Sadly, she is right. Today, “Protestant unity” has become an oxymoron. When the world observes the life of Protestant Christians, it sees more fighting, bickering and division than love, humility and unity.  That deeply saddens me.

Secondly, I find myself discontent with certain aspects of Anglicanism. Over the last couple of months, I found myself increasingly bored and restless with the routine of liturgy. Don’t get me wrong, Anglican liturgy is beautiful and deep, and I know many people who would say that it ushers them into worship like nothing else. Well, unfortunately, I am not one of them. When I hear liturgical order for the first or second time, I am blown away by its beauty and depth. But when I hear it repeated for 20^th or 50^th time, it loses its meaning for me and I have to work super hard to stay focused and not get distracted.

What I am slowly coming to realize is that the way God made me is good. This may sound like a no-brainer, but when you are surrounded with a bunch of Anglicans for whom liturgy is this amazing and essential way of connecting with God, and you feel like somehow God forgot to give you the “liturgical gene”, it’s easy to feel “less than”. Secondly, I am realizing that I must pay attention to how God made me and nurture the parts of my soul that do not get nurtured by liturgy and Bible reading. Specifically, there is a part of me that is creative, that loves nature, colors, variety and spontaneity. In the last month, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to “feed” that part of my soul and what does it look like in my daily life. I am still figuring it out. However, I’ve taken a small step and tried engaging in drawing/meditative prayer a few times. I absolutely loved it and below is anexample of what I’ve done. I simply cut out a circle out of paper and fill it in with colors, using crayons or pencils.

The one depicted below is called "Fear". Fear is what I was feeling in my heart as I set down to draw. I represented it as a light grey color in the background of the circle because it's kind of invisible, but it's always there. Then I drew the various things in my life (represented by colorful circles and rectangles), encircled by fear (darker grey). It made me realize how powerful fear is in my life. As I was thinking and praying about that, I drew some emotions that I felt in response to this realization: anger (red & black in the center), sadness (grey around the edges), repentance (purple around the edges), and some hope of redemption (red C-shapes around the purple). As I continued praying, I realized that God was already doing good work in me by convicting me of my fear and letting me sense His call to live differently. So, I added some intermittent green as a symbol of life on top of the purple and even amidst of red and black.

I would be very interested to hear from any of you about ways in which you pay attention to the way you are created and care for your soul. I would also welcome any ideas or suggestions about incorporating more “creative” forms of worship into one’s life.