Broken receiver...

My receiver is broken.  I think that's what you would call it ... the way in which I hear things that are spoken/written.

Now, I KNOW the rest of the world believes emails are primarily a poor communication vehicle, but I am a woman of letters and emails are just the modern letter to me.  In a way, I have lived nearly my entire life in the written word.  So, before you start objecting to what I am trying to say about receiving what is written, telling me that the written word lacks the intonation and expression and such of a verbal speech and is then therefore lacking or inferior, I will tell you I simply do not agree.  I do not.  The written word was a sufficient form of communication for hundreds of years.  It is a still sufficient form for me.

Although ... I would welcome a discussion of the problem of how people respond to emails, verses letters.  That, I agree, can be a problem.  A monumental problem.  But the same is true with texts and Facebook posts.  And the same is true with speech.  Even in verbal conversations, the one receiving is oft not actually listening to what is being spoken.  The receivee might be marshaling his own points for his rebuttal or she might be distracted by a problem at work.  Any number of reasons could exist for the lack of attention.  But such is not my point.

My point is that my receiver is broken.  Myrtle's.  Mine.  Broken or, at best, rather faulty in proper function.

There are people in my life helping with this.  I am not ready, nor am I sure I will ever be ready, to fully discuss all of them.  But some of them are easy.  For example, as I have mentioned before, Mary is such a gentle and generous giver of Gospel to me.  I have also pointed out how she well "translates" Gospel into Myrtle-speak, such as with the Jesus as my knight-in-shining-armor when it comes to facing the dragon of death.  Because I know this, I oft send her my thoughts or fears or worries to see if she might help me straighten them out or conquer them.

A most recent example is this article that had me terribly distraught.   In it, the woman struggling with illness basically concludes that it would be selfish of her to pray for or desire healing because if she were healed then she wouldn't be able to help others through her suffering.  I rejected the article immediately because I thought it was not doctrinally sound.  But, as I sometimes fear about the comfort and consolation I find in the Christian Book of Concord, I worried that what I thought was reading was only there because I wanted it to be.  By this I mean, is the comfort in a particular passage actually present or am I just wanting it to be there?  Was this author's conclusion actually flawed or did I just want it to be.  Do I reject her conclusion merely because I don't want to suffer myself?

Since I did not ask Mary if I might borrow her words, I will not cut and paste them.  What I will say is that Mary rightly pointed out that the article is all about the author and not about Jesus.  When writing or speaking about faith is about us and not Jesus, it is not really about faith.  I had nothing to fear in those words for they were not about the Living Word.  For me to long to be free of my suffering is not selfish or thwarting God's will for my life, nor would it hinder His ability to accomplish His work in me or in others.

Phew!

In my inbox are two emails from my pastor about not remembering the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and Psalm 23.  Clearly, my receiver failed with the first one.  Reading through it, I was hurt.  I thought what he was saying to me was that it did not matter if I do not remember.  Oh, how his words stung!

Yes, of course it does not matter, spiritually, if I remember God because He remembers me.  I understand that.  I do not always remember that I understand that, but I do.  However, struggling to remember these prayers to God in times of anguish and misery is a great loss to me.  They are the way I get through darkness.  They are the way I remind myself that what is happening to me, what is overwhelming me, is not all there is to this life or to my life or to who I am.  They are the sense to which I anchor myself when I am insensible.

In the second email, my pastor shared the most helpful of ideas.  Before repeating it, I would note that the fact that he wrote further on the matter, that he thought further on the matter, essentially mooted my reception of the first email.  Clearly, my receiver was broken at that moment.  But on to the idea:

My pastor suggested that since I have lost, for example, the whole of Psalm 23, perhaps I could work on remembering just one line, such as "The Lord is my shepherd."  Then, when I am struggling through bad times, I could pray the one line, knowing that God understands that I was praying the whole of Psalm 23.  My pastor did not know of my thoughts about inner subjectivity, but that is really what he was saying.  I could rest in the fact that I know that God knows that I know that He knows my prayer is for all of Psalm 23, not just the one line I managed to hold in my mind, managed to cry out to Him.

I believe in God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Our Father in heaven.
The Lord is my shepherd.

In a way, I could do the same with the Lutheran hymns I learned that I can no longer remember but long to sing, to also pray.

Lord Jesus Think on Me
To God the Holy Spirit Let Us Pray
Through Jesus' Blood and Merit
Abide with Me
A Mighty Fortress is Our God
From God Can Nothing Move Me

And, of course, I could sing the first line of the greatest "song" of all, to me:  the Words of Institution, Our Lord Jesus Christ....

As far as comfort and consolation goes, my pastor's second email was a grand slam at the bottom of the ninth of the World Series, was a successful Hail Mary in the final second of the Super Bowl, was the Triple Crown, the Stanley Cup, the Chase Title, and the FedEx Cup all in one to me, for me.

And I am 99.99% certain that the comfort and consolation in pastoral care my pastor had for me, meant to give me, in the second email was also present in the first email.  It is just that my receiver is broken.

If someone is interested, I am learning to speak things that are particularly helpful to me. And I am learning to recognize responses or behaviors or patterns that trouble my waters.  For example, as I have written before, if I dare to speak how I feel, I am not doing so in want of admonition or advice. I do so in longing for comfort and consolation, in longing for the Gospel and for forgiveness.  If I am seeking admonition or advice, I will specifically say so.

If I speak my physical misery, I am not looking for medical care or behavioral feedback.  I am longing to hear that I am not alone, though I may be the only one in the room.  And I am longing to hear that it is okay to not desire suffering, to want to be free from this state.

For so long, I have been afraid to speak what I think or feel because of the responses doing so garnered.  For so long, I have been afraid to think or to feel at all.  For so long, I have battled things greater than me in ways that served me then, but do not serve me now.

I am learning new ways. I am learning new perspectives.  I am learning the Truth. But, at the present, my receiver is still broken.

I could say my receiver is full of tangled wires, of errant connections, all born of law and of Law.  In many ways, this is a good summation.  But I am sure more words are needful to clearly explain.  Only I do not have them at the time.

In any case, for a while yesterday, I had the bestest time talking about literacy and the Living Word.  I talked about my thoughts about the Transactional Theory of Reading and how the Holy Spirit creates the poems when it comes to the Living Word.  I talked about innersubjectivity and the Psalter.  And I did so with a pastor who has long been thinking about conversation, with regard to our Triune God being three persons and with regard to our Triune God and His interaction with us.  I was immediately fascinated with his brief mention of a few lines of thought he had and wanted him to write a paper or a book like yesterday!

The other day, a pastor on Facebook wrote about using the word "trollop" in a sermon (if he should).  For a while, I got to write about diction and contextual clues and semantics.  And then I got to thinking about gender implications when it comes to quantities of nouns and adjectives in certain areas.

Good times for an ex-literacy professor.
Good times for a writer at heart.
Good times.

All those good times joined up in my mind with those two emails and lightening struck me deaf, blind, and dumb.  When I recovered, it occurred to me that my receiver is broken.  While I have worked hard to dare to ask for help from others for the things that I need, such as hearing the Living Word, having copious amounts of repetition, having things written down for me, and hearing the phrase "It's okay that...,"  I have not worked hard to better understand how the lack of those things that I need affects my reception of what I hear.

I have so many hard things in my life.  To be utterly and completely honest, to stand naked before you, I have wanted church and pastoral care, in particular, to not be hard.  In wanting it not to be hard, I have not worked as much as I should for the thing that matters most to me.  Yes, the Gospel comes to me.  Oh, how the sweet, sweet Gospel comes to me in many and myriad ways!  But I have be a tad hard-hearted in insisting, deep within, that church shouldn't be hard.

Only, the truth is, nothing is easy with me right now.  With what is happening to my body and my mind, nothing probably ever will be easy again.  And that is okay.

Or, by the grace of God, one day it will be.

For now, I am trying to say that if you are ever so gentle about it (and I am talking really gentle), it might be helpful to me ... not as a first response, but perhaps a fourth or fifth response ... to ask me if what is distressing me might possibly, perhaps, be a matter, at least in part, of my receiver being broken at the moment, that might be a good and helpful thing for me.

I struggled so hard to get to Divine Service tonight.  A dream last night turned a 2D memory into a 3D horror that overset both my body and my mind.  My Good Shepherd, who understands my battles, thus gave me a Word that was a most perfect Word for me.

The Gospel reading was about Jesus' first miracle.  My pastor asked us to think about why it might be that His first miracle was not a matter of life and death, was not feeding thousands or healing the sick or raising the dead, but was turning water into wine.  He had more than one answer for us, but one of them reverberated through my whole being before my pastor even spoke it:

Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.  His ministry began with the miracle of turning water into wine and it ended with the miracle of turning wine into blood, in the passion of the Cross, death turned into forgiveness and enteral life that is poured into our bodies each and every time we receive the Lord's Supper.

Jesus is the Alpha and Omega.
He is the Alpha and Omega of my life.
Broken receivers nonetheless.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!