Mitigon the Mighty and Sira the Strong

My wonderful husband just finished a mini-renovation of my home office as a Christmas gift to me. In the sorting and reorganizing of my office things, I came across a Christmas gift he created for me 13 years ago.

In 1995 we were living in Croatia and awaiting the birth of Boy 1. Through circumstances beyond our control we had moved only two weeks before Christmas into another apartment, yet Mark still found time to create a timeless gift...a book, a love story just for me.

It is titled Mitigon the Mighty and Sira the Strong: A True-Love Tale for Christine Parker. Not only did he write this original three chapter short story, but he turned it into a lovingly adorned book which he bound himself.

The tale is the story of a king and queen of neighboring kingdoms who are brought together through the suffering of her people and their shared love and service for all people and for God. Mitigon was called Mighty because he was so full of love that his subjects could think of no better word to describe him. Sira's people called her Strong because she was "the kindest, most generous person in the kingdom."

As the story progresses, the two marry and ultimately sacrifice themselves and a life happy ever after in mitigating the suffering of Sira's people. When Sira offers the last drops of water in her drought-ruined land to a dying child, she dies in the boy's stead. Mitigon discovers the final sacrifice of his beloved upon his return from his own kingdom with water and other supplies for Sira's people.

Both kingdoms mourn the loss of Sira the Strong such that their tears flood the plains and high places of her kingdom and the drought is relieved as, "In the midst of grief, God made flowers bloom once again."

Mitigon, weeping over his bride and lovingly caressing her cheek, feels the warmth slowly passing back into her lifeless form. "Once again," the tale tells, "God had turned tears of sorrow into tears of joy."

At the point in our life together when Mark wrote me this story, God had already turned sorrow into tears many times. He had made us witness to His working of sadness to joy in the lives of countless others. And he had allowed us every time to return to the warmth of each other's might and strength.

Now, 13 years later, this story is more real than I could ever have imagined. I thank my God daily for my Mitigon the Mighty.

Inspired to Look More Closely

I never really saw him for the great man he was. By the time I met him he was 70-ish and had been retired for many years, and I knew him primarily as Dr. Jack's brother. He had the persona of a jolly old man who never tired of telling me blonde jokes (which I loved!). He was famous for his jokes and would e-mail really good ones to all his friends.

But there was so much more to him than I ever saw.

I attended his funeral yesterday and was moved by the story of his life. Raised on a farm, he went to college and became a successful accountant. He was an accomplished musician and during WWII often was called on to play Taps for fallen soldiers. He and his wife stayed married until her death in the early 1990s and raised two daughters together. One of his daughters spent 30 years of her 37-year life in an iron lung due to the effects of polio. Not wishing her to be denied more of life than she already had, he designed and built a "portable" iron lung so that she could go on short trips with the family.

He served God's Kingdom as deacon, elder, and, most important, faithful child of God. After retiring he spent 13 years in nearly full-time volunteer service digitizing the card catalog for the largest theological library in the south. At the church he and his surviving daughter, who grew into a woman who displayed his same passion for serving others, and her family attended, he built the church's library into one of the best church library's around.

All the while he lived a deeply frugal, but not ungenerous, life and by the time of his death had contributed $50,000 to the endowed scholarship fund created in loving memory of his wife and dedicated to the training of God's ministers on earth.

I don't blame myself for not really seeing him. We cannot truly see the depths of everyone with whom we cross paths. I don't know that my relationship with this laughter-loving man of God would have changed had I known his heart more deeply, but I do know that in his death he has inspired me to look closely and pay rapt attention to those I do have the blessing of truly knowing and seeing in this life.

I Am No Monk!

Someone once asked me why I went back to graduate school after earning my Master's in Counseling. My off the cuff answer was that in our house you either keep up or shut up, and I'm not real good at shutting up. Although I was joking (mostly), it is true that mine is a household whose members love to learn and discuss.

In addition, I often find myself reading things that others in my family are reading so that I can engage meaningfully with them in conversation. I have read a lot of theoretical physics in a desperate attempt to keep up with my 13 year-old. Unlike with our running, I eventually had to cry, "Uncle!"

My husband Mark has been working on his doctoral dissertation in spiritual formation for a while now. So, of course, I'm reading a lot in that area (at least this is a topic I can wrap my mind around). But the more I read, the more dissatisfied I find myself.

You see, I am not a mystic. I have no monkish leanings.

I am all for the silent, isolated, cloistered experiences that we all need at times in order to revel in the presence of God. What I am dissatisfied with is that, according to everything I am reading, a monastic lifestyle is THE way to spiritual formation. I simply cannot imagine spending significant time cut off from the world around me as I try to become so disconnected from my senses that I forget everything but the existence of God.

I know, love, and respect a significant number of people who are more mystically gifted, so to speak. I admire their ability to sit in silence for a long time and simply be.

Consequently, for a long time I thought the problem was me. I was too socially focused and needed to break myself of this. My desire for external stimulation in the learning process was a weakness I should overcome. Etc.

There are times when it is necessary for me to move towards God in ways not a part of my natural mode of relating to the world around me. But I am beginning to believe that maybe there is more than one path to the kind of closeness to God that I see contemplation bringing for many of my friends. Unfortunately, if there is more than one path I cannot find anyone writing about it.

As I said, when we think something in this house, we discuss it. And so Mark and I have. He, too, senses a void in the literature. No one we have read yet makes much space for the extraverted and spontaneous on the path to spiritual formation.

In an attempt to better understand what I was sensing, I began looking at the relationship between Jesus and His disciples through this lens. Jesus did get frustrated with Peter, James, and John when they could not sit quietly while He prayed without falling asleep. But previously He had taken the same three to witness His transfiguration, a multi-sensory experience to be sure that required them to actually enhance their sensual awareness of the world around them. Is this a clue? Is it possible that Jesus knew you could draw close to God in myriad ways, some of which will be easier for some personalities than others?

Perhaps my dissatisfaction with the literature of spiritual formation is not such much a result of my own failings (of which there are plenty), and more about the need to find a way to appreciate the parts of me that make more than 10 minutes of meditation difficult. Maybe multiple paths to oneness and union with God exist which allow each of us to access the spiritual disciplines in ways that honor our unique personalities.

So I lay myself open to God hoping He will show me how to revel more and more in Him without having to deny the way He created me to be.

And though I may have had to give up on theoretical physics, I will continue to study and learn in an effort to keep up with my family...because I'm pretty sure there won't be much shutting up!