Poem of Love

Love is all I have, Rich and poor alike 

Love is all I need, In war and peace the same 

Reach out your hand to grasp, You never can hold on

Look over the horizon, You never can hold its gaze 

Love is bright through darkness, Love is warm through bitter cold

Love is calm through stormy seas, Love is near through long absence 

Why do you love? Love casts out fear 

Why do you love her? Her love makes me safe 

In good times and hard times, Love is all I need 

Full or starving, Love is all I have 

Lars Coburn, 2017

Poem of Lament

I can see across the horizon, There must be something more

I can see across the river, There must be something more

Why do our loved ones suffer? Why does the body decay?

Why the slow fade of the mind? Why do the upright fear the end?

Why the death of our loved ones? Way up yonder in a fair land,

There is something more, Way up in God’s wondrous land,

There is something more, Why do our beloved ones suffer?

Why does the body shake? Why the slow decline of the faculties?

Why do the faithful feel agony? Why the death of our beloved?

Sleep seems as the end, But wait there’s more

Sorrow and weeping, But wait there’s more

More to life than these days, More to love than these feelings,

More to grace than these mysteries, More to peace than these questions.

More to hope for than this end.

The Lamenter cries: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, 

His mercies are new every morning”

I cry for more. More of your love, O God.

I believe in more, Peace beyond comprehending

I believe in more, Jesus saving!

Lars Coburn, 2017

Poetry. The key is rhythm. The same can be said for the strumming of a guitar or the pounding of a good bass at a concert. The rhythms carry the emotion and feeling of art. Whether it is the rhythms by which the master painter swished the brush across the canvas or the architect designed the great building — the rhythms set our hearts a blaze. These two poems I wrote in the middle of some very important rhythms in my life. The first poem I wrote to my wife Janel during a season of our life when we desired to have a child but were unable to conceive. The second poem I first wrote and have since edited to this current version in 2012 when my grandmother passed away. While not the first person in my family to die, she was the first person close enough to me that I grieved deeply for. Life is a series of rhythms. The Bible opens with a poetic scene. God is there, hovering over watery chaos. A voice breaks in and creates. Darkness becomes light. Chaos becomes ordered. Water and land are separated. Birds fly. Fish swim. And humanity is made to work the ground and care for the earth. Each day is concluded with a phrase “there was evening and there was morning” — a rhythm. 

Every December magazines publish articles and blogs about a list of New Years Resolutions. Many have to do with counter acting the unhealthy eating rhythms that befall us during the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas in particular. Dieting and exercise are examples of rhythms. One of my fondest memories when I was a teenager living in Vietnam was the rhythms of playing basketball every Wednesday night with an eclectic group of foreigners and waking up at 5:45am several days a week to run three miles with a group (a few of whom were part of our house church group). I was the youngest in both of these groups and started going with my dad but I ended up being just as much a member in my own right. A large Serbian man once yelled at me that he was going to “kill me” on the basketball court, but it was all worth it because several years later he would consider me a friend. Some people have friends from college they still get together with for a yearly trip or gathering. Rhythms are good for the soul. 

The Bible tells us that when God rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt they were in the desert and Moses returned from an encounter with God. Moses delivered what has become known as the 10 Commandments. 

[1] And God spoke all these words: [2] “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. [3] “You shall have no other gods before me. [4] “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. [5] You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, [6] but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. [7] “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. [8] “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. [9] Six days you shall labor and do all your work, [10] but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. [11] For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. [12] “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. [13] “You shall not murder. [14] “You shall not commit adultery. [15] “You shall not steal. [16] “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. [17] “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Exodus 20:1-17 NIV

You could call these the 10 rhythms for living with God and others. One way of categorizing them is the first four have to do with our relating to God and the latter six have to do with our relating to each other. As you read through the verses, you might have asked “I don’t see Moses giving any numbers, are there really ten?” In fact, some Jewish Rabbis of Jesus’ day, back in the first century CE went through all the writings of the first five book of the Old Testament which are called the Torah (which means “Law” or “instruction”). They actually found over six hundred commandments. But these have received more attention because like anything in life there are priorities. These ten have been prioritized because of the weight and significance they have on the rhythms of life and the shaping of a people. You see these were not common values held by everyone in the era and surrounding countryside, or even the people who heard the commandments the day Moses read them aloud. God was bringing the Israelites out of Egypt to become a nation that would live in relationship with God and be what God had intended in the Creation story. Notice the fourth commandment has an explanation. The Sabbath, setting apart a day of rest and worship each week, is rooted in God’s own rhythm of creating. 

What are your rhythms? All of us have expectations like work, school, maintenance, meal preparation, and relationships that require certain rhythms — some natural and some unnatural (meaning we have to work harder at them). With the invention of the light bulb work and sleep no longer are mandated by the rising and setting of the sun. An important conversation with those you do life with (family and friends) is regarding the natural rhythms (ones done with ease: do you eat a meal together once a week at the same time or place? Perhaps your work schedule naturally lends itself to dropping your kids off at school every day) and the unnatural rhythms (ones which are difficult: your parents want to skype once a week but you cannot seem to find a consistent time and often put it off. Or perhaps your work does not have a consistent schedule which gives you freedom and flexibility but also causes chaos with you and your partner). 

Many Christians balk at the idea of Sabbath keeping by invoking Jesus’ words “the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” This is true and incredibly freeing from the standpoint of law keeping. But the invitation is to realize what it truly means for the Sabbath to be something made for humanity. It is actually a gift. Rhythms are not meant to be rules and restrictions but rather healthy guard rails and sign posts pointing us to live the way God intended.

I have often heard the phrase, “I need a vacation from my vacation” and I know it is totally true when I think about my most recent Christmas vacation.  We cram as much as we can into our vacations, we wade through the crowds (literally at Disneyland), and find our busy lives at the other end of an extremely hectic vacation.  Our vacation is not even over yet, and we start planning the next one (Disney World anyone?).  What if we approached it different?  Instead of just running from one vacation that does not meet our need for rest to another, what if we practiced God’s design for rest.  

The Bible refers to this rest from work as “Sabbath”.  In Exodus 20 verse 8 it is referred to as part of the rhythm of Creation (part of God’s great Creative work was rest) and in Deuteronomy 5:12, it is part of the deliverance from slavery in the Exodus story (the people were liberated from slavery and in their freedom God gave them rest). Do not miss this, vacation is not Sabbath because a vacation is not devoted to God.  Randy Harris, professor at Abilene Christian University puts it this way: “Sabbath is closely connected to God…[and] contains two key elements: playing and praying.”  You need to learn to play again, to have something completely dominate your entire attention.  Do you remember being on the court, or in the field, running and your heart was beating “pass, over here…GOAL!”  Your mind and body are in unison moving together.  God created you to play, but we have allowed ourselves to be reduced to poor multi-taskers.  The rules regarding the Sabbath were to help people focus on rest and on God.  We rest best when our minds and bodies are aligned, we call this play.  Play helps us rest in turn enabling our attention to God’s presence.  

God is always near, the trick is to hear.  A coptic Orthodox Christian lady in Egypt said this in 2011: 

“Silence your body to listen to your words 

Silence your tongue to listen to your thoughts

Silence your thoughts to listen to your heart beating

Silence your heart to listen to your spirit

Silence your spirit to listen to His Spirit

In Silence you leave the many to be with the One”

“Mama” Maggie Gobran

Sabbath is so much more than rest from work, it is an opportunity to be with “the One”, Creator, Savior, Lord, Almighty, God who gives true rest! 

The Rule of St Benedict would be a great night time reading if you have an over active imagination and need something to put you to sleep. As you read through it, if you get a translation that you can understand the language, you might be a little aghast by the strict nature of it. There are specific instructions for work, prayer, rest, cleaning, worship, and silence. We are not all called to monastic life but the monastic rule is really no different than a diet, exercise plan, work schedule, or family calendar. Monks just take the rhythms much more seriously as spiritual practices. Fuller Theological Seminary emphasizes the rule of life by designing four core courses every student in their three schools of Psychology, Theology, and Intercultural Studies have to take. In each course I was exposed to different spiritual practices surrounding worship, prayer, community, mission, and vocation. Each class concluded with a final project consisting of writing or revising a personal rule of life incorporating practices we had learned. Will you consider looking at your life and reflect on the practices and rhythms you need? The ones to form a structure that your life can be trained up. Remember the practices (like Bible reading, prayer, going to church, exercise, dieting, sleep…etc) are not the fruit of your life or the point. The fruit is what comes from your heart, things like love and humility. The rule of life or rhythms are simply there to help you gain the capacity to love deeply and live humbly.

My daughter’s name is Ashlynn Selah Coburn. The middle name Selah is from the Hebrew for breath, or could be translated pause. This is found in many English translations of the Psalms. The amazing process of having a child does give me pause and takes my breath away — God is good. A practice I want to suggest you incorporate is breathing. Every year my aunt and uncle go camping, well it has become more of glamping really, in Central Oregon along the Deschutes river. The fishing has dried up over the years to not be very good but they still love the campground and the over 40 years of memories they have made going to the same one each year. One year I decided to go all in on fishing and hiking. I spent over eight hours each day out hiking up and down the little river several miles in each direction. I am pretty sure I caught only one fish in nearly a week of it all. The time consuming part of the whole endeavor was the meandering way the stream cut through the meadows and the varying flow of the river in the different spots based on things like trees, foliage, and rocks. The fish liked to hide out in certain banks but I was no expert so I probably walked right by a bunch of them. We need to slow down, to pay attention to the meandering flow of our emotions and those around us.

Mindfulness has become very popular, but I am not just bandwagoning here, there really is something to it. In fact scientists have done experiments on rats to prove that deep breathing does in fact calm and reduce anxiety. Yoga and new applications like CALM which you can find on your smart phone or even Apple TV, help us create space to be in touch with our feelings through breathing. Many prayer practices incorporate breathing as well. I’ll mention three here: 1) The prayer of Examen by St Ignatius is one meant to be done at the end of the day or week to review in thanksgiving, notice the feelings we had, both positive and negative. To speak with the Lord about those feelings, and look forward to the day ahead in hope all while breathing deeply and slowly. 2) Sometimes called breath prayer, you can choose a word or phrase and say one part as you inhale and the other as you exhale. An example that has been helpful for me is to breathe in “I am here” and exhale “You are here” noting God’s presence with me, I usually suggest you say them audibly but if you’re in an airport terminal or public coffee shop it might be better to just do it quietly in your head. 3) You can also combine breathing with your daily bible reading. If you have a daily bible reading plan, I might suggest pairing it down to just a Psalm every morning. You can “kill two birds with one stone” or as PETA would like us to now say “feed two birds with one scone” by incorporating deep breathing to your daily Psalm like this: 

As the deer pants for streams of water, 

so my soul pants for you, my God. 

My soul thirsts for God, 

for the living God. 

When can I go and meet with God?

…

Why, my soul, are you downcast? 

Why so disturbed within me? 

Put your hope in God, 

for I will yet praise him, 

my Savior and my God.

Psalm 42:1-2,11 NIV

Creating space to be conscious and in touch with our feelings is what breathing helps us do. Instead of being reactive and chaotic we are able to know ourselves and be in touch with those around us so we are calm and present.

For Further Study

Read Andy Crouch’s book The Tech-Wise Family and Ruth-Haley Barton’s book Sacred Rhythms 

Rule of Life Questions: 

One way to structure your rule of life, especially a communal one shared with those you do life with is to think of a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly breakdown of rhythms. 

Daily: What practices are key practices we want to shape each day? 

(These may include exercise habits, meals, sleep, tv consumption…etc)

Weekly: What practices are important to us as we move through each week? 

(These may include work and time off, church participation, celebrations, free time…etc)

Monthly: What frequent practices do we value as we move through the month? 

(These may include techno free days, special outings, service projects…etc)

Yearly: What infrequent practices do we want to shape each year? 

(These may include vacations, holidays, life stage transitions like graduations…etc)

Visual is best. Placing the daily and weekly rhythms in plain sight helps motivate and remind everyone about the rule of life. I would suggest revisiting the rule of life at least once a year but not more than twice. If the rule is in too much of a constant state of flux it will never truly give life because you will always be adjusting to the new rhythms. But likewise if you do not reflect and adjust the rule of life at least once a year things once conceived as a good idea can either become stale or simply never really work at all.