I was recently reading a story by Tosha Silver about a time when she was in India and attended a fire ceremony for Lakshmi, the goddess of beauty and wealth. During the ceremony a huge spider crawled on her hand. She was extremely afraid of spiders so she gasped and swatted it away. One of the priests came over and yelled at her asking what she was doing and then saying it was Mahalakshmi herself coming to bless her.
This really struck me. How often is the Divine presented in one’s fears as a blessing yet the blessing cannot be received because of not wanting to stay in the fear and see it differently? Tosha later tells of a night where a huge spider was on the ceiling and instead of spinning stories of fear she entered a conversation with it. Looking at the spider as a blessing while also letting it know it can have the ceiling while she can have the bed.
What would it look like in this season of political and circumstantial uncertainty, which can stir up the most basic of fears, to instead of reacting in fear, one tries responding by interacting with what is most frightening. As contemplatives engaging oneself is the step before engaging the circumstance. Facing fears, (or insecurities, resistance, exhaustion) and all the issues within before just swatting at what frightens us. Bringing God in and asking where is the blessing in this?
I tried this once when I moved into my home, which had been empty for several months and had very large roaches enjoying the empty space. I am not a fan of roaches and they do cause me to want to run and hide. There were so many I could not just run away and hope they also would disappear. So I asked what is the blessing in this roach? The answers where numerous! I have a home, there has been a lot of rain, my home is surrounded by beautiful plants and trees, I am free to act in many ways, and I am no longer fearful of roaches. Now I need to say I am not so enlightened that I could coexist with the roaches running all over my home. I called an exterminator. Yet the reality of where I live with all the plant life is that bugs are a part of it and when we bump into each other I am now able to see the blessing.
Taking this to larger issues takes more time and practice. I have to say just asking the question “What is God’s blessing in this?” has helped me to at least stop and look at my fears. Try this week as we enter a political shift and uncertainty. Let me know what you notice.
If you are looking for help in this area, I highly recommend the Rising Strong workshop on Saturday and Quiet Places on Sunday. The book I was reading is called Outrageous Openness and it is our Intentional Reading selection in March.
I remember my 13-year-old self sitting on the altar of a small Southern Baptist church. The altar was brown, carpeted steps. A woman who had shown me incredible kindness sat with me. She was holding my hand. I was wracked with sadness and sobs. She listened to me as I told her about the divorces, the turmoil in my family, the fear that I was not normal (that meant queer, but I didn’t yet have the words for that). She listened. She leaned in. She cared.
After I shared, she opened her Bible and I remember her taking me through “The Roman Road”. I spent most of the time listening for Roman to show up in the story line. The Roman character never made an appearance.
The Roman Road is a fundamentalist evangelical tool often used in explaining the “Plan of Salvation”. I would come to know that well later, but for that moment, I didn’t understand any of it.
This is pretty much how the many conversations would go:
Nice lady (NL): When Eve took that apple and decided to eat from the tree, sin entered the world. We needed a path back to God and we get that through Jesus.
Perplexed 13 y/o Davin (PD): Well, why did God make that tree then?
NL: God wanted us to choose Him. When we don’t we invite sin into our lives and we need salvation.
PD: I don’t get it. If I poisoned candy and put it in a kid’s room, wouldn’t that mean I poisoned the kid if the kid ate it?
NL: blinking with a minorly irritated look.
Our session ended for that day. Two weeks later the nice lady tried again. Same place, ready to dig in, Bible between us.
NL: Okay so please remember that we chose sin.
PD: Yeah, but God kinda made that happen, right? Why did he put that tree there?
NL: Because God wanted us to choose Him.
PD: What? Why?
NL: Because he loves us and wants us to love him.
PD: Then why didn’t he leave out the tree that would ruin everything?
Our session ended again.
We met more and I had many questions: Why did God make Lucifer if He knew that he would turn into Satan? Who was Cain afraid of? Wasn’t it just him, Abel, Eve and Adam in the world? Who was Cain afraid would harm him when he was cast out of the garden? If God made us and the tree of good and evil, isn’t that kinda passive aggressive? She sighed a lot in those visits.
I was a teenager who just discovered faith community. I liked the church a lot. I liked the people. I liked the adults who worked in the youth group. I kept coming back and the nice lady kept trying to help me understand why I needed salvation in the form of repentance.
After many sessions with her, I was willing to admit I was a sinner, admit Jesus died for my sins, profess my belief in Christ, invite Jesus into my heart and promise to walk a path of faith, sharing the Good News. This is called a few things in literal, evangelical Christianity: being born again, getting saved, turning my life over to Jesus. Once I was in, I was in. The questions went away and I was determined to be the next Billy Graham.
Much of my theology in those days was slathered with fear and shame. I passed that on to those who took time to listen to my conversion messages. I was going to make sure Heaven was full and Hell was empty.
I was zealous and I was persistent. I was also very scared, brokenhearted, shame-filled and sad. The church kept me busy so my heart didn’t feel so very alone.
I was always angry back then. If you had to find me in a crowd, you could simply look for the kid with arms crossed over their chest, glowering, glaring, guarded and grrrrrr…
All the while I pushed people away, I was super offended when they did not talk to me. Hurt people often long for what they desperately try to convince others they don’t need.
I was creating an emotional wall; I was a teenage emotional construction worker with endless mortar and bricks: Sob the Builder.
There’s reasons for that wall. There’s reasons for everything we think, feel and do. Behavior is to meet a need, or at least a perception of a need. We spend so much time judging actions we rarely think about what is behind those actions. We rarely are compassionate with ourselves.
Everyone’s behavior makes sense to them at the time or else they wouldn’t do it. My fortress was built for a reason. It kept the bad out, but then it started keeping EVERYTHING out.
If I ever write a memoir I will call it “Well, that didn’t work.” And we still try again.
It’s comfortable to think in black and white because there is certainty there. It’s super hard when you let in the colorful world of all sorts of living and needing. It changes everything.
The option of truly being present with someone and learning who they are without an agenda to change them is the only way we get to have honest relationship. I didn’t get that concept for much of my life. I wanted the world to bend, not for me to bend. That’s how brokenness happens, in the not bending and the demanding it be different.
2016 has been awful for me and many I love. It has been the worst year of my life for sure. It also has been a very rich year. I have felt loved more often than not. I have given love more freely than I have in any other year. And 2016 was still the worst ever for me.
I am not someone who believes life’s trials are there to make you a better person. I don’t believe it is orchestrated in that way. I do believe, though, in every situation that sorrow exists, we can see aspects of living we never would have noticed without the sorrow. I don’t believe sorrow exists as a life lesson. I think it’s just part of life and what we choose to do with it determines a lot.
It’s been almost a year since I was harmed through sexual assault and there have been oh so many layers of pain my family and I have walked through. It has been horrendous and it has been illuminating. It has been heartbreaking and it has been healing. For me, what makes it or breaks it is my willingness to engage life in hard times vs run, run, run!
Engaging in life requires some courage when everything within wants to retreat. When that’s my reality I take the absolute smallest inching forward I can muster to just stay in the world, stay in my life. I have to get open, drop the mortar and brick, and choose to live in the elements, responding to life and love as it comes and as I co-create it. Dear ones, we are creating our inner world as we participate in life. I want my inner world to be a sanctuary and refuge.
The idea of refuge reminds me of my younger brother who tells a story that when he was about 19 years old or so, his AC busted and he had to have more windows and doors open at night to keep cool. He did this regularly in the apartment he lived in so he had adjusted and slept well most of the time.
One morning he gradually woke from sleep with the cat on his belly. He petted her, she purred and nuzzles. Then the slow dawning: “I don’t have a cat.” Yup. A random cat decided to sleep on my brother’s belly.
I love picturing this story playing out. It’s awesome, funny, and it highlights my gentle brother who awakes with welcome.
What I really love most, though, is the cat. The cat went all rogue and decided this house was as good as any and my brother’s warm belly was just the stuff this felonious cat needed to get a good rest.
What’s hurting within you? What’s preventing you from welcoming warmth and companionship into the core of who you are? What is this fortress you are building? What is keeping you from the wander and the wonder that may lead to new relationship? What is the smallest inching forward you can muster today to answer the pain with hopeful forward momentum?
Whatever it is, I promise you this: the pain you feel in that place is made worse with isolation and vigilance. Peace to your precious, scared heart and peace to your amazing, enduring spirit.
We all have the “why” questions. Keep that up! The questions are beautiful and welcomed. The altar is within you as you seek your heart out.
Knowing this and living this is my road to salvation.
Greetings! I pray that these words find you well. I continue to lift you in prayer each day, trusting that the power of God’s love, which keeps us connected, rests peacefully within you. For the most part, I am fine. Mercifully, the days pass quickly as we begin the preparations to hand off this mission soon. It turns out that being deployed during the holidays is unideal. Who knew?!? The Army made it look so quaint on the brochure.
Luckily, the mail keeps a steady traffic of support coming into our offices. I wanted to express my gratitude for the two enormous boxes of goodies and the Advent Wreath. It was a huge hit. The irony is that we have all worked so hard to lose weight and get into shape on this deployment. Many of us are risking gaining that weight back eating our holiday feelings with all the stuff coming in the mail. I have started working out twice a day so that I can eat the good stuff with no guilt. There is no way I am going to pass on Christmas cookies.
The Advent Wreath is beautiful. Most of the people who come to our chapel program are part of religious traditions that don’t utilize this worship practice. I must have had twenty questions about it the first week. After so many conversations, I didn’t know what they would think of it. They love it, however. We run stripped-down and simplified services in Iraq, but when I introduce some traditional elements, I have been surprised by how welcomed the practices were. It will be interesting to see if any of these soldiers try to introduce an Advent Wreath into their churches back home.
I will miss the sanctuary of Saguaro CC this Christmas. It is my favorite time of year to worship with you. I tried to recreate some of that ambiance here, but I literally blew up the Christmas tree. It was a pre-lit tree and I forgot to check the wattage requirements. You would have thought that I learned my lesson with the coffee pot from back in June. There are so many things I wish they had taught me in Seminary. I have now added basic electrician skills to that list.
I pray that these next weeks are a true blessing. It is peculiar to lead soldiers during these days as they are conducting the operations of war. There is not a lot of gloss here. This is definitely not a Hallmark setting. In some ways, it has led me to consider Advent anew, free from the presents, parties, and general consumer saturation of the holiday. In the sparseness of this place, I find myself preaching the following theme: Advent is an experience in the unfiltered wonder of God. Within that journey, tragedy becomes the paradox of God’s grace, for out of the brokenness of the world’s despondence the promise of God’s peace is born. It is not the jolliest of sermon series, but there is part of me that thinks it is probably closer to the truth of that historical reality many years ago. Don’t feel too sorry for my chapel goers; I make it up to them by singing Christmas songs instead of Advent songs. It is a little trick I picked up from [our music staff,] Keith Koster and Jeff Myrmo!
I hope to write you one more letter before I leave. If I am not able to do so, then I say with all my heart: Merry Christmas.
guest post by Andria Davis, Acting Senior Minister at Church of the Beatitudes in Phoenix, Arizona
In order to enter the main buildings of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, a visitor must walk down the Avenue of the Righteous Among Nations.
Situated in the middle of a large garden, this tree-lined walkway and the surrounding landscape commemorates those many non-Jews who risked their lives and their livelihoods in order to save Jews from the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
As you walk down the Avenue and stroll reflectively through the winding paths that weave through the surrounding garden, you may become overwhelmed with awe as you realize that each of the more then 2,000 trees that line the paths were planted to commemorate a unique person, and that each tree represents the life of one who worked diligently and under great threat to save the lives of countless others.
And as you walk through the garden, you may become overwhelmed with awe as you learn the stories of some of the thousands of names engraved on the stone walls that form the many coves and inlets, and when you hear the many stories of the ordinary people who did extraordinary things.
If you are like me, you may become overwhelmed with awe as you look around you, and you cannot see through the trees and benches and the signs and engravings, through those more than 25,000 markers commemorating those who worked diligently, ceaselessly to save the Jews from certain extermination.
I imagine that of many who walk down the Avenue of the Righteous Among Nations or who take time to sit with names that fill the garden walls, that they are as much overwhelmed by the stories of those remembered there, as they are by their own answers to the question: in the same situation, would I have done the same?
Would I have opened my door to that frantic knock in the middle of the night? Would I have opened that hidden passage in my house? Would I have secretly employed those fleeing for their lives and would I have arranged for their escape? Would I have said yes when the call came, or would I have said no?
A few years ago, as I sat in that Garden, I wanted to so badly to say that I too would have been counted among these who risked their lives to choose good instead of evil.
I wanted so badly to know that when faced with an impossible decision between my life and the lives of many others, the pursuit of safety for the many would have been the only pursuit I could follow.
I so badly wanted to be assured that when faced with the decision between what is right and what is wrong, I would always choose the hard path of righteousness and integrity over the easy path of complacency and status quo.
Above all, I wanted to know with conviction that when the world goes to pieces and all goodness, and all peace, and all love seems gone, that I would follow unwaveringly in the way of Christ, who said as he did in today’s passage from the Gospel of Mark, that it is better to sacrifice yourself in the name of justice, than to sacrifice another in the pursuit unreflective, unjust harmony.
In today’s passage, Jesus offers us a black and white way of living. He offers us a stark reminder of the obligations of one who calls him or herself a Christian.
Hear his words:
“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where the worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.” – Mark 9:38-50
For the faithful who strive to follow in the way of Christ, this is a black and white edict that comes to us who live in a much greyer world.
It comes to us in a world where right and wrong do not always appear so cut and dry and where our convictions sometimes have unintended consequences.
It comes to us in world where the small and individual injustice can build like a cancer, growing within us without our notice, that then spreads into the very blood and bones of our societal, religious and civic systems, unable to be amputated from us as we would a sick limb.
As you sit in the Garden of the Righteous Among Nations, among the trees and plaque commemorating the 25,000 brave souls who risked it all, life and limb, to save others, it’s hard to grapple with the thought that we ourselves might not have been so brave.
On the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, there is a quote from a named Martin Niemoller, who was a Lutheran minister in Germany during the Holocaust.
As a young man, he distinguished himself in the Navy as an officer and commander of a German U-Boat during World War 1. He was proud of his country and his service, but after Germany’s defeat in the first world war, he found himself at political odds with Weimar government.
Forced to give up his U-Boat and his office, he, like many Germans, felt like the changing government had abandoned him and all he stood for.
Disenfranchised, he sympathized with and supported the rising Nazi government.
Niemoller went on to pursue seminary and found himself in a prominent church in Berlin, where he was widely supported and his anti-Semitic sermons were well attended.
Quickly, however, Niemoller’s support for the Nazi government began to wane.
But It wasn’t the dangerous and xenophobic policies that were being solidified under the Nazi regime that ignited in him the spark of resistance, it was, instead, the Nazi interference in the life of the church and the removal rights of Christian of Jewish decent that caused him to take action.
It short, it was only when his own rights began to be infringed upon, that he spoke up.
Regardless of his motivations, his actions against the Nazi government were impactful and led to his arrest, apparently under orders from Hitler himself. Niemoller the spent the rest of the war imprisoned in concentration camps.
Unlike millions of others, Martin Niemoller survived the war imprisoned by the Nazis. His survival allowed him to live on into late life as an ardent anti-war activist, who spoke with ferocity about the importance of not remaining silent in the face of injustice.
His most famous quote, which is known in a few different forms, is inscribed on the Holocaust memorial in Boston. It reads as follows:
“They came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak up.”
I saw this quote shared widely this past Wednesday.
Among other things, it was the 78th anniversary of one of the defining moments of the Second World War, an event that is widely understood to be the beginning of the Holocaust as we know it.
On November 9th, 1938 Germans, fueled by anti-Jewish sentiment and supported by Nazi-issued propaganda, went on a rampage of terror that specifically targeted Jewish business, synagogue, and Jews themselves.
According to Nazi totals, 8,000 buildings across Germany were vandalized and defaced with anti-Jewish slogans and slurs. Nearly 100 Jews were murdered. Glass from widows strewn the streets, giving the event the name Kristallnacht – Crystal Night – the Night of Shattered Glass.
Two days later, on November 11, 30,000 thousand Jews were rounded up and deported to concentration camps at Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen.
This act brought to the surface the reign of terror that had already existed in Germany, and would soon be on the forefront of the minds of people across the world.
They say that hindsight is 20/20 – that when we know we now know, we can look back and feel confident about what we would have and could have and should have done.
That when we look back on that day, 78 years ago, we can proclaim boldly that hadweknown…
Had we known that this is what the future held,
We would have stood up.
We would have spoken up.
We would have put our bodies in between rocks and widows,
and used our selves as human shields.
We would have opened our homes and our safe spaces to our brothers and sisters and we would have gathered, arm in arm, linked in front of the rail cars, the tanks and the trucks to do everything in our power and anything at all, to reorient the world toward justice.
It is that 20/20 vision in hindsight tells that it would have been us, doing just what Jesus called on us to do:
That if we had been there, on that pivotal day 78 years ago, it would have been us giving up our hands and our feet and our eyes that our brothers and sisters might have a future in which they could continue feel and walk and see.
It would have been us.
We would have fought and screamed and risen up and joined together.
It would have been us.
We would not have stayed silent.
But two days later 30,000 Jews were rounded up and deported to concentration camps. Over the next six years, millions more would take that same journey. Millions would die.
Martin Niemoller was a Lutheran Minister who devoted his life to follow in the way of Christ. And yet even as a follower of Christ, an ordained minister, he felt sympathy for the ideologies of the Nazi government – ideologies that tended toward pointing a finger rather than lending a hand; ideologies that would exclude people who thought and acted and believed differently than the prevailing power; ideologies that said that ‘whoever is not with us is against us,’ rather than the ideology of Jesus who declares “whoever is not against us, is with us.”
It wasn’t until the communities of which he was a part and Niemoller himself came under attack by those ideologies, that he began to take action against them.
For his life following the war, Niemoller is said to have lived with the guilt of not taking a stand against those forces of evil until they came knocking on his door, when all the networks and systems that were designed protect him and those around him, had been stripped away.
“They came for the Communists,” he wrote, “and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak up.”
On Wednesday morning, I read Niemoller’s quote attached to an article depicting the events of Kristallnacht, 78 years ago. By Wednesday evening, I had read the poem more times than I could count, shared not in response to the historical past, but to the real and pressing present, shared in response to events that had happened that very day.
She was shopping in Walmart. A woman came up to her and ripped her Hijab off her head. “this is not allowed anymore, so go hang yourself with it around your neck not on your head.”
They came for my Muslim brothers and sisters,
but I did not speak out because I am not a Muslim
They woke up to a note on their car. “I can’t wait for your ‘marriage’ to be over turned. Gay families burn in hell.” Signed ‘#Godbless.
They came for my LGBTQ Brothers and Sisters
but I did not speak up because I am not LGBTQ
He came out to his car to find all four tires slashed.
She found hers covered in graffiti. “Go back to Africa you N word, you B word.”
A black baby doll was left in the gutter with a noose around its neck.
They came for our Black brothers and sisters
but I did not speak up because I am not black.
She was walking to math class at her high school
She was pumping gas
She was getting coffee
She was heading home
“Why aren’t you gone yet?”
“Build a wall”
“Grab her by the…”
“I should kill you right now, you’re just a waste of air.”
They came for our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our wives.
But I didn’t speak up because I am not a woman.
I didn’t speak up, not for my Muslim brothers and sisters, not for my Black brothers and sister, not for LGBTQ brothers and sisters.
I did not speak up for my immigrant brothers and sisters or my disable brothers and sisters. I did not speak up when it mattered the most.
As Christians, we must remember: they also came for Christ.
It wasn’t because he expressed a theological doctrine or dogma that ruffled the feathers of the powers that be, but because he spoke out for his brothers and sisters:
For the tax collectors and widows,
The prostitutes and the impoverished.
They came for Christ because he dared to say, “you matter” to those that society had pushed aside.
They came for Christ, but by then, Christ knew it was too late.
Jesus gave himself to the cross that no others should have to live and die as he did – that in his sacrifice, he could offer up a different view of the world – one in which all of God’s beloved creation lives in peaceful harmony befitting the kingdom of God.
But in his sacrifice, he did not absolve us, his followers, of our God given purpose in life and faith, that which is our salt and our saltiness.
He did not absolve us of our call to build around us world in which silence in the face of injustice cannot and does not prevail, where the evils xenophobia, homophobia, racism, and sexism are finally and eternally amputated from who and what we are; and a world in which all people are showered with the grace and dignity that is required to be shown all children of God.
You are the salt of the earth, he says.
But if salt has lost its saltiness, what good is then, but to thrown on the ground and trampled under foot. What good is it, if we, as Christians, do not share with the world our Christ-given call to stand behind and fight for our convictions of justice and peace?
You are the light of the world, he says. But what good is it if we should hide our light under a basket so that the world cannot see it and be shrouded in darkness. What good is it, if we do not illuminate a path forward with visions of love and hope?
How will you share your light? How will you season the world with the saltiness of God’s love?
My friends, we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
We are the voices that ring out in the silence.
We are people who stand up to show the world that the Kingdom of God is real, and that peace and justice and hope and love are at its foundation.
It’s time to stand up. It’s time to speak out. It’s time to let our light shine. Amen.
All of us more or less thrive on a predictable world, where things go as planned. When Brexit happened in Britain and when Donald Trump happened in America it was a jolt to our central nervous systems. And the shock waves were felt throughout the world. The establishment has been rocked.
For me, Bernie Sanders was the omen. His popularity, especially with young voters, was unprecedented. Then when Jeb Bush, who I thought was the strongest Republican nominee, departed the campaign, I thought to myself… “This country wants deep change. It does not want another Bush or Clinton. It wants someone who will disrupt business as usual, someone who will shake things up.” The American people want someone on the margins like Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump.
Now I pray that our people, government, and nation will find ways to mend the divisions among people, heal the anger and hatred fueled by the campaigns, create hope where there has been fear and suspicion, and attend to the very real concerns, problems, and needs of people.
We live in tumultuous times. Political storms, storms of climate change, international storms are brewing around us. It is tempting to despair, to feel alone and forsaken. And most of all many feel insecure, like the ground is shaking beneath their feet.
In light of all this I think of the story of Jesus calming the storm at sea (Mark 4:35-41)… In the case of the storm at sea, the waves were crashing on and spilling over into the boat. In the midst of all that Jesus said “Be not terrified! There shall not be a hair of your head that perishes.” In other words, “Yes, there are many reasons to feel timid and hopeless. Yet, in the midst of it all, I will calm you. I will help you find your center of gravity. I will deliver you.”
I was comforted by Hillary Clinton’s conciliar speech on the morning of November ninth. She said (my paraphrase) that no matter how hopeless we may feel; we should never give up the fight. And that in the big scheme of things, our acts of service, no matter how small, are never wasted. They are chronicled and used by God to further the kingdom.
Gratitude does not need to be complicated. In fact, practicing gratitude for the simple things actually helps one simplify their life. Acknowledging something simple, like breathing, can heighten one’s awareness of the places where things get complicated. This is especially true for one’s spiritual practices. As beautiful as a practice can be, it can become complicated very easily. Prayer lists can grow very long. The sense of ritual can take over. Certain positions or postures, times, and order can complicate to a point where heart of the practice can be lost. Coming back to the heart of a practice with gratitude is a very powerful spiritual practice. Beginning the prayer list, reading, examen, meditation, or physical practice with gratitude for the heart or why of the practice can shift the whole experience.
One of the main points I like to bring forth in meditation is the most important part of this practice: the fact that everyone there chose to come and sit. It is the act of sitting in my opinion that is the important. Whether the mind clears, or one stays with their breath or mantra, or one leaves feeling peaceful or enlightened, there is a nice benefit, yet the real power in the practice is the choice to sit. I believe that because we choose to sit, and step out of the norm or complications of life, the world is literally a different place when we leave. Beginning with gratitude, appreciation and acknowledging the Source of one’s life changes the practice from one of doing the practice to one of being with the practice.
Beginning a spiritual practice with gratitude takes the focus off of the doing and moves us into the participation and relationship with God/Love/Divine. That is a wonderful place to dwell. It helps one come back to noticing, savoring and to the gift of Life. I encourage you to begin your spiritual practices grateful for the gift of showing up, sitting down, using time, or just breathing. See if you notice anything different in your practice.
I’d like to end with a poem by Mary Oliver from her book A Thousand Mornings:
Poem of the One World
This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water
and then into the sky of
this one world
we all belong to
where everything
sooner or later
is part of everything else
which thought made me feel
for a while
quite beautiful myself.
The simple act of gratitude can change the world. A thank you to Diane Owens for the inspiration of this week’s writing.
I heard the whispers. I saw the quiet exchanges between the ones in the know. I watched this play out among the most powerful of my peers. They knew something and I was going to find out what that was. Information is power.
I waited.
I knew it was just a matter of time until one of them slipped up and told me what they knew.
Yeah. That’s right.
This wasn’t my first rodeo.
I mean, did they think I was born yesterday?
Sheesh.
They gave in within an hour and I didn’t even have to ask them anything. They came to me as I sat in my converted office which doubled as a jungle gym what with us being in the second grade and all.
The secret was a good one! It. Blew. My. Mind. Each word they shared was better than the last. Ready for the secret?
The answers to the odd numbered math problems are in the back of the textbook. Just sitting there, waiting for us to use them. Talk about a #lifehack, this was golden.
Take a minute to catch your breath. That was a lot to take in.
As a kid who turned in every math assignment with several worn holes in the paper from my baffled work that had to be erased and gone over again and again, this was music to my ears. This was evidence that I was obviously on God’s good person list with this piece of info! I was blissful.
I put this new knowledge to use immediately, finishing my math word problems assignment in 2.25 minutes, just a mere 27.75 minutes from my usual. Nothing suspicious here.
I marched up, handed that work to Mrs. Johnson and waited for her accolades. I was baffled when I saw her put that red pen to use. She handed it back with a big fat “0” at the top of the page. Looking back I should have likely been suspicious when most of the problems shared the exact same solution which was: “Answers Will Vary”.
Sigh. I may have peaked in the second grade.
There’s a joke meme that I have posted on my Facebook page in the past that reads “It turns out being an adult is mostly just googling how to do stuff.” Most people read the first three sentences when they search something on Wikipedia and that’s it. Most of us take in absolutely overly simplified explanations and act as though we have a PhD on the topic.
Seven-year old me just wanted the boring parts over with so I could get back to doing what I wanted to do. It was a very basic thinking pattern. Math boring; must stop. I can do that by copying all the answers in the book and move on from this moment.
This type of thinking makes sense in a seven year old, but far less sense in a 37-year-old. And yet when I was 37, I found myself wanting the quick answer while I was waiting to hear if I got a position I had interviewed for and very much wanted.
I turned to the internet like it was a magic 8-ball and knew everything. I searched online using this question: “Am I going to get the job?” And I searched this on several different search engine sites as though each may reveal more of my future… the things we do in lieu of feeling always surprises me.
I knew it was silly as I did it. The questioning allowed me to do something with all that nervous energy and I found it amusing. That was the payoff of doing this search. What it didn’t do, though, was yield a definitive answer or help me in anyway.
In my life, I have observed many times that the insistence of an immediate answer leaves me feeling empty when I get it. This is usually because I wasn’t asking the true question that would assist in meeting my needs. I was just trying to distract myself until I knew the outcome. It is a fear-based way of being for me.
Ultimately, the thing I was looking for most that day was an assurance that I was worthy of such a job and that I would be okay if I didn’t get it. Evidently the internet has yet to produce the self esteem and affirmation we long for, available by clicking a link. Give it a year. The internet has been busy with the election, after all.
I am a person of faith who has chosen to walk a Christian path. That’s never really varied for me, even when I lost a faith community after coming out as a queer, gender diverse person, I knew this was still my path. The way I understand and live into the call as a Christian has changed but my willingness to walk a Christian path has never wavered.
I spent most of my early life developing a belief system that I had all the answers and humanity needed me to tell them. I had the solution and they needed it. I have spent the last 16 years of my life letting that go and opening myself to the mystery and wonder that comes with living and being in the world, among each other, seeking love, seeking life, seeking Spirit.
When I do not have the answers, I get to do some things that are pretty great: I get to replace the closed-fisted certainty with an open handed wonderment. I get to hear your experiences and allow them to expand my sense of who God is and who we are in relation to God. I get to stop faking it when I just don’t know what to do with suffering. I get to be authentic and a person of faith.
I used to think that faith was the goal God laid out for me, as though the searching would give me an object to hold up and say “See what I got? Isn’t it shiny? Isn’t it amazing? I win!” Faith was to be obtained.
There was such a massive arrogance to how I thought about the role of faith and my call in that. A few minutes with me back then would have you asking, “Is it getting smuggy in here?” Yea. I brought the smug.
My faith was aggressive absolutism that I lived in as though I was waiting to get to the afterlife and say, “See, I told you!” I have learned that when the motivation is to be right the action I am taking is likely wrong.
Parables are the original word problems for Christians and none yield a direct answer. Jesus used juxtaposition regularly to get us out of the data and into the questions. Faith isn’t the ultimate answer to who God is and who I am to God. Faith was never the destination. Faith is the vehicle of how I get to live with you in the world and how I get to understand what love is and what love isn’t. It’s not to be obtained, it is for us to make use of in our seeking God.
What a mistake we make flipping furiously to the answers. What a mistake we make thinking the supplied answer was ever the point of the work. What a mistake we make when we allow an answer to snuff out wonderment.
I have had such a sense of relief when I realized the whole point of this assignment of life isn’t in deriving the answer and arriving at faith.
Faith is the pencil.
Faith is the paper.
Faith is the eraser.
Faith is what we get to use to figure and wonder at the questions that come in living.
I want answers often, especially recently for this season I have lived in. Here’s where I hurt myself in that wanting of answers: when I mistake having a stark and clear answer for a spiritual solution, I am left empty. Answers aren’t all that filling or satisfying when I hunger for relationship with God and with others. When I can replace answers with wonderment my spirit is strengthened and bolstered. Wonderment is life giving.
I have found my most honest words and thoughts I have had when faced with life’s questions are on paper riddled and marred with my attempts, stained with all my tries and mistakes. That is the clearest evidence of my willingness to engage in the questions. Those questions are all the same in front of each of us. All the big life questions cut across all aspects of humanity no matter the culture or language. We are all grappling with making sense of the world around us. That’s the work. That’s the living. And I guarantee, if we really do the hard work, our answers will vary. They were meant to by design.
What does God really want from us? 3000 years ago, the Israelites wanted to know. The Assyrians had overrun their country. The people were wracked by war and oppression. To make sense of the hardship and suffering, they asked what we humans often ask in such times–what are we supposed to do? What does God want from us?
Did God want animal sacrifice–new born calves or thousands of rams? Would sacrificing their first-born children do the trick? What did God really want?
The (minor) prophet Micah answered his people with words that echo through the ages:
God has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God?
President Theodore Roosevelt called it “The Micah Mandate.” “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.” In this 8th c. prophet’s words, Roosevelt heard God’s call in his life and the life of this nation. For Roosevelt, the individual soul and the country heart both needed a sense of justice that is tempered by mercy and mercy that is strengthened by a commitment to justice. Moreover, Roosevelt knew that neither the individual nor the country is the center of the universe nor the seat of all wisdom. God is.
Like the other Hebrew Prophets, Micah didn’t go into great detail as to how to live out the commitment to justice and mercy. That is for each generation, each nation, each individual to work out. Instead, as with Amos’ call to “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,” Micah’s words are a standard by which to measure our lives and the life of our church and our nation.
The Prophet’s words are echoed in those of Janusz Korczak, a Jewish educator and pediatrician in 1930’s Poland. Known for his humane approach to teaching, Korczak had his own radio show (before the Nazi occupation of Poland) in which he advocated for the rights of children. He also directed an orphanage for both Jewish and Gentile children. When the Nazis came to power, Korczak was offered sanctuary but continually refused it, choosing instead to stay with the orphans in his care. In 1942, Korczak and 190+ children were deported to Treblinka where all were put to death.
In one of his radio presentations, Korczak offered an understanding similar to that of the Prophet Micah’s, 3000 years before. “You lived,” Korczak affirmed,
. . . . how many fields did you plow,
How many loaves of bread did you bake,
How much seed did you sow,
How many trees did you plant,
How many bricks did you lay?
How many buttons did you sew,
How many patches, how many seams did you make,
To whom did you give your warmth,
Who would have stumbled but for your support,
Who did you show the way without demanding gratitude or prize,
What was your offering,
Whom did you serve?
What does God really want from us? Korczak’s answer was to give warmth, offer support, live a life of service–even to the end. For the 8th century Prophet Micah, it was to “do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.” Micah’s Mandate shaped Janusz Korczak’s life, even as his world thundered with hatred and fear. Amidst the thunder of our time and our world, we need to hear Micah’s Mandate, too.
One of the most amazing gifts of walking early in the morning at this time of year is the gift of what I call the “misty blue time”. I leave in the dark, and just before the sun comes over the horizon, there are a few minutes where everything turns a misty blue. Everything looks different during this in-between time. I know the neighborhood when it is dark, and of course I am familiar with it when it is daylight. Both have their own unique looks and I notice different things at both times. During this misty blue time my brain does not know what to jump to. Everything looks surreal and different. It is as though I am in a different world altogether and I get to enjoy my neighborhood in a whole new way.
In the contemplative walk, this misty blue time could be seen as liminal space. That space that says one time is over yet the next season has not quite arrived. Liminal space is a whole new world of noticing, practicing, and waiting for the sun to rise on the new season of life. I often witness the discomfort of this liminal space. It is easy to want to skip this space by taking what was known in the past and overlaying it on to the future and calling it good. The challenge in doing that is it limits the possibilities of the future with old patterns. The truth is the space yet to come has not been lived yet and the signposts are all new. With just our past knowledge, it is difficult to navigate. Yet, if one allows the liminal space to teach them, one can begin to learn how to live into the new place and releasing what no longer works. By remaining in misty blue, and allowing the knowledge of the past and anticipation of the future to guide one’s way, one is open to visions of life and God in a whole new way.
This August is a misty blue place for Pathways of Grace. We have more people using the space. New facilitators will be providing opportunities to experience growth. The website is getting a face lift and Mind Body is our new home base for scheduling and signing up for classes. At the same time we will be celebrating the past and your support in it, while providing the same safe place to experience your own liminal spaces. I have no idea how all of this will look, yet I am excited to see what I notice and live into the experience of what the next sunrise for Pathways of Grace will look like. Won’t you join me on this great adventure??
It seems like there is a memorial that many have attended; a service for the biggest celebrity of our times. The memorial is for Normal. I seem to be watching it die all around me in the weather, politics, how culture is viewed, social norms, etc. Maybe as a second half of life issue, I’m becoming that person in the rocking chair on the front porch with my cronies, talking about Normal before Normal died.
The vows of the Benedictine society are to obedience, stability, and conversion of life. Briefly, obedience rests in a listening heart. Who are you listening to? The response is God’s and Christ’s example. Stability is to the community and all that unfolds with that. Stability centers in the listening heart. Conversion of life is both the personal and communal commitment to always be growing and moving closer to God and others.
What I love about these vows is they recognize that normal is good and yet normal is not God; that normal is always evolving into the new normal and that is a process. Like any grief process it has its stages, yet in a contemplative life, letting go of Normal is normal. That is not the focus. After all, the death of one person’s Normal might be the cause of celebration for another. Think of segregation, women’s rights, etc.
If you find yourself mourning the loss of Normal in this season of great change, know you are not alone. Honor your grieving process and cling to a listening heart because God is in the midst of the transition. Listen with your heart, stand with community, and embrace that this new Normal is an opportunity to draw closer to God and others.
Pathways of Grace is in the midst of embracing a new Normal and over the next few weeks, I’ll fill you in about how it is evolving. This week, find ways to notice your relationship with Normal. How does it impact your listening heart?
