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“The greatest day ever!!!”

Jan 8, 2013 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality

I went to the grocery store a few days back, irritated that I had to make the trip in the first place. Stepping out of my car and dashing between drops of threatening rain, I heard a boy – probably about six years old – yelling at the top of his lungs:

“This is my greatest day, ever!!! Isn’t this my greatest day ever?!?!”

His mom said, “Yes, sweetie, it’s pretty great.”

I smiled and moved through the parking lot toward the front doors. Just a few steps before entering, I spotted a dad and his young daughter who had obviously witnessed the same. She said “Is this my greatest day ever, Dad?” He smiled and said, “It sure could be.”

I laughed out loud. And my less-than-stellar attitude changed dramatically.

This is the nature of enthusiasm, of glee, of happiness, of praise. It’s contagious. It’s viral. It will not, cannot be slowed, contained, or stopped.

Can you, will you imagine that the Divine expresses such unbridled enthusiasm, glee, happiness, and praise over you?

Go ahead. Imagine it. I’ll wait for you . . .

What might change? How might you act, respond, feel, speak, be? What if, even for a moment, you could allow this to be true?

Psssst: it is true!

The Divine sees and shouts, sings, whispers – endlessly and infinitely: “This is my greatest creation, ever!!! Isn’t this my greatest creation, ever?!?”

When you believe and live like it’s true, others can’t help but say the same: “Could I be the Divine’s greatest creation ever?!? Could I?!?”

And like a flash-mob, more and more people will see, hear, wonder, ask, act, and dance. Everything will change.

*****

As I look around at the world: Sandy Hook Elementary School, the NRAs response,
bi-partisan politics, the painful and recently-personal effects of patriarchy, the ongoing reality of sexual trafficking, and so much more, I long for something, anything to change.

We need a viral, contagious belief in my own goodness and that of others. We need a viral, contagious belief in the Divine’s determined and passionate heart our my behalf. We need to be able to stand in the middle of a parking lot and yell, “This is the greatest day ever!”

May it be so.

…a marvelous exchange.

Feb 3, 2008 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality

I came across this poem by Macrina Wiederkehr this afternoon in A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary.

I stand at my window and watch
one by one the stars all leave me
I am having tea with the dawn
the first ray of sun descending
into my teacup
into my heart
The steam of my tea ascending
to the heavens
into God’s heart
The yearning in my heart streaming
to the heavens
into God’s heart
And God, standing in the heavens
watching the sun rise in my heart
leans down to breathe in
the first rays of my yearning
and names it morning prayer.
What a marvelous exchange!

I’m not a big tea drinker, but I’m thinking God might allow the steam of my coffee to prompt the same marvelous exchange. So lovely to imagine. And not just imagine, but know…

Life with Popcorn

Jan 29, 2008 | Hope & Encouragement, Mothers and Daughters, Women's Wisdom

Life is tough. It’s filled with disappointments, unmet expectations, hurt, grief, frustration, on and on the list goes. I’m not saying it’s not also filled with amazing beauty, celebration, life, and love. I’m all for that and know much of it. But as I’ve been in conversations over the past few days, I’ve been increasingly touched by the levels of difficulty and struggle that pervade.

Did we somehow expect something else? Is that what makes life feel so unjustly hard? Or is it that life really is unfair?

Here’s where I’m landing this Tuesday evening:

Of course life is bizarre; the more bizarre it gets, the more interesting it is. The only way to approach it is to make yourself some popcorn and enjoy the show. (Unknown)

Emma, Abby, and I made and then consumed popcorn tonight as we watched another round of American Idol auditions. Perhaps not the highest quality choice, but in the midst of so many stories that are painful, I was grateful for an hour of dissociation, popcorn, laughter, and an occasional surprising moment of amazing beauty.

‘Might be a good metaphor for life: in the midst of our own and others’ painful stories may we know some gracious moments that help us gain perspective, laugh even for a bit, and find beauty in unexpected places – all accompanied by more popcorn.

Spiritual wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert

Jan 10, 2008 | Hope & Encouragement, Sovereignty, Spirituality, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom, Writing

I’m about 2/3 of the way through Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Not only do her words make me wish I could travel through Italy, India, and Indonesia; she continues to offer up occasional paragraphs that let me pause, consider, and tab some pages for later-reflection (or blog posting).

My latest tabbed page was #192:

God dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are. God isn’t interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality…To know God, you need only to renounce one thing – your sense of division from God. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.

She goes on to say that she likes to imagine herself this peaceful, ethereal, super-spiritual, and quiet woman. But in reality she is erratic, fast-moving, earthy, talkative, and even loud!

She wonders about finding God in the very person she most truly is vs. striving toward the more perfect self she’s daydreamed or convinced herself she ought to be.

Brilliant! We all ought to wonder the same.

Just stay as you were made. There’s a statement that flies in the face of how most of us live each and every day! It’s also a statement that eloquently and powerfully invites us to embrace that we are, indeed, made in the Divine’s image – just as we now are, not as we’ll one day be. It invites us to stop our striving and struggling to be perfect, more of something, anything, everything! It invites us to take inventory on who we most truly are and wonder how we might just find God dwelling right there – in us – now.

Just stay as you were made.

Oh, how I long for that to be true. It lets me breathe easier. It lets me think that perhaps I can be kinder to myself (and others, as well). It lets me consider that maybe, just maybe, God is closer than I think and that I don’t have to strive nearly so hard to know God’s presence, God’s compassion, God’s love.

Just stay as you were made.

Could it be? May it be!

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well…(Psalm 139:13-14)

Just stay as you were made.

May it be so.

Song as Metaphor for a Woman’s Journey

Jan 7, 2008 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality, Women's Wisdom

For it was there that they asked us,
our captors, for songs,
our oppressors, for joy.
“Sing to us,” they said,
“one of Zion’s songs.”

Oh how could we sing
the song of the Lord
on alien soil? (Psalm 137:3-4)

Kathleen Norris, in her book The Cloister Walk reflects on this psalm by saying,

“These lines have a special poignancy for women: All too often, for reasons of gender, as well as poverty and race, we find that our journey from girlhood to womanhood is an exile to ‘alien soil.’”

How do we sing in the midst of an oppressive patriarchy, when we’re asked to dress pretty and act nice? We may feel that the very language we speak is an ‘oppressor’s tongue.’

How, then, do we sing?

I don’t have an answer. 

I can feel my tendency to jump ahead to a quick and easy answer, to start singing a little jingle. But like those radio commercials that get stuck in your head, my quick and easy answer to this question would be just as insipid, irritating, and shallow. Hardly a beautiful song that’s reflective of my longing for “home” or even acknowledgment that I’m far, far away.

There’s another question worth asking – perhaps as a precursor to the one Norris posits: Do we even know or remember that we’re on “alien soil?”

Probably not. What if we did? What if I did? What aspects of that journey would I need to remember, grieve, mourn, and, while traversing, pray I’m not asked to sing?

Hard to answer. Indeed, hard to sing.

How, then, do we sing? Norris anticipates the quandary and continues, “If the psalm doesn’t offer an answer, it allows us to dwell on the question.”

Maybe, at least for now, its enough to wonder about my “captors,” those things that imprison me; my “oppressors,” those things that keep me (internally and externally) from living freely, fully, richly; my “alien soil,” those places I’ve been led and have sometimes willingly gone that have taken me further and further from “home,” from who I most truly am, from who I most desire to be.

Think I’ll just hum for a bit while I sit longer with her question.

364 Days

Dec 31, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Women's Wisdom, Writing

364 days have now passed in 2007.

I woke up early this morning for a vacation day and no alarm. I found myself lying there thinking about the past 364 days. There is much to ponder. I got up and made coffee instead.

It’s hard to spend time in a past that is painful. It’s also tempting to just look back on all that was good and choose to overlook the tough stuff. For me, at least, there’s a lot of both. I can’t, nor do I want to escape either. The irony is that the things that have been most painful have also been rife with beauty, growth, love, and life.

The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief
But the pain of grief
Is only a shadow
When compared with the pain
Of never risking love.
(Hilary Stanton Zunin)

I have risked much. I have loved much. These past 364 days, pain has been rife in both.

I have never known the levels of sadness that have accompanied this year. And I have not been overwhelmed.

In the midst of circumstances and realities I was certain would drown me, I have kept afloat.

The tears I was sure would keep me from ever getting out of bed again have not been uncontrollable torrents, but gentle and kind reminders that I do feel, that I do care, that I do desire, that I do love.

The endings that I imagined as incomprehensible and even impossible have brought understanding and possibility I couldn’t have imagined. I feared death – not physical, but nearly every other sense of the word – and have known life.

Despite a large aspect of the past year’s reality and reflection: I am not alone. Neither death nor pain have conquered me.

Life returns.

Love wins.

364 days have passed. At the end of today 2008 will begin. I am grateful for both.

Time to pour another cup of coffee…