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…

Some Advent Reflections (4)

Dec 23, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, My sort-of Sermons, Sacred Stories, Spirituality

The Polar Express, Ahaz, Joseph, and me…

Sunday, December 23 – Scripture Readings:
Psalm 80: 1-7, 17-19; 24; Isaiah 7:10-16; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1: 18-25

Hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, Isaiah challenges Ahaz to ask God for a sign. But Ahaz is afraid. Isaiah responds by saying, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14)

Just months before Jesus’ birth, an angel challenges Joseph to believe God’s sign. But Joseph is afraid. In his dream, the angel says, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us.’ (Matthew 1:20b-23)

Thousands of years after Jesus’ birth, we are challenged to believe (anew and again) in God’s sign. But we are afraid.

I could talk much about why this might be, but I’m not going to. (I want to watch The Polar Express with Emma and Abby and the evening is quickly escaping.) We are afraid. If we were not, we would all be living full, abundant, amazing lives. Full in the grace and love of the Divine. Abundant in the gifts and graces bestowed by the Divine. Amazing in the awareness of Divine-with-us always, every single day.

We’re two days from Christmas; two days from honoring and celebrating THE sign – past, present, and future – who tells us we don’t need to be afraid; who bursts into the midst of our normal lives (whether we’re King Ahaz, Joseph, or a mom who is minutes away from watching a Christmas movie and drinking cocoa). Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Ahaz is reluctant. Joseph is chagrined. I am often unmotivated to really be challenged and changed by the proclaimed good news. I am afraid – just like the generations before me.

It doesn’t matter. For thousands of years, Emmanuel has come, no matter what.

‘…do not be afraid…God is with us.’

Now that I think of it, The Polar Express might be the perfect articulation of what I’m trying to say. The young boy is afraid, in many ways, to truly believe the signs around him. There’s too much chance for disappointment. Too much possibility that the magic just isn’t real. Beautifully though, he takes the leap. He sets his fear aside. He believes the sign and hears the ringing of the bell from Santa’s sleigh. The last words of the book say,

At one time most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found on Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me as it does for all who truly believe.

Just like the voice of Isaiah and the proclamation of the angel, the sound of the bell’s ringing continues through the ages.

No matter what.

The music sounds. The angels sing. Heaven and earth declare God’s glory. “…the Lord himself will give you a sign.” No matter what.

Emmanuel. God-with-us.

 

Some Advent Reflections (3)

Dec 16, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, My sort-of Sermons, Sacred Stories, Spirituality

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Sunday, December 16 – Scripture Readings:
Psalm 63, 98; Amos 9:11-15; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3, 13-17; John 5:30-47

It’s Sunday – the beginning of the third week of Advent. For those of you counting shopping days, you’re down to only nine! In a season designed, in its truest sense, to invite us to anticipation and longing and hope, we more often know increased levels of anxiety and stress and exhaustion these final days. Not good. We need Advent. We need comfort and joy.

And, as though it somehow knows this (which I think it does), Scripture offers us words that call us back to what matters, what endures, what we most need:

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word. (2 Thess. 2:16-16)

‘Reminds me of a Christmas carol. It’s long, but worth reading (and maybe humming along):

God rest ye merry, gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our Saviour
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

In Bethlehem, in Israel,
This blessed Babe was born
And laid within a manger
Upon this blessed morn
The which His Mother Mary
Did nothing take in scorn
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

From God our Heavenly Father
A blessed Angel came;
And unto certain Shepherds
Brought tidings of the same:
How that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by Name.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

“Fear not then,” said the Angel,
“Let nothing you aright,
This day is born a Saviour
Of a pure Virgin bright,
To free all those who trust in Him
From Satan’s power and might.
“O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

The shepherds at those tidings
Rejoiced much in mind,
And left their flocks a-feeding
In tempest, storm and wind:
And went to Bethlehem straightway
The Son of God to find.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

And when they came to Bethlehem
Where our dear Saviour lay,
They found Him in a manger,
Where oxen feed on hay;
His Mother Mary kneeling down,
Unto the Lord did pray.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This holy tide of Christmas
All other doth deface.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

I don’t think I need to extrapolate out application from this hymn other than to say that, at least for me, it reminds me of what matters. It tells me the story through which my own story makes sense (even if only in fits and starts). It offers me comfort and joy.

That is the message that all of Scripture offers, really. It’s the message, invitation, and reality of the Divine – throughout time, now, and forever.

Here’s a smattering of even today’s readings:

My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. (from Psalm 63)

Comfort and joy.

Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who live in it. Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming… (from Psalm 98)

Comfort and joy.

I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them upon heir and, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them, says the Lord your God. (from Amos 9)

Comfort and joy.

And again:

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word. (2 Thess. 2:16-16)

Advent. God-with-us. Emmanuel. Comfort and joy.

May it be so.

Some Advent Reflections (2)

Dec 9, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, My sort-of Sermons, Sacred Stories, Spirituality

Sunday, December 9 – Scripture Readings:
Psalm 114, 115; Amos 6:1-14; 2 Thessalonians 1:5-12; Luke 1:57-68

I’m struck today by the contrast between the words of the psalmist, Amos, Paul, and then Zechariah at the birth of his son, John.

The Psalmist says:
Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
who turns the rock into a pool of water,
and flint into a spring of water. (114:7-8)

Amos says:
But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood – you who rejoice…who say, “Have we not by our own strength taken Karnaim for ourselves?” Indeed, I am raising up against you a nation, O house of Israel, says the Lord, the God of hosts, and they shall oppress you… (12b-14)

Paul says:
[Those who do not know God] will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might… (9)

And Zechariah, as a brand new father, says:
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. (68)

Words that speak of a trembling fear of God. Words that speak of God’s oppression of God’s people. And words that speak of God’s blessing, favor, and redemption. All words of God-with-us, Emmanuel. I certainly prefer the latter, don’t you?

But what if it’s not either/or; rather both/and?

During Advent (and frankly all year long), Scripture requires that we interact with a voice of God that is clearly about judgment, a God in whom we should fear, a God who articulates significant disappointment and plans for oppression, a God who, at least from Paul’s perspective, intends to punish those who do not obey Jesus’ gospel. We read of a God who, through the birth of John, is fulfilling prophecy (even like that above) and looking favorably on God’s people and redeeming them. One could be, understandably, confused or at least be tempted to just stick with the gospel passage.

How are we to make sense of these seemingly mixed messages? How are we to let these words coexist and remain in a both/and reality?

Maybe I’m an exception, but I don’t find this all that hard. It feels far more like my reality. Of course, my preference is to stick with the favor and redemption stuff, but that belies what I experience and know to be true.

Nearly every day I face experiences that provoke fear on some level, feel like oppression, and have me longing for punishment (for others, of course). I don’t have the luxury of a life that stays only in places of God’s kindness and blessing. Further, I don’t really think that’s God’s expectation or plan.

It’s appropriate that Zechariah’s words come out of the context of labor and birth. It’s appropriate that the larger context of this passage has us hearing more of Elizabeth than her husband; that it’s her labor, her rejoicing, her naming that tells us this story. That’s the reality of life: out of labor – its pain, its anguish, its seeming-endlessness – that life bursts forth, life that offers favor and redemption.

This is our both/and reality: labor – its pain, its anguish, its seeming-endlessness and life that bursts forth with a God offering us favor and redemption.

This is our both/and reality: fear, oppression, punishment (whether or own or our desire for others’) and God’s blessing.

This is our both/and Advent: a God-with-us, Emmanuel who speaks through psalmists, a prophet, an apostle like Paul, and a father’s words about the God who gave him a son via the labor of his wife.

Both/and not either/or. This is reality. And into such, we are told of a real, flesh-and-blood god who comes, again and again, not to take away the harder, even harsh aspects of our day-to-day life, but to inhabit them, to dwell in their/our midst, to live himself in places of fear, oppression, punishment and favor and redemption.

I choose both/and. You?