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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…

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.

How to make sense of ambivalence…

Jan 6, 2008 | Spirituality, Writing

There is a verse in the book of Job that captures ambivalence – without making much sense of it at all:

Will you frighten a windblown leaf and pursue dry chaff?

These words stick with me is because I spent most of yesterday writing about the desert – working on a chapter of
my someday book. It’s a conundrum – full of ambivalence – the desert: a desolate place of trial and a place in which God’s comfort and intimate care is to be found.

I find I go back and forth as I write and as I look at the pages of my life: where I’ve known much trial and where I’ve known comfort and intimate care. So, the images of a windblow leaf and dry chaff feel appropriate.

What am I to make of a God that allows me and others to feel this way – windblown and scattered?

It’s Job’s question, of course.

I know…God answers Job; but even that is not all that satisfying.

At the end of the day, ambivalence reigns (whether it makes sense, or not). There are far more questions than answers when it comes to God and the story being written and told. Will I let that be or will I fight it – and God?

What would it be like for me to let myself be a windblown leaf today?

I might see and experience all kinds of things that are impossible when hooked to a branch and a tree and roots and the soil.

A bit scary. No, a lot scary. And maybe the best way to make sense of ambivalence is by not demanding that it make sense…

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.