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Elegance & Crudeness

Feb 4, 2013 | Spirituality, Writing

A quickly-composed and deeply-felt post in the middle of my day…

Despite all obstacles placed in my way, many of which I erected myself, I am writing today.

I am writing about the Divine Feminine.

My history in regards to such, misconceptions that abound, and ways in which She is experienced both within and without. I am writing about my own religious tradition and the ways in which even the uttering of Her name would have well been understood as heresy from the pit of hell. I am writing about the ways in which that has confused me for so many years. And I am writing about how my movement toward Her has invited me into expansiveness, empowerment, and faith beyond-compare.

As I write, I have been reflecting on words spoken by artist and activist Callahan McDonough:

“I look for that balance of elegance and crudeness in my work and the daily reference in the ‘doing’ of the work. My desire is for my work to be experienced out in the world, to make a difference that touches people’s lives.”

Yes, this.

There is a balance of both elegance and crudeness in writing. Even more, in life. When I allow for both, I then extend myself grace and forgiveness. When I allow for both, I am compelled to higher levels of creativity without incessant second guessing. When I allow for both, I find myself in a place where darkness does not overcome light, nor does shadow or resistance overwhelm.

I am writing today. About some of the hardest things: my own story, my own doubts, my own fears. But in each, allowing confidence and doubt, hope and despair, and yes, elegance and crudeness; the jumble of emotions, talents, insecurities, and stories that are me.

Oh, that we would live our lives in such a place: aware of the elegance and crudeness innate in us all – allowing for both and calling forth ever-more. What might we yet create? What might we yet imagine? What might we yet birth?

Yes, this: birth. The primary and original place in which elegance and crudeness coexist. The primary and original place in which women bring forth their innate and particular power. The primary and original place in which miracles occur and the Divine Feminine makes herself known. The primary and original place in which God is made manifest in the world. Elegant. Crude. Beautiful.

I’ll take more of that, please.

A Lament

Jan 23, 2013 | Sacred Stories, Women's Wisdom, Writing

I’ve been tricked. ‘Tis so Sweet to Trust in Jesus is playing on Pandora. What? It’s an instrumental station – conducive-to-writing music – not old hymns! Aaaaaaugh! Every word cycles through my mind – even though I try to resist; even though not a one is actually sung. All I can do is angrily, uncontrollably weep.

Really? Trust in Jesus? Believe that God is at work in my life? How am I to do so in the midst of such excruciating heartbreak? Is this God’s will? Is this God’s plan? Is this God’s desire?

‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus when I’m getting my way, when things are as I want them to be. Not so much, when life feels like it’s going to hell in a hand-basket. When relationships fail. When wounds penetrate deeper than we thought we could ever bear. When disappointment feels like a crushing burden. When sadness catches in our chest so painfully that wee can hardly breathe. When anxiety nearly consumes all sane thought.

Where is the sweetness? Where is the hope? Where is the love? Where is God?

Thank, God. The song just ended . . . 

*****

At any given time I probably have 20 draft posts sitting in the queue. I think of something, see something, ponder something and jot down just enough to jog my memory later. Sometimes I return to what I started and craft something more. Often, I end up trashing most of it.

The words above were one of those drafts. I stumbled across it just today. Excruciating memories flooded as I pieced together the scenes of when I wrote it and why. Thankfully, the circumstances of that particular day have passed, but the reality and rawness of the emotions can still be felt, even now.  I considered trashing it, but then stopped. Here’s why:

It’s all good and well to skip merrily through our days – full of faith in a God who loves and provides. Until our faith fails because God seems to.

How are we to understand God in such places? How are we to hold on to trust? How are we to believe? How are we to hope? And what are we to do?

I wish I had answers. (Well, I have a few, but they just don’t suffoce in such places and those who tell you different are, in my not-so-humble-opinion, lying.) Here’s the best I can do:

Sometimes (if not often) we just need space, time, and frankly, permission to rage…at God.

So here it is: permission.

Take it. It’s yours. No lighting will strike. No coal in your stocking. No plague of frogs (a story from Exodus – or, if you prefer, the movie, Magnolia.) Be furious. Be pissed. Storm. Curse. Rail. Scream. Weep. Whatever. God’s OK with it. I promise. And if you don’t want to take my word for it, how about these? You are in good company:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
(From Psalm 13)

Why is life given to those with no future,
those God has surrounded with diffculties? I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water. What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true. I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest; only trouble comes. (From Job, Chapter 3)

*****

What I shared at the start of this post is hardly the first of such drafts I’ve written, but never published. Many have been trashed. And many more exist on untitled-but-saved files. They show up in journals scattered throughout my house. And had I kept the thousands of pages onto which I’ve poured my heart over my lifetime, we’d be buried; more lament would be present than praise.

It’s not that my life has been harder than others. It’s not that I’ve endured anything even closely resembling the stories of some. Hardly.

But my life is my own – just like yours. And my life, just like yours, is filled with heartache that deserves to be expressed; that must be expressed. There is no other way. Not really. So says Holocaust survivor, Elie Weisel:

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

So pour out your heart. Lament like there’s no tomorrow. And tomorrow will come. I promise.

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.

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…

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…

Happy 47th Birthday to Me!

Nov 30, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Mothers and Daughters, Sovereignty, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom, Writing

After writing posts for both of my daughters on their birthdays, I thought it only fitting that I do the same for myself!

Happy Birthday to me!

This has been a full, rich, painful, beautiful, long, amazing, surprising, miraculous, arduous, labor-filled year. I have known many tears, much frustration, and deep anguish. I have also known more laughter and life than ever before. I have been struck again and again by how amazing it is that both can coexist and frankly, be enhanced when juxtaposed to one another.

I’ve had many conversations with Emma and Abby this past year about what it means to let more than one thing be true at the same time: disappointment and hope, sadness and joy, frustration and desire. And this has been a year of that being enfleshed within me – on their behalf, certainly, but powerfully, on my own.

I have found much strength within me these past twelve months; strength that has enabled me to make difficult decisions and then live with the ramifications of such, strength that has allowed me to survive – and even thrive – in places I’d feared (and avoided) for many years. And that strength has, amazingly, not made me tougher, harder, or colder; rather, its enabled me to feel more tender, compassionate, and “present” to my own heart and the heart’s of others. I’m grateful.

Last year at this time I could have never been convinced of or prepared for the twelve months that were about to commence. Note to self: be glad you don’t know the future! Out of curiosity, I went back to the past – to my blog posts from about a year ago to see what I was writing. I came across some October, 2006 reflections on the women of Proverbs 1 and 31 that were amazingly prophetic for the year that was to come:

These women – metaphorical and real – are who I want to be: wise, listening to and living with those on the margins, gaining strength through perseverance and struggle, dignified and fearless, forever laughing with the abandon of a child. God knows and loves this woman. I am becoming this woman.

Indeed, I am. I feel more wise, more able to listen to those who are unseen, forgotten, or harmed, strengthened through perseverance and certainly struggle, more dignified, more fearless, and often laughing both with the abandon of a child – and with my own children.

I am this woman. Amazing.

That’s a year worth celebrating in the midst of acknowledging and grieving its losses and pains.

Another year older. Another year of being the grateful recipient of consistent, unpredictable, mysterious, and precious life.