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…

About Unexpected Generosity

Nov 8, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement

Still no news on my stolen car. Frustrating, yes, but that emotion has been offset by the stunning and unexpected generosity of one of my dearest friends.

She GAVE me a car!

She called randomly that morning just to see how I was doing – the day I went outside and found nothing. I said, “Well, I’ve had better days.” Our conversation continued and after she expressed her rage and indignation she said, “OK…we have a car that I was about to donate to the church. We have two others and don’t need this one. It’s just been sitting in the garage for the last four months. I was planning to give it to a needy family. You can have it.”

Who knew I’d be the needy family?!?

Tomorrow I’ll go to the DMV and get the title switched, the tabs renewed, and the insurance instated on my policy. I’ll also take it to a repair shop to have it looked over – just to see what needs to be done.

I’ve been thinking: as much as I desire to be in control, even though I know I’m not, it might be that I don’t really want to trust that the Divine, the Sacred is actually in control. I’m not always certain that I can depend on such; that were I to let go of control (holding on the illustion that I have it in the first place) things might not go the way I want.

But here’s the thing: when my life is the most out of control is when the Divine chooses to show up, miracles occur, and I am reminded that I’m seen, heard, and cared for – in stunning ways…with unexpected generostiy.

I don’t want any more stolen cars, but I do want eyes that see, ears that hear, and a heart that anticipates the Divine-made-manifest, incarnated really, all around me, all the time.

Playing Poker with God

Aug 24, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality

So often we frantically seek for an explanation to our suffering, to the things in our own life and in the world that make no sense to us. We often seek that explanation, or should I say, “demand” that explanation from God.

I don’t know about you, but no matter my endless beseeching of God for answers, they are rare in coming and often less than comforting when they are heard and/or understood.

I continue to believe there is something profound and unique to which we are called as women in suffering. It’s not that we are to be martyrs – just suffering because we must, or worse, because we choose to allow such. Rather, there is something beautiful and intimate that occurs in the midst of suffering – in relationship with God.

What if, rather than seeking an escape from suffering, we came to anticipate God’s whisper; God’s desire to offer intimacy, kindness, and care?

Offand on I’ve been reading a book called Women and the Value of Suffering by Kristine M. Rankka. She ends the book with a stunning poem by Anne Sexton saying that in it suffering is acknowledged, but with no attempt to justify or explain it.

The Rowing Endeth
I’m mooring my rowboat
at the dock of the island called God.
This dock is made in the shape of a fish
and there are many boats moored
at many different docks.
“It’s okay,” I say to myself,
with blisters that broke and healed
and broke and healed –
saving themselves over and over.
And salt sticking to my face and arms like
a glue-skin pocked with grains of tapioca.
I empty myself from my wooden boat
and onto the flesh of The Island.
“On with it!” He says and thus
we squat on the rocks by the sea
and play- can it be true –
a game of poker.
He calls me.
I win because I hold a royal straight flush.
He wins because He holds five aces.
A wild card had been announced
but I had not heard it
being in such a state of awe
when He took out the cards and dealt.
As He plunks down His five aces
and I sit grinning at my royal flush,
He starts to laugh,
the laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth
and into mine,
and such laughter that He doubles right over me
laughing a Rejoice-Chorus at our two triumphs.
The I laugh, the fishy dock laughs
the sea laughs. The Island laughs.
The Absurd laughs.
Dearest dealer,
I with my royal straight flush,
love you so for your wild card,
that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha
and lucky love.

If this is even remotely possible: the experience of playing poker with God, of hearing God’s laughter, of coming to love the wild card, of being loved like this, count me in! ‘Not that I can do anything about the suffering that has or will yet come; but I can hope for the grace and winsomeness to hear God’s invitation to play cards in the midst.

Ready to deal?

About Connection and Stamps (and God)

Jul 24, 2007 | Spirituality

about reconnecting:
Just a few minutes ago I finished writing a note to a person I haven’t been in touch with for over 15 years. I have no idea
what has taken place in that amount of time, no idea what has occurred, who has been loved, who has died, what tears
have been shed, what laughter has sprung forth. What I do know is that all of the same realities have been true for me:
love, death, tears, laughter. What would it be like to re-connect now? Would we have similar stories to tell or vastly divergent ones? Would we know what to say? Would we even recognize one another?

and a stamp:
As I placed the stamp on the envelope and put it in the slot in my door to be picked up by my mail carrier, I realized that really, regardless of whether we connect face-to-face, we have reconnected. My thoughts and curiosity have enabled that and aren’t dependent on reciprocation.

My musings above lead me to wonder about God.

How often do we understand God as the one who receives our note? As one who needs to respond in order for connection to have occurred? I wonder what would happen if I/we began to understand God more as the (re)connection itself, the
curiosity and the desire and the virtual (but no less real) connection that occurs just in thinking of another…and caring? Of course, it doesn’t have to be one or the other; God is undoubtedly both – responder and respondent, connection and re-connector. And even more, I’m guessing God is the one writing and stamping the notes, thinking the thoughts, caring – far more than me.

The mail will be picked up soon and I’ll wait to see what happens. Either way, connection has occurred. I’d love to experience God this way – not waiting for a response, but experienced as re-connecting, present in everything – every thought, every memory, every love, every death, every tear, every laugh…even in a stamp.