Wednesday, November 12, 2014

How a soul grows




Sunday rolls around and we aren't going to church, as in a formal worship service, and so we sleep late and linger longer over breakfast. We savor silence and conversation, co-mingling in this communion. 

If this makes us heathens, we gratefully accept. 

Today, and every day, we are but two who make up this presence of Christ in the flesh in the world, this Body sacred scriptures calls us, breaking bread and drinking from the cup and opening our hearts to Christ all around, in the unexpected and unassuming.

We leave home after breakfast and seek refuge in a small chapel, on a private university campus in the middle of the city. It is often quiet here, but today, people are milling around, trailing out slow in conversation, in neatly pressed skirts and pants. A crazy man walks in, tweaking, making his way to the far end of the sanctuary, breaking the relative quiet with his monologue and jerky movements. Still, something here, some presence perhaps, drew him in, even in this state. And he came seeking refuge, too.

We move to a room off to one side, with whitewashed walls and quotes from saints, and a beautiful tree with smooth red bark stretching from floor to ceiling. The crazy man leaves minutes later in a sudden fury, crumpling his jacket into a ball and throwing it in spew of angry, incoherent words at a pew. He stalks out, leaving utter stillness in his wake.

I cannot remember the last time I sunk into silence like this.

I fall in, hungry. I try not to fill the silence with thoughts and words, and succeed for a few minutes, before dissolving in unspoken prayer.

I feel something in me dying and something in me waking, this fluid, furious cycle of growth and change. I am trying to ride it out, for in it I feel the dance of wholeness - death and life, darkness and light - and it is messy.

And it is life, the way in the chill of autumn's air and fiery blaze of death, life burns to the marrow in our bones, arousing our souls.


* * * * * 

I never foresaw the day I'd feel like a misfit within the walls of a church. Any church. Right now, I will myself to go most weeks, if we go, and I cannot even say if this is a "season" (as we like to call phases such as these in the church) or if it's something deeper, more lasting.

I suspect the latter.

I cannot put it into words, but this: I am craning my neck to see Jesus, straining ears to hear him. And right now, I see and hear him best outside the walls of church. Outside the formalities and the ways we've clothed him in our varied interpretations of him and the expectations of how we are to act and think and be as members of this community of faith, and the language we use to convey these things. For when I walk inside, I hear more noise and confusion in my soul than I hear anything else.


I wish to peel it all back, to see who he really is, if that were even possible. To behold the mystery, and content myself with not knowing as much as I think I do, and perhaps glimpse him there, in the raw, like a burning bush.

I wonder at that man who threw his jacket in a spew of words and fled the church, and I think that God is big enough, to hold his children close within these walls as he holds his children close who are outside them. And whether we are "in" or "out" of church as a weekly gathering is not really the matter of his heart, I think, but that we are his, the way the whole earth and everything in it is his - and that we seek to love him and each other with our lives.

For when we do this, when we are this, are we not living as his Church? 

It's here I'm learning to trust that my faith, my very soul, have expanded enough to hold this tension, this weight of uncertainty, without tearing down the middle. Because if God is so big as to hold all of this and all of us together, then surely, it is well with my soul.


Linking up with Unforced Rhythms



  

12 comments:

  1. As always, I love the words you put to feelings, thoughts. I have my own version of "this tension, this weight of uncertainty, without tearing down the middle". And sometimes wondering if this is where I will stay. And sometimes I wonder if the fact that I find myself here at my age is discouraging to you. (until one of us has a birthday I am exactly double your age!) I hope it is not. It is probably not unusual that we circle back to questions....not in the same way, but questions nevertheless. And I am glad you are holding onto the "middle." blessings Amber.

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    1. Discouraging, Carol? No, not at all. You offer hope for me, of how to embrace questions with honesty and courage, even as we grow older. I appreciate this about you. And I thank you, for giving me so much space and grace to be where I am.

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  2. "I feel something in me dying and something in me waking . . . "
    To have the courage to wait, the faith to believe and the grace to call even this most difficult process "good," - Thank you Amber for your reflections. I'm grateful you found that place of silence.

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    1. Thank you for the times of showing up here, Kelly, and reminding me this is courageous. I cannot say just how much that means to me, but I have the sense you get that, too.

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  3. Ah, to see Jesus. Sometimes I have commented that we believers often block Him from view. Sometimes we make better walls than windows. We impede others from seeing Him, the real and raw HIM. Sometimes we do that within ourselves. I am also striving to see Jesus, wanting an intimate and unmistakable encounter with His Person. For He is just what I need so desperately, just what I want so deeply. This year, my "word for the year" has been joy. Trust me, I have struggled with its concept in arguably the most difficult year of my life. As I'm nearing the end of it, I know that I have discovered this one thing - for me, joy means Jesus, Only You.

    God honors a searching heart, for He will meet the heart who seeks after Him.

    GOD BLESS!

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    1. How beautiful, Sharon, that you have made this discovery about joy as you near the end of the year of reflecting on it. He does honor the seeking heart, no matter who or what does the blocking, doesnt he?

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  4. Ah yes... the glory in dying... in shifting and changing... in being Light and Love inside, maybe - but outside - yes! Yes... let's do that!

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  5. Amber,
    I always admire how you are so brave to wait in that tension...not rush ...but just be and to allow as De Chardin says to "always trust in the slow work of God"....((hugs))...hope you don't mind...I'm a hugger :)

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    1. Oh. The slow work... how true and wise that is. Thank you for all these words of encouragement, Dolly. I'm a hugger, too ;)

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  6. I guess, in church, I focus more on being there for the hurting ones. When I reach out to others, I sense God filling me up and His love flowing out of me. So, for our relationship, just God and me, my favorite place to meet with Him is by the sea. It seems to be the place I hear Him most clearly.

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    1. Thank you, Elizabeth. I understand that focus, too, as I've lived it a number of my years in the church. And yes, I love to meet him by the sea, too. Such a beautiful place.

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