In lieu of words

I hold these words in sacred space today as I pore over them, slow and hungry. And I cringe on my insides, because I know they're not more sacred today than they were yesterday or will be tomorrow, and yet this is the first day in years since I've cracked open this book. In light of remembering the life and sacrifice behind these words and the power of the words themselves, and even more, in light of what is still painfully relevant in them, I return. 

I return to listen. I return to make room for them in my heart once more. I return to be changed.

And I resist the urge to mark them in highlighter or underline with pen strokes. For it's too easy, all these years later, to let them sound too beautiful in my ears. To let my eyes fall upon them for superficial comfort - the comfort of recognizing truth in them, radical and holy, only for it to penetrate deeply enough to nod my head, yes, and feel I've been touched enough by their message without requiring much from me.

The temptation to let them be only a colorful mural painted on the wall of the high school football field down the street. Eloquent words framed by Pinterest on my wall.  A facebook status.  

Aesthetics. I want to weep at this realization, as I stare at Martin Luther King Jr's face on the cover of this book and remember his dream was not to be encased on a shelf as inspirational quotes but to spread like wild seeds throughout this country, this world, taking root and changing the landscape from hatred to love, injustice to justice, war to peace.

To remember him as an icon, a symbol, a quotable orator, and not as the complex man fleshing out the nuances - the blood, sweat and tears behind the words of this book - is to reduce him to his words. But he lived and died by these words, to leave behind a legacy, a dream, a vision, for others to pick up and spread.

And I find this, too, is one of several reasons I struggle to return often to Jesus' words, to read them as letters on a page, so familiar, so beautiful, so enigmatic. When in truth, they are disturbing, the sharp side of a nonviolent coin, cutting flesh until it bleeds life. And isn't that both the danger and the power of words? That they can make us feel moved enough that we believe we are changed - or they can actually move us to change. I cannot read too much of Jesus' words, either, for fear they will become little more than quotes highlighted and underlined on a page, framed on my wall, when the real wonder and glory of these words is seeing them come to life outside the pages, not inside them - both inside and outside of me.  

The word made flesh.

Inside this house, inside of me. Outside these walls, inside of you. Across this city, this country, around the world. To read these words in living color, to feel them stirring me to life and dwelling with us, this is the wonder I seek. 


Joining Kelly (and Kelli) in this change of hands from Unforced Rhythms to Small Wonder.

This beautiful, broken old road

As I've settled into my word for the year, resurgence, these first two weeks of January, I've noticed a dwindling desire to share in-the-moment stories from my journey in writing. It's as I suspected: resurgence in my life, at this moment in time, seems to be leading me to greater depths of privacy in my writing.

And this wraps around me with peace.

Even though I was just getting warmed up with practicing bravery in writing the story of this spiritual transformation I'm in the midst of. The end of the year came, baptizing me instead in the grace to begin a new year without needing to articulate the ins and outs of these changes publicly.

But I do have this to say, before I settle back into this world of privacy, with another deep breath for courage and a prayer for grace for each other - - - 

I've said goodbye to church, or church as I've known it recently, and am giving myself space to figure out where I fit. But not until more recently did I come to know, I'm really saying goodbye to the evangelical church and much of the culture that comes with it*.

I have many reasons for leaving.

Some of which can be communicated with long-reflected-upon, sought-and-prayed after words, readily available at the tip of my tongue, or if time allows for percolation in conversation. Others, I know in my gut and experience like a grating against the grain of who I am becoming. I know my reasons by how what was once as unnoticeable to me as the air I breathe now makes it harder for my soul to breathe freely. I am changing. I am accepting myself as changed.

But, as I said, I am not compelled to write these reasons one by one. For these words on my blog, I ascertain, are read mostly by evangelicals and I have no desire to alienate people, nor be dismissed as yet another voice droning among the masses of those airing church grievances.

That's not my heart. This kind of criticism is not what I'm about. 

I've felt some urgency at times, yes, to communicate my differences as they unfold, perhaps because there are more implied similarities within this specific Christian culture than I ever realized - until they no longer fit who I am. And I only want to be known as the person I am. Not the person I was, or the person I'm assumed to be, or the person who fits a certain profile of beliefs.

Maybe for me to articulate, even graciously, all the reasons why I'm leaving (as if I could) reduces me to nothing more than a non-evangelical image of the nit-picking I'm emerging from. I can produce no bulleted list, complete with scripture verses to support each point of change, nor do I want to. I'm going off the cuff of the Spirit stirring in my life, and I know, somehow, that even though I don't know what this will look like or what to call it - it's good.

Maybe the reasons why I'm leaving, in the end, are of less importance than the action itself, of one step and then another in the direction of the Spirit, repeated day after day after day.

The reasons themselves turn out to be no more than the puffs of exhaust fumes that linger in the air after the car has already sped down the road. They are not to be clung to, for they, too, will dissolve soon enough - and it's the road that remains. This beautiful, broken old road we travel centuries and centuries behind other seekers and followers, in different shoes, different vehicles, but that leads us home to Christ all the same.

When our paths cross on this road, if they do, I would wish you to look in my eyes and see love, more than any other thing, and hear these words in the offering of my hand to you:

Peace be with you. 


* * * * *

*By saying this, I am in no way trying to attack evangelical culture or generalize it singularly as negative, only recognizing that much of it no longer fits my faith.

Linking up with Unforced Rhythms

In which I jump on the bandwagon (OneWord 2015)

I confess: I couldn't let go.

I've never had a single word to frame my year, through participation with OneWord365, though I've tried. I've chosen words that quickly deflated, that I wrote once or twice about and forgot after that. More than anything, I think the trying was half-hearted. I didn't really care all that much, but I thought the idea was cool. 

And even though I wrote last week how I didn't have a word for this year, only an image of where I was, that could have been enough. I do love how images speak. But I held on, because I felt it stirring, right there, at the tip of my tongue. I suspected there was a word waiting at the edge if I only persisted.

And there was.

* * * * *

My word came to me, not through God, per se, or a flash of insight, but through a thesaurus. That, and listening to where my life is already moving. Maybe it's just that I know, in general, this is how God speaks to me. He makes me think and ponder and search, and often in the end, listen and choose for myself. So I brainstormed a list of words and mulled them over these past several weeks, with reflection, openness, prayerfulness. And in the end, I still wasn't quite satisfied with the list, so I thumbed through my thesaurus and scavenged for synonyms near the words that felt so close but not close enough, until one made my heart beat a little harder than the rest.

For some time, I've treasured the symbol of a Phoenix. The beauty of this mythical bird dying and rising from the ashes, again and again, ushering healing through this process of loss and rebirth, rumbles in the deep of me. It sings of identification, for this has been my life, too. A series of deaths, of ashes, of life smoldering and bursting into flame, of rising to start again. 

I'm beginning to wonder if all of life wasn't meant to be this.

This is why resurgence caught my attention. The origin of this word dates back to 1808, where it first indicated, to rise again. 

Rebirth. Comeback. Rejuvenation. Resurrection. Renewal. Return. Reawakening. Triumph. 

YES.

* * * * *

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On new year's eve, I walked a labyrinth for the first time. I felt, somehow, I needed to ready myself for it before stepping inside, but I didn't know how. So I just stepped in. With one way in and one way out, the cream colored path framed in a dark counterpart twisted back and forth in switchbacks like cloth intestines, heading toward the same center for all who walked. And we all walked it different, solitary, some times getting in each others' way or slowing one another down. And we all walked it communally, in this dance of giving each other space to be as we shared the same space of our journey. 

And I saw, as I walked, there is no readying for this exercise. The walking is the readying. The living, the praying, the meditation, the keen attending to a moment. It was the most meditative prayer I've offered, I think, and for the forty minutes or so I took to walk this path, scenes from the year replayed in my thoughts. My walk through the labyrinth mirrored my year in a symbolic, yet very physical way, and I had the sense I was walking this into the new year as an extension of the old, more than a fresh beginning. Carrying on with the momentum already set into motion through 2014, rather than clearing the slate and starting fresh.

I finally reached the center and settled in a space on the floor, staring ahead at a wooden cross on the back wall. I sat and drank this moment until full, stood up on knees that croaked into the quiet space about us, and headed back the way I came. The same path, but a slightly different view this time around. I reveled in the expansiveness of the path, at the same time, the comfort of having edges hemming us in.

I looked over at Ricardo, peacefully reclining in his seat along the side of the labyrinth and felt my cheeks warm with joy.

I’m glowing, I think. 

* * * * *

A few minutes before midnight, we all huddled in a half circle around a table now set in the center of the labyrinth. The priest, in normal clothes, led us through the liturgy of the Eucharist. He broke a loaf of bread in two and poured champagne into two chalices, extending an invitation for all to come who were hungry, no matter where we were on our journeys of faith.

“Alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us," he spoke to us.

"Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia," we answered, all our voices together.

My eyes burned hot around the corners with these words. The wonder and scandalous grace and generosity of it all. Church and I have had a strained relationship for much of this year, and honestly still do, and yet this night it hit with the force of a flock of geese stirring up the wind with their wings as they descend on water: I’m a little closer to what my soul craves here in this moment.  As I walk this solitary path in the company of others, granting each other the space to be as we are, I sense somehow I am heading toward home.

Ricardo grasped my hand and we edged forward to receive the first feast of our new year together. In past years, we’ve ushered in the new year dancing. We are dancing this year, too, a quieter dance, in the company of strangers who are also, mysteriously, family.
 

Joining my words with the Unforced Rhythms community, for the first link up of 2015.

On earthy hope, cocoons and the edges of wildness

The pause between Christmas day and the beginning of a new year has in recent years been fraught, for me, with a gnawing, hungry hope. An eagerness to cast off the old, which honestly hasn't been all that endearing these past years, and leap into newness. Or, at the very least, the glimmer of hope of newness. And what has happened these past years, too, is four or five months into this supposed newness, a weight of grief falls heavy on my heart. Things aren't all that different, it mocks. In fact, they're not different at all - and they probably never will be.

Does anyone else burn with exhaustion in their souls at the damned near impossible task of warding off cynicism and discouragement, while simultaneously seeking to honor the grief of losses splayed like a pile of bones one upon the other, while at the same time keeping a space vacant, no matter how small it is, to house the mystery of hope, the unexpected beauty strewn across our paths that day or so imperceptibly growing with time we nearly miss it?

Yeah, that.

I know that exhaustion well. Maybe you do, too. It is not so simple a gesture, I think, to embrace hope, for in expanding space to hope and love and light, we also expand our capacities for disappointment and heartbreak, for doubt and anger and darkness. We cannot grow one direction without growing in the other.

I'm not talking here about the biblical "hope that doesn't disappoint," but a hope more earthy and common to us humans. The hope of "maybe tomorrow will be better" or "maybe life will let up for awhile and I can breathe again" or "maybe that dream will begin to be fulfilled" or "maybe this (whatever this is) what won't be in vain."

We all have these kinds of hopes, don't we?

It doesn't have to mean we're not doing our best to live fully into this present moment, only that we're willing to consider there may be more light beyond this moment, and depending on what kind of moment we're in, it may be just what we need to get through to the next. 

This, friends, is where I've found myself, like I said, at the advent of a new year for some years now. 

But this year, it's different. I'm less eager, I suppose, to throw myself at the mercy of "high hopes" for newness. And it's more than that, too. It's a gentler hope, like the slow burn of an ember, flickering and holding steady through the night. I find myself leaning back on hope instead of pressing forward into it, and this subtle difference in posture changes the tone entirely. I'm resting, being carried along by a current, not bracing myself for rapids ahead or floating in my own little world like rapids don't exist.

This is where I am. I guess you might call it peace, though it isn't without its struggle, its tension.

It's an irony, no? That peace and tension can coexist? It seems all they need is respectful awareness of each other. 

* * * * * 

For several years, I've tried to participate in the One Word challenge. Writers pick a word that colors the theme of their year ahead and weave this theme, periodically, through their posts that year. Both times I've picked a word and it's fallen flat after the first post. Maybe I was trying too hard or not listening well, or maybe it's just not my thing to pick one word.

I still don't have a word. But I can tell you where I see myself in imagery, stepping across the threshold of next year:

Nestled, for now, inside a cocoon. Craving wide open spaces at the rougher edges of faith and God, where wildness and mystery dwell, outside of neat containment.

Yes, I'm here. Swaddled in this cocoon of the unknown, not only resting, but transfiguring. A caterpillar might know, instictually, that she'll one day emerge as a butterfly or a moth. But perhaps not. Perhaps she is swaddled tight, too, through the cycle of transformation, not knowing when or how or what she'll be when she emerges. Knowing she cannot ultimately control these things. So she gives herself over to it, to the process of change, to the grace of this great Weaver of beauty, and lets go.

So much of me, of my life and faith and marriage and writing, are bound up in this cocoon, that it's a sense of relief, really, to recognize this is where I am.  I can stop running desperate to hope or resisting it and work, instead, with the natural rhythms of metamorphosis. 

What this may mean for my writing is that I will tuck words away for awhile, letting them take shape in more private spaces.  I'm not so hungry to share all my words here, but to keep some in the sacred dark for however long they need.

I cannot say what this all will look like or what I will look like, for that is part of the journey through the unknown I'm learning to walk - to cocoon in - but I do know this:

“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

And somehow, that is enough for me, for this day, for this year. 



Linking up at Beth's for the last Unforced Rhythms of 2014.

When you can't hear the angels singing above the world's weeping

It's less than two days before Christmas and it has yet to "feel" like Christmas. This week is passing, looking and feeling much the same as most weeks, except my husband is in California with his family, so I'm in no hurry to get home. That, and traffic has been exceptionally bad, a maze of clogged cars snaking through the city streets and highways. 

At times this season, I've sat in our living room with the lights off, except for the twinkling tree, listening to Nat King Cole croon Christmas tunes, pensively willing anything to feel the same as it once did. It didn't, really. Most of the time, I restlessly changed the station to one of my favorites, Gregorian chants, and the voices would settle on me as the striking of a brass bowl does at the beginning and end of silences in the contemplative service I enjoy on Sunday evenings, reminding me this is where I am now.

The bowl rings. An invitation to inward reflection. Pause. The bowl rings again. A call to unfurl outward once more.

And to be perfectly honest, I'm relieved it doesn't "feel" like Christmas this year. Somehow, this lack of festive feeling, this feeling instead like any other day, carves out space in my soul to hear and see beyond feeling, placing me right at the feet of this ancient, still-unfolding Story. 

With my husband absent, I sit criscross in the place we've sat every night through December, in front of our nativity, reading daily snatches of the Advent story. Taking deep breaths, I imagine the resonant call to silence. Instead of reaching right away to light the candles, I wait, and pick up a paper printed with a prayer I've fallen in love with. Here, I tread quietly into the Presence.

O God, it is night. The night is for stillness. Let us be still in the presence of God.

Deep breath. Release.

It is night after a long day.

Not only my long day, but the world's long day. I let the weight of this sink in slowly.

What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done.

Images from the news flash across my mind, all that has been "done" this day and days before this day, that cannot be undone. The killings, the sickness and disease, the natural disasters, the court rulings, the violent protests, the wars. And all that has not been done - justice, peace, mercy, healing, reconciliation, brotherly love. 

The tears spring from what has seemed of late a desert. I stare blurry-eyed at the ridiculous, cartoonish tiny creche of baby Jesus, thinking, What kind of world is this?

The thought of grieving each and every sorrow born this night is unbearable, crushing, impossible. 

Where are you, Jesus? The cry echoes this dark room.

This is no world I'd want to bring a child into, I confess.

There's no telling if this was a world Mary wanted to bring a child into, either, let alone this child. And yet, he came. Into the womb of a world no less dark and tormented two thousand years ago, while the cries of grieving mothers also pierced the shroud of night, he came.

He came. And you know what? Most of the time, I can't tell that he did. Things look and feel and sound, so often, like a savior has yet to be born. Like our hopes were in vain.  Like light, in fact, did get swallowed up in darkness.

I would be a liar to say otherwise. To not admit that, so much of the time, declarations of "Emmanuel, God with us," fall shallow on the ears, dull on the heart. 

Even so. When I can't see the difference it makes on a day that feels like any other day - that, in reality, is any other - some part of my soul is that brass bowl, resonant and bright, ringing out that this birth changed everything. Seen and unseen, known and unknown, felt and unfelt, heard and unheard.

Another deep, shuddering, wet breath - Let it be.

The words that shift me from seeing and feeling, to faith in the company of doubt. There is nothing more I can do this night, but let it be.

The night is dark. Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives rest in you.

I let it all roll off at the imagined base of a feeding trough which cradles a baby born to be a sacrifice. 

The night is quiet. Let the quietness of your peace enfold us, all dear to us, and all who have no peace.

I speak this slow, a blessing over all that lives and moves outside my door. Peace.

The night heralds the dawn. Let us look expectantly to a new day, new joys, new possibilities. 

I close my eyes and pray to open wider the door of my heart to this hope. Hope for me, for you, for us - for the whole earth and all living things. Maybe it was every bit as hard to imagine for the ancient Israelites listening to half-crazed prophets proclaim a distant promise of a God-Messiah, as it is for me to imagine a new day for this old, weary, heartsick world. 

Most nights, I can't imagine it. The best I can do is utter these words - 

In your holy name we pray.

I let my hand mark the sign of the cross as I whisper, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Picking up the lighter, I watch the candles flicker to life, reflections of my faint hope in the darkness.

Amen, let it be.

* * * * * 

Linking up at Beth's for the last Unforced Rhythms of 2014. 

For more Advent reflections this season, you may read here and here and here.



 

How nature sings its preparation

I got a new body for my broken camera recently. For nearly a year, I've been without this extra eye, and I've felt its absence.

Maybe you're like me. When words hide underground amidst a churning of thoughts, I seek expression in pictures. Let them do the talking, my heart insists. I am not ready to speak.

So, as has been my pull this Advent season, I head outdoors, with eyes scanning for signs of the world preparing her earthen house for the coming Christ. For how can I put this to words, but that my ears have grown a tad weary and wary of so many human voices speaking on behalf of Christ? So I step out where the voices sing soft, so soft I need to silence mine to listen, and when I do, I hear their strength wrapped in subtlety of poetry. Unfinished, colorful, mysterious, laced with hope, they speak.

For those who have ears to hear, eyes to see.

How they prepare the way.

 Clinging to the branch, dying

that slow fade of death that precedes 

life,

yes - but still 

alive, blood red.

 Waiting,

watching,

for glad tidings,

great joy,

quiver of hope from the heavens,

 for the light holding

fast in the sullen skies,

the light,

the food,

the drink,

hanging from the tree.

 The rising Morning Star,

obscured;

the skeleton trees clapping

their hands;

 the flocks of the forest

piercing the skies

with song;

 the wizened trees bowed low.

 

Wings lifted to the wind,

 they perch,

they wait.

For Love that came 
once, as a tiny seed.

And then a forest,

ever spreading.

Instinctively, they know
Love will come again.

Linking up with Unforced Rhythms, hosted this month at Beth's blog, newly renamed Trading Good for Grace.

And linking a late Five-minute Friday, to the prompt of "Prepare."

For more Advent reflections, click here - and here.

Tales of beauty from the rubbish heap: The beauty of neediness

It's an honor to feature another friend's tale of beauty from the rubbish heap, a little dream I rolled out last May. From the first day I happened upon her words, I was drawn in by her courage and commitment to show her real self as a person in church ministry, and how she feels about her role, without the expected "Christianese". Would you please welcome Liz von Ehrenkrook, whose refreshing and thought-provoking words you'll find over at her blog, So I Married a Youth Pastor?

* * * * * 

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I have always been proud of my independence. It’s been a romantic sort of notion, never needing anyone for anything but keeping them around because I enjoy their company.

When I turned 18, I moved out of my parent’s house and into my first apartment, in another state. I was on my own and living alone. It was the most exciting thing in my life since I’d gotten my driver’s license and graduated high school.

I loved reporting to no one. On weekends I chose whether or not I wanted to see anyone or go anywhere. I ate what I wanted for every meal, if I ate at all. I slept in.

When I would venture out, I’d spend hours driving at night learning which highways intersected and which part of Seattle was my favorite. I’d cruise the streets, watching people spill out of bars and dream of turning 21.

I remember a married friend asking me once, “What do you do at home when you’re by yourself?”

“The same as you do. I read, clean and do laundry, watch movies, cook meals. I just don’t have anyone in the next room when I do.”

I had not yet discovered the term introvert.

* * * * *

It’s taken me a long time to realize how much I insulated myself with independence. It was my protection; it kept people from getting too close.

I needed to know there was nothing I couldn’t do on my own. I needed to know that if I never did find a forever mate I could carry all the groceries up the stairs, replace the burned-out light bulbs, mow the grass and change a tire.

Being strong-willed meant I was a healthy woman who could master the single life void of a man’s help - or anyone’s help for that matter.

I needed to be viewed first as independent and self-sufficient.

* * * * *

I’ve been married for almost eight years now. My husband, Mat, told me recently that I had changed, “You’re so needy. I’ve never seen you like this before.”

I cried. How did I get like this?

Needy is a bad word in my book.

Mat has always wanted to be my provider, my rock, but my independence short-changed him. I wouldn’t let him reach the things on the tops of shelves, or bandage a wound if I’d hurt myself; I’d break my back rearranging furniture before allowing him to help.

I didn’t realize I was sending a message: “I love you, but I don’t need you.”
 
* * * * *

A few weeks ago I sat on the couch holding back tears. They were the big kind, the ones that fill your eyelids and then spill out onto your cheeks in a thick, steady stream. I didn’t know how to express what I was feeling so I sat still, trying to shut myself down.

Mat was putting on his shoes, he had somewhere to be; I didn’t want him to leave me but I didn’t want to burden him with the ask, “Please stay.” The words were caught in my throat.

He moved to kiss me goodbye and the tears exploded. He didn’t ask me what was wrong; he simply pulled me into him and held me while my mascara stained his shirt.

Mat cancelled his plans without question telling the guys, “My wife needs me.”
 
* * * * *

I am learning how to love my husband according to his love languages, not my own. And loving differently has inadvertently taught me how to be needy.

So while I can get through the day without my husband’s help, I don’t want to.

I absolutely, without apology, need Mat. I am desperate for him.

The relationship I have with Mat has grown my relationship with Jesus. I’m pretty sure it’s no accident.

My independence taught me I didn’t need Jesus and for the six years I was on my own, living alone, I didn’t know him.

Marriage changed me. I love Jesus because he loves me in return, in my own language. I understand more now about God’s love because of Mat’s love for me.

I have learned how to trust, and I am learning how to let go.

More importantly I’m learning how to be needy.

Lord, I need you
Oh, I need you
Every hour I need you
My one defense, my righteousness
Oh, God, how I need you