Category: Community

The Stations of the Cross

In a couple of week I will be a part of The Stations of the Cross exhibit in Madison Wisconsin.  It is a collaborative effort among 15 artists and musicians to create a week-long art exhibition as an experience of the 14 stations of the Passion of Christ in the final days of his human life.

This is something I wrote considering the Stations.

For the project seven visual artists have each taken two Stations of the Cross and have created something within their medium (paint, photography, glass mosaic, cloth, sculpture, etching).  Each was considering the suffering and resurrection of Jesus as they interpreted it visually.  Then musicians responded.  Each artist had the freedom to choose the “lens” or perspective through which they interpreted the journey of Christ.  Over a period of several months, they internalized and stewed on their stations to discern and recognize its gravity, complexity and significance.  Then they reacted in a concrete form.

It isn’t often as a visual artist, that I choose to  actively express a part of my faith through my photography.  This project was an exception to that. 

The Christian life is often described as a road walked with Jesus, ever cognizant of the suffering that surrounds us every day.  If we were able to walk with him through those days and hours, two thousand years ago, even the moments before his death, how might that change us?

Someone once said that much of the spiritual journey is being stripped of all that we tend to put our trust in. Life is found in losing it for Christ’s sake; life itself and that which God has prepared for each of us, if received fully, deeply, viscerally, into our dna, will teach us what it means to walk with Jesus today.

The object of the Stations historically is to help the faithful to make a spiritual pilgrimage of prayer, through meditating on the chief scenes of Christ’s sufferings and death.

We invite you to walk with us back to those days of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday if you are local to Madison:

The Stations of the Cross exhibit will take place at the Common Wealth Gallery in the Madison Enterprise Center, 3rd floor, at 100 S. Baldwin St, Madison, WI (map).

The exhibit will be open during the following times.

  • Fri Mar 30, 2012
    7:00pm – 8:30pm exhibit opens
    8:30pm – 10:30pm reception, live music, meet artists & musicians
  • Sun Apr 1
    2:00pm – 5:00pm
  • Wed Apr 4
    3:00pm – 7:00pm
  • Good Friday Apr 6
    4:00pm – 10:00pm

The Bible says that there is no human pain or joy that Jesus has not taken on to himself when he lived and died two thousand years ago in Palestine.  From the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross he died on.  Because of his sacrifice, we are able to see the world differently and experience the highs of love and joy, as well as the lows of suffering and sorrow.  This is in and through Jesus.

As Henri Nouwen said: “Jesus died and rose for all people with all their differences, so that all could be lifted up with him into the splendor of God.  There is immense pain in the wide world around us and there is immense pain in the small world within us.  But all pain belongs to Jesus.”

Walking these stations is an opportunity to pause, set aside the distractions of your life, in order to listen and remember Jesus of Nazareth.  What you suffer he suffered.  Experience the redemption and good news.

God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks to us in our conscience,
but shouts in our pains;
it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

–C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Walk with us.  Walk with him.

 

Highs and Lows of being an Artist in the Church

I know how blessed I am by my church though most of the time I wish only for a few deep connections.  

But a mega church blesses others when they can put on a quality mini-conference.  This weekend I attended the Pulse Arts conference sponsored by Blackhawk in Madison, WI.   It’s a unique event that brings together worship leaders, songwriters, visual artists, dancers and anyone who considers themselves “a creative” for a 24 hour blitz of music, learning and rubbing shoulders with others of a kind.  For one brief period it feels normal, even great, to be an artist and a Christian.

Two years ago I met a few artists at a Pulse event who have since then became more than acquaintances, though not quite friends. I am collaborating on a Stations of the Cross art show in a few weeks with six other visual artists and a half-dozen or more musicians.  This materialized from relationships made at the Pulse conference.  I had to put myself forward as wanting do something collaborative. Oh how I hate to put myself forward — It’s so scary.  More on that later.

Ego and Self-esteem.

Is it just creative types that are the unlikely and slightly grotesque blend of both insecure and full of themselves?

I speak for myself when I say that it is hard to be a creative and a follower of Jesus’ teachings.  We know we must be original, even imaginative.  We know we must put ourselves forward, promote ourselves and our work.

At an event like Pulse where there are some who have “made it” the conversations were dominated by the singers and songwriters who haven’t made it who are full of puppy dog, hero-worship.

I went this weekend wanting, even needing, to have deep discussions about art and faith — mostly our deep faith as an artist.  In that aspect I was a little disappointed.

Creating Art for Art’s sake.

(Who decides what’s good anyway?) 

Creatives live with the tension between our need to be fresh and original, all the while knowing there is no new idea under the sun. We also know for a fact that unless you promote yourself you may toil in obscurity forever.  But self-promotion is an anathema, at least to me.

I spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about this connection between making “good” art, success and self-promotion. 

Someone promotes themselves really well and gets a ton of attention for their thing, whatever it is.  I look at it and think it is about nothing.   Do I simply not know quality when I see it? How do “the Arts” and artists in general win, if we’re simply promoting (and opening doors) for our friends without being objective about the quality?  Yes, that’s the way the world works.  And if I’m unwilling to play the game, should I just give up now?

Before you start thinking I’m just whining because I haven’t personally been “discovered” I hope you will read on.  It is so much more complicated than that.

Essentially, art is useless.

We all know that.  We have complex reasons for creating.

In the positive column, the reasons are many. We hope to help others escape or enter a different place in a good beautiful way through the images or words or ideas or music we make.  We hope to challenge someone to a different way of thinking.  One of the sessions talked about creating for or out of a renewed sense of wonder with the world God created. We create to challenge and to point toward injustice and ugliness of the world, in the hopes of bringing change. And especially if we are believers, we create out of a wish to comfort and console, to move others toward the consolation of God.  This is not a Hallmark conclusion, but as Tolkien said in his essay On Fairy Stories, we accept “the happy disaster” of this life. Tolkien the master of language and communicating even made up a word for “the happy disaster” calling it eucatastrophe.

As artists who are Christians we are able to create a sacred space in time for others that accepts the long defeat of this life and yet also reflects the hope we have in Jesus.                                                      

I suppose in the end I was able to see very clearly this weekend that the “experts” are simply people a little further down the path, who are pointing out what they have learned.  Depending on their facility to talk about it, the depth of their self-awareness, the richness of their experience with Christ, and how well they tell their story, they may or may not be able to help someone else.   But there is no magic to it.

I also faced that no matter how much you may believe that you are creating something worthwhile, something more than “useless art” the tension exists that success for the artist, just like everything else in the world, and can be simplified down to being popular and cool. Yes, we’re all still living in a perpetual hell of high school.  Each of us has within us something unique to give, because we are gloriously different from one another, and yet sadly that doesn’t guarantee success.

How does One Succeed? These are the people who succeed: (mostly) Those that have a combination of skinny good looks (yes, even Christians idolize youth), an ability to communicate well with others and a willingness to do self-promote, to learn and work the system, a tireless belief in themselves and lastly a strong ego.  They are the ones that usually “make it.”  Yes, cynical me.  There are exceptions of course.

Downward Mobility of Christ

Ironically this success formula is nothing like what we Christians are called to, which is the downward mobility of Christ.

In the end I realized that I must be willing to do some of that self-promotion and there is no shame in it, if you don’t want to toil in obscurity.

But as it is equally imperative to create from an inner, original space.  And it must not, dare I say cannot, be motivated out of a desire to succeed–to reach the big time.  I must create from that place of absolute acceptance that I have received from God, the place of being loved by the Holy One.  God made only one of me, only one of you.  Do the thing he has given you, your creative work, out of that place.

Lay it down, yes your best work, as an offering to the Holy One and continue to create, write, dream, and give of your heart.

Not gazing out, or up toward the desire for success but looking down, setting it down as an offering to God. 

It may seem like you are giving away little pieces of your heart to just a few people here and there.  (Okay, I speak for myself when I say that.)

But I was encouraged this weekend.

I came away still believing that word followed by word, image by image, song by song, we are making sense of the world through our art.

Yes, we are to work

backward,

downward,

toward a perfection that is found only

in creating for the Holy One.

Lessons from the Monastery: One of Five

Entering the monastery there is a sense of stepping outside of the line of time — real-time.  You have entered into kairos .  God time, as Eugene Peterson calls it.

The people I encountered at the Holy Wisdom monastery were kind. You couldn’t tell who was who.  They may play a role in the running of the monastery.  You don’t know.  I shook hands with a middle-aged woman with short salt and pepper hair, in a pristine suit, who did not give me her name, even when I gave her mine.  I found it odd and I learned later from my mother that she’s the boss of the place.  The Holy Mother?  Not being too familiar with the Benedictine traditions, I simply smiled when she did not give her name.  I am a “go with the flow” kind of person, but I’ll admit it felt strange.

When you enroll, you are asked your goals or intent for coming.  Oh dear, “my mother invited me” isn’t quite right.  Reading the luncheon topics is what convinced me to attend; today’s was Bearing with One Another. Next week’s will be Stability and Balance in Relationships and Prayer. It will be five weeks in all during Lent.  “Creating space to listen” was my final goal, scribbled  quickly on the form, wondering what God might do if I was quiet for that long—listening for him.

I find life is so full of learning of late, that I don’t even have time to apply.  That’s nuts.  Church attendance, doing, and serving – well, it’s all meaningless if we cannot, do not take in what we’re learning and be transformed by it.

Nevertheless what I heard today could very well change me forever, if I allow it.

Recently I was the recipient of some soul care, which served to do a work of healing in my life that profoundly changed me.  A good woman, she is a healing servant by night and doing servant by day.  Efficient and skilled though she is in her day-to-day life, she took several hours to listen to me, unknowingly being a part of a life-giving healing.

I brought years of pain, bitterness, misunderstanding, dejection, feelings of rejection and being disregarded. I felt so much pain that when I started to talk I began to weep.  Not simple crying mind you.

This was the aching heart of a person stuck in sin.

I couldn’t speak, often.  Unperturbed, she listened.  She didn’t touch me.  She didn’t pray.  She didn’t say much of anything, though she had some words to encourage – breathing out with kindheartedness and veracity, both of my sin and of my giftedness. Of my culpability and the tragedy of it all.  And as I spoke I knew.

This was a holy moment.  We were not alone.  This was kairos time.  She attended to me and as she did calcified thoughts and feelings came unstuck and God knows how long I’ve carried this pain, some of it over a decade; it began to wash away.  It was holy.  It was sacred.  Monumental.  Transformational.

Over and done, by listening.

I learned today this type of listening is called kenotic listening.  It is characterized by reverencing what is sacred in someone else. So often, when interacting with each other, we dwell on all their faults.   Their failings, their annoying bits and pieces, even how they disappoint us or let us down.  A kenotic listener affirms the good in others. 

  • Letting go of expectations that are likely unrealistic or self-serving.
  • Letting go of trying to change another person’s behavior.
  • Letting go of the desire to control outcomes or choices.
  • Choosing not to criticize.
  • Letting go of judging or negativity.
  • Letting go of your reluctance to forgive another.

Kenotic listening means giving up our desire to be heard, to pay attention to what the other person needs to say.  Creating space for them to speak.  Suppressing the urge to jump in with advice or simply interrupt with a differing opinion, or to argue our point.  It means being less focused on yourself and what you next want to say.  Opening your spirit to what the other person needs and wants.

Taking on patience as a way of life, which is the only way to bear some else’s burden. Yes people are temperamental, argumentative, self-righteous, rude and obnoxious, even stupid sometimes.  But we are called to bear with them.  Yes, some people can be mean-spirited, arrogant, close minded and selfish.  We care called to bear with them. Yes, some people make inconvenient demands on us, yet we are called to bear with them. Some people can be hard to get along with, and yet we are called to bear with them.

Phylo of Alexandria is quoted saying “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a huge battle.”

“Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it from you.  What seems like conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.  You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.” – Miller Williams

This is it.

I had a festering sore, down deep inside where the spirit meets the bone.  I didn’t know how to heal myself. I didn’t always want to heal.

I talked. She listened.  It was a sacred holy moment where true church happened – ekklesia.

Spiritually, emotionally and physically I will never be the same.

It was a holy moment, where time was pregnant with what the Holy One intended.  I shared all the ugliness of my inner most soul and with no guilt or religiosity, I was loved.

These are thoughts inspired by Trisha Day who spoke at the monastery yesterday. She gave me a name for what happened to me and offered a challenge to be that sort of person – a kenotic listener.  To revere what is sacred in others, to know they are fighting a huge battle, often alone.  Seek to build up not tear down.  Ask myself how I react to others thoughts and ideas?  Am I respectful? Do I allow others to annoy me?  Do I affirm what is good in them?

Kenosis means an emptying of me, giving up more than getting, and letting go of the need to be heard.  Listen well and deeply.  Stop myself from offering “sage” wisdom or advice, from jumping in.

Just listen.

Have compassion with everyone you meet.

It’s a high calling; a holy challenge for everyone is suffering in some way, life brings challenge and pain, sometimes unbearable pain.

We can blast. Ignore. Correct. Challenge.

Or we can embrace a holier moment, a holier calling of acceptance, endurance and trust.

MH

Trisha Day is a member of Sunday Assembly at Holy Wisdom Monetary, a Lay Cistercian associated with New Melleray and Mississippi Abbeys near Dubuque, Iowa.  She is the author of Inside the School of Charity –Lessons from the monastery.

What Is Most Personal Reveals What is Real: transparency pulls me toward God

The way we experience God every day is in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We can’t help but respond by changing — some call it growing.  This is individual.  It is personal and it is communal.  The Holy Spirit is present, leading us deeper into the wisdom of God through our honesty and openness with one another.

Even if we choose not to reveal ourselves it is evident through our life.     Don’t you think?

One of my favorite quotes is by Lev Tolstoy is

“A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.“

I believe it.  I believe that is what makes writing such a healing and positive thing for me and for those that follow along — the openness.  The honesty.

Henri Nouwen put it this way in Bread for the Journey:

We like to make a distinction between our private and public lives and say, “Whatever I do in my private life is nobody else’s business.”  But anyone trying to live a spiritual life will soon discover that the most personal is the most universal, the most hidden is the most public, and the most solitary is the most communal.  What we live in the most intimate places of our beings is not just for us but for all people. That is why our inner lives are lives for others. That is why our solitude is a gift to our community, and that is why our most secret thoughts affect our common life.

Jesus says, “No one lights a lamp to put it under a tub; they put it on the lamp-stand where it shines for everyone in the house” (Matthew 5:14-15). The most inner light is a light for the world. Let’s not have “double lives”; let us allow what we live in private to be known in public.

I do believe transparency within (trusted) community is crucial to the spiritual life.  Keeping our private lives full of secrets only encourages more secrecy.

I have experienced that transparency pulls me toward God. He longs for us.  And by doing so, often it throws me down on my knees.  Humbles me. And within a community where there is mutual dependence, it draws others in thus allowing space for their own transformation.  That is the miracle.  That is it.  The moment in which the attributes of God are seen us.  That is everything.  That is the resurrection and atonement all over again.

Has this been true in your life?  You don’t have to tell me of course, but I urge you to tell someone. And if you find it difficult to reveal yourself — your true self — to others ask yourself why?  And what are you going to do about it?

Be well friends.

If you are what you eat, I’m a Chocolate Croissant!

A Pain au chocolat from a Belgian Bakery.
Image via Wikipedia

“You are what you eat.” If that is true, I am a Chocolate Croissant.

I’ve felt righteously sorry for myself lately, it’s true!  And have eaten badly as a result.  I don’t exactly know why.

And my foot is hurting and has been for about ten days.  Everything I do makes it ache and sometimes it is much worse.  Finally, I saw the doctor today.  Her diagnosis “potentially” (waiting for blood work) is a form of arthritis.  Yeah, the A-word at 44.

If that’s not depressing enough, I called my mom afterward for our family history, because I didn’t know when she asked if this was in my history.  It turns out that arthritis runs willy nilly through her family.  She has it and it goes all the way back to Grandpa who was stooped over from arthritis by the time he died.  Several cousins and both of her sisters.  Even one of my sisters (younger than I am) has it in her lower back “prematurely for her age.”  Yikes!  You know all of this is arguably a part of aging, but I firmly believe even in your forties (or any time) you can resist entropy and apathy.

Isn’t it true that we are so easily distracted from our goals?

And really in this age of drive-thru-fast-everything, we want magical results — When they don’t come, we give up!  Quickly!  And if over time, like me, you’ve experienced the creep of weight gain, then you’re probably at least in your forties and you want it gone.  (In my thirties and twenties I could eat and drink whatever I wanted and I never exercised at least not on purpose. Oh, if only people knew that when they are young!  Your body responds so much more quickly to reform.)

Oh well.  That knowledge won’t help me now.   But I am competitive and motivated by it, so when I read a challenge from a fellow blogger that seems doable, I determined that no matter my pains (and they are many) I have to keep moving and working on weight loss. Slowly but surely.

So, October 1 to November 1, I will:

1. Set a weight loss (or  gain, or maintenance) goal.

2. Commit to writing a food diary every day of the challenge.

3. Commit to a regular exercise program for every day of the challenge.

Would you do this with me?

Even if you are in the peak of shape (lucky you, if you are) exercise is so good for the body, mind and soul.  If you decide to, be brave and let me know by “registering” for the challenge, write your goal and details of your exercise program in the comments section of today’s post.  Then, for the duration of the challenge, write down for yourself your daily efforts, eating, etc.  — If weight isn’t your issue, pick something else and commit to working on it between October 1st and November 1st.

There are other goals you might aspire to, anything in the area of personal challenge.

  • To write for 15 minutes every day.

  • To read a certain book.

  • To spend quality time with someone.

  • To be a person of Grace (I’m working on this.)

  • To stop negative back talk (I’m also working on this!)

Whatever it is, I think there is value in a community of people knowing your heart and in having what you do matter to others.

Plus, I’m awful curious who my readers are.  I know I have them, yes I know you are there because I have the stats.  And occasionally people write me privately to say they “lurk” —  totally cool. But if you’re feeling brave, tell “Us” a personal goal you have for the next month.

To summarize: I’m 35 pounds overweight and out of shape. 5’6″, 44 years old, 170 lbs.  I will:

  • walk six days a week. My foot is hurt/ing so I’m not sure what that will do to my walking but I can’t keep making excuses for pain, perhaps just no incline  for now, which exacerbates it.

  • find Yoga to practice three times a week to manage stress and sciatic/back issue.

  • do PT stretches every other day.

  • eat three meals a day focusing on natural (not processed) food. I will write everything down that I consume.

My goal: 2 pounds a week for month of October. I think that is doable.  What about you?

Many thanks to the_next_hundred_pounds for her challenge and inspiration!

I quit Facebook. Let’s just say it’s complicated.

I recently quit Facebook.  And then came back.  There’s a lot behind the decision. Let’s just say it’s complicated.

As we create a persona on Facebook, picking and choosing what we want people know about us, there is an air of the dramatic to it — don’t you think? This may be only a partly accurate reflection of who we are.  I am definitely not nearly as witty or intelligent as my FB persona.   I just communicate differently in writing than in person.  There’s a confidence (for me) online that isn’t there in many daily relationships.

I can say truthfully that I have made friends online whom I have never met face-to-face.  And I have serious and valuable conversations with people who are not in my day-to-day life.  And so often, things are said that a person might never have said to their face.

Is any of it real?  The short answer is of course it is.  I genuinely believe that it is every bit as real but it cannot ever replace the deep friendships that develop in face-to-face relationships.  The human touch, perhaps a hand gripping yours as you cry or even a smile cannot be felt in online connections.

In the end, I suppose I was tipping too far in one direction. Not spending enough time with flesh and blood friends.

Another reason I quit Facebook

was that I found myself caught.  For me, the world is a cacophony of need, pain and sorrow in a way that clouds my ability to stay focused on the positive at times.  When I read the New York Times or blogs I am so often left bereft and I too easily forget the hope that I have been given.  And FB is a daily reminder of all the need in the world, at least for me — a reminder of how different we all are — A polarization between liberals and conservatives, rich and poor, hungry and fed, educated and uneducated, creative and not so creative, the homeless and those with homes, Christ-followers and atheists and Hindus and Buddhists.  Funny people and people with no funny bone, at all.

I could go on and on.

Any time one expresses themselves, it is an opportunity for people to “let it rip” in a most ungenerous way.  And even when the ‘conversations’ are civilized, I am left with a feeling that this dialogue doesn’t do anything except underline our differences.  I do not believe we will ever convince one another in a different direction over the internet or with the written word.  I just don’t believe it will happen.  Debate, discussion and healthy disagreements can only happen face-to-face.

And so, I decided I had to stop expressing my viewpoints on important matters on Facebook.  It’s unproductive and divisive.  But quitting wasn’t the answer either.

“A real spiritual life makes us so alert and aware of the world around us, that all that is and happens becomes a part of our contemplation and meditation and invites us to a free and fearless response.  It is this alertness in solitude that can change our life indeed.  It makes all the difference in the world how we look at and relate to our own history through which the world speaks to us.”    Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen.

And so, I think I will continue but I will try to not be such a serious person [on Facebook.]

I will only raise issue of importance to me on my blog where I can at least put some time and thought behind it.  And in an effort to be connected I will do more of that — connect.

I will be more intentional about knowing and loving others both online and off.  What about you?

Reaching Out, Reaching Within

The danger is clear.  If you want to be with people, if you recognize a need for a healthier balance in that area of your life,  by the simple expression of it you might sound needy or afraid to be alone.

As I reflected on this at length over the past twenty-four hours I realized I do not fear isolation. Yes, that’s what I said — I am not afraid to be alone. It’s been a long process of coming to understand my self better and finding a certain level of personal contentment with solitude.

For many years I ran from solitude and the longings of my heart, filling it with the distractions of activity or work or later alcohol.    When I was single I was afraid to be alone.  Though I lived alone by choice, I would constantly seek out people and things to do. In my twenties I was able to fill my time with service and met many wonderful people that way.  Now my life is full of the busyness of a young family and when I have precious moments of solitude I love it; a walk in my garden, a drive in the country, strolling through a book store, or sitting in a coffee shop. These things that would have made me crazy for years I now cherish.

I relish my private thoughts and activities — my free time.  I am learning how important they are to sorting through what I think.  When I lose that private time I can quickly become tossed to and fro by the ideas and convictions of other people in my life or the experts I have to quickly elevated to a higher level of enlightenment than myself simply because they have a higher degree or they speak loudly.

So how do I reconcile this with the idea of a yearning for community?  Simple.  They are completely different ideas.

In Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen he says:

“There is much mental suffering in our world.  But some of it is suffering for the wrong reason because it is born out of the false expectation that we are called to take each other’s loneliness away.  When our loneliness drives us away from ourselves into the arms of our companions in life, we are, in fact, driving ourselves into excruciating relationships, tiring friendships, and suffocating embraces.  No friend or lover, no husband or wife, no community or commune will be able to put to rest our deepest cravings for unity and wholeness.  And by burdening others with these divine expectations, of which we are often only partially aware, we might inhibit the expression of free friendship and love and evoke instead feeling s of inadequacy and weakness.  Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other.

When I speak of community, I do not mean something to take away loneliness or aloneness.

Again from Nouwen,

This difficult road is the road of conversion, the conversion from loneliness into solitude.  To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.  … this is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is the  movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search.

This is a wonderful place to dwell and like all lessons in life, we travel back along the same road many, many times.  But I am learning to be content with feel my feelings, and wait for The Companion (God)  to speak.   And when it comes to a need for community that is a completely different thing.  They are both themes in one’s life that do not need to be reconciled with one another.  But they do need to be understood.

Nouwen talks about a conversion from loneliness to deep solitude.  A space to develop your passions, ideas  and opinions.  Rainer Marie Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet says:

“What is going on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love.”

So this place of solitude makes us into deeper people, better able to experience community, to love others and genuinely love being with them.  We can enjoy our differences of opinions.  And most important, others don’t exist to meet our needs but to experience a give and take of ideas and respect.

“Community”

Here’s the thing.  I have had a lifelong yearning for connection.

I think Henri Nouwen had the same thing going on. Nouwen’s understanding of the nature of life involved cultivating one’s self — inwardly, outwardly, and upwardly.

But if I am very honest with myself the very things I long for with people I resist!  It is much easier to be alone.

I avoid — the telephone, Christian small groups or even just “Mom” groups, making new friends, more than a wave to my neighbors, calling my family, and even at times real conversation with Tom or my shrink or my friends!

No, not all the time.  Not every time the phone rings, but often.  Not every email or someone asking to get together.  Not my best friends, usually.  But — I— just— avoid.  I recoil at church when I have to talk to strangers and duck and hide when I see a acquaintances in the grocery store.

Am I shy? Yes.  Am I as arrogant as I come off?  No way.  I do have a social anxiety, badly.  I can “talk” at length on-line or via email, but I sweat bullets to talk to the same person face-to-face.  I go to a church of 6,000 so the chances of seeing someone I know at church is slim to none.  But on the occasion that I do see someone I know I don’t scoot over to say hi and catch up.  I am persistently filled with dread to see people!  I stammer and stutter and end the conversation as quickly as possible.  I shut down.  Getting away is all I can think about.  And then on the long drive home I think to myself “how lonely church is and how I don’t know anyone.  Does anyone even care?  Poor me….”

It’s— quite —pathetic.

For almost fifteen years now, Tom and I have had one conversation more than any other.

Me: “Why are we so disconnected?”  Or, around the holidays “We rarely talk to your parents.”  It’s infrequent at best that we see my sister and her husband and we see Tom’s siblings once or twice a year and all live in the same town. I can go a month without seeing my mother and weeks without talking.

And we always come back around to the same place.

Tom:  “Tons of people love you Melody — Love you and are always conveying that to me!” Or,  “We just have to make some effort.  People are busy.” Or “If you really wanted closer relationships you’d [fill in the blank.]”

If you really wanted deeper relationships you would …

That is what I want.  I have a hole in my heart you could drive a semi through in the shape of people.  I need people and I don’t know how to be with them.  So I’m shy.  And I have social anxiety in most settings.  And I am terrible, I mean terrible and I don’t even want to try to be good at small talk.  It makes my skin crawl!  And the hole comes from (trust me my shrink and I have been through this many times) my low self-esteem thanks to my crummy upbringing.

So what can a person do to change all that?

In the past my best approach has been to have incredible vivacious outgoing friends.  They sought me out.  They made plans.  They were a party in and of themselves.  But, I am now a forty-three year old mom and I don’t work outside the home and my church is mega- and I just don’t have it ‘happening’ any more.  I’m frumpy and middle-aged, and I don’t drink.  How droll!

So who is this strange person that I don’t even recognize (me) that needs her friends more than ever

and seeks people

and connection

and community

more

than e v e r!

Nouwen describes this longing I have, saying: “The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human beings and to our God.  In the midst of a turbulent, often chaotic, life we are called to reach out, with courageous honesty to our innermost self, with relentless care to our fellow human beings, and with increasing prayer to our God.  To do that, however, we have to face and explore directly our inner restlessness, our mixed feelings toward others and our deep-seated suspicions about the absence of God.”   From Reaching Out— The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life by Henri Nouwen.

How and where do you find community?  What do you do to develop and keep it in your life?  What is important for you?  Yes, this is a response question posed even for the lurker (you know who you are and you don’t even have to tell me who you are.)  I hope to glean from your wisdom.

Yes, I quit Facebook (for the time being) because I’ve been lulled into the sense that I am — “so connected” — with people all over the globe and it’s crock.  It really is.  I need and want some face-to-face time no matter how scared that makes me.

What does community look like, feel like, smell like?   What does it require of a person?  Where do you find it?  This is what I’m thinking about.