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Lord, make me an instrument

vocatus atque non vocatus, deus aderit. — these words of Erasmus, translate to say:

Bidden or unbidden, God is present.

I think it is important to remember, beauty in the bleak days.

“Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, praising God until we ourselves are a constant act of praise.” — Richard Rohr

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon:
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope
where there is darkness, light
and where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
— St. Francis of Assisi (1182 – 1226)

So often, it is too easy to get caught up in ourselves.  “Lord, make me an instrument…” Don’t we all just want to be useful, usable?  I know, when I am caught up in my own darkness that I am, or at least I feel, useless.

While life’s dark maze I tread,
And griefs around me spread,
Be thou my guide;
Bid darkness turn to day,
Wipe sorrow’s tears away,
Nor let me ever stray
From thee aside.

— A hymn My Faith Looks Up to Thee by Ray Palmer.

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! –– Psalm 26

I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.
Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment; his favour is for a lifetime.
Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
As for me, I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved.’
By your favour, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain;
you hid your face; I was dismayed.
To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication:
‘What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit?
Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me! O Lord, be my helper!’
You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever. — Psalm 30

In you, O Lord, I seek refuge; do not let me ever be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me.
Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily. Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me.

You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake lead me and guide me, take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hand I commit my spirit;  you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. 

You hate those who pay regard to worthless idols, but I trust in the Lord.
I will exult and rejoice in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction;
you have taken heed of my adversities, and have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy;
you have set my feet in a broad place. 

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also.  
For my life is spent with sorrow,  and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away. 

I have become like a broken vessel.  But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’  My times are in your hand;  Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me.

Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord. — Psalm 31

———–

I covet your prayers friends. All I can say is that I know this is an illness.  I also know that it is spiritual attack.  More important, I know that I am beloved.  I will take courage and wait for the Lord.

On Paying Attention

At times like these.

When I am feeling so poignantly this illness depression, which is chronic and confusing and feels a lot like failure, at times like these  … I have learned to wait and pay attention.  Taste the bitter in this moment.    And see what God intends.
Henri Nouwen says of this patience:
“The word patience comes from the Latin verb patior which means “to suffer.”  Waiting patiently is suffering through the present moment, tasting it to the full, and  letting the seeds that are sown in the ground on which we stand grow into strong plants.  Waiting patiently always means paying attention to what is happening right before our eyes and seeing there the first rays of God’s glorious coming.”
I know intellectually that God wants me to let go of this grip I have on my pain.  He says “I will take it — your sadness, pain, fear, and hollow heart and make life out of it.”   This is the promise which gives us our hope.  This is everything.  Julian of Norwich says in Revelations of Divine Love:
 “God sees our wounds and sees them not as scars but as honors. . .”
It is possible to thank God for our weaknesses, our broken hearts, our frequent “failings,” even our sickness?  I think it is not only possible but necessary.

I believe He has something good he intends to come out of my heart falling over the precipice, shattered.

Yes, I’m weary of being so feeble and human.  Is it possible to thank him, yes and I am waiting expectantly as Nouwen says:

“Waiting patiently for God always includes joyful expectation.  Without expectation our waiting can get bogged down in the present.  When we wait in expectation our whole beings are open to be surprised by joy…, “Brothers and sisters … the moment is here for you to stop sleeping and wake up, because by now our salvation is nearer than when we first began to believe.  The night is nearly over, daylight is on the way; so let us throw off everything that belongs to the darkness and equip ourselves for the light” (Romans 13:11-12).

I am paying attention and I choose to be grateful nevertheless, which I wrote about over at Provoketive this week.

My cup is always half empty.  At least, without Jesus it would be.  Even with the Holy Spirit active it is an effort to be positive.   ….  Even in the midst of the hell of depression I am grateful.  God gives us this one life and we are charged to sort it out.   He guides us, truly he does, but much of life is us sifting through the good and the bad.

Life is choices.

… (more)

As we begin the season of advent it feels right amidst our clamoring to wait on Him.  In the fear, wait.  Anxious furtive thoughts, wait.

Pay attention and wait with joyful expectation.

MHH

Quotations from Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr and from Bread for the Journey by Henri J.M. Nouwen.

What God can possibly expect from a broken-down, brokenhearted, mess like you?

Grace is that kick-start value that breaks through the dullness of one’s self-loathing, recrimination or dysfunction, granting love and favor without the expectation of a return. Experiencing it from God is transformational, offering it to someone else is revolutionary. — Saltshaker 

In some ways, I wonder if my frequent lingering in the pain of the past —  the constant remembering — is a slap in the face to God, to the forgiveness and grace that I have received.

I live with that shame.  I live with the question if God is the healer why can’t I heal, finally, once and for all?  

That question rings out loudly today as I look back over my week of falling into depression, again.  I know that I have some control over it, though not sure how much.  I know that.  I wonder to myself if by slipping down there again, I betray my Lord?  Am I denying him?  “They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.”

I have always believed that my honesty and truthfulness was my only hope out of the wickedness of a childhood full of fear, self-hatred and pain.   Now I am uncertain.    Perhaps I am doing this in my own strength and I am not really healed? Does my frequent lingering only pick the scab off of a wound that deserves to heal?  I want the Lord’s healing.  I want my life to be proof of God being real.

I whisper a prayer from Jeremiah:  “I know Lord, that our lives are not our own.  We are not able to plan our own course.  So correct me, Lord, but please be gentle. Do not correct me in anger, for I would die.”  

Correction first, healing second.

Really?  This might be it.  The connection I’ve been searching for.  As I open up to God’s correction, then healing may come?  I see it in the words of Julian of Norwich in Revelations of Divine Love:

“See that I am God.
See that I am in everything.
See that I do everything.
See that I have never stopped ordering my works, or ever shall, eternally.
See that I lead everything onto the conclusion ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it.
How can anything be amiss?”

What?

Before time began, this too the Lord knew …

He knew of an angry father.

He knew of a reclusive, fearful cold mother.

He knew of four frightened daughters, full of secrets.

He knew me, full of self-loathing, before time began.

This too, He knew?  He never stopped ordering his works, or ever shall.

How – can – this – be?

What do I do with this knowledge that before time began He knew my pain?

He knew and He knows.  He knows my heart, what it feels like to fear your own daddy and wonder what you did wrong?  He knows what it is to crave a comforting, hug from mamma, a hug of safety.  He knows what horror tastes like, in salty tears streaming down, as you’re berated, over and over, for some failing; that as he yells, you are not even sure that he remembers what failing of yours set him off.  He is so caught up in his righteous raging.  All you know in that moment is the shame and loathing and fear.  You want to escape it, him, home.  If this is love… then there is no safe place.

And over the years you hide inside yourself, eyes wide to the world, cringing.  Expecting life to hurt.   Not knowing whom to trust, if anyone.  Even in that fear, remembered some thirty years ago, you stumble over the question of what God can possibly expect from a broken-down, brokenhearted, mess like you?  But he knew this pain too?

“God only desires that our soul cling to him with all of its strength, in particular that it clings to his goodness.  For of all the things our minds can think about God, it is thinking upon his goodness that pleases him most and brings the most profit to our souls.”  (Julian of Norwich.)

Really?

Cling to the truth that God is good.  Even in the midst of past horrors, pain. Scabs on your heart, thick scarring.  Disbelief.  Knowing, or at least fearing that people will always let you down. Your hurt billows out with the fear from the echoes from a daddy’s rage.

I will cling to His goodness as if it is a prayer, whispered, lifted to the heavens with a tiny billow of faith. 

A prayer of gratitude for his goodness is all he asks.  Not my perfection.  Not any deed or accomplishment.  Not even a big, humongous faith.

Simply cling to his goodness.

See that I lead everything on to the conclusion ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it.

He made life, with power wisdom and love?

Amen.  May it be so for me and you.

Someday Pain

“In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.”  — Denise Levertov

 

 

frequent looks backward,

are killing me.  a betrayal of today.

i want to know why

but yesterday hurts.

aches like a cold, itches

like a wound healing.

i can’t help but think

get over yourself.

and pray, the whispered mantra

i warble at first, hushed

to myself

someday pain won’t rule over me.

Kitty Versus Wolf

Kitty Versus Wolf

I have beautiful friend, she
sings like an angel. And
when she sings people’s hearts
heal.

Please take a listen.

And 10% of all CD sales will go to Poverty Stops Here, an organization that is confronting extreme poverty through investments in clean water, sanitation, and economic opportunities in Nigeria.

And the ever talented Tom Hanson produced the music.

Shall I Dance for You? (A poem)

The sun came out today and I felt its warmth creep into my soul.  It would appear

that I am on the mend.  Believing,

That is the tricky thing.  Knowing and accepting are strange bedfellows.

Where did it come from I wonder — this self-loathing?

Was I born this way?

Or is it the result of rubbing against broken people?

Am I shattered and wrecked – lost beyond repair?  Or, hopeful.  Yes.

Where do we find safety, deep rest except by trusting in the Son.

All my striving and this need to prove, outperform, and achieve isn’t the Gospel.

I have soaked in the lies of culture — an ethos of discontent– so deeply into my pores that I no longer believe?

Where do we find safety, deep rest except by trusting in the Son.

Am I respectable, admired, or lovable without doing?

Shall I dance for you so that you will love me, finally?

It is never enough.

So today, I will lie here in the sunshine and soak in the sun.

AN INEXPLICABLE THING: Depression

Depression is real, very physically here and enigmatic.  After all this time it remains a mystery to me exactly why it returns.

Granted, there are a few things that I realize I do know, I actually have learned about the illness.  And so for the most part yesterday, I decided to fight because I know I must, even while still disbelieving that it matters if I do battle against it.

It hangs on me —  dead weight.  I go through the motions of my day because if I stopped … well, I fear stopping, getting off this track of ‘life’ would be worse.  I know that too.  It is good that I can cook, show up on time, think (sort of) and write these words. I can do homework-time, do rides here and there (they are almost a relief for they fill up the endless stretches of life being like this.)

I am microscopic fragment adrift in the vast universe, even while the phone is ringing. The irony is in feeling so alone while the phone is mocking me by ringing.   I cannot even will myself to pick up it up.  My mother is calling but I cannot face her.  I don’t have the energy to say what needs to be said.  Years of what is misunderstood smolders around me.  Facebook depresses me.  Why do I need to know who is friends with whom?  It only reminds me how alone I feel.  Grateful, shiny happy people depress (and inspire) me.  Why do some people never seem to struggle?

I hate myself in this moment.  Somehow I thought I was past this.  Past the sinking hole of depression but now I see that I am depression.

A friend says in an email:

“He [Christ] knows how we feel, having been rejected by the ones he loved most.  He would die again if only just for me (or for you).  I’ve also realized that “homesick” feeling is just a symptom of the spiritual divide between us and God.  Those feelings can be put to use to draw us closer to him, but we’ll never quite be home until he returns or calls us there.”

There is something crucial in her last few sentences, an insight that I must try to tease out with my tired foggy brain.  All my life I have felt alone – when I am totally honest.  It is not that I have been literally rejected.  People love me.  I do know that, when I am not so disheartened.

“Have you ever experienced the kind of friendship you speak of when you cry out (in your depression) that you feel alone and so unimportant?” my husband asked me the other day.

I think perhaps this longing is something I need to sit with – too often I am looking to others and to things to fill something that only Jesus can.

I have tried many things to fill that ache over the years from over work, to compulsive shopping, to excessive drinking, and at times a relationship. I know that I so fear that vast ache, that I preemptively withdraw before anyone can hurt, reject or let me down.  I defensively withdraw because I fear that this deep, cavernous place down inside me cannot be filled.    And then I am forced to face my terrible loneliness that only God can fill.

8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. — Philippians 4:8,9

In moments like this I know, that I know, absolutely nothing.   But a tiny part of my brain or heart understands what this means – to hold on to this Hope for that is the peace that trancends all understanding.

He is with us and wants to fill us.

But, “we’ll never quite be home until He returns or calls us there.”

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in the midst of ashes, hope

Broken Bits and Pieces

I am so bloody tired of this feeling of being trapped and held by the past, unable to live the abundant life that was promised to each of us.

And I am frightened.  Scared to death of the endless looking back to see and remember.  When will I find in the midst of the ashes, hope.  And where is it?

All the broken bits of me are scattered and the wind gusting into my life today threatens to blow me away.

I don’t know what to do with the bits and pieces of memory – those things that hurt.  They cause me to doubt myself.  They are vicious. They are hurtful and dangerous, drumming.   They are clamoring.  They are ringing in my head  louder than my small wavering voice (only just) learning to speak.  Are they a lie from the pit or truth?  When I get like this, when my wounds are oozing as they do today, I cannot distinguish lies from truth.   It is what it is.  I am nobody.  Just another nobody with a story.  Who cares?  I cannot believe that this story would help anyone.  One word put on the page after another – risky only in its admission. Here, now, this, these words, they are nothing.

I am so tired of this place.  My family and its circling pain, all shattered fragments, falling apart more every day.  Who will hold the generations together?  They are slowly slipping away and soon they will be bits and pieces of nothing.

More importantly how do I learn?  When will I be transformed?  

Trust Him

The disciples appear to be sitting around, unsure of what to do, until Peter decides to go fishing (John 21) and the others go along.  Was it aimless activity.  They needed to  eat.  Not necessarily completely aimless but doing the thing in front of them. The disciples do not know what to do, so they do the necessary.  And the story suggests that they have put themselves in a place where Christ meets them.

“Here is the simple truth, attested to by the saints, that when we are uncertain what to do we should simply do our duty and God will guide.”

But that night they caught nothing doing what they perceived as the right thing.  It is suggested that they are being prepared to learn one of the central lessons of discipleship–apart from Jesus they can do nothing (15:5).

Jesus has taught this lesson before, for “never in the Gospels do the disciples catch a fish without Jesus’ help.”

I feel like those fishermen who struggled to believe—they were fishing in order to pass the time and in order to eat.  It has been a long, long time that I have sat with my story, lived it, tried to find something redeeming there in my story.  And my life.

I fear, like the disciples with their nets in the water, that

I. just. don’t. believe.

Yes, I am having trouble believing that you can catch fish here. With my life.  With this story.  It’s been “a long night of fishing and I have caught nothing.”

I need to hear His voice, and I don’t even know for sure that I know what it looks or sounds like any more.   Is it even him they wondered when he showed up?   When He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat”….

What are his promises for a moment like this?

Lay It Down

So I have to set down my anger and disappointment at myself for quitting my job so that now, in the middle of a recession, I have no possibilities.  I have to put my desire to work or “to do something” to support my family down.  I have to let go of my ego and pride and the very real delusion that a job will make me more esteemed person to others or bring me respect.   Lay it down.

I must believe that all of this, my story, is part of a purpose bigger than I am able to imagine or see.  Jesus is teaching me that apart from him I can do nothing.

Even I don’t see it.  It is almost easier to look backwards because that is so much clearer, ah beautiful hindsight.

No the future is confusing.  I think I want to go back to school then I am I’m totally frozen by insecurity, self-doubt, and fear — perhaps I’m not smart enough, diligent enough and more importantly have nothing original to say?  It has all been said, thought, written, done.   Lay it down.

I thought I was going to write my story, but there isn’t even a story.  It is just a story about an average nobody middle child who had a raging rather, became a workaholic while having three kids and a step daughter, who quit her paying job, got depressed, became an alcoholic, and now does what? Lay it down.

Tom says it is a spiritual attack when I start to feel like I have nothing to offer to the world, to my children, to my friends (what friends?), to him.  Lay it down.

Don’t tell me I’m a good mom, because I don’t care right now.   I don’t even know why I am here.

The future is blank.  It requires faith.  Big faith?  A small quavering timid faith is all I seem to have today, a brokenhearted faith.   Whatever it is, it’s immeasurable.

It simply is.  I have to lay it all down and believe what he promises, when he said …

“Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” – Luke 1:45

Lord I believe.  Help my unbelief.

On (Not) Writing

Image by JJ Pacres on Flickr

I’ve slipped back over here to my blog because I’m having trouble writing.  You could say I’m s t u c k —  mired in self-doubt.

Gluey, icky burdensome thoughts are inside my head as I go through my days — has it been a whole week  — of NOT WRITING.

How can this be, after all this time?  I’m heavy with disappointment in myself.

I even have the excuse of carpel tunnel (I had to look that up to spell it.) My right hand isn’t working correctly, aches all the way up my arm, goes numb, even typing out each l e t t e r hurts just a little.  Sometimes a lot.

I have read, reread, rewritten my poems.  Because nothing new is coming.

In that valley is where Mary Magdalene comes looking for them, at a milepost way deep in the shadows. Their journey back toward apostleship, toward being the church, begins in grief.  It was Mary Magdalene, striding into the valley of the shadow of death to knock, once more, on a door and proclaim the good news: “I have seen the Lord” — the Lord who will not let the grave claim you who are trembling inside the prison of grief or depression. Grief is one more place on the journey from baptism to the new Jerusalem. Let the one who poured the waters of promise on your head so long ago — let that one sanctify your grief and turn it into ministry. He has been doing that since the days of Abraham and Sarah. Since the days of Peter, who denied he had ever known Jesus of Nazareth.  That is the good news of the gospel. Thanks be to God. Amen. —Edgar Moore

There is something in these words that is for me.  That winding path I traveled over the last ten years holds grief and glory.  That is where the story will begin, if I can find it.

Melody

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer – Barbara Kingsolver

Help me to Be

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large — I contain multitudes.”   ― Walt Whitman

Today I slipped into the imponderable place. I am disappointed with myself that this is happening, which only makes it more resistant to my human efforts to change.

What happened? I have some slight success and the furies inside challenge. Their presence in my psyche is a relentless stream, even as I pretend otherwise.

I fear the furies and yet by doing so, I give them sway.

This is new, naming the furies, which have been with me all my life. They are a melancholy; the chaotic anxious thoughts, the doubt and self-recrimination, the clamoring perfectionism and uncertainty and let’s call it what it is, the monster itself – fear. There is also the need for validation and the craving for significance. It is ugly, mortifying, and difficult to decipher. I could add to this list all day long I think.

It’s fitting that I have read for two weeks on Humility in my Prayer Book.  In it I read this:

Teach me, O Lord, thy holy way,
And give me an obedient mind,
That in thy service I may find
My soul’s delight from day to day.

Help me, O Savior, here to trace
The sacred footsteps though hast trod;
And, meekly walking with my God,
To grow in goodness, truth and grace.

– A hymn by William Matson

For many years my faith languished and deteriorated – I could not “see” God, feel him nor know his love. I did not believe. And as I stumbled, broken by depression and then addiction, I was chastened. Every pretense I might have conjured up was stripped from me.

“The Lord is near the broken-hearted; he is the Saviour of those whose spirits are crushed down.” Psalm 34:18

I then I understood Grace.

And from that time I have wanted nothing but this Savior, what he wants. That is not to say that I do not struggle as he challenged me to give things up – there were, are, many idols in my heart. I quit smoking because I heard God say I want you to want me, need me, more than you need Nicotine. And I wanted to want him that much too. Smoking became a metaphor for the sacrifice of praise that he sometimes asks for. He asked of me. I still stumble.  I lean into him.

And yet when the furies swirl, I fear I have become disconnected from the Holy Spirit, allowing a deterioration of intimacy with Jesus.   Sometimes the furies create such chaos, like tiny tornadoes of anxiety. I want to cut myself open and imagine them flying crazily away from me!  Then I can be free, rid of the things that weigh heavily and make me unwise and thoughtless, quick to think or say things that don’t show God’s love.  I want to lean into the Holy Spirit and allow the fresh winds of his spirit to fill me.

I want a deep, deep faith.

One that isn’t hasty or trite. No snatches of scripture, I want to be wading deeply into chapters and books. I want my spiritual roots to go deep into the ground, so that when challenges come I don’t stagger or fall as I have in the past.

Helmut Thielicke said “To work without praying and without listening means only to grow and spread oneself upward, without striking roots and without an equivalent in the earth.”
I want to penetrate life deeply.

These are the things I have been pondering today.  I’ll leave you with one of my favorite writers, Christian or otherwise, Evelyn Underhill, from The Spiritual Life.

“Any spiritual view which focuses attention on ourselves, and puts the human creature with its small ideas and adventures in the centre foreground, is dangerous till we recognize its absurdity …  We mostly spend those lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual—even on the religious—plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.”

Humility and penetrating life deeply.  That is definitely not craving, clutching and needing the attention for myself.

Lord, help me to Be.

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Simplify Stupid. If only it were that Simple.

I’ve done a lot of writing of late and that has led to a lot of chores piling up.  When chores collect one begins to notice how much stuff we have around the edges of life.  Why is that?  A few things occur to me:

  • I look around my home and of course I have miles and miles of books — if they were stacked end to end.  There are more books that I will ever read, but they are on issues that I care about.  I have several books ideas of my own in the works and many of those books relate to research topics.  Still, why do I need to own so many?
  • Looking in my closet this weekend, my son asked me “Mom, does the Goodwill pay you to take their clothes?”  Ha ha, very funny. Though I don’t think he was trying to be funny.  It was ironic and too close to home.  His point was that I own a lot of clothes!  You can read about my year of no new clothes here and here.  I do have an issue with buying tons of clothing.
  • We have some friends who are downsizing from a house to an Airstream with two kids in tow and it sounds like a dream project.  I haven’t had a chance to hear their story in person but I am fascinated by the idea.

Christmas is coming.  How do we face the challenge of consumerism vs. living out our giving with integrity?  And why do we collect so much stuff when in total honesty much of it remains untouched? Is this a matter of simply needing to be clearing out more often to reappropriate things to the next family that could use them whether it is toys, clothing, gaming systems, movies or books?  Or should this be a conversation about buying less.  And about the value of simplicity?

A singer and artist I appreciate for the poetry of her words, Carrie Newcomer, said this on Facebook today:

I have a sense that simplifying is not about denial and lack, but rather about getting rid of what does not ultimately give life and deeper meaning to our lives. If we got rid of what clutters and fills our lives to the very edges – what would happen in those open spaces? What do you think?

How do you teach yourself the discipline of reappropriating things?  Why is this important? What do you do to simplify, remove clutter and create space in your life?  What would you do differently if you had the mental and physical space?  What resources have you found that help you?

The Female Voice

 

Feminism to me is the crazy belief that women and men are both created in God’s image and that each of us deserves a life of freedom and opportunity inside or outside the Church.

I have thought a lot about the lack of presence and example of women in the Church.  One Sunday at my church in particular, women were simply spectators, the audience, the bystanders, the recipients and beneficiaries … Read more at Provoketive.

Other things I have written on Women in the Church are here:

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