Tag: 2012: ABUNDANCE

Uncluttered, Exposed and Present: Touching the Unknown (a poem)

I carried so much hurt
a world of injury, so much so that
often I couldn’t breathe.
my chest ached of it. I couldn’t
hear the spirit, blowing windy about me.
wouldn’t heal, my open sores were evident to all.
I      had      no      space left inside
for the mystical, Holy
One to speak.

Making space for God sounds so suspect
(as if)
even though,
often
I was thinking
if God is there, why won’t he just talk
to me?

Then     I    let   go.   I let my fear fly free.
Then the glorious, lavish days
came, spent
listening.
days I look forward to sitting, there.  waiting
a while
setting aside the albatross.
Let it go, though
the grip
I had was strong,
and wrong
The scars ran deep
the pain furrowed my brow and at my core
there was only sorrow.
Now, I touch the Unknown
I am uncluttered, exposed
and present,
open for God to speak.

Perfect Practice (A poem about Lent)

Practicing lent

sounds slick. My gift,

heart-full-of-pride. My rituals,

my restriction, my sacrifice.

Then I throw out my arms, open-handed.

Looking up,
giving up.
Let go, let up.

Incarnate,

the One who comes
have me. I let go,

practicing lent.

Let your Fear Fly Free

So often, if I find myself returning in frustration and anger, again and again, to a subject.

When this happens I know that it has become an area of idolatry for me. Or it’s an area that God wants to heal in my life.   Or both!

I’m a slow learner but I’m learning this about myself.  About God.  His Truth is a beautiful thing.  Opening my heart to God’s voice in my life not easy, even unnatural.

How to you do that?  How do you listen well?  And when you know that you need healing by Him, how does this usually occur?  That’s something else I’m learning to allow space for in my life.

For the longest time I drank to try to make that Ugly Thing (you name it) go away. I ignored God’s regular, persistent call.  His knocking was gentle, consistent, reliable true.  But I chose to numb myself with alcohol or shopping or other idols.  But by self-medicating, aren’t we simply postponing the inevitable?  Running from reality.  Ignoring truth. Letting the Ugly Thing win.

Areas where I have seen this in my life recently, where I am letting go of my vice grip of control.

I’m letting fly free the issue of women in my denomination.

I’m letting fly free my need for a “paying job.”

I am letting fly free my need for significance and accolades.

I am letting fly free my self-loathing.

I am letting fly free my wish for my children to know Jesus as their Savior.

These are all things that I have tried to ignore how much they hurt, yes my big gut wrenching fears that control my mind and heart.  And in the end the weight of them crushes my spirit.  I cannot bear the weight of them any longer.

So I open my hands and I see them fly away knowing that the universe is God’s and he is in control of it all.   He loves me, he loves them, more than I ever could.  His desire for justice and truth to prevail  in the Church is stronger than mine.  And in fact he gave me this heart, that breaks and so easily comes undone.

And finally, his desire for me to be useful to him is less than his wish for me to know, fear, and love who he is, the Holy One.

He made me and he’ll carry me and all my fears.

May we be people open to God and able to let go of our need for control whatever it is — it’s so different for everyone. Let them go free into God’s hands, because is it not true that the Holy One is so much more capable than you or me?

What do you need to let fly free?

Ordinary Time [a poem]

Mine is an ordinary life
and it has taken me all my life to accept that idea.
I thought, dreamily
I was made for Big Things.  Contrary, it seems.
I live ordinary days and ordinary nights.
I’m a simple person really, but something inside me
is constantly seeking more.
That means, I am never satisfied.
That means, I am always questioning.
That means, I am rarely happy.

Mine is an ordinary life, and I am new to accepting ordinary time.    I crave
comfort, satisfaction, answers and joy.   I long for
peace.  I know ultimately that I am an ordinary person,
set on this glorious planet Earth.
I live ordinary days and ordinary nights.

Jesus came that we might have life, abundantly. 
How should that change me?  It changes everything.
He is a  big God, I am a small, ordinary soul.
Get that straight — yes, therein lies joy.

(Slow Learner Me) She is Satisfied

You live forward, but understand backward.

– Abraham Verghese

Sometimes I call myself a slow learner.  I suppose a more grace-filled way to say that is that I take my time learning spiritual things.  Doing that, I have seen that my life has obvious patterns.  I am often circling back to the same lessons and their painful realities.  One way to perceive this is failure, this reverting again and again to the Old Person – old lessons, old mistakes, old pain.   “We cannot contain or bear the deep coincidence of opposites that we are.” said Robert A. Jonas.

As I read scriptures in this season perhaps for the first time I see the long-view-of biblical themes and something clicks inside.  How do the things I seem to struggle with fit into the timeline of human struggles?  Doing that, I realize my story isn’t so significant.

My desire to land exactly where I’m “supposed” too just isn’t the main thing.  Oh! (Slow learner ME realizes) it’s about my character (who I am) and God’s character (who God is.)  Brilliant.

This human story is not about what I do, what I think, or what I may accomplish, but rather who I am.

Now that’s counter-cultural.  And I don’t know how to live like that.  Especially when so much of ME is uncertain, afraid, insecure, seeking ultimate purpose and significance.  Hungering for meaning in my daily life.  Yes, every day I wake up and the PROWLING ME needs filling up, hungry for purpose – this prowling, empty ME, needs substantial satisfying. 

(Slow Learner Me realizes something else.)  “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.  The old life is gone and a new life has begun.”

Old life, old ME, hungry ME, Slow Learner ME, she is a new person when daily open to Him.

As I struggle, regularly cyclically with contentment of purpose, I hear God.  As I wrote Nothing and Everything the LORD was speaking to me and perhaps to you.

The Holy One longs for us, calls us by name, BELOVED and knows us better than we know ourselves.  Even as we sit with our ideas, dreams, hopes, passions, ways that we think we are going to do things for Him, he must chuckle.   As we think that our great thing or idea will finally fulfill us, he must ache for us.   As we run around, “helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied…  Compulsive…  Busy.   …  well, that is the way that leads to spiritual death.” (Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved.)

(Slow Learner Me says) Oh.  Yes, I have seen that in my life.  Caught, snared by its tricky thorns. Entangled and bleeding, not knowing why (again) I have become so unhappy.  Bitter.  Lost.  Broken by Old, Slow Learner Me.

Prowling Me needs a substantial refilling, in order to believe once again, that I am Beloved.

Daily opening to being Beloved, me.

Becoming Beloved, believing it and living it—that is our truest calling.

Only to sit and think of God,
Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought,
To breathe the name
Earth has no higher bliss.

Frederick W. Faber

Slow learner me, she is satisfied.

On Putting the Dark and the Light Together

I  find it so interesting that Moses “when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.” (Hebrews 11:24 ESV)

I see that as choosing to take on the identity of  being one of God’s people, before his other human identity.   I choose that too.

It is a daily choosing.

Just as a good friend pointed out, being in the 12-steps (code-word for addiction recovery program)  involves being able to admit every day your broken state.  For me that is being an alcoholic.  It it necessary for your recovery and for survival.  Staying sober means admitting your powerlessness.   But can be a way to label yourself.  And it doesn’t create the space for allowing God to rename you, reshape you, even change and heal you, to transform and redeem.

I am rigid and ornery, prone to perfectionism.  Hard on others.  Even harder on myself.  I am a person that doesn’t like to be perceived as weak and is oh, so mean to myself!  How that fits with all of this I do not know completely except that it fits with my revisiting old pain, old narrative, old Story.  I have lived with naming my shaming for years.

But this is false, a false modesty and a false humility.

So says Richard Rohr, that incredible friar who wrote Falling Upward ( I have to admit I have not read this wonderful book, recommended by so many people I respect.  It’s on my to read list! ) But I get his emails.

I opened my inbox today and read this:

“All-or-nothing reformations and all-or-nothing revolutions are not true reformations or revolutions. Most history, however, has not known this until now. When a new insight is reached, we must not dismiss the previous era or previous century or previous church as totally wrong. It is never true! We cannot try to reform things in that way anymore.

“This is also true in terms of the psyche. When we grow and we pass over into the second half of life, we do not need to throw out the traditions, laws, boundaries, and earlier practices. That is mere rebellion and is why so many revolutions and reformations backfired and kept people in the first half of life. It is false reform, failed revolution, and non-transformation. It is still dualistic thinking, which finally turns against its own group too.

“So do not waste time hating mom and dad, hating the church, hating America, hating what has disappointed you. In fact, don’t hate anything. You become so upset with the dark side of things that you never discover how to put the dark and the light together, which is the heart of wisdom, all love, and the trademark of a second half of life person. Maybe that is why we blessed the candles on this day, right in the middle of winter.

“You become so upset with the dark side of things that you never discover how to put the dark and the light together, which is the heart of wisdom, all love, and the trademark of a second half of life person.”

Here’s to living in the Light!

God’s Whisper. [A poem]

Very early in the morning before the sun is up and hours before there is noise
in my sleeping house,

I rise.

As I creep down the stairs,
I hope that no-one hears them creak loudly.

After I have made the blackest coffee, it sits hot and comforting between my cold hands.

I sip it as I sit, read and pray. Pondering things that I do not understand.

Laying down my fears

as if by writing them, somehow I will let them go.

//
I stretch out my legs for a moment and my cat jumps
and sits on them forcing me to settle, just as I was going to be done  she forces me to sit back and to truly stop my spirit, just when I think I am finished there.

At this point I am not inclined to sit any more, all–too–ready–to–get–on–with–my day.

//

Though when I wake, my heart is full of longing to sit with Them, waiting
to hear the sweet whispers of the Father, Son and Spirit.

But soon my restlessness–overcomes–my–eagerness
and hunger to Be With.

By my heavy, sleeping cat on my legs I am suddenly

s l o w e d–d o w n;  just for a moment,
I suppose, I will linger. Suddenly, gone are anxious thoughts and my busyness;

I let it all briefly go.

Forced by my sleeping cat with her heavy weight holding me down.

//

I am reminded

God always longs for me.
God waits for me.

To settle in This quiet presence.
To sit with my questions.
To set aside my wonderment of the pain that surrounds.

To feel the awe of being with a Father that wants me.

There, as my legs fall asleep I am struck by how difficult it is for me to sit.

To receive Holy company.

To receive a Holy welcome.

To settle in and completely BE with Them.

It is as if my cat with her wish to be close to me, to take a nap on my stretched–out–legs,

is the Spirit’s hold, gentle but firm, full of love. Telling me to stay.

//

I am uncomfortable, but my cat sleeps on.  I wiggle my toes to get the blood flowing again.

She blinks sleepily at me.  She is annoyed when I jostle her a bit too much.
My cat just wants to be with me; she has no expectation, no need, no fear.  She has complete trust. Stay, stop squirming she says with a hard glaring look and her nails beginning to claw my leg.

“But my feet! My legs!” I protest.

Stay.

Sit.  Enjoy me.

BE.

God whispers to me.