Tag: Home

Silent for Days, becomes Years

Silent for Days, becomes years
when the Girl Child now Woman is afraid of her own words,
allowing her many fears to overwhelm.
sometimes offering Powerful Utterances
that shape, guide, portend,
sometimes paralyzed.
Deep calls to Deep, inside
the Place Where She is Full, saying
lay down, let go.

Silent for Days, becomes years
when the Girl Child now Woman
knows and comes to love
herself and comes to believe
in the One who Gave His Life for us all.
Still waters, Silent
deep, deep inside
the Girl Child now Woman is daily groping,
hoping not to misstep.  knowing
she holds one, two, three, four
Souls in her sweaty, grasping hands.
she is hopeful and
needing, wanting to nurture and heal.
so much faith, so much potential, so much possibility.

Silent for Days, becomes years
when Girl Child now Woman
lays down her life, lets go
of control,
of results,
of Knowing her Future or
knowing anything at all.
building calluses on her knees, head
bowed, tears flowing, hands
open, heart
free.

the Girl Child now Woman knows
how little she knows.
she lets go.  her heart
bursting from the agony of it,
the birthing of the one, two, three, four lives
put into her hands and
her One Life.
Just ahead, Looms.  Just ahead,
the One who Gave His Life for us all
Asks it of her
and she lets go.

Where are you From? (A not so whimsical look back…)

I am from…..

I am from the smells of good coffee, books scattered everywhere

and music always playing in the next room.

I am from the slightly worn leather and hard wood floors.  Used cars paid for in cash and furniture that needs replacing.

From dust bunnies chasing  us, while the dog and cats complain of inattention.

I am from things growing in the yard.

I am from a place of strangers always welcome.

I am from explosion of colors, herbs growing and losing myself in the garden.

I am from full stomachs, the yeasty smell of home made bread and pressure to be something lingering in the air.

I am from homemade cherry pie.  And lilac blossoms shocking in the spring.

I am from trees.

I am from vacations nowhere doing nothing.

I’m from holding hands when we pray and strong opinions and sarcasm.

I am from missionaries always working and  a waking up early, kind of reverent Bible believing.

I am from gratitude.

I’m from hugs, often and long.  And loud harsh ideas exchanged.

I am from shouting.

I am from doubting love.

I’m from children being seen but not heard and being told to “shut up” in Tibetan,
and Jesus loves the little children, and the Lord takes care of those that take care of themselves.

I am from the place where work is everything.

I’m from sharing what you are thankful for even when you are not thankful.

I’m from Papua New Guinea and Texas and Tibet, California and Wisconsin.

I am from Chinese food and Mexican, but not together.

I am from telling stories well and often.

I am from public shame and public affirmation.

I am from a long, carved alligator wooden table, with shells in its eyes. And a coveted conch shell.

I am from the place where secret memories are hidden deep.

—————————-

I really tried hard not to try too hard on this.  One could rewrite such a poem forever.

Adapted by Levi Romero. Inspired by “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon. Inspired by this idea from Ann Voskamp.  This was the template.

I am human. Join me. (Thoughts on faith, confession and writing)

Part two of … this.  A response.

You know it’s funny.  Several people responded to what I wrote today with what I found to be a slightly odd, or at least a surprising response to me.  Okay, odd isn’t fair.  They expressed concern.   You need to know something. If I have gotten to the place of putting my thoughts down, I have lived it — bled it — known each word like a friend.  I am on the other side enjoying the lesson, learning and knowing I am beloved.  The things I write while true still, are not cloaked about me oppressively.  

You see, no matter how many times I have to learn it — like the Israelites who were incredibly short sighted, foolish and distrusting of God, over and over — I do know I am a beloved child.  I do. Don’t worry so about me.

I read an interview with Anne Lamott, a writer that I adore.  When asked about her writing about her faith (since she’s “pretty outspoken, eccentric artist—a quality we love and admire in her. How does she successfully reconcile the perhaps stereotypical connotations of ‘Christian’ in this polarized day and age—when Christian in the political sense often means an extreme conservative—with her clearly open-minded, open-hearted point of view and way of living.”)

Oh yeah, that.  I can relate.

She said:

“That’s a complicated question. A good question. You do the best you can. A certain percentage of self-identified Christians think I am doomed and just fucked beyond all imagining because I don’t believe the Bible is the literal word of God. I’m a progressive Christian. I’m more of a liberation theology person.

My religious life, my life as a recovering alcoholic, my life as a writer, and life as a public person are the center of my life along with Sam and Jackson [Sam’s son].   People are going to think what they think. It’s called “another thing I have no control over.”

And when asked about her writing process she confessed unabashedly, “Right now I have prepublication jitters, mental illness, and distraction.”

Here is what I think, we are all simply human.  And in writing about our “walk” with faith, some are more honest than others.  I try to be crystal clear, yes even hopelessly honest. That’s my style, my voice, my path.  Sure, I hope one day to write out of a place of certainty.  Just when I wish for that, then I know that I don’t really hope for that.

I carry the scars of my life, not proudly — as if — but I am not ashamed of them either. I am a child of a raging man, who was verbally abusive and controlling.  That makes me different than a lot of kids who grew up with unconditional love and certainty.  I am an alcoholic (in recovery.)  It is a part of my dna and I will write about it.  I’m a compulsive, addictive person — whether it be to Facebook, or Farmville, or television shows like Stargate, watching episode after episode for hours — and I will never have all the answers for why I am like that.  I will never know complete release from that this side of heaven.  That’s what I think.  That much is absolutely certain. But this won’t sink me, it will push me.  Humble me.  Help me to know how much I need God, and the community of believers. And what I must do is be a person that is committed to the spiritual disciplines of prayer and study, to the humble place of making callouses on my knees, and to surrendering myself to service of others.

Daily, hourly.  Sometimes moment by moment, this sweet surrender admission of my broken places.  That’s me.

Reading the incredible words today from Enuma Okoro who said in an essay on faith and the writing life, written to people who seek her wisdom, she said:

“Engaging in the craft of creative writing is where they feel most alive and the means by which they feel most passionate about witnessing to “the things about which [they] have been instructed” (Luke 1:4 NRSV).  … These men and women seek counsel on discerning how writing can be ministry and where they might turn for support and encouragement in understanding how faith and writing intersect…

and she said later:

“Take the leap of faith and trust in your gift to proclaim God’s word in new ways.” I hope I can grow into the sort of mentor who recognizes the writing gift and call in others and boldly and daringly says to them, “Write for the love and power of words. Write for the love of God.””

So, dear friends know this. When I write about the pain of being an artist in the church, or of being a feminist in an evangelical church or the f-word being a dirty word, or my struggles to totally surrender to God’s absolute love, I am simply telling you that I bleed.  I am human. Won’t you join me?

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.

How to Be Alone

A poem and video about being alone.

IMPT. Stark and beautiful.  It holds a piece of my heart. (Except I don’t dance.)

Don’t be afraid to be alone!

A video by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman, and poet/singer/songwriter Tanya Davis. Davis wrote the beautiful poem and performed in the video which Dorfman directed, shot, animated by hand and edited. The video was shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia and was produced by Bravo!FACT.

Lessons from the Monastery: Part Two (Sixty Year Old Memories of Sensible Shoes)

Part Two in a series: Lessons from the Monastery.

I don’t find it hard to confess that dissatisfaction comes easily to me, along with the admission that my life has disappointed me. Disillusionment too, as my life is not what I thought it would be. I can admit this is true.

Well, that’s not exactly right – I had no plan.  No grand scheme.  I didn’t have any idea what I would do with my life as a youngster.

One thing I knew.

From that moment when I was swiftly rescued, “healed” in an only God could have done it miraculous sort of way.  As I grew up, I was told the stories over and over.

I was “the peanut baby.”  The miracle was something of God, everyone said so. And for whatever reason I began to believe that God had something special planned for me – for my life.  Eighteen months old I was choking on a peanut. I should have died. I will have to get my mother to retell the story because even as I ponder it now, there is much I cannot remember.  I don’t want to lose the details.

I have no memory of it.  In fact I have very few memories of childhood at all.

They are all gone, stuffed somewhere safe.  I haven’t in all these years of healing been able to find the key to unlock that precious girl’s life.

My life. My memories.

I’ve been going to the monastery with my mother.  Being with my mother is startling and even as I learn to trust her, I am afraid.  She’s a blurter.  And she has for memory everything, and more, that I don’t.  Her brain is iron clad; she is a beast of remembering.  And her stories come out at the oddest, least opportune moments; like the shock of ice-cold water.

So much so, that sometimes I cannot bear to be with her, sometimes.  I am learning to not be so afraid.

But today her memories were of her childhood.  A controlling father “much like your father” she said.  “Only mine was around less often, which was perhaps less damaging …” her thoughts trailing off.  In my mind, I too found I was wandering back to my dad’s controlling ways.  She’s remembering that her dad made her wear ugly shoes, because she was “hard on shoes.” Even though her sisters got any kind they wanted.

Those are sixty year old memories about sensible shoes.  Her father long dead and yet still, she remembers it today. 

God save me from bitter memories I say, not to her but inside to myself and to the ghosts.  Perhaps that’s why I keep them all locked up safe, because I don’t want to be bitter.

Today the speaker at the monastery spoke of stability and the descent into darkness as a way of becoming comfortable with uncertainty; a willingness to explore our pain.  Moving down into it and facing it.

No way!  I thought immediately.  This is simply nuts.

Then I remembered…

all the ways I learned to numb my pain, to forget.  And in that moment saw my progress – over time, over years.  A decade flashed.

I used to work hard at my job, to do really well and I received tons of praise and it was never enough.  I was never happy about it.  I was always afraid – of being unmasked, shown for the farce that I was.

The speaker spoke of learning to live deeply in the monotony of life, as do the Benedictines, monks, others – shall l I just say it?  The stay-at-home mom’s life was the epitome of mundane to me.

I see now that is was because I was running.

I couldn’t run fast enough from my internal demons.  Michael Casey, the Cistercian monk of Tarrawarra Abbey in Australia, says that distraction seeks to avoid and that we need to accept life as it is given to us. 

Ten years.  More than a decade of running.  Looking back I can see progress.  My heart was full of self-deception.  I couldn’t feel my feelings for many years and I numbed my feelings with alcohol, work, shopping, obsessive busyness, Christian service, action and movement of every kind.

And now I attempt to live in this moment — to see what’s in front of my nose. 

The speaker asked: Where do you find sources of stability in direct opposition to the running?  What does life look like when you need some stability? How do you know when you’re running? What prompts our perpetual running? What stops it, for you?

I was able to see, today that I have come a long way.   There are still moments of grievous disappointment in myself, but I lay that aside knowing that life is a long, long path for which I am only partway there.  It felt good, even divine, to gaze backward seeing the timeline of the years to appreciate that I am altered – different  – shifting and less flustered and more resolved.

I am able now to go unhurried into the future.  And I can now appreciate the dailies of life. I look forward to remembering, when it comes.

The deep monotony is good, in order to simply be.

MHH

Inspired by Stability and Balance in Relationships and Prayer led by Carole Kretschman at the Holy Wisdom Monastery, March 7, 2012

On Motherhood, On Children

I’ll be the first to admit it.  I fight daily with the little devil on my shoulder.  That being tells me lies.

I feel it so vividly – the tensions of being a stay at home mom, a lack of validation in the culture at large for motherhood or stay at home parents, and the voice inside me telling me almost every day “It’s not enough! Do more, be significant, something special.”  A lot of my poetry recently has come out of that place.

God has reminded me, for some reason, of the truth that we never know whose mother we are — in that we don’t know who our children will become. If we knew that our sons or daughters, nieces or nephews, would grow up to be the next Barack Obama, or Madeleine L’Engle, Joan Chittister, or Scot McKnight, or Michelangelo, whomever, would we look at parenting, at mothering, differently?

They all had mothers.

Fathers.  Aunties and Uncles.

Your role in the life of a child is a role that only you can fulfill even though most days you likely consider it insignificant.

This post was inspired in some part by reading this.

Upward Mobility (a poem)

Earth ‘s crammed with heaven… 

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.  – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

More than once, in fact
dozens of times in the Big Story of the Torah,
responding to God meant
falling face down on the ground.
Blinding light,
being pregnant with plain old
awe.
Take off your shoes kind of wonderment.
Because you’re on holy ground.

I am so unseeing.
Everything in me,
in my dusty, meager day to day corporeal living
roars something else.
At me. In me.  From me.  To me.
Lift yourself
up. Rise higher, get
above the next fellow.
Upward mobility. Show
your stuff. Your smarts. Your
talent and creativity.
The world is shouting in my ear.

Then I close the door, and
find within, in
my paltry worship, my measly human love.
All I have is a quickening heartbeat, throwing off
the chasing anxiety.
All I want is a falling face down on the ground, kind of awe.
When was the last time I felt
astonishment in God?
A breathed in, have to close my eyes
star struck, stomach lurching,
take off my shoes, because I’m on holy ground

kind of amazement of my God?

All I want.

When was the last time?

 

Not to Speak is to Speak: Volume 3

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies,

we should find in each man’s life

sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”  

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I am finding it hard to love my enemies.

Rush Limbaugh who obviously hates women and calls them sluts and makes them feel like whores.

Those that do not understand America is made up of oppressive systems and structures for African Americans especially and other minorities. That if we don’t do something about it, we are passive racists– contributors. I read this week that the Bible has “more than 2,000 passages of Scripture about God’s hatred for poverty and oppression. They see God’s desire for systems and structures to be blessings to all of humanity — not a curse to some and a blessing for others.”  Lisa Sharon Harper, Sojourners

(White) people that say our President is not a believing Christian make me angry. Because if he isn’t, then likely they think I’m not one either.

That Olympia Snow despairs enough about our political system that she quit the Senate this last week.

Quick to rush to anger.  That’s me.

'Meet the Sports Illustrated 2011 Swimsuit Models at STK Invite' photo (c) 2011, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition makes me angry.  Come on!  The ongoing female objectification implies that being healthy for women is all about fitting into a tiny bikini (especially since women very rarely appear on the Sports Illustrated cover otherwise).  The effect of female objectification in mainstream culture huge.   Does an interest in sports necessitate an interest in ogling female bodies? When boys watch their fathers flip through magazines dedicated to objectification, what do they learn about what it means to be a man? And what does this communicate to them about a woman’s place in society?   One positive, a doctor who raises concerns regarding the effects of “our pornified culture on our children”.  Miss Representation offered specific suggestions for creating change: positive change; healthy change. The link is www.missrepresentation.org.

I’m finding it hard to love.  These things make me angry!  God says Pray for those who persecute you.

Sigh, pray for Rush Limbaugh? Pray for racist people and the sexist editors of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition?

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.

Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. —  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Not to Speak is to Speak is a series I started last year. I’m thinking of reviving it.

Volume 2

Volume 1

let go (a poem)


let go

 

To part with sarcasm’s drips, acid

burning on my tongue, corrosive and scalding

a hole in my soul;

I know the true beneficiary, me.

 

Hatred’s Sweet Kiss (a poem)

Hatred’s sweet kiss deceives,

leaving me battered, shattered, and alone.

Only holy soul work undoes

the damage of deep aching;

ravages of original toil,

wanting to be God.

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.