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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.

Faith Transforms Me, Sometimes.

My motto these days is to do the next thing — what’s straight ahead of me.  In life, in faith, in parenting.

The next home task, the next creative project, the next scriptural study challenge — I choose to do this because I don’t know what else to do.  So I do the next thing.  I say yes to requests and a chance to help those in my immediate life.  I want to be useful.  This is tale about something l learned while trying to be helpful to a friend and be a good mom.

I should know to welcome an imminent challenge  when I write about parenting.  And I should also know by now that when I get intentional about any aspect of life, experiences come up that cause my “great” ideas to suddenly seem anemic held up to the light of day, real life.

One of my kids came home today particularly ornery.

Nothing I said was good enough. Or correct. Or useful.  Finally when I had had enough I stormed off angry saying: “I don’t know why I bother to say anything around here.” (I know who’s the kid, right?) The more I thought about it, the madder I got.  I was steaming, white hot mad and before I knew it, even slamming doors.

Fuming I went downstairs to fold their laundry.  I decided if that’s the way she wants it fine.  What if I simply refused to talk to her anymore? …. for a while, for a good long while.  I’m thinking, yeah, I will pass information along via her brothers.  That way I could make my point (which was that she doesn’t listen to my sage advice) and still get things accomplished.

Before long she came creeping downstairs.  Still seething in my plans for my “cold-war” campaign, even though I knew that my plan would never work.  Beyond the plain immaturity of the idea, it just wasn’t kind.  And if anything, I try to always be kind.

“I’m sorry I don’t believe in Jesus” she says inaudibly. “Not right now.”

“What?” I asked breaking my short-lived resolve.  In this moment, when a child says something like that, at least a thousand thoughts run chaotically through your head within the space of milliseconds. You’re dizzy from the swirl of emotion.  Still, in these kinds of parenting moments, my main thought is stay calm.

I remind myself: Do not say anything you cannot take back!   You cannot let on that you’re freaking out … no!  It is not like the whole world is sinking.

How she even knows what she accepts as true is decidedly up for consideration.  She is just a child. Stay calm.

She came home saying she didn’t want to go to church anymore.  What was the point? Then, as well as now in this moment, I mostly listened.  I said something vaguely like: “We just want you to continue going, so that you know what you’re choosing.”

I’m kicking myself.  The last time we had this conversation I totally choked.  Later, as I was telling Tom it was all so clear to him what he would have said.  And with hindsight it was clearer to me as well.  I should have been ready for this one, but instead of that I’m hyperventilating inside about MY BABY is rejecting my faith!  (Perhaps only mothers know what I’m talking about here.)  Yes, I’ve talked about this before, but I just can’t believe that at fourteen she’s already rejecting the Church, and by that I mean big C church.  “I already know everything I need to know” she had said.  And I think that was somewhere in the vicinity of when I stormed out of the room earlier.

“I’m sorry that I don’t believe in Jesus” she repeats.  “Not right now.” And I looked her square in the eyes. And shrugged.  Obviously I’m no Billy Graham.  There will be no coercing from me.  No broad explanations or great appeals for faith.  I know that I understood less than nothing about spiritual things when I was her age, not really.  I really couldn’t grasp the concept of substitutionary atonement at all. If someone had tried to convince me of it, I would have written them off completely.

I believe that one comes to an understanding of the truth of scriptures slowly, and a huge part of that is seeing others whose lives are utterly transformed by Jesus Christ.  This is one reason I had so much trouble with my personal faith for more than two decades—I didn’t see people around me transformed.  (Blame the Methodists and Presbyterians?)

So, I looked her straight in the eye. And shrugged, as I turned back to folding.

Later, I decided that I wanted her to come with me as I delivered soup to some sick friends.   This is it!  (I’m thinking I’m pretty brilliant.)  She will see the feet of faith—the good deed, out of my love of my friends that makes me want to do kind things for others.  This is it!

So with her  mumbling loudly and her iPod blaring, with great drama and complaining, she got into my car as I put the Tupperware of soup on the floor between her feet.

After several questionings about why she had to come, we arrive.  I reached toward her. She reached to hand me the soup, grabbing the handles of a grocery bag – and bam!  Soup splattered everywhere.  “Fuck! ” (Yes, that’s an exact quote)I yell: ” How could this have happened?!!”  I fumed loudly glancing up at the house.  Stomping around the end of the car, I see that there is soup top to bottom in my beautiful (if dirty) Honda—with a large portion of the soup on the floor, irretrievable.  It was a colossal mess!

Again, we find me furious.

Ironically what I had intended to be an example of my benevolence turned into me a fuming and cussing, even accusing her, in my mortification!

Then a light bulb went off. 

This isn’t about the “good deed” or about the soup spilling all over my car and daughter.  And though I was tempted to blame her for the spill, it wasn’t even her fault.

This is about how  I choose to handle it, right now.  This is about me being transformed by Jesus.

Self-conscious about the half empty Tupperware, dripping with soup, I sheepishly rang the doorbell and delivered my soup.  Then I went to the car and calmly drove home.  At home, after collecting my thoughts, I told her “You don’t need to feel badly about this because it wasn’t your fault!”  If anything, I should have warned her that it might be messy or risky to pick up.

So we cleaned up the car together, which was a lot like cleaning up vomit we both agreed, only it smelled really yummy.  It was good soup.  And we had another little disagreement.  This time about whether “Drinking until you vomit” was the same as just social drinking.  (Do I know a thing or two about that?) Still, she walked away from me into the house, sheeshing me about acting like an expert and saying that I was “wrong that I didn’t trust her ideas.”  And I, once again, I was left alone fuming and wondering.

Now if she can just make the connection.  If only I can too, more often be transformed.

Yes, faith transforms me, sometimes.

MH

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 Cor 3:18

On Parenting Deeply and Well

Parenting is undoubtedly the most difficult job I’ve ever done. Can I admit it here — it’s not instinctive for me? It’s not intuitive. Though Tom will argue voraciously with me on this, and has, the fact remains that I do not feel like a good mother. Many times I wonder what I was thinking becoming a parent. But that’s me being negative and fearful, not living in abundance.

How does one become a good parent?

We look back at how we were raised. We observe others, although this can quickly turn into bad comparison for me. We work on our own s***. We pray a lot! (I know my father prayed for me every day. I felt that loss when he died.) And we hope that the days will s t r e t c h, time will slow down, much like a sci-fi movie. I mean who doesn’t need more time to improve upon themselves? Now, when life is moving quickly and my children are dashing into their teen years I want to press the slow motion effect. If only.

If the Bible were a parenting manual (which it is not) I think perhaps it would say work on your character and the fruits of your spirit and the LORD will add to these things, but there are no guarantees. The more you try to control the outcome the less likely you’ll get it .

So what’s a person to do?

Today I was thinking and wondering this.  How do we teach our children that they are unconditionally loved – that no matter what they ever do our love is irreversible. This superpower, called “unconditional love,” was modeled for us by Jesus Christ. I lay down my life, regularly.  Or,  is it more like giving up my rights?  My power. My control. Oh, we’re back to that again. Yeah, I was mightily controlled growing up so that’s one of my issues.

And I vacillate with my kids. Oh, how I hated feeling controlled as a child, and yet without boundaries children (and adults) flounder. So I regularly pray for a good measure of strength to apply appropriate boundaries with consequences without being perceived as or wanting to be controlling.

There’s a strange characteristic in kids — they believe in the live and let live, totally. Yes, even mom and dad.

If you loved me you’d just let me … stay up and talk to my friends on the computer. Leave my stuff all over the house. Lose my cell phone with no consequences. Not work that hard in school, I mean lighten up, Mom. It’s only grades. Not live up to my potential, I mean if it were important to me I’d do it.

Yup, true. But I definitely regret that I wasn’t pushed more when I was a child. I was left to flounder. So, I have to admit, I’m a bit befuddled.

What’s the best book on parenting you’ve read?

What’s the best advice you’ve been given about parenting?

What did your parents do that was really right?  

Do you have any advice for a young mom like myself?

(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!

Nothing and Everything

Nothing and Everything

a poem by Melody Harrison Hanson

 

Some Days.

Some days are clues that no matter how far you’ve come,

you are nothing.

(And you are everything.)

 Nothing and everything to the Divine and Holy One who loves – accepts – heals – guides – knows.

 

The Holy One loves you no matter how often you stumble.

The Holy One accepts you for everything you are today and sees who you are becoming.

For this Creator God made you, even chose you and is the architect of your life.

The Holy One heals, because we sure need a healing.  Especially when confronted by the hideous ogre of our envy and pride.

The Holy One guides and has a plan.

 

“Even for me?” I cry, in the shadowy, nocturnal hours of fear, anger, twisted truths, ignorance, self-delusion and distrust?

“YES, even you” whispers The Holy One.

 

The Holy One knows me better than I know myself,

leads me through the dark sheol of my own creating.

Patiently, kindly pulling me back when my motives, impure and self-seeking, make a collision course with life.

The Holy One is the perfect parent, understanding what I need, who I am and who I will become.

This Holy One believes when I cannot believe in myself.

For I know I am so frequently frail,

Failing,

falling,

 far,

from the Holy One

who knows all, knows me, knows the future.

Even these days

when through my streaming hot tears of shame and regret, I can only look up.

“YES, even you” whispers The Holy One.

 

Some days.

Some days are cues to humble you.  To learn that no matter

if you are nothing, you are everything

to the Holy One.

Imagine my Surprise. I read the Bible “Wrong.”

I never knew  that there was a right or wrong way of reading the Bible.  

I have always thought, naively I will now acknowledge, that all that mattered was how one responded to what they read in the Bible.  Nope, I’ve been all wrong.  I don’t know where I learned this idea either.  I’ve absorbed a way of looking at the Scriptures that I never questioned.

“It’s how I was raised.”  

What do I mean? Fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals (and I was taught to believe this but no longer) have a view of the Bible that it’s perfect, as in ” inerrant and infallible” by which they mean, it’s a divine product and its authority comes in “that God literally wrote it” by whispering his intents to people who then wrote it down (like God’s holy scribes).  And unless it clearly was metaphor, most every word was literally the truth, word for word from God.  These people also believe that the Bible is basically all God wants us to know in communicating his will to us, which precludes the work of the Holy Spirit and prayer, among other things.  They believe the Bible has everything we need and is totally relevant to the Christian life today.  That it is simple and plain, obvious; meaning if you just read it you’ll “just get it.”  There’s a morsel of goodness in that idea that anyone can read the Bible.  Unfortunately, even though anyone can read it isn’t simple!  What about the fact that it was written in languages we do not read or speak (most of us) and in a culture and time that we know nothing about. And the last, most heinous thing that simplistic reading of the Bible brings is the idea that one can pick and pull verses out of the context, not believing context is that important.  They read the Bible seeking blessings and affirmations for life.

Guilty. Guilty.  Guilty.

I do believe, and it is important to affirm, as Temper Longman says in How to Read Genesis, that the Bible is:

“… grounded in the ultimate divine authorship of the whole.  Thus in spite of a variety of styles, genres, themes and motifs, it is important to ask how the parts fit into the whole.”

And that is what I have known.  I guess one can make the Bible say pretty much whatever you want it to if you work at it.  People do it all the time!  I’m forty-five years old, been reading the Bible for myself since high school, and in many ways this is how I have always understood things.

That is what makes thinking about it in a new way so frightening.

I have to admit that I’m learning.

That fact should not be embarrassing, but it is.  People don’t like to admit very often that they don’t know something.  We all like  to come off as experts, if not experts than knowledgeable, if not knowledgeable then at least well-informed.  (

(Sigh)).  It’s hard to admit when you’re wrong, uninformed, even lacking knowledge.  It is hard to admit but I believe if I’m willing to do that then perhaps others will become open to considering the same.

Do I dare even talk about this topic of reading the Bible?  I am by no means an expert but I’ve read some things recently. I am armed and dangerous but I’ll list my sources so that you can do your own homework.  (And you always should.)

Here’s what I’ve learned.

The Bible is a piece of literature.

It is a book made up of books.  It is a big story of God and the world.  It is made up of stories and poems that tell us about God.  It is also a series of smaller stories.   It is, like any other book you read, written within a genre and knowing the type of genre you are reading helps you know how you are supposed to read it; whether it is poetry, myths, parables, history, legends or a combination.  And like other literature you study you should know a little of the customs and culture of the time it was written.

“The truth of the matter is that the proper interpretation of any piece of literature, and in particular a text as ancient and important as the Bible, deserves our careful reflection.” — T. Longman.

Hermeneutics is just a technical name for interpretation or “how you read.”

There is a way to read the Bible for what it is not just for what we’d like it to say.  And as we learn to interpret the Bible — as literature, within a genre, written in a time and place, a culture, with a certain purpose, we are less likely to be “Biblical Literalists.”  Just because you find verses that supports your view doesn’t mean you’ve probed fully the biblical view.

How we read the Bible has become very divisive among Christians and has been a contributing factor in the “culture wars.”  Biblical literalists fear the “culture slide or culture creep” and tightly hold a grip on the Church and on their ideas; that a few texts yanked out of any context or culture, are prescriptive of how to “do church” for all time. This keeps churches from changing, in ways that may seem obvious to those of us (women and men) being raised with a different way of looking at Scriptures – raised to think, study and apply scripture for ourselves.

I do believe that the Bible guides us and has everything to say to us in the twenty-first century, it can and should guide us, it changes our ideas about our moral and intellectual life, it forms how we think and behave, how we treat others, and transforms us and shapes who we are becoming …

But …

It’s all about how you read and interpret the Bible. 

I think there may be many people in the Church today who were raised to be biblical literalists. I was.  I no longer believe this is correct in fact I know now that it is wrong.  But I don’t exactly know what I do think, yet.  That’s why I’m “developing my biblical hermeneutic.”

I’m learning that there are some that believe there are lots of parts of the bible that you cannot take literally, either as historical fact or direct will of God.

I agree with Tom Wright when he says that the authority of God is embodied in Jesus himself, not in the literal words of the Bible.  (Loosely quoted.)

Of course how you read and interpret is subject to the wisdom and biases of humans.

Everyone comes at the Bible with a “world view.” We are all guilty of cherry picking verses to be factual and literal truth or determining that something is cultural.   Everyone does it.

Take 1 Timothy for instance.

“Women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with hair braided, or with gold, pearl, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God.  Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became the transgressor.  Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”

If you read it literally, women are not permitted to teach or have authority over men but also they are not to braid their hair or wear pearls or gold or expensive clothes.   Also women are responsible for the origin of sin in the world.  The “good news” is that we can be saved by bearing children.  If you interpret it literally these are God’s instructions/restrictions for behavior and roles of women.  Some churches choose to prohibit women’s leadership in churches because they use this verse to “prove” that God doesn’t approve.  But they happily ignore the rest of the verses as cultural.

That’s cherry-picking. 

But if you look as the Bible as being written by a person in a particular time and culture, if you know the historical cultural setting they were writing in then you see that this is how one man in the early Christian church saw things.

When you read it with context, looking at the contrast between this and other texts in the New Testament, if we recognize or listen to more than one voice speaking about the role of women we can seek to discern which voice to honor.  In the New Testament there are examples of women apostles and teachers, women financing the ministry, women sitting at Jesus’ feet learning from him with the other disciples, a woman being the first to speak to Jesus after his Resurrection.  These stories all empower of women in the early church.  You can see this if you don’t restrict your reading to Timothy’s set of verses, which are very restrictive.

Listen to more than one voice. 

Look for themes and overarching ideas.  I believe one must recognize more than just one voice in trying to figure out anything in the Bible.  And it takes discernment and wisdom and doing your homework in trying to figure out which voices to honor.  I look at how Jesus treated women when it comes to this topic.  I do not look at the verses about early church as prescriptive of how we should run our churches today.  But that’s just me.   But as you can see, a lot is at stake in how we read and understand the Bible.

Everyone wants to read the bible for today – for guidance and wisdom for today’s problems, for today’s trials, for this moment.  The problem inherent in that is that without doing the hard work of asking the questions of the context and placement in history, we endanger our ability to hear God.   I am greatly encouraged with the knowledge that there are essential ideas from God that are clear and reinforced many places in scripture.  Those broad strokes from God are the things that guide us — point us to God and deepen our relationship with the trinity.

Those are my thoughts offered humbly because like I said, I am no expert and I am likely much too opinionated.

On the topic of unlearning and learning How to Read the Bible Again:

  1. The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight.  He’s a professor at North Park Seminary.  He also has a blog Jesus Creed which is for me critical reading.
  2. Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today by NT Wright.

And to add to my list of commentary suggestions (from why I’m Afraid to Read the Bible):

  1. New Testament Commentary for Everyone, by Tom Wright.  They could be in the “For dummies”series.  But not really, for everyone is a nicer way to put it.  These are really good.  They go through books of the bible and explain the background and what it’s saying.  I really like them.  Straightforward, not dumbing it down too much, just enough to make easy.  Not everyone has time to do a lot of study.  These are really informative and interesting.  And short.

Melody

Developing a Habit of Abundance

I am sometimes wrecked by my unbelief.  “Lord I believe.  Help my unbelief.” scripture says Mark 9:24.  I am coming to see.

Must I always put on habits?  It seems that I must choose daily, sometimes moment to moment.  I have to wear my belief like an new sweater or twist the rubber band on my wrist  to remind myself of what I want, what I know, what I need.  I am so full of need, so empty.

Like the havoc of the wind, I am wrecked by my unbelief.  The slang definition of the word wrecked is to be drunk or intoxicated.  I have always gotten high on all the wrong things – shopping, my own panic, books and other “things”, easily addicted even to the lack in my core, in my soul.  I am even hooked on my own sadness. In this I know what I need.  As I come to depend on all these highs that I choose for myself – my inner core isn’t worthy of my own trust.

Have I always been a vessel in ruin?  Shipwrecked.  Does that mean that I cannot be trusted?  That is what some believe and say that 1 Peter 3:7 means : that women cannot trust themselves. That man cannot trust woman who are the weaker vessel. What does that mean?  Others say that “Both Peter and Paul wrote about mutual, reciprocal submission in Christian relationships.”  If I believe I cannot be trusted, I’ll never learn to trust myself.  I’ll never trust anyone.  Can I then learn to trust God?

Growing up in the narcissistic family that I did, it is no wonder I do not trust myself.  Everyone in my family fluttered around one person, my father.  We existed to ensure his happiness and help him succeed at all costs.  The costs were many.  The price was high.   All my life I was told what to do by him.  I learned to always seek my father’s approval.  He was my universe.  What do you become when your “god” is cruel, selfish and destructive?  You cower.  You play the supporting role.  Never learn how to live your own.  Did he really become my god?  I don’t believe that is what he really wanted.  How did it happen?

I’ve been physically “free” of my father for eight years.  I am only learning how to breathe on my own.  Jesus is reshaping my view of the world and myself.  I am starting to see that I may be wrecked, like a ship cast to pieces against the shore and torn to pieces, but I did not create the storm.  And I am slowly being healed by the Jesus who healed, he healed women as much as men.  He empowers me.  He trusts me.  He is teaching me.

I have been fighting him, Jesus, and God, the Father.  As I fight, I am wounded like Jacob who wrestled with God and I am afraid.

I am afraid of my life.  I have been fighting and demanding.

I read and wonder if it is true:

“The Lord has to break us down at the strongest place of ourselves before he can have his own way of blessing with us. “ (James H. McConkey, Life Talks)

As I have healed, I have slowly demanded a purpose for myself, a big dream, a significant place to contribute, and God has been quiet.  At least it seems to be so.

“This is the work (service) that God asks of you: that you believe in the one whom he has sent. ”  That means cling to Jesus, trust Jesus, rely on Jesus, and have faith in Jesus.

“God created the world out of nothing.  As long as we are nothing, He can make something out of us.” [Martin Luther]

Really?

I cannot lose this ever present need and instead of making me feel strong, it shames me.  I feel my lack of belief, my frequent anger and pain, absence of joy or gratitude; I feel powerfully this emaciated, hollow life.  Is this what I am known for?  I pray not.  I pray that I can surrender, even now.  Even today give up every part of me, the resilient and the faint fragments , to him.

I tell myself I do not fear my own flaws.  But I fear that it will be used against me to prove that women are weak.   I fear my own power too.

Jesus says, “Lay it all down.”   Let it all go again.  As I am developing the habit of abundance, I doubt that have never responded like Mary did.  “Let this happen,” she said, when told that she would mother the king of kings (Luke 1:38)

Whatever it is, “this life” for I do not know what it is yet.  For I cannot even imagine.   I am learning to respond.

Let this happen.

Melody

P.S. I am inspired by reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts.

Why I am Afraid to Read the (entire) Bible

Here’s the honest and mortifying truth.

I have never read the entire Bible, whole.  I have studied various books at length, sometimes on my own but more often with a group of others.  But I have never opened the whole of the great book of God’s WORD, Old and New Testaments, and soaked it in as a grand story.  Of course, any “sheep” knows, don’t they, that the Bible wasn’t written to us but for us.  The Bible is not a handbook of do’s and don’ts, but rather a beautiful story which we can carefully apply to our lives.  And if we fear what it says, if we are unwilling to challenge and question it, we deserve to be ignorant fools (like I have been.)

I have never put my full attention, put my full brain, toward the Bible.  I have been afraid of reading the entire thing and these are my reasons.

I am afraid of my own ignorance.  I don’t know what I don’t know.  If I don’t know then I can continue stumbling in the darkness.  At least it is a familiar place, my ignorance.  Sounds dumb when you actually write it down.  But how many of us do this in the Church?  Far too many.

I am afraid of what the Bible actually says.  For too long I have simply listened to others and accepted what the “experts” say about spiritual things without really challenging any of it.

I am a frequently boiling pot, kept simmering by the cool head of Tom, my husband.1 He often keeps me from boiling over.  It seems that he will be doing this a lot as we began reading the entire Bible in one year – a challenge from our church they are calling: Eat This Book.

So I would add another point to my list of reasons that I have never the read the Bible in its entirety.

I am afraid of how I will respond to the Bible as a woman.  We all have a worldviews and as such, we read the Bible differently. I respond as a woman.  How can I not?  And that is different from my pastors (both male) and my husband, and most of the commentary I am reading.  As a woman I have different questions.  I am afraid of what  to do with those.  How do I sort out how much of my response needs to be talked about, questioned, and challenged?

On the other hand there is a lot that excites me about finally reading the entire Bible.

I look forward to diving in.  Already Genesis has perplexed me, made me extremely angry, and left me with more questions than answers when I look at it story by story.  I want to be able to see the big picture — to soar over the parts that jump out to me as problematic and see God and hear God, asking him what he wants me to focus on.   I look forward to how this Grand Story changes my life. 

Just last week, my pastor was preaching on Gen 1-3.  He was explaining a very important idea about how we look at scripture overall, which I mentioned already, that the Bible is not written to us but for us and that much of it is metaphor and poetry.

But then he highlighted the verses about man and woman becoming one.  Now I’ll acknowledge that it is beautiful, the whole picture of marriage.  But I actually thought it would have been more important (coming from my worldview, as a woman) or at least more valuable to women, if he had taught about how we are both, male and female created in God’s image.  To emphasize and thus explain what the Hebrew word ezer  (helper) actually means. These verses being misunderstood have diminished and hurt women.  He thought the other verses were more important.  We disagreed nicely by email.

I have to admit that how we interacted mattered a great deal to me and I’m learning that this is more important to me than me being right.   I shared my thoughts with him and he heard me.  I felt heard.  And this is a form of giving someone respect.

And so I would add another point to my list of reasons why I haven’t read the Bible it it’s entirely.

I am afraid of the disagreements among Christians.  I hate the way that Christians wrangle with one another over the baggage that goes into “being theological.”  Are you on the Left or are you on the Right?  Are you conservative or liberal?  Are you a feminist?  Egalitarian or a Complementaran?  A new Creationist or …. ?  I don’t even know all the camps of disagreement and I don’t want to.

I just want to read the Bible and get a little help along the way.

If you haven’t  yet, I’d encourage you to read The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight, which will help you rethink how you read the Bible.  Other resources I am finding helpful are the NIV Compact Bible Commentary and the Women’s Bible Commentary.  

The important truth is that I cannot allow my fear of my own ignorance, my fear of this faith tradition that I have followed my whole life, or my fear of disagreement keep me from the next step in my faith journey.

Being that I can be hot-headed, I just might say or do something stupid along the way.  And I would hate that but I cannot allow it to keep me silent.

A friend said to me  this week:  “I am praying that Jesus would guide you as you study His word.   May we always be in search for bringing glory to Him!”  Amen!  I suspect that I will be sharing more of this as I go along.

I wonder, have you read the entire Bible and if not, ask yourself what are you afraid of?    If we seek to follow Christ we are to live in the Bible today and every day.   The question is how?  Let us join together in our KNOWLEDGE not our ignorance.  Let us be SEEKERS together.  

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Christians were known for their knowledge, agreeableness and love?

“Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant me so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that I may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reign with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen”  But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

Jesus, according to John 16:13

Melody

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1 Tom and I have an egalitarian or mutually submissive marriage. And I was challenged by Rachel Held Evans (she does this a lot) this week .  She asked the question of whether more people need to talk about the ways of egalitarian marriages, to give others an idea of what it’s like.  I never talk about mine.  It’s precious to me and I’d not want to ugly it by my bumbling attempts to describe it.  But I’ll be thinking about that and try to weave things into my blog as appropriate.

2 Blackhawk’s pastors have given us a challenge.  “By reading the Bible every day, our hope is that we’ll become a people who are shaped by the Scriptures – people who are marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”  And they are taking it a step further by providing mini videos and teaching tools.  It’s quite good.   I am grateful to attend a church that doesn’t spoon feed, that helps the “sheep” figure some of these things out for ourselves, but also provide solid ways to learn.

The things to look for in reading Genesis are:

  1. The main plotline in the book: God’s desire to bless humanity consistently meets human stubbornness and sin, keeping a record of the words for “bless, blessing” as you read: God wants to pass on a blessing, but humans constantly thwart that blessing.
  2. Genesis 12, 15, 17 and the covenant with Abraham are the key to understanding the entire Bible: God is going to rescue the world from sin and corruption and restore blessing through his promises to Abraham.  The rest of the biblical story will focus on God’s relationship with Israel, because these are the people who bear the promise for the whole world.  Keep track of how the promises to Abraham keep getting repeated and passed on to the next generation and God works out his plan.
  3. Find your story in the characters: All of the characters in Genesis struggle with God, and we are meant to find our story in theirs: the characters wrestle with their own sin and failure, doubt and faith, selfishness and generosity as they try to follow God.  Use each character’s experience (for example, Adam and Eve’s temptation, Abraham’s struggle with doubt, Jacob’s journey from selfishness to trust in God) to find parallels with your own journey with God.
  4. God’s faithfulness: notice how many times God rescues people, or stays committed to blessing humanity. Allow Genesis to reshape your ideas of what it means for God to be faithful to you.

 

3 “Helper”- ezer.  Gen 2:18   According to R. David Freedman, the Hebrew word used to describe woman’s help (ezer) arises from two Hebrew roots that mean “to rescue, to save,” and “to be strong” (Archaeology Review (9 [1983]: 56–58). Ezer is found twenty-one times in the Old Testament. Of these references, fourteen are used for God and four for military rescue. Psalm 121:1–2 is an example of ezer used for God’s rescue of Israel: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”


he wipes my spilling tears [a poem]

Trying to write my story

is sometimes like cutting back flesh, recently pink and scarred

to find the plain cold truth.

I want to heal and so I wonder if this is wise.  This rending,

backward into ancient despair

to find the open rot inside.  It is a kind of hell.

But I go there.

I climb into that putrid place with

the fresh hope of Jesus.

Tonight, he wiped my spilling tears,

crawled around inside my wounds, and

held my thumping, aching heart

while it was tender and sore.

He took that pain.  Jesus was here

inside my story, so full

of sorrow and regret.

Foul, bitter, wretched I know that

I still am.  Quietly, he’s saying

let me rewrite the end.

What I will “Keep in my Pocket” this year?

Write thy blessed name, o Lord, upon my heart, there to remain so indelibly engraved, that no prosperity, no adversity shall ever move me from thy love.  Be thou to me a strong tower of defense, a comforter in tribulation, a deliverer in distress, a very present help and a guide to heaven through the many temptations and dangers of this life.

— Thomas a Kempis


What will I “keep in my pocket” this year?

Reflecting on the past year, I discovered some patterns – some good, some not so much.  I have had to face that I am can be a negative, scattered, and discontented person. (Ouch.) This is no surprise to those who truly know me. I’m a pessimist. A Cynic. An agnostic by nature?

I prefer the term realist because I know that on one level I will never forget. I believe I will always be a person that sees injustice and screams, an advocate against bigotry and discrimination.  And I will always speak and work for a more just world. And yes, sadly I can be a whiner, pessimistic and well, I’ll go ahead and name it:  I can be a downer!

Many times this year I have been so caught in my own brokenness — to a degree that I could no longer make out God’s voice in the cacophony of my injuries and the world’s throbbing sorrows.  And tragically then one ceases being useful.

And God is speaking.  He never ceases to speak. 

And it is intoxicating and magnificent.  Humankind cannot even imagine the kingdom of God here on earth, the way he wants it.  Even this year, God as has been healing me, I cannot conjure up what he intends. Most days I struggle just to believe. Amid his miraculous work, I only limit God by fixating on all my limitations.

And I know that others, perhaps you, certainly members of my own family, have difficulty trusting me, when I am so frequently scattered and shattered; when I don’t even trust myself.

I want to learn to trust in God, more.  And I want to become trustworthy.  

For 2012, I will focus on Abundance.  (as well as: Peace. Cease. Create.)

I believe this will come through discipline…

The discipline of giving thanks, of daily prayer and learning the WORD of God for myself.

I long for Peace.  I believe this will come in focusing on these things.

Being mindful. Being strong. Being a healer. Being trustworthy. Being healthy.

Some things need to Cease.

Less weight (as in actual poundage).

Less stuff.

Less (focus on my) pain.

I was made to Create. I will do that through being purposeful …

Words. Images. Life.

How did I get this list?

I was helped in thinking this through, by something a friend wrote when I asked about the process of finding three words, with intentionality, for the coming year. It took some time for me to sort this out for myself.

She said:

“the month of dec i spend a lot of time reflecting on the year passing by. it ends up beckoning the hopes for the coming year. i start making lists of words that feel representative of my intentions for the time coming. …  the words end up weaving in and out of the decisions i make, the way i take notice. they really impact the dailies. and since that is the marrow of our living- this daily bit- i love having them in my pocket. “

I love that.  “Having them in my pocket” whether it is literally or not, it’s a beautiful metaphor.

Really, what do any of us have but today—yes, this one day.  We are promised nothing more. We are given this one life and with it we can be scattered and flighty, erratic, untrustworthy, as I have been; or we can become intentional and resolute and positive, as I long to be.

How are you, as you head into 2012? What things will you keep in your pocket? How will you face today?

Turn the other Cheek? That just makes you a Chump.

Have you ever noticed that the Golden Rule comes with no promise at the end?  No words of hope — do this and you will get this.  Nothing. Do it because it’s the law. 

“Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you.”  (Matthew 7:12, NLT)  The ESV says “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” and the NASB says “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you.”

I think that stinks.  I have struggled with a situation where I believe I have the higher ground to stand on.  I have made good choices.  I have done well.  I have been the loving daughter, yes.  I have accepted.

And this Christmas — as always happens, when will I ever learn — I got slapped in the face by my mother again.  I don’t even know that the details or the reasons matter.  I think she is incapable of keeping her promises.  She is unable to do something based on what’s right.  For all my disputes with my father, I can say at least that he lived by his convictions.

I could make a list and this would be a long one, of the significant times in my life when I trusted her and she betrayed that trust.  I’m so tired.  I know that I am to forgive her but when will I learn?  If forgiveness means putting yourself out there to let it happen again, and again, then, well, that just makes you a chump.

But what if the person that hurts you with regularity is your own mother?  And what if that person is almost alone in the world?  Isolated (if by her own choice) and living for herself, impulsive with her generosity and love, unpredictable in her withdrawal?  What if …?

Lewis Smedes in his book The Art of Forgiveness, says:   “we filter the image of our villain through the gauze of wounded memories and in the process alter his reality.”

And yet, even she was made in God’s image and is loved by Him.  I don’t want vengeance, as Smedes suggests is the next step to forgiveness — surrendering our desire to get even.  I don’t want her to hurt.  She’s lived with enough pain.

She oozes her pain and fear of life.  I actually want my mother to be whole.  I long for, wish for in my deepest sad places for my mother that she would heal and be free.

And I’m just tired.

I want to surrender to the idea that she can no longer hurt me.  But every time I let her close she does just that.  And I’ve been searching mentally for days with my questions and I have been trying to figure out what to do.

“Forgiving is not meant for every pain people cause us.  Never has been, any more than Prozac was invented to cure the Monday morning blahs.  Forgiving is for the wounds that stab at our souls, for wrongs that we cannot put up with, ever, from anyone.  When we forgive people for things that do not need forgiving we dilute the power, spoil the beauty, and interrupt the healing of forgiveness. But when we forgive the things that forgiving is for we copy God’s own art.

God is the original, master forgiver.  Each time we grope our reluctant way through the minor miracle of forgiving, we are imitating his style.  I am not at all sure that any of us would have had the imagination enough to see the possibilities in this way to heal the wrongs of this life had he not done it first.”(Smedes)

When I first read these words I was angry, for I have an unreturned call to my mother and I have to figure out what I am going to do.  She asked to spend Christmas Eve with my family, she chose to come to church with us and celebrate with our brood.  And then she called and said she wasn’t coming though she only lives across town.  Ten minutes. “I could pick you up”, I said.  “No I don’t want to come.” was her reply.   I don’t know why.  Sure, I’ve speculated.  And as I have in the past, I could try to pick her brain to discover what small hint of truth is there that will appease the gaping hole in my soul, feeling her rejection physically.

This rending is old — My heart is shredded.

My heart weeps with pain that I don’t understand – the sense of being rejected my parents.  It is an ancient unhappiness, pain that feels older than me, going back a generation to my father and mother.  Neither of them felt loved by their parents.  Both experienced rejection, they tell stories of actual real rejection, which I never experienced.  Not really.  But for some reason I live it.  And every action they live out has become either proof of their rejection of me or proof of their acceptance.

She is set up to fail even before she does.  And she does.  Oh she does!

When she told me over the phone that she was moving with no processing, no reasons, no explanation just fact.  When she chose not to invite me to Mother’s day, with no reasons, or explanation.  “I don’t know why I didn’t invite you.”  “I don’t know why I didn’t process my moving with you.”  “I don’t know why I couldn’t come for Christmas with your family.”

“Forgiving isn’t meant for every pain people cause us.” (Smedes)

And then the moment of clarity comes.

What’s going on inside me is more about my frailty.  I can love without being loved in return, because it is the right thing to do.  And I can adjust my expectations, to none, so that I won’t be hurt so often.  And I can and must stop talking about my feelings of rejection so that my children can have some semblance of relationship with their grandmother.

Without the generations whispering fear and brokenness into their hearts.

That is my challenge.  That is the higher choice.  That is what it means to forgive as you were forgiven.  I don’t necessarily agree with every word Smedes says about forgiveness, or perhaps that too is simple semantics.

I have a phone call to return.  I expect to listen.  And offer simply my ear and perhaps a tiny piece of my heart.  I expect that I will be hurt again, but for today I will not turn away but turn toward my mother.

Offer her the other cheek and who knows, perhaps one day rather that a slap I will receive a kiss.

See there I go again, feeling hope. Thank you Jesus.  

If you love only those that love you, what reward is there in that?  If you are kind to only your friends how are you different than anyone else?  (Matthew 7)