Tag: Jesus

AN INEXPLICABLE THING: Depression

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

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

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

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

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

A friend says in an email:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He is with us and wants to fill us.

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

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Help me to Be

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– A hymn by William Matson

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

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

I then I understood Grace.

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

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

I want a deep, deep faith.

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

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

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

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

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

Lord, help me to Be.

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Just Make the Salsa: Living without Fear

A response to a Blackhawk’s Sermon.  A part of my Be Real Series.

April, 2007Do one thing every day that scares you!  — Eleanor Roosevelt

f.e.a.r.

The strangest things scare me. I was not afraid to become a mother. But almost every day I am afraid of being a mother who messes up her kids beyond repair.  I am not afraid of travelling the world and yet I am afraid to talk to my Indian neighbor and invite her for tea.  I am afraid to learn Russian or to play the piano again, but I do not fear writing this blog (mostly).  I know that I take beautiful unique photographs, but I am afraid of people paying me for my images.  Every shoot I do, I wrestle with the little demon on my shoulder that says that I should turn them down.  I have allowed my fear to make me stop taking pictures.

I allow my fear keep me from lovin’ on other people, many times, because I need others’ validation to tell me I’m okay. Oh how I hate it!  That is why it hit me so profoundly recently that I was squandering my skills as a photographer mainly because I was afraid. My struggle with low self-esteem and too easily needing the word of validation from others keeps me from living my life.  What is this about?

This is about not getting my identity from Christ.

So for me a sermon on the idol of image — this was profound.  I want other people to validate me and not just that, but the people who I decide are important.

When you continuously seek this validation from others you can never stop.  It is never enough.  I believe that was one of the things my father was plagued by and perhaps what fueled his anger — the constant need to do more because he wasn’t good enough. Thankfully the “do more” piece has been worked out of my life through my depression experience when I quit work to be at-home, but the “I’m Not Okay” hole is huge and intense.  And kind of embarrassing to admit.

Of all the crazy, mixed up ideas!  If I actually found my full identity in Jesus there would be nothing to prove!

That would be a life without f.e.a.r.

I have a friend that makes amazing salsa with fresh ingredients chopped just right, in a way that people love.  And they buy jars and jars of her salsa.  So she keeps making it.  I don’t think she would say she’s an entrepreneur.  She’s a very humble person.  She just saw an opportunity in front of her and went for it.  She didn’t have fear holding her back.  I would have had a thousand “what ifs” keeping me from doing it.  I know, because I’ve had a similar idea to sell Mel’s Soups and Pies out of my home kitchen, but I am too afraid of failing.

Just Make the Salsa!

I want to be willing to just “make the salsa!”  Life doesn’t have to be a place where we fear failure all the time, where we worry about what others will think of our actions, where we are constantly protecting the “image” of what others perceive of us.

This fractured, broken life is not the way that God intended it be.  If I can learn to be a reflection of Jesus in my life, then I can lose my f.e.a.r.

Oh God, please help me to receive my validation from you.  Help me to know that your approval is all I really need.  I am your child.  I am loved dearly — beloved.  The rest of it, success or affirmation of others, acclamation is just extra. Help me to rest in you, the source of everything I am, or ever will be.

9 t Do not lie to one another, seeing that u you have put off vthe old self 4 with its practices 10 and w have put on x the new self, y which is being renewed in knowledge z after the image of a its creator. 11 b Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, 5 free; but Christ is c all, and in all.

12 d Put on then, as f compassionate hearts, g kindness, h humility, meekness, and patience, 13 h bearing with one another and, i if one has a complaint against another, g forgiving each other; g as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on j love, which k binds everything together in l perfect harmony. 15 And let m the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called n in one body. And o be thankful. 16 Let p the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, q singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, r with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And s whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, t giving thanks to God the Father through him. —  Colossians 3:9-14

Imagine living without f.e.a.r.


Three Simple Words

I am broken.  I’ll be quick to admit that about myself. It is no use trying to hide it.  And that is in some part what my blog is about — hoping that I can help someone else.

Most of my adult life has been spent sorting out my broken heart while trying not to let everything fall to pieces.

Eighteen years we’ve been married — I am his second wife.  They’ve been beautiful, and hard, and just yesterday he held my hand, rubbing it tenderly.  And said, “I want you.”  Even so — sitting in the car today with my fingers drumming on the steering wheel, while I wait for the red light to change, — as she says those three simple words my heart hurts.  And my head is spinning.  I knew it!

“Grandma misses Mary.”

His mom.  His ex-wife.  My daughter, innocently trying to sort out who loves whom.  “Do you like Mary, Mom?”

I am quiet.

“Are you mad?”

“Thoughtful.” I say after carefully considering my words, “No, not mad.”  Because I am more than that simply mad, or even shocked — It is so complicated.  My daughter has no idea.  She says, “I always thought I wasn’t supposed to like Mary.”  And, “Molly did too.”  And then I am angry.  Enraged at what feels so unfair. — I tried so hard to be a “good” step-mom.

And I wasn’t.  Good at it – being a step- an other.  I was petty. And fearful. And controlling.  Today, I know how lucky we are, that my step-daughter, Molly, loves me anyway.

But there is nothing step- about her.  She is all mine.  My child.  And yet she is Mary’s child too.

Now Molly is an adult, and these scary and awkward moments that used to invade life with such regularity rarely come up.

Loyalties and love — who’s supposed to love whom — I just try not to think about it.  But, there it was.  The words spoken.  What I knew.  I just knew my mother-in-law still loved Mary.  And misses her.

And why does that hurt so badly? Should it? No.

I felt the air sucked out of my lungs. My heart ached, physically.  I was once again afraid of what it all means.  I know that I am so poor at loving others.  I don’t know what they need.  I fear rejection and fear others’ apathy toward me.  And so, I become apathetic.  I pretend there are no feelings.

I don’t call my husband’s parents.  I don’t initiate in any way.

I don’t even know how to love my own mother and sisters, and mostly do that all wrong; much less know how to love my husband’s parents, since after all I am their second daughter-in-law.  I know they still love her.

I don’t know how to love them, except perhaps to love him.  And love their grandchildren.  Even that — I fear — I know, I don’t do very well.

I am broken.  And yet, still — I — know — I am loved.  Religious people questioned why Jesus would hang out with the people that he did and he said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”

Jesus, I need you.  I am sick.  Help me to love everyone in my life, just as you love me.

Being Broken by Addiction

My dog Comet is being groomed for the first time today and as I was dropping him off I glanced over at the magazines. I was drawn like a bee to pollen by the cover of  Brava Magazine.  It had an article about the secret addictions of women in Wisconsin, aptly titled The Silent Treatment.

While I am not quiet about my alcoholism here on my blog and person to person I will freely tell you my story, I have never talked about it publicly — as I think that I am ashamed. 

No-one talks about addiction in my circles. And here is what I imagine others are thinking.  Perhaps they perceive that addiction is simply a weakness or a character flaw.  And in some Christian circles a place where you haven’t allowed God victory or healing or aren’t trusting.   How in the world did she “allow herself” to get addicted?  What a mess she must be.  Addicts are just bad people trying to be good.

That’s all bullshit. (Forgive me, but it is.)

And in my clearer moments I remind myself that I am broken like every other person in the world.  We all have some “thing” or more than one, that we have trouble overcoming. Most people’s “thing” can be a secret–food addiction, money problems, compulsive shopping, secret cutting, or pornography.   I won’t pretend to know what your “thing” is.

This article talked about how so many women in Wisconsin have a problem with alcohol addiction.   More importantly, that addiction to alcohol is in some part NOT a “thing” to struggle with, but an illness to work against.  I can tell you gratefully that I am “in remission.”

“[There is a] stigma that surrounds substance abuse in a culture that loves the sound of clinking glasses.” (Brava)

One of my favorite people is Henri Nouwen. 

I would have loved to have known him and even been his friend, as we share a common lifelong struggle with melancholy and depression and need for affirmation and community.  He wrote this:

Jesus was broken on the cross.  He lived his suffering and death not as an evil to avoid at all costs, but as a mission to embrace.   We too are broken.  We live with  broken bodies, broken hearts, broken minds or broken spirits.  We suffer from broken relationships.  How can we live our brokenness?  Jesus invites us to embrace our brokenness as he embraced the cross and live it as part of our mission.  He asks us not to reject our brokenness as a curse from God that reminds us of our sinfulness but to accept it and put it under God’s blessing for our purification and sanctification.  Thus our brokenness can become a gateway to new life.

Few understand that addiction is an illness like cancer.

There is a perception that somehow addicts cause their illness.  It is both an illness and an opportunity for self-control and inner strengthening.  As we grow in our understanding of our broken hearts and lives, we can become stronger.  How can we embrace our brokenness of addiction when the Church and (some) Christians make one feel as if you are cursed with a mental illness or lack self-control.

Yes, my alcoholism reminds me (almost daily) that I am a broken person.  The days and weeks when I try to avoid thinking about it, and (almost) pretend that I’ve got it all together, those are the times when I feel the farthest away from who I really am. I become lost in the idea of wellness that denies that I am and will be until the day I die an alcoholic in remission.

For whatever reason, I am an addict.

My deeply thoughtful thirteen year old daughter asked me recently why I can’t just drink socially?  We had been to party where there was a lot of drinking and I was having a hard time having fun.  I have been completely honest with her about my addiction and so I value her questions.  I believe she needs to understand my alcoholism, because it is a family illness and because one in four children of alcoholics become one themselves.

So why can’t I now drink socially?  “There is something in my brain that switches off after the first drink,” I told her.  “After that point, I have no ability to stop.”  I learned from my D&A counselor that every time I drank, my brain sends the signal to have more.  The well-worn pathway in my brain needed more, each time, to have the same impact as the last time I drank. I’m three years sober July 17th, 2011 and if I had a drink to celebrate I would need the same amount of alcohol as my last drink — about two bottles of wine, if I remember correctly — to feel any high.

As a Christ follower, it is even more complicated.

Or perhaps more simple depending on how you look at it. My addiction humbles me daily.  Drives me to my knees.  I go to church in a bar and I laugh, joyfully with the irony!  I don’t mind the reminders of my addiction because then I am drawn to the truth that my life is so improved — clearer, better, more meaningful sober. 

But three years of sobriety brings me to a place of acknowledging that I am still full of pride.  I have not been willing to help others who struggle with this addiction.  I have not been willing to speak out locally.  I have hidden my secrets and tried to live in a drinking world as a secret alcoholic.

The article in Brava was a challenge to me.

No, I am not at risk to drink, because I have created enough awareness of those around me of my illness, that the accountability keeps me sober.

But why am I so silent, so secretly ashamed? More importantly what can I do to give back?  I want others to know that this is not a shameful secret in my life, it is a disease of addiction that has harmful effects on people, families and communities and that recovery is possible with support.  It is not only possible but it is transformational!

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No, Not Seven.

“… forgive, from your heart.” Matthew 18:35

So often, when I think of my parents, I know that I need to forgive.

Truth be told I am afraid, even though I know that letting go of the past is the only way to move forward.  But I fear the unknown of living looking forward—a life of trusting, giving, loving, even hoping.  You see, most of the residual anger, I think, is simply a sense of disbelief that a mother and father could do that.

To say that we lived in constant fear is an unfair exaggeration.  But we were scared all the time (of my Father.)  What did Mother do, you may wonder?  What is she doing now?  My mother detached. And continues to be isolated and aloof from me eight years after my Father’s death. And though she “loved us very much” she let him rage on, and on. And he still has the power, even in death.

She let him rage on and became a passive perpetrator of his crimes.  And to a child growing up in his home, my Father was highly irrational, often cruel, hopelessly aggressive, and in a constant state of potential irritation; to the point that when I was in my early twenties and head over heals in love I found myself saying of the boy in question: “Treat me well. Or treat me poorly. I don’t care. Just be consistent.”

It is far too easy to wander from the point which is my inability to forgive. 

Perhaps it is because I cannot fully embrace the forgiveness I have received–just when I think that I do get it. Do I fully appreciate the mercy and grace in my life — there is no way that I can say I do — with lack of forgiveness in my heart.

I face my lack daily. But even amidst the doubt, questions and distrust (of God and people) I must remember that I am forgiven and because of that I want to know Jesus more. Jesus says, forgive as you have been forgiven.

In the movie Helen of Troy, Agamemnon the commander of the Greeks killed his own daughter to appease the gods.  My step-daughter who is agnostic and I were discussing sacrificing your life for another. Abraham was asked to sacrifice his child. Jesus.  Questioningly, she said, “Doesn’t it take away from what Jesus did that he knew he would end up in heaven with God?”  How revealing that statement is.

Would you give up your life for another even if you knew it would end well?  Would you forgive?  In the parable of the unmerciful servant in Mt 18, Jesus challenges this very thing that I am understanding about myself–my inability to forgive and give up my “rights,” the power of my anger toward my parents and Jesus says, “No, not seven times, but seventy times seven…” (Matthew 18)

Henri Nouwen reminds us that Jesus’ primary concern was obedience to his Father, to live constantly in his presence.  “Only then did it become clear to him what his task was in his relationships with people.” 

It is clear to me.  I need to seek to forgive.  I may not know how, but I know that I must move toward it by seeking the presence of God.

And a life of

trust, love and even hope will come.


gratitude

Though I haven’t read her book One Thousand Gifts, I do read Ann Voskamp’s blog.   She so poignantly questions our incapacity to be amazed and grateful.

“Why do I spend so much time struggling to see it?  Do I need to see the world, visit the exquisite, before I face eternity? Or isn’t it here? Can’t I find it here? Isn’t it here? The wonder? Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it?”


I so relate to that sentiment.  For me it is a struggle to be positive and grateful; to see the wonder in my life here and now.  And so much that I have is wondrous!

Last week in a group we attend we were asked to express some things that we are grateful for and I was absolutely mute.

I felt so ashamed of myself, but I just couldn’t come up with anything.  I was stuck in a limbo.   I have many blessings and things to feel thankful for but

I
just
sat there.
I was

unable (or unwilling) to express them.  Unwilling to open my mouth.  It all seemed too risky somehow.

I felt a fragile sense that if I opened up my mouth I have no idea what might happen.  What if it wasn’t words of gratitude that came out?

I don’t know about you but sometimes I am just stuck in my head — too heart and head heavy
to let go and allow myself the space —

to b r e a t h e.  Deeply.  (Do it right now.  In and out.  It feels incredible.)

Why is it so difficult to allow my pulse to slow down and feel

(even just a little)

grateful.

“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches you by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly – not one.”  — Rumi

Don’t you think that is true?  From hatred to love.  From dissatisfaction to peace.  From fear or anxiety to hope and trust.

I want to fly!   Some days, I do.

b r e a t h e.  Deeply.  (Do it right now.  In and out.  It feels incredible.)

I Dare you.

Osama bin Laden is dead; New York celebrates a...
Image by Dan Nguyen @ New York City via Flickr

Why not love if you have the option between that and hate?  Why does hate come so easily?  Why judge? Or condemn?  Why is it that Christians so often are known for how they judge others?

Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers.

But we don’t bring peace.  We rejoice in someone’s suffering.  Bin Laden is dead!

We wish for more for us which means less for them, who ever they are.

We can only think of our own needs.  We groan about the price of gas and our grocery bill, when others have to take public transport and go to bed hungry.  Often living with fear and financial insecurity.  Have no home.  Have nothing.

Why can’t we love more tenderly?  I dare you.  I dare you to love today.  Be a peacemaker. Hold your tongue.

The world is waiting for us to love, in Jesus’ name.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.  In fact, violence merely increases hate….Returning violence for violence multiples violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

Just love.

Why not?

I dare you.

Melt Down

I am my secrets.  They make me human.  And yet, if I don’t trust you enough to share them, I will die of my shame.  I need you to know my despair.

I need to tell you that today my heart is aching. I need you to believe that my masks are not all lies.  You do know me, because I always tell you the truth.  About my despondence — my anguish that comes too easily.  I need to tell you about the internal corruption that sits with me night and day mocking me.  And that I sit with my secrets wondering where are the friends to reassure me that everything will be okay?

Where is God to say that his Truth is all that I need?

Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me.  I am choking on it right now.  I thought for a minute I kicked this habit of despair.

I don’t doubt the fact of knowing you God.  I am certain that you are there. Knowing you love even me.  The tears I cannot cry, you wipe away.  No misunderstanding there.  But what I have come to understand is that some days — it makes no difference at all.  I hurt anyway.  Your song, God, offers no comfort today.  The music at times so poignant.  Nothing about that seems to matter, when I know you don’t care what I do with my life.  Universal truths don’t matter, today, as I sit here thinking about what I now know.   What I think I want.  Sitting here smothered by the heavy weight of my self doubt.  Begging you to help me understand what is happening .

Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me.  I am choking on it right now. I thought I kicked this habit of despair.

Why do I have to feel my life is so important?  Why can’t I surrender to simply living each day. Loving. Others. Quietly.  Unknown to the world.  Anonymous. Why can’t I just do it.  Instead I sit here under the black cloud of the sinkhole and my need stares back at me in the mirror.

I. want. to. be. s.o.m.e.b.o.d.y.  I want to be important.  I know what I can do.  I know my own potential.

But that is what I thought you took from me — God — in my Exodus years.  I know you took my heartache and salvaged my soul.  Gave me forgiveness and in the sojourn to hell and back you promised to take this hideous ingratitude, ambition and greed.  The need for accolades and esteem.  That part of me that I loathe, that wants so badly to earn my worth.  That thinks I can prove something, anything.  Those ghosts of ambition crowd out all that you have taught me through my affliction.  Face it.

I want to be immortal.  I always want more than you.

It should be enough that you love me.   The knowledge that somehow you are rebuilding the frame of this crooked broken heart, that aches and thinks it is something, anything without you.  My secrets remain.  The fact that some days I don’t want to serve you.  I want to be my own deliverance.  I want to be God.  As if I could.

Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me.  I am choking on it right now.

This is me melting down.

Open Window [a poem]

These are the days I walk with leaden feet.
I am heavy with the memory of you.
And I wonder.  Am I free?
These were your last days in April.
For me, each feels more than twenty-four hours long.
In the cold nights of April I lay awake remembering
losing you.
I hear the car wheels spin and splash in the icy rain.
I am over thinking the past, again.
And again, heavily blanketed by my disgust
and a sadness I cannot explain.
A sadness I do not understand.
We knew you were dying, though you would not acknowledge it.
Your thoughts once sharp, were flat and strange to me.
Your words once so clear and resolute were fading from us.
Your eyes became vacant, as your smile was fleeting and confused.
I knew we were losing you.
We lost you long before the rainy nights of April came. 
But you wouldn’t let us say goodbye.
I woke on Easter morning feeling the weight of memory and the sounds of the night.
I lay as still as I could, not wanting the day to come.
I sensed the rain was gone.
I heard the bird’s joyous song.  The sun appears.
As I lay there thinking, I knew suddenly with the morning
that freedom comes in looking back and then,
in looking forward out the open window.
Freedom comes.
Yes, I am free
as I allow hope and expectation into my heart.
Freedom is found in the cool morning breeze
of resurrection.

———————

We are Half the Church

Weyden, Rogier van der - Descent from the Cros...
Image via Wikipedia

Cartoons are blaring.  My son is home sick with a high fever and sore throat. (Strep likely.  We’ll know later today.)

I sit perched on the edge of my chair here in front of the computer, because my cat Jaz is comfortably lounging on 2/3rd of the seat and today I don’t have the heart to push her off.  She was here first.

I keep trying to gather my thoughts.  I hear myself sigh deeply and knowing that I haven’t gotten up early all week for my usual alone time with the Word, and God, the lack is weighing heavily.

I know that what I really need in this moment is — time — alone —  to — think.  Time for contemplation.

Not time on Facebook or time while I do last night’s dishes, or throw another load in the dryer and washer, or pick up the endless toys, socks, books and dog toys for the millionth time.  Not time driving my son to the doctor.  Not time like that. 

Quiet — undivided — time.

How often do we really find this kind of time? I cannot underscore how important solitary, thinking time is for me.  It helps me be less impulsive.  It centers me.  It makes the anxiety, and anger, and disappointments of life fade away and my priorities sift and sort themselves.  And when I read on FB about all the things that are “on your mind” I am more circumspect, which is good.

Considering all this — I think I should not write this post. But I don’t always listen to myself.

This is something I have thought about all week.  When it all first occurred I definitely tried to ignore it.  I kept thinking how obsessive I was clearly being.  I kept telling myself I was ridiculous.  Absurd.  Unreasonable.  Perhaps even obsessive, fanatic or narrow-minded.  Plum crazy, as my southern grandpa used to say.  I tried to ignore it.

Finally it hit me that this not going away.  So even if I’m deemed crazy, this is what happened.

My observation: I did not see one woman involved in leading worship or on the platform in any capacity on Sunday. I’ve been thinking about the lack of presence of women in my church.  And in the Church.  On Sunday, we were simply spectators.  On lookers.  Witnesses.  Receivers.  Beneficiaries.

  • Furthermore, I cannot remember the last time one of the teaching pastors suggested a book they were reading written by a woman.
  • They never quote women or talk about female scholars, probably because they never read female scholars.
  • To be honest I can’t remember the last time, if ever, a pastor has suggested or referred to even in passing, or quoted a female theologian, religious author, or historian.

On Sunday, because I my senses were heightened, I even noticed that all the artists highlighted were male, who painted illustration of Jesus on the Cross.  If it were only Michelangelo (he’s a genius) mentioned, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.  But he (my pastor) put four or five paintings up on the screen all painted by men.  (I know, I know, that’s picky right!?)  Of course I don’t know enough about art history to know whether there were any female artists who have illustrated Christ on the Cross.  I suppose it would take an art historian to find them, because a quick google search by me of Michelangelo’s time was unproductive.  So I’m not suggesting that he (my pastor) should have been able to find them.  And even if women were painting, they would not be well-known or easy to find.    But search for more modern artists perhaps?  I’m just saying, we are half the church.  That one point is less important, but the entire thing just made me very SAD.  And tired.

' The Dead Christ Mourned - the Three Maries'
Artist: Annibale Carracci Date: 1603

I am tired of not seeing or hearing from women. Tired of the male dominated culture on the platforms and in the Church at large.

Considering women are half the church I can’t even buy into the argument that there aren’t any to select from, because I’ve been told that very thing.  “The women haven’t risen up who have “the gift” of teaching.”)  I say, risen up? Not surprising to me in a church with few examples and where there are (still only) male Elders.  And where it is clear that this isn’t changing any — time — soon.   Besides, it is the rare person who is naturally comfortable with upfront or worship leadership.  Many people, male or female but especially female, won’t put themselves forward out of self-doubt, or humility or a combination.   I think it is even more likely that there are gifted, wise articulate women who may not be comfortable yet, but have natural instincts and can to be taught, mentored.  Who knows?. Will we ever know, if they are not given the opportunity?

To rarely see or hear a woman’s voice in authority or otherwise hurts me and my faith and my journey with Christ.  Christ accepts women.  He took risks for women.  He listened to women.  He was the most radical figure of reconciliation and grace in the lives of women!  IF only the church modelled their behavior after Jesus.

My experience this Sunday diminished my ability to receive fully from the worship experience.   That said it was still was an incredible time.  And God continues to speak to me.  Perhaps God was saying to me exactly what I heard.  I have to confess that I do not want my (feminist*) radar to always go off at church.  It is distracting and painful.  And I have considered asking God to take it away, shut it up, or get me out of there …  But I don’t think he would and I do think that I am in the exact right place for now.  As long as I can openly “think” here and have a few people in my life that I can express the pain and rancor to, I’ll survive.

For now,

Mel

Feminism to me is the crazy belief that men and woman are both human

and deserve the same life, freedom and opportunities

inside and outside the Church.

Under Construction

I’m slightly impulsive sometimes.  Although I have been thinking about a new look around here @ logic and imagination and for months I have fiddled with it in my mind it was not until today had the balls to push the button and SWITCH!  I just did it and then I couldn’t switch it back even if I wanted to, so I hope you’ll forgive me while I figure out the ins and outs of this new look and format.   I can’t go back.  The old look is gone f o r e v e r.

I don’t have time to say more but look forward to change.  Already I love the white, more optimistic background.  Pictures pop.  But I will have to change the picture in the header to something of my own (of course!).

Gotta run.  But in the meantime you have to read this.

Sloth

During Lent, we will meditate together on the Seven Deadly Sins and use this list as an aid in confession as we prepare ourselves for Holy Week, Good Friday and the Easter announcement of resurrection.

Sloth is not restfulness. Sloth is escapism of the deadly sort. Sloth saps our time and emotions through a favorite sports team, a new set of shoes, or obsession over our appearance—while leaving scant energy for our marriage or kids or duties. Nothing is so clearly modern, so clearly western as is sloth. Despite our fast-moving, success-worshiping, ulcer-ridden society, we invest our energies and talents most often in what is trivial. Despite our frantic pace, our eyes are seldom focused on what is actually “good.”

At its core, sloth moves us away from everything that ultimately matters and directs us toward simple distractions, for sloth is not laziness. Sloth is indifference—indifference toward my soul, my neighbors, my world, or my God. Drug users, Netflix addicts, and excessive video gamers may be poisoned by sloth, but so are most workaholics. In fact, sloth is best expressed not by a sluggish attitude but in zeal over petty matters. Sloth, in fact, is a sorrow about goodness. It finds those things that we were made to enjoy and pursue to be useless and boring.

To those of us who struggle with sloth Jesus said, “Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for all things put right.”

(Excerpt from Seven: the Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook)