Turning the light ON (a different kind of list)

One of the good things about writing is you can look back at your life and see the struggle, the pain, the craziness, the good stuff, the joy & take it in from an observers perspective.  From that perspective, life seems less an overwhelming set of tasks and more something that you should never give up on.

As the new years resolutions roll in (I always have at least a few, if not a hundred) it is hard not to remember the things that fall into the "yet to accomplish" category (other wise known as previous years list FAIL).  Looking at these past lists can feel like a huge kick to the face, the guilt smites & guilt is in no way a productive thing... in fact it is just the thing that will keep you from accomplishing your goals. 

I kind of think this universal (time) restart of the new year is a beautiful thing in this regard.  Think of the Jewish restart of Jubilee... after a 7 year cycle, all things start again... all accounts closed, it is the bigger picture sabbath we all need.  Time to recount the year, settle up, forgive and move forward.  Time to begin again, and turn that internal light up to it's highest setting. 

So with the goal of hitting a reset button on your life, the list that seems most urgent to me is a list of things to forgive myself for.  A list of all the things I have not done to care for me... a list that lets go of that guilt and shame and banishes it from the new year and any new work I have in mind.  

In one of my favorite books The Healing Light by Agnes Sanford the author talks about our body and spirit being like a lamp filled with Electricity. And in this book she says “As we practice the work of forgiveness we discover more and more that forgiveness and healing are one.” 

If we can liken our bodies to a lamp and our spirit as the electric current that flows thru it, then I guess guilt and shame are the things that block the current and keep our light out or dim.  And healing via forgiveness is the things that clears that block to our spirit allowing our light to shine. 

If this is the key then let me start this new year off with setting as much of it as I can aside.  It has, after all, already been forgiven... I mean, do I believe I am redeemed. ???!!   I can set to work on beautiful goals for the new year, for healing and forgiving others, caring for others, and self care.  But until I set to forgive myself, none of it will matter and I won't move forward in being "the beloved" in living my truest life for Him, my family, myself everyday. 

What is required is to become the Beloved in the commonplaces of my daily existence and, bit by bit, to close the gap that exists between what I know myself to be and the countless specific realities of everyday life. - Henri Nouwen in Life of the Beloved

Portrait of a child finding her voice

A portrait done in edited strokes

Looping her with shadow

Framing her in glow

Tinting, highlighting, neutralizing

Child, for this moment you are not growing

In image and word you stop

You still yield

Like beeswax warmed in your palm

Still so close to Him

But a growing capsule of His expression

In outbreak

Your words

Crisper than an adults

Your voice arriving, high-pitched

Insistant

If I could wash the light over your eyes, I would

But you will be:

Hurt by this world

Hurt by me

Separated from Him

I will listen to your intone

And hope that you know

that you are also:

Firmly, consistently, eternally loved

And tenderly heard

Christmas Conversation

I have been looking back at this blog and reflecting on some of what I wrote before I stopped writing a couple years ago. This Christmas Eve Conversation post is a painful reminder of a hard Christmas Season that I endured. As I reflect back on that painful time I think about all of the many, many people who are enduring something now, people who are in a hard place during this season of "joy". For many unique reasons the Christmas Season can be very difficult for an overwhelming number of us. Much like church life or Christian life many of us get trapped in the expectations of what a "good Christian", a "good community", or a "good Christmas" should be. We idealize what we & those around us need to create a blissfully happy (that is how we are supposed to feel, right?) Christmas.

But I believe there is a reason that Christmas can feel so difficult, I believe that reason is mysteriously captured in our church calendar during this season of Advent. The struggle, this longing is a deep seated need of all humanity for Him. And in this longing and struggle we tend to explore our brokenness... the ugliness in us surfaces, we bring it out in each other and we bicker, fight, growl... over money, gifts, shopping lists, clean houses, things not being "right"... because well, it really is NOT RIGHT. We are deeply and bitterly in NEED of a savior, deeply in need of redemption.

So we gather round, we tell the stories we all need to hear, we light candles to prove to ourselves that HE HAS COME, we sing songs to help us remember in that deep soulful place that music heals... THE REDEEMER HAS COME! And it is from that place that true JOY overflows. It is from that spot in creation's redemption that we recognize HE is WONDERFUL.

So here is a new CHRISTMAS CONVERSATION. 2 years post season of pain, post darkest days, post Christmas Eve conversation and the feelings of not wanting to join the celebration...

Christmas Conversation

Let me tell you the story

The one I didn't want to hear

Of the Son

Baby, angels, a star

Let it cast light on your darkness

Like traced silhouette

Yes, even now

Set your eyes, child, on that star

Look for it in the East

Like a beacon to follow when nothing else makes sense

Look for it and follow

Even blindly

How long?

As long as it takes

Sing now, the songs you don't feel like singing

Sing it even if mouthing the words

Like practice makes perfect

Your voice will arrive

And your voice will sing

'Redeemer!'

And it will not look anything like what you thought

Crouch there in the dark for a minute

I have been a little obsessed with the idea of the light coming. Everything I read, see, or have been listening to seems to be echoing a chant...

Please come, Light of the world!

Yet today, the Winter Solstice (darkest day of the year), that sea of thoughts on bringing the light fell into a drifting tide of darkened sadness.

It felt like I couldn't shake the sadness all day and so... I just let myself feel it.

Let me clarify what I mean by sadness because I know sometimes we are afraid to admit that we are sad. I do not mean I was depressed. I was inward reflecting but I was not imploding inward towards depression. Just feeling sad, which is an OK thing to feel.

Listen... just in case no one has ever told you...

It is OK to need. It is OK to want love. It is OK to be sad. It is OK to want more. It is OK to not know. It is OK to look and not see. It is OK to ask why. It is OK to sit and wonder what it will look like. It is OK to be afraid.

It is OK to feel like you are on the edge about to jump and that He is right there with you, saying "Trust Me! The light will come".

So... go ahead...

And that is when the fear comes... did you feel it just now in you, as you read.

Something pulling you from doing whatever that next jump into the darkness is?

If you felt it, you are alive. And that means you need to do it, whatever it is He is asking, all the more.

Fear of the unknown. Fear of the darkness. It is overwhelming.

Picture yourself in the darkest room... you hear a noise and your brain fills in the blank of the unknown with the bleakest picture of what it could be. Your brain is getting you ready to fight, hide, run, preparing you for the worst. That is what fear does & it is a cautious yet ultimately, usually, very foolish thing... Cue small cat or a ceiling fan swaying a piece of paper.

It is the things we can not see that scare us the most. Yet God always has us right there on the brink and never shows us. He asks us to trust Him and He asks us to go exactly where we are afraid to go.

But let me tell you, friends, Jump anyway! As you are poised here in the darkest night.

Because, let me tell you, He is faithful and He is good. His faithfulness will always overwhelm the doubt. His light will always illuminate even the darkest fear. It's a promise.

So what if you still are not certain.

The beautiful thing about the God I know is He will be faithful even in the smallest things.

You give Him the tiniest pin prick of a section of your heart and His light floods in thru that tiniest pin prick. It will overtake you. Even when He probably should say to you "Child, give it all or give nothing... I can not do anything with this!!!" But He does not, He takes it and He creates beauty with whatever you give.

So in the coming days as you enter the beauty of Christmas, while lighting that candle Christmas Eve that overwhelms and illuminates the entire room in His glow, please crouch there in the darkness for a minute & walk right up to the cliff of the unknown and step forward into His light.

I'll tell you, but it will make you uncomfortable

Hiding out

In sub-culture Christianity

Shaking in our ballet flats

Believing that community comes from living with people who share the same playlist

Community is helping an 82 year old bathe

While still letting him maintain dignity

Wiping out the bath tub after he leaves

Shaking off the sheets of a bed filled with crumbs, not from you

Small children crowding you

When you want nothing but space, set aside

It's not sanitary, it is painful

Community is painful

It aches in a way that makes you want it to stop

It makes you uncomfortable to think about

It asks you to "go there" when all you want to do is leave and not look it in the eyes

It unravels you

Spinning like the bobbin of an industrial seamstress at work

And then, it stitches it all back together

Opposite

And it builds

Sculpting, using that same thread, it violently wraps form

It leaves you in it's wake, reminding you that you are dust

The beauty it collects from you is flawless in it's dirty shame

If you really want to know

If you really need me to tell you

I will tell you

But it will make you uncomfortable

It is risky

It will ask you to take it off

It will ask you to give it all and not leave anything

Not a stitch

Then spin it all into that pearl we seek

Handing it to you in cupped hands, a gift

Breaking the silence about my calling

I haven't written much about one area of my life, and that is my work / my calling.

I guess I have felt like I was learning the past 7 years that I have given to this work & most of the time I was fumbling. But I have some stuff to say about being a women in ministry or maybe it is more that I have some stuff to say about me & how God has led me to this work. Being that you have to start somewhere...

I will start here, with something I was asked to write and share with the staff of Ecclesia (the church I work for) about a year ago. Actually everyone on staff was asked to write about their calling, and it was the first time I articulated the story of the path that lead me to my work (at least in writing).

I hope you enjoy this story and I hope it leads you to ask what part of His story you are in now... what is He birthing in you, what community does He have for you, what is a frozen place in you that you will be thawed out from?

My sense of calling

My sense of calling is best defined in a story or with an image, like the one above, which

tells the story better than I ever could.

I feel like God was talking to me about serving Ecclesia before I even knew it existed.

God used a simple story, read to my kids at bedtime, of an Ugly Duckling who finds

community. He showed me that He had a place for me, a place where His beauty

would shine brightly in me and where I would belong. He showed me the dark frozen

places I had been ashamed of and helped me realize that my desire “to swim” was not

as silly as everyone around me seemed to think. And even more importantly it had

been placed there, lovingly, by Him.

When I came to Ecclesia it was because God was pulling me here. And I donʼt think He

was particularly subtle about it. I remember driving and praying and feeling like my

spirit was unsettled. I remember asking God what was going on, I felt like God and I

were boxing it out. He clearly showed me what I was experiencing was not wrestling, it

was birthing. I wondered what God was up to and immediately went home and pulled

up a pod cast of Chris and told Vyk that we needed to visit Ecclesia.

The Sunday we arrived at Ecclesia for the first time it happened to be the first Sunday of

Advent. When I walked into the church, I looked up and on screen was an image of a

women “with child”. Chrisʼ sermon ... “What is God birthing in you”. God had my

attention! I looked at Vyk with tears in my eyes, he had the same look. I remember

feeling like God said to me “OK you are here, now roll your sleeves up and get to

work”. I really had no idea what was in store for me!

I feel like my calling has just been a faithful step by step obedience. A simple ”OK, I will

do this next thing”. I am not sure what I would have done if He showed me where it

would lead, but He just asked me to do one thing after another and I followed. He did

give me a glimmer that He was up to something by showing me that all important

symbol of a swan in a cloud as I drove to my first meeting as a volunteer with the kids

ministry that was just starting to form. I had no idea what He was asking me to do, no

idea what He would gift me with. What a pleasure it is to do His work, what joy it brings

me. And even in times of burn out, when God asked me to lay down this work, I did it

with a prayer that He would use me again to serve Him as beautifully.

The song of the me that is now

Complexity in it's heart

Feelings alive, once past

Age being a vehicle for spirit

Igniting in something sweet

Even still

Something to offer

After seasons of desert hunger

the burn now lends it's way to the after

Something sweet, even past this

But what becomes of this pattern

What is highlighted in the now I offer?

Not anything of habitual newness

Instead sweet listening ear

Insightful depth

Bright hope

I can not imagine something more

Although imagining has it's place

Teacher come and spark this light

Learned to learn

Then to unlearn

Father come and set it it square

Walk earnestly, eagerly

Even if it is misplaced

Courage In Grief

I called you brave

you laughed and said bravery has nothing to do with it

you were right right to speak it out loud

I called you brave out of awe of something I spotted in you that I fail to see in myself

Maybe it is less bravery than the ability to put on a brave face

Your character, always with joke ready to lighten the room

your eyes, always bright and bold, flashing with wit, never cloudy

It is a trait within a family that I never quite had

I remember feeling less than brave

I was simply afraid

Did I greet you at the receiving line with a smile?

I barely remember a receiving line, but if there was one,

I was only there with tear stained cheeks and eyes down

I called you honorable , ‘the honorable daughter’

you laughed and said you had no choice

you were right,

you said so because we were close enough to be bold

I called you honorable watching you attend to her so affectionately

even in those final sacred moments when death is in the room

maybe it was less honorable than honoring

maybe it was just out of a deep deep love

but you made her death humane, even beautiful

I remember feeling so afraid

afraid of the hospital room, the noises, but mostly afraid of her being sick

I remember everything I did not do, the times I was not there to attend to her

I wish I could have been more like you

more free with my affection, even when deeply afraid

I know I was there for her in many ways but the moments I was not

play over and over

Courageous, honorable, strong, and brave

all words I never felt I was

not in the middle of the night, tears, salted, mixing into warm bath water

countless nights spent with grief seeping out in those baths

my guess is you feel less than those things now

my guess is those words are not what you see inside

when you muster up the strength to even start to look

but, oh still, I see courage in your grief!

Choose Civility (A Street Art Campaign in the making)

Apparently in Howard County, MA they are Choosing Civility.

Which as far as I am concerned is pretty cool.

All it took was the library, friends of the county, and local colleges to agree to start a campaign. Some bumper stickers and a few meetings later...
Civility was adopted. That simple.

Here are the 15 principles of Civility that the county is adopting (from the book
Choosing Civility: The 25 Rules of Considerate Conduct).

• Pay attention
• Listen
• Speak kindly
• Assume the best
• Respect others' opinions
• Respect other people's time and space
• Be inclusive
• Acknowledge others
• Accept and give praise
• Apologize earnestly
• Assert yourself
• Take responsibility
• Accept and give constructive criticism
• Refrain from idle complaints
• Be a considerate guest

I laugh at the quote from their website:
"While Howard County aims to enhance its own quality of life through Choose Civility, the initiative is benefitting communities in the region and beyond, as others are inspired to implement similar initiatives."

Apparently they can share in Howard County too.

So, I just decided I am going to CHOOSE CIVILITY too.
But I kind of see more of a graffiti effort here in Houston.
If you see street art with "Choose Civility" you'll know I've been busy.

The part that was too painful to share

There is this part

The part that was too painful to share

So I held it here, just here, in my tight hands

And it melted down to my belly round

(pain sits in your belly if you do not share)

So I held this part and it was dark

That part, was the darkest part so far

And I tried to push and it wouldn't move

I tried to speak and you couldn't hear

So I kept that part

And the darkest part was the strangest part

And the hardest part was too much,

Much too much to share

So I kept it here

I'm sorry, but I kept it here

And that part is round and it keeps things in

It keeps me from all kinds of things

And I cry at night sometimes

Replaying, just that small part

Like you recorded that part

And I try to push and I try to speak

But that part is hard so I grunt and scream

And they mess with me

Stop f***ing messing with me

Let me feel this part