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.