Embracing the Silence

It has been so long since I wrote anything, I nearly forgot my log in. I had to scramble to remember the password. Much too long. It isn't like I have stopped thinking, or even stopped recording thought. Only lately is has been all structure and organization and the creativity that my soul longs for has been about who is being called to do what. There are these times when the moments are very much centered in organization and structure.

This week there is a new season. It is a season of silence. It is a gift and I am soaking it in, every bit of it. I am enjoying the other members of the Spiritual Formation Academy, our covenant group and meal time conversations are wonderful. A diverse group but finding much commonality. Still what I am enjoying so much is the silence, the space and the place of my own. It's amusing really, with the two older boys on their own and all those bedrooms empty, it is still somehow a unique feeling to be surrounded by just my stuff. I have spent time finding places for it all. I like knowing I can put things where I like, I like knowing when I leave it will look just exactly this same way when i get back. I have been laying in bed with thoughts of my closet at home and ways to get that stuff more organized too. I think this might be sick, but it has been very comforting I have known for sometime that I work better in order, but because I am always doing seven things at the same time (the perfect number after all) it is hard to take the time to keep order. I think that Monk is too extreme but I sure would like to have some of his methodical approach to order. Hey, order is biblical you know, just read the books of the Law.

But the silences are sweet. I am not feeling pressured to experience anything in particular and I am not having "aha" moments in particular, but I am hearing new ideas picking up a word in the scripture I hadn't seen before and just enjoying the freedom of space. I am enjoying soaking in others reflections and once again find it amazing that people are able to share their hearts with relative strangers. It seems like such a foreign concept to me but I am being touched by what they write. They thoughts are being included into my silences. I don't know how this is so, but it is.

Those who know me best will find the thought of me being silent for 12 out of 24 hours and then choosing to be quiet in free time will wonder if I have a brain tumor or if someone left a pod by my bed. It is a foreign concept but it is a delightful season. The silence is full and warm and restful. Thanks be to God, miracles do exist!

Last night we reviewed our Myers Briggs tests and I haven't changed a bit. I am still a very solid ENTJ, all the way down the line. This appears to be in conflict with the love for silence. I started to thinking this over during the silence last night and decided it was too much work. I have decided that being is good for now. I expect the people will become more of my energy source as the Spirit fills me up and my need for solitude lessens, but I am content for now.

Collecting the Tears

I read The Shack again last week. I read it several months ago but we had a book club meeting to discuss it and I wanted talking points. I enjoyed it the second time as I had the first, but noticed different details. I had wondered really the first time through if I would agree with the theology once I stopped enjoying the story and took the time to analyze if there was truth in it. This time I read with that intent and found places I agreed with, places I didn't. But could find no basis for all of the outcry and I have profound concern that we are fulfilling the message I took away from Masada all those years ago....'if the others would just realize if they leave us alone, we would destroy ourselves'. Why on earth would we worry about a book that makes people stop to consider the possibility that there is a loving God who wants us to know Him better? Or Her better. Or them better. Read the book, it will make more sense.

I was struck by several passages that eluded me the first time. The passage about Adam and Eve was very powerful as was the image of forgiveness being removing your hands from the offenders throat. I could identify with that. Still the one that has stayed with me is the depiction of Sarayu (the Holy Spirit) collecting our tears and then using them to grow a beautiful garden. It is very artsy and some would certainly say it is fluff to make us feel better about the misery in life. I hear that, and I guess if truth be told, I would say this myself, only recently I have shed a tear or two myself.

Now don't be jumping to any false conclusions like I am becoming all mushy and touchy/feely emotional pudding. This is not true. In fact, all that stuff creeps me out and makes me very ill at ease. Not your emotion, you understand. People seem to feel free to cry with me and I am never uncomfortable with that. I am dreadfully uncomfortable when I tear up. Actually uncomfortable is an understatement. So, imagine my astonishment and mortification when in the middle of worship, I found myself leaking from the eyeballs. I was good until we started singing. I remembered a dear friend who died recently singing the same song. I remember watching her face when we sang, 'sing has lost its power, death has lost its sting' and a few tears came. Those were dispatched and I was fine until the greeting time when someone asked me how my son was, how I was and those doggone tears came back. I pulled it together again when the sermon about healing sucker punched me. I sat next to my darling 11 year old who asked me what was up. I said my contacts were bugging me. He said the only time his eyes did that was when he was crying or drank a diet coke. I said I had also recently had a diet coke. We giggled some. Then prayer time followed, and I was out for the count. I don't know why I did that. I work there for pete's sake. I know the rules, no matter what you smile big, respond positively and remain gracious. I have been dealing with my eldest child's illness for 8 years long term and a week in the recent crisis. I have been calm and in control. Who knows what that was. Maybe hormones.

Then sometime in the evening, (after I had considered all the possible options in going into the witness protection program, transfering the a church to be named later or claiming I had an out of body experience), this picture of the Holy Spirit collecting these tears, carefully storing them and one day, at the appropriate time using them to bring about beautiful life in the midst of death. Ponder with me please if perhaps rather than being a feel good kind of message, this becomes the promise of redemption. That God who knows our name, who knew us in the womb, who has counted every hair on our heads, who had made plans for us, good plans that give us hope and a future, who wants us to have life abundantly, who promises nothing can ever seperate us from His love, does redeem the sadness, sickness and death in our lives and brings from it wonderous, beautiful, new life. What if tears are a sign of the promise instead of a show of weakness? It is worth considering, I think.

Today God and I discussed again Paul's message of being content in all things. I am practicing knowing that when it is obvious that things are too much for me, it is apparently not my job. That surrender means more than our will and our control. It means our beings including our emotions and it means knowing that we know that we know, God is good, God is present and if the two things seem to be in discord, it is because it is not finished yet. That's scriptural, you know. Funny how it always seems to come back to the same place.

Voices on the Headset

I have just completed a conference where I got to be the stage manager. I just love jobs that give you titles, don't you? I don't think stage manager was capitalized, which would have made it better, but still it was a title and more importantly, I had a headset. Yes, and wait, there's more! With my headset came a delightful little box that had a button that turned on and off my microphone. A title, a seat at a special table (I believe I had forgotten to share this benefit) and equipment. Short of getting paid for it, I can't see how it could have been better.

With my headset and my title, I had permission to give a running commentary of what was going on in the conference. I got to say things like, so and so is approaching the podium, or lectern or center stage or lights up or lights down or other exciting tidbits of information along these same lines. At first, nervous about doing the job well, along with a team of others who were nervous about doing the job well, we were a little tense and very focused on the business at hand. Everyone was talking at the same time, too much information all the time and no one quite sure what it was we were doing. By day two we were relaxing, having made it through the challenging day before, and by day three we had become our own little community within the community. In fact, we weren't a part of the conference at all, we were our own conference. Follow this logic for a moment, if you can. Our conference was based on observing and supporting another conference going on at the same time. While we were all in the same place, and presumably all on the same page, we were in fact, in our own little audio visual world and while we were in the midst of the conference we were in fact set apart.

Our conversation started out to be informative and it moved on to be connective. We began to comment on what we were producing. As time went on people began singing along, whether they were supposed to or not. There began to be comments on people in the audience who were sleeping and speakers who were either inspirational or long winded. The comment and direction of camera shots were interspersed with comments about the quality of the shot or it's beauty. At the end of the conference when the last blessing was pronounced and I could say, 'that's a wrap' (which is a very cool thing to get to say), over the same headset I heard the group discuss with joy the experience of working together as a team and the hope we would get to do so again. In a world looking for connection, isn't it interesting that a shared purpose and mission over three days brought about community among people who could not even see one another. Just voices in the headset, who somehow became family.

Even more interesting, this was a Christian conference where connection and community ought to be the overriding purpose for gathering. Yet, the renewal I have heard about did not happen during the business or even worship of the conference but in the hallways where friends met, at meals that were shared and in this little community of voices on the headset. I have been pondering this greatly. I am thinking of other conferences and retreats I have attended where my mind was expanded, my heart was touched and I came home tired but so satisfied and learned spiritual truths that I continue to live from today. I became a part of a community of fellow believers who for a time chose to set apart time and experience God together. I feel for those who attended the overall conference who did not have this experience. I am sorry we couldn't pass out headsets to everyone, I am sorry not all had friends to meet in the hallways or over a bowl of chips and salsa. I want something more for everyone, I believe this is God's desire as well. I know more exists, I have experienced it. I loved it enough to want it for everyone who hungers to know more of God and feel the connection of the family of faith.

I pray this is the year that those who plan for such events will form a prayer team who will sit in the presence of a mighty God who desires such things for His children. I pray that this is the year that those who hunger for more will be fed and that all will return home with a sense of being filled up to overflowing with the love of God. I pray that this is the year we reach out and connect with one another and remind each other we serve shoulder to shoulder no matter where we serve. I pray this is the year that at the end of conference there is a joy from time spent together, sharing the same purpose and vision, even without a headset. Because, that's mine and so is the title.

Who are we saving it for?

Once upon a time, I know this because my mother told me, women used to take showers and after they had washed their hair, they would put curlers in. Then they would put on their clothing and go out to buy the groceries, pick up the laundry, go to the library, and generally run their errands. All the while the curlers stayed in the hair. My mom used to say about this situation, "I wonder who they are saving it for?".

I didn't really understand her point. I was a kid after all, and my deal was hoping she would buy a barrel of monkeys, or color forms or some other inexpensive form of entertainment and leave my brother and I in the car while she bought groceries. I am fairly sure this was way before either of us was in school. These days one would be arrested for this. Anyway, I thought all adults were somewhat odd looking and whether there was stuff in their hair didn't seem to matter much one way or another.

My mother felt differently. Going out so all of the town could see you in your curlers didn't make up for having nice hair at dinner for a few guests. I will have to admit that now that I am a grown up, I will have to say I concur. It doesn't really seem sensible. In fact the only way for this economy to make sense is to only value the opinions of the small group who you are having for dinner. That means the the vast majority of the people you encounter you have no value for at all. Kind of frightening when you say it that way.

That same kind of frightening vision has overtaken the church. Have you ever stopped to wonder who exactly we are saving it for? Who is it we are cleaning up to entertain? Our neighbors, the people in the grocery store, the library? I don't think so. Some of the people in the neighborhood don't even know we exist. Pastors seem to have no burning desire to share the good news, many who don't even see this as their job. We have churches full of nice people who do nice things but don't wish to be too religious and don't think it's any ones business how they live. We like to keep the walls high and the crowd select. We want the right kind of people to come to worship, we need to keep the building in good shape, you know.

Recently I attended a training event for small churches where we discussed how we could do small church better. The workshop leader invited people to say the things in worship they found distracting. I suspect he meant music done poorly, responses that were meaningless, sermons that weren't well researched and delivered painfully. Instead people said they didn't like kids in worship because they got up to go to the bathroom, or were noisy. They didn't like people who coughed or sneezed or made it hard for them to hear. I finally said, apparently the biggest obstacle we have in worship is that we let other people come. I think that while there were some chuckles, there were people who thought I was being serious and agreed. We all agree we are in decline but our answer is we need to keep out those annoying outsiders. People, who are we saving it for?

Our base is declining, it is elderly and it no longer can reproduce to sustain itself. The youth are moving on. They have no loyalty to support an institution that finds them an inconvenience at best. The financial support is also declining and monies that used to find their way to the collection are finding homes elsewhere. There is much anger and frustration over budgets being underfunded and people's dream of coasting into retirement dashed, but they are still wearing their curlers in public and valuing only the small group of people they will have dinner with later. I guess if we are saving it for ourselves I have to wonder why we aren't enjoying it more.

Who are we saving it for? Its time for us, all of us, to decide if we are in the disciple making business, or in the self preservation business. We have been in care taking mode for much too long. It's time to throw open the doors and invited the community in again. This is a party for everyone. Lets get the curlers out of of hair and be about the business of inviting a few more guests to our Fathers banquet table. Let's make the church be about being the church, let's be salt, and light. Let's pick up our crosses and follow, let's be faithful and let's mean it when we say, here I am, send me. Let's stop farming out our people to other places to get deeper spirituality. Let's find ways to meet the needs and allow God to use us as a means of grace to the world around us.

Wouldn't it be cool if we went around in curlers at home, with the family that already loves us, so we would be ready to look good for the company? Just a thought.

Thicker than water

There is something about the family of faith that makes it challenging to live in. I think I know what it is, it's the family part. I have been to enough family gatherings; reunions, weddings, funerals and so on, that I believe I can say without hesitation, the only reason some of those people get in is because they are related. You do too know what I mean. The family forces a smile and everyone talks politely and the entire trip home in every vehicle is about weird Uncle Buck or Aunt Phyllis.

My own family is no exception. I had a great uncle named Logan who was the source of all kinds of discussion through out all the generations. We kiddos found him very funny and would practice walking like he did, debating whether he was still breathing, betting on the exact time he would move. My parents generation and older took offense at his laziness and expectation of being served. Rumor has it my grandfather threw a folk at him once for expecting my grandmother to get up and get him something for the billionth time. I don't know whether this is true but it is told even today and still brings chuckles. Logan's history was equally delightful for my cousins and me. He married once and wouldn't leave home. At some point his wife did and he decided not to repeat that mistake. I wonder if she did too.

But I digress. The point isn't that families have characters like Logan, the point is that we tolerate and even find some affection for the Logan's in life because after all we are related. They are a part of us because we are connected through blood. It gives us identity, it gives us a history and a sense of belonging. Even if you look at your family in horror, and what adolescent hasn't done that and prayed that they were either switched at birth or stolen by gypsies, it says something about who your people are. While this isn't always a good connection, in fact if all of us look far enough back we are bound to find a ancestor or two or ten that make us shake our heads, it's a mark we carry and learn to deal with in life.

This is no different for the Church universal. We are also connected by blood, Jesus' blood shed for all. This makes us all one enormous family, belonging because we are related. We like to exclude various branches of the family - they are too liberal, too conservative, too fundamental, too flaky, too serious, too high church, too low church, too touchy feeling, too traditional and on and on and on. I don't know that we have open feuding on going, unless its denomination verses nondenomination, but we do have our own little family branches we tend to honor more than the whole. Like a huge family reunion where each family can see each other and will perhaps wave but they all sit separately and tell their youngest members," Stay away from the Bertie Jones family. They aren't really family, they aren't our kind of people."

I just went to see Michael W Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman in concert. I don't have a clue how many people were there but lots. Like as far as the eye could see lots. I had great seats. I never have great seats but I had a friend who took care of me and I had great seats. The concert was amazing and at some point we were standing and worshipping. Michael W Smith was playing something everyone knew and everyone was singing and I turned around and saw the auditorium filled, the first balcony filled, the second balcony filled. Everyone on their feet, everyone singing, many with their hands raised, their eyes closed. The music was incredible but the connection with my brothers and sisters in the family of faith was so powerful it brought tears to my eyes. I haven't got a clue what members of the family were there. I don't know what family branch they sprang from. I don't know theologically that we agree at all on the issues we debate with such enthusiasm. I just know this, for a moment in time the focus was the connection, that we are related by the blood. We were all made heirs the same we, and all of us belong.

I know we can't live here. In fact, before I got home I got a funny text message from a young man I worship with regularly who said, "hey do you mind sitting down? We are in peanut heaven and you are blocking the stage!" We have other contacts that aren't so funny and God's grace is essential in keeping us from killing each other. But wouldn't it be wonderful if we could spend just a little more time worshipping together in the presence of God, focusing on the things that unite us instead of the issues that divide us? It's the blood you know, and it's thicker than water.

Comfort

As a child,I can remember laying in the sunshine that came in the big picture windows in the living room. I would lay there on my tummy reading Sunday morning comics when I had successfully pried them away from a sibling. My brother liked to read the whole paper intact, I just wanted the comics and the Parade Magazine. Several of us enjoyed that same spot, twice as warm there as any place in the room. By the time I was in high school my brother bought his own paper and Sunday mornings I was in church, but I remember the spot and the struggle with great fondness.

My sister and I shared a small room growing up. There were no private places in my small home, and finding a place of your own required creativity. There was an old dresser sitting at a right angle, across from the heat vent in the corner of the room. If you sat with your back to the dresser and your feet on the heat vent you were almost invisible from the door way. This is where I would read. For hours and hours I sat in my own little world with Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Little Women, Donna Parker and Anne of Green Gables. Later, my companions changed to Tolkien, DE Stevenson, Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers and more. Still, for as long as I lived at home, long after my sister had grown up, married and moved on, I sat in that corner, imagining I was all alone in the world.

I was haunted as a child by demons in the dark. Many nights I would wake terrified, at first needing to be comforted, later learning some comfort techniques of my own. Many nights as I would lay in bed with my heart pounding, sure that at any moment one of the many terrors that would dominate my thoughts was about to overtake me, I would imagine the drive up the driveway to my grandparents home. Their driveways was dirt, filled with many ruts and holes, half a mile long. After eight hours in a station wagon with my family, when my dad made the turn, my heart leaped. Even today I can describe the drive, the mailbox, the pond and the trees and the barns. That drive took me away from fear and brought me to a different place, filled with adventure and belonging.

I am confident that the need for comfort is the essence of the God given need for relationship. I believe God is aware of our need to feel that sense of security and safety and wants us to do so. I think we find comfort in habits and behaviors and even in relationships in ways that may have started from a genuine need and the best we could do at the time, and stayed to become subconscious responses that keep us from making wiser choices now. For example, a have a child who processes stress or boredom or even deep thought by twirling his hair. I would ask where on earth this habit comes from, but I have noticed that when I am stressed or agitated or trying hard to think of a solution to a problem, I am constantly rearranging my hair! I know where he got it, I just really didn't notice that I do it, until I noticed that he did.

I am confident that God is not in the heavenly realms grieving over my hair therapy, or my son's either for that matter. Unfortunately, this isn't the only behavior I have developed over the years to cope. Some of them are more destructive to me personally, and interfere with my relationship with God. I am reminded of the story of Jacob leaving Laban's home and Rachel's removal of her father's household gods. She must have known the God of Israel, but she depended on the comfort she had from those life long sources. It seems like a silly story until I reflect on the damage some of my own household gods have done.

I still enjoy the paper in the sunshine, I still prefer to read all curled up away from others and I still sometimes lay in bed in the still quiet hours and the darkness and remember my grandparents driveway. I guess I will go on messing with my hair from time to time, but I am praying that God will gently pry the household gods from my hands and remind me that He is my comfort and strength, a very present help and trouble and more than enough.

Dust in the wind

Whew. Boys and Girls, my life has been a whirlwind of activity but very little creativity. This is not so good. In fact, I believe it is negatively impacting my brains ability to keep track of one billion miscellaneous bits of trivial information, as I once did so well. I find myself sitting still when someone says to me, "I will see you later" thinking where is it I am going that they expect to see me. I have had mornings when in a cold panic I have searched my calendar, you know that tiny print on your cell phone, and wondered if the nagging thought at the back of my mind is correct and I am supposed to be somewhere. I can't imagine myself in a position where my presence is of importance to anyone but I am aware that when some of have been denied it, they get a little squirrelly. Some even a might testy. I have had to look into the witness protection program a time or two.

You know, we have had an ice storm. I don't want to hear all of the places in the world where an ice storm has occurred because I know there are many. I don't want to hear how others have gone without power for six weeks when I was only out two week. In fact, I don't to be reasonable or rational about this at all. In fact, I think I can now safely report that I have failed disaster response 101. I am praying I do not have to repeat the course. You know how God does that at times, allows you a "do over" to get it right. I don't want to get it right. I don't want to play 'find the matches in the dark', 'how many lamps can the generator light' or 'cooking pizza on the grill' any more.

So, I was crabby over the power thing, then we got into disaster relief. Yes, there was a disaster to relieve actually. I have never in all of my life seen as many trees down for as long a distance as we have had. Trees opened like blooming onions, limbs hanging, root balls fully exposed. It really does look like a war zone, but I am tired of that example. So we set about getting that fixed up. This means volunteers, tractors, chain saws, trailers, four wheelers, food, front running, evaluation and some kind of sense of direction. Guess how many of these skill sets I have? Even the food one is marginal.

Now I am even more irritable and I am supposed to be doing ministry. Just for your information and for purposes of clarity, this is where my definition of ministry comes in handy. I think ministry is loving God's sheep, whether they deserve it or not because God has loved me in abundance. Even when I am crabby. Especially then, I should think. I have been trying hard, I truly have, only I suspect I have failed mightily. So why is this true, I wonder.

I don't know for sure mind you, but I think it has a lot to do with the lack of play time in my life. I have worked hard, and I like to work hard, but without a little nonsense, fun with creativity, play time with buddies, I think I am losing my passion. In fact, I think I have taken my heart right out of the picture and been using solely my head and some of my muscles. I am trying to do things well, when I am not sure what I am doing and the only affirmation I can count on is that there will be more to practice on tomorrow. I am trying, through the sheer force of my personality and determination, to make what I do not know how to do be done well. I think it's getting done but it's really leaving some scorched earth in it's wake. I am quite confident that my Eternal Father, who loves me so much that He is content to let me get all spun up in a whirling dervish, or whatever that whirling thing might be, until I am angry and empty and devoid of feeling and say to me, "Come here, child. We have talked about this! You are supposed to take time to watch the water, dance to something peppy, write something ridiculous. Why do you trust Me so little?" I dunno. I am so silly at times.

I am reminded today that we truly are only dust in the wind. The Creator of the Universe can handle things if I were to take an hour or day or even a whole week off. And while I believe we are expected to use our gifts to serve, the Sabbath rest was given to restore our souls.

I am going to play some this week. I am going to find joy in the sunshine, I am going to watch the water a little and I am going to write something goofy. Oh wait, I just did. Check.