On seeking wholeness and puddle-jumping

Just when we can take it no longer, spring shows up. 

I cannot even begin to describe the glory in the warm sun, fading snow drifts, breaking out my new puddle boots and bright yellow spring jacket, not to mention the smiling faces of my kids bounding off the bus in t-shirts, stomping through mud, the shrieks of joy, smiles from strangers while running errands. We are all feeling saved today! This weekend is brimming with hope and joy and we are giddy with anticipation!

Today I genuinely believed that sunshine was the cure for my brokenness.

But it's not.

It is, no doubt, a life-giver, a source of growth and warmth in a cold world. It drags the seasons behind it in compliance, and us as well. Still, not my cure-all, as much as I try to prove otherwise tromping purposefully through the deepest side of a glimmering pool of melted snow.

This afternoon all my inner messes were covered up with the pursuit of just a little more sun, the pursuit of wholeness. But as soothing and healing as it was, it was more like salve on open wounds than miraculous healing.

I've been guilty of reducing God to the one who is making me whole, complete. Is that my greatest desire- to feel whole instead of this nagging brokenness? I do hope for that wholeness and there are moments where I catch a glimpse of it, like today and the wonder at the beauty of the seasons and these life cycles. But I'm talking bigger picture here, and I'm beginning to think God is more than that perfection that we imagine lies at the far-reaches of eternity.

See, I desperately need a God who is with me when the sun doesn't shine.

Maybe wholeness isn't the right goal when it becomes almost a fantasy.

Maybe certainty isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Maybe they've become idols.

Peter Rollins says, 'God is in the midst of life, and where two or three are gathered together, and not out there to be grasped but rather in the depth of life itself.'

Embracing our brokenness, our mess, our failures, without being overwhelmed by them, is where we find wholeness and meaning. Isn't that the scandal of the life of Jesus? That this Good News is for the screw-ups, for the cast-offs, for the ones who deserve it the least?

Read the Psalms and you'll see proof that God is in the full range of human emotions. This life sometimes is not full of hope and joy- sometimes life feels full of crap. God is there.

Sometimes we're stuck in the dead of winter. God is there. 

And when the sun isn't enough and my wounds open again, God is there. In this. Right here with me.

Learning to Lean In

She leaned forward over the table and set her mug of lukewarm coffee aside. Words soft but lips tense. "How can you be sure that all this struggling means anything?" The sadness behind her eyes was piercing and impossible to ignore.

I certainly don't know much. Each year the number of truths I know beyond a doubt shrivels. Each year questions replace the list of doctrines. Each year my view of God expands. It has settled, sifted, much of the I'm-not-so-sure-anymore falls through holes I poked out of my skin like a sieve. But what remains! The tiny diamonds, glistening anew, beauty begging to be marveled... it cannot be denied. This sifting is painful and sometimes gives way to loneliness. The sifting, the questioning while still intently following has brought me into much sadness. It's the same sadness I saw across the table- one that knows there is hope or the questions wouldn't have even escaped her lips. Oh yes, my friend, there is hope.

I reach in and show her one of those diamonds I've spent years cleaning off, painstakingly, gently. Still dusty and raw.

You lean into it. Press into the questions, the doubts, the pain, the struggle, all of it. You stay there awhile, in the wondering, in the loneliness, in the waiting, leaning into the biting wind instead of running to safety. You keep on leaning and saying the hard things out loud and naming the hurt, owning this place, the shifting ground you've landed on. You lean in, until you're sure God is there, too.

But shouldn't we know? I mean, that's what faith is for. I am supposed to have faith.

We've lost so much of the richness of that word- know. Knowledge is something of the intellect, taking place in the brain. But it's deeper than that. To know deeply is something more than just knowing consciously. It's more than my finite mind can explain like facts on a power-point presentation. It digs, sharp and deep, down through myself to the core of who I am. That thing- and it is a thing of substance- it is my absolute foundation.

I know that what God creates God will not abandon.

I know my calling and everyone's is to co-create by Jesus' example of the power of love over the love of power.

I know that nothing can separate me from that Love. Not even death.

I know that the human condition is one of pain, but I also know that I find my life when I offer it up in service, not when I act independently, grasping for control and security. Instead I can invest infectious love into my community and trust that others will catch on to the notion that either we all matter or none of us do.  Repeat: Or none of us do.

I know that my perspective of the joys and struggles is so very small, and I must trust a bigger story.

Much like childbirth, the more we tense up, clench our jaw, fight the pain, the more it hurts. Mommas know. I learned by my third delivery that the key to suffering was to surrender. This process has to happen. It takes everything within me to not fight back, but to breathe and focus on release of all tension. And you know what? The pain doesn't go away, but somehow it hurts less. And there is such freedom in trusting the process will give way to LIFE.

******

I am listening. Keep talking. There is no rush. And there's always more coffee.

Reduce, Reuse, Repost?

 "Remember–the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker." - Madeleine L'Engle

I find it a little ironic that today is Earth Day, and here I am entering the virtual blogosphere, this crazy world that is the opposite of earthly wild. No smell of moss and pine here. This soapbox creature lets everyone speak their mind, even if they really have nothing valuable to say.  I'm not entirely sure I have a reason, other than that I love to write about things I'm passionate about, like many of you who do the same. I'm not doing it because I have something enlightening to reveal to the world that isn't already being said. I'm doing it because I feel compelled to take the time to articulate my thoughts, particularly about my faith, in a way that is a little less obnoxious than posting on FB where it will surely start a war among the masses in as little as 10 minutes. Yes, I've been known to do this a time or two-hundred.

I am passionate about my faith. I have become a question-asker. This is often not well-received as I grew up in primarily your typical conservative evangelical Christian home, and many of my friends and family maintain those beliefs. While I deeply love and follow the Jesus who walked this earth, I don't always love or recognize the Jesus that Christians display so loudly. Reality is that I don't put my trust in other Christians. I put my trust and hope in Jesus himself, who points straight to our Creator God. I read of Jesus answering questions with parables and following them with deeper questions, and I have come to believe that questions are sacred. It's not God who is afraid of our questions, but it is us who often are afraid of the answers.

I call myself a universe-disturber, a L'Engle term, which is more than a bit presumptuous, but that means a few things to me. First, I believe we are all connected- all people, all of creation, the apple trees and galaxies and sparrows and bumblebees...all dependent on each other, nothing acting just on its own but intertwined and deeply relational. A monarch flaps its wings and affects galaxies a million light years away. Each cell in my body responds and changes to energy and emotion in ways scientists are just beginning to understand. This absolutely astounds me, and while I am no scientist, I have a budding fascination with how this world works. Many of us grow up to face a difficult, yet completely unnecessary choice between our faith and intellectual honesty. People have abandoned their faith over this misconception. I am here to hopefully help make a space for these conversations that I also desperately crave.

My favorite author, Madeleine L'Engle, also says that "universe-disturbers make waves, rock boats, upset establishments. Jesus was a great universe-disturber, so upsetting to the establishment of his day that they put him on a cross, hoping to finish him off. Those of us who try to follow his Way have a choice, either to go with him as universe-disturbers (butterflies), or to play it safe and resist change." Unwavering beliefs may seem like security, but if we cannot move with change, we are closer to death and further from life. And real, meaningful, passionate life is what we are all after! So not only are we all ultimately universe-disturbers in being connected to one another, but I aspire to be a universe-disturber, one who follows in the difficult steps of Jesus of Nazareth.

So here I am. Questions, doubts, weaknesses, all bound up with splashes of hope and peace, and on my best days, a mustard-seed-sized faith and trust in the Maker of this Earth we're celebrating today. There is much in this life that seems meaningless. And then, just when I'm about to give in to this reckless chaos, some glimpse is given which reveals the strange weaving of purposefulness and beauty. Because I know that what God creates, God will not abandon.