Even the Sparrows...

She cradled it while its breath slowed. Tender hands. Tender heart.

We talk about death, because she says she is a little afraid.

All good things, all of us, will come to our end in this world, we agree. She looks up at me with those wet eyes full of questions.

"But then the bird's body turns to dirt and it helps make better soil so that more seeds can grow."    

Yes, dear one.

It seems that life and death are bound up, each thread tight in its right place, holding the other. Nearly indistinguishable, sewing the nest together.

And it all matters. This moment while the bird takes its final breath and lies limp in her tiny hands. The tenderness of her heart for another. The journey home. The mystery. Her sadness and her questions.

They matter.

Some say life is just a cosmic accident. Others say whatever, whoever, Creator is, must be aloof, uncaring, considering all the suffering in the world. 

But if the end of even a sparrow's life is met with love, if its resurrection is found in bits of earth and the hearts of children, if our worth is amplified by the caring of one for another, an offering of dignity and worth and purpose, then I say this power of love MUST be personal and real enough that every single one of our lives has meaning. All the glitter and all the dust and all the wandering hours in between.

The fall of every sparrow, known.

Each hair on my head, counted.

And, oh, dear one, there are worse things than dying. Losing our sense of compassion, losing the wonder and sadness of it all. That's a death far worse than the death of the body.

Death is never the end of the story.

* * * * *

 If a healthy soil is full of death, it is also full of life: worms, fungi, microorganisms of all

 kinds...Given only the health of the soil, nothing that dies is dead for very long.

~ Wendell Berry

On Being the Prodigal and Celebrations

It was a long time ago, and also not so very long. That summer was finally coming to an end- the same summer that had chewed me up and spit me out. Left me standing on the street corner.

This is my Prodigal Story.

Days or weeks (I couldn't tell which) had been spent closed up in a cold room, lying on a mattress on the floor in an otherwise empty huge house, puking until I'd pass out. I was newly pregnant and abandoned. Sick as a dog. Too sick to walk down those long stairs to try and find something I could eat. Friends were gone. He was gone. The world moved on, took all my hopes and dreams with it. I was a fool. And my life as I knew it was over.

But one day after all those long, dark hours in that hideous room, I emerged, because I had to. Despair had had its way with me. I was still terrified of caring for a baby on my own when I clearly had made all the wrong choices for myself. But I had to do something. Had to move. Had to figure out how to live. So I went to church.

The same church that had practically been my home for years, where I led worship, led youth groups and studies... all the things... I had loved it. All that was over now. I was exposed. You can only hide a growing belly on a frail 100 lb. body for so long.

I walked in, like every other Sunday. Only it wasn't like every other Sunday. I had always been the good girl, the one with the answers, the one with the good reputation, the one with the picture-perfect life. I walked through those doors after hiding for so long with a neon sign flashing above my head. HYPOCRITE!  WHORE!  FOOL!  That day I went to church broken and ashamed.

I didn't know what grace was until that day.

* * * * *

My son, Judah, made his way into the world like we all do. Somehow we both survived his grueling birth and an even more grueling month after his birth than I could have thought humanly possible. I felt like Job for awhile there. I know that sounds dramatic. It is dramatic. This is me being dramatic. But really. Someday Hollywood will make a movie about the happenings in my small town and my small life. But that is another story.

Judah and I made it out of there. I loved him, but those first months were mere survival. I never really was able to settle into myself, my new motherhood. I left that town and its suffocating headlines behind. We fled to the woods. The smell of the pines stopped the world from spinning after being dizzy for an entire year. We started a new life.

Resurrection happened.

It is still happening.

But back to the church ladies.

* * * * *

She had a welcoming smile, always had. There were others but I mostly remember her. It was the normal hug and 'Good morning!' and then she looked straight through my fear and asked how I was doing.

How are you doing today?

A simple question. Usually there is a simple answer. Sometimes it is fake only because who has the energy to tell the truth these days? Not that day. I had no energy.

But there was no other way. I told her. Bluntly. Awaited the awkward silence. Her face lit up, both with tenderness and joy. She gave me another hug, then grabbed my shoulders and looked me square in the eyes. "Congratulations! A baby is always a miracle!" Then "We are throwing you a baby shower!"

That was it. No making sure I understood my sin. No plea for repentance. No awkward silences that day. Just grace. And it washed over me. Knocked those neon signs down over my head.

Those church ladies saved me.

* * * * *

Last weekend I shot my first gay wedding since falling into this wedding photography gig. One of my best childhood friends was marrying the love of her life and they graciously flew Matt and I down to Texas. Many people, wonderful, loving friends and family, have been concerned about my choice. There are a million things I could say and stories that I want to tell, but one voice has stood out to me this week, one question.

How can you celebrate something that is less than God's ideal?

If it is less than God's ideal, one man one woman covenant of marriage-- and I still have questions about it all, as I've made clear-- IF it is, then my answer is simple.

I celebrate their new life because someone celebrated mine when I least deserved it.

I celebrate their joy because I know the joy of finally finding the one your soul loves.

I celebrate their daughter because I have a daughter, and daughters are some kind of wonder.

I celebrate, even if  homosexuality isn't the way God intended when he breathed life into Creation, because this world and all of us are being rescued, and we're not quite there yet. I celebrate their love feeling every ounce of my own search for love, the wandering from who I really was, all the hurts along the way. My life has not been what God intended. But he has carried me anyway.

I can now freely say congratulations to them because the church ladies threw a party for my illegitimate child.

I celebrate because I was lost. I was found. I was once celebrated.

* * * * *

Judah turns eleven years old today. I cannot believe I am saying that. ELEVEN. This boy who rode the crazy train with his mama and who found new life right alongside her. I thank God for that boy. His life helped save mine. His laugh makes the world a better place. His tender heart I fear will someday be broken as mine has been, but I know now that being tender and being broken is the only way for grace to seep into all the cracks and make it new, make it come alive. So I try not to be afraid.

And Annie and Nevie, may you grow old together. May you learn the brutal and beautiful lessons of love and self-sacrifice and family. May you find God there.

I am grateful for the 'church ladies' everywhere who throw parties and fiercely love those who need it most.

All is grace.

Of dust and the best sort of magic

Sun is shining. It's a bit of a tease these days, considering the deep collective yearning for spring. If only I could flip the calendar an extra page and coax the sun to follow suit...

No dust particle floating freely can escape these winter rays, strong and true. What kind of magic turns dirt to glitter mid-air, anyway?

The best sort of magic.

* * * * *

Lift the heavy history book down from its place up high, out of sight, out of reach, out of remembrance. Down to earth, to heart, back to mind. Down down down it has been awhile, you think. Exhale and dust flies off the familiar pages. The scar-words. The penned lies written like facts meant only for rote memorization. No, no, you mutter, that is not me. Exhale all the foul thoughts and watch them scatter under breath and light. Exhale you are foul. Inhale you are loved.

* * * * * 

The boy says that Lent starts today anyway so it's a good time to give up all dairy and see if he feels better. Lent is for giving something up, he tells me. Everybody gives up something for forty days. Like chocolate or coffee or video games.

I tell him the old story about ashes, repentance, humility, this tradition of soul-searching by sacrificing bits of self. I feel it again, familiar, ash cross on forehead for all to see. 

I am dust. I am human.

Daily residue builds up. It has built up, I realize again. Today's failures, unspoken dreams, all the agony of watching Hurt fester in others, all the helpless nights and fearful mornings. All of it, dead cells, waiting to be sloughed off.

I am dust and it's getting caught in my lungs.

...because we were created from dust, I tell him, and some day our bodies will be dust again. We remember who we are, that we are The Created. And by remembering our dustiness, maybe we also are reminded of our shine. Reflectors of Light and of a magic turning.

If Lent is about recalling my own brokenness, my dusty self, my handwritten lies and biting past...if Lent is about sensing the need to depend on God to stitch up my open wounds and make me whole again, then I am already there.  I am sitting in it, and there is grace here. This terrible and marvelous year of dependence. This is all Lent, I say.

And God isn't asking me to go on a diet and call it sacrifice. "This is the kind of fasting I want," He says.

He just wants me.

He wants to breathe Life into my dusty corners and let me watch the past turn to diamonds in the winter's sun. Even ashes reflect Life, I hear whispered.

Exhale I am foul. Inhale I am loved.

What kind of magic is this that brings the dead to life?

On Melancholy and Miracles and Waking Up

the melancholy:

Sleep is forgiveness.

It falls, drop by drop, washing the dust of the day as it ushers in a clean slate and the promise of tomorrow. Sleep feels like rain and sounds like poetry.

Except when it doesn't. Except when you toss and turn and can't find comfort, when your mind only finds its form in the dark of night. Sometimes joy doesn't come with the morning and God, forgive me, please.

Let me just admit here that I've been bitter.

Let me say this out loud because it's important to say the hard things out loud- I've been whiny and miserable and exhausted and desperate and sometimes straight up mean. Grace makes it possible to be completely and utterly vulnerable. This time grace tastes bitter.

I feel heavy. And I imagine I'm not alone here, right? We carry it on our backs all day long. The plates we keep spinning. The baggage. The emotions. The failures.

And my God I am tired. 

A numbing melancholy has been my coping mechanism these last months where our lives were turned upside-down, shaken out like change on the floor. I'm not saying it's good. But this happens from time to time, I know. It keep us on our toes. And while I realize down the road we'll look back and see all the layers of struggle woven together as only time can do, right now, today, I'm not exactly counting it all as a blessing. I'd have to squint one eye and let it blur into oblivion to convince myself there's a silver lining.

So I've made the decision to keep both eyes open instead. To call it what it is. Frankly, I don't have the energy for anything else.

It's survival mode in these parts after all.

* * * * *

the miracles:

The holidays manage to show up year after year whether I'm ready to receive them or not. The holy-days. That's what it means. Holy. Advent is a time for hope. And joy. It was so odd this year, if I'd had any energy I would have used it to say it all looked pretty ludicrous to me. Me, with both eyes painfully and begrudgingly open. My heart wasn't there. I hated that it was snowing and -30 degrees and the garden was shriveled up and in hiding. Cold and dead. Nothing holy about that.

I should have known better. I did, I do. But I'm sleep deprived, so give me a break here.

Matt was out of a job and we felt like we were drowning some days. There were layers of other stresses. Layers like a cake when you have no appetite, and the insomniac icing on top is enough to make you turn all sorts of crazy. I'm human and I'm telling you I couldn't do it. So I stayed numb to the twinkling lights and carefully cut paper snowflakes and fancy gift wrap and baby Jesus and talk of hope and joy and why couldn't I just sleep?!

I know it's better to feel deep the pain and grief, whatever it is. I know. Sometimes, though, lives are fractured and it takes a miracle to break through the window so we can be ourselves again- our whole selves.

I don't know how it all started, really. Friends offering help, dinner, cups of coffee, fixing our brakes on the van. Random cards with encouragement or checks in them from loved ones and then a group of strangers who heard about our situation and decided to care and pay most of our bills for the month. Now, people. Hear me say this- sometimes help from strangers is enough to bring you to your knees. It was. It did.

And it kept happening, like salvation does, even when you're miserable and it hurts to walk or hold a conversation. It happened every time I looked someone in the eye and knew they actually wanted to help. They listened to me vent. They were kind and gentle when the world had been cruel. They kept my head above water. 

I'm still here, standing with one foot in the muck, still fighting my way through today on 3 hours of sleep. I know my kids don't have cancer, and I know the world is plum full of pain beyond what I will ever know and I should be grateful. But this is my today. It's still there when I want to hide under the covers and emerge in April. It still asks for breakfast and needs laundry done.

* * * * *

The night before Christmas Eve I  pulled into our driveway at midnight, snow crunching, thick and fresh. In front of my bright yellow door sat a massive pile of wrapped Christmas gifts. I sat there and stared them down, confused. An anonymous someone had bought us all presents and labelled them each thoughtfully, and there were so many presents! We're minimalists when it comes to Christmas, and not just out of necessity which was this year. But this- this was a gift all its own. I had never seen my kids so in awe of Christmas and in such wonder!

We all need space to wonder. To be kids again. I needed it.

I could keep going... more offerings, more help, another mortgage paid out of kindness. Friends and family to share meals with and roll out lefse with and community dinners to sit all together, shoulder to shoulder...it all reminded me what it means to be human. I am no island, it turns out. Surprise, surprise.

He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. -2 Corinthians

* * * * *

There's a story about Jesus feeding a multitude of people, who knows the real number, maybe 5,000, with just a basket of a few loaves of bread and two fish. What a joke, right?  Jesus took what there was and started feeding people. They ate until they were full. And there were twelve baskets worth of leftovers.

I don't need to know how this miracle happened. I know it happens. It is my story.

* * * * *

the waking up:

I have seen the hope of healing. I'm watching it ripple out all around me, touching the sick, lifting the weak, feeding the hungry. It is simple and unassuming. It takes human hearts and hands that choose Love. Sometimes I am the weak one, sometimes the sick, sometimes the one too self-absorbed and arrogant to notice the miracle. But gospel is good news for everyone, and it is FOR the weak. That is where I find myself again, at my most fragile. Because what the world calls worthless, our Creator calls his own.

I'm tired. I'm still begging for sleep that feels like forgiveness. Sometimes I lie awake next to my husband whose only full-time job these last months has been taking care of his crazed wife, and I feel guilty for worrying and guilty for all we have and thinking I need something more. I am privileged at the expense of another family maybe oceans away. During the day I can skate right over the top of that deep darkness. Ignorance is bliss, and that isn't a conversation for the dinner table. But guilt is meant to drive us to change. I need to be fully awake, fully alive to this wild world for that part.

I do need sleep and I desperately need healing. I am writing this because you probably do, too. But no man ever died just so I could get a good nap in. Soul healing is rooted deep and true and merciful. HOPE.

There is a time for rest and then there is a time to Wake Up. I will hold the melancholy close, calling it by its right name, for as long as it is a part of me, knowing bits of joy are found even in the darkest places.

I'm trying.

Wake up to the day, stretch out and feel the warm sun shining on your face, feel all the love and all the pain, side by side, bound together as they were meant to be.

Rise and shine.

Today is National Coming Out Day.

A host of emotions emerge with those words, especially when we're speaking as followers of Jesus, or people seeking Truth and our Creator. My faith has intersected my life and shaped my responses to the world and its array of beauty and corruption.

Maybe we should call it National Learning to Listen First Day.

This isn't an issue. It isn't a problem we can solve with the correct formula and a sharpened pencil. Contrary to many of my brothers and sisters I do not believe it is black or white, right or wrong, in all situations. Push me in a corner and I will still maintain that this is the wrong conversation, based upon who I know Jesus to be.

No, we're not tackling an issue here.

We are listening to people.

People. Humans. You and I. My neighbor. My child. This earth is full of human beings.

We are not robots. We are not merely assigned a number, as Hitler showed strips all human dignity. We are named. We are loved deeply by the One who gave us breath. We bear that image or something divine, something bigger, something true.

We love by showing each other dignity. We do that by listening. Always listening first.

* * * * *

Last weekend my dear friend came to visit from out of state. We have had an intensely deep friendship through the years. I have watched her whole world change and mine has changed alongside hers. I've witnessed her love for Jesus intersect with her homosexuality and I have wrestled with this- God, I have wrestled! I have cried with and for her. I have spoken honestly with her since the day we met. Because of that, a few years ago I made the decision not to attend her wedding. That conversation was the most painful I have ever had. But she loves me. She listened and respected my wrestling and how I live out my faith. My friend showed me more grace that day than I have ever been able to offer back. And I'm not the same.

She has taught me what grace looks like.

* * * * *

Much has changed in my heart since then. Ground has shifted again, left me standing with a better view of the horizon. The shifting knocked me out cold. The questions and doubts and wrestling with God is hardly over. I'm learning that it's the wrestling, the willingness to go to the mat with this, fight it out, live honestly and authentically, that's the place where I experience God. And I believe that's what God is asking from us.

How I frame my questions, my faith, my interactions with people has changed drastically. Many concerned friends continue to be, well, concerned. I'm okay with that. Having concern for one another is a good place to start, after all.

I am concerned about my friends (known and unknown) who have felt misunderstood, unheard, who have been treated callously because of their sexuality. I'm concerned about those who live in the dark because it's safer than having to deal with the backlash of coming out. It concerns me that in general, we, as a society, and more importantly, we, the church, have not begun the conversation by listening.

When we love someone, we pull up a chair.

When we love someone, we treat them with dignity, worthy of our time and energy.

When we love someone, we set ourselves and our preconceived ideas aside.

When we love someone, we earn their trust by being a friend in the daily stuff, the regular, the mundane.

When we love someone, what hurts them hurts us.

When we love someone, we call them by name instead of categorizing them by their sexuality.

When we love, we choose to listen first.

* * * * *

We need to practice the sacred act of pulling up a chair. And as a person who is trying, really wrestling with how to love people well, I'm offering a listening ear if you're willing to share your story. And I will share mine.

All is not Lost.

I wore last week like an overcoat. A heavy one. Know what I mean? I often write some similar description, because that is when I sit still just long enough for thoughts to settle and spill out.

The human heart is a fickle thing. It leads. It betrays. We hide it and we hide ourselves from others' hearts. We shape it and name it Love, and that Love feels like chains one day and wings the next.

* * * * *

We do see what we are looking for so very often, don't we? We look for the beauty, we see it in sunsets and babies' faces. We look for pain, it is there, like our own shadow, we're unable to shake it off. We look for emptiness, we see chaos. Look for meaning, and you will see cosmos and design, leaves fashioned like fingerprints, an apple tree as sustenance.

I choose how I view my life, how I see the people around me.

* * * * *

There has been much conversation about how our little town should deal with the homeless that wander our streets. After last week's three-part series in the newspaper that was picked apart, labelled as racist and insensitive by some, I have this sense of stirring. It is not the flurry of emotional responses that create change, but it is a slight shift of awareness, a wondering. Change stirs the pot slowly, evenly, careful not to splash. (The last of Justin Glawe's articles is here: http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/content/homeless-bemidji-no-easy-answers-homeless-their-advocates-and-city)

My husband, who has worked with the homeless for the last seven years, spoke wisely. We are just people. We all wear the same flesh. We all bear a human heart.

We learn about the human heart when we try to understand one another, especially those unlike ourselves, those that are labelled and misunderstood. We learn about the human heart when we see a brother suffering and allow our own hearts to break with theirs. When one suffers, we all suffer. And I soothe myself with this truth, as though saying it out loud will provide a shoulder to lean on or nourishment for the hungry.

And is it by chance that the same morning that this article was printed and left on the doorsteps of the masses in their separate pretty box-houses with spare rooms that sit empty all winter, is it by chance that just when his voice was heard, if only in print, that Andy, another homeless man featured, photo and all, was hit by a car in the early morning hours, in the heart of a city that doesn't quite know how to help it's most vulnerable?

I don't believe much in chance.

Andy was Butch's friend. I've talked a lot about Butch, the homeless man I encountered right before his body washed up on the beach. (Butch's story found here: http://prodigalstories.blogspot.com/2013/06/when-jesus-goes-by-butch.html) I've talked and talked and talked... at least we're talking, when we don't know how to help, we talk. We communicate. Even that is hammering a brick out from the walls built before our time. We talk. We hammer. We feel helpless. We're reminded to be hopeful. Grateful for the hands that do the dirty work.

It seems like yesterday that I met Andy on the sidewalk. He stopped me when I said hello, held up a card full of logos and asked if he could use that card at McDonalds. I nodded, yes. He said, "Good. I really need food. I'm  hungry." Everyone who spends any time downtown has had these encounters. And just recently I handed a sandwich to another man I didn't know sitting with a prosthetic leg on a busy street corner. It was blustery cold that morning and he was wrapped in a dirty blanket. He smiled graciously as he took it and thanked me. Then he said he was walking across the country for homelessness, and would I please remember him by his name? "I'm Kevin. Don't forget my name." I won't be able to forget.

It takes courage to believe that all this human suffering matters to the Creator of the galaxies. It takes courage to beg the question, and to not offer a pat answer. Courage to right the wrongs. Yet more courage to see these streets as holding us all together, one and the same, whether running or sleeping on them. And it will take courage to face a complex issue with complex but tender human hearts in the balance, with grace and longsuffering and persistence. It takes courage to be there in the messy places, instead of the comfort and bliss of ignorance.

For me? I don't take this timing lightly. It's a drumbeat that has been low and steady. A rhythm of grace. Of human hearts beating, one and the same.

As long as someone cares, all is not lost.

Rest in peace, Andy.

* * * * *

Why would you ever complain or whine,
saying, "God has lost track of me.
He doesn't care what happens to me"?

Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?

God doesn’t come and go. God lasts.

    He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine.

He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath.

    And he knows everything, inside and out.

He energizes those who get tired,

    gives fresh strength to dropouts.

For even young people tire and drop out,

    young folk in their prime stumble and fall.

But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.

    They spread their wings and soar like eagles,

They run and don’t get tired,

    they walk and don’t lag behind.
(Isaiah 40)

On Rubble and Compost

It has taken rumors of war to remind me that Syria is my neighbor. I can see its children running with mine, wild and free, through the tree line if I squint a bit, re-imagining the shape of this earth. It all caves in together, doesn't it?

The fear, the weight of the new reality we live in, sits heavy in my pocket. It's the rubble of hillsides and homes that have been blown up by the enemy. The Enemy, which we rush fast to name and sentence to death.

It isn't fear as much as it is despair that drowns us, I think. The feeling of hopelessness, complete loss of control and peace down deep, when the bits of good seem darkly overshadowed by the world's cruelty, even evil, as some call it. We shudder at the hatred we see in the headlines. And we see so many headlines. Status updates. Tweets. The events of the day, the very cold, desperate, hard facts of life like rubble in pockets cause us to drag our feet, sink into despair, raise a skeptical eyebrow at the thought of our children's children living peaceful or even safe lives.

If the Enemy rightly named is anger, or hatred, which I believe it is, then threatening this hatred is not the answer but will only make it swell with more hate- kill its leaders and many will become martyrs. Terrorists love their truth as much as I love mine.  Reasons have been offered for this by people wiser and more articulate than I, and I look to their words as I take up my hay fork and turn all this dirt, all this waste over and over again in my head and my heart, turning as an act of faith that eventually the trash will once again become usable earth, something that holds the possibility of life. This is me, turning my compost of sorts.

I look to Wendell Berry, who I've recently discovered to be a prophet for this generation. He wisely says "To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it." He has taught me of the beauty, the sacred and subversive act of farming. Hands to earth. Hard labor. Dependence on sun and rain and community. Tending the garden as prayer.

I look to Madeleine L'Engle, as I have for more than a decade, because it pulls me up and out of despair. She taught me that we have strayed far from the land, from story, from imagination and fantasy, and it is our loss. She challenges me, invites me, even, to stop dividing all of life into the categories of good and evil and start seeing my choices and my reactions as either creative or destructive, as promoting life or promoting death.

I look also to writers like Annie Dillard, whose quote recently surfaced: "Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there." We do have the option of seeing the beauty instead of the chaos. It is not completely out of our control.

And that all leads me this week to Barbara Kingsolver, a story-teller I've only begun to notice, quite frankly. I'm in awe of her grace that pours onto the pages, whether in story or essay. She says "God is frightful, God is great--you pick. I choose this: God is in the details, the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed up as stars to guide us." Take heart, she says to me.

But back to Syria and this devastating predicament at hand. Kingsolver offered me a wonderful parable I need to share. Not her own, but the Greeks' understanding of their enemy, and of our enemy today, because, in fact, while something new is upon us, nothing is ever really new.

The story of Jason and the Argonauts is a favorite tale of heroic adversity. The enemy, the dragon, was slain and fell to the soil. Each of its teeth grew into a new enemy, and Jason finally couldn't fight his way out. Kingsolver says, 'It took a woman who loved him, Medea, who whispered into his ear a simple truth: Hatred dies only when turned on itself. This force could not be extinguished by the sword, she told him; only a clever psychological strategy could vanquish it. Jason took her advice, throwing a rock cryptically and inciting an internal riot of rock throwing in which the dragon's-tooth warriors destroyed one another. Later on, encountering another dragon, Medea again stops Jason from drawing his sword with a gentle hand on his arm. This time, rather than allowing a new field of hatred to be sown and reaped, she moved quietly to the mouth of the sleeping dragon and gave it an elixir of contentment so it would remain asleep as she and her lover passed by.'

"It would require the deepest possible shift of our hearts to live in this world of fundamental animosity and devote ourselves not to the escalating exertion to kill, but rather to lulling animosity to sleep. Modern humanity may not be up to the challenge. Modern humanity may not have a choice," Kingsolver writes. "We are alive in a fearsome time and we have been given new things to fear. We've been delivered huge blows but also huge opportunities to reinforce or reinvent our will, depending on where we look for honor and how we name our enemies. The easiest thing is to think of returning the blows. But there are other things we must think about as well, other dangers we face. A careless way of sauntering across the earth and breaking open its treasures, a terrible dependency on sucking out the world's best juices for ourselves- these may also be our enemies. The changes we dread most may contain our salvation. And the stinging truth that we aren't entirely loved for our ways in this world? This thing could eat us up or save us. We are in no position yet to declare the moral of our story."

Despair says the world will always be this way, bent toward selfishness, love of power and force and ultimately sowing anger. Despair clutches the rubble in our pockets in case we need to fight back. Despair concedes that you and I have no real control over our future, or our children's future, or the future of those families we don't know around the planet we share.

But hope says it doesn't have to stay this way, that there are true and good victories in every generation and every day, however seemingly small the wonder.  Hope takes imagination and puts the dragon to sleep. It turns the rubble into art, and weapons into farm tools. Like Jesus said, there is another way.

So I will do what I can to steer my heart away from despair. I will be honest with my children about war and honest with them about hope of our country living better, not stronger, because there is no bomb big enough to eradicate hate. I will turn the compost until I can plant seeds of life in it, and with hard work those plants will sustain us. My children will learn about miracles by watching flowers bloom and by pulling carrots out of dirt. We will seek love and compassion and humility and bring bits of heaven to this earth.

Take heart.

When a homeless guy gave me a voice

It's been a month since I posted about my encounter with a homeless man named Butch. I didn't think all that much of the post when I wrote it just to get the weight off my chest. But that is usually how the truest stories are told. Well, this particular story took all my theological rants and questions and tossed them in the air like dust and isn't that really where it all starts anyway?

Here it is if you missed it: http://prodigalstories.blogspot.com/2013/06/when-jesus-goes-by-butch.html

And when I say 'encounter' what I really mean is my lack of encounter and the conviction that followed. This isn't a story I'm particularly proud of. Acknowledging that you missed something, that you're sorry, that your instincts are often self-protecting, these are vulnerable places, the dark corners you'd rather hide. I'd rather hide.

But something happens when we open ourselves up to each other, I'm finding. Something happens that stirs us down deep. Some kind of wonder- a communal head nod, an understanding that this is bigger than just me, that below the designer shoes scattering on concrete our roots are intertwined and we are at our core dependent on one another if we want to live well. Whole-hearted. Unafraid.

* * * * *

We went to Butch's memorial that same evening after I posted. I had to know more about who he was, and maybe give myself permission to feel so strongly about a stranger. My husband has worked with the homeless in our town for the last 7 years, so this world was nothing strange to him, but for the stay-at-home-mom and her kids to enter into it, well, you better believe I felt awkward. For about 3 minutes. Then one older man cried and leaned against me and said that Butch was like his brother...he looked into my eyes and told me not to ever forget and did I know how much his heart hurt? I'm undone. All these people who loved Butch, who walked with him every day, who were his family, they poured out their hearts in stories and tears and showed grace to the outsider and I stood there, on that bridge, bleary-eyed and humbled and speechless. Even my kids were quiet, taking it in. Someone else told me not to feel guilty, that my honesty was important, that it was brave love. Then we lit candles and put them on tiny rafts and said a prayer together and watched them float off into the water as night came and gently wrapped its cloak around our shoulders.

* * * * *

It's been a month and now I'm thinking my voice matters after all. I'm thinking I'm not alone in feeling helpless and overwhelmed at the broken world at my doorstep, and not alone in wanting to do something about it. Right where I am. Kids in tow. Owning my simplicity and awkwardness until it's not awkward anymore.

If I believe it all matters, that we all matter, then my role IS important, and maybe this is my role. To speak out for the ordinary people, to make space for the conversations so that extraordinary changes can be made in ourselves first, and our community next. I'm finding there are pockets of people who are far ahead of me here, and I want to learn from them.  What is your role, I wonder?

Whole-hearted. Eyes wide open. It's time.

Thank you, Butch.

The hot button issue.

I am exhausted today. Probably like everyone else. I'm overwhelmed and emotionally a bit fragile and it hurts to walk and I hate that I thought it would be gone by now and it's not. I feel pitiful.

But that's not really who I am. In my spirit I feel like a bird who just had its cage door opened for the first time- a bit hesitant, a little scared, but intrigued and overjoyed that there is a whole new beautiful world waiting to be discovered.  I feel like I've been shaken and a lot of the extra junk sifted out. Fell onto the floor boards and my bare feet like a shedding of skin and I feel fresh. I feel ready. Expectant.

There are glimpses of grace here. The simple, the mundane, that now I see are more than they had appeared-  even these are sacred. Pay attention. This small thing, this waking up of the spirit, it matters.

Today I am a paradox. The wonderful thing about this is that it demands that you acknowledge that the two very polar sides are not opposing at all, but are intertwined in places unseen. They don't just balance each other out as though on a linear cosmic balance board.  They reside in the tension, in the deep, in the questions. Tension is fast becoming a cliche word, and I'm in danger of overusing it, but I can't think of another English word that feels right. That's a challenge. Find me one please. Maybe I should make one up.

* * * * *

I read a blog post this morning that stirred up some new questions in me surrounding the homosexuality conversation. I am wishing all my Christian friends would read this, let it be another voice, mull it over like I am. I wish it would stir us, keep us up at night if it hasn't already, remind us of this tension and caution us to tread gently, choose our words more wisely, refine our beliefs a bit. New voices matter. 

This is not a complete theological exposition. It is personal thoughts from one human being living in the tension to another. Somewhere in the comments (which are also insightful) he says this:

I am not asking people to change their beliefs about gay marriage,

 but instead I am asking people to struggle more deeply with the implications

 of that belief, so that we may be better equipped to spread a

 compassionate gospel. We are to grieve with those who grieve — if the

 application of the scripture is as hard as you say it is, then it had best be applied 

with tears and tenderness, lest we crush those we serve. Those tears and tenderness can only be acquired through deep struggle with the cost of our words.

With that said, here it is.

http://sacredtension.com/2013/07/08/three-reasons-the-traditional-perspective-on-gay-marriage-makes-me-uncomfortable/

If you are willing to be a part of this conversation, let's all agree to do it well, to speak kindly, and be respectful. I have failed at this enough times to know the damage it does. But it's too important to ignore.

On listening when it's awkward

It happened in the back of the grocery store. I was simply trying to grab some chicken for company that night. I was an hour behind, frazzled, company was already waiting at the house and supper would be late. Again. One of those situations. You know the kind. I am quite sure I looked the part.

But she was looking for me, I think, for someone, anyone. It really shouldn't have been me. Not that day at that moment when I was consumed with my own shortcomings and guests and busyness.

She shook her head first as I reached across the corner of her mostly empty cart for that chicken. I tried to keep to myself, I did. But I heard her say, "I can't even afford to buy food anymore. How are people supposed to eat?" I get it. I ask that myself with 3 growing kids and a 10-year-old boy-man who needs a full meal at least every hour. (Well, thankfully now he recognizes he doesn't 'need' it like other people who don't have enough. He is a tender soul who often reminds us of our exaggeration. Even when we think we need to eat, we won't starve, he points out. Not unless we do that for a month. Not like in Africa, he says. Truth.)

I nodded and smiled in understanding, placed the chicken in my cart and tried to keep moving. I failed.

I'm not sure I could even begin to explain the extraordinary details this woman poured out to me about her life at that exact and inconvenient moment. Not a moment as in a minute. More like an hour. Right next to the frozen chicken and blocking traffic on a holiday weekend. Smooth it was not. I learned about her husband dying 5 years ago from the medication that has now been recalled. I learned about her house that's been on the market for nearly that long, all about the new deck, the realtors, borrowing even more money for a fence to maybe block the messy neighbors. I saw the desperation in her eyes as they welled up with tears. She leaned in uncomfortably close and told me she does go to the food shelf when she has to, but she doesn't want to tell anyone else because her children don't know how bad things really are. She'd hate to be a burden.  I learned about all her children, their names and her grandchildren's names and hobbies...the time her daughter almost died because of alcohol...how she found sobriety and God...the abuse in her childhood...the very specific timeline of her travels and moves across country to nowhere-ville Minnesota, "right up next to Antarctica", she said, and laughed out loud. And when this woman talked about her husband, I tell you what. Her tired face lit up like Christmas morning. "He wasn't the romantic type," she explained, tearful and quiet. "But he was my partner in life. He never left me. And I loved him."

My heart swelled with admiration, with sadness, with longing. And my eyes filled with tears, too.

There were a few very brief lulls between her rambling thoughts and I tried to close the conversation by checking my phone and the time, remembering everyone waiting for me at home. I turned my grocery cart the other way, as if to slowly wrap it up, offer goodbyes and blessings, move on from this stranger. On to more pressing matters. Like chicken. And company. And glorification of BUSY.

But I couldn't do it. She intrigued me with her earnest outpouring, her vulnerability and honesty. For reasons I won't ever understand, she picked me. At first I was slightly annoyed by this hangup, catching glances from people scooting around us, odd looks, curious looks. They didn't phase her.

"I believe in Life! I believe in God! Don't ever stop praying for your children," she was almost dancing now, "but they all have to learn their own hard way. Even when you think it might kill you!"

Now she had completely captured my attention, disarmed me. And now, of course, she was ready to say goodbye. She introduced herself, even gave me directions to her house. She grabbed my hands, looked straight into my soul, thanked me sweetly for listening, and turned to leave.

And I wept. For what, I'm not positive. In front of the company. And it was good.

* * * * *

I have prayed for eyes to see people, for opportunities outside of my small community of friends to allow these strange and fleeting lives to intersect, for moments that glimmer with purpose. I've prayed that somehow maybe I could make a difference, make the world a little less lonely. And when I didn't genuinely have the desire, I asked for even just the desire for the desire. Sometimes that is all I can honestly offer. I believe the Giver has honored that feeble and fumbling heart request I call prayer. It was answered in an awkward moment, at an awkward time, with a sort of awkward stranger. And I'm fairly confident it wasn't for her benefit, but for my own. One encounter at a time, breaking down the barriers I'm realizing I have erected. Opening the eyes of my heart by paying more attention to those around me, those fragile and divine and messy and beautiful people. Because we're all together in this chaos.

It's all very awkward. The best sort of awkward.

 There are no strangers here; only friends you

 haven't yet met. -- William Butler Yeats

* * * * *

I know I'm not alone. Have you had a similar experience? What did it teach you?

When Jesus goes by 'Butch'

I can't sleep.

My mind is slipping in and out and then drips right through my tired fingers and I'm not sure I can save it this time.

It's that sort of night, though. The kind where the rain on the window is telling a story you forgot you heard as a child. The kind of night that slows the clock- as real as when you're sitting in the dentist chair and that fifteen minutes may as well have been fifteen dreadful hours. That sort of magic happens on these nights. And it appears so commonplace. You should have noticed it there yesterday like the smudge on the bathroom mirror, right between the eyes.

Drops keep falling. Falling and falling and speaking a language of deeper truths. Truths about how things should be. How they were meant to be.

I saw him last Thursday, down by the lake shore. I was picking up my ruggedly handsome and sunburned husband and middle son and friends from their canoe adventure up the Mississippi River. They were back, survivors of the wild twisting and turning 67 miles by canoe. And it was Matt's birthday. The pies were waiting fresh on my kitchen counter.

He staggered a bit as he walked, head down and eyes quiet. 

All the littles were running around, joy-filled shrieks and windblown hair. There were seven of them altogether. Our two families tend to combine, and we relish those moments.

I saw him. And then I did it.

I whispered to my friend that he was walking toward us and we should really gather the kids. You know, someone was mugged down there just the other day. 

The words slipped out. Slipped just like my mind did tonight. 

I gathered the littles and still looked him in the eye and smiled as he passed. Said 'Hi there' and thought I meant it. 

We scurried along. We sang Happy Birthday. We ate pie. We listened to stories of fishing and storms on the river and campsites and wildlife from excited and tired little boys. 

: : :

The next morning I saw the headlines. A body had been found washed up on that same beach. A homeless man.

My gut knew before I even looked at the man's picture. It was the same eyes, the same long ragged hair. Except he had a name this time. On the streets and with his friends at the church where he often stayed and ate he was known as Butch.

: : :

I've been shouting from the rooftops for awhile now that Jesus is found in the outcast. I've studied this. I've thought and prayed and read and talked a lot about this. I've stepped outside an inner-circle church community to focus on living this. And now here I am, reading the news, seeing his face, learning his name, and all I hear is my judgment. Better safe than sorry, especially with kids. I can easily justify my concerns. And hey, I did smile and say hello. What more could I have done? I mean, really, what could I have done?

I'm naive. Admittedly. But slightly less than I used to be. I know it wasn't a moment where I could have prevented a tragedy. Maybe. Maybe the tragedy wasn't even that I judged someone I knew nothing about out of unfounded fear. Maybe the tragedy wasn't that it happened.

Maybe the real tragedy is that it happens.

We talk a lot about love. Especially loving the unlovely. And in a moment, old habits return and fear rules our hearts once again. We miss the miracle in the common or ugly or unknown. We miss Jesus.

I did. I missed him. And I mean it. I'm grieving a complete stranger, wishing I would have looked a little deeper in those eyes, asked him if he was enjoying the summer sunshine at least, connected. I missed something there and I feel it now, that loss, that groan for a life, for God to come fix all this mess and my fearful heart and turn it into something useable. Something closer to the way things were meant to be.

People are meant for knowing one another and for knowing their Maker. Sometimes you find that you meet Jesus in the grocery store line, on the street corner, or walking down the beach. Often he or she doesn't look a thing like the blond-haired blue-eyed painting we've bought and sold as gospel. We're meant to share life with one another, inter-connected instead of independent. Tearing down walls and labels and stereotypes and injustice and poverty one day at a time by inviting people over or in conversation instead of building fences and installing security systems and keeping our children safe from strangers.

We were meant for so much more than this. And I am sorry.

: : :

The rain is still falling, still saturating the earth, still scattering across the glass like ants whose hill was barbarically stepped on. It is this story of Life and the groaning and suffering and longing for our world to be made whole again, a return to Eden. I am pulled back to my childhood, back when I knew everything was alright in the world. When stories were true.

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.

Whenever you did one of these things to someone 

overlooked or ignored, that was me— you did it to me. - Jesus

: : :

I hear that Butch had many friends, that he was a kind and gentle man, that he had lived here for many years. He is loved and missed.

     ***Due to the response of this post, and after going to  Butch's memorial service, I wrote a follow-up post here:  http://prodigalstories.blogspot.com/2013/07/when-homeless-guy-gave-me-voice.html

The Theology of Soup

I am making soup tonight.

The process is an art form (channel your inner VanGogh with me for a minute). Saute onions and fresh-chopped garlic in rich, yellow butter...

At this point you can choose to just stop and eat, because this is perfection in a pan, right  here, people. My love affair with onions gets a little out of hand, I'll admit. I can't resist.

...otherwise, you can add some other veggies like carrots, mushrooms, peppers, cook and douse with seasonings. Add some homemade chicken stock you cooked the day before (this is a MUST for anyone who cares about flavor, health or their pocketbook- that covers everyone, right?) and simmer. Simmer. Simmer some more. Then you get to lean over the pot, breathe in the deep aromas, feel like you brought world peace and solved the earth's hunger problem all with a handful of vegetables.

There is an element of magic in making something out of nothing. Whatever unused produce is in the fridge. Left-over meat or rice. Turning it into a full and appetizing meal and filling my kids' bellies with nutrients. It's a primal ritual. Satisfying, not only to our stomachs, but right down deep to the soul.

Soup-making and people-feeding has become the core of my faith and every day life. I could recommend more than a handful of amazing books that have helped me put these ideas into words and works- books like Take This Bread by Sara Miles and Bread & Wine by Shauna Niequist top the list. I'm apparently not alone in my sentiments. We have dubbed Thursday evenings 'Soup Night', when I make a big pot and welcome anyone and everyone to join us for a simple supper. It is good to practice what you preach. I'm taking baby steps in this department.

Tonight I plan on using up some potatoes and squash, a bunch of cilantro that has lingered a few days in the crisper. My goal is to let nothing go to waste! Why throw it away when you could turn it into a new meal? I aspire to be as passionate about resourcefulness and stewardship as I am about flavor and nutrition. I suppose that requires discipline and practice as well, like any good thing.

When Jesus fed the five thousand, he took the few loaves of bread and fish and distributed to everyone and they were satisfied. As if that weren't miracle enough, afterward he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.”  So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the leftover bread.

God always uses the bits and pieces of us that we think are useless, that we would otherwise just throw out. But God is Master Artist and Chef- the Creator of all good things- and nothing, I mean NOTHING is wasted. Not even our flaws. Not even our garbage. Instead, God makes things new. Breathing life into dust. Speaking light into darkness. Beauty from ashes. You get the picture.

Make something simple and beautiful today, share it and be nourished.

* * * * *

God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it. --C.S. Lewis

"Alright, then, I'll go to hell." - Huck Finn

I ran across a phenomenally written blog post today. I have to share it.

http://brianzahnd.com/2013/06/when-america-went-to-hell/

Provocative title, eh?

Well, it's got me thinking. About slavery then. About injustices now. About re-reading Huck Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin (bumping them up on the must-read-this-summer-list).

In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck had helped hide a slave, his friend, Jim. Huck knew from Sunday School, however, that hiding slaves is a sin and will send you straight to hell. So Huck writes a letter to Miss Watson telling her where she can find her slave, finally ready to save his soul. Huck doesn't want to go to hell. But he loves his friend even more. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” — and tore it up.

Huckleberry Finn. Giving us a lesson on loving your neighbor. 

"Neighbor" was a messy word back then- certainly it didn't mean slaves! Who are we quick to exclude now? I can think of more than a couple possibilities.

But back to the Civil War.

Zahnd explains the irony of the revivals that swept through churches before the war:

Millions had “accepted Jesus” and shouted hosanna, but they did not know the things that make for peace. They prayed a sinner’s prayer, “got right with God,” and kept their slaves. They had a faith that would justify the sinner while bringing no justice to the slave. They had faith that gave them a ticket to heaven…and a highway to hell.

Probably without even knowing what they were doing these Christians had quite effectively used Jesus and the Bible to validate their racist assumptions and protect their vested interests. They went to church on Sunday. They got saved. They loved Jesus. They waved their palms and shouted hosanna on Palm Sunday. But like the crowd in Jerusalem eighteen centuries earlier they didn’t know the things that make for peace. And Jesus wept over an America headed to hell. The churches were full and slavery continued…until the Civil War. Then 623,000 people died for the sins of America.

This is a heavy bit of history. Have we learned from it? In Luke, Jesus said, “How I wish that you of all people would understand the things that make for peace.”

The things that make for peace. 

Jesus.

How can we better love people? How can we be peacemakers in a war-hungry world?

Zahnd warns:

If we console ourselves with the promise of heaven in the afterlife while creating hell in this present life, we have embraced the tawdry religion of the crusader and forsaken the true faith of our Savior.

Are we more concerned about churches being full, or that 'slavery' has continued?

Dear God, let us learn from our mistakes.

Bridges.

Communication, on the other hand, is painstakingly difficult and increasingly complex when so much of it happens in typed word and emoticons instead of voice inflection and body posture. Complex, but not impossible. After all, being face-to-face with someone and engaged in conversation does not necessarily mean there will be greater understanding or mutual respect or better chance of converting the 'other' to your own worldview.

STOP.

That is what we want, isn't it? If we're honest? We so passionately believe in our own worldview, our own interpretation of right/wrong that it must be our goal to communicate this truth adequately so the one in disagreement comes to this full knowledge as well. After all, love means telling the truth.

We are addicted to answers, to the idea that all views have opposition they must fight, addicted to labels. The yes/no, the right/wrong, the us/them, the black/white, anti-/pro- paradigm.

I don't buy it.

The real stuff of life happens in the tension, in the conversation, in the bridge-building between two opposing sides that both seek to convert the 'other'. I use the term 'tension' purposely. It is tense. It is uncomfortable. As the saying goes, when you're a bridge you get walked on from both sides. Truth.

Lately the gay marriage debate has taken the spotlight, and necessarily so in MN. I see my FB feed fill up with passionate conservative friends taking a stand for 'truth'. I see my equally passionate progressive and gay friends pushing back, standing for 'equality'. I have dear friends on both sides of the spectrum, and I've been known to offend both sides at times. I'm learning. Slowly. Too slowly.

If there's one thing I've continually felt God's pull toward in my life in the last couple years, it is that I am to be a bridge builder, in this conversation and others. Living in the tension. It's become my mantra of sorts. I'm not trying to sound cliche. Nor am I trying to side-step having to answer hard questions. I'm just learning to recognize that without building relationships and communicating by listening first, nothing will ever change.

So I choose to stand in solidarity with the Other. Because that is the example I see in Jesus. Feel free to disagree with me- plenty do. 'But Jesus said, Go and sin no more!' you say? Yes, he did. After he had taken the sinner's side, risking his own reputation and even his life. After he let her know that he did not condemn her. Then, and only then, had he earned the right to speak into her life.

Time to follow suit. Earning that right, earning trust in a relationship takes time. Serious time. And it involves much listening and not a lot of talking.

It's easy to dismiss someone out of ignorance or intolerance when you don't have to put real faces to the labels. It's not so easy to do once you've heard their story, listened to their heartache, felt their pain or confusion, called them Friend. Relationship is everything.

So much misunderstanding. So little listening and too few relationships being built between these two camps. It breaks my heart. I believe it breaks God's heart as well.

Can I be a bridge? It's certainly seen as risky business, often labelled as lukewarm, not holding to Scripture, divisive. I've been told it's not real reconciliation without repentance. I disagree. And we can disagree.

We can seek to elevate these conversations to a place that earns back the trust and respect where it was lost. We can see the beauty in diversity by creating space for these honest discussions. We can speak louder that the image of God exists in ALL people, gay and straight. We can ask honest questions to better understand instead of merely convert. We can decide that it isn't about agreeing on interpretations of Scripture or on a political hot-button issue. We can recognize that it's about how we love the one who disagrees with us. I haven't done a great job of this myself.

I'm saying it now, out loud, because I HAVE to.

***For the conservative person: How can you, or how can the church, better love the LGBT community? How can you better seek reconciliation with those who disagree with your interpretation of Scripture?

***For the progressive person: How can you seek reconciliation with those who view marriage in the traditional way? How can you love the LGBT community while respecting the conservative view and even inviting them along in that process of learning by listening?

Demanding conformity to beliefs is not helpful, nor is it the unconditional love that Jesus exemplified. Maybe our refusal to repent of our intolerance is precisely what we need to repent of. Maybe the first step looks like humility and more genuine questions than we think necessary. Maybe it looks less like choosing sides and more like bridge-building. Maybe saying 'congratulations' to a newly engaged same-sex couple doesn't have to mean you condone it. Maybe it's just an extension of some much-needed dignity. Maybe it's the first step toward a relationship- one that you can learn just as much from as them. It is possible to disagree in a variety of respectful and even hospitable ways.

‘Rather than being disappointed in less than complete agreement or understanding, I’ll be grateful for even small steps we can take together in challenging dangerous features of the status quo and opening up better possibilities for the future.’ – Brian  Mclaren

Small steps. What do you think?

Rock-sitting, veil-tearing, and learning to shut up.

“And then there is time in which to be, simply to be, that time in which God quietly tells us who we are and who he wants us to be.  It is then that God can take our emptiness and fill it up with what he wants, and drains away the business with which we inevitably get involved in the dailiness of human living.”  ~Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

I know we are called to movement. To change. To growth. But sometimes I feel like that's not possible until I sit myself down and get comfortable in an uncomfortable sort of way. Comfortable like sitting on a rock is comfortable.

I mean, this learning to be business is harder than change. It takes patience. Letting go of control (it's an illusion anyway). It takes focus to be still and listen. And I'm not talking about being physically still, because that is way too easy for me these days.

No, I'm talking about stilling my heart.

Mind.

Spirit.

In a culture that idolizes the race toward success, this s-l-o-w-i-n-g  d-o-w-n makes us feel restless, even lazy. But that's hardly the case.

"Be still," God whispers.  "Know that I am God." 

Be still. Not static, but still. Lean in a bit closer. Now listen.

I'm not one to expect God's voice to be audible. I'm sure it happens. Not to me. 

I don't expect writing in the clouds. Not anymore. (yes, there's a story behind that)

I don't need a lightning bolt to tell me where to go next.

I need God.

That is all. It is enough. Just knowing, remembering, that I am God's. I belong. I exist because of Love. That makes me loved unconditionally. And not just this, as if it weren't enough, but I get to be with him! There's that word- with- it keeps popping up everywhere now that I'm looking for it. I get to be with God, in relationship with him, I get to bear the image of my Creator. I have complete access to something divine because 'the veil of the temple was torn in two'. Top to bottom. It was rendered useless, meaningless, nonexistent.

What does that mean for me, sitting on this rock, in this hard place, trying to just be?

I'm not entirely sure yet. I do know that back then there was a boundary, a barrier between the holy and the profane. The sacred and the mundane were separated.

But then something provocative happened. Jesus showed up. As a baby of an underprivileged and unwed (impure) family. His life becomes a story of reconciliation, one where all the rules are turned upside-down. A rescuer, he was, but not in the typical sense. God became flesh and came to dwell with us. With us.

Jesus essentially tore back the curtain that separated us, the creation, from being with our Maker.

So I get to sit here and take it in. I get to stop trying to do good things for God and just be with him instead.

Stunning.

* * * * * * * * * 

Be-ing is an odd thing. But it is what we were created to do. After all, when asked what God wanted to be called, what his name is, God answered "I AM". There it is again. God is. And that isn't just enough, it is everything.

So this place I'm in, this rock that I sit on, uncomfortable and quiet as it may be, is the very best place for me to lean in and hear my Maker whisper these truths back in the wind, in the rustling oak trees, in the bubbling stream...that I am loved just because he loves. Because all is sacred. Because of Jesus.

Because I AM, too.