Diana

Inspiration

January 19, 2016 By Diana

Do you all know Seth Haines? He’s written one of the best books I read in 2015, “Coming Clean,” (reviewed here on this blog) He also writes an occasional Tiny Letter and was one of those who inspired me to begin writing my own version of that. In the last few of those letters, he has begun to do what he once did for a small group of email friends — provide inspiration for writing on a topic. Today’s letter inspired these thoughts and THIS is what I need in my writing life right now. I’ve been tired, lethargic, uninspired for many months now. I’m sure that enervating fatigue is connected to the stresses of the last eighteen months or so, from foot surgery and recovery to emergency hospital stays, to a major move across town, interwoven with the continuing disappearance of my mother into the mists of dementia and the inevitable toll of a long life on the bodies and psyches of both my husband and myself. But today, his own reflection (which is stunningly gorgeous – go over to his blog and sign up for his letter right this minute!) invited me to just sit and reflect on the presence of God in the ordinary. My response to that invitation:

The clouds are low to the ground this week, hovering over our city like a pale gray shawl, hiding the view, softening the noise, slowing my breath. Today’s clouds carry water, gentle but steady, trundling its way down the drainpipe behind the bedroom wall, glistening on the ground outside the sliding door.

I’ve just come from a long lunch with a friend, someone I trust, someone I love. And I heard such sadness, sadness I knew nothing about. And my eyes well with tears for her . . . and for me, because I did not know. And I did not ask. Until today.

The gray dampness of the day seemed appropriate somehow. And the Beauty in the midst of that gray was her lovely face, sincere, concerned, honest, receptive. We talked long past the 90 minutes of free parking and I left a more generous tip than usual. Story-sharing costs us something, you know? It is never cheap.

When I returned home, driving up the winding hill with the wipers going full tilt, I shared the saddest parts with my husband. He, too, was hit hard. He, too, feels that pull to re-commit to friendship, to share the load, to pay something for the privilege of inclusion, even if it costs nothing more than time and empathy. Those are never cheap, either, are they?

I made myself some tea, a new flavor – Peppermint Chocolate – and settled into reading and writing for a while. But my eye was caught by some new blooms on the vine that covers our low-slung back fence, the one over which we usually have a soaring city and mountain view. The wide view is unavailable during this grayness, this shawl-covering season. But the narrow one is always there.

I took my camera out into the gentle rain and aimed it toward those gold and lavender throated cups that were pointing every which way along the rail. The drops of water somehow multiplied their loveliness and I gasped as I gingerly stepped from concrete to grass to flagstone pavers. I snapped the pictures and I remembered a truth I too often neglect or downright forget: there is Beauty everywhere. Everywhere.

Even on a gray day, even when friends are sad, even when I forget to ask.

Where are you finding Beauty in the midst of the grayness, in the humdrum of day-to-day life?

Filed Under: Aging, Beauty, Blessings, community, Confession, Delight!, Encouragement, Enough

Who Am I? — SheLoves 20Questions, January 2016

January 9, 2016 By Diana
Starting the new year off with a bang over at SheLoves . . . with 20 Questions! This is the one I chose because I believe it to be so central to our journey. Start here and click over to read the rest over there. And please join the conversation, okay? Would love to hear who YOU are!

This is the central question of my long life, one I must ask myself every day, one that requires me to slow down long enough to remember the answer! It is a question buried deeply in our souls, maybe even in our sinews, and it is the call of God to each and every one of us. No matter what limits we live with — and all of us have limits of one kind or another — each of us has a unique place in the fabric of humanity. And our primary task in life is to find that place and fill it as fully and heartily as we can.

This question is both personal and universal, and the answer we seek can only be found in the unique context in which we live and learn. First and foremost, that context is always laced with the lives of others, so discerning an answer to who we are will require a deep and growing understanding of where we are. That context can — and should — change over time. We must pass through the necessary and important stages of development common to us all, each with its own set of ‘rules’ and tasks. Infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, old age — like it or not, we all move along the river of time and maturity. The trappings and boundaries of our life will change from stage to stage, sometimes quite dramatically. Where we live, and with whom, the level of our education, our job or career status, the state of our health — these shift and re-form constantly throughout our lives.

But that central question stays the same, and so does the answer. Or perhaps I should say, answers. There is an ‘a’ and a ‘b’ part to both, a primary and a secondary truth. The primary part is true for every single person on the planet — past, present or future. The secondary part is unique to each one of us — to our DNA, our emotional IQ, our mix of gifts, strengths, weaknesses and limits.

The ‘a’ part is perhaps the hardest for us to wrap our minds around, the most difficult for us to hold onto with confidence and rock-solid belief. Brennan Manning has written about it exquisitely:

“Do you believe that the God of Jesus loves you beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity—that he loves you in the morning sun and in the evening rain—that he loves you when your intellect denies it, your emotions refuse it, your whole being rejects it. Do you believe that God loves without condition or reservation and loves you this moment as you are and not as you should be.”

― Brennan Manning, All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir

Do you believe this? Do you cling to it, trust in it, allow it to form and re-form you? Hard as it is for us to fathom, every single one of us is the apple of God’s eye, the one over whom the great God of the Universe sings a song of love and delight. This is the through-line of our scripture, the nitty-gritty of the Jesus-Good-News, the powerful, ongoing labor of the Holy Spirit within us: we are loved.

The ‘b’ part of the question looks a lot like Fred Buechner’s famous query: do you know where your deep gladness is? What is it that makes your heart sing, that feels right, way down deep inside you? How do your own gifts and strengths converge to both bring you joy and the world in which you live good? As Buechner put it, where do “your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet?”

Hop on over and read the rest and see how others are answering this query!

Filed Under: Aging, biblical reflection, Encouragement, God's gifts, personal journey, SheLoves

Out of the Ether — OneWord 2016

January 5, 2016 By Diana
On January 1st, I sent out my first Tiny Letter of this new year. This is a project I have come to love and I am grateful for the friends who have subscribed to these missives, most particularly for the much smaller number who take the time to send me a response of some kind. Thank you!!

In that letter, I said that I was still waiting for my ‘word’ for this year to reveal itself to me. I was even so bold as to say I hoped it would be an easier word than the last few have been. My word for 2015 was ‘STRETCH,’ for 2014 it was ‘OBEDIENT,’ and for 2012, it was ‘WAITING.’ (Not sure what happened to 2013, but apparently, a word never materialized for that 12-month stretch!) Not one of those was easy, in any sense of that word.

After writing that letter, as I readied myself for sleep and turned out the light, I asked again for a word to appear. And lo, out of the ether of near-sleep, a word appeared. I thought I heard it as . . . slow.

Well, yes, that surely fits. 2015 was the year of Falling Down a Lot and every time I hit the ground, I thought to myself, “Woman, you have GOT to slow down!” So slow seemed right somehow.

But that sense of rightness lasted all of 30 seconds. Because coming immediately on the heels of that word was this one: ‘STEADY.‘

Ah, yes. I’ll take it! I said into that ether. I.will.take.it.

I’ve been chewing on that set of seven letters ever since, trying to conjure up images/ideas/connections as I reflect on the year just past and lean into the one so recently begun. Here are some of my initial thoughts and a few recent photographs to illustrate them.

After the turbulence of 2015, the entire concept of steadiness comes as a welcome gift, one that I am still unpacking, one that I am confident will be multi-layered and complex. For example, have you ever watched sea stars? They are among God’s steadiest creatures, I do believe. They only move when hungry or in danger and they cling to rocks, coral, wharf poles — anything sturdy and stationary. On top of that, they’re gorgeous — brightly colored, a pleasing shape and they have this incredible ability to regrow injured limbs. Hoping to make this a year of Not Falling At All, I want to learn from these guys and cling to the sturdy stuff. And, of course, it never hurts to look as good as possible whilst clinging, right?

Living in a beachside community provides easy access to one of the grandest of reminders that steadiness is a virtue and gift. The waves keep on comin,’ you know? Sometimes they’re slow and piddly; sometimes they’re muscular and wild. But no matter the weather, the time of day or night, the condition of the beach (or the presence of frail human bodies!), those waves are steady. They roll on, without end or interruption. I’m hoping for NO interruptions this year, at least none of the unwelcome and/or difficult kind . . . like emergency room visits or moving all my earthly belongings across town.

Now I will admit that some human bodies are less frail than others when it comes to those waves. We spent a fair amount of time watching surfers while we were away celebrating our anniversary last month. This particular guy was not young. No, indeed, not young at all. And he managed to catch a ride with some frequency. It’s true that a surfer’s steadiness is a temporary and usually short-lived thing. But while it lasts? Oh, GLORY. Even just a few moments of glorious steadiness would be welcome, welcome.

Now this old codger knew how to be steady! He clambered up on the edge of the Pismo Beach pier, folded his large webbed feet underneath his feathers, sat down firmly and drew his great neck and beak into the warmth and softness of his feathers. He remained watchful and alert, but he sat there, perched on a narrow plank for a good long time. When a nearby fisherman caught a small fish, he was instantly across that pier, waiting for a taste — he got one, too. Being steady does not mean being unwilling to move. Rather, I think it implies an alert readiness to change course, as needed. That’s the kind of steady I need.

And then, of course, in any central coast California beach town, there are the bluffs, those large, yellow-to-peachy-pink rock formations that rim almost every sandy cove between Ventura and Pismo Beach. I love them — they’re craggy, uneven, vulnerable to erosion, yet somehow one of the steadiest things in our landscape. They are ever-present, providing grand vistas of the broad Pacific, reminding us that we are truly tiny creatures with short life spans. They are a regular reminder of beauty and strength, two of the many facets of ‘steady.’

The oak trees that are ubiquitous in this part of the world remind me of the value of hanging in, hanging on, standing strong, offering shade, and withstanding both wind and drought. They are, in many ways, the epitome of steadiness to me. We don’t have oak trees in our current neighborhood, at least not very many of them. We were surrounded by them in our former home and their presence is one of the few things I miss since our move. I’m glad they’re EVERYWHERE in our town, because I enjoy being around them. I’d love for 2016 to be a year of hanging in/hanging on/standing strong, etc. Praying in that direction these days, that is for sure.

I did a quick biblical search for the word, ‘steady,’ and got back a grand total of four. I may reference one or two of them in the year ahead, but this one, from the beautiful book of Isaiah, seemed wildly appropriate for me at this point in my life:

Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.”
Isaiah 35:3-5

Yes, Lord. I am relying on you to provide both strength and steadiness as needed in the year that is unfolding before me. And I relish this picture of an inordinately long-lived rainbow as a reminder of the way in which you, O God, keep your promises to humankind. As always, 2016 will be a year in which you are the steadiness I seek, the steadiness I need.

Do you have a word for 2016? Share it in the comments — I love reading what others are living with/wrestling with/hoping for!

Filed Under: "More Wondering . . .", Blessings, Creation, Encouragement, God's gifts, Gratitude, hope, Marriage, Mystery, OneWord

Sing It Out!! — for SheLoves in December

December 17, 2015 By Diana
We were asked to write a shorter-than-usual reflection piece for SheLoves this month, reflection on a character in the Christmas narrative. My choice was a bit of a ‘cheat,’ because I picked two of my very favorites. See if maybe you see the same things I do in this lovely piece of our story. You can start here and then finish it over at SheLoves:

There are two of them in the story, two of them in the same boat.

And such a strange and wonderful boat it was.

One young, very young. The other, older, maybe ten or even twenty years older. Cousins the story tells us, they were distant cousins.

Both of them pregnant — unexpectedly, miraculously, stunningly pregnant.

And they came together at a crucial moment, offering each other gifts, gifts that took the shape of words, words that sing out with hope and promise, with surprise and jump-for-joy abandon.

That younger one was full to the brim with Spirit-joy and more than a little bit of wonder, and I’m guessing, more than a few questions. When she knew she was with child, she went running, right on up the dusty road, up to the hills, looking for that familiar face, that familiar cousin-voice, so hungry for a companion on the way.

And the older one? Well, she was smack dab in the middle of her own wonderment. For years she cried out to God, begging for a baby, a baby who never materialized, leaving her aching and isolated. When she was beyond hope, God answered! Now there was a wild-souled boy-child growing inside her.

Their meeting is a picture of the life-giving power that is possible when women who share affection and esteem support one another. Mary, overwhelmed by that heavenly visitation and its remarkable aftermath, headed straight into the arms of someone who knew her well, someone who knew God well, someone who could help her make some sense of all the craziness. She headed for Elizabeth.

Hop on over to SheLoves to see what happens next!

Filed Under: Advent, Beauty, community, Friendship, God's gifts, Grace, Gratitude, Mystery, Spiritual Heroine, Storytelling

Advent Two: A Prayer for Peace

December 7, 2015 By Diana
Each week of Advent, I am offering a simple prayer centered around the ‘theme’ of that particular Advent Sunday. Last week was ‘hope,’ this week, is ‘peace.’ These words will often flow from my own reflection on the texts and the sermon of that week. Yesterday’s preaching text was Luke 3:1-6.

I gotta admit, Lord,
peace is looking a tad impossible these days.
Everywhere, we are killing one another.
Some of us use guns,
and some of us use words.

So, yeah, Lord.
Peace is feeling more than a little bit elusive,
like a shy child, hiding in Mama’s skirts.

Come out, I want to cry.
Come out and settle with us.
Sit in our hearts and in our minds,
bring us together,
help us to put away those guns,
soften those words,
open these tired hearts of ours.

And then I read those words of Isaiah’s as our dear
and slightly crazy friend John the Baptist used them
at the unfolding of his ministry, his odd and marvelous ministry —
of strange words and of water.

And as I read them,
I remember that the whole idea of peace has more to do with what’s
happening inside me, and what’s happening in your church,
than it does with what’s happening in the nations,
or the cities, or the terrorist camps and capitals.

Peace has to do with my, with our, willingness to let go.

To let go of anxieties,
and of our feeble attempts to ‘fix’ others —
other people, other relationships, other situations.

But I struggle so to hold the heck on.
To worry things to death,
to try and manage people and things.

Oh, I am such a slow learner.

When will I remember that there is very, very little
within my actual capacity to control?
All that is given to me is the ability to choose,
to choose my own words, responses and actions.
And even that choosing has its limits, doesn’t it, Lord?

Luke’s gospel uses so few words to tell us about John and his ministry.
Maybe that’s because John himself was a man of few words.
Yet from those words, whole swarms of people got a peek
at what You were up to in their world.
John’s words were these: ‘repent,’ ‘forgiveness of sins,’ ‘be baptized.’

And then your servant Luke dips into his ancient scripture text and finds a few more, these beauties from the prophet Isaiah:

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be brought low;
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways shall be made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

— Isaiah 40, NKJV

More than a description of the changes in our physical landscape
brought by the ‘salvation of God,’
these words describe the changing landscape inside
each and every one of us.

I, for one, have a lot of hills and valleys goin’ on.
Rough places?
Yes, yes. I’ve got more than a few.
And there is a whole lot that is crooked in here,
a whole lot that needs straightening.
The kind of straightening that only You can do, Lord God.

So, as trite as it sometimes sounds to say or sing those
old-chestnut words,
‘let there be peace on earth,
and let it begin with me,’
I will say them, right here, right now.
Yes, yes.
Let it begin with me.

Come right on in here, dear God.
Trim down the hill of my resistance,
fill in the valleys of my anxieties,
straighten out the crookedness of my
malformed desires and dreams,
and smooth out the roughness,
the edginess,
that too often rises to the surface,
especially during busy seasons like this one.

You have invited me to be your partner in peace,
real peace,
true peace,
the kind that starts inside . . .
and then works its way out.

The kind that brings lasting changes,
in us and in our world.

So, Prince of Peace . . .
do your amazing thing,
and start right here, okay?

Right here,

Inside this messed-up heart of mine.

Amen. May it be so.

Filed Under: Advent, daily devo, Encouragement, God's gifts, Lifelong Learning

“Coming Clean” — A Book Review

December 4, 2015 By Diana

This year, I have said ‘yes’ to too many friends about reading and reviewing their books. I love doing it, I do. But suddenly, at this point in the year, I am feeling overwhelmed, more than a little bit guilty, and very, very late. Seth’s gorgeous book debuted at the end of October.

Sigh.

And I LOVED it.

Sigh, again.

So . . . better late than never, right?? RIGHT??

This book, this amazing book — “Coming Clean, A Story of Faith” — is its own strange and wonderful animal. Part memoir, part journal, part devotional, ALL honest and true. And so very, very good. In fact, this is one of the best books I’ve read. Ever.

And I’ve read a whole lotta books.

Seth has really important things to say and he says them so well. He had me at the preface, which contained this gem of a chunk, to which I wrote a very large, very red YES in the margin:

“Read this less as a book about alcoholism and more as one about the pains and salves common in every life. My alcoholism is not the thing, see. Neither is your eating disorder, your greed disorder, or your sex addiction. Your sin is not the thing. The thing is under the sin. The thing is the pain. Sin management without redemption of life’s pain is a losing proposition.

“There is an antidote for the pain. It was taught to us, commanded of us. It is simple in word and sometimes impossible in deed. It is free, but it isn’t cheap.

“Are you ready to explore with me? Are you ready to find the medicine?

“This is an open invitation to come clean.” (pg. 14)

And the book continues to unfold exactly what he means by these words. Journeying through it is at one and the same time delightful and exquisitely painful. Why? Because I recognized myself on almost every page — and I have never had an entire drink of alcohol in my life. “My alcoholism is not the thing, see.”

Oh, yeah. I see. I see.

The pain became overwhelming for Seth when his youngest son Titus was critically, unexplainably ill. Going from doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital, finding no answers. None. They watched this beautiful little boy slowly wasting away. And to stop the pain, Seth began to drink, finding in alcohol a friend and a comfort and a salve, albeit quite temporary, for the ache inside.

Seth is a thinking Christian, an intelligent man and a loving one, and as he walked this hard road, he began to wrestle with the things he had always believed. He saw no sign of an active God in his world or anywhere else. He knew that his own personal battle with the bottle would not be a welcome topic of conversation in most church gatherings — sad, but oh-so-true, I am sorry to say. And he began to journal. Early in that process, he found one person who was safe, a person who had walked the road to sobriety before him, and with her gentle help, Seth slowly began to turn in a different direction.

Here’s what I love about this story. First of all, it is masterfully written. Seth has taken his journal entries from the first 90 days of his ‘coming clean’ journey, edited and thought about them and created a small work of art in these 219 pages. Just for the language choice and the thoughtfulness, this is a worthwhile read.

In addition, he has told the truth as he was learning it. He asks the right questions and he wrestles hard with the answers, freely admitting that he cannot always find them. The journal moves into memoir when he writes of his early life, especially of his early faith, of meeting and knowing God in the sound of wind through the mesquite trees of his Texas childhood. He remembers his own early feelings of tranquility and assurance that all is right with the world because there is a benevolent God present in it.

Thirdly, he frankly admits and swears by the therapy he received in this process. I am a big believer in good therapeutic intervention, having found it to be life-changing, maybe even life-saving. And Seth writes it true, true, true. A good therapist asks the right questions and listens beyond listening, getting to the heart of things in ways most of us either cannot or do not. An encounter with a faith-healer in childhood, and the skillful way in which his therapist wove together technique and prayer to help him understand why that experience was so deeply formative, is a wonder to behold and a critical piece in Seth’s recovery process. I believe that reading some of these scenes in a group setting could be liberating and life-changing for many, and I was delighted to read that this book will be part of a group study in an Indiana prison.

That’s the kind of book this is, my friends. An instrument of grace, a means of revelation and a call to honesty, openness and hard, personal work. Read it.

And then do it.

You won’t be sorry.

Filed Under: Book Review, Encouragement, friendship. personal journey, God's gifts, Grace, Hard Things

One of a Kind: A Book Review . . . Bandersnatch!

November 30, 2015 By Diana

My friend Erika Morrison is one of a kind. Earthy, funny, stubborn, passionate, highly intelligent and filled to the brim with Jesus-love. And I thank God for her!

She has written a lovely, challenging, heartfelt book that is just like she is.

Bandersnatch — An Invitation to Explore Your Unconventional Soul, is 230 pages of alliteration, story-telling, question-asking (and answering), and thought-provoking ideas. It takes time to read this book, time to absorb it properly, and those questions she asks will stick with you for a long time after you close the cover.

Her basic premise is one I’ve been gently espousing here at my blog and in my work as a spiritual director: discover who you are, the one God loves, the one God designed, and become that person with your whole heart. Of course, Erika being Erika, she says it a whole lot better than that and she surrounds that central point with four lovely facets, each one offering a challenge to re-think who you are and how you live as a follower of Jesus.

This is her 4-part “A” list: Avant-Garde, Alchemy, Anthropology, Art — and she delves into each one with her characteristic verve and insight, offering personal stories and asking soul-searching questions from all four compass points. She borrows her title from a character in Carroll’s, ‘Through the Looking Glass:’ “A bandersnatch is . . . a rather untamed and frightening beast with unpredictable habits and unconventional attitudes, he is also good because his fierceness, his troublemaking, his nuisance-bearing disposition is . . . submitted to a better cause — the dominion of the kind and good white queen.” (pg. xii)

She boldly calls us to become like that bandersnatch — submitted to the dominion of the Kingdom, sold out to Jesus, and in touch with who we are, how we’re wired and how we might best bring that Kingdom into the lives we live, the worlds we inhabit, the people we meet, and the families we create.

I would not call this book an easy read. But it is a good read, a challenging one and potentially, a life-changing one. I highly recommend it. It’s available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble and wherever Christian books are sold.

Filed Under: Book Review, Delight!, Encouragement, Gratitude

Advent One: A Prayer for Hope

November 29, 2015 By Diana

O, Lord —

teach us to hope.

Teach us to wait.

Teach us to walk right into the dark, without fear, without missing a step.

Advent happens during the darkest part of the year in our northern hemisphere. That’s how we start the new liturgical year, in the dark.

The dark.

Where roots grow deep, buried beneath the soil.
Where stars appear, one flicker of promise after another.
Where sleep happens, that still space in the middle of all our busy, forcing us to slow down, to stop our striving, to make space for rest and growth, and to prepare for the renewal of the light.

We begin this four-week cycle with hope.

Because where else can we start?

Only hope can help us focus on wonder and goodness when terror and death assault our feeble frame.

It is hope that buoys our spirits when we are overwhelmed.

It is hope that sparks that candle, the one that lights the way, one footstep at a time.

So. Teach us to hope, Lord. Remind us that you are good, that love is real, that life is larger than our fears — that YOU are larger than our fears.

Help us to remember that all good things start small — seeds, kittens, puppies, babies, ideas, love, laughter, joy . . . and hope.

So, help us to start small, to trust that a flicker can become a flame, a flame can become a torch, and a torch can become a bonfire, piercing the darkness and lighting the way.

We wait for the baby. We wait for the King. We wait.

Teach us to wait with hope.

For Jesus’s sake,

Amen.

Filed Under: Advent, hope

Redefining Terms — SheLoves, November

November 21, 2015 By Diana
Each month, it is my privilege and pleasure to write to a theme at SheLovesMagazine. This month — of course! — the theme is ‘feast.’ In this piece, I choose to redefine the term, to broaden and enrich it. You can start here and then follow this link over to read the rest of the piece.

I’m sitting here, leaning firmly against squishy homemade flannel bags filled with field corn, bags I’ve warmed in the microwave, each of them aligned with a sore spot in my back or neck. And I am sighing with gratitude and comfort. I am also breathing in the first truly cool air we’ve enjoyed in central California for a long, long time. And I can hear the first tentative drops of rain hitting the patio just outside my door. Ah, yes. So many of my senses engaged at once, and I’m earnestly trying to pay attention to each one.

As I do that, I begin to feel like I’ve been at a banquet, thoroughly sated with deliciousness. Even though I’ve lived a long time now, I must admit that this kind of satiety is a new experience for me, this feeling full merely because I’m paying attention to the details of my day. For decades, the only ‘full’ sensation I knew well was that caused by overstuffing myself with various foodstuffs. And that kind of feeling full was important, very important.

I don’t know all the reasons why it was so important, though I’ve learned about some of them. Early in my life, I internalized that food was comfort, reward, gift and friend. I come from a long line of strong women, all of whom loved food. They also used food to do all kinds of things it was never designed to do. I never really knew any other way of thinking about food, and when I heard someone say something that ran counter to my internal understanding, I was mystified. I distinctly remember admiring a very slender girl in my high school youth group and hearing her say, “Eating is a nuisance. I only do it because I have to. I don’t like interrupting my life to stop and eat.”

Say what?

Click here to read the rest of this post . . .

Filed Under: Beauty, Blessings, Encouragement, Enough

When Fear Rules

November 18, 2015 By Diana
“IF WE ONLY HAD eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to be born both with in ourselves and with in the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.”

– Frederick Buechner, originally published in The Clown in The Belfry

“The kingdom of God is within you,” the master said.

Within you.

Hidden in plain sight. Familiar, yet new.

Too often, we feeble folk forget this powerful truth. We turn away from the gentle, subtle, powerful Kingdom of God that is within us and wander instead into the kingdom of fear. We listen to that voice that tells us everything is falling down, that there are enemies on all sides, that there is no room, and there is no time, for goodness, holiness, peace.

We let fear rule, feeling its insidious and invasive ugliness move into every cell of us, body and soul. And fear is a powerful thing, a fearful thing. When it’s working as God designed it to work, fear is a good and dependable early-warning system, alerting us to physical or emotional danger in our immediate environment.

But when we allow our thoughts to be held captive by worst-case scenario thinking, when that thinking leads us to make unhelpful and surly responses to others with whom we disagree (and often, there is room for honest disagreement), and when those unhelpful, even hurtful, responses are then offered in the name of Jesus . . . well, then. It’s time to take a giant step back and re-think.

The newsfeed has been radiating fear-based, reactionary words and threats since the tragic events in Beirut, Paris, Egypt and Syria this month. And far too many of those words have come from the mouths (or typing fingers) of folks who say they are Jesus-people. We need to take a really deep breath, my dear friends. Really deep.

And then, we need to talk. Not shout. And we need to pray, deeply, regularly, openly, secretly. We need to encourage our political leaders to keep the conversation civil, to remember who we are as a nation. And we need to encourage other Jesus people to do the same, to remember who we are as kingdom-people. Most of all, we need to re-touch that Kingdom within and hang with all our might.

We do live in a world that is filled with pain, poverty, prejudice, anger, racial hatred and religious bigotry. Bigotry that has bloomed into a terrifying kind of behavior. Yes, it is scary out there. Very scary.

But.

BUT . . . we follow that strange and wonderful rabbi, the dusty one, the determined one, the surprising one. The one who rebuked vengeful behavior. The one who called us to counter-cultural thinking and living. The one who offered himself to the terrorists of his own place and time. The one who said, “Peace, I leave with you.”

Peace.

We stand at an interesting crossroads right now. Can we, as Reverend Buechner says in the quote at the top of this post, discover ourselves to be ‘better than we are and wiser than we know?’ May it be so. Oh, Lord, may it be so.

Because when fear rules, we all lose.

Filed Under: biblical reflection, Confession, Encouragement, Grace