God’s gifts — Page 15

Q & A Tuesday Wrap-Up: Week Three

February 4, 2014 By Diana

I’m thinking maybe this week’s topic — SIN — felt too big for some of our usual conversational partners, because a few voices are missing this time around. We picked up a few new ones, however, and so the conversation continues to be rich and challenging. My thanks to all who linked and to all who left comments over the weekend. We’re wrestling things out together and I am glad.

I write with some frequency about my own journey with Jesus from fundamentalism to what I hope is a more grace-based space on the faith spectrum. What has surprised and saddened me as I continue to explore the world of faith blogs is the number of people who have been terribly, sometimes irreparably, burned by the church. My own experience is decidedly NOT that and I want to say that as clearly as possible. Yes, I had to unlearn some of the things that my earliest church experiences taught me. But my emotional connections to that early church are strong and universally positive. There were people there who loved me, worship was beautiful and thoughtful, and I actually loved earning ‘spending money’ for the treasure chest of goodies that Bible memory work made possible to the serious young student!

Some of you cannot say the same. Perhaps these words sum up what too many of us have experienced as a result of early church experiences: And I am still getting my head around how to achieve the balance between hating sin yet not hating myself. Maybe you get stuck there too?

Reading this paragraph, however, brought hope that we can, by God’s grace, learn to move away from old paradigms and embrace the truth of the gospel:

I begin to glimpse how death connects to sin, not as some arbitrary punishment, but an intrinsically linked growth–plant from root. Sin no longer seems like failure of some cosmic test, but some dark and awful thing that wants to eat us alive. God is not removed on some academic seat waiting for my proper supplication in order to expunge my “F” with Christ’s blood and replace it with His “A.” He is stooping beside an angry Cain, urging him, “Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” He is eating with the sinners, insisting, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” He is sitting beside the four-year-old girl who has shut herself in the closet to pray, again, not to go to hell. And though she doesn’t love Him–doesn’t even want to love Him–yet, He loves her.

One essayist hoped to wax eloquent and speak in theological terms about the concept of sin, only to find herself falling into a familiar pattern, one that reminded her that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak!”

Our thoughtful, neighborhood poet gave us two pithy, thoughtful examples of her good thinking, one in the comments:

oh to have His eyes
that cut through fog
to see the heart of us, the heart of all
and with a breath of His Spirit
He brings clarity we can’t find in our own power

pondering long before I blog…

And one on her blog:

so I need not think long about sin
I need not give too much power
to the darkness, no
I won’t deny His sacrifice
I instead choose freedom
choose light, choose life

Our conversation this week was enriched by the addition of two voices in a lower register, with links to two essays by thoughtful writing men. One wrote about our need to look sin square in its dark face in order to embrace the light. And the other pointed us in the direction of systemic sin, looking at the lectionary passages for the coming week.

Sometimes we have trouble looking at the judgmental texts of Jesus. If we take these texts as condemning individuals, they are harsh indeed. But if we understand that they are judgments against systemic sin, a general cultural abandonment of the values of their religion, we can pay more attention to them and learn from them.

I wonder about the general materialism of our culture. Might not this be such an example of “systemic sin?”

Each week, I am moved by and grateful for the comments that are offered on the weekly topic/question. Here are a few of my favorites, in no particular order:

“I took my first deep breath of grace. I am still breathing grace and always in need of more.”

“It seems to me we often forget that in the very first place God created us all. Deliberately. Desiring us. Loving us. Sin is what gets in the way of our loving relationship. It is not the ESSENCE of our very selves”

“I was raised in a church where I knew that Jesus died for our sins, but I didn’t really understand that it was a free gift of salvation and that I could be changed by the power of Christ IN me.”

“Obviously we know there is sin and evil in the world. But I’m not sure that the Augustinian “original sin” idea is the only way to account for it. You know the Celtic church was less influenced by Rome and therefore by Augustine, and they believe that one is born in holiness and returns to holiness at death. Now a lot happens in between, but I like the sense of the holiness of our life, derived from the fact that we bear God’s image and are born in his holiness. I think this speaks to our value, to our ability to choose to follow Jesus, and to have the offering of our life in discipleship to be a process of continual transformation. Which doesn’t mean that forgiveness and grace is not needed, but is more part of the process than the main thing.”

“Loves comes first…doesn’t it break a heart wide open when we see a place of blindness in our lives…places we have walked in ignorance …and His love opens our eyes…and we see through the lens of His love how wrong we have been…and the waves of grace come over us…He saw it all the time…and His love never stopped…His love patiently and continually called to us…called us out of the fog into the light…”

And to wrap-up the wrap-up once again, our Kiwi friend gave us a gift that looks like this:

I DID behave badly, and cause problems and stress. But nobody seemed to be able to see anything more than that – that underneath all those problems was a little girl, scared, alone and desperate for someone to love her. So when I was told that God couldn’t bear to look at me because of my sinfulness, and that He only wanted to look at Jesus, it made perfect sense! Of course God would feel that way, just like it seemed everybody else did.

It took leaving everyone and everything I knew and creating a completely new life (which also involved a new church) before I started to believe any differently. I had always known that God loved me, as long as ‘me’ was submerged and invisible in Jesus, but ever so slowly I started to learn and believe that I was of value to God. Not just as a container for Jesus, but as me. That God loved my strong will, and had intentionally given it to me (it wasn’t a design flaw after all!), that He loved my sense of humour, and that He actually liked me! Gasp! This was a completely earth-shattering revelation. God cared for me so tenderly and kindly in those first few years of transition that I started to be able to trust Him, instead of only fearing Him.

I am still – alas! – a sinner. And I am still often overwhelmed by how very far I am, from even my own standards, let alone God’s. The difference now is that I am getting better at knowing that God loves me, and that I give Him joy… even in my sinful state, He SEES me. The real me, the one He made and loves. It’s the difference between thinking that God looks past my pitiful attempts at goodness, sees my great sinfulness, and says “I knew it, you’re just a fraud!” and thinking that God looks past my sinfulness, sees my heart, the daughter He loves, and says “Come back to me, I miss you!”

WONDERFUL words from all of you – I thank you!

Week Four will be up a little after midnight on Friday morning and the Linky will be open until the following Monday at 4:00 in the afternoon, PST (If I can remember how to correctly program the dang thing!) Our question for this week: Is there room for my tears here?

Filed Under: biblical reflection, Blogging, Encouragement, God's gifts, Hard Things, Living the Answers, personal journey, Q & A, Surfing!

Q & A: Week Three – Remembering What Comes First

January 31, 2014 By Diana

Welcome to Q & A, a weekly series of ‘living the questions,’ questions that we often struggle with as people of faith. You are invited to read along, to comment with as many words as you like (just keep them in a conversational tone, without sharp edges, please), and/or to write a reflection of your own and link it back to this conversation. Each week the linky will be open from midnight Thursday/Friday until 4:00 p.m. on Monday (PST), allowing time for weekend wondering and writing. Then, each Tuesday, I’ll attempt a wrap-up post, with links, to help us begin to ‘live into the answers.’

This week’s question: “What’s with all this talk about ‘sin?'”

Next week, we’ll wrestle with this one: “Is there room for my tears here?”

Interesting surfing weather this week. I took another trip out to Coal Oil Point and discovered that the entire coast — and at least 200 feet inland — were shrouded in fog. The sun shone through it, which actually made it more difficult to orient myself, as the light bounced around the thick air. As I walked that gravel path, I thought to myself that the entire experience was akin to trying to write the essay for this week. SIN is a huge topic. An important one, and for most of us, absolutely central to our understanding of who we are, who God is, why Jesus came to earth, and what the cross means. So wading out into this particular topic is a whole lot like wading out into the fog. It’s harder to see what’s coming at you, it’s tough to find your fellow travelers, and it feels decidedly more scary than the exact same water does on a sunny day.

In my introductory post for this series, I featured photos taken at the exact same spots along the path that you’ll see here. They look decidedly different today. This weather feels slightly threatening, even a bit frightening and pretty much mirrors my feelings as we delve into a discussion about sin this week.

So . . . here we go.

Remembering back to my earliest years in Sunday School, at about age 4 or 5, I can see a little booklet. It had no words, just different colored pages, and the teacher used it to tell the gospel story. I don’t remember all of the pages and their contribution to the overall narrative, but I do remember these: a deep black double page to represent the state of my small, 4-year old heart, completely darkened by something the teacher called ‘sin,’ then a bright red page which represented the spilt blood of our Savior, then a white page, to indicate my now-clean heart if I said ‘yes’ to Jesus, followed by a shiny gold spread, which assured me of my eternal destination.

Oh, I loved that book! And I loved that story. And I wanted that white heart, yes I did. And I definitely wanted that shiny gold future. This little tool was meant to be a good, simple means for helping children begin to understand some of the truths of the Christian faith. I’m not sure, however, that those truths actually sank into my little heart as intended.

And here’s why:

Children that age are just beginning to understand about good and bad behavior; they have no real concept of ‘sin.’ I think I internalized the message this way: Jesus wants me to stop doing bad things; if I don’t stop doing bad things, I am a bad person and I cannot get to heaven. So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I worked very, very hard for a very, very long time to be a very, very good girl.

And I began to believe that my sinful self was the most important thing about me. Otherwise, why did Jesus come? Why did Jesus die?

Because I am a sinner. Everybody is a sinner. And that’s all that matters about us: we are sinners.

I had a sense of diligence, of always working hard to be better, of trudging through life, walking the straight and narrow I was a church girl — and I loved church, don’t get me wrong. I was a church girl in conservative southern California (and no, that is not an oxymoron. . . there was a lot of fundamentalism in CA in the mid 20th century). And every single invitational sermon I ever heard in the first twelve years of my life was centered around how sinful I was and how much I needed to be assured of a place in heaven someday. So by cracky, I’d better raise my hand, walk down that aisle and say ‘yes.’

I overstate. A little. But I think you catch my drift, right?

Then we moved and began attending a different church, one where I came to know Jesus in a much different way. The central truths were the same; it was the presentation that differed. More layers were added and the story of salvation took on deeper, richer hues. There began to grow in me the sense that maybe there was something more to be found in Jesus than forgiveness.

Forgiveness is powerful, wonderful stuff – and it is so very important. BUT. There is also Restoration. Empowerment. Redemption. Transformation. And I was deeply moved by the stories of Jesus I read in the gospels, the way he moved to the edges, called out the best in people — even people the rest of society had already written off, like Mary Magdalene, the Samaritan woman at the well, Zacchaeus.

Jesus saw something else in them that no one else seemed to see: he saw something worth his time, worth his goodness, worth his invitation. He saw them.

He also, of course, saw their sin. And he did not ignore it — he exorcised, he healed, he questioned, he called for newness. But here’s what I began to understand during my adolescent years and then reflected on more and more in my 20s and 30s:

Jesus saw beneath their behavior, beneath the swirling demons, beneath their bad reputations. He saw something else, something real and true and more important, even than their sin: he saw God’s image in them, and God’s design. And then he reached right in and pulled that beauty out so that others could see it, too!

Take a look at these two photographs for a minute.

When I put my camera up to take this shot, I saw only water with my naked eye. My camera, however, showed me — ever so dimly — that there were surfers out there! At least four of them! And then, I hit the ‘enhance’ button in iPhoto and voila! There they were, in sharper contrast and detail — four strong surfers, doing their thing, despite the messy day.

God can see us, my friend. He can see us beneath all the fog of sin and brokenness.
Not only that, God LOVES what he sees, desperately, passionately, eternally. God hates sin, that is true. God hates anything that cuts us off from relationship, from ‘walking in the garden’ together. That for me is the clearest, simplest and best definition of the word — ‘sin’ is anything that separates us from God.

But God loves us. And that means that sin is NOT the most important thing about us. Our created humanity is. That’s what needs rescuing, that what’s needs saving, that’s what needs restoration, that’s what needs transformation.

And that’s why Jesus came as one of us: to show us what it means to live a fully human life, with all of its ups/downs/struggles/joys/questions/answers. And to show us that neither sin, brokenness nor death has the last word. The cross followed by the empty tomb become the place where heaven and earth meet, where God shows us what it means to be a ‘king,’ where power and authority (and forgiveness and redemption) are redefined forever.

I’m not sure how or why the dominant picture of the atonement — what happened in the incarnation/death/resurrection — became sin-centric in the last few hundred years. It has not always been so. Scripture teaches us that many things happened with the Great Event of Jesus.

Indeed, we do need to grapple with, understand and relinquish our inner ‘bentness,’ our direction-toward-sin, and we need to do that each and every day. Confession is good for the soul, and by that I mean it is good for the soul. It reminds us that God is God and we are not.

But. BUT. When we focus so much of our attention, our study, our prayers, our worship, our conversation on what a mess we are (even though we are, indeed, very messy people!), we take the focus off of God’s ongoing work of redemption and transformation within us. We lose sight of our utter loveliness to God, despite the messes we make, despite our proclivity for willfulness and idolatry.

LOVE COMES FIRST. And if we can allow ourselves to be loved, without apology or hesitation — well, the earth moves, you know? Read the story of the Forgiving Father in chapter 15 of Luke’s gospel. Read it through carefully and prayerfully. The father loves that boy long before he sees him coming down the road. Long before the boy repents of his sin. Long before anything.

Love comes first.

“To God be the glory, great things God has done!”

I look forward to your comments and any reflections/responses you’d like to link up to this week. Even through the fog, there are great rides to be had! I am grateful for all the ways you are choosing to ‘live the questions,’ and then ‘live into the answers.’

Next week, we’ll wrestle with this question: “Is there room for my tears here?”

Filed Under: biblical reflection, Blogging, community, Encouragement, God's gifts, hope, Living the Answers, Living the Questions, Mystery, personal journey, Q & A, Surfing!, The Sea

The House That Hope Builds – A SheLoves Link-Up

January 28, 2014 By Diana

This piece is a bit of a strange one, at least for me. I’ve been inspired by the prose songs written by Sarah Bessey and Idelette Mcvicker over at SheLoves Magazine. And this month’s theme was hope. So this is a song for the house that hope builds, using as inspiration two quotes, one from an author and one from a poet, both of whose words are genius.

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for.
And the most you can do is live inside that hope.
Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
– Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

This is an essay of sticks and mortar, foundations and rooftops, sturdy walls, open windows and a wide, wide front door. This is an ode to life, in all its complexity and wonder, it’s murkiness and pain. This is a song of beauty, written in a minor key, one that resolves now and again to a glorious major chord. This is a hymn of praise and a psalm of lament. This is an acknowledgement, a breathed prayer, a testimony, a promise . . . that hope rises, even from the valley of darkness.

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
– Ellen Bass

This is an encouragement to sing, to shout, to dance. And this is glad permission to weep, to wail, to wonder. This is a weaving of many colors, each of which enriches the whole; a smorgasbord of many flavors, some of them sweet, some decidedly bitter. This is a call to courage, a plea for patience, a painting done by candlelight, revealed in the brightness of day. This is Life, and this is where we live it. Right here, right now.

Will you build this house with me? We have a ‘firm foundation,’ promised us from the beginning of time, known to us in the breaking of bread. We walk with the Master Builder, the one who knows our name, the keeper of the keys, the giver of grace.

Will you build it with me?

Will you come and stand by my side. Yes, wherever you are, imagine you are standing shoulder to shoulder with me and all those who build this place. Now, will you look up? What do you see? A starry sky? A cloudy day? A canopy of trees, a row of rooftops, a scarlet light wending its way through a blue, blue dome?

Whatever your view, stand with me and look. Let your gaze relax, your mouth drop open, your lungs deflate, and then draw in the freshness you need for the task ahead.

Are you ready to work?

What’s that in your hand? What do you bring? A flagon of tears, collected from lost boys and girls? A bowl of laughter, flowing up and over the edge? A story of love and losing? A tale of lost and found? A poem of love’s declaration, an ode to your broken dreams? A saga of satiety and fullness? A pitcher, poured out, yet ready to receive?

Everything is welcome, each piece necessary. For what we build is a glory. A crazy quilt of pattern and plain, a castle keep built on strength and also on weakness. These walls will withstand the wildest of winds, the roof will shelter and keep us.

Come with me now, let’s dig in and do this. We’ll whistle while we work, and let the chips fall where they may. For this is the house that hope builds, the place where everyone belongs.

Shall we begin?

Linking this with the fine people at SheLoves, their January link-up on HOPE. Maybe you could do that, too?

Filed Under: Beauty, Blogging, community, Dreams/Dreaming, Encouragement, God's gifts, hope, Mystery

Q & A: Tuesday Wrap-Up, Week One

January 21, 2014 By Diana

Oh, my! Such rich and wonderful depths to this conversation. My heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you who is reading along as we continue this experiment of pushing out, ever-so-gently, into the deeper waters that we wonder about as we live out this life of faith. And special thanks to each one who commented and/or who linked up some longer reflections from their own blogsite. I am grateful for each one of you, and grateful for the time and thought that went into your contributions here.

We have barely begun to scratch the surface of this topic, this thing we call obedience, but we’re enjoying the beauty of a shared ride along the crest of a wave, with thumbs up all round. I read every word you wrote, and these are the things that rise to the top as I reflect on what you’ve shared.

Almost everyone has had a difficult relationship with the idea and even with the practice of obedience, especially when it was taught in the context of conformity and obligation. (One of the links had this great line: “Goodness, obedience, when looked at through the lens of conformity is a dangerous thing.”) Several different writers mentioned the weight of being the ‘good girl,’ or the ‘good boy,’ and the pressure that rises as we try to make sure everyone is pleased with us, that we’re living up to expectations, that we’re earning performance points.

There was also, however, the recognition that if we re-define the term, if we look at it prayerfully and intuitively, the emotions surrounding the word change. Finding our way to a healthy, clear definition seemed to be high on the list; it feels important to us to think through what we mean when we talk about being obedient people.

I loved that the story of Rahab came up in one of the linked posts, and also the reflection on civil disobedience, which was linked near the end of our celebration of MLK day yesterday. Rahab and Martin Luther King, Jr., each push us to ask good, hard questions about what we mean when we say we are obedient people. Obedient to whom? To what? for what purpose?

Rahab broke one of the 10 commandments, didn’t she? She lied, she bore false witness. But most of us resonate with her choice. Why?

MLK encouraged black Americans, and any white Americans who felt called to join them, to disobey unfair laws and to step right into the middle of the mess by standing tall for the right, the good and the just. He looked the rules in the face and said, ‘NO. No, I will not be obedient to injustice.’

They each broke the ‘rules.’ And in the process, they rid themselves of the shackles of one set of culturally imposed values for another set entirely, a higher one. Rahab lied to save lives; MLK and all who followed him landed in jail, got beaten, endured insults, for what? Because they recognized a higher authority, the authority of justice, and they stood up for it. Which is something one of the commenters at the post talked about, too: that Jesus ‘stood up’ when treated unfairly – I loved this line: “But before Christ ‘laid down’ He stood up. He didn’t knock down but merely stood up.”

Sometimes obedience looks like standing up, breaking rules, speaking truth to power. And sometimes obedience looks like holding our tongues, being gentle and gracious, leaning into the difficulties in which we live. This line hit me hard and reminded me that sometimes, brokenness takes time to mend: “I think my obedience this year involves a willingness to receive God’s comfort in the emotionally decimated parts of myself.”

Yes, yes! Opening ourselves to the comforting love of God is an act of obedience, one that too many of us deny ourselves, believing that to be comforted and loved, we must somehow earn those things. We must do All.The.Things, the important, obedient things, and then maybe God will be there for us.

But how can we ever learn to love God — as the scriptures teach us — with ALL of who we are, if we don’t allow God’s love for us to fill and comfort and change us? Before we can love well, we need to know what being loved is like. Almost always that means learning to listen. To listen to that still, small voice that whispers hope, invitation, confidence, and love to our hearts.

“I attempted to be faithful in prayer
yet never fit the pattern
of warriors and intercessors
who tried to school me
no list of requests for me
instead I simply seek His presence
abide, wait, respond
He said

when you’re breathing you’re praying

so I relax into that.”

More than one person mentioned the importance of having trusted others in our life, those who love the Lord and who also love us. “Experience has taught me: those who have my best interest at heart will encourage me to seek His face, not try to tell me what His face looks like.” I think that is a central part of what it means to be in community with one another — that we encourage each other to seek the face of Christ AND that we recognize that each of us will be given a slightly different angle from which to view that face.

Over and around and above all of the difficulties, the misunderstandings, the limits of our human vocabulary, there shines this powerful truth: God is bigger than the rules. And God will never leave us to fend for ourselves, even though it sometimes feels like that is exactly what is happening! “No matter what circumstances I encounter, no matter what insurmountable obstacles appear to be in my way; and no matter, even, the dumb things I do–Christ will not relent. He will not stop. I can rest in knowing Christ remains steadfast in being for me. He continues marching forward, working all things toward his purpose and for my good.”

We’re riding this wave well, friends. I see you ‘listening’ to one another, with comments and links, with cross-comments and follow-up words. We’re in this together, and we’re learning as we go. Thank you, thank you.

On Friday, we’ll jump into a famous phrase that has so many levels of both difficulty and beauty, we may be surprised at what will rise to the surface. What’s with this ‘more of Jesus, less of me’ stuff? I’m mulling this one over. And over. I look forward to posting my own ‘living the question’ and some of my ‘living into the answer’ musings at the end of the week. The link will be open through the weekend.

Please take a button for you own blog from one (or both) of the ones Lyla has so beautifully tucked into the side bar here.

Filed Under: Blogging, community, Encouragement, God's gifts, Hard Things, Listening, Living the Answers, Living the Questions, personal journey, Q & A, Surfing!

What Remains – A Community Book Review

January 20, 2014 By Diana

When I began regular blogging a little over three years ago, I discovered so much rich content out here in cyberspace. A favorite place to read good content quickly became The High Calling, an online magazine with a long list of contributing editors and writers, all of them writing about living an integrated life — a life of integrity — at home, at work, at leisure, in our culture. Then I went to a writing retreat they offered in September of 2011 and another one in 2012 and discovered that these people are for real, that they’re funny and smart and loving and sincere. So whenever I receive an invitation to write for them, I am honored and grateful. Today, I am writing the third in a series of four reflections (Laura Boggess, Jeanne Damoff and Seth Haines being the other three contributors) on the book, The Geography of Memory: a Pilgrimage through Alzheimer’s, by poet and essayist, Jeanne Murray Walker. Here is an excerpt and a link:

She is old now, and increasingly frail. Her hair is a beautiful shade of white and though her blue eyes are clouded a bit by near-blindness, they sparkle as much as they ever have. And her smile?

It lights up a room.

On a good day, I see that smile a lot. I see it when she stops to greet everyone she passes—people whose names she does not know or cannot remember, people who are suffering from the same kinds of confusion and cognitive loss that she is, people who live and work in her assisted living unit: guests, cleaning ladies, visiting musicians … Everybody gets a glimpse of that magical smile. And everyone who is on the receiving end moves away from that encounter flashing a great, big smile of their own. My mother is the most naturally extroverted, hospitable person I have ever known; even into her 90s, doing daily battle with dementia, those parts of her still shine into my life and the lives of everyone she meets.

I am so grateful for these pieces that remain as she and I walk this hard road together, this journey through the unraveling of her mind. And I am grateful for Jeanne Murray Walker’s stories about her own travels through this strange terrain in her compelling book, The Geography of Memory: A Pilgrimage through Alzheimer’s.

Please follow me over to The High Calling to read more and to join the interesting conversation happening in the comments. Click here.

Filed Under: Beauty, Book Review, Encouragement, family, God's gifts, grief, Hard Things, hope, memoir, personal journey, The High Calling, The Journey with Mom

Q & A: Week One – Letting Go of the List

January 17, 2014 By Diana

I want to begin by saying that I am FLABBERGASTED by and deeply grateful for the response to last Friday’s introductory post in this . . . shall we call it a series? I want to call it a conversation, one in which we can share questions, ideas, concerns, without ever doubting anyone else’s sincerity or questioning one another’s commitment to growing in grace. I also want to state very clearly (and undoubtedly, will do so again) that I do not pretend to have answers to All.The.Questions. I don’t think that is possible or, quite frankly, even desirable.

We are works in progress, designed by God to search and seek until we are found. I hope you will consider this space a safe one for exploration, wondering and discussion. And I’m pretty sure that those of you who are here are not interested in argument, in fact are exhausted by it. So. . . may this be a place for stories, for honest questions, for differing opinions . . . but not a place for theological arm-wrestling. We’re all pilgrims on the way, and it’s good to walk that way together, don’t you think? I have barely scratched the surface of this week’s topic, and I will be looking at it again in this conversation, I’m sure!

Next week’s question?

What’s with this ‘more of Jesus, less of me’ stuff?

Surf’s up! And the water looks great. So grab your board, find a trail down to the beach and let’s venture out into the deep, blue sea.

Safety first, however.

Remember that the ocean is vast, extends way beyond our view, is deeper than we can imagine and can sometimes prove treacherous. Even if we’re waiting right next to each other for a new set of waves, each of us will have our own experience.

We’ll use the same general skill set, grapple with similar pieces of equipment, and wave at one another when the next swell rises. But when we catch that ride, we’re on our own, finding our way back to the beach. We can share with one another helpful hints, scary stories, good (or bad) memories of past ventures out into the deep. And that’s a very good thing, that sharing. We can teach each other, learn together, experience the rolling of the water as a team. But what we cannot do is make assumptions or hold onto unrealistic expectations about any of it. We’re all finding our way. And by the grace of God, we’ll discover reservoirs of courage and grace we didn’t know were possible.

So, bearing all that in mind, let’s push our way out into the deeper water for a while.

Earlier this month, I wrote a one-word post for 2014, bemoaning the fact that the word I was given is NOT a favorite of mine. It’s a word that carries piles of negative freight, instills fear in the hearts of toddlers, and frustration in the minds of most adults. It flies in the face of what we believe is the highest value known to humanity: freedom.

My 2014 word is this one: obedient.

I’ve wrestled with this word for most of my life, my rebellious heart resisting the very sound of it. Strangely enough, however, I have lived my life in an outwardly obedient way. I never did anything as a teenager that brought angst to my parents. Yes, I was outspoken, given to crying jags, and beginning to pull away from a wonderful but sometimes invasive mother. Still, I was a good girl.

A very good girl.

There was a problem with that, however, and it took me a long time to figure out what that problem was. Yes, I was obedient to the ‘rules,’ both written and unwritten. The rules of my family, my culture, my church environment. I was downright dutiful in many ways, helpful around the house, caring for my much-younger brother, getting good grades in school, not experimenting with anything. I learned to conform, to live up to the expectations of all kinds of others, and I worked hard to be pleasing, lovable, accepted. I had a clear picture of right and wrong in my mind and I toed the line conscientiously. Sometimes too conscientiously.

Yes, indeed, I was obedient.

But I don’t think I had a clue what that word meant. In fact, I’m still learning, unpeeling layers, redefining terms. I had internalized a long list of rules as a young kid, and that list just kept getting longer as I moved through high school and college. A few of those rules are part of my life today — I’ve learned that boundaries and limits can sometimes be gifts, giving shape to life, and hope in the midst of confusion.

But the problem with a too-long list of rules is that it can become like that many-headed water monster of old, the Hydra, the one that grew two heads for every one you cut off. Before you know it, you can find yourself gasping for air, the very life sucked out of you as you frantically try to contain all of life’s contingencies in their own secure, little boxes.

Here is just one, small example. Very personal to me, not necessarily applicable to you.

I began teaching Bible studies when I was 14 years old, immersing myself in devotional reading, prayer, journaling. And I kept teaching Bible studies, off and on, for the next fifty years. FIFTY YEARS. And I loved it. For one thing, it kept me ‘in the Word,’ which had been drilled into me as the most important rule of all, to be in that Word every day of my life. I am grateful for the depth of my own experience with scripture and I love it dearly.

But a funny thing happened when I retired from pastoring: I stopped doing daily devotional reading. And you want to know something even ‘funnier?’ I believe I was being obedient when I did so.

Okay. Now catch your breath, close your mouth and relax.

I still read the Bible. I still love the Bible. I even still study the Bible, though not as often as I once did. But I know now, three years into this strange land called retirement, that daily reading had become a ‘list’ item for me, one that had to go, at least for a while. Why? To draw me deeper into the heart of God, that’s why. To teach me — again — that obedience is not about adhering to a list, not about earning my way to grace, not about proving myself worthy.

For hundreds of years, people followed Jesus with their whole hearts without ever — EVER — holding a Bible in their hands and reading from it by themselves. Sometimes we forget that truth. I do not mean to diminish the remarkable gift that is ours in this book we call holy — it is the very breath of God and a primary means of encountering God in this life. I am grateful for it every day of my life.

But following a reading plan, in obedience to some inner call to toe the line, be a good girl (or guy), to check those fifteen minutes off the list, to prove to myself, or heaven help me, to God, that I am worthy of love and grace? Not good. Yes! The discipline of reading the Word is important, especially in the earliest years of faith commitment. But doing it in response to an internalized list of rules does not necessarily lead us into God’s heart.

And that’s where this word ‘obedience’ can get tricky, isn’t it? Obedience to what? To whom? To an ever-growing external or internal list of acceptable behaviors? Or does it look more like this: learning to listen to the voice of Love within, and to follow where Love leads.

This is where Jesus tells us we are to look, this is how we’re called to listen: to love God, and to love others as we love ourselves. Our dear Lord took the shining sword of his own sweet tongue and sliced through the multitudinous lists of the professional religious folk all around him when he said this:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.” – Matthew 22:37-40, The Message

Now that is a very short list.

So this is how this small facet of obedience is unfolding in me at this juncture of my life, at this end of fifty years of immersing myself in the Word of God. Over those years, I memorized some good-sized chunks of God’s word. And much of it, I still remember. During these last three years of digging deep instead of spreading wide, I’ve been grateful for that memory work. Most days, I chew on phrases — sometimes just a single word! — from that memory bank, and I ponder them while I walk, focus on them when I sit in contemplative prayer. I think I spent about four weeks just holding the word ‘glory’ in my mouth and in my heart, amazed at all the ways in which I could see it shimmering all around me.

Being obedient to this strange new call has brought profound reminders of who I am and who God is. I am grateful that as I move into the next decade of my life, I am slowly re-learning that God calls us to relationship, not a head trip; to transformation, not information; to love, not lists.

So, you over there, the one riding the board next to me? What is God teaching you about obedience these days? What further questions are being raised as you think about it, or as you read my thoughts? Share in the comments OR join your own blog post about this question by linking up below.

Next week’s question, for Friday, January 24th:
What’s with this ‘more of Jesus, less of me’ stuff?

And here, thanks to the hard work and creative genius of my friend Lyla Willingham Lindquist, is your choice of a button or two to put on your own blog as we walk through these Q & A times together:

Diana Trautwein - Living into the Answers

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Filed Under: biblical reflection, community, Encouragement, God's gifts, Living the Questions, personal journey, photography, Q & A, Spiritual Formation, Surfing!

About Settling Down . . . A Deeper Story

January 6, 2014 By Diana

Every month, I share a story at one of my favorite websites ever, A Deeper Story. This month, I am once again writing for the Family Channel. Here’s a piece of this month’s story and a link so you can read the rest:

You think you know so much when you’re twenty years old. When that third decade begins, you’re a little bit full of yourself, impressed with what you’ve learned in school and in life, and convinced that you’ll be able to handle whatever life throws your way.

And, if you were a 20-year-old raised in the 50s and 60s, you also understood the order of things, especially if you were a female. Even more especially if you were a female raised in the conservative wing of the Christian church. Your life was pretty well mapped out for you: childhood, adolescence, a little bit of young adulthood, marriage, motherhood.

Being an eldest child with a strong sense of propriety and extraordinarily overactive responsibility glands, you did exactly what was expected of you. So, in the year you turned 20, you got yourself married. You found a good, Christian man, dated him (carefully!) for a good long time, got engaged and then, of course, you “settled down.”

Well, five out of six ain’t bad, right? The meeting, finding, dating, engaging, marrying thing you did according to plan. It’s the settling down part you’ve struggled with for the last — how many is it now? — FORTY-EIGHT years.

I chalk it up to delayed and extended adolescent rebellion, that’s what. As an eager-to-please, hyper-obedient child and youth, you never truly rebelled against anything or anyone. And that remarkable man you married? He wasn’t exactly a rabble-rouser, either, was he?

Yet somehow, you’ve traveled this wild and wooly, sometimes adventurous, always unique journey-through-life that began with an afternoon of “I do’s” at the end of 1965. Now you’re taking a gander at 2014, as it rises out of the fog and begins to take shape. Holy crap, next year, you’ll hit the big 5-0. Can you believe it? Doesn’t that happen to old people?

I look at the pictures from this most recent anniversary and I still see those kids in there, those good kids who so wanted to do ‘the right thing,’ whatever the heck that was. Yes, the years have added pounds to our frames and lines to our faces and a whole lotta white hair to the head of at least one of us.

But you know what else I see? A couple of undercover rebels, that’s what. We obeyed the rules, we followed the protocol, yet somehow, we never managed to settle down, did we? At least, not in the way our parents envisioned settling.

Please click on this line to read the rest over at A Deeper Story. . .

Filed Under: A Deeper Family, A Deeper Story, Aging, Dreams/Dreaming, Encouragement, family, God's gifts, Grandparenting, Marriage, parenting, personal journey

An Advent Journey, 2013: Looking for the Light – Day Twenty-Two

December 22, 2013 By Diana

This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:

“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.’”

When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.

Matthew 1:18-25-NLT

In my book, Joseph is a rock-star. Kind, generous, steady, committed, teachable, receptive.

God chose a good man. And sometimes, I wonder if Joseph’s presence in her life might have been one of the reasons why God chose Mary, too.

Not much is known about him and he is never mentioned as a living person after that interesting episode in the temple, when Jesus is 12. Tradition teaches us that Mary was widowed early on. Maybe, maybe not. What I do know to be true is that Jesus had a stellar role model in the man chosen to be his earthly father.

And that goes way beyond his lineage and heritage. Yes, he is in the line of David and that gives Jesus the traditional ties to his people that he needs to be recognized as Messiah. More than that, however, is the character of this man, which we see most fully in this short story, told only in Matthew’s gospel.

I think Joseph loved Mary. That verb is never used, of course. It was, in some ways, a foreign concept in 1st century Palestine, at least in reference to married partners. But he clearly respected her, valued her reputation, wanted to do the right thing, the best thing.

Trouble was, he truly didn’t know what that was. He assumed that the right thing was to let her down gently. To dissolve their legal commitment quietly, in essence, to divorce her behind the scenes. It took some divine intervention for him to see that his idea of the ‘right thing’ was wide of the mark.

So, how often do I get it wrong? How often do I make an assumption, based on cultural expectations? And I mean church culture as well as ‘worldly’ culture when I ask that question.

Joseph was a good man. Matthew takes the time to tell us that. But sometimes, even a good man doesn’t know what the right thing is. Humility is called for, and an openness to the workings of God within us.

That dream of Joseph’s?

It was a life-changer and a life-saver.

But Joseph had to be willing to listen to it, didn’t he? Sometimes, our dreams are where we discover what is right for us to do, too. I firmly believe that God speaks to us in our dreams — the ones we have when we’re sleeping and the ones we have when we’re awake. What we’re asked to do is pay attention.

Lord of our dreams, speak to us. Hearten us, encourage us with the dreams you raise in us, the desires of our hearts, the call you send to us through the vehicle of our longing. Help us to be more like Joseph – to deeply desire to do the right thing, but to be open to a new understanding of what that thing could be.

Filed Under: Advent, An Advent Journey, biblical reflection, church year, daily devo, Encouragement, God's gifts

A Prayer for Christmas Eve

December 19, 2013 By Diana

When I retired from pastoral ministry three years ago, I assembled a small booklet of prayers I had used in worship over the previous few years, a gift of thanks to the people God called me to serve. This is a prayer from 2008, which I have edited and shifted a bit, in answer to Faith Barista Bonnie’s invitation this week to choose a character in The Story that we relate to. Several of the characters are noted in this prayer, and with less than a week to go before Christmas, I’m not sure exactly which one is closest to where I am tonight.

It’s Christmas Eve again, Lord, and here we are.

Gathered in out of the rain, our Christmas finery on,
our spirits eager – or weary
our ears and our hearts open – or not;
our families nearby,
our dinners either digesting or awaiting us soon.
We’re here.

And for some of us, Lord, that’s just about all we can manage.

We’re just barely able to stand with those shepherds,
tired and cold from their nighttime duties,
confused about the strange singing in the skies above,
wondering about that tiny newborn in the corner.
“So,” we wonder with them, “what’s the big deal with this little one?”

Some of us come, willing only to stand at the edges, perhaps somewhere near those wise ones from the east. Because we’re searching tonight, Holy Friend, we’re searching for truth, for insight, for strange portents in the sky that will give us the answer to the mysteries of the ages.

“Could this be the one?” we wonder with the oriental kings.
“Could this be the answer we’ve been searching for?”

And thankfully, God, there are some of us in this lovely room tonight who are a lot like Joseph.
Steady and stalwart, well-versed in the traditions of our tribe,
yet open to something new that God might be doing.
We struggle to be obedient to what we think God is saying,
to be sensitive to what we think God is doing.

But…it’s been a long, hard journey getting here,
and, to tell you the truth – we’re tired,
through and through.

“Here he is, at last,” we say to ourselves.
But we wonder…”What’s coming next?”

And, Gracious God, there are even some of us here tonight
who might choose to align ourselves with Mary.
We’ve just come through a tough task, but we did it!
The baby is safely birthed, your promises have been fulfilled,
something remarkable is just beginning and we can feel it,
we can see it, shining in the unformed future ahead of us.

And mysterious as it seems to be now, we know, because of the grace we have already experienced in our lives, it is all going to be good news.

All of it.

And so, we gather tonight – like that amazing cast of characters
gathering in this beautiful story
we repeat every Christmas Eve.

The story that is at the center of who we are,
the story that speaks to us of Love Unspeakable,
the story that sings to us of Joy Unsingable;
the story that tells us.

For all of us are welcome here.

That is the glorious truth we praise you for tonight.

All of us — weary shepherds,
searching wise ones,
faithful yet fearful fathers,
loving yet wondering mothers –
all of us are welcome here.

For that little one in the corner over there, that wee newborn,
that tiny, weak and helpless One,
is the same One who blew the breath of life into
each and every one of us.

“How can this be?” we wonder. “How can this be?”

And then, we hear again your words of love and promise and power:
“Behold, a virgin shall conceive…”
“He shall be called Immanuel, God with us…”
“For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son…”

And we sigh with relief, we sing with gusto, we remember with joy.

This is Christmas Eve – and we’re here!

Thank you for the story that calls us to this place.
Thank you for the Truth that sleeps in the manger.
Thank you for the chance to begin again at the beginning –

In the name of our remarkable and gentle Savior we pray together tonight.

Amen.

Joining this with Bonnie, very late on Thursday night:

Filed Under: biblical reflection, Christmas, church year, Encouragement, God's gifts, Public Prayers, The Church, worship

An Advent Journey, 2013: Looking for the Light – Day Ten

December 10, 2013 By Diana

I am fully convinced, my dear brothers and sisters, that you are full of goodness. You know these things so well you can teach each other all about them. Even so, I have been bold enough to write about some of these points, knowing that all you need is this reminder. For by God’s grace,I am a special messenger from Christ Jesus to you Gentiles. I bring you the Good News so that I might present you as an acceptable offering to God, made holy by the Holy Spirit. So I have reason to be enthusiastic about all Christ Jesus has done through me in my service to God. Yet I dare not boast about anything except what Christ has done through me, bringing the Gentiles to God by my message and by the way I worked among them. They were convinced by the power of miraculous signs and wonders and by the power of God’s Spirit. In this way, I have fully presented the Good News of Christ from Jerusalem all the way to Illyricum.

My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else. I have been following the plan spoken of in the Scriptures, where it says,

“Those who have never been told about him will see,
and those who have never heard of him will understand.”

Romans 15:14-21 -NLT

“A special messenger to the Gentiles. . . ” It is the apostle Paul who picks up the thread woven into the fabric of the Incarnation by those wise men from the east, who came seeking a new king. I suppose this story is really more of an Epiphany tale than an Advent one, but here we are with this passage on the 10th day of our Advent journey.

Perhaps those who laid out this list of readings wanted to be sure this small, golden thread was right up front, where it would be noticed. Because, you see, we are the recipients of this particular gift of grace. We are the ones who walk in the shadow of those ancient seekers from the east; we are the ones who follow along with Paul as he rounds the Mediterranean Sea, leaving depositories of gospel grace everywhere he goes.

It’s a thread worth noting, an essential slice of the light we are seeking as we turn round one more bend in the road, journeying toward Christmas Day. We, too, are part of this story.

We, too, are marked by the Spirit as ones who are ‘full of goodness,’ simply because we know Jesus.

Humble Savior, will you help us to know you better as we travel this road? Shine your light on us, lead us into truth, help us to see your goodness shining out of our lives, even in the midst of the holiday crazy.

* As an added Advent bonus, I heartily recommend you click on this link and meander over to SheLoves fine post on Random Acts of Advent Kindness. I’m going to try and do this as often as possible and I encourage you all to check it out for yourselves.