Living the Answers

Q & A: Week Five – Living Loved

February 14, 2014 By Diana

Welcome to week five in a series of longish reflections on some of life’s harder questions. We’re having a rich conversation in this space and I am grateful. Last week opened the door to a series-within-the-series, a set of questions that touch on the Big Topic of suffering. This week’s question jumps in a little deeper:

What do we do with our suffering?

Next week: How do I make all the pieces fit?

Valentine’s Day has never been a favorite day for me. It’s become over-commercialized and too often leads to tiny heartbreaks instead of warm fuzzies. Yet I find it oddly appropriate that this week’s question should fall on this day. Why? Because at the heart of all that I’ve learned by living this particular question is this strong, clear truth:

The greatest task, and the deepest joy, of the human journey is learning to live loved.

Trusting that despite all kinds of evidence that might, at first glance, seem to be to the contrary, we are loved. Loved beyond reason, beyond our ability to comprehend, beyond imagining.

Why are we loved?

Because we are. Because we live. Because we existed in the mind of God before ever we drew breath. Because each and every one of the billions of us who have walked the deserts and jungles of this planet is beautiful, lovable, glorious and a totally unique bearer of the image of God. A Great God, who is both beyond us and with us, who rejoices when we rejoice and weeps when we weep.

We are loved.

Everything else begins and ends with that statement.

On days when the sun is shining, the sky is clear, and we and our loved ones are busy enjoying the good things this life has to offer — on those days, the whole idea of living loved seems possible. Good feelings overflow, endorphins rush through our brains and bodies, and Life.Is.Good.

Yes, maybe we are loved! Maybe this is what love looks like — happy feelings all around, blue skies wherever my eye lands.

But when the blue begins to fade a bit, and clouds drift by, when harder things hit us, interrupt the good vibes of blue-sky days. . . well, then that whole idea begins to seem a lot more iffy, doesn’t it? Something uncomfortable begins to intrude, a physical ailment or a ruptured relationship, job dissatisfaction or not enough money at the end of the month — living loved? Not likely. Living ignored feels more like it.

But here’s what I’m coming to believe. I’m not all the way there yet, but I’m getting there, and I’m breathing prayers for grace and patience to live into this truth:

It is when the storm looms large that all the edges of living loved begin to be visible. It is in the storm that we meet God most intimately. And we encounter ourselves there, too. We learn a heckuva lot more about who we are, how we’re built, where our strengths and weaknesses are, and what our own personal shadows have to teach us when we’re navigating through gale-force winds than when we’re enjoying a blue-sky day.

If I’m honest — and I’m trying to be! — I don’t like this very much. I prefer sunny days and happy feelings. I’m grateful for loving family and financial stability and good health and the ability to be generous — and it’s easy to be grateful for all of that.

But life is not simply blue-sky days. And when the storms hit, gratitude is much harder to find. Sometimes we can go years without seeing a hint of blue in the scene unfolding around us. Life is complicated, often difficult, sometimes filled with pain. What then? Living loved?

Now, it feels more like living abandoned.

Last week, we encouraged one another to give ourselves permission for the tears that come with all those feelings, all those stormy days. I believe scripture invites us to lament, giving us words and emotions and stories that underscore the reality of human suffering. Biblical faith is not stoicism and it is not saccharine or cheesy, either.

Biblical faith is muscular, tough, stubborn. Joseph held onto hope despite calamity after calamity. Jacob learned everything the hard way. David was great at music and kingship, but lousy at parenting and integrity. Elijah was aces when the big show demanded it, but fell apart when fatigue overwhelmed. Hannah cried out to God when her life felt empty and bitter and then gave up God’s gift when he arrived. Ruth begged and borrowed the very food she and Naomi needed while learning to trust Israel’s God. Mary pondered and sang, questioned and grieved.

Suffering is never minimized in scripture. It is acknowledged on almost every page. We are never told to ‘rise above it.’ Instead, we are invited to live into it and to learn from it. And to recognize that God is right here with us, in the middle of every sob session, in the heart of every loss, right here in the muck with us.

Here are some powerful, beautiful words from Fred Buechner that begin to summarize what I want to say today:

“The world floods in on all of us. The world can be kind, and it can be cruel. It can be beautiful, and it can be appalling. It can give us good reason to hope and good reason to give up all hope. It can strengthen our faith in a loving God, and it can decimate our faith. In our lives in the world, the temptation is always to go where the world takes us, to drift with whatever current happens to be running strongest. When good things happen, we rise to heaven; when bad things happen, we descend to hell. When the world strikes out at us, we strike back, and when one way or another the world blesses us, our spirits soar. I know this to be true of no one as well as I know it to be true of myself. I know how just the weather can affect my whole state of mind for good or ill, how just getting stuck in a traffic jam can ruin an afternoon that in every other way is so beautiful that it dazzles the heart. We are in constant danger of being not actors in the drama of our own lives but reactors. The fragmentary nature of our experience shatters us into fragments. Instead of being whole, most of the time we are in pieces, and we see the world in pieces, full of darkness at one moment and full of light the next.

It is in Jesus, of course, and in the people whose lives have been deeply touched by Jesus, and in ourselves at those moments when we also are deeply touched by him, that we see another way of being human in this world, which is the way of wholeness. When we glimpse that wholeness in others, we recognize it immediately for what it is, and the reason we recognize it, I believe, is that no matter how much the world shatters us to pieces, we carry inside us a vision of wholeness that we sense is our true home and that beckons to us. It is part of what the book of Genesis means by saying that we are made in the image of God. It is part of what Saint Paul means by saying that the deepest undercurrent of all creation is the current that seeks to draw us toward what he calls mature humanhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
— Frederick Buechner, from a sermon included in the book, “Longing for Home”

Wholeness. Living loved brings us as close to that as we can get this side of heaven. Choosing, every single day, no matter the weather, to believe that God loves us — and to learn to love ourselves because God loves us — this is the only path I know that leads to wholeness, to healing.

That means jettisoning a lot of bad theology along the way. It means choosing to hold the tension of God’s sovereignty and God’s goodness loosely and humbly. It means choosing to live with unanswered questions. It means letting the tears loose, crying ‘uncle,’ stomping our feet on occasion or shaking our fists in heaven’s direction. And then. . . sitting still long enough to hear the gentle whisper of love echoing in our hearts — right there, in the middle of our frustration, our rage, our impotence.

It also means refusing to put suffering on a sliding scale of any kind. If you find yourself in the middle of deep personal pain for any reason — ANY REASON — then you are suffering. Please do not undervalue your own struggle by looking across the aisle, or across the newspaper, or across the world to someone else’s struggle. You will always find someone who is ‘worse off’ than you are. I promise. Instead, fully inhabit your pain, as much as you are able. Release the anguish of it, take it to God and say, “See this? Do you see this? Do you see how hard this is? Are you God or aren’t you? Can you fix this or can’t you?”

Yes, go ahead. Pour it out.

And then — shut up.

Sit by the side of the road and listen. Listen to what God has been teaching you about love and about yourself. Really listen. “I am with you always,” God says. “I collect your tears in a bottle.”

And remember that when these times hit — and they do, they will — that you are in such good company, the author of Lamentations to name one. He rages and sobs. . . and then he remembers. He listens to what he knows:

13 He shot his arrows
    deep into my heart.
14 My own people laugh at me.
    All day long they sing their mocking songs.
15 He has filled me with bitterness
    and given me a bitter cup of sorrow to drink.
16 He has made me chew on gravel.
He has rolled me in the dust.
17 Peace has been stripped away,
and I have forgotten what prosperity is.
18 I cry out, “My splendor is gone!
Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost!”
19 The thought of my suffering and homelessness
is bitter beyond words.
20 I will never forget this awful time,
as I grieve over my loss.
21 Yet I still dare to hope
when I remember this:
22 The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease.
23 Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!”

The LORD is our inheritance.

Can you still ‘dare to hope?’ No matter what sort of crap life hands you? Do you know how loved you are, even when the s**t hits the fan? Do you know how to love yourself when the pain level rises? Can you release the temptation to write off your own pain because someone else’s may be worse?

And here’s the question I need to ask myself right now, in the middle of the muck that we’re wading through: can I remember that there is only one Savior and that Savior’s name is Jesus? Can I release my need to be the giver of help and begin to receive what I need to get through this round? Can I believe enough in the immensity of God’s love for me that I can make good choices, ones that lead to health and healing?

I’m workin’ on it.

You?

Next week, we’ll continue to delve into this enormous and complex topic by asking:

How do I make all the pieces fit?

Filed Under: biblical reflection, community, Confession, Encouragement, grief, Hard Things, hope, Lament, Living the Answers, Living the Questions, personal journey, Q & A, Spiritual Formation, Suffering

Q & A Tuesday Wrap-Up: Week Four

February 11, 2014 By Diana

There are a lot of words in this wrap-up — and most of them are from all of you!

What a rich conversation we’ve had this week! Thank you all for your insights and your articulate, kind responses to me and to one another. Thank you for helping us all to wrestle well with the question of ‘tears.’ Yes, yes. There is room for our tears in the body of Christ, even though many of us have felt them to be unwelcome in particular corners of that body. The words you’ve shared, both in link-ups and in the comments section, have added so much liveliness and depth to living this particular question. I am grateful.

One of the earliest link-ups this week was breathtakingly beautiful, with reminders that life lived on planet earth is only an introduction to the life that is to come. She wrote: “I love crawling close in hospital beds and into the stories with their glimpses of the main stage, and inviting the next chapter into the room. It’s painful and gorgeous all at once. It’s the most beautiful thing my soul has ever felt. We are in the lobby. We have only caught a glimpse of beauty.” I encourage you to read the entire post.

Several posts this week were written in poetic, prayerful format, asking the church to be more open to letting the tears flow freely and unashamedly. We were encouraged to:

Make room in our own woundedness to walk the road with others who are weak and in pain. Be a sanctuary for the seeking, the saved and those sick in body, mind or heart.

Weep with those who weep. Rejoice with all who rejoice. Lift and uphold each other in prayer. Come alongside and be Christ’s ambassadors in caring for all in need.

Another faithful friend wrote a story of freedom, of permission to be all of who she is in the presence of God:

my younger self
was never known to cry
perhaps it was scolded out of me
having too often heard
“I’ll give you something to cry about”

but my God gave me tears
when I surrendered to Him
my harsh and stoney heart

now I am known
as a woman who weeps
long and deep tears
born of joy, pain, awe
and intercession

A regular contributor chose to offer a poetic reflection on both life and scripture in response to this question about tears:

The woman brought her tears,
rained them on our Lord’s
dusty feet. The body of Christ knows
(though we have forgotten)
the fellowship of tears.

And a regular member of the conversation joined her blog for the first time this week, also writing her thoughts in poetry:

While some have been tears
of deep grief,
sometimes tears tell me
it’s time to
stop
pay attention
see what God has for me.

Although not always readily apparent,
the time spent paying attention
until it becomes clear
is time
well-spent.

This beautiful and poignant post came from the deep wells of personal pain and loss and speaks to the hard but necessary truth that we don’t always know where our tears will lead, how our sorrow will be redeemed:

It will be days, months, maybe years, to process what God has done and to see the fruits from the passing of this small seed.
New life is coming, even from this death, and there will be more to write.
Leah has her own story to tell, but I will share some of the precious words she said to me,
“Mom, we will never be the same. He taught us so much.”

His name was Garrison Isaac.

You know ‘Isaac’ means ‘laughter’–and he is–laughing, I know.
With Jesus.

A really important corrective came from this once-Catholic-maybe-still-Catholic writer who reminded those of us with conservative/evangelical/Protestant stories that there are other stories about tears, too:

Well, Catholicism has no problems with tears. Repentance is regular and necessary and tears are often part of that. Life is accepted as being full of pain so there will often be tears. There isn’t any pressure on believers to be joyful. So when I came across this sense of failure over feeling unhappy or depressed or sad I was puzzled.

Tears have accompanied deep revelations of sinfulness and forgiveness. . .

Perhaps there should be some tears shed for the harm that has been done to the church by our disunity.

And the comments section this week simply soared, with heart-to-heart connections and beautiful words. A few of my favorites:

“He doesn’t let a single tear go to waste.
And the day is coming when He will dry each one.
Now that’s a promise to hold on to.”

About bad theology in the church:

“Once, not long after my miscarriage, I was told (taught, actually) that–if we’re not joyful–we make God the Father look bad. I rejected that idea in my spirit immediately, but I still feel a little angry when I think about it. We can be so careless w/ one another.”

A couple of deeply personal stories about the power of Holy Spirit tears:

“My cancer is well advanced in my bones, but I have made the commitment to sing in the choir the whole sesaon. I am pretty much the bass section. 2 weeks ago the anthem was “Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world.” The verses always start out the with basses belting out “I want to meet my Jesus,” or some variant on that theme. It was tough going for me. I did it, then went back to my seat and put my head down and started bawling while someone in the congregation stood up and thanked the choir for their spirited anthem. It was all good. These tears are gifts from God.”

A great reminder of a famous movie quote:

“Do you remember the line in “Steel Magnolias”? “My favorite emotion is laughter through tears” I’ve always loved that line.”

A profound question:

“Can I grieve my way back to owning tears? For so, so long, I had no safe place–and it seems I’ve forgotten how.”

Two reminders that early childhood lessons can sometimes trip us up as adults:

“Somewhere I picked up the idea that they [tears] are often manipulative or embarrassing, and I cringe now remembering ways I have dismissed the tears of others.”

“I decided as a young child, that my sister would use her tears to manipulate my parents whenever she was getting in trouble, and I vowed I would never do that.”

Testimonies of gratitude for the freedom to accept tears, those of others and our own:

“God has been slowly chipping away and breaking down the walls around my heart and in the last two years I cried more than my whole life. (I am 59) He weeps with us and gives us comfort.”

“A book that was instrumental in the process for me was, ‘The Wall Around Your Heart’ by Mary de Muth. I can highly recommend it. This breaking down in order to rebuild can feel like a strange unravelling where ground shifts beneath our feet and all seems uncertain.”

“I do feel I am doing this not only for me but for the precious people who are coming along behind me and I am grateful the opportunity to keep growing. Love the community here.”

A beautiful pledge to commit to openness and break the family pattern:

“but somehow to me, because of their stoicism, it felt like trusting God meant I didn’t feel the depth of the pain. I just had a visit with my only living Aunt last night who was only 5 years older than me. We wept together on the phone, sharing the sharing the pain of this approach – my grandmother not talking to her about my Grandfather (her dad) dying and my parents not talking to me about how i felt about the loss of my two siblings when I was a child. these are kind people who loved us, but they did as they had learned – but at the time, it seemed to us like we were to be brave and soldier on. by the time i could have talked to my mom about this, she got sick and soon died thereafter. I am determined to be open about my journey.”

And these words, from someone new to the conversation – well, they rang true in places deep and dark:

“Once when I was on a panel with other moms, discussing how women can minister to one another, I said, “Sometimes the greatest gift is to have someone cry with me.” Indeed, aren’t we uncomfortable with tears often, quickly sniffling and stuffing them away in our sinuses. I hold firmly to the thought that tears are a gift, and a gift to be shared with those who choose to walk with us. To have another share a time of tears is beautiful, to let them flow freely, not holding back, is a source of healing. One time when I had a blood test for inflammation, my sedimentation rate was off the charts. Later in the day a dear friend and I shared a precious time of talking and crying together. For some reason I had another blood test the next day. The inflammation was within normal limits. Shared tears can be healing indeed! On the other hand, Joy hold its own in the healing arena. I have had people ask me how I could possibly be so joy-filled when I experience such great pain. The answer, of course, is Jesus. The constant Joy is another gift, not manufactured by me, but given to me by a God who sees and loves deeply. The Joy and Tears are compatible, not mutually exclusive. They come together, share the same heart. I fully believe we can be shedding tears of sadness or pain and yet walk in Joy in the same moment.”

Another new ‘talker’ expressed regret and frustration with the ‘cheerfulness’ of too many church gatherings and how that can shut people out:

“I too could take the “good Cheer” better if we also were allowed to let the cracks show. That vulnerability is something most people just don’t want to face, it is too real, I guess.”

And almost immediately, there was this good word, reminding us all that we need people in our lives who know us, all of us, and who love us anyhow!

“I hope you have a “posse.” Through one of the hardest ministry hurts we experienced, i had four friend who knew the all of the story. they saved my sanity – my life.”

And I wonder how many of us can empathize with these words of realization, this glimpse into the full mystery of our own hearts:

“I have recently been surprised by my tears over something that I thought had been dealt with years ago, and realised it was because God was bringing healing to an area of my heart, of which I had been completely unaware! Which makes me wonder how much more of my heart is unknown to me…”

And to wrap up this week’s wrap-up, this lovely story of grace re-discovered through the healing, releasing power of tears:

“The worst period of my life was marked by a state of denial that refused to accept I was struggling. I used a false religion of acceptance (false because I was actually angry, resentful and playing the long suffering pious martyr) that hardened my heart and for a long time no tears fell. I was often ill and now it seems to me that these things were linked. Stress built up inside me and when not aknowledged and released as tears it manifested in other physical ways. (I do not believe that this explains most illnesses btw!) It was this experience that led me to believe that in some ways I was saved by grief. Mourning my sister’s sudden death paved the way for mourning unaccepted losses. Tears allowed more tears and joy came in the morning.”

A HUGE thank-you from me to all of you for your generous gift of time, thought, and words. We all richer for the connections made in this space.

Filed Under: biblical reflection, community, Encouragement, Friendship, God's gifts, grief, Hard Things, Holy Spirit, Living the Answers, Living the Questions, personal journey, Q & A

Q & A: Week Four – The Gift of Tears

February 7, 2014 By Diana

WARNING:

THIS IS A MUCH LONGER INTRO THAN USUAL. FEEL FREE TO GLANCE, SKIP OR IGNORE:

This week marks the halfway point in my original layout for this series. I designed Q & A around a set of topics I’ve been noticing as I read around the Christian blog world; six basic concerns that surface repeatedly and that often feel more than a little bit unsafe and scary to many people. When I wrote the introductory post for Q & A, I solicited additional questions from you. Two of you wrote back with a whole series of questions that crystallized around two main areas, which brought my total topic list to these eight:

1. Why is there so much talk about obedience? (January 17)
2. What’s with this ‘more of Jesus, less of me’ stuff? (January 24)
3. What’s with all this talk about ‘sin?’ (January 31)
4. Is there room for my tears here? (February 7)
5. What do we do with our suffering? (February 14)
6. How do I make all the pieces fit? (February 21)
7. Why do bad things happen to good people? (February 28)
8. What do I do with all the hard/weird stuff in the Bible? (March 7)

As you can see, these questions are broad, and fully half of them deal in one way or another with the huge topic of suffering. That is intentional. I don’t want to waste time, space or effort by delving into too much detail on any one topic, yet the facets of suffering are many and require careful parsing out. As we work our way through this list, you’ll notice that my reflections will always be general in nature, not specific. I don’t want to open a can of worms with any of these, but I do want to foster a safe space for discussion and conversation, rather than debate. Disagreement is welcome, as long as it’s kind and open. We don’t have to agree about all that much, actually, to be connected through the goodness of God made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. I am ordained in a small, evangelical denomination that I love. (You can meet us here.) We hold only six affirmations:

We affirm the centrality of the word of God.
We affirm the necessity of the new birth.
We affirm a commitment to the whole mission of the church.
We affirm the church as a fellowship of believers.
We affirm a conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit.
We affirm the reality of freedom in Christ.

And it is that last one that I cling to whenever I find myself in disagreement with another Christian on any topic that isn’t directly connected to those first five affirmations. There is room to ‘agree to disagree,’ and for the last 35 years, I have been privileged to be a part of a church family that lives that truth.

This time table for our conversations, our ‘delving into the mystery,’ overlaps by two days with the beginning of Lent this year. I am hoping to do another daily devotional series during Lent; the last time I tackled that was 2012. So, after Easter, if there are further questions that you would like to work through, please let me know and we’ll have at it during the weeks of Eastertide. I am also open to continuing the Q & A format as an occasional series, so let me know if there is ever a topic you’d like for us to address together after we’ve finished this series. Thanks so much to everyone for your wonderful contributions to this endeavor.

As you can see from the schedule, the question for next week is:
What do we do with our suffering?

My reflections for this week do not fit the surfing theme! Instead, I am focussing on three treasures of mine, things I have always kept nearby on my pastoral and/or personal desk, things that teach me some important truths every time I look at them.

Treasure Number One: One weekend in early April, nearly thirty-five years ago, we had a brief respite after a huge rainstorm that lasted almost a week. So we piled our three kids in the car and drove an hour west from our home in Altadena, towards the ocean. All of us walked out onto the beach and immediately noticed that there were thousands of tiny shells scattered all over the hard, damp sand left behind by the ebbing tide. We don’t get a lot of shells in southern California. Sometimes; after a big storm, we might find a few here and there. But this was just stunning to see — and delightful. We all began to gather as many as we could in the hour we’d set aside for beach-walking.

My middle daughter, who has always had great observational skills, was the champ that day, bringing back several handfuls of these beautiful, delicate things, almost all of them scallop shells. We rinsed and dried them and I kept some of them separate from the several baskets full of shells that have always adorned our homes over the years.

These were special to me. They were small, very small. And they were perfect. Something about them spoke to a deep place in me. Ever since then, I have had this clam shell full of them sitting on my desk(s), either at home or in my office.

Treasure Number Two: Within the first two weeks of moving to Santa Barbara to begin my very first (and only) paid position on a pastoral staff, I was browsing among some of the quaint shops on State Street in my new hometown. I quickly located a place that remains on my top 10 list to this day, a tiny, crowded shop that features jewelry, brightly colored linens, wonderful seasonal decor, and collections of tiny things. Do you see that basket? It’s about an inch and half square. And can you see what’s in it? Five tiny loaves of bread and two small fish. Does that sound familiar to you?

Treasure Number Three: The last piece of my favorite trio is this small carving of the weeping Jesus of Lithuania, a gift from a friend who used to be my boss. This is what Wikipedia (yes, I know!!) has to say about this figure:

Wooden carvings of Rūpintojėlis, “The Jesus who cares for us,” are often seen at crossroads and in cemeteries. He always rests his head on his right arm, his left hand rests on his knee, a crown of thorns on his head shows drops of blood, and his face is full of solicitude and sorrow.

The pose may represent Jesus’ anticipation of his crucifixion, after his scourging and crowning with thorns. It is also said to depict Jesus after his resurrection and before his ascension. One legend has it that Jesus traveled throughout the world wearing his crown of thorns; during his journeys, he sometimes sat on stones near the road and wept.
(italics mine)

At first glance, it might seem to you that this last piece of the three is the one that relates most readily to the question of the week. And, in one way, that is indeed true. This is a small copy of a figure that appears all over the country of Lithuania, a figure that encapsulates the suffering endured during communism’s rule, that reminded faithful Catholic believers that Jesus had not forgotten them in the midst of their suffering. His tears made their own more bearable somehow.

In truth, however, it is also the shells, and those tiny reminders of the miracle on the hillside, in combination with the weeping Jesus figure — all of these together — that help me to remember and believe that my own tears are seen by God. Not only are they seen, they are treasured, collected in God’s bottle and remembered. I believe that my tears, and your tears, are gifts from God and to God.

And also? Your tears and my tears are gifts to the larger body of Christ.

Tears are small things, you see. Tiny, actually. Just droplets of water that flow from our eyes when we’re feeling deep emotions or when we’re enduring physical pain. Did you know that the tears that come when you are peeling onions or blinking at a fierce wind are not a chemical match for the tears you shed in either pain or joy? ‘Real’ tears carry toxins away from the body, they are a cleansing agent, a release. And part of God’s design.

I also believe that they are evidence of the Holy Spirit’s good work within us. I believe that tears can be a charism, not unlike tongues or prophecy, wisdom or miracles. No, they’re not listed anywhere in scripture. But I believe it nonetheless. For me they are the gift that came when I asked for the gift of tongues, the gift of a special prayer language. I have not received the language, but the tears spring forth, unbidden, many times when I pray, when I counsel others, when I read the Word. And over and over again, I have learned that they are gift.

They are also often sign, providing a ‘pay attention to this’ inkling that God is up to something in my heart or the heart of another. Yes, they are tiny. But they are perfect — just like the shells. And they represent what God’s Spirit can do in and through us when we relinquish what we have, when we let go of our tendency toward too-tight control over our emotions and our thought life. A lesson that I remember whenever I look at the loaves and the fishes.

God, you see, can do miracles with very small things. And sometimes, those very small things are our tears.

So, why then, I wonder, do so many Christians shy away from them? Why is the predominant mood on Sunday morning too often one of incessant good cheer, hail-fellow-well-met, I’m-fine-thank-you-I’m-just-fine? In truth, the Sunday morning good cheer wouldn’t bother me so much if I were confident that the tears that I KNOW most people are carrying in their bodies and their spirits were given permission to flow somewhere in the midst of the community, maybe on another day of the week!

What worries me is that too many Christians simply do not feel safe admitting that they carry those tears, believing instead that they have managed to flunk the primary test of authentic discipleship. Where is the JOY? they wonder. Where is the gratitude? I have Jesus, why am I not ‘fine?’

What I want to say — what my beautiful shells and my small reminder of miracles and the figure of our crying Jesus remind me — is that life is not always grand. And that is to be expected. Injustice abounds. Wars rage. Children die. Health gives way. Minds deteriorate. Relationships break apart. Jobs are lost. Bad habits persist. Doubt looms large. Everything is not just hunky-dory all the time, you know? We are so.not.fine.

And. . . there is this, oh-so-important piece of our story:

Jesus wept.

Hang onto that truth. With all that is in you, hang onto it. Our holy book is laced with the language of lament, fists raised to the heavens, tears streaming down the cheeks. Because tears are a part of what it means to live as human creatures in a broken but beautiful world. Tears are a primary means of release, of communication, of grief, pain, loss and even of joy and gratitude. It all melds together, you see. Mourning and dancing ‘kiss each other,’ and all of it is part of what it means to live a full, real, human life.

This is a huge topic, so many layers to be unpacked and wrestled through. But for this week, the most important answer to our weekly question is YES, there is room for your tears here. In fact, they are welcome here. Because if you let me see your tears, then I know you are giving me a gift; you are giving me the truth. You are letting me in, so that I can weep with you, and then together, we can weep with God.

When we offer our tears to one another and to the living, loving God of the universe, we are allowing ourselves to be truth-tellers and image-bearers more powerfully than at almost any other time in our lives for precisely this reason: we know a God who weeps with us. And his name is Jesus.

Thanks be to God.

Next week’s question: What do we do with our suffering?

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Filed Under: Beauty, biblical reflection, Blogging, community, Confession, Encouragement, God's gifts, grief, Hard Things, Lament, Living the Answers, Living the Questions, personal journey, Q & A, Spiritual Formation, Suffering

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

Q & A Tuesday Wrap-Up: Week Two

January 27, 2014 By Diana

Well, this week we’ve got a few more people jumping into the waves with us and I’m so grateful for everyone’s rich contributions to the conversation. The story I shared this week was a personal one, unique to me in many ways. But as I read comments and links, I began to see that many of us had internalized similar ‘translations’ of that phrase — “More of Jesus, less of me.” Many of us have had to wrestle it out and realize that commitment to Jesus does not require self-obliteration. In fact, the opposite is true.

One linked essay linked early focused on the idea of the death of self as a process of rejuvenation, a coming of spring to a winter landscape. But the way is not easy; death never is. Another early subscriber phrased it differently: “we’re never more truly ourselves (as He created us to be) than when we’re revealing His glory and grace in our lives.”

I loved this quote from David Benner in a thoughtful essay from across the pond:

Surrender of ego would be surrender of personhood, which is never appropriate. We cannot be human without ego, and we can never be fully human without a strong ego. In many people, ego is too weak for them to engage in meaningful surrender. Without a strong ego we cannot engage in the transformational journey of ego relativisation through surrender of egocentricity and the reestablishment of a life-giving connection to the Self.’

This writer chose the word ‘diminishment’ as a descriptor for what this phrase, and others like it, seem to imply. “The problem with the way I understood diminishment lay in the way it led me to see my own Self. There was something wrong with it. With me. Why else would I need to diminish. It conjured up a picture of Jesus unhappily trying to find space to live within me and me just not moving enough stuff out of his way.”

Our resident poet, in her usual lovely and succinct way wrote this:

Totally lost, totally found.
It is the world in me that I want to replace with the Christ in me.
That I might have space to be the real version of _____.
The daughter He designed with great skill and precision
Not less, but more.
Fractures healed, imperfect perhaps
but complete in ways I can’t quite imagine.

A longtime friend of mine joined in the conversation in the comments and on Facebook, where she posted this news item and her own commentary on it:

About Pope Francis: Last week during a banquet in Chicago, Cardinal Francis George revealed why the cardinals gathered in conclave last March elected Bergoglio pope. George said: “Because the cardinal from Argentina was completely free. He possessed an interior freedom that was so evident.”

Is it not this unflinching freedom that allows Pope Francis to do what he does because he is unafraid and totally free to be himself at the same time of being such faithful son of the Church?

Yes! “An interior freedom” that allows for authenticity and faithfulness to tradition at the same time. I loved this!

Several of our contributors come from hyper-restrictive backgrounds, where there was much personal pain, isolation and grief connected with the loss of self which this phrase can evoke. One linked essay spoke of feeling completely cutoff from her own humanity while spending time in a demanding fellowship: “If Jesus is this intangible ‘feeling’, a presence in only certain places, and me is…..me and my junk – then of course it’s logical to spend as much time in the literal presence of God and ignore my literal humanity.” This group went beyond scripture in its interpretive zeal, causing deep scars and lasting pain.

In the comments, one reader wrote about the healing that followed a time of struggle in a particular community: “Fast forward to later years when a particularly damaging season in church life had left me feeling “much less than” and very weary. After uprooting to a smaller fellowship, I remember standing in a sweet worship time and we began to sing a new song (new to me at least) titled “Your Beloved”. The words washed over me, they were life-giving. It was for me a transforming moment; healing had begun.” Music can be such an instrument of healing, can’t it?

A mom of young kids, who also teaches high school students, wrote that she sees selfishness play out on a daily basis. Yet she still worries about the impact of teaching songs like JOY and using phrases like ‘less of me.’ “I have seen the heart of it twist and turn until it is knotted into a lie that says “don’t do anything you want to do. If you enjoy it, it isn’t from God.” I have seen it in my own heart the part that says, “Don’t pick yourself, don’t pick your dreams, if Jesus wants you to do the thing you will love, someone else will ask you to do it.”

I so appreciated this thoughtful questioning in one of the earliest linked essays:

It strikes me that there are many ways to answer that question because there are many ways to understand it. For example, what does “me” mean? Does it mean my willfulness and self-absorption? Or does it mean my essence? . . .

I love to hear Jesus’ voice calling me out, coaxing me to relax my strangle hold on life’s guardrails because there’s nowhere I can fall where He is not. I long to drop the constraints and fear and run far and high. I want to step into the flow of a larger design, where the rhythm of my giftings finds intrinsic place. A place not where I am lost, but where I am found. I want to come out of hiding.

A late commenter quoted Dallas Willard, a man who has taught beautifully about the need for good self-discovery AND learning to yield to the sweet, sometimes painful, work of the Spirit in us:

“As Jesus’ disciple, I am his apprentice in kingdom living. I am learning from him how to lead my life in the Kingdom of the Heavens as he would lead my life if he were I.” Dallas Willard

I first heard this quote a few years ago and something about it felt significant to me. It seems subtle, but there was something different about thinking how would Jesus live my life. It was a move away from an image I believe I held of us all becoming Jesus robots. Not the goal of me and you and everyone becoming Jesus. But me becoming more me. The redeemed me. The fully me that I was created to be. With my personality, gifts, experiences, quirks….fully being me- yoked with Jesus and the wisdom that he would bring into my life.

It was that phrase ‘Jesus-robots’ that clicked with me. I think — even though I had no concept of a robot in the early 1950s — that this idea was part of my almost primal fear of this whole line of thinking. I was grateful to find it put into words by someone else!

Every single voice is welcome in this rich conversation we are having and I am so thankful for each of you who is offering thoughtful words. My friend from New Zealand gave me one of the best word pictures for what I was trying to talk about in my own essay – and I don’t want anyone to miss these good words. She does not blog, but always leaves great stuff in the comments – so I suggest you subscribe to those, if you don’t already. I’ll wrap up this wrap-up with her words:

I’ve been thinking about the phrase ‘More of Jesus, less of me’ since you set this week’s questions, and the way so many people I know, particularly women, seem to use this as a command to invisibility, and how uncomfortable and wrong this feels to me.

I’ve also been thinking about light and transparency, and somehow the two things came together. When I try to get a photo of something – redcurrants or waves – that has light shining through it, I’m not trying to get a photo of the light itself. I’m trying to get a photo of how the light is making that particular thing look. The light is revealing something about the redcurrant or wave that I don’t usually see, something that is beautiful and/or unique.

Now apply this analogy to us. The light is Jesus in us. He shines through us, and as He does, the light somehow illuminates all our unique and very different qualities. Some of these qualities we are born with, and some are created as we walk through our lives, but it is the light of Jesus that shows them off. Given that God loves differences, I just can’t imagine Him wanting to look at a whole roomful of stained-glass windows (if that’s how we see ourselves… or jewels, or lanterns, or waves, or redcurrants, or whatever picture works for you!) that look exactly the same!

AMEN!

My deep thanks to each and every one of you who has written words in this space or elsewhere. As our small community grows, it will be increasingly difficult for me to include everybody in this weekly summary — each of these first two weeks, we’ve had about 20 different people contributing to the comments section, and 7 essays linked. I will continue to feature highlights, as I am able. Please know that I read everything you write and that I’m grateful for all of it.

Come back on Friday for our weekend pondering of” “What’s with all the talk about ‘sin?'”

Filed Under: Blogging, community, Encouragement, Hard Things, hope, Living the Answers, Living the Questions, Q & A

Q & A: Week Two – Fear of Abandonment

January 24, 2014 By Diana

This week, we’re moving out beyond the first set of breakers in this adventure we’re taking, out into the deep waters of our faith. I’m grateful for your companionship along the way, and look forward to your response to this week’s question: “What’s with this ‘more of Jesus, less of me’ stuff?”

The story I tell this week is a deeply personal one, and very likely not many (if any) of you will be familiar with some of the emotional and psychological backwater I’ve had to push my way through, by the grace of God, to learn a different way of understanding that phrase. But I think what I’ve learned is important for all of us, at the very least because this story might help us all to be more careful and thoughtful with our choice of words, especially when we’re teaching those who are young — in age, or in the faith. I look forward to your responses.

Next week’s question set, for Friday, January 31: What’s with all this talk about ‘sin?’
When I was a little girl, faithfully attending Sunday school each week, we had a little saying that went like this: “Jesus, Others and You – that’s how you spell JOY.”

And I inhaled that sentiment like it was the sweetest of perfumes. YES! We should always be last on the list, giving ourselves away to Jesus and to other people. That’s how you live like Jesus, right? That’s how you are a good girl, a truly good girl.

As I got older, that simple phrase became a little more complicated, and the scent of it a little more cloying. This time, it went something like this: “He must increase, I must decrease,” lifting the words directly out of the mouth of John the Baptist near the end of chapter 3 in John’s gospel.

From there, it morphed into, “More of Jesus, less of me,” and the older I got, the more terrified I became when I heard those words.

I didn’t recognize it as terror initially. In fact, I didn’t know how deeply this message had affected me until I began to be interested in spiritual direction. I first learned about direction by reading a series of novels, of all things. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, British author Susan Howatch wrote a great bunch of stories about priests in the Anglican church and I devoured those books when I was in my 40’s. They were earthy, to be sure, but they were also rich and filled with beautiful tidbits of theology and ecclesiology. Throughout the entire series, some of my favorite characters were spiritual directors.

So I began to read some rich and informative non-fiction books about direction, and to ask likeminded friends about it. One of those friends was a woman of spiritual depth and breadth with whom I co-taught several Sunday school classes for adults. She was also a psychologist and a spiritual director. In the mid-1990’s, I met with her to explore whether or not we might enter into a director/directee relationship. At our first session, she handed me a copy of Foucald’s “Prayer of Abandonment” and told me to take it home and reflect on it. Here is that prayer:

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures.
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you
with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord,
and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands,
without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.
— Charles de Foucald

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Filled with love, joyful submission, and trust.

But I could not pray that prayer.

I tried, but I’d get to the word ‘abandon,’ and start gulping great gasps of air. I prayed about it, I talked it over with the woman who had given it to me, and her immediate response to me was this: “Diana, you need therapy. Not direction.” (Did I mention I was in seminary at the time and beginning to hear God’s call to professional ministry? What??? Pastors might need therapy? Well, that’s a great big YES.)

I have spent the last twenty years trying to unpack what happened inside me as I read that prayer and, in the process, I have taken a long look at that old Sunday school saying and the use (or mis-use) of that verse from John 3. And I’ve done a TON of personal work on all kinds of important things. . . all because I gagged on the word, “abandon.”

We all have a fear of abandonment. Along with the fear of falling, it’s one of the most primal fears human persons carry. But what I was feeling was not quite that, was it? This is what I finally realized: I was terrified of disappearing. I had somehow inhaled some really lousy theology along with that early Sunday school ditty; I had taken the words of John the Baptist completely out of context* and come to believe that the way to the heart of the gospel was for me to somehow be sublimated to the point of extinction, for Jesus alone to inhabit this flesh.

There are all kinds of interesting reasons why this particular woman came up with these particular fears and most of them, I understand a whole lot better now than I did then. But what I want to talk about here is the sometimes dangerous way we throw words around when we teach and when we preach.

Because this is the beautiful truth of the gospel, the powerful, life-changing, miraculous truth:

As we learn more about the heart of Jesus, as we open ourselves to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, this happens:

“More of Jesus, MORE of me.”

Yes, you read that right. Think about it for a minute or two: why would God go to all the trouble of creating the wildly different and wholly beautiful human race if the goal was for each one of us to disappear, to lose our distinctiveness, to be pushed into the waters of oblivion that some have chosen to call “Jesus?”

Is that wave supposed to cover us completely?

In some ways, YES, YES, YES. We are covered by the grace of God made tangible in the blood of Jesus. We are; yes, we are.

BUT also, NO. We are not lost when we are covered by the grace of God. We are not ever lost. No.

WE ARE FOUND.

The true me, the real me, the best me, the apple-of-God’s-eye me, the very particular, very unique, highly individual me is given space. Room to breathe and grow and flourish. The heart of the mystery, the wonder is this: the more we allow Jesus to fill us with love, to inhabit us, the more ‘me’ we discover. The me that God had in mind when he created the world, the me that reflects the image of God, the me that Jesus sees when he moves in for good.

And I do mean for good.

Because Jesus is the one who calls forth from us health, wholeness, obedience — in the best sense of that word — and life. And in the growing and refining process that we use such big, ole theological words to describe (like sanctification, even justification. . . ohh, they make me shudder a little!) what emerges, over time, through all the good stuff that happens and all the hard stuff that happens — what emerges is the truest ‘me’ possible this side of heaven.

There is another entire blog post (or maybe a chapter??) to be written about all the possible pieces of this truth. Things like good self-care, healthy boundaries, learning what it means to love ourselves so that we can more fully and healthily love others. But for today, I want to give witness to the truth that the beautiful prayer listed above, the one that started me down the road of serious self-reflection and earnest biblical study, is now one of my favorites.

Because today I know that God has no desire to devour me, to make me some kind of freakish ‘walking dead’ person. No. Jesus came to this earth to show us what a truly human life looks like. And he wants us to discover what OUR truly human life looks like.

It’s true, we will look a lot like Jesus.

But we will also look like ourselves.

*John is replying to questions from his followers who have become jealous of all the attention Jesus is getting. John recognizes that his own work is done, that Jesus is now at center stage. In that context only, he says, “He must increase and I must decrease.” Like so many other catch phrases grasped from scripture, this one cannot be directly applied to each of us, at least not in the way in which it too often has been. When we come to Jesus and ask him to live in us, we are joined to this Elder Brother of ours as partners — not equal partners, but partners nonetheless. This is the way God designed it — God works through the likes of us. Amazing. It is my heartfelt prayer that I will more and more closely resemble this Brother of mine. But it is also my prayer that I will more fully inhabit myself, the one Jesus came for. The one Jesus died for. The one Jesus prays for at the right hand of the Father.

As always, I invite your comments here. If you have a blog, and feel inspired/moved/challenged to write a response to this post or to the question itself, please do link it here. So here’s the linky – and be sure to grab one of my buttons from the sidebar for your own blog post. Thank you!

Next week’s question, for Friday, January 31: What’s with all this talk about ‘sin?’

Filed Under: biblical reflection, Confession, death, Encouragement, Hard Things, Living the Answers, Living the Questions, Mystery, personal journey, Q & A

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!

Delving into the Mystery — Introducing Q & A

January 10, 2014 By Diana

I will admit that this new year is already kicking my butt. I know that sounds rude, and, to tell you truth, it feels rude.

I have one more year in my 60s. One.More.Year.

And I’m feeling it.

My husband has already moved through that milestone. And he’s feeling it, too.

We’re tired, cranky at times, worry too much over our old, dementing moms and our beautiful, energetic grandchildren, and our joints ache almost all the time.

Yet, here I sit, staring out at the brilliant noonday sun on a winter day, grateful right into every aching bone for the life I’ve lived, the gifts I’ve enjoyed, the things I’ve learned.

Yes, these joints hurt. But this heart and soul are still beating, still singing. I am grateful to be here, inhabiting this space for however long the Lord grants it.

And in between the groans and sighs, I’ve been listening. Paying attention. Reading. Learning.

Case in point.

This week, I took a walk on the bluffs near the University of California, Santa Barbara. I love that walk, the glorious views in every direction, the energy of a university campus beating its way underground clear out to Coal Oil Point, where the surfers hang ten.

So I took my very fancy new point-and-shoot camera and I walked. And I watched the surfers as they inhabited that immense sea.

Who knew that surfers could be such powerful teachers?? Here’s a little of what I learned on Tuesday afternoon:

To be a surfer requires dedication. These kids ride their bikes out the long, dusty pathway, holding their boards — holding their boards — close to their bodies.

To be a surfer requires community. You will never see a lone ranger, waiting for the next set. Always, always, they do this thing together. Yes, their rides are individual, but the waiting? The learning from the water? The ebb and flow? This, they do together.

To be a surfer requires patience, long stretches of sitting, watching, sensing, obeying the rhythm of the water. In between the thrilling stuff is a whole lot of boring stuff, but all of it is what makes an expert out of a beginner.

To be a surfer requires flexibility, and a willingness to go with the flow. From straddling to crouching to half-standing, to a full-out-stand-up-look-at-this, you’ve got to be willing to change your position on a dime. Take a gander at these:

Dedication, community, patience, flexibility — all part of the surfing life. And all part of being obedient to what the water has to teach, don’t you think?

If we want to learn —

we’ve got to get wet,
we’ve got to find a tribe,
we’ve got to be willing to wait out the lulls,
and we’ve got to move with the rhythm of the water.

I’ve been following Jesus all my life, cannot remember a moment when I didn’t know him. And still, I fall off that board, miss the cues, lose the rhythm. I’m not there yet — not exactly a beginner, but not quite an expert, either.

All along the way, I have managed to learn a few things, Some of them are painful, painful enough to leave scars. And though I would never seek it out, I’ve lived long enough to know that pain can be a place of profound growth, even of transformation.

Every surfer worth his or her salt has endured bruising, battering, humiliation and defeat. But the ones who choose to learn from all of that are the ones who become adept, adaptable, creative and committed. In short, the ones who yield to the mystery of it all, and accept that an occasional punch to the gut is part of the process — these are the ones who catch the waves, time after time.

This cross stands at the edge of the cliff that sits between the two primary surfing coves along the Coal Oil Point Reserve. It is glorious and sturdy, withstanding wind and weather for as long as I’ve been living. I like the juxtaposition of sturdiness and wildness that I find in this place, the unpredictable mingling of formed and unformed, hand-created and God-created.

It reminds me of life – this crazy mix of goodness and grief, beauty and horror, healing and brokenness that makes our four-score-and ten (if we’re lucky) the rich and remarkable thing that it is.

I am quickly approaching that number, on my way to three score and ten very soon now. Over the years that have been granted me, I have never been able to settle for the quick and easy. Don’t offer me truisms, cliches, pat answers or formulas, please. I’d rather hear a different way of asking the question! Because, here’s the truth of it: I am a person who loves the questions; I believe they are worth the patient work of exploration, prayer and lived experience that can sometimes lead to answers. In fact, I believe that my word for 2014, obedient, is as much about asking the right questions as it is about finding answers.

For as long as I pastored, there was a beautiful calligraphic print that hung in or near my various offices. It contains these words, written by Rainer Maria Rilke in his small book, “Letters to a Young Poet.” This is a truth I believe; this is a truth I try to live:

“You are so young, you have not even begun,
and I would like to beg you, dear one, as well as I can,
to have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves,
like closed rooms and like books written in a very strange tongue.

Do not search now for the answers, which cannot be given you because you could not live them.

It is a matter of living everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then, gradually,
without noticing it, one distant day,
live right into the answers.“

I would like to invite you to spend some time living the questions, beginning next Friday, January 17th. I’ll start us off with some reflections on a question that I’ve lived with for a while. And we’ll do that every Friday until there are no more questions to be asked.

Although I’ve got a list of about a dozen that I’ve discerned from my own life experience and from much of what I read on the internet, I am open to suggestions. Please leave them in the comments or email me directly at dtrautwein at gmail dot com.

Also? YOU are invited to link up your own reflections — either on the question that I raise or on another one that you’ve been living for a while. PLEASE NOTE that this is not an invitation to extended theological debate. There are lots of places to go if that’s what you hunger for. What I’m looking for are stories, experiences, concerns, points of conflict — anything that sets you down the road of wondering about the life of faith.

I think we’ll come closer to living an answer if we tell our stories and if we live our questions. Next Friday’s question set?

Why is there so much talk about ‘obedience?’
Does following Jesus mean I have to give up having fun?

<div align="center"><a href="http://dianatrautwein.com/category/q-a/" title="Diana Trautwein - Living the Questions" target="_blank"><img src="http://dianatrautwein.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Questions-250x188.jpg" alt="Diana Trautwein - Living the Questions" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Then, beginning the following Tuesday, January 21st, we’ll try our hand at discovering how we are living the answers. I will do some personal reflecting on truths I’ve been living into — perhaps connected to the question of the previous week, perhaps not. Sometimes I’ll look to scripture for help, sometimes to life, sometimes to both. And I can tell you right now, that some weeks there will be no ‘answer,’ just an encouragement to live with the un-knowing, to explore the mystery . . . to wait for the wave.

Diana Trautwein - Living into the Answers

<div align="center"><a href="http://dianatrautwein.com/category/q-a/" title="Diana Trautwein - Living into the Answers" target="_blank"><img src="http://dianatrautwein.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Answers-250x188.jpg" alt="Diana Trautwein - Living into the Answers" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

I have no idea if this will work or not! It is an experiment, one that I think is worth the risk. I hope you will, too.

I’m willing to get wet, are you?
I’m looking for my tribe, will you be a part?
I’m okay with the lulls, especially if I’ve got company.
And I’m willing to move with the rhythm of The Water.

So . . . let’s do a little surfing, shall we?