Like a Tree...

Some years ago I wrote a song based on the first Psalm.  The words are as follows:

Like a tree that is planted at the water's edge,
As we trust in you we grow,
Oh the seasons

Chance

Starting the Artist's Way again.  Funny how much this book has influenced my thinking and being.  It has been the single biggest influence in my life aside from my relationship with God and the Bible. 

Today the word "chance" came to to mind.  Julia Cameron calls it syncronity.  Some of us who are Christians might say "All things work together for those who love God."   You know the kind of thing I mean, right?  Like the things that perhaps one's enemies mean for harm and destruction and hurt, God actually takes and turns around and uses it for good.  And when we are centered in God and our life's purpose, there is often an easy flow, where surprising things happen and they fit in so sweetly and smoothly with the direction we are headed. 

I am definitely NOT a proponent for "Everything happens for a reason..."  Like someone is directing the flow of traffic, and someone being raped and brutalized in a back alley, creates some reality in some other place that makes the world a better place.  Poppycock!  I am however, a proponent for God's presence being with the person who is being raped, and I do believe that those terrible things in a person's life can end up changing a person's life in ways that heal and bring healing and hope to others.  But it isn't magic.  There's no magic wand that heals the terrible wounds left on a victim's psyche.  It takes years of hard work, and even then there are scars and places which will never be the same. 

A friend and I were recently wishing we had a magic wand to "fix" some hard stuff in our lives.  Wouldn't it be grand?  Sigh.  I guess we'll have to work through it the old fashioned way.  But of one thing I am sure, if we ask for help, it arrives.  Not always in the form we expect, or sometimes even want, but it does arrive and with it comes a power for change and growth, helping us to become the person we are meant to be. 

If you're in Southern Oregon, enjoy the sunshine.  And if you are in other parts of the world, enjoy the beauty of this day, whatever the weather.  Life is a gift.  May you open it with wonder today.

ADOPT BLACK DOGS!

Meet Joy...if you haven't already.  She is a rescue dog from Texas. She's MY Joy! 

I wept all the way through that Texas shelter looking for the right dog.  There were so many I wanted to take home, including a new puppy who couldn't stop shaking, she was so scared, and a beautiful husky whose looks reminded me of my old dog Bart, but whose temperament was much more agressive.  Couldn't handle that.  I saw Joy in the first room.  I bravely went through all the rooms, weeping as I walked, but wound up back in front of her cage where she lay in feces and urine.  I cried some more, and through my tears asked to meet this one.  Her name was Jada at the time.  A popular name I later learned, but a name to which Joy never responded.  I added Joy to the Jada, but it still didn't work.  Joy was the name she wanted.  It seemed so unreasonable to give such a name to a dog who was so sad and so sick (she had heartworm and parasites and fleas), she had allergies.  But Joy she became. 

When I was unhappy with her I would sigh:  "Oh Joy..."  And she would hang her head.  I would call to her at the dog park:  "Joy, Joy!  Joy!"   She didn't play the first three months I had her.  She had all she could contend with just staying alive.  But after she was treated for the heartworm, and after we stayed in one place for very long, she became her name.  I cried again the first time she played.

I got Joy at a discount because Thursdays in that particular shelter are the days they take 50% off black dogs because no one wants to adopt them.  I was a bit taken aback by such a thing.  Then thought, well, it's the south, maybe its prejudice.  But I later learned that no, black dogs are not the first to be picked.  Everyone wants light colored dogs. 

Well, I just want to say:  Black Dogs are just as WONDERFUL as any other dog!  Joy is the finest, sweetest most loving dog I could have asked for. 

Think about it if you're in the market for a dog.  Get a rescue.  And if there's a nice black dog waiting to be adopted, take him or her home and let them love you.  It's just NOT fair that they are much more often euthanized.  What difference does color make?  I guess it still does to some.  But for heavens sake, GET OVER IT!  They'll give you far more than you ever invest in them. 

That word again...

Innocently sitting down to read The Waiting Heart by Sue Monk Kidd, through which this reader has been moving slowly, what word comes gently, if not too subtley, floating out into the realm of syncronicity?  HESYCHIA!  "For heaven's sake" I exclaim to the Infinite One who seemed to be giggling at me, or maybe, and this is more likely, She was weeping over my slow-to-grasp-the-important, brain.

The day yesterday was spent in some angst about a disagreement...really about not getting my way. Maybe God was saying "For heaven's sake!" if this slow witted servant had been listening, instead of rolling around in the muddy dregs of her own needs and wants and FEARS.  Temper tantrums are not especially pretty when 4 year olds engage in them, and they are far less pretty when almost 53 year olds engage. 

So the reader trudged upstairs and into her sacred space to "rest in God."  After fidgeting, aware of the pain in her back and hip and feet from a forced march up a very steep hill earlier that afternoon, Spirit whispered in her rebellious and tired ear:  "Go lie down and get comfortable.  It's okay.  Let me do the praying."

"You know, it really isn't helpful when people who are supposed to be my best friend tell me I'm broken"  She whines.

Spirit sighs.  "Oh my dear, aren't you the one who said you were broken?"

"Yes, but she sure didn't have to agree with me!"

"Shhhh....rest."

And the rebellious, out of sorts, whiney servant heard the words "In repentence and REST you shall be saved.  In quietness and trust is your strength." 

The servant has a hard time keeping her mouth closed, and is awfully fond of having the last word, as it were.  Quietness isn't always something she willingly chooses.

But slowly, the arguments fade away, the outrageous pain in her heart begins to throb a little less indignantly.  Slowly love comes into the room and sooths the soul, the heart and yes, even the body.

In the end "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." 

And as the hero in a fairly popular and recent movie might add to Julian of Norwich's words:  "And if all is not well, it's not the end yet."  Well, perhaps that doesn't quite fit when speaking of the Eternal.  "All shall be well" is already and not yet.  Sigh.

But there's something to this Hesychia thing.  One's soul and perhaps even one's mind and body enters the realm of the already, while the "not yet" is left outside for a while.

Hesychia

 

Hesychia: the word means "rest."  Hesychastic prayer leads us to rest in God said Henri Nouwen in his book Lifesigns.  He goes on to talk about how the only way that wounded human beings can truly live in community is through such prayer.  We are needy...yes, even the most seemingly self sufficient of us are needy.  Every single one of us are wounded in ways we cannot always understand ourselves.  So the only way to live in community, the only way to make a home is to rest in God...to bring all that need, all of our broken places, all of the wounds to the Healer who can touch those parts of us that others cannot always understand, or don't have the energy to meet because of their own wounds. 

In the past few months my life has been taking root here in this place, and about a month ago I started dating someone who is an extraordinary human being.  New relationships always bring out the neurotic stuff.  It is uncomfortable, sometimes embarrassing to have someone see this mess that is oneself.  We put on a certain face to the world if we're lucky, but when someone comes to know us well and romance begins, we sometimes long to run and hide, when the thing that is most needed is transparency--honesty--truth telling.  But even when we are able to tell the truth about ourselves, it is often so very difficult to believe that someone could love us as we are.  We find it hard to see what they see in us.  Or we think that perhaps that person just doesn't quite understand the depth of the wounds. 

They don't of course.  But God does. 

And lately, from a place of contemplation, from a quiet heart, it is becoming obvious to me that God meets us there in our weaknesses, and it is in God that we can meet each other without fear, trusting the Eternal One to fill in the empty, aching, hurting places with Her grace.

May you find that quiet place when the emptiness in you cries out for human touch and attention.  God will fill those places with peace, and very often with a human love in community as well.

You are beloved my friends.   WE are beloved and held in that eternal and compassionate heart which is God.

Old Year Angst

from the Hubble Telescope

Woke up in the middle of the night with a gargantuan headache at the back of my neck, a runny nose, and found myself in the midst of what Anne of Green Gables called a "white night."  I wonder why she called it a white night rather than some other descriptive?  Well, whatever the reason, I lay there feeling all sorts of fear, and grief and angst!  Good heavens.  I haven't had a night like that in a while.  Self doubt ran rampant.  Insurmountable mountains loomed around me, grown from tiny molehills (well, ok, if I'm honest, they were more than molehills, but they had quadrupled in size nonetheless!)  Had I shrunk, like Alice in the looking glass?  Or had the problems become huge of their own volition? 

Morning brought a feverish weariness and so I didn't make my Sunday pilgrimage to church.  I always miss it when I don't find myself there to see friends and make new ones, to sing, to listen to a good "homily", as the Episcopalians call it.  It's interesting, the "calling" to ministry which I felt for so many years has grown silent.  It's like a beautiful calm after a summer storm.  All the years of struggle and confusion seem laid to rest here.  I don't feel any desire to serve at the altar, or preach, or dive into piles of church administration.  I've come through the most difficult year of my adult life, a kind of chaos I haven't known, though there has been plenty of painful difficulties over the years, and for some reason, that chaotic year, and a new church has simply laid to rest what once seemed like a tug of war in my heart and soul.  I may visit that calling and leave flowers at the graveyard, but there's no question in my heart, my mind, or my soul that the calling is no longer my concern.  It sits in  God's heart, and whatever may come to pass in this life or the next, is simply not something I need to wrestle with any longer.  One of my greatest passions will always be biblical interp.  I think it was inevitable that I "caught that bug," from a most astonishing New Testament professor, who put such energy and joy into teaching, who passed along such a love for scripture, that I don't think that particular part of my calling will ever disappear.  I haven't figured out exactly how to use it, but there isn't an urgency to figure it out.  Maybe I'll just always love to explore passages for their myriad of possibilities.

The ache in my head has continued, and so I'm going off to sleep, wishing you a peaceful night...or if you happen to read this during the day, a productive and happy day.