be

In the middle of an annual intensive seminar for the master’s program I’m in…it’s lovely, of course. After the insane busyness of December, this…feels…so…GOOD.

Being with these people. Talking about the care of our souls and how to translate spiritual formation into our work in the local church. It’s so intensely practical – and it all starts in the individual heart. In the heart of the leader.

So there’s been opportunity abounding to go deep. Really all it’s requiring of me is this time away from the every day demands…and willingness to see the truth. And simple turning to that quiet place in my heart that I seem to have lost sight of.

One really beautiful opportunity was given last night in a guided inner healing session. Not sure I’m realy ready to throw the whole thing out for the world to see…but…

Lets just say it boiled down to sitting in a very safe and quiet place with Jesus. Really needing to give him something – a big box of STUFF…all tangled…a hopeless mess. Being unable to give him that until I gave up holding on to the wounds inflicted in one relationship and the false image of God created in part by that relationship.

When these were all placed in the hands of Jesus…he took them out of the room – out of that safe, quiet place…and rushed back in to be with me. He didn’t want me to be alone in the pain. yes, I’d given those things to him, but that didn’t mean the pain would be gone. He held me. Very close. And whispered a healing word…only one…over and over. “Be….be…be…be….be…”

It’s so insanely easy to “surrender” a wound to Christ and to go about patching up the pain in whatever ways we know how. But when we slip off into that, we start ‘mapquesting’ our way to the desired destination – that elusive and cruel image of who we “should” be. Which probably entails getting ourselves lost in the obsessive, guilt-inducing habits (in the box of tangled…shit) that we were trying to hand over to Jesus in the first place.

The only way out is to cling to this passionate, persistent Lover who has gloriously seduced us – and to just…be.

Be.

garden in winter

Mom and I just got back from a nice long walk. It’s supposedly cold outside, but we get walking and talking ant it’s easy to forget. Besides, the cold clears my head. Inside seems stuffy in comparison.

I guess I did most of the talking today.

She listened.

To a lot of muck-shucking.

Funny how much crap can accumulate without my ever realizing it…I mean, sure I see stuff. This or that experience…or lack thereof. But when I don’t take the time to put words to it – to journal it or talk to someone about it – things pile up and layer after layer becomes stagnant and dead-ish.

There’s a certain dryness to things right now. The one discipline I’m clinging to is daily examen – it’s like the one touch point in the day. Kind of…keeps me from feeling like things are totally spinning off every which way. Though there’s really no apparent reason I should be feeling this way in the first place…well, no. That’s not true. Nouwen said, “A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive.” Read that this morning. Slam dunk, Henri. Again. As usual.

Anyway, we finished our walk. I didn’t want to go back inside, so we visited the garden. I hadn’t looked at it except from a distance since late summer. A couple of big snows have come and gone…the garden is a mess! Dead stuff all over the place – it needs a good raking. Mom pushed some dead leaves away and pulled a very large (and still edible :) rutabaga out of the ground.

So…I’m not a hopeless case. There’s a lot of good…just needs a good raking.

examen.me

My mom happened upon this tonight…

I’ve been looking for some ways to bring this time of night (daily examen) alive a bit….I really enjoyed the one I went through. You don’t have to sign up for an account – only if you want to keep a journal record online. Looks like a great resource:

http://www.examen.me

from Iona

You keep us waiting. You, the God of all time, want us to wait for the right time in which to discover who we are, where we must go, who will be with us, and what we must do. So thank you…for the waiting time.

You keep us looking. You, the God of all space, want us to look in the right and wrong places for signs of hope, for people who are hopeless, for visions of a better world that will appear among the disappointments of the world we know. So thank you…for the looking time.

4You keep us loving. You, the God whose name is love, Want us to be like you— to love the lovely and the unlovely and the unlovable; to love without jealousy or design or threat; and, most difficult of all, to love ourselves. So thank you…for the loving time.

And in all this, you keep us. Through hard questions with no easy answers; Through failing where we had hoped to succeed and making impact where we felt we were useless; through the patience and the dreams and the love of others; and through Jesus Christ and his Spirit, you keep us. So thank you…for the keeping time, and for now and forever, Amen.

(Pulled this from an article by Ruth Haley Barton, The Transforming Center)

a year in liminalness

Further thoughts on liminal space…

It’s a theme that simply will not go away. I get tired of the words for it…but the reality of it? No. That I love. It’s bringing things in my heart alive in ways I’ve never known. There’s not just black and white in the world…and not everything’s gray – it’s bringing a whole spectrum of colors to life. And I’m thankful.

It’s been exactly a year since I was first introduced to the idea of ‘liminal space’…and since then there have been lots of other words and phrases emerge to help define what’s become very real to me.

The landscape of this space has changed over the past year. A lot. But I’m not so sure I have words for it.

A year ago…I was so sure what I was waiting for. There were some very defined things…short term dreams…stuff I was sure would ‘fix’ what I felt was ‘wrong’ with my life. As months passed, there were slow changes…painful in many ways…that led me to a decision to set aside some of those definite things and look at what else God would be working in my heart – what deeper, more eternal things were at stake in the waiting. What deeper, more eternal things I was (am) really waiting for.

Now…I’m not even sure what it is I’m waiting for. I don’t know if that’s good or bad or somewhere in between. It makes me a little less certain of where I am in the journey (is this still liminal space or have I gone somewhere else?). But there still a feeling of being in between…waiting for something, though I’m not sure yet what it is.

Advent is the season of waiting…AND of celebration. In conversation with my spiritual director a couple weeks ago, we explored the idea of “lightening up”. She had told me the previous month that maybe this was something I needed to do :) To live well the challenges of liminal space, but to enter into the joy of it as well. Waiting AND celebration. She said, “Barb, I really think you need to learn to play.”

Something a friend shared recently…about the need to live from the core of who we are…ties in here. And somehow both tie in with yesterday’s post…delighting in God.

So this advent…we’re learning to play.

i will possess your heart

Happened upon this earlier today.

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away with me…” ~ Song of Solomon 2:10

 

mutual delight

Yesterday morning I woke up late. Too late to spend a significant amount of time on any one thing before church. So I took a shower (when in doubt…take a shower), cleaned up, then had about 20 minutes alone in my room before Mom was ready to walk.

I’ve been meditating on those really beautiful words in Zephaniah…”The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save; he will take great delight in you; he will quiet you with his love; he will rejoice over you with singing.” God delighting in me. In…me.

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” I kept turning this over and over in my mind in those first few minutes of the day. Here was an invitation…maybe even a command…to delight in God. In…God.

I’m still pondering the connection between the two meditations.

 

Anyway…I remembered what Larry Crabb says in SoulTalk about making second things first things. We make “the desires of our heart” the object of our seeking. We seek to obtain the desires of our hearts (soooo often in very “holy” ways)…and loose sight of the First Thing. Delighting in our Father the way He delights in us. Celebrating the God who celebrates us.

Listening versus…listening?

Two experiences I’ve had in the last couple days…similar experiences that are affecting me in two completely different ways.

Had a conversation with a friend recently – a friend of my Mom and Dad’s, actually. He’s big on asking questions. That’s great. And he listens attentively. But then the advice follows…and it’s so kindly meant, I know, but one gets the feeling that he’s listening for the purpose of giving advice. It creates a pressure in me to get it right - say the right words and he’ll affirm rather than correct you.

While there’s a part of me that would really like it if someone else could just fix all my issues, when it’s tried…when I’m out on their operating table, so to speak, it’s just not right.

I’m not a broken piece of equipment you can fix!

I came away from the afternoon rather distracted and tired, feeling unheard… misunderstood.

Contrast this to what I experienced the last couple days with a friend in class (I’m in the middle of a class on Spiritual Direction in my masters program…the previous class focused on learning what SD is, this class is all about practicing SD with each other).

I spilled my guts about a lot of stuff and he just listened. He asked questions that pointed my heart and mind to something greater than us. I felt free to speak.

I haven’t really appreciated the freedom and safety of that time until now…with this other experience to provide such a clear contrast.

Both of these guys are Christ followers. Both could be seen as father figures. Both listened. Both asked questions.

But in one place I was trapped, managed, examined, corrected, judged. In the other I was free and safe and listened to and embraced. A WORLD of difference!

Thank GOD for safe people…and may He give me the grace to grow further and further into being that kind of person in the world.

The hope of brokenness…

Unless there is this Being…

who is infinitely greater than me,

infinitely good,

infinitely powerful,

infinitely holy,

so completely and utterly NOT ME…

Then my life, as it is, is as good as it’s going to get. Days of fragmented action, nights of distracted sleep, a heart torn in its desire, given to frustrated discipline, nagged by stubborn addictions…obsessions…compulsive behaviors. Despair.

Then the world, as it is, is as good as it’s going to get. Days of starvation and economic crisis, nights of crime committed against the innocent, hearts torn in desire, efforts to make it all better, prisons of addiction of every kind, the silent pain of injustice, war, abuse, consumerism. Despair.

 

But God IS there. This Being…so much, so infinitely greater than me…greater than any drug lord or national leader or peace activist.

Infititely good.

Infinitely powerful.

Infinitely holy.

So completely and utterly NOT ME. Not you. Not George W. or President Obama or Brittany Spears or Ghandi.

God IS there. God is HERE.

 

So there is hope. There is hope. There…is…hope.

And despair…turns into brokenness.

And in brokenness we are embraced as Beloved sons and daughters of our infinitely good, powerful, holy Father. In brokenness we become a community of people journeying together, drawing each other deeper into our souls and deeper into our brokenness AND our belovedness.

And so we are changed.

And so the world is changed.

 

Through relationship that we only find in brokenness.

 

There is HOPE.

U2 / 360 / Arlington

So I was given the opportunity of a lifetime last week to go to my first U2 concert with great friends in Arlington, TX. I’ve so wanted to put words to the experience, but honestly, they just haven’t surfaced yet.

Here’s some amazing video my friend captured from our sweet spot on the floor. Check it out…