an announcement

Today I'm happy, and a little nervous, to announce something I've been working on in my spare hours: a new blog! Since I started writing here in 2009, sometimes skipping months in between and sometimes pouring out multiple posts in a day, I've found a bit of my voice, as well as an affection and a craving for writing about faith, doubt, spiritual seasons, and other fascinations. I've used this space to document precious family memories as well. For over a year, I've entertained the idea of creating a separate space that's more defined, where I can really focus writing out my faith, and having a bit more time on my hands lately has given me the opportunity to work on it. And so, at long last A Feast of Crumbs is born. 

If you'd be so kind, please click over, read the About page and let me know what you think! 

I plan to keep two separate blogs, but I imagine the topics will overlap. It's all spiritual, of course, but Noting Now will be where I mainly archive family happenings and updates, and A Feast of Crumbs will focus more on topics of faith and whatever else I'm itching to write about.

{This also makes it possible to make Noting Now private in the future, as the kids get older, if I see the need to do so.}

For most of my life, I've been scribbling in journals and tapping out ideas onto screens, working out my salvation. And so this beautiful community (online and elsewhere) of people with questions and ideas about God and how we relate to Him, what's happening in American Christianity as well as worldwide, church culture, and so much more: it feels like home. 

I've been blessed time and time again to stumble onto words that gave life to my tired spirit, and that blessing in turn directed my gaze to God. And so, if there's even the slightest chance that my words could do the same for someone else, then I want to pursue that chance. I've been feeling nudged, you know?

Thank you so much for reading here, and I hope to see you at the other blog too. Having a space to write it all out, document the journey, and gain clarity means so much to me, as does your presence.

Reading the Bible for Lent: Job

{I'm attempting to read the whole Bible during Lent this year, and blogging my way through it. The Bible is an old friend, but we fight sometimes. Ever hear of quitting something cold turkey? Well, this is my way of starting something cold turkey, if that makes sense. I'm facing it head on, with my eyes open, and a new way of reading. My hope is to read the entire text through the lens of Jesus (I'm figuring out what this means as I go along) and attempt a balance of honesty and charity, both of which I've lacked in the past. See also: The Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges and Ruth, More on Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, & Esther.}

This may come as a surprise, but I've come to love the book of Job. It validates the feelings of anyone who has ever suffered and wondered. There's something comforting about finding out that many of your deepest, darkest questions are contained in a book written thousands of years ago; that people were scratching their heads about the same things back then.

The book addresses many of the fundamental questions of the human experience. Why do people suffer? Why some and not others? How should we respond when tragedy falls? And the big one: why do bad things happen to good people?

The book reads like theater, so that's how I like to imagine it. The characters appear, and say their pieces, and an invisible narrator gives insight from a chair in the shadows, to the side of the stage. All the while, an uncomfortable tension hangs in the air, and we're all sitting in the audience biting our fingernails, hearing our internal conflicts voiced by the self-assured, the wounded, the pitiful, the glib, knowing they're getting to a deeper truth about the human condition that we'd rather not dwell on too much. Eerie echos of Ecclesiastes show up in Job's words, or maybe it's the other way around: is everything meaningless, are we chasing after the wind, do we simply work and go to our graves and then.......cease? What can we know? We begin with assurances and end with a big question mark, and the audience shuffles out, unsatisfied. I'll explain why I think that in a bit, but first here's the rundown:

The Characters:

• Job: a "blameless, upright man who fears God and shuns evil" (1:1)
• Job's children: seven sons and three daughters
• The Adversary/Satan ("the adversary" is the literal translation)
• The LORD
• Job's wife
• Job's three friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar
• Elihu: a friend of Job who shows up later in the text

The Events:

• Job is blameless, wealthy, and pious: so much so that he offers sacrifices on behalf of his children in case they sin.
• The Adversary goes before the LORD. The initial reason for his visit isn't clear, but for some reason the LORD asks him if he's considered Job, and describes him to The Adversary, offering him as an example of righteousness. This is the first puzzling moment of the book (why did the LORD offer him up?) but there are plenty more to come. The Adversary responds that Job only worships the LORD because his life is good; if harm comes to him then surely he would curse the LORD. The LORD gives The Adversary permission to do whatever he wants to Job's family and possessions, but not to touch Job. Essentially, this is a bet, with a human plaything.                                                               
• Job's sons, daughters, and livestock are all killed in one day. 
• Job hears of his great loss, falls to the ground and utters these admirable words: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD" (1:21). Then we're told, "in all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong." 
• Unsatisfied, The Adversary returns to the LORD. He argues that Job wouldn't remain faithful if his own health was affected. So, the LORD gives The Adversary permission to afflict Job, with the condition that he spare Job's life.
• Job gets "painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head", and again responds in a admirable fashion when his incredulous wife (who, interestingly, is also spared) suggests he should just "curse God and die". He responds: "Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?" (2:10) And again, we are told that Job does not sin with his lips.

• Job's three friends come to him, and sit with him in his sorrow. They sit and say nothing for seven days and nights. (I really love this detail.)
• Job starts to talk. He wishes he hadn't been born. He utters poetry; one can imagine his weak gravelly voice raising in sorrow, in shock.
• Job's friends start to talk too. Eliphaz goes first, and tiptoes around the idea that Job must have some un-repented sin in his life to have such calamity fall on him. He asks: do the innocent perish? don't those who sow trouble reap it? can a mortal be more righteous than God? He encourages Job to seek the LORD's forgiveness: "Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects; Therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty. For He bruises, but He binds up. He wounds, but His hands make whole" (5:17-18). Bildad follows suit, insisting that Job must need to repent. "If you were pure and upright, surely now He would awake for you", he says (8:6). Repent, and the LORD will restore you, he promises. 
• Job doesn't accept the premise on which his friends are operating: essentially that good things happen to the righteous and bad things happen to the unrepentant.  He insists he's innocent, over and over. We see a shift in Job's tone. Remember how earlier the narrator says Job didn't charge God with wrong? He does now, in no uncertain terms:

• 6:4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me; My spirit drinks in their poison; The terrors of God are arrayed against me.
• 7:11 Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
• 7:20-21 Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O watcher of men? Why have you set me as your target, so that I am a burden to myself?
• 9:16-19 If I called and He answered me, I would not believe that He was listening to my voice. For He crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause. He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness. If it is a matter of strength, indeed He is strong. And if of justice, who will appoint my day in court?

• That last line hits me like a punch in the stomach. Yes, the LORD is powerful, Job says. His friends have been emphasizing this point, and Job agrees with them. But, he wonders, and this is probably the biggest question of the book: is justice possible?
• The idea of a court meeting emerges, and the themes of justice and power come into play. Job wonders how he could approach the LORD without a mediator. He's powerless, and suffering, and oh so aware of the LORD's powers and yet insists he would plead his case before Him. But....how? This is a cry for a Messiah, a wish for a way to approach this LORD who punishes, in this case, to simply prove a point. In chapter ten, Job begins to describe all that he would like to say to the LORD, if he could. He wonders why the LORD would fashion his body only to destroy it. He's wrestling here with whether the LORD is truly good or not. We see a cadence in the text: these are your attributes, show yourself to be good/ but this is what you've done, it doesn't make sense/these are your attributes, show yourself to be good. Back and forth, forth and back. Surely, surely. This is faith: the insistence that something else is going on, something we don't understand.
• Zophar responds, again urging repentance. He introduces another theme: we can't understand everything. He asks, "Can you search out the deep things of God? Can you find the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than heaven--what can you do? Deeper than Sheol--what can you know?" (11:7-8).  What can you do, what can you know?

• And so it goes on. Job acknowledges the mysteries of the universe, the unknowable things of God. He says, I know, but then he asks why again. The cadence continues in rich and descriptive poetry. In chapter thirteen, we see Job come to a stubborn new conclusion (I love how this book shows us his process, his wondering): "Though he slay me, yet I will trust Him. Even so, I will defend my own ways before Him" (13:15). He's not giving up on his faith in the LORD, but he's not admitting to things he hasn't done either, which is baffling to his friends. And so the questions continue, chapter after chapter.
• Elihu enters the scene. He's more harsh with Job than the other three friends, who suggest Job needs to repent in a much more gentle manner. Elihu lays it out bluntly: "What man is like Job, who drinks scorn like water, who goes in company with the workers of iniquity, and walks with wicked men? For he has said, 'It profits a man nothing that he should delight in God'." Job is messing with the beloved ideal that if you follow the law and do right, God will bless you, and Elihu doesn't like it one bit. Because, let's face it: if you have to let go of that ideal, life has a lot less certainty, and you have to face your fears. But this is what Job has managed to do. He's looking his fears in the face, and yet not letting go of his faith.
• Finally, the LORD responds to Job "out of the whirlwind, and [says]: 'Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me" (38:1). I really recommend reading chapters 38 and 39; there's just no way I can do them justice here. The LORD asks Job question after question, like: by what way is light diffused, or the east wind scattered over the earth? Does the hawk fly by your wisdom, and spread its wings toward the south? And the grand finale: Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it. Boom.
• The LORD is sounding a lot like Job's friends here. Job answers, meekly, that he is vile and cannot answer. "I lay my hand over my mouth. Once I have spoken, but I will not answer. Yes, twice, but I will proceed no further." (40:4-5) Then, the LORD goes on to question Job some more.
• Then, something happens that is kind of shocking. Job repents. 

                   I know that You can do everything, 

                  And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You

                  You asked, 'Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?'

                  Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,

                  Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

                  Listen, please, and let me speak;

                  You said, 'I will question you, and you will answer Me.'

                  I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,

                  But now my eye sees You.

                  Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. (42:1-6)

• Then, another surprising thing happens: the LORD rebukes Job's friends! He tells them "you have not spoken of Me what is right, as my servant Job has" (42:7) and commands them to offer up sacrifices and have Job pray for them. 
• As the book closes, we learn that the LORD gives Job twice as much as what he had before. He gains more livestock than he lost, and again has seven sons and three daughters. He lives to see them grow and have grandchildren. So Job died, old and full of days. The curtain falls, the actors take a bow.

So we in the audience, what lessons do we take home? Are we meant to? The LORD answers Job's questions with more questions, and Job finds a strange comfort in this. 

                                         ............................................................

I don't find much comfort in the LORD's response; if anything He's even less approachable after His tirade of questions. And to be honest, the hasty happy ending feels contrived and empty. Nevertheless, I find a sacred space between the lines (and I'm finding, as I make my way through the Old Testament, that's often where the sacred space exists.)

Here's my comfort: this book is not the last word on God's character. It is a wondering, a question mark, a universal throwing up of the hands. I see this book as an amazing product of the imagination, a historical treasure, and an incredibly brave statement about how much we don't know. Is it to be taken literally? Are we the playthings of heavenly beings, bound to suffer and then grovel in the dirt when we have the courage to ask why?

That sacred space between the lines whispers no, no, no. Imagine we're living alongside Job. It will be a long time before we meet the God who weeps with us, who bleeds for us. We don't even know He's there yet, and so we cower before this tyrant of our imagination. There's so much we can't explain. We see hints of mercy, but who dares to believe it? Who would ever believe it was Him, unless He showed us?

I've heard plenty of sermons about Job: how it's a lesson to praise God in all circumstances, how God rewards the faithful, how God is God and we are not.....the thing is, I don't think that's what this book is about at all.

When you turn poetry into a formula, you kill it. We used to say jokingly, leave a little room for the Holy Spirit and tsk-tsk about sitting too close in church or slow-dancing at the prom, but isn't that just a good motto for life? Leave a little room for the Holy Spirit; leave the poetry to speak to us as it will. We may hear different things; we carry different burdens to the cross.

This book is a collective wondering; it asks the questions that were bound to come up eventually and have never yet gone away. And I suspect that, like all good art, it's supposed to make us feel something more than it's supposed to make us able to explain something.

When you're hurting, I mean really low, do you want someone to give you a chipper, trite answer or do you want someone to sit with you in your sorrow? Do you want to know why? Absolutely. Will any answer ever really satisfy your grief? No.

Sometimes, poetry is the best we have to offer, because despite what we know or think we know, we still wonder all the time. Even the staunchest fundamentalist wonders, in his or her moments of solitude. Job's friends seem afraid to admit any doubt at all, and so they channel that fear into certainty, while Job asks the deepest questions of his heart and freely admits his fear. That is why I love the book of Job. It is poetry in response to human suffering, and poetry is where I hear Him.

point the way

I would like to point the way to a God I am still seeking out, still trying to understand fully.
I would like to point the way to real hope, instead of more of the same.

Lining up to buy a chicken sandwich to prove a point? More of the same.

Demanding that stressed employees tell us Merry Christmas and fostering a culture of fear toward anyone who doesn't do things our way? More of the same.

Blaming a senseless tragedy on a lack of forced prayer in schools, never considering that we would not want our own children to have to pray a certain way against their will, or even more that God cannot be kept out of anything by humans? More of the same.

Counting ourselves as recipients of wild, ridiculously generous grace and then withholding it, or measuring it out cautiously, not wanting to overdo it? More of the same.

In my own heart, being so frustrated with these things that I run the risk of overlooking my own great sin? More of the same.

I am hopeful, and I am sad.

I want to point the way to something better, something I am seeking and finding in places I would not have looked ten years ago. This has been a year of speaking out for me. A year that began with tearing down, and progressed into a hard season of refining and shaping. My paradigm has shifted, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say it shifted some time ago, but this year I've been able to acknowledge and work with this shift. Something beautiful has happened: I can see the beauty of God once again. It is good news, and I would share it gladly. That "more of the same" gospel that I was trying to hold on to, thought I needed to fight for--it was death to my soul.

Now, I can whisper to my God, and I don't feel anger from Him, or disappointment. Just overwhelming love and grace, and when I fail, a sense that He believes I can do better, that He is cheering me on. Love, not fear. It is a delicate, precious thing and I will fight for it. I will fight to not misunderstand Him again.

It's not a way of easy answers (or any answers, at times). Sometimes giving an answer, an explanation, is the cruelest thing you can do to another human being who is in sorrow. It takes bravery to just sit, and be.

He has rescued me from my own perceptions. I believe change is coming, and I am hopeful because I see it everywhere. God is bigger than all of this, though. I will continue to be surprised by Him, to shift my perceptions.

              And we are put on earth a little space,

              That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

              -William Blake

mystic

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes--
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Lately I see this gorgeous bit of verse everywhere.

I listened to a sermon about beauty yesterday; about how the Wise Men didn't know they were looking for Jesus specifically, but they followed beauty and so they found him, eventually. The point was this: if you follow beauty all the way back to its original source, you will find Jesus, because anything and everything beautiful is from Him.

I love this. God seems more beautiful than ever when I think of Him this way.

I suppose it was the exact thing I needed to hear, because I just stopped what I was doing and built a pile of stones right there. I prayed, curled up on the couch while Silas tinkered, about beauty and seeing, really seeing, and melancholy and anger and making decisions that are fear-based, about my heart-dreams and my sins against my own heart. About love and regret and persistent pain. I leaned against my dearest Friend, and wondered why at times I cannot trace all this beauty back to it's Source. Why I am satisfied with  enough beauty to last the day but tiptoe around these burning bushes. In the ordinary of our lives, there is such loveliness. There are whispers of what could be, of the true potential of all of us made in the image of the One who transcends it all. I need to remember this, in all of my interactions. I need to ask more people what they are dreaming of and where they see beauty.

Fear is strange because we fear our deepest desires sometimes. I fear becoming real, like the Skin Horse, because it means being worn down, but I'm worn down to exhaustion from retreat and withdrawal. Could there be anything more wonderful than being real? When you meet such a person, you remember. I sometimes think heaviness is my own personal thorn; I can't comprehend all this energy and lightness around me except for the brief moments when it flickers over my head. I don't seem to have many answers, but I recognize beauty, and I can give thanks for it.

Looking around is a good starting point.

I may never understand my own holding back. I may never deem myself worthy of such wild, limitless love. Oh, but may I continue to know it anyway. May I somehow point the way to the Source, gasping alongside the rest of creation at the glory all around us. May I be brave enough to believe it all matters.

I invite it. I want to be a mystic, taking my shoes off in ordinary places.

scattered

On Tuesday I spent most of the day with a feverish toddler draped over me. We lay on the couch and watched Brave about three times, along with old episodes of Friday Night Lights and several renditions of I Like to Move It on YouTube which, unfortunately, is a frequently requested song around here. He coughed hard enough to throw up several times. Sick days are sweet though, in a way: Silas is not normally so cuddly, and it's nice to lay around and still feel like you're doing something important. In the evening, his temperature spiked up to 104, and the possibility of going to the ED loomed its ugly head. It came down with Tylenol and wet hair and a cold washcloth though, and so we stayed home.

......

I can tell when I'm in need of some quiet, to-myself time, because I start to get angry with my kids for taking my time. It's Wednesday evening, and Ricky took the two little ones out to pick up some dinner, after having quite the long day himself. I'm not finding the right kind of food for my soul, these days; which is another way of saying I can't seem to write or pray. I wish it were truly possible to forget about yourself.

......

I got an email yesterday with a video attached to it. I should have known better but I watched it anyway. If you don't see Merry Christmas in the window, you walk right by the store, a woman sang cheerily, with children's voices accompanying her. I say I should have known better because these types of things send me into a tailspin, reinforcing nagging voices that I'd rather ignore in favor of focusing on love and justice. I get so angry at the Christian subculture that promotes such distracting fluff. Then I want to write an angry sarcastic response, then I want to write a thoughtful response, and then I just sort of shrug my shoulders and decide the best way to worship in the midst of all this is just to try to be kind.

......

I lay down with Silas after lunch, on the big bed, and he played with his stuffed horse while I took an accidental nap. His galloping noises woke me up. I don't think he slept, but he stayed on the bed next to me, and so when I woke up we moved on to the next thing together.

poetry and violence

Psalm 3. A Psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom.

LORD, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, "God will not deliver him." 

But you, LORD, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high. I call out to the LORD, and he answers me from His holy mountain.

I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me. I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side.

Arise, LORD! Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.

From the LORD comes deliverance. May your blessing be upon your people. 

In all the years I've been in a relationship with the Bible,  I've often turned to the Psalms for comfort. The words are so beautifully put together, and some so familiar that when I read them, it's like coming across an old friend.

 I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.  (Psalm 121) 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.  (Psalm 23) 

I waited patiently for the LORD, he inclined and heard my cry. (Psalm 40) 

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  (Psalm 91)

and this one:

you, LORD, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.

Arguably, some of the most beautiful poetry ever written is contained in the Psalms.

But as anyone who has read them knows, the Psalms are not just a collection of beautiful words. They are a collection of the words of David. Sometimes I get frustrated by all that David in the text.

(Seriously, David, I'm trying to get some comfort here, trying to read some beautiful old words and you have to come along and ruin my morning with your violent Tony Soprano fantasies.) 

What I used to do was just ignore the parts I didn't like, or just employ a little snark to balance them out. I had no use for them; I have no enemies whose heads I wish to dash against a rock.

Of course, he was a man of his time, with his own cultural constraints. If someone was chasing me down I'd probably be praying for some protection too.

I've been looking for the humanity in the Bible, and it's opened up a new richness in the text that I didn't see before. Now, I appreciate seeing all that David in the text. It's the human condition--we are capable of such beauty, such poetry....and also such violence and anger.

David spent so much of his time fleeing from people. He grew up in the country, tending sheep and writing songs, and was thrust into the public eye at a young age. He loved God and wanted to please Him, but messed up  over and over. I look at his story and wonder if he missed the simplicity of his early days. I wonder, in his later years, how often he picked up the harp.

The lesson here for me is this: we're all David. Living in different times, with different ways of solving problems, but with the same fundamental problems of the human heart. Poetry and violence all mixed together, longing for communion with God.

The Bible is so much more interesting with the humanity left in. Maddening too, just as my own humanity is to me at times.

spiritual

I wake up rested and refreshed, and climb out of bed quietly so my sleeping children don't wake up. I make coffee and head outside to enjoy the fresh morning air while I read, think, and pray. I spend time thanking God for all I'm blessed with, I evaluate my heart and motives, I ask for forgiveness and help, I listen. I'm still. I read words that soothe, convict, encourage, inspire, break down, build up. I look up and they're awake. I smile, feeling centered and ready for the day. Off we go.

Yeah, that's my morning fantasy. Here's the reality:

I wake up because Silas is trying to put my glasses on my face. He hands me my phone, saying "lo? lo?" and I smile, blinking and sitting up. I think about coffee immediately. Ricky is leaving for work; kisses me goodbye. I hear the sounds of Superhero Squad coming from the office. I pull back my hair and head for the kitchen, heat up milk for Silas and remind Nicky that we're trying to start off the day with reading, not watching a show. "Well the day always starts with breakfast!", he proclaims, and I assure him that's coming. Penny stands at the back door. I let her out, and retrieve Silas' milk. He settles into a big chair to drink it; I pat him on the head. Nicky sits on the couch with his storybook Bible and starts to read about Joseph. I start some coffee. Silas drinks half of his bottle, throws it on the ground and climbs on top of Nicky, shuffling his pages. More protesting. Time for a diaper change. Nicky's now playing in his room. I sigh, say "Okay, we'll read later when you're less distracted." Silas plays, but when I stand up to go get my coffee and make some breakfast for everyone, he immediately starts crying. I go back. We play Ships--Nicky has built all the controls out of click-blocks. They dance around: toddler squats and robot moves. I smile and think this is so good. I get up again, they follow me. There is whining. I make toast with peanut butter and honey by request, pour orange juice, slice bananas. I stir cream into my waiting coffee, toast a bagel for myself. Silas, meanwhile, has eaten two bites and thrown the rest on the floor. All done! he signs triumphantly. I tell him he is going to sit there for a few minutes, and give him his milk to finish. I sip, and I read this:

Couldn't independence be not the ending point, but an adolescent transition period between childish dependence and mature interdependence? If we succeed in being independent, never needing God's help, couldn't that simply mean that we haven't tried anything very significant or challenging? Could it mean that we've never experienced the miracle of synergy with God, where we find God's strength flowing through us? 

"Book, book", Silas points to the ipad. I put it up high, take another sip of coffee, and let him down. Penny happily eats his leftovers. We have a doctor's appointment in two hours, but for now we're going outside to enjoy the cool morning air, water the flowers and play in the sandbox before it gets too hot for little toes. What's funny, what's God, is that I do feel soothed and convicted, encouraged and inspired, broken down and built up.

There are days, of course, when we wish there could be some other system. We wish there could be a way of developing patience without delay, courage without danger, forgiveness without offense, generosity without need, skill without discipline, endurance without fatigue, persistence without obstacles, strength without resistance, virtue without temptation, and strong love without hard-to-love people. But it turns out there is no other way. 

The Creator has created the right kind of universe to produce these beautiful qualities in us creatures. And among these beautiful qualities is interdependence--the ability to reach out beyond ourselves, to ask for help from others and from God, and to offer help when we are able. The whole shebang is rigged for mutuality, for vital connection.

I will probably yell several times today. I won't feel very spiritual. I will feel like I'm trying to sprint in a sand-dune. I will laugh, sigh, and hide in the bathroom. I'll try to keep a dialogue going with God all the while; that's the goal. Sometimes life feels like practicing, but it's the real thing, all the time.

quotes from Brian McLaren, Naked Spirituality

words for today

I'm not sure why it always flows downhill

why broken cisterns never could stay filled

I've spent ten years singing gravity away

but the water keeps on falling from the sky

And here tonight while the stars are blacking out

with every hope and dream I've ever had in doubt

I've spent ten years trying to sing these doubts away

but the water keeps on falling from my eyes

And heaven knows, heaven knows

I try to find a cure for pain

Oh my Lord, to suffer like You do

it would be a lie to run away

-Jon Foreman, The Cure for Pain

-------------

  

Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck,   

wipe its face, set it down on the lawn,   

and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire   

again, which—though they say it doesn't   

exist—can send you straight to the burn unit.   

Oh, we have only so many words to think with.   

Say God's not fire, say anything, say God's   

a phone, maybe. You know you didn't order a phone,   

but there it is. It rings. You don't know who it could be.   

You don't want to talk, so you pull out   

the plug. It rings. You smash it with a hammer   

till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbery   

metal bits. It rings again. You pick it up   

and a voice you love whispers hello

-Jeanne Murray Walker, Staying Power

the wall and the journey inward: part II

I'm blogging through Kathy Escobar's fantastic series, Rebuilding after Deconstructing, in an effort to clarify some things for myself, to share my story, and to encourage forward motion. This is so not about whining or placing blame, or picking on any person or institution.  Just the story of God and me, up to now... abridged. 

See also Deconstruction and the wall and the journey inward: part I

I didn't wake up that Sunday thinking I would reach a new low. It was actually a celebratory day; a service dedicated to testimony. People shared their struggles and victories from the previous year, and I sat in my chair, feeling their joy and sorrow, laughing and crying. It was so, so good. But then people started sharing about physical healing. Ever since my Dad's death I had felt fragile about that topic. I took a deep breath, asked God to help me, and and I was okay for a while. But it continued. A woman healed of a degenerative disease ran across the stage. A few others shared. I kept doing my deep breathing. Then a young woman talked about how she had a food allergy, and prayed to be healed from it, and guess what? She was! To the point where she binged out on the food she couldn't have and look! She was fine. Just like that, all is well.

I felt my heart shut down; tried to give myself a little pep talk, told myself just be happy for her. Don't make this about you.... but it was too late. I felt a dam break inside of me, and I panicked. I have to get out of here, NOW, I thought. Because sometimes people die, sometimes prayers are not answered the way we'd hoped and nobody was acknowledging that. I don't know if it was a panic attack, but that's what it felt like to me. I've never been so full of anxiety, sadness, and frustration. I managed to pick up my kids and drove home, shaking. I railed at the heavens, I asked God if he was really that cruel, I cried for hours.  And then, when I was done, I realized I had to take some sort of action to help myself. I couldn't remain here forever.

I did a therapeutic exercise that afternoon called The Chair. My friend had told me about it months before, and I had been avoiding it, but I wanted to do something to get better, anything. I imagined my Dad was sitting across from me, and I said everything I had needed to say when he was dying. I started off wrily with "I know you probably wouldn't approve of this, but...." And I chose to believe he could hear me.

Exhausted, I opened my computer and started reading a blog I had been following for a few months, rachelheldevans.com. I had already found solace in her writing, but that day (I don't remember how exactly) I stumbled upon links to a few other blogs, sarahbessey.com (then called Emerging Mummy) and elizabethesther.com. All three of these women were asking some of the same questions I was. All three were struggling to find a home at church again. Maybe, I thought cautiously, maybe this is a gift. That day, for the first time in a long time, it dawned on me He might just be taking care of me. I began to feel hope for better things in our relationship. I wrote a post about a month later called bread crumbs to mark the beginning of a new season.

I realized many important things in the months following that day. One is that my faith doesn't need to look like anyone else's. I gave myself permission to be a misfit, to be perceived as undisciplined, lazy, liberal, lukewarm, or whatever else. There will always be people who talk about easy fixes and overnight miracles--and I don't want to judge their experiences as not valid either. But that has never been my experience. Christianity, for me, has mostly been about putting one foot in front of the other. About seeking and waiting and learning to be content. Believing that I really do have what I need, right here and now. Persevering. Choosing to be a recipient of grace, humbling as it is.

And I hope that the more comfortable I feel in my own faith, the less I will freak out when it looks different for other people. There is still a bit of dread when it comes to church things; that has not gone away. Sometimes I'm not sure that it will. But I'm trying to be gentle with my soul, because God is.

I also decided to fight against having multiple selves--my church self, home self, work self.....wow, that is so exhausting. This is a hard thing for those of us who grow up in evangelical culture I think. We get so used to the happy Sunday morning identity that it's hard to take off. I still struggle to be real on Sunday morning, or in any church setting really. Blogging has really helped with that. I find that if I can summon the courage to say something on my blog first, then I can bring it up in a conversation later.

So that was the beginning of my journey inward. One very dramatic day followed by a lot of quiet reflection, a year of re-shaping my perception of God by noting all the things, big and small, that I have to be grateful for (hats off to another amazing blogger, Ann Voskamp, for writing an incredible book and opening my eyes to the power of saying thank you), and many conversations with my husband, whose experience has paralleled mine in many ways. I'll write more about finding new spiritual practices a little later.

It can take a lot of hard work and a lot of time for God to heal our hearts; to reshape our perceptions of Him. I believe more strongly now than ever before that He wants to. I will honor this process.

where we meet

Ah, the ache of this wounded world, yes? Like the Israelites, God sometimes feeds us manna, that which literally makes no sense to us, the "what is it?" food, and He asks us to eat the mystery of circumstances we don't understand. How to find gratefulness when we weep? Does it comfort at all to know that in the midst of our pain, God is keeping a list?  A list that turns us and the cosmos inside out and changes everything, changes me and my perspective and the way I brain-film my life: 

“You have recorded my troubles.
You have kept a list of my tears.
Aren't they in your records?” Ps. 56:8, NCV

 God does not slumber for He cannot cease to bear testimony to our hurt. God keeps a list. It's the wildest Love that drives the Father to record His child's every lament. We never ache without God attending, and He can't stand to see a tear fall to the floor. God cups our grief and puts our tears in His bottle.

...it's Love that makes God a list-keeper of our brokenness, and it's love that can make us list-keepers of our blessings. In this we might meet together in communion.

-Ann Voskamp, in this interview

bread crumbs: on being still

{bread crumbs: hints, big or small, that seem to fall in front of me just when I need them.}

I've been reading Lauren Winner's new book Still: Notes On A Mid-Faith Crisis for the past few weeks. I first discovered her in college when my room-mate lent me her memoir Girl Meets God; I still read it every other year or so. Anyway, something stuck out to me a few nights ago. One of the things she writes about is her struggle with anxiety. She decides to give up anxiety for Lent (I love the bravery of such a statement):

The desert saints said that the beginning of renouncing a thought is simply noticing it. That is what I'm doing in my quarter hours--I am noticing, and naming, and then for a few minutes, quarantining  a distraction.

But the desert fathers say something more: after noticing a thought, replace it with prayer. So that is just what I try to do to my anxiety this Lent--not just ignore it for quarter hour increments, but sidle up alongside it and pray. (89-90) 

This idea of just spending some time with anxiety (or in my case the almost paralyzing discontent that creeps up sometimes) and noticing it, then praying through it really spoke to me. I tried it yesterday. I spent some time with my discontent, asked it what it's name was. Sometimes it's just advertising telling me I don't have things that I want (turns out most of the time I don't want them, not really), or Pinterest telling me I'm not creative enough with my throw pillows or my marriage, or any number of outside sources streaming false information into my mind. It's all the same lie of not enough. So I spent some time with that lie (disguised as my feelings) and eventually it showed its ugly face. And I prayed. I held up all my feelings, true and false, asked for help, and help came in the form of peace.

But say that feeling of discontent came from something real--something that really needed to be changed or fixed, then spending time with it would reveal that as well. Sometimes discontent is just the push I need to make something happen. Most of the time, I'm finding, that is not the case. It's just the not enough lie blinding me to the blessings that surround me.

I used to think I should be harder on myself. Now I mostly try to be kinder to myself, in the hopes that the outflow will be better. God lavishes grace on me daily, and I am desperately in need of grace to lavish (or even to dole out in teaspoons, that would work.) What goes in must come out, and there is no way to be there for other people if I'm not there for myself too.

I will not run away from stillness. It is uncomfortable but it is fruitful. I love this prayer she mentions:

O God of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of thy Spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art God.

-from the Book of Common Prayer, 832.

bread crumbs: joy

Joy is mysterious to me, how it sneaks up and surprises. Yesterday morning, as I sat in church and listened to my pastor talk about serving the poor, reaching out to the lonely, and raising children to love Jesus and do the same, I was absolutely filled with it. We sang about vision; we heard stories of beautiful things that have already happened. I felt assurance rise up in me, and I felt the absence of a great weight.


I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace*.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/502/montesibilinirim.jpg/

Lately there are hints of the divine everywhere. It's there, calling to me, and I commune with my Savior as the days pass. There is no special ritual really, we just walk together. This is what it looks like right now.

There are seasons where I can't seem to see past my own front door; where I'm overwhelmed with inner struggles. And then, one day, it just lifts, and I find I have a bit of wisdom to tuck away. Some days I choose joy and some days it chooses me. Joy doesn't really make sense; it just is.

I stumble out of a cave and I twirl in the sunlight, and there are several truths to contend with. One is that a force other than myself drew me out of it, and so I will not take that for granted. The other is that I will keep spending time in the cave, because there are precious lessons to be learned there. This is a journey, but I'm finding more and more that it's not linear. And if we have to revisit things, and look them over a few more times, there's a reason.

I am learning to embrace the mystery of it all.

*from Matthew 11, The Message

bread crumbs: anticipation

I did not grow up with liturgy. My parents did, in the Lutheran and Methodist traditions, and they both turned toward charismatic movements in their twenties. Aside from learning to the words to lots of hymns, tradition was not a big focus in our home, and in some ways I saw tradition as being cold and uncreative; the opposite of the freedom of the Spirit we were intent on. So, I never gave much thought to liturgy, until reading Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God in college sparked my interest. Really it just brought an awareness of the liturgical calendar into my life, and I started reading the Book of Common Prayer. I love the rich history and the feeling of community, of a universal body of believers, that comes from liturgical practice.

In my home life, I find words that have weight and centuries behind them to be comforting and grounding. I'm all for heartfelt lyrics, but sometimes I need to draw strength from words, to be reminded of the attributes of God. I have a growing appreciation for liturgy, and I realize more and more that I want my children to have those rich words planted in their brains, for when they really need them.

This year we're making an effort to observe Advent, or it would be more true to say introduce ourselves to Advent. I've seen so many cute Advent calendars on Pinterest that I wanted to make, but geez it's already December 1, so yesterday I picked up one of those cardboard paper-flap ones at Hobby Lobby. This morning's verse: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Isaiah 9:1 led to a pretty great discussion with Nicky, over breakfast and all the way to school. I saw a spark in his eyes when I read it, and he told me about how God said, "Let there be light", and then we talked about literal light and Jesus-light, and I think he got it. And I thought about all that beautiful symbolism between the old and new testaments. I realize what this is now, this season. It's a way to present the gospel to Nicky, and later to Silas, and to ourselves every day for four weeks, and to let the anticipation of re-discovering the beauty of it all grow and grow, until Christmas.

And I also realize that really, I did this growing up. It just wasn't so intentional, so obvious, but it was done, because these kinds of discussions just flowed out of my mother, every day. However, this mama needs intentional and obvious. They are my friends.

Today I have a lightness in my heart that hasn't been there. It was a little bit like being a child again, pulling back that cardboard flap, wondering what gift is there today.

Words are the greatest gift.

bread crumbs: on truth

The whole earth is full of the weight and significance of who God is. The prophets were deeply influenced by this understanding that the earth is drenched with the presence of God.  The writer David said, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it." He later prayed, "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?"....

Truth is everywhere, and is available to everyone....

Claim it. If it is true, if it is beautiful, if it is honorable, if it is right, then claim it. Because it is from God. And you belong to God.  

So as a Christian, I am free to claim the good, the true, the holy, wherever and whenever I find it. I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God's and everything in it.....

To be a Christian is to claim truth where you find it....it's not truth over here and Jesus over there, as if they were two different things. Where we find one, we find the other....

 In the first line of his gospel, John calls Jesus the "Word". The word Word here in Greek is the word logos, which is where we get the English word logic. 

Logic, intelligence, design. The blueprint of creation. 

-Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis

bread crumbs

I'm trying something new. For months I've been processing so many things in my spiritual life, and let me just say, it's been a bit overwhelming. I've driven home from church sobbing. I've spent mornings drinking up words, desperate for an answer. I've sought, I've been silent. I've felt like a "bringer of doubt", a menace.

There have been days where I've questioned whether it's still accurate to call myself a Christian, not because I don't want to follow Christ, but because I don't identify with so much of church culture. Then there are days where I've seen a spark of something so new and fresh that it fills me with hope and excitement. Blogs like Emerging Mummy and Elizabeth Esther that just about knock me over with their honesty, their descriptions that match almost exactly how I've been feeling. A nurse I work with sometimes who is like Jesus with skin on. There are bread crumbs to follow. God is gracious.

There are many things in the Bible I don't want to teach my children-at least not in the way it is conventionally taught. I'm more concerned about sheltering my boys from certain aspects of conservative Christian culture than I am about sheltering them from the things conservative Christian culture is afraid of. (Here's an example: the obnoxious bumper sticker I saw today that shouted, "Jesus is Alive! Deal with it." Um, is that supposed to be a presentation of the gospel?)

It's difficult, trying to live up to labels. But I'm finding that when I step away from labels I can say some things about my relationship with God that I mean will all my heart. And that is huge. I don't need to be certain of everything, but I need a foundation.

So I'm trying something new, putting this stuff out there. I want to keep track of the bread crumbs just like I keep track of the way my kids are growing; the birthdays, milestones, anniversaries. This is kind of my pile of stones, marking an important place. An altar of sorts.

I hope for better things.