Lenten Journey: Fasting - The String Around My Finger

“When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.  They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting.  Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.  But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden.  And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.” - Matthew 6:16-18

For reflection...

"Mom," said my nine year old, "what if I gave up something for Lent that I don't like anyway?"

We have to grapple with the purpose of fasting.  What exactly is the point of giving something up, whether it's food or video games -- which my son is choosing instead of, say, coffee -- or sweets or Facebook?

Fasting from food, as many do on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday is, of course, an ancient spiritual practice in many traditions.  It clears the body and, some say, the mind.  Perhaps it helps us to identify with the poor. For me, it saves time -- no meals to cook and clean up after.  There are risks -- I'm sometimes cranky when I'm hungry -- but it does make me more mindful.

When I give up something I'm used to having, I have to pay attention.  I can't just reach for a piece of chocolate or a hamburger or the remote control.  I have to think about it.  It creates a pause in my day that would otherwise be lacking.

And what do I think in the pause?  Sometimes it's, "Oh.  I made a commitment, and I need to keep it."  Other times it's more like, "Wow.  I want that.  This stinks."  Then, especially then, I have to consider why I made the commitment in the first place.

I fast because I'm generally undisciplined.  Most of the time, I do what I want, when I want, and don't look back.  I have everything I could ever want or need, and yet, often enough, I still want more.  I don't notice what I have, only what I don't.  So when I say a voluntary, no, to having something, I notice it.

I notice other things too.  I notice that my stomach doesn't feel so uncomfortably full, and I don't feel that sugar rush-and-crash, or the caffeine buzz-and-dive.  I notice that I have more time to clean the house or walk the dog.  Maybe you notice that you've only been socializing with the other smokers in the office, because you always take your break outside with them.  That it's hard to be intimate with your spouse without that second beer or glass of wine.  That you sleep better at night when your head's not buzzing with the latest episode of Modern Family.

It's not that all those things we might fast from are so very bad.  It's that they cease to be a choice for us.  They are what we do, almost unconsciously.  I live a life that bumps along without anyone in the driver's seat, not even me.

Fasting is like a string tied around my finger.  In and of itself, it may be useless, but it points me to something else.  It reminds me to pay attention to my own life.

For entering in...

- Find a quiet place to be.  Spend a few moments becoming present to yourself.  Notice how it feels to be in your body, in this place, at this time.

- Even if you're not sure there's anyone listening, invite God to be present with you.

- Reflect on these questions:

• Have you ever fasted?  From what?  Why did you do so?  Because it was part of your faith tradition or spiritual practice, or for some other reason?

• What was it like for you, if you have practiced fasting?  What, if anything, was difficult?  Easy?

• If you've never fasted, are you willing to experiment?  What do you see as the risks?  The potential rewards?

• Become quiet, and ask yourself, "What might I be called to fast from today?  What do I do that has become so automatic I don't even know I'm doing it?"

• If you choose to fast, be ready for the pause when you come up against your voluntary no.  How does it feel to be in that space?

- When you have answered these questions in your thoughts or in writing, pause and again become present to yourself and to God.  What do you notice?

From Dust You Came

We've been walking around with ashes on our heads today, looking a bit odd.  "What's that on your forehead?"

A reminder of my mortality.

The priest who administered my ashes actually said, "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel," a legal alternative, but, though it may sound morbid, I prefer, "From dust you came and to dust you shall return."

It's the truth.  I live in this body, and it's dying.  It's not that I have cancer or some other terminal disease as far as I know -- none, that is, except that of being a mortal creature.  That is terminal.  I'm dying, and so are you.  I'm closer to death today than I was yesterday, even if my death is many decades in the future.

I don't know, of course.  It could be later today or tomorrow.

It's more than a little unsettling, this idea that today could be my last.  I'm not done.  Neither was my mother when, at 53, she died anyway.  I don't get a guarantee.  I don't get any sort of assurance that I will live to see my grandchildren or die peacefully in my sleep.

But whenever it happens, whatever the cause, old age or violence or disease, my day will come.  So will yours.

How can we prepare?  I still have trouble imagining a world without my mother, and I live in one.  How can I imagine the world without me?

Among many other things, the season of Lent and Ash Wednesday in particular remind me to wonder about it.  What have I created?  What have I destroyed?  What will I leave behind?

I was talking last evening with my daughter about an incident, some unkind words spoken by a person in authority, that shamed her.  We tried to find some sympathy for this woman, but the truth is, she is spewing poison into the world.  My daughter, on the other hand, even at 16, was able to absorb the poison and, through prayer and the support of her family, allow God to transform that poison into something wholesome.  My daughter doesn't have to hold that shame and pass it on to someone else.  She is sending it back where it came from, not as shame, but as compassion.

What we don't transform, we transmit.  My mother was a good woman with wounds of her own.  Some she transformed.  From those places, she left me a firm foundation.  From the unhealed places, she left me wounds of my own.  Now it's my turn -- and my daughter's turn.  God-willing, someday it will be her daughter or son's turn.  That will be my legacy.

There will be a day when all of my best efforts will be in the past.  The body I walk around in, the only crucible of transformation I'm given, will decay and return to the earth.  It seems wise to put it to work now, while I still can.

Lenten Journey: Ash Wednesday

Scripture Readings for the Day

Joel 2:12-18

Psalm 51

2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

For Reflection...

Fasting.  Weeping.  Mourning.  Almsgiving.  Sin.  Repentance.  Prayer.  These are the themes of Lent.  They sound dark and sad.  They make us want to look away.  

We shy from the lents of our lives.  I want not to fast, but to feast, not weep and mourn, but rejoice.  I want to hang on tightly to what is mine rather than to give it away.  I find it easier to ignore my sin than to repent, and tempted to keep busy with everything else rather than to pray.  Maybe you feel that way too.

Where does this get us?  We lead lives that, by and large, go unexamined.  We get up in the morning, work,  the day through, and sleep again.  We have good moments, no doubt.  We laugh, we love, we play.  All too often, though, we don't.  Instead we argue, we struggle, we worry.  We feel overwhelmed by our tasks, lost in our responsibilities.  We lay our heads down to rest but find we can't. 

We react by checking out.  We watch T.V. or surf the web.  We call a friend to gossip.  We drink.  We eat too much.  We shop.  We make excuses for it all.  Life is too hard.  We need a break.

But none of our reacting heals the wound.  Our lives continue to feel incomplete, sometimes even in the good times.

The truth is, Lent does not offer up something new; rather, it holds a mirror up to my life as it is.  The remedy  is not to turn away, but courageously to look at our own reflections.

For entering in...

- Find a quiet place to be.  Spend a few moments becoming present to yourself.  Notice how it feels to be in your body, in this place, at this time.

- Even if you're not sure there's anyone listening, invite God to be present with you.

- Reflect on these questions:

• When you consider the themes of Lent -- fasting, mourning, almsgiving, sin, repentance, prayer -- does any attract you?  Repel you?

• When have you experienced a season of lent in your life journey, a time when you were called on to fast or mourn or give away what you would rather have kept?  How did you respond?

• What are the struggles in your life today?  What are the joys?

• How do you check out of your own life?  When or under what circumstances?  How do you feel when you reflect back on those times?

• If you hold a mirror up to your life, what do you see looking back at you?  How do you feel about it?

- When you have answered these questions in your thoughts or in writing, pause and again become present to yourself and to God.  What do you notice?

Lenten Journey: An Invitation

"Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart..."

- Joel 2:12

Even now, even if you sit faithfully in church every Sunday.

Even now, even if you haven't been to church for a long while.

Even now, even if what you believe in your head feels dry and dead in your heart.

Even now, even if the God of your childhood seems remote or illusory.

Even now, even if you can't conceive of a God who would take on human flesh.

Even now, even if you're not so sure there is a God at all.

Even if you wonder if you're worthy. Even if you're not sure love is meant for you.

Even now.

If your life is perfect, if you daily feel loved and safe and worthy, this journey is not for you.  If you feel satisfied with all of your choices and their consequences, if your life has unfolded without complications or regrets, this journey is not for you.  If you have never been lied to, never been scared, if you've never been angry or sad, this journey is not for you.  If you've never felt shame, if you've never said or done something you wish you could unsay or undo, this journey is not for you. 

This Lenten journey is for the rest of us.  It is for those of us who want more from our lives.  It is a journey about faith in the possibility that we are meant for more than a scant few decades of suffering and cares.  It is a journey into hope -- hope that we can receive more, give more, feel more, be more.  More than anything, it is about love.  It is about acknowledging our deepest desire to love and be loved and opening to the chance, however much we might doubt, that there is Someone who loves us and longs for our love.

This is an invitation to spend 10-20 minutes a day for 40 days testing that faith, that hope, that longing for love.  It is an invitation to rediscover our own hearts, and in doing so, to glimpse the heart of God.  Is it worth a try, against the odds?  What do we have to lose?

With Jesus, we set our faces toward Jerusalem (Luke 9:51), not knowing what we might find there, but trusting that maybe, just maybe, we will find God, and in finding God, we will find ourselves.

Lenten Journey: Time to Prepare

Lent begins tomorrow with the solemn celebration of Ash Wednesday.  In this space, with God's help, I will offer a daily meditation and some questions for us to reflect on.

In order to feel prepared, you might want to consider these suggestions:

• Give yourself the gift of a scheduled 10-20 minutes a day.  Even if you don't choose to read these reflections or work with the questions, plan for the next 40 days to take this small window of time daily to reconnect with your soul.
• If you don't already journal, have a notebook ready.  You can choose only to think about the questions, but many people, including me, find that writing can be a way of clarifying our thoughts and hearing God speak.
• You might want to have a Bible handy, or check out an on-line Bible resource (like this, if you would like the Catholic New American Version, or Bible Gateway for many, many other translations).
• Don't expect perfection.  For me, beginning something new is the easy part; sustaining my commitment over time can be difficult.  Forty days is long enough for me to get distracted, to forget, to miss a day or more.  Jump in where you are, and God will always be there to meet you.
• Be willing to be challenged, even a little.  Transformation can be hard work, but the fruit is new life being born in us.
• If you feel like nothing is happening, persevere anyway, if not with this study, than with something else.  There's no right or wrong way to live the spiritual life.  The only way to fail is to fail to show up.  A daily ten minutes of silence is enough to say yes to presence and Spirit.
• Connect with someone else.  My spiritual journey began to take off only when I was willing to reach out to someone else in my own frailty and need.  Find a friend with whom you can share accountability and who will hold you up when the going gets tough.

Finally, set aside your expectations.  Neither I nor anyone else can say how God might show up for you during the coming weeks.  Be aware.  Listen.  Notice.  Trust your gut.  When it seems like it might be a whisper from God, it probably is.

The Pope

I grew up Catholic.  Our parish was of the unmistakably post-Vatican II variety, from the shiny, happy guitar music to the felt banners to the nuns in pantsuits.  My parents had grown up Catholic; my mother went to Catholic school through the 8th grade.  But I had never heard of the Pope.

Never, that is, until he died.  It was Pope Paul VI, and I was 11 years old.  What I remember is sitting in front of the T.V. at my father's house, watching as the vast crowds in Vatican Square waited to see whether white or black smoke would issue forth, whether the Cardinals had or had not elected a new Pope.  Eventually they elected the man who would be Pope John Paul I and serve for a mere 33 days before his death, the shortest papacy in history.  He was, of course, succeeded by Pope John Paul II, who served just over 26 years, only five years shy of the longest papacy in history, and who was the most visible Pope of the modern age.  I myself saw Pope John Paul II in San Francisco in 1987.  I saw him speed by on Geary Boulevard in the Pope-Mobile, and I participated in the mass he celebrated at Candlestick Park.

Today, in a virtually unprecedented announcement, Pope Benedict XXI has declared his intention to abdicate at the end of the month.  I wonder what it means to me and to the world?  How important can the Pope be today if even I, a cradle Catholic, managed to reach the age of 11 without any adult thinking it was important or necessary for me to understand his role in the church, in the world, in my life?

There was a time in history when the Pope was the most powerful man in the western world.  In a post- Constantine culture, where Christianity was the state-sanctioned religion to the ends of what had been the Roman empire; where adherence to Christianity was enforced by Crusaders and Inquisitors; and where monarchs, crowned with a sense of divine right, were accountable only to God, the Pope, the representative of God's authority on earth, reigned supreme.

It's easy to look back at that period of history and call it oppressive or naïve or quaint. But if I'm honest, if I can pause for a moment and step outside of my 21st century, democratic, individualistic worldview, is it possible for me to see the attraction of a world where authority had its place and everybody knew it?  There's a child in me who wants that sort of assurance -- the assurance that God is in heaven and all is right with the world.  The assurance of an earthly Father who can speak authoritatively with the voice of our heavenly Father.

History, however, clouds my child-like fantasy.  Popes are people, flawed, sinful.  The question of the institution of the papacy or of the Catholic hierarchy in general is one for another day.  I have worshipped as a Protestant (Lutheran, to be specific) and as a Catholic, and, while I am now, again, a practicing Catholic, I have a deep ambivalence about the way authority is exercised in the church.  My liberal or Protestant friends and family might be more comfortable if I disavowed the hierarchy altogether.  My more conservative Catholic loved ones might want me more single-mindedly to embrace the teachings of the bishops.  I find I can do neither, to no one's satisfaction, including my own.

Still, I think of myself as a Catholic.  Catholicism is my culture, my spiritual home, liturgically and organically. My personal spirituality is incarnational, ritualistic, sacramental.  I have found that I cannot make it be otherwise.  I know that there are churches that intend to embrace the roots of Catholicism sans the hierarchy.  Part of me wishes I could join them.  What I find -- what I found when I spent time in the Lutheran church -- is that, for reasons I don't know how to express or even understand, I cannot.  In some way, for me, being a Catholic still means that I am under the authority of the Pope and the bishops, even though I am a 21st century, liberal-leaning, American woman, a feminist of sorts, and a Christian who'd like to see us all commune from the same table.

So, for me, the Pope somehow matters.  He is still a figure with profound moral authority in the wider world, an authority both re-established and corrupted by John Paul II; there is no denying or evading the pall that the mishandling of the child sex abuse scandal has cast over the entire college of bishops.

But here, in this moment, is a new hope.  When Pope John XXIII was elected in 1958 at the age of 77, he was not expected to serve for long.  He was a placeholder Pope of whom no one expected much.  Yet it was he who convened the Second Vatican Council, ushering in both transformation in the church and the reactionary era which has followed and in which we are now living.

God, in my experience, revels in the unexpected.  God likes surprises.  It is easy, from our human perspective, to look at the hierarchy today and call it reactionary (see previous paragraph), calcified, hopeless.  None of that, however, reflects the Spirit of God the Father of Jesus.  That God, the God who this church and its flawed leaders are meant both to serve and to embody, is a God who raises up shepherds and teenage girls and fishermen and women possessed by demons and carpenters to lead the rest of us.

This is an hour for prayer.  God can raise up a man to this office who will embrace truth, whatever the cost.  I could speculate, but neither I nor any of us know what that would look like.  Who could foresee a Messiah hanging on a Roman cross, laid in a stone tomb?  No one.  Neither can we foresee what restoration God can bring to fruition in this moment.  Pray, friends, that God's will be done.

Gone for the Weekend

I'm out this weekend staffing with Women's Walk with Christ.  If you are Christian woman or know a Christian woman who is looking for a deeper and more purposeful walk with Christ and her Christian sisters, check us out.  We host three weekends a year in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado.  Our remaining 2013 weekends are April 19-21 and October 11-13.  If you are a Christian man or know a Christian man, check out Marked Men for Christ.

I did my Women's Walk with Christ weekend nearly five years ago, and it changed my life.  I am being transformed in relationship with God and others as I continue to do healing work with my sisters in the ministry.  Women from around the U.S. and around the world have had this experience.  You can too.

What I know is that any brokenness that I don’t allow God to transform, I will transmit.  I get to choose whether I leave the world more healed or spread my woundedness.

On the weekend, we address emotional wounds common to every woman:  Deceit, fear, anger, sadness, and shame.  We are women ministering to women, but it’s the Holy Spirit that brings the power and the healing.

Even if you’re not interested, send a prayer – or a good thought, if that’s more your style.  We’ve got over fifty women who will spend 44 hours opening their hearts to transformation beginning at 5:00 today.

I’ll be back Monday, and we’ll be getting ready to journey through Lent.

Peace be with you!

When All Hell Breaks Loose

In the tradition in which I grew up, we did not talk about spiritual warfare.  I never even heard the concept until well into adulthood.  I had never given so much as a thought to "powers and principalities."  (It must be said that the tradition in which I grew up did not encourage private Bible reading in those days either, so I was completely unacquainted with, say, Romans 8.)

To be honest, when I began to hear friends from other traditions talk about spiritual warfare, I was more than a little skeptical.  It sounded a little hysterical to me.  Then, as I started to pay more attention, I wasn't so sure.

At the very least, I have always believed that there are true things beyond what I experience with my senses -- otherwise, I would not believe in God, would I?  Then I had to ask myself, "Do you believe that things aren't all as they should be in this life?"  Um, yeah.  That's obvious.

As I became more familiar with the Bible, I could see the contours of the great cosmic struggle -- not a pitched battle between forces of good and evil, like many world mythologies would have it, but a one-off intervention by God in a creation which had submitted itself to idols.

Here's how the logic works:  Humans are creatures, made to submit to our Creator.  In some fundamental way, we have collectively balked at the idea, preferring not to submit to the Creator in the expectation that we won't have to submit at all, but be our own masters.  It's what traditional orthodoxy calls "Original Sin."  Problem is, it doesn't work that way.  We creatures are contingent; we can't be our own boss.  So if we say to God, "Sorry, we're not going to follow you," we're stuck with following something else.  We can't declare our independence.  We're not made that way.

So now we're stuck with a new boss, the "ruler of this world" (see John 12:31 and John 14:30).  You can call it the devil or Satan, if you want, or you can just think of it as not God.  It might help to add that Satan means "the accuser," which I have come to see as a direct contrast to the Holy Spirit, who is called "the Advocate" (see John 14:26).  The Advocate is working on our behalf; the accuser is working against us.  We get to choose where to pledge our allegiance.

When I look at my teenagers, its easier for me to see how and why I might choose the accuser.  I find myself almost daily saying to one or another minor in my home, "I am not your enemy.  I am on your side."  Those moments invariably occur when I'm setting a limit or encouraging some sacrifice that somebody doesn't like.  So it must be with God and me.  I see my Advocate as my enemy, because I'm being asked to do a hard thing.  I rebel, thinking I'll just be my own boss, decide for myself, but I end up instead hitching my wagon to the accuser's horse.  The very thing I think is going to make things easier for me, works against me and against the good.

When, instead, I have my eyes and my heart fixed on the good, when I am willing to serve and to sacrifice, I notice something else -- sometimes, all hell starts breaking loose.  We're gearing up for a weekend of healing ministry, and people are falling ill, bad weather is brewing, complications of all sorts keep popping up.  You can say it's coincidence -- I certainly have -- but I have to wonder if it's something more.

What I know is that any power that is Not God has already been defeated by the cross.  Done.  Deal.  The Powers-That-Be can bring on their worst, all the way up to death and destruction, and it's nothing but a smoke-screen.  Where I'm still a skeptic -- no, more like a scoffer -- is when I come up against any suggestion that there's any real risk of God's will being thwarted.  Ain't gonna happen.

In these moments, we need to dig in.  It's where faith comes to full bloom.  Nothing but nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ (Romans 8:38).

Sick Day

How many days do I wish for nothing to do?  With a day like that, I think, I could catch up on my reading.  I could write.  I could pray.  I could do all the things I usually feel too busy to do because I'm doing other things.

I've had a sick day today, and, like every other sick day I've ever had, I find that, try as I might, I can't summon the concentration to do all the things I'd imagined doing if I weren't doing the regular things.  I can't read.  I can't even pray.  My brain feels disconnected.  Once I spent a month on the couch with pneumonia watching reruns until I thought I would go crazy, but Pride and Prejudice was out of the question.  I couldn't do it.

It makes me wonder about a lot of things -- chronic illness or chronic pain, for example, which I suspect are  as burdensome in the way they rob concentration as they are in themselves.  I have thus been spared either, however, so what I can chiefly wonder about is the rhythms of doing and being.

I woke up today, unwell, thinking, "Today I can just be."  Here's how "being" started:  I swept and washed a floor.  I baked a cake.  Later I did some laundry.  Two runs to school and back.  Dishes.  General tidying.  In other words, plenty of doing.

I don't even consider myself much of a doer.  I have friends and family who can't get enough of doing.  A day laying on the couch, reading a book, would be torture for them.  Not so for me.  (As proof, let me present as evidence that I read the last Harry Potter book, cover to cover, in a single sitting.)  This doesn't make me someone who knows how to be.

I did take a nap today.  I generally associate naps with a vague sense of guilt.  I have friends who nap from time to time -- or regularly -- and I'm apt to say, "Good for you!"  But not for me.

I live, in spite of myself, as if my doing keeps the world spinning.  Maybe it just keeps my world spinning.

I'm left with the uneasy feeling that I still think that what I do is more important than it is.  Not that I'm more important than I am.  Quite the contrary.  What I say is that I'm of value in my being not my doing.  But that's not how I behave.  I act as if what I do is what makes me important.

I wonder what it would look like to make a list of all the things I -- or you -- do that we think the world cannot live without.  How does that feel?  When I had pneumonia and I couldn't cook, because I was wearing oxygen, and I could hardly get off the couch for a while, because it was moving around or breathing comfortably, not both, I felt somehow not like myself.  I was watching what I thought of as my life happening all around me, and I was not an active participant.

That suggests to me that what I think of as my life and what my life actually is are not the same.  My life went right along on that couch next to the oxygen machine.  It persisted on the inside, even while my outsides were pretty useless.

Someday I am likely to grow either sick or old and be less able or unable to do much of what I do now.  If I'm going to face myself then, I might want to face myself now.  Who am I apart from what I do?  Who are you?

Blog News

First, you may notice the cleaner design.  It's been updated better to coordinate with my new web-site, LivingtheTruthinLove.org.  As you'll see, there's not much there yet, but you can link directly to the blog from the navigation bar if you like, or bookmark Blog.LivingtheTruthinLove.org.

You may also notice a page entitled "Lenten Journey 2013."  There's nothing there yet, but starting next week, I'd like to invite you to join me on a journey through the Lenten season.  There will be some introductory information posted on the web-site -- and here as well, so stay tuned in the next day or two and then over the coming weeks.  The page on the web-site will also serve as a resource for the journey, but I'll post the essential content here, on the blog.

If you are wondering what to do to mark the Lenten season, if that's part of your tradition; if you are interested in digging deeper into your spiritual journey; or if you are curious about whether God has anything to say to you, the reflections will be for you.

We are, each of us, looking for meaning in our lives.  I am humbled and grateful to share the search with you.

Mirror, Mirror

Did you do it?  Did you look at yourself in the mirror yesterday?  If you did, what did you see?  If not, why not?  (And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, click here and read all the way to the end).

I see myself in the mirror all the time, every day.  I see myself when I get up, when I get dressed, while I'm applying make-up or brushing my teeth or fixing my hair.  I can do a quick check every time I enter a bathroom or my bedroom.  I see myself in the door of the microwave and the rear-view mirror of my car.

Mirrors haven't always been at hand.  For a long time, they didn't exist.  Then they were a luxury.  There was a time when a person could only see her reflection in water.  Otherwise, I wouldn't know what my own face looked like.  Someone could describe my face to me, I guess.  Later, someone could paint my portrait.

Maybe I would realize that I must look like my other family members.  Surely people have always spoken of having your mother's eyes or your father's nose.


Now I don't have too go out of my way to look at myself.  I know what I look like.  I'm familiar to me.  I've seen some version of me every day that I can recall.  Sure, the girl in the mirror used to be younger, but I've watched her, day by day, and I know her.  At least I think I do.

Even while I can scarcely move around my house without me staring back at me, what I see in the mirror is an illusion, isn't it?  It's my "mirror image."  I'm backwards.  When I see me I see the opposite of what you see when you look at me.  I cannot gaze squarely upon my own face.

Most of the time, we seek out the familiar.  It's comfortable, like my own face in the mirror. I probably visit that grocery store four times a week, and I always go to the same store, because I know my way around.  I can find things I need in a flash.  It's familiar.  Now they're renovating the store.  Every single time I go in, things are somewhere new.  The shampoo is where the yogurt used to be.  The ice cream is where I used to find the office supplies.  Don't even get me started on the cream cheese, which I couldn't find for three weeks.

I hate going to the grocery store these days.  Everything is different and unfamiliar.  I feel lost.  I cling to the things that I recognize, the checkers, for instance.  They're the same.  I find myself striking up conversations with them even more than usual.  "Wow," I'll say.  "How about all this mess!  It must be driving you crazy.  Can you even find anything?"  But it's me who's feeling crazy.  I'm the one who can't find anything.

What I want is for the checker to be a mirror for me.  I want to see, in him, in her, my own uncertainty and sense of dislocation.

I suspect that the truest mirrors are not the shiny ones.  If I want to see what I really look like, who I really am, I need to look in someone else's eyes.  I want you to be something like me, so I can see myself outside of me.  Maybe, from the inside, I feel unsure.  I want reassurance.  I feel confused.  I want clarity.  I feel alone.  I want to connect.

If I can't find the reassurance and clarity and connection in my own heart, maybe I can see it reflected through your eyes, in your heart.  Maybe when we see each other face to face, I'll see you, but I'll also see the truer version of myself, the one that's not backward.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12a), says Paul.  Maybe today I can't look in the mirror and see myself as lovable and beloved (but if you haven't tried, I urge you to do so).  All hope is not lost, even still.  Look in the eyes of someone else -- a friend, a child, a beloved pet.  Let them be your mirror.  What do you see?  And what are you reflecting back to the them?

Popular

When I was a teen, I wanted nothing more in the world than to be popular.  I remember once, when a girl who had been at our school and then moved away came back for a visit.  Everyone was so happy to see her!  They flocked around her while I, who hadn't known her well, stood jealously on the sidelines.  I want people to feel that way about me, I thought.

My day to day jealousies were even more pronounced.  I was convinced that I had the code cracked; I knew what it took to be popular -- I just didn't have what it took.

The T.V. shows and teen magazines of which I was an dedicated consumer confirmed what I already knew.  First of all, to be popular, a girl had to be pretty.  Obviously.  Pretty meant thin, and preferably blonde.  A cheerleading uniform certainly helped.  Straight teeth and straight hair were musts.  Did I mention she had to be thin?

Not only did I not have these essentials, but I was burdened with significant deficits as well.  Not least of these was that I was smart in school.  If a girl was pretty, I guess she could be smart too, but the confluence of short, chunky, near-sighted, curly-haired, and smart was too much.  I was doomed to a life on the social margins.

That was the story I wrote for myself.  People were not going to like me, at least, they were not going to like me in a way that elevated me to the social center, that exclusive club -- Popularity --  where I longed to be.

I compensated.  I decided, cynically, that not to be popular was just fine with me.  In fact, I was better off not to be one of those popular girls.  I might not be popular, but that just meant I was unique, iconoclastic.  Popular was common.  I was special.

Even as I reached for a feeling of smug superiority, I didn't believe a word of it.

Alongside making myself better-than, I employed a strategy I was more practiced at:  I would be really nice and helpful to people all the time.  I'd worked this angle with my family for years.  Even if I never made it to the upper rungs of the social hierarchy, I could make people like me -- or, at least, make sure they didn't dislike me.  I would create an illusion of being near the top.  In fact, it was sort of like a high-wire act:  Don't lose your balance or you'll upset someone and they won't like you after all.

As it happens, high school doesn't last forever.  The social center no longer existed in the same way -- except in my mind.  As time went on, through college, work, marriage and mothering, I kept telling myself the same story:  I'll never be popular.  I don't have what it takes.

Mostly, that story was so familiar, that I couldn't even hear it as it played on and on in an endless loop in my head.  But it affected all of my relationships.  I lived, unaware, with this unexamined notion that everyone else was looking at me and seeing what I saw when I looked in the mirror and asking:  Why aren't you blonde and sassy and a cheerleader?

What could that question possibly mean when asked of a 45 year old, graying, homemaking married mother-of-three?  I was looking at the 45 year old with the eyes and the unfulfilled desires of the teenage girl.

Finally, after long years, I paused and did something different.  I looked through my grown-up eyes.  First I looked out at the world, and I saw something I hadn't noticed before.  People like me.  They do.  For a minute, that surprised me.  That's what it means to be popular, doesn't it?  That people like you.  People like me.

Now, not everybody likes me, but somehow, it didn't feel like I was going to lose my balance and fall to my death.  There's a net -- and it's not only held up by the people who do like me.

The real safety I feel, the reason it's finally okay, I'm finally okay, whether I'm liked or not, ends with the eyes looking into that mirror.  They are no longer eyes of judgment.  I'm not sure quite when or how it happened, but it ends there because it started with hearing the message that there is a God who thinks I'm okay.  How many times did I have to hear it?  A hundred?  A thousand?  I don't know.  But one day, some time, it finally clicked.  That woman in the mirror, not thin nor blonde nor a cheerleader, is lovable.

Lovable is different than popular, but I hadn't known the difference.  Lovable was what I really wanted to be.  Popular was just a substitute, a stand-in, when I didn't know better.  I am lovable.  I was then too -- or would have been, had I known it.

If popularity is an exclusive club, lovability is as inclusive as it gets.  We're all invited -- you, me, the least popular person you've ever met or heard of.  It's the opposite of popularity in a way.  If, to be popular, I thought I had to conform to some external standards of goodness or beauty, to be lovable, I have to be radically myself.  If being popular meant being above, lovability means being one alongside everyone else.

Try this, would you?  Look in the mirror today, just once, and notice the man or the woman who is really in the mirror -- not the person you wished you'd grow up to be, not the person your parents thought you were, not the person you think you ought to be, just you.  And know that you are lovable -- and beloved -- just the way you are.

First Do No Harm

Other people can do lots of things I can't do.  They can play the piano or compose a song.  They can climb a tree or run five miles.  They can build things or read a financial spreadsheet or start an IV or make a perfect pie crust.  I can't do any of those things.

There are some things I can do well.  Most of them, like baking a loaf of whole wheat bread, I learned after years of trying and lots of failure.  A few, like singing on pitch, came more naturally, but still required  practice.

There's one thing in particular I've always been good at.

For almost as long as I can remember, since I was no more than nine or ten years old, people have told me things.  I have been a magnet for people who want to talk.  They tell me about their problems.  They tell me about their pasts.  They tell me about what they believe and about who they are.  They tell me things they have never told anyone else.

I listen.

It is a sacred trust that was given to me before I ever had a chance to earn or deserve it.  I don't know how I knew how to do it.  More than that, I don't know how other people knew I'd listen.  But I do.

Even when people don't tell me with words, I find that I know things.  For a very long time I knew things without knowing I knew them and without thinking it was anything particularly special.  Then, for a little while, I realized I knew things and thought it was very special, and I was a little afraid of it.

I was right to be afraid.  It was like having a super-power I couldn't control.  The real danger was this:  Sometimes I really do know what I think I know, and sometimes I don't, and I can't always know the difference.  Sometimes what I think I know about you isn't about you at all. It's about me.  You are like a mirror, reflecting back to me my own face -- my prejudices or problems or judgments or fears.

But for a moment, I thought that what I felt or intuited must be true and must be about you and meant I had to do something.  I had to tell you.  I had to make you understand.  I had to understand, figure something out.  I had to act.

Who in the world did I think I was?

More than once in my life I have had the unsettling and deeply humbling experience of having a friend tell me to back off.  In those moments I was given the gift of a painful truth:  I had violated them.  I had entered into their sacred space uninvited.  These few had the courage and honesty to call me out.  How many others had just suffered my invasive "helping" and, out of kindness or indifference or hurt had never said a word?

Now I know that my knowing things is both special and not so special.  It's my job to protect what you tell me or what I perceive, to protect the gift, the stories and you.  It's not merely about protecting you by keeping a vow of confidentiality, keeping your stories to myself.  I have to protect you from me -- from my ego, from thinking I know what you need or how to fix what troubles you.  I don't.

And you don't need me to know.  The only person who knows what you need is you.  If I have any gift to give beyond compassionate listening -- which must be characterized by silent acceptance -- it is to remind you that you have all the answers within you, in your own soul.  The best I can do is to hold the mirror and allow you to see for yourself.

That's more than special enough.

Too Much and Not Enough

A quick scan of the day's headlines generates a laundry list of things I know next-to-nothing about:  Chuck Hagel's confirmation hearings.  The end of 30 Rock.  The upcoming Super Bowl and attendant NFL controversy about players and brain damaging head injuries.  Ongoing debate about gun control alongside a story about a shooting at an office building in Arizona.  Reactions to the speech the president gave on immigration reform to which I did not listen.  And that's just the domestic news.

There are uprisings in Mali, which, I am chagrined to admit, I could not immediately locate on a map.  An explosion in Mexico.  Israeli airstrikes on Syria.  China's hacking of the New York Times.

The world is such a big place, and nowadays, we can know what's happening in most places, most of the time.  A ten second Google search can bring Washington, D.C., the Middle East, central Africa, Hollywood, Wall Street, or my own Lakewood, Colorado to my computer screen.  I can know who's doing what to whom.  I can attend to the big stories or the obscure.  I can know about people I'll never know, places I'll never visit.

It's completely overwhelming.

I wonder about earlier times, most of human history, really.  People knew only what they heard and saw.  They could access only the parts of the earth within the scope of their ability to travel on foot, maybe horseback or wagon or camel or boat.  Not far.

The people you knew were your family, the people of your tribe, and the people you knew, you knew.  You knew their histories, their habits, their graces, their failings.  You all did the same things, believed the same things.  You lived together and worked together, worshipped together, married each other and buried each other.  That was it.

I imagine that what people knew was manageable in a way that I can only dream of.  Questions, decisions, ideas were delimited by circumstances.  Novelty must have been rare.  People did what their parents did, who did what their parents did.  They did them in the same villages and homes with other people who shared their history and experiences.

I don't mean to idealize the past.  I love the internet, and I would not trade modern medicine, indoor plumbing, central heating and air conditioning, or air travel for the imagined idyll of an earlier time.  Without corrective lenses, I'd long since have walked off a cliff or in front of a speeding chariot.  I would be hard-pressed to outrun, or even outwit, a lion or tiger or bear.  I'm better equipped for the information age than the Stone or Bronze or Iron Age.

Still, I wonder how it would feel to live by candlelight and starlight; to learn by stories remembered and told and retold aloud; to know a few people and things deeply and well; to know who sowed the wheat, wove the cloth, tanned the leather, felled the trees, milled the flour, forged the nails, grew the grapes to press for wine.

As big and small as the world is now, it can be a strangely lonely planet.  Each of us on our own screen, in our own little world, connected with everyone and still alone.  I do what I do; you do what you do.  We live together, but our living is fragmented.  We do not know where we came from, where we belong, where we are.  Poet and Jesuit Gerard Manly Hopkins, in "God's Grandeur" names our condition:  "...the soil/Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod."

We have so much, and so little too.  I have the world at my fingertips and long for a corner in which to belong and to know as my own.  I have shoes, but can no longer feel the earth beneath my feet.

Life Is a Highway

"Mom!  Why can't you drive me to school?"

Because it's less than a mile to walk.

Because you'll get a little fresh air and exercise.

Because it's a beautiful, sunny morning.

Why do you want to be driven?

Sometimes I want to sit in the passenger seat.  Doesn't it seem easier?  No pack to carry; throw it in the back.  No looking both ways.  No cracks in the sidewalk to avoid.  Just lie back, put your feet up, play with the knobs on the radio.

The charm lasts longer than you might expect.  I could get used to this.  Someone else is in the driver's seat.  Where are we going?  As long as I don't have to decide.  Let me know when we get there.  Here's a couple of bucks to fill up the tank.  You do the rest.

Eventually, though, it wears a little.  I need a rest stop.  What do you mean we passed the last one for a hundred miles?  No, I wasn't paying attention.

Now I'm restless.  Why don't I drive?  You must be getting tired.  But we're hurtling down the highway at 75 miles per hour, and there's no place to pull over.

It was one thing when I was younger, and couldn't drive anyway.  There was no choice.  Sit in the back.  Look out the window.  The ballgame played on the radio for hundreds of miles.  It's how it was, and I didn't know any different.

Now, when I turn over the keys, it's something else.  I have choices, but I don't want to make them, so I make one and give the rest over to whoever happens to be sitting behind the wheel.

I could be the one in the driver's seat, but what if the car won't start?  What if the weather is bad?  What if there's traffic, and we get caught up in it and can't go anywhere?  What if I end up in a ditch?  What if I run out of gas before we get there?  I may have mapped the course, but that doesn't always keep me from getting lost.

There's somewhere I need to be, and there's no one to take the keys.  It's only me.  And maybe the car will start and there's plenty of gas and the weather's fine and the traffic is light.  The windows are down and the wind's in my hair and the radio's on and the volume's up and they're playing my favorite song.

The truth is, I don't know what I'll get when I take the keys and fasten my seat belt -- a straight shot or a detour or a dead end.  But I've got places to go.

To Do Hard Things

And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.  - Micah 6:8

There are goals I want to accomplish in my life, and to achieve them, I need to exercise discipline and work hard.  Day after day, year after year, those things go undone -- from getting fit or finishing my novel to cleaning out the garage or learning to grow my own vegetables.

The pattern that describes my failure is consistent.  First, I get motivated, either by hope or by despair:  You can do it!  Or, will you ever do it?  Then I dive in.  My desk is soon piled with books on weight training or character development or getting organized or composting.  Before too long I become bored with it, or tired. It's new, so it's hard.  I want the destination without the trials of the journey.

The way I discipline -- or fail to discipline -- myself is exactly the same as the way I discipline -- or fail to discipline -- my kids.  I cannot teach what I do not know.

Every word of advice on disciplining children begins with the admonition to be consistent.  I am not, not with my kids, not with myself.  I vacillate between extremes of justice and mercy.

There is a dynamic between them, justice and mercy -- the angry, jealous God and the God of forgiveness and loving-kindness.  Mercy softens justice.  Justice keeps mercy honest.  Justice provides boundaries, which keep me and others safe.  Mercy keeps the bounds of justice from becoming a prison.

Justice looks like anger.  It strives to be righteous anger, but -- careful! -- or it will spill over into judgment and condemnation.  Mercy looks like love, but, untempered, it becomes coddling pity.

Too much mercy or too much justice, and I turn you or myself into an object.  Mercy can make me an object of pity; justice, of condemnation.  I condemn myself and feel sorry for myself, and those movements become a self-perpetuating cycle.  It's a way of keeping me stuck, spinning my wheels.  I can't move forward toward a goal.  I can't do hard things if judgment is the goad and pity the balm for the wound it inflicts.

But justice and mercy, rightly balanced, could become the drive-train for accomplishing the goals I want to achieve.

I wonder if the fulcrum of balance is in walking "humbly with your God."  Is it not pride that unsteadies the wheel and drives me into the ground instead of forward?  I want to be or to do right, and I want you to, not because it's right, but because it looks good.  My kids will have better grades.  I'll be a size 8.  The driver, the one who wields the goad, isn't setting the goal out of a love of righteousness, but out of pride.

And what about mercy?  Pity is the reaction to the goad.  Overreaction begets overreaction.  Now on the other side, I show you excessive mercy as a way of elevating myself.  If I am your judge, I am lording over you.  Likewise, if I have the power to pardon you, to remove your natural burden of responsibility, I must be superior to you.  I am the subject, and you are the object.  In some sense, I'm playing god.

Justice and mercy held in creative tension, respects "you" as subject.  You retain your autonomy.  I trust you to act, even as I hold you accountable and hold you in love.  Even when "you" are me.

I am ready to become the subject of my own life, not the author-god, not the audience, but the protagonist, the actor.  I want to do the hard things.

Letter to a Dissatisfied Child

My Dear One,

You want what you cannot have.  You want what everyone wants -- all the freedom and none of the responsibility.  You blame me because you cannot have it, but it is an unchanging rule of life.  Wisdom says it would be neither kind nor loving to allow you to have everything you want.

You wish that I would capitulate to the standards and values of this world.  More stuff.  More popularity.  In those desires you are being drawn by the oldest of temptations.  I don't blame you, but I cannot simply bless your being overcome.  I cannot stand by and say, Yes.

I cannot stand by and say, yes, to the lure of material goods and fame and glory, which profess themselves to be the highest goods and beckon you -- and everyone -- to worship at their altars.  My no is a lonely stand. I make it in the desert.  It is what marks the space between us and the darkness.

I know it doesn't seem that way to you.  I know that, to you, it is me standing between you and what would make you truly happy.  What I know is that the happiness you seek is false.  It will betray you.  It will never really satisfy.  You will get the thing that you want and that thing will be replaced by a new thing for you to want.  It will never end.  You will always want, but you will never have.  Your hair and skin could become perfect according to your desire, but there will still be someone who is taller...or with a better this...or a more desirable that.  You will never be satisfied.  You will never feel good enough.

The only way to be freed for happiness with regard to material goods is to relinquish the want.  The only way to feel good enough is to accept the person in the mirror as she is today.  I know that is the last thing you want to hear.  You prefer the pretty lies that the world uses to seduce you.  I can only offer you the truth.

On first glance, the truth just cannot compete.  It is small and meek, where the lies are big and bold.  It is homely while the lies are glamorous.  It is quiet; the lies are loud.  It appears to offer only noes while the lies cry, Yes! Yes! Yes!

Look closer, my precious child, and you may yet see that you have been deceived.  The lies are bottle-blonde, pancake make-up and glitter.

Now see the truth.  It is homespun, but flawless.  It is rough, but warm.  Pick it up.  You may be surprised at how weighty it is.  It looks frail, but it is sturdy, substantial.  It will bear the weight of your need.

I know words will never convince you.  You can only taste and see.  You can do it yourself, hand to mouth,  or the trials of the world will force you to partake.  Either way, the truth, and only the truth, will finally satisfy.

One last word:  In your resistance or your acceptance, in your fight or your surrender, in your flight or your rest, in your wallowing in the darkness or your standing in the light, I am there beside you.

With all my heart,

Your Loving Parent

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry!

And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, "This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep."  For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law.  Then he said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."  So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, "Be quiet, for this day is holy; do not be grieved."  And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.  - Nehemiah 8:9-12

Sometime in the second half of the second century before the birth of Jesus, the Jewish people were permitted by their Persian overlords to return to Jerusalem.  The Persians had conquered the Babylonians, who had sent the Jews into exile.  As a result of the Babylonian seizure and occupation of Jerusalem, the temple was destroyed and the city walls knocked down.  Under the Persian king and his governor, Nehemiah, the people were permitted to restore the structures and the worship they housed.

In the 8th chapter of the Book of Nehemiah, the people are gathered, "the men, women, and those children old enough to understand" (v. 2, New American Bible, Revised Edition).  The Priest-scribe Ezra reads from the book of the law, and the people weep.

They've been away for a long time, exiles in a foreign land.  Many of them, the children in particular, may have never before heard God's law (which includes the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy -- along with their narrative stories, in addition to the Ten Commandments and other legal prescriptions).  It is their history, their legacy, their founding documents.  It would be something like Americans exiled to a foreign land regathered in Washington, D.C., to hear proclaimed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

That comparison, however, fails to do justice to the import of this gathering.  The Jewish people are a nation not only tied to a parcel of land and a set of beliefs, but to a particular God who has called them and set them apart from all other peoples and nations and whose hand appeared to have been set against them.  Remember, this is a time when every nation had its gods, and success in war seemed to ratify the power of that nation's deities.  Israel was unusual, bordering on unique, in its worship of a single God -- a God who was, over time, not only seen as the top God, but the only God.

For Israel, that meant that no misfortune that befell them could be attributed to the superiority or favor of another god over his or her people.  It could only mean that Israel's God, the one and only, wanted to punish them.  The words of Israel's prophets are filled with invective against Israel's failure to do the one essential thing that God required -- remain faithful to their covenant relationship with God and God alone, abiding by the law and eschewing the worship of any other so-called god.  The exile in Babylon was seen as the ultimate  expression of God's displeasure with Israel.

Now the people have been returned to the land God promised to them.  Do they not hear, in the midst of this grand assembly, Ezra reading the story of this promise?  Are they stirred because they hear God's word to Abraham and to Issac, to Jacob and Joseph and Moses?  The promise is made to those forefathers and mothers, and, consequently, to the people there gathered.  Their very presence in Jerusalem is a sign that God has not forsaken them, but desires to renew his covenant with them.

Do they weep with regret for what has come before?  With relief?

Ezra and the Levites insist they cease to weep and commence rejoicing.  Prepare the feast!  Leave no one out!  This day that the Lord has made holy calls for a joyful celebration.

Many of us gather on Sunday to hear the proclamation of the promise.  We do so, because it is our Sabbath  the holy day, set apart for the Lord.  We gather from our own exile.  We can call our separation from the promised land sin, but it has many names.  It is the alienation I feel from a friend who I have hurt by provoking a careless misunderstanding.  It is the guilt I feel over choices I knew were wrong, but which felt easier in the moment than what I knew was right.  It is the sinking feeling in my heart that I'm a disappointment to my parents or my spouse or my kids or my God.  It is the anger and resentment over hurts unhealed.  It is the ways in which I immerse myself in the temptations of the world -- possessions, power, glory.

I come to church from Babylon.

What is the word I hear proclaimed?  Here's what Jesus says to us out of Luke's gospel today:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." - Luke 4:18-19

I have heard any number of sermons calling me to go out and do likewise -- to proclaim the good news to the poor, release to the oppressed, and the like.  That is, of course, right; we are the body of Christ, called to do as he did.  But I cannot proclaim what I have not heard and taken into my own soul.

I am the poor who need to hear this good news.  I am the captive that needs to be released, the blind one who needs to have my eyes opened, the oppressed who needs to be set free.  I need to know that this is the year of the Lord's favor.  This is the day for rejoicing.

Do we leave church rejoicing?  Do we go forth to feast and share and celebrate?  Do we know that we are called, today, to live in a holy city restored?  That the temple has been rebuilt, and his name is Jesus, the Risen Christ?  That, as a member of his body (1 Corinthians 12), I too am rebuilt, restored, reborn, raised from death to life?

Do you understand the words that are declared to you?  How will you go forth eating, drinking, and rejoicing?

If I But Touch the Hem of His Garment

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years; and though she had spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her.  She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his clothes, and immediately her hemorrhage stopped.  Then Jesus asked, "Who touched me?"  When all denied it, Peter said, "Master, the crowds surround you and press in on you."  But Jesus said, "Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me." (Luke 8:43-45; cf. also Matthew 9 and Mark 5)

She was out of options.  According to Mark's gospel (5:26), "She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse."  She had nothing left to lose.

Surely it is her suffering that made her ready.  She would have been isolated.  She wasn't allowed to touch anyone; bleeding women were ritually unclean.  She must have thought about that.  She could not ask him to touch her, because then he would become unclean, according to the law.  

Did she have a plan when she ventured out in the crowd?  "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well," she says to herself (Mark 5:28).  Luke calls what she touches "fringe."  Jesus would have worn phylacteries, a Jewish ritual garment trimmed in long fringe.  Can you imagine?  She cannot touch the man, but will touch his clothes, and not just his clothes, but the very last edge of what is his.

He was on his way somewhere else.  Someone had asked for his help.  It was urgent; a little girl was dying.

I imagine that she does not know where he is going.  In any event, she does not expect to interrupt.  The crowd presses in and she reaches out.  She does not really know what will happen.  Maybe nothing.  But it's not nothing.  Power goes out from him.  She draws it from him into herself.

And she is healed, because she trusts in that power.

In twelve step theology, the fundamental principle behind the first three steps is entrusting a "power greater than ourselves" with our lives.  How does that look?  What can it mean?

I wonder if I make it too hard. 

In this story, as Peter insists, everybody is touching Jesus.  The crowds following him jostle.  They press in.  But power goes out only to her.

Could not any person in that crowd have reached out and touched him and been healed?

Why didn't they do it?  Why don't we?  

Maybe I haven't exhausted my options:   One more doctor.  One more dollar.  One more book.  One more conversation.  One more diet.  One more plan.  One more prayer.  One more try.

Maybe I'm afraid because I'm unclean.  I'm not worthy, I tell myself.

Maybe it's too much work to fight against the pressing crowds.

Maybe I'm just not willing to risk being disappointed; maybe the power is not for me.

How long will we suffer?  Twelve years?  Twenty?  A lifetime?

He is passing by, today, this hour, this moment.  Maybe you find him at church.  Maybe in the loving kindness of a friend.  Maybe in the deep recesses of your own heart.

When he feels the power drawn from him by her trust, he stops.  Nothing is more urgent than this.  He calls her from her anonymity and solitude.  He calls her into fullness of life and community.

What might we be willing to risk to receive restoration?  Will we only reach out and touch his clothes?  Can we hear his assurance to us?  Go in peace and be healed.

A A A

Yesterday we talked about change, about its coming, bidden or unbidden, from the inside or the outside, and about how we are left to respond with resistance or welcome.

The sort of change that arises from within might better be called transformation -- that is, a crossing (trans-) from one way of being to something new.  It's a truism in the world of personal growth that whatever pain within us is not transformed, we are bound to transmit.  We'll leave it behind in the world when we die, in our children or our other loved ones.  In God-language, it is the wood and the straw that eventually will be burned away, rather than becoming the fine and refined precious metal God uses to build his kingdom (1 Corinthians 3:12-15).

It's one thing to say that I am willing to be transformed, but what do I do?  Here's what I know from experience:  I can't wish it so.  I can do all the wanting and hoping -- and praying -- in the world, and I often keep on being the same old me, living in and transmitting the same old pain.  I might wish away the judgments that rattle on in my head or the behaviors that keep me stuck, but I find myself still listening, still doing what I say I don't want to do (see Romans 7:15).

What's more, my first reaction, I just need to try harder, is another way of keeping me stuck.  Here's how I think it works, by way of a metaphor:  At our science museum, there is a spot where you can pretend to cross a raging river on a little bridge.  The trick is in not looking down.  My temptation is to look at the bridge and watch where my feet are treading, but then I see the water below -- and I fall.

You probably know another version of this story.  It's about a Jewish fisherman on a wild sea at night, trying to follow his rabbi by walking on the water.  You know when Peter falters?  When he notices the wind (Matthew 14:28ff).

Here's what it means:   My eyes lead my whole body.  It's a scientific truth, like the experiment at the museum, and it's a spiritual truth too.  Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 6, vv 22-23:

The eye is the lamp of the body.  So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

I've got to look to the light to be filled with the light.

When I'm trying harder, I'm looking at the darkness, so I can fix it.  But I can't see.  It's dark.

So the first thing is to let the light in, but how?  A wise friend of mine recently reminded me of the three A's, which are, in my experience, the singular path to allowing my own transformation.  They are:

1. Awareness - Now that the light has come in, what do I see?  I don't have to do anything about it, just see if for what it is -- see me, you, my situation, the world, as it is, not as I wish it were.
2. Acceptance - I may not like what I see, but can I acknowledge that it is what it is?  I can ask myself, what if this were as good as it's ever going to get?  Then what?
3. Action - Only now, that the light is shining and my eyes are seeing, am I equipped to do anything at all.    And there's still a question:  Not only, what action might I take, but should I take any action at all?

The rest is up to God.