Year: 2011

Weavings is a wonderful publication whose blog recently reminded me how easy it is to be allured away from simplicity into a life of discontent and restlessness. It's both easy and difficult to do—to choose the things that are needed, not those that are wanted. To choose for less, instead of more. To choose for enough, and trust God's provision. The struggle for simplicity is one of choosing for your interior peace, over exterior impulses.

Where are you invited to simplicity today?

Two weekends ago, I taught and led a weekend retreat for the beloved, holy mess that is my spiritual home. The verses that wrapped our time were these, quoted here from The Message, Romans 12:9-19:

 ^9-10Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

 ^11-13Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

 ^14-16Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down. Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody.

 ^17-19Don't hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you've got it in you, get along with everybody. Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. "I'll do the judging," says God. "I'll take care of it."

There are quite a few lines that resonate here, for me and for those I journey alongside. But the first one still catches me up short, causes me to think, to breathe, to remember myself and my God.

"Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it."

How many of us fake it on a regular basis? Pretend in order to get someone to like us, or, alternately, pretend to like someone else in order to feel better about ourselves?

Loving from the center means finding that center and not just loving from there, but living there. That's a journey that only God can take me on, take you on. That center won't hold (apologies to Yeats) if we look for it anywhere else. We'll find ourselves spinning off, pulled by gravities that suck us toward orbits of insecurity, worthlessness and loneliness. It's in finding who is in the center of ourselves that we find who we are, and begin to live from that place truly, whole-heartedly.

I wonder what it would look like if, each day, we let go of the faking it a little more and received the gift of being ourselves just a little more fully.

What would it look like if you, if I, loved from the center of who we are just a little more tomorrow?

A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery. – John Keats

I recently shared the quote above on my Anam Cara Facebook Page. Being a poet at heart, it makes immediate sense to me, resonating deep within. But poetry, like mystery, is something that can be difficult, even frustrating, to enter into the first, second, even third time. If you are a "thinker" in Myers-Briggs terms, or a body-centered person in Enneagram terms (Types 8, 9 or 1), poetry can seem inaccessible, or even frivolous. 

I believe that poetry, and the space that it creates, is an essential part of the spiritual life. That doesn't mean it has to be your heartbeat, or even something that you consume regularly, but reading or writing a poem every once in a while can open you to the Mystery of God and His heartbeat in a way that simple words can't capture. It's a dive into the lake, as Keats says above.

While I've yet to see the movie "Bright Star", John Keats has always been a favorite poet of mine. Here's one of his—one of the handful of poems that I've made the effort to memorize.

This Living Hand

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.                                                   John Keats

Admittedly, that one is a bit dark, but it speaks to me of the way that poets—and God—communicate through the ages. It's no coincidence, I believe, that a large percentage of the Bible is written in poetic form.

Poetry can be dark, mysterious and thought-provoking, but it can also be playful—just as God is playful. One the other poems tucked in my memory is this tender and silly parable of forgiveness by Winnie The Pooh author A. A. Milne:

Forgiven

I found a little beetle; so that Beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the day …
And Nanny let my beetle out –
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out –
She went and let my beetle out –
And Beetle ran away.

She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches and she just took off the lid,
She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.

She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind,
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find,
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid –
And we'd get another match-box and write BEETLE on the lid.

We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"

It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it must be Me,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought he ought to say:
"I'm very very sorry that I tried to run away."

And Nanny's very sorry too for you-know-what-she-did,
And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and Me are friends, because it's difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match.

So, I encourage you—add some poetry to your life. See what it sparks, what God might be inviting you to. Find a poem that speaks to you, and dialogue with God and others about it.

I'd like to hear from you, too, on the subject of poetry.

Do you have a favorite poem?

How has poetry formed your soul?

Two weekends ago, my husband and I finally made it out to the Colorado Balloon Classic. We’ve been talking about going for three years, but every time the morning of our intended trek to the launch rolls around, we instead roll back over in bed. This year, though, we’d had our fill of good intentions and, bleary-eyed and less-than-bushy-tailed, we joined the throngs to watch what felt like hundreds of hot air balloons fill and take off into the bright blue sky.

We dragged our fingers along the quickly filling material of balloons on their sides, and watched handlers doggedly holding down the top ropes of balloons determined to buck their moorings and fly before time was right. But mostly we looked up. Up, up, and up.

If you’ve only seen hot air balloons at a distance, you are probably unaware of how completely massive they are. At least several stories high, these seemingly ephemeral aircraft cause you to crane your neck before they’ve ever taken off. And one they have, their quiet movement snags your attention precisely because it is so silent, and you watch them drift past above your head with rapt attention.

After the first three waves of balloons had launched, Bryan and I walked back into the car, hand in hand, content and feeling rewarded that we had made the effort of choosing beauty over comfort that day. And then, as we slipped into the car, another thought entered both of our minds: Ouch!

You see, as I mentioned, we’d spent most of the morning doing something that our bodies aren’t normally prepared to do—look up. Both of our low backs were aching, and would ache for days. We’d spent so much time (and, frankly, it wasn’t that much time at all) gazing skyward that the very things that rooted us to Earth were protesting. Loudly.

Now, it would be easy enough to leave that metaphor where it lies. You’d walk away knowing that we need to look up more, and that sometimes comfort needs to be sacrificed so that we can gain a greater perspective, see God more clearly.

But I think that’s too facile.

As someone who cares a great deal about bodies, and how God speaks through them, I don’t think that the only message of my aching lumbar region was that I’m lacking in spiritual high-mindedness. As I ached and dialogued with God about it over the next few days, He gently reminded me that life in the kingdom is about holding gently the tensions between what is and what is to come. The tensions between things like God’s sovereignty and our own free will, the tensions between grace and truth. And, that Sunday morning, the tensions between Earth and sky, between my dust-fashioned body, made so tenderly out of the earth that I am held to, charged to tend, and the spiritual reality of God, who is so much more, so transcendant and beautiful, so beyond what I could ever think or imagine.

God whispered to me that the ache in my back wasn’t wrong or an indication that I was missing out, but instead a reminder that Heaven and Earth meet and mingle in this too frail frame, that it aches with glory, and with the holy knowledge that I am made for the here and now, the temporal and immediate, and that I am also made, always, to look up, to dream, and to long for more.

I grew up in a British household. Without relying too eggregiously on cultural stereotypes, this tells you two things about me. First, I would prefer to insert what most Americans would see as a superfluous “u” into words like “colour” and “honour”. Second, I drink a lot of tea.

And by “a lot” of tea, I mean a lot of tea. I drink it when it’s cold outside and when it’s hot. I drink tea when I’m happy and tea when I’m sad. I drink tea first thing in the morning, and last thing before I go to bed. I’m grieved that one of my husband’s least favorite sounds is the whistle of the tea kettle—because it’s one of my favorites.

Ironically, it’s also one of my new favorites, rather than something that reminds me of my childhood (perhaps a reason why my husband dislikes it so?). In my parents’ household, we had an electric tea kettle. I’m not sure why, as I’m certain that they grew up in the Mother Country with kettles warmed on the stovetop.

It wasn’t until I got married and moved to Colorado Springs that I encountered the delight of a whistling kettle. Previously, my indicate that the water was boiled was a “pop, click” sound, as the kettle automatically turned itself off. These days, the tea kettle summons me from whatever corner of the house I’m in and, unlike most other things in my life (including my husband and the telephone), can rouse me from the depths of a book when almost nothing else can.

To celebrate a new season of life, I decided to purchase a new kettle. While there isn’t anything wrong with our current kettle (its utilitarian aluminum has held up well to almost everything except kitchen grease), it’s time for an Ebenezer in our kitchen. A stone of remembrance—thus far the LORD has brought us. And now it’s time for tea.

In my searching, though, I came across something curious. Stove-top tea kettles are, it seems, moving out of style. Or, at least, they are becoming less popular, pushed aside by their electric counterparts which “save you time” and “get your water boiling more rapidly.”

This discovery made me sad, and felt indicative of the amount of pressure that both I and my directees feel to be more efficient, quicker, more productive on a daily basis. While we may still have time for tea, we have less time than we had before, and we want our water to boil quicker to take up the slack.

Although I can’t say that I always drink my tea mindfully, it is a ritual that breaks me out of my routine and asks me to pay attention. To the whistle of the kettle. To the curl of steam dancing upward from my cup. To the time it takes to steep the bag well before it turns bitter. To the warmth of the porcelain as I cradle it in my hands. To the taste of that first sip. And to the presence of God in it all.

Frankly, I’m not interested in doing that faster, or more efficiently. While there are places in my life that I appreciate technology’s convenience, tea time is not one of them. Instead, I prefer to redeem the time, allowing myself to be present in it, asking that the grace of tea slow me down again, so that I can slow my thoughts, then slow my body, then slow my heart and—finally, finally—be still enough to hear that still small voice whisper His love.

Do I have time for tea? Oh, yes. Yes, I do.

As someone who suffered from depression for a number of years, I know how dark and difficult those times can be. As a spiritual director, I often hear directees beating themselves up for struggling with the darkness when they neither chose it nor are able to step out of it on their own. Depression is a real and complex experience, one that involves spiritual, emotional, mental and physical realities. 

Last week, Alan Fadling posted a "revised" list of practical helps for those suffering from depression, sourced from a book on Anglican spiritual direction written before the time of modern psychotherapy. As one who has walked this road, I wish I'd had this resource at hand at the time. If you're struggling with the darkness, or know someone who is, I pray that these words will encourage you and give you practical steps that won't feel overwhelming, cruel or futile.