So, so, beautiful.
This post by Jen Lemen is worth lingering over. Worth sitting with. Listen to Love.
Author: Tara Owens
Welcome Home
If you haven't seen this wonderful, silly, teary and delightful little video, you should take a few minutes and watch it now. It's undoubtedly a commercial effort for something, but I just love the joy and grace and love that pours through it.
It made me laugh and it made me cry, and it made me think about the way that we will be welcomed home into the Kingdom of God, the world to come. It will be good. Very, very good.
Three Spiritual Stages
Fellow spiritual director and accomplished author Paula Huston recently published this article on the three spiritual stages. It's a review of the Orthodox view that we all move through three stages spiritually, and to try to make someone in an earlier stage try to understand a later is akin to spiritual abuse.
It was definitely a thought provoking article for me. What are your thoughts?
A Quote for Today
It's a chilly day in Colorado. Chillier, even, than where my cousin finds himself at the moment—Siberia. It's not often that I get to say that!
Fellow spiritual director Leslie Stewart posted a quote from Evelyn Underhill that just must be shared… and it's much warmer than the temperature. Thank you, Leslie, and thank you, Evelyn!
For a spiritual life is simply a life in which all that we do comes from the center, where we are anchored in God: a life soaked through and through by a sense of God’s reality and claim, and self-given to the great movement of God’s will. ~ Evelyn Underhill
Nourishing Yourself In A Time of Sorrow
As we move toward the weekend, I can't help but share this beautiful post. You may be in a time of sorrow right now in your life, or you may be in a season of joy. Many of us in the northern hemisphere are feeling the darkness of winter lengthen before us. January 24, "Blue Monday," is often called the saddest day of the year. Wherever you are, these beautiful words on how a cup of tea can nourish the soul will feed you and bring you rest.
May your weekend be blessed with His love.
Staying Awake
This morning I ran across this beautiful video. The book that is referenced at the end, One Thousand Gifts, is on that is on its way to my mailbox as I write this. I'm looking forward to savoring it.
In the meantime, I thought I would share this beautiful and contemplative video. Take a few deep breaths, be present, and click "play."
The Rest of Rest
Having spent the last week or so sick and alternately in bed or tottering around to my various commitments, I've had some time to think about rest. Add to this the ethos of this season, this dig-deep-place of Advent, and rest has been hard to avoid.
Oh, but avoid it we (and I) do.
One of the first things that I ask a new directee is about their sleeping habits. While that may seem a little bit outside of my purview as a spiritual director, I hold by the truth that, at least in North America, the number one enemy of spiritual growth is exhaustion. Last year, my lovely small group went through James Bryan Smith's The Good And Beautiful God: Falling In Love With the God Jesus Knows. Do you know what the first spiritual discipline Mr. Smith had us practice was?
Sleep.
Yes, sleep. The exercise involved picking a day (and enlisting help if necessary) where we could stay in bed until we were entirely sick of being in bed.
As a culture, we're so focused on being in control, accomplishing, making things happen. Rest and sleep are almost seen as defeat. Especially this time of year, when there so much to do, buy, arrange, bake, wrap, cook, send and give.
We often quote, "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength" from Isaiah 30:15, but no one seems to finish the verse. The last few words get left off… "but you would have none of it."
We like the idea, but we don't like being called to the carpet by God when we're not living the truth.
Well, I've been called to the carpet this past week. In the rest that my body as been forced into, I've been reminded that I'm not in control, that God is truly good, even if my circumstances seem snotty. And that, especially during Advent, God is reminding me, and the rest of His bride, that His rest is what He requires of us. We can wait on Him and rest in Him—He's trustworthy.
So how about it? Can you take up the challenge to choose rest this Advent season?
Further Resources:
The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan
The Good & Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith
We Seek Smooth Lines
A few years ago, I helped lead a six-week series called the Creativity Project at my church. The aim was to open a space for people to exercise the creativity that we have all (and I do mean all) been gifted with by God. During that time, a few poems presented themselves to me. They were unexpected and arrived all in a rush, which hasn’t happened to me for some time. This particular poem came while I was wrestling with the spiritual discipline of creating prayer ropes, maintaining the patience, focus and prayer to tie complex knots over and over again.
As I enter the Advent season, God has brought this discipline back to me. Advent is about waiting. Waiting with expectation. Waiting with hope. Waiting even though things don’t seem smooth or simple.
Thus, I share this poem with you. Let me know what it stirs in you, what you see and hear… what you are awakened to or waiting for this Advent.
* * *
We seek smooth lines, swift and silken,
things uncluttered and uncomplicated. Easy
beauty, a sense of peace—the humility
of knots undoes us. No doubt even the cross
was not truly straight, although that’s how
we like to make it, right-angled so we know
our place, can trace our salvation
with rulers and thick-tipped markers.
The first symbols were more
rounded and irresolute, the tail
of the fish crossing itself, a Father,
Son and Holy Spirit less precise,
that wandered across thoroughfares
like a lost child, a secret yet to be told.
Now, we pull at our lives, seeking
resolution, understanding, something
that might make sense of the paradox,
the absences, the dying children,
while old women whose lines have long
fallen, sagged into the corners
of their eyes, their lives, comfortable
with the tangles, weave our times
into prayers, letting the loose ends
fray into supplication.
Of Hubris, Hope and Telling A Better Story
If you've stood in line at a grocery store anywhere in the United States in the past week, you're probably aware of the story that's captured the world's attention for this moment and, I suspect, a few more moments to come. While it may be replaced now and again by more pressing current events, I expect that we'll all be hearing a great deal about Prince William and Kate Middleton's upcoming nuptuals through the week of their wedding, currently set to occur on April 29, 2011.
I've had a few friends complain bitterly and sometimes caustically about not only this story, but about the role of the British monarchy in general. Words like "disgusting", "hubris", "anachronism", "inbred" and "leeches" have been used. Being a British citizen myself, it might be easy (and believe me, it's been a temptation) to become defensive or even antagonistic in response. I've taken some time, though, and asked God what's going on—both within myself and within the reactions of others—that He'd like to talk about. While I don't even pretend to be God's voice on the issue, I do think there are a few things going on that can teach us about the story God's telling and our hearts within it.
On the eve of Advent, I know that I am longing for a fresh start and, paradoxically, a reminder of the His-story of which I'm a part. I suspect I'm not alone in this. In fact, I suspect that whether you would call yourself a person of faith or not, you're longing for a fresh start as well. It's been a rough few years, globally. Economic downturns, political polarization and name-calling, unstable global politics, and a sense of distrust for our leaders has created an environment of fear and, sadly, despair. Good people are going through difficult times. Hard work, prayer, and just 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' hasn't seemed to produce the results that we would have expected five years ago. While it never was, the world doesn't feel under our control any more, and that brings with it a low-level but pervasive sense of unease.
Do you know the difference between a Shakespearan tragedy and a Shakespearan comedy? Some would say death toll is the determining factor, and while that may be a good measure most of the time, it's not the only factor. Tragedies and comedies can sometimes have equal amounts of bloodshed on and off stage, but comedies end in resolution and, more often than not, they end with a wedding.
I'm sure you get where I'm going here.
With all that's been going on, you've probably been wondering if the story we're living in isn't a tragedy after all. There have been questions, quiet doubts, and outright fist-shaking-at-the-ceiling prayers. Anchored by the Word of God, we know that the story ends differently… but our emotions, and sometimes our hearts, have taken a beating. Those without the plumbline of faith have even greater struggles keeping purpose and hope about them.
Enter stage right: Prince William and his commoner-to-princess fiancée, Kate (who would like you to call her Catherine.) Prince William, tragic Diana's son. Prince William, heir to the throne of England. And Kate, beautiful, intelligent, young and… hopeful.
It's hard to say whether it's William, Kate, or the combination of the two that grab our hearts the most. William's story is one of adventure trumping breeding: rather than take the safe route, he's entered the RAF and flies helicopters, even against the advice of the royal family who would prefer him to be safe. William lost his mother, also a commoner-to-princess story, and has had to manage mourning and the public spotlight. Kate's parents are self-made millionaires, an air traffic controller and flight attendant who made good with a dream and some effort, very little in the way of royal blood to their names. Young, beautiful and dynamic, together the couple are engaging and compassionate. They feel like real people. They could be your cousin, your sister, your son or your best friend.
They could be you.
And that's where the story has us. Why we're enraptured, why we care about something that can feel as anachronistic as royalty. Just like professional sports and players, there's a story going on that echoes of the story that we all care about, the story we all secretly and not so secretly want to believe.
In the story of Kate & William, we're being reminded that this story isn't a tragedy after all. Things may look dire, but there's a wedding to look forward to, and this means that this story's got a comedic ending. Not necessarily one we'll be laughing at as hilariously funny, but one whose punchline will have us smiling and understanding all the twists and turns along the way had to lead us to this point, this happily ever after, this feast.
And what story does that sound like, hmm? What story begins with a wedding and ends with a wedding? (I am, by the way, indebted to John & Stasi Eldredge for first pointing that out, or at least first pointing that out to me.) It's God's story, echoing into our own, giving us reason to hope that things are going to be right with the world, right with our own story, after all. That God's in control, and the ending is going to be more beautiful than we'd hoped. Instead of just getting by, we're going to get more that: we're going to be adopted into royalty, given a title, a crown, and called heir to the throne (the real Throne, the path to which is the real Cross). Our suffering will have mattered, and there's a wedding feast at the end of things to celebrate the most royal of all weddings: that of the Lamb of God.
Whether you like the royal family or not (and, in interests of full disclosure, I will say I happen to like them), we need our stories. In difficult times, we need hope, and we need to remember. Yes, there are important things that resources can and should be spent on other than royal weddings or Super Bowls or all the other things that remind us that our story is epic after all.
The story of Prince William and Catherine may not be God's story, but it is one that He is using to echo, to re-awaken, to remind people of the Larger Story. He is using it to offer hope, and to deepen our longings enough that we might be brought back once again to the One who has already called us His royal priesthood, His heirs, His children.
Grief, Grace & Glory
This week, I've had the humbling priviledge of walking alongside a family who is journeying with a loved one in her last days on this side of the New Heaven and New Earth. In the midst of a week of celebration and gratitude (it is Thanksgiving week here in the United States), there are phone calls to the hospice, sleepless nights wondering if she is going to survive until the morning, and deep hope that they will have one more day with the light of this life still in the world.
The words that I keep coming back to in order to describe this time resonate around a theme: deep, humble, honest, grace, love, grief, beauty and glory.
There such honest grief here in this family, and a recognition that this pain is mingled with joy. No one is trying to pretend this isn't happening, or dealing with it in a detached, distanced way. No one has said, "Well, she's going to be in a better place."
While those may be effective and sometimes necessary coping strategies for some familes, for some people at one time or another, the hearts of everyone here are alive. Alive to God, alive to the risk of losing the one they love, alive to grief and possibility and laughter amidst deep pain.
As I look at the faces, particularly the face of this woman's daughter, I see the face of Christ. Jesus was honest in his grief—over Lazarus, yes, but also over Jerusalem, a broken, wayward city that wasn't what it should or could be. Death isn't what we are made for, it isn't part of the original plan, and as it comes in to steal, rob and destroy. And, yet, death isn't the reality of the people of God. For the Beloved (which is us), there is so much more, so much waiting for us that is beautiful, glorious, full of grace. We, like Jesus, have to walk through that valley of the shadow of death in order to get there, to be fully resurrected. And the rest of us have to wait on the other side of glory, giving our family members the grace of letting them go, and being plunged into the deep well of grief over that which isn't meant to be.
How can we possibly risk this? Even knowing what's on the other side, how can we choose to walk through this with our hearts wide open?
As I watch this family, and see the face of Christ in each of them, I realize that this reflection is the glory that is mentioned in 2 Corinthians 3:18. It is Christ within them, bearing them up, pouring out grace upon grace. And it is Christ sharing in their grief, as He knows and cares for every sorrow we have, weeping with us.
Grace, grief and glory. In this thin space between this world and the next, there is almost more beauty than my heart can handle. This is what it looks like to live with your heart fully alive, vulernable to the pains of the world and, more gloriously, to the life of Christ through you.
For this, to walk with this glory, pain and beauty, I am thankful.