Thoughtful

Today …. this moment in time ….. this is where I live.

I am finding that faith is growing to permeate my life in ways I didn’t choose, but yet complete me. I have always known that it is knowing what Jesus says about welcoming little ones that gives me the since of my teaching as being a gift of worship. I know that how I live in my home, even how I look and care for my body are all parts of living in relationship. I am finding all aspects of relationships are beginning to carry that reflection as well.

This doesn’t mean that I am living with some holy halo, nor does it mean that I can’t live a normal life. It simply means that there is a sense of God’s presence that is greater than I used to know. It changes me. I can no longer ignore the way I treat others. Nor can I choose to do some things that I might have chosen before.  It doesn’t feel like a load. It feels like a loving presence not willing for me to compromise my life. It feels like a loving presence helping me to grow in each today.

Worship is not a Sunday activity for the presence we go to share with others in worship, is present in every here and now.

A psalm of a restless spirit

O God, I am restless, knowing I am not where I need to be but not knowing the way to go. I stumble in the mist of living a life distanced from others yet walking paths that touch at common places then wind off into alone. Lord, I long for companions for the journey recognizing the never ending companionship of you but believing you understand my longing for that human hand, that human voice, that human look within days like today when without school or church I find myself alone.

God, way back in the beginning you looked down at your garden and saw Adam in his aloneness and gave him a companion. It is true that in their companionship they turned from you to listening to each other but it doesn’t change the fact that you knew that the creation you made was lonely, was created with that longing for his kind. If you knew that then, you know it now. Help me to find companionship and to be companionship for others. Show me where to go to find others seeking like me who also are seeking you.

I praise you in my aloneness today and believe in the day when I will praise you in the companionship of an other or of others.

Essentials Blue Week 2: The God who acts and rescues in the here and now

From the beginning of time, the scriptures convince us that we are being pursued. The Christian faith is not primarily one of “chasing God,” but rather of being “chased by God.” We are not primarily the “finders”; we are the “found”. We are not primarily the “seekers”; we are the “sought after”.  (Wilt, p19)

 It was a dark moment in my life. Facing a counselour in my disillusionment and despair, I told him he could challenge my religious systemic beliefs but if he tried to take away my belief in God I would walk away. “People need a God,” he responded, “because they feel the need to be forgiven.” This profound statement, given in a secular setting, spoke much to me about the God that can make a difference in the world in which we live, about the God who “acts” (Wilt, p18).

 We live in a world increasingly dehumanized as tasks and goals once shared in physical community with others become more disjointed and distanced, where a person can go through the day without having directly interacted with any other person. We live in a world where intimacy with God has become so individualized that tele-evangelists have become viable alternatives for worship to many disillusioned by the growing alienation experienced within churches, in a world where the idea of accountability had become a suspect concept. A secular view of Christianity often images an enclosed system circling theology but not having much affect on the greater world in which we live. That Christians are involved with humanitarian concerns is balanced, in the secular view, with the many non-Christians who do the same. Each time one more example of exclusiveness among Christians comes to light it is heralded as one more proof of how ineffectual or even harmful “religion” is to the world.

If, as a church, we are going to reach beyond the barriers, to unseal the tomb that the church has become in the eyes of so many, we need to show the God who acts and rescues, the God intimately and actively concerned about those he loves and the world he created. The Jewish mentality of speaking of God in terms of action needs to find its way not only into our worship but into our lives in vital ways. How can those who lead worship bring this more actively into the call of worship? How can we live in recognition of the dimension of the kingdom of God being in the here and now not just some distant place to aspire to somewhere in the future?  

 This need is not a theoretical idea to me but a reality of interaction within forums, through the schools I work at, through interactions with neighbours and my children as well, as my deeply personal, present journey back into a church as community. It is no new concept for me to recognize the kingdom as another plane of reality living easily within the present yet in some way distinct from what we understand as the physical realm. Its true “thin place” was in Christ but today, I think God would want our lives to be the “thin places” to the world we live in, the places where those who are seeking can see the glimmers of God.

 Wilt, Dan, “Essentials in Worship Theology: The Nature Of God”, p18-22

Blue Essential week 1 – God of creation

In the day to day disconnectedness of the spheres of our world, there is longing to touch beyond the limits of our closeness. Nature, itself, declares the existence of something or someone greater than our finite understanding. Throughout the world this declared being finds expression throughout the great religions and the local spiritual expressions of the world. This same being, who we have come to know as God, expresses God-self by creating humanity in his image.

A favorite author, Parker Palmer, speaks of our creation in the image of God as part of his body or expression in this world. He speaks of needing to look back before the experiences of the world muffled that voice within us. It is in being the person we were created to be with our specific gifts, drives and personality that God is able to best work through our lives for justice, in relationships, and within the spiritual growth of our lives. In this birth given image we also find the truest recognition of the beauty God has created in the world, yet the healthiest recognition of the woundedness that still needs healing.

Those songs, those messages that give recognition to this intricately creative God offer healing of the brokenness that leaves us feeling alienated. That this great creator could allow the humility of the cross to provide a connection for us to the wholeness of divinity allows us to believe that this same God is a creator with enough merciful power that our lives can find rescue, healing, restoration and completion in the divine. The experiences of this love let us believe also in “the beauty which, because God is the creator Par excellence, he will create when the present world is rescued, healed, restored and completed.

N. T. Wright, Simply Christian, Harper Collins 2006, p 47
Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, John Wiley & Sons 2000

hope as taskmaster

 

You know, in some ways, life is easier when you give up hope. You can just sit around feeling sorry and let go of the effort to move forward in life. I mean that a bit tongue in check but just a bit. I have let myself hope for something again and find that because of that hope I am risking again letting others get into my life. I don’t do that easily. It is much simpler to be happy in my own company with the art and music, games and on line friends, all important, but all safe from the risk of opening up my life at a new level.

All I know is, it feels somewhat like I am the butterfly in the caccoon, the sleep is over and my wings feel too tight in the life I have right now. It is the time to take the risk of breaking through this caccoon, something only I can do for me if I am really going to fly into the life that is mine to live. I wrote this poem for a poetry forum today and want to share it here as well:

taskmaster

hope can be a taskmaster
shaking the feathers
in my soft comfy pillow
of holding back from trying I
am forced to step out
of my homey cacoon
let these fragile wings
dry in the sun
of exposing myself
to the eyes and minds
of others not knowing
the journey between
there and here I stretch
the uncurled wings
and test the flexible
frames the wind
furls into their outstretched
frame and I rise
from my protected perch
to seek the skies once more.

Soul Journey – Fossil

This is the second of the poem’s I posted to the friend’s forum.

fossil

June 27, 2003

 

she digs deep into

the bones of her life

fossil memories

record what once was

creating the foundations for

todays lost in yesterdays

buried deep

so deep she

cannot reach and

touch whorls of stone

marking passages

of tide and sea

there on the landscape

of her soul

she does not surrender

to this tyranny

of past but digs on

chipping relentlessly at

barriers of hardened clay

chisel in hand she pries away

a stubborn stone

until she is there

and with her eyes

she views the truth

of what once was knowing

it is not to be again

with brush and knife she pulls

the tiny fossil from its perch

and hangs it from her neck

the only memory

untarnished by the unforgiving

passage of years

she knows it for what it is

an end of dreams undreamed

beginning at the ending

she starts again.

Soul journey – Silhouettes of Promise

As I was posting some poems to a friend’s theme on a forum, I noticed that my journey of the soul that has become promonant in the past year has its seeds in the past. I will have to do more looking back, but here is the first of the two poems I posted on that forum.

Silhouettes of Promise

November 3, 2001

 

Sometimes we

Push ourselves beyond

Ourselves

And come undone

Trying to be more

Than we can be

In that moment

That hour

We view the light

And call it dark

 

Then moments kiss

Eternal hope

Reawakening from

Enchanted rest

Our souls

With flickers of hope

In the dark

Becoming light

Enhancing form within

The silhouettes of promise

 

 

 

Restlessness – Another stage of the journey

For years I have been walking a healing path that has recently come to a feeling of completion. Journey done. No. New journey begun. This stretch of the road has more companions for the journey but direction is still unclear.  For most of the time I am busy and fulfilled, finding joy in my job as a teacher, learing and growing through my church of choice, crafting and drawing and singing, looking forward to the bike rides soon to come while beginning to enjoy the walks of a warming spring.

Still there is time in the middle of the night when the world around me sleeps but I am awakened by longing. The words of a song flow through my mind as soothing water, words of a worship song sung in the community of last Sunday. Not my own song, it still carries the longing of this moment in the journey — a longing to not be alone but to be with one who knows and accepts me for just exactly who I am. At times like this, I am thankful for faith in the one who tells me to come to him with my weaknesses, my longings, my strengths.

All Who Are Thirsty

All who are thirsty All who are weak Come to the fountain Dip your heart in the stream of life Let the pain and the sorrow Be washed away In the waves of his mercy As deep cries out to deep (we sing)   Come Lord Jesus come Holy Spirit come As deep cries out to deep   ©1998 Vineyard Songs (UK/Eire) Words and Music by Brenton Brown and Glenn Robertson

Prayer Psalm Lament fashion: Concern, Plea, Why God will answer, promise of praise

 

God,

Sometimes your voice seems so clear. A clarion ring of truth filling my soul with light and life or fearful knowing that I must make a choice that my feelings war against. At those times, when I follow your leading, the road is clear before me and I know that the end will be praise.

But there are other moments when trust wars with doubt in me, when circumstances are mixed in emotions, when things that should seem clear are not and, yet, when I look within to where your still small voice dwells, there is silence or whisperings I cannot understand.

What am I to learn right now? What do you want me to know that will help me grow that much closer to the me you have created me to be?

So I wait and keep listening, knowing that you will lead me in the right ways, for this you have done, when I have allowed your strength, your power, your Word to take its roots in me.

Yes, I wait, and read and pray and live on in life, knowing that praise and understanding will come as it needs to for me to move forward in life. Lord, give me the strength to wait and to trust.

Amen

The fragile yet precious gift of trust

 

 

 

“Here is my heart”

with trembling hands

you held to me

this treasure rare.

I stand in awe

at such a gift–

A fragile flower

blooming, lovely

in your hand.

I reach to touch

the fragile bloom

afraid to bruise

its precious petals

knowing it is not

one bloom of many

but the outpouring

of the soil of years.

I shake my head

in wonder at such trust

and cup its sweet perfume

within a gentle hand.