I Love Your Hands!

I haven't been paying much attention to my hands these days. The other day my four-year old son looked at my hands and said, "Mommy, your hands are all wrinkly like a grandma." I laughingly said, "Oh, I have just been forgetting to put lotion on them lately." A moment later he returned with a little puddle of lotion cradled in his small, perfect palm, and started rubbing it into my hand. This thoughtful response really hit me. Honestly it reminded me of the woman in Luke 9 who rubbed oil all over Jesus' feet when everyone else in the room was concerned with religious precepts and political affiliations. Now, let me be clear, I'm certainly not comparing myself to Jesus. But I am suggesting that when Jesus answered his disciples inquiry about who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven with, "Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." he was talking about moments like these. What Jesus saw in children is something so pure, attentive, and vulnerable that we often overlook it, preoccupied as we are by the business of the day, our own insecurities, and our tendency to put our deep concerns on the back burner. What first sounded like a criticism, "your hands look wrinkly" revealed itself to be deep caring and concern.
I admitted I had been forgetting to care for myself, and my sweet boy went and got lotion and cared for me.

I have always loved hands. I have what I can only hope is a real memory of a photograph I saw somewhere as a child. It was a black and white of an elderly Native American woman with a kind, dark, leathery face mapped with deep lines that seemed to surround her features with a powerful topography. In her arms she cradled a newborn baby softly with her long fingers wrapped most of the way around his tiny head. Where her fingers came across his cheek, the dark, leathery, lined story of her hand met the soft, smooth, creamy newness of his face's yet untold story. I remember thinking, right then and there, how beautiful her hands and face were. On some level I think I felt how powerful it was to behold the face that she had earned. And those hands. Those hands had held so many babies; washed so many clothes so that others had something to wear; ground so many bowls of corn into flour for meals; cleaned so many dishes so that her family may be fed; and shaped so many hard, gritty lumps of clay into beautiful sturdy bowls for the table, and into vases for the windowsills.

I have a wood carving that Dave and I bought in Southern Germany. It is a little boy leaning into the curved palm of a big hand. I love this image. It's my image of God. No matter what circumstances are swirling around me, no matter how tired I am, or how overwhelmed by worry I feel, when I imagine myself held like that in what I'm sure is God's very calloused, lined, leathery, strong hand, I know I am loved--just like the vulnerable baby held safely in his elderly grandmother's wonderfully old hands. From those old hands he will learn what love, gentleness, and nurture really look and feel like.

The other day a set of very young, very soft, very little hands reminded me what love, gentleness, and nuture look and feel like. My son's new, unlined, smooth hands began to tell their own story. They told a story about how the sweet boy to whom they belong is learning to think about others; learning to figure out what others need; developing a heart full of compassion that wants to help those in need.

I haven't been paying much attention to my hands these days, but my son has. On some level he seems to know that they hold him when he's scared, make the meals that nourish him, wipe his bottom, wash his hair, wash his clothes, and clap for him when he does fabulous things. Yesterday when we were walking into our local book and toy store (yes, we have only one in our little town) he slid his hand out of mine as we approached the door, as he always does to feel independent. This time, though, he looked down at my hand as he let go and said, "Mom, I love your hands." I was so caught off guard by this that I almost teared up. In the moment I just said, "thank you, buddy. I love your hands too." But what I would like to say to him now is more like "Thank you, my sweet little man. Thank you for giving them the stories they tell."

The Face of Grace

Time is a funny thing. When we're happy it seems to fly. When we're struggling, it's like molasses in January. When it's summer in Missouri with restless, creative children running all over the house, "creating" at 5 times the rate I can clean up, the happy times and the struggles trade places about every half hour. If you have ever spent an entire day with several kids at all different developmental stages, you know that it's remeniscent of videos in behavioral neuroscience class where neurologists would stimulate different parts of the brain and we would see the subject go from being carefree and delightful to a full-blown rage in the space of 30 seconds. When kids are happy, being around them feels like being wrapped in a plush blanket on a freezing day. When kids are out of sorts, at least to me, it can be a big recipe for crazy cake, the ingredients of which are: constant arguing over petty little things; blaring of loud music...and repeat; dumping baskets of small plastic things all over the floor; inability to stay full; and the inevitable shrill shouting of "MOOOOOOOOMMY" from somewhere across the house about every 5 minutes. Stir that together with a couple of big dogs running around barking at everything that moves, bake in a 110 degree oven with 95% humidity for about 5 hours, and VOILE, you've got a crazy cake with Mom written in shaky handwriting on top!

But that's only on some of the days. On days like yesterday, the last of our summer play days before Abby's school started, the universe reminds me of why I decided to do the Stay at Home Mom thing in the first place. It was cool enough outside to open the windows and turn on the ceiling fan. My childrens' best friend came over and they watched a short movie. After it ended they put on fun music while dancing wildly and giggling until their stomachs hurt (that's my personal favorite kind of laughter)! After that we got a big roll of paper out, rolled it the whole length of the kitchen floor, and used a big basket of crayons and colored pencils, and drew "the longest picture in the world", Ramona and Beezus style. We finished it off with a dinner of taco salads and leftover birthday cake ice cream. As Abby and Simon walked their best friend to the door they all hugged and made plans for her to come over after the first day of school and do homework together.

You see, that's the thing about time, and about life in general. If we tried to make an evaluation of our life based on any one moment in time, we would never be able to confindantly move forward. We could never be sure what to hang our hat on. We would just have constant emotional wiplash. The real joy of life is found in all the in-between spaces, the moments of grace, where we grow, learn, and find love despite our best laid plans. It's a lot like planting a garden. We put the seeds or plants in the ground, water them, get on our knees and get dirty pulling up the weeds to help them flourish, let the light bathe them. Then one day you walk out on your porch to relax and your senses are overcome with delicious aromas. The mint, basil, coneflowers, and marigolds are carried on the breeze and become part of the air you breathe. The beauty of their blooms is almost an afterthought. I think this is how moments of grace are in our lives. They're intangible, invisible. They capture us sometimes, and elude us sometimes. But they are always there if we have the eyes to see, ears to hear, and the quiet to let our senses behold them.

At the end of this Missouri summer I have a 3rd grader and a preschooler in his last year of preschool. I have had days where I felt like a crazy person,days when I felt like the most blessed person on earth, and days when the best thing to do was to do only what neeeded to be done and just keep moving. We have played in the ocean, visited grandparents, gone to movies, taken swimming lessons, played at the pool, taken little excursions to the "big city" (Kansas City). Dave and I even got out on one big date!! Most important of all, though, is that we all move into another year with the knowledge that we are known fully and loved deeply by one another. We have everything we need, even if there are still things that we want. We laugh together and share questions together before bedtime at night. We make provisional plans for our future, and have each other to love as we talk through the challenges of the present. These are the aromas of grace, the beauty that surrounds us even when particular moments may not be so lovely. This is, as Anne Lamotte puts it, "carbonated holiness".

Why Do You Run?

"Rabbi Levi saw a man running in the street, and asked him, 'Why do you run?' He replied, 'I am running after my good fortune!' Rabbi Levi tells him, 'Silly man, your good fortune hs been trying to chase you, but you are running too fast.'" --Traditional Tale

After a summer filled with many Do-It-Yourself projects, the kids' swimming lessons, visits from wonderful friends, the daily tending of a veggie garden, and all the normal everyday cleaning and laundry that has to be done for a family of 4, my husband and I are ready for rest. We're ready for the rhythms and routines that come with the kids being back in school, the weather getting cooler (of course anything under 100 degrees would feel cool at this point), and a little added structure to our days. I don't know about you, but I'm one who enjoys deadlines, projects, and schedules that help give shape to the content of my days. I'm not particularly good at creating that for myself, so I appreciate the natural structure that the school-year offers. The lessons, homework, conferences, and meetings for me are like posts in time, to which I can attach the pickets of my endeavors.

This personal need for routines and rhythms drew me back to read a couple of my favorite books about rest: one by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the other by ordained minister, therapist, and founder of Bread for the Journey (an organization serving families in need) Wayne Muller. Heschel's Book is entitled "The Sabbath". Muller's book is called "Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest". Outside of clergy like myself, these kind of books tend to be overlooked (even among clergy, quite frankly). We Americans aren't particularly comfortable with rest and reflection. We seem to have internalized the notion that to be idle is to be lazy. We even use Sundays as catch-up time for yardwork and housework. With so many demands, we just rarely let ourselves off the hook, much less set aside time to commune with God and just revel in silence.

We often avoid such time altogether because we don't know where to start. We feel like we would have to neglect family and work to incorporate time for spiritual reflection and rest. We tend to see Sabbath rest as an archaic restrictive rule, rather than an opportunity for renewal. Rabbi Heschel describes it this way, "...the world becomes a place of rest. An hour arrives like a guide, and raises our minds above accustomed thoughts. People assemble to welcome the wonder of the seventh day, while the Sabbath sends out its presence over the field, into our homes, into our hearts. It is a moment of resurrection of the dormant spirit in our souls."

Muller takes Hechel's Sabbath wisdom to heart, and offers small, manageable, life-giving spiritual practices that we can incorporate into the rhythms of our fast-paced life. Muller suggests we
"choose a period of time or an activity--such as a walk or hike,
alone or with someone you love--when you will refrain from speech.
Notice what arises in silence, the impluse to speak, the need to judge
or respond to what you see, hear, feel. Notice any discomfort that
arises when you are not free to speak. During a 10-day silent meditation
retreat, I was convinced that other retreatants--also silent--were all
angry, or somehow mad at me. I could not rely on my wit, charm, or
intellect to engage them. For the first few days I resented the silence.
Now, after years of practice, I seek out silences, I delight in them.
They seem sweet, safe, a Sabbath, a genuine sanctuary in time"
(Muller, p56).

We live in a culture that values diversion, busyness, and productivity over wholeness. Everywhere we turn we find the entreat to do more, be more, make more, and acquire more. It's no wonder that at the end of the day we feel exhausted and depleated, reaching desperately for that third cup of coffee or the energy drink of choice. Regardless of what particular faith tradition we belong to, if we want to be whole we must find a way to stop running, to face the quiet, and to give in to stillness. At first it will feel uncomfortable, even unnatural and unsettling. After some practice, though, it will begin to feel like the pool of fresh, cool water beneath a beautiful waterfall. Have you ever hiked for hours to get to a waterfall? You're hot, sweaty, tired, your muscles ache, your feet may be blistered. But when you reach the waterfall, lay down your pack, take off your shoes to immerse them in the cool water, it is easy to rest. It's a relief. It's the most natural joy, just sitting on a rock, breathing deeply of the mountain air, and taking in the beauty. This is Sabbath rest. Each of us will hike different hikes, struggle with different pains along the way, start our journey up the mountain from different places. At the end of the journey, though, we all need to be whole. We each need to bathe in the rest that is freely offered to us. Find the spiritual practice that works for you. Find a place of rest. Set it apart. Stop running. Your soul is waiting.

The Bedrock of Our Being

I believe that anything in life can be turned into a mediation. Any mundane job or task, if we allow ourselves to be fully present there, can reveal chards of insight. Like an artist creating a mosaic, we can take all of the broken, seemingly misshapen pieces of our life and gather them together into something strikingly beautiful and utterly unique. When we look at our life in this way we can let go of the perfectionism that limits and paralyzes us, and instead allow our path to meander. Our job is simply to take our beautiful broken peices, the chards of our experience, and create a footpath with them as we go along.

I have been working on putting in a flagstone patio at my next-door neighbor's house. I had mentioned a while back that I really wanted to buy myself a pottery wheel and that I would do almost anything within reason to get it. A short while later my neighbor approached me saying that she would be delighted to pay me if I would help her daughter put in a patio for her. My first reaction was to say, "But I have never done that before! I have no idea what I'm doing!" Her reaction was just a simple calm smile. She said, in her native Minnasoten accent, "OOh, I'm not worried about that at all. You girls will figure it out. And I know you'll do a great job." She had seen all the amateur landscaping we had done and liked it. Add to that her generally wonderful feminist perspective, and we had a deal. We gathered all the DIY instructions, talked to some landscaping folks, and just started in.

The hardest part of this kind of project is in preparing the foundation. We had to cut the sod, pull it up, till the soil, dig up and move countless wheelbarrows of dirt, measure, level, and measure again. I'm not at all a mathematically or spatially minded person...I'm a right-brain English major type all the way. So I have more than a bit of a hard time moving from calculations to application. Inch by inch, bit by bit, we figured it out. After 3 hours of hard work this morning, we are finally ready to bring in the gravel. We're ready to lay the bedrock in which we will nestle our flagstones--arranging them like chards in a mosaic, gathering together their oddly-shaped edges to form a beautiful patio.

Fred Rogers, "Mr. Rogers", said, "It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life that ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is firm." Making sure that bedrock is firm is no easy, clean, or straightforward task. It requires that we wrestle with self-doubt, sweat, get very dirty, know when to ask for help, keep our body nourished while we work, know when to take breaks, and just plain do a lot of heavy lifting. Even before we embark on this journey, though, it often takes someone or something nudging us out of our comfort zone, smiling when we bodly claim we can't do it, and offering us a vision of what is possible.

Anything can be a meditation. Anyone can be a vessel of the Spirit's nudging. Leonard Cohen once said, "Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in." Gather up your broken pieces, your chards of insight, your misshapen edges. Love yourself, trust yourself, laugh at yourself, and go make something beautiful!

Jog n' Blog, Day 3...

I got back out there today after missing a few days. I knew it would be a great challenge to get this discipline going. I have kept up exercise by digging up many wheelbarrows of dirt while putting in a flagstone patio for my neighbor. But the jogging did take a backseat. Rather than beat myself up and make a big drama about it in my mind, I got up this morning, turned up the volume on my Annie Lennox album (she is always a revelation!) and did 2 miles, about half of which was jogging. Today was a relief because when I came to the end of my time I realized I wasn't really thinking about anything. Talk about a revelation :-) It occurs to me that beneath the discipline of our bodies lies the more important discipline of our minds. In this culture we're taught to always be productive. The shadow side of that is that we forget how to turn off our minds.

I'm working through a great book by Matthew Flickstein entitled "Journey to the Center: A Meditation Workbook". He's a psychotherapist, meditation teacher, and founder of The Forest Way Insight Meditation Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. In his first chapter entitled "Insights: Happiness versus Inner Peace" he notes that "Happiness refers to a state of mind...that is always dependent upon circumstances. When our circumstances match our aspirations we feel happy, and when they do not, we feel unhappy. Contentment, unlike happiness, is not dependent upon our circumstances. It is an inner perspective from which we are aware of the difficulties or problems of our lives without being emotionally controlled by them. Contentment is an experience of inner peace."

I believe this is the journey we are all on, by one road or another. Each of us comes to this journey with our own backpack of inner resources and faith traditions (please forgive any Dora the Explorer intrusion I just created for you parents out there). But regardless of which faith tradition or spiritual resources we bring to our journey, meditation is the most valuable piece. Vietnamese zen buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us to "close the windows" so to speak...to create time each day where we don't let the frenetic pace and baffling noise of the world bombard us. Even 15 minutes each day of quiet can change our whole disposition, outlook, and emotional program for the day.

So as I walked and jogged this morning, listening to the incomparable Annie Lennox, I just put one foot in front of the other, put aside all of the emotional circumstances of my life, and let myself be carried forward. Sometimes that's all we need to do: put one foot in front of the other; walk; run; listen; gently escort our thoughts and worries out of the way; and do the best we can for that moment. Flickstein warns that there is one obstacle "which could prevent us from reaching our goal...the tendency to become lost in the drama of our minds." Meditation helps to diffuse this drama and open our eyes to the simple beauty of the present moment that lies right in front of us. Here's to the present! Enjoy this day!

Suess: Don't Leave Home Without It

Dr. Suess' brilliant book "Oh, The Places You'll Go" should be required reading at each new stage of life. For kids it speaks frankly to their sense of being at once exhilerated, terrified, bored, and overwhelmed by the whole host of emotional experiences that fly at them like a missle in a 3-D movie.

For teenagers it perfectly illustrates the emotional/spiritual roller coaster that life is, and the whiplash-like speed with which outward and inward change comes. For college-aged people it highlights the impasse reached when restlessness and the weight of big decisions merge.

As adults we move in cycles through all of Suess' "Places", but we do so with a whole armor of defense mechanisms, and while carrying a heavy load of baggage. For us adults the scary places, lurches, and bumps don't always come as so much of a surprise as they did when we were younger and more inexperienced. But they can often cause deeper, subtler, longer-lasting pain since we don't always have a grown up to kiss our boo boos, take us in their arms, and soothe us with a comforting conversation. Sometimes adult suffering can't be soothed with a simple kiss. As adults the voices we attend to are sometimes comforting, but more often than not the messages we hold onto are the more critical ones.

Too often we are subject to what 20th century psychologist, Karen Horney (pronounced Horn- I), called "The tryanny of the shoulds." When we're holding onto all those morally perfectionistic expectations, each new "Place" confronts us not only with the challenges and obstacles inherent to that place or stage in life, but also with the burden of our grown-up second-guessing of ourselves. Dr. Suess refers to just this kind of struggle saying, "I'm afraid that some times you'll play lonely games too. Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you."

Suess describes life as "A Great Balancing Act" and warns to " just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And NEVER mix up your right foot with your left." As advice goes, this may seem kind of lame and insubstantial relative to the size of life's mountains. In fact, though, it's some of the best spiritual advice anyone could give. In other words, Know yourself, know where you are, know where you stand, but be flexible. As adults we tend to leave behind the fundemental wisdom of our childhood books, forgetting that between the rhyming phrases and wild illustrations are spiritual diamonds in the rough. Sometimes the best life-advice we can possibly hear is this, "be your name Buxhaum, or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea, you're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So...get on your way!"

Jog n' Blog: The Training of a Sometimes-disciplined mind, Day 2

When the alarm went off this morning I could feel that pull--that seductive voice that accompanies the ache of my sore muscles saying, "just a few more minutes. It won't hurt if you rest some. You need rest. You deserve it after doing a good job yesterday." They (you remember the all-knowing "they") say we should trust our instincts, listen to our body. Well, that's the thing about the widom of "they"...like anything else it can be proof-texted, taken out of context, and used to rationalize things that ought not to be rationalized. When you're starting an exercise discipline, consistency is key. Barring some kind of serious self-torture, you need to get up and go and ignore that voice. Having been through this process of starting and stopping exercise disciplines before, I wore my running clothes to bed, set my coffee pot to auto-brew, and charged up my ipod the night before. "Know thyself" is the key to everything (I know I said getting up was the key to everything yesterday...that's true. There are lots of different locks on the door into our proverbial "self-care house". Therefore there are lots of keys :-)

I took my 10 year old black lab, Maya, with me for the first half of the run, then put her up and finished by myself. To bring the dog, or not to bring the dog...to listen to music or not to listen to music. It's really the difference between solitude and accompaniment. As a mom, it's difficult to figure out what I need at any given time. On one hand I love the quiet, the luxury of no bickering, not being asked for things, not being asked to "watch this". Silence takes on a whole new kind of fullness and presence of its own after you have kids. It's a beautiful thing just to be able to rest in the absence of noise. On the other hand, I now live in a place where I don't have the social connections I once had, or the adult conversations I once took for granted. So, on days like today, music helps. When I exercise, I always try to listen for a word, a phrase, or some kind of noticing that comes to mind that I can carry with me throughout the day. That may sound wierd, but I use exercise as a kind of meditation; a way to encourage reflection to rise to the top of my consciousness, after it has been stampeded by the sheer volume of other stuff to attend to in a family.

On my run this morning I was listening to some hip hop and kept hearing the phrases "compassion in action, devotion in motion (MC Yogi)." As a minister I'm often disappointed by how we "religious people" often manage to take very mystical encounters and turn them into very cerebral concepts, stripping them of their mystery and spirit and putting them in a box, securely fastened by our fears. Compassion and devotion are not static. They are not ideas. Compassion and devotion are ways of being that necessarily require openness of spirit, vulnerability of soul, and the willingness to step out of our comfort zone and enter into the experience of the "other". When Jesus said that the second greatest commandment was to "love your neighbor as yourself" he was immediately asked, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus didn't answer with an idea or a bumper sticker-ready platitude. He told them a story of a guy who had been left for dead in a ditch, beaten and bloody. In this story person after person walked right past the man, more concerned with their own cleanliness, their own safety, their own security, than with the pressing need of the bleeding beaten man. In fact, it was the purity laws of their faith which kept them from extending their help. The Samaritan, one who was himself already on the fringes of society, one who was already considered an outcast by religious authorities, was the one who got in the ditch with the man, lifted him up, used expensive oils to clean him, and looked him in the eyes as he did it. When asked, "who is my neighbor?" (in other words, "how far do I REALLY have to extend my love?") Jesus told this story of compassion and devotion. Compassion in action, devotion in motion. As we go through our exercise disciplines, granted the priceless gift of motion, let us be reminded of the higher purpose that drives us. Let us be a people of action and motion, not just the mindless motion of distraction and diversion, but of purposeful movement toward the mystical encounter of compassion. Let us be devoted to actively loving, actively seeing one anther, actively helping those who aren't easy to love or to help. Let us set aside our need to box up and corden off our love, and instead give it away freely. After all, it's not ours to keep anyway.

Jog n' Blog: The training of a sometimes-disciplined Mind, Day 1

Well, as you can tell from the seemingly millenial period that has passed between my last blog entry and this one, my writing disicipline has been undisciplined. As coincidence might have it, so has my exercise and self-care. Yes, it has occured to me that perhaps this is a bit more than a coincidence. Like so many stay-at-home-moms I have fallen into a pattern of excuses for my lack of self-care. Let's see if I can some up with a few that some of you all might recognize: I need to sleep in; It's the summer; I just need to veg out and relax after cooking, cleaning, washing, etc.; once school starts and the kids are back in school it'll be easier (Yeah, RIGHT!!!). Okay, that's enough. I'm annoying myself just putting it in writing. But, while we're on the subject, putting things in writing is something I have also come up with a million excuses not to do. For the sake of balance, here we go: At the end of the day my mommy brain is just too tired to put two words together; without an office, it's too hard to focus; without much time to think, whatever I write will crappy anyway, so why bother?; Whew! That's enough. I think we all get the point.

So I have decided to take my two "growing edges", as it were, and merge them for one colossal experiment in learning discipline. "THEY" (you know, the big "they" in the sky who study everything and report everything so that we can all be definitively assured that what we're doing is "right") say that it takes about a month for something to become a habit. So, like so many other people in their mid-thirties trying to find some order in the joyful madness of parenthood, I am commiting to 1 month of jogging and blogging. I'm going to forget about whether this writing is crap. I'm going to try not to think about how bad I look in my jogging clothes. I'm going to force myself to get out of bed every morning at 6 a.m., before the kids get up. I am going to walk/jog/run rain or shine for 1 hour everyday. In true Amy form, I'm all jazzed up about starting this discipline today, but I *KNOW* the joy of the kick-off will wear off and I'll be pulled steadily back into the vortex of excuses and apathy. So be warned, when I do you all will have to listen to me whine about it while I try to push through and keep going. In the meantime, while I'm on my project-starter's high, I will go with it and spew a little of what occured to me as I jog/walked (okay, more walking than jogging...who are we kidding) today.

First, get the right clothes and shoes!!! Especially when it's sticky and humid. Get what I'm saying, ladies??? Keep moving. It will get boring, especially if you have no running partner. I chose not to listen to music today just to see if my frenetic mind could deal with the silence. But when I let my mind go, there were so many sounds: dogs barking, birds singing, the routine open and shut of car doors and starting engines as people left for work. These are beautiful sounds. They're the sounds of life. They're the sounds of life happening in all of the ways we take for granted until bad stuff happens. They are the sounds of daily rhythms. So, for today, I tried to appreciate them as I panted, got annoyed with my dog who couldn't seem to choose a side of the road to run on, and as I reminded myself to buy the right running clothes:-P Yesterday in church, during the Invitation to Communion, our rector read the same words he read every week, "Come, those who come to this table often, and those who haven't been in a while; those who have little faith, and those who wish to have more..." I had been used to thinking about those words as referring to two different groups of people. But as I listed this time, thinking about my own frustration with disciplines, it hit me: in each of us is always both persons. Some days we have little or no faith. We wonder why life has dealt us a bad hand and why so many others "have it so good." We can't muster up the energy to do the laundry, much less feel inspired to any great pursuit. And on other days we feel like we're on that runner's high. Creative ideas are easily flowing, we actually notice the poetic beauty of the smiles on our kids' faces, we make lists of things "to do" because we are excited about living. In each of us is both persons. One other thing our rector said during his sermon, which was about "the Art of Living" was that "each of us is the most perfect work of art God has created." What if we all thought of ourselves that way, even for a few moments each day? We're each a gift...a cherished creation. When we receive a fabulous gift for our birthday we take care of it. We maintain it. We enjoy it. We smile when we look at it, thinking of the thought and care that went into its choosing or creating. So, as I plug away at this new "jog n' blog" discipline, I'm going to try to think of myself in this way. I have little faith. I have much faith. But I am the best art God has made and I will come to the table regardless of how I feel. Will you be my virtual partner on the journey?

The Discipline of Discernment-- Where are you?

In his famous Harvard Divinity School lectures entitled The Human Condition Father Thomas Keating asks the question which, he feels, "is the focus of the first half of the spiritual journey." Three short words: "Where are you?" I remember as a child going to the grocery store with my Mom, walking so close to her that I listened to the rhythmic clunking of her heels on the hard floor as we walked. I could feel her skirt brush my arm every so often. She looked at her list and scanned the shelves, questioning quietly to herself. I usually cast my eyes around at all the different people we passed, noticing the worn parts of their shoes, the way their brow wrinkled when talked to their children, unconsciously eavesdropping on their conversations. My Mom and I weren't actively interacting, but I could feel her presence, her gait, her energy of protection surrounding me as we moved seperately together through the store. Like any young child, though, I saw the candy displayed in those clear tubs, with one lid just barely held open by the metal scoop someone had forgotten to put all the way back in. I saw it and I wandered off, away from my Mom. I followed the impulse of my sweet tooth and the promise of getting a scoop of yogurt-covered raisins. Before long I realized I didn't feel my Mom's presence there. I turned and looked behind me and didn't see her anywhere in that aisle either. I shouted, "Mommy, where are you?" My heart started to beat harder in my chest as I turned and went to the next aisle. She wasn't there either. "Where did she go? Why couldn't she hear me? What if I can't find her and she can't find me and I'm left here all alone?" Then, just as I started to cry silently to myself, I heard my name over the loudspeaker ordering me, Amy Hutchinson, to please come to the front of the store. My mother was waiting for me. While I knew I might be in trouble I didn't care. I could breathe again. Everything was okay. She had found me. That loudspeaker might as well have been the voice of God to me right then. My Mom knew where I was. I knew where she was. Everything would be okay.
The need to feel oriented, to feel connected to those who know us, and to be surrounded by those who can help and proctect us is the most basic need of all. Nothing makes the panic set in faster than feeling lost and disoriented. Without a sense of place, our sense of self falls apart. Our place and our identity are inextricably connected. When we meet someone for the first time, our first question is usually, "where are you from?" That one simple question unlocks all sorts of other details about who they are. The other day, standing at the cash register at Old Navy, I mentioned to the saleswoman that I had recently moved from Nashville, Tennessee. Instantly the girl next to me in line said, "You're from Nashville? Me too. I moved here 3 years ago." "Do you miss it?" I asked. "Oh yeah. My whole family still lives there. It's hard." Shortly after our conversation she gave me a coupon she couldn't use and we shared a knowing smile as I left. We shared a sense of place. In a way, our emotional compasses were still showing Nashville as our true North.
I think the Spiritual journey always comes back to that question. Where are you? Whether we are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, whatever our faith may be, we all stand someplace in relationship to God, Abba, Allah, The Higher Power, or the Unknown. We all stand someplace in relationship to others in our life. We all stand someplace in relationship to our "true" self. Sometimes the place where we stand is a paved path, well traveled, and flanked with stores providing anything we might need. We may not even be aware that we are at a crossroads since we are so comfortable. At other times it feels like every step we take carries us further off the beaten path, deeper into the mud, and farther away from the trailhead. For many of us, though, a lot of life is lived somewhere in the middle. Our days seem to push us from behind from the moment we wake up, urging us quickly into routines, task lists, commutes, in and out of problems, and leaving us exhausted on the bed at the end of the day feeling left with little or no time to reflect on any of it.
The problem with never reflecting, never thinking through our day and considering how we might want to change direction or recallibrate our compasses for the next day, is that we get lost. It doesn't always happen immediately. Sometimes we don't even know we're lost because all the signs look the same, all the roads we're traveling look familiar. But when we're lost on the inside, when we slowly become a stranger to our self, to our hopes, to our inner "home". When our spirits are lost, our symptoms aren't so obvious. Sometimes we say yes to too many people and too many things. Sometimes we just opt to play on the internet instead of talking with our partner. Sometimes we just keep moving and fill every moment up with more and more. At some point the ache will set in though, and we'll look at ourselves in the mirror and wonder who that is looking back.
The discipline of Discernment isn't just about the big decisions, though we do learn much about our spirits at those crossroads. Discernment starts with noticing. As you go through the tasks of your day this week, just try to notice what's around you. Try to be there with your thoughts instead of letting your mind wander. Turn off the radio in the car for 5 minutes and just breathe and feel whatever you're feeling. This is what children are so good at. They live in the moment and absorb, with all of their senses, the texture, complexion, aroma, and energy of that moment. Take just 10 or 15 minutes this week in the car, at the store, at your desk, to just notice. Ask yourself, "where am I?" The answer may surprise you.