Ted Lasso-ing Your Imposter Syndrome

          I haven't posted on here in years. Since my last post, I have changed careers from ministry to clinical mental health counseling. I am in my last year of my MS in Counseling degree, at 46. When you're in your 20's and early 30's, the culture expects you to change your mind/career/location. People love a glow-up story from younger people. Once you're in your 40's, big career change is often viewed differently. People tend to want to cheer you on, but also kind of check if you're ok. They seem to secretly wonder if you're having a midlife crisis. High-stakes life changes can sometimes come with a LOUD inner voice shouting, "You can't screw this one up, sister! You better be sure you can pull it off!" 

        While I preach to my kids about how mistakes are important opportunities for learning, let's face it, we're all way too aware of the "comments section" people in our lives. Those people who may follow us on socials but don't really know what our life is. When we're doing something new and risky, we don't always have the strength for Q & A. If you have ADHD like I do, your inner voice is more like a Rebecca Welton than a Ted Lasso. If you haven't seen Ted Lasso yet, start now. You'll thank me! Rebecca fully expects Ted to fail. Ted looks right past the success-failure binary and relentlessly pursues learning, connection, compassion, and reconciliation. This show CHANGED MY LIFE. For those of us in a lifelong tug-of-war with imposter syndrome, Ted Lasso offers the perfect solution--love for the learning process, compassion for self, and connection with supportive others. But, just as Ted Lasso's courage shouldn't have been underestimated, don't underestimate how much courage it takes to offer compassion to others, much less to yourself. 

          I was recently gifted a pottery wheel when my daughter organized a "wheel fund" among some of my close friends. She knew that I have longed to get back to throwing pots after decades of missing it. She also knew I would never spend money on that for myself, because I felt guilty about spending money on another degree in midlife. She gave me the gift, not only of a wheel, but of permission to pursue something unrelated to productivity and utility. She gave me the gift of creative joy. However, every potter will tell you, you can't make beautiful pots without lots of pots flopping. Even if you throw the "perfect" pot, there's a solid chance it will crack while drying, or crack while being fired. If you're so focused on producing a "successful" pot, you'll see the flopped bowl on your wheel as a sign of failure, instead of a sign of growth. This happened to me yesterday, when I threw a "perfect" mug, only to accidentally knock into it and squish it. As soon as it happened, I noticed my inner voice become like Ted Lasso's haters. I turned off my wheel, stomped back into the house, went to my room, and cried. 

      Sometimes our inner voice can sound like that press-conference scene in Ted Lasso where the reporter asks, "I just want to make sure I get this right. You're an American, who has never set foot in England, whose athletic success has only come at the Amateur level, second-tier one at that, and is now being charged with the leadership of a Premier-League football club, despite clearly possessing very little knowledge of the game." Ted replies, "You got a question in there, Trent?" The reporter replies, "Yeah. Is this a *!#* joke?" The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves may come from important people in our childhood, from trauma, abuse, grief, and all sorts of other experiences we had no control over. But, like Ted Lasso, we can choose to challenge those negative stories. 

       Ted chooses to take that same reporter, Trent, out to lunch later, knowing full-well that Trent saw him as an incompetent imposter. He asks him, "What do you love?...Me, I love coachin'. And I'm gonna say somethin' again, just so you didn't think it was a mistake the first time I said it. For me, success is not about the wins and losses. It is about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves, on and off the field. And it ain't always easy, Trent. But neither is growin' up without someone believing in you." When we're feeling like a fraud, obsessing over our failures, I wonder what it would be like if we asked ourselves these questions: "What do you love? Which people/practices/spaces help you feel safe growing into the best version of yourself?" I wonder what it would be like if we practiced telling ourselves a new story? What if we started imagining what the voice of a safe, compassionate, encourager might say to us? Someone who lights up when we walk in the room. I wonder if we can imagine being that person for ourselves sometimes?

        After a hard loss, Ted Lasso asks a player, "what's the animal with the shortest memory? Sam replies, "A goldfish!" Ted says, "That's right. A goldfish only has a 10-second memory. So let's be sad now. Let's be sad together. Then we can be a gosh-darn goldfish. Onward. Forward."  Besides BEGGING you to watch Ted Lasso, the point of this post is to invite you to join me in trying to adopt a goldfish memory for your imperfections and mistakes, and an elephant's memory for your inherent worth. Join me in asking yourself, "What do you love?" instead of "What is the comments section saying?" Join me in cutting the feed of the voices who are quick to list why you're not ready to do a new thing, and turning up the volume on the voices who encourage you saying, "Onward! Forward! So, all my "imposters," are you with me? Let's be angry together. Let's be sad together. Let's be discouraged together, then we can be gosh-darn goldfish! Onward! Forward! 

💜 Amy

        

Spiritual Feng Shui and My Inner Old Lady

Tomorrow marks the official beginning of a new school year, both for my kids and for me. My son is starting middle school, my daughter is a Junior in High School (YIKES! How even??), and I am starting my second semester of an MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. I took the Summer off from classes to work on some other important things. I turned 43 this year, and have have found that my goals are very different than they were when I was 33, raising small children. Back then I scoured Pinterest for life hacks on couponing, organization, redecorating on a budget, and recipes that sneak veggies into kid-friendly favorites. While I still love me a good Pinterest life hack, my goals have shifted from trying to control my external environment to learning to accept the things I can't control, changing the things I can, and developing the wisdom to know the difference. It's feng shui for the soul.

Spiritual Feng Shui is about clearing out the cobwebs of control illusions and perfectionism-seeking, and putting my spiritual house in order. Now if you think for one hot second that I am trading one brand of perfectionism for another, don't. Putting a spiritual house in order has less to do with order and more to do with acceptance and self-compassion. Getting a spiritual house in order means making a home where imperfection, failure, doubt, insecurity, fear, and disappointment are invited to tea with warm biscuits and boysenberry jam. It means creating a space where the voices of regret and worry about past choices are listened to by one's inner old lady--that woman that can tell you, in the same breath, how you need to get off of your hind end and do the hard thing, but also that she will hold you as long as you need her to while you cry about how hard it was afterward. Our inner child is worth listening to, but our inner old lady really knows what's up. She knows when to give us that look that says, "Child, you are straight up fooling yourself right now. It's time to get real. Go take care of things, and I'll be here when you get back. I'll fix you a plate." My inner old lady knows that my spiritual feng shui is not about deprivation and cardboard food.

So, this Summer, I have worked on letting go of things. Letting go of doing my kids laundry for them when they have stalled on doing it for themselves. Yep, it means a messy laundry room floor sometimes. But it also means competent kids who realize that their Mom put in lots of good years as their housekeeper, and now has her own other work to do. I'm also letting go of trying to read everyone's mind and discern their feelings, like some kind of bomb-sniffing dog trying to figure out if we've got a live one. Many women take on this role in their families, because we have been raised to believe that it is our job to keep everyone happy, balanced, and stable. We have been taught to diffuse the proverbial bombs before anyone even knows they are ticking. Nope. Not our job. We need to let our people feel and resolve their own feelings.

That one's a killer challenge for me. When you're intuitive and empathetic, you usually see other people's emotional stuff coming before they do. Or you think you do. So you want to fix it. If only they would ask, you'd be able to help them. Here's where my inner old lady clears her throat, looks down at me over her reading glasses, and says, "Just cuz you can, doesn't mean ya should." Right?! She's so wise, and calls me out every. single. time. It's hard, though, because, for some of us, carrying other people's pain feels like what love looks like. But that's not always love. Sometimes that's enabling, and it often feels so heavy that you can't get other important things done because you're hauling their mess around. So, like my inner old lady, tell them they can do that hard thing, and that you'll be there to talk when they get back. You can even fix them a plate (or grab something pre-made from Costco. They even have acai bowls now)! That's ninja-level self-care!

My final spiritual feng shui goal is to get my body back in healthy shape. Now this one is so fraught with the potential for shame and patriarchal cultural body nonsense that I hesitate to even talk about it publicly. It seems like people latch on too quickly to physical transformation stories. We applaud women more and more the thinner they are. This is dumb and dangerous. There are skinny people all over the world whose inner voice is shaming them into submission saying, "If  you don't lose weight, people will assume you have emotional problems." "If you really loved yourself, you would do what it takes to stay healthy." "Don't you want to set a good example for your kids?" So, here's the thing. Life has a lot of hard things in it. We are all just doing the best we can. Shaming only takes the weight of all of those hard things and multiplies it with messages that isolate us, hurt us, and alienate us from one another. We cannot and must not be about that. We are so much better than that. So, for me, getting my body in healthy shape can't be about keeping up with the Jones's or avoiding ridicule and judgment.

 For me, getting my body in healthy shape is about giving myself permission to hand off the baton. To let things fall apart sometimes so that I can put myself back together. It's about listening to my inner old lady tell me, "If you wait for things to slow down to take care of yourself, you'll be my age before you do anything. Now let me drink by wine in peace while you get your butt to the gym." It's about LOVE. So I am going to write down what I love. Write down what brings me joy. Then I'll make a list of the action steps that pave a pathway toward those things. I love feeling strong. I love some good arm muscles. Sharice Davids is my inspiration these days. I'm never going to become a martial artist, but I love the idea that these arms that have held, rocked, hauled, cooked, and cleaned up after my kids, and have held people when they were sick or dying, could get strong again and carry me into the next season of my life. So I'm going to do my burpees and planks and think about lifting up whatever needs lifting in the next 10 years. It will be a kind of thank you note to my body for surviving the last 5 years of terrible self-care.

Spiritual feng shui is less about order and more about freedom. We spend the first half of our lives trying to learn the rules and play the game. The second half begs us to listen to our inner bad ass old lady who reminds us to "do no harm and take no crap." My inner old lady is no demure shrinking violet. She calls me out and loves me up in equal measure. She won't let me make excuses and put myself on the back burner. She wants me to take up space and speak my mind. She wants me to resign from my role as resident people-pleaser and emotional bomb diffuser. But she also knows that I need to hear "I love you" lots of times a day and like long hugs. And she never tells me that I'm too much or that my vulnerability makes me needy. When she looks at me over those reading glasses, I can always tell that she's proud of me. I love my inner child, don't get me wrong. But my inner old lady teaches me how to be who I needed when I was young. She's compassion and love wrapped in laugh lines and serving me up a plate of biscuits with boysenberry jam. She is my spiritual feng shui guru, and she cares less about order and more about me. Invite her over sometime and let her in. You won't regret it.

Choosing Wisdom Over Control

On the wall at my gym this morning I saw a plaque on the wall that read, “Innovation—If you want to predict the future, create it.” I have always struggled with simplistic positive-thinking quips. They sound really good on the surface but ignore how much of life we simply can’t control. That’s why I’ll take the Serenity Prayer any day over simple positive thinking, self-help techniques. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” This covers it all. As soon as we think that everything is in our control, we are in big trouble. But that doesn’t mean we’re off the hook. We don’t get to “let go and let God.” Our real work, once we move past magical thinking and unrealistic responsibility-taking, starts when we get wise about what we can control and what we can’t control.

What makes this discernment especially hard, though, is that we live in a consumer culture. Everywhere we turn we are being sold something: food, diet advice, pharmaceuticals, clothes, style tips, homes, décor, parenting advice, and even spirituality. The real message underneath all the ads, though, is this, “If you get or do the right stuff, you can be in control.” Spoiler alert, this is nonsense. Terrible, unfair, unjust, and painful things happen no matter how much you go to the gym, how great your skin looks, how much clean eating you do, how organized you are, how many self-help books you read, or how much you pray. I know this seems like terrible news, but it’s actually liberating good news! It means you can stop wasting all of your precious energy on self-defeating perfectionism and start investing your energy in practices that make you humble, resilient, kind, and wise.

That’s what real serenity is. Real serenity comes when we cultivate loving relationships, surrender to the Grace of God whose love we can’t earn, and participate in practices that soften our hearts and strengthen our spirits. Serenity comes when we attend to what is merciful and just and find ways to use our gifts and talents to add to the mercy and justice already at work in the world. Serenity comes when we stop obsessing about happiness and take steps toward wholeness. We can and do create the future. We create the future when we love our people when they’re hard to love. We create the future when we smile and talk to someone we don’t know at in our faith communities, instead of circling up with familiar people. We create the future when we take an hour for ourselves and fill it with exercise, meditation, worship, reading, listening to a beautiful piece of music, or gazing out at a beautiful view. We create the future when we talk with a counselor to work through pain and loss that has a life-draining hold on us. We create the future when we make art, pursue research, and explore our curiosity. We create the future when we speak truth to power.

The bad news is that we will never be in control. The great news is that control is overrated; wisdom is not. Get wise about what keeps you from loving and accepting love. Get wise about what keeps you from forgiving and being forgiven. Get wise about what gives you deep joy. Get wise about what you can change and what you can’t or shouldn’t change. Get wise about what you are gifted at doing, and how you can use those gifts to make a more merciful and just world. Most of all, get wise about the ways in which self-reliance can get in the way of Grace. True wisdom happens when we admit how much we don’t know and how great is our need of one another. So, don’t worry about being in control. Work on being whole. Don’t worry about predicting the future. Work on showing up in your present. It won’t be easy. It won’t be painless, but the wisdom, community, and Grace you will find there will be the greatest gift you will ever receive.

Bunnies, Burrows, and the Power of "Yes. And..."

My living room couch sits in front of a big picture window. Through the fabric of my gauzy white translucent curtains I can see people walking their dogs, moms pushing strollers, dads walking hand in hand with their pre-schoolers, and animals busying themselves in my yard as if to say, "I like what you've done with the place, but we're just going to have to make these few key changes. The current layout just isn't quite working for us." This morning I watched a bunny preparing a nest in a hole she had made in my yard. My son and I watched from the couch as she pulled up blades of grass and carried them in neat little mouth-bundles back to the nest. Each time someone walked past she would look up like and act all nonchalant for a second before digging back in to her project.

I know that some of my neighbors go all Mr. MacGregor on the chipmunks, squirrels, and bunnies in their yards. They don’t want their lawn damaged, or property value diminished. Yes, and as I watched my lawn bunny undertake her work I felt happy that my yard was making space for another little home—a safe space for new life. My daughter recently attended the Science Fiction convention with her dad. One of the talks was on a genre of science fiction called “solar punk.” These stories are set in a future world in which solar power is the norm, and the architecture is adapted to the natural environment. Glass buildings curve and spiral around trees and plants. Vertical gardens punctuate the skyline. All transportation is underground, leaving city streets for foot and bike traffic only. As I enjoyed watching the bunny carve out a hole for her babies, I realized that I would rather have a hole in my lawn full of baby bunnies than a flawless yard with no room for the creatures who inhabited it in the first place. Yes, I’m a bleeding heart of the first order, and I don’t see that as a bad thing.

            Perspective can change everything. From a homeowner’s point of view, my lawn bunny is committing yard destruction. From the bunny’s perspective it’s simply undertaking home construction. As I sat next to my son on the couch watching him marveling at the bunny (instead of his video games) I realized that our relationships are all a matter of perspective. We think we know what our roles are, and we act accordingly. When our child screams at us we might think it’s disrespect. When our spouse or partner needs time alone we might take it personally. When our friendships change, we might assume we did something wrong, or that they don’t care enough. When our community changes, we might feel like it’s sad that it’s not the way it used to be.

            What if we shifted our perspective and stepped into another’s shoes for a moment? What if we said "yes" to our perspective, but then added "and" and considered the other's perspective. When our child screams, yes, it might be disrespectful, and they want attention and connection and don’t know how to ask for it. When our spouse or partner needs time alone, yes, we feel disconnected from them, and they might feel overwhelmed and need some space to process that. When our friendships change, yes, we're hurt that she or he isn't calling, and he or she may be facing a lot of difficult challenges and doesn't quite know how to be honest with themselves, much less be authentic with their friends. When our community changes, yes, we miss the comfort of the old ways, and new things are emerging.

            We are creatures of habit. We want to feel secure, certain, and comfortable. We like to think that we can figure things out then proceed accordingly. After all, we didn’t spend money and time manicuring a perfect lawn, raising kids, nurturing relationships, and investing in our community for nothing! Sometimes, though, what looks like destruction from one point of view is really construction from another. Sometimes it’s hard to make space for a new perspective, a new way of relating, or a new way of showing up in our community. Sometimes what feels like an intrusion or inconvenience is actually an invitation to share ourselves, and our spaces, in new and potentially life-giving ways. Sometimes, instead of reacting to a “problem” right away, we can take a moment to shift our perspective, see things from another angle, and allow space for a new way. Sometimes, as students of improvisation will tell you, it’s amazing what can be created when we are willing to set aside our scripts and expectations and simply say, “Yes. And…”

Trading in The Giving Tree Life for the Beloved Life

Social media is full of quotes, reminders, and articles about the importance of living your best life, of self-care, and of striving for happiness. We all know that we only have this one precious life. We all know that we need to put our own oxygen mask on before helping others. So why is this so hard to do? Most of us spend lots of time telling ourselves what we should do, and very little time doing it.  It’s true that most of us are short on time and long on important duties and obligations. But that’s not really an excuse. What we seem to struggle with the most (myself included) is a wicked combination of a martyr complex and fear paralysis.

On one hand we believe, even if unconsciously, that forgetting ourselves to care for others is a noble thing. To some extent, it’s what people of faith are called to do. We should not be so self-absorbed that we fail to recognize and work to repair the brokenness and injustices in our world. However, we are not called to empty ourselves. We are not called to be the living embodiment of The Giving Tree  (a book that is nothing but a cautionary tale for the martyr complex—it’s what a total lack of self-care and boundaries leads to)! Somewhere along the way some of us got the message that if we really love people we will sacrifice whatever is necessary to make them happy. What we need to remember is that we can’t make anyone else happy. That’s not our job! We can love people, help people, support people, and care for people. What we can’t do is fix or change people. Martyring ourselves will not inspire others to change. It will only deprive us of the oxygen we need to flourish—the oxygen of self-care, nourishment, quiet, exercise, creativity, connection, and play. A tree that has been cut down to a stump can’t clean the air, house the birds, provide shade, or bear fruit. Boundaries help us preserve what we need to nourish who we were created to be. Boundaries help us bear fruit in our lives. Boundaries preserve the means by which we can be repairers, healers, activists, innovators, and creators. We do not need to empty ourselves in order to fill others’ cups.  

Then there’s the fear.  So many of the decisions we make are motivated by fear.  It’s not usually fear with a capital “F,” like fear of heights or fear of death. What paralyzes us are the fears with a lower-case “f,”: fear of change; fear of embarrassment; fear of making mistakes; and fear of bothering, inconveniencing, or upsetting others. While these fears don’t seem big, they’re actually the most paralyzing, because they point to the things that we need most in the world—belonging, security, and connection. Practicing self-care—flourishing rather than simply surviving—is fundamentally about pushing past all the “little” fears and claiming our identity as beloved children of a loving creator. I don’t mean claiming an identity that says, “I’m special, so I deserve to neglect others and pamper myself.” That’s entitlement. I mean that we must claim an identity of wholeness. We must always remember, and remind others, that we are meant to love and be loved. Fred Rogers always said that “the greatest thing we can do is to show others that they are loved and that they are capable of loving.” I know. He should be canonized as a saint YESTERDAY!  What I often ask myself (over and over, because I keep failing at it) is “Would you want your children to treat themselves the way you are treating yourself, talking to yourself, or being treated?” If the answer is no, we have work to do. We need to put ourselves on the list!

So how do we do this when we have work, bills, and loved ones who need tending? “We can’t let people down” we say to ourselves. I think the problem starts when we set goals for ourselves that are too big and too unattainable. Our resolutions are often: lose 50 pounds; save $5000 for an emergency fund; make sure our children are happy; keep a constantly clean house; overhaul our whole diet; be a better friend. These goals are noble, but HUGE! What if we simply started small. The best path out of the woods of martyrdom is marked with simple, humble stepping stones.

The first step is to just breathe.  If we pay attention to our breath, we realize that we rarely breathe slowly and deeply. Breathe slowly and deeply. The world won’t stop turning. The next step might be to simply call a friend and put an actual date on the calendar for coffee and GO! While you’re there, sipping that beautiful brew, show up in the moment. Listen with your whole attention. Laugh! Be open. Don’t bother trying to act like you have all your stuff together. Fred Rogers says that attention is a holy thing because when we really pay attention to someone, we’re doing what God does for us all the time. When you talk yourself out of exercise, because you think of it as a luxury, instead think of it as medicine that you can’t live without. The truth is, it is!

So often, we live like martyrs and are paralyzed with fears because we suffer under the delusion that there is nothing we can really change or stop doing. We think that we must have the house in the “right” neighborhood, so we take on financial obligations that guide everything else we do. We think we can’t tell the people we love what we are feeling and needing because they should be able to read our minds and already know. Or, worse, we think we’ll burden them.  We think we can’t go to that group fitness class because we’ll be the most out-of-shape one in the room. We think we can’t say “no” to our kids’ requests because they’ll think we’re mean, poor providers, or they won’t be like the other kids. We think we have to post only the positive experiences on social media because otherwise people will think we are a downer and won’t follow us.  At the heart of so many of our actions or inaction is fear that is grounded in delusion. The truth is, we do not need to live in the “right” neighborhood. There are plenty of good neighborhoods, with plenty of fabulous people. We need to spend more time being good neighbors than we do judging our neighbors.

The truth is, the people we love can’t  read our minds. I don’t quote Dr. Phil very often, but he’s right when he says, “Do you wanna be happy, or do you wanna be right?” Tell your people what you’re feeling. Tell them what you need. Maybe don’t say “I need for you not to be an idiot,” but definitely say, “I feel worried and I need a long hug.”  The truth is, you might go to that group fitness class and have someone mistake you for being pregnant. Who cares? If those people aren’t the one’s showing up for you when you’re hurting, their opinion doesn’t get to matter. 

The truth is, we’re likely to do more damage to our kids if we don’t say “no” often enough. The world is a hard place, with much to overcome. If we don’t give them practice overcoming or sacrificing, they won’t be equipped to be good neighbors and people, won’t learn compassion, and won’t know how to renounce things. We are raising humans whose job it is not simply to be happy, but to be good, kind, compassionate, people who can help repair and heal the world.

So let’s stop living Giving Tree lives, and start living beloved lives. Let’s live, not as though we are too broken or busy to be worthy of care, but as if we are too precious not to.  Somewhere on the other side of martyrdom and fear lies a humble little path of uneven stepping stones. That path isn’t clearly marked or well-worn. You should bring friends, wear sturdy, comfortable shoes, and get ready to get messy. There’s no clean or easy way through. At the end, though, there is a table where cups are overflowing,  food is nourishing, and the canopy of trees is breathtaking! No stumps, just arched branches that spent decades bathing in sunlight, drinking in fresh water, and putting down deep roots in good soil.  They didn’t have any idea what they should have done. They just did what they were created to do, and it is a thing of beauty.

Reclaiming Our Time: Spiritual Practices for People in a Hurry

        I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “practice” I think about work! We run our kids to baseball practice, soccer practice, and dance practice. We remind our kids and grand-kids to practice their instruments. When our job descriptions change, we practice new skills.  Perhaps you hear the phrase “spiritual practices” and think, “More work? No thanks.” At this year’s Women’s retreat, I want to change our minds about Christian practices. Christian practices don’t take up our time, they transform our time, reclaiming it as a gift from God. 

        I invite you to think of the practices we will learn together, not as things to do, but as doorways into God’s grace, mercy, and presence. We practice prayer when we learn how to invite God into our conversations, joys, and longings. We practice hospitality when we make neighbors out of strangers and learn to treat all people as people created in God’s image. We practice discernment when we learn how to serve God in the places where our “deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Through Christian spiritual practices, our lives become a liturgy, our work becomes an offering, and our time becomes a gift. I look forward to practicing God’s grace, mercy, and presence with all of you in April!

Grace and Peace to you!

Rev. Amy Cox

Reflect and Practice: Be Witnesses Of These Things!

Read:  

Acts 3: 12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24: 36-48

Reflect:

In this week's gospel, the risen Christ appears to the disciples; they are frightened and fail to recognize him. He tells them to be at peace. He explains his resurrection by interpreting scripture. They eat together. They are enlightened, then Jesus leaves. Luke’s account here is very similar to John’s account, with one very important difference. Here in Luke’s account, Jesus commissions them with a very clear vocation saying, “You are witnesses of these things.”  We Episcopalians can get pretty uncomfortable with the word “witness.” We squirm a bit as we envision bible-thumping or people intrusively demanding to know whether we have “been saved.”  We have come to understand that Christianity is personal and private, just as our lives are largely divided between public and private.

But in the early, first-century church, being a Christian automatically meant a public confession and identity. The term “Christian” wasn’t one that followers of Christ gave to themselves. It was coined by outsiders—those who saw their thriving community and chose this word to describe them. Early Christians shared a common life that was unique and visible. Their communities were intended, not primarily to attract new members or keep the buildings in good repair, but to point to the fulfillment of God’s story in the person of Christ by the way they loved others and cared for the weakest among them.  To be “witnesses” meant to live as Christ lived, and love as Christ loved in all spheres of life. Jesus calls us out of individualism into a common life. He invites us to let our faith shape the way we think about and live our lives. He invites us to pay attention to the places where God’s love is at work in our lives and in the world, and to share that good news. We bear witness all the time to movies, accomplishments, and events that amaze us. Christ calls us to use what we love to do, what we are good at doing, and the resources we have to carry the love of Christ out into the world—to be witnesses by our lives!

Practice:

In a notebook this week, jot down moments where you noticed God's love at work in the world or in your life.  Also, Make a list of 5 things you love to do, and 5 things you’re good at. Notice where the items on your lists overlap. Then extend the love of God to someone else through one of the things on your list. Grace and Peace to you!

More Than One Way To Spell Feminism

In a recent blog post (on a progressive mommy blog!) I read a piece meant to reassure moms who work outside the home. It's central message went something like this, "You are teaching your girls that they can be equal to men and boys, and you're teaching your boys that girls and women are their equals." I'm as feminist as they come, and I certainly understand the heart of this argument. I never want working moms to feel a moment of guilt either. They are superheros, helping to support their families and hopefully fulfilling their own vocational dreams at the same time. But what I see as problematic is the statement that working outside of the home helps their children to see them as equal to men. Inherent in this reasoning is the idea that a traditional nine-to-five, working outside the home job, is the standard-bearer of what success and achievement look like. Have you ever heard anyone suggest that men who stay at home with the children are teaching children that men can be equal to women? I haven't. In fact, most men who serve in the role of stay-at-home parent often find themselves fielding unsolicited parenting advice from people on the street, shut out of group play dates, and victims of the ridiculous assumption that they can't find "real" work, or that they're less "manly." 

Let's just listen to what we're really saying here. We are saying that shaping, nurturing, guiding, and managing the lives of children is of less value then other work out in the world. This belief translates into very low pay for nannies, childcare workers, and preschool teachers--those people who are there on the front lines of those first five years of a child's life; the years which study after study confirms are the most crucial years for social, emotional, and cognitive development. Most nannies only make about $35,000 a year, which would never be enough in most States for them to support a family on only that income. Most preschool teachers don't make much more than that, and childcare workers often make barely above minimum wage. We have put our money where our beliefs are. So instead of devaluing people who do the work of raising and nurturing children, why don't we change the narrative, and teach our children that ALL work is valuable. Why don't we celebrate those who successfully teach little humans how to be adults who think of others, who know how to critically think, who know how to put themselves in other people shoes, who know how to cook and manage other life skills, and who understand the inherent value of every human being. 

This kind of work isn't what people do when they can't do other work. We don't become equal to men when we stop doing this kind of work. It is, in itself, an admirable and successful achievement.  If we change the narrative that implies that childcare is less valuable, less prestigious work, then maybe we would create policies that reward the value of ALL work. Then maybe our children would see that it's worth our time, money, and admiration to value the care and guiding of humans, and that men or women can successfully do that. Then maybe we would have more leaders who value the care of every human being, and who create a culture that translates that value into deserved pay, humane and egalitarian policies, and individual beliefs that don't force either working parents to feel guilty, or stay-at-home parents to be devalued, or considered not equally as admirable or successful as those who work outside the home. We do not need to try to place in an achievement competition. True feminism should create and support equal pay, equal opportunity, and equal respect for ALL women and ALL men, in whatever vocation they feel called to pursue.

The Uprising of Hope

The early hours of the morning have a holy silence about them, seemingly suspended in time as the rest of the world sleeps. Only a few determined birds chirp. The hum of background noise—talking, bustling, working, hammering, cooking—are all absent. The silence in these hours is almost as palpable as the presence of a person. Here, in this holy silence, Mary Magdalene attends to her own thoughts and senses in the thin place between this life and the next. In the silence and darkness even her weeping must have felt holy. This may have been what it felt like in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep. Dark, deep, holy, silent space. There is no fanfare or festival here. Not yet. Here, in this very thin place, is where Mary goes to find the Jesus’ body.

Here, after a walk enshrouded in quiet and tears, Mary Magdalene discovers the tomb empty. Here, in today’s gospel, she is confronted with grief that the teacher and messiah, whom she loved, had been taken from her and from the whole community of disciples who followed him. In an attempt to understand how to piece life back together—how find God’s hand in the midst of all this, she goes to the tomb to look after his body, and finds only emptiness.

Tears and grief are not what we want to think about on Easter morning. As the first bulbs of Spring push up through the ground, pushing hopeful exclamation points of color and life up onto the recently snow-covered ground, we are ready to run, not walk, into hope and new life. And we are not alone. When Mary tells the disciples that Jesus’ body is no longer in the tomb, they practically trip over one another racing to get there and see it for themselves. But Mary is not so hasty. Her grief lingers for a little while as she bears on her shoulders the weight of her loss, and the loss of the hope that her teacher and Messiah embodied. Like Mary, we come to this Easter morning carrying our own grief. We weep for those victims of the nerve gas in Syria, and those on the front lines of battlefields. We weep for those we love who struggle with illness. We weep for those we love who are no longer with us. We weep for lost jobs, broken relationships, and lost opportunities.

This morning, it is appropriate that the world’s grief if concentrated into Mary’s for a holy moment. Unlike the disciples who don’t pause for grief, Mary holds vigil at the empty tomb. It is only there, through the veil of her tears, that she beholds the angels. It is there, where she is brave enough to face the emptiness and darkness, that Christ himself appears to her. Everything in us wants to run, practically tripping over one another, away from darkness and emptiness. We want to be caught up in the fanfare, and put darkness behind us. But the great good news of Mary’s encounter with the angels and with the risen Christ at the empty tomb, is that God does not wait until the darkness passes to break into our lives. The Risen Christ appears to Mary right in the midst of her grief-stricken condition, as she is engulfed in tears. He comes even as the disciples are claimed by fear. He comes even as Thomas is crippled by doubt. God, in Christ, does not wait for sunlight or fanfare to invade our lives with hope, but meets us, even in the early hours of the morning, when solitude confronts us. This is no coincidence. Christ comes to declare that even darkness is a holy sacred thing when we allow Him to enter and transform it. His absence in the tomb and at the after the resurrection points us to the place he most wants to be. He wants to be seen in our bodies, in our lives, in our service. He rose from the tomb to live in us—His new body.

The risen Christ comes in the midst of darkness because it is God’s M.O. to use darkness to create, transform, and bring new life. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” The great good news of Easter is that God invades the darkness and the empty places, right in the midst of whatever condition we are in. God transforms it into a force for creativity, for new beginnings, and for new life. When our children were little we read them a book entitled, “On The Day You Were Born.” It reads, “While you waited in darkness, tiny knees curled to chin, the Earth and her creatures, with the Sun and the Moon, all moved in their places, each ready to greet you the very first moment of the very first day you arrived. On the day you were born, the round planet earth turned toward your morning sky, whirling past darkness, spinning the night into light.” This is the work and grace of God in Christ—to spin the night into light. To make something beautiful out of nothing. Out of the formless void, out of the chaos and disorder, God creates and transforms all things.

The miracle of the risen Christ—the miracle of the empty tomb—is that it changes, not only Jesus, but the whole world. It changes forever who God is with us. It changes the way we are. From now on, we know that we are never alone. As Christ sheds the wrappings of death, death loses its claim on us as well. Christ’s rising is also our liberation. Pain, suffering, fear, and hopelessness unwrap themselves from our souls and fall aside. In one holy moment, the chasm between our lives and the divine life of God is bridged.  This new relationship is clear in Jesus’ conversation with Mary. When the risen Christ is talking to Mary, the pronouns he uses in referring to God are no longer formal, as they were before his rising. When he speaks of “my Father” or “your Father,” the pronouns are intimate and familiar, not the formal, more distant ones. The space and distance is gone. In Jesus’ resurrection, God tore down all the barriers between us and the divine life of God.  Christ’s resurrection allows us to know God the way Jesus knew God. It allows to call God “Abba,” as Jesus did. The best translation of Abba is “Daddy.” Out of the darkness Christ has made all of us children of the Light. In Christ, the darkness is only a backdrop for the light. A holy space.

Christ’s resurrection is a Holy uprising. This uprising removes the stones that keep us from entering into our true identity in God. In Christ, God gives us the grace to transform our grief into mission, our fear into courage, and our doubt into faith. Violette is a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda. She lost her husband and was left to raise her children alone, when she learned about a program that was a true uprising of hope: Women for Women International. She enrolled and was matched with a sponsor in the United States - a woman named Liz Hammer, a Boston mother of two. Liz pledged to provide $30 month for one year to support Violette’s trainings, a portion of which also helped her pay for food, school fees and clothing. As the year progressed, Violette flourished. She learned marketable job skills and honed her innate leadership abilities. Despite having only a high school education, Violette has become a local businesswoman and a leader in her community.  Where Violette had been enshrouded in grief, left to wonder how she would put the pieces of her life back together, the Women for Women program gave her hope and a mission. Through the program God met her at the empty tomb, when she didn’t know who she was looking for, and offered her a new and fruitful life. Her hopelessness was transformed into hope. Her isolation was transformed into a new vocation. This is what God does. It is who God is. The hope of the resurrection is nothing less than God’s uprising. In the risen Christ God not only overcame the power of death, but gave hope a Body—that body is us. Each one of us is called to live out our baptismal vows by carrying hope out of the tomb and into the world. We are each called to participate in the uprising of Christ. As author Brian McClaren says, this is “an uprising of hope, not hate…an uprising armed with love, not weapons. This uprising shouts a joyful promise of life and peace, not angry threats of hostility and death. It is an uprising of outstretched hands, not clenched fists.”

When the Risen Christ says to Mary, “don’t touch me,” the more accurate translation is “don’t cling to me.” Christ’s command to her is his Easter command to each one of us. We are not called to remain in the tomb and behold Christ. We are not called to wait for the darkness to pass. We are called to run out from the tomb and carry the hope of Christ out into the world.  The risen Christ transformed us for a purpose—that we might transform the world by our very lives. So on this Easter Sunday, we come to the altar knowing that we don’t have to leave our pain, our weeping, or our brokenness behind. It is God’s M.O. to meet us right in the midst of it, to transform it, and make of us instruments of hope. So let us run headlong into that hope, claiming our identity as children of Light. This is what it means to be truly alive. Let’s tell others of the most hopeful uprising of all. The Lord is risen! Alleluia! Amen.

Lovingkindness Radiates

Aren't we tired yet, 

of collecting things;

of all the emptiness that greed brings?

We clench our hands and teeth. 

We hoard our stuff and hold our breath;

secure the doors and windows, 

and live afraid of death. 

Lovingkindness, set us free 

for open-mindedness, generosity. 

Sweet forgiveness, amazing Grace.

Lovingkindness radiates.

Aren't we weary yet, of cruel names

we call the "others" who do not look the same?

We name the things they wear, 

the color of their skin,

We name the ones they want to love,

and who they call their kin.

Lovingkindness, help us see,

behind the blindness, our unity.

One earth, together. One human race.

Lovingkindness radiates.

All around the world, don't you think it odd

how people pray for peace,

then wound and kill in the name of God?

Sacred truths are argued,

friends and families collide,

while those hungry, unhoused, and sick

 are glibly brushed aside.

Lovingkindness, bring us peace, 

Anoint us with courage,

 our compassion increase;

Complete forgiveness, wounded Grace.

Lovingkindness radiates.

Lovingkindness, make a way

for hope that comes in jars of clay.

Sweet, sweet forgiveness, amazing Grace,

Lovingkindness, radiates.

Oven-Poached Anytime Eggs in a Muffin Tin

So guys, if you follow me in Facebookland, you heard me whine recently about meal planning for my family. A Mama can have an occasional foodie temper tantrum, right? You know, when you spend an hour or more coming up with something "new" to feed them, an hour cooking it, and you only manage to please 50% of the crowd? I have always loved to cook and bake. I love all kinds of cuisine. But after 14 years of cooking for three people with all different "palettes," (some of which get as excited by Kraft Mac n' Cheese as I do by a pecan-crusted salmon fillet,) my inner-foodie was having a mid-life culinary crisis. So I've decided to prep some dishes to my taste, that I can eat for breakfasts and lunches. My only criteria is simple, healthy, flavorful, and enduring. Write-it-down good. So that's what I did today. I made these oven-poached eggs inspired by my love affair with Indian cuisine, and the glorious spice Turmeric. I loved them. My daughter loved them (and she's my picky one). My husband liked them, but prefers them without the feta cheese. My son, nope. But 2 out of 3 ain't bad ;-) So here's the recipe if it's something your starving but tired inner foodie might like:

12 eggs
1/4 of a zucchini, finely diced
1 red bell pepper, finely diced
2 or 3 green onions, finely diced
2 TBS evoo
1 TBS butter
turmeric, to taste ( I used about 8 shakes)
dried basil to taste ( I used about 4 shakes)
salt and black pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease a muffin pan. In a skillet, saute the zucchini, bell pepper, and green onions in oil/butter mixture at medium-high heat. drop in veggies, and saute until tender. Add spices. Continue to saute until lightly caramelized.

Drop one egg in each muffin space. Spoon veggie saute over each egg and gently mix them into the white of the egg, without piercing the yolk. Sprinkle feta on top of each egg. Place muffin tin on top of a 9x13 pyrex dish that is half-filled with water. Place in the oven for about 25 minutes, or until the yolks are firm, but not hard. They should remain golden, not turn yellow. You want a nice soft, poached yolk.

When cooked, run a knife around the edges and spoon out onto a plate. Serve with a side of mixed greens and a nice, light vinaigrette. Enjoy!

Sacred Improvisation

                                                   Photo credit: lakesidepottery.com

Marilyn Brown Oden writes that "sometimes a sense of dissatisfaction whispers to us from deep within. We feel a stirring, a yearning. If you know what I'm talking about, don't stuff this yearning down without a hearing. Don't be afraid of it. Chittister reminds us, 'trust your dissatisfaction. A deep dissatisfaction is an invitation to listen to our yearning. To reflect on our emptiness. To pray. To try to discern its source and its message. For it is our own calling that invites us to respond, our own life that we are intended to live."

I don't know about you, but the older I get, the more complicated it becomes to listen to my yearnings and follow my dreams. And that's just as it should be. Growing up into maturity means recognizing that to have some things, we have to let go of others; or at least put some things on hold for a while. But it can be tempting, on some days, to roll my eyes at Oden's advice and just stuff my yearnings down without a hearing. When I am tempted this way, though, I think about throwing pots (not across the room, but on a wheel). Potters know that, not only does each kind of clay respond differently to shaping, but each individual pot responds differently. A potter's hands have to pay attention to the feel of the clay, and adjust the kind of pressure they're applying accordingly. The act of shaping a pot is as much an act of listening and attending to the clay as it is coaxing it into a pre-visioned shape. The best potter is a master of improvisation. She has to be ready to revision the shape of the piece, and pull back some of the pressure when the walls being to get too thin in places. If she tries to force a shape that the clay won't support, the whole piece just flops, and it's back to the kneading board. Patience and openness to change are as vital to beautiful art and the technical skill required.

Envisioning our vocational life is much the same process. The pressures of life can bear down on us and shape us often without our even realizing it. The further we move into adulthood, the more we are asked to choose, not between a simple good vs. bad, but rather between multiple goods. We want to provide good things for our family. We want to follow our dreams. We want to support the dreams of our spouses. We want the people we love to be proud of us, and we want to belong to a loving, supportive community. As author Parker Palmer notes, The instinct to protect ourselves by living divided lives emerges when we are young, as we start to see the gaps between life's bright promise and its shadowy realities." When we reach this point, like the potter, we have a choice. We can flop, or we can improvise. The proverbial walls may seem a bit thin, but life is like clay, after all. It is malleable and yearning to find a shape, if we're open, patient, and creative enough to listen, to attend, to improvise.

Improvising when much is at stake is never fun or easy--at least at first. It's nerve-wracking and unsettling. But sometimes we need to be unsettled and disoriented in order to pay attention to our lives, hear the whispers of our souls, and discover the source of real strength. Real strength is not the bill of goods the world has sold us. Real strength isn't about coming up with a plan and stubbornly clinging to it, despite the collateral damage. Real strength emerges when we not only embrace our gifts and aptitudes, but our limitations as well. Real strength emerges when we know how to ask for help, and can accept the help as a gift, without worrying about how we will repay it. Real strength emerges when we hear a host of voices in our head telling us why we aren't enough, but we can listen to the One voice that reminds us that we are more than enough, just as we are. Real strength is not a big concrete, rebar-reinforced wall, but a handmade pot that has been fired and survived. It's not indestructible, but it is open. Its identity is not grounded in what it keeps out, but rather in what it holds. It's not perfect, and it very likely isn't the shape its potter originally intended. But the bread it can hold is no less than life itself. The water it can contain is no less than Living Water. In its simplicity it calls us to partake. To eat and to drink, and to be just what we were intended to be.

Seen

                                                         Photo Credit: Shine Gonzalvez
           http://www.trendsandlife.com/artistic-photographs-homeless-people-facing-challenges-streets/

We learn to name what we see.

We call it like we see it: black, white, tall, short, good, bad, clean, dirty.

We memorize the categories, and secure everything in neat little boxes.

Order from chaos. Sense from nonsense. Clarity from confusion.

Then he wanders into the coffee shop, same as any Tuesday morning­­, and opens all the boxes.

Without asking or checking, he puts the black with the white,

the tall with the short, the good with the bad, the clean with the dirty.

The muddy-eyed one with dirty knees and no title,

the one who you thought was just high, shameless, relentless.

The one who had been in that same booth,

in that same corner, every Tuesday for months.

He came in to take a break from holding a sign,

from doing nothing, you had to assume.

But he saw you. 

Checking your eyebrows in the mirror,

checking your phone,

checking that the barista got your name right on your extra-hot latte order.

If they wrote “Lindy” one more time, you were so done with this place.

But you never really saw him. 

He lingered somewhere in your peripheral vision,

far enough away that you couldn’t see the hole in his sock,

or the weight on his shoulders.

Far enough away that you didn’t notice the pencil unevenly sharpened with a pocketknife,

or the nails bitten between the verses he pressed into his notebook.

He sketched your profile once,

when you threw your head back laughing at something your daughter said.

He wanted to remember what love looked like.

He barely remembered when he had laughed like that,

before the voices, and the meds, and the vision problems.

When you came into the coffee shop that morning, you saw it,

framed by unfinished wood on the wall above the corner booth.

You knew it was a sketch of you by the birthmark on the neck,

and the streak of gray hair spilling down one shoulder.

It only showed when you really laughed hard.

“In memory of our friend Bart. May you get new eyes and sharp pencils on the other side” 

the brass caption read.

Then you remembered his dirty knees,

his shaky hands, and the nervous writing.

He seemed paranoid, always hunched over a notebook.

That homeless guy. The drug-addict.

But it was just Bart, sketching and writing to distract himself from the voices.

Sitting inside to rest his knees.

Seeing you, “Laurie,” laughing.  

Long Live The Welcomers!

                                                  Photo credit: approachingjustice.net

When it comes to trending topics, loneliness is not one of them. If I were strategizing about which key words would garner me the most clicks and likes, the word lonely wouldn’t be at the top of the list. No one wants to talk about, think about, or admit to loneliness. We’ve come a long way in our cultural willingness to talk about depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and addiction, but loneliness is a topic that remains, well, lonely. As a subject for discussion, it’s the guy who’s never invited to the party. We think that, if we admit we are lonely, it will make us the social equivalent of lepers. We assume “everyone else” is well-connected. I mean, just look at their Instagram and  Facebook feeds! They’re all livin’ the life! So we just post the highlights of our lives, put on our nice suit, cute dress, and make-up, and act like everything’s great.

Except it isn’t. “According to estimates by University of Chicago psychology professor John T. Cacioppo, PhD, coauthor of Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, at any given time at least one in five people, or roughly 60 million Americans, suffers from loneliness.” Cacioppo says, “By this I mean both the acute bouts of melancholy we all feel from time to time, as well as a chronic lack of intimacy—a yearning for someone to truly know you, get you, see you—that can leave people feeling seriously unmoored… Indeed, while social media has given us more ways to communicate, many experts believe it may also leave us more alienated. It's the deteriorating quality of our relationships that concerns researchers like Harry Reis, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. ‘We need to interact with other people on a fairly deep level, and that's what many of us are missing,’ says Reis.” (http://www.oprah.com/health/just-say-hello-fight-loneliness#ixzz4c4BqBeTv)

We humans are wired to act like we’ve got it all together. We learn this at a very young age. On the playground in elementary school, we all saw what happened to the awkward , shy, or “different” kids. They got picked on. Even the kids who would never pick on someone on their own are forced to choose between  joining in or being ostracized themselves. It is social self-preservation.  It’s instinct. Those kids who buck this instinct are often the exception that proves the rule. Adulthood should make us kinder and gentler. And sometimes it does. But it can also make us just really good actors. Henry David Thoureau observed that most people were “masses of men  leading lives of quiet desperation.” Our tools for curating a façade of happiness may be more sophisticated, but the statistics don’t lie. 60 million of us here in the U.S. are leading lives of quiet desperation. We’re just too afraid to admit it.

The good news is, statistics don’t prescribe our behavior, they just describe it. We humans are nothing if not adaptive. Just like we learn to cook, knit, meditate, dance, or play an instrument, we can learn to be welcomers.  Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. ” (Matthew 10:40)  The most miraculous  thing Jesus did is to set a table and eat with people. He set a place for everyone. He didn’t just break out the “good china” for the holy, pious, and popular people. He broke it out for the people no one else would let within 100 feet of them: the prostitutes; the lepers; the greedy tax collectors; the widows. He even set a place for his fearful, confused, self-centered, and wildly imperfect disciples. He didn’t teach people to welcome strangers by charging a consulting fee and prescribing 7 steps to success. He taught people to welcome strangers by setting a table and inviting them to come and eat, day after day, week after week, and month after month. He set the kind of table where the guests, who may have had nothing in common, had to sit across from one another, look each other in the eyes, pass the hummus, break the bread, and pour the wine within inches of one another. They sat close enough to smell each other’s deodorant-less dusty bodies. They sat close enough to see each other’s deep scars and press up against each other’s shoulders. He served the same food to the rich and the destitute, and gave no preferential seating. In our post-scientific world, we have a hard time believing Jesus’ healing miracles. But we now know that doctors and neuroscientists alike link loneliness and isolation to epidemic increases in disease and mortality. The centers of the brain that are associated with pain are much more active in people who are lonely and isolated.  So we shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus healed. His healing wasn’t magic, it was love. It was connection. With each place he set, he was telling people, “I know you. I get you. I see you. I welcome you.”

Welcomers are healers. Welcomers change lives. Welcomers are miracle-workers. We don’t need therapists and consultants to tell us what we already know. We need people to know us, get us, and to see us. We are social creatures, wired for connection. It doesn’t take special training or certification to become a welcomer. It just takes the discipline and commitment to smile, to say hello, to set a table and  invite strangers. It just takes a willingness to practice welcome the same way we practice knitting, meditation, dance, or music. So go out into the world today and be a welcomer. Get to know someone. Try to “get” someone who is different than you. Make someone feel seen. Real miracles aren’t that complicated, we just have to be willing to set a place for  them. Blessings and love, welcomers! Here's a song to inspire your welcoming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNjH8rEJjDc

Give Me A Drink

                                                   Photo credit: marshallcountyhealth.org
                                                           A Reflection on John 4:5-42

In many parts of the developing world people walk miles to and from wells to collect enough water to meet their basic needs: water to drink, to wash their clothes, to wash their dishes, and to bathe. Women are usually the ones who make these exhausting journeys, often digging the holes in the ground in the sweltering heat of midday. After all their efforts, the water they draw is only a few gallons. The water is precious, hard-earned, and has to sustain them until the following day’s journey. In many parts of the developing world, the water people draw from the wells doesn’t come clean and filtered like ours. Instead it is clouded by dirt and polluted with dangerous contaminants. The water they must drink to sustain their lives is the very same water that makes them sick, and is often life-threatening. Some of the water’s contaminants can be easily detected by taste or odor, but most can’t be detected easily, and require testing to reveal whether or not it is safe to drink. The unsafe water can take a terrible toll on human health. This problem is serious and widespread. So when so many families and children in developing countries are crying out, “Give me a drink” organizations like Living Waters for the World and Water.org answer by donating their resources and manpower to give them clean water systems and safe wells. Not only are they restoring the physical health of whole communities, they are also restoring the dignity, hope, and freedom of the people who live there. When they go to the new well, they find nothing less than new life.

When we come to the well at Sychar in this gospel text, we meet a woman who knows something about exhausting, back-breaking journeys. Her whole life revolves around wells. Other women remain at home with their families during the hottest part of the day because they can go to the well together in the cooler mornings. They can talk as they walk, sharing stories of their children and their husbands. But not this nameless Samaritan woman. She waits until the hottest part of the day to go to the well because that’s when no one else will be there. No one will be there to shun her, to whisper about her behind her back, or to shame her for her culturally unacceptable relationship. She intentionally spends her days alone, moving through her mindless routines, remaining on the edges of her community, both literally and spiritually.

When she sees Jesus—this Jewish religious leader—her usual shame grows into confusion, and even some aggravation. Now she is not only confronted with her complicated marital status, but also with the shame of being a woman who is talking with a man—a huge no no. Beyond that, she was a Samaritan woman talking with a Jewish man—absolutely unacceptable! The Samaritans and the Jews shared no social interaction since the Samaritans built a shrine as their place of worship, instead of worshiping at the Jerusalem Temple—the one true place of worship. The Jewish troops had destroyed the shrine, and were strengthening an already existing dividing wall between themselves and the Samaritans. Talking to a Samaritan was as good as insulting God. So when Jesus shows up in broad daylight at her well saying, “Give me a drink” all kinds of boundaries are crossed. As far as the Jewish community was concerned this Samaritan woman was contaminated, and so was her well.

 But Jesus knew something about her and about water that no one else knew. Despite the cultural and religious traditions that drew dividing lines between them, Jesus knew that God wasn’t interested in dividing lines. Jesus knew that something was contaminated, but it wasn’t this woman. His four-word request, “Give me a drink,” ushers in a divine revolution. In the bright light of day, God meets her at the well and offers her a whole new filtering system. The water that her ancestors drew from this well now flows into a new place and time, where God is speaking about a new reality. Here, where the Son of God shares intimate conversation with a Samaritan woman about the details of her life and the condition of her soul, she learns that eternal life is no longer something she has to wait for. Eternal life has met her at the well, and is asking her to follow him.

Most of us in the first world don’t have to walk out in the heat of day to a well to get our water. In fact, most of us enjoy filtered water every day. We don’t have to worry about contamination or water-borne illnesses. We don’t live in a country that prescribes who we can talk to and who is off-limits. It’s hard for most of us to imagine being in the Samaritan woman’s shoes. But we all go to other kinds of wells to quench our spiritual thirst. We go to the well of Success, believing that we will be filled with a sense that we are important. We say, “give me a drink,” hoping that our thirst for identity will be quenched. We go to the well of People-pleasing, seeking others’ approval. We empty ourselves until we have nothing left saying, “give me a drink,” hoping that our thirst for belonging will be quenched. We go to the well of power, seeking control over people and the circumstances of our lives. We strategize and plan saying “give me a drink,” hoping that our thirst for security will be quenched.

 We go to the well of consumerism, believing that if we have enough, we will be enough. We say, “give me a drink,” hoping that our thirst for purpose will be quenched. These spiritual wells are contaminated with illusions that trick us into thinking that if we do the right things, act the right way, or have the right stuff, we will be whole. We will fit in. God will love us.

Instead Jesus shows up at the well saying “Give me a drink. Let me taste this water you are drinking and see why it has such a strong hold on you. And while we are sharing this water, let’s talk about your life—since that’s really what I’m here for anyway." We can’t live without water. We need to come to the well. What Jesus asks of the Samaritan woman, and what he asks of us, is to receive fullness of life beginning now. The water filter Jesus invites us to receive filters out all of the world’s contaminating messages about how we need to be more, do more,  and have more to be deserving of God’s love. God doesn’t wait until we are perfect, acceptable, or whole to come to us. God crosses all boundaries to get to us—our dividing lines, our limited traditional understanding of who we should include and exclude, our categories of status and power, our unwillingness to believe that we are enough. God breaks through all of those boundaries, in broad daylight, in front of all the VIPs, to show the Samaritans and the Jewish people that God comes, not just for the Israelites, but for the gentiles too. God comes, not just for the people we like and who believe the same things we do, but even for those we consider our enemies.

Jesus’ presence at the well fills us with the kind of water that nourishes our Holy Imagination. He asks her, and us, to receive what he is offering, even before she fully understands it, and acknowledge her need of him.

This is our invitation during Lent—to come to the well as we are and to meet Christ there. We are asked to pause and reflect on all of the boundaries we erect between ourselves and others, and between ourselves and God. We are invited to go beyond the surface level of our lives—beyond our physical needs and rhythms of our daily routines—and arrive at the truth about our lives. When we can do this, whether it happens in a church or in our car, we worship. When the Samaritan woman asks Jesus where she should worship, His very presence at the well is meant to be her answer. His promise transcends this place, this time, this well, or a particular temple. His promise is his presence. His promise is a way of living and believing that is sustaining, not draining.  

  What are the wells we go to where we find only drought and disappointment? When we come to Christ’s table saying “Give me a drink,” we must prepare ourselves to let go of all of those other contaminated wells we visit and trust that our thirst for security, belonging, identity, and our purpose will be quenched where Christ is; whenever we live as Christ lived, love as He loved, and serve as He served. That life, that love, and that service is the only well that matters--the one with the living water. The good news is that we do not need to embark on a back-breaking journey. We have already arrived. God walks beside us, follows behind us, and leads the way before us, quenching our thirsty spirits with the Living Water of his presence. So come to the well. Receive the Living Water. Know that Christ meets you here, and offers you no less than the life, love and purpose, that will redeem what you thought was lost, sustain you through what you thought was unbearable, and will make a way where you thought there would be only desert. So go to the well and drink.