Category Archives: relationships
Hubris Three : Unless You Come as a Child
I have two previous posts titled Hubris One and Hubris Two. This one, Hubris Three, will make more sense, if the others are read first.
In Hubris One and Two I describe my spiritual journey during my twenties: of rejecting my childhood faith, a period of settling for pleasure in hedonism, an unsuccessful search for God in Religious Institutions, a search for purpose and meaning through working for civil rights, and then seeking a way to change hearts and minds, not just laws, by getting a degree in psychology, then recognizing that psychology also had serious limits, since most people don’t admit they need to change.
About this time, one of the couples in our social group began to talk and act strangely. Judy and Earl began to drink less, dance with each other, and finally to our horror, would mention Jesus Christ, as if he were someone they knew, not just an exclamation. Since they were our friends, most of us overlooked these aberrations and tried to not be too obvious, when we edged away from their inappropriate cocktail party conversations.
Soon however, they got our full attention, when they announced that Earl was giving up his job in his family’s company. And they were selling their home and expensive toys to work full time for a nondenominational, nonprofit organization called Campus Crusade for Christ.
We had to admit that was “putting your money where your mouth is!”
Most of us decided that it was temporary insanity. They’d get over it and we hoped they had set up trust funds for their children.
And I shrugged aside my feelings of envy of their believing in something enough to stake their whole life on it.
Judy’s sister was my best friend. She was much less assertive than Earl and Judy, but she finally shared with me that she had a new faith, a personal relationship with Christ, not just a church or religion. She couldn’t articulate it very well, but at this same time, her husband abandoned her and their two young daughters. Her strength through this devastating experience made it obvious, that whatever it was that she had discovered, it made a difference even in heartbreak.
In the middle of Hilde’s beginning over, Judy and a team of women from Campus Crusade came to town. Judy asked Hilde to host a Christian Coffee for her friends. I rallied our friends to help Hilde. I invited people saying, “I don’t know what a Christian Coffee is. I didn’t know our usual ones weren’t! But the talks will be short and the food will be fantastic. Come for Hilde’s sake.”
At the coffee, several women gave talks describing how they now had a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ, since they had accepted Him as their Savior and Lord. I didn’t really understand what these words meant and I wasn’t very comfortable with the simplistic religious language. My ears perked up, however, when they mentioned freeing insights into their own behavior patterns, improved relationships with their families, and a greater concern for others outside their limited social and racial group.
Obviously, whatever this experience was, it made concrete differences in the quality of their lives. And it was free, no college tuition or counseling fees.
When they led us in saying a prayer asking Jesus to be our Savior and Lord and to make us into the people He wanted us to be, I balked, blocked by my usual need to understand things intellectually first.
As others were weeping and hugging one another, I started gathering up dishes. But one of the women cornered me, asking if I had said the prayer. I said, “No, I can’t. I don’t believe in God and I think Jesus was a wonderful person, but an unrealistic visionary that got himself crucified.”
This woman was not deterred. She responded immediately, “Well, why don’t you just say the prayer this way, Jesus, if there is a God, and you are who you claim to be, please be my Savior and Lord.”
That threw me for a loop. It seemed like a win-win proposition. If none of it was true, I had nothing to lose. And if it was true, I certainly didn’t want to miss out on it. So, I prayed the prayer with her and accepted her hugs and congratulations, and went back to my Martha activities.
As I washed Hilde’s lovely china by hand, I listened to everyone celebrating around me and wondered if the prayer would ever make any difference to me.
Suddenly, feelings of sheer joy overwhelmed me. Somehow, I knew in that moment with my whole mind, heart, and spirit, that God was real and that He loved me unconditionally, even when I was denying Him. Teachings from my Catholic childhood, readings in the Bible, ideas from the Protestant classes, and insights from my study of Psychology all came together like pieces of a puzzle finally forming a whole picture.
But the most important part was the total confidence I now had, that I was completely known and deeply loved, faults and all, no brownie points necessary to earn it. As I drove home, bursting with joy, I tried to think of an appropriate song or hymn to sing. Although lovely, the Latin hymns of my childhood didn’t really fit the moment. Finally the child’s song, Jesus Loves Me, began to bubble up and out of me. Tears and joy overflowed as I sang at the top of my voice. And I realized that these simple words expressed perfectly what I knew now, that I did not know before.
In the next two years our group of women from most of the major denominations and one member from the Jewish faith came together each week to read the Scriptures and share our experiences of God in our daily lives. Many had always been active in their churches, but had never experienced this kind of relationship with Christ and God. For some the new understanding and deeper realization of the love of God came quietly, but steadily. For others, like me, it came almost like an explosion. But, in all of us, the Spirit began to bring new self-honesty, openness, and greater concern for others. The more we grew in our awareness of God in our lives, the freer we became to forgive ourselves and others and to love in new ways.
Although some things changed quickly, others did not. And we began to see more clearly that growth really is a life-long process, that needs nourishment from many sources: prayer, Scripture, the wisdom of others who have walked before us, and even humanity’s growing knowledge of Psychology and Biology. And perhaps most important, the acceptance and support of each other in our journey together.
Part of my new awareness was how ridiculous it was that I had thought that because my limited human mind could not make sense of God, then of course, God couldn’t exist. What HUBRIS!!
Humbled, but filled with the love of God, I began to see God everywhere, to experience miracles large and small. It’s like putting on God glasses. Reading the Scriptures was like reading letters from God. Meaning simply poured off the pages.
And I wanted to share this new life with those I loved and with anyone God brought into my life.
Our group helped give another Christian Coffee and grew too large , so we divided into smaller sharing groups. We witnessed miracles where God seemed to intervene concretely in our lives. But then, we also learned to trust His love, when we humbly shared the pain and faith of one of our members dying with cancer.
Since our focus was on hearing God in the circumstances of our daily lives, we were able to hear through our different religious languages to our basic unity in the Spirit of God.
Each of us became more active in our own denominations and became involved in renewal movements within them.
Personally, in the forty-five years since that first “Christian Coffee,” I have found that simply belonging to a main stream denomination does not provide enough spiritual nurture without having a support group of those, who have also experienced a changed life through a personal relationship with Christ as Savior and Lord.
I have also found that ecumenical sharing groups have the best chance of avoiding making idols of denominations and empty religious observances. They seem to stay focused on growing in their personal relationships with Jesus as Lord better.
And I have learned that for diverse people saying the prayer accepting Jesus as Savior and Lord can play out very differently. We come into the circle of God’s love in different places with our unique histories and patterns and personalities. Don’t ever try to put God into a box, however wonderful it seems to you. God is bigger than any of our experiences, rituals, beliefs.
God meets us where we are and respects who we are, because He made us and knows us better than we do, never-the-less anyone else can.
The Spirit
Unexpected geyser
exploding joyously
a baptismal spectacular
opens our eyes.
“Come and See”
Tears of waterfalls
stirring lonely pools,
the reconciling Spirit
invites us gently.
“Follow Me.”
Hidden river flowing
with silent, ageless strength
transforms and renews
our hearts of stone.
“Drink of me.”
Sunday from Hell or Does Somebody Up There Hate Us?
(Found this thirty-two year old memoir, while cleaning out files this morning. Someday, if I live long enough, I may think this is funny.)
I really believe in a God that loves us unconditionally; that that’s sort of what He does for a living. But sometimes….………
When I wrote this, we lived way out in the country, through a creek, up a hill, down a hollow, all five miles of which were traversed on an ancient dirt wagon path, last tended by Roosevelt’s CCC Corps.
Since we had a large family; us, five kids, my mother next door, horses, and miscellaneous and multitudinous pets, we drove a Suburban Wagon and a pick-up truck. Both vehicles were middle-aged and generally loose-jointed from the constant and traumatic trips over what euphemistically passed for a road to civilization.
Our adventure started on Saturday, when our eighteen year old had to take the Suburban to his new job fifty miles away, since the special jack for the truck was broken. That left mother and me using the pick-up to do our weekly grocery shopping. No problem, until a steady downpour set in just as we hit town. I bought only enough groceries to get by that day, then crammed them, mother, the new jack, and her purchases into the cab of the truck. So far, all was well, except maybe mother.
That night we got organized for a busy two hours at church on Sunday. One child was scheduled to practice lectoring at ten, while another was to train as a new altar boy, and I was teaching preschoolers. My husband and I were to usher at the eleven o’clock service, while one son served and the other lectored.(read the Scriptures.)
Three home haircuts, one bandaged ear, clothes laid out, and my mother reminded of the exact time of departure, I even remembered to set the alarm for six a.m. to get the eighteen year old up for work. Shutting my eyes about midnight, I treasured the thought that after getting our son up, we could sleep until at least eight-thirty, since we were so organized.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Sunday
6:00 a.m. Alarm goes off. Husband rouses son.
6:40 a.m. Phone rings and husband stumbles to it. Husband exercises remarkable restraint to his mother-in-law’s enquiry as to where-abouts of her umbrella.
7:00 a.m. Son announces that truck has flat tire and lugs are frozen. Good thing we bought that jack. That crises handled, we return to bed.
7:30 a.m. Phone rings and husband mutters his way to it. I offer silent prayers that it’s not about umbrellas. Unfortunately, it is not. It’s son fifteen miles from home with truck broken down in the middle of nowhere. We both get up and husband dresses hurriedly to rescue son.
7:50 a.m. Husband’s key chain breaks on way to car, spreading keys all over gravel driveway.
8:00 a.m. Husband drives off. ( Muttering censored.)
8:15 a.m. Husband notices that car is overheating badly. Detours to his office to get water.
8:30 a.m. Radiator bone dry and steaming, but husband cannot get into office to get water, since office key evidently still lying in driveway.
8:35 a.m. Sun is shining, not a cloud in the sky. Mother walks through woods to arrive an hour early. Still worrying obsessively about umbrella. Alarm goes off. I realize I am out of cigarettes.
8:50 a.m. Husband prays way to filling station without water. Filling station is closed. (Maybe prayer cancelled out by earlier censored muttering?)
9:00 a.m. Ingenious husband finds outside water tap and coke can to fill radiator.
9:15 a.m. Husband learns noteworthy fact: It takes fifty to sixty coke cans of water to fill a radiator.
9:20 a.m. Son calls asking if Dad went back to sleep. (My reply censored.)
9:25 a.m. I see handwriting on wall and start calling to find a ride to church.
9:30 a.m. Husband realizes Suburban’s gas tank is registering empty and wallet almost empty. (Regresses to censored muttering.)
9:35 a.m. I start calling to find substitutes for teaching, lecturing, serving, and ushering.
9:40 a.m. Husband finds open self-serve gas station. Gas gauge now registering slightly above empty. Wallet registering empty. Switches back to prayer.
9:45 a.m. My mother still worrying about umbrella. I remember it’s in the truck. I start searching purses and pockets for cigarettes.
9:50 a.m. Husband arrives to rescue son. Ignores question about whereabouts for last hour and a half. Opts to use Suburban to push truck all the way back to our regular service station where we have credit.
10:10 a.m. Arrives at service station, which is still closed. Starts son refilling hot radiator with the coke can and a seven up can from the truck. Son asks no more questions.
10:15 a.m. Service station attendant arrives. Diagnosis truck as needing a mechanic, but Suburban just needs a new water hose. Suspense builds. Do they have a water hose? Why ruin a perfect record. Of course not. Husband beyond muttering, censored or otherwise.
10:20 a.m. Miracle discovery of an open parts store one block away. Son has enough money to buy hose. Husband repairs hose.
Meanwhile back at the old homestead, chaos reigns, as children and grandmother freak out over noisy impending demise of adorable chipmunk in jaws of hungry cat in full view outside sliding glass door. I shout over uproar and hand down ruling that all close their eyes and ears and accept cat’s role in ecological balance of nature. Children go sulk in rooms and grandmother goes home in protest. I surreptitiously dig for long cigarette butts in ashtrays. I try one more call, then give up on finding a lector substitute and mentally wish priest luck.
10:50 a.m. Hooray, hose is fixed and husband and son on way home. Suburban begins to make ominous jet airplane noises.
11:00 a.m. Husband and son arrive home in Suburban with jet airplane delusion. Grandmother arrives with doughnuts to console children. Son calls boss and is requested to come as soon as possible, “or else” is implied.
For next ten minutes we hold a democratic discussion, loosely translated as everyone yelling at once, about possibilities of son dropping everyone off at church and how many friends would it take to get us all home afterward? And how would we get groceries? Fifteen year old expresses grievance about not getting to go play tennis. My and my husband’s simultaneous spontaneous responses censored. (We regress a lot.) Son worrying about jet noises, since his job is fifty miles away. Mother still looking for umbrella. Cat still nibbling on chipmunk, which fortunately is beyond caring.
11:15 a.m. We call married son, whose wife is sick with a stomach virus, but who agrees to pick us up at the grocery in an hour and bring us home.
11:30 a.m. Eighteen year old drops parents like kittens in Kroger parking lot and jets off to work.
12:00 noon Run into mechanic in Krogers. His diagnosis: truck seriously ill, Suburban’s jet noise
also may be serious and dangerous on the highway.
12:30 p.m. Married son packs us and our eight sacks of groceries into his small car.
12:45 p.m. Son’s car begins making strange noise half-way to our house. Son stops to
Investigate. Husband remains numbly staring into space, while lighting two cigarettes at the same time.
12:55 p.m. Ice cream melts.
1:05 p.m. Start on again. Noise quits, but car drags bottom along last stretch of rough road.
Son sighs a lot. Husband mute.
1:20 p.m. Arrive home with eight sacks of groceries to ravenous whiney children, full cat, Mother again asking my husband about her umbrella. As husband opens six pack bought at Krogers, I hear him muttering something about “where the sun don’t shine.”
1:30 p.m. Phone rings and I panic that it might be about son driving the dangerous Suburban. It’s the person in charge of lectors asking was anything the matter, that our son didn’t come to lector?
2:30 p.m. Person in charge of lectors says that she is sorry she asked.
2:45 p.m. Husband finishes six pack. I escort mother, who is still obsessing about her umbrella through the woods to the safety of her house.
Hilde
Hilde, my old friend, my sister-in-Christ
lost and fragile in your fog of confusion,
let me lead you, carry you even
back in time to the truth of you.
Of you rising like a phoenix from the ashes
of a broken heart from a failed marriage
inspiration for us all, a mother of two
starting over, learning to restore the voices
of the silent young, the broken, the old,
your gifts lavished on the least of His,
bringing to life the Good News of God’s love
for those with simple minds, but open hearts.
Hilde, my old friend, my sister-in-Christ
lost and fragile in your fog of confusion
let me lead you, carry you even
back in time to the truth of you.
Sometimes I Get Really Weary of Being an Amateur Human Being
Some days I feel like I haven’t got a clue as to what actually matters in the BIG scheme of things. I know that my motives are suspect, mixed at best.
Is seeking to experience the presence of God simply spiritual hedonism, for pleasure or escape from pain?
The scripture from Ecclesiastes, “All is vanity,” really does seem to sum life up lately.
Marquand’s point of no return haunts me. At seventy-five I fear there’s not enough time left to become the person God created me to be, the person able to give what those God put in their care need.
The scriptures about loving other believers are another scary challenge. The truth is I don’t like very many people, but I tell myself that being committed to their well being is love.
I have some serious up close and personal unresolved conflicts with a few of them. I’m trying to work on seeing through their eyes, so I can forgive, and I have made some progress. But true reconciliation takes both sides seeing through the other’s eyes. I still feel too vulnerable to work with them on that.
Does self knowledge only free us to not judge others, if we can first forgive and not judge ourselves?
Can we grow and get free only after learning to live with the humbling knowledge of who we aren’t? Sometimes I get really weary of being an amateur human being.
I truly know that God loves me unconditionally. But, something in me just won’t give up wanting to be a person God can love for whom they became with His grace. Then, I remind myself that we are only called to play the hand we were dealt and I cling to the hope that I have played my pair of deuces as well as I could with the grace of God.
And then I come full circle to “All is vanity.”
Maybe that’s where we need to be, so we can let go of ego and let God do His thing.
Grow, Lord Jesus, Grow
Had an interesting dream last night. I discovered that I had a new baby. At seventy-five this would not necessarily be good news. But this baby was simply awesome. He could talk and had eyes that sparkled with intelligence and love. All he seemed to need was some food, so the baby and I set off to find food for him.
When I remembered the dream today, I thought maybe the baby represented a new part of me that needed nourishing. I couldn’t figure out what in me needed nourishing, until I was looking at my Nativity Scene, debating whether to put it away. The figure of the baby Jesus resembled the infant in my dream.
I love Advent when I spend each day praying, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come” and watching for glimpses of God’s love and grace in each day. This hope and expectation suit my personality perfectly. And I am seldom disappointed. But, somehow once the joyous symbols of Christmas are put away, I often lose my focus, and allow the cold grey days of January and February to dampen my spirit and dim my vision and ability to see God in each day.
There is a difference between waiting expectantly for new life and taking responsibility for nurturing it once it comes. With the infant Jesus this is easier, because He can tell us how.
As I looked at the tiny figure in the manger, I felt a renewed sense of responsibility for nourishing Him within me. So, my prayer for after Christmas, is “Grow, Lord Jesus, grow within me. Help me find nourishment for You.”
Once Again He Has Come
Christ came this Christmas for me in a moment of clarity. He came when I recognized with deep joy that my husband and I finally “get” each other.
We were total opposites in personality, in upbringing, in spirituality, in interests, values, in our ways of responding to people and life. Our sense of humors differed, our ways of expressing and receiving love also. It has been a challenging fifty-four year journey, side by side, but never quite together.
Today, Christmas day, I realized that a few days ago for the first time, he actually heard something spiritual I wrote and responded spontaneously from the heart, and today I also realized that I see the physical world in new ways(his)and frequently now laugh out loud when I have spontaneous humorous images flash into my mind when I read or hear certain things, just like he has tried to explain to me over the years. The gift of our seventies has been shared laughter.
When I reflect on the ways we’ve changed, I think it took more than just accepting how each other are, it took actually learning how to see through each other’s eyes and hear with their ears; for him to be able to feel with me and for me to become able to step back from feelings and see things logically. For him to be able to express love and for me to be happy showing it in small acts of service.
We are far from perfect at this, but we have broken through the walls of self and begun to experience being one.
Isn’t it amazing that life and love begin anew so many times and that it’s never too late to love in new ways?
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for coming once more, with your gifts of love.
Christians, Beware of Christian Idols!
Fundamentalist Christians have to struggle not to make an idol of scripture. Jesus is the Word of God. Scripture is vitally important, because scripture introduces us to Jesus. Jesus speaks to where individuals are and calls us to growth now, just as He did the people in the scriptures. He wasn’t adding more rules. The Jews had plenty of them. Our call is to an ongoing, deepening relationship with a living Savior who continues to show us the way of love that changes us. Though scriptures may be like letters from God about Jesus, they are not God, and He is not limited to them. And Jesus himself, was sent to awaken us to God’s Spirit within us and all around us.
Catholics have to struggle to not make an idol of the structure of the church. Again, Jesus is the Word of God to each of us. The spirit of God grows in us through a personal relationship with Jesus. The church can be a safe place of nurture with its rich tradition of spirituality, but ultimately we are personally accountable for growing in our relationship to God through Jesus, the Way of love. The Church may be our mother, but it is not God, and God is not limited to it.
Liberal Protestants tend to idolize ideals for our physical world and being. Which once again, are good things, and part of our call to stewardship, but are not God or our ultimate reason for being, because physical life is not all there is, either now or forever. Humbling though it may be, it is not about our intellectual ideals for this life. It’s about recognizing our incompleteness and accepting the call to a growing relationship with God through the human expression of both His love and the spirituality that He is calling us to, Jesus.
The Scriptures and the commandments; the church and its traditions of spirituality; caring for the physical well being of others and our world, are all good and absolutely vital parts of Christianity, but none of them is God. None of them are a substitute for a personal relationship with God, which for Christians is given life and nurtured by our relationship with Jesus who is the love of God fleshed out for us.
Out of that relationship can flow a love for scripture, a love for the spirituality of the church, a love for all creation and all humanity and a valuing of all of these and appreciation for those whom God calls to ministry in each area. It is not one or the other. There is one God, but many gifts and ministries.
When we only value one aspect of the kingdom of God, we have turned a good thing into an idol.
Jesus, Himself, was sent to lead us to God, not just to Himself. His love, laying down his life for us, is the Way to God. He was taken away, so that we too would be filled with and led by God’s Spirit. And God’s Spirit is love, love for all His creation and all His creatures. And the world will know that we are His by our growth in love, a love that lays down its life for others.
Anything else is an idol.
The I Am I.
1. A question.
2. A becoming.
3. A beloved.
4. A lover.
5. A unique expression of Spirit.
6. A partner in Creation.
7. An inseparable part of the whole.
8. A woman.
9. A friend.
10. A nurturer.
