Category Archives: Spiritual
Hiding Places and Safe Places
Grown-ups have hiding places,
ones where we hide
from ourselves.
The bottom of a bottle
is a traditional favorite.
Toxic relationships are another.
In those, we just focus
on pleasing the other.
Conformity is a camouflage
of many different colors:
a church, a club, a cause.
But the most popular are
roles or titles:
mother, teacher, CEO,
policeman, criminal,
priest or ho,
even being gay.
You see, a long time ago,
we hid our patchwork
selves away.
But hiding places and safe places
are not the same.
Safety only comes
when we have nothing
left to lose.
When we no longer
cling to idols,
or hide behind an image.
Only when all else fails,
do we explore
the darkness inside.
Then coming face to face
with our emptiness,
we find God
and peace.
Gifts of Age(Part Two): A Life Long Klutz Learns to Draw
My philosophy in life had always been, “If at first you don’t succeed, quit, don’t make a fool of yourself.” But my recent small success in the domestic art of crochet opened up new possibilities. So, at a time when my physical abilities were becoming seriously limited, I decided that I needed to risk failure and persevere at something totally new and foreign to me, that didn’t involve walking.
While debating what I would try, I received some note cards with art by paraplegic artists. They painted holding the brush with their teeth or even their toes. The art was very good. It dawned on me that being a klutz with my hands, might not preclude learning to draw.
As early as kindergarten it was obvious that I lacked eye-hand coordination and any natural artistic talent. Stick figures were my limit and when cutting out paper dolls, I inevitably cut off their heads. Even later when dissecting frogs in college biology lab, I was nick-named, Jack the Ripper. And over the years on report cards of almost all A’s, the C’s in art and handwriting were pure kindness on the teachers’ part.
But now, I came across the book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which claimed that anyone can learn to draw. It showed first attempts by students of all ages, who obviously had no natural talent. Then, it showed portraits they had drawn after less than ten weeks of instruction on learning to draw in right hemisphere mode. The differences were astounding.
When we use our right hemisphere, we see things as they really are and see the parts in their relationships to each other. In left hemisphere mode we transpose things mentally into symbols, similar to cartoons. It’s a sort of minimal and generalized way of depicting lips, eyes, trees, and so on, that isn’t a true replication with shadows and depth and correct proportions. Our left hemisphere is linear and used for language. Our right is spatial and used for images. One or the other is usually dominant in each person. But, even if our left hemisphere is dominant, there are simple tricks that help us use our right hemisphere.
After reading the book, I found a drawing class for beginners using some of the same techniques. Like the students in the book, my first attempt was laughable, but by the end of nine weeks, I too, produced a detailed shaded drawing of my great-grandson that actually looked like him. And when the teacher moved to another city, she even asked if she could use my first effort and my end of the course portrait to advertise her classes there. For me this meant more than just success in producing a likeness. The most helpful thing I learned was that perseverance is the greatest talent of all. And a bonus was that being in right-brain mode is an experience of living in the present moment.
Throughout my sixties, I took color pencil, watercolor, and acrylic painting classes. I have learned to live with the fact that most of my fellow students are right-brain dominant natural artists, who often, but not always, produce better art than I do. But, I’ve also found that even if it takes me three tries, I can end up with a painting that I actually like and that my children will hang in their homes. Finally, I can accept my failures as part of the learning process of life, which should never really end.
Besides, cut into strips, my failures make great book marks.
Gifts of Age ( Part One): I Can See the Door from Here.
I’ve never been a person who lives in the present moment. I have always been mentally rushing pell mell into the future. I’m either worrying about running late, planning ahead to avoid a possible problem, or dreaming hopefully about a future project or stage of life. Hitting Medicare age definitely presents a challenge for people like me. We have to face that we may be running out of future.
In my early sixties I developed some health problems. Though not life threatening, they were time consuming. Suddenly, I was spending a lot of time in Doctors’ waiting rooms. People who live with one foot in the next minute, day, or year are not naturally patient people. Sitting for hours in small rooms listening to people in more advanced states of physical decay is a definite stressor for us. Although I have the domestic talents of a Gabor sister (though unfortunately not the physical endowments), a friend suggested that I take up crocheting to help me stay calm. It was stretching my limits to learn how to simply make straight rows of approximately equal width and of whatever length that the time in a waiting room allowed. This was amazingly soothing, an experience of grace. However, it began to cause others frustration, when they asked me what I was making and I replied, “Nothing.”
It would seem that for many people, making nothing challenges the very foundations of their value systems. It is at the very least unpatriotic, if not ungodly. So, I found myself getting much unsought advice on useful things I could be making. I finally realized that I was actually, though accidentally, accumulating a collection of what appeared to be winter scarves. Admittedly, some were long enough to come to the knees of NBA basketball players, but still it gave me an answer for the Martha Stewarts of the waiting rooms. And as I ran out of family members with birthdays about the time cold weather arrived, I was inspired to begin donating them to a homeless shelter. Now, I was not only calm, domestic, and productive, I was altruistic.
This period of difficulty along with its gratuitous side effects brought alive a sermon I had heard back when I lived in the land of denial. A many seasoned Minister had passed on these gems, “Life is hard.” and “For every goodie, there’s a baddie and for every baddie, there’s a goodie.” It seems impossible that I lived to sixty without admitting to myself that life really is hard. But since, I always focused on the wonderful untarnished possibilities of the future, it happened kind of naturally. For dreamers, running out of future means slamming into a brick wall called reality.
We’re like the joke about the two little boys, one a complete pessimist and the other an incorrigible optimist. The pessimist was put in a room with all the toys imaginable for a boy his age. After a few moments he began to sit dejectedly ignoring them all. When asked what the problem was, he replied, “I just know they’ll break, if I play with them. Or my mom will put a lot of them away for later, so I don’t want to like them and have to give them up.” Meanwhile, the optimist had been put in a room full of horse manure, where he was cheerfully singing and excitedly digging his way toward the bottom of the pile. When asked why he was so cheerful, he replied, “With this much manure, there’s bound to be a pony in here somewhere!”
Actually, both worrying about worst case scenarios and dreaming impossible dreams are attempts to avoid reality.
Since we are only given grace for the trouble at hand, not for those we imagine for tomorrow, my biggest challenge is learning to live in the present moment. Sometimes the brick walls of reality are themselves the agent of grace. There’s nothing like running out of future for providing motivation for living in the present. So the upside of hitting Medicare age is that it can open up a whole new way of being in the world.
There is always enough grace for the moment even for a dreamer/ worrier like me. With the grace of God I can learn to “seize the day!”
God is in the Timing 2
Several times, God has answered my prayers in ways that show He really does understand a wus like me.
One year I was teaching a third grade Sunday School class, but woke up feeling hopelessly unloveable. I didn’t think I could communicate God’s love very effectively in such a state, so I went straight to my equivalent of a prayer closet, the bathtub.
There I prayed, “Lord, I know you love me and that it’s weak to ask for signs, but please reassure me, so I can share Your love with the children.”
Just at that moment, my nine-year old daughter came into the bathroom. As I opened my mouth to scold her for this uncharacteristic violation of my privacy and our house rules, she wrote with her finger in the mist on the mirror, “God loves mommy.” Then she smiled and left before I could say anything.
It was very easy to teach with conviction and joy about the love of God that day.
On Eagle’s Wings
Seventy-four was the right age to do it.
To quit needing to belong, to stop letting a group define me,
to give up seeking courage through numbers.
By trying to always fit in, I somehow lost my sharp corners,
becoming rounded off with small, but important parts lost in the process.
It was a hard year of letting go, but it’s paid off with new life at seventy-five.
Choosing to be whole, not a chameleon, is like rising up on eagles’ wings.
Distinguishing between wants and needs, mine and others, so I can get to know and celebrate my unfinished self,
and begin again to grow more like the person I was created to be.
Judge Not, Lest………………………….
Nobody but God knows our whole story, not even ourselves. So, only God has the necessary information to judge anyone. One of the reasons we are sensitive to others’ criticism is that we are already judging ourselves.
But we don’t know the hand we, or others, were dealt. We don’t know the combination of genes, the effects of time in the womb, the combination of personality and life experiences, hormonal imbalances, even the effects health issues long forgotten have had on us.
Two very trivial experiences, that I became aware of, illustrate this. Most of my life, though I love yellow flowers, I have always disliked forsythia intensely. Once while talking with others about memories of being disciplined in childhood, I surprised myself by saying, “My grandmother always stripped the long Forsythia branches to use for spanking us.”
Bingo!
It took me years to overcome an antipathy to classical music, only to finally remember at ten years of age having measles and standing shaking and miserable as my mother hemmed my Easter dress and my father insisted I listen appreciatively to Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
In mid-life I spent some time recording my dreams in order to better hear what was going on in my unconscious. My children were grown and gone and I still hadn’t figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up.
There was an interesting “character” that re-occurred in my dreams, a competent, practical, assured woman (not a reflection of my conscious self at that time, for sure). In this particular dream, I was playing cards and when it was my time to deal, I realized that I wasn’t playing with a full deck. (It’s ok to laugh here!) So, in the dream I went into a storage closet to look for the missing cards. The woman came into the room at that point and said with authority, “Eileen, get back in the game and play the hand you were dealt.”
I have come to realize that many of my parents’, teachers’, and my own expectations for me were probably delusional.
In college I wrote an essay entitled Breathes There a Man with Pride So Dead, Who Never to Himself Has Said, “I Am NOT the Common Man.”
In mid-life, I had to come to terms with the possibility that my struggle to not be mediocre (common) might not be the real issue. It might be that I have to struggle to become mediocre!
We are only called to play the hand we were dealt.
Ultimately, the judging of how well we do that ends up back in God’s court.
The Dialogue between Faith and Reason
Part One
Faith untempered by reason quickly becomes superstition. Reason that is unwilling to take the risk of faith becomes hubris.
The challenge of the spiritual life is maintaining an ongoing dialogue between faith and reason that stretches and refines both.
The historical paradox of Jesus being divine, yet fully human, does not require an either/or solution. We can focus on one aspect to better understand it, but if we emphasize one to the detriment of the other, we lose the meaning, purpose, and power of the mystery.
One of the most amazing and freeing aspects of the humanity of Jesus, as illustrated by the stories in the Scriptures, is that he grew in wisdom and holiness. He, like us, was until the moment of his death in a process of growth in understanding of his mission, in his understanding of the nature of love, and in the faith and courage to accept death .
Even more surprising was that often the people who guided and challenged him in this process were women, women with no religious or political credibility, even gentile women, and women considered unclean.
Recognizing the humility of the human Jesus can free us to both face our own incompleteness and to believe in our potential for growth.
And risking the leap of faith to accept Jesus as the expression of the unconditional love of the creator of all that exists for us personally is the saving grace that can carry us through the doorway of death.
God is love and Jesus is the human expression of that perfect love. Jesus is the Word of God to us.
Our own difficulty in grasping the paradox of the divinity and the humanity of Jesus, is simply just that, our difficulty, because of where we are in our own growth process. Sometimes our leap of faith is like putting something we don’t understand into an open file labeled Possibility and then living with an openness to the Spirit of God speaking, guiding, challenging, calling, teaching through the everyday events and people in our lives and then empowering us through Her quiet voice within.
(to be continued at a later date)
Does God Have a Weird Sense of Humor or What?
This is a story from a member of a traveling Christian repertory theater ministry.
Sarah, a nineteen year old, made very little money in this ministry from September through May, so she spent the summers at home working as a temp to supplement her meager income.
Since she had no car, she walked to and from work. At the first of the summer, she found this a blessing of time spent in prayer and reflection. As the temperatures rose it became less a blessing than an ordeal and she began to ask God to send her a ride somehow. After asking everyday for a week to no avail, as she was walking once again to work, she finally prayed,
“Lord, I can see that I might not find the time to spend with you, if I had a ride. And the heat is only uncomfortable, not dangerous, so the walking is healthy for me. But would you just let me know that you heard my prayer please.”
She had just finished this prayer, when a small boy on a tricycle, towing a little red wagon, came along side her. As he passed he called out, “Hey, lady. Want a ride?”
Do I Dare Call Myself a Christian?
Christianity
Christianity is accepting and sharing the love of God fleshed out in a Jew named Jesus.
Christianity is both an encounter and a relationship. It’s an experience and a process.
Christianity is growing in the knowledge and understanding of the unconditional love of God with both our mind and our heart, so that we can continue to respond, “Yes,” to God even when the going gets rough.
Christianity is, as Henri Nouwen writes in Reaching Out, a journey inward through our own brokenness to find God within, a journey outward to a broken world, and a journey together as earthen vessels, unique, flawed, but empowered.
Christianity is about realizing that though we have been filled with the Spirit of God, we leak.
Christianity can free us to recognize that the Spirit of God works in diverse ways in diverse people; sometimes like a geyser, sometimes like a brook, sometimes like an underground river.
Christianity involves recognizing that God is bigger than anybody’s bread box.
Christianity is valuing the fruit of the Spirit, peace, joy, and love, in whatever ethnic or religious context we encounter it.
Christianity is loving people more than loving thinking we’re right or feeling chosen.
Christianity is summed up in 1 Corinthians 13:1-7
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant of rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Vs 12-13 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three: and the greatest of these is love.
If this doesn’t humble us when we are claiming to be Christians or judging others, nothing will.
The American Tragedy
The tragedy of today’s America is that the middle class is systematically being wiped out by the policies of both political parties.
Neither party is willing to put the goal, of finding a way to fulfill every American’s right to life in a time of exorbitant costs for medical care, before political expediency. There is no longer the caring, commitment, and creativity needed to seek and find other solutions than leaving it to the government to solve the very real and critical crises of survival for many hardworking, middle-class Americans.
Thus, from necessity, the government will fill the void; its bureaucracy growing ever larger and more inefficient. And eventually the means will defeat the end of decent, affordable medical care for all Americans.
And the conflict from attempts to prioritize our rights to life and liberty will end with diminishing both.
Instead of regurgitating totally unchristian vituperation and polarizing political propaganda, why don’t we focus on recognizing the reality and severity of the problem, brainstorming solutions across party lines, and every single one of us praying, not for our personal agenda, but for enough love, commitment, and creativity to live up to our American dream of life, liberty, and justice for all.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 