Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Ready



I go on sabbatical at the end of this week.
This is my second sabbatical, and this time mine overlaps with Andy's, so our family will be spending two months in Europe.
We'll start in Berlin, (where Andy will teach a class on Bonhoeffer, in the Bonhoeffer Haus, which is pretty awesome). Then we'll settle down in Paris for the duration, with short trips to London, Switzerland, Taize, Venice and Florence, and whatever day trips in France occur to us.
(When we come home, I'll have one more month left, which includes a week-long silent retreat at a monastery in Kentucky).

My goal this sabbatical is "uni-tasking," which is to say, I want to do one thing at a time.  I want to live in the moment, to be in the here and now. I want to exist in the world with five changes of clothes and no social media.  I want to struggle through learning a language, let my kids teach me things, and read novels set in the place I am visiting. I want to journal in a cafe and walk till my body hurts.  I want to see art, and taste food, and be surprised by what a day might bring, and what I can get by without.
I want to learn from the French joie de vivre, which, I suspect, involves slowing down a lot and practicing patience and presence. And I am fascinated anyway by the idea of living with "exuberant enjoyment of life."  I wrote about accepting the gift of this sabbatical, and the strange phenomenon of avoiding joy instead of embracing it.  I have let go of guilt and self-judgment (which is an ongoing practice.  Even in the writing of this I have had to do it again).  That seems essential to receiving grace and joy.  I've also let go of Facebook.  Both of these experiences are preparing me for what's ahead.

I am scaling waaay back, leaving my computer at home (gulp), and going back to pen and paper.  My work email is set to automatically delete everything that comes in. Next I have to figure out how not to get news updates on my phone every time our president says something shocking.  But we're planning on turning off our phones for much of the time too.
I want to remember how to breathe. Deeply and fully.
And then I want to do it a lot.

I have purchased three different travel purses and road-tested them. This is unusual for me, considering I have used the same purse every day for at least seven years, and the same wallet since I was 18.  I dug out some old purses to see if any of them might work. This is evidently not unusual for me. In one I found a ticket stub to the Table Mountain Cable Car in Capetown, and in another a subway card from NYC. After much indecision and extensive advice from Maisy, I think I finally arrived on the one I'll be taking.  Now I am on the hunt for the perfect walking-all-over-creation shoes.  These obsessions are helping me break down this big trip into manageable, bite-sized anxieties.

We are almost ready to go.
We've changed the burnt-out lightbulbs and washed the windows, and Saturday I'll scrub the fridge.  All the things that need doing that I don't do for myself, I will do for someone else.
The dogsitter will have a lovely clean fridge and bright rooms.

I looked up my family tree, and it turns out that I have lots of roots in some of the places we'll be, so that's exciting.  Maisy has some city scavenger hunt books, Owen is already planning family excursions to nearby towns, and Andy is reading French philosophers. The Roots are exploring.

Both kids are bringing ukuleles so we have some musical evenings ahead.  Art supplies made the cut too, but the stuffed animal limit has been set at a strict four.
The kids are heartbroken about leaving the dog for two whole months, and we're working through those tears. There will be many more, I am sure.  And I am not naive about how our strong-willed collection of introverts will handle jet lag, homesickness, competing agendas and limited alone time.  But I am hoping to glean some joie even from that vivreing.
Or at least grow in patience and presence.
And breathing.

We are leaving in the thick of summer and returning to Fall. Owen leaves 13 and returns 14.  My church will change while I am gone.  But, as I have repeatedly assured the kids, the dog will not forget us.
Two months is a very short time in the scheme of things.
But each one of the next 60 days is a gift, ready to be received.
I am ready to receive them.

checking out to be all in


I have been easing off of social media the past few months, like a detox.  Sometimes I dip back in and it feels like a relapse - I don't like what it does to me. I feel sluggish and anxious and fired up about things that I don't need to take on.  It no longer feeds me; right now it mostly drains me.  I will be going off of it completely for the next three months as I go on sabbatical.  
I have been a zealous Facebook user since 2009. Every year I print a book of the photos and things I shared about my kids (and more and more, things I didn't share - just posted to myself so that they would make it into the book).  So I find myself grieving that record-keeping and wondering what will take its place.
But I also know I need to do this. 
I wrote the following post on Facebook after returning from a spring break trip with my family to Mexico, and just before Holy Week:

March 25, 2018


So... 10 days away from Facebook/social media and here are some things I noticed:
1- I didn't miss it.  
I didn't miss the drama (DRAMA!!). The arguing and factions. The urgency and insistency. The labels and categories. The for or against, good or bad, right or wrong. The way it takes otherwise decent people and gives their worst instincts a megaphone. It's a whole conversation I don't have to be in. For real. Choice. Freedom. (#sabbathwisdom)
2 - I did miss it, in a bad way. 
I was shocked how little interest my phone held for me when I wasn't responding to the little red circle on the corner of the Facebook icon. And how often in my day I do - like multiple times an hour. Like every time I pick up my phone. With the app deleted, and staying away from social media completely, I was FAR more present with my kids, husband, self, surroundings, thoughts, emotions, sensations. It turns out Facebook use is compulsive for me. The immediate feedback. Instant gratification. It's an addiction. It affects my relationships. I keep one foot in not-real world and only one in the real. I am no longer comfortable with my use of it.
3- I did miss it, in a good way.
Facebook keeps me connected to people I love who live far away. We share stories and photos. Glimpsing people's lives and thoughts can make me inspired, reminded, grateful. I see stories that remind me where God is and encourage me to keep looking. I share things I know are inspiring to others. I missed this. And if I consider going off completely, I would miss this.
4- I missed less.
I read far more full articles in the newspapers I subscribe to. Instead of scrolling past titles and thumb-responding, or feeling bombarded with people's opinions or agendas and getting swept up, I read the morning paper, like the old days (except on the screen). I felt both better informed and healthier.
5- I missed more. 
I didn’t ride the waves of frenzy surrounding new stories or whatever else people got up in arms about. Whatever else people said about my friend that tore her apart or made her a symbol for their cause, missed it. Whatever finger-pointing and hand-wringing and mouth frothing went on about any and everything, missed it. Whatever funny dog videos or hysterical gifs or stupid, brain-draining articles about this health fad or that shocking behavior I would have spent precious time watching or reading, missed it. 
I feel like part of me has been an open wound I keep picking and irritating with social media. I didn't know it was affecting me like it was. Left alone for 10 days, it's beginning to heal. 
At this point, I feel very hesitant about returning, or in what form I should.
I need to sort out what I am wanting and needing, so I'm taking the next week off of social media too. 
Peace.

Sunday, July 15, 2018

Avoiding Joy / Refusing Grace - (Grace Encountered Part 3)


John 15:9-15 (from The Message)
"I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love. “I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love.
Matthew 11:28-30 (adapted from The Message)

"Are you tired? Worn out? Overwhelmed by the heaviness of it all? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I will show you how to take a real rest.  Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I wont lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn how to live freely and lightly. 



The final week of elementary school my daughter's whole 5th grade went to a camp together. She had heard about this trip since kindergarten, and was looking forward to every part of it, most especially the night walk with the science teacher, the slugs and snails class, "stream studies" and the ropes course. The bus would pull away from the school at 6:50 am on Monday morning and she couldn’t wait to be on it. All her stuff was packed and by the door and the excitement was so great that it was hard to fall asleep the night before. 

But in the middle of the night, Maisy awoke with terrible ear pain, which turned out to be a full-blown ear infection. When Monday morning came there was no way she could go on the trip; she’d be seeing the doctor instead. 
I drove to the school to let her teacher know, and spent the next two days with a devastated daughter, feverish and heartbroken.  But by the second night, the antibiotics had kicked in and she was almost back to 100%. I told her we would wake up early and I would drive her up to camp to finish the week with her class.  

On Wednesday at 4:30 am I gently shook her out of bed, and by 5:00 we were backing out of the driveway, preparing for our 4 ½ hour drive, which I would repeat in reverse after dropping her off.
Around 5:30 or so, Maisy, who up to this point could hardly keep the smile off her face and the wiggles out of her legs, got quiet and still.  
After a few minutes she said, “Mom, I feel really bad that you have to drive me all the way up there.”

“You do?” I said. “Well, Maisy, I wonder if you can let that bad feeling turn into gratitude instead. Listen to me carefully: I am so excited to drive you up to camp. I know how much it means to you, and it makes me so happy to be able to do this for you.”

Her eyebrows shot up and she looked at me in wonder. “Really?” she asked.

“Really.” I answered, unable to keep the tears from my eyes or the grin off my face.

Her whole demeanor lit up, and gratitude oozed from her until she was practically bursting. 
“Mommy! Thank you so much!” she exclaimed.  

I marveled at the sudden shift in her, from feeling bad that I was doing something for her, to pure gratitude; the difference was dramatic.
These are both ways to greet a gift.  But one kept her (and me) captive to a system of judging, measuring, unworthiness and transactions.  The other set her free to receive not just the gift of a ride up to camp, but the whole rest of the week. 
Every moment ahead of her, this child was ready to absorb with delight, far more, I suspect, than she would have if she’d boarded the bus alongside everyone else. 
This experience was precious.  It mattered so deeply to her, so it mattered deeply to me. I was willing to sacrifice a whole day driving for her to be there, and when she received that as a gift, she received her own life, all that was before her and within her, as an utter gift.  
The joy that we both felt right in that moment could have powered the car.

I’ve been thinking about that moment as this sabbatical approaches. 
What happens when someone asks, What would make your heart sing? If you can think up your wildest dream that would make you feel fully alive and free, what would it be?
And then you do the fun thing of thinking that thing up; you dream it and embellish it and throw in fun details like, a family cooking class in Italy! What about a hike in Switzerland between a town that makes cheese and a town that makes chocolate
You say how you want to try living in a place where you don’t speak the language, trusting each day to bring a new adventure and working only to be open to what comes.  And you want to do this with your whole family, together, say, in Paris. So you write all this down.  And it’s hypothetical, and electric with dreaminess and fantasy.  You send it off and then you work to let it all go.  Aaah, it was fun to dream.

And then they say, “OK. You can have that.”

And at first it’s thrilling and unreal. 
You book an apartment and renew your passport and look up the hiking route and buy guidebooks.  And then suddenly it’s real. 
And you start to think about how you’d better come back super spiritually recharged so that it will be worth the significant investment. Or how you need to write something meaningful and important that will last so the time pays off.  
Or what if it isn’t all you dreamed it would be and your family fights a ton and you freak out about not really knowing the language, and you waste the gift, and it goes too fast, and you don’t milk every second of goodness from the experience? 
What if the wish granters made a mistake and should’ve granted someone else’s wish instead? Someone more worthy, or more deserving because they’ve suffered more than you have, or they don’t already have as much joy in their lives as you do?
And you find yourself grasping for expectations to meet, and ways to measure your progress or prove your worthiness.  And then, as your wishes and dreams are coming true, you feel bad that someone is driving you all the way there, and your heart isn’t breathing, let alone singing. 

Here’s the flat out truth of it: after nine years of talking about Sabbath and the vital need to stop it all and simply be, after all I’ve said about stepping out of the way of fear and into ive-giving connection with God and each other, after everything I’ve preached and practiced and written about remembering whose and who you are, when faced with this enormous, extravagant gift of a Sabbatical, this crazy chance to put everything down and go adventuring in the world I love with the people I love most with nothing else to do but that
I am actually terrified to receive it.  
I am finding all kinds of ways to resist it.

As it turns out, it feels so much more vulnerable to me to receive joy, than it does to embrace suffering. 
That has come as a complete surprise to me. 

I’m scared of that much grace! I am that intimidated by this amount of generosity and joy! That kind of heart-singing feels too good to be true so I’m apparently trying to make it not true so I won’t be disappointed or a disappointment.  
Instead of teetering on the precipice of freedom and joy, I’m watching myself cling to anxiety, and grasp for the solid ground of self-judgment in the familiar territory of earning and obligation. 

To complicate matters, we are in a time when it is treated like a violation to be joyous.  
If you have too much contentment, you must not be paying attention.  
There is so much to be worried or angry about, so much suffering, we could spend all day every day only dwelling on that, and many of us do.
So perhaps joy feels gaudy, naive, or thoughtless.  
Perhaps we think it’s more polite, or woke, to hide our joy, or temper it with caveats, so it doesn’t make others feel bad. 
We treat joy like a weapon that can wound those who are already suffering, or a limited commodity- there is only so much to go around, and if one person has too much joy they are hogging it from others, and should feel guilty, or at least have enough shame or dignity to hide it from the rest of us.

But joy is the word we use to describe the energy of being fully alive, fully connected to God, knowing who we are and whose we are. 
Joy is heart-song.  
And heart song it isn’t just one high, cheerful note. It’s the whole tune, with all its complexity.  The low, groaning moaning parts from the depths of our lonesome souls, the laughter-tinged merriment of high notes, the goosebumpy harmonies and steady favorite melodies, and the rhythm that keeps the beat of it all.  
Joy is the breathing open, fully singing heart with all its parts.
Joy is the car ride after you’ve lost the chance to go and it’s is handed back to you. Joy is not adversary to suffering, it’s partner and friend. Because grace meets us in suffering, and grace brings joy; both remind us that life is a precious and beautiful gift, both point us back to grace and invite us to receive.

Jesus said all he said so that we have his joy – joy that comes from being fully alive, fully connected to the Father, fully at home in love.   When we are fully at home in love, that feels like joy.  When you feel the depth of being loved, when you love others from your depths, when you receive God’s presence as love - your own life, a gift, not earned, not deserved, not only for the worthy, but for you, this life, all its beauty and all its pain, unique and unequalled anywhere else on the planet, your one gift of a heart-singing life held in love - you taste joy.

But even that I want to turn into something I can measure.  
Am I receiving the gift fully enough? 
No. I never could.  It’s impossible.  We could never fully receive the abundant and limitless measure of God's grace and love for us.
So I will stop trying.  
I will hear the words of my heavenly parent who says from the driver’s seat, “It means so much to me to be able to do this for you.  My heart sings when your heart sings.”  
And I will hear, really let myself hear, the invitation Jesus gives: 
Are you tired? Worn out? Overwhelmed? 
Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.

I want to learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
That’s what these next three months are for. For me and for you.
We get to learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

While I am away doing this, you will be here doing it too.  You get to, you’re supposed to! play, and heart sing, and use money you didn’t earn to do things together that feel frivolous or over the top. You get to step outside the ordinary patterns and try out things you wouldn’t normally do.  This is the time set aside specifically for this: to learn to live freely and lightly, as Jesus says. To make ourselves at home in God’s love. 

While I am away from you, practicing receiving grace with and from my family, you get to practice receiving from one another. 
Not saying, “Oh no, I feel so bad…” but “Thank you.” 
Practice listening to your heart song and letting it out.  
Listening to each other’s heart song and letting it shape you.  
Practice feeling joy whenever and wherever it meets you, and not hiding from it or pushing it away, but sharing it, because joy is meant to be shared and not hidden, claimed by all and not divvied up to individuals. Joy is powerful and contagious and resilient and it multiplies. Joy in one heart strikes a chord in the next and the music grows.

I am listening to French language cds to try to catch up to my kids who’ve spent the week at French immersion camp.  The cds are unlike any language class I’ve ever taken. Instead of asking us to memorize vocabulary and conjugate verbs, he jumps right in to whole sentences and asks us to trust him. To show up and experience it, without trying to master it or get it right.  Learning, he insists, happens through forgetting and remembering.  You don’t memorize the backstory of your favorite characters on your favorite shows, you just get reminded and you forget and you’re reminded again, and gradually it sinks in and you know it.  Learning is forgetting and remembering, over and over until it’s just there, part of you.  
“But how can I remind you,” he asks gently, “if you haven’t forgotten?”

Grace cannot be grasped or mastered. It can’t be memorized.  The unforced rhythms of grace are learned through forgetting and remembering. 

So for me, every time now that I feel the resistance rise up, I am going to try to greet it with tenderness. 
Oh, hello resistance! Look at you wanting to earn this gift! That shows you know it is a good gift.  It shows you deeply appreciate it. I wonder if, in this moment, you might be willing to let the gift in, and let yourself feel how grateful you really are?
Over and over, I’ll forget and remember, until grace becomes part of me. 
I with God, and Jesus with me, making my home in love.

What if, every time you feel resistance to grace, you too greet that resistance with tenderness and hear the invitation to let the gift in?  
Because there is absolutely nothing else God would rather be doing than watching your heart sing. Your one precious heart that God made and treasures.  And the harmony of all these hearts singing at once is the greatest music God could ever conceive of.

Howard Thurman famously said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because the world needs people who have come alive.”

What makes you come alive, Butch? What about you, Georgia? What makes you come alive, Linda? Lisa? Svea? Norm?  What makes each person in this room come alive? What kind of glorious, soul-opening, spine-tingling symphony would emerge from this room full of fully-alive singing hearts?

In a world of dire news, exhausting commentary, unrelenting evil and a breakneck pace, what radical and powerful antidote is a community of joy-filled and joy-oozing people?  What defiant and reorienting force is a even a single person fully at home in love?  When we make our home in love, when we live in the joy of being connected to God and each other, it affects others.  If you need proof, go see Wont you be My Neighbor. What a gentle, powerful witness Mr. Rogers is to the deep and transformative impact of loving others the way Jesus loves us. When we make our home in love it changes the narrative, frees us from the way of fear and draws us back into the real reality, the Kingdom of God.

Get away with me and you’ll recover your life, Jesus said. 
I am RSVPing Yes to that invitation.

And you can too. 
RSVP Yes to it with each other. 
Remind each other when you forget.  Receive the gift.  
For goodness sake, spend the money.  Hire each other babysitters and go see Mr. Rogers together!  Buy flowers and music and indulge in beauty.  Let yourselves play, go on outings, deepen your friendships.  Share your stories and write new ones.  Hear each other’s heart song.  
This congregation has had lots of practice receiving grace in shared suffering.  This time is for practicing receiving grace in shared joy. It’s all part of the hearts’ music and God can’t wait to meet you in all of it. 

Let’s commit to being all in on this heart-singing thing, shall we?  
While we’re apart, together we will be learning the unforced rhythm of grace that keeps the beat of it all. 

Amen.


This is Part 3 of a series, "Grace Encountered. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

A Prayer for the 4th of July


We belong
first and foremost
to you, Lord.
God of heaven and earth,
eternity and the moment,
ever and always.

Then we belong to the whole of creation;
the living, the dead,
the yet to become, and the reborn,
the ongoing cycle of earth and life
with its glorious array of ever-expanding participants:
mountains and trees and oceans and valleys,
gazelles and robins and rivers and earthworms,
all.

Next we belong to the human family,
all humanity in every corner of the vast globe,
all languages, creeds, cultures, skin tones, religions, beliefs, experiences, 
hopes, celebrations, losses, goals, 
vocations, technologies and connections,
in grief and wonder and anger and happiness and confusion and sadness and joy.
Whatever happens, and no matter what,
we belong to them all, all, all.
And they all
belong to us.

After this we are grouped - 
some arbitrarily and some by choice - 
into land masses and geographic regions.
We develop identifying accents, clothing preferences and regional tastebuds
which is to say,
we gather our experiences into ourselves
alongside others
who are gathering into themselves experiences
alongside us.

We call our places of belonging towns, counties, villages and cities,
tribes, nations, countries, continents and coalitions;
these countless designations simply mean that
we live nearby
and agree to certain codes of living with one another
that, in one way or another, uphold our greater belonging - 
to the whole human family,
the living and the dead of all creation,
and the Lord of all.

Next we have the smaller groups in which we learn
and the people there who teach us,
the neighbors, musicians, coaches and collaborators,
the members of our faith, our teams, our clans.
We have hobbies we cultivate with people who practice them alongside us,
passions we pursue and those whom they impact,
jobs we end up in and those who end up there too,
whose lives intertwine with our own.

And then there are those specific people from whom we come,
the ones whose being and belonging
shape our own being and belonging most directly,
I mean, of course,
our ancestors and grandparents,
aunts and uncles, cousins and kin,
parents and siblings.
We may have the partner with whom we share our life,
and the children whom we shape and watch become,
and the pets we assemble into our homes,
and the gardens we tend,
and the friendships we cultivate,
and the places we grow our roots,
deep, strong and sure,
with and for those to whom we give our hearts,
who will one day be buried in the ground alongside everyone and everything else,
to which we already and always belong.

So on this day that celebrates our nation,
we give thanks for all the belongings that hold us,
both created and innate.

We give thanks for the communities into which we pour our lives,
and for all those in our communities that pour their lives into us.
We give thanks for the earth that nurtures all life,
and all those who nurture the earth.

On this day that celebrates our nation,
in our collective belonging called The United States of America
we give thanks for all that is good and wise and kind,
all that upholds our humanity,
both individual and shared.
Thank you, God.

And in our collective belonging called The United States of America
we confess all that is evil, foolish and divisive,
all that damages our soul,
both individual and shared.
Forgive us, Lord.

And when this day that celebrates our nation
has come to an end
in fireworks and fanfare,
it remains
that beyond country, beyond kin,
beyond borders and beliefs,
beyond any and all boundaries,
whether natural or unnatural,
is the Great Belonging,
that is,
to one another, all,
and to you, Lord of all.

For this, today,
we give thanks.

Amen.

How to Repent (It's not how you think)

Psalm 46 ,  Jeremiah 31:31-34 When I was in college, I spent the large part of one summer sleeping on a 3-foot round papason chair cushion o...