Lately…
• I’ve been wondering where my spiritual home is. It’s a good thing to wonder about; good to openly seek a place in which to grow and be challenged. Last week I had the chance to sit down with my pastors over wine and discuss theology, scripture, what church is and why it’s important. I adore conversations like that. I wish I had more of them. I left more in love with those women than I was when it started, and yet still unsure of what I do next. Trying to be open to anything. May the courage of my convictions supersede the cowardly ease of my familiarity.
• I flew to Florida for a weekend with Erin. It was a lot of travel and a lot of money, but seeing the familiar is a necessary tonic. I love those friendships that have survived so much, that have that ease of conversation. It’s like being tuned back to the note at which I sing best.
• I’ve been a bit obsessed with Balmorhea, an Austin-based instrumental ensemble. Their 2008 album, Rivers Arms, has been on repeat for a few weeks; I haven’t yet found a place where it didn’t fit. “Baleen Morning” and “The Winter” just slay me. Highly recommended. I’ve not been one who was particularly drawn to instrumentals. Now I’m finding myself collecting more and more of them.
• This morning my windshield was covered in pollen and I scratched my itchy eyes and knew the season had changed.
• I’ve reconnected with my best friend from high school. She has been married for ten years and has three kids; I have a dog. Somehow we still have so much to talk about. There’s hope.
• I had a dream that a flock (gaggle? Posse?) of ducks had imprinted on me. They followed me around—about 20 of them, of all ages—and I was stressed because I knew they needed to get to water and I didn’t know where water was. I finally did find still water and I was so relieved. I discovered that it was saline, but it was too late. The ducks turned away from me. I awoke ashamed.
• The puppies will turn a year old this weekend. I live each day with that confidant expectation that I’ll never have to go through that again and I’m relieved. I’ll love them forever, but what an incredibly difficult time.
• My boss and I were talking about logic puzzles and now I can’t stop doing them. I love how clear cut they are. I love that there is only one right answer and that I can get there using what’s in front of me. I’m sure that sentiment is true in other areas of my life.
• I really loved “The Hunger Games” movie. I thought they did a great job interpreting the book. Odd to see places I know to be calming shown on the big screen (it was filmed outside of Asheville, much of it in Dupont State Forest) serving as the backdrop to a story so dark.
• “New Girl” is hilarious. I gave up on “Glee” months ago. I’m still scared to turn on my TV, so thank god for Hulu.
Showing posts with label Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
The Hidden Soft Spots
Recent Dream:
Began as a visit to an old building that was meant to be a church but really looked a bit more like a massive dairy barn. The whole structure was wood. The first floor was open, the pews pushed to the side and people were milling about. The ceiling was a good 20-30ft up; the room had wide windows along the sides. It was beautiful, well-crafted, a unique and memorable space. I was touring the facility with a young man who was considering it for a small wedding. Three of us went upstairs to see the smaller chapel housed there. There were maybe 12 other people already upstairs. The place was calm and relaxed. This man and I were walking and talking when suddenly the floor gave way and he plunged. I looked through the hole in the floor to see him screaming and bleeding, bones exposed on the ground below. The other people upstairs panicked and started to run toward the stairs and several of them found weak spots in the wood and they themselves fell. There was screaming and fear as we all realized the floor was littered with dark, weak spots of wood; how we’d missed them up to that point wasn’t clear. Every step we took had the potential to be gravity’s finest; to be our last. I remember frozen in place, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the fields beyond, wondering how such a quiet day could become so loud.
I have no idea what it means.
Monday, January 24, 2011
No Distinction from the Stars
I became a member of my church yesterday. Never thought I'd be one to consider committing to something like this, but I'm happy I did it. As part of my membership ceremony, I was asked to speak about how I feel called to serve. Frankly, I don't know how I'm called, or what I have to offer. It is a glorious notion made impossibly complex in action.
Anyway, here is what I said:
Several years ago, I worked for an adventure camp based in Virginia, and would spend much of the summer on an old school bus, taking kids around to various sites in the region to do different activities. I was on the younger, 8-10 year old trip when we pulled up to our campsite in rural West Virginia. The site was situated in a beautiful cove, on the flood plain of the south branch of the Potomac River. Looking up was mountains, looking around was lush grass with the river just beyond it. It was gorgeous. That night was cloudless and moonless, and we let the fire die down and all the campers lay on their backs to look at the stars. The milky way stretched across the sky like a great, glowing ribbon, and to our left and right the fireflies twinkled and danced. Seemingly thousands of fireflies flew around us and when they floated overhead they made no distinction from the stars.
It was a great scene of wonder. It felt like we were blanketed by the stars; those living and breathing insects around us, and the endless heavens above. The kids were left speechless, a miracle in and of itself.
The next morning we were packing up camp, and I heard a little girl scream. She came running toward me, yelling about a horrid insect that had landed on her shirt. She demanded I kill it immediately. I gently pulled it off her and saw it was a firefly. I told her this but she didn't care. A firefly in the daylight is just another beetle.
That image has stuck with me for years, especially when I think of God's calling on my life. Something that shone like stars in the right setting was unspectacular in the wrong one. How very much I feel like those insects when I am not where I'm supposed to be. I am nothing when I am not in the place to which I am called. I inspire no sense of God's mighty creation with my life. And so God calls me to leave the safe ordinary nature of the daylight and proceed into the night to be a light. The creator calls me to be more than just a beetle. What a terrifying prospect.
I know that I am not called because I am particularly talented; I am called because I am not. When I think I am qualified, then I believe I can do the job myself and I leave no space for God to guide. It succeeds on my qualifications and not God's. It becomes about me.
And so I don't know what I am called to do as a part of this community. I'm more often than not completely unsure of what I have to offer at any given moment in the first place. But I desire to serve, to discuss, to engage—I desire to learn and to teach, to root and to bloom. I desire to be a light, as you have been lights to me. I think of our church community as that West Virginia flood plain: the purple ink of the night sky full of stars, the blades of summer grass dotted with each one of us, shining in the way we were created to shine, serving as a light in the darkness, signaling to each other that we are recognized, we are known and we are loved for being precisely where--and how--we are supposed to be. We answer the call to our purpose.
(my church is Land of the Sky United Church of Christ)
Anyway, here is what I said:
Several years ago, I worked for an adventure camp based in Virginia, and would spend much of the summer on an old school bus, taking kids around to various sites in the region to do different activities. I was on the younger, 8-10 year old trip when we pulled up to our campsite in rural West Virginia. The site was situated in a beautiful cove, on the flood plain of the south branch of the Potomac River. Looking up was mountains, looking around was lush grass with the river just beyond it. It was gorgeous. That night was cloudless and moonless, and we let the fire die down and all the campers lay on their backs to look at the stars. The milky way stretched across the sky like a great, glowing ribbon, and to our left and right the fireflies twinkled and danced. Seemingly thousands of fireflies flew around us and when they floated overhead they made no distinction from the stars.
It was a great scene of wonder. It felt like we were blanketed by the stars; those living and breathing insects around us, and the endless heavens above. The kids were left speechless, a miracle in and of itself.
The next morning we were packing up camp, and I heard a little girl scream. She came running toward me, yelling about a horrid insect that had landed on her shirt. She demanded I kill it immediately. I gently pulled it off her and saw it was a firefly. I told her this but she didn't care. A firefly in the daylight is just another beetle.
That image has stuck with me for years, especially when I think of God's calling on my life. Something that shone like stars in the right setting was unspectacular in the wrong one. How very much I feel like those insects when I am not where I'm supposed to be. I am nothing when I am not in the place to which I am called. I inspire no sense of God's mighty creation with my life. And so God calls me to leave the safe ordinary nature of the daylight and proceed into the night to be a light. The creator calls me to be more than just a beetle. What a terrifying prospect.
I know that I am not called because I am particularly talented; I am called because I am not. When I think I am qualified, then I believe I can do the job myself and I leave no space for God to guide. It succeeds on my qualifications and not God's. It becomes about me.
And so I don't know what I am called to do as a part of this community. I'm more often than not completely unsure of what I have to offer at any given moment in the first place. But I desire to serve, to discuss, to engage—I desire to learn and to teach, to root and to bloom. I desire to be a light, as you have been lights to me. I think of our church community as that West Virginia flood plain: the purple ink of the night sky full of stars, the blades of summer grass dotted with each one of us, shining in the way we were created to shine, serving as a light in the darkness, signaling to each other that we are recognized, we are known and we are loved for being precisely where--and how--we are supposed to be. We answer the call to our purpose.
(my church is Land of the Sky United Church of Christ)
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Address the Harms
“I thank God for pain,” said Dr. Paul Brand, “I cannot think of a greater gift I could give my leprosy patients.” Brand is the doctor who first discovered that leprosy does its damage by killing off nerve endings and was a leading expert on the treatment of a disease that still exists and still holds a vicious stigma. The loss of pain receptors means that simple injuries, like a splinter or a blister, become problematic, because the victim doesn't have the ability to feel these injuries and tend to them.
Our ability to feel pain is often the conduit we need to address the injury before more damage is done. Pain saves us; forces us to identify and address the harms facing us. One of the main injuries suffered by lepers is the loss of sight; the nerve endings that remind eyes to blink are destroyed, so dust settles in and causes infection.
My pastor, Amanda, spoke on exile this week, and the story of Jesus healing the lepers (Luke 17 for those who want to reference) and only one came back to thank him. I wonder if the reason only one came back is because of what this healing looked like. Does healing mean that all the sores left and the lepers went away looking brand new, or does it mean their nerve endings grew back? By that I mean, did Jesus blessed them by restoring their ability to feel, even while leaving the sores and infections? To an outsider, no healing would've taken place. But to that leper, it would certainly be known. How overwhelming that would be, to suddenly feel for the first time these wounds that were visible but unfelt. It would be painful, but it would be progress.
I wonder how our pre-defined definitions of what healing looks like limit our understanding of it. Maybe part of the healing process is feeling, for maybe the first time, the wounds we carry, the dust in our eyes.
Our ability to feel pain is often the conduit we need to address the injury before more damage is done. Pain saves us; forces us to identify and address the harms facing us. One of the main injuries suffered by lepers is the loss of sight; the nerve endings that remind eyes to blink are destroyed, so dust settles in and causes infection.
My pastor, Amanda, spoke on exile this week, and the story of Jesus healing the lepers (Luke 17 for those who want to reference) and only one came back to thank him. I wonder if the reason only one came back is because of what this healing looked like. Does healing mean that all the sores left and the lepers went away looking brand new, or does it mean their nerve endings grew back? By that I mean, did Jesus blessed them by restoring their ability to feel, even while leaving the sores and infections? To an outsider, no healing would've taken place. But to that leper, it would certainly be known. How overwhelming that would be, to suddenly feel for the first time these wounds that were visible but unfelt. It would be painful, but it would be progress.
I wonder how our pre-defined definitions of what healing looks like limit our understanding of it. Maybe part of the healing process is feeling, for maybe the first time, the wounds we carry, the dust in our eyes.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Somebody Understands
I can't stop thinking about the shooting of the abortion doctor in Wichita.
I'm disgusted by it; haunted that someone could be so hated for doing what is, by law, legal. It doesn't really matter whether one deems it immoral; it is within the law and thus the choice belongs to the woman and the doctor, not to some perceived moral cause.
But we have those who claim to be protectors of "innocents" who find it their moral obligation to assassinate those with whom they disagree. Before this murder, Dr. Tiller had had his clinic bombed and he had been shot. Twice. His family received death threats; he was taken to court on multiple occasions under paper-thin allegations. And he kept practicing, because he believed so strongly in a woman's right to choose. And so a single bullet met him in the foyer of his church, as he served as an usher. How ironic that he'd be killed there. I wonder how many "houses of worship" put on the face of condemnation at this act while secretly singing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead". I cannot fathom how those who espouse the worth of unborn “life” can in the same breath advocate the outright murder of a doctor working within the lines of legality. It makes my blood absolutely boil.
The right to choose is not the same as advocating abortion: it is simply asking that a choice be possible, that the decision rest in the hands of the woman and not in the hands of the church or the government.
I'm disgusted by it; haunted that someone could be so hated for doing what is, by law, legal. It doesn't really matter whether one deems it immoral; it is within the law and thus the choice belongs to the woman and the doctor, not to some perceived moral cause.
But we have those who claim to be protectors of "innocents" who find it their moral obligation to assassinate those with whom they disagree. Before this murder, Dr. Tiller had had his clinic bombed and he had been shot. Twice. His family received death threats; he was taken to court on multiple occasions under paper-thin allegations. And he kept practicing, because he believed so strongly in a woman's right to choose. And so a single bullet met him in the foyer of his church, as he served as an usher. How ironic that he'd be killed there. I wonder how many "houses of worship" put on the face of condemnation at this act while secretly singing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead". I cannot fathom how those who espouse the worth of unborn “life” can in the same breath advocate the outright murder of a doctor working within the lines of legality. It makes my blood absolutely boil.
The right to choose is not the same as advocating abortion: it is simply asking that a choice be possible, that the decision rest in the hands of the woman and not in the hands of the church or the government.
“We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.” --Anne Lamott
a bullet ensuring the right to life
whizzed past his kid & his wife
and knocked his glasses right off of his face
and the blood poured off the pulpit
and the blood poured down the picket line
and the hatred was immediate
and the vengeance was divine."
In 1998 Ani DiFranco released the song, "Hello, Birmingham" about the shootings of abortion doctors. I post a video to it now; the words are powerful even as the video is shoddy.
"A bullet came to visit a doctor in his one safe placea bullet ensuring the right to life
whizzed past his kid & his wife
and knocked his glasses right off of his face
and the blood poured off the pulpit
and the blood poured down the picket line
and the hatred was immediate
and the vengeance was divine."
Monday, March 3, 2008
Notes on a Monday
* So I actually had Sunday off this week, which I shockingly discovered, so does most of the working world. Like I got to see people...when it was still light out.
* Apparently my church moved. They did not ask permission. For this reason I will continue to not give them any money.
* I've been really absent-minded lately. Today I put shampoo on my loofah and didn't realize I hadn't been washing my hair till I was already done.
* Poor Prince Harry. Why couldn't we just leave him alone in desert? He was doing great--no ladies, booze, Hitler costumes or having to suffer from not being as hot as his brother, just shooting up stuff and walking around--and what did the media do? Point him out like he's Waldo and now he has to take his gun and go back to his castle. Wait, did I just say I felt sorry for a royal? For suffering? I'm sorry I must be high.
* You know what movie was surprisingly good but it took me forever to watch it cuz I didn't think I'd like it? No, not "Gigli". That was as bad as expected. It was "The Departed." There is no part of me that wants to like Leonardo DiCaprio but he is a good actor...dammit. Liking Leo is like me and gaucho pants: other people love 'em but I can't help but feel like I beat up a clown and stole his pants. I can see their perks but they don't work for me. K kind of a bad analogy but I'm still recovering from washing my body with some TRESemme shampoo. Cut me some slack.
* Five of us went out for Leslie's birthday on Saturday night for some tappas and my 3rd visit to the French Broad Chocolate Lounge in a week. I don't even like sweets that much but I can't stop going. That was the most fun night in recent memory. And I didn't even lose my pants (note: I haven't actually, literally lost my pants in about 8 years. That was a quick learning curve.)
* Here is my second favorite blog of recent: Jessi Klein's NotBlog. I kind of want to be her friend.
* I recently heard myself on video. I have to decided to cease all talking forever. I sound like a smartass mouse.
* Currently I have the emotional capacity of a grapefruit. Not the size of a grapefruit, but the actual emotional capacity of one. Like if you were to stare longingly at a grapefruit and then expect reciprocation, that's what I'm like currently in the emotional sector. But less curvy. And not as full of vitamin C. Or from Florida.
* Hey guess what! I still want to be a writer. And I'm still scared of it. Soo...nothing is different.
* That's it, I'm swearing off boys for the rest of the afternoon.
* Apparently my church moved. They did not ask permission. For this reason I will continue to not give them any money.
* I've been really absent-minded lately. Today I put shampoo on my loofah and didn't realize I hadn't been washing my hair till I was already done.
* Poor Prince Harry. Why couldn't we just leave him alone in desert? He was doing great--no ladies, booze, Hitler costumes or having to suffer from not being as hot as his brother, just shooting up stuff and walking around--and what did the media do? Point him out like he's Waldo and now he has to take his gun and go back to his castle. Wait, did I just say I felt sorry for a royal? For suffering? I'm sorry I must be high.
* You know what movie was surprisingly good but it took me forever to watch it cuz I didn't think I'd like it? No, not "Gigli". That was as bad as expected. It was "The Departed." There is no part of me that wants to like Leonardo DiCaprio but he is a good actor...dammit. Liking Leo is like me and gaucho pants: other people love 'em but I can't help but feel like I beat up a clown and stole his pants. I can see their perks but they don't work for me. K kind of a bad analogy but I'm still recovering from washing my body with some TRESemme shampoo. Cut me some slack.
* Five of us went out for Leslie's birthday on Saturday night for some tappas and my 3rd visit to the French Broad Chocolate Lounge in a week. I don't even like sweets that much but I can't stop going. That was the most fun night in recent memory. And I didn't even lose my pants (note: I haven't actually, literally lost my pants in about 8 years. That was a quick learning curve.)
* Here is my second favorite blog of recent: Jessi Klein's NotBlog. I kind of want to be her friend.
* I recently heard myself on video. I have to decided to cease all talking forever. I sound like a smartass mouse.
* Currently I have the emotional capacity of a grapefruit. Not the size of a grapefruit, but the actual emotional capacity of one. Like if you were to stare longingly at a grapefruit and then expect reciprocation, that's what I'm like currently in the emotional sector. But less curvy. And not as full of vitamin C. Or from Florida.
* Hey guess what! I still want to be a writer. And I'm still scared of it. Soo...nothing is different.
* That's it, I'm swearing off boys for the rest of the afternoon.
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