The Wolf Howl of God

This is the assignment for the Spirituality and the Senses class I'm auditing at George Fox Evangelical Seminary: Where is God in Our Sense of Hearing.

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The river was quiet and the night cool. From my vantage point standing in the back of the boat, I peered through the darkness trying to spot any trees or rocks poking above the surface — clues there was far more hazardous material lurking underneath needing to be avoided. During a night practice, it is not an easy task. Though the lights of the city illuminate the slough to some degree, it’s not enough to make the dangers obvious. But that is my job, my sole responsibility: to keep the twenty paddlers and caller safe. Though for this reason the authority on the boat is ultimately mine, I only give commands when I have to. Most of the time, I watch and listen. Some people may wonder why I largely gave up paddling to till but the truth is, looking around at the river and the sky, hearing the birds and the breeze, I have the best seat in the house. During this particular night, we were paddling in the slough and my ears were tuned to the noises of the night. That’s when I heard the owls. They were soft and gentle and hearing them “whooo” from the trees was magical for me. I asked the paddlers in front of me if they had heard the owls’ call but they had not. I was the only person who heard them because I was the only person who was listening. Hearing the owls has since been a living reminder to me to listen deeply, to appreciate what may not be heard right away.

When choosing what kind of hearing experience to try, I decided to focus on what would be the most stretching for me and what I finally came up with was to sit quietly for a long period of time. As ironic as I know this is being part of the Friends’ church, I have a horrible time sitting quietly. When traveling around among unprogrammed Friends, I can only be quiet for so long before silently writing in my journal. I would much rather move and discuss than sit in a silent room — too polite to leave yet not polite enough to leave my journal in my bag. Even on the boat I have a job to do, a till to guide through the water. Knowing how busy my life is, I do take at least fifteen minutes in the morning to sit silently with God in my favorite chair. There’s no music, no journal — just God and I having a talk or sitting in each other’s company. It’s a needed time to just be. For this experience, I decided to stretch the fifteen minutes to an hour and to try it two ways: once with music and once without. Both were hard.

The first night I tried it with music. Knowing intuitively I needed something more meditative, I used a CD from the library called “Wolf Song”. It starts out with forest sounds — birds, a river, trees creaking, and wolves howling. Having just gone backpacking at an open sided shelter deep in the wilderness the weekend before, the sound of the wolves sent shivers up my chest. The thought of having such power so nearby and me being so vulnerable was frightening and thrilling at the same time. Wolves are humbling. Such intelligent creatures and yet so fearsome. This is how God also is – immensely powerful, uncontrollable, ready to strike in ways we may not like and this scares us.

Along with the wolves’ howl, the sounds were interspersed with musical interludes laid over the forest sounds. First there was a focus on the wolves, then the music, then the wolves again. I tend to focus on the musical side of God – thrilling and heart-soaring, enriching and beautiful, full of color and life, comforting to the soul. But there is also this other side to God – this wolf howling at the moon side I too often neglect to see. This haunting illustration of the fearsome dominance of God chills the heart in its tracks and makes one forget all shallow pretensions before God’s awesome show of power. Staring into the eyes of a wolf, one is both caught in the wonder of the moment so rare and yet also scared out of their mind at what the wolf could do. The angels in the Bible had to keep telling people to “Fear not!” Encounters with the true God, not an image, leave people trembling from head to toe.

One of my favorite books on the images of God is Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos. In the book, the main character interacts with a wide variety of Jesus images until finally in the end, he meets the real Jesus but instead of being face-to-face with “I AM,” he is kneeling and Jesus comes up behind him and lays his hands on his head. He never sees Jesus’s face. He never captures a new image – it’s the silent power and the lack of an image that finally speaks the truth of who Jesus is. I’ve had so many images of God in my faith journey and they have each been valuable and taught me something in turn. They’ve been the musical interludes to my relationship with God, the comforting moments, the healing hands, the loving words. They’ve all been immensely valuable yet it’s been the times when God has stepped in without my asking – speaking my name, coming to me in a dream or reminding me how un-knowable he/she is, the times when God has howled like a wolf in the night that I tremble before this God I cannot control or truly begin to comprehend.

The question I come to is, “Can I truly trust God if I am constantly making up who he is?” Yes, it’s comforting to imagine God sitting up in a tree beside me talking things out or just enjoying the moment, but if I stay up in the tree with him/her, I’ll have missed much of the point of who God is. We can’t ultimately name God nor is an image of God ever going to be complete. I am slowly learning to let there be space between the images, to stop in the silences and hear the wolves howling in the shadows, feel the trembling vibrations in the blowing breeze and to go further inside myself past blood and bone into my soul where my deeper wisdom tells me I have knelt in the woods myself and howled along. This is the God I want to know – the one I can’t direct, can’t grasp, can’t begin to draw or paint. Yet, at the same time, I am driven to try. As a writer and artist, I am drawn to the musical interludes, the beautiful expanses of song coloring in who God is and I long to take up my own watercolor pencil set and sketch out a few pictures of my own. Perhaps we are allowed to do this as long as we respect the silences and know we must ultimately lay our pictures down to hear who God really is.

Laying the music down and embracing the silence was difficult in its own right. Instead of the music being a bit distracting, my thoughts stepped in with the grace of an orangutan playing a drum solo. Trying to calm and quiet myself in the midst of all this noise was slippery at best and downright impossible at worst. The waiting I have endured for several months is playing at a fevered pitch for two to three more weeks and I’m now having a hard time breathing. I know this is a time when I most need to sit quietly with God and, in fact, when I wrote about my struggles breathing as a conversation with God, they did ease a bit for a day. Even so, I laid down in God’s arms and got to talk with him about my fears and concerns about all these changes going on in my life. I told him I feel like I am suspended in mid-air unable to get down and unable to move on. I’m just hanging there. It was also hard to put down the to-do list yet a relief at the same time. I have often thought in the mornings that fifteen minutes is just not enough time with God and our time often does go over. I’m hoping with a different work schedule I can take more time in the mornings to sit with God.

Out of all five senses, hearing seems to me to be the most direct to God. Though I know God is closer to me than I am to myself, I have to remind myself everything I know with my other four senses is, in fact, God present. But with hearing, whether inwardly or outwardly, I hear God and I know it’s him. You can’t mistake that voice – not when you’re standing on a beach and hear your name or you’re standing on the back of a boat gliding through the dark and hear a whisper. There are times I question if it was God and there are other times I just know. It’s at those times my body shivers for I’ve come face to face with a power unfathomably beyond myself, a love far more ferocious than I’ve ever felt, and a voice far more addicting than any other I’ve ever heard. Though I cannot tell from whence it comes, it speaks, and it speaks to me. This wild wolf howl of God echoing in the woods comes from somewhere and everywhere and invites us to set aside our preconceived notions and listen anew. 

The Gift

I reacted without even thinking – jumping up and down, squealing with delight, amazed someone had gone out of their way to do something that generous for me, that they had really heard me and did something about it.

It all started two days before at a dinner party where several friends and I were talking while we cooked. I don't remember the context of the conversation, but I confessed to them something I had never told anyone before: that for years I had wanted a basketball of my own so I could shoot hoops. I loved trying to make the basket and letting my mind just think and ponder over whatever was going on in my life. It was my way to meditate but I only got to do it when I was on my own somewhere with a basketball and something to put it through – a rare occurrence.

I had forgotten about the conversation by the time I walked into our aerial class the following Monday night when my friend suddenly pointed at me and shouted, "You!" I wondered what I had done or what she wanted me for when my eyes followed her pointed finger now directed at the desk where sat a brand new basketball still in its box. My reaction was immediate and involved my whole body as I squealed and jumped around – enthusiasm personified. My wide grin lasted the entire class. She even lent me a sharpie so I could write my name on the ball, not that I'll let it far out of my sight when playing with it. I even took it in with me to proudly share with friends at a Mary Kay party after class. Even now, that grin has just not gone away.

Though I thanked my friend profusely for this wonderful gift, the best way to thank her was to actually take the ball out and use it. The basketball would still mean something to me if it sat at home, but that is not what the basketball was for. If I really wanted to appreciate her thoughtfulness, I needed to go out, play with it, and live my dream.

Thus the ball got "baptized" at a friend's house – I was so excited to put it through a hoop! I then looked around for a basketball court near my apartment and found one close by that's rarely busy. Tonight I headed there to really break it in. It was everything I've dreamed of! I shot hoops, made some baskets, ran after the ball, pondered, thought, enjoyed being outside, enjoyed the time alone just thinking and playing and being. It was bliss.

But what if I hadn't taken it outside to play with it? What if I had left it in my apartment and didn't use it? What if I decided that even though my friend gave me this gift, she had not actually meant for me to use it? That sounds ridiculous, I know, but isn't that what we do with some of the gifts God gives us? God gave us each a human life and we spend it being angry and afraid, fearful and timid, unforgiving and bull-headed. We don't take risks. We play it safe. God gave us each a body and instead of fully living and expressing ourselves in it, we detest our bodies, find all kinds of faults in them, park it on the couch and feed it crap. Is that the way to treat a gift? To not only neglect the gift but abuse it, ignore it, be afraid of it? We are meant to live the lives God gave us, to delight in our bodies! We are meant to take chances, leaps of faith, to challenge ourselves, and do things we never thought we could! We are meant to exercise and play, to respect our bodies, treasure them, and care for our bodies with love. Instead of sitting around, we need to get out and enjoy what God gives us! I think it breaks God's heart when we take the gifts he gives us, the ones he meant for us to enjoy, and we hide them away or ignore the gifts, doing anything but delighting in the joy she/he means for us to have.

There are also gifts in our own souls we don't fully understand; times when we discover things about ourselves that don't fit with our preconceived notions of the world, our beliefs, or our own sense of self. A gift or an ability, a characteristic or thought, rises to the surface into the light of day and our immediate reaction is to ignore it or run away from it, condemning this gift as a bad thing simply because it doesn't fit with the boxes we've known.

Is it possible we could step back for a moment away from those boxes of belief and theology, take in the view of the larger picture, remember we actually know only a tiny fraction of what is in this world, and take a risk with the Gift Giver? Can we acknowledge that just because a gift is beyond our comfort zone, that it could still be a gift given by God who is calling us to stretch and grow? Can God call us to let go of what we've known before so we can embrace a new thing and transform? If we truly believe God is greater than all created things, then we must also acknowledge we do not know or understand everything. We have to be willing to be taught even when that teaching might be unacceptable to what we and our friends have known before. Following God's voice, trusting his gift and the way he leads us on, we need to understand the gift of who we are is given for a reason, that the Creator does not make mistakes and that if this is who you are, you need to learn how to live out that gift in the most loving way possible.

Whatever your gift is, you need to learn to live it out. Whoever God has created you to be, dance it in love and joy! God does not make mistakes and if God created you that way, you are going to have a much easier time with yourself if you simply accept who you are and learn to flow with the gift instead of trying to squelch it down. These gifts of ourselves are meant to be enjoyed, played with, delighted in, and used. God did not give you that gift if he/she did not mean for you to live it out.

My basketball now has a special place in my living room where it constantly reminds me how much I love taking it out and using it. It is harder to remember to use the gifts inside myself, the ones God gave me, but I have learned they are a part of who I am and to be truly at peace with myself, I must accept them and learn to use these gifts as well in the most loving ways possible.

Being true to yourself and who God created you to be won't always make the people around you happy, sometimes quite the opposite. Even so, living out who you truly are will release you in ways you never thought possible. Once you get a taste of that freedom, that inner peace, staying inside the boxes no longer matters once you know what it's like outside of them where your soul has room to breathe and play and live. Then, you in turn become a gift God opens and gives to the world. Live the gift.

Tramp for the Lord

In the Corrie Ten Boom Museum in the Netherlands, I saw a picture in an upstairs hallway of Corrie standing on a road with a suitcase in hand and a smile on her face, the caption underneath reading, “Corrie, tramp for the Lord”.  Corrie traveled extensively sharing her story of The Hiding Place with the entire world, speaking in an untold number of places, talking about tolerance, compassion, and diversity with whoever would listen.  I loved this picture and felt an immediate affinity for what it represented.  Being a traveling minister myself, I thought this picture was hilariously funny and immediately decided I too, was a tramp for the Lord.

As of today, I have been on the road with my backpack for one month, one-twelfth of the whole year.  By the time I am done with this trip and adding in all the other travel I have done for the book in the last twelve month period, it probably comes close to one-sixth of the year.  I think this definitely gives me “Tramp for the Lord” status.  This pleases me.

In addition to being greatly amused by this new title, it has also given me an opportunity to think about what being a tramp for the Lord means.  Going into this ministry trip, I knew the hardest part would not be all the moving from place to place or carrying the backpack, which I am told is probably at least fifty pounds, but that it would be handling the roles of speaker, guest, representative, and author on a nearly constant basis for almost six weeks straight.  It’s an admittedly, tall order.

When traveling on a journey like this, you aren’t your own person, your time is not yours to use as you wish.  When you are a tramp for the Lord, you lay down some of your own desires, preferences, and even needs.  You give when you think you can’t give anymore.  You engage with people when you would rather disengage and sneak off to be alone.  You put one foot in front of another when you would rather sit down.  It is very much a laying of one’s life on the altar, giving it up, casting your net out on the water, and praying, “Not my will by thine be done.” 

I’m not saying that it’s not fun.  I’m not telling you that there aren’t times when I have more freedom to go do as I choose than at others when I’m on someone else’s schedule or that I haven’t had delightful periods of peaceful rest.  I’m not saying I wouldn’t do it all over again in a heartbeat, that all the things I have seen, explored, and learned are not entirely worth all the planning and the daily challenge of being present.  The rewards are more than worth the price.  In fact, the Sunday before I left, friends at church said with generous sarcasm, “Way to carry the cross Sarah!  Suffering for Christ in Europe!”  And it’s not as if all my needs go unmet.  But you never get as much time to rejuvenate as you would like, as much quiet without someone wanting to talk to you as you need.  You have to learn in the fire when to keep going when you don’t think you can and when to excuse yourself for some rest.  I probably error on the side of staying to talk with people but I know my time here is of limited duration and I need to be open while I can.

One image that has inspired me continually as I go along is that of scattering seeds in the fields I have the honor of passing through.  Hanging against my hip is a “bag of seeds” and everywhere I go, I reach my hand in, grasp a handful, and throw them out among the furrows.  I pray they take root.  I pray they find a place to grow.  I pray God brings along other people to water the seeds I’ve thrown.  But where the seeds land and how they grow I will never know.  My task is to walk through the fields faithfully, to throw the seeds lovingly, not to know what happens to them after I leave.  But there is great pleasure in this, pleasure in knowing I get to throw the seeds and joy in being a planter in hands I adore.  Tramping along the dirt roads beside stone walls, I do what needs to be done to get the seeds out there. I have faith God has reasons for exactly where I go.

So here I am, giving my time, my efforts, my life.  Because that is what we do in the ministry and we are all ministers.  We acknowledge that our lives are not about us.  It’s about the larger story of God redeeming the world and everything in it, seed by seed.  It’s about being a light of his everlasting and steadfast love, of his joy and inner peace.  It’s about grace.  But the great thing is though, that God takes care of his children. The Lord makes sure all our true needs are met while we scatter his seeds.  Though we sacrifice our lives, God does not.  He takes what we give and makes sure we have what we need.  He gives us the space we did not expect to write in our journal, or take a walk by the sea, or a train ride that’s quiet, or makes sure an activity is more life-giving than we thought it would be.  I know I’m in good hands.    I am still a whole person and God respects that more than anyone else.  But if I am not willing to sacrifice for a greater good, what is my faith worth, let alone the service I give?  We all want to leave behind us something larger than ourselves, something lasting longer than our lifetime.  The Bible tells us to die to self so we can live, a verse I think Corrie must have liked and I am proud to walk under the same banner, a tramp for the Lord.

Ahava Auto

Note: I wrote most of this last fall and then finished the story tonight.
"Screeeeeech... screeeeech!"  That is the noise of my frustration coming from somewhere around the front wheels of my car. "Grrrr" is the noise coming from me.  Resisting the urge to pull over and exercise my kicking skills against the car, I turn into the parking lot at work instead and try my best to put the noises out of my mind until I can tend to them later.  Praying over the car and then making it a burnt offering crosses my mind. 

In the afternoon, I nervously walk back to my wax-long-gone vehicle and start it up hoping the first fall rain miraculously has wet enough of whatever is making the noise to finally make the car be quiet and not let the noises cast the "shadow of the valley of death" onto my automobile's valuable life.  "Here's to hoping" I think.

Following the advice of a friend, I turn the radio's volume up so I can't hear the noise because if you can't hear it, the noise doesn't exist, right?  This is what I have been telling myself throughout the several weeks as my car has elected to make one noise, or two, after another but I can no longer stand the aggravation.  "That's it!" I decide. "I'm taking you in!"  Windshields wipers making back and forth trips across my window, shooing the raindrops away, I find my way through the rain over to where I know I need to go.  I often avoid this place and I wish I had a good reason for doing so but until I actually get there and talk with the guy, it's hard to go to this shop because I'll take the car in for one thing and the mechanic points out something else that needs to be fixed.  Or a couple of things.  Take your pick.  It can be a heart-rending experience, especially if I haven't been in for a while and I know work needs to be done.

Parking the car in an otherwise empty parking lot, I grab my little purple backpack from the seat beside me and try to cover the lenses on my glasses as I hurry to the front door of Ahava Auto.  Bell jangling to announce my entrance, I wipe my feet on the matt and look up to see the mechanic coming in through the shop door to my left. 

"Sarah!  How have you been?  Car giving you trouble again?  You know, you can come see me anytime, not just when the car is making noises.  I miss talking with you!" 

Sheepishly, I look into his face, "Hi God.  I know and I'm sorry.  I miss our talks too.  It's been a busy week but I really need your help with this.  I've got nowhere else to go." 

"No problem but you don't have to save me till last." he cheerfully replies with a wink and a smile.  "Let's see what we can do.  Give me your keys and we'll take it for a test drive first."

After opening the front door for me and unlocking the car, we slide onto the bench seats of what I like to call, "my grandpa muscle car" and he pulls out onto the road with a master's skill.  "So how have you been this week?"

"Okay. I have too much on my plate. I really appreciate and am grateful to you for the house sitting work and the full-time hours for a little while but they are demanding and other things aren't getting done. I don't know what to do about it."

"Don't know what to do or are too scared to do it?"

"Both." I admit. "I know I need to unload a few things, that I say yes to too much.  I know what I am supposed to be doing, but I'm not putting my priorities on the top of the list.  I'm not putting first things first." 

"You know, a car like this runs well.  It's a good engine but it's meant to drive.  It can serve in other capacities when you need it to such as a place to sleep if you're homeless but that is not what it is made for.  You can do it for awhile but it feels uncomfortable if you do it for long.  A car is made to drive.  What are you made for?"

"Writing.  I know it's writing.  I love to put words on paper. It feels like painting.  I also love being in that place of prayer with another as a spiritual director.  I feel 'in my place' when I do those things."

"But you haven't been.  Why not?"

"Busy.  Not willing to take the time, to sit down and share.  Some days I feel I don't have anything worth saying."

"But you always do, eventually.  It's not yours alone you know.  Your gift is meant to be shared.  The car is meant to be driven."

"Yeah."

"Is this the noise?"

"Yup"

"Ah.  You know, there is a difference between what need to be done and what is just getting done.  What needs to be done will help your car run like it is supposed to.  What is just getting done is what comes up which may or may not be what the car is made for.  Understand?"

"I think so.  So all those little things I think need to be done may or may not be what I actually need to be doing and the things I am made for are not even on the list."

"Exactly."

"That is rather disheartening."

"Why is that?"

"Because most of the things I do feel like they need to be done!"

"Try it this way: make a list of the things of top priority to you.  Keep the list short then do those things.  All those other little things will either go away or you learn to say no to what does not fit.  You can only fit so much in the trunk of the car."

"I'll give it a whirl.  So what's wrong with the car?"

"The hub assembly, rotars, and brakes all need to be replaced."

"How much is that going to cost me?"
"More than you could ever pay, but there isn't ever any charge.  Just do me a favor okay?"

"Okay."

"Do what you were made for.  I made you to be you.  Stop trying to be everything else."

"Thanks God."

Pulling back into the parking lot, God turns off the car and gives me the keys.  As I walk around to the driver's side, he wraps me in a big hug which he knows I need. As he heads back into the garage, I am left standing by the car, wondering why I ever wait so long between visits.  Then I take my seat and look at the steering wheel, smiling at the note he's left. "God was here - Come back soon!"

Daring to Open the Door

I have long heard tales about the glories of the Woodbrooke library, how it is a literal treasure trove of hundreds of years of Quaker thought, writings from as long as Quakers have been practicing this particular spirituality.  I have been told how people come from far and wide to study here and to open the books held within its walls, how there are many nuggets of gold among the pages never fully explored.  I had also read guests could borrow the books while they were here.

Thus, when I saw the stained glass door with the word "library" incorporated into the design, I was rather excited.  Being a very curious person, using my key, I unlocked the door, walked down a short hallway, and entered a cream colored, small room.  On my right was a locked door labeled "library office" and I could see through the glass window there were shelves of material stored in there.  On my left, were bookshelves full of fiction and poetry and while scanning the volumes, I was pleasedd to see they had the full sets of Harry Potter and Narnia.  Still, I wanted to write while I was here, not read, and besides, I would be more interested in non-fiction anyway.  I figured they stored the old books in the office to protect them while no one was on duty.  Rather dissapointed as this did not live up to the glories I had heard of, I turned around and walked out. 

The next morning, I was eating breakfast with several of the other conference participants when one of them was telling us about how she spent a very enjoyable time the evening before in the library and how when she left, there were several other people still up chatting.  This didn't match my impression of the room and when I told her so and shared what I had seen, she told me I had to keep going through that room and into another.  Quickly, I finished breakfast and headed back to see what else there was.  This time, I let myself into the first room, and walked straight through it to another door I had not noticed before labeled "library".  Letting myself into this room, I saw before me shelves of non-fiction books along with moveable shelves to my right and while they looked very interesting and I figured the old ones were on the moveable shelves, I was still dissapointed.  What I saw and experienced was not what I had heard about.  So much for great libraries.

But then as I looked around, I spotted yet another door.  Pushing on the door handle, I walked through and finally saw what everyone had been talking about.  From floor to ceiling were locked book cases with glass fronts and behind them were shelves and shelves of extremely old looking books, book after book after book after book.   Looking down at a sign on a table in front of them, I read, "All books published before 1800 are now on restricted access.  Please ask library staff for help."  It took me one second flat to realize where the books published after 1800 (!) would be.  Sure, enough, turning to my left were high shelves full of both old and new books and eagerly, I ran to these and started scanning titles.  Freely, I pulled off and perused books from years such as 1818 and 1826, people's journals and periodicals, records, and theological thoughts about the goodness of God in a world with so much trouble and pain.  There were early Quaker documents, people I had never heard of, a whole library full!  The glories of reading were open for all.

As I walked back through the rooms of the library that day, I thought about how similar this is with our experiences of God.  We hear about a God who is loving beyond end, who wants to spend our daily lives with us, and how he will renew the whole of creation, glory beyond measure  We hear of wonders and miracles and joy and peace and love and those sound fantastic so we decide to explore this God of which we hear and go to church or pray.  We pick up a book or write a book, we go hear a speaker and start speaking ourselves.  We look for God in the flowers, in the smell of freshly mown grass, among the bricks and motar of the world.  And we come up dissapointed.  We do not see the God of which we hear.  Some walk out, some stay in the room trying to make the best of the situation, make the best of a dissapointment we don't even admit to.

But then we sit down to breakfast one morning, or talk to a friend and they tell us of their experiences with a God we do not know.  A God we have hoped for, but have never seen or touched ourselves.  We have heard whispers but have never known where to look, caught glimpses but never knew where to run.  But we give it a go, we decide to go back to what we have known and look again.  And this time we see a door.  Do we dare to walk through it?  Do we dare to leave what we have known behind and see what is on the other side?  Yes, we dare!  Turning the handle, we step into a whole new view of the Lord we thought we had known, new vistas are opened, new horizons before us yet this is still not the God we have heard of so we, having learned our lesson in the first room, look aroumd and explore, searching for yet another door.  Then there it is and we walk boldly before it in great reverence suspecting what is beyond. 

Grasping the door knob in our hands, we slide it open and are immediaetly in awe of what we find beyond.  Everything we have heard of is true. Everything we have longed for is there.  And God is there, full glory, eternal majesty, with our favorite cup of tea wanting to be personal, to talk, to listen, to walk the road with us, to show us this whole new creation.  Wisdom of the ages at our fingertips, love beyond measure around us.  It's all true, it's all solid, and there is so, so much more. 

We are all in such rooms.  We are all looking, searching, even if we have come to uneasy terms with dissapointment.  We suspect there is something more to God and this world.  We suspect there is deeper love and healing and we know that where we are at is not it.  And we are right.  The rooms we are in are not it and here is where the metaphor breaks down.  There is no final room.  There is no place we finally get to lay down in and say we have seen it all.  There is only door after door after glorious door.  This doesn't mean, however, we need to go right from one room into another.  It is okay to stop and take a look around, to pull some of the books off the shelf, find a chair, and open them up.  The shelves are a gift.  The books, the writings, they are to guide us as we walk through these rooms, words to teach us and let us know there are doors beyond and when we learn from them, we are better able to see the door into the next room.

I have walked through many doors in my life and it comstantly amazes me when I find yet another one waiting for me to open up and walk through. Some doors I am searching for and some are given me.  Some I find in great surprise and others are pointed out.  Sometimes it is a book I've read, or a place I have seen, but they are always there one after another, calling me to keep looking, keep knowing, and keep growing.  It's a beautiful garden that fills your soul with peace, it's the song of the birds, or tears of a new realization.  It's the love of a friend, so deep, resonating in the very core of your heart that you look at God and think, this must a part of what your love is like.  We think we know.  We think we understand.  Then something comes along that brushes our hand and haunts us, telling us there is more.  Do we stop?  Do we dare to look beyond?  Do we open the door?

Do I?  Do you?

An Interview with God

The foothills of the Swiss Alps, Paris streets, and a German café – it has been a whirlwind adventure thus far for our traveling minister. Now at the half-way mark of her European speaking tour, this roving Walking the Sea guest reporter managed to sit down with Sarah on the Eurostar train while heading back to England. While asking the questions you all want to know (I already know), Sarah candidly shared her experiences with me (as she usually does) and the lessons learned while trekking across the European continent.

“Good morning Sarah. How are you doing today?"

“Pretty good. A little tired but I am on the train back to London so I can sit back and relax for awhile while talking to you.”

“Good. We’ll make sure you get to bed at a decent hour after you speak on the poetry panel tonight. But for now, let’s talk. You have been on the road for nearly three weeks. Overall, how has the trip been going for you?”

“The trip has been going well. It has been stressful at times and breathtaking at others. I’ve seen so much that it is going to take me a long time to digest it all.”

“What are some of your favorite things you’ve seen?”

“Many cathedrals and churches including St. Paul’s, Cologne, Sacre-Coeur, Notre Dame, Sainte Chapell, and one in Brussels. I’ve also explored many museums such as the Louvre, Rodin Museum, Dutch Resistance Museum, and the one on the history of London. I also loved seeing the original works at the British Library and a German poet’s museum in Germany. Two that really moved me deeply though and meant a lot to me were the Anne Frank House and the Corrie Ten Boom Museum.”

“What was so inspiring about those?”

“Anne Frank and Corrie Ten Boom are household names in America and were part of my education. They were stories I knew well but hearing a story and then visiting the houses where the events took place are entirely different experiences. I can read about the hiding place in Corrie’s bedroom all I want, but to stand inside it with five other people, the amount in hiding when the family was arrested, the truth becomes known in your body and what they did reaches way down deep inside me.”

“You also had some interesting thoughts in Europe about World War II you haven’t shared. What are those?”

“Being in Europe itself was also life changing. You hear a story but then when you visit the place, it becomes so much more real to you. Going to the beach, Marielke and Fritz told me as we sat in the dunes that they are still finding buried bodies from World War II when the Nazis would take their Jewish and political prisoners and make them dig their own graves there before shooting them. I am born a Jew and though it is above my grandmother’s generation (usually the cut-off for the Nazi’s), I am still racially Jewish and involved at Temple so I don’t think they would have had a problem killing me too. Besides being in places I would have been killed, not that I wouldn’t be killed for being a woman or Christian at other times and places, seeing the repercussions and hearing people’s stories of their families, I realized it is not something that happened 70 years ago, but is part of the fabric of life today. Temples still have tight security in Europe as anti-Semitism in still around.”

“You have spent a lot of time with people from other cultures. What has that been like?”

“For most of my time thus far, I have been the only person from my country. At the conference in Switzerland of 80-90 people, there were people from 26 different countries including a few Americans. Among the young adults there were 10 countries represented, I was the only American, and seven countries in my small group. I have really enjoyed these times of getting to know people from all over the world. It helps me gain a wider perspective on life, to not be so boxed in within my own culture, to be able to see past it and that there are many ways of speaking and living. By knowing and appreciating other people’s cultures, it has helped me see the light and dark sides of my own.”

“What are one of the major differences between European and Western American culture?”

“Most people in European cities take public transportation whereas in Oregon, we drive most places. This affects so many things! For instance, there are no car parks. The whole time I’ve been in Europe, I have only seen one car park and that was a small one outside Versailles. Most people who do drive park on the street and those cars are really small. Since people have to carry the food they buy, there are many small markets and food comes in smaller packages for easier carrying. I have not seen a single supermarket the whole time.

The houses and flats are also a lot smaller than in America, much more compact. They don’t have the drive to accumulate stuff like many people in my country do, there is no place to put it, and they are much more conscious of how their choices affect the earth.”

“You don’t speak Flemish, German, Swiss, or French. How have you got along language wise?”

“It has been really hard. I liken it to a cat having tape put on its paws. Cats sense a lot through their paws and having that sense taken away is very limiting. It feels like your hands and feet have been tied up as well as a gag over your mouth for you don’t understand the signs either in addition to conversations. Being a speaker and writer, having my career and this ministry based on the English language, this has been particularly difficult. I learned to tune most everything out, all the conversations and all the signs. In Germany I was in a huge bookstore and was not tempted to pick up even one book. This is huge for me as I love reading but all the books were in German so I just tuned them out. Most of my world has been tuned out. I have managed to learn to figure things out and get the gist of what some of the signs say and that has helped. I have also learned to search for someone who speaks English who can help me find my way. This has not been easy to do at times when each of us speaks very little of the other’s language but we usually get the gist across. One word I did learn pretty quickly is the French word for exit, sortie. That was a helpful one to know. Still, I have spent so much time conversing and spending time with people from other countries that it has become a huge treat to talk to someone who speaks English with an accent similar to my own. This gives my ears and brain a break from trying to understand all the different accents! It has been funny standing in lines for the various sights when I find myself next to someone from America or Canada (this does not happen often) who has something near my accent. We are so happy to talk for a few minutes together!”

“Traveling alone cannot be easy while dealing with these challenges. What has that been like for you?”

“Well, first, I am not alone. You are with me everywhere I go. But you’re right, it is hard not having any other human with me on a continual basis for such a long trip. Some people I am seeing in more than one place and that helps but it is a lot of saying hello and goodbye again and again and when there is a problem while traveling from place to place, I have had to find ways to deal with it on my own. I have loved spending time with my European friends and getting to know new ones. At the same time, it can be lonely when you do so much traveling by yourself. It is probably one of the hardest things about this trip.”

“How have you dealt with the loneliness?”

“Blogging on here has helped ease the stress of traveling by myself and hearing comments back on here and facebook helps immensely. If people wanted to support me while on this journey, that is something they could do that only takes a bit of time but gives me great joy. Not being able to communicate much in the countries I’ve been in, I know I can talk and lift my voice up on the internet and it is nice to know I have been heard and to hear back from friends.”

“Do you have any advice for someone traveling in the ministry on their own?”

“Oh yes! Have a few people back home who you can really talk to, be deeply honest with and trust and who are encouraging and loving. Make sure they are people who will respond back to you when you contact them through e-mail or Facebook and that they will be with you when you need to vent or share your frustrations and joys, people who will let you know you are heard and loved. This is what has helped me the most, these friends who help ground me and let me know someone is listening.

Also, if possible, spend time with people you already know from other places. While here, I have had the delight of getting to know better people I have traveled with in Kenya and spoken to in America. Some of these people I am seeing more than once and that helps as well. They have been those I ask for feedback on the talks and they who I rely on for help and companionship while here. In fact, there are not many times on this trip when I am not with someone I have already known or at least met.”

“How about any other advice for people traveling in the ministry in general?”

“Keep investing their time in a relationship with you. Nearly every morning, I read a portion of the Bible and think about what sticks out to me from what I’ve read. We also talk throughout the day and it is your strength I rely on when I don’t think I can go any further. There have been times I have been exhausted with aching legs and back, simply concentrating on putting one foot in front of another, and I feel you pick me up into your arms and carry me where I need to go. Having additional reading to feed me has been very helpful in learning about you. My pastor gave me a book to deliver to someone she knows in England and suggested I read it myself before I meet up with him and my spiritual director gave me the Sunday Missal with reading and reflections from the mass while I’m gone. Spending all this time with unprogrammed Quakers when I am used to a more structured style of church, these tools have been important. I also have been keeping a journal, not even necessarily about the trip, just things I need to talk out with you.”

“What have you been learning spiritually?”

“A huge lesson came yesterday as I was standing in line for the Louvre Museum. This is usually a line people try to avoid but it turned out to be one of my favorite moments in the whole day. On my ipod was a song I used to sing in youth group when I was in high school, a song I love, and I was reading the book Peggy gave me to deliver. What the author says has given me a lot to think about, and really, would be a whole blog post in itself, but in this interview, I’ll say it has taught me a new level of freedom living in your world, in your love. Instead of trying to learn how to do things better, I’ve been learning to live and love and BE and things another spiritual director once told me I see in greater clarity. I also learned that the sight seeing, the exploration and expanding of my mind and perspectives is also part of my work as a traveling minister. Realizing that made my time looking around a lot less stressful, more joy-filled and more relaxed. I also learned if you are standing in line trying not to cry for the truth of it all, people are too busy taking pictures of the building to notice.”

“What are you really glad you brought with you?”

"There are a few things I usually bring with me when I travel such as my watch, alarm clock, and Rick Steves backpack. However, there are a few things that have come with me for the first time that have made a world of difference. One of these is my ipod. I usually only listen to it on the long distance trains, when I’m alone, or waiting in a line, so at other times I can be aware of my surroundings and with the people I came to see but it is my comfort object. It is what gives me familiar sounds and feelings in a foreign land. I also bought the inside bags for the Rick Steves backpack and I am never traveling without them again! These three bags, one large, two smaller, make living out of a backpack so much easier, I cannot tell you just how much. Things stay organized and I am so glad I bought them. My daypack is another bag that is exactly what I needed. My cousin’s friend makes these and we made a barter deal for this one. Inside are many pockets, large and small, and as the trip has gone on, each thing in the bag has found the place it goes back to. I love this bag! It is my nearly constant companion wherever I go. The last item I cannot even imagine I was going to travel without is my netbook. A netbook is a small laptop with a ten inch screen and limited capabilities, light and compact. Realizing how much writing I had to do while on the trip, I wrestled with the decision of purchasing one to bring along and I have used it every day. It has not hindered me experiencing where I am at but has helped me stay organized, in touch with people, and has helped expand my writing time to you all ten-fold. Yay for netbooks!

There is also a whole other category of things I have that mean a great deal to me. In the last few days as I was preparing to leave, a few of my friends gave me small gifts to take along. My spiritual director gave me the Sunday Missal, as I’ve already said, another friend knitted me hand warmers and yet another gave me a pair of gloves. One friend gave me a pair of earrings I never have to take out and one gave me a blank journal. Two of the necklaces I brought are also gifts I’ve been given in the past along with a fuzzy pair of purple socks for comfort. One friend gave me a massage the day before I left and that has stayed with me too. With these items as constant reminders, I feel the love of my friends all around me, buoying me up as I’ve walked this journey. They are like warm hands placed on my heart.”

“Tell us about the talks you have been giving.”

“So far, I have spoken about Spirit Rising at Watford Friends Meeting, Der Haague Friends Meeting, and at the Friends House in Paris. In Watford I also spoke to the youth about Freedom Friends Church and evangelical Quakerism in my area and in Switzerland, I spoke about my passion for writing and about being honest with your readers. My next talk is speaking on a poetry panel tonight at the Quakers Uniting in Publications Conference in Birmingham, England. All these talks have gone well and people really enjoy hearing about Spirit Rising and my experiences as a writer. Giving these talks have been my favorite part of the whole trip! I usually start out by telling people about the book, how it came about and our process of putting it together. I then read a few pieces aloud, always including the poem describing the process of our editorial board working together cross-culturally, The Journey Worth Taking, and the story, Phish Food. I read Phish Food because I can always make an audience laugh whenever I read that story and I love to make people laugh.”

“You’ve been very busy. When do you breathe?”

"On the trains. I breathe and relax on the trains and they have quickly become hours I look forward to because I know that for a while, I can get lost in my own world. I work on my writing, look out the window, read a book, or just listen to my ipod. I also have the sense when I am on a train that you are bringing me to the next place you want me to be, that this is your itinerary and you know whose lives need to be blessed as I go along. Like a sower of seed, I walk through fields scattering your love and the deepest truth of you and when I am done, you take me to the next field. I know I won’t see what happens to the seed, but I don’t need to. I’m quite happy to be the one scattering them about and then stepping onto the train to head to the next field. I am hoping there will be a trail of flowers and life I leave behind.”

“Do you miss home?”

“No. I miss that face-to-face time with people I love to talk to instead of having to use e-mail or Facebook and I miss meaningful touch but that is it. I am in Europe and my mind is here, my thoughts are here. I am living in this moment, this time and place. This is the work I am given to do. For now, this is my life and I am happy in that.”

“Are we going to be seeing more blog posts from you?”

“Most definitely and far more often! The first half of the trip has been very different from the second. The first half had many days when I was out and about from morning to night and the second half I am free for many of the evenings and on trains much more often. This gives me a lot more time to write which is great because I have several good blog posts on the way.”

“Where are you going next?”

“I am heading to London for a few hours to tour Friends House and see friends who work there and then I’m taking a train north to Birmingham for the Quakers Uniting in Publications Conference. I’m looking forward to the writing workshops and specified writing time. I also hear the grounds are beautiful. It should be a rich time.”

“Thank you for the gift of your time. It’s been interesting to talk with you as it always is. I love hearing what is on your mind and I’m sure our readers will as well.”

“Thanks for the great talk God. I always love confiding in you, you really listen and ask good questions. And I’m really glad you’re on this journey with me. You absolutely fascinate me with all you’re teaching me. If I could ask one thing, please use me to bless those around me. Let them feel you inside of me. That would be to me great joy.”

And so our traveling minister continues to walk the world, praying the message I have given her is somehow communicated to wherever she is being sent. I know for a fact she would appreciate your continued prayers and occasional messages as she begins the second half of her journey. I am with you all.

Live the Question

"You are so young. You stand before beginnings. I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can - to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions like locked rooms. Like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot be given to you… because you could not live with them. It is a question of experiencing everything… You need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day." - Rainer Maria Rilke

Ever since a book titled, "Letters to a Young Poet" caught my eye, this quote has been one of my favorites.  I hold it close to my heart and have gradually, over the years, been learning the wisdom of it.  This has certainly been a time when I stand before beginnings and at times it seems like a wide chasm before my feet.  As a single adult, I have heard many times from others how  lucky I am to not have a great deal of responsibility, to be able to pick up and move wherever I want.  I do admit, it's nice to not have to take into consideration a house or family, but what many who have these responsibilities don't seem to understand or remember, is how frightening a wide world of possibility can be.  When you can go in any direction, how do you know which one to take?  How do you begin to find your way?

I wish this was a post where I outline the answer, give you the steps on how to find your way.  But I have to tell you it is not.  I am still "standing before beginnings" myself, not for the first time, but definitely once more.  I know what I want, I even know where I might find it, but going from point a to point c can sometimes be far more complicated than going through point b.  And sometimes, it is far more simple than we could ever think or hope. 

We each wrestle with this question of where is life?  Where am I going?  What am I supposed to be doing and is this it?  For some reason, we see life as this goal we need to achieve, not necessarily the journey we take. We think we have to get somewhere, to reach some kind of marker.  And as much as I would love to reach new heights in my career and to do during the day what for years, I have been doing at night, a deeper wisdom urges me to enjoy each day as it comes.  Still, I look to the horizon, and shade my eyes so I can see what might be there, just a few steps away.

I do know this: that if you feel called to take new steps, to courageously walk into that horizon, you have merely to put one step in front of another.  God gives us strength for today.  We can plan for tomorrow, but we need to remember, we are living in today, not tomorrow.  And when we do think of tomorrow, we need to take the steps today to get there.  God will provide.  I don't know how and I don't know where, but I know when.  Tomorrow.  And maybe someday, if I keep living the question and taking the steps I am given along the way, I will find myself living the answer on some distant day.

Head Out of a Box

I decided to take my head out of a box and my fingers from around the tape dispenser to take a breathe on my blog. My life is surrounded by boxes lately and it will continue to be surrounded by boxes for a while. After 3 1/3 years, I am moving out of my apartment to a one bedroom in another part of town. I want to know what it's like to live on my own without a roommate. I've never had that experience and I think it's high time I did. So tonight I packed my great-grandmother's and grandmother's cookbooks into a box along with tea that has seemed to mate and multiply in the cupboard. I have lost track of how many boxes it's taking to pack up my library, I am probably up to 14 or 15 small to medium sized boxes by now. I don't know how that happens, I think they are mating too.

By the way, if any of you in the area need a octagon shaped table with leaf and four chairs, come on down! I also have a plethora of left-over containers. They are all now "fixed" so they stop growing in number.

I am excited to settle in to where I will be living as strange as that will feel at the same time as grieving leaving here. I have loved this apartment, gotten along extremely well with the managers and I really like my next door neighbors. However, I realize this place, this area of town, has become an ivory tower for me, my place of safety, and it's time to kick myself out of the tower. But this is the first place that has felt like home to me in a very long time. I am hoping the new place will be home too, maybe even more so than this one has since it's all my own.

Lately, life has been so full. Much has fallen to the side of the to-do pile, many things that need to get to get done and aren't done. I am trying to remember to take the time for myself that I need for nourishment and refreshment but between the speaking, working, moving, and a whole host of other projects, I feel like the best I can do right now is put out the fires and occasionally a bit more. Still there is joy in the midst of it all. Yesterday evening I went to see a show in Portland, something I hadn't done for a long time and it felt like me saying, "Oh Sarah, there you are! I've missed you." When I woke up this morning, the dark cloud I have been sleeping under lately was gone. That felt really good. God has also been busy bringing people into my life that needed me at that moment, people who's lives I am humbled to touch. It's nice to know in the midst of it all, God is still shining through me. He likes reminding me through this way that he/she does have purpose in my life. It's nice to see some of that.

I hope to get back to posting here more often, I love writing on this blog. I even have some great pictures to share! But for now, I am headed to bed. I have a full work day tomorrow but it's my favorite subbing job, that will be fun. It's always nice to know what you're doing at work and I can pick this job right up. I hope you are all enjoying May!

Questions for Refletion - Submission Part 5

These are some questions Katie has for reflection at the end of the chapter that I thought you might like to think about. If they are useful, great, if they are not, that's okay too. Take them and use them for what you will.

• The False Self is where we find our identity in anything apart from Christ. Some examples of things we can find our identity in are: beauty, riches, intelligence, success, fame/popularity, sexual prowess, athletic ability, servanthood, sainthood, etc. What are some of the things that have defined you in your False Self? What are some of the positive qualities of these things? Where are the shadow sides of these things?
• Who has access to your Wounded Self? In other words, who can easily shame you, making you feel small, bad, or somehow unworthy?
• What does your Wounded Self tell you about yourself? "I am... unworthy, ugly, unacceptable, unloved, alone, stupid, unlovable, bad, worthless, unwanted, unimportant, etc."
• What are some of the redeemed qualities of the characteristics of your False Self? For example, a person who finds his/her identity in being right, will likely hurt people by speaking the truth without love. What would that characteristic look like from the Imago Dei?
• When do you feel most at peace with yourself? When are you the most centered in your Imago Dei? What makes you feel alive?

Relating out of the Imago Dei - Submission Part 4

For the last few days, I have been thinking over a lot of things, many of which, affect greatly this conversation we have been having on what submission means in relationships. When God told us to submit one to another, he wanted us live under his headship. Only there can such submission be healthy and good, when it is aligned with Christ. To do that, we need to live out of our Imago Deis, the images of God within ourselves, when in relationship with one another. This is our topic for today.

This is a diagram I took from Katie's book, Living in the Intersection, which will aid us in understanding the different ways we can relate to another out of our Imago Dei.


The first way of relating is from our Imago Dei to someone's false self, their hard candy coated shell. Of this relationship, Katie tells us, "By speaking the truth in love, Christ can be dangerous to another's False Self. Jesus does not placate or stroke the False Self, but rather challenges it with the truth of who one is called to be. That is a picture of what exhortation means. To exhort someone is to call them to a higher place, to challenge one to excellence. Exhortation is a gift of the Spirit. One cannot truly exhort another apart from the Spirit." This exhortation is spoken in love. After all, grace must come before truth. It is much easier to listen to correction if you know the person correcting you is doing it out of love and care for you as a person. Such speaking is only done out of God's movement, never out of a need to be heard.

If the other person is operating out of their wounded self, we will be a safe person for them. God, and in turn us, never adds to a person's shame, only diminishes it. Katie says, "When we flow from a Christ center, we will have a healing effect on people when they share their sin and shame." We are called to be the light in dark places, accepting and compassionate, bearing the truth that no sin or shame diminishes a person's worth. We are to remember, we all struggle with sin, none of us is more holy than another. There is no judgement in love, only grace and truth. After all, God loves each of us in a special way and he wants us to learn to see each other through his eyes, to be able to see their Imago Dei. Though we all have wounded selves to work through, we are all truly and deeply beautiful. The more closely we are connected with God, the easier it is to live out of his grace for ourselves and to live it out with others.

Even if another has bad boundaries and is operating out of their false or wounded self, we can always live out of our Imago Deis no matter how the other person chooses to behave. That is our gift from Christ, not being bound by the behavior of another, being free to choose for ourselves to put love and truth first in our lives.

When speaking of true intimacy, Imago Dei to Imago Dei, Katie relates to us, "True intimacy is to know and be known in our innermost self. It is when a person flows out of the Imago Dei and touches the Christ center in another.... Out of that place we take joy in one another, we delight in one another." Larry Crabb puts it as touching the "Christ in you out of the Christ in me." It is out of this place we can truly love and support one another, encouraging and lifting each other up as Christ would have us do. God meant for us to be living out of him/her when Paul says for us to submit to one another as to Christ. If we are both living out of our Imago Dei, out of our peanut, then we can be unified in spirit.

Knowing and living out of our Imago Dei in relationship to God, ourselves, others, and the earth is the whole goal of what I am writing about. In the coming days I will be talking about the drama triangle and the lion/lamb metaphor. The reason both of these are a problem (as I will explain) is when we are caught up in it or unbalanced, we are not living out the image of God within us.

I cannot understate the importance of learning to live out of our Imago Dei and learning to see the Imago Dei in others. When someone hurts us or causes us pain, it is so important to remember they too, are the image of God and we need to learn to see and love that, who they truly are, instead of getting caught up in the wounded or false self. Jesus did that. We are called to do the same. We are not to slander them, say hurtful things behind their backs. Christian or not it doesn't matter- we are to treat everyone, no matter who they are, with deep respect and love just as we would treat Jesus for that is exactly who we are seeing. Even if they've hurt us, even if they are still hurting us. We do not have to let them walk over us, (have good boundaries!) but we can still love them. I know for myself if others had not lived out of their Imago Deis and loved me and spoke truth to me when I was living out of my false and wounded selves, I would still have truck loads of shame and "chocolate" in my life. By living out the image of God, we can touch lives in ways we will never comprehend the full depth of. We can be the hands and grace of God to one another. It's a beautiful thing.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

The Peanut M&M - Submission Part 2

Today we're going to start with dessert. Namely, peanut m&ms. Amazingly enough, they will explain why I believe everyone, no matter what their beliefs, has God's presence within them. (Let's pause here as I thank God for letting me live in a time when I would not be burned at the stake for saying this, though Deanna says I would be persecuted no matter when I lived for one reason or another because I "keep running my mouth".)

For those who don't know what peanut m&ms are, picture a peanut covered in chocolate with a hard candy colored shell.

The peanut inside the m&m is the unique image of God we have inside each of us, the reflection of him, his spirit inside us. He made us each in his image and no matter who we are, we all have that core of divinity, of eternity, glowing inside us. It is a light of priceless worth. It is who we truly are.

The chocolate covering the peanut is all the crap and shame in our lives, it's those nasty places we don't like showing to others, the hard things to admit, to talk about, to be open with. It's the things about us and about our past we are ashamed of and want to hide away. It's the sludge we swim in, our unhealthy places full of the things we haven't worked through.

The hard candy shell is the mask we put over ourselves to hide our shame. It's the smile that doesn't light up or eyes, the scowl, the anger, the pretend face. It's who we present to the world so they don't know what is going on under the surface. Different people choose different masks, different shells, even religiosity can be a shell.

Everyone has all three things in our lives: the peanut, the chocolate, and the shell. We are each a peanut m&m.

So why is this important? Picture someone with a hard candy shell, someone you know who has such a thick exterior, it's hard to get to know them. Or picture someone you know who has a reaction to something disproportional to the question or issue brought up. Perhaps it's a topic they get particularly angry about, or you ask a simple question and they get really mad or go hide away. Now picture someone who you can clearly see God's image in. The first person, the one with the thick exterior is hard to get to know, hard to really talk to. The one with the disproportional response is also hard to be in relationship with as you never know what will set them off. The third though, the one in whom you can see God's image, is someone you can trust, someone who brings delight to life.

Here are illustrations for each person on how their peanut m&m might look.

Hard to get to know:

Disproportional reactions:

In this case, you touch a crack in their shell and get their "chocolate".
In this one, the person is all nerves, they don't have much protective shell at all and are thus, very sensitive.

Easy to see God within them:

In my own life, my candy hard shell was my silence. As the shame and crap in my life grew, I became quiet and retreated. I stopped putting myself out there and taking risks. As I've worked through my chocolate and shell, my voice got louder, stronger, and I accepted the power I have inherent within me. I learned and am definitely still learning to live out of my peanut. One of my chocolate pieces, a reaction I did not expect to be as angry as it was, was when this issue of submission came up. Knowing how powerful working through some of my other chocolate has been, I want to face this dark matter and find the peanut, the image of God underneath.

This is the challenge for each of us: to work through our shell and chocolate so we can live out of our peanuts. Be patient with yourself and others as they do this. Everyone has their own pace, everyone has their own path they must take. For example, the shell should be dismantled piece by piece, it has been a protection up to this point. If too much comes off at once, it leaves raw nerves and exposed vulnerability way too soon before the person can handle working through their shame. The chocolate needs gentle yet firm hands to help sort through things with the acknowledgement that none of the chocolate is God's truth. However, God takes the chocolate and makes it into something beautiful and pure but we have to turn over the chocolate into his loving hands first. We have to be willing to face it head on, to take a steady look, acknowledge our chocolate before we can work through it. You have to let the chocolate go. The chocolate is not your Imago Dei (Latin for Image of God). The shell and chocolate is not who you are. Your peanut is who you are. Your peanut is the person God made you to be. Live out of your peanut. After all, God loves nuts.

This is a song I love that speaks to so many of these truths:




(Thanks to Deanna who sacrificed several of her peanut m&ms to be pictured for this post.)

Submission and the Imago Dei - Part 1

I have always found it ironic I am the go-to person for dating advice. Yes, ask the one who is not in a relationship advice on how to make one better. Over a year ago, when writing our church's Faith and Practice, Peggy and Mike assigned to me the section on "Care of Marriages". I protested, reminding them I was not married and they both were. They both replied, "Exactly. That is why you are the person to write it, you have an objective perspective." So, keeping in mind the section on marriage already written and what our committee discussed, I voiced in words the heart of our church on caring for marriages.

This is the marriage section I looked at and really like:
"Freedom Friends Church recognizes and supports marriage. We do not believe that there is more merit in a married life than in unmarried life, but we recognize the stability and blessing that marriage may bring into our lives. We are inclusive in our marriage practices, believing that any two adults can make a spirit-led, long-term commitment based on love before God and the community. We believe that the two people give themselves to each other, and that the community, including the pastor, is witness to, not makers of, this sacred event.

We believe in equality in marriage, and that married life is based on mutual respect, love, friendship, and devotion. We believe that marriage is an equal partnership, and we promote marriages that are free from violence and abuse of any kind. As with all things, we seek the will of the Spirit in our marital relations. We wish to support all marriages in our midst: those that are made in our presence, as well as those that arrive already made."

This is what I wrote:
"We believe marriage needs to be cared for and supported by both the individuals who make and sustain the commitment, and by the faith community surrounding them. We hold the marriages among us in love and respect, believing the couples themselves knows what they need. We will not step in to intervene in a marriage unless asked by the couple or under dire circumstances such as abuse or addiction. When care has been requested, Ministry and Oversight will provide prayer, referrals for counseling, and guidance in a confidential and honoring manner."

Having an objective perspective, it is easy to see things and tell it like it is. That is one of the best qualities about a spiritual director: having someone who is objective yet cares about you to talk with and to voice your questions in front of when struggling with God. Whether it is dating or in faith, and in actuality, you can't really separate the two, I have loved being this objective party who gets to stand with someone in matters close to the heart and journey alongside them.

But lately, God has been poking at my objectivity and I have come to realize there is an area of relationships I really struggle with. Through conversations with friends, family, and what we are studying in Ecclesia, the idea of submission has kept coming up. It is like the old adage, "When a student is ready to learn, God provides the teacher." (My paraphrase.) Being well aware this struggle of mine could get in the way of my ministry and distort how I can listen with my directees to God, not to mention my own relationships with God and others, I want to do a series on this topic here on my blog. I know it will help me work through this issue and from past experience, I know it's the honest and personal posts that have spoken to you the most as well. So we are going to open up this dark closet I haven't liked to look at and explore it together. Together, we'll clear the air.

Much of what I have already learned about this topic I have learned from Katie Skurja of Imago Dei Ministries in Portland, Oregon. I have taken her workshops on these topics and talked with her a lot about them and will be quoting her as well as using some of her diagrams in upcoming posts. If you are interested in learning more about what I talk about, she and her ministry team are holding a workshop during the day on Friday and Saturday, April 30th-May 1st which I would HIGHLY recommend. I am excited to go myself, it's been several years since I've gone and I'm looking forward to hearing the truths she teaches. This summary is taken from their brochure on the workshop:

"We will explore the Trinity Model to gain deeper understanding of what it means to have freedom in Christ. The Trinity Model principles are a means for facilitating revelation and healing for the whole person - Spirit, Soul and Body—that we might follow the path of Christ and live “as though God were making his appeal through us” (II Cor. 5:20)

The workshop is first of all for personal application. We believe that experience is the best teacher, therefore we will be actively applying aspects of the model during the workshop. The principles you will learn have broad applications for your own life and relationships, as well as discipleship, prayer ministry, education and any other facet of ministry you may be involved in. We highly recommend that you attend both days of the workshop to gain the most benefit from the teaching and experiential sections.

The Imago Dei Ministries team has a passion to see the Body of Christ living the abundant life God gives us as we learn to abide in right relationship with God, self, and others. You are welcome to join us!"

You can find more information on their website.

Before we get into submission, though, there are some building blocks I would like to put in place to help us get there, some groundwork we need to cover to help us understand what submission means, not to mention they are important things to look at in themselves. These teachings are one of the cores of what has helped me heal in my life the most so I am looking forward to sharing them with all of you. They are the truths I live out of. I would love to hear your questions and comments as we have this conversation and will include my responses in what I post. I am looking forward to sharing this journey with you.

The Mystical Stream

Mystics: They are those who look at the blue sky and see the stars, those who reach for the heavens and grasp a hand, who talk to God and expect to hear His voice.

I wrote these words when trying to describe what mysticism is like. Many people hear that word and think of images filled with new age crystals, incense, and repeated mantras called out in a ritual. It is hard for them to imagine that mysticism could have anything to do with Christianity. But there is a rich and long tradition of Christian mysticism and it is a tradition I am proud to call my own. Wikipedia puts it this way, "Christian mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight." If there is one Christian label I would be happy to carry it is being a mystic. The first time someone called me that, I had to go look up what it meant in a dictionary and I liked what it said but there was much I missed. I had no idea of all the mystics who had gone before me or the ones who are around me today. But they are there, talking to God, seeing him, relating to Him. I heard about them at seminary, read their works, studied them, learned from them, found mentors across time. People like John of the Cross, Therese of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Brother Lawrence, among many others have taught me to listen better to the mystic music I hear and to delight in God's notes.

If you've read The Shack, and I believe many of you have as it's still #3 on the New York Times Trade Paperback best seller list, then you have read a good example of mysticism. It's looking at the world and seeing what is not seen, the light, God's presence, hearing his voice. It's looking at the shack and seeing a cabin in the woods where we spend time with God. It's knowing he's there and reaching for his hand. There are many types of mystics and many ways to relate to God. My strongest experiences have been when God comes to me in my dreams or a vision he gives me. I sometimes close my eyes and go to our special places when I need a good talk and I hear God respond, and God comes to me in many forms.

Mysticism is one way of relating to God among many, it's a tradition, a stream, beautiful among many other streams. Some people have these experiences and don't know what they are, or they think they have stepped into something heretical. But I want these people to know mysticism is a delight between God and the soul and that God enjoys giving such gifts. You are not alone. Read books on Christian mysticism, there are many. Many mystics have written about their experiences. Talking with a spiritual director familiar and supportive of the tradition is also very helpful. Most importantly, open your inward eyes, your heart, and talk to God. He'll answer.

Women in Ministry

Sitting in front of me were thirteen women, most of them African, expectantly looking at me to tell them about women in ministry. They were strong women with gifts and talents, a desire to serve, and living in a culture that generally speaking, does not give them many rights of their own. One of the things going for them is we were all part of the Quaker church, one of the few streams of faith that has had women in ministry since the very beginning, straight back to George Fox and Margaret Fell. It is one of the many qualities of Quakerism that attracted me the most- that women are acknowledged to be as highly functioning as men and they have the ability to fulfill any role they are called and equipped for, a decision based on God and not man. Being a part of the Quaker church, I sometimes forget how women in ministry is still a topic not widely accepted, not only in Africa, but here in America too. Many people still think women should not minister to men and other women, that we are not equal to their gifts and abilities. There are many, including women, who believe our place is the silent role. Well, for those who know me, you know I am not the silent type so today I am going to tell you what I told those African women (and then some) because I realize it needs to be heard in this quarter of the world as well as theirs.

I would first like to address what Paul says in the Bible. In researching for this post, I found an article on Bible.com, that you can read here, which puts really well my thoughts on Paul.

"With all this in mind, what then do we make of the troubling verses that command women to be silent in the churches? First of all, we must interpret those verses in light of what we have just established--that there were women in leadership positions of the church. Obviously, Paul is not writing to them. He is must be addressing another issue entirely--the women who were loud and unruly during the service, causing disorder and confusion.

When he wrote the Corinthians, he was dealing with a church that was very disorderly in their services. Much of the letter was spent correcting excesses and abuses. Some of these pertained to women in particular and some were to the entire church. Paul is not being prejudiced against women when he instructs the Corinthian women to keep silence. In the early church the seating arrangement was quite different from our modern day churches. Men were seated on one side of the church while the women and children were seated on the opposite side. This is still practiced in many cultures today.

The women of Christ's day were generally uneducated and usually only the men were privileged with an education. Due to this situation, when the church met the women were tempted to shout across the room and ask their husbands the meaning of whatever was being taught. This disturbed the service. Paul was simply saying during the service, "Women, keep your children quiet and you be quiet, and if you have anything to ask your husbands, wait until you get home." Because of the new equality that Christianity brought to women, it could be that some of them were taking their freedom too far, to the point of being obnoxious.

When Paul wrote to Timothy, he gave him a similar directive. Again, it is important to understand the context in which the letter was written. In I Timothy, a careful reader becomes aware that many severe heresies and false teachings that were being dealt with. We can draw a conclusion here that many of the proponents and victims of the false teachings were women. Timothy pastored in Ephesus, and it has been suggested that goddess worship might have played a large part in Paul dealing so severely with the women. Ephesus was a primary center of the worship of Diana or Artemis. The heresies being taught might have suggested that women were authoritative over men and had higher access to spiritual knowledge than men did.
Regardless of the particulars, in both cases we can see that Paul is dealing with specific incidents in specific churches for very particular reasons.

We must understand that many of Paul's epistles dealt with local problems and his commandments are not meant to be taken as "commandments" across the board for all situations. Rather, we are to seek the Lord for the basic principal that needs to be incorporated in our churches. Because of Old Testament precedents that had already been set, apparently it never occurred to Paul to re-establish the case for women in ministry. Why would he need to? The early church took it as a matter of course that Jesus would call and ordain anyone He chose--and that settled it! As a matter of fact, the Bible mentions a prophetess who was in the Temple when Jesus was brought there as a baby. Her name was Anna (Luke 2:25-35), and she was one of two people who recognized Jesus as the Messiah because of her sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.
Paul's writings are sometimes misunderstood today because we do not know all the details that led him to write as he did. We must rely on the Holy Spirit, and the rest of the testimony of Scripture to interpret how we are to apply these things to our everyday lives. Scripture should always be compared with other Scripture and the context taken into consideration. Even in Paul's day, there were those who tried to twist the meaning his words."

In my words, "Paul is not God". We shouldn't take what he says, ignore the cultural context, and apply it across the board in our own interpretation of what he meant. Paul praised many women for speaking and ministering in the church. One of the first classes I took at seminary was "Women in Church History" and believe me, there are many. Why would God create all of humankind and then only let half of that group tell each other about him? Men have no special ordination above women. We are ALL created equal in the sight of God and God ordains whoever he will. Who is man and women to question what God has decided? Standing in that room in Kenya, I told passionately told them that God has given them gifts and that we are responsible to use those gifts. No matter what those gifts are, we are to wield them in power, justice, and love. God has spoken and we, no matter what gender, are to listen to God and not humans. God is to come first and even if the people around us say not to, if God says to do it, then we are under Divine orders to express and use our gifts and talents. God does not discriminate along lines of gender, neither should we. Those women in Africa have strong voices. I told them one can be silenced, and two can be silenced, but by standing beside one another and speaking out, they cannot be silenced.

During our question and answer period, one of the women asked a very relevant question. "What do you do about marriage?" I told them, along with Eden Grace's and Pastor Jane's added voices, that when you think about marriage, make sure the man you marry is in full support and encouragement of you in ministry, that he will partner with you and honor you as a minister of God. It is better to stay single and obeying God than married with someone non supportive of your call. But we assured them, with examples they knew of, that there were men out there who would support and help them, stand by them, and honor what God gave them.

I go to a Quaker church led by women, our pastor is a women as well as all our main officers. We did not plan it this way, it is simply who was called to fulfill those places, we make no distinction between men and women when discerning God's call on a life. I also belong to Multwood, a group of strong Quaker women leaders who encourage each other and help each other in our ministries. God gave me the gifts of leadership, speaking, teaching, writing, and spiritual direction. I have led both men and women, taught them, spoken to them, and I know there are a wide variety of people who read what I write. I know there is power in those gifts to change lives and I have been blessed with wide support. How much power have we lost in the lives of other women who were told such gifts amidst others could not from God? How many lives could be touched if we encouraged the women (and men) in our churches that we, like the Quakers teach, are all ministers, all tools God uses to touch and love his creation?

Betty Miller, who wrote the article on Bible.com, goes on to say, "We pray that this teaching will encourage many women, who might otherwise relegate themselves to the "back burner" to instead step forward into the full calling of God upon their lives. Likewise, we pray that men who have been taught against letting women minister will see the truth of the fullness of God's plan. No matter who we are in the Lord, we will be held responsible for how we treated others and how we either hindered or helped the cause of Christ on Earth. Those in leadership especially need to heed this warning with reverent fear. Just because we have believed something our whole life, or because our denomination or culture teaches us so, doesn't mean it is correct. If you have a problem with seeing women in the pulpit, or in any position of leadership, we pray that you will prayerfully seek the Lord with an open heart on this issue."

God made both men and women equal, one is not above the other either in church or in the home, they are different sides to the same equation. God has both male and female attributes, the are enriching and valuable feminine images of God as well as masculine. Both need to be honored, both need to be upheld! We lose so much of who God is and who God could be in our lives when we only uphold masculinity and put femininity in second place. THEY ARE EQUAL!!!

Women and men alike are meant to live out of their truest selves, to the image of God they are in their souls. Everyone has that responsibility and that right. We should welcome that in our midst, encourage one another, listen, and learn from both women and men. God does. She/he upholds us, gifts us, an loves us. We ought to do the same and honor that of God in everyone, male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free. For if we do, we will hear more fully what God is saying and by honoring each other, we honor the one who made us.

I am blessed to be a part of the Quakers, people who honor, mostly, what women have to give. I know not everyone has such an easy battle. I pray the women in Africa took courage in what I said to live out what God has called them to. I pray the women reading this now will do the same just as I pray the men reading this will encourage the women around them in their ministries, help speak out for women's equal place in ministry, and even more so, I pray we all listen and obey God's call, encouraging one another, and that we honor God's image inside each soul, no matter who we are for God loves us and equips us all.