Deb Carriger Richards - Blog: Living in Layers

Fourth Sunday of Advent: Yearning to Do the Will of God

12/21/2018

During the years we lived in northern Minnesota, I used any excuse (or none) to take a short drive to Duluth in order to view the Big Lake, Superior. One pristine May morning, I followed a street up, up, up to the top of a hill that overlooks the lake. All the way, I thought to myself, The drive back down will be stunning!
I started back down, taking in as much of the vast blue as I was able. Just as I thought I might explode with joy, my front tire hit a pothole, startling me so much that I burst into tears,
On the first Sunday of Advent 2018, I moved with my coffee to a place by the window, intent on watching the snowfall. Looking up, the bright cast of clouds overhead made it impossible to clearly see the snow coming down. Instead, my eye was drawn to the clumps of white stuff gathered in the shrubs just beneath my window. The simplicity and density of the moment pulled me in.
When we allow ourselves to think that life is primarily about the stunning views, the breathtaking beauty, the heart-stopping excitement, and that only the “big” things matter, we miss the present moment of our own life. We overlook the reality of the here and now, where God dwells, and through which the Spirit works to accomplish the will of God.
When we study the life of the Jesus, we study his interruptions—those many small moments with the one person in front of him. Following a life of obscurity, Jesus gave only three brief years to this. Yet, through the way he lived, Jesus was able to say, “Behold, I come to do Your will, O God.” We, too, are called to live the life God has given us.

Reflect: Guess what? It’s still Advent! If you have a creche in your home, take time to look at it. Realizing that it is not yet the eve of Christ’s birth, remove all of the figures around the creche until you come to the one that corresponds to this present moment:  Mary. Tell her what is in your heart.
Journal:  God shows up as your life. ~ Paula d’Arcy
What does life want from you? What are your circumstances calling you to do?
Practice:  Remember Jesus came feasting! In the coming days, let your eyes feast on light and beauty; your ears on music and meaningful conversation; your mind on prayer and scripture; your heart on love; and your soul on Christ in doing the will of God.

Third Sunday of Advent: Yearning to Know

12/3/2018

The Preaching of St. John the Baptist (Pieter Bruegle the Elder)

Now the people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ. ~ Luke 3:15

My firstborn was a Christmas baby. In 1976, ultrasounds were not routine, and today’s modern 3-D version didn’t exist. There was no big “reveal” party, and, apart from necessities, very little advance planning. The baby wore a Winnie-the-Pooh bunting for the drive home from the hospital, where a bassinet awaited.
During the pregnancy, all I could do was hold the idea of “baby” in my imagination as my waistline expanded and the love in my heart deepened. The moment I saw my son, his beauty and wholeness and life were more than I could take in.
Even modern technology could not have offered what I most wanted to know—who my son is. All the rest would have to unfold—Daniel’s personality, interests and accomplishments; the various ways he has touched the lives of others; all the many expressions of the very life of God through his life.
Today’s Gospel reading indicates that as humans, we long to know the Christ. The people around John seem to be held by this very question. As I heard one Ignatian spiritual director express it many years ago, “We want to know the One who is responsible for our mercy.”

Reflect: How do you know what you know? Observation? Research and information gathering? Emotional intelligence? Intuition? Gut instinct?
Journal: What do you know in your heart to be true? Of what are you uncertain? When you explore the interior of your heart, what do you find?
Practice: Think of a conflict you are experiencing. Make an inner image of the conflict until you feel the emotion of it. Attention is like a current. Move the current of your attention from the image in your mind, down the central line of your body, to the heart. Notice any changes. This is something you can practice at any time.
~ (adapted from Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness, by Robert Sardello)

Second Sunday of Advent: Yearning to Hear

12/1/2018

Not long before my thirtieth birthday, I experienced an inner restlessness I could not name or solve. For months I carried a low-level edginess and disquiet. I was already a praying person, connecting with God through daily prayer and scripture reading. But I needed. . .something.
In late summer, my husband and I traveled to New Mexico. One evening we arrived early for our dinner reservation near Chimayo, so we followed road signs into the nearby hills to an overlook for Santa Cruz Reservoir. We pulled into a parking spot and I got out of the car to look around.
Walking up a footpath, I topped a low mound, and entered the deepest, most tangible silence I have ever experienced. Below me lay an azure lake. Large boats moved across the water in silence. I don’t know how long I stood there, but a deep peace filled me that has remained.
Following this experience, I began to seek God in silence. I became intentional about noticing the subtle inner movements of the Spirit, and moved from a place of hearing (through words) to the place of discernment (in the silence of my heart).
Today’s New Testament reading is a prayer of thanksgiving for the Philippian church. St. Paul prays that their “love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value.” For Paul, discernment is a “whole body experience” to which we bring all the love, strength, desire, and imagination we can muster.

Reflect: What does it mean to “discern what is of value?” How would doing so alter your priorities?
Journal: Do you truly want to hear God? What feelings does that thought stir in you? Write your insights.
Practice: Walk through your home and notice the differing qualities of silence as you move from room to room. Choose a place to spend three to five minutes in silence. Over the next few weeks, try to develop a practice of silence.

First Sunday of Advent: Yearning to See

12/1/2018

We heard it on the ten o’clock news. I had never seen the Northern Lights, and here was my chance.
               “What if?” I asked Jack. “What if we drive north, away from the lights of town? If we see something, it will be worth braving the cold and losing a little sleep.”
               Soon we were standing together on a gravel road in the silent cold, heads thrust back, craning skyward, not knowing what to expect.
               Suddenly we saw a faint white streak, shooting upward, and almost immediately another trailing beside it. Then the heavens gathered and knotted at the center, forming a great dome overhead, and light showered in all directions.
               Next the light streaked red, dazzling us with jewel-like radiance. Lower along the horizon, it glowed green and luminous blue. Then the lights joined and began to twist and dance. They leaped and shuddered and twirled and swooshed!
               We felt giddy; we felt high. We both laughed out loud.
When things finally quieted, we trekked back to the car in silence. Our desire fulfilled—that of seeing aurora borealis—transmuted into deeper longings. . .the shared longings of this season. . .of seeing the One who fulfills all desire for beauty, for glory, for the miraculous, the holy.
               In scripture we are given the word for this kind of seeing. The word is behold. The writer of Ephesians speaks of it this way: May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus speaks of the “drowsy” heart as a condition that would keep us from seeing; from being fully prepared to behold the Coming One. The drowsy heart is weighed down by carousing, drunkenness, and the anxieties of daily life. And in writing to the Thessalonians, St. Paul instructs us to strengthen our (drowsy) hearts by increasing and abounding in love.

The Incarnation we most long for is our own, and it comes through the strengthening of our hearts. To love, we must be in touch with our own desire to see—to behold with the eyes of our hearts; to become enlightened by Christ.

Reflect: Bring to mind the person of Christ, or another person whom you love or desire to love. Envision this person with the eyes of your heart. Notice that you do not have to be able to see their physical features clearly. This is the experience of “beholding.”
Journal: What does this mean to you? Try describing what your heart sees. Does this give you new insight into this person or your relationship to them?
Practice: Write a letter, expressing thanks for what Christ or another person has meant to you. Consider sharing your insights with someone in conversation.

Yearning for Incarnation

12/1/2018

Photo from 2018 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar (click on image to go to website)

Recently I was asked to offer a guided reflection on Advent for a Reconciliation service at St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Des Moines. They requested help with the practice of journaling, and I knew immediately what the topic should be. "Yearning for Incarnation" (meaning our own).

The Value of Journaling as a Spiritual Practice

“Write a true, careless, slovenly, impulsive, honest diary every day of your life.”
   ~ Brenda Ueland

I do this.

A couple of weeks ago, out of curiosity, I dug out an old journal of mine.
It was a journal from 1999 (nearly twenty years ago) At the time I wrote it, I was in immense pain, filling page after page with my anger, my rage, and my sadness.

Then, I stopped and asked myself, “What do you want?”

            I wrote, “to pray, write, study, teach, be a spiritual director, help my children.”--

This is my Current Job Description!

The raw, burning emotion of my experience didn’t serve me. The flame of my anger created too much smoke. Only after I cleared away the smoke by getting the emotion on the page, could I then get to the deeper layer that offered so much hope.

I needed to know what I wanted.

We can feel great inner resistance to the act of writing our feelings. It can be paralyzing, something I still feel at times.

A friend of mine who was feeling this resistance because she is going through a very painful time in her life, bought a journal and wrote on the front: Ugly Words.  When she showed it to me, I remember thinking it was a way for her to give herself permission to speak her truth; to say her feelings, and give voice to her experience. Something about those words also seemed to shout: KEEP OUT!!

Our greatest resistance to keeping a journal may be the fear that someone might read it. Find a safe place to keep your journal. Keep it in your car. Tuck it behind some items on an unused shelf. Stash it in the bottom of the laundry hamper, or in a locked file drawer at work.

If you truly can’t find a safe place, Write, write, write and shred, shred, shred; or write, write, write and burn, burn, burn!

Terry Tempest Williams, one of our best current writers on nature and environmentalism uses this trick: when you are writing your thoughts and come to things you don’t want anyone else to read, write over them. Repeat. Repeat until you’ve gotten out what you need to say, until even you can’t decipher what you’ve written. Then move on.

Our deepest impulse as human beings created in the image of God, is to create wholeness. ----to cooperate with the Spirit of God in creating our own wholeness. Journaling helps to bring that impulse into the realm of the concrete, the embodied.

So do other spiritual practices: prayer, fasting, giving, silence and solitude. In addition to being prayer, journaling supports the other spiritual practices.

Richard Rohr has said that “Faith largely became believing things to be true or false (intellectual assent)
. . .instead of giving people concrete practices so they could instead know how to open up (faith), hold on (hope), and allow an infilling from another source (love).”
A conscious way of being and bringing the fulfillment of the Incarnation into and through our lives requires a stronger container than thought. (mere intellectual assent.)

Our encounters with the Holy One require imagination, a sense of wonder, and a willingness to risk in order to become partners with God in the New Creation.
This experience of partnering with God in the New Creation of our very own life is “the pearl of great price” we find in Matthew’s gospel—that once we find it, there’s nothing we would trade it for. Another way to think of it is this: You ARE the work God is doing in the world.

It requires that we wait in Hope. And waiting in Hope requires an attitude of faith, which is what Advent is all about. Thomas Merton said that, in a sense, our lives are a perpetual advent. We find we are always waiting in Hope, even as we are working in cooperation with the Spirit of God in bringing about that New Creation.

Judy Cannato, in her book Radical Amazement speaks of what it means to share in the divine nature:
  We do in fact embody some of the very capacities that Jesus tells us are fundamental to God’s nature. In moments of contemplative pause when we are acutely aware, we may recognize a resonance and understand the call. We, too, are capable of compassion. We, too, can accept the unacceptable and love the unlovable. We know how to serve, how to forgive, how to be just and merciful. We can be inclusive in hospitality, vulnerable before love, and empowered as we break free. To become divine is to simply but fully live out of the truth of who we are in the deepest part of our being. And so our refusal to claim our godly nature, rather than being an act of profound humility, is a rejection of the empowerment that came through the life of Jesus. And that rejection has been deadly, not only for humankind, but for all creation.

The two great paradoxes of our faith are the Nativity—the revealing of God Incarnate, and the Resurrection—the emerging of the Risen Christ from death and the tomb.

The Incarnation we most long for is our own.
The Resurrection we most long for is our own.

In our encounters with the Holy, the tendency is always to focus on the event; to hold onto the experience. (to fix our gaze on that manger; to fix our gaze on that empty tomb)
But what matters is what follows— the opening of our hearts, the energy that arises and infuses our lives, that brings forth questions, and the passing on of the related meanings we find there to others.

This is how the meaning of our faith came down to us.

And because it has, we take time to ponder what is in our hearts during Advent and Lent, in an attempt to live out the implications in our own lives.
We are meant to live these meanings bodily—individually and in community—until they are fulfilled in and through us.

Sin has been described as that patterned way of being in which we remain living at the surface. Spiritual practices, especially journaling, will enable us to go deeper.

**The way is through the human heart. The heart is a perceiving, purifying, integrating, energizing center.

If our hearts are blocked, crushed, fractured, pride-filled, shackled, or if we keep choosing to skim only the surface of life, our hearts cannot provide the energy needed to embody what we have received in Christ. The four weeks of the Advent season can provide opportunity for us to reflect in the silence of our hearts the Incarnation, and the ways we are called to live the experience bodily.

This Day

10/29/2018

I've never seen a day like this, autumn or otherwise. The sunlight shimmers, the clouds are soft, there's barely a breeze, the colors are muted. I can practically meet the sun's gaze with an open stare. It's worth being momentarily blinded just to have the experience. This time of year, the sun fills the southern sky, but lacks intensity.

I'm conscious that my work, relationships, home, body, marriage, all work together to support that which constitutes my life.

In a focus group with other spiritual directors this week, we worked with the question, "What would it look like to foster and support vibrant spiritual enrichment in central Iowa?" At the heart of the question is the recognition that each of us, too, needs ongoing spiritual enrichment and growth.

We spoke of yearning, and what touched me most deeply was Billie's comment, "I want to be in touch with the power that is responsible for my life."

(That power, I believe, is God as well as me.)

On Friday, my friend Glen stopped in at my desk and stayed for a couple of hours.  It's been a while since we've had a chance to talk, and I got to hear about his trip to Israel as well as his work with Joppa and Habitat. We talked about spiritual growth and all of the places the Spirit has led Glen in the past four or five years. When he left, all I could feel was God's presence, and this scripture verse kept going through my mind: Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. (Psalm 81:11)

On Saturday, I attended a Spiritual Practices workshop and heard this: "I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through--listen to this music." [Hafiz] I also encountered this from Richard Rohr:  Faith largely became believing things to be true or false (intellectual assent) instead of giving people concrete practices so they could instead know how to open up (faith), hold on (hope), and allow an infilling from another source (love).

One of the most meaningful practices for me was walking the labyrinth. I noticed my desires--ecumenism, to walk with God in new ways, to be conscious of "way open before me." During one stretch, I felt scared--aware that I was in a place I'd never been before, then noticed that I was "accidentally" headed back to the center. Next I swung outward, away from center, with feelings of being cast off and alone. The person behind me came too close. I had to focus on my own steps. I knew I needed to stay in my own place, and at my own pace. Then I allowed myself to be distracted with thinking about the future before bringing my mind back to the present moment.

As with any spiritual practice, you have to stay on a path long enough (longer than you may think, or want) in order to get in touch, for insights to come, and feelings, and in order for things to really happen.

Next, I settled in a pew in the tiny church next to a stained glass window and gazed on an icon of Christ. I wrote--a vision of full immersion in my own life, like a baptism by fire that each of us undergoes, and comes through changed and ready for resurrection. The coming through is not the resurrection. But following the coming through, the walking forward, the first step, is only the beginning. I recalled a conversation with Helen from the night before about Etty Hillesum, speaking of "God with us." And that we are to show the mercy, the love, the joy, the peace, and the hope. All of these come through our lives because God is with us, along with the grace and the light.

As I looked around, I thought of the many churches, chapels, and sacred spaces where I have been; the way they continue, even when no one is there. Throughout the days and nights, weeks, months, and years they endure and hold presence and space.

I was also acutely aware that two spiritual greats--Thomas Keating and Eugene Peterson--left us this past week.

In the afternoon, I slept and read. Rested and read. I savored Terry Tempest Williams's book, Refuge, parallel stories of the rise of the Great Salt Lake with the loss of habitat in 1983 alongside Terry's mother, Diane's, dying. I finished and ordered three more of Terry's books.

And always the awareness of things going on in our country--bomb packages targeting Democrats, the deaths in Pittsburgh at a Jewish synagogue, troops being sent to our southernmost borders. (Not to speak of the rest of the world.) And, closer to home, news that Mike and Melissa's 26-year-old son, Derek may have a recurrence of cancer. Derek was diagnosed with colon cancer less than two years ago, and his younger brother, Cody, with lymphoma a few short months after that.

[We pray for an infection, and/or the will of God (as opposed to the will of not God) and for patience, strength, and wisdom for the family, per Melissa's request.]

All of the above.

I'm reminded of the first thing I read this morning after some quiet, coffee, and journaling.   It's from this quarter's Parabola magazine, and the theme is Hope.  "The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954.

At dusk, I walked down to the marsh behind the school and watched red wing blackbirds as they dropped into the reeds and grasses, and settled. I love the sounds they make--singing, chirping, twittering, whirring, and all the variations. I wished I had a sleeping bag and could bed down right there for the night. They'll be gone soon, I don't know which day.

For now, though, there is this day. I've never seen one like it. Nor have you.

Midterm Anxiousness

10/23/2018

I feel hopeless at times about political tensions and arguments. I try to think through how varying positions affect my core concerns: the plight of women in desperate situations; division and warring among people; betrayal, deceit, and manipulation of the vulnerable; the abuse and exploitation of children.

Some people with great integrity get behind causes I don't fully understand or believe in. Others with an obvious lack of character stand for causes I support. It seems it's always this way.

With midterm elections looming, I'm forced to rethink my political views. How much I would like to believe in and vote for a leader instead of casting a vote which in reality is only a vote against an issue or against someone else. Doing nothing seems better than taking action I don't believe in. I've wondered whether I might shred the absentee ballot with my name on it, that right now sits on our dining room table, a thought that brings tears to my eyes.
And, yet, grace precedes and follows me everywhere I go. This week alone, I have been gifted with several long conversations.

One friend seems to marvel that while she doesn't agree with everything she reads in my blog posts, our friendship remains intact. I'm able to share with another friend how deeply she has influenced my thinking over the past six or so years of our friendship. Yet, on Saturday, when I had lunch with my longtime friend of more than thirty years, and the discussion turned to what's happening with immigrants at our southernmost borders, I found myself wanting to reach across the table and throttle her!

Luckily, she took a restroom break and this fell into my brain: I believe I know what I think about this because of what I have read and seen. She believes she knows, based on what she has read and seen. I shared this with her when she returned to the table, and we both readily agreed. Later, I tried researching "facts" and could find nothing clear to substantiate what either of us had so convincingly stated during our conversation.

Yesterday after work, I started out for a short walk and ended up at the pond, where I felt drawn to twin oak trees, by the sound of red wing blackbirds gathered among the branches. Even as I wondered about the wisdom of standing directly beneath them, I rested my palm against the trunk and looked up while I let the sound of their chatter fall on me and fill me. I don't know the signal, or who gave it, but with one silent sweep they took to the air. I ran to watch for them, and a short time later located them in the taller cottonwoods a short distance away. They took with them my angst, and I walked home in peace. No matter what, I cannot let these lovely days go by unnoticed and un-savored.

At last, I am once again in touch with my own inner knowing. And I'm able to fill out my ballot with a sense of clarity and inner peace. I hope the same for each of you.

Signs of Hope

9/30/2018

Again this weekend Jack and I planted ourselves in The Driftless. I make my way there two to three times per year, and Jack a lot more often than that. We will probably end up there someday to stay. He says I get to determine when, and he gets to determine where. We were housed in a sweet place high above a wide valley that threads its way through the coulees. Threaded through the valley is a trout stream, and two small lakes we discovered when hiking.
Jack spent all morning fishing, and I trekked down the long curve of paved county road, stopping occasionally to study rock outcroppings and bluffs, and to listen to the birds who call these woods home--woodpeckers, chickadees, cardinals, nuthatches. I stopped to look at the scarred walls of a quarry, and the big official looking sign posted at the gate that explains all of the important things that take place within its fenced boundary.

I walked across the road and gazed into a deep ravine. I heard rushing water at the bottom, but couldn't see it. The air was fragrant, crisp and cool, and though it was gloomy out, there was quite a lot of color--oranges, golds, yellows.

I've listened to and read Terry Tempest Williams's work recently. Speaking at Harvard Divinity School, she quotes David Orr: The planet does not need more successful people. The world does desperately need more peacemakers, more healers, more restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind--people who live well in their places, people of moral courage who are willing to join the fight to make the world more habitable, more human, and more humane. These qualities have little to do with success as we define it.

I personally believe there are plenty of these goodhearted people in the Driftless region of southwestern Wisconsin.

In the afternoon, Jack and I drove into La Crosse, passing through some of our favorite small communities. Every blackbird in Vernon county was flocked up, lining the electrical wires. There was a Sauerkraut Supper at St. Peter's church in Middle Ridge. The Amish waved to us when we passed by. Some of their buggies are convertibles. I watched as a vulture was carried out of one of the valleys on an updraft.

Places have names like Sidie Hollow, Harmony Hills, Manna Avenue, Timber Coulee. It appears that people who inhabit this area "live well in their places." Something hopeful to ponder.

And all of this, for me, was playing against the backdrop of the Kavanaugh confirmation process.

One week prior, I listened to and watched the complete testimonies of both Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Here's what I wanted to hear, but didn't hear in the Senate hearing:
I wanted to hear male Republican Senators ask Dr. Ford questions with the depth and sensitivity that male Democratic Senators used in their questioning of her.
I wanted Rachel Mitchell to finish the job she was called in to do.
I wanted Judge Kavanaugh to come out in clear and strong defense by answering questions clearly "yes" or "no".

As frustrating as all of this has been, I do see signs of hope. One sign of hope is that more women are speaking freely about the truth of their own experience. I've had three long conversations with my daughter, Sarah, about some of our feelings and experiences, and two with my son, Daniel. They're smart people, and I learn a lot from them.

I wrote Christine Blasey Ford a letter of thanks, as well as North Dakota's Senator Heidi Heitkamp. Sarah contributed to Dr. Ford's GoFundMe account.

Sarah asked whether I feel safe on my long walks. I said I do. . .but it does always occur to me that someone could stop, overpower me, bring harm to me when I am out in some isolated area. Only a couple of cars passed me that morning. One did stop, and a young woman rolled down her window to ask whether I was hunting for mushrooms.

And I've been reflecting on these words of Terry Tempest Williams, which caught my attention last week. Not only did these words catch my attention, on some level theyseemed to shock me into wakefulness:

"Democracy is full of strike moments, when injustice rubs against justice and a flame is carried by a man, a woman, a community, who lights a path of right action in the name of social change." (Terry Tempest Williams, Red)

I know that I want to be one of the women who carries a flame to light a path of right action in the name of social change. Right now I'm not sure what that looks like. For me, it seems that I am called to continue to listen, to support others who are coming awake, to encourage others, especially women, to recognize their own inner wisdom, and speak their truth, whether or not I agree. With all of this, I continue to be in process, It seems important to be willing to stay in it, even when it's uncomfortable. Even when it breaks my heart.

At last, Pope Francis has approved investigation into Vatican archives on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. A sign of hope, which may prove as dubious as a quick FBI investigation. Some things coming out of the Church continue to be discouraging (lacking courage)--for example, the current meeting of Bishops for the youth synod consists of 250 priests, bishops, cardinals, and some younger laypersons. Though some of the laypersons are women, only the men are allowed to vote.

Regarding ongoing clergy sex abuse, even within our own Diocese through a recent press release, the language continues to center around "decades old" allegations. This language sounds self protective and minimizes the experience of victims. Two things we must recognize: Statistically, victims of child sexual abuse wait thirty years to report the event. And, experientially, for the victim, there is no such thing as "decades old."

Though it's true that since 2002 the Catholic Church has taken concrete steps to keep this tragedy from happening, (any allegation is to be taken seriously and reported immediately to outside authorities; the accused is removed from their position until allegations are either cleared or confirmed) I still feel skeptical when I hear that the problem has all but disappeared. I can see why good people of faith want to believe it. But it's in the very nature of abuse that it finds a way to hide, particularly if it is sexual in nature.

There is at least one courageous Bishop among us, Bishop Conley, who in his column on August 17th, entitled "A Call for Vigilance and Action," stated, What I am learning is that even when there may not be clear and obvious signs of sexual abuse and physical assault, there can still be behavior that can be rightly seen as abuse, boundary violations, warning signs, and conduct that requires intervention. If we investigate these warning signs with appropriate vigor, we could learn there is a misunderstanding, but we could also learn there was serious abuse that we did not know about.
When I first read that, I thought, Every woman knows this. (Conley is the Bishop of the Lincoln, Nebraska, Diocese) You can read the column here.

On Sunday morning, I looked out and noticed one small puff of cloud, rising from the valley floor. It spoke to me of hope; of not giving up; of doing my small part; of doing all I can with great love; of being content in my small role.

Lake Time

9/16/2018

Clear Lake, Iowa

It takes a minimum of three days to make a good retreat. I am not the first to make this discovery.
At last, my soul has stopped churning.
I am blessed to have great friends who allow me to take up residence at their lake properties on occasion, for the purpose of solitude and writing. Jack dropped me here, and left on Friday to return to southwest Wisconsin, his sweet spot.

A Walk in the Park

Writing on an Empty Stomach

"We've been discovered and interrupted!"

As I come back from my walk, I'm feeling agitated and restless. More and more it seems the bishops and leaders in the church behave like Samuel Whiskers in Beatrix Potter's story, The Roly Poly Pudding. Do you remember? John Joiner saws through an attic floor to find Tom Kitten wrapped in a pastry, with Samuel Whiskers and his wife, Anna Maria, rolling hurriedly with the rolling pin, to ready him for the oven. Upon being found out Samuel Whiskers exclaims, "We've been discovered and interrupted."
As for the Church, it's sad to realize that without (outside) discovery, the history of these activities would not be interrupted at all.
If we look at what Jesus of Nazareth had to say to religious leaders of his time (Matthew 23, Mark 12, Luke 11), it's clear that he did not spare them the severity of his conscience, his raw emotion, or the meaning of his words.
And this is not the time, either, to be sparing in our responses.
And what meaning does it truly have when a seventy-five-year-old bishop retires? What meaning does it truly have when religious leaders are called out for their crimes, and named, when the statute of limitations has run out for the victims? Ant what is the meaning when the vilest abuser is protected under the rule of Patriarchy, which is itself a distortion of what masculine energy was designed to be and intended to represent?

If misogyny didn’t exist within patriarchal systems, this would never have happened to our children. We haven’t begun to talk about what the Church has done to women.

I pour my thoughts on paper and feel better, free now to eat, take care of myself, go outside and be with the hummingbirds that fly past me constantly, feeding on the neighbors’ decks on either side. I count them. There are eight, ten, twelve.

Late in the day, a solitary hummingbird perches on the neighbor’s solar lantern. She preens, guarding her feeder, and sits silhouetted against the sun. Everything about her is perfection.
A white pelican drifts to the water. The birds, including a heron, settle into the reeds for the night. The hummingbirds take turns stopping, hovering a foot away from me, before zooming off. There’s a waxing crescent moon overhead, ripples on the water, the waning light of evening. The geese fly in, the boats leave, the bugs come out. It takes a great while for dusk to die away, for sounds to fade, and the bringing on of darkness, rest, and sleep.
I go indoors and turn on a light. I decide to make SoulCollage® cards.

Being

Up at five, and the stars are brighter than they were at bedtime. By 6:30, the hummingbirds are active again. I enjoy a long quiet day, reading in the sun. The temperature reaches 90 degrees.
For some reason, I think about Don Hammonds, a long ago friend from Atlanta, and the poster on the wall in his office:  She is free who is not afraid to go to the end of her thought.
And I talk to myself. Let go. Stop fearing. Be free.

Some things are on my mind, the creation of the world, for one. When God created light, did the light shine brightly, all at once, or was it like the slow dawn on a small lake in the upper Midwest that begins as a hint of glow that grows slowly and steadily, spreading across the sky from the east, brightening to fill the air?

Another thing has been on my mind, too. Recently I was with a group of people and another man hit on me. He didn’t use words, but I could see and feel what was on his mind. He moved toward me, and I looked at him and said, “No.” I moved away and returned to my seat. He sat down next to me and jabbed his knee into my right buttock. The life went out of me. His significant other was seated right next to him, and one of his children. I moved to the other side of the table.

He ruined the event for me, if for no other reason than I felt I had to avoid him and remain hyper-vigilant for the rest of the morning. Isn’t that exactly what every predator wants—to trigger those kinds of feelings and therefore have that kind of power over another person? It’s never about attraction, and very different from flirting. It's always about power, about dominance. And it's ugly.

Being

Jack starts back from Wiscnosin, and arrives in the afternoon. After dinner we sit on the deck, me with a glass of Moscato; a lovely evening, and eight white pelicans float by in formation. We watch as they land on the other side of the reeds, and eventually float around to our side. A little while later they move out, take to the air, and fly west.

At last I feel I’m fully on Lake Time.

Before we walk the next morning, I sit on the deck with coffee and hummingbirds, watching the lake. I call this “Lake Pajama Church.” I watch small flocks of birds rise from the reeds, but they’re not the yellow-headed blackbirds I’ve seen here in early summer. Suddenly the sun lifts, too, and casts bright light on the world. The hummingbirds fly back and forth, fly right up to me and look into my eyes, check out my hair. I have no idea what they gain from this assessment.
Jack and I sit two feet apart, and they fly between us, as on some reconnaissance mission, nearly grazing the back of Jack’s neck, landing on the deck railing close by.
I wonder what the lake sounds like in its natural state, or what it may have sounded like a hundred years ago or more. I try to roll back the traffic sounds, the motor sounds, even the sound of waves lapping against the sides of boats, and find it’s not fully possible. If I come back in the fall, I may try this again.

I read this on Facebook:

               Those who have the
               gale of the Holy Spirit
               go forward
               even in sleep.
                                                            ~ Brother Lawrence

The gale of the Holy Spirit. I’ve experienced this, but never heard anyone else say it. The Spirit is a great force in my life, like a windstorm. A whirlwind. A tornado. Not sweet, soothing, peaceful, the way others so often speak of it.

After breakfast, Jack launches me from a neighbor’s dock in Kay’s red kayak, and I’m out on the diamond studded open water when I make this discovery: there are dragonflies and monarchs in the middle of the lake. A gull flies overhead on mission, like God’s First Raven after the floodgates of the sky were closed, empty-beaked but with plenty to report.
I paddle, float, paddle, float, wishing I’d brought my moleskin along to capture my thoughts. Morning traffic picks up along the thoroughfare frequented by leisure boats and jet skis. One large boat idles and waits (thank you) but the young couple riding the Sea-Doo doesn’t have time. They pass me ya-hooing, the girl’s long blonde hair flying straight out a foot behind her. She looks like Barbie.
I turn myself parallel to a pontoon as the people on board pontoon-honk their horn to friends seated on a nearby dock. When I paddle by a short time later, I hope the smooth rhythmic elegance of my strokes on the water bring them thoughts of, “Ahhh. . .this is the life,” and not, “Who the heck's the sloppy oldster out there who think she knows how to kayak?”
I float into the shade of oak trees along the shore, and think of my dad. He grew up a woodsman and friend of trees. (I learned from Grandma’s journal that when she was lonely she often took her children to the woods to play.) Dad grew up hunting and fishing, the kind of hunting and fishing that poverty requires.
I talk to him. “Look, Dad, the trees! It’s an oak grove.”
I think he only got to come to Iowa once, when I first moved here.

This weekend I've finished Edward Abbey's book, Desert Solitaire, based on his experiences as a solitary park ranger in the wilderness areas of southeastern Utah. What a renegade, one of my favorites of all men and writers.
He says, "If a man's imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever fantasies of the supernal. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dreams."

It's getting harder for me to be with God inside a building. I know the invitation is always there, but I don’t respond very well. I say this not to offend anyone else’s sensibilities, but because experientially God is most real to me here, where the natural world is also most real to me, and I am most real to myself. It’s not about worshiping nature or God in nature. It's simply about being. with. God. Someone is probably praying for me just now, wanting to wish me into a church.

Home

Heading back, I steer clear of the fisher folks, as I’ve been taught to do. I’m glad they’re there, in case the kayak capsizes. I’ll let you in on a a little secret. I can’t swim.

When I left, Jack asked how long I was going to be out.
“You’ll probably know,” I said.

As I paddle toward the dock, he steps out and waves.

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Equilibrium

9/3/2018

Ordinariness eventually becomes an inner demand. We stumble after it--not knowing how to be ordinary--only how great is our need for the healing it brings.
~ Anne Hillman, Awakening the Energies of Love

As we continue to cope. . .

with the psychic shock of the polarization and dissension in the Catholic church over recent revelations of abuse and corruption, and accusations against Pope Francis, I've needed to focus on regaining a sense of equilibrium. After all, if I lose my own grounding, my peace, my passion and compassion, my groove, my mojo, how am I able to respond adequately to anything?
This normalcy, this ordinariness, tempers my rage and opens my heart.

Life is faithful in its unfolding.

Right after I wrote that last blog post, I attended our final Biddies gathering of the summer. Looking into the faces of those women gave me hope! Their innate goodness (all the more good because they don't realize it), the many ways they are present to each other, and their joy at being together was immediate and palpable. Later that same day, I boarded a plane for Oregon to spend time with Gayle and Karen, two best friends of forty-one years, to drive into the mountains with my son, Drew, and to attend a most perfect wedding celebration. All of it was exactly what I needed.

Mother of the Bride, Karen, speaking with Mother of the Groom, Sarah

Setting for a Perfect Wedding!

That complete break from everything, along with returning home and to ordinariness have helped me to regain a sense of balance. Ordinariness for me is a rhythm of being home, being out, being at work, being with people, being in solitude and/or with Jack. Being. Ordinariness looks like Being.

I read. (In the past month I've read Anne Hillman's Awakening the Energies of Love, Thomas Berry's Dream of the Earth, Terry Tempest Williams's When Women Were Birds. TWICE.) Reading has a way of nurturing and forming me. I can feel it, physically, feeding me. It's a source of life.

I stand, coffee in hand, and watch my hummingbirds as they guzzle, dive, perch, and take off chasing. Tiny winged territorial beings. I know they have to leave soon, following their own innate rhythm in the great stream of living things, of life.

I notice the owl that hoots just north of the house as soon as it grows dark out, the way the air smells in the mornings, the light in the pine bows when the sun begins to go down, (Edward Abbey says that owls don't so much hunt as they call out to their prey. The hoot is unnerving to rodents, rabbits especially, who of course may think the owl can spot them. They run from cover to find something better. That's when the owl actually sees and can track them.)

I walk, and notice the same tree that jumps the gun on color every year at this time. The same lanky blonde boy passes me on his bicycle every day. He has the roundest, bluest eyes. His hair is the color of wheat. Today he was stopped, one foot planted on the pavement, with his phone next to his ear. His smile lit up the planet. His mother must be crazy about, him, I think, as I pass him on the bike path. How can she stand to let him leave the house?

I reflect on Thomas Berry's writing. If the planet is an airliner, how do we (ecologically) avoid a crash landing? His book was published thirty years ago, in 1988. I keep reminding myself of this as I try to absorb what he's saying. Thirty years hence, is it unavoidable or are we trying to mitigate the damage that will be caused by that inevitable crash landing? I have all the hope in the world for it. I can base that on not one thing factual. He ends this book with the idea of hopefulness. Hopefulness that the earth will show us how; will teach us what we need to do in order to evolve; to show us how to take the necessary risks as humans.

I think about this, also the many agreements that we make with ourselves, something I like to call the non-negotiables; those many agreements to which we hold ourselves. They come to life in the ordinariness of the everyday. They emerge when we most need them, as a frame of reference for all that we experience. They keep us from despair. On the days when we're convinced we can't do any of it, the days we want to give up because the strain is too great, the non-negotiables call to us in the form of the promises we've made to ourselves.

The Girl in the Denver Airport, Terminal B

On that recent Tuesday, walking through Terminal B in the Denver Airport to catch my next plane, I spotted the striking, youngish blind (who can tell anyone's age these days?) woman walking ahead of me with her cane. She moved at a quick, confident pace, and I wouldn't have caught up with her, only she stopped.
I approached her and asked where she was headed. "Gate 80."
"I'm at Gate 90, so we can go together if you like."
She took my arm.
She'd left her good cane at home, along with her service dog because of his size. She was going to Colorado Springs for the Olympics. She lives in downtown Des Moines.
Then something interesting happened. I felt we were suddenly off track, and the signs weren't helping. More than once I had to stop so we could reorient ourselves. When I couldn't tell which way to go, she filled in the blanks with information she'd received form someone else. We were forty gates away, and I was dependent upon my "blind" walking partner to get us where we needed to go. With our combined ways of seeing, we arrived at our gates.
I'm thinking that in our church, in our culture, in our world, which have all become so hopelessly polarized, it will require a lot of different ways of seeing before we will move forward together, what Greg Boyle calls "toward a stance of kinship." Otherwise, I'm thinking that young woman may have found her gate while I might still be stopped, stumped, searching.

The Boys on the Urbandale Bike Path

This morning I passed two young boys on the bike path who were deep in conversation. (At least one of them was.) He said, "Dude, actually no dentist would ever do that! Imagine if the next day was picture day." That's all I heard.
On the second loop near the lake I heard him say, "Dude! You know my living room? And that lamp? And the little couch?"
He was doing what we all do in order to be understood. He set up his listener by creating a context, a frame of reference, for understanding. Evidently, the other boy didn't get it the first time around. Without context, he couldn't.
The problem with hearing each other, with coming together and creating solutions, is that we don't hear, accept, or receive each others' contexts. You know the living room?  (That ain't no living room Dude!) And that lamp? (Lamps are wrong. Lamps are bad. Your whole problem is you've got a lamp, of all things.) And the little couch? I still want to know what comes after the little couch, don't you?

And from the Vatican, Silence

Thus, we wait.

I am willing to wait for what Pope Francis has to say. This one, whose theology runs parallel to mine (I'm certain it's the other way around, aren't you?), has a voice that I am able to hear. I have felt from the beginning that he lives from a stance of service, of reason, of compassion, of humility.

In the meantime, some of what we continue to hear locally is that it's better since 2002, and, that, by and large, over time, it hasn't occurred with that many priests. This still falls on my ears as disclaimer, as minimizing, as deflecting. But it's what we have to work with.

The other wing of the message is a call to penance, fasting, and prayer. Prayers Gonna Pray. . .I'm a praying person. A gift in this experience is that it deepens my prayer. Penance and fasting, however, at this particular time, make no sense to me whatsoever. Carry on.

Letting Go and/or Asking

When to let go? When to push for what I want?

OH, WAIT. . .What if I simply asked?

Bible study begins tomorrow (starting at The Beginning, Genesis 1) and on Monday some of us will start an Ignatian process together (The New Spiritual Exercises). Both of these meet over the next eight months.

Last week at this time, I was agonizing not so much at the prep time these will both take and my need for balance, but when was I going to find time to write?

I grappled with this over a couple of days, trying to get myself to "let go" and trust that it will work out.

It wasn't working.

Then I stumbled onto the idea to ask my boss if I could come in to work later on Tuesdays and Thursdays. What a concept. He pretty much immediately agreed to it.