Author Archives: Elizabeth Nordquist

Sparks of Fire

27 Wednesday May 2015

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imagesWhen I was in ministry in the parish, Pentecost seemed to be a big Bold Celebration…broad swatches of red, images of fire, forceful kettledrums and swelling organ sounds. If we were fortunate, members of the congregation who had a mastery of another language would read Scripture in another tongue, intimating, if not imitating what the first Pentecost sounded like.

This year, however, as a person in the pew, someone whose role in the Church and whose way forward is not completely clear, I felt more like one of the gathered disciples in the room, praying, wondering, managing fear, and I wasn’t quite sure I would be glad if indeed I suddenly did find myself crowned with a tongue of fire. My own interior did not feel very flammable, and even though there were kettle drums and chimes, and a favorite passage read in nine different languages, I felt unable to join the band. Until I stopped paying attention to the Big and the Bold, and to watch for the Spirit in the littles! Rather than looking to a swiftly descending dove or a bright red, orange and yellow conflagration, I began to be aware of the embers of the Sacred Fire, the Holy Spirit, planted in me by the Risen Christ, continuously setting off sparks of energy, imagination and love, and companioning me through the darkness of solitude, of anxiety, of bafflement and of despair for the world.

The Holy Spirit was virtually left out of my early curriculum in the Church, but as an adult learner I have encountered Her Presence in Scripture, in creation, and in the lives of those in the world who are on a journey of Spirit with tenacious power. And so, I was able, with my lens re-focused, to see in that Pentecost worship last Sunday the embers of Spirit Presence in small but important ways: familiar words of an old hymn provoke a memory of aha moments when I trusted that the Spirit was my friend; imagining the stories of the nine readers of Scripture, pondering the way they had been Spirit-led to be in this place on this Sunday; the particular syntax and subjects of the pastoral prayer that carried so much of my own concerns; the gentle inclusiveness of the preached word; the quiet offerings of grace as the plate was passed–all sparks of Spirit, not incendiary on the surface or always feel like something to write home about, but leaving me with renewed love for the Mystery of the Holy and for the people who chose to celebrate together that morning, and with hope for this tattered world which invites and needs those hot coals of Grace that the Spirit keeps aglow.

Home alone i am aware that those embers of Spirit are always glowing in me, and that as one person in the Church I live out Pentecost in my daily meandering–wrangling the dog, reaching out to friends and neighbors, watering my garden, writing a letter of care, reading new thoughts that challenge me, sharing my good and heart with those who suffer, sit in a committee meeting–the spark of Spirit is passed along, and the power of the Spirit is let loose in the world. It only takes a spark–of Spirit! from the embers that rest in my heart.

Seeing What’s New Within

16 Saturday May 2015

Posted by in Easter, examen, seeing

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strasbourg-cath-rose1404I have been looking all around me to see signs of new life this Eastertide, and have been energized and delighted by what I have seen. With Ascension Day, we turn into the last days of this season which will end with Pentecost. It is time to look inside to see what the power of the Resurrection has done in me. The ancient practice of  Examen is one I use often, especially in the evenings when I can reflect on the day. However, today I can do the examen with an eyes to gratitude in this Easter season: what am I noticing that has been given new life by the Presence of the Spirit?

At my stage of life I have a longitudinal view over the decades of my journey with the Risen Christ that gives me great joy:

  • I can see that much of my fearfulness as a young person has been transformed into a more familiar trust, something I never imagine would have happened.
  • I notice that my trigger-speed judgement of others—where they belong, what their motives are, how they are to blame–has been mercifully slowed down, even held in abeyance, until I know more, can see more, and realize once again that I am not given the role of judge.
  • In concert with that, I have been given much more compassion, as I am learning to bless even the ones who cause my grief. I know it only as a gift, not a result of good intentions or will power.

But I notice changes in me with the clear awareness that God is not finished with me yet. I am living in a chapter of my life in which frailty, brokenness and death are much more pronounced in me, in the people I love and in the world. They come relentlessly, not only to my elders, but to contemporaries and to younger friends. I see tiny seedlings of new life in me, but they need nurture and nourishment. I find I am needing to pray for the graces to ground me as I accompany those I love through the valley of the shadow:

  • I need stamina to remain faithful in my loving when the road is long and unpredictable, and takes unexpected directions, and when people I presume to know do quite baffling things.
  • I need deeper trust that the Holy One is continuing to make a way where I don’t always see a a way.
  • I need to focus on the things most necessary, and not get diverted by things that don’t point me in the right direction, that take me away from first loves, that engage me in fretting and wringing my hands.
  • I also need to let laughter ring widely and deeply and frequently in my spirit. I want to cultivate that Sarah-spirit, whose laughter might occasionally be inappropriate, but ultimately is a sign of rejoicing in the complex universe that is beloved of God, with thousands of nuances, surprises and curiosities.
  • I want to cultivate that peaceful way of navigating the world that embodies the knowledge with Lady Julian that all will be well, and all be well and all manner of things will be well.

The coming of rain this week to our parched landscape has reminded me that small shoots of new life require several things: the sunshine of hilarity and gladness because my mourning is so repeatedly turned to laughter; the soaking of the spirit from those who risk telling me the truth; and the rich soil of those who walk and wrestle the journey of Spirit with me. All together they may continue to produce in me a harvest that produces an aroma and a beauty of a rose, or like a rose window, allow the Light of the Risen Christ to shine through. I pray it is so!

Photo of Strasbourg Cathedral, Rose Window.

Seeing What’s New in Your Call

04 Monday May 2015

Posted by in Discernment, doing good, Easter

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images-6In Eastertide 2015 I am looking for what new things the Resurrection is bringing forth in the world and in me. What am I called to do in light of the promise of new life? I have gotten all wrapped up this week in wondering how to talk about Call and vocation…and then this this week happened–what a week! The country of Nepal is staggering is unbelievable grief, destitution and bafflement after a huge earthquake has killed thousand of people, has cut off many from life-giving supply line and has razed place after place that people called home. It almost defies imagination! What am I to do?

Another evening falls, and a section of Baltimore goes up in smoke manifesting years of tension in the area between the residents and police. There are tears, there is fear, there is rage, there are too many news media covering the events and non-events. And the anguish is horrifying and palpable. Again what am I to do?

I am a woman with choices–retired, educated, housed and fed. I live in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural neighborhood in a huge metropolitan city in Southern California, and I have lived here for over 30 years. The challenges of this metropolis are enormous. What am I called to do?

Two stories from sacred texts have grounded me this week. The first is the story of Moses in Exodus 3 in which he encounters an angel wrapped in a bush that won’t stop burning, and is told that this is holy ground. Doing what I know to do, yet, yet turning aside to see what is new, is the dynamic in which my call is uncovered. It is here shepherding the flocks that Moses discovered what the next right steps were for his call.

The other story that tugs at my heart has similarities. After the resurrection the disciples don’t know what to do or where to go, so they return to the familiar family business of fishing. And once again, that is the place of Holy encounter–Jesus invites them to breakfast on the beach, and then lets them discover their call in a Q and A with Peter; it is command  to to feed his sheep as an act of Love. It seems very generic–but it is an ample directive, suitable to almost any place that each one of them will find himself. To feed in a spiritual sense is to welcome, to nourish, to take care of–for Love’s sake.

So this last week unfolded with opportunities to recognize Holy Ground underneath me and with ways to express Love to those who were brought to me: for the rescue, recovery and healing of Nepal, there were opportunities to give and to pray, some with specific need and names; for Baltimore, I had the chance to be grateful for the spiritual community leadership that arose gave witness and strength to the slow evolution toward calm. Each of those sites is Holy Ground–God is there in the carnage and struggle to heal. What is more, I only need to be aware of turning aside to nurture and nourish those given to me each day in the name of Love. I found that one day after another there were requests for prayers to be offered–for one in surgery, for one in despair, for one who is dying, another in treatment, someone in transition–and often the call for the day prompted an action–a letter to a senator, a wee gift sent for encouragement, a date for a phone call, a card for remembering, a check to help defray the expenses. Some of the connections were surprising! I was grateful that my pace could be measured enough to slow down, see if the call had my name on it, and then respond.

As long as I have life and breath, I am given opportunity to respond to the Call of the Holy, as long as I claim Holy Ground and do what i do for Love’s sake.

Seeing What’s New–through Mystery

26 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in Easter, letting go, mystery

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StaveChruch

                      for Carol and Dennis who asked…

I am profoundly aware in Eastertide that so much of a faith journey is Mystery. We often recite the Mystery of Faith when we gather at the table for communion: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ is coming again! Yet I am surrounded by a mystery-intolerant culture, both public discourse and in personal conversation. I am very apt to leap to ask the questions of proof, of evidence, or reason before I can be still with the unknowing or Mystery. Yet over and over again, I am faced with intimations of the “Mystery we call God,” and Easter illuminates and poses the challenge all over again. I am comforted when I read from spiritual teacher Esther DeWaal, when she says in her book Lost in Wonder, I try to walk in reverence, taking off my shoes, remembering that this is holy ground, and having to accept that there is much I shall never fully know. (122)

I don’t see myself as a Mystic, especially when I read Julian or Mechtild, yet I have had enough encounters with the Mystery to recognize it when I encounter it. Neither am I a relaxed traveler, although I really savor and delight in the gifts I encounter when I am on a trip. Yet, one day close to the end of a trip to Norway, I was particularly anxious and fretful. We had spent the days afloat on a beautiful fjord, and were headed to a lovely hotel, but the road signs were unclear, and one of our party had a longing to follow a trail to a stave church in Urnes on Sogn og Fjordne that we had not seen yet, a UNESCO World heritage site. Our detour took small side roads, and required waiting for a small ferry that carried only a few cars at a time and seemed to move on its own schedule. Although the day has been full of sunshine and light, it seemed to darken while we waited for the ferry. At last we crossed to the hill and up to the stave church, centuries old, adorned with carvings on its side, honoring its pride of place at the top of the fjord. As we waited for the guided tour to begin, I looked back down the fjord to see an impressive storm gathering and coming our way. Although our guide was winsome and articulate, the Celtic carvings on the exterior wall intricate and mysterious, and the narrative of the people here new to me, my anxiety was focused on the looming storm. The group filed into the pews of the small dark church, and just as we did, the storm hit the building: lightning lit up the gloom, winds pushed the simple chandelier until it was horizontal with the floor, rain teemed down with an intensity that I had never experienced, and we could see and feel the tall staves rocking the building. My own interior distress became gargantuan–because of my newly implanted artificial lenses, I could not transition from light to dark very well, so could not see clearly; the woman in front of me was translating the guide’s lecture from English to Norwegian, so i could not hear. I was sitting in the middle of the pew, so could not get out. I felt frightened and alone. I was terrified.

It was at that moment, realizing my utter inability to save myself, that I gave up, and in an experience for which I have no adequate words, I dropped into God. As I have tried to use words subsequently to relate what happened, I might say that I surrendered to the Mystery we call God. Or that I “let go and let God.” But I had no other resources, and something primal is me propelled and/or allowed me to relax into the familiar Hands of the Holy that would not let me go. I heard no words, no familiar Scripture or image came to mind, but I knew that I was safe and that I would be all right. The Presence was as strong and palpable to me as the wind, the storm and the shaking church.

In a matter of minutes the tour was over, the storm subsided, and we walked out into a sunshiny afternoon on the hill overlooking the fjord. None of my traveling companions knew of my terror, my sense of helplessness, nor that I had encountered the Holy in a riveting way that could be a touchstone for me when I encountered moment of great fear and and certainty. I could not speak of it for a long time. Yet I was changed.

As I go back to that moment, I recall how often I had recited these words from Psalm 139:

If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light round me become night,even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, and darkness as is light to you.” (9-12).

That reality had been alive in my body and spirit in those dark and light moments in the stave church at the end of the fjord. And I still can’t explain it adequately, or understand it. Yet I know what I know about what happened to and in me. It is a mystery, and it is Mystery. I pray to keep staying open to the possibility.

Seeing What’s New–through Pain

20 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Easter, grief, presence, seeing

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images-5From Lent through Eastertide I am trying to pay attention to the places that the Risen Christ is visible in ways I have not yet fully seen. One constant in the lives of those I know and love is the presence of suffering, grief and pain. And I am watching to see how surely God is in those places, and I wait to see how.

  • how is God present in the dailiness of the beloved ones who are chronically ill, who can never know from moment to moment if their bodies are going to allow them to step into the plan for the day?
  • how does God come alongside the grieving ones–those who have lost someone without warning? those who have walked in the excruciating pain of doing all that medicine and current protocols can provide, only to recognize that those means are not enough to save the life of the beloved? those who have been faced with the mortality to which all flesh is heir?
  • how is the Holy One a companion who bears our griefs and carries our sorrows through depression, anxiety and despair, whether those weights come from biology, trauma, circumstance or habit?
  • how is the Spirit manifest and available when our sighs are too deep for words?

I am drawn again to the company of Jesus in the post-Resurrection days, this time to the fearful gathered ones in a locked room, then the next week to Thomas, who is full of doubts. I am touched by the fact that Jesus does not wait until they get themselves together, with right belief or with right feeling, but enters into the place where they find themselves and speaks and touches them right where they are. He brings peace, he shows his own woundedness, and they are glad.

I am uncovering that reality as I accompany my own company of beloved ones who suffer and/or wrestle–the Holy One appears in unlikely places for them; they report to me that there are moments of joy, moment of peace, moments of rest, even when the going is bleak and is rough. For one it was new information that brought promise; for another it was the laughter than was infectious that gathered everyone into a sacred moment. Another one was buoyed up by faithful friends who continue randomly to appear in tangible and intangible ways. The refrain of a well loved song or a just remembered line of an old poem can evoke Holy Presence; the new blooms of spring or the endless and constant ocean sing out the praises of the Creating One, and there is peace or respite for a moment.

The invitation in these stories for me is first to be like the disciples–honest about my own fears, my own doubts, my own struggles, and to let go of my need to “do it right,” whether it be grieving, aching or fighting. The transparency of these wounded ones allowed them to be receptive to the Risen Christ when he came to them; some well mannered defenses may have deprived them of that miraculous break-in of Light in their darkness.

But also I learn from Jesus that intimacy with the Holy and others can happen when I am not afraid to show my wounds and scars, even to allow them to be touched. I can hold them in such a way that they can give me and entree of Grace into the places and ways that others need a sign that there is hope and resurrection after great darkness. I am challenged and encouraged by that stance. I need courage and trust to live that way.

It helps me to know that the disciples had to live into the reality of the Resurrection, even through pain, even as i do. And the Holy One does and will appear.

Seeing What’s New– at the Table

12 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in breaking bread, Easter, seeing

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diego-rodriguez-de-silva-y-velazquez-kitchen-scene-with-the-supper-in-emmausI love the vignettes that follow the Resurrection story in the gospels as this reality of a New Life began to sink into the consciousness of the beloved ones of Jesus. I especially love the story of the wandering ones making their way to Emmaus, wrestling with their previous expectations and understandings of of what Jesus said was going to happen and how it fit the paradigms of what they thought they already knew. Jesus joins them, but they are so preoccupied with their questions and presuppositions that they never recognize him. Until they broke bread together at the table. And we read that it was in the breaking of the bread together that they saw him.

Diego Velasquez has an acute lens on that moment in his painting called ‘The Serving Girl,” in display at the National Gallery of Ireland. In the upper left corner of the painting, one can see Jesus and the two questioners sitting at the table about to break bread. But the foreground is filled with the image of the Serving Girl who is providing them with the food, and surely will be washing up afterwards. The two seekers have yet to get it, but she already has recognized that this is Jesus–risen from the dead, walking and talking with them, nourishing them with his very Presence. What is there about sitting at table with another that allows to see deeply and truthfully into the identity of another?

As I have shared meals with other in this first week of Eastertide, some festive celebrations, some intimate tete-a-tetes, some casual coffees, I recognize that knowing and loving another is a full body experience at its best. It is multi-sensory–ambiance matters, from setting to decorations. Tastes sharpen our palates when we share bread–and cheese or jam or pate. “There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk,” says the late food writer M.F.K. Fisher. I love the moments when one at the feast says to another, “Here; have a bite of this!,” or “May I just taste your dessert?” Aromas of good cooking that we share allow us a sense of a deep comfort we might call “home,” whether or not our own home had such a great culinary menu.

However, it is the Serving Girl who brings the one thing necessary to the soul-knowing that gives life. She is paying attention. Although no one seems to pay attention to her, as one whose skin color pegs her as an outsider, as one whose status in the household gives her no privilege, as one whose only viewpoint is that from afar–she knows, she trusts, she believes and she smiles in the New Life that she witnesses. All things are new now! Christ is Risen!

I am paying greater attention to those with whom I share a table this Eastertide–making sure that my cell phone is put away, listening for the words spoken and unspoken, taking note of where we meet, of where beauty attends us, of how well we can hear each other. When someone comes to my house, even just for tea, I want each table tryst to be a holy moment, so that I can see with fresh eyes the new creation sitting with me and before me.

And my prayer is that my heart will be that continually open one to the old friend, the new friend, the grieving one, the rejoicing one, the baffled one and the the baffling one. “Come in and stay with me, Lord Jesus.”

Seeing What’s New!–Eastertide

06 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Easter, listening, seeing

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chihulyTampaIt is Easter Monday, and as intensely as I participated in the 40 days of Lent and the journey of Holy Week, I am relieved and delighted to be here in Eastertide. It is not as if there are great celebrations of faith in front of me, but I feel as if if I am entering in a spacious place with room enough to observe in quiet the ways that the resurrection keeps happening in the world, in the Church and in me.

I am grateful for waking up to a silent morning, with only the accompaniment of birds. No school buses or trucks or planes seem to be racing around in my neighborhood yet. I muse on my favorite Easter scene in John 20, when Mary come to the place where Jesus has been lovingly buried, to ponder, to wonder, to imagine what what might come next. There are tears and remembering, but then suddenly there are angels–always carrying a sacred message–who extend compassion to her by asking where her tears come from. I often wonder where my tears come from–why am I weeping? Certainly the world presents enough cause for tears on a daily basis, and my heart weeps more often than my eyes do–for innocent families left bereft because of the cruelty or torment from others; for the ravages of wars on targeted populations because of their faith or race or gender; for the earth gone dry here in my home state because of rampant greed. However, it is those moments when by surprise my eyes are suddenly filled with tears that I ponder in this morning quiet–the music that throws me back to a time when I was more wide-eyed and eager, an observation of a grandchild who is overcoming great obstacles, or a realization that I am in the last third of my life with opportunities come and gone. What am I being given a chance to see through my tears in this Eastertide?

Mary gets to see Jesus. She doesn’t recognize him at first; he seems ordinary, utilitarian, unrelated to the drama in which she has been living this last week. However, when he speaks her name into that silent beauty of morning, she recognizes that One whom her heart loves. Yet the relationship has undergone a transformation; their love for each other will take a new shape. Jesus tells her he is returning to God, she will now be about the business of recognizing the face of Jesus in everyone she meets and loving that particular one because she and he bear the image of God in their particular person. With Easter we don’t view people from a human point of view any more; we see them as new creatures, in the words of Thomas Merton, “shining like the sun.”

So I muse on those I expect to see this first week of Easter–those with whom I sit in spiritual direction–will I recognize the sun shining in them? my neighbors with whom I share the welfare of the block and the city? my family who bring laughter and tears into my life? my friends in faith who worry and churn about the state of the Church and living in a pluralistic world? How will I be willing to look at those in our country and our world who seem bent on muddying the waters, striking fear and anxiety in the populace, spewing inanities and vilification all around? Will I be willing to see the face of God in them?

I am grateful this early morning for the space to sit quietly with this question, and to pray this prayer, Open my eyes (again) that I would see Your face. Show me the new creation that you love, and empower me to love the ways you do. In the name of the Risen One, Amen.

Open Heart–Holy Week

29 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in compassion, Lent, open heart

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IMG_0422Open my heart! In all the opening to God that I have sought to practice in these days of Lent, the most important one is to open my heart. I feel as if I have an open heart, have invited its blossoming and strengthened it for years, but as I take the turn in to Holy Week, I see the true exemplar of an open heart in Jesus.

Each gospel tells a unique story of good news in its version of the Jesus story; I am most drawn to John, whose storytelling I have been reading this Lent. I have been struck again by the number of unlikely people and systems to whom Jesus opened his heart: someone of another ethnicity; someone of another theological point of view; an insignificant housekeeper, Peter’s mother-in-law. In his encounter with the young man called a rich ruler he wasn’t taken with his money of his intellect, but looking at him, he loved him. With little children, he didn’t find them a nuisance, but invited them to come up and engage him. He had a capacity to see beyond the initial impression of each one and beyond what the projections of the culture was into the soul of a person, made in the image of the Holy One. Even in his own extremity of death from the cross, he opened his heart to the thief executed next to him, to his mother–entrusting her to John, and to all those who conspired and acted to kill him, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing”

As I have been attending to my own openings, I see how what can seem to be appropriate boundary setting is often a closing of my heart to the God-shaped soul of the persons I encounter if I am not mindful and attentive. Each person that I ask to be of use to me–to cut my hair, to help me find something in a store, to show me how to use a new gadget–is someone made in the image of God, who has a story to tell, who is worthy of love. My call is open my heart to that soul for the time I am with them with attentiveness, love, and non-judgement. I too often don’t remember that call to an opening of my heart.

I watched a movie called “Nebraska” this week on Netflix, highly acclaimed from two years ago. The spine of the story was a son’s open-heartedness toward his aging, alcoholic and confused father. On the surface there was very little that was winsome or even tolerable about that father, but the son kept opening his heart and his action to his dad because he saw his heart and soul. It was breath-taking! Later in the week I saw an interview with the father of one of the victims of the Germanwings flight in France. He was grieving for his own son, but his deeper concern was for the parents of the co-pilot who apparently has deliberately killed the entire airplane; again, I witnessed his compassion for them and for their journey of grief which was astonishing and full of grace.

As I travel this week which we as Christians call holy, I am looking again at Jesus and those he encountered even as his went toward his own death, and at the way his heart never closed–even toward those who denied and betrayed him. I am looking at the exemplars in this world whose heart stay open against all odds int he face of unbearable oppression, cruelty and injustice. And I ask the Spirit for the courage and the Grace to be one of the open-hearted ones, who as Isaiah commended, is not one who points the finger speaking evil, but rather offers food for the hungry and satisfies the needs of the afflicted (Isa. 58: 9-10). I want with my open heart, not only to allow the angels to feed me as thy have throughout Lent, but to be one who sees, who feeds, who helps heal the wounds of this fractured world.

Personal photo of work by Judy Chicago, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Opening my Mind-Lent IV

23 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by in changing my mind, Lent, opening my mind

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ChristthetheDesertIn this week of Lent I have mused on how opening my mind to the Presence of the Holy in me and around me could allow angels to feed me. I began reflecting on all the ideas I had once held firmly, and how I now have come to understand and to believe something different.

The angels who have fed me over the decades of my life are many–pastors, teachers, seminary professors, therapists, exemplars, writers–each one that was a game changer taking me to places where I never imagined I would go. Some have taken me deeper in the Mystery we call God. Some have widened my understanding of the complexity of being human. Some have taken scales off of my eyes or lifted my vision up to see that there are “more things than I have dreamed of” in this world that God has made–more diversity, more variety and ways of seeing. “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”–these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit,” says Paul quoting the prophet Isaiah.

The editors of Christian Century asked a collection on theologians and spiritual writers to reflect on “How I Changed Mind,” now published in a book. Each essay chronicles a combination of an opening of mind along with an opening of heart and intention. As I look over my own mind shifts, the opening of my mind to the Spirit of God has been as important as my circumstances and my feelings. As one who was raised in a tradition that held “right” belief in higher honor than “right” feeling or “right” doing even, I had reservations about being too open minded. Yet in my journey I have found that each time I was willing to open my mind to what the Spirit was prompting, i encountered Holy Presence on the other side.

As a very young person, I would have been so surprised to see where the Spirit was opening my mind. I could not have imagined that a life of faithful following would lead me to a ministry of Word and Sacrament, a calling that I had been taught belonged only to men. I didn’t imagine that a closer reading of sacred text would demonstrate that all Christians are to be mutually submissive to one another, even in a marriage. I had not understood the radical inclusiveness of the company of Jesus that opened life and love to all who had been “othered” in my community–people with racial-ethnic provenance different from mine, those with a different sexual orientation, those whose faith practices looked very different from the practices I held dear. And I had missed nearly completely that global dimensions of the Christian mandate to love the world that God created and loves, including the creation itself. I would have been startled to know that I could have soul friends from many traditions–Judaism, Roman Catholic, “spiritual but no religious,” even self-proclaimed “nones.”

During Lent I have been reading The Rebirthing of God by John Philip Newell. He speaks about what we know what what we think we know, yet he also is aware than there is much within us and in the outer world that is still unclear. He says, “We long for what we do not yet know to emerge from hidden and unawakened depths within us into the light of the day, into the realm of consciousness.” (91). My prayer for this practice is that in my longing to know more about the Mystery, I will be willing to open my mind to the ways that the Holy One is being revealed, and that i will honor the angels who bring that awareness to me.

Personal phono at Christ in the Desert Monastery, Mew Mexico.

Opening my Hands-Lent III

14 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by in Lent, touching

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communionHandsOpening myself to the presence of God in life, and letting the angels feed me, this has been my Lenten practice; this week I have tried to open my hands. I have a strained relationships with my hands because I am not “handy” or coordinated or deft. But, midway through the week I realized the invitation was to OPEN, not to create or craft or accomplish. What was the Spirit bringing to my hands–or by extension, my physical body–that took me more deeply in to the Presence of the Holy? I began to sense how God often comes to me in the things I encounter with my hands.

Some days I baked bread, then brewed tea and coffee for those who came to visit, and my hands came close embodying St. Teresa’s mandate that our hands are God’s hands as they share hospitality with beauty and grace. The frosting on the cake was when my 10 year old grandson said to me with shining eyes, “I love this cake, Mormor! You are such a good cook.” I knew that on a very practical level Betty Crocker had put the baking mix into my hands, but as I opened my hands to receive and to use it, I became a vehicle for God’s hospitality and grace.

I noticed that as I sit listening, I often have open hands, as if to receive the words coming to me, not only with my ears, but with my entire being. My hands are an articulate part of my style of communication, and when I can open them, I am able to receive more from those that the Spirit brings into my life. I went back to Jon Sweeney’s wonderful book, Praying With Our Hands: 21 Practices of Embodied Prayer from the World’s Spiritual Traditions, (Skylark Press, 2000) to recall how many ways my hands can be the entry point for the Holy One’s gifts to me. I remember learning to pray by my bedside at night with hands folded in front of me, and have those same folded hands during grace before a meal. I remembered the weight of the hands of colleagues in ministry on my hand and shoulders as I was being ordained and installed in various ministries to which I have been called, and then, paying it forward, as I will tomorrow again, opening my own hands in affirmation and blessing to others, many of whom were my students, being ordained to ministries of their own. My hands have nearly glowed and tingled with the sense of the Spirit using the open hands that were offered there to transmit the Spirit in all Her power, beauty and unpredictability.

I receive God’s Presence through the variety of the textures that brush past me, that come alongside me daily. This week there was the silk-like coat of my new puppy, the soft petals of the new roses opening each morning, the plushness of the comforter on my bed, the richness of the ripe avocados on my tongue, the fuzziness of my grandson’s hair as I tousled it, the strong and tan skin of my beloved who accompanies my daily. Each one has been a manifestation of the grandeur of God as I have touched it.

And then, I hold dear the holiness and nourishment of the Eucharist, which I receive in bread and the cup, and which I celebrate at the table from time to time. Bread for the journey held in my hand, strength for the day held in the cup. Communion is the place where I can let go of whatever barriers and strings I wrap in my fists, and allow myself, along with the gathered ones, to open to the Mystery of Faith, to receive in my very own hand the Body and the Blood of the Beloved. And I come to know again and again the Presence as I am fed by angels. Open hands!