Tag Archives: listening

Advent 1: Attention in Quarter Light

01 Wednesday Dec 2021

Posted by in advent, listening, Love

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…now we see in a mirror dimly…

.Only one candle to begin Advent…things are gray, misty, even opaque…yet it cheers me, one candle to set the intention to look for the places the Light gets in. However, my presbyopic eyes have trouble seeing much behind or within that tiny Light

So my attention has been directed to another sense, my hearing. In a conversation with a friend, I was asked to listen for the way the Holy One reaches out in sounds, words, music, echoes, touching me, if I am open to it through those media. Even though my spirit journey experience has been circled, enlivened, nourished and directed by those sounds for all of my life, I was startled. The liturgy Advent has rested heavily on words of darkness and Light, on looking and watching.

Yet now I am directed to Listen! Immediately I began to hear the ways that the Holy One is present in my conversations, in the Word proclaimed, in the reading fo sacred text, in the sacred music of the season, phrases of comfort and joy, speeches of challenge and daring! Following that thread, I found immediately discovered that the sounds in my life were leading me to clarity, understanding, reassurance and spiritual perspective. Even though my eyes are dim, my listening is acute, and the Spirit keeps catching my attention through whispers, through gentle voices, through clear and straightforward thinking expressed–eloquently or not. And often the Word that I hear stays with me, sinks down into my bones and marrow, into my heart and ruminations. And it brings me Hope.

The word that returned to me this week–as it has again and again over my life–is Love. Despite the messiness, despite the venality, despite the heavy, heavy grief, despite the pain and the loss, I am prodded to join with the saints and angels to hear Love as it is spoken, to speak Love as I am given space, to offer Love no matter who might want or need it. Each day of this Advent will be unique–different circumstances different demands, different opportunities, but all opportunities for me to act in Love. The “encircling gloom” is not too dark to be Love this Advent.

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Preparing a Welcome

21 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by in breaking bread, grace, hospitality, listening, Uncategorized

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welcomingfireplace I love to inhabit the place where people come to visit. Each week people come into my living room to sit and reflect on the places here the Holy has been apparent in their lives and what challenges have presented themselves. Each Thursday my granddaughter comes over after school to do homework, to create a new project, to snack on Doritos and catch up on conversation. And every so often, people come from far away to spend a night or two with our home as a base of operations. I am always in need of preparing the space for each visitor.

I have the memory of a bustling mother who hosted many in the homes she inhabited over the years. She with my father were, in their stateside missionary years, hosts for missionaries in transit from their fields of work abroad to their homes for furlough. The dinner table was long and set with many inexpensive dishes that fed a crowd. My father ferried people from train, plane and boat to the home and back again. Besides food and transportation, they were busy with helping find medical resources, shopping and assisting in making connections to the next points on the itinerary. All this was done in between the rhythm of daily prayers and ongoing helpful conversation.

Another icon of hospitality for me was my first spiritual director. Her home in my imagination was a Hobbit House–cozy, warm, and full of icons of Spirit, some classic, some personal signs of her own. More important than the place was her presence. She was always smiling and welcoming, and as we talked, for over 20 years, she brought to me an attentiveness, supported by an accumulated memory of who I was and where I had been. I was not just a generic guest, but I was a particular visitor, in that sacred moment and place, whose journey was worthy of all the time and listening the hour afforded.

As I turn into Holy Week this weekend, I am drawn to the occasions when Jesus was offered hospitality–the supper where his feet are anointed by a woman who did what she could; a Passover meal in an upper room, where he welcomed his beloved one by washing their feet; a sharing of a loaf of bread and a cup of wine, his icons of himself, given to those around the table. On each occasion, someone prepared the material of the meal and the place for eating it in readiness for the welcome. And in each, someone, Jesus, became the host in attending the the deep need of Spirit, for a sacred space and sacred moment in which to experience the Spirit.

In this Holy Week ahead of me, I would like to exercise hospitality of Spirit–by welcoming those who are brought to me, prepared for what they might need–a cold cup of water, a listening ear, a shelter from the storm. And I would like to offer my presence to each one–listening for words or no words, receiving their stories with Grace. I also ask for an awareness of how the Spirit is the container for each visit, and be able to have eyes to see and ears to see how the Spirit is moving and prodding and comforting each one. so that I can join that movement in grounding us in energy, imagination and Love.

The poet Rumi tells us, “This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival…Welcome and entertain them all!…Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

I pray for an open door, an open ear and an open heart this Holy Week!

 

 

 

 

 

50 Years: All That…and So Many Surprises!

06 Thursday Apr 2017

Posted by in blessing, children, grace, listening, marriage

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This week I celebrate 50 years of marriage to my husband. I never imagined a fiftieth wedding anniversary. In fact marriage as it has evolved has been as much of a surprise as it was a hope.

I could not have imagined 50 years ago that each of us would have had the variety of callings that we each have had, separately and together. Nowhere on the horizon did I see rock climbing and kayaking, art history and critique, global standards and values education as passions and career trajectories for my husband. I could not have imagined what bearing and raising children would be like for me, nor my own calls to Ministry of Word and Sacrament, seminary teaching and spiritual direction. The possibility of all those threads of our individual lives being woven into a whole could have seemed fanciful and daunting to me were I have to known how we would unfold.

I imagined that we would grow in the same directions emotionally, spiritually and in interests. While that has been true in some ways, more often we have developed differing points of view, different vocabulary, different habits of the heart, and the work has been how to let those differences continue the dialogue between us in respect and love. In some of those 50 years the differences have felt like challenges, in others like complementary perspectives. I have been surprised at how rich it has been to live and act in a household where speaking our truth in love has brought energy and Light to each other and to those around us.

Children have both enriched and schooled us. Our families of origin with their ways of seeing and acting were not completely adequate for our call to parenting, especially in a milieu of a rapidly changing and technological society in a global world. We could not fall back on old adages and precepts any more than we could use all of our mother’s recipes that used ingredients no longer made. So we were adult parents seeking the ways of child nurture for ourselves and offspring, seemingly without a net. We presumed on the mercy of God over and over–when we disagreed, when we failed, when we did not have a clue, when we were disappointed, and when we were surprised by joy, which is where we find ourselves now as parents and grandparents, getting ready to celebrate this summer as an entire family.

It seems as if the overriding theme in these years has been Grace: God’s grace to us as creatures, God’s grace in directing us to each other (which at one time seemed unlikely!), and our own learning to be Grace-full and Gracious, in times of extremity, sickness and health, times of scarcity and times of plenty, times of grayness and times of sunshine. We have been give enormous graces of education, of meaningful work, of health care, of loving friends and communities, of opportunity to travel, of deep conversation, of being Light-bearers where we find ourselves.

And now we are living in the Grace of Growing old together. We look at our wedding picture on the wall and wonder who those young people are. We resemble them, but we are so much more: wiser, we hope; more compassionate, we think; more elastic, we notice, both in waistline and acceptance of others. We want to be more transparent, more loving, more delighted and delightful! And it is Grace that is helping us find our way.

One our wall since the first decade of our marriage is this quotation from philosopher, Stanley Cavell:

Only those can genuinely marry who are already married. It is as though you know you are married when you cannot divorce, that is when you find your lives simply will not disentangle. If your love is lucky, this knowledge will be greeted with laughter.

Our mouths are filled with laughter as we celebrate! Grace has brought us safely through these 50 years! We are grateful!

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Sanctuary: A Place to Be Heard With Kindness

04 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by in community, compassion, friendship, listening, sanctuary

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images-1After the marches around the country and world last Saturday, I heard a common theme from those who participated: they had found a safe place to tell their stories and were heard with kindness, even amid packed subways, crowded plazas, and inconvenient travel. Those who marched felt as if their voices mattered in a way that will make a difference. They felt safe, and even in the teeming crowds there as sanctuary.

This past week I retreated with my beloved soul friends who study and pray together the rest of the year. We felt safe enough in the historic and beautiful retreat center to wrestle with Jesus’ instruction to pray for friends and enemies. As we sank into the comfort and safety of that familiar place, as we allowed the wearying and harsh realities of our personal journeys and of the chaotic world to surface, we told stories–of childhood, of early years of mothering, of Grace given and of grief of rejection.

As I contemplate my Word for this year, SANCTUARY, I am recognizing that the sanctuary that I seek and that I provide needs to be a place in which truth can be told and listened to. Year ago my friend Ken Medema wrote these words to a song about the Church: If this is not a place where tears are understood, where can I go to cry? So I seek sanctuary in Holy Presence, in silence, in prayer, and then in words too deep for sighs. But I need it also in friendship–one who will listen without interrupting, one who hears without judging, one can sit in silence while I struggle for words. I hope for someone who can hold my reaction of the day in confidence without needing to analyze, diagnose and prescribe. I long for someone who can welcome my story, even if they come from another perspective completely.

I am called to practice being that safe and compassionate listener, especially this year. Every tragic event is made up of personal stories; every piece of draconian legislation threatens particular persons with livelihoods and loving to maintain. Every wave of change or upheaval affects the arc of someone–in person. I have a small amount of agency by which I can make a political or social difference, and I must exercise that. But I have more power by which I can lend and ear, savor a tale, cherish a memory of someone who needs to tell it and hold it as sacred.

These days I am wearing an ornamental safety pin designed by my friend Kris Haig to signify to someone, “You are safe with me!” I begin with being a safe and sheltered place to listen to stories–simple or convoluted, sweet or horrific, fantastic or dreary. The story of the Holy One who comes in love and compassion to humanity, never to let go, grounds me and gives me ballast when the whirlwind sagas of those needing shelter come my way. We can be safe. sanctuary for each other.

 

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From the Margin

23 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by in Discernment, faithfulness, icons, Mindfulness, paying attention, seeing

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“The Servant Girl at Emmaus” by Diego Velazquez hangs on my wall, a print, an icon of my ministry, as one who has almost always felt that my ministry and life was not one of center stage, but in the surrounding support systems. The culture of celebrity ministry exacerbated that feeling when I was active in church and seminary, but this season I am even farther out on the edge in my retirement and in my recovery from surgery–limited by energy, strength and position. However, The Servant Girl is here to remind me that even in a place of limitation, I can encounter the Holy One. Up in the left corner on the painting I can see Jesus and his two companions to Emmaus. They have been walking the road together, wrestling and wondering, and now sit down to eat together. She, however, is the one who recognizes first that this is the Risen Christ, the Beloved One; it is evident in her attentive pose, her listening ear, her momentary pause from her tasks.

So I can take heart. Even though my appointed rounds are more circumscribed than they used to be, I can still encounter the presence of the sacred, the incarnation of the holy in the encounters I do have. This week there has been an encounter with someone at an occasion where I was a stranger where I met another stranger who longed for connection, and in those moments we were joy and peace for one another. Although I cannot and do not want to enter the shrill and divisive political fray, earlier in the week I was able to sit with a wounded one to imagine together how we could be faithful citizens, yet still do the things that makes for peace, within us and for those around us. Although I can’t go far afield for long times, I can, with memory and social media, keep prayerful watch over the weeping ones, the sick ones, the fearful ones, the weary ones, the suffering ones, and those in despair, knowing that the Loving One is the healer, the Comforter, the Sustainer, of me and of the ones I hold to the Light.

The Servant Girl also teaches me that my connection the holy happens when I am doing the things I have been given to do. Even in my limitation I still have laundry to fold, bills to pay, errands to run, phone calls to make, appointments to keep. When I am paying attention those are venues, however surprising, in which I might hear a word, see a sign, sense a direction from the Holy One. My daily practices may need to be adapted to my present body and mind realities, but I never go anywhere in which I am outside of the circle of God’s loving care, for me and for others.

The changing world, the changing Church, the changing ecosphere, the changing social milieux all cry out for powerful activists, agents of change, makers of peace, visionaries and workers for the healing of the world. But, that is not is not the call to me right now. I think of Milton’s conclusion in his poem, “On His Blindness,” They also serve who only stand and wait. Neither is that my call. I am, like my beloved Servant Girl, asked to do daily that which is given to me, all the while paying attention to the places and ways in which the Holy One may appear, listening for the Spirit voice that says, “Go here–to the right or to the left.” Even on the margin.

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A Tune for All Seasons

25 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in action, listening, open heart, peace, singing

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Some tunes seem to thread through my life. “Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius is one of them. I first knew it as a personal, contemplative song:

Be still my soul, the Lord is on thy side./Bear patiently the cross of grief and pain,/in all thy ways, God faithful will remain.

It comforted me, resourced and filled me when I felt very alone.

I then learned the tune as a rousing hymn to action:

We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender/ we go not forth alone against the foe./Strong in Thy strength and in Thy keeping tender/ we rest on Thee and in Thy name we go.

A call action in a military mode, in which my part of the community saw a need to defend ourselves and our beliefs against the enemies, waiting to attack us.

But we are in a different time, a more connected world, with much more expressed pain and rage, a much closer view of what is human behavior at its worst, and a continual call to imagining and being Christ’s peace in the world. So these words by Lloyd Stone and Georgia Harkness fill the tune today, my birthday, when I am in the process of recuperating from surgery, when I am given more confinement–but also more space–to actively and contemplatively give myself to the healing of this world in which I live, in which my children and grandchildren more and have their being, the world that God created, redeems and loves.

..hear my prayer, O God of all the nations, myself, I give thee, let thy will be done. 

His Eye Is On the Sparrow

04 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in presence, singing, waiting

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Sometimes the world narrows down to  just me and my present experience of the moment, even though my mind know about the infinite number of people of the world and the great capacity of the Creator who made it and who loves it. Undergoing surgery two weeks ago my only focus was my wholeness held by the Holy One, for the procedure, for the aftermath, for the recovery. And all those feel very long.

Yet this song keeps pealing through my body and heart. I learned it first from my mother, whom I remember singing it, tear streaming down her face as she cooked in a steaming hot kitchen, her heart bereft with some secret sorrow. Then I heard Ethel Waters sing it in the movie, “Member of the Wedding,” and later Mahalia Jackson, commanding complete attention in Royce Hall at UCLA. Not for a second did any of the singers forget the grief and care of the world,  but in the moment of singing, the microcosm of particular need to be held under the eye of God herself. echoing the Psalmist, as she prayed her personal prayer for healing and Presence was the trust-filled longing of her heart.

In my recovery, I am still hearing this song in my veins, muscles, nerves, bones. I have been “watched” by the Beloved, I am being healed by the Great Physician, I am being comforted by the Spirit, and in my heart I sing.

 

Pilgrim’s Hymn

21 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in listening, peace, pilgrimage, prayer, singing

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The practice of spiritual pilgrimage has captured my soul’s imagination since I was a young adult; the setting out into the unknown in the company of and the longing for the Presence of the Holy One has been the central metaphor of my journey. This hymn by the late Stephen Paulus captures both the tenor and the essence of my hopes for my life. Tomorrow I set out on a new pilgrimage, that of spinal surgery and recovery. I carry this hymn in my heart, and believe it is one carried by all the other pilgrims of my love and life, no matter what their own words might be. Grace and peace go with us!

PILGRIMS’ HYMN

Even before we call on Your name

to ask You, O God,
when we seek for the words to glorify You,
You hear our prayer;
unceasing love, O unceasing love,
surpassing all we know,

Glory to the Father,
and to the Son,
And to the Holy Spirit.

Even with darkness sealing us in,
we breathe Your name,
and through all the days that follow so fast,
we trust in You;
endless Your grace, O endless Your grace,
beyond all mortal dream.

Both now and forever,
And unto ages and ages,
Amen

 

(Michael Dennis Browne)

 

 

A Simple Song

14 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in beauty, blessing, gratitude, listening, presence, singing

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Too much happening to create complex songs. Singing in snatches from the x-ray machine, the waiting room, the middle pew, the far bedroom, the backyard; but the singing must continue! “Sing a simple song,” writes Leonard Bernstein in his Mass.

Simple songs this week:

“Safe am I, in the shelter of God’s love…”

“Bless the beasts and the children…”

“Wait for the Lord..”

“…lost in wonder, love and praise.”

“You have called me by name, and I am yours.”

“Loving God, here I am…”

And so I keep singing–a little off-key, a little shakily, but singing nevertheless.

Bernstein also added the line, “Make it up as you go along…God loves a simple song.” This week my songs will take place inside me with a neighbor, with a visiting friend, with a line-up of doctors and other care-givers, probably with hospital staff, with family and friends far and near by media of various kinds, but the song must go on in me–for my sake, for the sake of those I love, for the world’s sake, and for God’s sake

Singing a simple song:

 

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How Can I Keep From Singing?

06 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by in beauty, blessing, centering, joy, music, Uncategorized

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singing1In these Dog Days of August replete with politics, athletics, wild weather (too hot, too many fires, too wet) and the shrillness of uncensored opinion about everything, I am looking to those sources of Grace that keep me centered, grounded, even in Joy! I know that much of my theology, much of my heart, much of joy lies in the songs that have accompanied me from the cradle, and will continue to do so as long as I love. I am sure that in these days of distress all round us, I need to keep close to this source of Spirit and healing from the Holy.

Music was a language into which I was born, primarily sacred music as sung by the communities in which I was nurtured. My family worshiped together in daily prayers, and all of us learned to sing in harmony, as we sang through the Inter-Varsity hymnal year after year. I played the piano in accompaniment. But while I was a seminary intern, I heard for the first time a melody with words that took root in my spirit, and continues to cheer, heal and haunt me. It is a 19th Century hymn attributed to Baptist pastor Robert Lowry. I was preaching one of my first sermons on the prophet Deborah, someone up against military threats, sexism and difficult odds. When she emerges from all the “tumult and the strife,” the next chapter in the book of Judges ascribes a full length song of celebration to her. After I preached, without introduction, a winsome young soprano soloist friend sang a capella from the balcony these words (not Deborah’s):

My life flows on in endless song above earth’s lamentation/ I hear the clear, though far off hymn that hails a new creation./ No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging./Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

The following verses sing about darkness, tyrants, prison cells, yet a clear deep sense that Love wins, and that alone is the prompt and cue for singing. Augustine has told us, that the one who sings prays twice, and so I am doubling my prayers through song this month–prayers for peace, for comfort, for hope, for healing, for resolution, for vision for energy and action; prayers of gratitude and praise, delight and laughter.

I include a youtube version of the late Jean Redpath singing this song on Prairie Home Companion; she surely could not keep from singing. I plan to follow her example!

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