A heart full of love

What is there to say about these last few weeks?  It's been a roller coaster of experience and emotion.  After the crash of finals came the much needed pause, time for reflection and the opportunity to sink into rest.  I feel peace again.  I'm not speechless anymore.  I'm able to close my eyes when I pray again.

I'm taking a summer class at a seminary that is very different than what I'm used to.  It's not bad, by any means, and while there are some things that startle me, overall I'm enjoying the opportunity to see God through the eyes of this place.  I'm especially thinking more about how, and where, God speaks.  "God is still speaking" may be the mantra of the UCC, but I think this little Presbyterian can claim it, too.  God is still speaking.  And where He speaks is usually surprising.

God spoke to me yesterday through an 86-year-old man, whose hunched, tired body stood in stark contrast to his feisty personality.  This is a man who has 7,700 verses of the bible memorized.  And I really do believe that God spoke to me through him yesterday when he looked me, right in the eye, and with no pre-knowledge of my life or circumstances said "Lindsey, shut the door on your past and open the door on your future.  You're about to give the performance of a lifetime."  

God also encourages in different ways, too.  He spoke to me through the voice of my mother.  Just a few weeks ago I was sitting in an airport feeling broken, discouraged, and I told her with my face buried in my hands that I was having a really hard time believing in myself.  And she said to me, "Lindsey, get on that plane and go home with a heart full of love."  

I feel like I'm in a place of transition in my life--and I feel like it's been a long time coming.  I am shutting the door on certain parts of my past, but am starting to feel brave enough to open the door to my future.  While some people may be fading slowly into the background of my history, others relationships are forming and sustaining me.  And I'm grateful that I've been blessed enough to step forward into all the joys that lie ahead with a heart full of love.

No words

It's the end of the academic year for me.  I am 3/4 done with my seminary career--what a blessing that is.  While some of the nuts and bolts have yet to be fixed firmly in their place, it is with mostly confidence that I say I will graduate next year.  Hallelujah amen!

I haven't written in this blog for awhile not just because I've been busily writing other things that have pesky little deadlines attached, but also because there's been a lot going on outside of school.  It's one of those situations of abandonment, loss, and grief that leaves you with everything to say and nothing to say all at once.

And as those sorts of situations are inclined to be, it's coupled with amazing reminders that I live surrounded by the reality of divine love and radical hope.  I see God in my incredible family, my friends who are stepping up for me despite the myriad of commitments and responsibilities they already carry on their shoulders, and the communities of accountability that challenge me while helping to hold me together.  I am seeing God everywhere these days.

But I don't know what to say to Him.  And that's why I haven't written in awhile.  I feel with keen awareness that God is here, that He is around me, that He loves me, and that he is not letting me go.  But I don't know how to talk to God when I am speechless.  I feel like I'll have a lot to say when the words come back.  

Stay tuned.

Catastrophe

Those of you who know me well know that I am what I call a catastrophic thinker.  Some may call this an understatement, and rather categorize me as an apocalyptic thinker :-)  Either way, this refers to my tendency of conflating situations in my life, for which I can find no immediate solutions, into something irreconcilably dire--as if when I can't think up my own logical solutions, the only options left remaining are life-derailing (or threatening).  Hence, I think catastrophically.

This is not something I like about myself.  While sometimes thinking catastrophically has proved mildly helpful (when smaller "catastrophes" are derailed, for example, because of my hyper-vigilance), in general it is not a good way to live.  It's stressful and time consuming.  And, I don't think catastrophic thinking makes me a good steward of my mind, my passions, or my emotional energy.

I don't know why I sometimes think this way.  Of course, a few professionals have posited their own hypotheses.  Many a well-meaning psychologist has leaned back in their chair, hands clasped over their crossed legs and a self-satisfied grin starting to form on their face, and said, "Well, haven't had you had something catastrophic happen to you?  Like being diagnosed with epilepsy overnight?  Wouldn't that make anyone fear impending disaster?"

Ah, yes--the epilepsy card.  While it is true that being diagnosed with epilepsy at 16, and having that be the first real trauma that interrupted the otherwise idyllic landscape of my childhood, has not helped my catastrophic thinking, per se, it certainly did not cause it.  Any member of my family can tell you that.  I think my catastrophically-wired brain was well at work by the time I was 6, and diagnosed myself with a chronic case of appendicitis.  Or when I saw some lights flashing outside of my window when I was 7, and logically assumed that I would be abducted by aliens sometime that year.  Or when I was 11, and thoroughly convinced myself after going to Scotland that I had been exposed to (and acquired) the bubonic plague.

So I hate to break it to you, my psycho-analytically inclined friends--but I think I was just born this way.  It doesn't mean that I'm not trying to change it--I've gotten much better at checking myself and this pattern of thought these last years especially.  I think it will be essential for me to unlearn this way of thought in order to do the ministry I want to do.

However, I'm not writing this to explain my psyche to you all (far too daunting a task for anyone to take on, frankly :-) ).  I'm writing this to explain that I've seen God, even in my catastrophic thinking.  Call it shameless optimism if you must, but there is a silver lining to the way my brain has been hard-wired.  Because when I think catastrophically, it is one of the few times that I actually reach out for help.  And there are few things more holy, to me, than the experience of being vulnerable before and caught by a community of people who live in love.

You see, there always comes a point where I realize that the resources of my own little brain are simply not enough.  So rather than think myself in circles, there always comes a point where I am able to talk, to reach out, and to pray with those around me.  And God is faithful--there are always people, family, friends, who gently listen to my weary musings and remind me, with grace and assurance, of the breadth of God's imagination.  

This is why the Triune God resonates so deeply with me--the idea that God in Godself exists in community.  And if that so, than I think it necessarily follows that our communities of care and accountability are, truly, holy ground.  They are where we are cared for and caught, and where we also do the work of carrying and sustaining.  Sometimes, I'm grateful for my own level of exasperation with myself and how I think--because it reminds me that I cannot exist on my own.

So I am a catastrophic thinker.  I hope I won't be this way forever.  But I am grateful to be reminded that God calls me not to lean solely on myself, but on the trusted friends and family who exist with me in community.  After all, God does not just live in me--He lives all around me, too.  

In which I brag about my brother

Warning: Love Burst to follow.

I have a wonderful brother.  Like, ridiculously wonderful.  The kind of brother that allowed his boisterous little sister to use him as a jungle gym as a baby, who let me hold low-grade hostage negotiations for the toys of his I stole as a kid, and who told me I looked beautiful before my first dance as a teenager.  That is one cool brother.

But there's something about him I find even cooler.  My brother is the kind of guy who became aware of his white, educated, male privilege at about, I'm guessing, three years old.  And he started his work to dismantle that privilege at about three and a half.  All hyperbole aside, my brother is someone who I see working on the front lines to deconstruct the unjust systems of power which are pervasive in our culture and in our history.  I hope I can be like him in that way.

He can do all that because he's brilliant.  But he can also do that work because he is one of the most sensitive, compassionate people I have ever met--I'm serious when I say that, oftentimes, I think he would be a much better chaplain than me.  He has the brains and the heart to do incredible things in this world, and he already is.  He certainly taught me a lot as a kid--through all the deep theological exploration and discernment I've done in seminary, I'm constantly aware that I am able to employ the the concepts of postmodernism, feminism, deconstruction, and liberation because my brother taught me about them first.

All this to say: I love my brother.  He is one cool guy.

An unexpected hero

I was "that girl" in the airport yesterday.  I blame it on my pastor.  He had lent me a copy of "Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure," a short movie about the explorer Ernest Shackleton and his (to say the least) harrowing 2 year journey to survive disaster after disaster in his failed Trans-Antarctic journey.  Shackleton is a personal hero of my pastor's, and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about him.  Also, I thought, wouldn't that be a great movie to pass the time with while sitting in the San Diego airport?

Wrong.

You see, I wasn't expecting to be as moved as I was.  I also wasn't expecting Shackleton's journey to be as intense as it was.  Nor did I expect it to move me to tears.  Thus, I was that girl sitting in the airport, alternately gasping and sniffling as I watched the short 40 minute film.

My pastor had expressed admiration for Shackleton as a leader, and I have to say Shackleton's leadership is what moved me most profoundly.  As I mentioned before, Shackleton's journey was a failed one--due to various unforeseen disasters, he and his 28 person crew did not succeed in their goal of being the first to  cross the Antarctic continent by foot.  What I found inspiring, though, was Shackleton's willingness as their leader to sacrifice his dream for the sake of human life.  When the situation went horribly awry for reasons beyond their control, Shackleton did not push his crew further into danger for the sake of his dream--he changed his dream to be that of preserving the lives of his crew.  

He also made it fun.  According to the movie, many of the crew reported situations of fun and downright levity initiated by Shackleton in even the most harrowing of circumstances.  Shackleton had a way, apparently, of looking at what seemed and felt like failure in the face and turning that into an opportunity for hope.

I mentioned to someone the other day that I think God is a poet, and our lives are His poetry.  I see reflections of that in my own life, but I also see it in Shackleton's.  I think only a poetic God, a God of supreme artistry, could turn a journey like Shackleton's into what it was.  Shackleton embarked on his journey so that he could set a record--to be the first to cross the uncharted Antarctic continent.  He failed at that goal, but in the end accomplished so much more--after 2 years of being lost in the Antarctic, he and his crew survived.  How's that for a record?

It's fitting that the name of Shackleton's ship was Endurance.  I'm on the brink of becoming a leader myself, and I think one of the calls of that leadership is to endure with people.  It's to value human life in it's infinite artistry and worth more than loftier, abstract goals.  It's to look the disasters of life squarely in the face, and try to make meaning of them without dismissing their significance.  That, for me, is how to hope. 

The Good Shepherd?

Teaching Godly Play to 9/1o year olds has been an incredible joy.  They never cease to challenge and amaze me.  Take, for example, what happened yesterday.  I was telling the story of the Good Shepherd--in comparison to the Ordinary Shepherd, the Good Shepherd leads his sheep to food and water, guides them through places of danger, and would give his life for them if they are lost or in trouble.  Then I got this question:

"So when the sheep come to places of danger, the good shepherd leads them through, right?"

"That's what I think, yes," I said.

"Well," the student went on, "why does the good shepherd even lead the sheep to the dangerous places at all?  If he was really good, wouldn't he help the sheep avoid the dangerous places entirely?  Also, if he's so good, how did that other sheep get lost in the first place?"

That, friends, is why I had to find a way to talk about theodicy in my sunday school class.  Way to go, little dude.

Of course, in true Godly Play style, I directed the question back at the class (a pedagogical technique that really served me well as I was struggling to speak).  This group of 9 and 1o yr. olds decided that it wasn't so important whether or not the good shepherd brought the sheep to the place of danger to begin with; what matters is that the good shepherd goes back to carry you out, where the ordinary shepherd just leaves.  From the mouth of babes, right?

I got a phone call today with some news about two people in my life.  Both are young fathers.  The first part of the call was good news: one young father, a family friend, had his near-terminal diagnosis reversed, and while he's not out of the woods yet, he is miraculously beating all the medical odds that were set against him.  The other young father, my cousin, who was suffering from the same illness with the same odds set against him, died today.  

So who is God?  The ordinary shepherd, or the good shepherd?  And if he's good, how does he let us get "lost" in the first place?  On behalf of the wife and kids of my friend who is surviving, I rejoice in my good shepherd God.  I am in awe of the loving God who can rescue people from the thicket of illness and carry them back on His shoulders safely home.  But where was the good shepherd for my cousin?  Do his wife, children, and family see God as the ordinary shepherd who saw danger, and left his sheep behind?

One of the things I found most poignant about the question my little friends asked in class yesterday is that, I imagine, that will be the first of many times they ask that question in their lives.  And I imagine that, each time, it will be harder and more painful to see the good shepherd God when life, grief, and loss invade their consciousness in new ways.  

In the end, I know that the resolution to these questions are not mine to find--those decisions  always belongs to that person and God.  So my only prayer now is that, somehow, the Good Shepherd God might meet my friends and family who are left speechless in the wake of their loss.  I pray that, even though I may not be able to wrap my mind around it, they would feel God not as the one who abandoned them, but as the one who is carrying them in His arms safely home.

Ascending the Staircase

Wrestling with God has its perks.  It can be hard, certainly.  Downright painful.  Throwing out the hard questions of life, death, pain, and salvation never feels fun, while it's happening.  But there are perks.  Because there always comes a turning point, where I suddenly realize God isn't wrestling back--He's embracing me.  While I'm throwing punches, He's simply holding.  I like that God is big enough to do that.

There are times, of course, where God feels too far away for me to even go to the mat with him.  Those are hard times.  I still don't know why they happen--and I don't think it's always because of lack of clarity, piety, or effort on my part.  Sometimes, and in some situations, God feels (and maybe is) devastatingly far away.

I feel grateful that for this season, at least, I have felt God surrounding me as I throw out all the questions, complaints, and flat out doubts I have.  I feel grateful that, sometimes, I feel God hovering so tangibly around me I am sure that I might physically see Him.  

Karen Armstrong in her memoir "The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness" uses the T.S. Eliot poem "Ash Wednesday" as the framework for describing her journey.  You can read it here--it's a beautiful poem.  What Armstrong latches onto in that poem is the idea that we are constantly vacillating between hope and despair, as if we're ascending a spiral staircase.  I've experienced my faith in God like that--a constant twisting in turning between belief and doubt, confusion and understanding, ecstatic joy and, sometimes, lingering emptiness.  What is constant always, though, is that God is at the center.  Think of a spiral staircase--the stairs twirl around  a central pillar.  So twirl as I might from hope to despair, God remains assuredly at the center, keeping the whole structure upright.

So for now, there is hope.  For now,  I am able to be unafraid of the cross--I am re-understanding what it means to take up my cross and follow Christ.  I am seeing it as a symbol of freedom, not a symbol of victimization.  For now, I anticipate with cheerful hope the opportunities for new ministry, new life, and new experience that lie ahead.  For now, I am undaunted by my degree, my future, and this crazy thing we call ordination.

And in the end, what I am grateful for is that when I inevitably take my next step up the staircase, when I start wrestling again, I trust that God will be there to meet me.