tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44185588555304316492024-03-12T18:24:03.349-04:00A Good Enough BlogGiving up the pursuit of perfection for the pursuit of good enoughUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-32642387732717045062022-06-07T08:45:00.001-04:002022-06-07T08:49:59.436-04:00Feedback, please!<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGl1vFaeqIXk6cuFxAoafA2rOGz_1wp5xfFp-eYffJYDlJQEoTHXE7xrCYFytykG3ThNb8PWJHxnI3gojZpAfx6ayjpcsU723BI28YuWMf2tAbByQGp-3eZ_5ZJlHLS53SfX3ciCwFUgQWXCuVc-zBYg0F-OSJ5-jjIwuDfgOm7vrkoSUOt87U1Taxeg/s1200/feedback.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGl1vFaeqIXk6cuFxAoafA2rOGz_1wp5xfFp-eYffJYDlJQEoTHXE7xrCYFytykG3ThNb8PWJHxnI3gojZpAfx6ayjpcsU723BI28YuWMf2tAbByQGp-3eZ_5ZJlHLS53SfX3ciCwFUgQWXCuVc-zBYg0F-OSJ5-jjIwuDfgOm7vrkoSUOt87U1Taxeg/w320-h213/feedback.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hello, friends! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's almost been a week since I finished this blogging journey through Kate Bowler's book <i>Good Enough</i>, and I'm wondering if you could take a few minutes and give me some feedback. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">At first I was going to ask, "What did you like?" and "What didn't you like?" but that seems awfully general and not terribly helpful. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So instead, I'm curious to know: </span></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Did you actually read the book or did you simply read the blog or a mix of both depending on the day? <br /><br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">What did you look forward to the most about the blog? <br /><br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Were you more interested in the summary of each entry I tried to provide or my interpretation of what Jessica and Kate wrote? Did you like my wild tangents based on things going on in my life, or would you have preferred I stayed closer to the book? Or, a mix of both? <br /><br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Would you be interested in reading more of my reflections based on a book we'd be reading together? <br /><br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Do you prefer the blog format where you can read by yourself and go at your own pace, or do you think you'd like to try participating in a group discussion? <br /><br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you'd like to try a group discussion, would you want to do it face-to-face or would you prefer an online format, like Zoom? <br /><br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">What other thoughts do you have? </span></li></ul><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Feel free to answer as many of these questions as you want either in the comments or shoot me an email if that's easier: albauer at yahoo dot com. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thanks for joining me on this adventure! </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-58369713604826744432022-06-03T09:30:00.001-04:002022-06-03T09:34:11.739-04:0040 A Good Gardener <p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am not a gardener. Never have been. Don't plan to become one. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I did receive a snake plant for my birthday in February this year, and I'm proud to say that it's still alive. So alive in fact, I think it's about time to transplant it to a bigger pot. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRTpyswLtB-NsHMGgwVTHwav9yjTXLzMyqWd1HsuI-uj0yr9M5AKoxJXd4sNi8NnNlPsKMAmT9LSlyNoApvTlyyixHmCg8UmTkPqCJ6T5YSqc2nPv4ACOVXt_NFzAIE6q4xY--mja8NYM1Dk_zYR9HU9VWIKhyCmxUb9k8LbmSrI6y-T1wN_e6ncN7Vg/s3024/IMG_0774.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRTpyswLtB-NsHMGgwVTHwav9yjTXLzMyqWd1HsuI-uj0yr9M5AKoxJXd4sNi8NnNlPsKMAmT9LSlyNoApvTlyyixHmCg8UmTkPqCJ6T5YSqc2nPv4ACOVXt_NFzAIE6q4xY--mja8NYM1Dk_zYR9HU9VWIKhyCmxUb9k8LbmSrI6y-T1wN_e6ncN7Vg/s320/IMG_0774.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">(I've heard a plant will break a pot if it gets too big. That sounds like a big mess. Of course, so does transplanting. Soo .... )</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm not a gardener, but I do appreciate gardeners. For years I have benefited from the bounty of various gardeners in whatever neighborhood I was living in at the time. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">And thinking of all those people from all those years, I have to agree with Kate and Jessica when they say, <b>"Gardening requires a certain kind of hope, envisioning new life in the midst of despair and death. Gardeners toil and trowel, pluck and prune, all for a single bloom. The very act of gardening is one of hope" (p 226). </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">This entry reminds me that the book <i>Good Enough</i> was originally intended as a Lenten devotional, hence the 40ish devotionals. And this entry was meant to be read on Easter Sunday - the same day we read about Mary Magdalene wandering around in the garden, on the verge of losing all hope because Jesus' body has disappeared. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">She sees Jesus but mistakes him for the gardener. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Kate writes, "What a strange detail: the resurrected Christ is mistaken for a gardener. </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maybe it's because he stole the gardener's clothes, since his were stripped and gambled over. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maybe because Jesus looks like his dad, the first gardener, who tended Eden barefoot. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maybe Jesus looks like the new Adam, the head gardener for the new Eden of the new heavens and new earth. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maybe it's because he carries the pruning shears of a vinedresser, the careful tender of our souls, ready to pluck and plant, uproot and cutback. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maybe he looks ready to cultivate new life, to pull us toward resurrection with his fingers digging in among the worms. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Or maybe this gardener looks like he knows something about hope - hope that Mary desperately needs" (p 228). </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">(I like that last option the best. I'm totally going to use this whole section in a sermon someday, with proper attribution of course.) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Gardeners know, like The Good Gardner, that a seed must be buried in order for it to grow. </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"When things look most lost, most dark, most covered, most long-gone, most hopeless ... that's when the seed is undergoing the most important change. Through its death, it might produce much fruit" (p 229) </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Over the course of these last 4oish days, I have felt almost the whole range of emotions a human can feel, and I'm guessing you have too. And I hope reading this book has been an encouragement to you, especially an encouragement to look directly into all those emotions and to explore what is lying underneath them. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">God loves you -- ALL of you and your life, even the parts of you that you don't want to acknowledge. And the parts you think are imperfect but <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/11-happy-enough.html" target="_blank">really are good enough</a> which is in fact good enough. And <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/27-to-my-body.html" target="_blank">your body</a> when it lets you down. And <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/04/3-mourning-future-self-tuesday-042622.html" target="_blank">the losses</a> you grieve. And the <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/04/2-buoyed-by-absurd-monday-042522.html" target="_blank">absurdities</a> that fill your heart with joy. The <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/04/1-regula-sunday-042422.html" target="_blank">sacred times and places</a> where you hear God speaking to you most clearly. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">And I hope more than anything else this journey has led you to a place of hope - <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/06/39-bright-hope.html" target="_blank">bright hope</a> - because really, in the end, that's all that matters: that we do our best to create sacred rhythms in our lives that train us to always look for the glimpses of hope that God scatters in our lives every day of the week but can only be seen by eyes that are searching for them. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"The seed in the ground, the body in the tomb - this is a picture of defiant hope. All of the labor and sweat and love and precious time for a single bloom. Delicate and bold. Brief but memorable.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Alleluia, indeed." </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-85486383602530758872022-06-02T06:00:00.001-04:002022-06-02T06:00:00.209-04:0039 "Bright Hope" <p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,<br />thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,<br />strength for today and <b>bright hope</b> for tomorrow,<br />blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I don't know if the title of today's entry is taken from the beloved hymn, "Great is Thy Faithfulness," but that's the song that popped into my head as soon as I opened the <i>Good Enough</i> book today and saw the title, "Bright Hope." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I also thought, "Shew. We could sure use some bright hope today," remembering that the first two of twenty-one funerals are beginning in Uvalde, TX.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Kate and Jessica write, "Too much hope, and you are, frankly, delusional. Too little hope, and you will drown in despair. So, how do we have hope when our reality looks so hopeless?" (p 220) </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">They turn to the prophet Ezekiel - the man of strange dreams and visions, "a traumatized witness to a traumatized people" (p 220). A man of many sorrows, a man in need of hope. And what does God do for this prophet? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">God sets Ezekiel on top of a mass grave, thousands of dead, dry bones. And God asks Ezekiel "a really stupid question" (p 221): <i><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ezekiel+37%3A1-14&version=NRSVUE;MSG" target="_blank">Can these bones live? </a> </i> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Of course not. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"What good is hope in this place, spoken over a pile of drying bones?" </b>(p 221) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">(Feel familiar?) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And yet ... </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And yet, God restores the Valley of Dry Bones, breathing life into what was once buried and forgotten. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">God restores the house of Israel ... BUT "it doesn't come without the participation of her people" (p 222). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There's no standing by passively watching God work; the land and the people will be restored because <i>the people</i> will build a new temple and establish a new polity. <i>The people</i> will rebuild. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And perhaps the greatest reminder of bright hope and God's faithfulness is tucked into the very last verse of the book of Ezekiel: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Ezekiel 48:35 " ... And the name of the city from that time on shall be, The Lord Is There.</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As Jessica and Kate say: Not <i>was </i>there, but you ruined it. Not <i>will be </i>there, once you do these things or get your act together. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>The Lord <i>is</i> there. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>That's the bright hope reminder I needed today. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>May I be a person marked by bright hope in the midst of the darkest of hours. May I be an Easter person. </i>(p 225) <i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you're feeling like I'm feeling, I hope you will try the "A Good Enough Step" on page 225: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Find something that is useless, unrelated, and could be made into a terrible art project. Make a pile of things and then make something. "As you go, just focus on this one thing and complete it with only one goal in mind: let it make you laugh" (p 225). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"Look, we can't make something from nothing. We are not God. So make something with your own hands and take a minute to pronounce it truly terrible ... and good. We must make something from what we have every day. What if you already have in your experience, and in your life, what it takes to make something good happy? Just from what you have already been given?" </b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-9926818806074572722022-06-01T06:00:00.012-04:002022-06-01T09:40:43.969-04:0038 Too Few Sparrows<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate and Jessica start this entry with a story I had never heard before of Mao Zedong's "war on the nation's sparrows" because they believed they were eating up too much precious seed grain. So they employed all sorts of tactics that caused the little birds to begin to fall to the ground (page 215). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"China was victorious in its war, and soon the numbers of live birds had reached extinction levels" (p 216). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But within a few years, they noticed that the rice harvest had actually <i>decreased</i> without the birds ... because now, all manner of insects and locust plagues were feasting on the crops, making the current famine that much worse. The government actually ended up importing 250,000 birds to put things back in balance. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i>Hominem unius libri timeo. </i>"Beware the man of a single book." (p 215) </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Kate and Jessica write, "Perhaps there were too many sparrows. But a single solution was not a solution at all" (p 216). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Chinese government narrowed in on the one thing they thought would solve the famine crisis. And it only made things worse. If only they had thought a little longer about this and came up with a few other options. Or perhaps employed multiple tactics simultaneously (maybe ones that didn't include killing massive amounts of God's creatures). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">f only they had consulted more than one book. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>What is the downsized version of this that can be applied to our individual lives? In what ways do we tend to be people "of a single book?" </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well, do you tend to listen to news from the same media source all the time? (Do they always tell you what you want to hear or what you think is happening?) Do you only consult the same one friend when you're trying to make a difficult decision? (Do they always confirm what you were already thinking?) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>If you surround yourself with people who look like you and work like you and think like you and believe like you, then you become a person of "a single book." </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"If we are going to be the kind of people who build a more equitable world, work toward peace, and fight for justice, there must be room for anger and lament. But how will we know when we're on the right track? We can search for the signs - there will be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control" (a.k.a. the fruit of the Spirit!).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>If we are going to be the kind of people God designed us to be, then change needs to happen, particularly an openness to that which is different from us. From people who are different from us. For solutions that maybe aren't the first ones that come to mind. To be people of "multiple books." </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is always risk with change and with loving others, but there is a way to know if we're on the right track or not: does it produce the fruit of the Spirit - is it loving and joyful and kind and good and gentle and faithful and self-controlled? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I suspect you will know sooner rather than later whether a particular change passes that litmus test or not. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Our hearts are soft, our ears open. Speak, Lord, of the change You desire to write into our life stories as they unfold. For we are gently becoming aware that knowledge will not be the basis for our understanding of how life goes. Love will. </i>(p 218) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">How do you feel about the suggestion in "A Good Enough Step" on page 219? They talk about "weaponized piety." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm not sure I understand exactly what they mean by that, by "weaponized piety." And I'm also not sure what the point is of asking the two suggested questions either." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Perhaps I'm just tired, and my brain is out of gas for the day, but I honestly could use some help with this! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">P.S. Look at me asking for help! I've come a long way in the last 15 months! :-) </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-21897027866434737342022-05-31T06:00:00.001-04:002022-05-31T06:00:00.179-04:0037 The In-Between <span style="font-family: georgia;">Liminality is a delicious word. </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><i>Liminality.</i> </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's delicious to say. I knew what liminality felt like, but I never knew the textbook definition until the last couple of years. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">According to all-knowing (wink) Wikipedia, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality" target="_blank">liminality</a> ... "<span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">In </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #0645ad; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Anthropology">anthropology</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">, </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">liminality</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"> (from the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #0645ad; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Latin">Latin</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"> word </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;" title="Latin-language text"><i lang="la">līmen</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">, meaning "a threshold")</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-1" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality#cite_note-1" style="background: none; color: #0645ad; text-decoration-line: none;">[1]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"> is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition the status they will hold when the rite is complete.</span></span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-:0_2-0" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality#cite_note-:0-2" style="background: none; color: #0645ad; text-decoration-line: none;">[2]</a></sup></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Liminality is a person standing at their college graduation ceremony. Or a couple getting married on their wedding day. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Or humanity living during a global pandemic.</i> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate and/or Jessica quote anthropologist Victor Turner who says that <b>liminality is like being at a threshold - lifting your foot up to enter a room but before you put it down on the other side. "We are at a threshold - something still becoming - but we don't know yet what all the factors are, and how to frame them. We yearn for normalcy only to find that liminality has become our 'new normal'" (p 210). </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">We can be in-between all kinds of things: </span></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Relationships</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Seasons of independence and dependence </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jobs </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Friends</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">The diagnosis and the cure </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Feeling courageous and feeling afraid </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">The life we have ... and the life we want </span></li></ul><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">When you're in a liminal space or time, you're unsettled. And a little lost. Feeling a little exposed and vulnerable as you wait for what's next. </span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">And maybe instead of rushing ahead to "what's next," maybe it's better to linger in the liminality for just a little bit longer. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Instead of trying to escape it, let us settle there for the moment. Knowing and trusting we aren't alone. We're in this strange middle place ... together" (p 211). </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate and Jessica point out that liminality is all a part of losing our life for Jesus's sake: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. <b>Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."</b></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> (Matthew 10:37-39) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are we, somewhere unnameable, fully present to our reality. Tracking it, with all its subtle gradations and colors and contrasts, the sweetness and the struggle, the stuck and not-quite fitting. </i>(p 212) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Liminality is uncomfortable, to be sure. But Kate and Jessica advocate recognizing it when it happens and lingering there for just a bit. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">In their "A Good Enough Step" on page 213, they write, "For one hour, consent to the in-between. Nestle right in there, not knowing anything for sure. Crazy, isn't it? That's not where we are comfortable. But try it for one solid hour. No strainging for answers. Not pushing to land on an idea. Or solve a problem. See if a poem or song fits. ... <i>(They suggest trying <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%20131&version=NRSVUE,MSG" target="_blank">Psalm 131</a>.) </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">"And if you do happen to get a nudge where something becomes clear, a just-noticeable difference - sometimes the shift comes sideways, the truth that something has changed - receive it. And if not, just read awhile in the unknowing. Because someday we will see things as they really are. You can count on it" (pp 213-214). </span></div><div> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-88000036333090095742022-05-30T06:00:00.003-04:002022-05-30T10:33:33.942-04:0036 2:00 A.M. / 2:00 P.M. <p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">"There is no small talk at two o'clock in the morning," writes Kate and/or Jessica in this entry from their book, <i>Good Enough.</i></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Have you ever noticed that? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Have you ever noticed how you (or others) suddenly say things in the middle of the darkness of night that you would never say during the light of day? And you don't even decide to do it -- it just comes spilling out. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There are many conversations I wish could happen at 2:00 a.m. that instead happen at 2:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. when we are not our truest selves but instead are wearing the masks we always wear in the light of day - trying to be smart enough, successful enough, likable enough. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I think there is more truth spoken (for better or for worse) at 2:00 a.m. than at any other time. And pain probably feels more acute at 2:00 a.m. than at any other time too. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The realization of the difference between the 2:00 p.m. self and the 2:00 a.m. self crystallized for Kate on her middle-of-the-night plane rides for cancer treatments. She began to notice the "hard truth of living, that for many people, carrying on, for days and weeks, and months will feel like an existential struggle to simply keep living. For them, it's always 2:00 a.m."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Especially the woman pretending to wait for a flight but who lives, with her two children, in the airport. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"Once we know pain, it is like the dark side of the moon. Hidden from view, but every bit as real. The world is full of 2:00 a.m. people. It is me. It is you. So we reach out to hold hands in the dark" </b>(p 207). <b> </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I love that last bit: "So we reach out to hold hands in the dark." Because we're not alone. Even if there's not something sitting next to us, we're not really alone. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm reminded of Frederick Buechner's words (which I used in my sermon from Sunday): </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>“Here is your life. You might never have been,
but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without
you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be
afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the
universe. I love you."</b></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Allison/Desktop/Second/1%20%20WORSHIP/2022/5%20Eastertide/05.29.22%20%20Ascension/05.29.22%20%20LP%20sermon.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="font-family: georgia;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 106%;">[i]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are you who see it all now. The terrible, beautiful truth that our world, our lives seem irreparably broken. And you can't unsee it. ... </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>May you experience deeper capacity and glimpses of hope, as you continue to see the world as it is. Terrible. Beautiful. Fragile. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Check out the "A Good Enough Step" on page 209. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">They call it "dislocated exegesis" - get out of your normal place of reading and see what happens, how the Spirit speaks in a different way. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Read Isaiah 40:1-26 outside after the sun has sunk over the horizon. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">(<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+40%3A1-26&version=MSG;NRSVUE" target="_blank">Here's a link</a> to 2 versions of the passage, including my favorite, "The Message!") </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Read it once quietly. Then again out loud, slowly. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What do you notice about the passage? How do your surroundings inform what it means to you? </span></p><div><!--[if !supportEndnotes]-->
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<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Allison/Desktop/Second/1%20%20WORSHIP/2022/5%20Eastertide/05.29.22%20%20Ascension/05.29.22%20%20LP%20sermon.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 106%;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <a href="https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2016/9/9/grace">https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2016/9/9/grace</a></span>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-47760052524741878482022-05-29T06:00:00.091-04:002022-05-29T06:00:00.188-04:0035 When Words Fail <p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">What better entry for us to be reading right now than one that ponders what you do when words fail?</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Because, frankly, I struggled mightily with the words for the sermon I'm going to preach later today following the recent spate of shootings, especially the one at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In my weekly email to the church, I confessed that it feels like we're living in a Good Friday world. We're experiencing something akin to what the disciples must have been feeling when they watched Jesus' cold, dead body being laid in the tomb. And again, as they watched him ascend into heaven "to sit at the right hand of God." (Tomorrow is Ascension Sunday.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As Jessica and/or Kate write, <b>"There is hope for someday, but someday is not now"</b> (p 200). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Words often fail - at least, words that are spoken thoughtlessly or carelessly. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"Perhaps it is here where we might need to learn a new way to pray"</b> (p 200). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">They explain, "It's a way of paying attention that author Marilyn McEntyre calls 'the subtle difference between listening <i>for</i> and listening <i>to.' </i>It's an attitude of readiness without an agenda, an openness to what might come. Of breathing into a possibility of hearing and receiving something new" (p 201). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Have you ever experienced that kind of prayer, when you listen to God speaking in an unexpected way? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For me, it's often when I read (listen to) poetry that I hear God speaking. Especially when I listen to Padraig O Tuama's podcast, <a href="https://onbeing.org/series/poetry-unbound/" target="_blank">Poetry Unbound</a>, where he reads and explores a poem that has caught his attention. The number of times what he says speaks to what's on my heart is uncanny. And providential. It's a wonderful gift to receive these kinds of words. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When my words fail, I turn to the words of others. Especially poets. Especially the psalms. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sometimes that takes me out of myself and drops me in another place, kind of like the "forest bathing" Kate and Jessica talk about in "A Good Enough Step" on page 204. It seems so much easier to listen when you're surrounded by something so much more beautiful than anything humans could create. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer." <br /></b>-Mother Teresa</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Blessed are you in your radical honesty. In the way you speak of your grief (or listen to others speak of their grief) - the long sleepless nights in an empty bed. Of the physical pain you feel - the joints that don't work like they used to, your brain fog or chronic migraines. Blessed are you who speak of your loneliness, the empty home or nest or womb. Who have the audacity to ask for the miracles you need. The healing or a new friend or a redeemed family.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am grateful to Shawnee Mental Health here in Portsmouth for their post on Friday, May 17 because sometimes our words fail because they're not the right words. Here, they offer some alternatives: </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2kCqX4Vkk24E_JApkEIFmmsY8DOwXRu8w6W9cLTVusfAoFbh75EU-UNo0MVgOpzZtqBifahzu7hgAOfqyghqJ0q25WgnJN91JJQDXbDWy6x6KY16acufAaEaFitghR5H3yurnPnEaefH_NL93d6OuJ3QHUvOZlOtnmzfUOTmi4SCS0UH8j5Atp4JmlQ/s1200/284237675_4942056655916624_3402262742439950765_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2kCqX4Vkk24E_JApkEIFmmsY8DOwXRu8w6W9cLTVusfAoFbh75EU-UNo0MVgOpzZtqBifahzu7hgAOfqyghqJ0q25WgnJN91JJQDXbDWy6x6KY16acufAaEaFitghR5H3yurnPnEaefH_NL93d6OuJ3QHUvOZlOtnmzfUOTmi4SCS0UH8j5Atp4JmlQ/s320/284237675_4942056655916624_3402262742439950765_n.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">They suggest these alternatives to the question, "How are you doing?" which can be awkward and empty if asked thoughtlessly. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why not try ... </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1️⃣ How are you today?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">2️⃣ How are you holding up?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">3️⃣ I’ve been thinking about you lately. How are you doing?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">4️⃣ What’s been on your mind recently?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">5️⃣ Is there any type of support you need right now?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">6️⃣ Are you anxious about anything? Are you feeling down at all?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A more specific question may garner a more caring interaction. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-5329970659794024562022-05-28T06:00:00.002-04:002022-05-28T06:00:00.180-04:0034 The Reality-Show Gospel <p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What exactly is "The Reality-Show Gospel?" </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate and Jessica define it as the thing people say when things don't work out the way they expected or hoped, and don't know what else to say. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>And conclude that this negative thing "must bring about something better" (p 195). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Until it doesn't. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Until the devastating diagnosis is delivered. Until the divorce papers arrive. Until a friend is killed in a senseless accident (p 195). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://katebowler.com/books/everything-happens-for-a-reason/" target="_blank">Everything happens for a reason ... until it doesn't. </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When we run out of reasons, they write, we need something else; we need each other. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"It's so tempting to skip past the difficulty and pain and rush to find a rationale. But in the long pause, there is wisdom. Sometimes a reason isn't readily apparent, or perhaps it's not ours to assign. Job's friends got it right when they offered him the gift of their presence, but not the weight of their reasons" (p 197). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>It's OK to want more than empty cliches when you are hurting. And it's OK to give more than empty cliches to someone when they are hurting. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Instead, give the gift of presence. (Or receive that gift, as the case may be.) It's part of the "cost of caring" (which we talked about yesterday). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are you when you realize you are way out of your depth and you have no idea what to say. Blessed are you, confronted with suffering you can't imagine, but you don't say it. You do not say you can't imagine their pain, because you do want to imagine. YOu want to be there with them, in your heart and mind, imagining what they are feeling and what they might need. </i>(p 198) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I love the practice they suggest on page 199 about "What <i>Not</i> to Say to a Friend in Need" and how to practice NOT saying those things for real. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Empathy and actions - that's what you need to have on hand to give in these situations. Not empty cliches that ring hollow and may even make things worse. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-14850444681375093482022-05-27T06:00:00.003-04:002022-05-27T10:11:00.512-04:0033 The Cost of Caring <p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Welp - it was bound to happen eventually: I missed my deadline for these daily posts. (And if I told you about the week I've had, you'd understand. But I'll spare you the gory details!) </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Instead, I'll just say that I did realize before the deadline that I didn't have a post ready to go, and I wondered if I should just throw something together in order to adhere to the letter of the law I set when I adopted this daily discipline. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Then I decided it would be better to stick to the spirit of the law and miss the deadline while (hopefully) creating a "good enough" post a day late as a compromise. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">### </span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">"The Cost of Caring" </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've often wondered what would happen if a church's fall stewardship campaign slogan was, "Give until it hurts. Then give a little more." (p 189) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What would the response be? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A variation on that, once shared with me by a pastor-friend used to solicit funds for a beloved yearly conference, is, "Don't give until it hurts; give until it helps." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The same, but different. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The title of this entry is "The Cost of Sharing," and it's a testament to the conflicted relationship with pain we have these days: "Part of the confusion here lies in our understanding of the purpose of pain" (P 190). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate and Jessica note that several kinds of pain should be avoided: abusive relationships, self-harm, brokenness, dysfunction, and pathologies of every kind. <b>"That kind of pain is not part of God's desire for us and violates the deepest, truest things about us: that we are deeply worthy of all good things. Full stop" (p 190). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But some virtues are developed that require sacrifice, which involves pain. "<b>When we want to grow, there might need to be some pruning. Some hacking at deadening habits and beliefs. Some watering and readjusting so we might grow toward the light"</b> (p 190). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate writes about her friend Christie who is a nurse: "She explained the brutality this way: <b>the way you know you are doing your job correctly is that it costs you a part of your own soul. Even with the best self-care practices, the job of any caring professional - be it a nurse or doctor or social worker or teacher or chaplain - comes at a steep price. It costs you to care.</b> Caring, she said, is an occupational hazard" (pp 190-191). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What will good things cost us? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Hope costs us the satisfaction of cynicism. <br /></i></span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Love costs us selfishness. <br /></i><i style="font-family: georgia;">Charity costs us greed. </i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">These words hit a little differently now after this week's shooting at the elementary school in Texas. I wish caring wasn't an occupational hazard for me as a pastor - even caring for people I don't know and will never meet. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's tempting to look away from the pain, to save myself the pain of seeing the grief of so many families. It is "beautiful, terrible work" to see another person's humanity, even from a distance. This sentence that ends this entry reminds me of the chapter, "The Bad Thing" we talked about <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/16-bad-thing.html" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But I am reminded of the image they mentioned there: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 15.4px;"><b>"Seeing pain up close [your pain or someone else's] can give you an incredible experience of awe. It's like seeing a garment turned inside out and all the rough seams are showing. You see someone's absolute humanity shine through all the pain, and that vulnerability makes them more - not less - beloved" (pp 93-94). </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are you who listen to long, winding stories from lonely hearts instead of rushing off to more interesting friends. You picked boredom or loving strangers instead of the warmth of being known. That was your time and you're never going to get it back. </i>(p 192) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">How are you handling the pain of the last few days - whether from stories you see on TV or tragedies that are unfolding in your life and the lives of those whom you know and love? Can you look it in the face? Are you ignoring it? Are you "doomscrolling" or getting too obsessed with the pain? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What does a healthy relationship with pain look like? What pain is pruning, and what pain is damaging? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And, just so you don't think I blindly buy in to everything Kate and Jessica write, at the end of the "A Good Enough Step" on page 194, when they write, "Somehow, we are more blessed when we give than when we receive," my soul shouted, "No!" </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well, maybe not shouted exactly, but definitely disagreed. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I know this chapter is advocating caring ("giving") despite the cost, but in my 2021 Christmas Eve sermon, I explained my experience of "excruciating humility" resulting from the onset of seizures. It is excruciating and humbling to have to ask for help ... to receive, instead of to give. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But isn't that the foundation of our relationship with God -- receiving, not giving? We didn't do anything to deserve the Incarnation, to deserve salvation. That's the whole point actually.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yes, I'd much rather give than receive ... but sometimes it's better to receive than to give. (Just saying!) </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-84556166449625883752022-05-25T06:00:00.006-04:002022-05-25T06:00:00.208-04:0032 Gondola Prayers <p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gosh, I think my favorite line of this chapter is this one: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"We are praying to the God whose very sweetness has broken through to us" (p 185). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm not sure that's a sentence that resonates with every believer in God. If the God you pray to is often angry and needs to be appeased by your prayers, this idea of sweetness probably feels foreign to you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But if the God you pray to is a refuge or a peacemaker, loving like a father and/or a mother, then you know exactly what Kate and Jessica are talking about here when it comes to prayer. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Prayer, which is ultimately a mystery. <br />Prayer, which sometimes God answers. <br />And sometimes doesn't. <br />And sometimes we can't see or don't understand the answers. <br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">And sometimes answers in a way we didn't want or didn't expect. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"In prayer," they write on page 186, "we are brought into the presence of God, whose eternal reality translated for us. We sense we were created because we are loved. Just that. We are not a means, but an end. And we are more whole, more alive, with a wellness that we didn't create through some transactional effort on our part." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"The mystery of prayer is that we may never understand exactly how it works, just that it draws us into intimacy with a God who hears" (p 186). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Waiting is a necessary part of prayer. "To pray means we have to yield up space and time, and some of our darling preoccupations. For one hot minute there is a self-emptying that mirrors God's own" (p 186). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. </b></i>Simone Weil (p 188) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Look at your life: is there maybe a void now that you could yield up to God in a time of prayer? </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-11927193562279687402022-05-24T06:00:00.005-04:002022-05-24T06:00:00.194-04:0031 Bottling Magic<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Stop for a second and think about this: when did you give and receive the most love today? </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Or, if you're reading this first thing in the morning, when did you give and receive the most love yesterday? </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Take a few moments to really think about when you felt most alive, most full of joy, most yourself? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What was that moment like? Did it feel like time stopped or slowed down? Was it simple? Was it sweet? Was it bittersweet? Who was there? Was it something you said/did or something they said/did? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Once the moment passed, how did you feel in its aftermath - joyful? tired? sad? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Did you even notice how wonderful that moment was as it unfolded or is it only now that you're looking at it in the rearview mirror that you see it for what it was? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And just how tempted are/were you to try to hold on to that moment? To create it again, this time to capture it like magic in a bottle so that you'd never have to get it go? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"When something is that good, the temptation," Kate and/or Jessica write, "is to keep it, hold it, bottle it, preserve it, and, if we're the entrepreneurial type, maybe even sell it. But often, those precious moments are fleeting. They are precious exactly <i>because </i>they are few and far between" (p 179).</b> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm not entirely sure I agree with that -- that precious moments are actually that few and far between. Frankly, I think they happen all the time but we're not often paying attention or actively looking for them. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But I agree with the point that when these beautiful little moments happen -- even if it is in the wake of something terrible -- "we want to instrumentalize (remember that word from <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/19-no-reason-whatsoever.html" target="_blank">this post</a>?) the moment. We want to stay there. When something is good, we want to build a fortress - move in and live there forever" (p 180), much like Peter wanted to build the three houses up on the mountain in the wake of Jesus' Transfiguration. (Here's <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+9%3A28-36&version=MSG" target="_blank">that story</a> in Eugene Peterson's "The Message" version of the Bible because I love it!) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Can we make this moment last longer? </i>(p 181) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nope. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But we can "learn to see the signs, to feel the moments swell around us. We begin to see those brief periods as delicate, precious .... We can become more beautiful, more transcendent, as we learn to carry them with us, changed by the things we might never see again" (p 181). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are we who recognize that spark, that glimmer of transcendence that feels ... otherworldly. Like points of light that converge to reveal a reality we can scarcely believe, yet somehow we remember in the depths of our souls. The sunrise that no picture can capture. The moment of clarity we can't exactly describe. It is a magic suffused with delight and goodness and beauty and joy. And we know it was You, oh God" </i>(p 182) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Have you read the "A Good Enough Step" on page 183? It talks about making an Ebenezer. (Remember this line from the beloved hymn -- "Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thine help I come"?) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why don't you try it? The next time you're outside, find a rock. Think the last time you felt the transcendence of God - write a word on the rock to remind you of that experience or attach a note to the rock, then put it somewhere you'll see it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"No, we can't bottle these moments, but we can be changed by them" (p 183). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">BONUS: Sometimes these moments of transcendence are intermingled with immanence. Sometimes you can only see something beautiful after something terrible. And sometimes it's the other way around. If you feel particularly drawn to this chapter, you may want to check out <a href="https://johnpavlovitz.com/2021/05/04/the-coffee-you-wont-get-to-drink-a-reflection-on-dying/?fbclid=IwAR0-fB8r7De5JXeNSK_mBMjAFDCoMYGSrqmayJR-GTUaO-kiJTel9-Wd7fc" target="_blank">this additional reflection</a>. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-71885558138064241122022-05-23T06:00:00.023-04:002022-05-23T15:15:18.508-04:0030 Refuge<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ouch. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">This chapter hit home for me. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"In an effort to save yourself (and others) from pain, sometimes you start to hit the mute button on your own life" (p 173). </span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">It doesn't start out as an intentional lie, that little phrase, "I'm fine!" usually accompanied with a cheerful smile. </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now, for the record: a friend of mine taught me about "tiered responses" - how you don't have to tell every person who asks, "How are you?" how you really are feeling on the inside. Sometimes, "I'm fine!" is the right thing to say to a person you do not trust to handle your tender soul with care.</span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">But sometimes - even with the right tier of people who WILL handle us tenderly - somehow it ends up becoming a lie because we don't want to bother others with our pain. Or suffering. Or confusion. </span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Then what happens? "You don't feel nearly as entitled to the full spectrum of emotions - from joy to sorrow - that you wouldn't mind hearing from a loved one" (p 173). </span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">We shortchange ourselves. We stand in the way of our own healing by not admitting the beautiful, terrible reality of life as we experience it. </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Isn't it funny (in a terrible way, I mean) that we'll sacrifice almost anything for someone else, but can't imagine someone doing the same for us? So we start to tell lies instead when our life is shattered because we don't want to bother others with it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">(We don't want to be "<a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/16-bad-thing.html" target="_blank">the bad thing</a>" that reminds others that life is fragile and that bad things can happen to them too.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And then we start to feel guilty for lying. And then we think God will abandon us for our lack of faith. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But Psalm 46:10 is just the assurance we need: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging" (Psalm 46:1-3). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When the world as we know it "has been upended, it is <i>right there</i> we can find shelter with God, our refuge. God is our safe place, not after the worst is over or before the other shoe drops. But right <i>in the midst of </i>our pain and grief and loss" (p 175). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm curious:</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Have you ever tried the "A Good Enough Step" kind of prayer on p 178 using Psalm 46:10? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's one I use and have taught others. If you're looking for a simple prayer to give you words when you can't find them yourself (the Psalms are good for that kind of thing!), try using this grounding prayer and notice how, as the words drop away, so too (hopefully) will the burdens you are carrying. And maybe even the lies you've been telling yourself or others. <b> </b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-22885796789805241782022-05-22T06:00:00.001-04:002022-05-22T06:00:00.180-04:0029 The Burden of Love <p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"There is nothing we can do with suffering, except to suffer it," says C.S. Lewis in today's chapter from <i>Good Enough</i>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate and Jessica recount the story of his book <i>A Grief Observed</i>, an exploration of the experience of realizing he loved someone just as she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. They had only three years together. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He writes of grief as leading one down deep ravines that descend in winding circles, bringing you to a normal space where you can breathe again only to be plunged into another ravine. And then suddenly, "it takes your hand and settles you silently into something like joy made holy - wordless, indefinable, more real than your memories somehow" (p 168). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">("<a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/18-hello-goodbye.html" target="_blank">Hello, Goodbye</a>" talks about this same theme.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Grief, they write, is the burden of love. "It can't be defined or drawn, only suffered. But what must be said, what must be given, is the permission to feel it. All of it. Not as a state, but as a process. No one can tell you what that process must be for you, just now. So gently, gently, let is lead you through" (p 169). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are you, dear heart, grieving that which feels irreplaceable. And you are right to think so. Don't let anyone place upon you any other truth, but know this utterly. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are you under the burden of all that love. Because bearing it along with you is the faithful path for you to walk now. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"A Good Enough Step" (p 172) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Go on a prayer walk. Let the prayers be spontaneous. Sit down and rest if you find a bench along the way. Hear the birds or cicadas or frogs. Listen as theirs songs become prayers. Add yours to the chorus." </span></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-50870732793183811742022-05-21T06:00:00.008-04:002022-05-21T08:14:38.426-04:0028 Mediocrity for the Win<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lately, I've been thinking about what life looks like when you have a "scarcity mindset." Both as individuals and as groups, like churches or boards or volunteer organizations. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Scarcity affects our thinking and feeling. Scarcity orients the mind automatically and powerfully toward unfulfilled needs. For example, food grabs the focus of the hungry. For the lonely person, scarcity may come in poverty of social isolation and a lack of companionship." (Read more <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201504/the-scarcity-mindset" target="_blank">here</a>.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Groups often think they don't have enough to do the work that needs to be done. N</b></span><b style="font-family: georgia;">ot enough people. Not enough money. Not enough time. </b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Individuals often think they'll never be good enough. Or smart enough. Or successful enough. Or <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/11-happy-enough.html" target="_blank">happy enough</a>. </b>(That's a link to a previous chapter that ponders the same themes in today's chapter.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>There's this neverending longing to be enough. To be perfect. To be able to do it all and to do it impressively well. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The thing is ... we aren't ever going to be able to be all those things. Or do all those things. Maybe we'll look like it on the outside, but the insides will never match. It's part of being human. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"If only we could trust that the giving of ourselves, with all our imperfections, has a value beyond rubies. We need a deep permission. Permission to ask for help. Permission to get better. Permission to fail" (p 163). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In their "A Prayer for When You Feel Like You're Not Enough" on page 164, Jessica and Kate write, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"There are cracks in everything, but You fill them with love. Fill me with Your divine presence that is entirely unimpressed by my attempts at perfection." </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And maybe this <a href="https://youtu.be/mX2xIW7Oa9c" target="_blank">Leonard Cohen song</a> flashed through your mind when you read that. (Remember when I preached a whole sermon series on that song?) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But what immediately came to my mind is <a href="https://artincontext.org/kintsugi/" target="_blank">the Japanese art of kintsugi</a>, in which broken pottery is repaired using powdered gold, platinum, or silver. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kintsugi pottery, as a philosophy, views shattering and restoration as a natural part of cracked pots’ history, instead of something which should be hidden. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>We all have cracks - individuals and groups. Why not fill them with love (instead of fear)? </b></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Blessed are we who see that intrinsic worth comes, not through our talents, but from You. Thank you for saving us from our own dreams of perfection. </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm curious: </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Look at this bowl. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGrxqqYcFAVhECq1FhoH_-eL1qCnw7EgaAucQntb3hKeMu1JhZtcv4Lyfd5I2RZOGWlJ-u8N2aTs8yoFK2253Q-xpbdSONgrZufr3jYPNRTaT1gYkv-agMDIxf2Qu5f0pGzIZ8t6XvGAIWLUplUdGqWh246N5b-uWZJRgZ-oVJP_fdq8RkqUGjeA9Qjw/s640/kintsugi-bowl.JPGjj.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGrxqqYcFAVhECq1FhoH_-eL1qCnw7EgaAucQntb3hKeMu1JhZtcv4Lyfd5I2RZOGWlJ-u8N2aTs8yoFK2253Q-xpbdSONgrZufr3jYPNRTaT1gYkv-agMDIxf2Qu5f0pGzIZ8t6XvGAIWLUplUdGqWh246N5b-uWZJRgZ-oVJP_fdq8RkqUGjeA9Qjw/s320/kintsugi-bowl.JPGjj.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">See the cracks in it. The imperfections. There's even a piece missing. Not every crack can be mended, I suppose, but the bowl is still beautiful. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Imagine running your finger over the thin gold threads holding the broken pieces together, mending them. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You may never be able to use this as a soup bowl again - because of the missing piece - but think of all the things it still can hold. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">On page 165, they describe the sacred rhythm or spiritual practice of "visio divina" - "divine seeing." </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Contemplating art - like looking at this picture - is a spiritual practice you can do anywhere. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">They write, "Let's try it. Pick an image. It can be art on your wall, or you can pull up something online, or head to a local art exhibit, or visit an outdoor mural. Settle in. Ask God to reveal God's self through the work of art. Rest your eyes on the image and drink it in for several minutes. How do you feel? If you are in this image, where are you? Are there words that arise from this practice? What is God showing you?" </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Why don't you try it? </b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-19744610657370559332022-05-20T06:00:00.002-04:002022-05-20T21:31:36.799-04:0027 To My Body<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oh, my. This chapter is so powerful in and of itself that my words will only get in the way. So I'll keep my comments brief. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you are someone who has had, is having, or know someone who has health problems, this chapter is for you. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's a love letter to your body. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>It starts out saying, "Sometimes, I hate you. You ache. You get tired sooner than I'd like to admit. You wake me in the night for no good reason. Your cells duplicate at unpredictable rates. New gray hairs and fine lines and silver stretch marks show up out of nowhere. You let me down just when I need you the most" (p 156). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Further down the page, it says, "Yet here we are. This flesh and bone. These cages. These places of freedom and constraint" (p 156). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>It's beautiful and terrible, don't you think? </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>These words - "This flesh and bone. These cages. These places of freedom and constraint." </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>These bodies of ours - imperfect, flawed, beloved. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">With the passing of each day, our bodies bear the marks of time and love and grief and life, marks worn deep into our skin. "This is the beautiful, terrible evidence that we have lived" (p 158). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are these imperfect, fragile bodies. This flesh and bone. These cells that sometimes duplicate for no reason whatsoever. This skin that is stitched together with scars and stretch marks and fine lines. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed is the body because it is a home. Not just for us, but for those who love us (p 159). </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">At the end of "A Blessing for the Body" on page 159, she writes, "And sometimes you need to stand in front of the mirror and take off all your clothes, and remember that this body, your body, is God's home address." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So that's my suggestion for today. Do that if you can. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And if you can't, stand in front of the mirror and read <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps+139&version=MSG" target="_blank">Psalm 139</a> -- click here for Eugene Peterson's "The Message" version, which is dear to me. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's a snippet: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" id="en-MSG-6642" style="background-color: white; position: relative;">Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="indent-1" style="background-color: white;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="position: relative;">you formed me in my mother’s womb.</span></span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="background-color: white; position: relative;">I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="indent-1" style="background-color: white;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="position: relative;">Body and soul, I am marvelously made!</span></span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="indent-1" style="background-color: white;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="position: relative;">I worship in adoration—what a creation!</span></span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="background-color: white; position: relative;">You know me inside and out,</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="indent-1" style="background-color: white;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="position: relative;">you know every bone in my body;</span></span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="background-color: white; position: relative;">You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="indent-1" style="background-color: white;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="position: relative;">how I was sculpted from nothing into something.</span></span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="background-color: white; position: relative;">Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="indent-1" style="background-color: white;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="position: relative;">all the stages of my life were spread out before you,</span></span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="background-color: white; position: relative;">The days of my life all prepared</span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span class="indent-1" style="background-color: white;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Ps-139-13-Ps-139-16" style="position: relative;">before I’d even lived one day.</span></span></i></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-10536341681613920992022-05-19T06:00:00.001-04:002022-05-19T06:00:00.191-04:0026 Say Potato<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"Say potato." </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">That's clearly </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">the most fun sentence I'll write all week! :-) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hopefully by now you've already read today's <i>Good Enough</i> chapter about the writer who joined Tinder, found herself caught in the monotony of small talk, and created her own version of the "Turing test" to expose the Tinder bots masquerading as real people. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the midst of the getting-to-know-you small talk, when she was suspicous of a bot, she would say, "If you're human, say 'potato.'" </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's the thing: "Bots don't have a programmed response for something so absurd" (p 153). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Funny, right? But what does any of this have to do with anything, you ask? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well, remember the post from the other day about <i>The Velveteen Rabbit</i> and <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/20-becoming-real.html" target="_blank">becoming real</a>? That's what this is all about: the fact that AI (artificial intelligence) can only approximate human behavior to a point because humans are flawed and <i>good enough</i>, not perfect. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"None of us is perfect, and somewhere in those imperfections we can be found" (p 153). I like that: we are found in our IMperfections. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I find profound beauty in these words: "Maybe it's true that it hurts a little to become real and risk intimacy with a stranger who might become that friend we're looking for. Or we might be the one they need at that precise moment. Perhaps it is our real job to help one another become more real, one absurd question at a time" (p 153). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are we, opening our hands in readiness to risk intimacy, to receive the gift of friendship and give it in return (p 154). </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Remember <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/23-being-honest-about-disappointment.html" target="_blank">this post</a> and it's "A Good Enough Step" about letting your pen do the talking and naming what your soul wants to say to God? Well, if you haven't finished that yet (I'm pointing the finger at myself here), maybe circle back and work this into that. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or, follow the "A Good Enough Step" on p 158 and "Write a terrible poem about longing for a friend." One way or another, express the disappointment and longing growing inside of you in an attempt to name it and then let it go. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-28004988304581906842022-05-18T06:00:00.011-04:002022-05-18T06:00:00.174-04:0025 Give Up Already<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Jesus tells his disciples, "<i>When </i>you fast ..." </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not "<i>If</i> you fast ..." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or "<i>Consider trying</i> a fast ..." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or "<i>Maybe, someday, you might wonder about </i>fasting <i>on a strictly intellectual level ..." </i>(p 146) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It was assumed that fasting would be "a regular part of the Christian life" - a way of "setting aside comfort in order to pursue God" (p 146). </span></p><p><b style="font-family: georgia;">"Fasting is simply giving up something for a time. ... It's not really meant to have any concrete benefit except the experience itself" (p 146). </b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And somehow this act of giving up something for a time will lead to freedom. Or so Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- famous theologian, pacifist, and Hitler-assassination-attempter -- says. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">It doesn't seem like it should compute, but, as they say in the book, "... there is a strange liberation in letting things go" (p 146). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">My most recent experience of fasting is I suppose what you could call a "forced fast." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's now been over a year since I officially (or at least legally!) drove a car since, in the state of Ohio you can't drive for 6 months following a seizure, and I can't seem to go 6 months without having another one. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And while I initially deeply lamented the loss of independence that goes along with not being able to drive when you live in a small town with no mass transit system, I am SO GLAD not to have to worry about a car anymore. I mean, it's still there with flat tires and a dead battery </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>(yes, I do know that I shouldn't have let that happen, but that's not the point here)</i>, </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">but, for now, I don't have to worry about strange noises or overdue oil changes or the number of lights lit up on the dashboard because who knows when I'm going to be able to drive again. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I mentioned this newfound joy to a friend who was, of course, driving me somewhere: that maintaining a car is one of the things I dislike most in the world and that I'm glad not to have to worry about that right now. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And you know what his reaction was? Jealousy! He too dislikes car maintenance and actually was envious of me because I don't have to do it during this forced fast. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I am loving this "strange liberation" in letting this thing go. </b>I do miss my freedom to run to the store when I need something, and my ability to drive for many hours at a time on a road trip with my sister who hates to drive. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But even as I lost that freedom, I have gained many hours spent in the company of people I love as they cart me around from place to place. (And as we sit in my driveway chatting at the end of the journey - my favorite part!) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>More than anything else, it has loosened my "attachment" to doing things MY way at MY pace on MY schedule. Which is another "strange liberation." And that's a habit I hope will stick if/when I start driving again. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I wholeheartedly agree with our authors when they write, on page 147, <i>"... something quite lovely happens when we let go, when we live with less, when we give up something dear. Somehow, we make a little room for God to take up more space. And wherever God is, that's where we want to be." </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What is your experience of fasting? Love it? Hate it? Never tried it? Did it lead to a strange liberation or just endless frustration? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>God, give me courage, give me strength, give me hunger for You. Let this set time of less be a chance for more of You. Let this fast be an entrance into the discernment I desire, the divine presence I'm longing for, and the hope to will what You will, oh God, to be who You've called me to be </i>(p 148). </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-91651190933105062702022-05-17T06:00:00.009-04:002022-05-17T06:00:00.181-04:0024 Kindness Boomerang<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Remember when committing "random acts of kindness" was a movement sweeping the country? All the drive-thru or Starbucks orders that were unexpectedly paid for by the person in front of you? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Before I moved to Portsmouth, two friends helped me pack up a whole bunch of stuff, so I took them out for dinner ... only to finish the meal and find that someone else in the restaurant had already paid the bill for all three of us! I didn't even see anyone I knew there! </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm a fan of acts of kindness, but I prefer them with some purpose or intentionality. For example, the person behind you in the coffee line probably can afford the coffee they're buying ... but I bet the barista behind the counter could use a few extra bucks. If you want to show someone kindness, perhaps that's the person who really needs it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>The act of kindness I received wasn't random. I don't think it was, at least. It was intentional - probably someone's anonymous way of saying thank you. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate's story of her parents' anniversary tradition of picking out a grumpy couple and paying for their meal -- that's an intentional act of kindness. It is specific, a reflection of the specific way Jesus loves us. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I love how she describes it: "It is a strange kind of magic. It feels good to be kind. Even when it's done in secret" (p 140). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Perhaps it's the secret part that matters the most -- a "mysterious act of kindness" (p 144), an act of love done for someone else with no way of returning the love. The only thing one can do is receive that act of love and be blessed. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>"Kindness is a restorative act done for the good of another, handing over something valuable without the expectation of return. And yet, it does offer us something. There is this unexpected boomerang effect. The day gets better -- not always easier, definitely not perfect, but a bit <i>sweeter" </i>(p 142). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>So now we are beginning to understand blessing itself. The overabundance of delight that flows from the heart of God into our own. The excess of bliss that descended pure as a mountain stream to create all that is, and sustain it by love alone. Blessed are we, carried along in that flow. To love and give and give again. And when we are spent, to be gathered up and restored so we can love again. Bless again. And be blessed. Because that's why we were made in the first place" </i>(p 143). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm curious: </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What else could I be curious about other than what mysterious act of kindness you did after reading today's chapter?! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Let us know in the comments how you made someone's day a little sweeter! </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-32815296173990156042022-05-16T06:00:00.002-04:002022-05-16T17:58:11.366-04:0023 Being Honest About Disappointment<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What do you do with the loneliness of disappointment? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>None of us can escape disappointment. It's part of the human condition. We all know the hollow loneliness that accompanies it. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>But what do we do with it? </b>Do we ignore it, stuffing it down deep inside us somewhere, hoping it will never resurface again? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or do we boldly look it in the face, name it for what it is, and talk to God about it? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In this entry, Kate and Jessica step into the often murky waters of THEODICY, which at its most basic form is a "philosophical and/or theological theory which attempts to explain how a good God could create a world containing so much evil." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Of course, Kate and Jessica are going to advocate for praying in situations like this. (As do I!) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But what kind of prayer is best? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>According to Father James Martin - whom Kate posed this exact question to - "Prayer begins with acts of unbridled honesty. <i>God, this isn't enough. God, I can barely make it through the hour</i>" (p 136). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">We think it would be lovely if, as the book says, the world was run by formulas: I am good therefore I will thrive. I am loving therefore no one will leave me. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But a quick look at the world around us -- wildfires out West, a mass shooting in a Buffalo grocery story, a shooting at a church in California, my gentle friend's scary and confusing messages about the neurological problems he's having as part of post-surgery complications -- and we can see there is no formula at work. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Aside from donating money to these tragedies and checking in on my friend, prayer is the only other thing I can do for them. And probably the best thing I can do for them. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But before I get to "all the good things that can come from prayer - trust, acceptance, connection, occasional miracles," first comes <b>radical honesty</b>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As Kate says, <b>"The more genuine our prayers, the more freedom there is to acknowledge the reality of all a life with God can be."</b> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Since my own major health crisis, my prayers have gotten more honest. MUCH more honest, to tell the truth. The book of Psalms is full of laments, and I have gotten to know them well: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? </b>(Psalm 13:1)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Since I led my first retreat on prayer, many moons ago, I have always advocated for people to be honest with God in their prayers. God can take it. God has heard it all. You're not going to upset God or shock God or scare God away. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And I love how Kate and Jessica end this entry: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">" ... tell God. All of it. Fiercely. Even the unanswered prayers. Don't leave out a single one. Even if you sit among the broken things and your confidence seems to shrink with each day, know that you may feel lonely but you are not alone" (p 136). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are you, dear one, when you don't know if you can pray. Because even that very thought is the beginning of prayer, whether you know it or not </i>(p 137). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I notice that I am increasingly interested in people who have a high level of self-awareness and understanding. Sometimes that's due to natural emotional intelligence. Sometimes it's the result of intense spiritual self-examination, sometimes under the influence of a spiritual director. Often, it's the result of a good therapist. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Whatever the source, I can't help but think radical honesty is at the heart of it all. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In some sermon a couple of months ago, I shared this quote (by Ruth Haley Barton, I think): <b>"You'd be surprised what your soul wants to say to God right now." </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What does your soul want to say to God - right here and right now? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Check out "A Good Enough Step" on page 139 - "When was the last time you let yourself be honest with God? Really, radically, honest. Not just in your disappointments, but in your hopes too. What do you hope for that you are afraid to say aloud out of the fear of being disappointed? ... Tell God everything. ... Settle in. Take a deep breath. Trust that God hears, that God hasn't left your side. God can handle it all." </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-21692830577028877592022-05-15T06:00:00.001-04:002022-05-15T06:00:00.191-04:0022 Loving What Is <p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have a dear friend who is about to turn 40. Conversations with him lately are peppered with references to and jokes about middle age. (Seriously, he's already talking about retirement with great sincerity!!) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As one who is on the northern side of 40 myself, I grin at his comments. But I also appreciate the way he is acknowledging this significant marking of time. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I don't think either of us would say, "The best is yet to come" in the sense that life up until now has just been a warm-up for the "real thing" that's to come. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I guess I shouldn't speak for him! I wouldn't say that, at least. I was never one of those kids who, when they were 8, wanted to be 10 or when they were 10 wanted to be 13 or were 13 but dying to be 16. I've generally been content to be where I am in the moment. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Perhaps this is on my mind because I'm still thinking about the book I referenced in the last post ... but there is something about middle age that allows a different perspective: finally reaching a point where it's OK to love what is, instead of mourning what isn't or never will be. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate Bowler's own stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis in her mid-30s propelled her into this category. She writes, <b>"When we start to have more past than future, we must allow ourselves a gentle honesty. Just as God numbers the hairs on our head, so too our days on earth can be counted. This ends, and part of accepting our finitude is bringing greater appreciation to what's gone, and what still may be" (p 130). </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This same friend I mentioned earlier recommended the book they reference on p. 130, "Being Mortal." (I get a significant number of my book recommendations from him!) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate recalls a beautiful story in the book about asking people with whom they wanted to spend their time. The results? Kids wanted to spend time with their families, teenagers with their friends, and the guy in his thirties wanted to meet Bono. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"But then the closer people grew to death, the more they wanted to spend time with their closest friends and family again. The horizon had expanded from childhood to adulthood, and then shrunk back to that beautiful, precious core" (p 130). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>She concludes, "When we have more past than future, our desires may change to love not simply what <i>might be</i>, but to love <i>what already is</i>. Our nearest and dearest. The people we couldn't get rid of if we tried. The ways our bodies and minds have carried us. The <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/04/6-small-things-big-love-friday-042922.html" target="_blank">small moments</a> of a single day" (p 131). </b></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Blessed are you who are attempting to love what is here, what is now. You who recognize the wonder and pain looking at <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/04/3-mourning-future-self-tuesday-042622.html" target="_blank">life's rearview mirror,</a> at those things that are gone. The person you were. The quickness and sharpness of a body that didn't tire as quickly. The relationships and jobs and aspirations. The people you can't get back. Blessed are you, holding the gentle compassion that wraps memories in grace (p 132). </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm curious: </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Has anyone tried the "A Good Enough Step" on p 133? I'm trying to find a block of time in my day to spend on this - the idea of letting your pen "talk to you about what is here, right here and right now. Write letters and words and phrases; write the chaos that is your life." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Then lift your pen, start in a new place, and let your pen make a word salad of desires. All of it. The things you have long hoped for, even the things that are not over. All your heart's deepest and most hidden longings."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And once you're done, you can look at that page, and with Kate and Jessica, say, "And all of this - past, present, and future - is still you. It is the particularity that is your life. Precious beyond rubies. Utterly irreplaceable, indelible." </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-85642371875161962142022-05-14T06:00:00.001-04:002022-05-14T06:00:00.198-04:0021 #blessed<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ah, this is a favorite topic of Kate Bowler's - something she has written about before. <a href="https://uscatholic.org/articles/202201/blessed-are-you-when-you-dont-feel-blessed/" target="_blank">Railed against,</a> you might even say. (I think she would, at least!) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">We tend to add the #blessed hashtag to the good things in our lives: the perfect pictures on social media or when we (not so) casually mention our promotion at work. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Since we're 21 entries in, I'm guessing that you've noticed the entries all include a blessing of one sort or another. And often, those are the parts of the chapter I love the most. In the video promo for this "Good Enough" book, I think she even mentions something about believing in blessing the crap out of everyone. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And she really means that with all her heart ... but not in the "partially nude bikini shot" or "Christmas card professional photo shoot where everyone is looking directly at the camera wearing matching chambray tops" kind of way (p 122). </span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">When she says #blessed, she means it the way Jesus uses that word: </span></b></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Blessed are you when you are at the end of your rope. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">When you are exhausted and despairing. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">When tears are your food, morning and night. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">When your stomach grumbles and your mouth is dry. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Bless are you who forgives the person who never said sorry and who definitely didn't deserve your forgiveness. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">You who are ridiculed and humiliated, left out and left behind. The timid and the soft-spoken. The one who works toward peace instead of the easy road of vengeance. (p 122) </span></li></ul><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">(You can read Jesus' exact words here in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+5%3A1-16&version=NRSVUE" target="_blank">Matthew 5</a>.) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate and Jessica write, "These beatitudes should make us uncomfortable. Because God is celebrating who we try so hard <i>not</i> to be. <i>Dependent. Needy. Desperate</i>" (p 123). </span></b></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">These words are not for the folks who are "succeeding" at life. That's not who Jesus was talking to. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">"He was looking into the eyes of <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/14-for-exiles.html" target="_blank">those who felt like the misfits</a>. And then used everyday experiences of weeping, hungering, thirsting, suffering as a badge of belonging" (p 124). </span></b></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">In an interesting moment of serendipity, I am 98% of the way through a novel (audiobook, for the record) that is told from the perspective of someone who feels very out of place among her friends, as she looks at their perfect lives that seem to have turned out the exact way they expected whilst wondering where she has gone wrong because NOTHING in her life had turned out the way she expected. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Spoiler alert: it turns out no one's life turns out the way they expected. And while they may not say it out loud, no one really thinks they have it all together. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Spoiler alert for the book, I mean, ... but maybe also for real life too. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">The longer I listen to the book, the more I want to slide into Kate Bowler's DMs to recommend it to her! I think she would love it - it's a beautiful if profanity-laden meditation (and I'm using that word loosely!) on the reality of life and when you feel like a misfit and how beautiful and raw and honest conversations can connect you to another human being unlike almost anything else. I have chuckled out loud numerous times as I've listened while doing my dishes but also (carefully) wiped my eyes as they filled up with tears. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">The left out will be welcomed with a warm embrace. The forgotten will not just be remembered but honored. The ones who don't have it all together are exactly who God is inviting into the kingdom. In fact, the whole kingdom belongs to the ones on the edges. This is the upside-down kingdom - directly available to those of us who don't have it all together (p 124). </span></i></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Blessed are we. The imperfect and don't-have-it-all-together. God's beloved.</b></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm curious: </span></b></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maybe go back and re-read "A Blessing for When You Don't Feel #blessed" again (pp 125-126). Are these words you need to hear? Are they words someone else needs to hear? I think twice now I've sent pieces of the blessings from this book to those who are struggling. Maybe share a paragraph or two from this one with someone. Or, maybe get them their own copy of this book! </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I love this snippet from the Madeleine L'Engle quote on p. 127: "I have suggested that it is a good practice to believe in size impossible things every morning before breakfast, like the White Queen in <i>Through the Looking Glass</i>. It is also salutary to bless six people I don't like much every morning before breakfast." </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jessica and Kate write: "Your turn. Think of six people you don't like very much. I certainly didn't have to look too far. Bless them. Even ... <i>especially</i> ... if you don't want to" (p 127). </span></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-50425189569527193562022-05-13T06:00:00.002-04:002022-05-13T10:59:25.956-04:0020 Becoming Real<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Will you stop reading this blog if I tell you I'm not sure I've ever read <i>The Velveteen Rabbit? </i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or, if I have, it's been so long ago, I don't remember it. Nor do I have a particularly nostalgic feeling about it like so many other people do. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">With all that being said, I can still appreciate the beauty of the story - the beauty of being made real through our wear and tear. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVkvW2czrJtnNPlAgKs8QLrZlXjCYeCKHuG7gHIq3vZ0Vg3_fXxlkUL9hFD5ShblJT1kPfn_bMailM5MTGAWU1GsiIdsp0MFme7C-x_Ukzvlto68wUXP8nXvJ9faOb6i7sVZb_HLb3s1n-sDfv1zZ93nFQx01DstddM5gKeReOq0wwGJ_st7-UVDfntw/s1074/14595220387_86e0753db6_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1074" data-original-width="1009" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVkvW2czrJtnNPlAgKs8QLrZlXjCYeCKHuG7gHIq3vZ0Vg3_fXxlkUL9hFD5ShblJT1kPfn_bMailM5MTGAWU1GsiIdsp0MFme7C-x_Ukzvlto68wUXP8nXvJ9faOb6i7sVZb_HLb3s1n-sDfv1zZ93nFQx01DstddM5gKeReOq0wwGJ_st7-UVDfntw/s320/14595220387_86e0753db6_b.jpg" width="301" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And the beauty of these words: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>As the Skin Horse explains, “Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” </i>(pp. 118-119)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What may be even more beautiful is the story behind the story - that the author, Margery Williams came to love literature through her father who died suddenly when she was seven. Kate and Jessica write, <b>"In her stories for children, there is a tender ache for the lives we’ve lost and the loves that endure. We are changed, and we often wish it were otherwise"</b> (p 118). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">We've already talked about </span><a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/04/3-mourning-future-self-tuesday-042622.html" style="font-family: georgia;" target="_blank">"Mourning A Future Self"</a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> and the difficulty of knowing that even as we have to say goodbye to something we will deeply mourn, there is still a chance to say hello to something new which is born in its place (</span><a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/05/18-hello-goodbye.html" style="font-family: georgia;" target="_blank">"Hello, Goodbye"</a><span style="font-family: georgia;">). Kate and Jessica are no strangers to looking deeply into loss and pain in a very real and genuine way. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As they have in so many of these entries, Kate and Jessica don't try to erase or resolve the tension inherent in being human. Indeed, as Kate writes in another book, there is <a href="https://katebowler.com/no-cure-for-being-human/" target="_blank">no cure for being human</a>; no way to escape death and suffering without also squeezing out any sign of life. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>There will always be "a tender ache for the lives we've lost and the loves that endure. We are changed, and we often wish it were otherwise." </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Perhaps we, like the Velveteen rabbit are getting a little shabby from the wear and tear of loving and living which may not sit well in an Instagram world. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">But we are not coming undone; rather, we are becoming - becoming more real than we ever have been before through that tender ache. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Blessed are we who are becoming, who have lived so long in this strange state we call time that it shows. We are changing, and that's how we know we are alive. </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>...</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>You may not recognize yourself in the mirror. But this is what we hoped for, right? To live and love. To be loved. To have our experiences show on our faces and in our cells. It is the real life of Jesus in us, being made visible, as all our seams show" </i>(p 12). </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Pastor Allison </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">What does the story of "The Velveteen Rabbit" mean to you? Was it a favorite growing up? If so, who read it to you? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">From the "A Good Enough Step" on p 121: </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Find a minute alone. Take out a photo of yourself as a child. Allow yourself to appreciate what was - who you were. All the pain you had yet to know or perhaps already did know. ... But then also take time to tell your younger self all the way that living and aging and suffering have carved out within you a space for reality and more love and compassion for others. Be effusive! If a prayer comes, pray it. If a poem appears, write it. If you want to create art, do it. </i></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-62850664844502173742022-05-12T06:00:00.006-04:002022-05-12T06:00:00.190-04:0019 No Reason Whatsoever <p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I love learning new words. And it only took 2 paragraphs from today's <i>Good Enough</i> entry to teach me a new word. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Hyper-instrumentalization. The obsession with use.</b> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"It's a symptom of the pragmatism that has wound its way into almost every part of American culture. How useful was your day?" (p 110) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This raised an interesting question for me: do I ever do anything I'm not good at or for no good reason? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've already told you that I'm an over-achiever by nature and nurture <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/04/a-prelude-sat-042322.html" target="_blank">here</a>, so of course, I don't! And I have inherited the competition gene from both of my parents (though each would say the other is more competitive!). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I suppose that without even realizing it, I have fallen into the habit of hyper-instrumentalization -- thinking that everything I did needed to be done well and have some purpose to it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>But I do have a playfulness streak in me - a streak that I think has gotten stymied in the last couple of years for any number of reasons. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In fact, not long ago, I was reading a book with some friends, and one of the chapters was about the spiritual discipline of playfulness. And I puzzled over what silly, playful thing I could do on my own. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And then I remembered that I have some friends who adopt street cats. I had previously drawn portraits of their cats with their names in fancy cat-themed scrawl. And my friends framed those portraits and hung them above their food bowls, six inches off the floor, in the corner of their dining room!!! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Well, it occurred to me that they had adopted a new cat, and I was behind in my commissioned portraits! (I use that term very loosely!) </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>So that very night, I pulled out my sketchpad, pencils, and markers, and scrolled through my phone to find pictures of the cat, and got to work, sketching away. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>It was so silly and delightful that I decided that (of course!) I should ALSO sketch portraits of my friends, so they can hang those up too! </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And since I know you're dying to see the pictures, here you go: </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7ayAxQGBTxan6XkWXSN20gqIXczK_IN77jQj2HShKRvrc7_8oCJv61xhrc0dyIJngc-BnKv_-weB963ptsFV2uY3tsfFygv5xf5EgAFBJxUPaEAi-eqk84TH_AddMdgiUKiC2n54aMHOMgD0SoyFLhqpgerV8xpmGoSEsO4dznzyoQacLJKbtysu7A/s1512/image0.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7ayAxQGBTxan6XkWXSN20gqIXczK_IN77jQj2HShKRvrc7_8oCJv61xhrc0dyIJngc-BnKv_-weB963ptsFV2uY3tsfFygv5xf5EgAFBJxUPaEAi-eqk84TH_AddMdgiUKiC2n54aMHOMgD0SoyFLhqpgerV8xpmGoSEsO4dznzyoQacLJKbtysu7A/s320/image0.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghB45nJMW_pMkaWSMu7578vpakKpHOyJP8Y_V0dV5MwM59PExixfuTEllz2g5U5JGqVAcwo6w1RaLDTc2H2Xr1_HtwujdD0L_hlsBr1JoPPjP66MejyAeHTVusUGLFqVTPQcCi1lxedYm0ZhSaivkO-cigb8H0EW4FQuy_yPv5AFeM45r7v3tq-69grA/s1512/image1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><br /></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Cat portraits to hang over their food bowls. Does it get any more <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/04/2-buoyed-by-absurd-monday-042522.html" target="_blank">absurd</a>, really? </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Probably not. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>But what joy I experienced simply in the trying, knowing that what came out may not be high quality, but that my friends would love it anyway. <br /><br /></b></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghB45nJMW_pMkaWSMu7578vpakKpHOyJP8Y_V0dV5MwM59PExixfuTEllz2g5U5JGqVAcwo6w1RaLDTc2H2Xr1_HtwujdD0L_hlsBr1JoPPjP66MejyAeHTVusUGLFqVTPQcCi1lxedYm0ZhSaivkO-cigb8H0EW4FQuy_yPv5AFeM45r7v3tq-69grA/s1512/image1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghB45nJMW_pMkaWSMu7578vpakKpHOyJP8Y_V0dV5MwM59PExixfuTEllz2g5U5JGqVAcwo6w1RaLDTc2H2Xr1_HtwujdD0L_hlsBr1JoPPjP66MejyAeHTVusUGLFqVTPQcCi1lxedYm0ZhSaivkO-cigb8H0EW4FQuy_yPv5AFeM45r7v3tq-69grA/s320/image1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It turns out being silly and playful comes a lot more naturally for me when other people are involved. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In fact, after chatting about this very subject (playfulness and absurdity) with another friend who says he excels at making irresponsible and silly decisions, I may just have found my spirit guide to shedding my habit of hyper-instrumentalization. </span></p><p><i style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Blessed are you who see the art in absurdity. Because when you think about it, life is unexpectedly and terribly and wonderfully absurd. So why don't we just embrace it? (p 113) </b></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What's the most absurd thing you've done lately? I</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">f you can't think of anything, what about asking a silly friend to do something absurd with you? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have to say my perfect recipe for absurdity is a group of friends and one of the antique stores here in Portsmouth. There is no limit to the odd, silly, or bizarre things we can discover! </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-91332911352097814232022-05-11T06:00:00.001-04:002022-05-11T06:00:00.182-04:0018 Hello, Goodbye<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kate and Jessica say that there are two simultaneous truths (p 104): </span></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">When something changes, a world we love ends <br /><br /></span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Change happens every day. </span></b></li></ol><span style="font-family: georgia;">And so we set about trying "to solve the sorrow inherent in change by giving it up entirely. Routines become a bulwark against the threat of pain" (p 104). </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I suppose we all sank a little deeper into our routines in the last couple of years during the pandemic. We probably found even more security and safety in routines when everything else felt so uncertain and uncontrollable. Routines we can manage. Routines make us feel like we're in control. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And while that may be appropriate for certain seasons of our lives, holding closely to our routines so as to avoid suffering ("the order of nature") will ultimately squeeze out life itself (p. 104). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maybe this is part of the COVID-19 hangover/sluggishness a lot of us are feeling these days. Maybe the routines that served us well before are no longer serving us in the same way. Maybe it's time to find a new routine. But we're not sure how. And that makes us afraid. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Using what we've been learning about in this book, maybe it's time to exchange our old routines to create a routine <i><a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/04/1-regula-sunday-042422.html" target="_blank">regula</a></i> we can live with hands wide open and that allows space and room for the Spirit to move in a wild and uncontainable way instead of routines that leave us clenching our fists in fear. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But there's something else we should consider too, Kate and Jessica say. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not every change is a bad thing; it's just a thing that happened. What made it good or bad depends on how we responded. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">How did you respond during the pandemic? How did you respond the last time you got bad news from the doctor? When the relationship with you loved one was broken? When you lost your job? </span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Did we become better or worse? Holier or crustier? Softer or quicker on the draw?" (p 105) </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">We may have had to say goodbye to a lot of things in the last couple of years; but what have we said hello to in their place? </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">"May you, dear one, find comfort from places and people you don't anticipate who remind you that you are not alone. You may be saying goodbye to something - someone dear ... but something new will be born. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">I cannot promise it will replace what was there, and I won't try to tell you it will always be better. But, I do believe that we can find beauty, meaning, and truth right where we stand" (pp 106-107). </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm curious: </span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Are you one of those people who gets stuck in their routines as a way to avoid the pain that sometimes comes from changing? How has this entry made you re-think that way of living? Might you be ready to CHANGE something - maybe something small - just to see how you might surprise yourself with your response? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In their "A Good Enough Step" on page 108, they suggest finding a tiny notebook and creating a list of things you're saying goodbye to - honoring each thing for its importance to you and your life. Where is the "beauty, meaning, and truth" right where you're standing, even as you're saying goodbye? </span></p><p><i style="font-family: georgia;">"Truth makes love possible; love makes truth bearable."</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> (Rowan Williams, </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">A Ray of Darkness) </i></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4418558855530431649.post-80275117029030895572022-05-10T06:00:00.028-04:002022-05-10T06:00:00.179-04:0017 Hopping Off the Treadmill<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm reading a book called, <i>This Here Flesh</i> by Cole Arther Riley with two of my favorite people in the world. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">We started a Lenten discipline of reading a chapter of a book together and Zooming on Thursday afternoons to discuss it, and then we decided to keep going, post-Lent. <i>This Here Flesh </i>is our second book. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the first chapter called "Dignity," Riley writes: "Our dignity may involve our doing, but it is foremost in our very being - our tears and emotions, our bodies lying in the grass, our scabs healing. <b>I try to remember that Eve and Adam bore the image of God before they did anything at all. This is very mysterious to me, and it must be protected</b>" (pp 11-12). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've been marveling over those last two sentences, especially the "very mysterious to me, and it must be protected" part. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In our do-ing oriented world, it's hard to imagine the mystery of being beloved because we are human be-ings, not human do-ings. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">She also writes, "We cannot help but entwine our concept of dignity with how much a person can do. The sick, the elderly, the disabled, the neurodivergent, my sweet cousin on the autism spectrum—we tend to assign a lesser social value to those whose “doing” cannot be enslaved into a given output. <b>We should look to them as sacred guides out of the bondage of productivity. Instead, we withhold social status and capital, and we neglect to acknowledge that theirs is a liberation we can learn from.</b>" (p 11) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And then she summarizes the chapter by saying that the very idea of being valued and given dignity only for what we can do or produce, "I disagree with those who say we bear the image of God only, or even primarily, by living out our faith in our labor. The thought is reductive, and it evidences that we are content to exclude those who will never work, who may never speak, who no longer make or do. Their image-bearing is not dispensable; it is essential." (p 12)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I say all this because I can't think of a better argument to, as Kate and Jessica say, <b>HOP OFF THE TREADMILL. </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And remember that yes, the world will keep spinning without us. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And that we are <b>"loved, loved, loved. Not for what we do, but for who we are"</b> (Bowler, p 101). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pastor Allison </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>I'm curious: </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the "A Good Enough Step" section, Kate and Jessica write: "Take a moment to be curious. What are the non-negotiables of your day?" </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, what ARE the non-negotiables of your day - the things you can't live without, that day isn't complete without? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's a chance, they say, to hop off the treadmill ("the myth of hyper-productivity or of bottomless energy or need-to-say-yes-to-every-request-that-comes-your-way may not be serving you like you once thought" p 102) and re-define the non-negotiables and to make room for them <a href="https://goodenoughsecondpres.blogspot.com/2022/04/5-building-good-day-thursday-042822.html" target="_blank">in the jar of your life</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0