9 The Foundation

" ... we are built on a foundation not our own" (p 51). 

Do you ever stop to think about all of the people who contributed to making you you? From your parents to your teachers to your coaches to the authors of the books that have shaped you and the writers of the music that soothes you? 

We are built on a foundation not our own: "With a divine mud pie, God shapes and molds us in God's likeness .... The Master Builder whose carefully poured foundation is what we build on top of now. It certainly feels like a template for the rest of our experience" (p 52). 

Instead of needing to claim our right (as Western American Christians) to be the architect of our own destiny, we can instead rest in the incredible relief and assurance that "Our only job is to build on what we've been given, and, even then, even our gifts we can trace back to the creativity, generosity, and foresight of others" (p 53). 

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." - Sir Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke (p 55) 

Pastor Allison 

I'm curious: 

From "A Good Enough Step" on p 55 ... 

Whose foundation are you standing on? (They include a list to get you thinking.) 

Take a minute to whisper a prayer of thanks for your foundation. Or, if you are able, send them a note of gratitude. 

8 When Good Things Become Burdens

Welp, here we are: week 2 and day 8 of 40(ish) days of learning about what a "good enough" life and faith look like. And I suppose it's not an accident that Kate and Jessica return to the place where we started: with a new reflection on the regula we are all hopefully building. 

I'm not sure I've ever considered the idea that good things could become burdens, but the example of Kate's friend Rachel who thought praying could only be authentic if she was on her knees is compelling (pp 45-46). 

Kate and Jessica conclude: "Our ideas become so rigid that they are held up over all other considerations. We adopted them thinking that they could help us live, but our rules can't anticipate every circumstance, or meet every rising need. They just aren't flexible enough, smart enough, or compassionate enough. After all, a rule can't see you, or know you, or respond to you"(p 46). 

When they put it that way, I completely understand! This explains the (biblical and modern-day) Pharisees and Sadducees in a nutshell! 

When they return to the idea of regula, they remind us that "The little habits we create with God's guidance will actually be made to fit us. Fit me. Fit you. The particular you, in this particular moment" (p 47). 

Their discussion about the idea of the yoke (which helps to carry burdens) that is made to fit over the neck of a farm animal in a way that fits only that particular animal reminds me of a sermon I heard at a colleague's ordination service. The preacher talked about how the stole that some pastors wear (like me) around their necks every Sunday is a representation of this same yoke, a reminder of our call to serve others in the way we have been shaped and designed to serve. In a way no one else has been shaped and designed to serve. 

I appreciate their reminder that we are called to create habits that fit us - instead of borrowing someone else's habits - and that "the point of spiritual practice is not simply carry more, try harder, do better. It fits. It's easy. As Jesus says, 'It's light, I swear'" (p 48).

(Also, the footnote at the bottom of the page is a delight!)

"But You say that Your yoke is gentle and easy. And if that is true, may I see these small habit as opening a space for transformation. That instead of building walls around me, You erase the barriers I've built around who You are and how I should respond" (p 49). 

Pastor Allison 

I'm curious: 

Check out the list of "excitedly absurd rules" they include on page 50. 

What are your favorite absurd rules or laws? 

Here's mine, one I need to be particularly aware of: It's illegal to wear a fake mustache in an Alabama Church. (Someone please tell me the story of how this law became necessary!! And if you don't know, please make up a story and drop it in the comments!!!)  

Read more absurd laws from around the world here! 

7 Asleep on the Job

Whoa. 

I'm used to hearing Jesus say, "Why are you so afraid?" That question alone is asked multiple times throughout the pages of Scripture by God in various ways to various people through various means. 

But when Jessica and Kate write, "Jesus might have said, instead, 'I thought you knew me,'" well, that just grabbed on to my heart and wouldn't let it go. 

It reminds me of the experience I had Wednesday night during our time of solitude and silence. We're in week 2 of gathering in the sanctuary Wednesdays from 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. and being silent together. (The sanctuary is plenty big enough to spread out and feel like you're alone!) 

I set up candles on the communion table to watch and to light, then add some papers for prayer requests, a guided reading for a Scripture passage, and a guided prayer to reflect back over the day. 

Last week, I picked this passage from Mark 8:22-29 ...  

They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t even go into the village.” Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 

“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Then I added the questions: who is Jesus to you? What your relationship with him? If you could ask him to meet you in your deepest need, what would that look like? 

And I thought about how important it is to know the answer to that question, to know what images come to mind when we think of God, to be able to articulate the kind of relationship that we have with God. 

Kate and Jessica talk about all the things the disciples had seen Jesus do ... and yet, they were still "incredulous" when he appears to them post-resurrection (p 40). Are we too still incredulous? 

Seeing that we ourselves are reading this book in the season of Easter -- the weeks between Easter and Pentecost -- this seems like a question we should linger over longer: who do you say Jesus is? 

And then they ask: Why is it that we so often have "a picture of who we want God to be?" (p 41) And "how we want God to act?" (p 42) that may not match up with what we know of God? (We're getting dangerously close to idolatry again which we already talked about earlier here.) 

We worship a God who falls asleep during a storm. Who calls us to "love the stranger and foreigner and enemy. The one who leads us into chaos. The one who heals some but not all. ... And the one whose presence remains but whose absence is always before us in this broken world. We marvel at the God loves us and stays by our side, regardless of how little we understand or how often we wonder if our savior is asleep" (pp 41-42). 

There's a steadfastness in that that I love, like the "little way of love," that we talked about yesterday.

They don't try to answer the "why" of the questions we're asking; they simply accept that God is bigger than us and so much more than we can ever comprehend. 

"Oh God, comfortable would we be if You gave us formulas and answered prayers and realized hope. But You call us beyond comfort. ... May again and again we be awed by Your presence. That even when we feel like we've hit rock bottom, may we recognize we have fallen into Your arms because there is no place so deep or so dark or so scary that Your presence cannot reach." (p 43). 

Pastor Allison 

I'm curious: 

In the "A Good Enough Step" on page 44, they write: 

"Let is surface - that fear that is just below the surface, masquerading as frustration or irritability or tension. Let it come forward to your mind and sit with it awhile. Then put it into a prayer - something very specific and simple that says, "God, please take over all of this, just for today." Rest. 

Why don't you give that a try today? 

6 Small Things, Big Love

"There are many acts of great love that are great because they are massive, monumental, and earth-shattering. 

"And some are great because they are incremental. Each small act adds up to something really spectacular. 

"Small acts, great love" (p 35). Small acts are good enough to express great love.

Welcome to "the little way" of love. 

In the late 1800s, Saint Therese - knowing that she would die at a tender, young age - wrote: 

Love proves itself by deed, so how am I to show my life? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers, and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love (p 36). 

I started writing this post three different ways, then deleted them all because nothing I could say would have made this simple truth any simpler; my words would have just gotten in the way. 

Lord, help us "to remember that love isn't always in grand gestures or extravagant gifts, but in the small, faithful acts. Help [us] to remember it is in the showing up, in the work behind the scenes, in doing that which won't get us recognition. The one who is first in and last out. The generosity of time, resources, spirit. The one who leaves flowers in her wake. 

"This is the long faithfulness that can change the world" (p 37). 

Pastor Allison 

I'm curious: 

At the end of the chapter, Kate and Jessica refer to Galatians 5:4-6 -- here it is from "The Message" version of the Bible: 

"I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love." 

Those are two interesting sentences to put side by side (what I put in bold). Which do you spend more time thinking about, interior love or exterior love? Which do you feel more capable of? How do they work how in hand? 

And I love the words of the Adam Lindsay Gordon poem they quoted: 

Life is mostly froth and bubble, 
Two things stand like stone, 
KINDNESS in another's trouble,
COURAGE in your own.

What do those words mean to you? 

5 Building a Good Day

“We need to learn how to structure a day that is rich in meaning and joy-producing activities. … How we spend our time defines who we are. There is no magical future. Today is our future” (p 29).

How do you structure your day?

Hopefully by now you’ve got a good enough regula going: some routine for reading today’s Good Enough chapter and this Good Enough blog post and leaving a Good Enough comment.

It may not always happen at the same time every day, but hopefully you’re creating a sacred rhythm of carving out some time and space in your day for time spent with God in prayer and study.

You’ve got to be thoughtful about this because, as they say in the book, a day is a limited thing, only as big as a mason jar (from the opening illustration on pages 28-29). So you’ve got to decide what Big Stones and Small Stones will fit in your day.

If you’re reading this in the morning, don’t start planning today yet. Instead, think back over yesterday. (There’s a sacred rhythm called the “daily examen” that can help with that. It’s a favorite evening ritual of mine.)

If you’re reading this at night, think back over today.

What big loves (big stones) found their way in to your jar? Which ones didn’t but you wish they had? What little loves (little stones) found room to wriggle their way in?

Or, did your jar seem so full of unwanted things (shards of glass and sand), there was no room left for loves, big or little?

What meaningful and joy-producing activities do you wish had been a part of your day? Why weren’t they? How can you change that tomorrow?

I appreciate the point the authors make toward the end of the reading, that in some seasons in life, our jars may be very small, and we may only be able to fit a few things into them. Again, as someone who is living a more limited life now because of health concerns, I cannot cram as many stones into my jar as I used to. (Well, I could, but I’d probably give myself a seizure.)

Some days, it’s good enough to only have a few stones in our jar. 

“To be human is to accept that we are limited and the more honesty we have about that, the better” (p 31). 

(I love that. If you do too, you should read Kate Bowler’s excellent book, No Cure for Being Human.)

Let your big loves in first. Prioritize them. Then let the rest come as they will. That’s good enough.

From “A Prayer at the Start of the Day” (for the early birds among us!):

You are the kindness that runs to find me wherever I have wandered off to. You are the faithfulness I don’t have enough of. You are my safe harbor in the midst of the storm. And in that quiet place, speak gently to me of what needs to change in order for Your freedom to free me, Your love to care through me, and Your faithfulness to strengthen me.” (p 32)

Pastor Allison

 

I’m curious:

From page 33: “Think about the day you’ll have tomorrow. Is there anything you can cross off or kick down the road? Don’t crowd your day.”

“What are your big loves? Allow them to take up space.”

“Then, do it again tomorrow.”

How we spend our time defines who we are. 

Thoughts? Questions? Thoughts on my questions? Share them with me in the comments!