Ragamuffin ~

One of the first things I learned this morning, between walking my dog and sipping my coffee and deciding if I could get away with this messy hair on a Saturday, is that Brennan Manning died.

I was sitting on the couch when I found out, and I burst into tears.

I never met him. I heard him speak only once, and that was years ago in a small college-town auditorium where some friends and I were stashed away in the cheap seats, so far from the stage that his small frame was barely visible.

But his dog-eared, highlighted and underlined books are tucked into every shelf space in my home.

His words are carved into quiet, internal places I return to when I need to hear the voice that reminds me that I am God's beloved child, that we all bear that identity.

Brennan Manning was one of the first Christ-lovers who helped me to see a life of faith with new eyes, with a new heart; not as an endless, duty-filled list of assignments: to do, to do more, to do better, to do it all with great strength and without fail.

Instead, he invited me to see myself as he saw himself, as a ragamuffin: a bit bedraggled, a bit scruffy, a bit of a mess. Not the kind of person marked by perfection and sought out by power and influence and beauty; but rather, a person marked by a growing awareness of their belovedness, an awareness that comes from letting God come a little closer, and then closer still, over time, and finding in that gritty intimacy, all that a life of faith can bring: famine and feast, brokenness and wholeness, waiting and wonder, disappointment and hope, death and life, every bit of it held by a God who has come so near that I get to call him "Abba" ... daddy. 

I'm so grateful I was introduced to Brennan Manning, to his faith, to his heart, to his journey. I'm so glad to have his books in my home, his words tucked away in those quiet, internal places.

"My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ, and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it." - from The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning

God bless Brennan Manning, God bless us in our missing his presence. God bless us in living into our belovedness.

Mourning Into Dancing ~

You have turned my mourning into dancing

You have turned my mourning

You have turned my mourning into dancing

You have turned my mourning

You are clothing me with gladness

You are clothing me with joy

My sack-cloth and my ashes fall away

(from Psalm 30)

There are so many things that draw me to the liturgical church. The prayers, the creeds, the seasons and the colors, the vestments and the candles, the rituals. The repetition, the sacred tending to ancient practices. The Lectionary. It is brilliant to me, that in the course of a few years, years A, B and C, a person in one of many liturgical churches will read the same scriptures and pray the same prayers as those being read and prayed by seekers, believers, skeptics and wonderers all around the world.

Every few months, to help sketch out a few musical ideas for my parish, I get a sneak peek at the upcoming scripture readings, the Lectionary. The information is available on a thousand websites, but I am old school and like the feel of paper sifting through my fingers, so I wander now and then into the parish office and reach into the oak drawer where Hazel stashes the bulletin inserts. I get to look ahead at the next several weeks of readings,  I get to experience a sense of the the arc, the trajectory we're on with the story God is still telling. I love knowing what's coming up. It's better than getting my OPB member magazine in the mail.

A few months ago, as I was leafing through my newly absconded readings from Hazel's stash,  I saw that a reading from Psalm 30 was fast approaching: "You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy."

The timing seemed sweet, as this bit of scripture had been winding itself through my heart and mind for awhile.

A practice of mine is to try to craft simple songs for worship and meditation that are drawn from scripture. This is something I've enjoyed for years, much of the enjoyment coming from the thought that, with putting scripture to music, there's a decent chance that the words won't be dumb.

This particular passage, the one where mourning is transformed and we're given something new to wear to the dance we're invited to, this passage was the one I'd most recently spent time with at my piano, noodling around until my fingers found their way to a singable melody.

Something about where God has me right now, something in the tone and tenor of God's voice in my ear, is all about turning: fear into courage, resignation into openness, mourning into dancing.

The thing is, I'm not much of a dancer. I can't imagine it's my clunky frame or awkward social anxiety or general lack of coordination below the knees. Nah. Couldn't be me. I blame my grandfather.

He was a Conservative Baptist preacher for over fifty years. I loved the twinkle in his eye, the way he called me "sugar", his broad shoulders and the funky eyeglasses he wore. But this sweet man knew how to wield a leash, and he rarely loosened his grip on the one he had on my childhood, even from miles and miles away. Dancing, movies, cards, all were 'tools of the devil' according to grandpa, so, while we got away with a few hands of Old Maid now and then, movies and dances were simply not allowed, and dances were particularly characterized with vivid warnings as the playground of all sorts of naughtiness, so, on the off-chance that grandpa would somehow find out, dances were strictly off-limits.

I'm sure he meant well.  I know I mean well, when I'm being bossy and controlling. Oh, I mean well.

I do recall sneaking into one school dance for just a few minutes during the sixth grade. The evening included a mix of parent/teacher meet-ups, a display of student macaroni-art in the hallways, while in the gym, the 4th, 5th and 6th graders were sock-hopping to some 70s top-twenty hits played on cassette tapes over a crackly audio system. I ditched my mother and the macaroni art-gallery and wandered into the gym with a friend, you know, just to see what the cool kids were doing, and to see who my crushes, Tim and Tony, were dancing with. I leaned against the wall, took in the lights and the music and the naughtiness all around me, dropped my jaw like a baby bird reaching for her first fat worm, and waited for the ground to crack open, swallow me up and hurl me straight into the belly of hell. Yea, a tight grip on that leash my grandpa held. I'm sure I looked over my shoulder to make sure he hadn't walked into the gym at that very moment. I fled and never set foot on a dance floor again.

Until now. I've been asked to receive and respond to God's kind invitation. I've been asked to allow for my mourning to become my dancing. What might this transformation look like to a girl who doesn't know how to allow for one to become the other? How does a girl find her way from the wall to the dance floor? What does a girl do, when she doesn't know how to dance?

She takes off her sack-cloth called shame, and her ashes called sorrow. She allows them to fall away. She straps on her sparkly shoes called gladness, she buttons up her fancy dress called joy, she unties the leash that’s kept her tethered in fear and she stumbles onto the dance floor, where she’s met with a strong hand and a kind voice to help her find her footing. She leans into the music, lets herself be held, lets herself be led, and lets herself begin to dance. Step, step, turn. Step, step, turn. Mourning into dancing. Ashes into gladness. Sack-cloth into joy.

I’m not looking over my shoulder anymore, afraid that grandpa will show up and see what naughtiness I’m up to.  He died several years ago, well into his 90s, after giving his life away in ministry. And knowing what he knows now, freed himself from his own tethers, I can only imagine that he's been dancing all the while.

Out of the Dark, Into the Light ~

This little purple-striped beauty broke through the ground in my garden a few days ago, just in time for Easter weekend.

She did what the season of Lent asked of her: she tucked herself away in the dark for awhile, she let herself be nourished by the stillness around her, she allowed for some isolation and waiting. And then, as if she could hear the church-bells start to chime out their glad anthem, she sprung out of her slumber in time as if to say "aren't I pretty?!"

Personal attentiveness to the season of Lent is a newer idea to me. I'd heard of such a thing when I was younger, but since these Lenten tales usually involved the surrender of something chocolaty, I just couldn't see myself going that far.

Awhile back, when I found myself dipping my toes into liturgical waters, waters with spiritual practices I found intriguing, I discovered I was more open to Lent and how it might look in my own life.

I didn't know where to begin. I asked around, I listened to homilies, I read a few tiny guidebooks, I listened to friends. The sweetest guidance I received came from a friend who told me that Lent could be whatever I wanted it to be, that it didn't have to be dictated by anyone else. She also offered that I didn't need to limit my thoughts to "giving something up". She offered that I could enlarge my Lenten practice, my experience, and hopefully my spirit, by "taking something on".  That's more like it.

This season, I did do a bit of letting go, but I let myself take something on as well. My tiny yard has quite a few bare spots asking for some attention, and I'd rather crowd out weeds than pull them, so I decided that I would plant one bulb every day during the season. If I did the math, that's 40 bulbs in 40 days.

The bulbs were planted at night, on my last run out to the yard with Maggie, right before tucking in. I liked the idea of planting in the dark, it felt holy and symbolic, like a true act of faith. What I didn't consider is that a girl with bad eyes who cannot see in the dark and who has the slightest kink in her short-term memory, would likely forget where she planted last night's bulb.

Now, with Lent behind us, this little purple-striped beauty will have others popping up out of the ground to join her in the garden. I imagine she's looking around for them just like I am. Since their planting was staggered, their debuts will be also. Here's where I might mention how great it will be that, with Lent lasting 40 days, I get to be dazzled by the sight of 40 separate plants showing off in my yard each morning, once a few more weeks go by. Here's where I might confess that Mags and I didn't make it out to the yard for planting every night. A few of my other Lenten practices were not marked by perfection either. Just check my Starbucks receipts and my recumbent bike odometer and you'll know what I mean. Ah well, the practice of Lent, the grace of Lent. Imperfection. I imagine that is the idea.

And yet, with Easter and its celebrations just a day away, there is more color in my yard, more color than there was when my priest gently applied ashes to my forehead and reminded me that I come from the dust. There is more hope, hope that comes from seeing what some waiting might give birth to. And there is more light, because even in the dark, it simply will not be overcome. It will, in good time, break through.

Thresholds ~

I've been carrying a card around with me for the past few months, a card from my dearest friend. The front is brightly spattered with primary colors, and a chalk-lettered cheer from a kiddo named Eli. It reads: "God, give me guts".  On the back, my friend wrote about waiting, change, and threshold crossing.

'Threshold' has not been a big part of my vocabulary. I mean, I've heard about brides being carried over the threshold (is that still a thing?) My oldest connection to the word comes from a memory that my middle sister vehemently denies to this day, but when we were little kids, maybe 7, 9, I asked her where babies come from, and she said "it starts at the wedding ceremony when the preacher says "you may now kiss the bride", and by the time the bride gets home and her husband carries her over the threshold, she's pregnant". I figured out all on my own that something musta happened between points A and B, but I just left it there.

There have been some threshold crossings for me lately. I do believe I am being carried over these, carried by words of kindness and courage and protection offered by people who know me best. And by God, who has been nudging me to go ahead and take some long waited for, long anxious-about steps. Bob Bennett, in his song, "Mountain Cathedrals", sings: "I'm eager and afraid at the same time to move from where I've been." Me too Bob, me too.

Thresholds can be so frightening, there's just no telling what eyes will see or a heart will feel on the other side. And yet, thresholds can hold all kinds of hope. Hope that the new thing that God may be doing in a life will be be just the cool drink of water we were so thirsty for (Isaiah 43:19)

The friend who sent me this card, also sent me some quotes from Irish poet John O'Donohue. I had the sweet privilege of hearing John speak a handful of years ago before his untimely death. He was at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, and between the beauty of that sanctuary and the beauty of his words and brogue, I experienced a deep stillness. Since then, seeking out his books is a constant line item on my 'to-do' list. His name is scribbled on that post-it-note-in-my-head of authors to search the aisles for when I visit Powell's Books. He's also on my go-to list when I am shopping Amazon.com and need just a few more bucks-worth of stuff to get free shipping. (I am one of those suckers who doesn't get the arithmetic of this arrangement enough to understand that the more I spend the less "free" the shipping is, but if I get John O'Donohue out of the deal, I'm in).

I seek out his voice whenever I can. Just yesterday, the morning felt hard, heavy, anxious. I got to work and popped an old Krista Tippett/On Being interview with John into my ear ("The Inner Landscape of Beauty"). A girl can get just about anything done when she's got an Irish poet calming her down.

In this interview, John was talking about thresholds. There are lampposts I look for to guide me in my spiritual becoming. When I come across the same idea over and again from different voices and encounters, what I see in that is a little light in the dark to help me find my way. Maybe God gets it that I can be the tiniest bit dense and distracted, so God kindly and gently brings me back to what I need to consider. And where I am now, given the light I've been offered,  I am considering thresholds.

In this interview, John writes that the etymology of the word "threshold" comes from "threshing", the word used to describe separating the grain from the husk.

(side note - I love discovering the origin of words. Had I a chance to do it over, I'd go to school to earn a degree in etymology. Given the economy, I still may work in an insurance cubicle, but I'd have that sweet diploma)

He goes on to say that a threshold becomes a place where we move into more fullness. And that the act of crossing a threshold allows for the healing of patterns of repetition that keep us caught.

There are reasons we get stuck, reasons we stay stuck. Reasons, good reasons, we decide to be more afraid than eager to move from where we've been. It serves us in some way. If nothing changes, nothing changes, and that can be like a heavy down quilt on a bone chilly night. Comfortable.

The steps I've taken over some thresholds lately have been encouraged by the threshold-crossing I see going on around me. I watch, either up close or from a distance, people I care about deciding that comfortable isn't so comfortable after all. To be brave instead of paralyzed. To choose healing over defiance. To be grain instead of husk.

A card from a friend, a cheer from a little boy, a truth from an Irish poet. Sometimes the simplest things can open a door that has been jammed shut for a lifetime.

 

I am pretty sure at this point in my life that my middle sister was mistaken about where babies come from.  But things do look and feel a little different on this side of the threshold, so I'm watching for more light from those lampposts to see what is trying to get born.

This Miserables Year ~

I’ve made an intentional choice this year to take on some misery, to allow heartbreak and desolation to be my daily companions.

I’m finally reading Les Mis.

I’ve seen the Broadway musical, watched the Hollywood movies, rented the 25^th anniversary PBS special, worn the Cosette t-shirt and sung ‘On My Own’ at the top of my lungs with my puppy dog staring at me curiously and whispering “oh my God” under her breath.

It was time to read the book.

I took a stab at reading it several years ago. A friend of mine is a voracious reader, and we were lamenting the lack of time or opportunity to be in a book group. So, we made up our own. We were meeting up for coffee once a month anyhow, so we decided to invite Monsieur Hugo to join us.

It turns out I like the idea of a book club.

The actual reading and preparation, the pressure to enter into the discussion, not so much. I was able to fake my way through the first few meetings, letting my friend do most of the talking, while I nodded thoughtfully and sipped my latte. But a few meetings into it, she began to press me for my insights on the classic story of law, grace and redemption. I knew I was busted when the best I could muster sounded something like this: “um, well, I really liked that part when that guy went to that place and saw that thing.”  We kept meeting for coffee after that, but Les Mis went back on the bookshelf.

I saw the newest film version this past Christmas. Hugh Jackman had me at “my name is Jean Valjean!” My sister brought her newly purchased e-reader to town for the holidays, and though I’d pledged to never support such a device, certain that I would not be one to contribute to the demise of the indie bookstore, there I was on New Year’s Day, in line at the B&N big-box, setting down the cash for my own.

Les Mis was my first e-book purchase. Successfully downloading an e-anything is cause for cake and balloons at my house, as I am not the savviest techie girl. So when I saw these beautiful words, ”download complete”, I ran my fingers over the smooth screen bearing the tiny Hugo image, fiddled with the back-light, figured out how to tap-tap just right to turn a page,  and dove into 1815 France.

I am reading Hugo on the bus. I have a short commute, but filling my head with his delicious and extravagant words before I settle into my gray-walled cubicle is a fantastic way to start my work day. With the jostling of the bus and the challenge of reading with tri-focals, I picked a font and a type-size that brings my e-reader version of Les Mis in at 4268 pages. That’s a lot of misery.

I ride the bus to work 18 days each month, so at 20-ish “pages” per day, I’ll be done by the end of the year.

I have never been a big fan of signing up for anything that may take a year to finish. I’m a little bit prone to distraction, a little likely to move on to something else, more of a starter than a finisher.

But that’s another thing I want to be intentional about this year, I want to finish something I start. It always helps to get from one side of a hope to the other with the buddy system.  You know, a walking partner, some sort of accountability check-in, a person to tell your best-kept secrets to. What’s daunting becomes do-able. 4268 pages becomes 20.

With Jean Valjean, Fantine and Marius, the naughty Thernardiers’ and the beloved Bishop riding the bus with me every day, this feels different, like it is going to get done.  I am going to finish Victor Hugo’s “Les Mis” by the end of the year.

I’ve never been so happy to be so miserable.

 

 

Nightlight ~

There’s a light, there’s a light in the darkness
And the black of the night cannot harm us
We can trust not to fear, for our comfort is near
There’s a light, there’s a light, in the darkness

(Beth Nielsen Chapman)


There is a light, a light in the darkness.

I bought it at Ross a few weeks ago for $4.99. My first nightlight since I was toddling around in diapers. It’s crafted out of cut mocha-brown glass, and when darkness falls on my 830 square feet of living space, the mosaic pattern shimmers against the periwinkle color of my bedroom walls.

My need for a nightlight has come on slowly over the past few years. I’ve always been a girl who doesn’t mind the dark. Oregon is a good spot for me. I can be the tiniest bit grouchy when the temperature creeps up past 80 degrees. Give me some cloud cover, a little mist, a bit of sun playing hide-and- seek, and I’m just fine. I am comfortable under the steely-gray of a blustery sky. I savor a dark, chilly night with a blanket, a latte, and my puppy dog.

And yet, over the past few years I began to sense a change. The dark started to feel, well, really, really dark. I imagine there are a few reasons that account for this change: the “bad” news being “extra-extra-read-all-about-it-bad”, the false comforts I may have relied on showing themselves for the counterfeits they are, and the fact that I’m on the short list to receive my invitation to join AARP (hey, I’ll take a discount where I can get it, but really, AARP?! I’m there already?) It’s possible that some of the neurons firing around in my brain, the ones that have made me a lover of the cozy-dark are, how can I say this delicately? …changing.

I mentioned my unsettled night-time feelings to a friend, and she took me nightlight shopping. I plugged in my mosaic Ross-find late that night after everything in my house was tucked in. I loved how the reflection danced along the vase across the room, the mirror above my dresser, even the brushed nickel accents of the ceiling lamp. I settled in and went to sleep, easily, for the first time in several weeks. The shades, the shadows, the weight of the darkness didn’t bother me for the first time in many bedtimes. There was light.

A few months ago I went to see the ‘Narnia’ exhibit at OMSI. I was captivated enough by the maps and the movie props, the interactive displays and the life-size costumes. But Aslan, that good and wild lion, was nowhere to be found, his presence in the fantastical stories given hardly a mention. I expressed my disenchantment to my sister, who has read the C.S. Lewis books several times. I told her that all I really wanted was to walk into the exhibit hall and see Aslan; to hear his voice, to bury my head in his mane and to hear him say that all would be well soon enough. When I told her how I felt, she replied with a quote that may have come from Lewis himself: “Just because you didn’t see him doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.”

I’ve heard preachers declare that the phrase found most often in the Bible is “don’t be afraid”. My own version of an in-depth Biblical word-study (Google) tells me that the word “afraid” does appear over and again in Scripture. It shows up like this: “He was afraid”. “She was afraid”. “They were afraid”. I can’t imagine God the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit being fans of preaching to the choir, so “don’t be afraid” must have been words of comfort, encouragement and hope to fearful people.

“God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.” (I John 1:5)

God is light. There is darkness. That’s the tension we live in. There are shades and shadows; there is a weight to the darkness that we all encounter. And yet, I believe that in the dark, those good and wild words, “don’t be afraid”, aren’t so much a marching order but an invitation: “I know you are afraid, come to Me.” “I’m afraid.” “I know.” “I’m afraid.” “I know.”

The nightlight doesn’t make the bad news any better. It doesn’t change the truth that I’ve let myself be misled from time to time about where my comfort lies. And it doesn’t change the fact that I’m not getting any younger. And yet, the shimmer of the nightlight reminds my heart that God is present, even in the dark.

I don’t see Him, but that doesn’t mean He isn’t there.

God is light. And in Him, there is no darkness. None at all.

There’s a light, there’s a light in the darkness
And the black of the night cannot harm us
We can trust not to fear, for our comfort is near
There’s a light, there’s a light, in the darkness

For the Love of St. Francis ~

I took my 3-year-old terrier-who-knows-what-else-mix mutt to the park last Sunday for the Blessing of the Animals. Maggie’s been mine for about eight months now, and because she’s been such a gift, such a blast, such a comfort and source of laughter to me, I figured, hey, sure, we’ll do the Blessing.

The Episcopal tradition offers me an invitation to remembrances and celebrations that are new to me, and this is one of my favorites - a chance to thank God for the life of St. Francis of Assisi, and while doing so, to thank God for His creation, for the life of His creatures.

Um, yea, “creature” about sums it up. As the good Reverend approached, my gentle, fun-loving, scratch-my-belly-would-you-please puppy dog stiffened, growled, snarled and bared her teeth at the hand that would bless her.

I was mortified. I wanted to yank at her leash and make a quick getaway. I sifted through the excuses that quickly flooded my thoughts, all beginning with “she’s never done that before, I can’t imagine what…” I wondered what happens to dogs who bite the clergy. Sigh.

It didn’t go at all like I had planned. I didn't think the heavens would open and doves would descend, but I was counting on a sweet moment. I’d spent 45 minutes the evening before, brushing her coat so it would be soft and shiny. I got her to the park in time to run off some spunk, chase a few squirrels and sniff about the grass to find her spot.

I’d told her what we were doing, and while I understand she doesn’t know the meaning of my words, (I do realize she’s a dog), I do believe she understands my tone and she knew that this tone meant we were off to do something fun together. She had to know.

Yea, not so much.

When my eyes are open and I can see beyond what I am “seeing”, I find that there a story pictures, snapshots, collages everywhere. Any given moment can present itself like the next page in a pop-up book, springing off the flattened surface with nuance and color and dimension, revealing a bit of truth we may not have otherwise noticed.

I can be a little cranky sometimes, out of sorts, anxious. I would like to receive a blessing, a prayer, a kindness, a bit of light in the dark, a pathway out of a dead-end, but I can’t see beyond the present circumstance to understand that what I long for is actually happening. I can be like Maggie, not trusting that the hand that’s reaching toward me is good and kind, and bearing what I hope to receive.

The gospel of Luke records that Jesus, aching for the people He loved, spoke these words: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not.” (Luke 13:34)
　
Maggie would not. All the Reverend wanted to do was touch her gently on the head and offer a word of blessing. But Mags would not have it. She would not.

Sometimes we won’t either.

We stiffen, we growl, we snarl and bare our teeth at the One who would simply come near to lay a hand of gentleness on us, but… we… will… not.

She wasn‘t as animated as she usually is about the car ride home, she lay quietly on the passenger seat, and later that afternoon she rested her head on my lap, all “you still love me, don’t you?”, emanating from her big, brown eyes. I rubbed her ears and remembered the blessing the Reverend had offered Maggie, albeit from a safe distance, earlier in the day: “May the God of all creation bless and keep you, and fill those who love and care for you with joy and thanksgiving.” Amen. Yes Mags, I still love you.

We’ll try it again next year. The Reverend is willing, so am I. Hopefully Maggie will be too.

Receiving can be hard. “I will not” comes so easy. We all need another chance to give “I will” a try.

God bless St. Francis, who loved the Creator
God bless the kind Reverend, who loved my cranky dog
God bless Maggie, who got her blessing despite her behavior
God bless all of us, when we are growly, snarly, reluctant receivers of His goodness