Apr
29
I promise, I have nothing profound to say about cleaning house. Except that I love the clean openness of spirit I get when I banish the clutter and sit, as I am now, admiring tidy rows of books, cleared desktop, white walls, a shining floor. Maybe I can’t get “zen” enough to see the act of cleaning house as a fully spiritual experience, but I know what feeds my soul — and a clean office is right up there.
Apr
25
Last night, I was reading a commentary on the story of a woman who asked Jesus to heal her daughter and was met with silence. The writer who was parsing the Scripture said Jesus ignored this mother who, in her despair, had sought him out and that he did so in order to test her faith.
If that’s a true story and an accurate interpretation, I’d have a lot of trouble respecting the God-man we call Jesus. He sounds arrogant and capricious and not a guy I’d much like to hang out with.
This morning at Lake Forest Church in Huntersville, pastor Mike Moses recounted another story of Jesus performing a miracle healing. In this story, friends brought a man who was paralyzed and asked Jesus to heal him. Without waiting for the paralyzed man to ask for his help, without demanding that he repent or declare his faith or touch his robe or wash his feet or anything. Jesus pronounced the man forgiven and he was healed.
Mike said this shows how our own efforts to love and pray for people — even people who don’t believe — can result in a blessing in their lives (although Mike said it much more eloquently and maybe with a slightly different spin; but until the podcast goes up on the LFC website, you’ll have to live with my recollection/interpretation of Mike’s message). In other words, the Jesus that Mike talked about is a God-man who operates from unconditional love and compassion, one who is looking for opportunities and ways to heal us. That’s a God-man I can see myself following.
For years, I steered clear of religion precisely because of contradictions like this. Like Glenda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz in her first encounter with Dorothy, I kept asking, “Are you a good God, or a bad God?”
Sometimes it’s hard not to ask that question. Especially when religion has tried so hard to create God in our own judgmental, loving-with-strings-attached image.
Apr
21
On her Facebook page this morning, life coach and friend Marilyn Lynch Carpenter reminds me that my work effectiveness is impacted by the health of mind, body and spirit, then asks where I’m spending my time on mind-body-spirit fitness.
I wish I had a better answer.
Here is what I know about me: Mind and body fitness follow fitness of spirit.
If my spirit is not in a healthy spot, I don’t give my body or my mind what they need for fitness. I don’t walk. I don’t do yoga. I don’t sit on my patio and breathe in nature. I don’t find the joy in tearing tender lettuce onto a plate with avocado, goat cheese, sweet peppers, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, so I tend to eat things I’d rather not admit right out here in public. I feed my brain reruns of Law & Order instead of the books or music or movies that allow my spirit to flourish or give it something of substance to chew on.
It all starts with my spirit, then spills over into mind and body. And when I don’t nurture mind and body, spirit is fed in ways that promote dis-ease instead of health. So the cycle can become a downward spiral.
So I must start by spending time on things that lift my spirit: meditation, reading that inspires me, good companions, time under the sky, slowing mind and body with yoga, WDAV and WNCW (Bach and bluegrass work for me), rooms of people speaking spirit, a cat that sleeps on my neck.
When I start there, mind and body fall into place and work effectiveness takes care of itself.
What feeds your spirit?
Apr
20
I don’t really want to love everybody who crosses my path. But I love hearing from my favorite Purple Pastor that my M.O. is to love others wherever they are on their journey.
Loving others can be hard work. Unlike me, others are sometimes irritating, small-minded, negative, draining. Some of them wear size six jeans and their hair looks good no matter how humid it is outside. I’d rather nod and keep moving, lose their phone numbers, talk about them behind their backs. But it’s my business to love them.
To do that, I have to forget most of what I think I know about love. Love is not what Hallmark or Harlequin tell us. Love is a choice I make to be a force for good in someone’s life. It’s a decision I make to be a kind and loving presence, a source of support and encouragement. Love is not a feeling, it’s an action.
Love is not a feeling, it’s an action.
The feelings follow the action, of course. When I make a decision to be a kind and loving presence, I eventually end up with a kind and loving heart. And that is the power of love. Love changes everything. And it can only change things for the better.
Apr
17
I collect a few things. Books. Masks. Pitchers and creamers (question to self: what is it I long to pour forth?). Funky hand-made purses. People with problems.
Here’s what I’d really like to collect: Silence.
A friend, Michael Cogdill, commented on my first post about my friend Jane, saying it was a testimony to the power of her silence. He’s right. She couldn’t speak the final months of her life, yet the quality of grace and joy and serenity in her silence set the tone for everything that took place around her in those months.
At a recent Centering Prayer workshop, the following quote from 13th Century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi came up more than once: Silence is the language of God; all else is poor translation. I take that to mean that I am most likely to find myself fully in Divine presence when I am silent; and most likely to arrive at clarity when I listen to that silence.
Yet we’ve created a culture that doesn’t allow us our silence. We’re blasted with music when we walk into a mall or a restaurant. We’re so afraid of our own company that we plug ourselves into music when we walk or bike. We leave our TVs on all day long for background noise. Even in prayer, we are far more likely to speak than we are to simply rest there. Does God really measure the sincerity of our prayers by their volume or their length? Have we lost the ability to be still and know…
What are we so afraid of hearing if we listen to the language of God?
Apr
15
In an effort to keep my conscience — if not my side of the street — clean, I’ve heard myself say, “I’m sorry for anything I might’ve done that hurt you.”
A real-speak translation of that statement sounds something like this: I don’t think I did anything wrong but I’m willing to apologize if it will make this go away. I might also add: I accept no responsibility for any part I played in whatever went wrong. And I have zero interest in examining my side of the street to see what kind of junk might be piling up at the curb.
In thinking about this back-handed, easy-way-out apology, I looked up the word “apology” in my 1933 Roget’s Thesaurus (which falls into the category of things I’d grab in the event of a fire). For word geeks like me, it offers four options in nuance: excuse, vindication, penitence and atonement. Sounds like a lot of wiggle room in the word “apology” if I’m in the mood to rationalize and justify behavior.
Before I toss off an apology, shouldn’t I examine, not how the other person reacted to what I said or did, but what I actually said or did? What were my motives? What negative undercurrent might have bled through into my tone of voice or word choice? Was I judging? Attempting to control? Minding someone else’s business instead of my own? Unreasonable in my expectations? Irritated by traffic and taking it out on someone else?
Then, instead of plea bargaining with my conscience, I might decide to say, “I’m sorry I wasn’t very patient yesterday…wasn’t completely honest this morning…didn’t listen to your side before deciding I was right.”
Of course, if I make that kind of transparent and vulnerable apology, I’m also implying some intention to change my behavior. That’s a lot harder than “whitewashing,” “glossing over” or – my favorite synonym in my vintage Thesaurus — “helping a lame dog over a stile.”
Now aren’t you sorry you don’t have a 1933 Roget’s?
Apr
13
After calling myself a frequently lapsed pray-er in my previous blog, I am encouraged by a YouTube video of Frederick Buechner (see my “Read this now” page for a quote from one of his books) in which he calls himself a part-time novelist and part-time Christian. Buechner has always struck me as a deeply humble man, which has made him a full-time hero for me.
Apr
12
If I were going to start a movement, what would that movement be?
When I asked myself that question last week after looking into Seth Godin’s message on tribes, the word “prayer” popped into my mind. Not because I’m such a prayer guru that I have something to say that everybody should hear. More because I baffle myself by failing to pray faithfully, even when I see its power. I’m not the only one, I know, who wants to be something more than a frequently lapsed pray-er, who wants prayer to be something more than rote words and lukewarm habit.
The next night, as I sat in Centering Prayer, I understood that I don’t have to be a guru and I don’t have to have answers to engage people in a conversation about prayer. I just have to care enough to launch a conversation and keep it going.
More later…it’s lunchtime and I’m hungry…but I wanted you to know: I’d like us to talk about prayer. And I hope some of what is said will upset all of us in ways that challenge the status quo of prayer.
Apr
5
About 40 years ago, the song Alice’s Restaurant was an anthem for hippies who wanted the U.S. to get out of Vietnam. The end of the song (which is about 18 minutes long; youtube link below) talks about a handful of people walking into their draft boards and singing a few bars of the song. That, Arlo Guthrie said, could constitute a movement — the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre movement.
I thought of it today after watching the TED video (which, oddly enough is about 18 minutes long) of Seth Godin talking about his concept of Tribes . Godin suggests that each of us find something that matters to us and start a movement. All we have to do is connect with our tribe and lead.
Clue to finding your movement: Who are you upsetting? That’s where your potential to change the world lies.
If I were bold enough, what would my movement be? Godin gave his audience members 24 hours to decide on their movement, so I think I’ll take 24 and see where I land.
What about you? Godin believes any of us — all of us — have the power to start a movement. So ask yourself who you’re upsetting. If you were going to change the status quo and create a movement, what would it be?
