Tag Archives: Everyday God

There is Love

28 Wednesday Oct 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care

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There is Love.... Glen & Kate

I promised myself that this morning, I’d begin writing November’s session of Everyday God, my once weekly (that has evolved into my once-a-month trickle)    contemplative prayer class.

The idea for Everyday God grew out of last year’s personal Ignatius retreat — and this year’s practicum need for spiritual directees.

Not too surprising, the class has brought no directees.  And instead, I sometimes feel like I’ve gotten into a little more than I bargained for, just like those Desert Fathers and Mothers who went out into the desert in the fourth century to find God and found instead they had a following of pilgrims clamoring for spiritual guidance on their own terms.

I am a poor twenty-first century  imitation of a desert mama.  Instead of writing for Everyday God, I’m again lost in the quiet world of blogging space.  And happily lost, mind you, with no desire to leave. 

The word ‘resistance’ comes to mind.  Maybe because the topic of resistance has been our latest curriculum stop for wandering, on my three-year journey toward receiving certification as a spiritual director.  It’s no small consolation to learn that my meandering ways are pretty normal, just the opposite of what one might expect, of someone who experiences their greatest writing thrills of dare-I-say ‘victory’ when in the company of angels.

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There is Love.... Kara & Joe

When I write on heavenly matter, words just flow, even when heavy and pregnant with eternity.  But rather than going to THAT scary place where I feel so lost and out of control, I choose what I tell myself is the safer sphere of blog and paper journals:  a place where I  choose my topics, a make-believe place where I  know WHAT I want to say and WHERE the steam of writing is going; though even here, within the reality of this web log, my writing often takes on a mind of its own, taking me places where I had no intent to travel.

I have a love affair with the written word.  Books, good writing —  wherever it shows up — is hard for me to resist.

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There is Love.... Kyle

Though this morning, far away from my time-hog-blog, I began to think that my love affair should instead be with the Incarnate Word.  And in some strange human way, it is.  This Incarnate Word is in my everyday life, much like a taken-for-granted-but-still-much-loved husband, who too often ends up receiving leftovers, playing second fiddle to the first violin writing spot of my life known as Bestamesta.com.  God.  That was not easy to write.

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There is Love.... Amy & Bryan

Am I just rationalizing when I confess, that whenever or whatever I write, or wherever I read good writing, that the Incarnate Word is in that too, where I experience or find there is love?

As I pondered this thought, I began hearing that haunting much over-used wedding tune of the Seventies, written by Paul Stookey for the wedding of his good friend Peter Yarrow —   two of the three-part harmony of Peter, Paul & Mary.  I took time to reacquaint myself with the song’s words.  And before I had even reached the lyrics ending, I knew these words, even unvarnished by the gloss of music, incarnated the Word who is Love, especially when my second fiddle Incarnate Word was seen in the role of husband.  The third stanza of The Wedding Song reads:

“Well then what’s to be the reason
for becoming man and wife?
Is it love that brings you here
or love that brings you life?
And if loving is the answer,
then who’s the giving for?
Do you believe in something
that you’ve never seen before?
Oh there is Love, there is Love.”

Paul Stookey created the Wedding Song then gave it away to Public Domain Foundation for the good of the public.  Thirty years later, the royalties from this one song have raised $1.5 million in charitable gifts.  In Stookey’s own words:

“Into every songwriter’s life comes a song, the source of which cannot be explained by personal experience.” 

Perhaps it’s time to stop resisting.

Belonging

03 Monday Aug 2009

Posted by in Prayer, Soul Care

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In honor of my 100th post, I joined Blog Oklahoma late yesterday evening. 

Before joining, I traveled through all seventy-one pages of blog descriptions of other members.  A dozen enticed me to pay a visit; three ended up on my blogroll. So I thought, “Why not”.  “I’ll come out and play.”  But other than this, I’m not sure what will come of my membership.

Memberships are funny animals.  In joining a club or society or whatever, we satisfy this inate desire to belong to something bigger than ourselves.  I belong to the AICPA and the OSCPA, though my life as a certified public accountant rests on an unlit back burner.  Yet I hate to drop this long-term affiliation, even though I’ve no dreams to ever practice again.  I confess:  I enjoy being on my husband’s payroll.

More recently, I joined the Oklahoma Country Master Gardeners.  Now this membership requires me to do something other than to breathe and pay money once a year.  Twice a month I go sit behind the county extension help desk, what I have affectionately renamed the ‘hope desk’, as my callers are always looking for a ray of hope.  When the phones grow silent, I visit with two other on-duty gardeners.  And when my phone rings, I listen to the caller’s latest malady, as I play a bit of plant detective to uncover the mystery of why this or that is not performing as expected.

We do have our pesky expectations, don’t we?  Expectations have sent me to question my local church membership.  The last three Sunday mornings I have played musical pews, to see if  I can find a better fit than where I currently ‘belong’.  So far, no dice.  Each church has its own personality, it’s own way of conducting the business of church, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m looking for that mythical mystical unicorn.  

I’m looking for a church that conducts less business and more church, at least during the worship hour. My biggest gripe about church is not the passing of the plate, or even the dreaded passing of the peace–a nightmare for introverts like me, and even some extroverts like my friend Laure who always dabs on a bit of hand sanitizer afterwards, just in case she got a little more than bargained for–but rather it’s the spirit-grating advertisements that come in the midst of the worship service.  We’ve prayed, sang a few hymns and then, low and behold, here come a few ‘announcements’ or two.  Ecclesliastes 3 teaches us there is a time for everything under the sun; in my book, commercials, even if related to the business of the church, should not reside anywhere near  a worship service.   To them, I say:  Be gone.  Find your own time and space.

Ironically, for this writer-wannabe, the perfect church service would be practically wordless — certainly no sermon or commericals.  Just music, a few chants, the barest of homilies.  I had hoped to find this animal alive at the montly Taize service at St. Paul’s Cathedral yesterday evening.  But what I remembered at 3 pm was gone by 5pm.  So it will be September before I can satisfy my curiousity.  And I hope,  this unmet desire to join with something bigger than myself.    

But make no mistake.  If Taize meets my dreams of church, I’ve no plans to join St. Paul’s.  And I hope the real members of St. Paul’s don’t mind.  But if they pass the plate, I’ll pay.  And if they pass the peace, I’ll play and even keep my hand sanitizer at home.  But mostly, I just want to pray, surrounded by a few others who mostly want to pray.

Come Holy Spirit.  Come out, come out, wherever you are.  To you and you and you, Trinity of One, do I truly wish to belong. 

Gentle Nudges and Whispers

22 Wednesday Jul 2009

Posted by in Soul Care

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I should be paying bills.  Or a whole host of other things.  But instead I write, surrounded by resting dogs.  Other than a few odds and ends, there’s nothing much on my plate for the rest of July.  It’s a good feeling to have my gardening ‘hope desk’ commitments fulfilled; and as I’m on a writing holiday from Everyday God, I’ve been enjoying some time for leisurely writing and reading.  

But yesterday, during a lull in phone calls at the ‘hope desk’, I was rocked out of my sweet lullaby to receive what may have been a small ”nudge’ of remembrance from Everyday God.   The three of us on duty know each other fairly well from last fall’s master gardening classes, as we shared a common table and counselor, though both are light-years ahead of me in terms of gardening knowledge. 

So we took advantage of the space to catch up on each others lives and gardens.   During a brief pause in conversation, one friend asked after Daddy’s health.  And while in the midst of sharing a short report of Dad’s good news, my other friend interrupted my story, in the hurried and breathless way that local weather forecasters preempt regular programing to inform its viewing audience that a tornado is breathing down their necks.  I confess to doing this too often myself, so I had no problem with her interruption.  I understand all too well how weighty thoughts can disappear if not given birth when ready to come into the world.

To my great surprise, she couldn’t wait to tell me that if I ever offered Everyday God again, she wanted to come.  Forgetting Daddy for the moment, I responded to her words, telling her I didn’t know what the future held with respect to this contemplative spiritual formation class I was mid-wifing.  But that I would definitely keep her in mind if I offered the class a second time.  I don’t think she thought any further of her words.  Her job was done; the weight was off of her and onto me.  And I was surely left to wrestle with the meaning of this unexpected source of desire.  Was this a nudge from God, a whisper to remind me not to become too comfortable in my life of leisure?   

If so, it worked.  Because this morning, and even a little last night, while pouring through Evelyn’s Underhill’s book Mysticism, I began to think about future lessons.  And even about offering the first seven sessions of Everyday God a second time around.  And the thought of both is so…comforting, so moving, so beautiful and lovely.  Though none of these words are an exact fit of  ‘it.’

But I am drawn toward these in the same way my friend is.  And not because I should do them.  I do too many things out of ‘should’.  But this I have done and would do out of the deepest of desires.  I want to.  And so, it’s time to go dash off a quick and breathless email to interrupt my friend Linda’s day, while the tornado is breathing down my neck, creating this burning awareness of the beauty of life within me.  And before the fear of it keeps me from birthing my own version of this whispery nudge.