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Passing the test.

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Did you ever see Stan Lee’s TV show “Who Wants to be a Superhero”? The contestants were assigned tasks, but there was a hidden assignment that they didn’t know about. In one they had to get from point A to point B really fast – but there was a distraction. A young girl was on their route, crying loudly about how she was separated from her mom. Unbeknownst to the contestants, she was an actress – and this was the real test. The ones who passed the test that round were the ones who stopped and helped her. They didn’t worry about being late on their time – their focus was in helping.

How often do we notice what the real test is? How often do we stop and take time to help?

I admit I’m terrible at it. I have a lot of excuses why I can’t help.

I’m late getting to work. I have ice cream that is going to melt. I don’t know how to help. I don’t have the tools, the training, the time.

So I don’t stop. I drive on by. A lot.

When I do stop, I find that I actually do have everything that is required. I think it is going to require a cast, and really it requires a band-aid. I think it is going to require a therapist, and really it just requires a hug. I’m starting to think that I certainly don’t have to stop for everything, but the things I do get over my fear and stop for turn out to be things that are within my power.

Sometimes my problem is that I don’t want to get too involved. I don’t want to make personal connections. It is way too common that people I help start to see me as something other than a servant. They start to see me as special. They mistake the messenger for the message. They start trying to follow me instead of the One I follow. They ask for my phone number. They want to become friends on Facebook.

It isn’t me. It isn’t me at all. It never was me. I’m just the face that God wears sometimes. I’m just the hands that God uses sometimes. When they see me again, I’m more than likely just going to be me, plain old me, not special, not sparkly.

So sometimes I don’t want to get involved for me, and sometimes I don’t want to get involved for God. I don’t want people to mistake me being me as a slight. Because when God is working through me, it is really amazing. There is a connection. There is understanding, and healing, and compassion.

Me? I’m an introvert. I feel lost in a crowd. When I’m just me and the Spirit isn’t there, I’m not all that. I’m not bad, but I’m not what they think I am.

Sometimes I warn people if I think I’ll see them again. I had to do this a lot in college. The energy often isn’t there the next time. That energy doesn’t mean that “we are meant to be together.” It doesn’t mean that we should “hook up.” It doesn’t mean I’m going to be your guru or your girlfriend. It just meant that God needed me to help you right then, and I listened.

Does this mean I’m passing the test, or failing it? While I think it is essential to always point people towards God, I think it is also important to always be a vehicle for God. I’m not, always. It is tiring. It is hard. But then again, so is exercise, and I do that because I think I’ll get stronger if I do it. Perhaps this faith-walk is the same.

I still don’t think I’m going to stop to change out a tire for somebody, especially when I have just bought ice cream.

Praying in the storm.

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I’m trying to be calm. I’m trying to be accepting. I’m trying to not fight what is happening.

I know that all things work for good, for those that believe in God. This doesn’t mean that it is awesome all the time. Sometimes it is pretty awful. Jesus didn’t have it that great – beaten, flogged, crucified, abandoned by his friends- not a day in the park, there. But it had to happen. It had to happen that way.

I know that the more we fight what is, the harder things get. I know that the more we have to define things as “good” or “bad”, the harder it gets. I’ve learned that anger and grief are both just symptoms of not accepting the situation as it is.

It is easy to think such calm thoughts when you aren’t in the middle of the storm.

I’ve had a pretty stormy time the past week. I just had to spend $1700 on my car on unscheduled repairs. Yes, I’m grateful to have a car that works. I’m grateful that I have that amount in savings. I’m grateful that they were able to take 20% off, saving me $350. I’m grateful that they were able to provide me with a loaner car while it was being fixed. But I was trying to save up some money. I don’t like running things close to the edge financially. My parents did that. They were great teachers for what not to do.

Then I got stung by a yellow jacket. They’ve built a nest near my front steps, and spraying them has seemingly created even more of them. There is no easy way around them, so they have to be dealt with. I’ve called the professionals. This will cost $200.

Then my back went out. I exercise daily, so I thought I was basically guarding against such problems. Maybe I was just delaying the inevitable. Turns out I have a slipped disc. Turns out this is even more money for the doctor and for the x-ray. The money I saved on the discount for the car is going to be quickly used up.

I’m trying to be like Jonah. I’m trying to praise God in the belly of the whale. It is really hard. But I want to, and that has to count for something.

I think when Jesus was here, he came to understand how hard it is to be human. He came to understand that we are distracted a lot by pain and loss. It is hard to be grateful when you are miserable. But I think that is the secret. I think that we have to look around and see what we do have, instead of what we don’t have.

It is really hard.

Sometimes it is easier to be thankful for what isn’t – I’m not incapacitated. I’m not out even more money.

But this isn’t really a healthy path.

So I try again. I’ve got a husband who loves me and looks out for me. I’ve got a house that is cozy and comforting. I’ve found a new doctor who is kind and was able to help. I’ve got a doctor’s note so I can take the weekend off to heal some more.

And pain, strangely enough, is a reminder to pray, and that is always good.

One – Moebius strip

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If, as Carl Sagan says “The cosmos is also within us, we’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” (Cosmos)

And as we read in Luke 17:20-21 “ One day the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the Kingdom of God begin?” Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God isn’t ushered in with visible signs. 21 You won’t be able to say, ‘It has begun here in this place or there in that part of the country.’ For the Kingdom of God is within you.”

And Jesus also says “I and the Father are one.” in John 10:30,

…does that mean when we are praying, we are talking to ourselves?

Room at the table.

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I was in a pastoral care class last year. A guy from another church started talking about the Christian church today. He was really afraid for how far out the church had gone, trying to make it open to everybody. He was afraid that we “had pushed the boat out so far from the shore” that we couldn’t even call ourselves Christian anymore.

He was afraid that making the church “all things to all people” watered it down so much that the message was lost.

Deep down, he was afraid that anybody could do anything and still say they were Christian.

They could be women and want to be ministers. Not deaconess, not pastor’s wife, but honest-to-God minister. Women are supposed to support men in their ministry, not be ministers Women are supposed to be like children – sit down and shut up. They are supposed to cover their heads and be silent in church and be submissive to their husbands.

Or they could be gay, and not only gay but openly gay, holding hands with their partner in public. There is a bit of “don’t ask don’t tell” going on with homosexuality in the church. Some people are ok if you are gay, as long as you aren’t open about it. They may understand that homosexuality isn’t a “lifestyle choice” in the same way getting a tattoo is, but they still don’t want to see it. They want to at least pretend that you are gay, but celibate. They want to think that you have at least stopped acting gay.

While we are on the subject of tattoos, there is that too. For some people who go to church, they are uncomfortable with you saying you are Christian if you have tattoos. They know in the back of their heads somewhere that it is wrong. They can’t tell you the verse that mentions it, or explain it even if they knew it, but they know it is wrong, because they were told it was. So they want to close the doors to you.

I wonder how they would handle a gay woman with tattoos in the ministry.

The trouble is that Jesus didn’t give us any of those rules as to who was in and who was out. Those rules came from the Old Testament and from Paul. Not Jesus. Jesus leveled the playing field.

I wonder what their fear is? What are they afraid of if we open church up to everybody? If we are to find the lost sheep, who are we to tell this one that he isn’t good enough? This sheep is black, this one has a limp, this one is blind in one eye, this one has a strange smell, this one sounds different when he bleats. Sorry – you aren’t like the rest of the sheep that are here. You are out.

If Jesus calls them to him, who are we to stand in the way?

When Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes, he made enough for everybody there and lots left over. He didn’t feed just his disciples. He provided for everybody, no exceptions. Nobody was asked if they were worthy, if they were contrite, if they were holy enough.

Nobody was asked anything about their sins and what they planned on doing about them.

They were there for Jesus. They were there to hear his message. Jesus spoke to them all, and fed them all.

We are to do the same.

Instead of members of the church worrying about watering the message down by allowing “just anybody” to be a member, we need to worry about our own actions. Are we holding on to the bread, thinking it is ours alone?

Jesus hung out with the hooligans, the misfits, the has-beens and the never-was. He hung out with the outcasts, the lepers, the last on the list. He touched people he wasn’t allowed to touch. He broke all the rules.

He gave us a new kind of math. His cross is a plus sign, and an equals sign. Jesus is the centerpoint – where Heaven meets Human. Jesus is the epicenter, where God came down here, to be with us, as we are. No longer was God up there, out of reach, rarified and separate. No longer was there a division between God and us. This is the plus sign. This is the cross.

And he made us all equal – all forgiven, all blessed, all loved. We are all equal in God’s eyes. We are all his children, not the chosen few who look the part, but all of us, as we are, right here, right now.

Jesus made enough room for all of us at his table.

Stuck – cars and bodies.

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My car won’t start. I’m waiting at home for AAA to take me to the dealership to get this figured out. It has happened off and on for several years. It will get fixed, then stop again. It is a little annoying. I’m trying to use everything I’ve learned to adapt to this. Be calm. Accept it. Don’t fight it. See it as a lesson.

Maybe there is a good reason I’m being kept at home right now. Maybe something bad would have happened if I’d gone on my errands today. I’m trying to trust God. I’m trying to be thankful f

Meanwhile I’m thinking about other things. There is a possibility that I might be stuck for a long time. I’m not talking about my car right now. There is a possibility that I have multiple sclerosis. I have several of the symptoms. When I went to the eye doctor two years ago she noticed that my eyes twirl in an odd way. It is called rotary nystagmus. It isn’t a disease. It is a symptom. The ophthalmologist, in standard Western doctor way, told me not to look up anything about it. She didn’t want me to be scared. She doesn’t understand that not knowing is far more frightening than knowing. At least with knowing, you can name what you are up against. You have a plan of action once you have a name.

It could be a brain tumor. It could be multiple sclerosis. It could be a side effect of my bipolar medicine. It could be nothing. It could be either something really horrible, or it could just be the way things are and this just has never been noticed by any of my previous eye doctors, ever. That part is unlikely. I go to eye doctors at least every two years.

I was sent to a neuro-ophthalmologist. Then I was sent to get an MRI. Nothing bad showed up. I’ve had a thyroid test too – fine. There are now other symptoms. My fingers have a slight tremor. I have a pins and needles feeling in my arms occasionally. I have vertigo every now and then. Nothing stays long enough to be of real interest, until something else pops up for me to wonder about.

There is no cure for it, so early detection won’t do me any good. And, standard Western medicine being what it is, it treats the symptoms rather than the cause. That treatment alone is painful and has unpleasant side effects. So I pulled open “Prescription for Nutritional Healing” – one of my favorite how-to books. It is like an owner’s manual for the machine that is the human body.

Fortunately I’m already doing some of what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m doing water aerobics and yoga. I’m eating seaweed. I’m headed towards being vegetarian.

But the most important thing I think I can do is accept it. Whatever it is. Learn from it. Maybe there is something just over the horizon that I would miss otherwise. I’m mindful of the Chinese story of the old man, the boy, and the horse. I’m mindful of Rumi’s “The Guest House”. (I have copies of these in my Resources folder.) Everything speaks to the idea of not judging, of accepting, of trusting. Everything also speaks about being with and in the moment, the now.

Perhaps I will eventually get to the point where I can’t walk. My body will be like my car – unresponsive. I’m trying to be OK with that. I’m trying to be thankful for that. I’m trying to be open to the lessons that God needs me to receive like that.

I’m breathing into it, just like with a deep yoga stretch. Just like with pigeon pose, I’m breathing into it, breathing into all the tight places.

On Communion, and worthiness, and leftovers, and grief.

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Some people won’t take communion. They will go to church and say all the creeds, but they won’t go to the altar rail. When asked, they say they aren’t worthy of it.

Some feel that they are too much of a sinner to take communion, even while hearing the words that Jesus erased that concept. Jesus died for their sins. That debt is paid.

Some people will come to receive communion, but will not touch the chalice. They feel that it is too holy to touch.

Strangely, it is helpful if they do touch the chalice. Being a chalice bearer is weird. The angles are strange. It is hard to serve wine to someone who is kneeling while you are standing. It is weird to have to hold onto the chalice with one hand while they drink. It is hard to make sure they get a sip of wine, while making sure that they don’t get wine spilled on them. So for them to guide the cup is really a good idea.

For those who approach but won’t touch, I wonder how they can justify eating the bread and drinking the wine. Eating and drinking is far more intimate than just touching. For those who don’t approach at all I wonder what it is about the Passion that they aren’t getting.

It is like being invited to a banquet and refusing to go in. All that work has already been done. The bill has already been paid. You are invited, and you showed up, so some part of you accepted the invitation.

To not partake of it isn’t polite, it is rude. It is the exact opposite of the intent of the sacrifice. It doesn’t make sense. But then I also think of people who say they want to go to church but don’t because they feel they aren’t good enough. This is like saying you want to go to the gym, but you aren’t in shape. You go to both places to get better. You go to both places to transform yourself. You go to both places because you think you can’t do it on your own so you go where other people are trying to figure it out too.

But I wonder how much of this feeling comes from our society’s obsession with guilt, or with making people feel like they aren’t worthy. Nothing healthy comes out of this. There is a lot of control wrapped up in this too. Some families are like this, and some institutions are like this. But the institutions are just made up of people who are operating out of their own insecurities.

Jesus wasn’t like this, but the church has become this way. I think a lot of that is because the church is full of people, and people aren’t perfect. I no longer take Communion because I no longer go to church. It isn’t because I feel unworthy but because I can no longer participate in something I feel is a sham.

I’m the kind of person who used to eat the last piece of pie in the break room. There is this strange habit of people to not eat the last piece of something. They don’t want to finish it off. They think it is rude. I feel it is rude to be wasteful. I used to look at that last piece and think “hey, thanks for saving that for me!”. But I’ve changed. I exercise now, and I care about what I eat. Every calorie needs to be helpful. Every calorie extra is that much further away from my goal. Sometimes I’ll eat a cupcake, but I think of how much exercise I have to do to burn it off. There is a connection here. I don’t go to church anymore because I don’t feel it is helpful or valuable. I feel I’m getting further away from my goal.

I can’t be part of something where people aren’t taught how to hear from God. I can’t be part of something where there is a hierarchy of lay and ordained, of us and them. I can’t be part of something where it is more social club than social outreach.

I’m not sure where I’m headed. I miss going to church. I mourn in a way. There was a lot of my identity wrapped up in going to church. But the more I read of the Gospels, the more I felt that I was being pulled away from what Jesus meant. When he said “Upon this rock I will build my church” he was talking about Peter, the person. Peter was a person, a faulty, Jesus-denying person. But people misunderstood, and made a grave for Peter, then put an altar over his grave, and put a building over that. When you take Communion in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, you are consuming something that has been consecrated over a grave. That is creepy.

That alone would stop me from taking Communion.

God is neither male nor female.

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God is neither male nor female. God just is. God is both and neither. God has no need of gender. God does not need another half. God is whole. God is the Creator. It is our human minds that need male-ness and female-ness to God. God has both qualities together.

I believe that to promote the idea of “the Goddess” or the “divine feminine” in order to achieve parity is a bad idea. I understand why some women feel it necessary to have God be female. People tend to want to make God in their own image. But if it is rude to women to have God be masculine, then it is rude to men to have God be feminine.

Our human brains can’t handle something not being definable or limitable, but that is at the heart of what God is.

God is the alpha and the omega at the same time. God is, was, and shall be. Our human minds cannot handle that. We can’t handle something that is beyond our concept of time. So we certainly can’t handle something that is asexual or bisexual or omnisexual. We don’t have a box on the form to check off for that.

God was described as male, as father, in a time where being male was seen as superior. This is why God was described as male then. But God is above all of us. Our language does not have a third person gender neutral pronoun other than it, and that sounds terrible. “It” just doesn’t have any weight to it. But s/he is weird too. And it still subtly promotes one gender before another. God is the perfect balance of both, and neither at the same time.

It is us who are divided, but God is one. God is complete and unified.

Ah! God!

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I’m noticing a connection in the different names for God. Jehovah. Allah. Yahweh. Hosanna. Adonai. All have the sound “ah” as part of them. Is there something we should notice here?

Is God, (which is not a name so much as a descriptive) the surprise, the awakening? When we are surprised in a gentle way we often say “Ah-ha!” It is a sound of coming to ourselves, of waking up. It is a sound of an awareness that is deepening. It is a sound of new understanding and growth. It is a good sound. It means that we are stretching ourselves and growing into awareness and consciousness.

Or, another idea, do we find God in the exhalation? A breath out is an “ah”. Of course, God breathed life into us, so the sound we breathe out is that same breath. It didn’t change from going into us to going out of us. And when God was breathing into us, God was actually breathing out. God breathes out, and we breathe in.

Another idea, is God to be found hiding in “amen” and “alleluia”? In our giving thanks, we are pointing back to God. With our God-given breath we are giving it back in praise. I’m reminded of the idea of giving up the first born of the livestock. It takes a lot to give up the firstborn – you aren’t guaranteed a second. It takes a lot to give up your breath, for the same reason.

There are no guarantees. But we are made to love and serve God, and not to hoard up any of the gifts we have been given by God. To use our breath to praise God is the simplest and most honest gift we can offer.

Wherever we go, there we are. Wherever we go, there is God with us.

There is a Jewish podcast that I listen to a lot. The writer/speaker likes to talk a lot about the first word in the Torah. The word is b’reishit. It sounds a bit like “Bray-sheese.” It is often translated as “in the beginning”, but the author says that “with beginnings” is better. It isn’t about the beginning of time, but beginning itself. Every moment is a new beginning, a new chance.

He has said that if you rearrange the letters of the first word, it spells the “song of the aleph-bet (the alphabet)”. That is pretty poetic, and it makes a lot of sense. I’ve heard that the Jews believe that God spoke or sang the world into existence with the Torah.

The writer/speaker has talked about many different meanings and depths to this word, this beginning of beginnings, but I don’t think he has ever talked about the fact that the Torah begins with the second letter of the alphabet and not the first. So I will.

Why would the Torah’s first word start with B, and not A? For starters, God is always surprising us. The underdog is constantly getting promoted in the Bible stories. The second son gets the inheritance most of the time. The last shall be first.

I think God wants us to not expect things with God to be the same pattern as it does with the world. God’s ways are not our ways. The rules change. Don’t become complacent. What you thought was going to happen isn’t always what is going to happen. You are not in charge.

But then, it all goes back to the sound, Ah. Sometimes you only notice something when it is missing. By having B as the first letter and not A, it points back to A. And A, “ah,” points back to God. And God is the beginning of everything.

Stumbling block, or stepping stone?

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My craft room is the wrong color. When it got the house, it was teal. I quickly painted it fern green. I find green soothing. It is something of a neutral color for me, a default. But then I realized that I wasn’t using the room. It has great light. It has a lot of space. But I wasn’t spending any time in there. I was storing my beads and fabric and paint in there, but not using them there. I’d take them to other parts of the house, usually the living room, and work there.

It has taken me ten years to get back into that room. It was yoga that did it, and it is yoga that teaches me about it. I feel that I’ve wasted a lot of time not using it all this time, but I often feel that. I suspect a lot of that comes from the fact that my parents died young. I don’t want to be wasteful of time, or to assume that I have a lot of time. I think that wanting to have lived a meaningful life is common to most people, and it is hard to have lived a meaningful one if you’ve frittered it away. I’m trying to be mindful. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes it seems there are a lot of unnoticed things that thwart me.

I needed space to do yoga every morning. I needed a space that was big enough for a yoga mat and for me to be able to do some side twists. I have a tiny house. It was what I could afford at the time. Plus, a small house (hopefully) means not accumulating a bunch of stuff. So, this means that the living room is not really big enough. There is room for the mat, but not the side twists. The same is true in the bedroom. I’ve got plenty of room on the porch, but it is outside and I don’t want to be stared at while I’m doing yoga. Actually, I’m very self-conscious about being outside at all, but that is another story.

So I put the mat in the craft room, and I made myself do yoga every morning. I realized that I didn’t want to go in there. Yoga is teaching me to look adversity head on – to not run away from it. Study it. Dig down to the roots. Why am I feeling this way – like I want to run away? Why don’t I want to be in this room? The first and deepest impression was that it was the color. Too dark. Not energizing. It is calming, but a little too much. Now, there is a lot of light from the north – the light is great for painting in the morning. But it just didn’t strike my eyes right, and the color wasn’t inspiring.

I got a book called “Sacred Spaces”, about how to make sanctuaries wherever you are. One of the sections was on feng shui. I determined that something more like a sea-blue, or slate-grey-blue would be better. It would be a pain to drag out everything in that room and repaint it. So I made some suggested amendments to the room. More blue pictures. Seashells. I made a point of closing the closet so the mirror showed. Either it helped, or I thought it did, because I was more likely to want to be in there.

But I’m leaving the walls. Part of it is that I feel that removing all difficulties actually can be a problem. Having an obstacle, having something that annoys me, actually wakes me up. It strengthens me. It keeps me conscious.

I’ve noticed that if everything is fine, I don’t push myself. I don’t stretch or grow. And I don’t pray. When everything is going fine, I don’t seek God nearly as often.

Turns out I’m in really good company. Plenty of people throughout the Bible did that. When things were going bad, they called on God. When things were going great, they forgot about God. Have a pain in your back that you are worried about? Pray. When it stops hurting, you stop praying. Normal.

God likes to hear from us. God wants to be connected to us. It is sad that we often only remember to pray, to connect with God, when things aren’t going well. What would happen if we treated our friends like this? If we only call them when we have something to complain about, the relationship isn’t going to last. God wants to have a relationship with us.

So maybe we should be thankful for the obstacles, and the pains, and the things that annoy us. Maybe they are our rescue. Maybe instead of being stumbling blocks, they are stepping stones.

I’ve decided not to repaint that room. I’ve decided it keeps me mindful of how to be calm and present amidst adversity.