This weekend, I found myself sitting near the dianthus rock in the front yard. Really, it is just a huge rock that frames the massive amounts of colorful dianthus nearby. I sat there because it was easier to reach the weeds by being with the weeds, rather than towering over them. Sitting with the weeds actually gave me a view of under-the-plant canopy. I do not see this perspective much, as I tend to look at the plants, rather than getting down with them. When I am at plant level, I see the weeds, but I also see the toads, the new plants coming up, and blooms I hadn’t noticed before. Sitting at plant level also offers me surprises like the kitty jumping out from his napping place to pounce on the weed I am pulling and scaring the dickens out of me.
Being on the dianthus rock places me in a certain spot in our yard. If I look to the left, over the hostas and blooming daylilies, past the birdfeeder, through the hedge and the dust kicked up by a passing car, I see an outline of a window. On the other side of that window is the place my friend took her final breathe on Christmas morning. That was about 6 months ago. I miss her. I miss our talks and our times of not talking, simply sitting sharing silence. There was the laughter and tears shared over everything from our kids, politics, marriage, family, and that damn ALS, which invited both tears and laughter, sometimes at the same time. I saw a different perspective on politics when I was with my friend. I saw the health care issues differently, I heard a different voice about lobbying, and the responses of some of our politicians to the challenges of folks with ALS. I also was present for the stories of what it is like for a mom, a sister, and a wife, to live with a terminal illness. I miss the ritual of walking over, and spending sacred time with her.
Reminded of the blessing, helps me focus on how grand our times could be. Even the tears could be grand. Sitting with my friend also meant sitting with the impact of ALS on her life, and the lives of her family and friends. In a sense, sitting close to my friend, listening, experiencing, caring for each other offered both of us a plant-level view into each other’s lives. It takes time to stop, sit down and watch what is going on a different level. The things we might consider to be weeds will always be there, regardless of the canopy under which we look. However, I wonder if the weeds are just simply part of the landscape and with out them, the beauty of blooms might not seem quite so grand. Perhaps there is something about living with the things that we think are weeds in our lives that make us who we are and who we are becoming. Maybe it is not about worrying about the amount of weeds I think are in my life. Perhaps that is the wrong focus. Rather I might ask of my own self, how might I embrace that which feels like a weed, and learn from it rather than being so obsessed with getting rid of it. That sounds like a completely different type of conversation.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
The usefulness of lament
I have been thinking about lament for a few months now. There are several reasons for this. One, is my recent time spent as a chaplain intern allowed me to journey with people in dark, difficult times. I have experienced close friends dying, others have had difficult diagnoses. Personally I am left wondering about my own experience of lament, and how I may have been trying to avoid elements of it over the years. The tough thing about avoidance of what we may consider "negative" feelings is that they are still there, doing damage to our bodies, our relationships and our psyche, all while we are trying so hard to ignore it all. It seems as if the pressure of all that "stuffing" simply invites that which is being stuffed to leak out in a different place.
Lament can be used in a couple of different ways. First it can be used as protest. I am reminded of our local nurses and hospitals that are in many ways lamenting what is going on in the work place and how that matters to staff, hospital workers, administrators and especially patients. The picket signs downtown show, in a public fashion, lament.
Lament can also be experienced as a dark night of the soul. A feeling of being in a desert, without the hope that you may actually claw your way out of that dry place. What brings me to a place of curiosity is this: it seems as if we (yes, I am certainly including me here) seem to want to bypass the pain, as if by not confessing it, it is sure to go away. We behave as if we believe, "if I ignore it, it doesn't exist." While we may not think about it in this way, it seems as if this is how we can often behave. If we admit we have something to lament, we might have been told to "buck it up." If we hide it we are often told we are either "in control" or have "courage." I suspect it might be (sometimes) less about courage, and more about fear that someone else think we can't keep it all together.
Why is it that we think along these lines? I have had plenty of conversations with folks to know that it is just not "me" who does this, it is "we" ~ or at least there is a bunch of us. What is the usefulness of lament? Is it useful? I suggest it is. And, it is needed. Now the question seems to be, "so now what?"
Lament can be used in a couple of different ways. First it can be used as protest. I am reminded of our local nurses and hospitals that are in many ways lamenting what is going on in the work place and how that matters to staff, hospital workers, administrators and especially patients. The picket signs downtown show, in a public fashion, lament.
Lament can also be experienced as a dark night of the soul. A feeling of being in a desert, without the hope that you may actually claw your way out of that dry place. What brings me to a place of curiosity is this: it seems as if we (yes, I am certainly including me here) seem to want to bypass the pain, as if by not confessing it, it is sure to go away. We behave as if we believe, "if I ignore it, it doesn't exist." While we may not think about it in this way, it seems as if this is how we can often behave. If we admit we have something to lament, we might have been told to "buck it up." If we hide it we are often told we are either "in control" or have "courage." I suspect it might be (sometimes) less about courage, and more about fear that someone else think we can't keep it all together.
Why is it that we think along these lines? I have had plenty of conversations with folks to know that it is just not "me" who does this, it is "we" ~ or at least there is a bunch of us. What is the usefulness of lament? Is it useful? I suggest it is. And, it is needed. Now the question seems to be, "so now what?"
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Community: A Storied People
Community is a place, in which we are created to exist as the people of God. We are invited into relationship with God, and subsequently with each other, and our own selves. Within this place, we can receive redemption (wholeness) from God, and experience the incarnational Spirit of God living in and through each other. Included in this divine gift is the redeeming, grace-filled manner in which we learn to be with one another. “Community” is our participation with the Trinity and the “other” and they with us. Sometimes the “other” is the other we encounter within us.
The Triune God reveals a gracious model of community. The Trinity is diverse and loving, gracious and giving, egalitarian and honoring, always drawing us in to relationship by creating a space for us. The Triune God is relational within it’s own self, and with creation. Created in the likeness of God, and being restored to that likeness, we are invited to participate in relational redemption with God, each other and ourselves. In this manner it is a strong integrative model as it speaks to the journey to whole-ness (both individually and corporately) available in the kingdom of God.
One manner in which community is revealed is through the element of story. “Story” is life’s narrative: of an individual, of a people. It is the integration of an individual’s story within the larger narrative. This aspect of community is important not only in our relationship with God, but also with each other. It is in the story of the “other” that we are able to see aspects of God, we may not have experienced in our own journey. It is in the story of the other, that God calls us to lay down self, love another and in this way, learn of and model God’s love for us. It is in laying down our own interests for others that we begin to understand areas in our own lives that separate us from God and others.
Without narrative, we limit our understanding of the far reaches of emotion: fear, pain, joy, or peace. Story of the other illuminates the limits of our thinking and breaks boundaries of our experience. Narrative invites us to wonder how our story, and that of the other fits into the meta-narrative of God. It is the South African concept of ubuntu: “our story is wrapped up in the story of others.”
My own experience in understanding narrative has included support and challenges. Growing up, culture both in and outside of the walls of the church seemed less interested in individual stories. Within my faith community, the focal story was identified is the Christian scriptures. It was to these stories we were to look, at times with the reminder that "we (because of our sin) were the cause of the pain evident in some of those stories." Individual stories appeared important only as they matched up to the stories of scripture. There was not much discussion of a corporate story, unless one looked at how an individual’s action “made the church (and by implication, God) look bad.” On the reverse, narrative support came later in life, in the listening presence of friends. These friends attended to my story, the joys, and the wounds and continued to love me. This attuned support offered healing in its simple existence.
My faith tradition did not seem to understand the importance of story. My story was mine and mine alone. There was not an invitation to tell one’s story; it was simply something that you held, alone. The reality is that one carries the burden of the trials and perhaps even the joys, alone. A recent conversation come to mind. This person had held a secret for their entire life and had never had another person with which they could share this information. Keeping the secret seemed to impact the quality of life of the patient more than the actual “thing” that was actually hidden. There was great relief and (I believe) a turning point in the healing by speaking out the secret: this part of their story, out loud to another person. In the holding of the secret, in the missing that part of the narrative, it seemed as if grace was more difficult to access in these situations.
Community, as represent as story, unites us in celebrations of faith such as baptism and communion: coming together, representing the reconciliation and healing grace we can offer to our self and others. The story of the people of God proclaims grace in actions of love and forgiveness. As we experience grace through the telling of our own story and by the attuned listening to the other, we begin to realize the power of the grace needed in the world and how we can participate. We embody God’s Spirit in us; each one images God to each other and to the world. This corporate image is attractive to the world and draws us, to Yahweh.
The Triune God reveals a gracious model of community. The Trinity is diverse and loving, gracious and giving, egalitarian and honoring, always drawing us in to relationship by creating a space for us. The Triune God is relational within it’s own self, and with creation. Created in the likeness of God, and being restored to that likeness, we are invited to participate in relational redemption with God, each other and ourselves. In this manner it is a strong integrative model as it speaks to the journey to whole-ness (both individually and corporately) available in the kingdom of God.
One manner in which community is revealed is through the element of story. “Story” is life’s narrative: of an individual, of a people. It is the integration of an individual’s story within the larger narrative. This aspect of community is important not only in our relationship with God, but also with each other. It is in the story of the “other” that we are able to see aspects of God, we may not have experienced in our own journey. It is in the story of the other, that God calls us to lay down self, love another and in this way, learn of and model God’s love for us. It is in laying down our own interests for others that we begin to understand areas in our own lives that separate us from God and others.
Without narrative, we limit our understanding of the far reaches of emotion: fear, pain, joy, or peace. Story of the other illuminates the limits of our thinking and breaks boundaries of our experience. Narrative invites us to wonder how our story, and that of the other fits into the meta-narrative of God. It is the South African concept of ubuntu: “our story is wrapped up in the story of others.”
My own experience in understanding narrative has included support and challenges. Growing up, culture both in and outside of the walls of the church seemed less interested in individual stories. Within my faith community, the focal story was identified is the Christian scriptures. It was to these stories we were to look, at times with the reminder that "we (because of our sin) were the cause of the pain evident in some of those stories." Individual stories appeared important only as they matched up to the stories of scripture. There was not much discussion of a corporate story, unless one looked at how an individual’s action “made the church (and by implication, God) look bad.” On the reverse, narrative support came later in life, in the listening presence of friends. These friends attended to my story, the joys, and the wounds and continued to love me. This attuned support offered healing in its simple existence.
My faith tradition did not seem to understand the importance of story. My story was mine and mine alone. There was not an invitation to tell one’s story; it was simply something that you held, alone. The reality is that one carries the burden of the trials and perhaps even the joys, alone. A recent conversation come to mind. This person had held a secret for their entire life and had never had another person with which they could share this information. Keeping the secret seemed to impact the quality of life of the patient more than the actual “thing” that was actually hidden. There was great relief and (I believe) a turning point in the healing by speaking out the secret: this part of their story, out loud to another person. In the holding of the secret, in the missing that part of the narrative, it seemed as if grace was more difficult to access in these situations.
Community, as represent as story, unites us in celebrations of faith such as baptism and communion: coming together, representing the reconciliation and healing grace we can offer to our self and others. The story of the people of God proclaims grace in actions of love and forgiveness. As we experience grace through the telling of our own story and by the attuned listening to the other, we begin to realize the power of the grace needed in the world and how we can participate. We embody God’s Spirit in us; each one images God to each other and to the world. This corporate image is attractive to the world and draws us, to Yahweh.
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