Fabric of love

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Why is holding a baby so joyful and healing? I've had the pleasure twice in the past several days: one a sleeping infant and the other, a feisty five-month old. One a beautiful, angel-faced girl, the other a juicy, sweet-faced tot with loads of dark hair.

When I held my niece for the first time, we just settled in, comfortably. I had forgotten: the peacefulness; the soft, pearlescent skin; small sighs and coos, the unique scent of a baby's head; the moist lips and searching gums, exploring and waiting for mom; how their miniature bodies fit into the crook of your arm. How close they are to perfection. How close they bring one to Spirit.

As I held the younger, I whispered while she was sleeping: "Remind me what it's like." Her calming presence did, indeed. My plea was based on the story I once heard about a toddler peering into the crib of a newborn, asking the same question. The farther we are from birth, the more removed we may seem from God. Often, we need something soft, cuddly and new to remind us – a baby, a kitten or puppy.

A few days ago as my body was silently aching, my 14-year old reached over and began massaging my back – unprovoked. It was such a loving, unexpected gift and reminded me of the healing power of touch. Not dissimilar from holding the babies.

God's touch/reach is never as far as we imagine.

This morning's Henri Nouwen online meditation focused on the loneliness of Christ and the isolation Jesus felt on the cross when he uttered "Why have you forsaken me?"

"Tuesday, July 31, 2012/Jesus' Loneliness

When Jesus came close to his death, he no longer could experience God's presence. He cried out: "My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:47). Still in love he held on to the truth that God was with him and said: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (luke 23:46).

The loneliness of the cross led Jesus to the resurrection. As we grow older we are often invited by Jesus to follow him into this loneliness, the loneliness in which God is too close to be experienced by our limited hearts and minds. When this happens, let us pray for the grace to surrender our spirits to God as Jesus did."

While we may need a soft reminder of God's presence, we are assured that Spirit is always with us ... perhaps too close to see, feel or experience, but present nonetheless.

• What does holding a new baby, kitten or puppy touch in me?
• How does that bring me closer to Spirit?
• How have I experienced the power of touch in my life?
• When has God been so close I felt alone?
• How can I hold experiences of Holy closeness when I do forget or can't feel it?


the simple
act of gathering
begins it all

perhaps, it starts
at the mere anticipation

of cradling the
beautiful new
creature

perfect in every
way

a peaceful joy
descends on both,
cloaking the pair

with the very same
gossamer

that binds human
to Divine

person
to God

brokenness
to wholeness

isolation
to oneness

loneliness
to contentment

bitterness
to joy

the gossamer fabric
of love

The juicy inner stuff

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Somehow I grew up with the idea that to be a good Christian, God would ask you to give up everything at home and travel far away. There was pain and suffering. That's what we were told missionaries do and we revered missionaries.

Yesterday in the car, it hit me why I have always liked theologian Frederick Beuchner's quote about vocation being "the place your deep gladness meets the world's deep need." Because God calls us where our hearts are.

For years, I have been trying to reconcile the secular world's view of success and happiness within myself and it's never worked. I've had money and I've had time, but I've never had money and time. Time, for me, is way more important: time to discover my inner self, time to build a regular relationship with God, time to nurture others, time to paint, time to write, time to heal, time to become healthy, time to spend with others, time to really listen, time to be quiet, time to reflect.

There's still a small part of me pulling to get that job, look for work and give up my dream. Mostly out of loneliness and some need for affirmation. I am trying to be faithful to where God calls me.

I am being called to surrender not to pain and suffering or moving far away, but to not only do, but believe in the work that gives me the greatest joy: writing, making art and teaching spiritual nurture all bound together by this turtlebox framework that God planted in my heart several years ago. I must trust that it will take me on the path that's right for me as well as provide the necessary resources.

I've been trying to control the process about which piece comes first, what person to approach, when something is finished or not, whether I need to back up and earn money in another way; basically, I have tried to control the business part of the process. It's much easier to let the creative part flow. Our culture doesn't recognize, let alone honor, a business model based on Spirit's leading. But I should.

I attended a new Bible study yesterday. One my mother is leading with a variety of women from different Christian traditions. We're reading Luke and I was immediately struck by Elizabeth's easy way of embracing the announcement of her late-in-life pregnancy, then going off for five months to wait. It was so unlike her husband, who was struck mute because of his disbelief. Mary was just as accepting.

Passages about these women helped me see the connection to my periods of waiting while something of God's forms in me. I am a patient person and feel as if I've been waiting a dozen years for my fruit to ripen. Elizabeth waited much of her life.

It's like I keep sticking my finger in the baking cake, it comes out wet and I tell myself: "It isn't done yet." I want to crank up the temperature and hasten it's doneness, but then it will only be a sloppy mess.

Lord, please teach me to let go of my impatience, comparisons to secular models, need for outside affirmation and revel in the joyful work you have given me!

• What illusion of being faithful have I discovered and am shattering?
• What truth stands in its place?
• Where is God currently calling me?
• Am I patient?
• Am I willing?


how does a soul
do its real work
the juicy inner stuff
that needs tending and time


when it feels alone
in doing so


when it can't
seem to find another
walking the walk


when it doesn't
produce a paycheck
or create exciting
party banter 


how does a soul
leave the loneliness
and outside expectation
behind


replacing it
with God's
presence and promise?

Watering the desert of loneliness

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When I shared the current iteration of the book I am finishing – it seems I'll never be done – I was disappointed by the strong reaction of a friend to the first chapter entitled "Pain as teacher." I had struggled with that title and it, finally, seemed such an apt fit. "I'd choose another word, people don't want to read that. I know I don't want to think about the pain of chemo again," she told me.

I stopped in my tracks and yet I've had to consider her suggestion because I value her experience and opinion. In sitting with that episode, I have realized that I probably can't change the title because it has been my reality.

Then, last night in desperation to get to sleep and away from my non-drowsy ten-year-old, I picked up a book from the spirituality pile sitting on my bedside table. It was Henry Nouwen's Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. I have no idea how it came to be there; it's not my book. Anyway, he, too, gets right to the heart of matters in addressing the uinversally individual condition of loneliness, suggesting that one can not be engaged in a spiritual life without recognizing the poles between which we vacillate. The first movement is loneliness and solitude and our constant movement between them is our spiritual life.

In that loneliness lives the pain that no one cares for or understands us. Pain, he calls it. Pain.

It's pain our culture anesthetizes and that we personally avoid by busying ourselves. I know that it calls to us anyway and, when unaddressed, clamors for our attention. And there's really only one way to deal with it: dead on by looking deeply into ourselves. I don't doubt that anyone goes there unless forced. No one else can do this work for us. Nouwen calls that the "false expectation that we are called to take each other's lon[e]liness away ... by burdening others with these divine expectations ... we inhibit the expression of free friendship and love and evoke instead feelings of inadequacy and weakness."

He's not messing around here. However, he does offer a path: "find the courage to enter into the desert of our lon[e]liness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude."

When I muster that courage, I have been gracefully rewarded. Two weeks ago, during Quaker worship, I was able to sink pretty deeply pretty quickly, which is not always the case. I was so rooted, I had a waking dream of Jesus standing behind me moving me with love, not words, toward an ancient, stone wash basin. It was a baptism: a cleansing of my heart of all that is not love. An act I did for myself motivated by love: from Jesus, for me, from me and for all others.

"The real spiritual guide," according to Nouwen, "is the one who, instead of advising us what to do or to whom to go, offers us a chance to stay alone and take the risk of entering into our own experience. He makes us see that pouring little bits of water on our dry land does not help, but that we will find a living well if we reach deep enough under the surface of our complaints.

I recently found my well. I pray I have the courage and trust to return.

• When have I felt lonely?

• What does it feel like, exactly?

• What happens when I open to it?

• How does it direct me spiritually?

• How have I experienced my inner well?

hurrying off to worship

probably a cross word or two

muttered to the kids in the car

... opening the large

wood-and-glass doors

and something begins to happen

I feel my heart again

its beat vibrates more strongly

as I sense the presence of others

soon, I'm not there anymore

but in a room of stone

with

Jesus, moving me forward

without words

to an ancient basin,

where I cleanse my heart,

leaving room only for

love

Practicing otherness together

I feel as if I have been working and living in a vacuum: so very alone. I always think I am such an introvert and believe I prefer things that way. And, sometimes, I do. But right now, I could do with some companionship, some championship. Writing a book is lonesome work.


Yesterday,  I heard from a wonderful young friend overseas doing mission work in a very unconventional way (she's living and working among that country's people) and introducing them to the concept of Christianity if and when they or the circumstance seems ripe. I know she's becoming accepted and her gentle ways and beliefs drifting to others. She remarked how alone she felt until she articulated a prayer for "fresh vision" for her work and life even though she's "living the dream." When I responded to her e-mail, saying how much she hit the mark for me as well, she added wisdom from yet another friend:

" ... it's not loneliness, it's just aloneness. It's that I'm the only one who carries both of my lives from the two sides of the ocean with me when I cross back and forth. No one else comes along and 'gets' it on both sides. "

My friend added:

" I believe you are a builder in what you're doing, but you're not the only builder. You might not see the other ones or grasp the layout of the whole structure, but your piece fits into something bigger and you're not really alone in it."
Several years ago when I was in the midst of a two-year spiritual-nurture training, I was introduced to the concept of "otherness." I had never heard the term, yet it immediately spoke to me. And I now know we all experience that otherness much more than we'd care to admit. There is, definitely, work we must do alone, but there is also a corporate aspect that gives great meaning to our lives. Quakers are adept at balancing the individual and the corporate, using the community to encourage, challenge and hold accountable.

When we can recognize that we are not truly alone, but that we all feel like it, it builds community and support by that very insight.

My prayer is still for fresh vision, companionship, championship. It' s a prayer many others are uttering as well ... in unison with my heart. Awareness of practicing otherness together makes it not otherness any more.

• What's my auto mode when I feel alone?

• How often do I admit that feeling to others?

• What happens when I do?

• Am I currently in need of a fresh vision?

• How am I able to ask/pray for that?

head stuck

in a notebook



or a computer



behind a
closed door



by myself





often,
it's solace





lately,

it's lonely





it IS
my work



but I
desperately

need another

to understand,

to cheer





how many

of us have
the same
prayer?