immersion

“Your profession is not what brings 

home your paycheck. Your profession is what 

you were put on earth to do with such 

passion and such intensity that it 

becomes spiritual in calling.”     

Vincent Van Gogh

  I asked for a copy of this image as a birthday present.  I can't recall ever asking for a specific thing before. I had seen it in a show 2 years ago - framed with the Van Gogh quote along the bottom - and I was completely captivated by it. The image is actually the cover of a book**, which includes lots of amazing underwater shots -  but what I asked for (and got) was a large, framed copy of the image just by itself. 

Anyway, I don't know what Rod and Sonya of Eve Studios named this image, but what came to mind while I stared at it was 'immersion'. Here is a bit of what it says to me so far...

It speaks to me about living risky and immersed, exposed and vulnerable.  Plunging in anyway, somehow staying on track in spite of yourself.  Knowing that there are costs and being willing to pay them. Looking fear and complacency right in the eye and saying (with intensity and conviction) ' you two are LOUD, but maybe you don't get to have the last word ..." 

I think this image gave me a visual representation I could associate with courageously living differently. I don't always feel that courage, but there ARE times when it is intensely present, brimming over even.

The profession reference in the quote (for me, anyway) speaks to living at and being part of  Flatlanders Inn. As I recall, when I saw this image for the first time, I had recently experienced yet another encounter with someone who looked at me like I had three heads because we choose to live where and how we do. This image gave me a visual - something to rest in and help me feel okay in my own skin and about our choices, okay to be our family -  just the way we are, and to immerse ourselves into something deep and life-altering without guarantees or even the support we sometimes wish we had more of.  We know that what we're doing isn't normal, and we know that many people won't or can't open themselves to something that seems so different.  (It isn't actually that different, but fear and complacency are loud, great convincers for humans!)

At the same time, there is so much grace communicated; its as if the model is suspended in the water. There is a sureness about her that seems out of place. As a viewer, if you've ever been in a swimming pool, you know she can't be suspended, its impossible - you know she's sinking and that her limbs must be moving. It makes me wonder: do our human attempts to do things that feel risky, unstable, like guaranteed failure, things that look just plain ridiculous... do they look this beautiful if captured in a certain moment, through a certain lens or from a certain perspective? Can we be graceful when we feel clumsy, laborious, unsure?  Do faith and trust help the whole thing to appear graceful when its also cloudy and confusing?  Is that part of what it means for calling to be spiritual - that there is a lot of risk and uncertainty in it?

Anyway, as of my birthday last week, I get to be inspired by this image every single day.  The ways to engage with it are endless..... I'm thankful to Lorrie, Lisa, Karen, Bren, Cory, and Bek for all pitching in so that I could contemplate 'immersion' every day!

** Those photo books are still available, by the way, and the proceeds from sales support water projects in the developing world. (Go here for more info if you're interested in the book - i think the shipping is free!)  You can also search out the H2Oohhh exhibit page on Facebook for more info.

shame

ever feel ashamed of yourself?  I'm not talking about guilt here, not some fleeting ooops-I-wish-I-hadn't-done/said-that feeling.  I'm talking about shame - the deeper feeling that peeks out every so often and says accusing things like: 'you're not valid. you're a pretender. maybe you shouldn't have been confident.... where do you get the idea that you have a right to contribute? I'm not going to let you forget where you've come from, or that you're a poor excuse for a _______  .'

photography found at: http://www.orkut.com.br/Mai

A couple of weeks ago, I had an experience that was causing me to want to curl up and not be seen.  I was wishing I could hide inside my own skin.  The memory of it would come into my mind and I'd have to suppress the desire to run away, to go find some covers to hide under.  As if by running, I could hide from my own thoughts.


When I get into this space, I inevitably feel like the people around me don't have any idea what I'm experiencing.  And that they can see right into me. They've got their acts together, they wouldn't have anything to do with what I'm wincing at the mere thought of.


So, before our family holiday, I called up a friend (at 10pm!) and asked if she had any wine and a few minutes for me. She graciously said yes (to both requests!), and even thanked me for coming over! Then I  told one of my sisters my secret.  (I could only tell one of them,  it was all I could manage.)  My husband also knew.  And I gave myself space to cry - several times, because I've learned that in some mysterious and beautiful way,  crying untangles the knot that lives in my stomach in times of grief.  Both my friend and my sister told me that they understood it was a huge deal for me, this thing I wanted to hide from.  They both shared similar experiences. And they both loved me anyway. They both found ways to say that their perception of me was not altered, and they both found gentle ways to encourage me to let it go.


It wasn't long before the memory didn't have the same power over me.  I can think about it now and not want to hide or even wince.  Someone told me once (a therapist someone) that I showed signs of having been shamed - often - in my life.  She was right.  But, you know, those shaming patterns don't have to live forever.  Over the years, I've learned how to practice vulnerability in some pretty freeing ways.  And, I've been acting - with a great many stumbles - on some decisions about what and who will have power over me.  


The stuff thats happened over the course of my life - for a long time I wanted to bury it.  And finally, I just accepted that it was what it was.  And that I was going to keep having to cope with it; in new ways as I changed and as the years progressed. It wasn't healthy to believe that there would come a day when it would be behind me forever. I had to let go of the 'I've dealt with it' mentality and replace it with a 'I'm dealing with it' perspective. 


I like the way Petersen talks about living creatively together in Galatians 6; 'Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day's out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ's law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.'


This post was inspired by a site I found by reading the very worst missionary's post about Second Chances.  Check out this site - dedicated to gracious living and being people of many chances.
thanks for reading! don't be shy to leave comments.

echoes, phantoms and expectations

Lately, I've been reading and thinking about gender roles/expectations.  I came across some interesting stuff last week... 

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was famous for writing,  and later on for speaking up on behalf of women. (and maybe for being a bit unstable...)  She expressed and embodied some of the struggle that was being experienced by the women (and men!) of her day.  Rather than telling you my interpretation of the tension she lived with, here are some of her memoir words, from a lecture in 1931.

'I discovered that ... I should need to do battle with a certain phantom.  And the phantom was a woman... I called her after the heroine of a famous poem,, 'The Angel in the House'.... you who come of a younger and happier generation may have not heard of her... I will describe her... She was intensely sympathetic.  She was immensely charming.  She was utterly unselfish.  She excelled in the difficult arts of family life.  She sacrificed herself daily.  If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was draught she sat in it - in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others.  Above all - I need not say it - she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty, her blushes, her great grace.  ... every house had its Angel ... the shadow of her wings (falls) on my page, I (hear) the rustle of her skirts in the room... (she whispers to me) 'my dear, you are a young woman ... be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex.  Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own.  Above all, be pure'.  ... I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself ... I turned upon her and caught her by the throat.  I did my best to kill her.  My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self defense.  Had I not killed her she would have killed me ... for, as I found, you cannot put pen to paper .. without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex.  And all these questions, according to the Angel in the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must .. tell lies if they are to succeed.  Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her.  She died hard.  Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her.  It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.  She was always creeping back when I thought I had despatched her.   - from Woolf's In the Death of the Moth and other Essays.  As quoted by Daniel Levinson in Seasons of a Woman's Life.

Even though we are living in a world that is very different from Woolf's 1931,   I find myself wondering why is Woolf's phantom description still familiar?  

MLK

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is today.  

Canadians join in appreciating and honouring the legacy of a man whose 'dream' contributed to very important change, and who became synonymous with courage and justice.  When I think of Martin Luther King, I think of speaking up, of grace.  I think of having the strength to act when rage and despair would be so inviting.

I think of honesty and reflection, shared responsibility.

I think of dignity, wisdom and leadership .... in action.

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

With Rosa Parks - another grace filled person, even when she'd had enough

a corner turned

I turned to my friend the other night as we were chatting and confessed that I'd lost my groove, that something had fallen off the rails somehow and I needed to get back on track.  It wasn't until the words were out of my mouth that I realized both that I had lost my groove AND that I was beginning to find it again.  In the mucky midst of it, I wasn't really aware of how lost and off track I was.  I've read confessional posts around the interweb about sadness, about mourning, about loss, even about depression.  And I always identify somewhat, but with some distance.  Very important and necessary distance.
See, if you have a parent that struggled with depression and then ended their life, it's pretty hard to ever imagine yourself as struggling with sadness or grief.  If you're me, you just keep spinning positive and smiling and hanging in, finding the good and the lesson in everything. It's an essential to survival, this spinning positive.  Plus,  we're supposed to do that as good Christian folk anyway.  It's in the manual.
Some of my fellow students were talking about a counselling class I missed, where they learned about 'stackable losses'.  As they described this idea that was completely new to me, I identified a lot with the concept.  Basically, when we have multiple consecutive or concurrent losses, we are unable to respond to additional losses.  Our coping ability diminishes as losses increase.  I heard my friends talking, but I immediately saw in my mind a picture of our little garden at Flats.  
A few of us were going to work on the garden together, but the plan didn't come together as hoped.  I did my best on my own with it until we were away in July.  When we got back from San Francisco, the garden was pretty overgrown.  I weeded and watered, but it didn't seem to be enough.  Then we had 3 days of blistering heat.  I went out on the first two days and watered my little garden, but by the third day the wilting and sad plants actually brought tears to my eyes.  I turned around, locked the gate and didn't venture back into the garden again.  Even though the greenspace materialized over the next few weeks and became a beautiful place that I'd been dreaming of and waiting for, I stayed away.
Stackable losses - pile them up on top of each other and you end up with very little room at the top to deal with dying plants that friends forgot to water.  
So, how do you make more room, or get back to who or where you were before the losses started to pile up?  I dunno, my classmates left out that part!  
But just realizing that I'd had losses, and that they had stacked up very high has helped me find my lost groove and turn a corner. 
 I managed to form the question 'could I be depressed?' at a recent visit to the doctor. She looked at me in her kind and knowledgeable way (only a woman who has witnessed and helped me to give birth could have such a compassionate look!) and said "I don't think so.  You're life is full of things most of us insulate ourselves from.  You've taken on a lot and its not cheap.  I know you have good strategies.  Some times will be harder than others, and it looks to me like you're gonna be just fine."
Like a good doctor, she said we'll keep our eye on it and monitor frequently.  And because she is so aware of my family history, she has never missed a chance to say 'How are you REALLY doing?'  
Since learning about stackable losses, I've named some huge losses in my life over the last few years.  I've even painted them on a canvas!  I'm disciplining myself NOT to think about the lessons and gains just yet, to actually allow myself to count losses for what they are.  

  Tune me in to foot-tapping songs, 

      set these once-broken bones to dancing. 

   Don't look too close for blemishes, 

      give me a clean bill of health. 

   God, make a fresh start in me, 

      shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. 

   Don't throw me out with the trash, 

      or fail to breathe holiness in me. 

   Bring me back from gray exile, 

      put a fresh wind in my sails! 

   Give me a job teaching rebels your ways 

      so the lost can find their way home. 

   Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God, 

      and I'll sing anthems to your life-giving ways. 

   Unbutton my lips, dear God; 

      I'll let loose with your praise. 

  Going through the motions doesn't please you, 

      a flawless performance is nothing to you. 

   I learned God-worship 

      when my pride was shattered. 

   Heart-shattered lives ready for love 

      don't for a moment escape God's notice. 

from psalm 51 - the message

New word

Decentered.

That is my word of the year.

A few years ago, my word was CLARITY.  Some professional situations were teaching me the value of clarity, and the expense of its absence... I realized that this principle applied to the rest of my life, too.  It was a good word to grow with.

The next year, SUSTAIN was the word I that guided me often.  In times of doubt, wondering, impasse, frustration - I turned over and over again to the fact that God sustains, is alongside, and that I can see so little of what is important.  I learned (through experience, not just in my head) that in trusting the sustaining (faithful, loving) actions of God I can better see the sustaining (faithful, loving) actions of God.

Last year's word was TENSION.  I felt a growing awareness of the reality (and necessity) of simultaneous push/pull.  It became increasingly clear to me how much we need tension to grow, how much we need to be okay with it rather than resisting it.  I realized how much I want to fix, mend, tend, heal, cure, and how little I wanted to 'be alright to sit with' things just as they are... and that there are indeed times when that is what I must do. (An old friend talks about the tension between success/failure on his blog..thoughts not expressed frequently enough in our culture of competition and achievement!)

This year, DECENTERED is the theme/word I want to learn from.  I've come across this word in counselling texts, and its a way of practicing, of being with people that resists being expert, resists knowing anything at all.  An image that goes along with this word is one of flying above circumstances, somewhere in the sky, rather than being mired and attached to every aspect or detail of a situation.  A decentred approach genuinely cares without obsessively owning.  It influences without being completely invested in outcomes.  The opposite of decentred - centered - can lead to an inappropriate sense of responsibility, a heavy burden, even exhaustion.  But being appropriately attached to circumstances can be invigorating and life giving.  I need to grow in the ability to be decentered, and if this year's word is like those from the past, I will learn a great deal in the months to come.

If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds. Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Matthew 6, The Message (MSG)

.... what the random?!.. and SOAR

This week, the Flatlanders community and WCV are hosting a team of students as they explore inner city winnipeg as part of SOAR Heartland.  They are joining in our daily life and hanging out with members of our community.  Today was fun.  We hung out with Larry  and talked about worship.  (I'm learning how well known Larry is - you might know him as the poet who sits at River and Osborne)

The discussion was interesting, and Larry did end up taking out his poetry book (its usually attached to the back of his wheelchair) and compiling some of our discussion in there.  While I sent the students (some of them led by my husband, who seems to be loving teaching and sharing about our neighborhood!) out on a 'prayer artifacts walk', I typed up Larry's compilation.  Here is an excerpt;

Worship … A Group Poem

Worship is an Act of Love

Worship comes from the source of humanity

Worship is Light .... what we do to encourage life

Worship is putting God’s glory into action

In every human interaction

Worship is a conversation,

Not just with God, but our fellow human

Worship is being submissive

An act of mission

Worship is a declaration

Worship is a lifestyle

A means to reconcile

When your mind is focused on God, that is worship of the heart

Growing close to God intentionally

All our hearts in harmony.

Larry is a great poet and a great teacher.  Look for him if you're in the village ... he'll gladly write you a poem!  He is not homeless (as a recent article in ChristianWeek suggested), but he won't mind if you pay him nicely for his creativity.
***********

Spending time with this group sent me looking through the archives of this blog for the last time I was part of leading a group of young people in this community... except I didn't even live in Winnipeg back then!  I wrote these words  a couple of years ago when I led a team of Saskatchewan college students on an inner city exposure trip...

"I must say I LOVE THE NORTH END OF WINNIPEG!!

This trip has reconnected me with some intense emotions from back in the day when I worked (in this neighborhood) .. My heart is so at home here, and I've been startled at some of the events our team feels unsure about, because my steps in this place are sure and confident. This is the place where I learned to rely fully on the Lord each and every day... Re-establishing that familiar connection on familiar streets - even with familiar faces - feels right and good.... but also brings many other mixed up emotions, too!"

... funny how things work out, huh? :)


If you're still reading.. here is a little snippet from Jamie's blog - its from an interview with Stuart Murray, who has written a book called 'The Naked Anabaptist'...

" My argument is that, in our post-Christendom western culture, the moment has arrived when the Anabaptist tradition is needed more than ever before. It is not the only tradition needed as we face new challenges and new opportunities, but it offers gifts to the wider church. These include a deep-rooted commitment to peacemaking in a fragmented society, experience on the margins of society in a context where all Christians are becoming marginal, a commitment to simplicity and community in a consumerist and individualistic culture, and a focus on the life and teaching of Jesus in societies that are sick of institutional Christianity but still intrigued by Jesus. It is not necessary to become Anabaptists to receive these gifts and to explore ways of working on these issues in many traditions and contexts. "

... words of encouragement to a homeless anabaptist... !

Thanks for reading.

how we could be all the time

I saw this video at nance and sean's a couple of weeks ago. It inspired me. I started writing this post with words articulating more thoughts and reflections about thinking 'collectively'.

But then, I decided that I can't do justice to the idea, nor can I even communicate whats in my own head ... so, better to let the video speak all by itself. (and you have to watch it in its entirety - 41/2 minutes - It's worth it! The message is in the crowd, not Oprah or the lyrics ...)

I like it. I'm inspired. I wish and pray for the world to move together, letting the rhythm and reason established by the Master Choreographer guide us ...

returning passion

In a message I heard recently, someone said that 'the passion anyone has for Christ is directly proportionate to their experience of Christ'.

Isn't that a great statement? Its basic, yet still profound when stated so succintly.

Here's the cool thing.. I've had some really amazing, life changing encounters with a god who is alive (not dead, not ancient, not historical) and who guides, who is present and faithful, whose voice I recognize often. Isn't that great? Whats more is that if it weren't for those encounters, I'd have given up on faith a long time ago. I'm not strong enough, or disciplined enough.. I'm too much of a screw up to hold it together. But somehow that didn't factor in to the equation or limit opportunities (I'm sure I missed alot of them along the way, too) to have these memorable encounters.

But it doesn't stop there... as I read the recorded stories about Christ, I realize that I've only experienced a smidgen of all that he is. I've got a lifetime to continue to experience all sorts of new things with him and because of him. That's even more great!

I don't know if its coming through in this blog or not, but some passion that was dormant for a while is returning. Have you ever gone on a hike and emerged into a clearing, only to realize that you'd been in that place before, that it wasn't new after all? That is what I've been feeling like these last couple of weeks... returning to the familiar.

I wish and pray this sense of optimism and hope for each of you ...