vulnerability

A friend recently pointed me to Brene Brown's TED talk on vulnerability and its relationship to human connection. It's worth your time. What she says about transparency and courage is worth your time..."to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart". Even when it's messy--especially when it's messy. It reminds me of what some of my students said last year about brokenness and living a beautiful life. If you struggle with perfection and control or if you panic thinking about being vulnerable (as I do), maybe you will relate to her message.

blessing and time

Because rituals remind, the experience of time during the holidays can be bittersweet for us. Maybe, because of what is lost, we have to "fight through," pretending to enjoy for the sake of those we love. 

As O'Donohue writes, the work of day-to-day living is precarious:  there can be danger or darkness anywhere. Habitual time can turn in a second, and suddenly some unforeseen suffering is taking up tenancy in one's life... 

Blessing, he says, calls the potentiality of the future into the present moment and into the loss of the past:

To live like this is to experience time as a constant invitation to growth--to become more than you have been, to transform loss into presence, and to allow what is false to fall away. At the gates of time, blessing waits to usher toward us the grace we need....A blessing awakens future wholeness...a blessing 'forebrightens' the way. When a blessing is invoked, a window opens in eternal time.

One of my favorite poems by Wendy Cope evokes this achingly beautiful image of forebrightening, one I hope is present for all of us this year.

balance

"We're going to start with a headstand." I felt my shoulders tense and evidently every one else in the room felt tense too. The instructor commented on the sudden heaviness and fear in the room. So she told us to breathe and notice where that tension was settling. To detach and look at it. I immediately started thinking about the vertigo I was feeling in my life, like my world was upside down. How do I retain any sense of balance, of vision, when it just feels like I'm about to fall?

John O'Donohue writes, in his book of Celtic blessing, about how we encounter those tilted spaces between and within us: 

We never see the script of our lives; nor do we know what is coming toward us, or why our life takes on this particular shape or sequence. [But] a blessing...opens a different door in human encounter. One enters into the forecourt of the soul...Our longing for the eternal kindles our imagination to bless. Regardless of how we configure the eternal, the human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness, a place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of life's journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now....When you bless another, you first gather yourself; you reach below your surface mind and personality, down to the deeper source within you--namely, the soul. Blessing is from soul to soul.

Perhaps the way out of fear is through blessing, giving and receiving it. If you've ever tried a headstand you know that it helps to cultivate a strong inner core as well as to focus on something other, outside yourself. And the result just might be balance, even when, especially when, all around appears upside down.

advent

     Jan Richardson, over at The Advent Door, writes about the first readings (Matthew 24) of Advent:
It can be tempting to recoil from the imagery...: Christ as burglar, coworkers and companions left bereft, the anxiety of not knowing when or how the Word who became flesh for us will come again. Yet the season of Advent challenges us to resist recoiling and instead to press into the insecurity and unsettledness of this passage—and of our lives. Advent beckons us beyond the certainties that may not serve us—those sureties we have relied on that may have no substance to them after all. Advent is a season to look at what we have fashioned our lives around—beliefs, habits, convictions, prejudices—and to see whether these leave any room for the Christ who is so fond of slipping into our lives in guises we may not readily recognize.
     What an odd image. What an uncomfortable picture.  Isn't advent supposed to be about hope? about  joy and peace on earth? Yet the picture we get here, where advent begins, is one of pain, of freedom and salvation coming in disguise, more than that, in ways that we would not choose, that we may not recognize.
     And what do we do with it? I know my tendency is to hide in business, in taking care of others. Because it's scary to see Christ as a thief...and yet that is what he calls himself in this reading. And that's what he feels like sometimes. Have you ever felt like the one left in the field or left grinding the meal? Alone and with all the work?  Have you asked where is the Christ for that person? Where is freedom? Richardson says it's in the seeing, in being awake to uncertainties, to the unexpected. Perhaps it's in letting go of the expected.
     Read the rest of her poignant, yet encouraging writing here.

aesthetic moments

The last few weeks have been a blur. So glad for some space to breathe again. This past weekend I finished Comprehensive Exams for my Masters--just have oral defense and a couple of elective credits left (my sister calls it the never-ending Masters!).

Our family is all together for Thanksgiving for the first time in a long time. I am thankful to crawl out of the philosophical cave I've been in to breathe, to cook, to laugh, to spend time loving with family and friends.

One of the authors I've been reading writes of the "aesthetic moment," those timeless, ephemeral instances when true connection occurs, when because of, rather than in spite of, all our differences we see  the Other and respect and create something new and beautiful. My wish for all of us  during this often stressful time of year is a season enchanted by aesthetic moments.

playing for change

I love this idea!! Have you seen?


(thanks to experimental theology for the introduction.)

Defending Halloween

"...one night a year the world seems to become re-enchanted. Halloween night feels different. That night is spooky and menacing. For one night a year we go back in time and become medieval again. That's what makes Halloween so interesting. It's the last vestige of the Dark Ages. Smack in the middle of our disenchanted modernity." --Richard Beck

This past week, Richard Beck has written a series of posts on the healthy aspects (candy aside!) of Halloween:

It’s October. And that means I face the yearly question from students: “How should Christians respond to Halloween?” There’s an interesting conversation to be had about Halloween. A place to explore the intersection of faith and culture. To add my voice to that conversation I’d like to offer some psychological observations in defense of Halloween.

Psychologically, I think Halloween performs two important functions. First, Halloween allows us to collectively process our eventual death and mortality. The graveyards, corpses, blood, skeletons, and coffins of Halloween allow us, on a yearly basis, to confront our physicality and work through our largely repressed fear of death. In this, Halloween serves an important existential function. Second, Halloween allows us to work through our fears of the uncanny, the things that go bump in the night. This is the second major theme of Halloween, which manifests itself in Halloween’s evening and monster motifs, the bats, owls, ghosts and goblins. The world is a scary place at times, a strange and mysterious place, and we tend to fill its dark corners with “monsters.”

Read the series here. And while you're there, check out his fascinating series on The Theology of Monsters (one of my favorites).

Our family's traditions: carving pumpkins, eating popcorn and drinking cider, and roasting pumpkin seeds.

     Jacque and Pierre

 Jack doing the popcorn on the nose trick

However you celebrate this time of year, I hope you enjoy time with family and friends!

vote for AIC

Check out my daughter's post  about this amazing place that serves the children of Pune, India, where she traveled last summer to volunteer. Her beautiful pictures tell the story...

Please vote for AIC  to win $20,000 through the Chase Community Giving Challenge!

Bonhoeffer's this-worldliness

We ended the year in my World Lit. II class with writings by D. Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was involved in the plot against Hitler's life and was killed just before the defeat of Hitler's Third Reich.
In his Letters and Papers from Prison, he writes:

During the last year or so I've come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not a homo religiosus, but simply a man...I don't mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable...but the profound this-worldliness, characterized by...the constant knowledge of death and resurrection....
...I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman..., a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world... (p. 369)

Similar to Buber's "I and Thou," Taylor's paying attention, and Metz's open eyed mysticism, "living unreservedly" is beautiful. There is something disarming about it--especially in the context of taking seriously the sufferings of others.

Broken is Beautiful II

A couple of weeks ago I posted a video titled Broken is Beautiful. It is of a young woman who makes art out of x-rays that reveal some sort of brokenness, some hidden pain, some deformity.  I've been thinking about brokenness and beauty...Is there really beauty there or is it just a cover up? Surely we all know the ugliness of brokenness. We live with it every day in our own hearts.

My students and I have just finished Les Miserables in my World Lit. II class. It is a story about a convict...a man so broken, so ugly, so hardened he almost kills the only one who takes him in and feeds him. And when that one, that priest, enters into the ugliness with him, he is undone: “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I am withdrawing it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I am giving it to God!"

The rest of the 1000+ page novel portrays the result of one man's seeing and touching and transforming the ugliness. But not just one man...because Jean Valjean then becomes the one who touches the broken and brings hope. He not only touches, he enters into it. One of the most powerful scenes in the book depicts Jean ValJean entering into the sewers of Paris carrying an unconscious "enemy," his daughter's love, to save him from arrest. He is up to his neck in slime, baptized in excrement, while he holds the wounded Marius above him.  Talk about entering in....

So I asked my students what makes a beautiful life? Here are some of their responses:
      A beautiful life can only be lived by someone who places the well being of others above themselves. Whether it be giving ones crying friend a hug, to living in Africa and teaching kids English; that is a beautiful life.


      [to live] a life to it's fullest... that [is] beautiful.
     A beautiful life has struggle and heartache, like every other life. Beauty comes from pain, a beautiful life is one where suffering is overcome, and joy is brought out of it.

     To me, living a beautiful life goes hand in hand with living a meaningful life... if you surround yourself with people that you love and care about, and strive to protect and take care of them, than you've lived a beautiful life, and you go on living in the hearts and stories of others. My view of a beautiful life is surrounding myself with the people that I love, and people that love me back. 

     What makes a beautiful life for me is knowing there is only one of me, in the world and in my existance, and living every moment so perfectly in my mind creates a sense of beauty.

      For me, I think it comes from looking beyond yourself to something more. Looking beyond clothes and popularity and money and weight to something greater. "Something more" is different for each person walking this earth, but most of the time it includes family, friends, hobbies, or religion. Like finding something you love to do and doing it. Or spending time making meaningful relationships with the important people in your life. Or helping others. Or searching for God.

     To me, the beautiful life is the one I live....I have known no better and no worse. Therefore I have nothing to compare to. The beautiful life is the one that is mine, to me anyway. my beautiful life entails a given meaning, an importance that I didn't have to create for myself, and that in itself is beautiful enough for me. 

     I find beauty in life when people triumph over their struggles and become closer to the people around them through it. 
When I read their responses, I noticed how much they mentioned people and relationships. Which brings me back to my original question: Is there really beauty in brokenness?  And is our brokenness only beautiful when someone else enters it with us? really sees and loves anyway? If relationships bring beauty to brokenness, they also have the potential to make it ugly, we have the potential to make life ugly for others...it is part of our brokenness. So what do we do? I hope that we enter in, that we choose (when we have a choice) to bring life and beauty to others, even when it means that we get covered in crap, others and our own, because surely that's when we experience beauty the most.
(This paradox of beauty in brokenness reminds me of my daughter's experience when she was holding the hand  of a dying woman in Calcutta. You can revisit her post here...amazing, powerful story--an unexpected glimpse of beauty).

What makes a life beautiful?

BROKEN IS BEAUTIFUL from PEOPLE OF THE SECOND CHANCE on Vimeo.

(Thanks preachermike for the link)

I and Thou

     In the previous post, I highlighted Taylor's writing about encountering your neighbor as the main character in her or his own story. Her ideas remind me of Martin Buber's book I and Thou. Buber (1878-1965) was a professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Palestine and wrote in the early 20th century about similar ideas.
     He noted how we tend to treat the world, whether objects, animals, or people, according to their function, according to what they can or would do for us. He termed this way of relating "I - it". Such interactions are characterized by self-protection, by preconceptions of response, by expectations of getting something from the other. Taylor would say by making them a supporting character in our story.
     But when we place ourselves fully in the moment with another, when we are vulnerable and mask-less, when we release preconditions, we might experience "I-Thou" moments with another person. They are moments of enlargement...when both are enhanced by the being of another.  The result is pure dialog, even without words, especially without words. 
     For Buber, God is the "Eternal Thou," and so our relationship with him, like our encounters with other persons, shouldn't be preconditioned or self-protective. Rather we should remain open and available. Buber wasn't necessarily a mystic. Like Taylor, he believed that often the most profound I-Thou relationship with God occurrs through an I-Thou relationship with other people and the natural world.

Good Friday

I didn't attend a Maundy Thursday service this year, though for the past 2 years I have and have felt the weightiness of it. From a past year I wrote:
     Tonight was the Maundy Thursday service, my first. I didn't know exactly what to expect, though I anticipated communion and perhaps foot washing. Both were present. What powerfully struck me, though, what stunned and shook me was the emphasis of betrayal. Though the service was begun in contemporary praise, almost celebratory, the bishop's sermon emphasized that Judas accepted the footwashing of his master, ate the passover with his lord, all the while knowing he betrayed him, all the while perhaps even thinking how he would spend the 30 pieces.
     Then 4 basins were placed at the front, 2 in the center from which the 2 bishops wash and 2 at the sides for anyone else to use. This community quietly washed each others' feet...from the bishops washing the members' to the young men washing the bishops' feet...husbands and wives, fathers and children...friends. One of the most moving was a young girl, about 10 or 11, who took her daddy up to the side basin and washed his feet. She was weeping. She then crawled in his lap.

     Then the greeting of "Peace to you" and the feast...communion given to us by these servant leaders, the Bishop saying: "Christ's body broken for you"as he placed the bread in my cupped hand.
     The service ended with sudden harshness. There was total silence, no background keyboard or guitar, no choral reading. We had just finished communion, and the bishops forcefully stripped the communion table and tugged off their robes. Only the cross was left at the front with a bare table in front of it. The bishop threw a black cloth over the cross and abruptly pushed over the table. It thudded as it hit the ground. He ran off stage and turned and looked at the sound of a stake being struck several times. Then he ran out of the room, a look of anger on his face. 
     There was no movement, no sound as we all realized the implications. We, who just washed each others' feet, who just participated in the Feast together, were all the betrayers. Every last one of us, from the Bishops to the young girl. We were all Judas. We left the church in silence, no benediction, no blessing.

Then a later year, another Easter this:
     I didn't understand before what struck me so forcefully this year: the act of footwashing is done by the betrayed to the betrayer, by Jesus to Judas, by Jesus to me.
     And we are called to do the same...to wash the feet of those who betray us and to allow those we have betrayed to wash our feet. I had this terrifying vision of the people I had betrayed washing my feet. Harder almost than Jesus ...with Him I know acceptance, I know vulnerability, I know He dived into the mess I was in and walked through it with me.

     But with others, I don't know if they really forgive...maybe because I don't forgive myself? Could I wash the feet of  people who have betrayed me? I hope so, I hope I do...Why is it so difficult to be that vulnerable with each other, when we are all betrayers of Him and each other?

     I do have more hope this year...more hope that it all is leading somewhere. More hope that there really is healing and maybe even restoration. And more assurance that we're not alone, will never be alone, no matter how lonely we sometimes feel.

     The pastor said on this snowy Easter morning, while huge flakes looking like doilies floated lazily down, that "more was gained in the Resurrection than was lost in the fall."

the fortunate fall...
And this year my thoughts are lingering on words from Taylor's book...the one about wearing skin. She says: 

     In the case of the meal, he gave them things they could smell and taste and swallow. In the case of the feet, he gave them things that were attached to real human beings, so that they could not bend over them without being drawn into one another's lives.

Then she imagines their thought process: 

     Wow. How did you get that scar? Does it hurt when I touch it? No, really, they're not ugly. You should see mine. Yours just have a few more miles on them. Do you ever feel like you can't go any further? Like you just want to stop right here and let this be it? I know, I can't stop either. It's weird, isn't it? You follow him and you follow him, thinking that any minute now the sky is going to crack open, and you're going to see the face of God. Then he hands you his basin and his towel, and it turns out that it's all about feet, you know? Yours, mine, his. Feet, for God's sake. (p. 44)

This but not this

Recently I came upon a writer and artist whose deeply reflective work has moved me.  Jan Richardson writes:

The challenge of creating a piece of art lies not just in deciding what to include but also in discerning what to leave out. Every piece of art involves a process of choosing: not this, not this, not this. I can only find what belongs by clearing away everything that doesn’t.This is no speedy endeavor.

On an intimate scale, it’s much like the kind of discernment that we see Jesus engaged in as we follow him into the wilderness on the first Sunday of Lent...

The devil’s temptations show that he knows the words of scripture well. Jesus’ responses, however, reveal that he knows more: he understands the heart of the sacred texts. And here in the wilderness, the one who has steeped himself in those texts begins to understand how the ancient words of God are to take flesh in him as the living and incarnate Word of God. Once, twice, and yet a third time: with every temptation, Jesus responds to the devil: not this, not this, not this. With each response he names what does not belong to him; with each answer he gains clarity about what he needs to empty himself of in order to be who he has come here to be.

When he emerges from this wild space, when he has completed this liminal time of fasting and praying and wrestling and waiting, Jesus has a clarity that could not have come otherwise. It has taken a long time, this emptying, this clearing out, this letting go of what doesn’t belong in order to find what does. But in taking the time, in venturing into that place, Jesus has found what he needs. As he enters his public ministry, he possesses a picture that is more complete, more whole. From discerning not this, not this, not this, he can now say, this.
(read the rest of Jan's thoughts and see her inspired art at The Painted Prayerbook).
I found myself thinking, "Yes...exactly". The choices that we don't choose ...and sometimes unchoose...are as important as the ones we do choose. Don't we all long for the certainty of "this" over the "not this"? And I wonder if the "this" is clarified even more (after the wilderness) as it is confirmed by our fellow waiters and wrestlers. To know your "this" and to encourage others in finding theirs....sounds lovely to me.

Rooms

So I've been thinking in the last few years about the changing nature of place and space. Of the intersection of mobile space with geographical place as we move through real places while engaging socially or professionally in virtual spaces. What effect does the place have on our interactions, if any? And how does interacting in virtual spaces affect our movement through, our awareness of interactions in real places? Is it possible to be present and engaged in 2 places, in 2 communities or more, at the same time?

And speaking of spaces...here's one that has changed drastically in one month, from clutter and laughter and music to this quiet place that still somewhat smells of the lotion that was used not that long ago. It used to be our oldest daughter's room, then the one who just married and moved to London...now it is a "guest room", but it feels like it's just waiting for someone to move in (don't think it will stay this way long!). It's nice to have the extra space, but I really don't mind that place filled with laughter and music and clutter.

Wish List

An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

by Barbara Brown Taylor

The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle

The Luminous Word: Entering the Mysteries of Advent & Christmas by Jan Richardson

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller

and...

these shoes from a favorite company

and this camera (because my children are growing up and going to graduate school, and getting married, and going to dances, and getting tall and I want to capture it all!)

(I'm trying the "You might also like" feature that I've seen on many blogs--but most recently here):

Flash Forward

Anyone else notice the many quantum physics references in the new ABC series, "Flash Forward"? Everything from photons that know you're watching and so change their behavior to Schroedinger's Cat. And there's the whole premise of fate and causality...whether knowing the future makes it happen or is it just one of many possible futures that a person can change (quantum state of uncertainty--all possible futures happen--the cat is both dead and alive at the same time). Then there is the episode titled The Black Swan ...

The Office Wedding (Finally)

Pam and Jim's wedding. The episode was worth the wait. Maybe because we are in the midst of planning a wedding, I can relate to the fun and the tension in expectation. Typically provocative, leave it to this fictional "reality show" both to spoof and celebrate our obsession with a fictional couple and with social media. To celebrate humanity in community with all its messiness. I like how Richard Beck views this episode. He writes, "The most important point, for me, about The Office wedding is how Jim and Pam figure out a way to give it away to their friends." You can read the rest of his post here. No matter how my daughter's wedding actually turns out (and we have a "MeeMaw" in our family too!--doesn't everybody?), I hope they have a day of laughter and celebrating their chosen life together, with us their (quirky) family and friends.

The Visitor

I loved this movie...even the not so perfectly happy ending. At the beginning of the film, the main character, a college professor in NJ, Walter, just goes through the motions of his life. He is a visitor in his own life, a watcher...on the sidelines...after all, his wife has died. So Walter tries to capture something of his life, his wife, by taking piano lessons (she was a concert pianist). But he fails horribly at it.

When he is called to present a paper at a conference in NYC for a colleague, he shows up at his apartment there (which he hasn't been at since his wife died) only to find two young lovers, immigrants, who have taken over the place. The interaction between these characters, the unlikely friendship that develops, brings Walter back to life. The kinship that occurs between the man, an illegal immigrant from Syria, who lives so present in the moment that he often forgets time, and Walter who is so imprisoned by time, ignites Walter. The Syrian teaches him his instrument, which Walter takes to almost immediately....kind of a metaphor for finding his own rhythm, his own way even when there continues to be loss.

and also...

The posting below on liturgy and loss was inspired by my daughter's reflections on her experiences in India...the pain, the laughter, the smells, the proximity of real human suffering. She writes:

On Friday I began my morning shift volunteering at Kalighat, Mother Teresa's home for the dying. It is simple work, it is hard work, it is frustrating and it is joyful...As I walked by a bed, one dying younger woman with a shaved head, who is also psychologically handicapped, began pulling at my pants and smiling at me. I sat on the bed next to her and held her hands in both of mine. We just smiled at one another and I stupidly wasn't really sure what to do next...perhaps try and sing to her? Massage her hands and arms? Before I could make up my mind on what to do, she began to massage my hands, and my arms! I was so taken off guard that I started laughing, then she started laughing, her few rotting teeth showing through, and then the Sisters, seeing what was happening started to laugh as well. It was such a sweet moment. I didn't know if I wanted to continue laughing or start crying. Looking into this dying Bengali woman's eyes as she was caring for me, as our roles were reversed for a moment in time, was so real and so human.

Read more here: http://www.lightsontheshore.blogspot.com/