A few lit candles. Check. Bible and journal close at hand. Check. Living room all cozy. Check. Coffee pot poised and ready to brew. Check. Healthy blueberry muffins out of oven awaiting fat-rich butter. Check. Four amazing women on their way from city to country to join me in God talk and spiritual formation. Check.
My favorite picture window at the breakfast table, framing a picture perfect snowy forest of trees.
Smeary, streaked, smudged and ruining my view. Fail.
Just look past the dirt, through the window, I told myself. Easier said than done. You're getting ready for a morning of spiritual growth, I chided myself, not a photo shoot for a decorating magazine. My vision, as it often is, was distracted by something that really didn't matter.
My thoughts drifted back to a spiritual growth moment of the same ilk earlier in the week that obviously needed some revisiting. Reading a book I received for Christmas, (that I didn't know I wanted, but now it's a favorite), I landed upon a lesson that provided perspective that truly mattered.
It's the story of Fred Rogers, that's right, the sweater-donning Mr. Rogers that wants to be my neighbor, written by newspaper journalist, Tim Madigan. In I'm Proud of You, My Friendship with Fred Rogers, Madigan carries the reader past the obligatory journalism interview assigned to him by his editor, to the account of a rich friendship between two men of different worlds.
Madigan quickly gets to the true character of this gentle man known simply as Mr. Rogers to the late twentieth century American family. By page eighteen I discovered Rogers was a "much more than simply meets the eye" persona of the general television viewing audience. Here both character and spiritual formation were artfully crafted; experiences that shaped the man on the screen.
In his adult life, Rogers was a beloved father, grandfather, successful television personality and ordained minister. Madigan notes as a child, Rogers was "pudgy, bookish, musical and extremely shy."
Rogers shared with Madigan his boyhood trials of bullies that taunted him while walking home from school. "As I walked faster, I looked around and they started to call my name and came closer and closer and got louder and louder . . . 'Freddy, hey, fat Freddy. We're going to get you Freddy.' I resented those kids for not seeing beyond my fatness or my shyness. And I didn't know it was all right to resent it, to feel bad about it, even to feel very sad about it . . . The advice I got from grown-ups was, just let on you don't care, then nobody will bother you. What I actually did was mourn. I cried to myself whenever I was alone. I cried through my fingers as I made up songs on the piano. I sought out stories of other people who were poor in spirit, and I felt for them.
I started to look behind the things that people did and said, and little by little, concluded that Saint-Exupery was absolutely right when he wrote in The Little Prince: 'What is essential is invisible to the eyes.' So after a lot of sadness, I began a lifelong search for what is essential, what is about my neighbor that doesn't meet the eye."
Although I was engaged with Madigan's biography about Fred Rogers until the last word on the last page, I paused for a long time after reading this particular story about Freddy Rogers that taught me to see what is essential in people, in life.
I want to see like that.
What do you see when you look at people through the windows of your world?
What does God see when he looks at you through "his window?"
"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'"
Genesis 1:26 (ESV)
Lord, help us to see past the streaks, smears and smudges to the image of you He created in all of us.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Getting the Used Air Out
I knew I needed something. But, I just couldn't quite identify what it was. Yet once it showed itself to me, I knew. And I found that something in two places, one most unlikely and the other most inevitable.
For awhile now, my emotions have felt like a jumbled mess. I can appreciate the visual of this "mess" I discovered years ago by bereavement expert Everett Worthington. Worthington created a picture that looks like a tangled up ball of yarn. In between the twisted threads within this ball he placed numerous descriptive words such as sorrow, disappointment, rage, delight, joy. Worthington named his picture The Tangled Web of Emotions.
In my own emotionally webbed-brain I see specific threads that twist and turn around my emotions; threads of necessary losses such as the deaths of both my Mom and my Dad. Other distinctive threads that are not quite as difficult to bear, but necessary losses just the same; the healthy grief over adult children that find their dreams in "foreign" lands and live miles away from their Dad and me. And woven into these are the unhealthy and unnecessary losses that include missed opportunities and some poor choices I've made along the way. I can name many of the emotions nestled in between the tangled up yarns. Longing, sadness, joy, disappointment, shame, hope, and satisfaction are just a few.
In the midst of this helpful identification of grief and goodness, I continued to sense there was a certain something God wanted me to do.
Although individual ministry from a seasoned caregiver could facilitate the discovery of this "something," I knew the Holy Spirit was pointing me in a different direction. I held off making an appointment and God, in his perfect sovereignty, provided.
At the encouragement of my husband, I began reading a biographical account of Theodore Roosevelt called Mornings on Horseback by Pulitzer Price award winner David McCullough. Jim pointed me to a chapter describing the psychosomatic nature of asthma that gravely impacted Roosevelt's childhood years. Here that unlikely place of a new understanding of my emotions presented itself.
"The onset [of an asthma attack] may be sudden or gradual. The first stage is a tightening of the chest and a dry, hacking cough. Breathing becomes labored and shallow. The child starts to pant for air ("asthma" in Greek means panting). . . . He is battling for breath, tugging, straining, elbows planted on his knees, shoulders hunched high, his head thrown back, eyes popping. Fiercely as he pulls and gulps for air, what he gets is never enough.
Hyperventilation occurs, as less and less air is pulled into the lungs. The feeling, it has been said, is of taking in mere spoonfuls of air, these reaching only the top of the lungs.
But though the sensation is of being unable to take air in, the problem is actually the reverse: the air already inside cannot be expired as in normal breathing. It is the used air trapped within the swollen lungs that is keeping the child from breathing in the fresh air so desperately wanted. The struggle is to get the used air out."
Getting the used air out. My emotions were getting stale! They were "used air." Until I read that, I never realized emotions could get stale. But that was exactly what I felt happening in my brain. They were knotted up in this tangled ball, in need of escape. But I had left them there to get stale. Used, stale and flat. I just wasn't feeling my feelings. At one time I had experienced them all afresh, but their shelf life was short lived.
I needed to figure out how this was occurring in my life. So I made a list of all the events that were losses in my life for the past four years. Then I asked myself two questions. What did I do with all the emotions surrounding those events? Were they trapped or had I released them?
And then God not only reminded me of the inevitable, but provided it for me as well. A few weeks into my "stale emotions epiphany" I met a friend for coffee and she suggested we form a small group for spiritual formation. Our agenda will be to process life and share how we find God in it. Of course! A small group community is God's inevitable place to breathe fresh air into my "deflatedness." This will be a place where community can help me experience Jesus in my joys and sorrows. Five ladies that desire to come together to process their journeys and God's faithful presence is God's provision. He provided a group that will give me space to exhale.
Spiritual director and author Thom Gardner shares a study that shows that "there is enough DNA in the condensation of human breath to identify the person who exhales it. When we exhale, the essence of our life is broadcast, carrying with it our DNA- our identity as individuals."
So, what do you do with all the emotions surrounding your losses? Do you exhale? Most of you know the correct answers and how-to's for processing grief. You can list the steps to grieving easily. You can write laments. You can receive formational, healing prayer. You know the necessity of releasing your emotions.
But what if you bypassed looking for the right answers just for the moment and began by honestly asking yourself the question: what do I do with my emotions surrounding my losses?
"But, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men." Lamentations 3:32-33 (ESV)
Keep breathing,
donna
ps. For a good read to help you with your "breathing habits" check out Thom Gardner's Living the God-Breathed Life.
For awhile now, my emotions have felt like a jumbled mess. I can appreciate the visual of this "mess" I discovered years ago by bereavement expert Everett Worthington. Worthington created a picture that looks like a tangled up ball of yarn. In between the twisted threads within this ball he placed numerous descriptive words such as sorrow, disappointment, rage, delight, joy. Worthington named his picture The Tangled Web of Emotions.
In my own emotionally webbed-brain I see specific threads that twist and turn around my emotions; threads of necessary losses such as the deaths of both my Mom and my Dad. Other distinctive threads that are not quite as difficult to bear, but necessary losses just the same; the healthy grief over adult children that find their dreams in "foreign" lands and live miles away from their Dad and me. And woven into these are the unhealthy and unnecessary losses that include missed opportunities and some poor choices I've made along the way. I can name many of the emotions nestled in between the tangled up yarns. Longing, sadness, joy, disappointment, shame, hope, and satisfaction are just a few.
In the midst of this helpful identification of grief and goodness, I continued to sense there was a certain something God wanted me to do.
Although individual ministry from a seasoned caregiver could facilitate the discovery of this "something," I knew the Holy Spirit was pointing me in a different direction. I held off making an appointment and God, in his perfect sovereignty, provided.
At the encouragement of my husband, I began reading a biographical account of Theodore Roosevelt called Mornings on Horseback by Pulitzer Price award winner David McCullough. Jim pointed me to a chapter describing the psychosomatic nature of asthma that gravely impacted Roosevelt's childhood years. Here that unlikely place of a new understanding of my emotions presented itself.
"The onset [of an asthma attack] may be sudden or gradual. The first stage is a tightening of the chest and a dry, hacking cough. Breathing becomes labored and shallow. The child starts to pant for air ("asthma" in Greek means panting). . . . He is battling for breath, tugging, straining, elbows planted on his knees, shoulders hunched high, his head thrown back, eyes popping. Fiercely as he pulls and gulps for air, what he gets is never enough.
Hyperventilation occurs, as less and less air is pulled into the lungs. The feeling, it has been said, is of taking in mere spoonfuls of air, these reaching only the top of the lungs.
But though the sensation is of being unable to take air in, the problem is actually the reverse: the air already inside cannot be expired as in normal breathing. It is the used air trapped within the swollen lungs that is keeping the child from breathing in the fresh air so desperately wanted. The struggle is to get the used air out."
Getting the used air out. My emotions were getting stale! They were "used air." Until I read that, I never realized emotions could get stale. But that was exactly what I felt happening in my brain. They were knotted up in this tangled ball, in need of escape. But I had left them there to get stale. Used, stale and flat. I just wasn't feeling my feelings. At one time I had experienced them all afresh, but their shelf life was short lived.
I needed to figure out how this was occurring in my life. So I made a list of all the events that were losses in my life for the past four years. Then I asked myself two questions. What did I do with all the emotions surrounding those events? Were they trapped or had I released them?
And then God not only reminded me of the inevitable, but provided it for me as well. A few weeks into my "stale emotions epiphany" I met a friend for coffee and she suggested we form a small group for spiritual formation. Our agenda will be to process life and share how we find God in it. Of course! A small group community is God's inevitable place to breathe fresh air into my "deflatedness." This will be a place where community can help me experience Jesus in my joys and sorrows. Five ladies that desire to come together to process their journeys and God's faithful presence is God's provision. He provided a group that will give me space to exhale.
Spiritual director and author Thom Gardner shares a study that shows that "there is enough DNA in the condensation of human breath to identify the person who exhales it. When we exhale, the essence of our life is broadcast, carrying with it our DNA- our identity as individuals."
So, what do you do with all the emotions surrounding your losses? Do you exhale? Most of you know the correct answers and how-to's for processing grief. You can list the steps to grieving easily. You can write laments. You can receive formational, healing prayer. You know the necessity of releasing your emotions.
But what if you bypassed looking for the right answers just for the moment and began by honestly asking yourself the question: what do I do with my emotions surrounding my losses?
- Do I get busy and push them aside?
- Do I ignore them?
- Do I keep them to myself?
- Do I read more books about becoming emotionally healthy?
- Do I replace them with food, achievement, the computer, etc. in order not to feel?
- Do I project them onto others?
- Do I isolate myself?
"But, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men." Lamentations 3:32-33 (ESV)
Keep breathing,
donna
ps. For a good read to help you with your "breathing habits" check out Thom Gardner's Living the God-Breathed Life.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Munus
Community isn't always comfortable. (No revelation there!) But discomfort is what pushes us to grow up. Community is where we expect our congregation, our clients, our care receivers, and our family members to become more like Jesus. In that respect, community is an important and precious gift.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes community truths in his seminal book, Life Together. He begins by exhorting the reader to treasure community as a
"gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart."
community is a privilege . . . a gift of grace . . . a praise . . .-- sometimes my experience, sometimes not so much
(At this point, we could do a word study on the words grace, gift and koinonia, but that's done so gloriously in other books. By the way, have you read Ann Voskamp's 1,000 Gifts?)
While searching for a title to this blog, I sought for words to express what I seek from this grace-gift called community and what I believe God desires for all in community. I found something quite interesting in the Latin definition of community. Below is a copy and paste from WordIQ.com (a simple shortcut, but it delivered)!
The origin of the word community comes from the Latin munus, which means the gift, and cum, which means together, among each other. Community literally means to give among each other. Community could be defined as a group of people who share gifts which they provide to all.
Thus, I embraced the title community gifts as an expression of the place where gifts from our community can be shared within the gift we have of being in community.
Bonhoeffer also exclaims:
"Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren."
(I would humbly add it is grace to live among all peoples, and Bonhoeffer is quick to note from this same chapter quoted above, Luther's admonition that we'd rather sit mong roses and lilies, the "devout" people, than those who are unbelievers.)
I am thankful that God has graced us with each other and saddened by the many miles between us. For those of you that journey to Ashland for training in the ministry of caregiving, you know what I mean. We've fellowshipped, studied, prayed and experienced the presence of the Lord together with pastors from Nebraska, women's ministers in Uganda, full-time Spanish missionaries, spiritual directors in Florida-- the list of far away places is long. For many of us, family members are spread across the globe and friends are choosing to live in countries other than our own. So yes to Dietrich, it is nothing but grace that we are allowed to be together!
Deuteronomy 18:25 reminds us that we are scattered like seed "into all the kingdoms of the earth." My hope is to gather up a handful of that seed into this one "blog basket" and share our gifts of ministry among each other through a variety of posts. Whether your focus is full-time ministry, lay counseling, raising a family, professional counseling, healing prayer, or mentoring, I encourage you to get involved in sharing your gifts with one another. Here are some examples to get you started:
Ask specific questions about how to minister in your current community. You've heard it said over and over, there are no stupid questions.
Reflect upon the blog posted. Do you agree, disagree, or have had similar experiences?
Share victories of positioning people to experience Jesus in their emotional upheaval.
Give helpful administrative hints regarding your caregiving ministry in your context.
Offer your creative ideas on mentoring someone on their journey.
Explore difficult areas for you in the ministry of healing and formational prayer.
Bonhoeffer offers:
"The Christian in exile is . . . strengthened by a letter written by the hand of a Christian. The greetings in the letters written with Paul's own hand were doubtless tokens of such community."
Looking forward to your "letters" and the forming of this new community.
donna
Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes community truths in his seminal book, Life Together. He begins by exhorting the reader to treasure community as a
"gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart."
community is a privilege . . . a gift of grace . . . a praise . . .-- sometimes my experience, sometimes not so much
(At this point, we could do a word study on the words grace, gift and koinonia, but that's done so gloriously in other books. By the way, have you read Ann Voskamp's 1,000 Gifts?)
While searching for a title to this blog, I sought for words to express what I seek from this grace-gift called community and what I believe God desires for all in community. I found something quite interesting in the Latin definition of community. Below is a copy and paste from WordIQ.com (a simple shortcut, but it delivered)!
The origin of the word community comes from the Latin munus, which means the gift, and cum, which means together, among each other. Community literally means to give among each other. Community could be defined as a group of people who share gifts which they provide to all.
Thus, I embraced the title community gifts as an expression of the place where gifts from our community can be shared within the gift we have of being in community.
Bonhoeffer also exclaims:
"Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren."
(I would humbly add it is grace to live among all peoples, and Bonhoeffer is quick to note from this same chapter quoted above, Luther's admonition that we'd rather sit mong roses and lilies, the "devout" people, than those who are unbelievers.)
I am thankful that God has graced us with each other and saddened by the many miles between us. For those of you that journey to Ashland for training in the ministry of caregiving, you know what I mean. We've fellowshipped, studied, prayed and experienced the presence of the Lord together with pastors from Nebraska, women's ministers in Uganda, full-time Spanish missionaries, spiritual directors in Florida-- the list of far away places is long. For many of us, family members are spread across the globe and friends are choosing to live in countries other than our own. So yes to Dietrich, it is nothing but grace that we are allowed to be together!
Deuteronomy 18:25 reminds us that we are scattered like seed "into all the kingdoms of the earth." My hope is to gather up a handful of that seed into this one "blog basket" and share our gifts of ministry among each other through a variety of posts. Whether your focus is full-time ministry, lay counseling, raising a family, professional counseling, healing prayer, or mentoring, I encourage you to get involved in sharing your gifts with one another. Here are some examples to get you started:
Ask specific questions about how to minister in your current community. You've heard it said over and over, there are no stupid questions.
Reflect upon the blog posted. Do you agree, disagree, or have had similar experiences?
Share victories of positioning people to experience Jesus in their emotional upheaval.
Give helpful administrative hints regarding your caregiving ministry in your context.
Offer your creative ideas on mentoring someone on their journey.
Explore difficult areas for you in the ministry of healing and formational prayer.
Bonhoeffer offers:
"The Christian in exile is . . . strengthened by a letter written by the hand of a Christian. The greetings in the letters written with Paul's own hand were doubtless tokens of such community."
Looking forward to your "letters" and the forming of this new community.
donna
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Community Begins Within
Sometimes I pursue community and sometimes I run from it. In between the two, I delight in being alone with Jesus. Community isn't always easy for me and who can argue with spending quiet time with the Lord? But Jesus is the relational Christ and we're called to reflect who he is. Part of that reflection is being in community.
My title at the Institute of Formational Counseling at Ashland Seminary is "small group specialist." The course I teach in the Doctor of Ministry Counseling track is healing in small groups. But teaching about groups, leading groups, and writing about community is a far cry from participating in groups and living like Jesus in relationships. Since our move to the Ashland area, after living in Northwest Ohio for thirty-one years, being in community has been rather difficult. Sometimes I'd rather be alone than develop new friendships and small group encounters.
(Does that ever happen to you? Do you ever find yourself in that safe place of talking about something, or like me, teaching about it, rather than experiencing it?)
Stephen Seamands, professor of Christian doctrine at Asbury Seminary, reminds me of the importance of living out the relational nature of Christ in his Ministry in the Image of God The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service. I've been revisiting his book and am challenged again to work out the stumbling blocks I place in my path to building relationships within community.
Recently my daughter shared with me some highlights of a marriage conference she attended at her church. The conference speaker listed obstacles to intimacy in relationships. One of them listed was negative self-talk. I found that quite intriguing; self-talk as something that gets in the way of developing positive relationships. And then it sunk in more deeply and, for me, the message morphed to community begins within. Looking within is a key for me in my struggle for and in community. And when I look inward I find negative thoughts, often centered around self, that get in the way of experiencing others in my communities of family and friends. Exploring the "within" was what led me to Seamands book again.
I've underlined, highlighted, and sticky tabbed several of Seamands statements that pushed me to think more deeply about community. Here are just a few I reread today:
Quoting Colin Gunton in The Promise of the Trinity: "If God is a communion of persons inseparably related, then . . . it is in our relatedness to others that our being human consists."
"Human beings, created in the image of the triune God, are constituted for relationship."
"Who we are in our relationships with people generally trumps what we do for people."
All great thoughts, but what do I need in order to be that person in community, to focus on others and not what's running around in my head?
As I pondered this and perused the last part of Seamands book, there it was, something I missed at the first read. Seamands, quoting the apostle Paul, presented a scripture to rescue me in my struggle to form relationships and address negative self-talk:
"Christ in you, the hope of glory."
Within all my self-talk, I wondered, where is Christ? If not Christ in me, then what am I bringing to community? (I believe I will be thinking on these things for more than a few days!)
At the juncture of Seamands' focus on the phrase "Christ in you," Seamands points to Ruth Paxson's book "Life on the Highest Plane." Here she describes the "Christ in you" experience.
"To be a Christian is nothing less than to have the glorified Christ living in us in actual presence, possession and power. It is to have Him as the Life of our life in such a way and to such a degree that we can say even as Paul said, "To me to live is Christ." To be a Christian is to grow up into Christ in all things: it is to have that divine seed which was planted in our innermost spirit blossom out into a growing conformity to His perfect life. To be a Christian is to have Christ the life of our minds, our hearts, our will, so that it is Christ thinking through us, living through us, willing through us. It is increasingly to have no life but the life of Christ within us filling us with ever increasing measure."
Paxson's words give me a place to re-start my approach to community. I tend to have to learn these teachings again and again. At least for now, community begins within.
My title at the Institute of Formational Counseling at Ashland Seminary is "small group specialist." The course I teach in the Doctor of Ministry Counseling track is healing in small groups. But teaching about groups, leading groups, and writing about community is a far cry from participating in groups and living like Jesus in relationships. Since our move to the Ashland area, after living in Northwest Ohio for thirty-one years, being in community has been rather difficult. Sometimes I'd rather be alone than develop new friendships and small group encounters.
(Does that ever happen to you? Do you ever find yourself in that safe place of talking about something, or like me, teaching about it, rather than experiencing it?)
Stephen Seamands, professor of Christian doctrine at Asbury Seminary, reminds me of the importance of living out the relational nature of Christ in his Ministry in the Image of God The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service. I've been revisiting his book and am challenged again to work out the stumbling blocks I place in my path to building relationships within community.
Recently my daughter shared with me some highlights of a marriage conference she attended at her church. The conference speaker listed obstacles to intimacy in relationships. One of them listed was negative self-talk. I found that quite intriguing; self-talk as something that gets in the way of developing positive relationships. And then it sunk in more deeply and, for me, the message morphed to community begins within. Looking within is a key for me in my struggle for and in community. And when I look inward I find negative thoughts, often centered around self, that get in the way of experiencing others in my communities of family and friends. Exploring the "within" was what led me to Seamands book again.
I've underlined, highlighted, and sticky tabbed several of Seamands statements that pushed me to think more deeply about community. Here are just a few I reread today:
Quoting Colin Gunton in The Promise of the Trinity: "If God is a communion of persons inseparably related, then . . . it is in our relatedness to others that our being human consists."
"Human beings, created in the image of the triune God, are constituted for relationship."
"Who we are in our relationships with people generally trumps what we do for people."
All great thoughts, but what do I need in order to be that person in community, to focus on others and not what's running around in my head?
As I pondered this and perused the last part of Seamands book, there it was, something I missed at the first read. Seamands, quoting the apostle Paul, presented a scripture to rescue me in my struggle to form relationships and address negative self-talk:
"Christ in you, the hope of glory."
Within all my self-talk, I wondered, where is Christ? If not Christ in me, then what am I bringing to community? (I believe I will be thinking on these things for more than a few days!)
At the juncture of Seamands' focus on the phrase "Christ in you," Seamands points to Ruth Paxson's book "Life on the Highest Plane." Here she describes the "Christ in you" experience.
"To be a Christian is nothing less than to have the glorified Christ living in us in actual presence, possession and power. It is to have Him as the Life of our life in such a way and to such a degree that we can say even as Paul said, "To me to live is Christ." To be a Christian is to grow up into Christ in all things: it is to have that divine seed which was planted in our innermost spirit blossom out into a growing conformity to His perfect life. To be a Christian is to have Christ the life of our minds, our hearts, our will, so that it is Christ thinking through us, living through us, willing through us. It is increasingly to have no life but the life of Christ within us filling us with ever increasing measure."
Paxson's words give me a place to re-start my approach to community. I tend to have to learn these teachings again and again. At least for now, community begins within.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)