Convergence

Have you ever experienced a season in your life where the same themes of life keep calling out to you, begging for your attention?

For me, it's been a convergence of  community experience and undoubtedly God's current urging for my life. It began as most of God's blessings do, first an ache for something that was missing that God intended for me. This core longing to have more community for nurture and nourishment has been the center of my prayer life for about a year and God has been faithful in his provision! And now God is saying, pay attention. I have things for you to learn and ways for you to grow through my provision. This is my blessing, don't miss it.

He is blessing me with the phenomena of  convergence: the occurrence of two or more things coming together. In my mind's eye I see  this convergence as a dot on a map which represents a destination point called community. Coming into that point are many roads, each created for a different purpose.

Caregivers of spiritual direction and healing prayer agree that community is one of the most foundational needs of humanity. Community began in the form of the trinity and God's people have been called to express the sacredness and beauty of the trinitarian relationship in the body of Christ throughout biblical history. To be created in the image of God is to be created for community. God places us in community to form us spiritually, heal us emotionally, and enjoy each other relationally.

So, what does your "community map" look like? Do you have avenues of relational experiences that are forming you? Are there roads which you are willing to travel in order to be changed, to be formed in the image of Christ?

If you are like me, you might find yourself giving care more often than receiving care. God can, and desires, to balance that out for you.

I am thankful for the convergence of many community experiences after a time of searching:

My Sunday evening fellowship and prayer group of  adults that are in the same season of life

A bi-monthly spiritual formation group of four incredible women

New friends that have reached out to us at church

Convergence.

What "coming together of two or more things" is God doing in your life?

Pay attention. Don't miss the blessing. Write it down. Share it here or with others.

Thanks be to God!
donna
   

Which Essential is Essential to You?

Greetings Seminar Participants!

I thoroughly enjoyed being with you these past four days. Together we embraced the incarnation, considered what it means to be in spiritual community, wrestled with understanding the right and left hemispheres of our brains, and explored classic definitions of Christian spirituality.

I especially appreciated the lecture citing Scott M. Peck's four stages of  community from A Different Drum.

1. pseudo-community-- niceness reigns and people live in their projected self
2. chaos-- emotional skeletons crawl outof the closet and our true self emerges
3. emptiness-- time of quiet transition asks: why are we here?
4. true community-- deep honest sharing

Where does your church fall on this continuum? How can you help move it from one stage to the next?

What part of The Essentials especially spoke to you?

Looking forward to  hearing your thougthts.
donna

The Power of the Opposite

This morning my mud-sludge lawn competed with snow that lay upon it like sifted powdered sugar. Both the dusting and the dirt vied for attention, giving me a snapshot of my emotional life.

My kids ask me how I am doing with death and Brian and I talk about the sadness I feel around the anniversary of my Mom's birthday. He says, "It's beautiful."

Beautiful sadness? Do those words belong in the same phrase?

"Think of it this way," he continues, "You have the capacity to think about the loss of your Mom and be sad. That's beautiful."

This capacity to feel sadness is a thing of beauty? Well, when I think of the alternative, to be cold and unmoving towards this great loss,  I  see Brian's perspective. And in some mysterious way, to describe grief as beautiful sadness feels like a warm comforter wrapped around my feelings.

I told him later I thought his words profound and he gave me something else to ponder: "It's the power of the opposite," he explained.

Now that's something I understand. Opposites existing, murky mud and pristine snow, one with the other, do wield a powerful force. There's a force in me that says only room for one. I can only handle one at a time-- the beautiful one, of course.  It's power that I work hard to control and tension is the by-product. Who wants that?

During a recent sermon series on marriage, Pastor Bill said that tension in marriage is good. It creates space for spiritual growth. Who wants to grow spiritually by way of tension? Who wants that?

Most of us would like tension to just go away.

But what would happen if we allowed ourselves to hang in the balance of this tension?

Isn't that what Jesus did for us?

He experienced the power of the opposite as he hung in the balance in all the beauty and cruelty of the cross.

We read in Hebrews, "for the joy set before him, he endured the cross."

But I think I need a world covered pure in unadulterated snow. Nothing muddying up my landscape.

And oh how we impose this need on others. Someone cries and we try to make the tears go away. Life is messy and we try to sweeten it with a dusting of powdered sugar.

But what does Jesus do? Jesus bears the tension of a fallen world, "surely he has borne our griefs," and makes our lives more than bearable.
He makes our sadness beautiful.

Essentials are for Everyone

In a few weeks one hundred people in the ministry of counseling, healing and caregiving will arrive on the Ashland seminary campus to discover what is essential for positioning people for transformation. Dr. Terry Wardle, Director of the Institute of Formational Counseling, will teach on six foundational principles necessary to the process of change. Pastoral counselors, youth pastors, professional counselors, senior pastors, psychologists and lay leaders will be challenged and inspired by formative times in the Lord's presence, worship, lectures by Dr. Wardle and small group process.

While I know the content of this seminar is of extreme value to my understanding and experience of being a people helper, I personally have a different goal. I want to embrace principles of change so I am first and foremost a better person to the people around me. Becoming a person that impacts my family and friends in a way that is transformational is truly a life-long training seminar for me! I need these principles to help me be different for others, different for myself, and most of all different so I look more like Jesus. Following are the six foundations Wardle identifies as crucial to change.

Empathy/Incarnational Love       Kairotic Encounters    
Right Brain Learning    Left Brain Learning    
 The Value of the Spirit     The Body of Christ on Earth

I am delighted to welcome caregivers in healing ministry to Ashland and this dynamic training event. I am grateful for how they will use what they learn to bring the healing power of Jesus to wounded souls. But what if all the caregivers that came were not in vocational ministry? What if they were, for example, Moms and Dads, public and private school teachers, hospital volunteers, Sunday school teachers, Grandmas and Grandpas, Bible study leaders, and home school Moms? How could The Essentials make a difference in their communities?

It's time that we speak out to all communities of people, and God is positioning us to do just that. I believe we have a responsibility and the opportunity to take what we learn to everyday people because the essentials of helping are for everyone.

Finally, I believe we are leaders called to disciple the body of Christ into a deeper understanding of what it means to help others grow into the person God created them to be.

So for those of you embarking on Ashland in two weeks, I challenge you to consider two things as takeaways from the seminar:
 How will you essentially change your family relationships?
 And, what can you offer to your church body?


Below are some resources that may help you engage with the essentials of people helping.

Incarnational Love: anything written by Jean Vanier; The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning;
I am Proud of You by Tim Madigan

Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of We by Daniel Siegel

Community: The Safest Place on Earth by Larry Crabb; From Brokenness to Community by Jean Vanier

Kairotic Encounters: Breathing the God-Breathed Life by Thom Gardner; Wounds that Heal by Stephen Seamands; One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

Spirituality: Invitation to a Journey by Robert Mulholland; The Sacramental Life by David deSilva; Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle; The Way of the Heart by Henri Nouwen

(For more information on The Essentials seminar contact Lynne Lawson, Assistant Director of the Institute of Formational Counseling at Ashland Seminary.)

When Gray Gives Way

Yesterday a good friend defined my mood as melancholy. Just out of curiosity, I looked up the definition and the words "a sad, thoughtful state of mind" fit quite well with my spirit. My mind was full of my Mom's memory and the next day would have been her eighty-fourth birthday. 

Everything outside reflected my mood on the inside. My drive through the country to chapel choir practice was dulled by shades of gray that painted the landscape. What's usually beautifully was bleak. I anticipated a lifting of the gray inside me once rehearsal got underway, but my usual antidote of music was not successful.

At rehearsal, John Rutter's The Lord is My Shepherd presented the choir with some new challenges. I focused on confusing meter changes, unfamiliar rhythm patterns, and singing above third space C. Our director, Rob, promised if we listened to the recording of Rutter's anthem, we would experience the flow of the piece and not struggle with its' technical aspects quite so much.

So today I took Rob's advice which proved to be much more than what I thought I needed. In my melancholic fog yesterday I completely missed the lyrics; the scriptures of the Twenty-Third Psalm. I missed the shepherd's peace, the shepherd's presence and the shepherds's promise. Now as I let the music float over me, I freed myself from the rhythms and the notes. It was like the choir performing the choral work was doing the thinking for me and I was being carried by the message as I sang along.  

A message that has meant so much to me and to so many others who have experienced the valley of the shadow of death . . .

With much gratitude for my step-mother, twenty-seven years ago the Twenty-Third Psalm was the final words in my Dad's ears before he took his last breath.  And a few short months ago, a printing of this Psalm was given to all that attended my Mom's funeral. And now it was ministering to me on the anniversary of her birthday.

And yet, another gift completes the picture. Bright, clear, golden sun streamed through my bedroom window where I sat with the song and I was reminded that the Lord is always there to lead me. Even in the valleys of deathly shadows, he is there to bring me out of the gray into his comfort.

Thanks, Rob, for this song.

And thanks be to God. 

What is Essential Is Invisible

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.

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?

• 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?

This can be hard healing work, but we can be confident in God's promises.

   "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.