8.15.10 Rain Walking

The first time Gwyn and I went rain walking—an absolute downpour, streams in the alleys, rainspouts spewing, street drains cascading—Gwyn fell in love with her rubber boots.  Our forgetting them on our vacation last week merited a temper tantrum.  From Gwyn’s perspective (from most kids’ perspective), a summer afternoon rainstorm is about as good as it gets.  She glories in the puddles, she sticks her head under the rain spout, and she fills her boots with water.

It’s trite, but I still can wish that Gwyn doesn’t lose her enthusiasm to be out in the thick of things when everyone else wants to stay indoors.

The second time Emily was diagnosed with cancer, our terrific grief was followed by familiarity—we’d been to “cancerland” before; we knew that the deluge, while stealing our hopes for the present and possibly the future, brought with it unique gifts.  You could say we still had our red rubber boots stored in the closet.  The intense focus of a life-threatening illness can crack a person (and a relationship) open in ways that aren’t available to us in day-to-day life, and in a backwards, I’d-never-choose-this-but-it’s-my-lot kind of way, Emily and I learned to walk out into the rain.

Perhaps I’m talking about perspective here.  An optimist will always see the bright side of a rainy day.  But I believe I’m talking about faith.  Faith is our orientation to the world, what we set our hearts on.  And a Christian faith is about setting our hearts on the reign of God.  As I see it, the reign of God is that creative, justice-seeking life force pulsing throughout the world.  There’s no place where it isn’t, but there are plenty of times when the reign of God is almost impossible to recognize.  We find the rain overwhelming and want to turn our backs on the world.  But that’s when people of faith pull on our boots and head out the door.

Nurturing faith (my own and Gwyn’s) is about keeping our hearts wide.  There’s always a bigger picture than we can imagine.
    --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew 

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7.15.10 Loving the Neighbors
 
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  Mt 19:19
 
I grew up in a suburban development outside of New York city.  Most of our neighbors were childless couples who commuted into the city for work; on a walk around the block, we were lucky to see another human being, much less a kid.  On Christmas eve my family traditionally delivered my mother’s kuken to the old ladies next door and a few other couples.  There were years I only saw these neighbors when we rang their doorbells bearing the saran-wrapped bread topped with candied fruit. 

So when I attended my first National Night Out party in south Minneapolis, I was flabbergasted.  The block was cordoned off; kids rode their bikes freely and drew with chalk down the middle of the street; a neighbor fired up a big kettle drum and we actually ate a meal together.  Then I moved, made a commitment with Emily to “farm the back forty” (as my neighbor describes our gardening), struggled through Emily’s two bouts of cancer, and adopted a kid.  My experience of living as a neighbor has been utterly changed.  I’ve yet to borrow the proverbial cup of sugar, but I’ve done just about everything else—entrusted my daughter with neighbors, attended the neighbors’ kids’ dance performance, fed neighbors and been fed, split a farm share, received hand-me-downs, given hand-me-downs, visited neighbors in the hospital…

It’s a unique relationship, one I’m coming to cherish.  Few of the people living around me would I have initially chosen as friends, and yet proximity has endeared them to me; our lives have intertwined and been enriched.  On the surface the connections seem small—Gwyn’s love for the yappy dogs who live north of us; the raspberry upstarts we transplanted from across the alley; my neighbor’s willingness to share his push mower.  And perhaps these are not the enduring connections of the heart.  But I’ve come to see these small kindnesses between people living close together as stitches in a broader cloth.  In a fast-paced, isolating world, we know who has back-pain, whose mother died recently, whose kid is struggling in school, who won the tennis tournament.  I’m convinced this matters; it binds us one to the other and makes of us something bigger, a community.  This being a neighbor is a mundane form of love.  I’m glad to finally be learning how.                    --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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6.15.10 The Redemption of Shopping
 
I don’t just hate shopping, I abhor it.  When I need new underwear, I usually wait another six months until the old ones are in shreds, then I strategize, enter the mall running, buy the same kind as always, and exit at a clip.  I dislike the crowds, the muzack, the prices, the necessity of cheap overseas labor, the throw-away American mindset, and especially the overt commercialism.  Most of what fills our stores nobody needs.  I ache when I see that vacuous gaze in shoppers’ eyes.  I dread the clutch of desire that, despite my best defenses, still catches me unaware.

Come summer, though, I’m a shopaholic.  The greed I’ve held at bay during the cold months comes raging forward and I unleash it on the city, trolling street corners for garage sale signs, even scrolling through Craig’s List, obsessing at the words “Multi-family” or “neighborhood” while keeping a dose of skepticism at “huge”.  And while I’m excited (well, thrilled) at finding a good bargain—for Gwyn’s sandbox I bought a potato masher, egg beater, whisk, spatula, pastry cutter and a basket for $1.75!!—there’s more, much more, going on out there than unfettered materialism. 

First, you get to be outside.  Saturday mornings in the summer can be glorious, and at the best neighborhood sales, you can shop without getting in a car.

Second, you meet your neighbors.  I went to a sale this spring coordinated by four consecutive blocks; the alleys were teeming with people chatting, drinking coffee, and happily bragging about their purchases.  My own neighborhood sale is the largest in the city—more than 170 garages open their bowels to the world.  A neighborhood that usually feels uncoordinated and awkward gains cohesion one Saturday a year.

Third, all that stuff gets re-used.  People get clothed.  Plastic toys don’t wind up in landfills.  For every item purchased in an alley, one less item is sold at the mall, which delights me to no end. 

Garage sales help ordinary people meet their needs without contributing to the GNP.  We can duck under the economists’ radar and support our own, local economies.  And by stepping outside of the grinding commercial machine, there’s some hope of a healthy relationship to our goods—a relationship that doesn’t diminish our planet or our souls. 
                                                   --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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3.15.10 Humbled & Exalted

My heart leaps up with joy to God, who humbles only to exalt us.

A friend recently learned that her nephew is gay, and, despite being completely accepting of him, reacted with sadness.  Now he would know exclusion, prejudice, and hardship none of us want for our family members.  I know the feeling.  I reacted with similar grief when I first became conscious of my bisexuality.  Others would make incorrect assumptions about me.  The easy assumptions I’d made about my life (marriage, kids, holding hands in the park) were in shatters.  Suddenly I was the “other,” on the outskirts of our culture.

Almost twenty years and a same-sex marriage later, I can say with confidence that the gifts of being queer far outweigh my losses.  Most of what I lost was the convenience of letting society write my story for me.  By not fitting into that story, I’ve had the opportunity to create my own, which is far richer than anything I’d dreamed prior.  I still rankle when politicians go on about “gay marriage” or “alternative lifestyles” because they’re doing their darnedest to fit me into their prescribed story.  There’s much to grieve, not about the fact of being queer (which is pretty darn great!) but about our society’s response. 

My small United Methodist congregation is celebrating two decades of being a reconciling congregation—twenty years of being “out” in the world, opening our arms to GLBT folk in defiance of the United Methodist Church’s policies.  What we’ve lost—some members, perhaps some status—has been minimal, while we’ve gained vision, a welcoming spirit, new members, and a reputation.  When General Conference rolls around every four years, bringing up the inevitable conflicts about our Book of Discipline, salt once again gets rubbed in our wounds.  There’s still much to grieve. 

But the gifts are bountiful, and worth revisiting.  We’ve had the opportunity to write our own story—that is, to create church in what we believe to be God’s image.  That opportunity continues each time we gather.  We participate in this exalted, creative identity of being God’s people.
                   --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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4.15.10  Together and Separate
 
At times I can hardly stand being a parent.  Gwyn is ornery, throwing herself backward until she inevitably bonks her head, and then she screams inconsolably.  She wants to be held, and yet if I hold her she’s still unhappy, wanting the piece of raisin toast and then not wanting it, too hungry to eat, too tired to sleep.  Yesterday afternoon I spent five hours with Gwyn.  Other than caring for her, my accomplishments in that time include a walk to the library to return and pick up books, and the assembly of half a casserole.  It never did get in the oven.

At other times, usually when Gwyn has pressed her compact body against mine, I experience a dissolution of myself and a unity with her that feels fundamental, as though we’re inhabiting the essence of God.  I often wonder whether the basic human longing is to be reunited with the universe, to have the world hold us as tightly and lovingly as our mother’s womb.  Certainly my spiritual quest is about seeking that connection.  These moments of mothering, when Gwyn and I melt into each other and drink deeply, have taken me by surprise.  I’ve always sought to be comforted by God. I never expected that being the comforter could satisfy so completely.

Parenthood traverses these extremes of human relationship, often within minutes.  I sometimes feel like I’m a flagpole in Gwyn’s rowdy game.  I’m home base; Gwyn ventures away to chase after other kids or feelings or experiences, returning to drink up safety and love and nourishment. As she grows, she goes further from me.  Already she pushes me away when she’s in a foul mood; she’s her own person with her own anger that I can’t resolve.  And at times I push her away. 

The dance is familiar, from my own childhood but also from my relationship with God.  The great paradox of the spiritual journey is the simultaneous reality of ultimate unity and complete separateness.  God invites us to be part of I AM, but only as our unique selves:  “Who do you say that I am?”  My struggle as a parent is to manifest both for Gwyn—to inhabit with her that identity-dissolving love, and to respect our individuality.  No wonder my heart feels stretched.
                                                   --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
 
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3.15.10 Call & Response

God likes a good conversation.

I’m convinced of this, not because I’ve ever had one (a heart-to-heart over a divine cup of coffee) but because I’ve lived one, and do every time I sit down to write.  A lovely dialogue emerges through the writing process.  I get an idea or a niggling question and pursue it on the page.  Then I step back and listen.  Invariably I’m surprised—by what I’ve written, by how it’s written, or by what I’ve forgotten to write.  This small jolt of surprise is how I sense the Spirit moving.  Then I reenter the text, responding to the surprise by allowing it to steer me deeper into my subject.  These conversations can go on for years (I’m heading into the sixth with my novel!), but they’re inexhaustibly rich. 

When we speak with the stuff of our lives, God listens.  And when we listen with the stuff of our lives, God speaks.  I’m just now learning how submitting a course proposal can be a question to God, or how honoring my once-a-week date night with Emily can be a way to listen to God, or how pushing Gwyn on the swing can be a way of joking with God.  There’s a movement inside of me—some impulse that initiates an action—and, rather than simply acting according to this impulse, I can posit the action as a question.  Where are you here, God?  What would you have me do? 

At first this feels an awful lot like exerting my will—something we’ve been taught is not exactly holy.  Say I begin to miss a friend.  The longing to see this person propels me to pick up the phone and suggest a walk.  Now, if I’m not thinking, our walk is just a walk and my need is satisfied.  But with intention, my invitation extends through my friend to God; I can listen for what happens on our walk as God’s response to my heart’s call and allow that surprise to shape my next action.  And if there is no surprise—if I can’t recognize anything coming alive because of my action—I must trust that what I’ve done is enough and let it go.  What’s born in my will is sometimes trustworthy and sometimes not.  It’s always worth exploring, though.

I’m beginning to learn that God speaks the language of creative engagement.  Together we get to write the story of a life, moment by moment.
                                                   --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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2.15.10 Divine Attention

Spend an afternoon with a one-year-old and you, too, will be struck by how attentive children are.  A house finch flies past the window and Gwyn turns her head.  The garage door rumbles and Gwyn heads on all fours to greet her Imma.  I’m walking with Gwyn in the backpack; she kicks me for a good block before I, too, spot the Siberian huskies and their owners.  Gwyn finds the clump of cat fur under the buffet; she spots the broccoli when I open the refrigerator; she recognizes the cracker boxes on the coop shelves.

Emily and I have always lit a candle at dinnertime.  This became a favorite ritual of Gwyn’s, along with blowing it out afterward.  Soon she noticed that we didn’t light it at breakfast and lunch, and insisted otherwise.  We now enjoy candlelit meals at all times of day.

I shouldn’t be surprised by the intensity of Gwyn’s attention—after all, this is how we humans learn and grow.  But I am surprised regardless, perhaps because she’s so small, perhaps because I’ve never observed the formation of attentiveness up close.  As I’ve come to experience it, an active spirituality is synonymous with paying attention.  However we understand the source of life, whatever our practice, attention is key.  This is because spirituality is essentially relationship—relationship with whatever gives us meaning, be it God or humanism or our breath or the woods out the back door.  And responsiveness in relationship requires attention.  Only when we pay attention (to our bodies, to dreams, to our loved ones, to societal needs, to the gentle nudges in our hearts) can we be respond in a way that deepens our presence.  Only when we pay attention do we grow in understanding.

Gwyn’s biological impulse to learn everything she can about the world around her is absolutely ordinary.  And yet every time she turns her head, every time she points and sucks in breath with excitement, she is developing an extraordinary relationship, one where dogs and candles and dust-bunnies delight her and where her delight becomes infectious.  Her spirit vibrates with every observation, as does mine.  And God, I suspect, delights in being noticed.
                   --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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1.15.10 Surrendering to God’s Will

Because I became a theological thinker and feminist at the same time, and because I’m a good Protestant, I balk at the idea of setting aside my magnificent, troublesome, powerful will as an act of devotion.  Why would God give us wills if not to use them?  I believe in a co-creating God who works in and through our being.  Collaboration works best when two wills meet, both softening and exerting themselves in careful harmony.  A God who encourages mutuality, who balks at patriarchy and thrives in creative, just environments would never ask of us such a demeaning act as surrender.

Lately, however, two events have asked that I reconsider this position.  I became a mother—willfully, gleefully—and suddenly had to surrender my nights of sleep, my contemplative time, and enormous chunks of my independence.  This act of love I chose with such enthusiasm demanded sacrifice.  And while bits of the sacrifice come easily, most of it stretches me.  I don’t do well with little sleep.  The mind-numbing work of caring for a baby for more than three hours solo makes my skin crawl.  For months I grieved the ability to think through a thought, any thought.  And then my partner had a life-threatening recurrence of cancer.  The vows I made, first in my heart, then at our wedding, and finally in my daily choice to love Emily, meant tremendous sacrifice:  weeks at the Mayo Clinic, full parental responsibilities for Gwyn, relinquishing what shards of alone-time I had left, including my work.  Life got hard.

My primary experience of this time was surrender.  I had to surrender to circumstance.  To fight circumstance—to exert my will because I did not want to lose my independence, I did not want Emily to be sick—meant betraying the people I love most.  God is love, the Sunday school books tell us, and yet this truth is so difficult to digest.  If God is love then what I experienced was a profound surrender to God’s will.  And while I rebelled, love is also what carried me through.

Surrendering to God’s will may not mean entering a hierarchical relationship with a higher power.  Instead it could be bowing down before a value we hold so dearly we’re willing to put aside what we think of as self.  Ironically enough, the Self we become is more true than the one we let go of.  Even sacrifice gets turned on its head.         --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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12.15.09 Doors onto Holiness

Gwyn turns one this week (holy cow!) and after a whirlwind first year of parenting, I’m trying to assess the state of my soul.  Gone are my long, quiet mornings of prayer and writing—even now Gwyn is crying in her crib, resisting her nap.  Gone also are my prayerful swims at the Y, silent walks with Emily, and restful experiences of Sunday morning worship.  My spiritual life has veered sharply away from contemplation toward action, and I’m floundering.

How do we find spiritual renewal when time apart is impossible?  Of course it’s rarely completely impossible; we could rise earlier (than Gwyn’s 5:30 a.m. waking?!) to pray; we could go on retreat (to a state park or café if an actual retreat center is unaffordable); we could lock the bathroom door and linger on the toilet, as many parents are wont to do.  But what I’m toying with these days is the idea, hardly novel, that God is always present.  If that’s the case, perhaps we needn’t escape the fray to find renewal.  Perhaps every moment is a doorway onto the sacred.  For me, the door is wide open during quiet, reflective moments, but what if a moment wracked by Gwyn’s teething cries also has a door I can pass through and sit with God? 

Honestly, it’s hard to find.  Most parenting moments demand that I multitask if I have any hopes of digging myself out of the piles of laundry and dishes and dirty diapers, and multitasking means a divided attention.  Of course I experience moments of being present to Gwyn, when Gwyn is entirely, openly present to me and God is as bright as I’ve ever known.  Gwyn sets her hand on my shoulder during a walk in the backpack.  Gwyn rests her head against my chest as she’s falling asleep.  We discover a funny, snorting noise and converse this way all through breakfast.  But most of my day—most of everyone’s day—is crammed with more mundane moments than these, and I wonder where I might find the portal onto holiness that will sustain me.

Attention and breath:  Almost every contemplative practice entails exercising these two.  When Gwyn has waken for the fourth time in eight hours, her fist to her gums and tears rolling down her cheeks, I pay attention to her warm body and to our breathing, in and out through the wee hours; I try to walk through these doors to a place where I can know God’s responding love.         --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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11.15.09 Only Praise

Before my partner had surgery on her neck, the doctors (all five) took innumerable scans to glimpse the tumor.  They saw a mass encompassing a region where essential blood vessels and nerves resided, and prepared us for Emily to lose function in her left hand and arm.  Emily gamely did some last-minute sewing, piano duet-playing, and hand-appreciating.  What a stunning, complicated creation!  She then began praying (and asking her community to pray) for the best outcome.  She visualized the surgeons cleanly pealing the nerves away from the cancerous mass, removing the tumor, repairing the vessels, and closing up her breast bone with resounding success.

Emily’s hope made me nervous.  I trusted the surgeons, who were practical and kind and the best in the nation, and I trusted the scans because they produced accurate images.  If the surgeons read the scans and said that chances were good Emily would lose arm function, wasn’t hoping for full recovery unrealistic?  Until Emily requested otherwise, I directed my prayer to what I figured was a more reasonable request:  Please, God, let Emily be cancer-free.  Perhaps if I didn’t ask for too much I’d actually get it.

When the surgeons told us the outcome—they’d extracted the tumor with clean margins; they’d repaired her blood vessels; they’d saved every one of the affected nerves—I reacted with relief, then gratitude, and then humility.  I’d been wrong.  I’d trusted the doctors to delineate the boundaries of what was possible, and they were wrong.  I’d trusted the scans to portray accurately the mysteries within Emily’s body and they hadn’t.  Finally, I’d been playing a silly game, hiding my true desires from God.  I had hoped within what I thought were realistic parameters, which the surgery results shattered—thank God, thank God.

As we recover from surgery now, I find myself hesitant to use cause-and-effect explanations for what happened.  I’m hesitant to make any theories about the boundaries of what is possible or about how God works in the world.  I watch Emily’s slender fingers move across the computer keyboard and am filled with praise, only praise, and suspect that’s enough.
           Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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10.15.09 The Humanity of God

A week from today Emily will undergo a day-long surgery.  Four different surgeons will take turns slicing open her neck and breastbone, cutting out the “area of abnormality” including severing at least two major arteries and nerves, reconstructing what they can, stapling back her bones and finally sewing up her skin.  The doctors have listed for us the many possible dire consequences of this, of which I’ll spare you.  Afterward Emily will be in the hospital at least a week; she’ll likely have weeks of rehab and two months when she can’t lift Gwyn.  We’re entering a difficult time indeed.

I’ve never before prayed so hard.  Most of the time my prayer is desperate:  Please-please-please, God, make Emily well.  This plea is an instinct, a longing, a request originating in my gut.  It’s the prayer we all pray regardless of belief or disbelief when the plane precipitously loses altitude and our hearts rise out of our bodies:  no-no-no, not now, not to me.  This prayer is a fundamental longing for life.

Emily has requested that her loved ones spend time visualizing her well, and I send out this prayer, too:  Emily bouncing lightly at the head of a line of dancers, waving her white hanky and glowing with joy; Emily and Gwyn shaking their heads until they’re both dizzy and giggling; Emily with a vital, cancer-free body sleeping next to mine.  This is a creative prayer springing from the belief that we humans get to participate with the divine and with nature in shaping our future.  We are not helpless; we are not entirely subject to the whims of fate.  Our visions and actions matter.

When I’m not paying attention I strike bargains:  Heal Emily, God, and I’ll forever cherish my loved ones.  Or I find myself terrified that the universe works by checks and balances and the great privilege of having a soul-mate for eight years will be compensated with loss.  My prayer then is perverted:  I’m not that happy, God.  Don’t take her away from me.  Sometimes I try rationalizing with God or the universe or whatever:  Emily has too much to offer, it wouldn’t serve anyone for her to be severely crippled or to die. 

I can always tell when my prayer is misshapen because afterward I feel rotten and I distrust the world.  Then I remember my Christian belief in a divine being who longs and pleads and weeps with humanity, who is part and parcel of this broken world but who works for healing regardless.  I pray with God then, and am accompanied in my longing.  Will you join us?

          --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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9.15.09 Daily Duty
 
Instead of napping or watching movies, this time around Emily has dealt with her fatigue from chemotherapy by meditating.  Twice a day she descends to the basement, sits comfortably, breathes deeply, and focuses on opening her heart.  When she emerges, she’s radiant.  Not only has experienced very little of the anxiety that was so paralyzing during her first bout with cancer, she’s happier, more energetic, and has bounced back much more quickly from the ill effects of the drugs.

My job is to support Emily’s two hours of meditation by caring for Gwyn.  While Emily grows peaceful and loving in the basement, I’m changing diapers, soothing a bonked head, monitoring what goes into that tiny teething mouth, and preparing our next meal.  With the arrivals of Gwyn and Emily’s cancer, my opportunities to pray silently and in solitude are, well, nonexistent.  I’m now busy Martha scurrying resentfully around the house while Emily sits at Jesus’ feet in rapt contemplation.  Her glowing face sends me reeling with envy.

Kate Martin, a Poor Clare sister I visit with regularly, told me she’s quite sure that, had the Mary/Martha story been reversed and Mary instead complained to Jesus about Martha’s noise and bustle—so distracting when Mary just wanted to focus!—Jesus would have said, “Mary, Mary. Martha has chosen the better part.”  Kate’s point was that it wasn’t Mary’s role that was more worthy than Martha’s but her contentment in that role.  Someone has to sooth the baby and put dinner on the table. Mary has one path to follow, Martha another.

Thus I find myself on a spiritual path of which I’m not particularly fond.  “The primary spiritual practice,” Thomas Keating writes, “is fidelity to one’s commitments in daily life.”  Or, from Jean-Pierre de Caussade:  “I shall use the duties of the present moment and by them be united to God.”  Mine is the path of daily duties where my only moments of prayer happen while nursing the baby and most powerful moments of spiritual growth come from stretched patience, lack of creative solitude, and the repeated sacrifice of self.  Ah, the feminist in me balks!  But, indeed, setting myself aside (temporarily, mind you) for the sake of those with greater needs does widen my experience of love.  The diapers, the dishes, and all the duties of the daily round contain within them the glory of God if I choose to seek it. Over and over I must choose: resentment or faithfulness, closing my heart or opening it. 

                            --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
  
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8.15.09 Receiving Grace

As I write this, two friends from Wisconsin are busy in the kitchen concocting an elaborate Ethiopian meal.  They’ve spent the week taking Emily to chemo and helping me with Gwyn and the house, and still have enough generous energy left to cook.  Amy and Rhonda are the fourth in a line-up of care-givers this summer:  Emily’s mom, Emily’s brother, and my parents, each for weeks at a time, along with meal deliveries, berry deliveries, baby sitting, and shot administrations from local friends, and food and a place to stay from acquaintances, now friends, in Rochester.  All this is on top of the nine-plus months of support we received during Emily’s first bout with cancer.  We are unbelievably, phenomenally, miraculously blessed.

Receiving such abundant care can be challenging.  I feel indebted.  If, as often happens these days, I’m in no position to respond in kind, I feel guilty and unworthy.  Others are in far greater need than we are.  I’m too exhausted to imagine reciprocating. I’m healthy; I should be able to take care of everything and everyone.

Where did I get the idea I have to be worthy enough to accept someone’s help?  Or that I only deserve help if I can keep the scales balanced?  Such notions spring from an ego that enjoys being self-sufficient, that resists the humility that comes of accepting others’ charity.  Over the course of Emily’s illness, I’ve had no choice but to receive help, and I’m slowly letting go of the pressure to reciprocate.  When I asked our Rochester host what I could do, she said, “Pass it on.”  I hope to God someday I’ll be in a position to open my home and table as she has.  In the meantime I must learn to receive, simply and humbly.

This practice takes me right to the heart of Christian life.  If Emily’s illness has taught me anything, it’s that, by virtue of being human, we’re all ultimately broken in some way, and that accepting this brokenness while at the same time trusting in our ultimate wholeness is the most loving, healing, and generous act possible. This is how I understand Christ’s wisdom:  He lived in the brokenness of his body and his unjust society, and yet manifested with every word and action the enormity of God’s grace.  As I received others’ care, I experience God’s realm coming to fruition here, now.  And when I offer care, as I do whole-heartedly for Emily and Gwyn these days, I participate in that great setting-aside of self that makes room for grace in the world.  Little by little we can each learn to surrender into these caring hands.
                           --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
 
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7.15.09 Pass the Baby

I recently ran into a former PPUMC attender who quipped, “At Prospect Park, people don’t pass the peace, they pass the baby.”  Amen to that, sister.  Over the past seven months of Gwyn’s life, I’ve watched dozens of people hold and delight in her.  Liz Richards jiggled her to sleep when I was unsuccessful.  Steve Kerrigan brought her up to the children’s sermon.  Sharon Kimble gave her sitting lessons on the floor.  Liz Pierce solicited Gwyn’s help in acolyting, and Roxanne Lockhart had her on her hip during announcements.  Kelley has monopolized her during sermons, Sue cried at Gwyn’s newness, Cassie wasn’t sure at first but then got a kick out of her.  John swung her between his long legs.  And when I’m not scanning the congregation—where is my baby now?—I’m saying a prayer of thanks for community.

Sure, shaking someone’s hand and saying, “Peace be with you” is a lovely gesture, but there’s an entirely different kind of peace that comes of knowing your child is cherished and safe within a large group of people.  Where else (except possibly a family reunion) could this happen today?  Most American babies get held by an average of two people in a day, compared with, say, babies in Zaire who are cared for by up to twenty-four people. 
What kind of impact does this have on us—both on the babies and on the adults?  When this year’s five confirmands donned dresses and suits to stand before the congregation and articulate their faith, I was so proud I cried.  Not one of them is my kid.  But I’d seen three of them baptized and watched two grow from infancy; I felt integral to their faith life if only in a passive, cheering-from-the-crowd way.  I’m richer for being a small thread in the fabric of their lives.

As a new parent, I’m awed by the responsibility of giving Gwyn an entire world.  While much is beyond our control, Emily and I do get to shape the context within which she becomes her own person with her own beliefs and relationships; we create an environment of listening, affection, and trust that upholds her spirit.  This is challenging enough to do within the small scope of home.  But outside our safe enclave it’s a big and dangerous world.  Now that I’m a parent, I see church in a new light, as a communal extension of the loving, trustworthy cosmology within which I want Gwyn to grow up.  I confess that at times when I can’t see Gwyn I get a bit nervous; terrible violations have happened in churches.  I have to have the faith in this community that I want for Gwyn.  Every time kind hands reach out for my baby girl, she learns a bit more about the nature of God.  And I want her to know this generous God exists not just in our home but in a big way, within the fabric of society.
           --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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6.15.09  Preparation for Love

The poet Rumi believed that embodied, human experiences of love are how life prepares our hearts to love God.  When I heard this, I first thought of Gwyn and how my love for her cracks me open.  She naps for an hour or two, wakes, sees my face and happiness blooms in her eyes; her arms thrash and legs kick and she becomes the essence of joy.  My reaction is frightening in its potency.  Is it possible to love a child too much?  No, no.  This is God’s great gift to us:  a fathomless bond.

My mother-love may give me a glimpse of the creator’s passion for creation, but also—and this confounds me—a taste of my own, slowly unfolding passion for the creator.  Desire, according to Rumi, is an essential part of the spiritual path.  When Americans feel desire, we become uncomfortable; we want to satisfy that desire and be done with it.  The Sufis teach that desire, for both human and divine love, draws us forward.  The deeper our longing, the stronger our drive to reach the Other, to know and love the Other.  So this taste of blinding affection for my child, this ache that splits me apart and makes me weep, is a form of longing.  I suspect I’m sampling a small fraction of the union that’s possible with God.

If this is seeing through a glass darkly, how will we ever survive seeing eye to eye?  Perhaps we need to practice for this very reason—we’d be blown apart otherwise.  Now that Emily’s cancer has recurred and I’m stretched daily by care-giving and the horrible concern that comes with great love, I feel this preparation physically, my limited human body breaking down and breaking open to make room for an impossible and incomprehensible Love that transcends illness and death.  Quite honestly, I don’t want it.  And yet I’ve never longed for anything else.
           --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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5.15.09  Doubtful

My daughter Gwyn arrived and I turned forty in quick succession.  New motherhood, months of interrupted sleep, the weird blurriness of nursing, the abrupt loss of time alone to think, write, and pray, and perhaps (gasp!) age have all had the unpleasant result of making me suddenly insecure about my creative work.  Words no longer trip from my tongue, or pen.  The only idea I’ve had with any sort of clarity for five months is, “Sleep would be nice.”  Most of my ego-boosting work now plays second fiddle to changing diapers.  After twenty adult years of being a teacher and a writer, I’m now doubting myself.

Thanks, Gwyn.

Then this weekend I heard the memoirist Bernard Cooper speak about writing.  He professed to have no idea what his “writing process” was.  “Forgive me if this is too abstract, but I make it up.”  He confessed constant insecurity.  But, he said, self-doubt isn’t a bad thing.  Otherwise we’re too willing to rest on our laurels.  Doubt keeps us fresh, keeps us striving.

My thoughts leapt immediately to the life of faith, where doubt is often assumed to be the enemy.  Certainty marks devotion; doubt not only connotes a lack of faith, it’s faith’s opposite.  In reality, moments of deep questioning or even skepticism can stir the ground, allowing faith to send down even stronger roots.  Sharon Deloz Parks, who thinks deeply about spiritual development, writes, “For faith to become mature, it must be able to doubt itself… Ironically, faith can come alive in an engagement with radical uncertainty” (Big Questions, Worthy Dreams).  Facing uncertainties and wrestling with them helps us ground our beliefs not in shallow creeds but in our core of lived experience.  Only by embracing doubt can we sustain the many contradictions of a spirit-filled life.

Doubt trips us up so badly, no wonder we find it difficult to think of doubt as a friend.  But that’s the case for me now as I learn from scratch the humility of functioning as a mother and artist, and discover what new is in store.  Once again, thank you, Gwyn.
                                           --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
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4.15.09  MotherLove

Call me thick in the head, but the greatest surprise motherhood has brought me is the realization that this profound, all-encompassing, unequivocal love for my child is ubiquitous.  When Gwyn breaks out into a goofy, bubbling smile upon seeing me and my heart practically explodes with an affection I never knew before becoming a parent, I’m dumbfounded, positively dumbfounded, that all the mothers of the world and throughout history have been privy to this sensation.  How is this possible?  The severity of mother-love is not a secret, and yet words have done it no justice whatsoever.  

I find myself in a state of continuous amazement.  My mother felt this way?  About me?  And that stranger on the train has felt this love about her squirmy son?  And Mary felt this toward Jesus?  And the divine Mother, God herself, feels this about creation?  How have I lived forty years and not known?

My fleshy body feels too fragile to contain this sensation, which bursts in hot flames from my core.  It tears me apart and leads me to tear apart so much else I’ve built up in my life—vocation, avocation—for the sake of caring for Gwyn.  There’s no rational explanation for this love, only moments:  Gwyn’s eyes widening when she sees mine; her fist frantically thumping on my chest as she nurses; at two a.m., when she’s forced me groggily out of bed and sleep is surely the only thing I could love, a round-mouthed, self-satisfied coo.  It’s like touching the lodestone.  Here is the center of the universe.

I must rewrite my autobiography.  I must revise my theology.  I want to start all over again because I didn’t know.  Mother-love breaks through the boundaries of what I thought was possible.  And I’m just a frail human being!  What I’ve tasted is a minute fraction of the love powering creation.  I want to fall on my knees and hold up my hands in surrender.  If we can love like this, creation is an embodied explosion of energy with unlimited potential and God, whoever or whatever God is, knows where the real power hides.
           --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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3.15.09  Melting

After two days in the mid-forties, the alleys are streaming with snowmelt and sidewalks are swamped.  Down by Lake Hiawatha, the ducks swim in puddles on the lawn.  We sit on a park bench beneath which a stream descends from the hill behind us down to the beach; our rain boots interrupt the flow.  Most of the lake is still solid and white, but a patch of open water by the shore sparkles with sun.  The earth is thawing.

The natural world is its own form of scripture, and today it asks us to melt.  The neighborhood seems particularly willing to heed the sun's call--everyone and their brother is out walking.  Kids even swarm over the playground despite the six inches of water below the equipment.  We're more than ready to come outdoors after a too-cold winter of being holed up inside.  The sun's warmth relaxes our shoulders that have been hunched against the cold since November, and we all relish walking without constant fear of ice patches.  We even linger in conversation since there's no rush to get back indoors.  Sure, we're willing to melt!

But, as with any scripture, the March thaw invites melting on many levels and I wonder what else is being loosened in the hearts of these happy walkers.  These days I feel my love for little Gwyn as a great melting.  Values I've held for years (everything from a clean kitchen to a productive work-day to an identity based on accomplishments) are slowly shifting to make room for this baby, who demands clean diapers and smiles and makes mincemeat out of my ambitions.  The self I've been for my adult years is changing from solid to liquid, from responsible and involved to this fluid, responsive state which is parenthood.

I don't always like it.  The ways I used to feel good about myself are no longer available to me.  I'm more hidden from the work world and feel empty as a result.  What's available to fill the void, however, is this child, who smiles and babbles and enjoys the rhythm of early spring walks.  And perhaps the season is ripe for that old identity to soften and dissipate.  Thank God for spring.        --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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2.15.09  Small Church, Big Hearts

Recently I asked a friend why she’d left an intimate community church like Prospect Park UMC for a cathedral downtown.

“I couldn’t stand the pressure,” she said.  “I want to show up at church, worship, and leave without feeling guilty.”

I know the conundrum.  After church last week, an enthusiastic congregant invited me to adult education.  I had a squirmy Gwyn with me and the possibility of a restful afternoon at home.  I told her I couldn’t.

“Come on, Elizabeth,” she said.  “You can bring her along.  We’re studying Celtic spirituality!”

After I’d already said no, her invitation crossed the line from welcoming to pushiness.  Of course I love Celtic spirituality, of course I love conversing with my church community, but there are many things we all love and we’re always choosing between them.  Most Protestants are raised with enough guilt we don’t need others layering on more.  In my case, I’ve studied in Wales, have prayed Celtic prayers as part of my meditation for years, and have been deeply formed by that earth-centered Christianity; I felt I was shirking my responsibility to the church by not participating.  I’ve also taught adult ed and know how valuable a few extra participants can be toward making discussion lively.  I felt I should attend.  In a small church, every person counts.

So here’s my question:  How can we as a community hold one another tightly enough that our love for one another is evident and loosely enough that we’re not exerting undo pressure?  No one in a small church should feel so much pressure—from without or from within—that they need to leave.

The answer, I suspect, is two-fold.  First, we need to extend invitations, not expectations.  The second is much harder:  We must forgive ourselves.  Ironically enough, that morning the pastor had preached our responsibility to periodically retreat from the world’s myriad demands in order to nurture the sacred connections that come of stillness and silence.  Gentleness with ourselves yields gentleness with others.  And this, ultimately, is part of being church for one another.
                               Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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1.15.09 Side-Stepping Time

3 a.m.:  Gwyn is nursing at my breast for the third time tonight.  I drift off, barely able to sit upright, then jerk awake when I realize Gwyn is sleeping too.  I tickle her armpits, stroke her chin, and even resort to desperate measures—laying her down, which she hates—to keep her sucking.  A full belly means a good three more hours of sleep.  Emily snores beside me.  The house is fortressed against the winter; ice has formed on the lower panes of windows and our heater kicks on every half hour.  My world is small.  A shut-eyed child pressed against my belly, an enclosure of lamplight in an otherwise dark house, and the tight circle of our breathing. 

What with Gwyn’s birth a month ago and the bitter cold outdoors, I’ve side-stepped time for a spell.  For forty minutes every three hours or so, Gwyn and I dismiss all other demands and retreat to our small world of skin, milk, and breath.  Of course time proceeds as it always has; the work-a-day world continues, the email stacks up, and the heating bill will have to be paid.  But Gwyn has invited me to put aside my usual engagement with time, which has been tied to financial obligations, community responsibilities, and my ever-present eagerness to get things done.  In Gwyn’s time, an hour sipping breast-milk is well-spent, as are the fifteen minutes afterward just sniffing.  The grandest place to sleep is on an idle chest.  Gwyn would prefer we hold her close and dance around the house—to heck with the dishes.  When I’m not bleary with sleep, I’m often internally resisting her requests.  Shouldn’t I be reading my students’ manuscripts?  Making some progress on my novel?  Washing her diapers?

As much as I anticipated the timeless realm of infancy, so much inactivity proves challenging.  I try to prop my book in my lap or make phone calls while nursing, and I usually fail.  Gwyn asks of me what the spiritual masters have always recommended:  stillness, slow breathing, and a spirit of letting go.  Only unlike meditation, I can’t avoid Gwyn—and fortunately for both of us, I don’t want to.  My love for her invites me into that still space where everything matters even when little happens.  I sit.  We breathe.  Gwyn brushes my skin with her fingers, and I pay attention:  a tiny moment when our spirits touch.

           Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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12.15.08 Inner Story

"I'm not supposed to ask personal questions," the nurse said.   "But I'm curious.   How did you guys meet?"

She didn't mean Emily and me; she was curious how the two of us met the birth parents of Gwyneth Anne, the newborn with downy hair resting on my chest.   The birth mom had just stopped by to kiss Gwyn goodnight and tell us she'd left some colostrum at the nurses' station refrigerator.   She was pumping so Gwyn could get the liquid gold that arrives at a mother's breast after birth--a huge gift to Gwyn's future health.

"The outer story," Emily answered, "is that they found us on the internet.   The inner story is that it was an act of God."

The nurse nodded.

I've experienced enough loss and random illness in my life that I'm wary about attributing the general unfurling of events to God's hand.   I'm extremely skeptical of all theology that smacks of "God's will" interfering in human time to bring about particular results.   We humans have too much power to shape our circumstances; nature is too obedient to physical laws and too random in its consequences.   Wars happen, earthquakes happen, children are born and die and God's will seems superfluous to it all.

And yet...Here is the fresh miracle breathing against my skin, her fine fingers clenching and unfolding, her body utterly trusting.   Gwyn is a new person and, all biologically predictable facts included, she's wonder enough to change a disbeliever's mind about the existence of God.   So there's this divine fact to account for.   Behind Gwyn is her birth mother's spectacular body, which carried Gwyn to term and pushed her out in record time.   And there's her birth parents' remarkable emotional strength, which carried them from the shock and disappointment of an unwanted pregnancy to a love for their little girl so profound they chose the heart-wrenching path of an open adoption.   There's a thousand small miracles--a doula who also gave a child in an adoption, a hospital ward welcoming of our crowded, non-traditional situation, a state that allows same-sex couples to adopt... And, most mysterious of all, the joining of the birth parents' lives to our own, with Gwyn the joiner and the beautiful beloved.   I am so humbled.   Who am I to say God's will isn't here or God's hand isn't at work?

The inner story may be so profound, our rational minds can't penetrate it.   When Gwyn turns her diffused gaze on me, when our eyes meet and it's the closest I've known to two souls meeting, I know nothing at all of God except awe.    Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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11.15.08 Hibernation Time

We Minneapolitans woke this morning to our first coating of snow, a sticky wet white that will melt by noon.   Suddenly the birds are active at the feeder and the kale is looking wilty.   November has brought freezing rain ticking at the windows, drafts under the doors, and darkness cloaking us by dinner time.   Once again, it's time to hunker down.

As Emily and I strive for simplicity in an increasingly complex world, one of our goals is to live more attuned to the earth.   During warm weather that meant harvesting and canning cherries when they were ripe, relishing the box of vegetables our farmer dropped off each week, gradually transitioning our little plot of land into a productive garden, and savoring every possible glowing moment under the sun.   As we head into the cold months, our stash of garden winter squash dwindles.   We begin retrieving strawberries from the freezer instead of the back yard.   The lettuce we buy comes from further and further away.   We now hang our clothes on the line in the basement and must wait days before they're dry.   The heating bill rises.   The simplicity of the summer months, so easy and joyous, is gone.

What are the gifts of winter?   A narrowing of the scope of our engagement.   Shorter days and colder weather encourage us to stay at home.   The garden is frozen, the neighbors aren't playing in their yards tempting us with conversation, the vice of darkness limits the draw of the outdoors.   There's less to do.   On long nights in our house, the knitting emerges and the books are thicker.   We're more inclined to socialize with friends at home, building a fire in the fireplace, playing games or singing together.   With less to do, we can slow down a notch.   Perhaps we can rest more, like the bears and plants.   Perhaps we can stop producing for a spell.   The frozen earth and the darkness invite us to look inward, to tend the gardens of our souls and the souls of our relationships, to care for those things unseen rather than the growing, glowing obvious.   The simplicity of winter is limitation.   Rather than rebel, we can choose to welcome limitation's treasures.

Creation is also our scripture, and the wild turning of the seasons reveals divine wisdom for us beleaguered humans, over and over.   Maybe this winter we can take it in.  

                           Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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10.15.08 Having Faith?

In the mad rush to get our house prepared for a baby, a slew of workmen and one paintbrush-bearing friend have paraded in and out.   Last week guys took a saw to our kitchen cupboards for the purpose of squeezing in a dishwasher (it fit with one-eighth of an inch to spare) and knocked a door-sized hole in our closet wall.   This morning, two burly strangers are crow-barring off the lead-paint-laden windows in our spare bedroom.   Are you surprised that I'm thinking about faith?

Of course the flying leap of faith for Emily and me right now is the adoption, but for the sake of simplicity I'll stick to my house.   Whenever faith comes into play, I get this tense, suspended feeling in my chest.   Our lovely kitchen cupboards were an innocent casualty of the dishwasher project. The guys had to cut a gaping hole without any guarantee that the dishwasher would fit.   A gut-wrenching, suspenseful moment occurred between the sawdust flying and the snug placement.   Sound familiar?   We all arrive at these canyon ledges in life where, despite all our careful measurements and detailed planning and fierce hopes, we have to take a running leap to get across.  

In Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts, and in Latin and Hebrew, the word faith is a verb--an action.   "Faith is not a singular state that we either have or don't have, but is something that we do.   We 'faithe,'" writes Sharon Salzberg, Buddhist teacher and scholar.   From this point of view, the object of faith (that is, what we have faith in ) is seemingly irrelevant.   On the surface of things, I'm not invoking God as an agent in the building project.   Nor is faith a blind trust that everything's going to work out great.   Salzberg again:   "Faith, in contrast to belief, is not a definition of reality, not a received answer, but an active, open state that makes us willing to explore.   While beliefs come to us from the outside--from another person or a tradition or heritage--faith comes from within, from our alive participation in the process of discovery."   Faith is an inner action, a movement forward into the unknown for the sake of being alive.   Faith is an engagement with our world that can't help but institute change.  

Pray with me, will you?   Pray that God might enter our hearts with power tools and a lot of skill.   Pray that we become a faithing people, leaping across gaps to new ways of making this world a home for all.                         -- Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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9.15.08 "As," Not "As Much As"

At Charles Backstrom's memorial service, Cease Stickles related how Charles called into question Jesus' fundamental teaching.   "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is well-and-good; it's a spiritual practice that teaches us to treat our neighbors and enemies with as much respect as ourselves.   But, Charles apparently argued, wouldn't it be more loving to ask others what they'd like done unto them first?   We're all so various and complicated in our needs.   Especially when it comes to mission work and international aid, doing unto others what we imagine is best for them can prove ineffectual and often harmful.   Perhaps Jesus meant "Ask first."   That's what we'd want, right?

I recently heard Cynthia Bourgeault, a centering prayer instructor, make a similar revision of "Love your neighbor as yourself."   That little "as" is a tricky word, easily--and commonly, for centuries--interpreted to mean "like" or "as much as."   When we're striving to love our neighbors as much as ourselves, we're presented with the worthy challenge of self-love as the foundation for love of others.   When self-love is difficult, as it often is for women or people hurt during their childhood, loving others becomes a good teaching tool.   I would never call my partner or child "stupid;" why then do I subject myself to harsh name-calling? To foster kindness toward others, I must begin with myself.

When self-love comes easily, "Love your neighbor as much as yourself" is a worthy practice.   Bourgeault, however, is skeptical that this meaning was Jesus' intention.   She posits that he really meant as , as in "your neighbor is yourself."   By loving my neighbor, I am loving myself, and vise versa.   Jesus invites us into a new understanding of identity, connective and continuous, unlimited by boundaries of selfhood.   I am in you and you are in me.   If I love my neighbor because my neighbor is me, I am a small part of a larger body.   The earth is me, too, as are wars and cities and this church community.   Jesus asks us to behave as though self is bigger and more permeable than we can imagine.   Part of me died when Charles died, and part of Charles lives on in me.   Love creates this bigger identity.   Thanks be to God.  
-- Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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8.15.08 No Other Hands

"Dancing heals our bodies, our communities, and the earth."   Emily offered this possibility to a small group who bravely came out to the Villa Maria Retreat Center for an entire weekend of dancing.   Out on the lawn, in a lovely round room, and around an eleven-circuit labyrinth, we danced ancient, earth-centered dances, all in circles, all holding hands.   Together we were explored prayer danced not in solitude but in community--we needed each other to make the dance happen.   Most of the dances were pre-Christian, some with a Christian overlay, and they all were women's dances that preserve a fertile, reverent manner of being in the world.   By repeating these steps, we recreated a very old way of relating to each other and nature.

In our conversations about the healing properties of these dances, one Catholic sister reminded us, "We ARE the earth."   We are the earth's only means of dancing.   We are meant to dance; by gathering in communities, holding hands, and creating this common prayer, we are fulfilling the earth's potential.  

Her comment reminded me of my favorite quote from Teresa of Avila:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which is to look out Christ's compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.

The earth has no dancers but us, no means of holding hands except through us, no way of teaching our interconnectedness and interdependence with plants and creatures and sky and cycles except through us.   One woman said to me, "Have you ever noticed that it's almost impossible to dislike someone while you're dancing with them?"   All of the dances massaged the ground and pumped the earth's energy up, into our bodies and our circle.   Each dance provides a form which, much like any faith tradition, has withstood the test of time as a worthy   container for holding and honoring the Sacred.   Dancing these forms, I experienced them as an extension of the natural order--a way to remember how thoroughly of the earth I am.                                   Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

If you're interested in learning more about circle dancing, go to www.twincircles.org.

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6.18.08: In-Between Places

In Celtic spirituality, "thin places" are those landmarks--the cairn on a hill, the ancient oak--where the veil between this world and the next is slight.   These are holy spots where generations have felt viscerally the spirit-world's nearness and reconnected to the soul's journey.   Lest this sound too pagan for your tastes, I'd argue that Christianity is rife with thin places:   Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Chartres Cathedral in France, Sanctuario de Chimayo in New Mexico, Mont Sant Michel, Taize, Iona...even, in its own humble way, Prospect Park United Methodist Church.   Over time, people have journeyed to these sites, prayed, and returned home changed.

I'm convinced that, just as in-between places exist on our geographical landscape, in-between moments exist on our journey through time and serve a similar, "thin" role in our spiritual development.   I vividly remember the months after a fire destroyed all my belongings; I'd just moved, and the move coupled with the loss of my almost every possession thrust me into an in-between time of grief, of trying to remember who I was, of searching for the new me on this side of a loss.   While that period was wrenching, it was also formative.   With hindsight I can see how vulnerable I was, stripped of everything familiar, and how grief opened my being.   That in-between time exposed my raw self to God's raw self.   The person who scrambled out of the ashes was profoundly different.

I recognized this liminal state in Emily as she was enduring cancer treatments; I see it in clients when they lose loved-ones or go through a divorce or take huge career risks.   I suspect Prospect Park UMC has entered an in-between place this summer as we say goodbye to one pastor and greet another, and as we let go of our old sanctuary configuration for the sake of new possibilities.   We're taking a pilgrimage together to a thin place.   The trip is rough; it means leaving home behind, it means moving forward without knowing the outcome, it means traversing an emotional landscape that we usually avoid.   But the trip can open us.   In our vulnerability, God can touch and shape us in powerful ways.   While it's darned uncomfortable to be neither here nor there, now is the time when mystery reaches through the veil to infuse us with new life.              
        --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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5.15.08 The Quit Impulse

The quit impulse--we all know it.   The United Methodist Church upholds the ruling that clergy can deny congregants membership for being gay?   I quit.   Prospect Park UMC is ripping out half the pews?   I quit.   Our pastor is leaving after three short years?   Well, then, I will too.   There are a thousand good reasons for quitting an institution as flawed as the church.   Shall I name a few?   The appointment system which strips congregations of their self-determination, the patriarchy which perpetuates domineering images of God and unhealthy governing bodies, rampant homophobia, exasperating committee work... Need I go on?   I don't blame anyone for jumping ship.

Each fresh injustice triggers in me the quit impulse-- I'm out of here!   Anger, impatience, self-righteousness, fear, and despair grab the upper hand and faith, for a time, disappears.   I'm glad for these emotions, I even wallow in them, because they inform me of my moral bearings.   They reflect my deep engagement with life.   If I was complacent or uninvested, I wouldn't care.

But each time I feel the quit impulse I must discipline myself to enter a period of discernment.   While quitting a relationship is appropriate if it is abusive or no longer life-giving, quitting because of human foibles and institutional malfunctions and the angry impulse to show them often solves nothing.   Individuals will always disappoint.   Institutions will always malfunction.   The poor we will always have with us.   While other churches look golden, they're not.   Ditching religion entirely brings its own problems.   If my body and spirit aren't being damaged, I must discern instead where God is working in this mess.   I must return to faith.

Faith, as I understand it, is not blind trust that everything will work out or that the authorities know best.   They most certainly don't.   In adverse times, God asks of us a proactive faith which may include quitting the church but never means quitting the journey.   God calls us into deeper trust in ourselves, our community, and a love far greater than us.   What is solid here?   What is sustaining?   Our innate sense of justice.   The slow work of social change.   Friendships across years.   The daily practice of opening our hearts. The challenge of inclusive welcome.   This journey is hard, hard, hard.   I'm grateful to you, my companions on the journey, and to our faithful God. --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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4.15.08 One Person's Trash, God's Opportunity

Monday morning:   The recycling truck already lumbered down the alley at daybreak, and now the garbage truck tips bin after bin of neighborhood waste into its bowels.   In our attempts to be environmentally conscious, Emily and I throw

away as little as possible.   Our first steps were easy enough--we composted the food scraps, recycled whatever the city picks up, and donated used items to thrift stores.   The next layer of reduction took more effort.   We eliminated non-recyclable yogurt containers by making our own.   We wash plastic bags, reuse them, and recycle them at the coop--a thankless task.   We've finally gotten in the habit of bringing our own bags when shopping.   On average, we throw away three gallons of garbage each week.   Not bad.

Of course there's yet another layer to consider:   our carbon emissions from driving and from energy use in the house; the environmental impact of our investments; the waste inherent in the production of our food and in our long-distance travel.   It's nigh impossible to live lightly on the earth, given our lifestyle.   We fail again and again.

Years ago, I blithely and ignorantly let the city cart my trash away with nary a thought.   But this morning, garbage truck rumbling behind the house, I must own up to both my trash and my failure.   I must say, "This is MY waste.   I will take up this much of the landfill.   This is MY oil that's leaked from the car into the groundwater."   In other words, I must embrace the full ramifications of my actions, both good and bad.  

Sound like a confession?   Sure enough.   Rather than deny our capacity for evil, spiritual seekers must learn to claim negative emotions as inherent to our humanness.   Our broken qualities, if we own them, can be opportunities to grow in our capacity to love.   We're each given a choice between death and life, and can't choose life without allowing ourselves the alternative.   Thus each trash day is a chance to face our imperfections, our infinite capacity to hurt the world, and to choose life instead--again and again.
        --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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3.15.08 The Gift of Worship Part 2

I'm almost asleep, drifting into that safe, semiconscious current, when Emily says, "I have a rebuttal to your last Prospectus article."

Oh?

"Worship is God's gift to the people, not the other way around."

No wonder I lie awake thinking of such things.

These days, Emily's primary form of worship is circle dance.   A community gathers around a centerpiece with a candle as a reminder of sacred presence, and moves together using both ancient and contemporary forms.   The dance is a vessel.   When it's an old dance, it holds the culture from which it emerged, the abiding, traditional wisdom of the people who created and sustained it, and the passage of time which links us to back them.   When the dance is new, it holds humanity's continuing and evolving engagement with holiness.   The community moves into these forms, embodying this vessel.   When we hold hands in a circle with the flame at our center, we invite the Spirit to fill us.

And sometimes, rarely, it does.   Or perhaps it does all the time and sometimes, rarely, we notice.   The feeling of worship--the sensation of connection, of inspiration, of being nurtured at our core--is sheer gift.   We can't make it happen.   All we can do is show up.   Together we practice becoming a vessel, and whether or not the Spirit pours in, this act of faith has value.   By showing up, we position ourselves in relationship to a generous universe.   We open our hearts to a Mystery beyond the limits of consciousness.   We depend on one another to form this vessel, and so we remember our interconnectedness.

Of course Emily is right.   Everything is gift--the existence of our forms of worship, whatever they are; the coming together of our communities; the rare, beautiful moments when we well up with love.   Worship is relationship, where we both give and receive.   Worship is the practice of being present.              
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

If interested in learning more about Sacred Circle Dance, go to www.twincircles.org

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2.15.08 The Gift of Worship Part 1

The prevailing wisdom at Iona Abbey in Scotland is that "worship is primarily for God's pleasure and is a gift which should be offered with integrity."   In my ongoing quest to understand what worship is and why it's important, I need to sit with this idea.   What might worship as a gift to God look like?

Bear with me as I spin out a scenario.   Instead of my driving to church with an ultimatum--worship better feel nurturing or else!--I might steer through the twisty Prospect Park streets considering what I might offer the Holy One.   The acolyte would light the candles with awareness that the flame is our symbol of God's abiding presence.   The choir might strive for harmonic beauty not as a performance or to showcase talent but to please God.   The person leading the children's sermon wouldn't be as concerned with educating our little ones as with augmenting children's natural capacity to celebrate life.   Likewise the preacher might not offer the sermon to prod or educate the congregation, but rather to illuminate God's being so we might worship that much more.   We would sing our hymns heartily and as musically as possible to facilitate God's pleasure.   Our language, particularly the language of our unison prayers, would "have integrity", meaning each individual and the whole community would speak the words from the heart.

As a congregation, the gift we can offer God is different when we're together than when we're praying alone in our bedrooms.   We offer God the gift of community, of people trying their best to be in relationship to one another.   So I might enter the front doors of church with more humility.   For me to give God my best, I need these people.

Perhaps this is an ideal picture.   But so often our thinking bounces around the closed box of our humanity.   If worship is our gift to God, we've got to open that box. Worship isn't about us.   This work, this weekly ritual, is about our attending our relationship with divinity.   Such reverence doesn't ask that we're always serious or well-behaved or formally dressed; it asks that we be fully ourselves, and attend to the One who is beyond us.                              --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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