just won my very first silent auction item! (what items to win! what a cause to support!)
Based upon what I’ve written about this week and upon my generously mystical interpretations of serendipity, taking these babies home tonight makes me tear up.
You know that noisy breath that yogis practice? Ujjayi breath calms the mind & body and serves as an anchor for yoga practices. You don’t have to be posin’ to use it–often I practice the deep, intentional breath walking down the street (my yoga teacher says it’s really breathing that does you good in any exercise). When you constrict the muscles at the back of your throat and force the air through, up and out of your nose, it sounds like the ocean–that’s what I always hear people say.
As I’ve fallen in love with the mountains over the last year, finding deep comfort in the tall mounds of earth that peek out behind trees and skylines, drawing the horizon higher, I’ve been a little crestfallen that the foundational breath of yoga has to do with the seashore instead.
What joy on Monday: our little family hiked to the summit of Mt. Pisgah, and as we wound higher and higher, I realized that ujjayi breath doesn’t only sound like the waves of the ocean: ujjayi breath sounds just as much like the wind blowing determinedly through the trees and ridges of the mountains.
Now I envision my dear Blue Ridge Mountains as I take poses and force air through my throat. Not only does that air mimic the wind of beloved hills, but also reminds me that the mountains and trees stand steady in the midst of blowing tempests, even as it allows the living air to change it slowly and slightly.
Growing up, I sensed a lot of fear at school and at church when people asked questions about whether the Bible was “literally” true. Whether Adam and Eve existed was a litmus test for salvation, I thought, and people who didn’t use the exact numbers in the Old Testament to calculate that the world was 6,000-10,000 years old weren’t Christians at all.
Then I went to Duke University, where lots and lots of smart people studied and taught, and almost no one believed that Moses had parted the Red Sea, or that David had anything to do with the psalms that bear his name. Having been raised with a very strong sense of God giving people unique gifts to use for his glory, all these very smart people confused me. I could tell that knowledge wasn’t a curse, or something to be afraid of–I knew that they had been given a great gift in their intellect. Their questioning had somehow led them away from God–“beyond” God, some might say of themselves–and I had trouble holding together the inquiring mind I’d been given and the mystical Christian faith I’d known and practiced for almost two decades.
Duke’s motto is “eruditio et religio”–knowledge and religion. I wrote extensively while an undergraduate about the relationship between these two forces as they interacted on Duke’s campus. When I graduated, the then-Dean of the Chapel, Sam Wells, inscribed the Bible given to me upon graduation from this “secular” university (each student is offered a leatherbound NKJV as they graduate), “May you always find knowledge and religion united in your heart.”
Now a few years out from my Master of Divinity at Duke and more than a year out from my ordination to the priesthood, I had a flashback of the fear I knew well from my formative years in Ohio. The surprise was that it came from the other “side” of the tracks, this time. Defensiveness surfaced when it was suggested that Jesus came back to life in a physical, literal way after he died on Good Friday. Such a supernatural, inexplicable occurence was tamped down by explaining, “the myths are still true in the deepest way.”
The church is happening here, folks. We’re talking about what’s “literally” “true” and what’s myth and what “myth” means. We’re not agreeing, but we’re staying in the room together and we’re smiling at each other and looking each other in the eye (and praying together).
I see fear on both “sides” of this Biblical Literalism debate, and I think there’s hope on both sides, too. Everyone’s got a dog in the fight, because the fight is about the basis of our faith. Everyone’s been wounded in this fight by ignorance, impatience, and hard-heartedness from others. Knowing that everyone’s a little bit afraid and nervous and sincere, I wonder if we can find a way forward together by putting down some of our armor and some of our weapons.
(I’m no N.T. Wright, but it’s my goal during the 50 days of Easter to read Surprised by Hope; join me, if you’d like!)
These three remain: faith, hope, and love.
But the greatest of these is love.
just over a year ago, a clergy colleague said to me, “You’ve got to go through Good Friday in order to get to Easter Sunday.”
I’ve known since last April that this year’s Holy Week and Easter would be a turning point for me; last April, I had a very painful ending to a job and place I had started to love very much, and this last year has been a trudging road toward a new, good normal. It’s not that I’ve necessarily arrived somewhere now here in Easter week, but that Lent and Holy Week were a big looming hill that I’ve crested–April 2014, and though I’m aware enough of God’s work to keep me dependent on Him, I feel like I can see beyond for a little ways, and oh my goodness, is the view lovely. I want to share a bit of my view.
Last June, I showed up on Trinity’s doorstep bedraggled, emotionally and spiritually. I’ve spent a lot of my first year trying to “balance” self-protection (having suffered deep burns in my formative first year of full-time ministry) and priestly vocation. Parishioners did not take offense, but patiently loved me, offered themselves, gave encouragement–they showed up. On Sunday, as I walked in procession through these dear people, I realized how I’d fallen in love with them; how their love had given me balm to heal. They showed me that even in the midst of pain, the best way to be is honest and real and unprotected–“balance” as such doesn’t exist, and ought not be sought.
As a two-clergy family, we have to work hard to find non-“work” friends. It’s a good thing that most of our community comes from our churches, but it’s also comforting, on the road to healing, to have a few friends who you know truly only put up with you because they really do like you for you (this is my own trust issue, not a commentary on the faithful friends I’ve been given through Trinity). The first time one of these now-friends said, “Hey lady, you’re looking different today; you doing okay?” I almost cried & hugged her. Someone who had no social contract to notice me decided to notice anyway (it happened to be Ash Wednesday, so yes, I was a little tired).
Less than a week has passed, and already I’ve been shaken to the realization that it’s not a storm that I’ve come through and left on the other side, but a shift into a new way of being. In doggedly pursuing healing in the last year, I’ve been learning to notice things–notice and relish the faces in the Easter Day crowd who you’d last seen pained and in hospital; notice and celebrate the tears welling up while you process through the middle of this loving crowd who has shown you Jesus; notice and be curious about the super-tight feeling in your stomach that won’t go away–don’t try to figure everything out, or to label every passing experience, just notice it, be present to it, say “Hello, you’re here right now, and I’m here, too.”
This is a more vivid, larger, and more painful way to live, being present. But that’s what God is about. God is so determined to be present with us that he came to sit with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, and he continues to be present with us through the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Comforter comforts us in all our troubles so that we may comfort those with the comfort we ourselves have received from God (something like 2 Cor. 1:4).
hope of things not seen 