On Patience with Your Soul

Spring is rainy and muddy here in Oregon with shoots of daffodils that are vivid against a gray backdrop.  Our backyard is particularly muddy with sodden mulch,  puddles of  muck, and weeds and plants competing for space in the flower beds.  Whoever lived in our house before must have been quite a gardener.  He or she would be sad to see the state of things now. All of their glorious flower beds either mowed down, dug up, or surrendered to a life of weed diversity.  I like to think that I may be a gardener at another point in life when I am not nurturing children and a university. When there is more space for sitting in the mud and taking care to weed, and tend, and plan a beautiful garden of vegetables and flowers.

Evelyn Underhill reminds us in her essay entitled "Patience" that in the garden of the soul one of the most common and worst mistakes we make is to not take the time of a master gardener.  Instead we make violently plunge in and pluck out all the weeds as fast we can, creating a big pile, feeling good at the end of a morning of how much we accomplished. (Yes, this is my kind of gardening in my yard if any happens at all).

But, Evelyn reminds us, that an expert doesn't work like that.   This style of gardening breaks leaves and knocks shoots. It has only got the tops of the weeds and not the roots.  It's the expert that is careful not to disturb the growth of the plants, gently tending the ground, picking off slugs and snails, and tending the little plants with care.

This is the work of God in the garden of the soul.  A patient gardener, in no hurry for a bloom of flowers, instead caring for the foundation of a soul that will bloom flowers year after year.

Be gentle, Soul, and patient with yourself and the work of God. Be patient to be Where-You-Are-At.  In the mud, and the snails, and the weeds of it--knowing that Life and the Gardener will be at work in your soul with precision and care.

Your work, Soul, is to wait with humility as the work is done.  To welcome the often painful and usually slow work of the Gardener, but also to realize that Gardener is gentle and determined that you, Soul, will be Glorious.  As you take note of what you want pulled up and plucked out, be gentle with yourself and with intentionality and care work slowly and carefully on change.

So for today, facing a rainy Saturday with buckets of laundry, challenging family dynamics, university work, grading to do, errands to run:  I will welcome the events and interactions of this day as God's gardening tools:  slowly and persistently at work in my Soul.  The Gardener has such vision for you, Soul.   I don't know, Soul, if you grow potatoes or roses, but my sense is that work of the Gardener will take us to fruitfulness and vivid color.  

On early morning worries & perspective

Like most of us, I am prone to worry:  to dwelling, to rehearsing, to problem-solving, to running whatever is the issue of concern over and over in my mind. And back again.

The hours of three and four in the morning are good for this.  I am stirred from bed with a distressed toddler and then stumble back to bed, only to find sleep far away from me as my mind moves into gear: worry, ponder, roll it over, think it through, come up with a plan, change the plan...what is the solution? what is the way? what will change?

It leaves me edgy and worried in the morning.  If I do come up with a plan--then a false sense of being in control, because the worry-demons will be back with their same list of complaints.

Plans are good.  Problems can be solved.  Solutions can be named. But the tide of worry, intensity, hand-wringing, stressing--this only leaves me with a weak and shakey interior.

Lately, I am practicing taking Jesus up on his offer: Come to me and find rest.  Do not worry.  I am going ahead of you to prepare a place for you.  And the psalmist's understanding of God:  mercy and goodness will chase you all the days of your life.  The Lord is a host--preparing a feast for you, overfilling your cup in the presence of your enemies.

Whatever and whoever you enemies might be, God pours out steadfast love, kindness, mercy, goodness in abundance and unchanging presence in their midst.

What if, when the hand-wringing begins, I consciously unclench my hands and ask God:  What is your solution?  What is your way forward?  How do you want to breathe life in this?
And then...

     here it is:  then, Stop. Rest. Breathe.

The ocean of God's grace and mercy rolls over my worries, anxieties and fears.  Cleansing them with salt, washing some away, scouring worry-rocks into sand, drowning fears, releasing me to realization that God is an ocean of grace. Lapping around the big rocks of worry, surrounding them and washing over them.


Perspective has changed.  I think that's one of the greatest works for prayer: it realigns our perspective.
Some of the worries remain. We are human beings--living finite lives.

God is an infinite ocean of grace and mercy, washing us in fresh perspective and deep love.

From Love to Love

Lord, You're my lover,
my desire,
my clear and flowing fountain,
and my sun.

You are the One
who teaches me
by loving me
unconditionally
just how I am to love.

And I?
I am Your reflection.

--Mechthild of Magdeburg, from The Flowing Light of the Godhead

Unconditional love.  How difficult this is--we love each other on condition. Mostly that condition is about how the person we love makes us feel about ourselves.  When we love someone, we want to feel accepted, cherished, regarded, remembered, delighted, and trusted in that love.  When we love someone and it makes us feel disregarded, hurt, lonely, misunderstood, forgotten...then we build conditions into our love.  We withhold love because we feel resentful or that we are being used.

There is a place for healthy boundaries and for not giving away our hearts to those who trample on them.   We do have to love ourselves through the love of God at the core of ourselves, or we will not have Real love to give away, but instead be using how we love others as a way of completing ourselves.

Unconditional love is love that can only come from God. It is a reflection of God's love for us.  It is a love that gives without keeping track, without worrying about what the other person will think. This love gives freely because the source of this love is not dependent on the response of the beloved.

When we are rooted in God's love and receive love from God, we are able to love ourselves without condition. And then are able to love others unconditionally.

Lent #17: of grace & patriarchy

Breathe John 8:1-11.
...Jesus bent over and wrote something in the dirt with His finger.
later to the woman--
Jesus: Well, I do not condemn you either; all I ask is that you go and from now on avoid the sins that plague you.

Grace. If I could sum up on the whole of the gospel in my life, I may use this word: grace.  Mercy, honor, favor, pardon, generosity. Acceptance of what is. Graciousness. Unmerited favor. Charis.

Jesus gives the woman grace, and also calls her to be who she is created to be--released from the pattern of sin that no doubt dominates her life (as it can ours).

However, this story irks me.  This woman is caught in an entrenched patriarchal system.  The law of Moses saw women as property, and therefore, a woman belonged to her husband.  Adultery, then, was not a sin against herself, but a sin against the husband. The adultery laws were very few for the men.  In fact, under the law, men could have sex with an unmarried woman who did not belong to another man without penalty.  The woman would bear the penalty, but because she was no one's property, the man did not. In Exodus 20,  desiring another's property (wife, slaves, ox, donkey, etc) was sinful.

So here is the woman, and notably, her partner-in-crime is missing.
I really would have liked Jesus to address this injustice in the passage.  I would like for him to have used this as an opportunity to redefine patriarchal law and call for the man to come before these church rulers.  And then he could offer grace to both of them. Or maybe first just to the woman, who had few choices but to use her body as power in that society. Perhaps Jesus could have addressed this with the man and did a little "clearing out of the temple"--throwing a few tables around and generally making an impression that this patriarchal system was just as much sin and bondage (and more) than the adultery.
I am disappointed.
Do you ever feel disappointed with the Bible? That it could have been clearer, that Jesus or Paul or someone could have send something differently--that somehow the history of the Church could have shifted because the scripture was a bit more clear on some things.

I want to see justice defined like I think it should be.

Hmmm.....guess I haven't learned very much about grace.

Isn't that why grace is such a difficult issue in the Church? We all have our ideas of what "restitution" is, what "addressing the issue fully" looks like. As people of God we offer grace, and others say--"but there should be consequences", or the person has to "earn back the trust".  And so to one person, grace is simply forgiveness, to another grace must come with a call to accountability, and to another grace is following a certain policy.

Grace is complex and simple.  Grace is being a person who does not condemn others (or ourselves). Grace is calling people to who they are beyond their sin--as many as there are churches, there are thoughts about what this looks like.

But the crux of the practice of grace is living in the place in which Jesus is bent down, writing with his finger across the dirt of our hearts.  When we live in the midst of our own dust, aware of the stones that could mark us, we are free to be people of grace in others' lives.

As soon as move to the edge of the ring, and put the "sinner" in the middle, we no longer are grace-bearers.

I suppose that I will have to lay down my stones for the absent man.
Can I trust God to turn even patriarchy fully on its head in the end? Scripture calls for it.

I can turn those stones meant for hurling into building blocks of living a life of grace without patriarchy today.

If I could pick a place to be in this story, I would be with the woman.  I need those words Christ says today and everyday: "I do not condemn you either, all I ask is that you go and from now on avoid the sins that plague you."

Go in grace.