Back in the days before the instant gratification that cable and DVRs provided, movies like It’s a Wonderful Life and The Wizard of Oz appeared on TV only once a year.
Even when I was little I knew that The Wizard of Oz always came in the spring. It may have been February or March or April, I don’t remember. All I knew was the movie came on TV in the spring and my birthday was also in the spring, thereby making that season my favorite.
While almost everyone has seen The Wizard of Oz, I’m guessing that few are aware of its movie sequel, Return to Oz.
The movie was released in 1985 and if you were a child of the 80s, you probably remember Return to Oz as one of the scariest movies ever made.
While The Wizard of Oz is a movie of wonder and joy with a villain that can do no worse than make our heroes fall asleep in a field of poppies, Return to Oz, billed as a children’s movie, sets a far darker tone.
From the very beginning where Dorothy, still longing for Oz and her friends there, is thought to be crazy and taken to a doctor to receive shock treatments, this movie is instantly more threatening than anything in the original movie.
For me the scariest part of Return to Oz is not the Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion and Tin Man who have now lost any resemblance to anything human, but the headless witch, Mombi, who collects heads the way some women collect shoes, trading out her own head for another as the whim suits her.
Dorothy returns to Oz to find the yellow brick road broken and overgrown. The Emerald City is gray and dusty. Her friends have all been turned to stone. Oz is haunted, not by ghosts, but by memories of its better days.
As dark as Return to Oz seems, this theme of ruin is pervasive in children’s literature.
The Penvensie children return to Narnia and the ruins of Cair Paravel in Prince Caspian.
The four Alden children find an abandoned boxcar in the middle of the woods in The Boxcar Children.
And Mary Lennox finds a lost and forgotten garden in The Secret Garden.
But with ruin, always comes restoration.
Cair Paravel is restored. The Alden children make a home out of that boxcar and Mary finds that the plants and flowers in the garden are still wick, still alive and ready to flourish under proper care.
And at the end of Return to Oz, Dorothy uses the ruby slippers to restore Oz and its queen, Ozma.
Perhaps the greatest example of ruin and restoration, though, isn’t found in any children’s book.
It is instead found in the Bible.
Jesus is broken, beaten and dead, carried off to a tomb and left alone with the exception of Mary Magdalene who holds vigil over her lost Lord.
Like Mary Lennox, like Dorothy, Mary Magdalene cannot give up hope, cannot let go of the only goodness and light she has ever known.
And so she waits.
And her waiting is rewarded. When Jesus rises from the dead, he first visits Mary.
There will be times of ruin in our own lives, times when we feel alone, times when we feel broken.
But we have hope in Jesus Christ. For with him, all is restored.
“For all things are yours,” Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3:21-23. “… all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.”
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Blink of an Eye
I woke up yesterday morning and knew that it was spring.
Yes, it’s still February, but I could feel it … something had changed overnight and now it was spring.
I’ve written before that spring in Florida comes and goes so quickly that if you aren’t paying attention, you’ll miss it. And spring anywhere, not just in Florida, is too beautiful to miss.
Spring is a season of symbolism. It is the season of new life, of awakening.
When I woke up yesterday morning, I felt like a little kid again, the little kid excited to see the snow vanish and the trees bud. I drove down the road and watched people riding their bikes and wished I had a bike. Not that I ever rode my bike when I had one, but that’s what spring does to people. It makes us want to live anew. It makes us want to breathe air that’s recycled through trees and not a building’s air handler.
I think I felt spring coming all week.
On Thursday I met with my Parish Discernment Committee for the first time. This committee is composed of church members who will sit with me weekly for the next month and a half and help me understand just what it is that God is calling me to do.
As I drove to church that night, I was nervous. I felt a little ashamed at being so nervous when God has done nothing but show me again and again that He is going to provide me with whatever I need to become the Christian He expects me to be.
Before the meeting, I sat with Pastor Debbie and Father Dave, my Commission on Ministry representative. It was my first time meeting him and my brain was racing, trying to comprehend everything that he was saying.
But then I noticed this wall hanging over Father Dave’s left shoulder.
“Be still and know that I am God,” it said. The words are from Psalm 46:10.
As soon as I read those words, I felt this calm wash over me. Suddenly the nerves were gone and as Father Dave explained the upcoming BACAM conference and how everyone is usually intimidated by it, all I felt was excitement and giddy joy.
All during the committee meeting that followed, I fought the urge to jump up and shout that joy to the heavens.
And the words that kept popping up in my head were these, “How did I get here?”
How did I get here? It wasn’t a question filled with fear, but a question of amazement and joy.
How did I get here? It’s like I woke up one morning and found myself living the dreams I had always wished for but never imagined could be real.
How could I be this blessed?
How could my life change so quickly … in the blink of an eye?
It makes virtually every day seem like spring filled with hope and the promise of something wonderful, just around the corner.
Yes, it’s still February, but I could feel it … something had changed overnight and now it was spring.
I’ve written before that spring in Florida comes and goes so quickly that if you aren’t paying attention, you’ll miss it. And spring anywhere, not just in Florida, is too beautiful to miss.
Spring is a season of symbolism. It is the season of new life, of awakening.
When I woke up yesterday morning, I felt like a little kid again, the little kid excited to see the snow vanish and the trees bud. I drove down the road and watched people riding their bikes and wished I had a bike. Not that I ever rode my bike when I had one, but that’s what spring does to people. It makes us want to live anew. It makes us want to breathe air that’s recycled through trees and not a building’s air handler.
I think I felt spring coming all week.
On Thursday I met with my Parish Discernment Committee for the first time. This committee is composed of church members who will sit with me weekly for the next month and a half and help me understand just what it is that God is calling me to do.
As I drove to church that night, I was nervous. I felt a little ashamed at being so nervous when God has done nothing but show me again and again that He is going to provide me with whatever I need to become the Christian He expects me to be.
Before the meeting, I sat with Pastor Debbie and Father Dave, my Commission on Ministry representative. It was my first time meeting him and my brain was racing, trying to comprehend everything that he was saying.
But then I noticed this wall hanging over Father Dave’s left shoulder.
“Be still and know that I am God,” it said. The words are from Psalm 46:10.
As soon as I read those words, I felt this calm wash over me. Suddenly the nerves were gone and as Father Dave explained the upcoming BACAM conference and how everyone is usually intimidated by it, all I felt was excitement and giddy joy.
All during the committee meeting that followed, I fought the urge to jump up and shout that joy to the heavens.
And the words that kept popping up in my head were these, “How did I get here?”
How did I get here? It wasn’t a question filled with fear, but a question of amazement and joy.
How did I get here? It’s like I woke up one morning and found myself living the dreams I had always wished for but never imagined could be real.
How could I be this blessed?
How could my life change so quickly … in the blink of an eye?
It makes virtually every day seem like spring filled with hope and the promise of something wonderful, just around the corner.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Thin Places
About half way through the movie The Shawshank Redemption, the main character, inmate Andy Dufresne, is taken to the warden’s office. For years Andy has been writing the state for donations to a prison library and now, finally, the state has responded with boxes and boxes of books and records.
While the guard uses the bathroom, Andy begins searching through the boxes to see what treasure has been sent to him. He pulls out a record of The Marriage of Figaro, stares at it for a moment and then calmly grabs the key and locks the guard in the bathroom and then locks the door to the office.
Then, though he knows he will be punished severely, he puts the record on the player and then turns on the microphone to the intercom system. In seconds the voices of two women singing plaintively fills every inch of the prison.
In the prison yard, everyone stops. Everyone stands silent staring off into the sky, listening to something beautiful in a place where they have only known loneliness and horror and seclusion. In a place where everything is gray, this music, in a moment of synesthesia, brings color to their world. Color in the form of notes that rise and fall, that ache and yearn.
For a moment, every one of the prisoners escapes. While before they were dead in spirit, now they are alive.
They touch something in that moment, something real and ethereal and meaningful and heavenly.
I remember when I was a kid having those kind of moments with music. I remember getting lost in the emotion of the piece. I remember getting goose bumps. I remember listening to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and feeling the music, not just hearing it.
Even now in church each Sunday, certain hymns seem to burrow their way into my soul and make me cry though I hardly can reason why it’s happening.
There just seem to be moments when I listen to music, when I can connect to something … to God perhaps … and feel a presence that is not always visible to me.
In her book Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor writes about an Irish spiritual term—thin places. They are “places on earth where the Presence is so strong they serve as portals between this world and another.”
They are places where the boundary between the earth and Heaven seem almost transparent, where the boundary fades away and the things of God and Heaven are readily visible or felt.
And for the most part, thin places are found in nature. I am convinced, for example, that the bridge in the woods behind the church is a thin place because the Presence of God seems to fill every atom, every molecule of air and earth and sky.
But there are other thin places, places within us, sparked by music, by words, so that we don’t have to wander out into the woods to feel God, all we have to do is sing … or listen to someone else sing … or sit and be still and listen to our own souls sing.
We may not live in a physical prison as Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, but the figurative prisons that we fight and rail against can be breached in much the same way.
By finding those thin places.
While the guard uses the bathroom, Andy begins searching through the boxes to see what treasure has been sent to him. He pulls out a record of The Marriage of Figaro, stares at it for a moment and then calmly grabs the key and locks the guard in the bathroom and then locks the door to the office.
Then, though he knows he will be punished severely, he puts the record on the player and then turns on the microphone to the intercom system. In seconds the voices of two women singing plaintively fills every inch of the prison.
In the prison yard, everyone stops. Everyone stands silent staring off into the sky, listening to something beautiful in a place where they have only known loneliness and horror and seclusion. In a place where everything is gray, this music, in a moment of synesthesia, brings color to their world. Color in the form of notes that rise and fall, that ache and yearn.
For a moment, every one of the prisoners escapes. While before they were dead in spirit, now they are alive.
They touch something in that moment, something real and ethereal and meaningful and heavenly.
I remember when I was a kid having those kind of moments with music. I remember getting lost in the emotion of the piece. I remember getting goose bumps. I remember listening to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and feeling the music, not just hearing it.
Even now in church each Sunday, certain hymns seem to burrow their way into my soul and make me cry though I hardly can reason why it’s happening.
There just seem to be moments when I listen to music, when I can connect to something … to God perhaps … and feel a presence that is not always visible to me.
In her book Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor writes about an Irish spiritual term—thin places. They are “places on earth where the Presence is so strong they serve as portals between this world and another.”
They are places where the boundary between the earth and Heaven seem almost transparent, where the boundary fades away and the things of God and Heaven are readily visible or felt.
And for the most part, thin places are found in nature. I am convinced, for example, that the bridge in the woods behind the church is a thin place because the Presence of God seems to fill every atom, every molecule of air and earth and sky.
But there are other thin places, places within us, sparked by music, by words, so that we don’t have to wander out into the woods to feel God, all we have to do is sing … or listen to someone else sing … or sit and be still and listen to our own souls sing.
We may not live in a physical prison as Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, but the figurative prisons that we fight and rail against can be breached in much the same way.
By finding those thin places.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Skipping Stones
When I was kid, I walked a lot with my head down, not because I was shy or afraid of tripping over my own feet, but because I was a scavenger.
I was always looking in the road, on the sidewalk, in the grass for rocks, for stray pennies, for virtually anything my parents would consider trash, but I found to be treasure.
The sidewalks in Upstate New York were mostly made of concrete, but were here and there made of shale and there were always bits and pieces of rocks lingering by the grass. Some contained hidden surprises like fossils that only appeared when the rock was broken.
Other rocks may have seemed like nothing special, but contained ridges or grooves or veins that made interesting and unique patterns so that it was impossible to leave the rock abandoned on the side of the road.
One day, and I can’t be sure when or where but I’m assuming it was along the shore of Cayuga Lake, I found what I thought was the perfect skipping stone. It was oval and flat and completely smooth as if God had decided that the skipping stone needed to be its own variety of stone like granite or pumice or agate.
It was just perfect.
I could imagine flinging it across the lake and watching it hop and skip twenty, maybe forty times, before disappearing into the water.
But that would mean, of course, that I would lose the most perfect skipping stone in the world … forever.
I still have that skipping stone. It’s here somewhere in the house in a box with other things I could never part with.
Yes, I have kept a plain, ordinary grayish rock in a box for probably twenty years.
All that makes me think about the things we keep and why we keep them.
Last night my computer finally died after being hit with another virus and not having the strength to fight it off.
I managed to save my documents to an external drive. The drive is about the size of two decks of cards. As I stood there holding it in my hand, I realized that it held my life, or at least the last fifteen years of it.
But I realized that even if that drive turns out to be corrupted with same virus and I lose all that I’ve done on a computer for that last fifteen years … I haven’t lost my life.
In the end, pictures, music, word documents … they don’t breathe, they don’t laugh, they don’t cry, they don’t hold you and keep you warm on nights when you feel the cold both literal and figurative.
They’re things.
Like that skipping stone.
I was looking for it today in between church services. I couldn’t find it, but I know it’s here somewhere and when I do find it, I plan on letting it go.
I plan on setting it free.
There’s a lake next to the church with water that is flat and glassy except when the occasional fish jumps, or the otter that lives there pops out and flips like he’s doing a show for Sea World.
It’s the perfect lake for the perfect skipping stone.
It’s a stone that has followed me from my childhood in New York, to my college years in Ohio, to my adulthood here in Florida. It has sat quiet and still during the struggles in my life and during the joy.
It was waiting, I suppose, for now, for when I can finally let it go and let go with it a part of my past.
And by doing so skip one small step forward.
I was always looking in the road, on the sidewalk, in the grass for rocks, for stray pennies, for virtually anything my parents would consider trash, but I found to be treasure.
The sidewalks in Upstate New York were mostly made of concrete, but were here and there made of shale and there were always bits and pieces of rocks lingering by the grass. Some contained hidden surprises like fossils that only appeared when the rock was broken.
Other rocks may have seemed like nothing special, but contained ridges or grooves or veins that made interesting and unique patterns so that it was impossible to leave the rock abandoned on the side of the road.
One day, and I can’t be sure when or where but I’m assuming it was along the shore of Cayuga Lake, I found what I thought was the perfect skipping stone. It was oval and flat and completely smooth as if God had decided that the skipping stone needed to be its own variety of stone like granite or pumice or agate.
It was just perfect.
I could imagine flinging it across the lake and watching it hop and skip twenty, maybe forty times, before disappearing into the water.
But that would mean, of course, that I would lose the most perfect skipping stone in the world … forever.
I still have that skipping stone. It’s here somewhere in the house in a box with other things I could never part with.
Yes, I have kept a plain, ordinary grayish rock in a box for probably twenty years.
All that makes me think about the things we keep and why we keep them.
Last night my computer finally died after being hit with another virus and not having the strength to fight it off.
I managed to save my documents to an external drive. The drive is about the size of two decks of cards. As I stood there holding it in my hand, I realized that it held my life, or at least the last fifteen years of it.
But I realized that even if that drive turns out to be corrupted with same virus and I lose all that I’ve done on a computer for that last fifteen years … I haven’t lost my life.
In the end, pictures, music, word documents … they don’t breathe, they don’t laugh, they don’t cry, they don’t hold you and keep you warm on nights when you feel the cold both literal and figurative.
They’re things.
Like that skipping stone.
I was looking for it today in between church services. I couldn’t find it, but I know it’s here somewhere and when I do find it, I plan on letting it go.
I plan on setting it free.
There’s a lake next to the church with water that is flat and glassy except when the occasional fish jumps, or the otter that lives there pops out and flips like he’s doing a show for Sea World.
It’s the perfect lake for the perfect skipping stone.
It’s a stone that has followed me from my childhood in New York, to my college years in Ohio, to my adulthood here in Florida. It has sat quiet and still during the struggles in my life and during the joy.
It was waiting, I suppose, for now, for when I can finally let it go and let go with it a part of my past.
And by doing so skip one small step forward.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Be the Light
Smallville, the television show, is the origin story of one Clark Kent, the man destined to become Superman. Over the many seasons it has been on, it has shown us Clark the teenager growing into Clark the man and finally in this, its last season, it is showing us Clark as he takes the responsibility of being a hero to mankind.
In tonight’s episode, Clark asks his mother if he should do it. “Should I become this hero?” he asks. “Should I step into the light?”
Martha Kent’s kind face fills the screen. “Clark, you are the light,” she says.
It seems as though I’ve heard those words before.
Like just last Sunday in the Gospel reading. In Matthew 5:14 and 16. Jesus says, “You are the light of the world … let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
You are the light of the world.
Not everyone but you.
You.
We. Us. We are the light of the world and much like Clark Kent, we have a huge responsibility as that light.
We do not have Clark Kent’s superpowers.
But not to worry … we actually have something greater.
Directive from God Himself … to be good, to do good, to be a beacon of hope for this world.
And God’s directive is not just for Christians, but for the whole of humanity.
Step up.
Be a light in the darkness.
Nobody expects you to blaze like the sun. In fact, who would want that? The sun can scorch and sap the very life out of you.
But even the smallest light can make all the difference. I think back to the first time I saw a lightning bug on a cool summer night and how much joy I felt watching them dart in and out of light, first here and then way over there and then back again.
Even the smallest light can heal.
Be that light.
In tonight’s episode, Clark asks his mother if he should do it. “Should I become this hero?” he asks. “Should I step into the light?”
Martha Kent’s kind face fills the screen. “Clark, you are the light,” she says.
It seems as though I’ve heard those words before.
Like just last Sunday in the Gospel reading. In Matthew 5:14 and 16. Jesus says, “You are the light of the world … let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
You are the light of the world.
Not everyone but you.
You.
We. Us. We are the light of the world and much like Clark Kent, we have a huge responsibility as that light.
We do not have Clark Kent’s superpowers.
But not to worry … we actually have something greater.
Directive from God Himself … to be good, to do good, to be a beacon of hope for this world.
And God’s directive is not just for Christians, but for the whole of humanity.
Step up.
Be a light in the darkness.
Nobody expects you to blaze like the sun. In fact, who would want that? The sun can scorch and sap the very life out of you.
But even the smallest light can make all the difference. I think back to the first time I saw a lightning bug on a cool summer night and how much joy I felt watching them dart in and out of light, first here and then way over there and then back again.
Even the smallest light can heal.
Be that light.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Parlez-vous Francais?
When I took French in high school, I had to choose a French name for myself. “Kendra” doesn’t translate very well, so one year I was Patrice and the next year Genevieve and then Rose.
But my senior year, the teacher had her own name for me.
She called me “The Girl Who Refuses to Speak French.”
You see, I could read and write French very well, but I was terrified of speaking it. I was terrified of making a mistake, of sounding stupid and I wasn’t interested in asking for help.
For the record, I still received an “A” in that class.
Over the past year, God has really been working in my life to put in me in situations that are completely outside of my comfort zone and then giving me the choice—much like I had in my French class in high school—sit mute and let others do all the talking, or risk something, risk everything maybe and learn something new and perhaps grow and change because of it.
And while I have taken some tentative steps outside of my comfort zone (like driving two hours by myself to the Diocesan Convention last weekend), I still retreat frequently to that quiet girl in French class who was content to take her “A” and be safe rather than take the risk of failure.
In his book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, David Platt writes about Jesus calling the first disciples. He says, “Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation.”
In a few weeks, I will be attending the BACAM conference. BACAM stands for Bishop’s Advisory Council on Aspirants for Ministry. It is another step in the discernment process, another step in my journey to discover if God is really and truly calling me to the priesthood.
After I received the invitation to BACAM, I immediately sent an email to Pastor Debbie and told her that receiving the invitation was just another thing that reminded me that this journey I’m on is real.
It’s very real and very exciting and very terrifying.
If at the end of the discernment process, I am accepted as a postulant, my world will change in such magnificent and awe-inspiring and perhaps completely chaotic ways, it will make mumbling a few words in French seem like a fairy tale.
As David Platt wrote, I will be leaving certainty for uncertainty. And ultimately I will be abandoning who I thought I was all these years in an effort to embrace the “me” that God is slowly—baby-step slowly—introducing me to.
In the end, God doesn’t ask us simply to step outside our comfort zone, He obliterates that comfort zone and asks that we trust Him when we’ve gone so many years not even trusting ourselves.
And yet, as frightening as that all may seem, there is a comfort, there is a peace in giving it all to God. I have no idea what my future holds and that should send me to bed, quivering in the darkness.
But it doesn’t.
Because the truth is, I am more at peace, I am more whole, and I am more “me” now than I have ever been in my life.
And that is the beauty of God.
It’s like that moment when we’re children and we jump off the couch confident that our father will catch us.
There is freedom in flight.
And there is comfort in the safety of His arms.
But my senior year, the teacher had her own name for me.
She called me “The Girl Who Refuses to Speak French.”
You see, I could read and write French very well, but I was terrified of speaking it. I was terrified of making a mistake, of sounding stupid and I wasn’t interested in asking for help.
For the record, I still received an “A” in that class.
Over the past year, God has really been working in my life to put in me in situations that are completely outside of my comfort zone and then giving me the choice—much like I had in my French class in high school—sit mute and let others do all the talking, or risk something, risk everything maybe and learn something new and perhaps grow and change because of it.
And while I have taken some tentative steps outside of my comfort zone (like driving two hours by myself to the Diocesan Convention last weekend), I still retreat frequently to that quiet girl in French class who was content to take her “A” and be safe rather than take the risk of failure.
In his book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, David Platt writes about Jesus calling the first disciples. He says, “Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation.”
In a few weeks, I will be attending the BACAM conference. BACAM stands for Bishop’s Advisory Council on Aspirants for Ministry. It is another step in the discernment process, another step in my journey to discover if God is really and truly calling me to the priesthood.
After I received the invitation to BACAM, I immediately sent an email to Pastor Debbie and told her that receiving the invitation was just another thing that reminded me that this journey I’m on is real.
It’s very real and very exciting and very terrifying.
If at the end of the discernment process, I am accepted as a postulant, my world will change in such magnificent and awe-inspiring and perhaps completely chaotic ways, it will make mumbling a few words in French seem like a fairy tale.
As David Platt wrote, I will be leaving certainty for uncertainty. And ultimately I will be abandoning who I thought I was all these years in an effort to embrace the “me” that God is slowly—baby-step slowly—introducing me to.
In the end, God doesn’t ask us simply to step outside our comfort zone, He obliterates that comfort zone and asks that we trust Him when we’ve gone so many years not even trusting ourselves.
And yet, as frightening as that all may seem, there is a comfort, there is a peace in giving it all to God. I have no idea what my future holds and that should send me to bed, quivering in the darkness.
But it doesn’t.
Because the truth is, I am more at peace, I am more whole, and I am more “me” now than I have ever been in my life.
And that is the beauty of God.
It’s like that moment when we’re children and we jump off the couch confident that our father will catch us.
There is freedom in flight.
And there is comfort in the safety of His arms.
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