Still Amazed

It was almost a year ago that Pastor Debbie took me on a tour of the grounds at Hope and told me her vision of building a labyrinth there on church property. Even though the only labyrinths I knew of were found in mythology and had minotaurs lurking around corners, Pastor Debbie explained that the labyrinth she spoke of was not a maze, it was not something to get lost in, but rather it was contemplative prayer walk.

It’s funny how when you hear something for the first time, suddenly you hear it everywhere. Within days of Pastor Debbie telling me about the labyrinth, I found myself in a class, learning about how the brain works. We were given a book to read called A Whole New Mind and there in a chapter entitled Meaning, were pages on labyrinths, how they are used not only at churches, but also at hospitals as meditative walks.

And with that, I was on board.

Here’s the problem, though. When I get on board with something, I frequently want it to happen right away.

Timothy Keller writes in King’s Cross (and really why aren’t you reading this book yet) that “Patience means working when gratification is delayed.”

The process that eventually brought a labyrinth to Hope was a long process. It involved at its most basic level a continued dedication to removing from the grounds those things that were dead and/or choking the life out of surrounding plants. It involved paperwork in the form of a grant. It involved so many things that had to click into place before something else could happen.

Sometimes when you have a goal, when you have something you want more than anything in the world to happen, you have to accept that things happen in God’s time and that the only thing you can do is keep taking those steps—sometimes very small—toward that goal.

Yesterday I was there when the plants were finally added to our labyrinth. The labyrinth had started to take shape a few weeks ago when Pastor Debbie and Marty laid the path with rocks, but now the plants were here.

And our labyrinth went from a drawing on a piece of paper, to a 2D project in rocks, to something now with depth and substance.

It was a hot day and I think my only contribution may have been to watch others digging the holes and carefully planting the Simpson Stoppers that will eventually grow together to create the hedge of the labyrinth.

But I was glad to be there.

This morning as Pastor Debbie showed others around the labyrinth, I found myself stooping and gently lifting up some of the smaller plants that were wilting and leaning from the rain and the wind the night before. I’ve never been a fan of nature. I like it from a distance. I love it through a camera lens.

To touch it as I did this morning, to gently settle the small stem on a pinecone or dirt clod, to help prop it up so that it has a chance, this is something I would never do, but did today.

It’s one of the reasons I’m still amazed.

I sat in church this morning and realized that. I’m amazed … that I’m still amazed, that a year after joining Hope, God still surprises me sometimes in the smallest, yet most meaningful ways.

He surprises me with purpose.

He reminds me that even when I have fallen much like those tiny plants, when the world seems too heavy to bear, He reminds me that He cares for me in the way we care for those plants … with gentleness and dedication and wonder.

I'm still amazed.

I'm still blessed to be amazed on this my 100th posting.

Accidents

In King’s Cross, Timothy Keller writes that suffering occurs when there’s a gap between the desires of our heart and the circumstances of our life and that suffering only increases when we try and wrestle those circumstances into matching our desires instead of simply submitting to the will of God.

It finally all made sense to me this week. I was already having a horrible week, one of my worst in recent memory and then Wednesday morning I found myself stopped at a red light in the right turn lane, getting ready to make the last mile or so to work.

Turn right. Really that was the only thing on my mind, so you can imagine my shock when the woman next to me in the left turn lane, also decided to turn right … right into my car, running the length of her car across my front bumper.

The sound one car makes as it hits another car is excruciating, like ten million nails on chalkboard made all the worse by the seeming slow-mo quality of the crash. It just kept going and going as I frantically tried blasting my horn and putting the car in reverse.

Fortunately, both the other driver and I were okay, not so much our cars, but we were okay and I was left with this eureka moment of understanding that if I or any of us really had control over the circumstances of our lives, all the bad things that happen to us wouldn’t crowd together like some kind of flash mob gone bad.

We would spread out the trials so we could handle them better and address them one on one.

And it was in that moment, that I finally gave in (not gave up, never giving up), but gave in that sometimes life is simply beyond our control and sometimes instead of wrestling with it, we should just let life happen and see where God will take us.

Thy will be done.

Later that day I stopped by the church to see how the labyrinth was coming along. Pastor Debbie and Marty were there just beginning to lay out the stone path and I made a feeble attempt to walk it then.

I had much better luck with it a few days later on Friday.

I found myself back at the labyrinth early this morning. As I walked out behind the church there were two sprinklers on randomly spraying the trees in the early morning sun. I wondered if all the sprinklers were on and if I would have to walk the labyrinth in a hazy mist.

But the sprinklers turned off almost as soon as I noticed them, like I had caught them doing something they weren’t supposed to.

Next to the sprinklers, a large rabbit darted out into the grass from the trees. It stayed there for a minute, framed in sun and shadow and then hopped out a few more feet. A second later, a smaller rabbit joined it.

For a few minutes, I just stood there watching them, reminded that one of the first things that drew me to Hope was the quiet and the stillness in which I could feel the presence of God.

I drank in that stillness and then walked the labyrinth.

In the future when I look back on this week and how it was that I was finally able to feel some healing, I will look back on first the prayers and comfort offered to me by friends and then I will look at the little things, how a car accident taught me that no matter how hard we try to rein life in, life will happen to us regardless.

And I will think about how a labyrinth, a maze in which you cannot get lost, grounded me in the stillness of God.

No accidents here.

Thy Will Be Done

In King’s Cross, Timothy Keller writes that “suffering happens … when there’s a gap between the desires of your heart and the circumstances of your life.”

He goes on to describe Jesus at Gethsemane as he struggles between what it is he knows he has to do (die on the cross) with what it is that he really wants to do (which is live). In the end, though, Keller points out that Jesus ultimately submits to God saying “not as I will, but what you will.”

Thy will be done.

They are familiar words and I wonder if we haven’t said The Lord’s Prayer so much that the words have lost meaning.

They will be done.

Not our will. His will.

Lately “thy will be done” are the only words I find I am able to pray. The circumstances of my life right now so out of whack with what I desire to do, that I struggle to find the words to pray. I don’t even know where to begin with God.

So lately it’s been only “thy will be done.”

Today, I made it out to the labyrinth at church. Eventually hedges will mark the path, but right now, rocks serve to show the path and they do it quite well. The path is a little jagged, a little raggedy; at one point it disappears into a thicket of pine and scrub, only to reappear a few feet later.

But I walked it this afternoon, trying to think of what to say to God as I walked and finally settling on “thy will be done.”

No sooner had I thought the words though, then I heard what sounded like rain on the church roof. I was twenty feet away, but the rain hadn’t reached me yet.

As I began to feel the beginning bombardment, I ran from the labyrinth back to the church, huddling under what little shelter I could find.

The skies opened up and for about thirty seconds, it rained so hard, the raindrops pounding the ground with such force, it almost hurt to watch.

And then just like that, the clouds parted and sunlight flooded the lawn.

Rain and then sun in seconds.

And sun so bright and so hot, it made it seem like it had never rained at all.

I waited a few more seconds and then returned to the labyrinth to finish.

All the while thinking that sometimes God’s language is so perfect, it doesn’t need translation.

Rain and then sun so that it was like it never rained at all.

Let His will be done always.

Shield Your Joyous

Earlier this year I found myself in trouble for, of all things, looking at someone. If this had been the wild, wild, west, I’m sure I would have found myself in a dual at dawn. As it was, I had to sit down and explain, somewhat embarrassingly, that I have horrible vision and I was only staring at the person because I thought I knew them, but couldn’t quite see them.

All of which goes to show that there is very little we can do in life to avoid conflict.

There was a time just a year ago that one of my goals in church was to be invisible, to hide behind pillars, to melt into the pew, to slip out after Communion, to leave the guest register empty.

I found myself wanting the opposite of that, though, when I joined Hope. I had too much joy to contain. I could have tried to hide, but I think my glow would have given me away.

Despite all that, I still find myself sometimes longing to be invisible. I think if I ever go to another church I won’t say a word, I won’t even make eye contact and then maybe that way I’ll avoid being hurt.

Because the truth is when we open ourselves up to joy, we also open ourselves up to pain. Those who are joy-filled are most vulnerable because in their joy they have let all their defenses down.

It’s why during Evening Prayer, I almost always choose the collect with the line “shield your joyous.”

Suffering is hard.

It is especially hard when it comes in a place in which you have only known joy.

It makes me doubt. It makes me want to run. It makes me wonder how the world can be so cruel.

We may not know why we suffer, Timothy Keller writes in King’s Cross, but we know this: “It can’t be that God doesn’t love you; it can’t be that he has no plans for you. It can’t be that he has abandoned you. Jesus was abandoned, and paid for our sings, so that God the Father would never abandon you.”

Keller goes on to write that the words that sustained him through his darkest times were a reflection of this he found in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings:

“Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

Suffering passes and the light, the joy of salvation, the light of God’s love is forever beyond the reach of the darkness.

To close ourselves off from pain means also to close ourselves off from joy.

Pain will come and the only way to make it through is to remember that darkness never reaches God’s holy light.

Swimming Lessons

I didn’t learn how to swim until I was sixteen.

I grew up in Upstate New York, so it wasn’t like I had the opportunity to do a lot of swimming. I remember getting in a friend’s pool once in the middle of June and the water temperature was a crisp sixty degrees.

We had an indoor pool at our high school. It was a beautiful pool and heated. The only time it wasn’t so beautiful was when someone pulled the fire alarm in the dead of winter and sent a bunch of kids fleeing from the pool out into the snow.

And of course, it wasn’t so beautiful for me when it was time for our swimming unit in P.E. I’m still not sure how I managed to pass the unit when I was fifteen except that if you’re quiet and don’t complain, if you keep moving and splash around a bit … the teachers will usually overlook you.

Unfortunately they weren’t able to overlook me the next year, what with all the screaming and flailing around.

P.E. teachers are notoriously … well … evil … and one of the things they had us do during the swimming unit was create a whirlpool in the shallow end of the pool. I’m sure they were thinking they were just giving us a cardiovascular workout by having us move en mass in a circle. Simple at first until those crazy, psychotic laws of physics kick in.

The more we moved, the harder it was to stay in the circle, the harder it was not to be flung out into the deep end.

It was probably no big deal for everyone else since they could swim. What did they care if they wound up in water over their heads?

But for me … I was terrified.

I fought hard. But, in the end, I only remember clinging to the side of the pool, my legs kicking at the water behind me as I tried desperately to hang on.

I’m sure I made quite a spectacle of myself because when the rest of the class moved on to the next unit and left the pool until next year, I was told to stay behind.

I spent the rest of my P.E. year in the pool getting one on one swimming instruction.

It wasn’t easy. I was terrified of the water, terrified of putting my head under, terrified of just about everything, but I had an incredibly patient teacher. Sometimes her only job was to walk alongside of the pool as I swam, holding out a long pole for me to grab if I started to panic.

I never did grab that pole, even on the day that I made it out into the deep end for the first time. I never grabbed the pole. In fact I was sort of angry at it. It just seemed to be in the way.

I didn’t need the pole. It was enough that my teacher was there. It was enough that she believed in me.

I’ve been reading Timothy Keller’s King’s Cross this past week. He writes quite a bit on suffering and trust.

He writes of God saying: “I want you to keep trusting me; to stick with me, not turn back, not give up, turn to me in all the disappointments and injustices that will happen to you. I’m going to take you places that will make you say, ‘Why in the world are you taking me there?’ Even then, I want you to trust me.”

Trust is a hard thing especially when fear gets in the way, when we don't know where we're going, when we feel like we're about to be thrown into the deepest waters.

And much like my journey learning to swim, we can either choose to leave the pool and run from our fears, or we can hope that someone takes notice, that God sees us and sends us someone to walk alongside us and guide us in overcoming that fear.

It takes an abundance of faith.

But God proves Himself over and over and over again.  He never fails.

All we need is faith.

Say My Name

In John’s Gospel, chapter 20, Mary Magdalene visits the tomb of Jesus only to find it empty.

She immediately runs to tell to the disciples. They come back with her, see the empty tomb, and then return home.

Only Mary stays behind.

She is crying, weeping, when a strange man approaches her and asks her why she is so upset.

She explains that her Lord is missing and she asks the man if he knows where Jesus has been taken.

“Mary,” the man says.

Mary.

Mary.

And in that second Mary sees that the man she has been talking to is Jesus himself, and he is alive. Not a ghost, but a living, breathing, being.

Mary.

She doesn’t recognize him until he says her name.

How many times have we been blind to God? How many times have we failed to recognize Him even when He is standing right beside us?

Last Easter, I walked into Hope for the first time. I remember Mike standing at the door greeting everyone. I remember asking him if all the eggs had been found. I remember that at some point during the service, during one of the songs, I was bouncing up on my toes with what I thought was nerves but turned out to be something else entirely.

Walking into Hope that Easter was a Mary moment for me. Like Mary, I knew God, but it was my first glimpse of a living God. I thought I knew Him, but I know now how blind I was, how I didn’t really understand His presence in my life until I found Hope.

It was like He was calling my name.

And in that call, I saw Him—truly saw Him—for the first time.

I was filled with what seemed like unending joy, the same joy Mary must have felt.

That joy stayed with me for the better part of this last year. Only recently has it taken a bit of beating. I have found myself smiling less. My soul has felt wounded.

Last night, though, during the Easter Vigil, I felt that joy return. The moment Pastor Debbie handed me the Communion wafer, I felt my lips quiver, wanting desperately to smile. And when we sang, I found myself bouncing up and down on my toes. Not nerves at all, but joy, threatening to explode.

It was like I had heard my name again, had heard God call me once again.

He never stops, by the way. He never stops calling our name.

This Easter, today, I was the greeter, welcoming in people who were coming to Hope for the first time as I had last year.

And I was bouncing a little too, rocking back and forth on my feet because I knew, I knew a secret.

Someone was going to walk into that church today and have their life changed as mine had been a year ago.

Someone was going to hear God say their name.

Someone was going to feel that joy for the first time.

Someone’s life was never going to be the same.

Labyrinth

I walked my first prayer labyrinth the other night.

I hadn’t planned on going to church and when I got there I didn’t plan on staying, but the request seemed so small. Just sit for a minute and listen to the music of a Taize service. Just sit and listen.

Pastor Debbie started on the path first. The labyrinth was set out on the floor of the Parish Hall, nearly covering the floor from wall to wall. A wooden cross, taller than me, sat in the center. Pastor Debbie carried a stone with her as she walked and when she came to the cross, she put the rock at its base and then started back around the labyrinth again.

There were about a dozen of us and we didn’t walk the labyrinth one at a time. Some started well behind the person in front of them. Some started just a few feet behind, but at one point it seemed like we were all on the path together.

The path twisted into a maze of tight turns and more than once I almost lost my balance. Really I could have lost my balance … there was no penalty for falling off the path. But I fought hard to stay on, even turning sideways sometimes to avoid brushing up against someone whose journey brought them close to me.

At first I wished that I was walking the labyrinth alone, but as more and more people joined the path, I realized how important it was that we all walked together.

Sometimes the path wound back on itself so that I would brush up against someone who was much further along than me. Sometimes, our paths were parallel so that someone behind me was now walking beside me.

It was a truly brilliant message.

We are all on the same journey together. Some are further along. Some are right behind us, but no matter where we are in the journey, there are opportunities to walk together, to brush up against someone even for a second and make a difference, to be able to point out to the person behind you what struggles may be ahead.

I had wanted to walk the labyrinth alone. I had wanted to be alone with my thoughts and to pray and meditate and in the end I learned that night that I am so thankful for people. I am so blessed with people … who walk and sometimes clear the path ahead, who join me sometimes on the path, who follow behind me, who guard my back.

Community.

It’s so vital to understand that even when we want to be alone, even when we think we’re alone, God has given us people who take the journey with us.

Who those people are may change throughout our lives as we move and grow, but they are always there and we can’t think for a second that we’re alone.