Two Kinds of Bread

I enjoy the experience of buying groceries. I’m grateful not just to stock up, but to have the chance to amble up and down the aisles. I love the leisurely look at food, making choices, ticking things off my list. But what I love most of all is people watching – smiling at babies and children, exchanging friendly words with people, and generally contemplating all the life circumstances around me. Sometimes I’m too rushed to enjoy it, but if I am mindful, it all feels a bit like prayer.

Photo by Paul Patterson

But after buying my groceries this past Friday, my heart was heavy as I was trying to get to sleep. I have not been able to put my finger on the source yet, but lately I’ve been more stressed and that night I was feeling discouraged and a bit despondent. I know I have a faulty imagination when it comes to these things. I’m hard-wired to have catastrophic thoughts, thinking the worst, so I shouldn’t have been convinced by my fears. But there I was late at night, tossing and turning and in need of hope.

Lyle prayed for me, chasing off the demons of doom, which in itself was a huge help in fixing my perspective. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered what my blog topic would be and thought back to the now full fridge of groceries. As good as that food would be, it still could only fill me for a while. Hunger would always return. I thought back to the faulty imagination of mine which gives me trouble. Where was the aisle in Superstore that would fill this grasping hunger once and for all? My full fridge just wouldn’t cut it.

Last Sunday morning, our church had talked about two kinds of bread. Scripture tells us that all the food money can buy will not keep our deep inner hunger away. For that kind of hunger, we can only turn in humility towards God. Our own striving and planning will not keep our inner thirst away. So many things in this life seem to promise that we’ll be ok and that we can make it on our own efforts. I myself felt that way in my younger days, but not any more. Good food, my beautiful garden, my accomplishments (such as they are), all my “stuff” – the older I get, the more I realize that there is no saving help in all these things. It’s not that they are not good, but they don’t ultimately help when I am beset with worries or fears. All these worldly things are what is called “earthly bread.”

We all have experiences of crying out to God, saying, “God, I’m hungry, I’m thirsty. I need the bread and water that can only come from You.” This kind of food can’t be bought at Superstore. My particular hunger lately has been to keep my eye on hope as I get through a tougher time.

The scripture from Sunday morning came back to me. An invitation from God.

“Come, everyone who is thirsty—
here is water!
Come, you that have no money—
buy grain and eat!
Come! Buy wine and milk—
it will cost you nothing! (Isaiah 55:1)

The flour was not used up – Photo by Paul Patterson

This verse is an echo of the Old Testament story of the woman who had hardly any oil or flour left to live on. Yet, when she gave what little she had away to someone in faith, the oil and flour did not ever run out.

I was grateful for Lyle’s prayers for me, but also for the Sunday morning homily. It came back to me at the moment I needed it as I tossed on my bed with my fears. I was reminded that God would not forget my hunger for hope.  I woke up with a lighter heart the next morning because of God’s offer of mercy. I knew I wasn’t forgotten.

Trust in the Slow Work of God

A phrase has been turning over in my mind lately, whispering to me daily like an encouraging friend: “Trust in the slow work of God.” It came to me through Greg Boyle’s lovely book Tattoos on the Heart, and was originally written by Teilhard de Chardin. It has been tempering the impatience in my heart; the agitation I’ve felt as I’ve waited not just for the end of my cold, but also for greater peace of heart. 

These are not easy virtues to come by. Spring came slowly and late to Winnipeg this year, and we’ve had to exercise patience and hope as gardens inched up ever so slowly. I could water and weed and wait, but I could not force those new shoots to come one minute sooner than they did. It was certainly a time to trust in the slow work of God.

At this time in the school year, it’s not uncommon for teachers and students alike to be counting down the days until summer break. 14 more days. Caught in between life as it is and life as it will be, we are tempted to tap our inner feet impatiently. Living in the moment becomes harder. Why focus on the moment when change is around the corner?

I begin every day with prayers, asking God to help me meet the challenges ahead. I ask for patience and compassion for my students as I enter the million interactions that make up one day, and I pray twice adding the names of certain students who are my greater teachers. Every day, I see the hand of God at work, but I also see the “not yet” of life. Many situations don’t get resolved overnight and require a steady dose of patience and hope. In the meantime, waiting can make me edgy and impatient.

It’s the same thing in our hearts. We have to wait for our characters to grow in God’s own timing. My prayer guide reminded me of this same thing with a scripture passage. “We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next.” (Romans 5:3, The Message translation)

Shouting praise for troubles is not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I’m faced with them! It seems I’d rather fret and complain! But God tells me I can take this view of my troubles because through them, God is doing the slow work of developing patience and trust.

This is difficult to do because everyday life can seem murky. Scripture says that we see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13). We don’t always understand why certain situations or people have to be in our path, like detours that makes our drive longer. Stuck in the middle of our life stories, it’s easy to forget that it’s all going somewhere, and that something new is surely being formed in the hands of God, the loving Potter.

Staying disciplined with physical exercise is easy for me, but it’s the exercise of patience and hope that is much tougher. Lately, it feels like I’ve been getting wake up calls, reminding me to trust in the slow work of God. I’m so grateful for this phrase that has softened my impatience and turned my face back to God.

Here is the whole poem by Teilhard de Chardin. It is well worth the read. Perhaps today I’ll print it out, place it in my pocket, take a breath and read it when I can’t see the way.

Above All,
Trust in the Slow Work of God

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
– that is to say, grace –
and circumstances
acting on your own good will
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.

Amen.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit, paleontologist, biologist, and philosopher. 1881-1955

Renewing Places

Going through the experience of a funeral is meaningful but also tiring. You enter a time of reflections and sorting through someone’s life  – both physically as you clean out their living spaces, and spiritually as you consider their legacy. In a real way, you leave “ordinary time”. Lyle and I arrived back in Winnipeg pretty exhausted. We both felt we could have slept forever.

Returning to work was like going back into another universe. It felt a bit like stepping  into a boat in the rapids when you’ve been on different, quieter terrain. Whoosh, and you’re off, ready or not! I think my inner self was choosing the second option, hollering, “Not ready!”

Our community has a study night on Wednesday. This week (as is often the case), it was perfect timing. For all of us, whatever rapids we’re in, our boat is invited to pull over and stop for a while in a quiet side pool to regroup and refocus. 

When I was a kid, maybe 8 years old, a advertising jingle made an impression on me, “Hop in the car, come as you are to A & W.”   Hot, sandy and grubby after a weekend at the lake, I was in in a sweaty undershirt when our family went to the A & W drive-thru (remember the window trays?). I was embarrassed to look so disheveled, but I grew totally happy as I  remembered the jingle – I could come as I was! I didn’t have to be perfect first. (Ok, I was a weird kid!)

This is how I felt (and always feel) on Wednesdays, and I wasn’t let down. The topic for the evening was C.S. Lewis’ land of Narnia. We’d been invited to think of a scene from the books that has always stayed with us. As three themes from Lewis’ classic works were presented, we shared our memorable scenes.

The whole evening was really helpful in refocusing me. It might sound like a small thing, but just remembering the deeper stream of life again was helpful. I had been swept up in the surface swirls and eddies of life, forgetting the more sustaining currents beneath me.

Lewis believed that most of us are so pre-occupied with ourselves and myriad worries that we aren’t thinking straight about who God is. We know we’re “supposed” to love God, so how come it so often feels like a should? His aim in writing the Narnia books was to step over the “shoulds” and experience God through a story. He wanted to “help us sense what the experience of God is like, as if we had never before really thought about it.” (Rowan Williams in The Lion’s World)

It is no accident that all the children’s adventures starts with a door in a wardrobe. They were stuck bored in a house on a rainy day, and they walked through it to another much more adventurous world. Their lives were never the same. As we shared our favorite passages from the books, it was as if each person had walked through the same door. I was renewed and strengthened from our discussion.

I am thankful for all the doors I can walk through which take me to the deeper places.

My Mother-in-law’s hands

We are back in Winnipeg this weekend after the funeral of my mother-in-law in Medicine Hat, Alberta. As difficult as the week was, it also abounded in reflections and experiences of God being with us. Prayers, supportive emails, phone calls and flowers from back home, a hospitable sister and brother-in-law, hearing Lyle’s heartfelt tribute to his mom – all these served to keep us grateful and tethered to meaning.

One thing that came out repeatedly during the reflections was mom’s many acts of service – quilting, sewing, flower arranging, cooking, baking, gardening, house renovations – you name it, her hands were never idle. Lyle and I have a closet full of quilts and crocheted afghans to prove it. It was all in service to others. I’ll never forget the huge box of thoughtful kitchen and household items she got ready for me when I married Lyle. When they used to visit us, our kitchen cupboards would be restocked with canned goods, baking and the most amazing homemade noodles. She was a quiet woman, but if hands could speak, her acts of kindness would have qualified her as an extrovert.

At the funeral, the official minister gave his sermon, but it was “Uncle Leo’s” 5-minute tribute to his oldest sister that stayed with me the most. Mom had asked that her siblings sing a hymn called “Take Thou My Hands Oh Father”. It happens to be one of my favorites, with rich words and beautiful harmonies.

Before they sang, Uncle Leo used the metaphor of the hymn and talked about his sister’s helping hands. They had always been so active, but in her declining years, she had to let others give her a hand. This was not so easy for her to accept. Parkinson’s and other ravages of old age robbed her of the ability to use her hands well. The first thing she had to give up was the hours in the kitchen. It was difficult for her to let others serve her. For someone who had been so busy, it became humbling to let her hands lie still in her lap. When she first had to use her walker and then her wheelchair, she didn’t want to go to church and let others see her in her limited state, but eventually she went. Her hands were fragile by now, and she had no choice but to lean on others.

One of the items from her life on display at the front of the church was the scarf she had been knitting for our son Joel just weeks before she passed away. She had not been happy with it and had unravelled it more than once in frustration. I’ve heard that the Amish intentionally put an error into their quilts, to remember that they are not perfect and to stay humble. Olga’s scarf was filled with errors, but we see it for what it is – a rich symbol of a selfless life. Joel plans to finish it, leaving the mistakes intact, evidence of someone’s display of love even amid difficulty.

Her increasing limitations reveal what is true for us all. Youth and strength can fool us into thinking that we are self-sufficient, but the truth is that we are all dependent on God.  Not realizing this leads to pride and the independent attitude that so permeates our culture. The funeral hymn had a very fitting prayer, “Take thou my hands oh Father, and lead Thou me.”

In the days after the funeral, this prayer has become a wake-up call. There is so much I worry about. How often I forget my dependence and try to work solutions out on my own. I have had what feels like an everlasting cold in recent weeks, and it has made me wonder how much my worries have made me more vulnerable to getting sick. I’ve often written about giving my worries to God, and during this week, away from my regular work, I’ve felt called anew to give what is beyond my control to God, trusting that God has my back, guiding me where I am lost with wisdom that is beyond my limited sight.

Lyle prepared a slideshow for the funeral, and one picture stood out for me. Last summer, when his dad passed away, we released monarch butterflies at the graveside. There’s a picture of Lyle’s hands helping his mom’s hands to hold the monarch just before she released it. The contrast between young and old is so vivid and the picture is poignant and beautiful. Mom’s hands are fragile and wrinkled. To me it is emblematic of God’s strength amid our fragility.

I am grateful for Olga’s life, and the faith, trust and humility she exercised as she continued to let God take her fragile hands. It was not easy for her. I pray that I might not fight limitation and worry, but instead offer my hands to God and let myself be guided, like the good hymn says.

 

Angels

In the last 8 days, Lyle and I have made 2 trips by air – one planned and the other unplanned. The first was to see a stage production of C.S. Lewis’ classic The Screwtape Letters in Minneapolis, performed by one of our favorite actors Max McLean. I used our school division’s personal leave day and off we flew. Both of us were under the weather, but it was nonetheless a very fun trip, made meaningful by such a profound play. We even got to meet our hero Max McLean after the show!

Olga Penner 1925-2013

The second trip began on Friday after learning of the sudden passing of Lyle’s mom Olga Penner, from a massive stroke. We were anticipating the long weekend at home, but within a few hours our plans changed and we suddenly find ourselves in Medicine Hat, Alberta, planning a funeral and reflecting on Olga’s life, feeling sad but also grateful in the liminal space that death brings.

I’ve been reflecting on what threads to tease out for the blog. Where has God been in all this? Something I have been struck by over and over again is gratitude for the people who seem more like angels of mercy on our travels. When you’re away from home, you feel more vulnerable being out of your comfort zone. It’s amazing how much small acts of kindness mean on a trip, especially when grief strikes so suddenly and tears are not far away.

You realize what is always true, that we are all dependent on the acts of kindness that bring healing to this broken world of ours. The list for us is long and growing longer every day: thoughtful servers at restaurants, strangers, friends and family who offer kind words, the hospitable owner of the bed and breakfast place we stayed at in MN, the kindness, empathy and support of my co-workers when they heard about my mother-in-law, the generosity of my sister and brother-in-law who are hosting us, so many people who offer their thoughts and prayers and condolences – and the list goes on and on. These small encounters are truly a life-line.

One angel we met in Minneapolis was Max McLean. He is an actor we began to follow when our church used his dramatic readings of scripture for our Wednesday Bible studies. It was inspiring to see his play but a bonus surprise was the Question and Answer time at the end of the performance. A part of the great discussion was learning about the vision of the company he founded in 1993 called The Fellowship for the Performing Arts. We live in a world where being a Christian is often badly represented and to many seems quaint, irrelevant or sadly, even repulsive. To counteract this, McLean had a dream: “to produce meaningful, compelling theatre from a Christian worldview that speaks to a diverse audience.”

We had just experienced a play that fit that mandate exactly – the play we saw was meaningful and compelling indeed. It was the highlight of our weekend. We walked away with food for thought and full hearts. McLean was quoted as saying that the words of C.S. Lewis “have intellectual integrity and dramatic power”. His stories hit us in the imagination. To think that someone out there cares about giving voice to the deep message of Christianity to is so hopeful to me. (I was also thrilled to learn they are adapting my favorite Lewis work, The Great Divorce.)

Lyle and I celebrate our 29^th wedding anniversary today, May 19^th. Over the years, we have stuck together (and almost split up at one point) through difficult times, and the single most important glue has been God’s faith and love for us and our being part of a meaningful faith community. We found ourselves surrounded by meaning and a lot of fun on our “anniversary weekend” together, and I have been so thankful for this not so small miracle. There were times when I could not have imagined the story would turn out that way, so I know that our God means it when scripture says, “I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

I am so grateful for all the angels that have been sent our way from God over the years, strengthening us every step of the way, giving us hope and a future.

Practicing Gratitude

“For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The exercise in my morning prayer guide caught me by surprise. “Write down 10 things you are grateful for today.” I was coming down with a cold, and hadn’t yet reconciled myself to being out of bed, much less to facing a day of teaching with a scratchy voice and the prospects of being sick. Gratitude seemed like the last item on the menu of what I could offer the world.

Seen at a cursory glance, the world certainly doesn’t seem to encourage gratitude. There is so much around us that evokes only dark and cynical thoughts. The world “as-it-is” has a lot of problems! Bombings, parents of my students who neglect their kids, our culture of materialism. But never mind the world outside. My own inner world is clouded with problems as well – pride, anger, a lack of faith. Doesn’t too much of life seem like “two steps forward and three steps back”?

Richard Rohr writes that “God forbids us to accept “as-it-is” in favor of “what-God’s-love-can-make-it.” And so, putting aside my inner protests, I began to write my list.

• I became aware of the gorgeous flowering Christmas cactus in our bathroom. I had barely paid it a moment’s notice the last few days. How is it that I routinely miss the miracles under my nose?
• The night before, I realized with a start, as I often do, that it was already almost mid-week and I still hadn’t thought of a blog topic. Thoughts of “where was God” accompanied me as I drifted off to sleep, which was much better than the anxiety laden mindset I’d had a few minutes prior.
• Even if I was coming down with a cold, I was grateful that I could take a day off if I needed to (which I ended up doing).
• Earlier in the week, Paul (our pastor) had sent me an email. He’d been thinking of me while listening to a sermon online, and had some thoughts to share and encouraged me to listen to it too. I was grateful someone was looking out for me, offering mentorship.
• I feel so grateful for the migrating birds which are so abundant these days – juncos, fox sparrows, yellow-bellied
  

  Ruby crowned kinglet

  sapsuckers, purple finches, common redpolls, even a ruby-crowned kinglet – all of them such a delight to see and hear, and in my own backyard!

• Last weekend, by chance, I bumped into an old university friend I hadn’t seen in over 25 years. When I last knew him, I was a pretty confused and lost 20-something year old. In the wake of that meeting, I realized how rich my present life is – rich in meaning and friendship and community and spirit. Even amid struggles, I know God is never far off.

As I continued my list, my heart began to shift and my doldrums lifted. Bible scholar N.T. Wright often says that God is “putting the world to rights”. As much as we are tempted to see the world “as-it-is” as small and getting smaller, God is always at work, pushing back the boundaries and making everything bigger. Where would we be without all these “chiropractic adjustments” that God does constantly, putting our hearts and world to rights?  I thanked God for each story on my list and as I continued with my day, I was surprised to find how that simple exercise had changed my day for the better. My outer circumstances didn’t change one iota, but my inner eye was seeing better.

Prodigal Son by John Hrehov

At our Wednesday study night, we talked about the set point – the image of God that is our bottom line. Our imaginations can get so small and we easily lose perspective on who God really is. The story of the prodigal son offers an excellent set point. In this classic story of love and forgiveness, the son has done everything possible to separate himself from his father. Predictably, his world has become so small that he longs to eat the slop that the pigs he’s feeding are eating. As he returns, and hopes at best to be offered a job as a hired servant on his father’s farm, he finds instead a father who has been waiting the whole time and is ready to throw a party for his son who has returned.

“While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion. His father ran to him, hugged him and kissed him.” Luke 15:20

Rohr says that a true Christian is an optimist, and is asked to believe that Love is constantly transforming the world into something better, despite appearances.

Am I a true Christian? I seem to be riddled with so much doubt and struggle that I’m often really not sure. Often I trudge home to God with a small imagination of who’s waiting for me. Thank God that the Parent who is waiting for me is not a “one-false-move” God, waiting to teach me a lesson for straying. Thank God that constantly, when I look up, I find forgiveness and a world that is much more expansive that I could have dreamed.

No Matter What

The view outside Winnipeg windows these last few weeks has been anything but spring-like. Winter has lasted a month longer than usual. Usually by March, we begin to welcome the blossoming of color but instead, falling temperatures and even snowfall was the norm. News reports said that depression had increased as we more than earned our nickname of “Winterpeg”.

Part of my wake-up routine includes a bit of yoga stretching. The window overlooks our garage and every morning I watched the progress of snow melting on the roof. It seemed almost imperceptible at first, but it was hard to deny that the longer hours of sunlight were having an effect, despite the cool temperatures. Not only that, but more and more of the yard began to show through. Spirits tired of winter gravitate toward these signs of spring, small as they are.

Lately, I’ve begun to muse on the deeper signs of hope that we reach for when consolation feels far from our hearts. During these last few weeks, when headaches have seemed  relentless and I felt mired in the “slough of despond”, as John Bunyan wrote in Pilgrim’s Progress, it occurred to me so look instead for signs of God’s presence. Here’s a few places that have kept me going in tough times.

I have begun reading a book called Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, by Gregory Boyle. Boyle is an American Jesuit priest who has worked with gang members for over 20 years. His book is filled with stories of people at the bottom, who find their lives stitched back together by the power of love.

The stories have had the power to turn my inner eye away from whatever problems I’ve been grappling with, reminding me of the bigger picture. Sometimes our education in the “university of hard knocks” makes us imagine that God is out to get us. In one of my favorite quotes, Boyle reminds us that it’s “not the ‘one false move’ God but the ‘no matter whatness’ of God” that we can hope in. No matter what or where we find ourselves, God has our back and is working overtime to restore us to love and hope.

Mostly, his stories have been melting my heart. They remind me of what our pastor calls the “basement of grace”; of the God who “looks beyond our fault and sees our need,” an old black spiritual that Boyle refers to. My students in Winnipeg’s inner city have so many needs and many days I am left exhausted. If I’m not careful, I can start to think I’m doing it all wrong just because it’s hard. It’s enough to get my heart a bit calloused, but I’ve been reminded that God meets us where we are, often in the basement, and tells us we are infinitely loved. His poetic writing has been inspiring me. Someday I hope to write that well.

Another book God has used to melt my inner winter is Present Perfect by Gregory A. Boyd. Each chapter of this wise book has exercises to practice “finding God in the now”. I have been repeating a sentence like a mantra in recent weeks, “We will never be more loved than we are in this moment.” It is a powerful sentence to marinate in. My natural bent is towards getting it right before I think I’m “ok”, but this mantra tells me otherwise. There’s nothing I can do to keep away God’s love, like one of my favorite verses says, “If I were to climb up to the highest heavens, you would be  there. If I were to dig down to the world of the dead, you would also be there.” (Psalm 139:8 Contemporary English Version)

Another helpful exercise has been what he calls “observing your mind and heart”. We all tend to so completely identify with our thoughts, feelings and urges that we can become slaves to them. I myself do this with my emotions, thinking that I am what I am feeling. Boyd suggests an experiment: recall a harsh or judgmental thought we’ve had recently like “I’m stupid” or “That person is a jerk.” Now, Boyd suggests that instead of just thinking it, observe yourself thinking that thought. As you observe the thought, imagine yourself engulfed by God’s ever-present love. “The real “you” is the “you” that is defined by God’s love, not the indicting thought.”

I have been practicing this habit all week and find it helpful. My deepest hope is that I will continue to  let God’s love define me, not my often negative emotions. Like the old commercial says, “Relax, you’re soaking in it!”

Mourning cloak butterfly

This weekend, spring has finally begun to arrive fully. I spotted a mourning cloak butterfly yesterday, encouraged out of its winter frozen state by the warmth. This morning, I’ve noticed the migration of junco birds in my yard. What has been hidden is now becoming plain to see. My prayer is that in hard or easy times, in desolation or consolation, we may all practice seeing what is always there, no matter the weather. May we all look for the “no matter whatness” of God.

 

God’s Smile

I know it happens to everyone at times, but I have been way off balance for the past while. A few things have been going on, but one is work. We had student led conferences to prepare for. It’s always a lot of work, but what gets my nerves jangled is being “on stage”. I start getting all anxious about my performance and get tempted by the “not good enough” scripts which are ancient in my DNA. For me, getting off balance usually means that the headaches kick in and then it becomes a double battle.

These anxiety laden times come and I know it is not just the outer circumstances. I bring it on myself.  I was praying, and keeping an open eye for God in the midst of it all. Besides the prayers and support of Lyle and my community, two signs, like angel messages, came to me which were clear signs from God.

The first sign happened after school one day. Reviewing some student work and cleaning the class before leaving for home, I was feeling quite down about all the challenges of the day. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I heard a quiet but quiet clear message in my inner ear, almost as if it was audible. The voice was full of compassionate love.

“I’m so proud of you.”

This message came to me from outside myself. It’s hard to describe this experience and it probably sounds more than a bit kooky, but I had to admit, someone was saying it… to me. It honestly felt like it was from God.

“Proud? Of me?” I immediately wondered. I only saw before me my own self-doubts and feelings of failure. How could it be true that God would be proud of me? But I could not deny what I had heard, and began to reconfigure my perceptions of my day and my week. Maybe, just maybe, my perceptions weren’t to be trusted, and I felt strangely consoled.

Anthony De Mello, a Jesuit priest who died in 1987, wrote “Behold the One beholding you, and smiling.” God’s words, so unexpected and kind, were a smile from beyond that kept returning to me during the week, reorienting this wayward child. It was a reassurance of who I really am, beyond performance.

That evening, my friend Lorna asked if I had a poem about metamorphosis. She needed it for her writing class, and since I’m the “butterfly lady”, she phoned me. I emailed her a poem my friend Marilyn once wrote for me, but in the meantime, Lorna emailed me a story she came across thanks to Google.

It’s the story of someone watching a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis. Seeing it struggle, the person took a pin and helped it out, only to watch the new butterfly die after being released. The struggle had been meant for its own good, to strengthen it for its new life. Without the struggle, the new life could not be completed.

I’d heard this story of transformation and the value of struggle years ago, and didn’t think too much more about it until the next evening.

At our Wednesday study night, my other friend Cal told me he had a short story he wanted me to read. Knowing of my being off balance, he’d been praying for me. “It’ll just take you a minute,” he said. He passed me a book by Thomas Keating called Invitation to Love, and the story inside was the same story Lorna had shared! It was a synchronicity. I hadn’t heard this story in years and the fact that it came to me twice stopped me in my tracks. This too was God speaking to me. I was being reminded that struggle is not only ok, but necessary for growth. I’d forgotten this.

Keating writes that when we are in the midst of temptation and difficulties, God does not necessarily rush to our rescue. The struggle itself is opening us and preparing us for God’s divine energy of grace. In God’s world, struggles strengthen us. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4

Spring this year in Winnipeg has been slow in coming. Snowbanks in our yard are still higher than my knees, but I’ve noticed something. With the ever-lengthening hours of sunlight, the sun’s persistent smile is lessening the snow bit by bit despite the cool temperatures; despite appearances.

Many times our hearts are like this wintery spring, like C.S. Lewis’ description of Narnia, “always winter but never Christmas.” We hold an icy disbelief in our hearts that God could ever love us just as we are. I had a glimpse this week of God’s infinite smile, and I am so grateful. God never stops melting our resistance and breaking the barriers we hold.

I pray that spring will arrive fully and finally in all our hearts.

Risen Indeed

Lately, the church is in the season of Easter with that strange word, “Resurrection”. In our post-Christian world, many people must view it as antiquated and irrelevant. People don’t rise from the dead! An interesting story, like Santa Claus, but…what does it have to do with my world? This week, we in our house church are scanning our weeks for “resurrection stories”, in preparation for Sunday’s meeting.

Growing up in a Christian faith, I believed in the resurrection of Jesus without question. After all, the pictures were right there in my illustrated Bible! It’s quite something else to embrace this word, and reality, as an adult. As Scott Peck famously said, “Life is difficult,” and to really believe that there is hope beyond our difficulties is not always that easy. For the first disciples, the thought of Jesus coming back to life was inconceivable. In fact, the earliest accounts of their discovery of the empty grave make it clear that they were terrified and shocked.

In my adult life, I have often given lip service to believing in Jesus’ resurrection, but have lived as a practical atheist, stuck in a quagmire of doubt and darkness. It is only in recent years that I have truly begun to believe again. Instead of talking about theory and research (which I’m lousy at anyways), I’ll do what makes the most sense to me – tell a story.

Every Saturday morning, I go for my outside run. Since September, I have taken the same route. I run all the way to the Assiniboine River and then along the river to the Forks and back. It’s a lovely run and when the skating trail was open, I got to run on the river itself, enjoying the unique snow huts and all the people taking in this Winnipeg treasure.

There is a tiny park along the way called the “Canora Green”, leading to the river. One time I stopped there to catch my breath and said a few prayers. Prayer doesn’t always “feel” real, but that time it did. I had a sudden sense of God being there with me in the quiet morning air. Ever since then, I have made it a habit to pray for a few minutes as I look out on the river.

The view from the Canora Green

No matter what the week has been like, difficult or easy, I find myself thanking God for being with me in all the ups and downs. Gifts of encouragement, friends who pray for and with me and who point me to hope when I don’t see any. Gifts that come in the form of books, faith engendering music, prayer that restores faith, laughter despite myself. The biggest gift is that I keep finding answers to the question of this blog!

Mostly I give thanks again and again that God saw me through situations that I couldn’t figure out myself. Our dear friend Paul always ends his emails with the signature “Under a ton of mercy”, and this is what I mean. God knows me infinitely better than I know myself, and has always found a way to rescue this gal who gets lost on a regular basis! That’s what I call mercy.

I always end up saying some prayers for those I know who are suffering, either from cancer or other illness or who have personal problems that seem too large.

Lately, I have begun to imagine this stop during the week when I am going through challenges. “God, I know somehow I will be back at the river thanking you on Saturday, so help me believe in your resurrecting power.” A tiny shift in attention, maybe, but it changes everything.

Another view along my weekly run

Churches have a tradition on Easter morning of a call and answer. The minister calls out, “Christ is risen,” and everyone answers, “Christ is risen indeed.” I can trust that the “indeed” can continue to happen. The scripture says that God’s mercies are “new every morning”. I experience this as a trustable gift given to me over and over despite my own failings and mistakes, from a good parent who keeps giving good things even to this wayward child. Risen indeed.

“Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” -Lamentations 3:22-23

Chance to be good again

This week, a very clear story of the effectiveness of prayer happened. The theme in my prayer guide was prayer and I definitely needed the reminders. It was the first week back after a break, and I found I was a bit cranky and resentful of giving up those lazy, free days. Of course, this led to some cloudy emotions which brought me back to my morning prayers. As the song says, I was “sending out an SOS”. I usually spend some time praying for others, but the airwaves were almost all personal requests. “God, give me stamina. Forgive my reluctance. Give me strength for the day. Help me be patient with the kids and to share Your hope with them, not my resentment.” These prayers are always murmured in the quiet morning darkness. My brain felt all rumpled up and I didn’t know what else to do but pray.

I found that every day after these prayers, I was surprised by the strength that came up. No day was perfect, but the blessings became obvious. It wasn’t until Thursday, however, that the clear story happened.

The day before, I had done a lesson with the students on adjectives. They had a list of adjectives before them, and were to pick the ones that described themselves. Then came part 2. We passed our papers around and wrote adjectives describing each other. These adjectives will be used next week in an art lesson.

I kicked myself later for not warning them that negative adjectives were not allowed. It didn’t even dawn on me, and of course it happened. Amid the many, many positive words were the few hurtful ones. Gay. You stink. Ugly. Weird. Stupid.

I should have predicted it, and my heart sank. My immediate response was to get everyone to sit down. I explained what happened, talked about mistakes, and said that honesty was important, as was fixing our mistakes. I encouraged whoever had written the words to stay behind. The students went out for recess and two students did stay behind and erase the offensive words.

But there were still 3 papers left with offensive words. I decided to leave it for the day and I had a heavy heart as the students left for home. How would I handle this in the morning? The only option I could think felt so archaic, to take recess away for everyone unless the guilty parties owned up to it. But it didn’t feel right.

“No way!” said Lyle at supper when I explained my dilemma. “I hated that unfair discipline when I was in grade 6 and 7.” So I felt stuck. I didn’t want to punish everyone, but it didn’t seem fair to those with the offensive words on their papers to suffer injustice.

A story book that I recently read to my students had some good advice which came back to me. “Don’t try and solve your problems now. The morning is wiser than the evening.” And so I went to bed, resolved to pray about it in the morning.

Coincidentally, the passage and reading for the day spoke to my situation exactly. Well, almost exactly. It said that we could take our dilemmas to God with confidence. We might not get the answers we want, but when we align our wills to God’s will, we can trust God with the results of our prayers. “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8)

And so I prayed for God’s wisdom to know how to respond to my students. I waited in prayer but didn’t seem to hear anything.

Over a dozen people came out to help paint over homophobic slurs spray-painted on a Winnipeg man’s home over the weekend. (Aadel Haleem/CBC)

Getting ready for work, I flipped the radio on and heard the story of someone in Winnipeg this week who had received homophobic slurs painted on his house.  Manitoba has some new anti-bullying legislation called Bill 18, and it has provoked a lot of conversation in recent weeks about gay rights. Unfortunately, someone received the dark side of this conversation and had his house spray painted. What was so encouraging was how the community rallied around him. People came out and painted over the slurs.

And that’s how God answered my prayer! With a lightened  heart, I began the day with my students by talking about what happened again. I thanked those who had fixed their mistake and said how sadly, there were still 4 papers with bad words. Inspired directly by the repainted house, I asked who would like to stay in for recess to recopy these 4 papers, minus the bad words. Everyone’s hands shot up in the air and voila, we had a win/win situation.

It seemed that I wasn’t the only one with a light heart all day. Everyone was in good spirits. I thought of the movie, “Do the Right Thing”, and how just one good decision can change everything. In the words of yet another movie (The Kite Runner), we all had the chance to be good again. That’s what grace is all about.

Some who are cynical of prayer might say that solution would have come to me anyways, but I don’t agree. One of the mercies of prayer is that it keeps the eyes of the heart open. Just how will God answer? I have seen too many answers to think prayer has no effect. I see how prayer changes hearts and lives – dark, despairing thoughts are replaced with hope and fears and resentments are replaced by energy and love. In the words of the old hymn, “I was blind but now I see.” True, it is a daily occurrence for blindness to return, but I have always seen blindness be trumped by vision regained.

There are some adjectives that describe me which are true only some of the time – patient, empathic, creative, kind – but the adjective that describes me all of the time? Blessed.