Bringing Faith to Life
imagination
Not meant for the easy way
19 years
How easy to be a tree.
Seed and sprout,
Green and grow,
Bloom and leaf and shed, repeat.
Reach, reach for the sun.
Yawn, yawn, day is done.
Oh, to be like the tree.
Small then tall,
with no thought outside it all.
Branches spread wide,
Food and water come inside.
Times up, fold your wings, come home.
But Good and Evil, that devilish deed,
I’m destined to fend for a different kind of me.
One who sprouts chutes, but not without pruning,
One who grows tall, but not without tuning.
Looking strong, till I crack,
Feeling supple, till I snap.
Dare I reach at all? best remain small
Under cover, so no one will wonder,
what is she doing?
what has she done?
can she stand at another’s command?
Wait! I can stand.
I am taller,
I am stronger,
I am bolder,
I am broader.
The tree obeys the seasons for unknown reasons.
I abide the change, it’s more than an even exchange.
The new is older, but welcome somehow.
The creaks and cracks, just guides to know-how.
Such strangers to the younger set, yet
Familiar friends, I’ve never met.
Well, until now that I have seen
that what I don’t want to be is a tree.
Because easy,
easy just doesn’t become me.
Gotcha! not
011 years
I turn to write on the board and I hear it behind me.
The scampering of feet, shuffling of desks, of papers, of books.
Looking over my shoulder, nothing is amiss.
Every student in his place. Every desk in its space.
The smiles of sweetness greet me. “Yes, Dr. LeBolt?”
I shake my head in wonder. Could I have been mistaken?
I return to my writing and it begins again.
the scampering, the shuffling, but now the giggles begin.
I whirl. Gotcha!
They sit, smiling sweetly, each face at a place, hands folded, bodies erect and alert. “Yes, Dr. LeBolt?”
Am I making this up?
Gotta get more sleep. I return to my writing. There…it…is…again. I cock my head to peer over my right shoulder.
Nothing but sweet smiles. Expectant.
I draw in my breath. Turn BACK. My arm is poised to write.
Silence.
Implement touches board…(scamper)…whiiiiirrrllll!
nope…Every face. Every place. Everything perfect. I give up!
I turn back to begin again.
I am no longer exasperated. In fact, I am smiling. Can’t stop smiling.
In my best script I form the letters on the board. Slowly. Carefully. With great love and care my hand travels, connecting letter after letter to shape the question I want to ask.
Perhaps the sliding and shuffling continues. There may even be hammering and sawing. I suppose that was a great explosion off in the distance.
I do not know. I do not turn back. I keep on.
God, is that you? I write.
Then, I keep writing. Why do I seek to catch God in the act of constructing my life?
Strengthened in Prayer: multi-tasking is Biblical
211 years
by wlebolt
in Body, Call to Action, Deeper Sensation, faith, imagination, In Action, Life, Made to Move
First Thessalonians (5:17) says it clearly: “Pray continually.”
I assume that means 24-7, 365. So, if I understand that correctly, that means my life should be one continuous prayer. Praising. Confessing. Thanking. Asking. But, wait, God wants me to be going about His business here on earth, too. So, if God expects me to pray without ceasing, He must have designed me to be both doing life and praying at the same time. Multi-tasking must be Biblical!
That’s good news because we’re good at multi-tasking these days. Texting while driving. Shopping while chatting. Pretending to listen while we’re thinking of 100 other things. Actually I don’t think any of those are truly multi-tasking, that is, doing both at the same time. I think we ping between things to accomplish both: Text, then check traffic, then text. Peruse shelves, then “say that again?” then select our salad dressing. Hmm, uh-huh, when our mind scans our mental to-do list, then uh-huh… Yes?
So I guess it’s natural to approach prayer in the same way. Pray, then do. Pray, then go. Pray, then speak. (or the other way around as may be more often the case) But if God actually intends for us to pray continuously — without stopping — that means we must have been made for this. In fact, it may be the one thing that can truly be multi-tasked with live. And is meant to be.
Except we don’t. We treat it as we do all the things we’ve been assigned. We add it to the list and then, if we’re dutiful, we check it off. Or, perhaps we’re a bit better about it and weave it throughout our days’ doings. But let’s not kid ourselves; that’s not praying continually.
Just for the sake of argument, if I could pray AND do at the same time, what would that look like?
- The prayer form would have to keep changing along with whatever I was doing.
- If I was talking, prayer would be in the words.
- If I was listening, prayer would be in the listening.
- If I was moving, prayer would be in the motion.
- If I was writing, prayer would be in the lettering.
That would be life lived completely God’s way.
What about if I exercising? Just to see, I pulled out my resistance band yesterday (a stretchy band that I use for exercise and in fitness activities) and choreographed motions to the hymn, Spirit of the Living God. I pull it. It resists. I pull harder. It moves. The give and take of exert and respond is the rhythm and movement of words and song. The song ends…”Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me” and I bring the band, taut between my hands, down to rest. In that moment I can feel the residual effects of the resistance and the stretch I’ve just performed. I can literally feel the prayer I have just prayed and I am stronger.
I have been strengthened in prayer. That is multi-tasking, and I think God is okay with it.
**Thank you to the folks at the Upper Room and the Global Board of Ministries who invited me to participate among them at SOULfeast 2013 this year. This inspiration is the fruit of that invitation.
Trespassers will be forgiven
011 years
When I google “trespassers will be,” I get these hits:
Trespassers will be …
- shot
- violated
- eaten
- prosecuted
They mean to say, this is private property. We don’t want you here.
Gone are the days when cutting through your neighbor’s yard to get to your friend’s house is okay. We know not to trespass; there will be consequences.
I was delighted when a friend shared seeing this sign in front of a church she walked past:
“Trespassers will be forgiven”
It gets you because you expect to see ‘shot’ or ‘prosecuted’, or worse: certainly not forgiven. So it draws you to the word, “forgiven.” That if you come on this property, it’s okay. You’re safe. You’re welcome. We’re friendly here. We’re the kind of folks that welcome strangers.
It’s amazing what our signs say about us.
The people who put up this sign knew this prayer and the power behind it.
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
They are forgiven… as they forgive their trespassers. First one, then the other follows. Whoever trespasses against me, I will forgive not so I can earn my forgiveness but because that’s how God has already dealt with me. I am a participant in my own forgiveness and it involves the stranger. the wanderer. the seeker. the lost. God’s is a “pre-forgiveness” economy.
I think I would like to visit this church. To find out whether what’s inside matches what’s on the outside. A good reminder to double check if the same is true with me: do my insides match my outsides? After all, God’s always checking that — except to Him there’s no inside separate from the outside to Him. It’s all in plain view. When they’re not matching, God knows it.
I’d like to think I am consistent. That I’ve put down my “I’m Right and You’re Wrong” sign and left that completely to God. But secretly I know that if today both I and the unbelievers I love strolled through the pearly gates, me smiling and them dumb-founded, I could not resist the urge to say, “I told you so.” Still holding that sign.
It’s amazing what our signs say about us.
Perhaps that’s what God is working to complete in me. Helping me become a person that would not even consider saying “I told you so” to the one for whom this is new. And simply gush, “This is what I have been waiting so long to show you.”
Then we’ll both know what forgiveness looks like.
Have you seen the DQ Duckie?
512 years
by wlebolt
in Body, Christ, Christian, Deeper Sensation, faith, imagination, Mind, photography, Spirit, witness
Have you seen the ducks at Dairy Queen?
See them? Go ahead. Look carefully. See the eye, the beak, the fluffy little body? You see it now, right? Had you seen it before?
I can’t go to Dairy Queen without seeing them now. Just for the record, I do love Dairy Queen. Not that I frequent the place, but there’s one along the bike trail and I am all about rewards after a good day of riding.
And that store, right along the W&OD Trail was where my eyes were first opened… to the ducky. Our family sat at a small table, just beneath the advertising poster on the wall of the store. Our pre-school-aged daughter Olivia pointed to the sign and said, “Look at the duckie!”
We looked, but no, we didn’t see it. She insisted, pointing and describing the details. She wasn’t making this up. Right there in the ice cream, she saw the duckie. And finally, looking as if through her eyes, we saw it too. All the little ice cream swirls completed the heads and beaks and big duckie eyes.
Children see with different eyes. Eyes that haven’t already decided “what something is.” They are open in a way adult eyes don’t seem to be. But even in adults the child-like eyes are still there. I know because, with her help, my eyes could see it as she did. It wasn’t hidden. It just wasn’t apparent until I had a bit of help.
I think the eyes of faith are this way. Sometimes we just need a bit of help seeing what’s already there. Like an Escher painting, we need a shift in perspective to see what we didn’t initially see. Once we see it, it’s obvious. But we may need someone sitting at our table to point it out to us.
This week I heard someone say the Trinity is like this: God above us, God beside us, God within us. I probably have heard that before but it never quite struck me this way. That Christ is the “God beside us” opening the scriptures to us, imploring us, giving us strength, helping us see — opening our eyes to what’s obvious to Him but not yet to us.
I know the trinity is a sticking point between me and my Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters. The divinity of Christ, his membership with the three, the part He plays in connecting me with God the Father and God the Spirit, is not clear to them. They don’t know “God beside them,” just above and within. The Lord and Father they know compels them to incredible obedience – just as that same Father does me. I just have the Son beside me pointing the way.
I wonder how many times He has said, “Don’t you see?” And I haven’t seen, or haven’t heard, or just looked the other way in my distraction by other things. Jesus is in the perspective-changing business, and that’s all about the opening of eyes.
For some I imagine it isn’t till the end of things that the Lord’s presence allows them to make the triune connection. Of course by then any child could see it.
Ironing out the wrinkles
212 years
I know it’s old fashioned, but I iron. That’s not nearly as old fashioned as the linen napkins I just finished ironing. The Thanksgiving napkins. We’ll probably use them for Christmas, too. They’re special occasion napkins.
I realized as I was ironing that I love those linen napkins. They’re each monogrammed with a script “R” in one corner because they belonged to my paternal grandmother before they came to be mine. I couldn’t see this until I ironed them. And as I ironed I wondered about where these linens had been, who had used them before, on what family occasions, whose lips had been wiped on this very fabric? (Okay – the last is going a bit too far.) But there was history here in my hands. At first, stiff and crinkled and then supple and smoothed. It became important then to fold them with the “R” showing.
This became a devotional moment for me. The connection with my ancestors, yes, but also the smoothing. The act of seeing my effort, small though it was, take something uninviting and turn it into something welcomed. And isn’t it like God in these moments to share a little secret with us? Provide a little illumination that adds depth and meaning and value.
Those wrinkles, the product of washing and letting air dry, reminded me so of the messiness of my mind. (Now it occurs to me they are actually a bit like the convoluted gray matter itself – ah, the anatomist in me still lives!) How chaotic it is on the inside, firing one idea and then another, until they are so entangled that I can’t hope to capture them all. But here I was, taking time to do something that could wait, that could even go without doing, and it became a metaphor for the process that untangles and smooths.
I know from experience that if I wait just a bit and go about my chores and activities which don’t require a lot of figuring out, the firecrackers of thoughts will settle into their places, each connecting with the others into one big thought meant for the moment. Perhaps the whole day.
Key, for me, is clearing away the distracting chaos on the outside – which so temptingly calls to the chaos on the inside, “Come play. Come play. We will have fun.” – to honor the message in the moment. And perhaps to write it or share it. That’s fun.
Then I can go out and play.
If mind over matter works, would it matter if we adopted a Divine Mind?
212 years
Today, I feel great. Tuesday, I had a heart condition. How can that be?
Our mind is amazing, isn’t it? Tell us we are sick, we become sick. Tell us we can do it, we can. Convince us it is our lot in life to be such and such, we become such and such. This is no minor matter. Three days ago doctors suggested (not even told me, mind you) that part of my heart might not be working well. And all of a sudden that became reality to me.
By this, I don’t mean that I just believed them – intellectually. I mean that I developed symptoms to support the diagnosis they hadn’t yet confirmed. My mind made me sick.
Now before you go thinking I am totally off my rocker, I have shared the sensations I was feeling with other women I know and they say the same. That stress – deep feelings about people and events, concerns about hardship, fear, worry, uncertainty, even uncertainty over positive things – felt like chest pain to them. A feeling of pressure that they wanted to massage away. This is how it felt to me, too. Except, the reason for my stress was physical. I had a diagnosis.
But wait. It wasn’t. Just kidding. And now, guess what, no more chest pain. In fact, other aches and pains in joints are subsiding. Can stress and the power of suggestion really have this effect on my body?
Even though I am a die hard realist, trained in the sciences, I have to say yes. My mind took over my body there for a bit. And now I’m back. But I’m back wondering – because that’s what scientists do – how that happened. And what does it mean?
First, now I know why women are so much more reluctant to report symptoms of a heart attack. It feels like the empathy they’ve experienced a hundred times before. How can we know this time is different? Cardiologists, are you listening? Women need a different gauge. When you have one organ that both feels and circulates blood, how do you separate which is overloaded?
Second, I’m wondering how much my imagination runs away with me, physically. How often do I suppose something is so and then is becomes so even if it isn’t? Like, I imagine that someone doesn’t like me or is out to hurt me or will take advantage of me, and then that “thought” becomes real to me. Even if they haven’t thought it at all.
Third, can I use my mind for good? That is, can I think healthy and become healthier? Can I think forward-moving and overcome my procrastination? Can my mind really overcome my matter? Honestly, that seemed pretty far-fetched until this week. I mean, how could you connect your mind with your body that way?
But now I am wondering. Even though I can’t see the connection, I have felt it. In real time. In concrete and undeniable ways. And if mind and body are inextricably linked, should I not examine what I am thinking? Test those thoughts. See if they are true, if they are real? And should I not look at my body, my physical self – this sensation, this addiction, this behavior – and ask, might my mind be causing this?
Just introducing the thought has me wondering…Is this why we’re instructed to adopt the mind of Christ, place not only our bodies but also our thoughts in His hands? Would that not heal us?