Bringing Faith to Life
Archive for April, 2015
A Billion Prayers
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What do a billion prayers sound like to God?
Do they ring, like bells?
Do they rush, like water?
Do they sing, like melody?
Do they echo, like canyons?
Or do they shudder, like fear?
Shout, like panic,
Whisper, like despair,
Rasp, like profanity?
Do they run for their lives?
Huddle in hope,
Gasp, in disbelief,
Cry out in pain and anguish and tortured lament.
What a cacophony,
a deafening ordeal.
No mortal man could hear it and live.
Yet God hears the heart of His people,
And smiles, weeps, sings, frowns, dances, shouts, claps, calls, whispers, shudders, twists, sips, tastes, and sees.
A billion prayers, come to life.
What do a billion prayers sound like to God?
They sound.
At just the right time…
0At just the right time, you brought the world into existence, so why am I in such a hurry to speed things up?
A Half Truth isn’t …
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A half truth isn’t a whole lie. It’s just half of a truth looking for its better half.
The Power Behind the Coach
0Hi Friends,
Every now and then there’s something that captures “all” of you in a single place. It speaks who you are, what you believe, and how you operate into one expression. It funnels you.
In the story I posted last week on the Fit2Finish website (my “professional” zone) has funneled me. A coach has ushered me in to the heart and soul he put into growing young men and women into creative, grateful, thriving young adults. The arena for the adventure was youth soccer fields and the duration, 47 seasons over nearly 20 years.
The power behind this coach’s success lay in his self-imposition of one boundary: he didn’t cut anyone, ever. Every child was included and nothing they did was irredeemable. He mentored each one, according to their need, and that shaped a community he could never have foreseen or imagined into one from which he continues to reap incredible joy.
God is not mentioned and yet Christ resounds.
I hope you’ll read the article The Secret Behind Coach Chas Sumser’s Success. If you enjoy it, please subscribe to the Fit2Finish email “share” to receive weekly posts offered to the sporting community.
It’s my way of giving back to youth sports in thanks for what they (and their coaches) began in me as a child and continue to show me in new and amazing ways.
Thank you for reading.
Wendy
Caution: Stillness May Be Dangerous
09 years
Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.*
Except I hide my sitting in moving. But trust me, I’m sitting on the inside. Oh, not lounging-on-the-couch-with-a-soda-and-popcorn-in-front-of-a-movie kind of sitting. No, I mean myself, the part of me who knows she is me, is seated and stilled. I must disguise this as moving because, were I to ACTUALLY sit, I’d be accused of sitting around which is wasting my time which is NOT allowed.
So, while I move, I sit.
And while I sit, I whir. The cogs turn and the wheels spin and holy smoke probably rises from my brain factory. Gone totally rogue, my ideas bump into each other, introduce themselves, recognize old friends, and sit and chat. So now THEY’RE sitting, too! The sound of a million voices is deafening, silent to the passerby, of course, but not to me.
I don’t mind it, though. It’s not distracting. In fact, it’s engaging to host a multitude of delightful thoughts, all with a chance to do more than gather, more than collect, more than mill around waiting for instructions. Here, in my very head which is bobbing along the roadway looking like it’s DOing something, these thoughts are churning. They are comparing notes, discovering, unearthing, creating. It’s quite a process. Never know what might turn up, or who.
Perhaps I will jot a few notes when I get home if there’s a particularly juicy tidbit. Or maybe if l let things mull and age and ruminate they will make themselves available for my next opportunity to sit, I mean, move.
Please don’t tell anyone. It’s really quite subversive, this stilling. In fact, it could be dangerous.
*phrase borrowed from a favorite greeting card.
Faith Doesn’t Work without the Works
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On the 13th of January, my book was released. It’s titled, Fit2Finish: Keeping Your Soccer Players in the Game. No, I didn’t self publish. There is actually a publisher out there who believed in me and believed in my message enough to work with me to get this into print. Thank you, Morgan James, Publishing, for getting it into stores and into e-format so people can take a look at my work and decide for themselves whether it’s worth buying.
Here’s the KC part: when you publish a book, people are really happy for you. They congratulate you on your accomplishment, celebrate you on Facebook and Twitter and generally make a big deal about you.
“It must feel good,” they say, “to have arrived!”
And for a moment, it does. The moment when you open your box of shiny new books and look at your name on the cover, it feels very satisfying. But then the delivery truck arrives with the cases and cases of books needing selling. You thank the nice man who helped hoist your crate into your garage. You thank the kind neighbor who helped form the brigade to heave the cartons into your basement. You stack them neatly out of the way, waiting for the orders to roll in, so these books can go flying out the door!
But they don’t, because who knows about them? Who knows you? Who are you anyway?
When the glitter fades you are left seated on the throne of your unsold books, or perhaps buried by that very pile of books. The ones that were meant to be your “contribution to the world!” your “gift to all those families” the “saving grace for all those kids.”
Well-wishers glance in your direction and smile. “Good luck,” they say, as they depart for more important things and to attend to more pressing matters. They don’t say but I hear, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill.” (James 2:16)* The words spoken to a brother or sister in need who lacks the necessities of life, while (we) go along (our) way, failing to supply it.
Faith doesn’t work without the works.
How very poignant this message is to me now. My dearest of friends – the ones who truly believe in me – show me their faith, not with casual mentions or polite congratulations, but by showing up and sharing the work. They have purchased books, shared them with friends, connected me with resources, and generally spread the good word.
“
There’s a book here whose author I know and trust. She’s got something important to say. Listen to her.”
I am responsible for that book. Inspired by my friends’ belief, I continue to work for the good of those who are dearly loved by the One who inclined me to write the book. Sale or no sale, He still gets His word in edgewise. “Don’t let up. This is My work you are doing.”
Faith in your story isn’t enough. You have to be out there telling it. Books don’t sell themselves, you know!
*God-nod: I was inclined to share the idea of this post but I couldn’t quite recall where the Bible story was. I opened my copy of The Upper Room this morning, and there was the verse, inspiring a powerful meditation by another author.
This Gift is Not Mine, But Yours
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There’s such a difference between
“You are gifted!” and “You’ve been given a gift!”
One might confuse the two, thinking either one will do.
But no, one must go.
Step away; the other may stay.
You are gifted! Shining star, you’re certain to go far.
A sure anointing, don’t be disappointing.
The burden so heavy, not the resources to levy.
Tremendous heft, leaves me bereft.
Flattened by stares, everywhere the snares.
Put that gift aside, my heart begs, safe from pride.
No! Come and see, You’ve received a gift from Me.
What could it be? Unwrap it and see!
The cover falls away, and I know this is here to stay.
It’s a perfect fit, not meant to sit
idly by while I wait,for jitters to abate.
Take her out for a spin, it’s not a sin
even if you stumble, we won’t grumble.
Open her up, feel the breeze, do I have to say please?
Feel it juke and jive, let it come alive!
Forgive me for my confusion, the two have been in collusion,
You are gifted… is a weight to be lifted.
You’ve been given a gift … that offers me a lift!
One might confuse the two, thinking either one will do.
But no. One must go.
The first steels my will, I had better stand still.
The second makes me dizzy, I had better get busy.
What’s Revealed at the Pool?
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How do you get in?
Close your eyes, hold your nose and jump!
Shimmy in, inch by inch.
Step. down. the. ladder.
Look out below!! SPLASH
Test the water …
Sit with feet dangling
Sunning and dipping. Sunning and dipping.
Dive: Lap, lap, lap, lap, lap, lap.
You can tell a lot about a person by how they enter the pool.
How do you get in?
Order Through Imagination
0I want to have written the story that changes peoples’ lives, not write it!
Oh, it’s not about the fame and fortune, nor about the accolades and acclaim. I just want people to read what I write and see themselves in it, only better. I want them to see their family members in a new light or their lives go in a new direction, their circumstances navigable and what now seems impossible, possible.
The problem is, writing it always comes before having written it and, very truly I tell you, what comes before all of that is living it. This is the problem with writing from imagination, it’s real. And finding the truth there is hard. But it is the magic of letting one’s mind wander to far off places, filled with random characters and creatures. Except it’s not random at all. It’s ordered.
That’s the paradox of imagination: we restore order through imagination. We put things to rest, explain the confounding and often re-write the ending we wished for but that never came to be. So much comfort.
But is that fantasy? Is it escapism? Are we avoiding the truth?
I don’t think so. In fact, it may be the best way to approach the truth. First, with beauty and aesthetics, re-creating the real draws us in and makes us smile. How brave is that boy! How insightful is that girl. How ingenious is that Nanny. Oh, and so fun! Yep, Mary Poppins it is, and how delightful is that “Disney ending.”
But life doesn’t consist of Disney endings. Get real!
What if the real requires imagining? Consider,
I believe our task is to develop a moral and aesthetic imagination deep enough and wide enough to encompass the contradictions of our time and history, the tremendous loss and tragedy as well as greatness and nobility, an imagination capable of recognizing that where there is light there is shadow, that out of hubris and fall can come moral regeneration, out of suffering and death, resurrection and rebirth. Richard Tarnas
Not just an aesthetic imagination but a moral one? With the one we create what might be. With the other, we consider what God might have meant. Put the two together, and it has the power to change lives.
I want to have written the story that changes people’s lives, but that one’s taken. Now, to consider what God might have meant.
The Discipline that Wasn’t
0Dear Friends,
Give something up for Lent. This is the challenge to us. Not so we can feel deprived or empty, but so we can draw near to the one who thought up this whole Lenten thing. In recent years, I have adopted, rather than subtracted, during Lent. This year, I engaged the blank cyber-pages of the Kinesthetic Christian and accepted God’s invitation to “write short.” Don’t elaborate. Be brief. Speak in staccato.
Daily.
I didn’t have perfect attendance, but God always does. When I set about writing, God always shows up. I pray, God shows up for my readers, as well. But I am not in charge of that. The irony is this: it became a discipline of trying less hard. A sort of wait-for-it without waiting, a just-notice-when-it-shows-up, kind of thing. If I had adopted this practice with a “have to post” mentality, it couldn’t happen. It required I let go of the must-do in favor of the whatever-you-say.
It was a most undisciplined-disciplined effort and, yet, a most enlightening experience. Who knew? Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.
Thanks so much for reading.
Wendy 