Bringing Faith to Life
Archive for August, 2015
Learning to Balance May Be Life’s Most Important Lesson
0
This is stability to me. Learning to balance on an uneven, but forgiving surface.
Teaching others to do this in a strong and capable way is one of my greatest joys.
Of course, it’s not always as easy as it looks.
Gratitude isn’t a habit it’s a practice
1“
I was surprisingly at ease,” former President Jimmy Carter said at his press conference, recalling his emotions when his doctors told him they had found melanoma on his brain after doing surgery on his liver.
“Call it clear thinking or mind over matter. Or simply: grace,” writes Sarah Kaufman in the August 21st issue of the Washington Post. “Grace – meaning elegance, calm equanimity,” she goes on, “is the only strategy that makes any sense, really… a text book coping strategy, what any therapist would advise,… but how difficult, unless you’re in the habit of feeling grateful.”
This grace, she concludes, is Carter’s habit. She’s got the wrong grace.
Kaufman was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her work in “criticism,” as it applies to contemporary dance. Now that’s grace of the elegant kind. But it’s not the grace going on with Mr. Carter. That grace, while it is elegant and engenders calm, is of a different ilk because it comes from a whole different source.
What Mr. Carter has spent a lifetime pursuing isn’t a “habit” of gratitude, it’s the practice of gratitude.
So what’s the difference?
Habits compel us. They are automatic and patterned responses which are out of our conscious control. Practices, on the other hand, are intentional. They are things we choose to do again and again, but they require an effort of own will – a turning toward and choosing.
Over time, both habits and practices can become very much a part of us. Their effects “show” in us, even if we don’t see them ourselves. Habits are rarely, if ever, healthy things: fingernail-biting, smoking, and addictions of all kinds lead to dis-health and tend to enslave us. What we think of as “good” habits like exercising, eating well, and getting enough sleep are not really habits at all. They are practices, chosen each time, consciously and without compulsion.
The “habit” of gratitude Ms. Kaufman calls grace in Mr. Carter’s behavior is not a habit at all, and it’s certainly not a “coping strategy” initiated strategically to “deal” with the circumstance. It’s the fruit of a lifetime of practicing the posture of gratitude before a loving God.
Day after day, we can choose again and again to enter the presence of the One who deals gracefully with us, in spite of our faults and failings, yet shines the light of redemption on our lives and offers the gift of forgiveness. That’s the grace Mr. Carter has known, and, in the hardship of a very difficult diagnosis, it surprises even him! After a lifetime practicing the presence of God he falls naturally into the calming arms of the One who has for nearly 90 years said to him, “All will be well.” He has come to trust that voice.
Habits will fail us. Oh, they can be comfortably familiar, offering distraction or temporary satisfaction, but they don’t satisfy or quench. Habits can steal our freedom; practices can grant it. Ironically, habits, which we seem to control, take it from us, and practices, where we release control, offer it to us.
Gratitude isn’t habit-forming but it is gratifying. Gradually, as we make it a practice, it shapes our outlook in the best and worst of times, a familiar destination along a well trod path.
Clear thinking and mind over matter get us only so far. When life’s circumstances tax us beyond our own resources, grace is more than a strategy. But it takes practice.
A Monkey Bar Faith
0
We let go of Mommy’s hand to enter pre-school.
We let go of Daddy’s hug to board the bus.
We let go of our beloved teacher’s smile
only to do it again next year because we must.
We let go of the hand of the principal
as she wishes us well on our way.
We let go of our first boss’s hand
who understands why we can’t stay.
We let go of the friend who moves away
or the paw of our beloved pet.
We let go of our great, great grandmother
who it seems we had hardly met.
We let go of the neighboring couple
who were never home anyway,
We let go of our causes, however just.
And, so reluctantly, the years that were promised us.
We let go, bit by little bit,
of our children, so full of fun.
We may let go way, way too soon
of a mother, father, brother, son.
Letting go is a way of life it seems,
that none can hope to avoid.
It’s a holding and releasing –
not to re-fill the vacant void.
But to pivot on our out-stretched hand
which holds fast, so high and strong,
To the bar which secures it surely
until we deftly swing along.
Strange to say, we were preparing
for a life of loss and sad goodbye,
As tiny children, on the monkey bars
of playgrounds far and wide.
Where Mommy took us,
and Daddy held us,
where teacher wrapped our blistered hands.
Where principal scolded us,
and boss emboldened us,
when the time came for grown up lands.
I’m so grateful for the happy hours
I spent swinging from bar to bar.
A blessed assurance that every hand-hold,
has its limit
and every pivot
invites my reaching
for exactly where You are.
The Shaping of Us
0There is something fascinating about driftwood. It’s lighter than it should be, yet strong and durable. Weathered and aged, yet youthful and beautiful. It never fails to call my attention when it washes ashore. One small piece demanded picking up. It was a perfect miniature canoe, cigar-shaped and sized with a space hollowed near the center for a tiny mouse to paddle homeward. I set it in my hand where it perfectly balanced, as it would on a wave or on display on dry land.
I pocketed my treasure, well, I would have, if I’d had pockets. Instead, I tucked it into the waist band of my running shorts and promptly forgot about it. Until after I had sprinted up the mountainside in a rainforest downpour and the small canoe, drenched and darkened fell out upon the floor, undamaged, but for its folding.
Its folding. Softened by the rain and compressed for the journey, it was sorely misshapen. It still had the look of a canoe, but it listed badly and tipped when I tried to set it upright. It had been so perfect. Now, it was deformed. I felt responsible.
I know! I will soak the poor craft and re-shape it to its old form!
Sure enough. Water makes it supple and the hollow makes it pliable, but the hand that shapes, well that’s the rub. It needed molding and holding, but I was more bend and press. It requested patience and care, but I was more fold and prop. This treasure needed a loving hand to roll it and tamp it and stand by while it dried. My ingenuity and a friendly yellow straw were poor substitutes.
How grateful I am that the hand that is re-shaping me is not mine.
Seasons Past, Seasons Passed
1
Back to school shopping
cool weather,
shorter days,
acorns plop,
tinted leaves crunch under my feet.
yellow. orange.
red and brown.
Christmas shopping
bundle up,
day gives way,
a dusting of white,
hollow, whistling wind stings my face.
black. white.
gray.
Easter shopping
warm sunshine,
moist buds,
dampened earth encourages its blooms
merry pitches delight my ear.
pink. purple.
golden and lilac.
Travel shopping
blistering heat,
day, please stay,
humming cicadas welcome bright butterflies,
warm sprinklers douse my sneakers.
green. green. brown.
Come, go, come, go.
Regular as the tide,
as the sun, as the moon, as the stars.
I am
not a season,
not a regular,
not fixed in the universe.
I come
with empty hands,
with full heart,
with agile mind in slowing body.
It is
the me that changes
against the glory of days,
of season’s greetings and departures,
of life gone on
in neighboring houses.
I am
here, as ever have been.
what day?
what weather?
what smell, what sound,
what touch?
Does anyone know?
Rainbow: the Original Snapchat
0Dropped my last 
off to start college.
Driving home to my empty 
I became a bit sad until I saw 
out my window. It was so lovely I had to pull over in the rest area to snap a photo (safely).
How kind of God to send me a sign.
And then 
it was gone.
Who do you think invented Snapchat?
“And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ” ~ Genesis 9:12-13
Sometimes Mission is not so Far Afield
29 years
I made a wrong turn on my way to a training session. Darn that GPS, it proclaims “you have arrived!” just as you pass the turn. Thankfully, just up the road there was a big church parking lot where I could make a U-turn. On exiting the lot, I was greeted by this sign: 
I let the car idle for a moment as I considered this. There, in my training shorts, shoes and sport shirt, was I really entering the mission field?
I have never actually been on a mission trip. Never stood with a group before the congregation to send me off to a distant land to build a church, or to a neighboring state that has experienced devastation, nor even to the inner city to lend a hand to those living in poverty. Could it be that right here, right now, with my little training business in my own community, I was knee deep in mission? Maybe I didn’t need to go on a trip after all.
I wasn’t exactly “called” to Fit2Finish. Not in a voice-from-heaven-that-insisted-I-go way. It’s been more of a constant contact kind of thing. On this day, I was meeting up with Emily, a 16 year old basketball player, who’d had ACL reconstructive surgery in February. We had already had several sessions, but this time we were meeting on the basketball court of a middle school near her home. She had been cleared to return to play, but it would be my first time to meet her father, Roy, who was bringing her. He wasn’t so sure she was ready. What’s so “missional” about this?
I have walked this road before, and it can get rocky in the space between a sporting kid delighted to have permission to return to play and the father who loves them so much it would absolutely kill them to see their child injured again. (Incidentally, the mothers tend to do much better; it’s more often the fathers who wince at the prospect.)
I put Emily through her paces. She runs, jumps, dribbles, and shoots. She stops and starts, pivots and hesitates, and drives the lane for a lay-up. Roy and I both shag balls as we watch, and I make a point to join him under the basket to hear what he’s thinking. His reflective sunglasses prevent my reading his face for cues.
“What do you see?” I ask him. After all, he is the expert. He has been watching this kid since she toddled with a ball.
“How does it feel?” I ask Emily when she jogs over. After all, it’s her body. She knows it inside and out.
I haven’t said a word. Not offered any observations, made any corrections, agreed or disagreed with any statements made. I have just created the circumstance to watch and listen, as father and daughter hear each other out to discover their common ground.
On this sunny day in August, with a cool breeze blowing across the playground, things go smoothly. It’s not always like this. Sometimes there are undertones and misgivings, ushered in with angst and fear. Parents don’t trust their kids. Kids are frustrated with their parents. Parents want to wait. Kids are in a hurry. Parents have expectations. Kids want to meet expectations but they can’t. Sometimes, it gets ugly.
I can’t ever be sure how things will go, but it seems where I’m meant to be. “You are now entering the mission field.” It’s not exactly a “sharing the faith” kind of thing, but I am convinced that somehow, when I put on those training sneakers, I am standing on holy ground.
Funny, as I prepare to shuttle my own 18 year old off to Virginia Tech this week, expanding the space between us and leaving the proverbial “empty nest,” I will especially miss her poignant observations about life. Often, just a few words captioning a drawing in a memory dusted off. In our cleaning out and packing, she has pulled out a book she made as a first grader. 
On the ‘Meet My Mom’ page, she has written, “(My mom) really likes to tech pepol to stresh.”
I do like to teach people to stretch. Guess I have been at this longer than I thought.
Teaching people to stretch… their limbs, their minds, their lives, toward their goals, their dreams, and toward each other. Now THAT is a mission field. Amazing how those wrong turns remind us.