The Presents of God

It's about time I write about the next chapter of God in the Yard. It's not that I haven't read it, or that it doesn't touch me where I am, but that I don't have much to say besides, "Yes."

I'm not hearing from God right now. I reach out to find him, and I feel like I'm grasping at air. He disappeared a while back and things haven't been quite the same since.

But here's the thing: I've been around this block before. I don't say that to blow it off, to deny soul's pain or act like there aren't still questions. But these things have a way of working themselves out.

I don't know yet what God's invitation is to me in this. I don't know if there's a call to something beyond steadiness and prayer even when there's more darkness than light. But I know this: He is still there. And that is enough.

As I wait for Him to reveal Himself or his call, I can't help but think about where I was this time last year. I was at the point of actively awaiting Mirren's arrival. We were six weeks away and had already rushed to the hospital once to see if my water had broken.

I have that same expectant awaiting arising inside when I think about what God is doing right now. He's active even though I can't see it, and in due time his work will be born in me and through my life. Just because I don't know what that's going to look like doesn't mean I can't anticipate it.

And so I have my own season of Advent this year, internally as well as externally. After all, we don't only await the birth of the Christ child during this season, but also his coming in each of us. 

I Wonder About Flight

Trying to figure out what to write for Chapter 5 of God in the Yard has been like trying to describe music in terms of colors - I can do it, but I don't always feel like I'm talking about something real. 

Gratefulness is hard for me, but not for the same reasons that it's hard for Barkat. It's not that I don't trust the sky. It wasn't until I put my thoughts from GitY  together with a quote from Kathleen Norris's Acedia and Me. Norris says, "being rejected, I learned to reject." 

I knew childhood rejection, and I resonate with the idea of learning there not to let the good things in. And so I stopped trusting, stopped thinking I could make friends and people would like me, stopped believing that I saw what was real. I became suspicious of people and scared of them, scared that they would pretend one thing and then become something else, scared that they would seem to like me but really wouldn't. And gradually I became suspicious of all good things, came to touch and embrace them tentatively, wondering if they would really be there when I needed them, wondering if they were really good, or if they would turn and bare their teeth when I needed to lean into them the most. I pushed away good because it hurt too much to have it turn into something else.

But there's more than that: I also pushed the good away because it wasn't, not even ever once, perfect. It was a lot of things, good things, even great things, but it wasn't perfect. And I was taught high ideals for experiences. I was brought into a world where things were supposed to go right, where it was normal to have high expectations and be disappointed, where ideals were extolled and everyone, including myself, felt like they fell short all the time, felt like they ruined otherwise "perfect" moments with their self and their mess.

So I also learned to reject the good because it wasn't the perfect, to not be grateful for what I had because it wasn't the best I could imagine and it wasn't what I wanted it to be. I learned to be disappointed with the good because it wasn't the best. I learned to be picky instead of happy, frustrated and disappointed instead of satisfied and full.

Between the two, it's hard to overcome. It's hard to trust the good, to trust that God is good and that the things he puts into my hands aren't going to bite me. And then it's hard for gratefulness to not feel stifled or stilted, because I'm trying to be grateful for things that still don't seem good enough to me.

The first of these is the most painful. It's hard to trust, hard to believe that things can be different than they once were, that it's ok for me to wonder and wonder and wander and wonder some more. It's hard for me to want to reach out and embrace something when I'm afraid it has spines on the bottom instead of a tender underbelly.

But the other is the most damaging, I think. It takes them joy out of even good things, things that I love. And it's always there, sitting at the back of my mind, wondering why things couldn't be just a little different, wondering what would make this better, wondering if I'll ever by as happy as I want to be, wondering why I have to make do with these small goods in my hand when I see so many other, bigger goods that could be.

The first makes it hard to embrace good things, but the second makes it hard to WANT to, and that seems more harmful and dangerous in the long run. It's one thing to reject out of fear, and another to reject out of pride, to say, "That's all well and good, but it's not good enough for me." The second brings on the feeling that good is never going to come the way I want it to, so I may as well just reject it and be done, and then resign myself to never having anything as good as I want it. I may as well just decide that I'm never going to be happy, that things will never be the way I want them to be, and live anyway,

But that allows me to nurse my pride, to nurse a dissatisfaction with the world that means joy can't come in, that's self-watchful instead of self-giving, and I don't want that, either.

And so I end this chapter feeling stuck. Not hopelessly stuck, but at least momentarily so. I suppose that's the good thing about envisioning life as a journey: you just keep walking, even when you don't know where to go next. And eventually, God leads you to victory, whether in this life or the next.

Celebration

I believe in telling the truth, and the truth is that I'm no good at celebrating, at least under the traditional definition of the word. No good at all, in fact. If you need a realist, I'm your woman, but celebrating comes like pulling teeth.

That's why writing about week 4 in L. L. Barkat's God in the Yard feels like such a monumental task to me. I don't have much to say about celebrating, because it's not something that's a habit in my life. Thinking about it feels a little like trying to visualize a tesseract - I can almost see it, and then everything dissolves again.

There's one time in my life when I remember celebrating well, and that time it felt like a command straight from God. The situation was crazy: Dave and I needed money to get married, he'd been promised a job, and it feel through. We either needed to postpone the wedding or get some cash. 

I prayed like I'd never prayed before, with faith I didn't know I'd had and words I would never have said if they weren't given to me: God, there's plenty of money out there. Help some of it to find its way to us. 

It did - a friend wrote Dave a $1000 check out of the blue, because God told her he needed it. Then he got a job out of nowhere, and I felt commanded to celebrate.

It rose up inside of me with an imperative tang. I needed to do it and we did: I took Dave out for one of  the nicest dinners of our stint as a dating couple, where we feasted and drank and built an altar of remembrance for what God had done there. 

And I do remember it, vividly. In fact, if that story teaches me nothing else, it's that celebrating is important because it helps us remember the things God does, the things He once did, even in a season where it's hard to hear his voice. 

I want to remember, and so I need to celebrate.

Now I struggle with my normal days. I find it hard to want a normal life, to want this home-and-family existence that doesn't involve running around doing fun, exciting things all the time.

And I wonder if I struggle with them because I don't know how to celebrate them. If I knew how to mark the little things, the baby's developmental milestones, the way the light comes through the windows in the morning, the things Dave and I do to love each other on a daily basis, maybe I would appreciate them more. 

Celebrations are hard for me because childhood celebrations came with expectations. When I was a child, celebration days were supposed to be perfect. People wanted to have fun, to get along,  to be happy spending time together as a family. 

Since perfect days are rare, expectations were almost always disappointed. In fact, I did most of the disappointing. I put so much pressure on myself that I would snap and get upset. I'd yell at my brother, cry when something didn't work out the way we'd planned, or get upset with someone else who didn't meet my expectations.

I came to believe that I ruined good things, good celebrations, and so in some ways I came to dread them. 

I want celebrating to be something different for my children. I want it to be something they love, but I want it to be human, real and messy, like everything having to do with people is messy.

As luck would have it, Barkat expands the definition of "celebration" in her book, from something that not only marks a happy time or an act of God to something that notes or highlights things of importance, even when those are hard things. This makes celebration into something I'm more familiar with. 

Most of my celebrations are little things: daily writing, a prayer that I pray almost every morning that reminds me of God's presence, Dave's and my ritual before bed of recounting the best and worst moments of every day. They don't have much in common except that they're regular, they're important for me, and they usher me into the presence of God.

They're not enough. I want more celebrating, more marking and noting and deliberate focusing in my life right now. But I suppose where I am is a place to start, since being with God is never a bad thing.

(I finally found the button!)

Contemplation is a Dangerous Thing

In Chapter 3 of God in the Yard, L.L. Barkat talks about contemplation. And I'm here to tell you today that contemplation is a dangerous thing. 

I don't know what Mary was doing when the angel came, but I like to think that she was taking a quiet moment, maybe somewhere between breakfast and lunch, maybe hanging up clothes to dry and appreciating how the rhythm of the work set her mind free to roam. And then an angel appeared, like that, and changed her life.

I can't help but think that Mary didn't plan to carry the Christ-child. She didn't plan to be pregnant before her marriage, and she didn't plan to always have to live with that. Her dreams were probably modest: maybe she wanted to be married, to have her own home, to have kids running around in a few years. Maybe she wanted to care for her parents into their old age, to learn as much as she could about God, to learn to mix a mean hummus.

I don't know what she wanted to do and who she wanted to be, but I do know that it all got turned on its head when that angel was done making his proclamation. Gone, probably forever, was Mary's good name. For all she knew, Joseph would go, too, and with him her dreams of home and family. And she'd have a baby, but not in the way or the time that she wanted, and he wouldn't be much like the rest of the kids in the neighborhood.

Her future looked pretty dark, too. Without a husband and having gotten pregnant before she was married, she'd be a pariah. She'd probably stay in her father's home, until he died, and then get some grudging care from a brother or a male cousin. She'd be among the least, though, the ones most in need of love and charity (and the ones her son later cared for so tenderly).

In spite of the muffled crashing sounds her dreams made when they hit her dusty floor, she bowed her head and said, "Yes, Lord." Actually, she said, "May it be unto me according to your word."

I don't think Mary was an idiot. Stunned, maybe, and shocked that an angel would come visit her, but not stupid. She knew what her words meant and the cost her submission could exact up on her dreams, her life, and her future, and she said them anyway.

If you know the story of Mary, you know that God put things back together. Joseph didn't abandon her, so she wasn't shamed. Whether you believe she had any more children depends on the particular tradition you follow. Eventually she watched that baby, the one who rocked her world, die humiliated on the cross. And I'm sure she saw him raised again, walking and moving among his people.

But her life changed that day. And it changed not only because God chose her, but because she was willing to release her dreams and grasp on to his. That's not to say that we shouldn't have dreams and we shouldn't do what we can to make them happen. But it is to say that we don't know the whole story, and that the life God calls us to, even if he doesn't do it through the booming voices of angelic messengers, may have gifts that we won't see if we don't submit to him and be present in it.

So contemplation is a dangerous thing, because it opens us to what God is offering right now, in this present moment. And if we talk hold of that, who knows where it will lead and how many dreams we'll have to sacrifice to follow it.

Rules and Redemption

"God forgive me for that . . . and that . . . and that."

So went my thoughts, that year I turned 7. 

The way it ran in my head seemed so simple. Simple and terrifying.

Christians were supposed to be good. When they weren't, they were supposed to ask God for forgiveness.

But everywhere I looked in my heart and my life, even then, I knew I wasn't good. And so I asked God for forgiveness, frantically and constantly, so that if I died I wouldn't go to hell.

Paul tells us to pray without ceasing, but my young prayers weren't what he meant. Those prayers had little to do with being God's child and knowing him and everything to do with my little self striving to appease his anger. I was compulsive, praying and praying but feeling like I could never be clean.

Even then, I saw the good-and-bad motivations that made up the reasons behind most of my actions, and I couldn't reconcile them with what I'd learned about God and his expectations. It seemed clear to me that I wasn't good enough, that I never would be, and so I prayed on and on and on.

My relationship with God wasn't the only place where I tried to follow the rules. Rules have always played a strange roll in my world. I see them both as the path to success, approval, and achievement and as the most soul-binding things on this earth. 

I spent most of my young life trying to follow the rules and feeling so tied up in my trying that I felt lost. Everywhere I went, I'd find out what the rules for acceptance and success were in that particular place. I got so good at it, and so good at following them (or at least looking like I was following them) that I became a rule-chameleon. Whatever you were supposed to do at home-church-school-work, I did.  

As a mechanism for giving my sensitive little self the stability I craved and helping me succeed in social situations where my introverted self didn't naturally know that to do, finding and following the rules worked. It took an incredible amount of energy to watch people that closely and conform my behavior to the standards I found, but it worked. At the cost of knowing myself and engaging in life from my middle, it worked. 

Given all of that, I hope you can understand why, when it comes to spiritual practice and relationship with God, I don't do rules anymore. I can't. In fact, it feels like marked growth on my part that I didn't throw God in the Yard across the room when I saw that Chapter 2 was entitled, "Rules: the way."

I did brace myself, though, as I waited to hear about what yet another author thought I had to do to find God. 

Maybe you can imagine my relief when L. L. Barkat chose a wandering way, when she said, "my job is not so much to practice a rigid set of disciplines as to pay attention." Maybe, though I kind-of doubt it.

Inner-me jumped. Yes, please. Sign me up.

With all those years of scrutinizing others behavior to learn the unspoken rules, paying attention is something I can do.

I wish I could tell you how little me found freedom from her compulsive prayers, but I can't. I don't know. What I do know is this: one day, the compulsion was there, and I remember feeling like I was going to snap in two from the strain. And the next day it wasn't. 

I didn't do anything to earn my freedom and I certainly didn't deserve it. Instead, it was given as a gift from One who was paying attention to me. And if he can pay that much attention to one little girl, certainly I can pay a modicum of attention to him, the universe's God.

Edge Spaces

In the first chapter of her book, God in the Yard, L. L. Barkat talks about edge spaces, "where one habitat meets another - where grass gradually gives way to bushes, which fives way to trees or vice versa."

Edge spaces are the places where change takes place, the spaces where one thing slowly becomes another. Small or large, they're spaces where more than one thing lives, where life of different shapes and forms can grow together and become parts of one whole.

I know what edge spaces are because, right now, my life is an edge space.

This is a year spent straddling different worlds. These are worlds filled with different roles, different callings and places and clothing and companions and food and colors and weather. And slowly, ever so slowly, one sort of life is becoming a different sort of life.

I don't like change. I'm bad at it and I don't like it. If it has to happen, I prefer it to come in one compelling, excruciating moment, and then be over. I like my change to leave me sputtering for air despite the pain that causes, because then it's done. No more anticipating, no more waiting and wondering and worrying about what it will be like, what exactly will happen. Just everything, nothing, and the need to get used to the falling sensation.

Instead I have this. A year (plus or minus) filled with small changes, with changes that I can see coming but can't deal with until they happen. A year of anticipation, and not always a good kind.

Walking through this edge space is tiring. On bad days, I get home from work and all I want to do is watch television, because the blinking electronic box is, at least, manageable. I wonder if this time will end, if we're going somewhere or if this is all an elaborate hoax with no reason or purpose. I want more than this awkward water-treading for my daughter: more energy to play with her, more time to spend with her, more of a life to usher her into. Not to mention wanting more for Dave and I.

But right now we're here, in our enforced edge space. It's the jumping off place of a new pilgrimage for us, I think, even though we're not at the place where we can jump off quite yet. And so I try to find the beauty here, in the sad, spiky gift of a year in transition. Because if God is everywhere, then he's here with us as we shuffle through these puzzle pieces and try to build something sturdy.

Even these days have beauty.

Even these days are glorious winged things,

if only I wasn't blinded

from the sideways glint of light

off shiny, feathered wings.