On the Awesomeness of God

Today, this last Sunday before Lent begins, is traditionally the Feast of the Transfiguration; you know, the one where Jesus and his disciples go up to the mountaintop and Moses and Elijah come to stand on either side of Jesus and the voice of God booms out and all the disciples throw themselves to the ground in terror and Peter is, like, ooh, let's build three booths, one for each of these Holy Dudes...

Years ago I heard a sermon on this subject that focused on Peter's ridiculous attempt to try to contain and manage all that power, and still today I hear that part and I grin: so typical, I think, and so human, and so foolish; he SO doesn't get this.

But today's sermon did a wonderful and somewhat terrifying job of reminding me that I am not so different from Peter.

So much of my work these last few years has been about honoring what Alice Howells calls "the Divine Guest," the Divine presence that lives within each of us.  I do believe that's important work; we need to become aware of that Presence within, and need to release the entailments of that old assumption that God is wholly Other, some big white-bearded guy way far away in the sky.

As I sat in my metaphor class on Friday, listening to all the presentations in which people were exploring the metaphors in use in their own lives, I kept hearing these themes around polarity, separation, and reconciliation.  We grow used to thinking -- and most of us want to think -- that there is one single answer; that there is a right way and a wrong way; that once we "get" it, somehow everything will fall into place and become clear; that it's an either/or question. 

But the problem is that there really isn't One Right Answer.  Because really it's a both/and.  The beauty of it is, it's ALL TRUE.  God is big and out there AND Jesus AND Buddha AND in me AND in you -- even though sometimes that doesn't seem to reconcile and we can't make sense of it.  That's the glory of the Trinity -- it reminds you that there are more dimensions here than we can ever fully comprehend.

But of course I've been (after a lifetime of living in that God is Other and All-Powerful space) busily building a little tent within myself for Godness.  We could characterize that as a noble enterprise, and worthy, which it is; we need to be attentive and attuned to that inner voice of Oneness.  But sitting there in church this morning, picturing the hugeness and terror of a giant thunderstorm, immediately overhead, I got again the awesome power of the God who terrified me so as a child.  And realized my little tent of Godness bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Peter's booth: I've been hoping to contain something that cannot be contained, trying to shelter myself from the scariness of all that power.

I grew up thinking I must be truly blessed.  Because the Bible says "Blessed are those who fear God" -- and I've have always found God to be a terrifying concept/being.  Listening this morning, I realize I still do.  But the good news is this: it's okay to be scared.  It's okay if you're not always in control.  Terror carries gifts with it that I am only beginning to understand.  The tender hand that caressed my cheek into being also hurled these rock cliffs into the waters and split them asunder; it is totally appropriate to find that awesome and overwhelming.

But look at the beauty of this rock, and know that beauty to be grounded in you as well.  We are the rock, and the lichen; we are the leaf that flutters into the crevasse and the surf that pounds the granite into smoothness.  There is power out there, and there is power in here, and power everywhere in between. 


A friend sent me this breathtaking slideshow from the BBC this morning, which helps to clarify how very much otherness and likeness there is in the world.  And watching it, I could hear Rich Mullins singing "Our God is an Awesome God,"  so I went to YouTube to see if I could find it for you.  The videos that feature the original recording are kind of tacky, so at the risk of losing the musical clarity I will post instead a video of one of his live performances: what it loses in musical quality it gains as a reflection on today's learnings...

A wing and a prayer

Wandering through my files this morning, I found again this wonderful image, taken a year or two ago of the reflections in my neighbor's window.

I think it calls to me today because I've just been listening to Desert Spirit, a long-favored recording of Native American flute music.  That music awakens in me a hunger for the stark intense colors of New Mexico -- which then in turn reminds me I spent most of yesterday in class, seated across from a woman who flies up from Santa Fe to attend our courses. 

Yesterday she was wearing Santa Fe colors, and her scarf and earrings fed my eyes as I sat listening to all our final projects, my classmates' explorings of the workings of metaphors in the arenas of faith and education, marketing and activism, environment and corporations.

It was a wonderful day, and a delightful and inspiring conclusion to an amazing course.  And as usual -- I'm learning not to be surprised by this -- I suspect I learned way more about myself than about the subject.  Going back to school has been an incredible blessing... but I confess I'm grateful I have only one course to go: this work is really intense and challenging, but I'm itching to carry my learnings into some other sphere.

But in the meantime, let me share with you this wonderful quotation from Annie Dillard (in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a book I read and loved some 30 years ago): My teacher sent it to me after reading my final paper, and I think it perfectly captures what I have come to know and love about my excursions with my camera:

"I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell." 

I think one of the biggest blessings of my time at Antioch has been the way it has worked to unite all the disparate parts of me -- past and present, left and right brain, heart and mind, masculine and feminine....  I feel as if I have been tucked under that enormous wing; been cherished and adored and taught again to fly; as if the promise of those wonderful lines in the Episcopal Compline service have finally been realized:

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit;
For you have redeemed me, O Lord, O God of truth.


Keep us, O Lord, as the apple of your eye;
Hide us under the shadow of your wings.

... which brings me to this, my favorite prayer:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.

Consider the lilies

I loved these words today, from The Dove in the Stone:

"I plucked at the grass and heaved a big sigh.  Why was it all so hard, so difficult?  Why the wars and killing, the drugs, pollution, and AIDS?  What could any one person do to help change things for the better?


It was hard to grasp what seemed to be the answer: 'You can only work on yourself.  Start there.  Your consciousness or that of anybody else's is like the widow's mite -- it is all you have to give.  Nothing is wasted!  But that little bit gets added to all the other little bits, and slowly and inexorably, the light increases and feeds the aura about the earth.  It is absolutely true that by working on your own shadow, you withdraw it from the collective pool of destructive and unconscious energy. So take heart!"

And this, too, I found encouraging:

"We might be mistaken in always thinking that we have to struggle and achieve our growth.  The secret of inner growth might be better seen as an allowing rather than a frantic fighting for perfection -- a cracking or perforating of our shell, allowing the light to begin streaming out through us... I picture being sort of a sieve for God.


This would mean a surrendering of arrogance and a submission of the conscious ego to the Divine Guest within us.  After all, Christ did not choose perfected people to be his disciples; quite the contrary.  And he was the one to remind us to 'consider the lilies -- neither do they toil nor spin, yet surely Solomon in all his glory is not clad like one of these.'  

In other words,, trust the process; don't put so many unnecessary obstacles in the way.  Look, even at yourself, with a humorous tolerance and a loving eye.  A loving eye then would extend to people and situations, to seeing beauty in the very fragility and even the ugliness in the world.

Take heart, allow the light to flow through your cracks, and have a good day...

New friends and old...

I tried various meditation practices off and on for probably 30 years before I stumbled into Centering Prayer and found it to be home. 

But for several weeks now I've been starting my day with an interspiritual meditation provided by a class I'm taking.  It's a recording, with music, and a voice inviting me into various aspects of spiritual practice, and quite lovely.

But some part of me has grown increasingly resistant to the prescriptions of the practice; I've been missing the peace of emptying, and the time granted by Centering Prayer for thoughts to wander in and out of their own accord; always welcoming, always releasing and returning...

And so for the last three days I've been playing hooky and meditating on my own again -- which means I get the more obvious ups and downs of that.  The first day was fabulous, a deep and welcome release, but yesterday I finally had to get up and get a notepad and a pen because there were so many to-do's arising (what can I say?  I'm a list-maker...)

And today my brain decided to get all creative on me, because it's beginning to think about an upcoming exhibit.  And this is the result.

Well.

Not really: I was visualizing some much more striking versions of this; tearing the image, gluing it onto a board and writing the poem in white along the tear.  Or maybe printing it on fabric; ripping it and stitching it onto black, with black threads hanging from the pilings.

And I may still try those things; it's always fun to experiment.  But for now I like the simple peace of this, and so I share it with you.  The poem (which you can barely see in this small version) is new, but the image is an old friend, so it's fun to bring it out again and post it here -- just as Centering Prayer and the varied pace of it are old friends; safe and familiar.  Make new friends -- it's always good to challenge your assumptions, and turn things upside down.  But keep the old (one is silver and the other gold).

And who knows?  Maybe the old is ready for some cosmic shift to make it all seem new again...

Mind the gap...

The phrase "mind the gap" usually refers to the distance between subway platforms and the actual trains their customers are trying to board.  But it does seem to have a certain cautionary relevance if we are exploring ways to build a sense of connection, both with the divine and with the rest of creation.  Because despite our efforts, there is still a gap, and it's all too easy to get caught up in our awareness of the separation and forget the big picture, the quintessential completeness of it all.

... at least, that's what I find myself thinking when I look at this image.  And I'm trying to pay attention to those instantaneous responses -- especially as I continue my explorations into the world of metaphors -- because I believe, as Alice Howell says in my reading this morning in The Dove in the Stone,

"The way to unlock the wisdom/Sophia in this world is to learn to think and live symbolically.  To do that, they say, you have to find the process hidden in everyday manifestations about us in nature and even in ordinary objects, because there can be nothing in this manifest world outside of the universal processes that govern their existence... 

For me, at least, it means matching images with meaning... Everytime we imagine something, we are creating or co-creating, and we can associate that with something godlike."

Not that I consider the work I do in trying to read these images godlike.  It's more that... well, it's just fun; like playing guessing games with Sophia; wondering what she might be trying to tell us.  Is that irreverent?  It's not meant to be; it's just joyful. 

So, hey!  Would you like to play, too?  Let me know what you think might be the imaginal connection in this image.  Because I know from Louise's comment on last night's post (and my own apparent inability to manufacture any kind of reasonable fiction for that post) that there are probably lots of you out there with incredible imaginings of your own to contribute!

I mean -- wouldn't that be fun, to open this up, get some free exchange going around the possibilities?  So tell me: what do YOU think Sophia has to say about this?

Having trouble lying...

I know -- this is supposed to be a mostly serious and thoughtful blog.  But my blogsister Louise has passed on something called a Memetastic Award, so I feel honor bound to honor it and pass it on again to some other wonderful bloggers.  So here's how it works:  when you get the award, you have to...

✦ Link back to the blogger who bestows the award. (✓) (Recover Your Joy)

✦ Display the image from the award creator (see graphic below). (✓)

✦ Pass the award on to five (5) other bloggers who must follow these rules. (✓)

✦ Link the post back, so Jillsmo can follow its trajectory. (✓)

And then the fifth, and not so easy to accomplish requirement ('cause it means I am supposed to tell a lie -- well, actually, four lies,to be exact...)

✦ List five (5) facts, four (4) of which must be lies. (I failed; see below)

Okay.

First off, here are five wonderful bloggers whose photos and words never fail to inspire me:

     Joyce at Peaceful Legacies
     Karen at Gberger
     Kim at Prayers for the Oft Traveled Road
     Patricia at Improv Wisdom
     and Altar Ego at Reverent Irreverence

And now for the lies.

Well.  Hmm.  This is hard.

Actually, this is really hard.  I keep writing stuff down and erasing it.

The truth is so much more bizarre and interesting; lies mostly seem kinda boring.

Patricia: this may explain why I struggle so with Improv!

So I've just decided to be defiant and not go there.  Feel free to suggest a lie or two of your own -- perhaps it's the late hour, but I just don't seem to have the brains to do this!  Maybe I can just copy over Louise's lies?  But that would be cheating...

Oh, well.  Maybe tomorrow I'll come up with some lies.  But for now I think I'll just go to bed.  G'nite!

All it will take

While searching for a blank memory card I found an old one that had images on it from our trip to Eastern Washington; images I'd never downloaded onto my computer, and I had thought them lost forever.

Not that they're all that good, you understand, but it is a VERY different landscape there, and with my current hunger for southwestern vistas, I'm enjoying the opportunity to revisit these desert scenes.

Which is yet another lovely example of this curious human hunger for balance.  When winter first arrives I welcome the change in the weather, but by the time March is blustering in I'm desperate again for warmth and sunshine.

I love dark chocolate, but after too many bites my tongue begins to long for salt and spice.  I'm thrilled to be with friends but after a lengthy visit find myself craving alone time.  Like all humans I have a hunger for consistency, but too much consistency becomes... well... boring!  Which means, again -- I need to strike a balance; to find enough variety in some parts of my life to appease that piece of me that thinks the grass is always greener somewhere else while at the same time staying centered enough to keep moving forward while staying grounded.

And though that phrase -- moving forward while staying grounded -- sounds like a contradiction in terms, I have to say it seems to me that that is a critical aspect of the spiritual life.  I actually don't believe we can EVER truly move forward without ensuring that we move from a deeply grounded space.  It's just that that space isn't necessarily physical.  To me, being grounded, being centered, is about being in touch: in touch with ourselves, with our humanity, with our essential divine nature... and moving forward is only progress if it flows out of that groundedness, out of that sense of connection.

Moving forward just to move forward will never get us anywhere, and those who do that just to escape where they are now, or where they've been, who are simply moving out of a desperate need for change, may tend to find, like Satan in Milton's classic, Paradise Lost, that they are carrying their own hell around with them -- whatever that hell looks like.

Horror and doubt distract 

His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir 

The hell within him; for within him Hell           

He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell 

One step, no more than from Himself, can fly 

By change of place.  
--  (Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV) 

So if you're restless, itching to move on -- consider this possibility: maybe, just maybe, there's something right here, right now, that is every bit as extraordinary as a foreign cruise or vacation.  Perhaps instead of running the time has come to stop and breathe and wait; to wait for what this moment holds to take root in you and bear fruit.  What looks right now like a total wasteland could become a green and fertile valley: all it will take is time and care and love.