Ways of Knowing

Fourteen years ago when I started this blog, I chose the name “Know That I Am” because it describes the paradox of my faith.  I have always known a deep yearning for God but struggled with having a solid sense of relationship with God. I want to “know” the God with no name who simply says “I am.” Bur, how can anyone know God?

Mark 12:30 states “You shall love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”  This passage is a daily part of my life through the Morning Prayer Service from the Northumbria Community.

 Call:             Who is it that you seek?

Response:    We seek the Lord our God.

Call:              Do you seek Him with all your heart?

Response:    Amen. Lord, have mercy.

Call:              Do you seek Him with all your soul?

Response:    Amen. Lord, have mercy.

Call:              Do you seek Him with all your mind?

Response:    Amen. Lord, have mercy.

Call:              Do you seek Him with all your strength?

Response:    Amen. Christ, have mercy.

Answering these four questions each day with the affirmation of “Amen” has reminded me to engage in all four ways of loving God through my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength.  However, when I was younger, I thought only one way of knowing God was necessary. 

My years pursuing a Master of Divinity at Wesley Theological Seminary are a good example.  Taking classes in Christian theology, scripture, and history, I sought to know God with my mind.  The seminary seemed to teach that an intellectual knowledge of God that would settle all my doubts and questions. I thought that if I mastered knowing God with my mind, I would find peace from my doubts.  However, the answers I developed fell short of resolving my doubts, and just raised new questions.  Completing the degree did not mean that I had settled anything.

Yet, during my time in seminary there were many seeds planted about the other ways to know and love God. Those seeds waited for years before I noticed them and nurtured them.  So while singing in the Chapel Choir was important to my faith, it was decades later that I understood how music emerges from my soul.

It surprises me when specific memories of my years in seminary come to mind in my ordinary daily life.  Yet when I take the time to pause and notice that memory, I see one of the seeds planted during that time.  Curiously they are not the intellectual issues and topics I studied or wrote papers about.  They are the other aspects of knowing the “I Am” I know to be God, with my heart, my soul and my strength.

 

 

Redefining Patience

At my job, the company is in the process of a very long reorganization which will radically change the lives of many, particularly me and my staff. The frustration with the leadership is that the process to rethink how the organization will function is being done solely by a small group of senor level staff. It is the classic situation where the few on the top are acting for the whole, keeping the process and content secret.

I understand the secrecy is being maintained out of a concern to protect the rest of us from the difficult and painful choices that are being made. At the same time, secrecy itself creates many destructive undercurrents within any system, whether a family or an organization. It is difficult to trust people working in secret when they do not trust you enough to say what is being talked about behind that wall of secrecy.

So when I ran across a subchapter of Seasons of Strength*, titled Patience in Disguise, it grabbed my attention:

"We can recognize three faces of patience, the first being its political guise. This is the virtue that is counseled to persons or groups seeking change. Thus women and blacks and the poor are told, “Be patient.” Here patience usually equals passivity. The communication is, “We will take care of it. Don’t rush us.” When this political advice is heeded, the “patient” mumbles that “nothing can be done” and succumbs to
impotence and inactivity. A virtue is twisted into weakness for purposes of social control.”

This accurately describes the feeling many staff are experiencing at my office. When the reorganization was first announced in January, many responded with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation. I encouraged my staff to consider this an opportunity to rethink and improve our work for our customers. At the same time, I urged each person to consider his or her own strengths and weaknesses, to update résumés, and prepare to offer their skills to the leaders. In spite of some trepidation, they followed my urging with a positive spirit.

However, we learned recently that the final unveiling of the reorganization plan will not occur for another two months. Even though I had urged up the chain of command that a clear date to be announced, because it is easier for people to adjust to a concrete date than have no idea when it would occur, I was not prepared for the amount of negative emotions it triggered.

Now, I sense, both in myself in others, a second way in which patience is acted out.

“The second visage of patience, that of the Stoic, appears at the other extreme. Stoic patience is a tough virtue, able to tolerate a great deal of pain. This “virtue” enables one to surmount feelings of loss or injury. Gritting his teeth, the Stoic keeps going. The Stoic “plays through the pain” with an iron will. In such an exercise of patience the person often denies the feelings that accompany the experience. . . . But in a deeper sense, it is a defensive lack of “patience” that we see – the refusal to be open, to receive, to be moved.”

There is a strong emotional appeal for a shut-down way of dealing with the situation. I lived through that my personal life very recently. While the Stoic way of patience can be sustained for short periods of time, it does lead to a complete closing down of one’s feelings, the good and the bad. You cannot allow only the good ones to come out, because once the door is open to the Pandora’s box, everything that is inside wants to be expressed. Many around me are hunkering down to do this over the many weeks ahead.

I know how exhausting and ultimately life-denying the Stoic position is, so, returning to the next passage from the Whiteheads’ book:

“Between these extremes of passivity and compulsive endurance is the active virtue of patience. . . . When we exercise this virtue we do not merely undergo an experience, such as illness or loss, but actively go through it. We are not just passive victims of the crisis; we face it. We can look into it and search out its meaning. This stance differs from both personal passivity and the gritty, Stoic denial of feeling. The virtue of grief, an offspring and heir of the human strength of patience, demands an acceptance of loss. This acceptance comes only with a patient attention to the experience, to both its absurdity and its meaning.”

So, there is the “acceptance of loss” and the “patient attention to the experience, to both its absurdity and its meaning.” I have been working on that sense of having lost something, and the initial work of grieving what was good and nurturing for so long. This process of writing about what is going on, using an external concept to structure my internal process, is one way I engage in paying “patient attention.” It helps in staying out of extremes of passivity or Stoic control.

The authors later note that “shadows of ambiguity and conflict” are a part of the experience. Those shadows really are quite dark at times, obscuring a sense of where to go or what to do next. I sense it when other staff describe how they are coping with the situation. However, it is encouraging that the authors support the kind of internal work I am doing:

“In psychological terms, this virtue demands receptive mastery. . . . to allow myself to fully savor and experience – whether of loss or delight. . . . Without this strength of receptive mastery, lacking the virtue of patience, we may be unable to “hold still” long enough to attend to what is happening to us.”

Just out of curiosity, I searched the Internet for the use of the phrase “receptive mastery,” thinking there must be come intellectual sphere in which it is part of the jargon. Indeed, I found the phrase is used in the study of how people learn a new language. In those situations, “receptive mastery” is a learning stage which may move forward into “productive” or “expressive” mastery in which what has been learned receptively reaches a level of active use. So before one can apply what is being learned, one has to actively “fully savor and experience” it. This engagement with the situation becomes essential in learning from it.

As I struggle to know how to lead my own staff out of the shadows, it is encouraging to know that I must also engage in developing my own self-awareness. I know I must continually be doing my own internal work so as not to manipulate or use them to meet my own personal needs. I know that in being a non-anxious presence with them, I can lead them with my own calmness and focus.

But that is not enough It does not lead me toward how to move ahead. The book fails to offer any further advice, turning its focus to other topics. So I will try to focus on paying attention with patience, knowing I will slide to the extremes of passivity or Stoicism. Maybe in that way I will discover some vision to follow.

*Seasons of Strength: New Visions in Adult Christian Maturing by Evelyn Eaton Whitehead and James D. Whitehead. Authors Guild Backinprint.com edition, 2003, p.89-90.

Trusting God to be God

The words jumped out at me as I read the page, resonating beyond my half-focused attention to the book in my hand. “[W]e are primarily or even exclusively trusting God to be God in the ways we have become accustomed to thinking about God.*”

How true that is. It is so easy to settle into a habitual and narrowly defined relationship with God. Habits grow out of a desire for some predictability and stability, like the morning routine I follow to get ready for each day. While a morning routine cannot hurt you with its automatic patterns, habitual ways to approaching and thinking about God eventually will shut God out.

The routines or habits, done without thought, get in the way of seeing or responding to what has changed around us. Those accustomed ways of thinking about God become sinful, when sin is understood as a willful separation or turning away from God, because there is no attention focused on how God may be present or available in the moment.

Continuing reading, “Trusting God beyond the God we have understood or known up to now can feel very uncomfortable.” Learning to trust God is much more complicated than human relationships. It is easy to lose the sense of ongoing connection with God. There are times of doubt, times of wondering if God is even there or a self-delusion. Praying can feel like leaving messages on an answering machine. The words are said and the feelings expressed, but we are often left wondering if God is screening the calls, not picking up the phone.

Listening to directees, I hear a common experience of waiting without knowing, wanting some sense of connection and often finding none. Those times of not knowing undermine a sense of trust, especially during times of fear and emergency when the need to trust in God’s concern and support are the highest.

Over and over again we need to be alert to how God may be reaching out to us, in a new way, and learn to trust that God is there even when we do not perceive it. As I have re-read old journals, I have been able to see God’s action in my life in retrospect, even though I could not see during those periods of my life. Sometimes the ways God reaches out to us is so outside our understanding that God seems absent and invisible. It is only after the old understanding is broken apart that the new understanding can be found.

Bakke then points to the hardest part for me to swallow, “we are called to depend more on God than we do on ourselves – a very unlikely possibility unless we are aided by grace.” Or, in other words, only through acknowledging and accepting the grace that God extends to us will we be able to depend upon God. I struggle with this because it has a circular logic, or begs the question. In order to depend upon God, I need to be aided by grace which comes from God, and if I don’t recognize or accept the grace, then I cannot depend upon God.

I am quickly getting to the edge of what I learned about logical fallacies in college some (let’s leave the number out) years ago. I know that from a logical perspective, Bakke’s statement is false, but that doesn’t make it false as a faith statement. Since I claim to have experienced God in some small way, can I let go of my aversion to the circular argument, rather than getting caught in the intellectual barbed wire?

This is the leap of faith, moving far beyond my comfort zone at this time. I will leave it there for now, but it will still be nagging at me.

*Holy Invitations: Exploring Spiritual Direction by Jeannette A. Bakke. Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 2000. page 63.

One of 1.8 Million

Why was I on the Mall to see Barack Obama take the oath of office as President of the United States? Living five blocks from the Mall certainly made it seem an easy choice. Even though circumstances led to me being there alone, wrapped up in many layers against the temperatures in the low 20s, I knew I had to be there.

Perhaps it was the memory of January 1981, when I stood with feminist friends on the side of Pennsylvania Avenue waiting for the car with Ronald Reagan. We held up our signs proclaiming “ERA NOW,” one last argument against what Reagan represented. It was meaningless. It could do nothing to stop the self-interested, conservative era that has dominated the county for the last 28 years. So I needed to be on the Mall to see and believe in the dream of our country in which the values of compassion, respect for all people, and the protection of civil rights would be reaffirmed.

Perhaps it was the need to feel the positive energy of this time of transition. I don’t need to say “I witnessed history” as so many stated to reporters. That puts it immediately into the past tense, already written down. I needed to feel people around me who believe in the hope for a new way of honoring each other through our differences. I needed to be around others who want a new definition of what it means to be an American. Well, not really a new definition, but a return to a previously held definition, one that I find in the best times of our history.

Perhaps it was the belief that this man who knows discrimination and has been attacked because of a core part of who he is will understand how destructive that discrimination is to all of us. A man who is bold in stating his belief that those of us who are different from him in our sexual orientation are still to be treated as equals. A man who invited the Gene Robinson, a proudly gay man who also is a Bishop of my church, to begin a concert with prayer.

Perhaps I needed to be there for those who I know and love who could not. I have been surprised by how family members and others have responded to my talking about attending the inauguration ceremony. Even though I was at least a mile away, I stood there for others, representing their hopes and dreams for new possibilities. They can see the pictures of the crowd of 1.8 million, and know I am there, standing 50 feet in front of the Washington Monument. Sorry Dad, I did not wear anything on the top of my cap so you could pick me out, but I am there.

My prayers are with this new President, his administration, his family, and my country, that we can find a way out of fear into faith, out of manipulation into respect, and out of secrecy into mutual respect and trust.

Crying at Baptims

This Pentecost with the baptism of an infant, Karl, as well as his mother, I found myself crying again. It started early in the presentation and reached full flow when I joined the rest of the congregation in saying “We receive you into the household of God . . .”

I have been much more aware of my emotions during church services in the last few years, and am still learning to adjust to them. Often during some point in the Eucharistic Prayer a few words will suddenly jump out at me, speaking directly to something I have been dealing with in my life. I believe it is a gift, God wanting to reassure me. That doesn’t make it any easier.

It can become incredibly awkward since men are not supposed to be emotional. I have decided that I am not going to stifle the emotions just to make other people more comfortable. That would feel like I am stifling God. In consideration for other’s sensitivities when the crying starts, I wait until people are busy making a joyful noise singing a hymn to blow my nose. Or, when my eyes are full of tears, I blink them back until there is a time for prayer and people are supposed to be paying attention to God rather than the guy several feet away who is dabbing his eyes.

I should not have been surprised by the tears last Sunday, as I looked at the parents and their young son. I saw their hope for Karl and the love of those standing with them. Baptism is a time for hope, for bringing the salvation of Christ into his life and in the welcoming him into a community that pledges to teach and encourage him into the faith.

Alongside that hope, I thought of all of the pain and grief that Karl would experience in growing up and becoming a mature person in faith. I wondered what kinds of problems he will encounter in his life, and if he would be overwhelmed by situations. I prayed that he will be given the strength and courage to face those problems.

The sadness grew because there is nothing any of us, including his parents, his godparents or the rest of the community can do to keep that pain away or to protect this young infant from all that will happen. He alone will have to find his way to cope with and overcome the turmoil. I wish it could be different.

So, one more Sunday, I had to stuff my damp handkerchief into my pocket before turning to those around me to exchange the Peace of God, my eyes still damp from tears, and feeling a bit foolish. Foolish for caring about what might happen to Karl. Foolish for wanting to be emotionally open to God and for God.

Sue’s Reflection on Spiritual Hunger

Sue lived next door to me during our spiritual direction training program. While she and I come from opposite sides of the globe, we found ourselves dealing with similar questions and struggles - searching for where our call was leading.

Recently I wrote Sue, “ I doubt I will ever feel satisfied… because I always seem to want more…” Sue replied, “I smiled as I read your words: I have recognized the same in myself for so long; but you know, I suspect that might be a grace to keep us in touch with what is in fact a deep spiritual hunger.”

I struggle with her response, even though I know that she has described something very true. I started down this path to spiritual growth wanting it to lead to being calm, peaceful, and satisfied. While there are times of quiet and centeredness, those times are only brief, infrequent, and rarely when I really need them.

What keeps emerging for me are feelings of the incompleteness and of not having done enough. I feel it as a failure, so when Sue reminds me to consider it a grace, a gift from God to keep me open, I am startled. Rather than being a failure, she understands that yearning as a gift from God. God is stirring me up, calling me forward.

Sue went on to write, “Some people never tap into that hunger for more and don’t want to, because it’s uncomfortable at least, painful at most.”

It is definitely uncomfortable and gets in my way. I easily slip into distraction from that unsettledness. I can numb myself in different ways, such as watching television, staying busy with work or church business, or fantasizing about creating a perfect garden. But, if the yearning is from God, then numbing myself is denying God’s persisting call.

The yearning often recalls places of pain, either from the past or how my life is being lived today. I become aware of how I failed at something in the past or I feel inadequate to resolve a current dilemma. So again, numbing the pain becomes very tempting and it is very easy to slip away from reality.

Alternatively, wallowing in the pain feels safer than risking God’s desire for more. By becoming stuck in the feelings, I don’t have to take on the hard work and challenge of getting on with my life. It avoids changing those things either within me or around me that have closed me to God’s desire.

In her gentle way, Sue leads to her own response, “I’m learning to befriend it.”

Again, she surprises me with what seems obvious. Rather than push away the yearning and discomfort, she urges me to bring it closer, and get to know it better. If the yearning is from God, than by approaching it I am approaching God.

It is not unlike some yoga positions that I attempt while watching the limber young woman on the DVD. With this aging body, I will never move with the grace and strength that she has achieved. I can still approach the movement with the hope that even in my imperfect execution, I am getting closer.

So Sue asks the final question any good spiritual director would. “What happens when you take that holy longing and restless desire for more to your God?????”

But I am afraid to take it to God. What might God ask or even require of me if I were to directly ask the question? Would I be required to take a radical step out of my current life? More questions rise up to keep me away from God.

I don’t know why I am afraid, if I truly believe that God is loving and wants to bring me into closer relationship. But the fear is there, and perhaps that is what I need to take to God in prayer, at least for now.

Tree of Hope

When Mom died recently, the neighbors gave us a gift certificate to a local nursery, knowing I am a passionate gardener - just like Mom. Wanting something special to remind me of her, I decided to plant an unusual tree.

The chosen location required a small tree, but being near the front sidewalk, one that would be interesting all year. As I flipped through my mind all the trees I have wanted to grow, I knew it had to be a Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum). Originally from China, they were introduced into this country at the turn of the previous century.

David was curious about what to expect, and while pictures helped, he wanted to see one. So one day we went to the National Arboretum, a place we have visited regularly with our dogs. I was surprised that we quickly found two paperbark maples near the National Capitol Columns. They appeared a bit rough for the wear, but still intriguing.

Then we found a very beautiful young one in the Asian Valley. Even in the early spring, without any leaves, it was a delight to see, with the reddish-orange bark that peeled back in odd places, catching the light and even moving in the breeze.

David checked around to different nurseries before he found one in stock that he brought home. I felt a bit left out of the decision, but knew he has a good eye. When I finally saw it, he had chosen well.

It was only after I planted it that I realized it was more than just reminder of my Mom’s life. It is a tree of hope for our future and for our home with a view of the Chesapeake Bay.

We have been in a time of transition for three years now. David has been professionally in-between for almost five years. I have been trying to keep going with my own professional life and pursuing my call to be a spiritual director while wondering when or how his life might pull mine up by the roots.

Without consciously deciding it, planting the tree was our way of making a commitment to put down our roots in that little piece of land looking out over the water. The experts say paperbark maples will grow to 30 feet in 50 years, and I hope to be there shaping its growth as a fitting memory of Mom.

It reminds me of Jeremiah, who bought the parcel of land as the Israelites were being marched out of Jerusalem to exile in Babylonia, showing his belief that they would be returning some day. While we are not threatened with enslavement or exile, we wonder what life will bring, and how we will be able to keep the house, its garden with the labyrinth, and the view of the Chesapeake Bay.

There is a Paper Bark Maple now growing in the front yard, our statement to God of hope that we will live in our bit of Jerusalem.

Human Limits in the Perception of God

An important first step in any research project is to think clearly about the frame that will be used because it affects both the course of inquiry and its results. Without taking the time to define framing, a short explanation can be found in the introduction to Simple Framing by George Lakoff:

Carry out the following directive: Don't think of an elephant! It is, of course, a directive that cannot be carried out – and that is the point. In order to purposefully not think of an elephant, you have to think of an elephant.

The frame used in the Baylor Religion Survey (BRS) illustrates how a human point of view can limit and distort our perception of God. The report identifies (page 28) the two dimensions that were used to analyze the research analysis: “God’s level of engagement” and “God’s level of anger.”

For the sake of brevity, I will focus on the dimension of anger. Since one side of the graph assumes that God has some degree of anger at humanity, all of the responses to the survey are interpreted with that expectation. In this case the “elephant” in the report is “God’s anger.” All of the analysis done and reported results have that image of the angry God built into them.

This reflects the theological position of Baylor, its founders, its faculty and its students, so it is an honest frame from their personal experience. Even as the survey shows, there are many in the United States that believe in the Authoritarian and Critical God, so the researchers do a good job of describing what they know.

However, there are many of us in this country who do not experience God as angry with humanity. When I was growing up, Sunday School teachers constantly reminded me that “God is Love,” and God’s love is one of acceptance and welcome. Just as Jesus gathered the children to him during his ministry, we sang the song “Jesus Loves Me,” further building up that image of a warm, welcoming and caring God.

The assumption of anger by the BRS researchers does not describe my religious experience. By forcing all religious believers into that assumption of anger, they force a theological and experiential bias that is alien to many other people. Just as you cannot forget the elephant in Lakoff’s example, there is no way to forget the frame of anger built into the research reports.

While I keep trying to find some way to salvage some good from the report, I keep running into that angry elephant. I am disappointed because I had hoped to use the research in my conversations with people as their spiritual director. Yet there are two aspects of this research that I can apply.

First, there are a significant number of people in this country who believe that God is angry at them, either as an Authoritarian or Critical presence. When I am with someone in spiritual direction, I want to be sensitive to that belief, to listen carefully to how it affects their relationship with God, and whether it supports or interferes with their spiritual growth.

Second, I want to be aware of my own spiritual frames, and to avoid imposing them upon those who come to me for direction. I want to listen for how God may be acting in the other person’s life, which may be very different than my own history and experience.

It is only with God’s help that I will move beyond my own human, limited perception of God. I pray that God will challenge and support me.

Baylor’s four views of God

Time magazine had a special report summarizing the ongoing research study American Piety in the 21^st Century at the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion. This study suggests there are four perceptions of God in the United States:

• The Authoritarian God “is deeply involved in daily life and world events. God is angry at sin and can punish the unfaithful or ungodly.”
• The Benevolent God “is deeply involved in daily life and world events but is mainly a positive force reluctant to punish.”
• The Critical God “does not really interact with the world but is unhappy with its current state and will exact divine justice.”
• The Distant God “does not interact with the world and is not angry. God is more of a cosmic force that set the laws of nature in motion.”

Perhaps you have already determined which definition fits you, or maybe none of them seem to apply? It might have been quick and simple to say “this is it,” or you found yourself caught between different viewpoints? Possibly you see yourself as having started with one viewpoint, but now being in a very different place? Or, maybe its doesn't work for you at all?

One life journey through the viewpoints

As I consider my own journey, this sociological construct of views of God might be useful for reflecting on that journey. As I proceed, I will take these at face value, without considering possible bias.

I was raised in a mainline Protestant denomination that viewed God as Benevolent. In a protected middle class suburban community in the 60’s and 70’s life was comfortable. While there was conflict in the world, it seemed far away and did not threaten me.

The family church was one that provided safety, support and nurture. In spite of mistakes and stupid things, God was not hovering to criticize or punish.

Leaving home to attend college, there was a mainline Protestant chaplain who convened a student group of like minded believers in a Benevolent God. Unfortunately that chaplain left after my sophomore year because the church was cutting budgets. But at least I found a group of like-minded people.

Freshmen year led to an encounter with the Authoritarian God. Fellow students regularly proselytized everyone. They promoted the “Four Spiritual Laws” and proclaimed only those who followed their view of God would be saved. Their Authoritarian God was involved in human life only through Jesus, who was presented as friend for all. I was not interested in the God they promoted. In fact, I began hiding my Christianity since using the word led people to think I was a part of that group.

It was also in college that I first encountered the Critical God. I assisted a woman student with cerebral palsy. She walked with crutches, so I carried her books and her tray at the cafeteria. She told me how her parents believed that her disability was God’s punishment upon her for some unknown sin. She was raised with that belief, yet struggled with it, wanting to reject it but not being able to overcome its dominance in her life. It was completely foreign to how I understood God, and it seemed a cruel belief system that caused her depression and suicidal thoughts rather than love and acceptance.

After leaving college, and beginning life as an independent adult, I began a period of deep personal questioning and doubt. While I attended congregations that proclaimed the Benevolent God, no one could show me how to know about God’s activity in my life. There were no guides to how to develop a relationship with God.

I attended seminary, hoping that along with the intellectual and professional training I would also find a relationship with God. While I had experiences that I now understand to have been of God, the academic atmosphere could not provide the perspective or the people to assist my understanding of God.

After seminary, I was a member for many years of a congregation in the Episcopal Church that took skepticism seriously and many are agnostic. It matched my growing sense of the Distant God. While God was not unimportant, the Christian education program focused on teaching an existential method for making decisions.

It was a powerful experience to get a practical process to think through how my decisions affect others as well as me. I could clearly own the impacts of the chosen action. No decision was fully right or fully wrong, because both sides of a decision involved costs and promises. That realization freed me to more fully reject the Authoritarian God or Critical God, which do not tolerate ambiguity.

However, as an existential process, God was not considered part of that decision making process. I struggled with that aspect. I wanted God to be involved, to be a presence in my life, and the congregation was uncomfortable with that perspective. The Distant God of the congregation was unable to guide me or comfort me.

But the Baylor model has some deep problems, reflecting many of the same biases as those Four Spiritual Laws that I encountered in college. But that is another topic.

Flames and Angels - Moses

When I graduated from seminary in the early 80’s, I bought a calligraphic print by Michael Podesta titled “Exodus.” The print illustrates the drama of Moses’ encounter with the burning bush. Framing the outside of the print is Moses’ plea to be left alone by God, his attempt to prove how unworthy he was of God’s attention. He argues “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” In the center of the print are orange flames rising up from the desert scrub with God’s words of promise and commitment, “I will be with you.”

Moses had been getting along just fine, in spite needing to flee to Midian after killing a brutal Egyptian overseer. He had established a life in exile, with a wife, son, and a home. The flaming bush appeared many years later, and God was calling him to leave all of that security behind. There was every reason to argue against God’s expectations for him to confront the overwhelming powers of government and civic religion.

When I try to picture myself in the story, once I got past my first response of grabbing the hose to put the fire out, I know I would do what Moses did. I would make excuses to get out of whatever those burning leaves were telling me. Who in their right mind wants to be told to quit their job, leave their family, and go to another country? I have bills to pay, and pension to think about, and responsibilities to my loved ones

Yet, several years ago, when I was teaching a class in which people could explore their own sense of being called, most of us wanted some kind of burning bush experience. As one person jokingly said, “I keep waiting for the billboard on the side of the Beltway to show up saying “Jan, your call is . . . .”

The appeal of the story for many of us is the clarity of God’s call. Maybe it is the residue of watching Hollywood’s version of the dramatic encounter with Charleston Heston as Moses. But that movie leaves out a significant part of the story; it downplays God’s demand for a dramatic change. Unlike the movie, the Bible tells us that Moses argued back. He complained about his fear of public speaking. He did not want the job.

Few people have those kinds of encounters. Maybe most of us would rebel against such a difficult and frightening expectation? Maybe we haven’t gotten as far off course from God’s hopes for us as Moses had? Maybe few are ever called to actions that totally reshape the history of a people and of the world?

For whatever reasons, God seems to prefer a more subtle approach, one which urges us along, gently pointing, opening or closing doors, and filling us with ideas and hopes. We are invited to join in being with God, to act as co-creators in building the dream God has for the world. Throughout that dream building, God is faithful to the promise made to Moses, the promise that “I will be with you always."

That is why I keep that print close. It tries to remind me of God’s promise to me, to always be with me. I don’t always remember that promise. Much of the time when I get caught in the distractions of work, adult responsibility, and commitments, I forget to listen for God. When I have been gripped with fear or loneliness in the middle of the night God seems far away. Then I start yearning for the burning bush, again.

But what I really want is to believe it when God says “I will be with you. Always.”

Flames and Angels - Mary

A few years ago I was able to visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. The tour guide leading us through each room was talking, far longer than I cared, about Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” Looking around the room, in the far corner was another Botticelli painting, an Annunciation. I immediately walked over for a closer look.

It shows Mary and Gabriel in very different roles than most paintings of that event. Gabriel is kneeling, submissive, imploring Mary to consider his proposal. Mary is the powerful one, with her hands set to push away this intruder, the creature invading her private space. She is strong, yet clearly caught by the power of what was occurring. She is not rejecting Gabriel’s invitation out-of-hand. But she isn’t a push-over either.

I can identify with this Mary and her defensive pose, knowing that is how I would react. She must have had some spunk, and a lot of courage. She would have known that to become pregnant before marriage, she would face lifelong gossip about who the father of Jesus was. She would be flaunting the sexual morals of her community by agreeing to this call from God. So Mary had good reason to say “no” to Gabriel. She was taking a very big risk for God, and for her whole life could not know that anyone would really believe her story. Once she had said “yes,” once she became pregnant, there was no turning back.

Her famous song of the heart, the Magnificat, reflects her understanding of her society’s treatment of the lowly and powerless. Yet, she also proclaims a new social order. The mighty and powerful will lose their power and their riches. Those who were ignored and excluded by the religious community will be exalted, and brought forward to a new life and relationship with God filling their needs. It is not Mary meek and mild who is singing this song, but Mary of courage who says yes knowing it will change the world.

I have sung many versions of the Magnificat in various settings, including English cathedrals. It has always had mixed meanings for me. I enjoy many of the riches of the world and power in my job and as a male. Yet, as a gay male, I also experience people and a society that reject and demonize me for the same perceived sexual misbehavior that Mary encountered. The rich and powerful reject me in a similar way. So it both condemns me and it offers me hope.

For most of my life, Mary had always seemed distant, a plastic statue focused somewhere else. The candles surrounding her statues in churches were there to keep me away, to treat her as somehow different and no longer human. The Roman Catholic pronouncements of immaculate conception and bodily assumption seemed designed to further remove her from being human like me.

When I first saw that painting, for the first time I saw that a different way of relating to Mary is possible and the story could be read very differently. I began to sense that she is my sister, someone who shares with me a common bond of life experience. She is a feisty, strong and courageous woman who knows what it is like to make a decision to agree to God’s call to her.

So, how can any of us living now find any commonality with Mary? Can her story speak at all to our sense of relationship to God? Or is it easier to place her in such a high position that we can avoid dealing with what she has already shown us?

Beginning the Journey

I am on a journey, seeking God in the everyday experience of my life, in relationships with diverse people, in prayer that is spoken and silent, in music brought to life through breath and spirit, and in Christian community gathered together in worship.

This will be a place to explore how my faith continues to grow, even though there are still times of fear and despair. While God seems to be more easily glimpsed in the rear view mirror of recent experience, there are brief moments of a sense of presence. I believe that times of skepticism and doubt are to be respected, in that they allow for clarifying beliefs and cleaning out clutter.

These ramblings will reflect the world I encounter; from workplace to church communities, from next door neighbors to friends scattered around the globe, from books and articles to thoughts emerging from prayer.

As a spiritual director, I listen to others explore their own spiritual journeys. In those times, I listen to hear where and how God is present in the other person’s life. I listen for the questions about God that are being asked in the events and experiences of another. While those stories, as well as the identity of individuals, are kept confidential, they often lead me down unexpected roads and open doors that have been closed. I hope to look behind some of those doors here.

As a person of prayer, I explore the methods of prayer that engage and support me. Since it is often resistance that leads to a growth, I hope to dance with that resistance, to see how a playful interaction can energize my life and my faith.

As a musician, the chatter of words in my head becomes silent as my mind coordinates my breath, my eyes, and my muscles to bring into life something fresh and transitory. Music feeds the spirit that is within and sometimes expresses that spirit.

Worship strengthens me through the words and action of liturgy in the presence of a gathered church community. The community draws me out of my safety while pointing me toward new possibilities. The shy intravert is swept up in the passing of the peace, and fed by gathering with others around the Eucharistic table. I am made whole again.

I invite you to join me on this journey.