Daring to Dream in the Desert

Lent is here. On Thursday morning, as I was driving in to work, I metaphorically took a look around at my internal and external landscape: "Yes," I recognized, nodding to myself, "here we are in the desert, again."

The desert wilderness is a familiar setting for Lent. The season typically begins with the Gospel texts telling the story of Jesus going out into the wilderness following his baptism, to face the devil's temptations. The Old Testament imagery of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness for 40 years on their journey to the Promised Land also comes to mind.

I'm continually amazed at how closely my own life cycles seem to mirror the church's liturgical calendar. This is probably one of several key reasons my own Lutheran faith has been a good spiritual home for me. Last year, during this time, I was navigating a wilderness of still adjusting to a new life in a crazy big city. The church calendar provides for me what has been a helpful framework for orienting my own human story within a story that is greater than mine. It helps both shift and shape my focus towards that bigger picture so I don't get lost in my own "stuff." It provides me with a system for placing a more positive spin on certain life events as they unfold, as it gives me a better vantage point for attributing deeper meaning to things that might otherwise appear meaningless. "Wrestling with the devil in the wilderness" is a struggle much easier to endure when you know that Easter is coming. Easter has never failed me. In a prior blog post I wrote about the notion that "We live by the stories we tell" (Elie Wiesel). My own living takes place within the drama of a story that is much broader and wider and longer and deeper than my own. This helps me make greater sense of my life.

Lent is an appropriate time for wrestling with one's demons. This past summer I encountered a written meditation about this "confrontation":

"If you therefore go to the desert to be rid of all the dreadful people and all the awful problems in your life, you will be wasting your time. You should go to the desert for a total confrontation with yourself. For one goes to the desert to see more and to see better. One goes to the desert especially to take a closer look at the things and people one would rather not see, to face situations one would rather avoid, to answer questions one would rather forget." ~Alessandro Pronzato, Meditations on the Sand

Lent is a time for being brutally honest with ourselves. I wholeheartedly believe this can be done in a loving manner--being brutally honest does not mean self-battering. Regardless, it still might hurt just a bit as we examine ourselves and start to recognize the various facades we have built up in our minds, our hearts, and even our souls. Lent is a time for taking the steps toward returning to a more authentic version of ourselves. Who is it that God created me to be? How is the quality of my life suffering as a result of not embracing the fullness of that vision? What are my Easter hopes this year--what kind of healing do I need to bring to my mind and my heart and my soul? What will this year's Easter resurrection look like in my own life story?

I am a dreamer. As I look around at my current wilderness surroundings, I recognize that I am wrestling with certain byproducts of this fact. As a dreamer, I hope. As a dreamer, I tend to see visions of things not-yet-existing-but-seem-so-completely-plausible. As a dreamer, I am more optimist than pessimist. As a dreamer, I often view limitations as artificial perceptions. As a dreamer, I recognize that I am typically at odds with many predominant worldviews. And, just yesterday, I realized the fact that, as a dreamer, there are some days in which my life is probably more fiction than real. But this doesn't make it any less true. One of the unfortunate byproducts of dreaming is simply dreams unrealized--some dreams may still eventually be realized over the course of time, others will ultimately fail to catch the wind they need to set sail. And sometimes there is an ongoing cycle of dreams being seemingly dashed, yet resurrected again and again, refusing to be laid to rest permanently in spite of their repeated failure at managing to get both feet off the ground.

So, it seems, my Lenten journey this year is going to include wrestling in the desert with these hopes of mine that are still stuck hanging around, waiting for their wind. In light of the theme of love I articulated in my last post, I'm going to be reflecting on my own visions of love and why the things I dream about sometimes seem so incredibly elusive. The Easter story, in a nutshell, is about God's intimate, passionate love for us. This story shapes everything I believe about love. When my hopes get dashed, I think it's because of my repeated refusal to buy into society's competing worldviews of what love is "supposed" to be about. In these moments, sometimes my own faith languishes as I pause to question whether or not the things I hope for actually do exist. But, in time, I eventually return to the space where I again taste and see that love really does exist in the way that I understand it--and this is what gives me the courage to dream. I know this at the very core of my being, and this is the very bedrock on which my faith rests. Sometimes I just forget.

I hope that I will always dare to dream, even during my brief desert expeditions.

"Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly." ~Langston Hughes

A Lenten Journey: Love's Recovery

I've been thinking ahead to Lent, pondering what shape I would like it to take this year as I seek to deepen my spiritual life in some meaningful way that's appropriately relevant to my "now." People often give something up for Lent, as a spiritual practice reflecting sacrifice and penitence...but really the focus of this discipline is not what we "give up" but what we replace that "giving up" with. It's an exercise meant to renew our focus on our relationship with God and what that means for us in our lives.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Lenten season. Lent is actually one of my favorite times of the liturgical church year, as it is a season that is rich in metaphors (sin and grace; brokenness and wholeness; journeying through the wilderness to the promised land; life, death and resurrection; etc.). One of the Bible verses that always comes to mind at this time of year is one that stood out to me during the first Ash Wednesday service I attended in college:

"Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing." ~Joel 2:12-13

"Return to me with all your heart." This is always the theme that stands out for me as I think of Lent each year. This year, rather than trying to think about what I might "give up" for Lent, I'm pondering what kinds of things I might do to actively engage this task of returning to God with all my heart. What might this look like? I just read a reflection by one of my seminary colleagues who writes about a similar contrast: Giving Up or Opening Up.

Yesterday morning on the way to work I discovered more clues to my spiritual path as I continued listening to the Indigo Girls (I'm on Disk 2 now of the 1200 Curfews album). My attention took hold as the following lyrics played:

"Oh how I wish I were a trinity
So if I lost a part of me
I'd still have two of the same to live..."

It's hard to live life fully with an open heart without continually facing threats of losing a part of yourself in the midst of the journey. To live an authentic life requires constantly risking yourself. (I've never been very good at the whole "putting up walls" thing.) I loved how these lyrics recognized the reality of this risk of loss while remaining unwavering in the desire to keep forging ahead, living life to the fullest.

"But nobody gets a lifetime rehearsal..."

Oh, God, there are definitely days on which I could really use some dress rehearsal time! But...it's not gonna happen. Thankfully there's grace in appropriate places and at pertinent times, to help minimize the bruising when we don't always get things quite right.

"As specks of dust we're universal..."

Segue to Ash Wednesday! (You are dust, and to dust you shall return...) I was beginning to see my own personal theme for this year's Lenten journey take form. I began to ponder the title of the song that was playing: "Love's Recovery." And then I heard the echoes of my favorite Lenten verse, "Return to the Lord with all your heart."

"To let this love survive would be the
Greatest gift we could give..."

I rewound the song and began to listen to it from the beginning. Tell me, Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, about this greatest gift of love. As I listened to the lyrics I heard the story of a love that weathers the storm and safely survives even as relationships fall apart all around the pair. Love's Recovery.

"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." ~1 Corinthians 13:7

My journey this Lent is going to be a journey about Love. If there's anything I've learned through my fitness journey, it's that everything we "DO" matters. Rituals matter. Repetition matters. What we think about matters. And so, I'm reminded, that in order to surround myself with the kind of love I hope to have in my life, I need to return to the very source of that love. ("We love because he first loved us." ~1 John 4:19). Immerse myself in that love. Practice and participate in that love. And then, most importantly, share the love.

For Everything There Is a Season

Over the last couple of weeks, as I've struggled with enduring a long season of trying to fight off colds, viruses, and other ailments that have plagued me off and on since New Year's Day, I have been intentional in trying to listen for what I'm supposed to be learning during this time. Rather, regardless of whether I am "supposed" to be learning anything, it's still important for me to ask the question, what "can" I be learning?

This latest bout--round 3--has really dug me down deep. I'm wrestling with an asthmatic bronchitis that has taken deep root in my lungs and I've been slow to recover from. Just yesterday I returned to the doctor for an updated plan of action for helping to return me to my healthy self. It's slow going, but I have faith that I am finally on the right track and will soon be able to put this "sick" season behind me. My spirit NEEDS to finally put this season behind me. Besides my body being exhausted from fighting off ailments, there are moments when I've felt the emotional effects of depression from being down so long physically. I can't get out to do the things that help ward off the usual negative toxins that life throws at you: stress, anxiety, sadness, or whatever other things come up in usual day to day life. My ability to go work it all off at the gym has been thwarted by not being able to breathe. Oxygen is important.

So, in spite of everything, I've tried to embrace even being sick by trying to listen for what I might be able to hear. It's lonely lying in bed trying to breathe through inflamed bronchial tissues, just trying to sleep so my body will have time to repair itself. When the tears come (I'm sure the various steroids I'm on have had an added effect to feeling hormonally out of sync) I try to maintain a delicate balance of letting them run the course they need to but also trying to gently steer them away as I know crying is not helpful for someone already struggling with breathing issues. Finally in the last couple of days some of my intention is starting to pay off. I'm recognizing some spiritual movements within that are leading me to feel more hopeful again. I'd say there's a lot in life that is worth putting up with if I find that I am also simultaneously being spiritually moved. But, just as creative inspiration usually cannot be forced, spiritually moving experiences aren't usually something we can just plan on. We can be disciplined in trying to create spaces that allow such things to happen, but then...we just have to sit and wait, sometimes in sheer silence. But, as I was reminded today, sometimes God is in the silence.

1 Kings 19:11-12:
"He said, 'Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.' Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence."

Sometimes we have a tendency to look for God in moments that dazzle, amaze, excite, thrill, or even comfort us in some dramatic ways. But sometimes there is simply silence. Perhaps when we try to pay attention to God's presence in those moments and places where there is silence--moments and places which, on the surface, may seem to reflect God's absence--perhaps this act of spiritual discipline actually beckons God's presence into our life and hearts in a new way as we are intentionally seeking God out...extending an invitation for God to come near.

So, I've been seeking God in the silence, trusting that if I keep listening, eventually the words would come. In the last several days or so I've felt myself entering into a new season of my life....a season which I'm hoping will begin with feeling healthy again soon! Additionally, I am looking forward to a season of spiritual nourishment and growth. Having already sensed this spiritual shifting in various ways internally, I finally heard some words that I was needing to hear as I was driving home from work today. Sometimes God speaks in the silence. Other times, God speaks while listening to the Indigo Girls. "Kristy, what do you want your life to be about right now?" This is the focus I've been looking for. I want a lot of things, but I know where the focus has to be if I want those things ever to come true. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The things I want come out of what I treasure most. And actually, as I am typing and reflecting on the fact that I just said I want a lot of things, I realize in some respects that I really only want one thing: one true love. But, like creative inspiration, and spiritual experiences, real love can't be conjured up on command. I can be disciplined in creating an open and welcoming space for love to enter in....but then I can only wait for nature to take its course. But I'm re-learning that it's worth it to wait for the real thing. It's worth everything for that one thing.