Duck and Goose

The Still Small Voice, which the original Hebrew translates as The Thin Silence, has been guiding people since time began. God talks to people all the time. Maybe they're listening. Maybe they're not. Maybe they don't recognize it. They call it, intuition, or a nudge, or a feeling.

For me it is sometimes an audible voice, sometimes a phrase that will not leave my brain, sometimes a quiet certainty. This time, the later was drawing me to the StoryVision Weekend Retreat sponsored by the Northwest Christian Writers Association and lead by Mick Silva. Shaky finances, newly booted out of my writing office for 'overusing the building', and blown head gaskets that needed repairing threatened my ability to obey the impulse to attend. But I stayed the course. I have learned about pushing through opposition. If I don't do it, I miss a blessing.

In the world of Christian Faith, moments when God's goodness simply overrides any evil to introduce pure love and destiny in the clearest way possible, are called Kairos moments. I knew down to my toes that this weekend was such a moment.

And there they were, a flock of women readily able to peel back the layers of their hearts and narratives, in a setting where the focus was, as a friend of mine once described 'opening up a vein and pouring the blood into words on a page".

Confirmation for a path upon which one is on is frequently meted out by the kinship of others. So it was that weekend. 

Out in the world, a discussion of feelings or reflections on the narrative of one's journey from the inside out is viewed as TMI. Definitely too much information. Castigation for seeming boundrilessness comes in the form of grimaces and a slow retreat to another part of the room. Here, in this place of serenity and beauty, we took turns sharing that which was shaping us as people, as women, and the challenges of putting those words down on paper. 

Steady on, I began to tell myself. Keep going. Deeper. Wider. More intense. No stepping back, but rather, peering into even more darkness and bringing it into the light. I saw the arc of my story as a writer stretch across a sky I had not lifted my head to see before.

Laughter around a campfire. Sharing in the bright light of a well windowed living room. Sleep, with the sounds of others moving through their night rhythms, all drew me into my own calling. I became more at ease with those words I had already written and more eager to discover the ones yet to find their life in my sentences.

On the last afternoon, we sat gazing at the water while Mick gave us his final and best encouragements. My eyes found pleasure in watching the odd coupling of a white duck and a Canadian goose on the dock stretching out beyond us. They seemed friends. They sat contentedly side by side. What an odd pairing I thought to myself. 

Unexpectedly, the Goose rose to slip in the water. That's when I saw his left leg clearly injured, crippled, useless. As he hopped his way into the water, the white duck followed , his companion. 

That's us, I thought. Us writers all try to get to the water with one leg injured at some time or another. In the water, we can glide as others do, but the trek from dock to water needs companionship. Because we are all so different as writers, we look like odd pairings as we cajole and urge each other on to do the difficult to get to that which creates ease or pleasure for others. 

How like God to take my obedience to the impulse of the Holy Spirit and bless me with new colleagues, new understanding, and one terrific metaphor for the days when I type up in isolation the deepest parts of my heart.

Love,

Deborah

A New Thing

According to the Youtube description, I'm listening to ten  hours of waves crashing. It's the noise in my ears that helps me focus when I'm letting words come to me, or making choices about which ones to use.

This isn't the life I'd planned. I'm supposed to be happily celebrating about my thirty something year of marriage and taking care of my three grandchildren while I work my last couple of years in the church as a pastor who enjoys creating music. Instead I am a houseguest of friends who are supportive of me carving out a new life. Three of my children are alienated from me and two of them are involved in benignly, but effectively toxic situations that keep them from the truth of their stories. My husband left me for another woman and left me with nothing but the furniture. My youngest daughter, the only one I got to raise alone, remains in my life working towards her dreams and goals, steady as she goes.

How did all that happen?

At the end of my thirties I prayed a prayer God took very seriously. In the beginning of my forties I asked some questions and set some limits. All hell broke loose. I lost about everything and ended up with virtually no family or career but a 'yes' answer to my prayer. I told God I wanted Jesus to be so real to me I could feel his hand in mine. I forgot to say, 'If you can do all that without it costing me anything, I surely would appreciate it.'. Pruning hurts. Separating the wheat from the chaff, well, chafes. Purifying like the gold/dross thingy causes third degree burns.

But I was given a column in a newspaper. All the while I wandered around the enclosed paddock in which God had me, literally surrounded by water on all sides and absolutely no doors of escape opening, Surrounded by people who were very wounded -- let me underscore that-- VERY wounded, who took as license my presence to be an opportunity to torture, I was subjected to ' planned aggression'.

"Anybody can love a friend", it says in scripture. But these people were so wounded they could lie more easily and often than they told the truth.

God gave me no out. There was no escape. I had only one choice. I was going to have to rely on my faith and I was going to have to learn to let myself be loved and cared for. Letting myself be poured into was not easy. Mainly because I didn't need this amount

I needed this

I was devoid of every last ounce of resources... except my faith.

I had to learn to get spit on, and defamed and shunned and discredited and keep a soft heart and refrain from retaliation. 

Most importantly, I had to learn to listen for, to and follow the Holy Spirit. Eventually, every path was cut off to me save one. In a most daring moment of faith, I utterly trusted in God. I put everything in storage, rented an office where I could work a lot and slept  in my car. 

Everything broke loose for the good. 

In the days after this, in many ways and formats, I will be telling the story of The Grand Adventure. For now, let me suggest it is an option to seek something beyond this world and find in it, in that Love, life and fullness of time; days that are not just spent but lived. I am so happy God seriously answered yes with the creation of a whole new thing. What happens when your heart is broken will decide if you rerun the previous situation or move on to something else.

Love,

Deborah

The Anatomy of Hate

She wandered down the aisle and said in her condescending voice, "You know, Debby. We love you." And I , for the first of many times to come, drew myself up into my inner strength and said, "No, I was sent to teach you love."

And that was the beginning of twenty years of hell living in a place where the most wounded of the most wounded lived. God was teaching me the 'why' of the  message of God's love. Why did people need to hear they were loved unconditionally without any effort or merit on their part? Because they were filled with shame and remorse and guilt and sorrow and despair and fear and hopelessness.

Take the woman, for example. Later, I was told by the son of the lover, how this woman's husband had carried on an affair with his assistant for fifteen years. Now, in her eighties, her remark at one gathering that the woman she most admired was a neighbor who use to babysit for her husbands love child while he and his lover went on tristes, eluded me.

But I had lead a church into truth telling and a desire for repentance, an old fashioned word that means "I don't wanna do that stuff that's hurting me anymore'. She was fearful, although the entire community knew about it, that she would be publicly shamed. I simply HAD to be removed.

So she, and the treasurer who was having an affair with a treasurer from another church and had been embezzling money got together to get a phone campaign rolling, and a year and a half later, they successfully maneuvered themselves into a win. The church had been growing in leaps and bounds and people were just at the point of joining when the whole thing was dragged sideways.

In the midst of all that, there was much more woundedness revealed.

In shock and disbelief that such evil could win, I wandered for twenty years destitute and couch surfing or going from one bad rental to another as the hate campaign continued and I lacked the resources to leave. Ironically the further excuse for abuse came from a fledgling Domestic Violence agency which had stumbled it's way into affluence and favourtism where it circled around the unhealed histories of those involved.

It was a lot to endure. And yet, God was faithful which is why this telling is recorded on my 'faith' page.

Countering the bad, I met amazingly kind and loving people who were eager and willing to live from the center of their lives out, and again and again came along beside me with physical resources and comfort and aid and encouragement and faith and joy and blessings and cheer and wisdom and networking and love.

Do you see how much longer that list is than 'they booted me out without anything in the middle of winter with just me and my birth children right after my husband left me and I lost two adopted kids to their birthmothers and the husband who abused me.'?

The hate that was extended to me came from a place inside those people that included almost everything listed in the first descriptor I offered of why people need to hear they are unconditionally loved. It comes to a place where the heart has been squeezed so tightly blood and love cannot flow. In it's place enmeshment and codependency and dependency and a willingness to denigrate and defile filled the veins like electricity.

What is flowing through you? For me, it was the ultimate test. How was I going to respond to hate. That is the topic for another essay. But it is the question I must ask myself everyday. The hate continues. See haters aren't set right by the truth. They are only set right by repentance,  that indicates some degree of engaging with base behavior or attitudes or thoughts and turning around into another direction.

In a tale that is wonderful to tell, I did make the choice to repeatedly forgive and God richly blessed me because of it, not with riches but with faith and opportunities for positive influence. It wasn't easy and I wasn't always willing , only willing to be willing. My circumstances did not improve much. From the outside my life looked pathetic. But inside, where it counts, I had joy and peace and hope, lots of hope.
More later, when I speak of the power of love

Love,

Deborah

A Tale of Two 'Whys'

The big heat is lessening. Life is not about moving from shady or air conditioned place to place. My thinking seems to be more straightforward again.

This new lifestyle affords a lot of time thinking about things. That's good for a writer, a musician, a theologian, and woman, an artist, a differently- abled person.  I've been thinking about how I got here , to this place, not only locale but this spiritual place.

Stuck in a little village for twenty years there is so much to forgive. I used to forgive so easily. My ex husband used to say I had the heart of David. Then, like Job's story, it seemed that life on earth said, 'Oh yea? Well forgive THIS!" and then threw every arrow conceivable through my heart, piercing it, trying to draw blood.

For me now, it isn't that I don't still forgive constantly and fairly easily by just human standards, it's that I get stuck on wanting to know why. Where I stay entangled, though not enmeshed thank God, is trying to understand the 'why' of someone else's hurtful behavior or decision to not choose a life giving activity.

Why - does someone find their self esteem and self worth through affluence and possessions?
Why - does someone hurt so badly inside they can't face it and project out their pain on others?
Why- does someone do things that hurt themselves and, in doing so, hurt me?
Why- does someone prefer a lie to the truth or The Truth?
Why- does someone keep their distance from the pain of loss.

The list is endless. I have arrived at this. I cannot understand someone else's 'why' unless they tell me or someone who knows their 'why' tells me. For example, years ago there was an old geezer who just wanted me out of a position of leadership. He worked very hard to have me removed. When the end of my tenure was coming, a man came to me and told me his mother was the man's assistant and for fifteen years the man forced her into an affair she did not want. That was the days when women didn't know they couldn't be forced into things. She had even fled to another state to get away from him.

He and his wife, who knew of the affair and chose to look the other way back in the day when women didn't know they didn't have to put up with affairs unless they wanted to, were very fearful of a new trend in the organization for people to tell their true stories.  Their 'why' was a fear of facing their own story.

After I knew that, everything made sense and I let go of a rope in a game of tug of war I could not win.

There was another man in the same organization. During a particular ritual of healing, he stepped forward to me and whispered, "I want to be a better husband to my wife". I knew it took every ounce of courage in his being to say those words to me. I gave him the biggest smile of affirmation and said words to the effect of 'you already are'.

When I get stuck and I think the behavior of others is incomprehensible, I ask the Lord to take me back to the list in my own life. When was self esteem and self worth found in something other than God's Love for me? When was I frozen and out of touch with my pain? When did I hurt myself by binge eating? When did I come to love The Truth? When did I keep my distance from my loss and cry only sixteen tears when necessary?

I just have to remember my journey. Then I understand why. It's never fails to connect me appropriately with understanding. 
Love,
Deborah

Making Lists

So this is it...this is the day to which the culmination of twenty plus years of obedience to the Spirit has lead. I have a new life, a fresh start. All of the enmeshed experiences I gave myself and lead myself into and said yes to because of the circumstances of my childhood, have pretty much been dismantled...

I begin, like I always begin... I make lists. I get organized. I try to get a mental handle on the picture of my life, the constructs, the paradigms, the overarching themes...I grasp at what I can and hold more than I should.

Everything my heart desires is about surrendering and releasing and receiving, and yet that is not the operative mode of my comfort level....

So I make lists. They are lists I rarely check off. Today I went through a few from the past and found myself surprised that there were three of them that actually had lines crossing out indicating accomplishment. That's a lot.

Usually I just transfer the items to another list or wait until the items are no longer timely or relevant.

But if I am to truly step into the unknown, truly live one moment at a time, I have to see the making of lists and discarding of them as a careful modification of surrender. And I ask myself the question, 'what is the practical experience of trusting the Spirit?" Or a second question,"Is following the Spirit too disorganized?"

How can I step out of my comfort level on a daily level and still keep my wits about me, still stay grounded?
Is it all mutually exclusive?

I know that when I look back at these days from a distance, I will have the answers to my questions.

What I know from looking back at previous days now is that I didn't even ask the right questions...
I'm OK with that. Maybe I just need to feel like I'm hanging on. Maybe that's the way I move through things at the behest of the Spirit....trying to make the intangible concrete....

I'm watching me....how will I do this new, creative life? How will I take all I've been given and , in obedience, create what I am lead to create?  So different than the life of service I have lead....
More later...
Love,
Deborah

Can You Speak Secular

When I was in teacher training for early childhood oh so many years ago, the lab school where we took our classes had a distinct disdain for the anthropomorphism of animals. We were forbidden to read stories to children where any animal talked. It was said to mislead them.

In the same way, sometimes, the traditional church can be a gatekeeper for what is sacred and meaningful and what is not. 

I heard someone talking about the meaning of her coffee mug a while or so back. It made me think again of a huge theological discovery I've made that is ancient truth rediscovered. Other,non, marginal, dis, doubting and prior believers are eager for us to hear what is sacred to them. They will, if we are willing to do so, let us listen to what has had meaning for them that is beyond the here and now. Maybe it's a place, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a book, and maybe it's an afghan or a chair or a cabin in the woods near a lake.

We who believe have a peculiar call to share what we know here. We know that the onus on followers of Jesus is to listen first and share second. We know it is important to go to the other, non, marginal, dis, doubting, and prior believers rather than making them come to us. And if we don't suggest they come to us, it has to be in a venue familiar to them. We worry less about wandering from the path and more about not walking with people on their own streets. That is the new road to Emmaus.

You see, it is true that teaching children that animals can talk is misleading =except for those youtube animals that can sing and dance and of course my own dog and cats who have the ability to say 'OUT' quite clearly. But what children learn when they are young and ducks and trumpeter swans and pokey little puppies are losing their way is that there is an affinity between us and animals. It's a starting point. 

When somebody tells me how holy Kahlil Gibran's 'The Prophet' is to them, it's an opportunity to begin a discussion of the sacred and how it moves us past the concrete. I suppose I could go into a discussion of Trinitarian theology and kill their joy in about a nano second but what's the point; my correct theology or their budding one? The only test question we have to answer on the Jesus exam is 'Yes or No?'  And getting to Jesus was already modeled for us as he put his hands in dirt and water and people's hearts and said, '"what do you see of eternal value and meaning here?"

Let me put it even more simply. I have a colleague who was raised as an atheist Jew and she asked me one time, "How do you see the sacred in the secular?"

How can a coffee mug lead to eternal meaning? That's the new millennium calling for Christians in an age more people than ever are spiritually curious even as the church is either dying or becoming an arena spectator sport. We don't spread the Gospel as much anymore as we translate. 

Can you speak secular? Can we say where we once were and how we're not there anymore and how that happened even as we held our meaningful gift mugs?  Jesus would now sit at the Espresso stand instead of the well, and say "The Holy Spirit is a little like your shot of flavour that sweetens the deal and makes it more pleasant.” And so we drink from a new cup, if we can bear to allow ourselves a new chalice.

What Victory Looks Like: the difference between 'have' and 'of'

The faith that guides and directs, sustains and motivates based on a relationship with a God who loves and cares doesn't always have the feel of 'the better life'.

That interaction between heaven and earth that develops our spiritual self in ways of maturation leads us, frequently, into situations where the rub is real and the chances for earthly defeat are real.

Looking at the big picture, the long view, and standing on higher ground as often as we can is what yields a harvest of peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, self control,  and love.

By earthly standards, two weeks ago, I looked like an utter failure. Now, I just have my first published book that is resonating with people in life giving ways. The only difference inside of me between two weeks ago and now, is a sense of relief that following the invisible nudge of the Spirit has proven trustworthy. External standards would still make me look like a failure. The smile on my face, the increased peace everyone tells me is emanating from my being, the hope in my heart which does not disappoint are the tell tale indicators of victorious living.

Keep paying attention to your insides. People of faith live from the inside out. Everyday, they live with 'centered' as the goal. On those days when we have  faith instead of being people of  faith, we miss out on seeing what God sees, loving what and who God loves, and speaking what comes from a heart that offers the unconditional love it has first received.

It's so tough. Jes' sayin' but keep trying.
Love,
Deborah

The Difference My Faith Makes

Fie on me for not being able to see it earlier. Why did I get things a different way? Why did I see things a different way?

Let's take brain science for instance. They all seem so surprised that babies are people, right from the start. Instead of confirmation, the researchers were seeming to just make assertions. Details about baby's gaze, reactions, engagement, all brought forth ooh's and aah's as if electricity had once again been discovered.

As with most epiphanies, I'm not sure how and why the catalytic reaction of past and present mixed such that a new realization with the proper label 'truth' afixed itself to the concept. But one such day, I came to understand...ahhh.... the brain science people do not come from the foundation of Psalm 139. They do not know, before they were born they were knitted together in their mother's womb. Somebody created them. What a difference to not be created.

Brain science people are starting from scratch.

Because of my faith I am not starting today from scratch. There is a relationship of Love that guides me into the day, through the day and will finish the day with me.

When I look at a person I know that person has depth and meaning and longevity.

In the same way, I have wondered why people within the church frequently classified statements or opinions or experiences I shared as 'too much'. The world would not categorize them that way. Then, by the parameters of the same epiphanal notion, I reckon they have used their faith to protect themselves from the world, from remembering what it is to forget they are Loved.

Somewhere in the middle, is the constant of faith's moving in, around , through, into , out of, and beyond daily life, the now and not yet, today and eternity.

My faith makes a difference because if I sit in the middle of it, I can be in the time zone where God can truly teach me, use me, and connect with me, without 'me' getting in the way. I can experience God in ways of surrender and response and obedience that expand, grow, nurture and prune all the way that is most a blessing in the most expansive way.

Way too much for many. Next point, maybe...how does one increase the ability to receive God?

Ponder that.....