Thoroughly Alive

When the bench was placed, probably sapplings were all that stood in front of it. Now, the trees are about forty feet tall. The view is to the left or right of them.

The evening cool has come after a long hot day. The breeze displaces my hair and I like it. Messy hair is a sign of high fashion or exertion.

The effort to walk to this bench from the car is not my legs or breath. Notwithstanding the way my ribs hurt from puking a bad piece of pizza and the rest of the day's consumption for three hours, two nights ago, my body can go the distance. Only my left arm and shoulder hurt from needing to downsize to a single toed cane from a tri.  The effort comes from the decision to become strong enough to walk around the whole lake like I used to be able to do.

The goal is to walk freestanding. My gluts and quads need to be quite a bit stronger to accomplish that. Walking is primary to achieving that milestone. Using a cane, having downgraded from a walker to a four toed and now the tri, is progress. It forces the weaker leg, the new leg, to remember how to bear weight and create balance with the other leg; to stride.

I look at the people using wheelchairs and remind myself the worst did not happen.

Taking a risk on that surgery was the scariest risk I've taken in ages. All I knew was, in the natural things seemed to be lining up. I had to let everyone else hold the supernatural in their hearts and hands.

The surgical team is arrogantly smug with the success of  their work. Well they should be! I have a new leg, a new body. A new life.

So I keep coming to Greenlake and attempting, step by step, to recover the acuity to walk around it. When this was our family neighborhood,  I could lap it, all 2.8 miles,  in 45 minutes. This evening I have walked the requisite five minutes in one direction. On this bench I rest a bit before heading out in the other direction.  Since I found that easy this time out, I am to add one more minute next time. Then another, then another. Gradually, I will be able to turn around and face the aqua theatre to return to the car without having to rest.

When I can do that thirty minutes in one direction and then turn around and return to the car, I will know I can do the lake again. I'm figuring the first time will feel like being set free.

This morning Facebook brought up a 'memory'. It was about making the most of adversity. You know what I like about adversity? The best way to go through it is thoroughly alive. There's this new popularity about paying attention to your breathing and it relaxes you. It's true. If you pay attention during adversity, big or small, someone cuts you off while you're driving, or those terrible rainstorms in the South right now, you begin to acquire the skills that deepen typical, non adverse living.

While I was first recovering from doctors opening up a seven inch spot in my thigh, holding all my soft tissue aside and cutting away diseased broken down bones in order to put in a titanium prosthetic with a pretty pink ceramic ball, I was on a light dosage of oxycodon and heavy duty tylenol - insert little trademark thingy please. Two weeks into it, switching to just Percocet. I expected that the pills would do what ibuprofen does;take away the pain. Not so. They just made me not care about the pain. It was such a foreign experience for me. I discovered I had to will myself to wean from them before I developed a habit of not caring about pain. It was an attractive idea, that of not having to pay attention to pain. I understood a whole segment of the population I had not before comprehended.

Since 1984, I have been committed to being fully alive. I had a moment. I said out loud to God, "I will do anything to not have to live like this anymore." It is not a lifestyle American pop culture indulges or cares for. No little lies, no speeding forward unconsciously, no external definition of self. I lost a lot of people who were afraid of my decision. They were not interested in anything deep or confronting their pain. I was very very sad when they left. I got through my sorrow by committing more deeply to 'thoroughly alive'.

Whether or not you choose to be thoroughly alive IS a choice. Deeply alive, rigorously, assiduously, methodically, comprehensively alive. It is the decision to be alive in the natural, AND be alive in the eternal, the sphere beyond us and all around us we do not see. It is the decision to live incarnationally in both the now and the not yet, or the big picture we can't physically see.

Dealing with pain and moving beyond it requires existence that has a wider perspective, a deeper meaning. It is a trial and error process of discovery.

The first step is to say it. Commit to it. "I want to be thoroughly alive".  OK. You're out of the car. Now figure out and take the second step. Take a deep breath, exhale, and pick up your feet.
Love,
Deborah

Of Hips and Walking and Unknown Days Ahead...

Whew! A week of miracles happened the second week of April 2016. If God had drawn a line on my timeline marked "BB" and "AB", signifying the division of my days into those filled with obstacles that seemed insurmountable and those that involved breathtaking new opportunities of happiness and ease, it would be that week.

Four days in a row, events occurred freeing me from shackles of opposition to living each day using my full potential of gifts and talents and wisdom.

Day one- a surgeon agreed to operate on me, giving me a new hip and repairing damage that was 55 years old. My mobility would be improved 200%.
Day two - a transcript was freed that had been used to keep me from proving I had taken a certain set of classes that endorsed my professional credentials.
Day three- I was accepted into a degree program to study music composition and English.
Day Four-I signed with an agent to represent a portion of my body of work, out in the world.

I was breathless. I knew how Joseph felt when he was placed in the palace after decades of wrongful imprisonment.

Sixteen weeks later, I am leaning into the execution of my days with these new parameters. With not a clue as to how to live in this new way, with these new freedoms, I  take it second by second. A minute, an hour, a day, is too large a chunk of time.

What would you do if a chronic obstacle was removed? What would you do if four obstacles were removed?

What do you do with sudden freedom?

All of my life habits had to change. Previously arranged around compensating for the obstacles,now, daily disciplines need to support the new freedoms.

With a hip that now works and is strong, I learn to stand tall, and walk on my leg in a new, more trusting way.

No longer discredited as someone who is unqualified, it is on me to display the education for which I worked so hard, so many years ago.

What once was just a dream, full development of my love of music and becoming a better writer, is now an item requiring the scheduling of office visits, and classes. and arrangement of time to do justice to the learning process.

The opportunity for my words to reach a wider audience, offer more encouragement to more people, presents a to-do list and a willingness to order my life such that I could engage more relationships with more readers. It made my efforts to do so a collaborative effort where I need to rein in my 'Lone Ranger' and allow myself to have someone else speak for me and my work. Surrender and trust to the nth degree and days filled with hard deadlines and new requests for my highest and best are now de rigueur. Do you notice the shift in tense? The change was immediate. Overnight.

Before the surgery, the doctors were concerned that I had been disabled for so long, unable to walk properly, I would not be able to wrap my brain around walking again. My prehab included accepting immediate change. Indeed, the first words I heard clearly in recovery were 'She's weight bearing'.
Five hours after surgery I stood tall with my feet on the floor and walked fifteen steps. They wrote the number down on the whiteboard. "Fifteen steps". Green marker, as I recall.

After years of professing belief in a God who loved me and wanted the best for me, with no natural circumstances to give evidence of that, I was now in the middle of four different stories, examples, of situations that could only be explained by the existence of a profoundly loving God who had my best at heart. My faith was put to the test, not to get me through, but to move forward in blessing, because it apparently was true. What I believed was true. God loved me, wanted the best for me and had 'plans for good and not for evil.'.

The story of Jacob is about his hip reminding him Who is in charge. I have that. Joseph, after decades of imprisonment, was vindicated regarding unjust accusations because someone noticed he had a gift. Check the next box off. And the last two items, the remaining miraculous opportunities, present me with,once again, as I had in the desert, walking in blind faith that I will be able to hear the Spirit instruct me in the ways of swimming in a larger pond, in a stronger actualization of my gifts and talents than I have ever imagined.

Blessings. We all pray for blessings. But how do you live with blessings? How do you steward blessings?
Gonna be another steep learning curve. "B" stands for breakthrough.
Love,
Deborah

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.....

TheTruth About Faith...

Making the statement, "I'm in this mess because of church leaders who didn't have any faith in their hearts" will put a wrong slant on things.

It's a true statement, but what I'm in is not a mess. Actually for the first time in about two decades, I'm NOT in a mess. I'm in a plan.

But how different my life would have been, would be now if oh so many church leaders had chosen to attend to the deficit I exposed in church leadership instead of trying to discredit and dissuade me from being seen and heard as someone who was accurately reporting events and conditions.

So, how do we end up with church leaders who don't have any faith in their hearts?

Start with seminary, go through tradition and end up with culture.

Seminary is just a head trip. Pure and simple. No one gets sat down in seminary and asked, 'Why did Jesus die for you?" "Where is the pain that needs the healing of the Balm of Gilead?" "What has God designed in you.?"  Those are questions that lead to faith.

No, sadly in seminary they debate whether those are questions that need to be asked.

Second, tradition says church leaders will have a very narrow view of the world.
They worship at only one church with an occasional field trip, they have duties that keep them away from non believers or a-believers or former believers, who ask very good questions.
They are put on a pedestal and not taught how to be player coaches.
They like all of the above because it keeps them from having to endure social intimacy which makes them uncomfortable ( according to one particular study).

No, I am in this plan because I have faith. As one leader put it one time, "The trouble with you is that you take all this sh*t seriously". Yup...faith can cause you trouble.

I don't have their retirement plan right now, but I do have my spiritual integrity. I think I'm going to be OK.

The Spiritual Side of Sleeping in the Car

Sounds like an enormous sacrifice doesn't it? Sounds noble, sounds self sacrificing. Kinda sorta is. Except for two things. First of all, my office space is pretty deluxe. I keep getting gifted with weekends away and housesitting jobs, and...
the front seat of my car is way better for my back than a big ol' bed.

When you have an L4-5 injury you spend the night tossing and turning to keep the pain at bay. Sleeping is an endurance experience. It takes ten hours in bed to get eight hours sleep. Stretching out means curling up in fetal position with a pillow between your knees and everytime you turn, that pillow has to be readjusted.

In the car? The seat envelopes me at just the right angles. I am not stretched out straight. I find myself sleeping four or five hours at a stretch in a deep deep sleep.

Plus, the place where I sleep is wildly secure and protected. A bathroom is at hand for middle of the night runs, although I sleep so deeply I find I frequently just sleep through the night.

Who knew?

So...I agree to this plan God puts in my heart and I end up with a better quality of life than I ever could have imagined.

This shared workspace building is a dream. Simply a dream. I know and like half the people here already from very pleasant associations. I'm eating better than ever and losing weight, much desired, at a very rapid pace because I cook and eat better at a more regular rate. My office has stairs that are involved and so I am getting more exercise than I ever would have imagined.

All of this goes together to generate some of the best work I've ever produced. I'm more relaxed, less stressed, more creative, feeling more safe than I ever thought possible. I can't wait to get to work each day from my morning shift.

Ah...the morning shift. I finish and then I have an incredibly beautiful place, again, completely safe, where I can go for a long morning nap before I head for the office.

The connections the Lord created are stronger and I'm getting more positive feedback than ever before.
So...here's the lesson. What is God calling you to give up to get a better quality of life? What is God calling you to do that you don't think is possible because you haven't surrendered what you don't think you could give up?

God has set a new standard of living for me. It is not one I thought possible. I have no doubt that in a year or two or three I will be able to purchase a home and have a bedroom with proper closets.

When that happens, I will have a whole new habit of living, a whole new standard of living.
And my trust and surrender of the Lord God on High? Off the charts...just off the charts. I never ever thought I would be so provided for.

Yes, I look back and try to see where I could have had better if I'd surrendered more but you know what happens? It's as if God jammed the channel. Looking back rarely brings good results in moving forward.

So for today, I rest in each moment. I cherish the provision of each hour. I do my best to make the most of it. I rejoice. I say thanks. I relax and go to the next moment with an open heart.

That isn't what you thought I was going to write/say is it?:)

The Church and Me

So yesterday I found the evaluation sheets from a job I took for sixteen weeks during the summer of 2005.

The word I get to use now that I'm just a business woman who happens to be a Christian is pissed.

I wish I could have seen everything clearly when it was all happening. My innocence and naivete astounds me. Just clueless.

Why? Well, for some odd reason that I will only know in the afterlife I suppose, I always see things from an eternal perspective. I see health in people who are really unhealthy. Meaning I see the possibility of them as whole and functioning. I see the possibility of growth in stagnant situations. I see what 'healed' looks like in the wounded.

To every person, I speak into their best life. If Haley whatshisface saw dead people, I see life. To the detriment of my own protection.

Sometimes I think God has kept me where I am, without opening any escape hatches, so that I could lose the rose coloured glasses.

The interconnected enmeshment of the denominations in which I have moved and had my being is beyond belief. It's incestuous. They are men who are faking it and not quite making it. Company men they used to call them in the denomination of my childhood. The business of religion.

So here's me, on this Donna Quixote like quest for spiritual maturity and life abundant saying, 'Hey gang! This new life we are offered is so cool. Don't you just want to get to the core of your pain and fear and turn it all over to God and let it be washed clean and given new meaning?" And their like, well, really we're in this for the applause and affirmation and leader worship we can receive because it feels really safe and comfortable.

You would think it would lead me to hate wouldn't you? But it doesn't. It can't. Because in November of 1993, I took vows to hold God's people in my heart. I'm supposed to love them even when they hurt me. So, my default is always , after I've set some limits, to go into teaching mode.

I spent all day on a book I've been working on since the mid nineties which if written with excellence and read properly, has the possibility of leading people to a deeper relationship with themselves and a closer relationship with God. That could be revolutionary. It will not have any patriarchal aroma to it. That might be different, freeing for some hopefully.

Then tonight, I spent my hours working on my spiritual memoir.

In both instances, I have had an opportunity to see with hindsight, what my spiritual journey has been. It's enough to make you believe in God.

Now, I'm not going to keep my experience from the summer of 2005 a secret. It was the singularly most defining time period in my life outside of the Spring of 1969 in Cambridge England when I surrendered my life to God. And no doubt, as always happens, when I speak my truth, people who are embarrassed about their behavior might see it as an attack or criticism.

But I am, at this point in my life, fully confident that God is working in their lives as well, whether they want God to or not. Good will come of me telling my story.

And this day, this most incredible day when I am reaping the blessing of a  thousand moments of small obediences to the nudge, the whiff that has been my pillar of smoke and fire, I wish that for them. I wish healing and awareness and increased closeness to the eternal love that shapes and molds us for the best we can receive.

The Blessing of Obedience

Today was a day filled with the pay off of blind, faithfilled obedience. I spent a lifetime learning to discern the voice, the will, the nudge, the hint, the whiff, of God's communication with me, God's leading, God's intended good will towards me.

Yet, so often I sabotaged my own blessing by not trusting that growth, that proces. Today was a 'yes'.
And I sat in the good pleasure of being alive and unbounded creative energy and peace with who God has made me to be all day long.

I would wish for you a day like I had today. It encourages me to be moreso.

Faith Based Living

The journey to my current faith walk has been so extraordinary, it inspires, in me,awe for the living God

Coming from a family of lip service and non belief, head knowledge and denigration, that the Spirit would break in on me at such a young age and I would continue to have urgings to search and clues to follow into the deeper in and higher up, is remarkable.

This weekend, when I examined my current fascination with Joel Osteen's material that retrains my brain to think in terms of a God who desires to bless me, I saw a parallel to my respect and desire to learn from Joyce Meyers. I was working from unbelief to belief with her and now I am working from Spiritual riches to riches in the natural with the Osteen teachings.

Both of those are so extraordinarily far from my foundational experiences in the church. I come from mainline club status. Rules and rituals girding the loins of a closeted faith enmeshed with an organization and building that neither breathes in nor expires in faith.

I am astounded to find that unbelief is not an issue for me anymore.

So too, I know soon, the issue of wealth and opening myself up to monetary blessing in a big way from God will eventually be a non issue for me. It will be fun to be past that as an obstacle.

Also this weekend I thought about being a church reject. It hurts. I love the Body of Christ so much and it pains me that people with less faith are able to be gatekeepers of faith. I don't like not being recognized.

Sitting in the wonderful Norman Cathedral that is St. Mark's, on the side wall today as I came in late, I marveled at my willingness to go to yet another path. But clearly God has been leading me in ways that culminate in liturgical worship.

I wish pastors would let me teach them. They are missing so much. They spend time only with their own congregations. They have to wear the mantle all the time. The collegiality frequently breeds familiarity.

None of the Dove. None of the Lion. I want to help them develop a relationship with the Dove and the Lion.

So, I will pay very close attention to the thin silence and not jump ahead but only act on that which I discern. And maybe.....who knows... that might be where I end up after all.

What's at the Center of the Great Adventure

Unwrapping my theological core in the beginning of this adventure seems a little complicated.

So, some people call it intuition. But it's more personal than that. Some people call it the voice of God but sometimes it's only an impulse. Sometimes it is a voice but that kinda freaks people out.

Sometimes it's just a feeling of alignment and there are other confirmations that I am on track so I continue in a certain direction.

Sometimes it's a feeling of enormous resolve.

At any rate, a couple of weeks ago when it became clear the latest landlord was going to arrange things or fix things to find any excuse possible to pressure me out of the house, I just said 'enough'! Five times in a row I  made the mistake of looking for domestic stability so I could write what I feel called to write and get the words to market, finish the website so I could solicit teaching and speaking engagements and get my podcasts recorded.

I had this idea. Those ideas I always attribute to God because they have my best interests and most visibility of my faith. The idea I had was to call this place that did work space rental and take my work out of the mix of my domestic situation. I just couldn't move again until it was to unpack in a permanent place. People say one thing but do another all the time. I needed to remove my work from the hands of unpredictability as far away as I could.

From that lead, the other pieces of  the question, 'How do I lead a normal life that is productive and fun and fulfilling without having a home where it all happens?" fell into place.

I believe God supplies answers when a set of positive events fall into place together.

My faith had been bolstered this summer by a concentrated time of study in retraining my brain to think of God as a God who blesses. My whole view was framed by asking the question, 'Does this idea bless me or my situation or my possibilities of providing for my family.?"

As I explored the option of the office and found it provided more than I thought possible, I moved on to the next dilemma and the next. Each time, right before I needed it, someone suggested a solution.

Taking each step as an act of faith made a collective move in the right direction.
As I read this back, I see I have created an incalculable number of questions about what is good for me, what am I called to do, and what does God have to do with all of this. For now.....this is the start of explaining what it's like to be inside my faith. Best I can do.

I must remember to talk, sometime, about the difference between and the decision to make the leap between the ministry ( the pastorate) and being an artist and a business woman.

Great Faith

Having never written about my actual faith walk in a detailed way, in a public place, finding the end of the thread as a place to begin is challenging.

I'm not sure this is the "right" or "proper" place to start, but presently I am thinking about the chasm between me and established church leaders. From many of them I am hearing, and have heard, "stop saying you hear God". I always wanted to say to them,"of course I hear God! I'm not busy with minutia like you. I'm not worshiping the gods of other scholars. My physical circumstances are not comfortable. I hang out with non believers. How could I possibly NOT hear God??!!".

The only difference in my life right now is acting boldly on what I hear.  I have parced out the pieces of my life because God is running an end game around church leadership in providing me a forum to speak of my faith: how I came to know of it, how it came to be, and how I trust it will grow.

That much I know right this moment. More will come I'm sure.

Eventually, this will be the blog where I record the faith walk elements of The Grand Adventure.
Tonight, I am exhausted from the changes and will simply commit publicly to the dedication of the space for that purpose.

I wish I knew how to change my masthead. But then again, perhaps such an exposition is indeed the building of faith based leadership. If enough leaders make it about faith, it will become faith based.

And now. Good Night.

On Robin Williams

When I look at the body of work generated by Robin Williams, it's possible to see that he knew all the answers about compassion, and pain, and hope and courage and joy. He just couldn't internalize it. Mental illness steals the ability to internalize goodness. In heaven he will be complete, and happy and free! Yea God!

Real life as scripture

I just had this thought as I was preparing to write another column. What if real life was scripture? Could you preach on that? Could you find enough Kairos moments to see God? To witness to your faith? That's the point. I think.
Love,
Deborah