Faith Finder
“Faith Finder” is a monthly blog in which Elizabeth sifts through community, faith, and family for the good grain. Questions and comments are welcome.
Maybe
I’ve been mulling over a Zen story about a farmer whose horse ran away. “Such bad luck!” his neighbors said. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.
Then the horse returned, accompanied by two wild horses. “So fortunate!” the neighbors said. “Maybe,” said the farmer.
Later, the farmer’s son tried to ride a wild horse, was thrown off, and broke his leg. “How awful!” the neighbors sympathized. The farmer: “Maybe.”
The army came through town, recruiting all the young men. They passed by the farmer’s son because of his broken leg. “Such good luck!” declared the neighbors. “Maybe,” said the farmer.
What I can’t get out of my mind is the farmer’s abiding equanimity. Where I ride waves of emotion, he keeps an even keel. The highs of anticipation, excitement, and jubilation, he seems to say, can throw us off as much as disappointment. Throw us off what? Our center. Our place of groundedness, of connection, of trust in some ultimate purpose or pattern. Success and failure, fortune and misfortune, happiness and sadness will come and go. Who are we to judge such things?
I find myself wanting to Christianize this very Buddhist story, not by framing bad fortune as the result of human sin or good fortune as redemption, but rather by digging down into that farmer’s “maybe.” What resources does he draw from to maintain that equanimity? The rare times I take what life throws me without judgment or emotional upheaval, I lean on faith: God is behind this. I have faith that God, and good, emerges regardless. Sometimes—most times—the good isn’t recognizable; it’s not what I think it should be. I have faith in a good beyond human reckoning.
The Zen farmer draws from a well quite different from mine. But we both try to live in a story outside the obvious. That this story even exists fills me with hope.
–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Bucket List
A friend explained to me yesterday why she, a born-and-bred Catholic, is faithfully attending adult education classes at her UCC church, asking hard questions, giving the pastor blunt answers, and otherwise being a rabble-rouser. “I want to know what I believe before I die,” she said. “I don’t want simply to fall back on what I was taught.”
My in-laws call the list of things they want to do before they die their “bucket list.” I admire anyone who thinks through what might bring their life fulfillment and then sets out to achieve those things before they “kick the bucket.” I like the intention of a bucket list, how death helps us put life in perspective and encourages us to manifest dreams, live our values, and seek out significance. The majority of people who hire me as a writing coach give some version of this explanation: “I’m not a writer, I don’t know why I’m writing this, but I have to create something of this story before I die.” Our mortality goads us into hard but meaningful labor. I like working with people who have death at their backs. The stakes are high.
My friend’s bucket item strikes me as particularly rich. Christianity gives the impression of being a set of doctrines that believers must claim and adhere to, but in fact the opposite is true. Reciting a creed or falling back on what we were taught or accepting without question any of the church’s teachings is simply not a life of faith. But engaging whole-heartedly in meaningful questions, and staking your actions on your beliefs, is. “Who do you say that I am?” Christ asked the disciples, and continues to ask each of us.
We answer with our lives. Some people find Christianity a gruesome religion, but I like how Jesus’ story puts death at our backs, and so makes our seeking significant. What’s in your bucket?
–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Posted in Faith and Imagination, Spiritual Growth
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Whutif and Howbout
From the moment her eyes pop open in the morning until that instant of surrender at night, Gwyn emits a steady stream of imaginative possibilities. “What if I’m a hermit crab? How about we live on the beach? How about you’re my crab mom? What if I have a shell? A shell, Mama—we have to make a shell!” Which is why I stumble through the basement at 7 a.m. looking for cardboard. An old lawn sign makes a cone-shell; stapled construction paper make claws. The game lasts an hour and then she’s onto the next possibility, the next revision of her world.
Meanwhile, Emily retreats to the office to develop dance curriculum for seniors and I escape to write books and help others write books. Or we plan the garden, decide what to have for dinner and cook it, consider our weekend options, nurture our friendships… What if? How about? Every moment of every day is a dynamic interaction between dream and manifestation. What’s possible resides in the territory between what we can imagine and the physical laws of the universe—although perhaps even these are porous.
With a December birthday, Gwyn will spend a third year in preschool, which has meant that Emily and I spent the last few months debating where. Does she need more to challenge her, to help her transition to kindergarten? She’s been in a Waldorf preschool, where there’s no instruction and play is central. At age three, play meant knocking over other kids’ blocks, but now she’s moving into prolonged, interactive fantasy: The kids are squirrels building nests and harvesting nuts; they are fairies in a rainforest they create with hanging scarves. Another year of this and Gwyn will have the skills to imagine a complex scenario and work with others to bring it about.
I don’t know whether this will prepare her for school, but it’s sure good preparation for life. And, for that matter, for the life of faith. So much of faith is imagining what’s possible, believing in it, acting from that belief, and creating that new reality with others. When we believe in God, we’re believing in playful, interactive possibility. We wake up and ask, first thing, “What if? How about…,” then go searching for the cardboard or magic markers or whatever else will bring God’s realm into being.
–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Posted in Faith and Imagination
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Too Busy to Write
Sorry, folks. I’m too busy to write a Faith Finder article this month. I could give you all sorts of explanations—the 8 a.m. phone call with Gwyn’s teacher, the hassle of bundling her off to school, the disaster I’m ignoring in the kitchen, my crazy to-do list—but ultimately the problem is internal. Jangled nerves. Thoughts popcorning willy-nilly. Disquiet, distraction, disease. Can’t write if you can’t focus.
So instead I’ll give you the cat: She’s a lump of white and black fur curled on a blue blanket. From here I can’t see a head, only the slow rise and fall of her breathing body. Her every muscle is slack. Her snores are soft and even.
Or perhaps I’ll give you this morning’s trees, sticky with snow, each branch white against a crystalline blue sky. The snow details the trees.
For that matter, I could give you this awesome red easy chair. It’s big enough to sit cross-legged in, with good but soft back support. A window on the left, a window on the right—morning and afternoon sun. This chair holds me but it also holds memories: Gwyn squeezed beside me, chowing on popcorn while we read Winnie the Pooh; rare evenings reading by the fire when the house wraps silence around me; deep meditation. There was a time, before Gwyn, when daily I’d close my eyes and sit for a half hour, only breathing. A great filling up, a lingering release. An expansion, a deflation. I’d take God in, I’d send God out on my prayers. Stillness must have settled into these cushions like dust. I sense it even now.
Sunlight is in the potted rosemary and creeping thyme. The house balloons with quiet. A sip of hot tea and my belly radiates warmth. When I get up, my day will stampede forward—a client, a dentist appointment, the kitchen disaster, four dozen emails—but for now I linger on this page. It’s an empty palm.
I offer it to you. –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Posted in Spiritual Practice
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Ten Glimpses of God in Five Hours
- Gwyn’s sick, which means two nights of interrupted sleep. This morning she arrives in our dark bedroom wanting to play. I don’t. She curls up at my feet, right where the cat sleeps, and lays still for five minutes.
- Snow has dusted the earth. It falls all morning in trace amounts, miniscule white thoughts moving through air.
- Hot tea fills my belly.
- Emily can’t wait to get to work, she loves what she’s doing so much.
- Gwyn watches movies, a special treat reserved for when she’s sick. She’s snuggled under a blanket on the couch. I keep her company by cleaning out the hall desk. Stationary, old maps, coupons, manila envelopes, photos. I haven’t sorted this stuff in years. Quiet organizing calms me, as though tossing old bus schedules has a counterpart in my heart. Curious George gets himself into innocent mischief.
- I show Gwyn the glitter I’ve found. Her exhausted, teary face lights up. “Can I do a craft?” she asks. She pours Elmer’s onto black paper, then sprinkles the glitter. Gold stars shine in the darkness.
- The toilet upstairs hasn’t been working right for a month. To pee at night we have to go downstairs. Too cheap to hire a plumber, I’ve been in plumbing hell a few hours each night this week. This morning I run to the hardware store, where the owner knows my struggles. The connector I need is shorter than the comparable one they sell. “Buy the long one,” he tells me, “and twist it into a loop.” His easy, brilliant solution fills me with plumbing joy.
- Lunch is leftover pork roast, slightly salted.
- I delete dozens of emails from advocacy organizations working for gun control, just wages, GLBT rights, a healthy environment… Up against my limited time, I’m humbled by the abundance of good effort in our world.
- This moment, now: The gratitude I feel writing these words.
–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
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Changing Church
Ages ago, when I was in the messy middle of coming out bisexual (I felt raw and unformed because I was not the person others had thought me to be; I railed against God for making this world such a difficult place to be honest in) I read a passage my spiritual director Cil Braun had written in a newsletter: “God is not static. God is in constant creation, constantly being created. We are not static, either. We are in constant creation.” Yes, I thought; I am being created. At the time it felt wretched. Looking back I know coming out was gloriously, divinely formative.
“Discomfort is the nerve ending of growth,” Jonathan Rowe writes. Kids know this viscerally when growing pains wrench their legs; they know it emotionally when cascading new experiences—getting dressed themselves, suddenly drawing figures—send them scurrying back to babyhood. Sometimes Gwyn crawls into my lap and pretends to nurse as though her perpetually changing life is just too much to bear. The writers I work with learn to tolerate terrible discomfort as they take their pieces through revision; they, too, throw occasional tantrums. Change hurts.
So when the facilitator of the Healthy Small Church Initiative challenged our congregation to change significantly, I thought, Ut-oh! Individuals may kick and scream their way through growth, but organizations are worse; they dig in their heels. Prospect Park UMC has been given some provocative statistics, though. We’re on the decline. Other churches with worship experiences and communities and ministries much like ours don’t make it. The facilitator’s message: Change now or die.
Dire? Grim? Perhaps, but I keep coming back to Cil’s words—God is in constant creation. Staying the same slowly shuts out God’s work. Changing—consciously, willingly, actively—is one sure way to participate in God’s realm. Many of the facilitator’s suggestions were exciting: Talk to the neighborhood, find out what is needed. Create a vision for ministry. Shift the church culture to be more inviting and inclusive. Worship in a way that meets the spiritual needs of those who have yet to come as well as those who are here. Good stuff.
But getting there is going to hurt. Can we learn to tolerate this terrible discomfort together? “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Posted in Church, Spiritual Growth
Tagged change, Cil Braun, Healthy Small Church Initiative, Jonathan Rowe
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The God of Dreams
“God lives in your dreams.”
So says a line in one of Gwyn’s children’s books. Our congregation is beginning to dream again, and I’m curious how this dreaming can invite God more fully into our midst.
When I’ve dreamed dreams for my future, those dreams that tug me with longing are born of both me (my talents, my interests, my personality) and God. How do I know God’s in the mix? Usually some mystery is involved—where did this longing originate? Where is it taking me?—with no logical explanation. Usually the essence of my being is stirred when I work with the dream. Usually the dream pulls me into my best self while also serving some pressing need evident in the world. Almost always the dream seems impossible or stupid; it rarely comes with cultural affirmation and almost never with money. By following the dream, the world becomes a better place, but in a sly, backwards way that few people recognize.
The God of dreams asks us to co-create. We don’t need to wrangle our dreams into fruition using sheer will power. Nor does God wave a magic wand and grant our wishes. Instead, God joins us as we listen to our heart’s longings, as we write them down, as we sweat and argue and problem-solve in our efforts to manifest dreams. God surprises us with unexpected challenges and with tiny moments of grace. We must be active players in bringing about our dream, and we must humbly accept God’s participation. The process of heeding our dreams is so rich, it often outshines the final result.
Surely God lives in the dreams of groups of people as well. God—creative energy, the unfolding of justice, the great pulsing love at the center of the universe—wants nothing more than to come alive. May God use our dreaming and scheming to bring this about. –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
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Humility
It’s gone out of fashion. Even in Christian circles we associate humility with the mothballed faith of our grandmothers. These days we have more hip spiritual practices, like living in the present moment and doing yoga and advocating for GLBTQA rights. Why bother groveling? With anything that might undermine our pride? Spirituality’s supposed to make us feel good, right?
Lately I’ve been reading some Benedictine spirituality. Joan Chittister believes the Rule of Saint Benedict is a relevant and alive document, one that speaks directly to the contemporary consciousness. In my skepticism, I came across this question in the Rule—“Who will dwell in your tent, O God?”—and Benedict’s answer: “These people reverence God, and do not become elated over their good deeds; they judge it is God’s strength, not their own, that brings about the good in them. They praise the Holy One working in them, and say with the prophet: “Not to us, O God, not to us give the glory, but to your name alone” (Ps. 115:1).
The rare times I’ve taken humility seriously, I’ve worked to think less of myself in favor of some other. Down with the ego! But to Benedict, the practice of humility says nothing about us and everything about God. God is goodness and strength working through us. Say I’m a lamp. I can feel awfully proud of my bright flame, and then practice humility the old way by saying, “Bad lamp! Your flame’s not so great.” Or I can follow Benedict’s suggestion and say, “Divinity is burning here, too. Praise be!”
I love this, for two reasons. God is not some abstract, absent being but goodness working through me—near, daily, tangible, real. And by remembering this, repeatedly, I place myself in a dynamic relationship with God, that is, with the strength and goodness that makes the world go ‘round. The glory is with God. Isn’t that marvelous?
–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Holy Memory
Five hours into our week-long family vacation, Gwyn said, “I want to go home!” This wasn’t a new refrain. When she’s excessively tired or hungry, she sometimes says it when we’re at home, bustling around the kitchen or getting ready for bed. Emily and I have speculated that “home” is a pre-birth memory for Gwyn, and today received confirmation. “Let’s play I’m home in Nanny’s womb,” Gwyn said to Emily this morning as she crawled under the covers.
In short order she was born once more.
Nanny is Gwyn’s biological mother. That Gwyn remembers her womb so viscerally, so fondly, feels miraculous. At firs Annie didn’t want a baby inside her although she came to care for it responsibly and with love beyond her years. Perhaps, though, it wasn’t Annie so much as God who made a home for Gwyn before this one, wrapping her in warm water and sending her a steady stream of nutrients. Perhaps the home Gwyn remembers is pre-womb, even, a place of origins and ends, what Christians call heaven. I like to think Gwyn remembers being immersed in God.
Regardless, at the core of her being Gwyn knows home. She knows complete comfort, complete unity, somewhere, somehow. I like to think we all do, although most of us have lost our conscious awareness.
This, I believe is the foundation of Gwyn’s spiritual life, and everyone’s: A memory of home. Her journey as a human being is both away from this home and towards it. The more she draws from this source, pulling divinity forward into her being, containing in her body the love of her origin, the more she will grow in spirit. Over and over she will be born. –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Housefly, Go Home
Arnold Lobol writes a cautionary tale about a housefly who one day wakes up to see all the dirt in his house. He diligently begins sweeping. When he pushes the pile over the threshold, he notices the dirt on his front path, and then on the road. He’s a good way down the road when Grasshopper comes along and inquires what he’s doing. Poor Housefly; he’s taken on cleaning up the world.
I am that housefly. Not that I’m a compulsive cleaner—far from it. But I can’t look around me without seeing what needs to be done. A moment spent admiring the (glorious) flower garden with Gwyn turns into a to-do list: weeding, transplanting, pruning, seeding. Cleaning the kitchen after dinner, I’m acutely aware of all I’m not cleaning: the grease on the kettle, the spills in the refrigerator. Clearing out my email, I berate myself for not writing to my senator to stop the Keystone pipeline or to the Security and Exchange Commission to make public the disparity between CEO- and worker-income. I have trouble living in an incomplete world.
Oddly enough, the one arena where I feel peaceful and even passionate about incompletion is in writing. I advocate revision; I’m the spokesperson for the slow evolution of creative work. As Mark Doty writes, “the longer we can stay in the state of uncertainty, of unfolding possibility, the better.” In other words, to be a fully engaged creator, we have to cultivate an enormous tolerance for incompletion. We must see what we’ve done as well as what can be done—with equanimity, with a peaceful heart.
Most of the time, I’m halfway down the street with a broom before I realize this isn’t how I want to live. Each day is a new creation, as is a home and work and this society we all participate in making. My prayer is that we might learn to thrive in the midst of a messy, beautiful becoming.
–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew