in search of hope

Depending on your political ties, you might feel hope is lost or hope is found. January 20 was a day of grief for some, and a day of celebration for others. This post isn't about trying to convince you about which side you should be on...it's about how do we navigate hope even when our side doesn't win, and how do we have hope in something real...not just because we are the "winners"?

I have been thinking about the divisions in our country and while some feel that there is hope because one man is out and another is in, I am aware just by reading my Facebook feed that half of the posts on Inauguration Day were grieving and upset and about half of the posts were celebrating and experiencing relief.

But irregardless of which side you find yourself on...what will actually help our country heal and move towards unity, not division?

And honestly, a step back...do you even feel that unity is the goal?

I will assume that we do want unity, and we don't want division. But I'm acknowledging that it's possible we don't all want unity... but in the case that we do, what would help unify us?

Is it agreeing on everything? I think we can look back on history to know that humans will never all agree...we will continue to have different views on the "right" way forward. And therein lies the struggle. How do we allow for diverse perspectives and find unity?

I think some of our obstacles to unity are when we believe there is only one right way, and that right way is my/our way of thinking. When we have an us vs them mentality, we have built a wall between unity. How do we unify without believing we have to convince the other side to join us on our side of the wall?

It requires humility

It requires letting go of being right

It requires love for the hardest to love (the ones we don't understand, the ones who voted differently than us, the ones who believe differently, the ones we consider our enemy...)

It requires hard work, intentional work

It requires us to let go of our belief that there is only one "right" way to view things

It requires forgiveness

and confession

This is true in the church, this is true politically, this is true inter-racially, this is true anywhere we see divisions.

Honestly it sounds pretty hard, nearly impossible

Perhaps that is why one of Jesus' only recorded prayers is for unity, because he knew just how difficult it is for us to be united.

We continue to focus on being right

having the right answers

knowing the only way

What if we focused on the truth that sets us free...

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

as I have loved you

LOVE YOUR ENEMY

because anyone can love those who are like ourselves

LOVE

instead of living in fear

LOVE

Yes, Love...
because of this

I believe there is reason to still have hope

Not because of who was elected president

But because there is still Love in our world

And Love is greater than fear

So there is always hope

May it be so

Amen.

memories and blurred days

how is it possible that it's already august? this year has both crawled and sped by, simultaneously. I think most days I don't even know what day of the week it is. without rhythms of work or school to help define the week from the weekend, it all just felt the same. and then summer came...but it just felt like the school year without chrome books in front of my kids. 

last week I was in Oklahoma helping my parents sift through their attic. they have decided to down-size which means all those remnants of my high school years that I somehow managed to leave behind needed to be weeded through. no more mooching off my parents "free" storage space--at 44 I finally have to admit that I'm an adult...and into the trash bin I threw ALL of my high school and college yearbooks. gasp! I know that for some of you those are precious memories. but for me, barbies and my little ponies won for that small space in my one checked on piece of luggage I aimed to fit my memories in. oh, and photographs spanning from high school prom (trash bin) to college (kept more of those) and into my years in Vietnam. mostly it was the memories from pre-marriage. I'm not sure why I have left these memories at my parents' home all of these years. but I think there's the Lori pre-2001 (when I got married) and the post 2001 Lori. it's a strange thing to get reacquainted with oneself. in fact, it was the first time for me to visit my parents post 2001 without my husband and boys. strange, but good. I actually found myself wanting to play with my barbies...perhaps because I am in a season of learning how to play again. I am realizing that as a serious adult, I need the gift of play...doing something for no other reason than the activity itself.

so barbies now sit in a box in my florida home. I don't even have daughters to play with them--and my two sons were only slightly amused (horrified?!) at watching their mom pull them out and talk about how fun I had with them...

I guess sometimes years blur together too...when did I put those barbies away for the last time? when did I decide it was time to grow up and stop playing pretend? 

soon my boys begin high school and middle school. i am watching my oldest leave behind boyhood. I have to admit that there's a mix of grief and awe. who is this person living in our home? he takes up a lot more space, and I have to admit I'm not sure how to parent a teenager...

but one day (and I'm sure it will blur in with all the days between now and then) he will come home to gather up his memories.

but thankfully...we still have a few more years to capture some of those memories in person.

Holy Saturday

It's Saturday. The day between Good Friday and Easter. But there was a time where it was simply Saturday. There was no Easter yet, and the grief was fresh--heavy and real. The disciples didn't know what would happen on Sunday, and they were certainly feeling disoriented, disillusioned, and a multitude of emotions that come with grief.

What is interesting to me is that as Christians we don't really know what to do with Saturday. And even on Good Friday we tell everyone "death isn't the end of the story!!" We want to rush to the end of the story...we want to lessen the blow and rush to Easter. Why are we so uncomfortable with grief? What if we made room for the tension and entered into the space between?

And especially now. We are in a long drawn out "Holy Saturday" so to speak. That space between...we have experienced loss on so many levels as we had to cancel pretty much our whole April calendars. Everywhere we look, we are reminded of loss. Messy homes remind us that our kids are home all the time and we can't keep the house clean for very long. Spring break passes with no where to go because we have had to cancel vacations, and we can't leave the house to go anywhere but to buy groceries.

Loss.

Good Friday.

Grief.

And we don't know when our Sunday will come. And somedays we might even find ourselves wondering will there be a Sunday to follow all of this? Thankfully, history proves that Sunday will come. But none of us know when, or how, or what Sunday will mean. It certainly won't be as we predict. 

The disciples, and Jesus' mother Mary...they didn't know what would come next. After three years of doing everything with Jesus, the disciples must have felt lost, confused, disoriented, angry (especially at Judas), and heavy. How much sadness can one bear?

What will life look like for them now?

Did they turn to each other for comfort? Or did they find themselves so heavy with the weight of what they had witnessed that it was too unspeakable to even know how to talk about it with one another? 

And so for a whole day...for more than 24 hours the disciples, Mary, and so many others felt a grief that was beyond what they had imagined. This was not how the story was supposed to go.

I imagine Holy Saturday did not feel holy. So why do we call it Holy? What makes it sacred? Is grief not a sacred space to live in? I recently read an article by Christine Valters Paintner (article here) about threshold space...that space that is betwixt and between.  Christine writes: 

"Much of our lives are spent in Holy Saturday places but we spend so much energy resisting, longing for resolution and closure. Our practice this day is to really enter into the liminal zone, to be present to it with every cell of our being."

Friday marks the loss, Sunday marks the joy. But Saturday marks the deep grief between the two. The space between where the story is still unclear. It's as if time stands still.

And perhaps it is made holy when we allow ourselves to sit there in tension. If we do not have the tension, then it is merely a regular old Saturday. A ho hum Saturday. Because like so many have said on Good Friday. Yes, he died, but don't worry. He will come back to life on Sunday. So then everyone goes about life as normal on Saturday. The disciples would look at each other and laugh. Because they know the end of the story. Tomorrow Jesus will do his magic. He'll come out of the cave and his burial cloths and it will have been no big deal. Because they would be freed from the tension that grief creates.

But that's not how it went.

The disciples had no idea.

And we lose the holy in Holy Saturday when we do not allow ourselves to sit in the tension.

In a "normal" year (aka a non-covid year) we would fail to see the sacred space of Saturday as something relevant to sit in. But is there not an invitation to us this year to have the gift of grief and lament when we still do not know what resurrection will look like for us? Are we not also longing for life to return to normal? Are we not also crying out "how long O Lord?" Are we not heavy and disillusioned and disoriented in our own places of Holy Saturday? I know that this year, more than ever, I find Holy Saturday has gifts to offer my actual real life I am presently living. More than ever I am able to contemplate the place the disciples, his mother, friends and followers of Jesus found themselves on their Saturday. This year I am one who is grieving losses. I am one who is unsure what comes next. I am one who needs to cry and grieve. Will you sit with me in this place of tension on Holy Saturday? There are gifts awaiting for us as we sit with others who have grieved. As Christine says, life is full of Holy Saturdays. The joy of Easter will be more full for those who have grieved.

ode to quarantine

when the world stopped

all came to a halt

I could hear the sound of breathing

sighs, gasps...

some held their breath

until they no longer could

the news headlines began to blur together

numbers climbing day by day

fear rising as the numbers increased

but while the world closed its doors

and became solitary and quiet

the earth did not obey

slowly at first

small green tendrils

reaching up through the soil

stretching their arms

after a long winter's quarantine

time to emerge and create life

barely noticeable

as humans sat inside

but looking through the windows

the trees began to show off

flowers opening up

smiling as if to say

"it's ok"

you too will find spring comes

after your long winter time

don't worry!

spring always comes

even after the harshest of winters

Immanuel, God with us, where are you now?

Waiting is really hard, and yet so much of life is about waiting. Waiting in traffic, waiting in lines, waiting for the new movie to come out in the theatre, waiting for a friendship, waiting for summer, waiting for Christmas.
Waiting gets old, doesn't it? It's so easy to grow impatient and let emotions spill over.  When we feel like we've been waiting too long, we begin to protest in our own ways. Adults are not immune to acting like 3 year olds when the waiting has made us weary.
Advent is a gift to us...it gives room for the weary at heart. It says "yes, waiting is hard, but there is something worth waiting for..." And we are given space to grieve, lament, and take heart once again...that while sometimes there is complete silence, other times we see that God really does still act in our world. After 400 years of silence, the Israelites must have been weary of waiting for the Messiah.
They had anticipated that God was sending a Messiah (a savior), but they endured SILENCE for 400 years!!!
Where are you God?
Where are you now?
Why are you silent?
Why have you abandoned us?
Did they wait well?
Ha! Do we wait well?
We all have our moments when we are composed and able to wait. We know that it will take several hours to sit at immigration in Thailand when it's time to renew our visas...so we bring our homework, our work, our phones...and we distract ourselves. We sigh, we wait, and eventually our number is called and we are finished. The waiting does end.
But what about waiting that has no end in sight? We have NO IDEA how long we will wait. It's like waiting at that immigration office day after day after day and each day being told, not yet...go home. Come again tomorrow. That is enough to drive any of us mad. Even the most patient person.
Perhaps that is the point. None of us are patient in and of ourselves. Even the act of waiting requires us to depend on God. And it brings us to the end of ourselves, the end of our own human resources. It reminds us that we need the Very One we are waiting for. We need help to wait...
Advent gives space to the voice of longing. Can any of us say that there is NOTHING we are waiting for? Perhaps we are not aware of what we are longing for because it has been too painful to wait.
Waiting for a job
Waiting for a baby
Waiting for healing
Waiting for the grief to lighten
Waiting for someone to return to us
Waiting to be loved
Waiting.
It's not easy to wait. And it's no wonder that the Israelites gave up and distracted themselves with their own ideas of how to fix their problems. But, even in their forgetfulness and distraction, God still came. It wasn't because they waited well that finally God breathed Life into the midst of our human condition. No, perhaps the miracle is all the more because they had stopped waiting, stopped looking...
and then God moved
I don't begin to understand what all this means
But I welcome the space to pause in Advent, because I need it.  For those of us who don't find it easy to pretend all is well, advent is a welcome gift. It gives voice to longing. It allows us to know we are not forgotten in the long waiting. God has not forgotten me. God has not forgotten you. Though we look around at the condition of our world, groaning for its relief and redemption, we are reminded at Advent that God enters in.
One of my favorite Advent songs this year has been Immanuel by the Liturgists...here are the lyrics

Immanuel by Liturgists

Carry me to the place unknown

Where the river runs so deep

Where the water cold washes over me

And I all but drown in Your mercy.

Carry me from this hell called home

Where the walls like shepherds sleep

Congregations fall from the Gospel's heart

To the desert of prosperity.

Immanuel 

God with us

Where are you now?

Immanuel

God with us

Be here somehow.

Lift me up to the place unknown

In the shadow of Your wings

Where I'm safe from harm

Hidden in Your arms

Never far from the sound of your breathing.

Oh lift me up from this hell called home

Where the blood of children speaks

Of the wars we've made

Of the lives we trade

For this desert of prosperity

For this desert of prosperity

Immanuel

God with us

Where are you now?

Immanuel

Our God with us

Be here somehow.

Immanuel

God with us,

Where are you now?

Immanuel

God with us,

Where are you now?

Immanuel

God with us

Be here somehow

God with us,

Be here somehow.

dancing with mystery

"My heart is restless until it finds rest in Thee."

St. Augustine

Making space for the sacred mystery in my midst

I sit silently

I begin to dance

I see the beauty around me

as I step into the moment

and embrace what is here now

I let go of what I am clinging to

and wonder at what is holding onto me

Even in the darkness 

and in the silence

I begin to sense

a Holy Presence

breathing with me

whispering to me

Inviting me in

and I hold my arms

open to invite this embrace

to hold me

the Mystery dances with me

and I am in awe

as I capture a twinkle of light

flashing into my heart

behold the Sacred

here with me

set fear aside

I've had writer's block for too long.
Or, more accurately,
the words have been trapped inside me
and I haven't taken the next step
to sit
 down
to write those words...
and they
 get
                                               lost.
When I finally sit down
they're gone
like autumn leaves
fallen to the ground
and then I give up
but deep calls to deep
and there are words and longings
stirring deep within
to not give voice to what wants to be said
becomes a heavy weight that I carry

those words that want to be spoken
--that need to be spilled
don't see the light of day
because I am afraid
afraid of what you might think when
you read those words
what you might read into those words

but to let fear have the final word
allows
too
 much

space

for what isn't true
to grow in place
where truth
could have been spoken
can I risk to let those longings be expressed?
can I let those inner thoughts
be put into words?
once they are put out there
they cannot be taken back
even the eraser
leaves a mark
perhaps it's ok
to set fear aside
and risk
it might let
love
rise
up