Tag Archives: grace

Easter-Egg Life

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As I practice both/and living, I learn to allow myself a mix of grace and hard work. Both/and living means, for me, a life that embraces paradox and nuance—different than black-and-white, either/or living.

It’s not unlike the Easter-egg hunt in our back yard last weekend. Several families gathered to spend a lazy afternoon enjoying haystacks (make-your-own taco salad), early spring sunshine, and Easter candy.

Our gathering was ripe with contrast:
Warm sun, cold wind
Hollow (plastic) eggs and solid (hard-boiled) eggs
Edible treasures and inedible treasures
Young and old (three generations of family)
Hiding and finding
Large eggs and small eggs
Textured eggs and smooth eggs
Relaxation and busyness
Eating and drinking (can’t do them at the same time)

Dozens of eggs peeked from grass clusters or perched in low branches. Most of them were easy to spot, but some hid deep in overgrown grass, or camouflaged with bushes and trees. Kids ran through the yard and collected the easy-to-find eggs, then dumped out the baskets to assess their treasures, popping candy into their mouths as they sorted the hollow, plastic eggs from the dyed, hard-boiled eggs. After they’d satisfactorily sorted their first take, they went out again, looking for the harder-to-find eggs. The second round yielded less results; nevertheless, each child’s collection of candy and coins, tiny animal toys and stickers, continued to grow.

My journey into paradox has involved opening the components of my life, like eggs collected in a basket, to find out they were filled with chocolate I couldn’t eat, money I couldn’t spend, and to-do lists I couldn’t finish. My basket stank. The hard-boiled eggs rotted, and the hollow eggs held no treasure. They were labeled—religion, self-help books, pulling myself up by my own bootstraps, always doing the right thing—but the contents disappointed. I thought I’d painstakingly collected resurrection power, or at least a lucky rabbit, but instead I had unearthed anxiety.

The hardest work in my life has been excavating the mountain between me and grace. My value has long been rooted in performance and productivity, and—far from what the church patriarchs predicted—it’s excruciating for me to be “lazy.” I have been incapable of resting my soul, unable to move in “the unforced rhythms of grace” (Matthew 11:29, MSG). A planned life and a protestant work ethic leave grace hanging to the side, like an awkward, unneeded appendage.

Late Easter afternoon, as we covered bowls of salsa and picked up trash, my daughter Kyli kept asking my help to find one more special egg. She knew it had $1 in it which would be hers to keep, along with the container—a beautiful, 3D-printed, shiny black egg that screwed open and shut, with mermaid-scale texture on the outside. I searched with her willingly at first, becoming more reluctant after each subsequent request. I had hidden the egg in question, but I couldn’t remember where, and I soon tired of looking.

It’s not that hard work or self-help books are inherently or predictably bad. It’s just that my basket lacked wholeness. I needed to collect eggs containing decadent chocolates meant to be eaten, money to spend, and lists of what I’d already done. I struggled to find those eggs. I saw them in other people’s baskets, but whenever I went collecting with my basket, I found more of the same eggs I’d already collected.

At length, one of Kyli’s uncles found the black egg under an apricot tree. Kyli squealed with joy, opened the egg to retrieve the dollar, then carefully added it to her egg collection. Soon she returned to our play-set, where the cousins were sending all manner of things down the slide—rocks, smaller cousins, broken plastic things. All was well in the world and she could focus on the fun at hand.

Like Kyli, I never did find the special “eggs” I was looking for. Someone else found them and handed them to me. Much to my surprise, the eggs I didn’t work for are some of my favorites. I used to think working hard mattered a lot, and productivity trumped enjoyment. I’m grateful to the authors, friends, and family who have lovingly placed “grace eggs” in my basket. I’ve learned to have fun.

It’s not that I won’t work hard; I do and I will. The difference is, as I putter and tumble and stride through my days, I like them. I like me. I like people and pets and all kinds of weather and books and food and friendship and I almost like it when my kids wake me up at night. At least, I’m pleased they trust me and know they don’t have to be alone when they’re scared or can’t go back to sleep. This, I think, is grace.

A Finger to My Lips

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What pulls at me today, daring to suggest my calm and holy center is not where I belong? Emotions roll like a ball in one of those handheld mazes, frozen in place as I s-l-o-w-l-y tip the maze, then a lightning-quick roll to the far corner before I can steady my hand.

So, what is pulling today?

Fear of disappointing my husband.

Heaviness from the impenetrable docket of housekeeping chores.

Despair over how my daughters have been treating each other.

Anxiety that I am a split second away from disappointing myself or someone else.

Terror because I am not in control of my inner world, or my outer world.

Is speeding up is the answer? More lists, more timekeeping, more discipline? No, because speed propels me out of my center, into the fears and despair.

The call is to slow down. Slowness requires trust—of myself, God, the people around me. Trust of time and the universe. What precedes trust? Willingness to accept a variety of outcomes, and to receive that I am well-loved in all of them.

Beginning at the end of myself, I find my way back to the beginning, receive the wideness of love, prevalent as air. As I breathe in love, I trust the intrinsic goodness of myself and others. I give up trust in outcomes and good behavior.

I choose slowness as an embodied reflection of my still and holy center. This is different than the stubborn slowness I use to distance myself from the needs of others, or the sullen slowness meant to display my tired and long-suffering soul.

With a playful but firm finger to my fretting lips, God intervenes. My churning heart stills once again in the embrace of grace and abundance. I am called to “unforced rhythms of grace,” where the daily cadence of faithfulness takes place within the finished song of grace.

~Scripture quote in the final paragraph is from Matthew 11:28-30 MSG: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Naked, Sacred Spirits

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Friendship drama. I feel it in my body. I watch my daughters ride the waves of acceptance and rejection in the classroom or at play dates. I listen to adult friends struggling with relational tension. I talk about my own social anxiety and parasitic desire to look good and be right. I try to help my children understand their own and others’ behaviors, to see with a heart of grace. But when there’s nothing left to do or say, tension lingers in my body. Why?

Relationships are tenuous and fragile. I don’t like that. The clock ticks, lies are believed, trust breaks, narratives are written into the brain, and suddenly I am aware that I still question my value, my belonging, my place. Maybe I was skating by on trusting that everyone, including myself, would behave maturely. Then a moment of triggering or misunderstanding cracks me open, revealing a child who is still asking if she belongs here. Is she worthy of love?

Seeing through the crack to another person’s inner child is as frightening and vulnerable as being seen through my own cracks. I don’t feel authorized to talk to another person’s inner child. I sense the import of this mutual seeing—my inner child gazing at hers through our cracks—and I freeze. The stakes are high. I know that even if she is gracious to me, I may hide in fear; and even if I reach a gentle hand toward her, she may perceive a monster, commissioned to hurt her or keep her in her place.

How will our spirits see and feel and hear each other? I have no control over this. Maybe our faces and our words will look like friendship, but our spirits will henceforth sleep with one eye open when the other person is in the room. Maybe our spirits will come out of hiding, hold hands.

Her naked spirit and my naked spirit are sacred. They live in the company of the Great Spirit, God who shaped and breathed and spoke them to life. The connections I make to prove myself, or break to save myself—God imparts holiness to each one.

The overused analogy about how we’re all God’s children may be useful here. We squabble. We finagle to divide God’s affections or allegiance, but He is unaffected. “You are my favorite,” He says. “You are my favorite,”—to a sibling who took the lion’s share of ice cream, or lied about what I did, or made a face at me when He wasn’t looking, or apologized in a sour tone. Ugh.

God is 100% on my side. God is 100% on her side. I will lean in to this challenge. I will say Namaste—the divine in me greets the divine in you.

Cats, Who Speak Their Minds

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Cats, Who Speak Their Minds

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for kittens,
by turns eager or shy,
soft or sharp,
gentle or vicious,
always fully embodied.

Blessed are You for cats,
who know the wisdom of naps,
the wildness of string,
the curiosity of a cardboard box;
who speak their minds
with mews and purrs,
claws and paws and pointed ears.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for senior cats,
who ease into all-day naps
quite naturally,
forget litter box etiquette,
and are content with a cuddle,
rather than a romp.
May I, too, receive life
with gaiety and age with grace.

No Formula

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No Formula

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for the ways
we fertilize change
and for the ways
change escapes
our eager efforts.
We work,
and something happens,
or nothing.
We do not work
and nothing happens,
or something.

We try hard,
then harder.
The problem worsens.
We invest long years
until: success,
or, the loss of a dream
we didn’t know was a dream
until it vaporized
and broke our hearts.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for giving us much influence
and little control,
for standing beside us
as we watch our labor
burn to the ground,
or produce one hundred fold,
always saving us from the lie
that our value lives in
what we have made or lost.
Your grace exposes our folly
and assures us that whether
our legacy is beauty or pain
(likely both)
we are fields of treasure.

Between Grace and Perfection

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My parents did just about everything right. They read the Bible together every day, consumed a home-grown whole-foods diet, kept the house clean and the yard weeded, and if there was a squeaky door my dad fixed it within an hour. They kept cream-colored carpet clean for thirty years, while raising two children. Need I say more?

Things turned out right most of the time for my parents. Their kids turned out well (ask around if you don’t want to take my word for it), none of the fruit from their 40-plus fruit trees spoiled on the ground, and never was a penny wasted or a sock lost. We lived below the government-defined “poverty level” income my entire childhood, and rumor had it that one neighbor thought we were millionaires. My dad has always been an expert at making his money work for him, even if it meant a three-squares-of-toilet-paper limit and eating freezer-burned garden produce.

If anyone could make the claim that doing things “right” actually works, my parents could. They didn’t waste anything—not a drop of hot water, not a plate of food, not a moment of time. My parents liked their life and the way they lived it—at least most of the time. I observed them and assumed if I did everything “right” I would like myself, as well as my life. And for a while my experience affirmed this idea. Then it didn’t. When I discovered a seething dislike for myself, I was confused. Why was I perfectly miserable?

It turns out a performance-based value is no value at all.

With much effort—which involves releasing my grip more than trying hard—I have s l o w l y learned to like myself. The claws and flaws of perfectionism are still imprinted on me, but I practice living from a different space, acknowledging that growth is not about becoming better, so much as it is about healing. My sister shared an Instagram post with me that describes this well:

Healing is not becoming the best version of yourself. Healing is letting the worst version of yourself be loved. So many have turned healing into becoming this super perfect version of ourselves. That is bondage. That is anxiety waiting to happen. Healing is saying every single version of me deserves love. Deserves tenderness. Deserves grace. When we get to a place where we can see and empathize with every version of ourselves, even the version of ourselves we can sometimes be ashamed of, that’s when we know we are walking in a path of healing.

@somaticexperiencingint

Some days, I have both feet on that path. I get ugly with my kids and I embrace the ugly me. I forget something important, and I find a new way to handle it. Some days, I’m back on the perfectionism path, scrutinizing every move, finding fault everywhere; or feeling self-righteous (the alternative to self-loathing when value is performance-based).

Most days I’m hopping back and forth. I accept grace for losing my temper when a website loses all the information I entered, but swear under my breath when I find a dirty sock that didn’t make it in the wash with the rest of the load. I walk by the overflowing kitchen counter without a single shaming thought, but get panicky when I text a friend about a change in plans. I calmly pay the overdue penalty on a bill that got buried under piles of unopened mail, but flog myself for losing it with the kids while trying to leave the house for a school program.

One gift of imperfection is acceptance that sometimes I will still try to be perfect. Even this urge to perform is worthy of tenderness and grace. There is room for it within my wholeness and healing. I will keep dancing this dance in which both grace and perfectionism get time on the dance floor.

State of the Union

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Marriage is inconvenient. I have to check with my husband, Michael, about lunching at a different-than-usual time. I can’t turn the bedroom light on in the mornings because he’s still asleep. If I want to be alone, I have to announce it and arrange for it (children are also culpable for this one). The bedclothes are always in disarray, the toilet a mess, and one word at the wrong time can tip us sideways for a day or three.

Michael has his own list of inconveniences, probably much longer than mine—if he took the time to write them down. But he doesn’t keep track much. I know marriage counseling was (mostly) fun for me, but inconvenient for him—more nerve-wracking and stressful than interesting or inspiring. He participated nonetheless, and we sorted some things out. We talked about allowing ourselves and each other to “just be.” In fact, we talked about this for years. I can’t say exactly when or how it moved from an idea to a reality, but I know that facing our most terrifying fears was a long stop on the way to freedom. Our marriage is buoyant now in a gracious and spacious way that allows for inconvenience. Relational blood pressure is down to a healthy range.

Our counselor had a Gottman Institute resource for everything, including a weekly marriage check-up titled “State of the Union Meeting.” The basic idea is to have a weekly, guided conversation about your marriage. The first bullet item on this handout is, “Start with what is going right in the relationship.” Next item, “Give one another five appreciations each.” Of course we disagreed on whether these were actually one item or two. Were we to start with what is going right by sharing appreciations? Or were we to make some general statements about what we felt was going right, followed by five specific appreciations? We haven’t settled that yet.

Last week I was sitting in my ugly, brown prayer-chair, when God asked me out of the blue, “What do you think is going well in our relationship?” I was surprised and delighted. The question itself, even unanswered, was joyful, even celebratory. I immediately thought of the Gottman worksheet, and began a list:

– There are deeper roots. I don’t have to hover over our relationship like it’s a new transplant.

– We like to be together, especially in stillness.

I paused—peaceful, grateful—and wrote, “I’m just so happy about the question, I can hardly think of answers.” But more answers came.

– We assume the best about each other.

– We at least interlock pinky fingers in the situations that seem to drive us apart.

– Our dialogue is not as one-sided as it used to be. We hear each other better and don’t miss the mark in our communication as much.

– I’m more willing to engage with what is, instead of what “should” be.

– I’m more aware of the fears I bring to the table.

– We don’t always try to make sense of each other or understand everything between us.

– We’re getting better at feeling, together.

Underneath the list I wrote, “I’m blown away. We actually have a better relationship than we used to. And it’s certainly not from trying hard.”

I used to do a lot of what I call “pre-work” in my relationship with God. When I sat down with Him, I’d fret and plan and beg and argue, read or study the Bible, and write long pages in my prayer journal. In most of this I avoided the real issues—albeit unintentionally. I wanted God to make me patient and happy, and show up in a predictable manner. Christian theology had taught me these were reasonable expectations in a relationship with God. But in all of this “work,” I avoided the real work. As I noted in my journal, growth in my relationship with God is “certainly not from trying hard.”

Dealing with the real issues—deep anger, fear, disappointment and depression—was hard, but all I had to do was show up. I didn’t try hard. I accepted hard. I allowed myself to feel a lot of hard things, and learn that I was not in control, and neither was God—at least not in the ways I wanted Him to be. I released my knotted “try hard” mentality and accepted that life is hard, and no amount of trying hard is going to fix that. To my surprise, I found God in the real work of accepting and walking through the stuff I didn’t want in my character or in my life. No holy avoidance or miraculous patience. Instead, a togetherness that gifted me a sense of belonging.

Here I am, healthier, mostly because God and I agree that it’s okay for me to be a mess, and for life and love to be, at times, a long list of inconveniences. I can “just be.” The state of our union is, “spacious enough for inconvenience.”

Motherhood, My Invitation

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Motherhood, My Invitation

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for motherhood—crucible,
mental health course—no way to opt out,
sleep—a mocking specter,
messes—everywhere, always;
but this too: my first real invitation to be kind
to the uglier parts of myself.

Blessed are You
for seeing me when I was unseen;
for holding my hand
when motherhood was a mirror.
I saw things I didn’t want to see,
didn’t want to be,
and became afraid of myself.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for being my companion in the night,
a place to belong
when I didn’t belong in my own self.
You waited, waited for me to hear You,
hear You above the shame,
because You loving me when I hated myself
was the invitation to know my wholeness
and love myself, and in so doing,
to love my children, too.

What Is God up To?

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What Is God up To?

Reflections – week 8

It’s the final week of reflections inspired by my current small groups. We’ve been exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. I have a feeling I’ll be going through these books again in years to come. They invite me to occupy my own wholeness, to live in my Spirit center. I’m honored to read the words of folks who are truly alive, and to offer my own words into the great expanse.

Many thanks to the authors of these books—to Karen McAdams, Rachel Faulkner Brown, and Gregory Boyle. You are Spirit wind blowing in my life.

I have long been certain that God is crazy. Here’s proof, from the mouth of Jesus: “Whoever believes in Me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). I could write pages on what I think this means, but I honestly have no idea. Regardless, it blows the doors off my measured world and invites me to a wild curiosity.

Gregory Boyle writes, “I hired a homie named Julio once who was in possession of the worst attitude to ever walk through our doors. Julio was not the first homie who told me where to go and requested I do things with myself that I don’t believe can be physically done. I do remember, as I hired him, that I deliberately chose to be intrigued by him rather than get defensive. Instead of dreading his arrival and the implications of his belligerence, I opted for curiosity. Way better. It worked out.”1

I find myself in a place where I’m liable to get defensive with God, so I’m opting for curiosity. Curiosity keeps me from “furiosity” and fear. Father’s House Session Seven is about how we were “made for more,”2 and that “more” may look like healing people and exercising power over spirits of darkness and oppression. Exercising spiritual power feels like one more chance for me to mess things up, in a very public way. If I pray over someone for healing of a physical malady or for the removal of a spirit of fear or depression, it’s no longer private. And I probably need an answer for when it doesn’t “work.” I don’t have one, and I hate all the usual ones about whatever God’s will is and maybe I misunderstood what to pray for, or maybe I needed to pray longer or with more people or with more faith, blah, blah, blah. I’ll pass on looking like an idiot and I’ll pass on making excuses for God not showing up.

So obviously I have some things to work through. In the meantime, curiosity keeps me present. Curiosity holds open the possibility for things to happen that I don’t expect or understand. Curiosity invites an awareness that God may be up to something of which I am totally unaware. Curiosity lets God out of the box, to see what He’s going to do. I’m not sure why God lets me keep a lid on Him. But I’m kinda ready to take the lid off. Or at least open it a crack and see what comes out. Curiosity allows me to wonder instead of worry. What is God up to?

In the early chapters of the book of Acts, Peter is beginning to inhabit his spiritual boldness. One day when he walks with John to the temple for prayer, they encounter a man begging for money. The man was lame at birth, and presumably made money to help his family care for him by begging at the temple. He asks Peter and John for money, and instead they heal him in the name of Jesus. He gets up on those legs that didn’t even work in utero, and runs around praising God.

So God’s house can be a place for beggars to come, and to receive something different than what they’re asking for. Through His Spirit, God gives us good things we don’t ask for. This is why I want to be curious. What is God up to?

I suppose I was made for this. It’s not like flying to the moon so much as it’s like walking or eating. I am naturally supernatural. The adventurously expectant life is not my posture toward God, nor His posture toward me, but something we experience together. I am a trusted daughter in this partnership.

* * *

As I look back on Father’s House, having now journaled through it twice in small groups, I recall the story I shared at our final meeting last fall. I journaled it that morning, just a couple hours before we gathered for our Father’s House finale.

November 1, 2022

Saturday our family spent the day around the fire pit in our back yard. The freestanding metal fire pit and all the chairs are still out in the lawn now, on a Tuesday morning. Yesterday it sprinkled a bit and I thought about moving the fire pit, but I didn’t make it a priority. As I fell asleep in the evening I could hear it raining more, and each time I awoke in the night it was raining. I wanted to enjoy the sound of rainfall, but I couldn’t help thinking about the fire pit out there and how easily it rusts. When I got up this morning and it was still raining, I remembered that our two favorite lounge chairs rust also, and I started feeling anxious and frustrated with myself.

Then Papa reminded me, “no condemnation.” And I thought, “but doesn’t letting that stuff rust mean I’m a bad daughter? Doesn’t it make me careless, wasteful … and just really really wrong?” And the answer was, “no. Leaving stuff out to rust has nothing to do with who I am.” I faltered as I tried to say that in my spirit. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, but with some effort I said it. I wonderingly turned it over in my mind and as I accepted it to be true I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I felt light. Amazed. Loved. Free. Then, as is my custom on Tuesday mornings, I weighed myself. 114.6 pounds. As I entered it on my smart phone I felt good about keeping my weight in the 113-117 range for several years now. And then I knew in my spirit that weight management says nothing about who I am. If I weighed 200 pounds I would be just as beloved. And I knew it in my heart. And then I just felt spoiled.

I am spoiled by knowing I don’t have to get life right, and I don’t even have to get spirituality right. There is no “right” incantation or posture or actions. There is no deserving. He is the one doing—the Giver, the Filler, the Inviter. My role is to receive (and there is no “right” way to receive) whatever extravagance He extends to me. He elevates me to where He is, and invites me to a life of amazement. In living that life, I extend the same invitation to the people around me who are still trying to get it “right,” or who have settled miserably into the mire of getting it “wrong.”

“God stands with the powerless not to console them in their powerlessness, but to always remind them of their power. … Jesus invites us to this anarchy.”3

Endnotes:
1The Whole Language, page 130
2Father’s House, page 136
3The Whole Language, page 135

Mess to Meadow

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Mess to Meadow

Reflections – week 6

Welcome to week six of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. This is week six of eight.
I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

“Messy.” This word resonated with me as a descriptor of my inner world for most of the past ten years. Also, “Complicated” and “Untrustworthy.” Being at home with a newborn baby introduced me to my inner world, and brought to light a toxic relationship with myself that had been flying under the radar most of my life. Twenty-one months after quitting work to stay at home, my second daughter was born, and in between cuddling warm, squishy babies and washing loads of laundry that left only pink lint in the dryer screen, I learned to hate myself.

Self-hate is like having the world’s worst roommate, and reading only bad news in the paper. On some level it feels normal, but there is always the hope that things will improve. I had no idea what would be involved in learning kindness to myself. Mercifully, it was not a journey I took alone, but in the company of my husband, favorite authors, music, and God.

I didn’t know it, but I needed to learn what parts of my inner world are truest. What parts can influence or control other parts? Why did I feel powerless so much of the time, and why did I increasingly try to control myself, my children, and my husband to combat those feelings of powerlessness?

One aspect of learning to be friends with myself was practicing acceptance of all the parts. This has been a vital key in finding peace. But I still want to know, when different parts are at war, what is the most real part? In a broader sense, who am I?

Gregory Boyle writes, “When the homies arrive, they have not been properly introduced to themselves.”1 I can relate. While caring for two little ones, I was introduced to myself, but it wasn’t a proper introduction. I got acquainted with what Father’s House calls my soul—made up of mind, will and emotions.2 These always seemed at war with one another. I thought my will was the control center, the part of me that could call the shots for everything else. But it didn’t work. My emotions jumped into control, my mind spent most of its time cowering in fear, and my will unceremoniously shoved me through the duties of each day. After a few years of getting to know myself, I was thoroughly done with being me, and I was madder than hell at whoever said my will was supposed to control my mind and emotions. I was also angry with myself. So angry, from trying to control my emotions with my will, and my will with my mind, and failing. Always failing. Defeated, lying on the ground, exhausted, dirty.

In the video teaching for Father’s House Session Six, Rachel Faulkner Brown introduces the idea of a spirit center.3 The soul (mind, will, emotions) is around the spirit center, and is informed by the spirit center. In other words, everything moves outward from my spirit center. This means I don’t rule myself with willpower. I cannot tell you what a relief this is. Willpower is an unfaithful partner, an accident waiting to happen. I either wield it to the detriment of the soft parts of myself and my children, or I don’t use it, also to the detriment of our most tender parts.

A spirit center changes everything. There is a whole and holy part of me, a quiet place, a finished place. After being properly introduced to myself, the haggling between my will, mind, and emotions took its proper place outside my spirit. The authors of Father’s House write, “In the Kingdom, who you are releases what you do. The enemy tries to convince you what you do determines who you are. That’s why Satan attacks what you believe about yourself the hardest.”4 I have been caught in a vortex of doing, not knowing that being comes first. Spirit is my center, and my center is Spirit. I don’t need to control my spirit.

So, the truest—by which I mean the most unwavering—part of me is my spirit center, around which all the other parts find their places, and the whole becomes a residence of freedom and meaning.

Rachel Faulkner Brown suggests that I ask God, “What do You call me?”5 This is Papa’s response: “Meadow. You are now a place of beauty, stillness, rest, wonder, creative activity. Seasons may change the blooms or the flow of water, but you will always be these things.”

Mess to Meadow.

Wrestling to resting.

Despicable to divine.

The coming hours of this day are not a treacherous trudge over land mines, but an adventurous afternoon in a meadow.

Endnotes:
1The Whole Language, page 94
2Father’s House, page 100
3Father’s House, Session Six video teaching
4Father’s House, page 99
5Father’s House, Session Six video teaching