One eye clear

This is one corner of a soul collage, or soul card, that I made last week.

One eye stays clear, in spite of trouble revealed from within and distortions layered on top.

(I'd like to find a generic term for this process: SoulCollage® is copyrighted, and "soul card" can refer to tarot, but this video is not either of those things. Any suggestions?)

Memory

This hippocampus lives inside building 46 at Google in Mountain View. I walk past her* often, and I always stop.

Hippocampus, by Mardi Storm

She is a dream trapped in a latex room. Most of the time she has nothing but electrical gadgets, event notices, and a couple of office plants to gaze at.

Surprised (every time!) to see her, I stand by her head and let her gaze at me … and I'm reminded that I have forgotten something important, but what? What is it? Has even she forgotten, dry-docked as she is?

For photos that do justice to the hippocampus, please visit the artist's website (http://www.mardistorm.com/).

* Is she a her? I don't know. To me she is.

Redemptive sadness

(My blog has moved to SleepOnTheHearth.com. Please visit!)

I spent three nights last month at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California. The Mercy Center has several walking paths that were created years ago by Father Thomas Hand, S.J. One of the paths, called the Water Way, leads you down a slope and into an area shadowed by trees, then alongside a dark creek that is criss-crossed with fallen branches and tree trunks.

This depiction of the Tenth Station of the Cross is nailed to a post at one end of the Water Way. At this point in the story, Christ's clothes are taken from him: one last humiliation before death.

I am struck by the sadness in each man's face, and by the way in which Christ is clasping the man's hand. I don't believe that redemptive violence is part of the Christian story.* Instead, I believe that God willingly entered into our suffering to be with us, because of love for us. It is a different story.


* Shout-out to Shawn Anthony at Lo-Fi Tribe.

Ex nihilo

Psalm 18:16-19

But me he caught—reached all the way
from sky to sea; he pulled me out
Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos,
the void in which I was drowning.
They hit me when I was down,
but God stuck by me.
He stood me up on a wide-open field;
I stood there saved—surprised to be loved!

In Addiction & Grace, Gerald May writes about how we often substitute one addiction for another. We are compelled to fill our life's emptiness: the void. When people are delivered from addiction, he writes, it's because grace enables them to tolerate spaciousness, at least to some degree. Grace transforms the void in which we were dying, and we find ourselves in a wide-open field.

A void and a wide-open field are both spacious, but in a very different sense. The void that meant loneliness is transformed into space that means freedom. A void lacks air and light and structure—it's a nothing—and in it we're aimless and can't find direction. A wide-open field, on the other hand, is a generative space in which new life and purpose can unfold. It's a riot of fresh air and little wild animals. We stand there saved, surprised to be loved!

For me, the surprise comes from being loved right there in the emptiness, in the place where I have nothing to comfort or distract me. I mean those times when nobody needs me and it's clear that the world would go on without me; those times when I understand that my task in life is not to fix everybody and know everything. It's plainness, mortality, and human limits. It's those times when being with God is like sitting in silence in an empty, lightless room, hearing and saying nothing.

I've spent many hours over the years gazing at the carving in this photo. Today I am struck by the spaces around Mary and Joseph, and the space between them—the dark emptiness into which Love was born. I tried to photograph it in a way that would capture what I mean.

The easiest, hardest thing

Matt. 26:38b

Then he said to them, "....Stay here and keep watch with me."

My friend Sue Ann works as a chaplain with SpiritCare Ministry to Seniors. She conducts lovely, gentle worship services at long-term care centers, plus she does visitation and pastoral counseling. SpiritCare recruits volunteers to do things like play the piano, help with communion, and spend time with residents.

I've helped Sue Ann at three homes now, and helping turned out to be simpler and less scary than I'd feared. I can help just by singing loudly, or just by slowing down to really look at and see the beauty of the person I am speaking to. These things don't cost me much—in fact, they bring me joy. I'm grateful for the structure that Sue Ann's ministry provides, because it makes it easy and possible for me to do what would otherwise be too much for me.

I've been praying through the story of Gethsemene in Matt. 26. In this scene, Jesus tells the disciples that for the moment, their task is to stay where they are:

+ Sit here while I go over there and pray. (v. 36)
+ Stay here and keep watch with me. (v. 38)

During these hours in the garden, Jesus is preparing for his own death. He asks his friends to help him by doing what sounds easy but is often painful and difficult for us to carry out: to stay awake, to stay present to what's really happening, to keep vigil with those who suffer.

SpiritCare's ministry is a taste of just such presence.

2. Sustenance

(My blog has moved to SleepOnTheHearth.com. Please visit!)

Psalm 63:2

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.

Where? Where do you see God? Where are you when you get those fleeting glimpses of the real thing? Outdoors? Tucking a child into bed? Whispering a prayer of gratitude? Reading a great book? Petting a dog? Singing in church?

Find those symbols and observances and savor them. Call them what they are. We need all the refilling we can get.

Last weekend, probably very early in the morning on Holy Saturday, a doe gave birth to twin fawns outside our livingroom window. Here she is with one of them.

Only God's money

Matthew 25:16

Right off, the first servant went to work and doubled his master's investment.

This morning at St. Cuthbert's, Pamela offered each household a fifty dollar bill from the church's discretionary fund. Is she insane? Instructions: This is God's fifty dollars. Use it to invest in God's kingdom. In ninety days, tell the church what you made of it.

This is a poor church. A small church. But that fifty-dollar bill began to enrich and enlarge my ideas about God the moment I touched it. My first thought was an earnest desire to make something of it and come back next week with a hundred-dollar bill to put in the offering plate. So far so good.

I left church and drove downtown to the YMCA. I packed my wallet in my gym bag to take into the building with me, where I planned to spend a quarter to store the wallet in a locked box during my workout. But I nearly left behind the fifty, which I had stashed in the glove compartment. I caught myself thinking a dark, quiet thought: Well, if it's stolen ... it's only God's money.

Perplexed, I slipped the fifty into my wallet—my wallet—and took it inside with me.

My wallet. Inside which my credit cards and my cash and my insurance cards have shifted to make room for this stranger, God's fifty-dollar bill, which is only here on holiday.

Though I am generous with my money, this fifty-dollar bill is illuminating a fixed stinginess in me. I believe the theory that my whole wallet belongs to God. It is a beautiful theory. But how does my belief hold up in practice? In my unguarded moments?

What would happen if I was carrying around God's wallet, containing God's credit cards? What if my ATM card gave me access to God's checking account?

But that's crazy talk for another day. What will I do with the fifty dollars? I'm still thinking. If you have a great idea, post a comment, or email me at momently@gmail.com.

For her part, our cat Rosie does not see the thing having any value whatsoever.

Surprises

Acts 1:9–11
Jesus rose from the dead (Easter), appeared to various people over the course of forty-plus days (the Easter season), ascended into heaven (Ascension), then sent the Holy Spirit to those he had left behind (Pentecost)—a series of terrifying, beautiful surprises.

Today is the sixth Saturday of Easter; Thursday was Ascension Day; Pentecost is in eight days. We're in the middle of all this crazy new life. The bulbs I planted in December put up a few flowers and are now reduced to drooping green stalks, but ... the wild irises outside my office window are rioting. There are six flowers out there this morning. Go figure.

A scrappy, messy affair

I'm grateful that the Easter season lasts for 50 days.

I didn't go to church on Easter—I wouldn't have been able to take it all in. (Maybe that's why I didn't feel like going this year. Too big a disconnect: the agonizingly slow growth of rooted faith on one hand, and the fast-blooming cheerfulness of an Easter Sunday church service on the other.)

Some of the bulbs I planted are flowering. It's a scrappy, messy affair; unpredictable, earthy, and with mixed results. But maybe that's how faith is anyway.

Lent and repentance

Psalm 51:6

Behold, You desire truth in the inner being; make me therefore to know wisdom in my inmost heart.

In The People's Companion to the Breviary, Psalm 51 comes up not only on days like Ash Wednesday, but every Friday morning, rain or shine. The Carmelites of Indianapolis, who created the People's Companion, phrase verse 6 like this: "For you desire truth in my innermost being; teach me wisdom in the depths of my heart."

I have prayed this prayer many, many times. As I figure it, because God desires truth in my innermost being, God is willing to teach me wisdom. This is a prayer I would expect God to answer.

Am I any closer to an answer? I don't know, but I do continue to see my need to make the request.

To see and act on deep truths that are revealed by growing self-awareness and awakeness—this is my idea of deep repentance. Sounds easy, maybe? .... but I don't think it is. Not at all.

Unstill Epiphany

The breath of God: new life

(My blog has moved to SleepOnTheHearth.com. Please visit!)

John 20:22

And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said unto them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost.

I planted bulbs about a month ago, and this photo shows four tiny shoots above the ground. Can you see them? I can, but only because I have felt them with my fingertips. It dropped below freezing last week, which is rare for us, and I worried. But then I remembered that bulbs can survive much worse.