lent readings, week four

To hear Brandi read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/ckwo4jFowFY

I grew up in an achievement-oriented household. Our protestant work ethic was actually our life ethic, and we were raised to work longer and hustle faster than anyone else. This led me to believe all sorts of things about how my value was rooted in my effort. Looking back, I know it is truer that we were being taught to demonstrate our value as beloved kids through our effort, but the two messages still conflate for me in, at times, devastating ways. Part of adulting is exploring the unintentional messages you’ve adopted, and to clarify what will remain for you.

As kids, we were so loved, so believed in, that we were encouraged to try and excel in any bles-sed thing we took a liking to. It was amazing. My parents were always game to teach a thing, drive a distance, or enlist for an adventure. Now, as a parent of 4, I have no idea how they found the energy to encourage us to try so much. I often encourage my kids to try to be quiet and not make any plans that require my help. Ha!

In all seriousness, my need to go, to do, to produce, has been with me since I had language to describe that drive. I live life at a sprint, which means the last year has been a relentless teacher of stillness, silence and solitude. I am so grateful to have been grounded in this way (I recommend this term with at least three connotations to consider):

The air traffic control version when flights are grounded and all hell breaks loose in the terminal as people’s plans vanish,

AND,

The grounding-as-punishment earned by wayward teenagers who refuse to abide by the rules set to help them (and others) flourish,

AND,

The contemplative practice of spiritual grounding, helping one be present in one’s body in the very moment one is in).

Grounding is good for us. It hurts, it frustrates, it destroys plans, it slows us down, it restricts us. And, it is good for us. This week of Lent, ask how grounding functions in your own life. (PS-This is a backdoor into a conversation with yourself and God about how and why you do what you do. How much of your doing, of your pre-COVID routine, is a way for you to prove to yourself that you belong? That you are valuable? What happens to your sense of worth when you are forced to stop doing, when you are grounded?)

For me, my understanding of my place and purpose tends to vanish when the “thing I do” or the “institution I challenge” or the “people I teach” are taken away. It is terrifying. I fear I am built to perform, and thus feel lost when I am grounded. By leaning in to the wisdom found in silence, the presence found in solitude and the value found in stillness, I am learning another way to be.

 When we were younger, we sometimes stumbled across the rare Saturday when no one had a game, a practice, a rehearsal, or a job. My youngest sister always anticipated this miracle first. Armed with the knowledge that no one had to leave, she would patiently wait until one of us appeared to be going somewhere. Then, dressed in pjs and a bathrobe, she would throw her little body between said person and the door, yelling, “It’s bathrobe day! You can’t leave!” Knowing what this meant, the person would usually start laughing, gently resisting her order. Looking up, other siblings would began to chant, “Bathrobe Day!” Inevitably having succumbed to peer pressure, 15 minutes later we would all be in pjs, starting a movie marathon. The only movement allowed on bathrobe days was when one poor soul had to make milkshakes for the rest of us.

My sister knew things I didn’t, even as a kid. She knew that grounding was good for me. She knew that every productivity addict secretly longs for bathrobe day. Lent offers us a similar kind of wisdom. This week, approach grounding with curiosity. Allow yourself to wonder if you matter even when you can’t produce. Allow yourself to ask God how to trust you are loved even when you are alone. How to know your life has impact even when your stillness slows your roll.  How to know your voice matters even when only God can hear it.

This week, pursue grounding for all the good and ugly it might reveal in you. Try bathrobe day, and separate the you that does from the you who is. She is in you, and deserves to know she is loved before she does a thing. I pray you notice that when you are grounded, you stumble into a beautiful grounding before God and others that allows you sit in silence, in stillness, in solitude, in love.

To Ponder:

“But how sobering, that I can bring forth out of my thought-world into the external world either that which leads to life, or that which produces death in other men…we must understand that the reality of communion with God, and loving God, must take place in the inward self.”                               -Francis Shaeffer

“Contemplative prayer deepens us in the knowledge that we are already free, that we have already found a place to dwell, that we already belong to God, even though everyone and everything around us keep suggesting the opposite.”  -Henri Nouwen

To Read:

Mar 10 Ps 103; 131

Mar 11 Isaiah 43:1-7

Mar 12 Ps 1:1-3; 23

Mar 13 Habb 3:17-19

Mar 14 Luke 6:20-31

Mar 15 Ps 106:1-8

Mar 16 Eccles 3:1-8; Ps 13

lent readings, week two

To hear Brandi read this essay, click here: https://youtu.be/fG-tRc2PjsQ

For recovering productivity addicts, Lent offers an invitation to disrupt ingrained habits, to hit pause and allow a new rhythm to begin. Getting stuff done matters, but for some of us, like an addict who can’t take just one drink, it seems impossible to find another way to create a meaningful life. If you are primarily seen as the dependable efficient one, then checking things off the list—for you or for others—provides a consuming fix. While tasks are necessary, completing them can prevent other avenues for rest, for meaning, or for establishing our value.

Lent invites us to set aside time for stillness, for silence, for solitude. For some of us, the past 12 months have forced us, if not into the former, at least into stuck isolation. While we are here, we might as well look around and see what we see. I don’t like being disrupted. I don’t like being still when I want to move. I don’t like to move when I want to be still. In fact, I can get irrationally ragey when a task takes longer than I think it should, when I get interrupted, or when I feel trapped waiting on someone else. It is not my best look. But as a student of the life of Christ, I have to notice that he disrupted nearly every person he encountered. What’s more, he allowed himself to be disrupted. Almost like, as contemplative practitioners of Centering Prayer remind us: Jesus lived each day committed to consenting to the activity of the Divine Presence of God.

Consenting to the presence of God, being open to wherever it leads, sounds lovely, but it is also incredibly disruptive. I just took you on a long walk to remind you that being disrupted is part of the gig if you are a child of God. (Whispering now) We are all children of God. God’s handiwork, displays of God’s splendor. And. Crafted to be God’s hands and feet. God disrupts us by helping us acknowledge we are hip-deep in God’s Beloved Community. We get to sit there, and we get to take care of others there. We are still, and we serve. We are loved, and we love. We are alone, and we belong to others.

It is not realistic for a lot of us to cease activity in order to commune with God. It is possible for all of us, whether at work, rest or play, to consent to God’s disruptive, reorienting presence. Pay attention to your life. Familiar patterns of activity might serve you well, but they might rob you of the silent stillness you need to hear an ancient call to be still and known. To be disrupted.

For all of us, may a new rhythm draw us in, where we find ourselves moving at different paces. May our effort—or intentional rest—grow out of value and belonging, rather than determining it. In all the best ways, I hope you are disrupted by God this week.

To Ponder:

“Recovery involves quelling the riot of thoughts in the mind and thinking the overpopulation of images and feelings that accumulate with an abundance of activity. Silence and solitude are the recovery room for the soul weakened by busyness…In silence and solitude we regain our perspective, or more importantly, God’s perspective. Augustine described it as learning to ‘perform the rhythms of one’s life without getting entangled in them.’ Alone with God in prayerful quiet, the rhythms of life are untangled.”  -Howard Baker 

“Whatever may be the tensions and stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.”      -Howard Thurman

To Read:

Feb 24 Ps 120:1-2; 121:1-4

Feb 25 Zeph 3:14-18

Feb 26 Ps 107:1-9, 19-31

Feb 27 Daniel 6:25-28

Feb 28 Luke 6:20-31

Mar 1 Ecclesiastes 7:5-14

Mar 2 Ps 130

vote like everything matters

To hear Brandi read this essay, visit the Expand Your Us Youtube channel, or click here: https://youtu.be/kcIWeGnt_Tw

I am the kind of parent who likes to find a phrase that will work in a variety of situations, over a wide span of a kid’s growing years, and then repeat it, relentlessly. This habit infuriates my children. When I instinctively use such a phrase, I often privately marvel at my own wisdom: “I started saying this to him when he was 2, and it still packs a perfect punch now that he is 17!! I am brilliant!” Then I look up and see him rolling his eyes, and I watch, with dismay, as the garage door to his soul closes, in my eager, proud face.

Multi-use phrases aren’t for everyone, but I love them. They became even more important to me in the last few years, as I have leaned into trying to practice a more contemplative life. I am mostly still addicted to productivity and action, but I have grown in my practice of meditation, learning to slow down, to breathe, to observe, to listen to my thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations before I take action that can damage—or protect—others. In this way of being in the world, mantras are useful. They help center you, reminding you of who you are and how you want to be with others, rather than simply reacting in anger, exhaustion, fear or despair.

Sometimes, I pick a mantra, hoping it will Jedi-mind trick me into being a better person. “Lead with love” (instead of my natural habit of trying to slay injustice like a dragon hunter) or “I am enough” (instead of my instinct to strive, to finish, to accomplish). Repeating a phrase doesn’t magically change business as usual, but it does offer a helpful reminder, a gentle or sledge-hammer-like nudge that says, “Hey, on your best days, and in your best moments, you know there is a better way. Choose that way now.”

With early voting underway and Election day a week away, it feels like the entire country needs a reminder that we are more than our instincts. We are not automatons. You don’t have to roll your eyes or grind your teeth when you encounter a sign or a person advocating for the party you find useless. You don’t have to raise your voice when someone praises a position you find destructive. You don’t have to shut down when you have the chance to engage someone spewing hate, or repeating a lie, or disregarding the sanctity of another person’s being. We are more than our instincts.

To be clear, I am not advocating ‘staying out of it.’ This position, fueled by apathy and privilege, has somehow become a respected view. I couldn’t disagree more. In fact, this brings us to my real life mantra, one that I did not choose, but that my husband identified for me: “Everything matters.” 

Sometimes he throws this at me like an arrow, as if to say, you are so exhausting. Everything CANNOT matter all the time. Sometimes you have to say no. Sometimes it isn’t your fight, or yours to correct. Sometimes the thing in your own house has to matter more than the thing out there.

Sometimes though, he murmurs it, tossing it like a life raft. We say it silently, like a prayer, eyes locked. Everything does matter:

Choosing to invest only in my community leads me to neither know nor care about others.

Normalizing difference leads to sharing our ‘mutual garment of destiny.’

Unkindness leads to inflicting pain.

Stopping to listen leads to understanding.

Dismissing another human leads to loss of life.

Elevating the value of different kinds of work leads to respect for all kinds of folks. Relentless ambition leads to greed-driven, destructive, power.

Defensiveness destroys relationships.

Staying out of it leads to taking no responsibility for those around you.

We live in a democratic republic, and our democracy is built on the idea that everything matters. Elections provide us with the chance to vote our own interests, but they also demand that we advocate for the we. The democratic ideal leads us forward with shared governance, but it also almost works backward, reminding us that we are all in this together. No one is an island, as Pope Francis and others have said. We share resources, neighborhoods, schools, places of worship and leaders.

To pretend that I can vote on one issue, or my tax bracket, or against the thing that hurt me, is to forget that because we live in a democracy, everything matters. If you vote as if you are the only American whose interests matter, then you are likely unsafe for others, and you have rejected democracy. Everything matters, and the impact of every interest on all the people must be considered.

If I had to sum up my husband’s life matra, it would be, “Everything’s gonna be ok.” He has a miraculous gift to be unbothered. He trusts…himself to survive?...the world to right itself?...God to protect us? He teaches me that life does go on, whether or not I exhausted myself trying to fix the thing I had to fix. He teaches me that much is to be gained through loss, through failure. He teaches me that sometimes accepting my own powerlessness is the most courageous act of all. He teaches me that investing in people helps soften the blow when things aren’t ok. That we all desperately need each other, and that being loved does not require earning my keep.

 Middle age—and countless griefs—have challenged these mantras. Crying out on our knees over senseless death, damaging others even when we tried to do everything right, we know now that everything is sometimes not okay. 

Throwing ourselves at systems that continue to diminish others, speaking up against unchanging, stubborn injustice, working and failing to restore broken relationships, we now know nothing seems to change even when you live as if Everything Matters.

Like all good marriages, there is little beauty found in being right, but loads of wisdom in learning to learn from each other. When everything matters, everything will be ok. When we learn—in relationships, in our lived-out-faiths, and in our civic engagement—to expand our capacity to care, invest and act on behalf of others, we become part of the beloved community. When we do this, we build such strong relationships that we survive and resist and fail and achieve together. Everything really will be ok. These ideas both motivate us and temper us.

 As we make a plan to vote in a pandemic, I share our mantras, broken as they are. As the world seems to unravel, I remind us of these ideas that are insufficient when they live in isolation. My hope is that we can find power and perspective when we hold them in tension: Take action on behalf of those around you as if everything matters. It does. Lean in to your community, sharing in joy and suffering, need and want, as if everything’s gonna be okay as long as we belong to one another. It will. (Vote.)