Playing Poker with God

Aug 24, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality

So often we frantically seek for an explanation to our suffering, to the things in our own life and in the world that make no sense to us. We often seek that explanation, or should I say, “demand” that explanation from God.

I don’t know about you, but no matter my endless beseeching of God for answers, they are rare in coming and often less than comforting when they are heard and/or understood.

I continue to believe there is something profound and unique to which we are called as women in suffering. It’s not that we are to be martyrs – just suffering because we must, or worse, because we choose to allow such. Rather, there is something beautiful and intimate that occurs in the midst of suffering – in relationship with God.

What if, rather than seeking an escape from suffering, we came to anticipate God’s whisper; God’s desire to offer intimacy, kindness, and care?

Offand on I’ve been reading a book called Women and the Value of Suffering by Kristine M. Rankka. She ends the book with a stunning poem by Anne Sexton saying that in it suffering is acknowledged, but with no attempt to justify or explain it.

The Rowing Endeth
I’m mooring my rowboat
at the dock of the island called God.
This dock is made in the shape of a fish
and there are many boats moored
at many different docks.
“It’s okay,” I say to myself,
with blisters that broke and healed
and broke and healed –
saving themselves over and over.
And salt sticking to my face and arms like
a glue-skin pocked with grains of tapioca.
I empty myself from my wooden boat
and onto the flesh of The Island.
“On with it!” He says and thus
we squat on the rocks by the sea
and play- can it be true –
a game of poker.
He calls me.
I win because I hold a royal straight flush.
He wins because He holds five aces.
A wild card had been announced
but I had not heard it
being in such a state of awe
when He took out the cards and dealt.
As He plunks down His five aces
and I sit grinning at my royal flush,
He starts to laugh,
the laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth
and into mine,
and such laughter that He doubles right over me
laughing a Rejoice-Chorus at our two triumphs.
The I laugh, the fishy dock laughs
the sea laughs. The Island laughs.
The Absurd laughs.
Dearest dealer,
I with my royal straight flush,
love you so for your wild card,
that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha
and lucky love.

If this is even remotely possible: the experience of playing poker with God, of hearing God’s laughter, of coming to love the wild card, of being loved like this, count me in! ‘Not that I can do anything about the suffering that has or will yet come; but I can hope for the grace and winsomeness to hear God’s invitation to play cards in the midst.

Ready to deal?

My Proclivity for Lists

Jul 31, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality

I’m a list-maker, I admit it. I not only make them, I complete them. I can have multiple lists running at the same time: work, home,
parenting, the grocery store, yard work, future vacation itineraries – both fantasized and real. Whether fortunate or not, my brain has the capacity to hold all of these at once, determine which one(s) to work on at a particular time, and still recall the others.

My parents would say I should enjoy this while I can because that now-taken-for-granted-capacity will begin to fail as my age increases. I know what they mean but at least right now I’m not sure it’s a gift that’s all that great.

Lists somehow regiment life. They add order. And though both of these may be good things, I only want lists informing my life, not defining my reality.

Lists have a strange and mysterious power to become the determiner of what was, is, and should be – in many realms, but perhaps most profoundly for a religious person who lives within a text that is filled with more lists than we know what to do with.

I was looking at some passages in 1st and 2nd Timothy last week that had to do with Elders: their role, the qualities of such, etc. And I found myself incredibly frustrated. Too many to-do’s. True, the order thing is there – in spades, but for me, they felt like they’d lost their goodness and moved to something dangerous, something life-draining vs. life-giving. I struggled to think of a way to breathe life into these texts; to offer a larger perspective on how I/we might understand them. I wanted to find and invite something, anything different. I didn’t have much luck.

As I’ve spent some more time reflecting on the palpable tension I experienced in this context I wondered how it might speak to a larger reality in my life these days:

My list-making, or at least my previous understanding of what would provide me order, security, boundaries, safety, and even answers, stopped working the way it used to.

Surely, I used to think, the Biblical text – the mandates, the commandments, the lists (and those who’ve interpreted it) could offer me a rubric through which to understand my life and how to live it: a simple step-by-step process that would make sense of the increasing complexity I found myself in. I went back to the books that lined my shelves, most written by reputable Christians, hoping to find that framework.

They let me down – through no fault of their own. Somehow, between the time I bought the books and read them the first, second, or even third time and now my life no longer fit. The rules and how-to’s don’t make sense at all. I need something that offers freedom, something that gives me life.

Not surprisingly really, I found it in the Biblical text when I went to the stories – especially the women, who didn’t live by the rules and were (still) deeply loved by God. I found story after story that literally drips in freedom, that offers life. I’m incredibly grateful.

Still, what to do with the lists – my own and those in Scripture? At least for now, I choose to understand them in the larger context of the Biblical narrative, in the larger context of a God who desires and promises life above all else. For now, I wonder how the lists themselves, the do’s and don’ts, the thou shalts and thou shalt nots might limit both freedom and life.

For now, I’m fine to just wonder – not worry, about making the lists, completing the lists, crossing off every item.

If nothing else (though I believe there’s more) I’m glad I can remember what I need at the grocery store while simultaneously typing on my cellphone a list of to-do’s for work the next day as I’m waiting in the checkout line, looking at my watch, and thinking about how many things I need to get done before the next alarm sounds on my calendar/phone indicating what’s next on my list…

Enough typing. I’ve got to get on to the next thing on my list! 

About Connection and Stamps (and God)

Jul 24, 2007 | Spirituality

about reconnecting:
Just a few minutes ago I finished writing a note to a person I haven’t been in touch with for over 15 years. I have no idea
what has taken place in that amount of time, no idea what has occurred, who has been loved, who has died, what tears
have been shed, what laughter has sprung forth. What I do know is that all of the same realities have been true for me:
love, death, tears, laughter. What would it be like to re-connect now? Would we have similar stories to tell or vastly divergent ones? Would we know what to say? Would we even recognize one another?

and a stamp:
As I placed the stamp on the envelope and put it in the slot in my door to be picked up by my mail carrier, I realized that really, regardless of whether we connect face-to-face, we have reconnected. My thoughts and curiosity have enabled that and aren’t dependent on reciprocation.

My musings above lead me to wonder about God.

How often do we understand God as the one who receives our note? As one who needs to respond in order for connection to have occurred? I wonder what would happen if I/we began to understand God more as the (re)connection itself, the
curiosity and the desire and the virtual (but no less real) connection that occurs just in thinking of another…and caring? Of course, it doesn’t have to be one or the other; God is undoubtedly both – responder and respondent, connection and re-connector. And even more, I’m guessing God is the one writing and stamping the notes, thinking the thoughts, caring – far more than me.

The mail will be picked up soon and I’ll wait to see what happens. Either way, connection has occurred. I’d love to experience God this way – not waiting for a response, but experienced as re-connecting, present in everything – every thought, every memory, every love, every death, every tear, every laugh…even in a stamp.

This Father’s Day

Jun 17, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Mothers and Daughters, Spirituality

I find myself in a sort of a gray place today. Granted, it’s the Seattle area and the skies are often as they look today: filled with clouds, overcast, chilly. But it feels like more than that.

It’s Father’s Day. My daughters are with their dad – and, therefore, not with me. A new experience this year. Maybe that’s part of it.

In an effort to shift to a brighter or at least clearer space I spent some time reading the liturgy of the week. I came across this excerpt from The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware. It touched the gray and invited some grace-filled shafts of warmth and sun…

The actress Lillah McCarthy describes how she went in great misery to see George Bernard Shaw, just after she had been deserted by her husband.

 

I was shivering. Shaw sat very still. The fire brought me warmth…How long we st there I do not know, but presently I found myself walking with dragging steps with Shaw beside me…up and down Adelphi Terrace.

 

The weight upon me grew a little lighter and released the tears which would never come before…He let me cry. Presently I heard a voice in which all the gentleness and tenderness of the world was speaking. It said: “Look up, dear, look up to the heavens. There is more in life than this. There is much more.”

Whatever his faith in God or lack of it, Shaw points here to something that is fundamental to the spiritual way. He did not offer smooth words of consolation to Lillah McCarthy, or pretend that her pain would be easy to bear. What he did was far more perceptive. He told her to look out for a moment from herself, from her personal tragedy, and to see the world in its objectivity, to sense its wonder and variety, its “thusness.” And his advice applies to all of us.

However, oppressed by my own or others’ anguish, I am not to forget that there is more in the world than this, there is much more.

I bought more flowers for the front porch yesterday. When I got up today I spotted them as I picked up the Sunday paper. They made me smile. I bought a few more when I went to the grocery store this morning – wanting even more of their color, their warmth, their reminiscent glimpsing of Eden. They permeate the gray and offer me heaven in the hear and now. As will my daughters when they return from their time with their dad. As will my parents and my brother as they visit here this afternoon. As will even gray skies as I recognize their Creator.

How like God to speak through George Bernard Shaw to Lillah McCarthy. And to me – on Father’s Day. “Look up, dear, lookup to the heavens. There is more in life than this. There is much more.”

Indeed, and not just in the heavens, but all around.

Asking “what-if” questions

Jun 12, 2007 | Spirituality

These days, at Mars Hill Graduate School, we are considering a lot of “What if” questions:

  • What if you truly loved your neighbor as yourself?
  • What if you were truly willing to enter the heartache of a fallen world?
  • What if you truly believed the gospel could change the world?

They are almost trick questions because, of course, as a Christian, one is almost mandated to answer them in a positive,
definitive, and no-questions-asked sort-of way:

  • Of course I love my neighbor as myself!
  • Of course I’m willing to enter the heartache of a fallen world!
  • Of course I truly believe the gospel can change the world!

The problem is that our lives don’t reflect our oh-so-confident response. At least mine doesn’t.

And that’s why I like these questions.

They provoke me. They prod me. They haunt me. Theyprompt even more questions. And all of this is good.

I wonder if Jesus’ parables didn’t strike a similar chord. He consistently provoked and prodded and haunted – especially those who thought they had all the right answers. They prompted even more questions – still. And all of this is good.

Here are some more “what if” questions:

    • What if I wasn’t afraid to ask questions?
    • What if wasn’t afraid of not getting the answers right? What if I asked more questions of myself,
      others, and even God?
    • What if, indeed?

    All of this is definitely good. 

    On Womens’ Suffering

    May 3, 2007 | Spirituality

    I was at a conference last weekend in Syracuse, NY, at which a number of theologians, philosophers, and educators spoke and thought together. The theme was Feminism, Sexuality, and the Return of Religion. Regardless of what the event might have hoped to invite or engage, there was one significant theme I took away: women have, do, and will suffer.

    Let me quickly say, on the heels of such a depressing statement, that I am not depressed by this. Rather, I was able to think about the reality of suffering as certainly inevitable but also as the context through which we know and offer much hope – and ultimately life.

    Sarah Coakley was the speaker on Friday morning; she is the one to whom I must give credit for these categories in which I’m been ruminating this past week. She said that there are really three categories of suffering:

    1) Suffering with no way out. No amount of will or agency or courage can change the situation. It is completely, 100 percent, out of our control. Examples might include the Holocaust, genocide, fatal disease and even some natural disasters.

    2) Suffering but with the inclusion of agency. The circumstances are truly painful but there is the possibility that a woman could exert her will and begin to experience change. In so doing, we must quickly recognize that such change may, in fact, be a step out of one form of suffering and movement into another. The key, however, is that agency actually can be exerted. This kind of suffering is not completely out of her control. An good example would be domestic violence: horribly tragic and not at all occurring because the woman isn’t exerting agency. Rather, it’s a context in which the circumstances, though horrific, do still have room for movement and change (perhaps, at times, not by the woman herself but by the community around her).

    3) Suffering that is chosen – freely, willingly, and on behalf of something or someone else. The quickest image that comes to my mind is that of a mother protecting her children. Mother’s throughout time have willingly sacrificed themselves – even their very lives – on behalf of their child’s protection, health, or very life. 

    How might women begin to understand more clearly the dramatic difference between these three categories and then willingly, freely, even with exuberant hope step consistently, bravely, and willingly into number three? Discernment.

    I met with my Spiritual Director this morning. As we talked about these categories – and discernment – she said that we make a mistake when we think we can just “do” discernment. “Rather,” she said, “discernment is a way of life.” It’s a way of being in relationship with God that is far more significant than particular aesthetic disiplines and practices that we employ when we’re in a bind. It’s a spacious place within our very soul that is able to wait, to listen, to wonder, to actually feel vs. just processing things at a completely intellectual level without ever engaging our hearts.

    Not easy, this discernment thing. And certainly not easy to suffer, no matter the category.

    As I’ve been thinking about this nearly nonstop since last weekend, I realize that suffering is everywhere – certainly in my life and all around me. My attempts to escape it are for naught and I must be one who tirelessly works to end it – in my own life and in the lives of others. In the in-between time, in the midst, I want to suffer well, with strength and wisdom and grace – not for suffering’s sake, but on behalf of it’s end…