BRAMBLES

Some days I feel like I am a round peg stuck in a square hole. It fits, but there is always something a little off. Something is not quite lined up. There’s always room for growth, and always in the same four corners. There’s a lot of wiggle room, but everything might not hold the way it should if I get moved. Sometimes if I am resting in the sweet spot, I think I look a little loose to everyone else.

There’s something about a wobbly peg that makes people start looking around for some glue.

I get bumped by the paradoxes and the inconsistencies. God is a lion, God is a lamb. Do not be a slave to ‘do not touch this, do not touch that’ – but seriously, do not touch that, ok? It is for freedom that I am made free, but really only technically – I am free to want and to do the will of God. If what I want to do is to run wild, then I am free to either get hemmed in or fenced out. If I’m not careful with my thinking, I can get lost in the brambles. I can start to feel that God is giving mixed messages.

Things don’t always line up. We pray fervently in the Name of Jesus for people to be healed and they are not healed. They die. They do not get back up from the dead, even though we pray, In Your Name, by the power of your Name, not for ourselves but for Your Glory and for the Glory of Your Great Name. They stay sick and they get sicker and they suffer, even though the Bible says, If you ask for anything in My Name – if it’s something that is within My will, and if you ask with right motives, and if two or three of you come together in agreement to ask Me, and if you ask and ask and ask and ask persistently until I give you what you ask, but still are able to wait patiently in faith believing that you have already received what you have asked for – then you can be pretty sure that I will almost certainly let you have it. That is not verbatim.

And how can we discern this will of God, upon which everything depends? Do I walk by the Spirit, or stay put in the Spirit? Do I walk on the water, or do I sleep in the boat? Do I speak to the storm, or do I ride it out? How much does it matter? When you are surrounded by chaos, it’s hard to hear that still small voice that says, This is the way, walk in it. That voice can be very still and very small, or maybe really loud but talking to the person next to you. If you’re listening for it, you can actually get a little paranoid and start second-guessing yourself every time you get on an airplane or think about which route to take to school. Oops, I turned left instead of right. Great. I was distracted, and now I’m stuck in traffic. Oh but wait – Oh no. Was there some place I was meant to be, and now God’s plan has been thwarted? Or maybe there is something that God means for me to do on this road, and so He took me out of my way. I could be right smack in the middle of God’s will right now. This is so exciting. I’m starting to feel all tingly – Is there going to be an accident??

I’m not even kidding. Sometimes I want to say to God, Could you speak up? Could you please be a little more specific? I’m getting a little muddled. Can’t you just give me some rules? Maybe a chart of some kind, with some stickers for when I get it right? I need some boundaries. Fixed rules, set in stone, so I don’t have to always be asking You – waiting on You – while I’m trying to make basic decisions. Turn left here, turn right there, if this happens then move, if that happens then stay – that kind of thing. Feel free to write it down. Also, if You say You’re going to do something for me, it would really help if You would actually do that thing in THIS time/space continuum. I don’t know if You are aware of this or not, O God, but when you speak You can be kind of cryptic.

We are supposed to walk by the Spirit, but we are so bent on rules. We want them. We crave them. We have no way of measuring ourselves without them. What is that ‘A’ on your shirt for? Is that an A grade, or is that an A for ‘adulterer’? Are we still giving out ‘A’s? I thought we stopped doing that.

I walk the tightrope between super-natural grace and natural consequences. I swing on the paradox between, God will supply all of your needs according to His riches in glory and, Ahem, there aren’t actually any cattle in the stalls at the moment. I trampoline between, God is my shield and my defender, and Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him. I was having the conversation with a friend the other day, and we were talking about inconvenient troubles like slander, gossip and tarnished reputation. I spoke very wisely from the depth of my experience, The truth always comes out in the end. She looked at me straight, and said, Does it? We laughed a little and the two of us agreed together – no. No, actually, it really does not.

Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds feet, and makes me walk on my high places.  Habakkuk 3:18-19

LITTLE CHILDREN

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, ‘Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea... See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you, that their angels in heaven continually behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.’  Matthew 18:1-6, 10

That’s pretty harsh. When Jesus starts talking about millstones and drowning, you might safely assume that he is serious. I read this and I am left thinking, Whoever receives one such child in His name receives Him. Jesus spoke these words to his disciples, straight to their face – and yet one chapter later, they are sending children away from him. Sick children, babes in arms, brought to Jesus for healing and blessing – the disciples are chasing them away. Jesus doesn’t want you around. Jesus is tired. Jesus has a headache. Can’t you make that kid stop screaming? You almost have to wonder, did they not think that Jesus meant what he said? Were they not taking him literally? Did they think that he was only speaking to them in metaphor? I’m not shocked to read that Jesus was indignant.

Jesus seemed to speak often to his disciples about humility – somebody was always jockeying for position, trying to impress, trying to get it right, or trying to anticipate what Jesus was going to want them to say or do. You can almost hear it sometimes – We’re with him. We know him. I can tell you already, Jesus isn’t going to like this.

It always puzzles me that Jesus said humble yourself as this child. If you said to a child, be humble, they wouldn’t know at all what you meant – you would really have to work to explain it to them. Children, before the insecurity sets in, are shameless braggers. Look what I did! Watch me! See what I can do! You’re not watching – really watch me! They assume that if you love them, you are interested in everything that they do. They assume that everything they do for you is amazing. They are in a constant state of wonder at their own abilities. Look how I can bend my leg. Listen to this song I wrote. Watch this play that I worked really hard on. I am doing things, I am learning things, isn’t it all so amazing!

If you were going to compile a list of the most godly people you know of, those most closely representing the Divine image, the ones on the same page as Jesus, the ones closest to the kingdom of heaven, your thoughts might not immediately turn to a Daycare. Your first thoughts might not be of children, who innocently go straight for the front of the line and have to be taught to wait their turn; children, who don’t know what an important person looks like unless you tell them; children, who rub the earth between their toes and fingers, and love it, and who have to be taught to wash their hands; children, who poke your breast and your belly and have to be taught boundaries; children, who are always and forever asking Why? and then Why?, and then Why? again; children, who say things like, But how do you know God is real? Are you sure? What if God is an elephant?; children, who feel untruth in their gut, who say out loud, That doesn’t even make sense.  

You might not think immediately of a child, who wouldn’t even think to ask, Who will be on your right or your left in the kingdom? – but who just comes to you boldly and says, Can I sit on your lap?

And yet Jesus said, Be like that.

WORDS MADE FLESH

I have a fear of losing my voice. I send the words out wrapped in hooded blessing, and I try not to think about where they might end up or where they might trip and fall. I lose faith in them sometimes – I wonder if they will be kind and determined, as I mean them to be, and whether they have the strength and the wisdom to withstand a wolf. I want to tempt them to return to me, but they are already changed. They are already in somebody’s belly.

At times I feel a hand clamping over my mouth, and I don’t know whose it is – I don’t know whether to bite on my tongue or the hand. The words want to escape, but I don’t know if I am their captor or their abettor. I am thinking about ineffable, and I am asking the God words what they are even for – what is it they are trying to do?

Sometimes I have to talk with other words – listen to ones that I know are other. I need to know my neighbour. I may need to borrow some sugar – one of us may land in a ditch. I need to stand face to face with God words that I don’t like, that I don’t believe, that are written in ways that anger me or hurt. I need to feel myself trip over them and bang my head. I need to remind myself that it’s ok – it is not death, for the words to hang there abandoned, despised, rejected. I need to bear witness to how life comes forth reborn because we cannot agree to disagree.

There are words that are simply true for everybody – breathing, loving, and pain. They are blankets – they don’t need to be spoken because we already know, yet we still want to pull them around us. We share them willingly with one another, when we are cold, when we are afraid, when we love. The words become the light, the wind, the earth, the sea, wrapping us in all that we know together. The words enfold us in the safe embrace of the universe – they assure us that we are, none of us, alone.

But there are words that are intimate, timid, murmured by a solitude within us, drawn from us because we are alone. They are drawn from us while we are asleep. With the God words our soul is cut and shaped into bones. The bones are sent out to find flesh to absorb them and give them a place to live. The offering is taken – a piece of ourselves – and cupped in the hands of God. We hope that God will breathe into it. We hope we will awake to a mate.

POSTPARTUM

I don’t remember worrying about much before I had children. I put off till tomorrow, I slept peacefully in airplanes, I chatted with strangers on buses – I lived day to day. I didn’t worry about a lot of things I worry about now, like crashing and stranger danger and falling out of tree houses. Parenting has a way of adding new levels of awareness. There are so very many things you could worry about, if you were so inclined.

I wonder very often about why I was chosen – why I was chosen to be mother to my three beautiful children. They’re each so very different – different from me, different from one another. They are so incredible in the here and now, and so filled with potential. Sometimes I just don’t have a clue. I worry about wrecking them. I think maybe God didn’t factor in all the risks when they were placed into my hands. Maybe God hadn't read my Family History.

I know a lot of amazing women, but I have not met one yet who makes me think to myself, Yes, I would let you raise my children. You are everything I wish I could be for them. You would draw out everything in my children that I wish I knew how. You would not wreck them in any way. For all my limitations, when I start to think about whom besides me could raise my children if I were not around, I look at all the people I love the best and I become very, very aware of flaws.

I do not think, I am looking for someone to raise My beloved only begotten Son,Word made flesh, helpless baby. Hey, there’s this teenager – I think she’s about fourteen. She's engaged to a man she barely knows – a blue-collar type, who works with his hands. My Son will tarnish his reputation – the timing will be ‘off’. Now, there is always the possibility that he will not love My Son in the same way as he will love the ones made in his own image. And My Son will most likely become fodder for playground gossip – ‘He doesn’t know his real father. His parents weren’t married when his mom got pregnant. They had to get married. His dad only married his mom because he’s a nice guy, and he didn’t want her to get stoned.’ Yes, yes, off to a great start. They shall be his parents.

God wasn’t worried.

God could not have done more to establish just exactly how much He was not worried. God put Jesus into the care of a teenage girl and a carpenter, dropped him into their arms in a stable surrounded by the smells and sounds of animals – the furthest thing from safe or sanitary, with nowhere else to go – far, far away from home, on purpose.

The thing that I have to keep reminding myself over and over again is, it is not about me.

I knew this before my children were born – before they ever moved inside me – when I didn’t know who they were or all that they would need. I was only a vessel. No angel spoke it to me, and yet I pondered it in my heart. But sometimes I forget. I need to be reminded.

You are blessed among women – you are the chosen. I have not given you to My children – I have given My children to you. These children are gifts.These children will bless you and bring joy to your soul. They will absolutely change your world. Open your heart wide to receive, and let the God love fill you. It is not about worthy – it is only about willing.

BRIDE OF CHRIST - STEPFORD WIFE

Maybe it is the way it’s always been, but our minds are saturated with unrealistic expectations. Performance enhancing drugs, photo shopping, breast augmentation, hair extensions, cubic zirconia, face lifts, spray tans, Viagra, gel nails, happy pills, relax pills, pills for sitting at attention – everything is augmented. So much is fake. It used to be that fake meant ugly plastic flowers – nobody liked them, nobody was expected to believe they were real. They filled a space, they added colour and they were low, low maintenance. But these days we are being pushed to prefer what isn’t real. These days, fake seems to be the standard. These days, fake is very, very high maintenance.

It’s hard to live up to all the pressure. It’s expensive just trying to keep your hair and skin looking like they are younger than they are. It’s overwhelming trying not to be inconvenient with your emotions – to pretend that you are in complete control of yourself, that you are never sad or depressed or angry. It is exhausting trying to stay always at an optimum level of motivation and inspiration. We really can’t do it all without special tools, doctors, drinks, medications, and daily affirmations – I’m not always sure God wants to get involved.

Sometimes I worry that we have let perfectionism bleed all over the church. We don’t know how to confess our sins anymore. We are losing the gift of encouragement to motivational speakers. We are forgetting our purpose. Sometimes I have to look it up, because I can’t quite remember exactly.

I know God wants His church to be real. I know God wants His bride to be the realest thing around. God did not sign up for a Stepford Wife – always submissive, always vacuuming and getting rid of stains, never questioning, never showing pain or frustration, never thinking or feeling or having a bad day, never eating too many cookies, always smiling. I don’t think that is how God envisioned His church at all. I hope it is not. I would never survive – I can’t even play Martha.

But I have said, like Martha, Lord, if only You had been here. God has been beautiful to me, and has protected and covered me, but God does not often do what I want. It very rarely happens that I ask God for something and that I get it just the way I asked for it. Very often I just get silence, which I have been taught to assume means a no. Very often I get something I would not have thought to ask for – not even in the ballpark. Like I asked for a watch and I got a ratchet set. Sometimes it seems very random. Sometimes it is the opposite of what I want. I ask God for strength and direction, and I get more to carry and the road disappears. Very often I simply do not understand.

Sometimes I get tired of the spiritual gymnastics I have to do to make it ok that God isn’t coming through the way I want. God never closes a door unless He opens a window. Sometimes our tears are our blessings in disguise. God’s ways are higher than ours. You never know what God is protecting you from. God knows what you need more than you do. God’s timing and your timing are not the same. God is not your personal genie. If God doesn’t give you what you want, it’s because God has something better planned for you. God knows you are not ready to receive that. God is growing you. God won’t do for you what you can do for yourself. The most amazing miracles happen underground, where you cannot see them – Spring will come, and you will see. Every bit of that is true. But the fact that we have so many different ways to avoid saying, God is not doing what I want, tells me that I am not alone.

I wish I could have a fingertip on Holy - but God has been asking me to just work on real. The truth is I have said some very real words to God. I have once or twice told God that I think maybe He is an Impotent Husband and that I am sick to barfing of all His words, words, words. I have once or twice said, If You love me so much, and You’re so all-powerful, then why don’t You just – DO something? I don’t always have peace that passes understanding – sometimes I am very unsettled and confused. I have once or twice lain face down on the floor, breathed in and out and said God, God, God, God because that was all there was to say. Not a name, not a prayer, not a swear – just not the sound of silence. I have told God a few times that I am tired of being the only one who is ever wrong in this relationship, and that it just isn’t healthy – that I am tired of being the one who has to do all the soul searching.

God doesn’t need me to cover for Him. God has nothing to hide. I know that I am dust, and that God is God is God.

In Love there is intimacy and naked and real. I can’t believe God wants to watch me tape a smile onto my face and hear me say, Fine. God doesn’t want my fake. Dead, dead in my sins, dead deep down in my soul – these God can deal with. God specializes in resurrection. It’s the paint that has to go.

ADVENT

I’m really feeling the Advent spirit in a big way this year. Like I’ve been a long time in sin and error pining. Like life is hitting me upside the head with you have to, and it’s taking me on a journey that I really would rather not go on right now. Like everything is so necessary and busy that there would be barely any time or room left for pressing things like giving birth. Like I just wish everything would stop for a minute so I can be quiet, make room in my heart to ponder things, and feel heavy and joyous with expectation. Totally like Advent.

God came into the world so inconveniently. It really wasn’t a good time. It almost seems like maybe God didn’t plan it very well – didn’t factor in things like government and censuses. It’s as though God didn’t know anything about how once-in-a-lifetime the birth of your first baby is, and how scared you are, and how full your bladder is all the time, and how much you don’t dream of giving birth in a barn. But God didn’t seem at all concerned with finding a convenient time. Ready or not, God had no problem with interrupting absolutely everything.

I’m not convinced that God is really excited about having a birthday party every year. I’m not sure God is really impressed with how long it takes us to plan it. I don’t think God is tickled over how grumpy and overwhelmed everyone gets over it, and how we start to stick our fingers down our throats after hearing the same song sung thirty billion different ways every day for a month. I don’t think God is thinking, You know what is awesome? Presents! I want everybody to have presents! I don’t think anybody really thinks any of that – but we do it all anyway, because of God, in God’s name.

I think that we need to be honest with ourselves – we’re trying very, very hard to make room at the Inn for God. We’re planning way ahead of time. We’re baking, we’re decorating, we’re sending out cards, we’re popping little doors open on calendars. We’re expectant. We sing, O Come, O Come Emmanuel – we meet with God, we ask God to be with us. We behave so convincingly as though we believe God’s presence is something we have to anticipate, go find, invite, make welcome, make space for. We don’t seem to really understand what Emmanuel even means – welcome or not, invited or not, ready or not, noticed or not, God is with us.

I will give my children presents this Christmas. We’ll have new pajamas, a tree and a turkey. We’ll eat cookies, and we’ll watch Christmas movies like, Home Alone and Christmas Vacation and Scrooged. Someone will read Luke 2:1-20, I’ll cry when I hear O Holy Night, and we’ll wrap each other up in ribbons of peace, family and love. In the midst of it all, I will try not to let my heart get expectant and ready and prepared for God. God is already here.

AFTER THE POOL

Now it was the Sabbath on that day. Therefore the Jews were saying to him who was cured, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.” But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Take up your pallet and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your pallet and walk’?” But he who was healed did not know who it was; for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse may befall you.” The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. And for this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.  John 5:9-16

What was that made whole man from the pool of Bethesda doing in the temple when Jesus found him? If the disciples were filming an episode of Where Are They Now? that sounds like a great place to be found. Very spiritual. Maybe he wanted to get right with God. Maybe he was going to offer up some praise. Maybe he was just looking for a friend who could be happy for him, instead of envious of his wiggly new legs. It’s entirely possible – John doesn’t make note of what he was doing in the temple. But I have my suspicions, because of what Jesus said to him when he saw him. Look at yourself – you are well. Stop sinning, so something worse doesn’t happen to you.

One thing about Jesus – he didn’t run around randomly telling people to stop sinning. I can only think of one other time – after he had stepped in between an adulterous woman and a pile of flying rocks. After sending all her accusers away convicted, he said to her, I do not accuse you. Go and sin no more. No judgement. No lecture. He saw right into her heart and said, Don’t go back to your boyfriend.  

Jesus was not into making threats either, and so I wonder why, after the healing – later, in the temple – Jesus felt the need to say to the man from Bethesda, Stop sinning, or else. It doesn’t really sound like something Jesus would say.

Sometimes Jesus makes you whole, but you kind of wish he hadn’t. Jesus didn’t really prepare you for all that it was going to mean. You weren’t exactly emotionally ready when he came along and asked you if you wanted to be made whole. You mean, like, now? – Yes. I mean, like, right now. You can be a little upset that he asked you to choose.

Truthfully, if you’d had your druthers, you’d rather have had a little bit of time to adjust mentally. Get a few things out of your system. Take a little time to open yourself up to the idea of wholeness again. Get re-oriented with the world of the walking. You weren’t ready to hear, You can’t do that. You just wanted your heart to work – you weren’t even thinking about religion. You were not equipped to meet this new possibility that, in the world of the walking, your little miracle might be completely beside the point – that there might suddenly be expectations.

But this wasn’t an intervention and Jesus wasn’t offering rehab. Yes or no. Choose.

Take up my pallet and walk? Where am I supposed to go? – I’m not telling you where to go. I don’t care where you go. Walk wherever you want to walk. But do not stay here, and do not reserve your spot. Go today. Right now. Pick up that smelly old mat and move, man. You’ve got legs – use them.

I know what institutionalized looks like – when the captive doesn’t know what to do with freedom. I know what it sounds like – what the words are that keep them from being well. It isn’t my fault. That man who healed me, he told me to do it.

Jesus really hadn’t said, Pick up your mat and carry it around all day. He had only said, Take your spot by the pool with you when you go. But the man was still holding onto that ratty old pallet when religion came along. That symbol of his sickness and his poverty in spirit – it should have been anathema to him, but it wasn’t. He wasn’t holding onto it because Jesus had told him to – he was holding onto it because he still planned to use it. And so I think he was in God’s house doing the most predictable thing in the world – the only thing he knew how to do. He stopped carrying his mat on the Sabbath. He put down his pallet, rolled it out smooth and sat himself down on it. He curled his well legs up under himself, he stretched his well hands out in front of himself, and he started pretending unwell.

I don’t think the man got it. I think that maybe when Jesus came right up to him in the temple and called him on it, he started to get a little mad inside. Mad at Jesus.

Seriously, what is your issue with me? Who even asked you? I never said ‘yes’ to any of this. I was doing just fine before you came along with your ‘Do you want to be well’ shtick. I look well to you, do I? Really, Jesus? You and I must have seriously different ideas of what ‘well’ looks like. Because let me just point out to you that currently I’ve got no job, no home, no possessions, my legs are all pins and needles and my back is killing me, I haven’t stood toe to toe or looked anyone in the eyes in almost forty years, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing or who I’m supposed to listen to – everyone is interrogating me and telling me what to do – I can’t even go back to my old friends because somebody else has my spot, and now I’ve got nothing but guilt and shame and trouble, thanks to you. Wiggly legs, and nowhere to run. And there is something that I would like to say to you, Jesus. I am considering the very real possibility that you set this whole thing up. This was never about me at all. You just wanted to use me to make a point. Well, you sure made it. So thanks, Jesus. Thanks a lot.

Maybe not. But what did the man do after Jesus found him – after he had learned the name of the one who had healed him, and exactly who Jesus was? He didn’t ask to be a disciple. He didn’t jump and leap for joy and cause a big scene. He didn’t pour tears all over Jesus feet. He didn’t do as the man born blind did four chapters later – get thrown out of the synagogue because he would not, could not deny the only Truth he was absolutely sure of, that I once was blind but now I see, and Jesus is the one who healed me.

He did not go forth and tell about Jesus – he went away and he told on Jesus.

This I know about Jesus – he can remove obstacles. He can come right up to you and whisper into your ear, and bring healing to you when you aren’t even sure that you want it. He draws close to the poor in spirit. But he cannot make you choose to be whole – even after he has already made you so. He cannot make you want to be well.

I don’t know what Jesus had in mind when he said, So that nothing worse may befall you – but I listen carefully to his story of The Unforgiving Servant, and how that man’s stone of debt came rolling back onto him. And I imagine that healed man from the pool of Bethesda walking around with a cold, unresponsive, not-my-fault, passive, paralyzed heart.