Creation

I have been thinking lately about the process of creation. This was sparked by my recent clean out of a box under my desk at home. In it, I found a folder overflowing with old poetry that I had written back when I was an aspiring poet. Most of this is admittedly awful poetry. There are some that are okay and those are ones that were written and revised. The poems that eventually got published in small poetry chapbooks have underwent several sometimes extensive revisions. They took a lot of work as most things that have value do.

Great works of literature, poetry, music, and art are most times resultant of a lot of blood, sweat and tears. And I would venture to say revision and reworking. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass underwent several revisions during Whitman’s lifetime. Much of Henri Matisse’s amazing canvases started out as simple drawings. This was true of my favorite artists from the Der Blaue Reiter movement (Blue Rider), Kandinsky, Marc and Klee. They often made rough sketches that they revised when painting. Their creations did not just happen; they took work and were the result of a process of trial and error. They evolved, were reworked, and revised.


The universe and all its wonders are God’s great creation. The Bible tells us in Genesis; “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” I believe that this act of creation was done through the process of evolution. God set that process in motion and that process constantly revising. Always striving to get it perfect.

The Bible also tells that us that man is God’s greatest creation. A creation that He made in His own image. Genesis stated that God formed man of dust or clay from the ground. I always imagine the sculptures of Rodin when I read this passage. And yet even God's greatest creation, man undergoes revision and is ever evolving.

I know that I am a work of constant revision.  I am aware of aspects of me that I know need improvement. Don’t we all. I am different than I was 20 years ago both in physical appearance and in who Robin is. Heck I am a different me today than I was yesterday.  I work on my relationship to God and my world. God works on me, gently guiding me to be more Christ-like. 

Creation is a mighty and active thing. I am sure thankful that we have a God that continues to revise and does not just shove us in a folder, in a box, under His desk.

We are all God’s poems, the cosmos His canvas, the stars His concerto.

We are all His creation!

Holy Rolling in a Mainline Protestant Church

I have been having a really hard time lately with going to church on Sundays.  

I love aspects of my church, Carla (the rector), other members and the church sanctuary but I miss the praise music of the churches that I attended in my Pentecostal past.  The guitars and drums of a Calvary Chapel or even the modern praise music that the Presbyterian Church I attended screened with an overhead projector onto the wall.  

Don't get me wrong, I do love hymns but I miss “good old raise your hands in the air” praise music and that combined with the repetitive rituals, has made me feel stagnat and just going through the motions.  Carla's sermons are always thought provoking but it is hard to attend every Sunday just for that.    

Yet I managed to drag myself to church this past Sunday as I have done for several Sundays now, reluctantly.  There in my pew, near the back, God reached me.  Carla’s sermon this past Sunday was just what I needed without knowing I even needed it.  She stood in the aisle, not in the pulpit, and talked about the elements of the service.  She explained them in a way that I had never even considered.  I wish I could remember each and every thing she said.  She talked about the rites of the Episcopal Church in a way that made me understand that they were meant to be more than routine rituals that we perform.  They are meant to make us think, reflect, and strengthen our relationship with God.  They are not static but rituals of action.  They require something of us and if we treat them as merely mindless rituals then church can easily become rote and stagnant.  

Just hearing this and understanding that I needed to change the way I was looking at church, opened a door for me.  During a simple song where we repeat a chorus of “Alleluia” after each verse, I found myself raising my hands in praise.  At first I was a bit tentative, my hands were just a little but in the air but as I let myself feel the words both hands were soon raised high.  

It did not feel entirely comfortable.  I felt a little self-conscious.  It may take a little time before I am entirely able to just let go.  

However...

It felt good.  It felt active.  It felt right.   

Gideon

I am hard headed. If you know me at all you know a truer statement could not be made. I get so bogged down, so lost in my own head that I can’t hear God’s voice much less see the ways in which He is trying to lead me.

Since turning 50 a couple of months ago I have been feeling a bit directionless and lost. Asking for God’s direction in my life has become the focus of my prayers and this loss of direction has consumed my thoughts during the day as well as the night when it has caused me a great deal of insomnia. I found myself wondering why God was not answering me. Turns out He was providing the answers and the direction but as usual, He had to basically smack me upside the head to get me to listen and see.

What it took so long for me to see what that He has brought several people into my life in the last couple of weeks that I found myself ministering to or supporting in one way or another, sometimes with just listening, sometimes with prayer and often times with both. When I say several I mean more than just a few. For those who are not so quite hard headed it may have only taken one and for most, maybe a couple but for me it took 5 separate incidences.

5

I want to share with you the last incidence - my AHA moment. I went to a reading by a young gay Christian author on Monday night. The book is “Does Jesus Really Love Me” by Jeff Chu. It is a powerful and courageous thought provoking book and the reading was great but what really moved me was the question and answer period after. I had asked a question about emergent churches and had identified myself as having been a Pentecostal. Later a man who was sitting behind me also asked a question and stated that he was a member of a Pentecostal church. After the Q & A was over I introduced myself to this guy, Tony, and we began to talk. As he was telling me his story his eyes filled with tears and he revealed to me that he had been considering suicide. He just could not reconcile his beliefs and his homosexuality. I too, started to cry and shared with him that I too had at one time thought very seriously about suicide and actually had attempted it. I too, at that time could not reconcile how I believed with who I was and this seemed the only way out. This was a horrible, dark time in my life so I could feel and understand his pain.

The thing is, and what I will be hoping and praying for Tony to realize is, that we are all children of God. I am a child of God and you are a child of God and Tony is a child of God. Nothing can change that. God doesn’t even need us to believe in Him to make that true. It just is. It took me almost 20 years, a lot of people praying for me and a failed suicide attempt to get to this point - again the hard headedness plays a part BUT I am here and I am testifying that I know this to be true. God loves me and accepts me for who I am and He is willing to keep trying to get through to me no matter how dense I am.

Pray for me and pray for Tony. Ask God to guide me in my relationship with this man and that I can serve Him by supporting Tony and helping him to realize just how big and amazing God is and that there is a place for EVERYONE at the table.

Oh and if you don’t know the story of Gideon - google it or you can find it in the Bible in the 6th chapter of Judges.

Change

A while back Meghen’s best friend told her that the reason she had not made any real effort to sustain their friendship was because I had changed since my return to faith. 

I have spent a good deal of time thinking about this and feeling bad and also somewhat guilty that I cost Meghen this friendship.  I also denied any change and asked friends who knew me well before and after if there was any merit in her statement. 

This morning on my ferry ride in to work it hit me that, of course it is true.  Since “my conversion”, (for lack of better word), I have changed.  I am different.  I am made “new” in Christ.  When I look back on my journey out of faith and back into faith, I do see the changes and more importantly, I feel these changes.  

The years I spent trying to deny what I knew in my heart to be true were hard.  It was a constant battle trying to convince myself to not believe and to shut any doors that could possibly be open to any acceptance of Jesus.  I look back and I see God’s faithfulness to me, His steady hand in my life. I am grateful that God does not give up on us as we so often give up on Him.  I have a peace in my soul now and a joy that I cannot adequately explain.  

So I guess Meg’s friend is right, I have changed.  

Quality of Life

This week I had to make a pretty big decision and for the past couple of weeks this impending moment has been keeping me up at night. It had to do with a job that I applied for that would have meant an over 20% increase in salary. Major decision when you are the primary breadwinner in the family. The problem with this job was that it would have meant giving up my Fridays and commuting off island 5 days a week instead of 4. My Fridays are when I get to hang out with my kids and have lunch with them at school. It is when I do my volunteer work at the church and school. It is when I have some time alone to take a walk, pray, meditate, write and maybe meet a friend for coffee. Fridays are what I like to call my “soul refresher” days.

$14 K more a year is hard to pass up but I did. I told the HR rep to pull me and that I would not be doing the second interview that had been set up. Crazy - well maybe but when I reflect back over the choices that I have made in life and the choices that Meghen and I have made together, well we always seem to choose our quality of life and since we have had kids, the choices have all been with their best interests in mind.

For me choosing quality of life started early on. I always seemed to follow the things that I loved rather than what would bring me security or financial gain. I took the LSATs, was accepted at UC Hastings Law School but chose a liberal arts masters program in early American Literature instead.

15 years ago, I was in the middle of chemotherapy treatments for Hodgkin’s lymphoma that had re-occurred. I had only been in remission for 4 years so having it reoccur so quickly was a bad sign. I got to a point that my quality of life was suffering to such a degree that I made the decision to stop treatment and to take a trip across the United States. I spent almost 5 months on the road traveling the US, visiting national parks, art & natural history museums, and thinking. I spent time with friends that I had not seen in years and I rediscovered myself. I also came back cancer free. I do not know how but it was gone and it has remained so.

Over 9 years ago, Meghen and I decided that having a parent at home with our newborn daughter was important enough to us for her to quit her job and for us to figure out how to survive on my income.  I found a second job and we made it work. Then when I was laid off from one of my jobs, we made the decision to pick up and move to Vashon so that our kids could have a better childhood.

All of this is to say that I firmly believe that money is not everything. I can say that as we have our basic needs met and are able to scrape by. I know this is a privilege that some do not have. I feel lucky that I am in the position that I could freely make this choice and that I was not forced to choose out of necessity.

I know there are some that would say I am foolish for these choices, that I have just gotten lucky and they could be right. I may end up never being able to retire or living in the woods in a shack but I believe that we get one shot at this life and we should make the best of each day that we are given.

Man I did not want to go to church this morning but since Finn really wanted to and I really NEEDED to we got up and went.  It did not start off well.  I dropped Finn off at Sunday school and then went up for service.  Carla (pastor) and Paul (music director) were both on vacation which meant that Ann was preaching.

Ann is a wonderful person but not a very inspiring preacher and I often skip church when she is giving the sermon.  PLUS in the row in front of me was a mother and her young daughter who was standing on the pew and kept sliding up and back and talking loudly.  All of this was quite distracting and this was a morning where I really felt the need for peace.  I started asking myself why I was even there, how possibly could God's voice be heard in my heart when I felt so distracted and unfocused.  In fact, right after the service started I thought about skipping out,  then someone I knew came in late and sat beside me.

During the hymn she started sobbing so I put my arm around her.  She cried off and on throughout the service and when it was over I asked her if she wanted to talk.  We talked for a while and prayed together.  She is going through some major issues of the heart and there was much I could relate to but I always feel inadequate when I offer comfort to others.

Then it hit me...I don't have to be perfect and have just the right thing to say to those in pain because I am a vessel of God and He above all can offer the greatest comfort.  I just need to allow God to use me to be that light for the person who is surrounded by darkness.  It also became glaringly apparent that there were a myriad of reasons for me to have my butt in that pew that morning.

I am struggling and seeking answers for myself right now but taking the time to offer comfort and to listen to someone else who is struggling in some small way helped me.  It made me think of the verse in Isaiah (55:8) where God says:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.

I know that God is there and even though I am struggling, I know He is there.  I know that the ways in how He is comforting me may not always be obvious or in the ways I think I need but He is there.  He works through those around us in ways that we could not even imagine and sometimes the greatest way He gives us comfort if by bringing us into situations where we are asked to comfort someone else.  God's grace in our lives is most often revealed in the small everyday things that we take for granted.  My prayer this day is that God opens my eyes so that I am open to the ways in which He wishes to reach me.

Milestone Reflection or Midlife Crisis?

I turned 50 a little over a month ago and at the time I must have been too busy to really ruminate on it until NOW.  The past week has found me contemplating my life and the fact that, statistically speaking, more of it is behind me than in front of me.  

There is a line in an Indigo Girls song that says:  "Every five years or so I look back on my life, And I have a good laugh".  The last 5 years for me has brought several changes - most of them major, including selling our house and picking up and moving to Vashon Island but the biggest one of all was the fact that I returned to a faith in God/Christ that I had attempted to abandon almost two decades earlier.  

Music and reading are two of my favorite pastimes and I find that God speaks to me through lyrics and the written word.  My return to faith was brought on by attending a performance of the Indigo Girls and the lyrics of the Amy Ray song - Let It Ring.  "I'm gonna let it ring to Jesus cause I know He loves me too and I get down on my knees and I pray the same as you".  In that instant a peace washed over me and I had an Apostle Paul conversion so to speak.  I realized that God had been there all along and as much as I tried to convince myself of His un-existence, I just couldn't.  I am reading a great book right now penned by a Christian journalist who happens to be Gay titled: Does Jesus Really Love Me? and the following line struck me.  "I doubt. A lot" And yet I can't not believe in God". 

So all of this leads up to the point of this entry which is to say that I am feeling a bit unsettled with this big milestone birthday but not quite sure why I am feeling this way.  My prayers this week have been a lot of just listening- trying to feel God's presence and to figure out what I am missing that is making me feel so lost.  One realization I had is that, even though I have a wonderful church, I am needing a friend (on island) that I can hang out with and talk about issues regarding faith and my walk with Christ.  I have good friends off island that I can share with but finding a person of faith close to my own age on island is challenging and may be impossible.  I have reached out to someone who attends my church and with whom I have a lot in common but church attendance on Vashon does not always equate with belief.  However I remain optomistic and believe that God's hand is in all of this and that if I am faithful and follow He will surely lead.   

So in this time of what appears to be some sort of mid-life crisis for me, I ask for your prayers of peace and understanding.  And don't worry I am not going out and buying a convertible but I have been thinking about a motorcycle.