Waiting Softly in the Cornfield

There's a softness to waiting for yourself if you do it right.

I often don't.

More likely I'm pressing impatience into it, worrying it to go faster, be sooner, come more quickly.  The waiting becomes something to conquer, and if not that, endure.  The waiting becomes its own tyrant, oblivious of the soul that needs the time.  My soul.  My own self.  My own valuable, exhausted, treasured self that just.  Needs.  Time.

Softness comes in pausing in the moments when nothing is happening and letting that be okay.  Softness comes in turning down the noise of ridiculous expectation and outrageous demand. Softness comes in naming and embracing weakness.  Humanity in its frailer moments, being real.

To do it right you have to stop.  You have to give permission for less.  You have to ask for help.  And space.  You have to forgive if they don't understand and just be gone anyways.  To do it right you have to trust that the One who is softest of all knows what you need and is already providing exactly that.  Even as you wait.

This business of forming a spirit is a long thing.  It's drawn out and stretched out and works out its own ways of waiting and becoming in its own sweet (truly) time.

"Just be still.  Wait here with Me," He says, "And remember that I'm God, and I'm for you.  We'll get there when the time is completed."  At least, that's what I heard out in the cornfield the other day, under a wide sky of nothing.  Nothing, being everything.

And so, I wait softly.

Staying Together in a Pulled-Apart World

Unfiltered photo of heart cloud at sunset.

Are we okay?

The 'we' I mean is the broad scope of human relationships that have been strained to the max by the necessary distance forced upon us these past long, world's-gone-crazy months.  

I'm feeling it.

My youngest grandson just turned one and, compared to the others at the same age, he barely knows me. That sits as a sadness in my chest, even as I patiently and intentionally take the opportunities to win him over now.  We're getting there, but it's not quite okay yet.

Another sadness.  There are kids growing up way too fast on the other side of the world, and I'm missing out in ways unreclaimable.  A few of our children have come to our Hot Springs family since I was there last.  I don't even know them yet.  They have no experience of me.  This isn't okay.  And neither is the growing ache to simply be with Suradet and Yupa; to laugh with, grieve with, dream with together in the same place.  Not okay.

We can gather now, here at home, as a faith community, and this is very good.  Yes, so very good.  And also, no hugging.  And this is not okay.  And neither is it okay that our COVID-weary selves sometimes get the better of us and we end up saying things or responding to things said that aren't really about whatever was said at all, but about our fears that things have changed and that maybe we don't belong now, or whatever other insidious fears have bubbled up since this all began.  And perhaps the long loneliness we experienced when we were all shut up in our homes was the true reflection of our worth, which is why we are so desperate for social affirmations now that we can be together, even without the hugging. Nothing feels okay without the hugging.

And what about what we've found out about each other's positions on all that was never a thing before but is suddenly so important and 'out-there', now that we're supposed to wear masks and get vaccinated? What about the trusted, life-long friends who are suddenly on the other side of what seems like a very dangerous fence, no matter what side of that fence we might think is the safe one?  Are we actually going to call each other names now?  Is that okay?

See why I'm asking? 

Are we okay?

Speaking to different but equally contentious relationship-straining topic, Paul reminded the Galatian church that "the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love" (Galatians 5:6).  The people there were rather entrenched on their own sides of what seemed to them a very dangerous fence.  Dogma was the actual threat, and falling into a way of thinking that stood firm on "us and them" instead of "we".

Are "we" okay?  Can "we" do this together?

Can we make unity the priority over being right?  Can we leave room for an opposing opinion to be considered?  Can we refuse to gossip or belittle?  Can we seek first to understand before being understood?  Can we stop and have the conversations before making the declarations?  Can we refrain from losing our tempers and instead let grace temper us?

I'll go further here.  I'm vaccinated.  If you're not, I respect you.  I don't have to agree with you to love you and accept you.  I hope you'll do the same for me.  

We dare not see each other as the enemy, else the real enemy wins.

There is more of this journey ahead my friends.  We will need each other badly if we are to survive and thrive and be "more than conquerors through Him who loved us."  That's Paul again, who - oh wait! - also reminds us that "we" do not do this alone in our human efforts.  Like a heart-shaped cloud that shows up at sunset at the same moment I'm pondering these painful things.

So a prayer for us as we reach out and hold on to each other.  (I'm hugging you as I pray this.)

Father God,  we invite you into all the relational strangeness here with us.  Please.  Be fully present in the spaces between us to hold us together in this time when we are pulled apart by so much.  Draw us toward You in peace and humility.  Collect us together under Your wings of grace.  Shape us into Your image to declare Your faithfulness and love across the sky.  Be everything we need that You are and we are not.  We need You.  Amen

The Return

Apparently when a blog or other social media site is too infrequently updated, it's called a "ghost town".  Not so much because it's haunted, just abandoned.  I can sort of see the tumbleweed rolling down main street past the vacant windows of the General Store, with a faded sign that says Bread and Honey is on sale.  

My last post here was May 3.  Today is September 7.  That's a long lonely time away, and I'm feeling rather melancholy about it to be honest.  Not guilty, not even really apologetic.  There have been good reasons, and any reasonable soul taking good enough care of themselves would not heap shame upon their own heads for such a thing, even in the best of times.

But this has been anything but the best of times.  It's been an over-the-top, prolonged, never-like-this-before (see how I avoided the use of the word "unprecedented"?), epic-for-all-the-wrong-reasons time, and there's been way, way too much else to do.  And that's just true as truth is when there's not just a pandemic rumbling about, but you're also leading and loving a faith community through it, and attempting ridiculous academic goals on the side.  I might mention some unexpected family stuff, plus taking on five weddings this season, and the significant loss of two friends in places far away but close to heart, but I don't want things to start to sound unbelievable.  I can hardly fathom it myself.

Hence the melancholy.  And the fatigue.  And the need to ruminate a whole lot more before I begin to write too much about all the layers and orbits and realms and landscapes I have felt swung into these past nine months or so.

I guess all I wanted to do today with this particular post is to throw open some shuttered windows and shake out some dusty sheets covering whatever furniture is still in here at this point.  To sit in here for a while and remember a way of being, and to start again, again.

It's crazy because so many of the "other things" there was to do involved writing.  I'm not sure I've written so much in every given week than I have over the past nine months.  This included assignments and a research paper and sermons and countless email updates and daily Facebook postings.  And yet, I'm keen to pull an old metaphorical desk beside a newly opened window, open my laptop, and write something fresh.  Make it count, make it new.  Chase away the ghost town feeling and let this live into the wider spaces I've been exploring while I've been away.

Wider spaces, like loving people whose views on some important things turn out to be very different than mine in ways confusing, and would be scary if I didn't already trust and love them.

Wider spaces, like moving with intentionality up and out of my own comfort zones to reach out, when everything in me is screaming that it's terrifyingly dangerous out there.

Wider spaces, like being led into innovation and experimentation when all I crave is normalcy.

Wider spaces, like never, never losing the power of human "touch" in the hands-off, high-tech world forced upon us by a global pandemic. 

Those spaces, and more, because it's not done, this exploration, this living, this learning, this becoming.

So.

I have good intentions.  Even have things mapped out over the next few months to write and ponder and wonder and posit and all that kind of thing reflective folks like me tend to write about.

We'll see.