Real-Time and Everywhere On Purpose

1 John 4:12

No one has ever seen God;
but if we love one another,
God lives in us,
and His love is made complete in us.

Yup. I'm on a Valentine's theme this week, with Wednesday being February 14 and all the red and pink of it being something I so want to celebrate.

But not just the romance bit.

Romance is great, and I'm so glad for a life-long sweetheart. Our story is a good one, and I hope I am known for repeating it often.

It's just that I am thoroughly convinced that we miss out on the enormous scope of love when we make it about couples only. Are you kidding me? The vastly different loves of my life in the full spectrum of my relational world, bring a depth and breadth and wildness and wonder I can barely articulate.

Hard to describe, probably because, according to John's first letter, there is some manifestation of the image of God made visible in how we love one another. This is a sense of our human connections somehow "making complete" the love of the Divine.

How is this even a thing?

The invisible become visible.
The mysterious mesmerizes.
Like clouds in formation,

and forget-me-nots

sending not-so-secret messages.

Except, unlike these totally-untouched captures that I took with my phone camera, nothing about our love for one another is wispy or accidental. Quite the opposite. I would have to say that all the beautiful richness of my love life has been, in various degrees of intensity, on purpose.

What if, this week, and every week for that matter, we just told the people we love that we love them? What if we did it on purpose-like, in ways they love to hear it? What if we, on purpose, went about creating and bolstering and refining the invisible, eternal love of God, by engaging with each other in visible, tangible ways in real time?

Grateful for a Monday morning full of love.
It's everywhere.

Making Deeper Spaces for Love

Above all, love one another deeply, 

because love covers over a multitude of sins. 

1 Peter 4:8

To begin with, this photo is not doctored.

I know there's a lot you can do these days, with the right kind of programs on the right kind of computer, to make something look like whatever you want.  But that's not this.  I don't even know how to do that.

This is just what happened one evening down by the dock when I was in the midst of some earnest prayer asking for direction.  Not kidding.

A heart from heaven.

Love it when that happens.  (Wait for this in a second.)

Mostly though, my spiritual journey is not like that.

Love is not like that.  

Not so obvious and unusual and spread all across the sky and bordering on miraculous, 

like that.

Not mostly anyways.

Mostly, my spiritual journey, particularly into what it means to love like Jesus, has consisted of every day stuff, regular stuff, sometimes tedious stuff.  

Sometimes painful stuff.  

Like really painful stuff.  

And if you want the truth, it's not the wow stuff in the sky, or the little stuff in the grass that actually love-shapes me.                                                                                                                                                                

Don't get me wrong.  I 'love' it when that happens.  (See what I did there?)  Makes for good pictures and interesting Facebook posts.  Often as not it does provide a sweet reminder that God is fully present in the moment, that I am the object of Divine attention.  

Yes, I get that.  

But it's not what carves out the deeper spaces of love in me.  

The deeper spaces of love come from the every day stuff.  The regular stuff.  The stuff that's sometimes tedious and sometimes painful.  Really painful.

Because it's digging deeper, helping me find out what I'm made of what God is making of me.

"Love one another deeply," Peter says.

"Above all," he says.

Because.

Because why?  

Because there's a lot in me (and a lot in others) that wants to squeeze love out.

Sin, Peter calls it, like the good Bible word it is.

I know the word has been given a bad rap by folks throughout the centuries who have wanted to stamp it on a lot of external behaviours that, oh in a decade or so, are all of a sudden not considered so.  Like when my childhood pastor's wife said one Mother's Day message, "I was so glad when God finally said it was okay to wear make up."  Maybe growing up you had a list imposed upon you.  (Maybe, if we're honest, we have our own lists we impose on others, who knows?)

For right here and right now, just staying with Peter here for a moment, I'll just say that sin is clearly not-love.

So anything not done for love, especially not done for the two great loves Jesus talked about, Love God, Love people, (Matthew 22:37-40) - that's sin.  (I may get in trouble here for not hammering down on this more, but for now I'll leave it at that.)

Love.

Love that covers over a multitude of not-loves.

Wow.

So love one another - deeply.

Cover all those not-loves with love.

Deeply.

But do we?

Yes, I know we each have our relational circles.  

The people we are closest to.  

The ones who get most of our love, and rightly so.

But is there space for more love?

Broader love?

Wider circles of love?

Deeper spaces of love?

Or. 

What if we are all filled up with

fear

resentment

opinions

judgements

protectionism

perfectionism

ambition

competition

greed

worry

sexism

racism

oh and let's just ad

me-ism (or its more common name, selfishness)?

(Maybe we could call some of that sin?  You pick which ones.)

What if?

What then?

Where are the deeper spaces left for love then, if we're all jumbled up and filled up with the not-loves?

Love deeply.

I can't seem to get away from this.

It makes me reckless, actually.

To love deeply is to take risks.

Loving people who won't love you back.

Loving people who won't understand.

Loving people who won't recognize it.

Loving people who won't value your love.

Loving people who don't deserve it.

Loving people who barely have any capacity for love themselves,

and it makes them all pinchy.

Love like you won't get hurt, but you do.

To give yourself away....it's not safe.

It's not safe.

But we love.

Deeply.

If we can make room for it.

Spirit of the Living God, the God Who IS Love,

keep carving out the spaces in my heart.

Please come in and carve out the not-loves

so there's room for You and Your LOVE.

And if You want to do one of those things,

where You step in with the clouds or the forgetmenots

I'll love that too.

But please,

don't stop Your real work in me.

Carve away.

I trust You.

 

In Celebration of Hearts That Won't Let Go

Something uniquely spectacular is in the works for Saturday, May 26.

I'm talking about a wedding.  Weddings by definition are spectacular events all unto their own.  And this one, just because of the nature of the covenant that these two people are making  with one another, is totally beautiful and true and exciting in its own merit.

But there's an element to this wedding that is a unique celebration of lasting community and committed friendships.

The two people getting married - the Bride, Charlotte Inthof, and the Groom, Bruce Barrett - are two human beings for whom I had the high honour of being present when they drew their first breath.  For both Charlotte and Bruce, I acted as labour coach to assist their mothers, both of whom are dear friends who spectacularly delivered them into the world.


And on Saturday, May 26, I will again have a high honour, this time of officiating their union.

How cool is this?

Come on, how often does this happen?  That a pastor is officiating the wedding of two people whose births she attended? (If anyone knows of anyone else with this claim, I would love to be put in touch.  We can start a support group or something! Go on speaking tours.  Like that.)

But here's the thing.  This didn't happen by accident.  This represents life-long relationships.  Obviously.  And relationships of any length, let's face it, take brutal amounts of work.  They just do.  Marriages, colleagues, business partnerships, service teams, sports teams, communities of faith, friendships, co-anythings.  Most of the time, at varying levels, relationships that matter require much from us. 

Even aside from this upcoming wedding, I've been doing a lot of reflecting on my relationships lately.  My relational world is about to dramatically change, at least for a while. I'm about to pull away for a time from a whole tribe of people with whom my soul is truly at home.  It's a necessary absence as part of the transition at Highview; a time to allow Erin the space to establish her own leadership voice as Senior Pastor.  A time for the Leadership Team to establish this new chapter.

I'm totally on board with this.  And I'm also sad.  And I'm also realizing that the anticipated absence is sharpening my awareness of the tenure of my relationships, and some of the things I believe make for long-time commitments across the relational horizon.  Being with the same community of faith for so many years, there are lots of long time relationships.  And this summer Ken and I will celebrate 40 years of marriage ourselves.

Midst the complexity of every human connection, if I had to distill it down to what matters to me, what makes a relationship last, I would hang a lot on three things.

1.   Open Listening

What if everyone we meet has something to teach us?  What if every conversation was an opportunity to better understand rather than be understood?  And what if, over time, that sincere posture of being completely open to listen, to learn, provided a way to deeply connect?    Think of the conflicts that could be avoided or, better yet, collaboratively resolved into a brilliant 'third-way'!  And how profound the freedom and expansion of a safe place to become, in the presence of an open listener who truly wants to know what it is you have to say.

2.  Tenacious Forgiveness

Here's an ironic fact of life.  Human beings can do huge damage to the very people they love the most.  We can.  And in our relationships we have the capacity for catastrophic betrayal, crushing indifference, and cruel, cruel vocabulary.  Or course, there's also the 'smaller' but accumulative relational infractions of annoying habits, simple carelessness and colliding personality quirks.  Any one of these, big or small, has been the cause of wretched endings, sometimes, quite understandably so.  But no long time relationship has arrived there without a certain tenacity of forgiveness that just won't let go.  Forgiveness isn't about allowing ourselves to be abused, of course.  But it is the base line fabric of any relationship that's gone the distance.

3.  Lifted Perspective

Our relationships are about way more than the people immediately involved.  In a marriage, it's our family and friends.  In a business partnership, it's our colleagues or employees.  In a church, it's our family of faith.  And on it goes.  When a relationship ends badly, others are affected somehow.  This is because no relationship exists within a vacuum.   And in a Christian world-view, our relationships don't even belong to us.  They belong to the One we've committed our lives to, and He has something in mind to accomplish through the connections He orchestrates into our lives.  So when the temptation rages to walk out, a lifted perspective considers how this will pan out in a bigger picture.  Who suffers?  Who else gets damaged?    This, by the way, is the power of speaking vows, wedding or otherwise, to a larger group of people.  It lifts our perspective up and over ourselves into a wider world of relational webs, strengthening the connection and increasing the potential longevity of the union. 

A comment on the obvious is needed here.  Throughout my lifetime (turning 61 in a few weeks), I have also had the painful experience of relationships that went sour and some that even became dangerous.   I will likely always feel this sorrow, this confusion, in their unhappy endings.  Without question, I had something to do with it.  Without question, so did they.   For a while, I spent a great among of emotional energy trying to figure it all out, pursing and trying to fix things until it was apparent that was only doing more damage or becoming more dangerous.  

However, more recently, and with the help of spiritual companions and faithful friends, I am more inclined to simply and gratefully receive the good, good gift of those who have patiently hung in there with me, in spite of me.   Those who have openly listened to my heart, have forgiven the sins I've committed against them, and have seen the bigger picture of our relationship as a binding thing.  In their love I have been able to experience the fullness of my life in ways that continue to startle me.

So, on Saturday, May 26 I get to be in that beautiful space with a whole lot of stellar people who love well.

What an amazing way for Bruce and Charlotte to begin their lives together. 

A Hug In Reverse

So, I'm going just come out and say it.

Even in the midst of so many joys, opportunities and new things waiting, this entire season of letting go has been painful.  And it's only getting worse the closer it gets.

In less than two months, May 27,  I will officially step down as Highview's Senior Pastor.  Even in writing that out just now, I've stopped to heave an involuntary deep, and slightly shuddered sigh.   Okay, more honestly, I've been pretty weepy these past few days.

It's that big a deal.  Because....love.

When you've loved a certain way, with a certain freedom and permission, if you will, for this many years, it becomes far more part of your chemistry and synapses and DNA and heartbeat and breathing and being than you could ever have imagined.

Problem is, I love Highview with all of me.  And love makes this letting go really sting.

And lately I've realized it feels like what I'm doing right now is very much like the opposite of a hug.  Like a hug in reverse.  Everything that prompts a hug - the desire to hold close, draw near, be fully present in the moment of - I'm feeling all the feels of that, but doing the exact opposite.

In my leadership, shepherding, pastoral life, I have had by default the honour of knowing and being known, loving and being loved in ways that run into the deeper places of our lives.  I have stood in holy places with you, beautiful and wretched, where life is most real and love is grown; birthing beds and death beds, gravesides and coffee shops turned into confession booths, emergency rooms, ICUs, and in ceremonies, indoors and out, where vows are spoken.

And also, even less intensely, in the every day way of loving that a pastor just does, just making sure things run smoothly, leading meetings, following up on all the nuanced conversations, scooping up all the body language, building teams, praying, studying, preaching.  All of it.  It was - is - all part of how I have hoped to love you.

But this season I have handed over, delegated, stepped aside, released, let it be someone else.  Someone capable and humble and ready and respected.  And it all feels very, very right, and good and freeing, and part of a true and fascinating story God has been writing for our church. 

There is  no worry in my mind at all that Highview won't be well loved when I'm gone.  Just, know that.  And I have lots else to do.  This is also very true.  It's not like I'm bored or lonely or wondering what comes next.  My days are full still, even as the shift begins, and I map out weeks now that include more time for some of the things that are ahead of me.

But it still just feels so weird that I'm not 'doing' all those love things I used to do.  Feels like indifference, neglect, like I don't care, or at least that it looks that way, even though inside of me love rages on.

But this is the most loving thing to do now.
Let go.
And go away.
For a while.

Like a hug in reverse.

So....in real time hugs, I'm going after as many of those as I can for these next eight Sundays.  Fair warning.

[Don't worry.  The non-huggers in my life and congregation have nothing to fear.  You know I know who you are and love you just the same, just the way you are, and won't be bugging hugging you.  Well, not too much, at least.]

But the hugs in real time will help, I think.  I hope they help you know I love you, even as I let go of this.  And the hugs will help me too, so thank you in advance.

Because the joy at the other end of all of this is that I don't have to go all the way away.

Three time periods chunk themselves out before us.

Now to May 27 - Letting go and getting in as many real time hugs as I can.

June 1 to December 1 - A time of deep resting for me, and for allowing space for Highview to continue to be amazing.

December 2 and onward - A new era of being with you.  And the real time hugs can happen again.

Oh Highview, do you know how much I love you?  Do you?

It would be such a shame if, somehow, you didn't know this by now.