Category Archives: Sacred Space

Truth Beneath the Ashes

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When it comes to my own dust, I tend toward one of two responses.

Ash Wed. SchmeerSeveral years ago in Waco, TX, a couple hundred of us gathered for a crack-of-dawn Ash Wednesday service led by a team of seminary students. All kinds of folk—Baylor students, doctors, construction workers, grandparents—gathered at the shoreline of Lent, sleepy-eyed and somber. Fiddle music beckoned, “Come, ye sinners, poor and needy…”

No Ash Wednesday service would be complete without the imposition of ashes and pronouncement from Genesis: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We spilled into the aisles, ready to receive the mark of the cross, after which we would turn and mark the forehead of the person behind us. Just ahead of me in line stood a college student, a kind, cheerful young woman named Rae. We waited our turn, then Rae received the ashes and I stepped forward to receive mine from her. That’s when things went…um…slightly askew.

Rae pushed my bangs aside and smudged the sign of the cross on my forehead, according to plan. But as she drew her hand away, somehow she got some of that inky schmeer on my nose. Horrified, she tried to wipe it off and in the process, managed to spread the greasy mixture to my cheeks, my chin and, as best I can recall, one of my earlobes.

Finally there was nothing to do but laugh at this epic Ash Wednesday fail. I hugged poor, mortified Rae and returned to my seat, looking like a coal miner.

But as I sat there blotting my face with a tissue, it occurred to me that what Rae had just done, quite unintentionally, was to paint a picture of how it really is with me.

When it comes to my own dust, I tend toward one of two responses: As with those ashes tucked conveniently beneath my bangs, either I try to cover up my sin so that no one will see—or I try to pretty up my sin in order to make it appear more respectable. I’m okay wearing my dust in a smart little liturgical shape, along with everyone else. In fact when worn that way the dust actually becomes a sign of my spirituality. But the greasy truth is this: my sin is all over me in blotchy smears from head to toe.

The Apostle Paul also found himself covered in dust one day—sprawled face-down in the dirt of the Damascus road, blind as a bat. But even as he lay there picking grit from his teeth, a promise began to stir inside his heart and mind which later he would put into words for all of us: “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”

That’s my story. I’m gratefully sticking to it.

This piece also appears at http://www.nextsunday.com. NextSunday Resources, an imprint of Smyth & Helwys Publishing Inc.

Love’s Bullhorn

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Some things are a delight to listen to. Then there’s John the Baptist.

“In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming,
‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.'”
~ Matthew 3:1-2

Street PreacherThere are certain sounds in this world that make listening a pure joy. I have my favorites: Garrison Keillor’s buttery voice on public radio; the pure brass tones of Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man; Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk; anything by the Avett Brothers. Some things are a delight to listen to.

Then there’s John the Baptist.

This wild-eyed, wild-haired, hellfire-and-brimstone Nazarite is anything but delightful. And yet all four Gospels report that the people flocked to him in droves from what we know today as Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan. Think about it. Jews and Arabs standing elbow-to-elbow because, as Fred Craddock put it, when the gospel is being offered you tend to forget why it is you hate the person standing next to you.

Meeting John the Baptist is about as much fun as walking through a body scanner at airport security. So why in the world would all these incompatible, barely-speaking-to-each-other people leave home, hike all the way out to nowhere and let themselves be devoured by sand fleas in order to hear an uncivilized oddball holler at them for hours about getting right with God?

Maybe because for all his eccentricities, poor grooming, scorching rhetoric and horrible bedside manner, John brings them face-to-face with the moment they’ve both craved and feared most: the opportunity for a do-over. A chance to come clean. The hope of a fresh start.

I have a friend in his 60s, a rugged, burly, brilliant guy who looks a little like the Marlborough Man from the old cigarette commercials. Decades ago he graduated from an elite university in the East, then moved to Texas to work on a graduate degree. But somewhere along the way he became addicted to crack cocaine. Lost his family; lost his place in graduate school; lost big pieces of himself.

Providentially this man washed up cold and wet on the shores of our church. We did what Christ-followers do and put our arms around him. Gradually he began to find life again and, miracle of miracles, was even reunited with his wife. My husband and I had them over to our place one night for supper.

As we lingered over coffee and dessert the man began to open up; talked about where his life was going. “I want to believe that my best days aren’t behind me,” he said. “I want to believe my life can still be good for something. I just can’t help but feel like I’ve blown all my best chances.”

That’s when his wife—a lovely, sixty-ish, bohemian Texas flower child—grabbed his hand and said with conviction: “Baby…if God can yank Jesus out of a grave, I figure God can make something beautiful out of your busted parts.”

With John the Baptist it may feel sometimes as though he’s the one busting our parts. But his message comes down to the same good news: Repent. The kingdom of heaven has come near.

This devotional originally appeared at http://www.nextsunday.com. NextSunday Resources, an imprint of Smyth & Helwys Publishing Inc., is a free press focusing on “quality Bible study and church resources that celebrate the intelligence of learners, the devotion of teachers, and the mission of churches everywhere.”

Love’s Eyes

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Love has a way of changing people’s features.

EyeJoseph, son of David, the angel said, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
~Matthew 1:20b-21

Darn right, he’s afraid. See, for most of his life Joseph has pretty much lived with a carpenter’s saw in one hand and his rulebook, the Torah, in the other. And his rulebook tells him there’s only one way to see an unmarried, pregnant woman. This is a disaster for poor Joseph.

But in a dream he hears the angel say, “God is doing something new here, Joseph. Mary is not who your rulebook says she is.  God is bigger than your rulebook. Take the leap of faith!”

Often it does require a leap of faith in order to be able to see someone in a new light.

Our son Taylor is a remarkable person with a quick sense of humor and a tender-to-a-fault heart. He also has an acute sensitivity to people in pain, no doubt because he himself lives every day in the land of Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

One night a few years ago when he was a senior in high school, Taylor and I spent an evening meandering about town together and ended up browsing for an hour in an art gallery. We topped off the evening with cheesecake and coffee at a favorite restaurant.

As we were eating, out of the blue, Taylor said:  “I know I’m not much of an artist. But if I were a painter, I know what I’d create.”

“What would you paint?” I said.

“I’d paint a banquet scene,” he said. “A super-elegant table with flowers and crystal and mountains of food. And there would be some very particular guests.”

“Who are they?” I said.

“So, sitting at my table would be Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.”

I took a long sip of coffee. “That’s some pretty intense company,” I said.

With a mouth full of key lime cheesecake he said, “Yeah, but in my painting, even though we’d still be able to recognize them, they would look different than we’re used to seeing them.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “What do you mean?”

“Well, see,” he said, “because we hate them we only know how to see them one way. But in my painting we’d also be able to see them as they appear to God, who only knows how to love them.”

Love has a way of changing people’s features.

Love says: People aren’t always whom you think they are. Take a leap of faith . . . I’m doing something new.

This devotional originally appeared at http://www.nextsunday.com. NextSunday Resources, an imprint of Smyth & Helwys Publishing Inc., is a free press focusing on “quality Bible study and church resources that celebrate the intelligence of learners, the devotion of teachers, and the mission of churches everywhere.”

Love’s Family Tree

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charlie browner

“This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham…”
~ Matthew 1:1

Sometimes people decide they’re going to read through the New Testament in order to grow spiritually. So they turn to Matthew because it’s at the beginning of the New Testament and, alas, never make it past the first seventeen verses. This guy begat that guy, and whosit begat somebody else, and what’s-his-name fathered so-and-so. Just dreadful.

As every great storyteller knows, the beginning’s got to be great. He or she has to have us from Hello. Had John Grisham begun The Firm twenty years ago with a three-page genealogy, he might still be practicing law in Mississippi. No gifted writer starts by blathering on about who begat whom. It’s a lucky break for Matthew that the Jewish Christians to whom he was writing were maybe the only people on the planet who weren’t bored by the “begats.” After all, this was their story.

There are two things I particularly love about the lineage of Jesus.

First, the surprising variety. There are all sorts of folk, both pious and problematic, dangling from the branches of this family tree and Matthew doesn’t try to cover them up or pretty them up, God bless him. As family trees go, Jesus definitely has a Charlie Browner on his hands. This is something of a relief to me since my own family has its share, not only of humble, salt-of-the-earth types, but also bootleggers and jail-dwellers and a smattering of moonshiners. No problemo. Jesus’ family is a fixer-upper, too.

The other genealogical jewel here, I believe, shines best in the names of the women on this list. Sure, there are plenty whose names should have been included but weren’t. Conversation for another day. But four of the five who do make the cut all have something surprising in common:

Not one of them is Jewish.

You would assume to see a lineup of pure-blooded Hebrew matriarchal all-stars in this genealogy. But nope—turns out Jesus wants everybody on his family tree: Jews, Hittites, Moabites and Canaanites. Also Postmodern-ites, Democrat-ites and Republican-ites, not to mention seducers and murderers and schemers and well, just everybody.

Ultimately what this boring list of names stands for is the beautiful news that none of us really belongs but God loves us just the same. Not one of us qualifies for a spot on this tree but God welcomes sinners like you and me anyhow. It’s not about pedigree—it’s about mercy.

What do you know, maybe the boring thing’s not so boring after all.

This devotional originally appeared at http://www.nextsunday.com. NextSunday Resources, an imprint of Smyth & Helwys Publishing Inc., is a free press focusing on “quality Bible study and church resources that celebrate the intelligence of learners, the devotion of teachers, and the mission of churches everywhere.”

Let It Be: 2014

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Snowy tree-lined road at sunrise.

Call them resolutions, aspirations, intentions, whatever. I pray that a year from now these will have been true of me in 2014:

1.  She lived in and led from the roominess of God.

“The Good Shepherd leads his sheep out of the tight and tiny boxes in which we lock ourselves into his spacious pastures.”
~ Timothy Radcliff

“All that is true, by whomsoever it has been said, has its origin in the Spirit.”
~ Thomas Aquinas

2. She wore her own face.

“Now I become myself.
It’s taken time, many years and places.
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces…”
~ May Sarton, “Now I Become Myself”

“The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation… and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but their own vulnerable selves.”
~ Henri J. M. Nouwen

3. She was mindful of each moment.

“We spend a long time wishing we were elsewhere and otherwise.”
~ Robert Farrar Capon

“The present moment, like the spotted owl or the sea turtle, has become an endangered species. Yet more and more I find that dwelling in the present moment, in the face of everything that would call us out of it, is our highest spiritual discipline.”
~ Philip Simmons

4. She practiced stillness.

“I learned…that inspiration…comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness…The imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.
~ Brenda Ueland

5. She operated more often from love than from fear.

“Our fear is in the service of all the little ways we have learned to protect our false self. But love is really who we are. We’ll never see the love we really are, our foundation, if we keep living out of our false self of self-protection and overreaction. We must remember that ‘perfect love casts out all fear’ (1 John 4:18).”
~ Richard Rohr

6. She chose joy.

It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation…
~ Mary Oliver 

7.  She finished that dag-nabbity book!

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
~ Thomas Mann

Good and gracious God, let it be.

photo cc flickr.com/photos/18_2rosadik36

Theological Reflections on a Bulldog

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Willie as PuppyOur dear English Bulldog, Willie Boy, died last week. Hearts are still at half-mast around here.

Back in December of 2005, in a moment of temporary insanity, Tim and I decided to grant our daughter Lucy’s persistent and increasingly creative requests for a puppy. We approached the task of choosing a breed with painstaking precision.

Okay, in truth we Googled this dog. Plugged in the two most essential characteristics—“requires minimal exercise” and “excessively affectionate”—and voila (or as we say in the South: wah LA), all fingers pointed to the English Bulldog. (Our Google search for dogs born potty-trained came up empty.)

Willie lived up to his breed’s reputation. He was a furry love sponge whose idea of rigorous exercise was a trip to the mailbox. He fit in from the get-go.

And along the way Willie taught me some things about God. For one thing, God appreciates a good joke. Anyone who doubts God’s sense of humor has never met canis lupus bulldawgus. It’s my fixed belief that bulldogs got thought up at around 4:45 on Friday afternoon, when God was feeling a wee bit prankish.

And Willie was evidence that God uses all the crayons in the big box. In 1848 Cecil Frances Alexander of Dublin, Ireland, wrote some words that would become a best-loved children’s hymn: All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful: The Lord God made them all. 

Mrs. Alexander wrote the hymn to help children better understand the opening words of the Apostles’ Creed: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

I can report that Willie Boy didn’t know the Apostles’ Creed from applesauce. He never once weighed in on the predestination debate, or invited anyone to consider the gospel, or lifted a paw to help address the problem of evil in the world.

And yet, as my heart lurches now for our jowly, gassy, ornery little guy with the undulant waddle and goofy underbite, I can’t help but marvel at our colorful Creator—who jolly well could have made all animals boringly alike, but who, for the sheer pleasure of it, gave us bulldogs and baboons, wart hogs and wallabies, poodles and panda bears. Yippee!

So here’s to you, Willie Boy—you hilarious reminder of God’s creative goodness. Sleep soft, old friend. You gave us joy.

Willie's jowls on floor

Absorbing Chaos

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Dennis C. Golden, president of Fontbonne University in St. Louis, once recalled a visit years ago with a friend who also was at the helm of a university. During their conversation, Golden’s friend described her role as college president in terms of three specific functions.

Basically, she said, I get up every morning and I do three things:  

Absorb chaos.

Give back calm.
Provide hope.

Ministers everywhere will recognize something of our own calling in those words—especially the part about absorbing chaos. Serving Jesus in the church and in the world involves the inevitable sponging up of all kinds of ugliness and pain:  Anger. Gossip. Secrets. Shame. Betrayal. Pettiness. Addiction. And, as most of us have discovered along the way, absorbing chaos takes a very personal toll.

One Thursday in the not-so-distant past I joined some pastor friends for lunch at an Atlanta bistro. We get together every month, ostensibly to discuss books but largely to prop each other up. I was feeling particularly raw that day about some conflict in my own congregation over changes and challenges we’d been facing for a while. My friends at the table were already familiar with the situation, but I shared some updates as we ate.

While scanning the dessert menu, I mentioned that I had a doctor’s appointment later that day. “I need something to help me sleep,” I told them. “My chest feels tight and my heart keeps racing.” Sympathetic nods all around.

From the far end of the table one of the pastors spoke up: “For what it’s worth, I swear by trazodone. My doctor prescribed it for my anxiety five years ago and it changed my life.”

“Have you tried amitriptyline?” another friend asked. “When my depression was at its worst last fall, my doctor put me on that.”

“Yeah, but it dries out your mouth,” announced a third.  “I couldn’t preach while on amitriptyline—it gave me cotton mouth—so I’m giving St. John’s wort a try.”

There was a brief silence, then we all burst out laughing at what a beleaguered bunch we seemed to be. But here is a sad truth: of the ten pastors at the table that day, seven had required medication for anxiety and/or depression, and only two had not experienced some traumatic episode of conflict in his or her church.

Absorb chaos. A person can sop up only so much ugliness before his or her soul begins to turn rancid. Maybe that college president should consider adding a fourth bullet point to her job description: “Wring out sponge.” There are plenty of good sponge-wringing avenues:  prayer, worship, meditation, exercise, therapy, good friends, etc. Why do this? For all kinds of reasons, but I’ll name two:

First:  God has given you and me a name and it is beloved, not beleaguered. You and I were meant for more than a depleted, soggy half-life.

And second:  God has given us a name and it is creature, not Creator. Christ already absorbed the sin and chaos of the world—received the poison and shuddered as it killed him. Why in the world would we feel the need to let it kill us, too?

So for God’s sake, and your own—lift up your sponges. (Say it with me: We lift them up to the Lord!) Lift them up and squeeze till your knuckles turn white. This is a faithful act.

Lessons from Stone Mountain

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Julie on Stone MountainIt all started with my teeth. A couple of years ago I was reclining in the chair of my dentist, Dr. Uetsuki, waiting for the nitrous oxide to kick in.

Are you doing anything special for New Year’s? he asked through his blue paper mask.

Nothing out of the ordinary, I said.  Just black-eyed peas for luck.

Have you ever climbed Stone Mountain?

Well, I’ve been meaning to.

My wife and I climb Stone Mountain every New Year’s Day, he said. To watch the sun rise.

I listened with interest as he described the ancient Japanese custom of marking the “firsts” in any given new year. Every first of January, throngs of Japanese men, women and children travel to the coast or to a mountain to observe Hatsuhinode—the first sunrise of the new year.

Could I?

In that moment an idea was born. With my 50th birth year just days away I found myself wondering:  “Could I make it up Stone Mountain fifty times?”

Twelve months later my 50th birth year passed into history as I completed climb number Five-O in the afternoon of New Year’s Eve.

During that year I stood atop Stone Mountain beside pools of ice and under a sun so hot, I swear you could fry bacon on that rock. I climbed at sunrise, sunset, noonday and once under a full moon.  I climbed alone and I climbed with kinfolk, church friends, neighbors and houseguests from around the world.

I spent a year schlepping myself up and down Atlanta’s most famous piece of granite and I have news:  Stone Mountain is a treasure. Climbing the mountain gave me some marvelous gifts that year, among them these memorable lessons:

Lesson One:  There is big value in feeling small.

Standing on a piece of rock that pre-dates me by a few million years and will still be there long after I’ve entered the cloud-boat, as Mary Oliver puts it, has a way of putting perspective on some things. Like the size of my troubles, for instance. The shape of my priorities. The difference between the truly important and the merely urgent. My place in God’s bigger picture.

Lesson Two:  Everyone needs to stand on top of something.

A mountain can be a great metaphor for life. The physical act of ascending a mountain brings a sense of overcoming, not only the rock itself, but other obstacles as well. Some challenges we face are relatively minor: Irritating people. Frustrations at work. Everyday stress. Others are more daunting. In May, on the day when my husband’s brother took his life, I stood on the summit, shook my fists in the air and shouted at death: “You don’t get the final word down here!”  In some mysterious way, my feet seemed planted not only on the crest of that mountain, but also on the neck of everything that wants to break us down here:  Depression. Cancer.  Addiction. Death.

Lesson Three:  Some moments are meant to be savored, not seized by the lapels.

I lean toward the sin of workaholism. Sometimes I’m so busy maximizing the moment that I lose sight of this cardinal rule:  When it comes to life, you must be present to win.

During one of my climbs early last spring I was marching up the stone trail, iPhone in hand, fielding calls and sending text messages. Somewhere near the top, during a water break, I caught sight of a Red-Tailed Hawk circling overhead, every movement of his wings so effortless, so graceful. As he swooped near the place where I stood jabbing at my phone, I thought I saw him shake his head and roll his steely eyes at me, as if to say, “What’s the point?”

No Time Like the Present

I heartily recommend the practice of marking each year in some intentional way. If you’ve never tried it before, there’s no time like the present—it’s not too late. Here are some possibilities:

Plant a garden. Run a marathon. Finish writing that book. Try talking to God. Try listening to God. Forgive somebody. Forgive yourself. Climb a mountain. There are a million ways to bow your head and say thanks for the gift of life.

Originally published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution January 9, 2011.