What are the sheets of today?

 
What's wisdom?

Two separate conversations have been playing within my head today. Within those reflections, pictures and memories of other times gone by and words spoken play upon my heart and mind.

But let me tell you about the two specific conversations that both feel so true for where I find myself...

The first one was with a dear friend as we sat and ate and laughed and enjoyed one another... so much transition have been laid upon our lives and a reflection of a quietness that has entered the journey made its way into our shared talk.  A lack of desire to place opinion or experience upon social media these days.  A desire for privacy has been upon my heart more and more as of late.  That which I am touching feels like a tender journey and many aspects of it feel private.  As I examined that reality a while back with my therapist, she smiled as she expressed how this whole concept was new for me and was actually a sign of health.

But then....

It happened in another conversation.  There are these assignments I have for my classes that I am taking at the Charlotte Spirituality Center.  One is the Ignatian concept of a daily personal looking at one's life through the lens of presenting the day before God.  I journal daily and write often, one would think this exercise would be a cake walk. But no it wasn't, it hadn't been; and as I sat at the table and the topic of these daily writings came up, I could feel this bubbling up inside of me to share my experience.  Something that would have been so easy for me to do in days past became like choking words out at first.  "They've been hard for me," I said.. or something like that... I then admitted that within the whole month I had maybe managed three or four at most.

Then it went  beyond one sentence as I let my heart spill out of my mouth... They are hard for me because I am on this journey where paradigms are shifting and all that is within me feels the pressing in of an awakening.  Which let me mention,  I like how Brene Brown, in her book, Gifts of Imperfection, crosses out Emotional Breakdown and above it writes Spiritual Awakening.  But awakening and breakdown aren't at times all that far apart.

As I shared a dear friend and fellow student expressed a gratitude for the fact that I shared.. her perceptions of my journey just different from the reality.  Moving away from my class to just another conversation, another dear friend expressed her heart and hope that I would begin writing more about my journey these days and I heard it.. It's just... It's just...  us Christians, can be brutal... we can be awful to one another and to those who we are meant to love well... And well, I'm not looking for any more critique. And we don't do well when our paradigms and thoughts and theology feel threatened by change...  Old wine skins like old wine and like the way things are and were ....  I've watched  bleak and horrible things  play out too many times all in the name of God....

Recently my therapist suggested I meet with a colleague of hers to explore an aspect that is affecting me beyond her expertise and I looked at my therapist and just expressed how I couldn't... I couldn't have another person examining my life right now.. I could talk to her but not to another... In times such as these there is a southern phrase that comes to mind, "Hunkering" down....  Simplifying.. letting be what is and taking time...

Taking things simple and quiet.. Closing in a circle of a few  precious friends and sitting and waiting and being intimate and gentle with conversation and change.

Twenty - four years walking within Christian perimeters. And there are solid aspects to that walk that have buried themselves deep within my bones and into my reality and into my life, yet in these last few movements of time I have realized how shallow my love was.. how tentative my affection, how surface my reality. How safe I played it... how little I knew of the Christ I was supposedly following.  I knew man's version.. Ministry's version.. a Western version...and I earnestly loved Him but in these last days a most beautiful shift has only begun to occur... One that is full of gentleness... One that is full of kindness.. compassion, largeness that I have not ever touched.... What happened?  How did I even get here?

I ceased striving and I have begun to know Him.. I stood still and I began to know Him...

I was willing to see
I was willing to hear
I was willing to open my heart

And so I only have just begun to see
I have only just begun to hear
I have only just begun to know...

I lean into the lessons that Samaria taught the Jews in the times of Christ... and I sit with the stories of tax collectors and lepers and women from the past...

Do you know that there are scriptures that express what foods are clean and which are not ? At one point to know God was to know and follow those laws to the strict letter of the law!  But then in Acts a sheet comes down to only one man, Peter! And that is changed.  Food is neither now clean or unclean. The message about the heart grows stronger ... Gentiles don't have to be circumcised to be accepted into the heart of God as beloved. Again the reality is fuller and further revealed...

I only ask one simple question today.. OK maybe two...

What are the sheets of today?

Who and where are the Samarias today?

What are the sheets of today that would cause theologians to tremble and have to once again wrestle with salvation with fear and trembling?  What are our sacred cows that are not so sacred and do not belong in the heart or mind of God but in the heart and mind of man?  

I don't pretend to  have many  answers these days... I am living within the questions... I was struggling so deeply with religious fear but bit by bit, He brings courage and His love runs deeper and stronger and fuller then I have ever imagined... He is more full of grace.. He is more full of love.. He is more full of compassion.. He is more.. MORE... So much more than I have ever even dared to think and in these moments and days I am falling further and further and deeper and deeper into a love and passion for the Creator of all and the Lover of my soul....