I remember when our oldest was 15. He watched a show whose theme song was Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds. It was during that time that we were transitioning as parents for the first time, and Jim was guiding me through with grace and understanding that in order for our children to become adults they needed freedom. I wanted to still control. Control what they watched. Control what they listened to. Control.... But the young man who was no longer a child, who was soon to be driving was being led by an incredible father. And I was being wooed to my husband's understanding. Thank God!
Maturity...
Question...
Free Will...
Choice...
Love...
Wisdom...
So I wasn't thrilled with the show he was watching but I was only to see how it was actually going to show him an incredible lesson. One which I would need a few more years to learn.
These days I have gotten into some of the most interesting conversations I have had in a long time. Here's a recap of one. We were talking about the expression of heart and intent and how sometimes the depth of which isn't conveyed correctly via social media or online communication. I have sat with the conversation. Today, I have thought through it all with this posting.
A few honest comments about life right now and then I will explain the song and the boxes.
My husband and I have been in full or part time ministry for almost the entirety of our married lives. Serving Christian ministries and churches in a variety of capacities. He created Interpret My Dream under Streams Ministries, a website that trained up dream interpreters across the globe.
With the help of friends and those that believed in us, we started Stir The Water, an online organization that continued to train up dream interpreters as well as began to service and train up the empath, the intuitive, the seer. Those that knew in their very core that they saw beyond what was seen, heard beyond what was heard, knew, felt, tasted and smelled all that exists within the unseen spiritual realities.
We wrote, spoke, created classes and served and loved and raised our family amidst a culture of non denominational charismatic Christian faith. Some of my closest friends I have never met, as the culture of our ministry was web based and across the globe, but true and real and deep are those experiences. If you are one of those people know that your names and logins live deeply within my being, etched upon my heart.
I have recently shared and re-shared my journey as I kept thinking for months and seasons, "I can't do this anymore." I did and I didn't know what that was exactly. I allowed experience and life to cross my path. I smile and think of my friend Camille as quotes from Four Feathers dance through my head as I wrote that last sentence. (If you haven't seen the movie you should, the one that was released probably almost a decade ago now. Wow! Time flies.)
I don't want to make the journey I am on seem more grandiose then it is... It has been much harder than I ever anticipated; full of sadness, full of joy, full of anxiety, full of wonder, full of beauty and awe, full of struggle, full of life.. full of death. It has been full.
It has brought us to a place where as a family we decided to step back. Step way back. Stir The Water is on a hiatus. Our family has taken Sundays as a day for family and friends, food and fun. We are pausing. We are being still. We are ceasing our striving. We are being. We are getting to know God anew.. afresh.. and falling in love with each other and the Spirit all over again.
It is good.
It is very good.
Less is the path to more. Decreasing is a path to increase. Adjusting self and life towards re-balancing. Laying down life and letting it go one finds self and life all over again. That is this season. Stepping back grants perspective that living in the middle doesn't and neither one is better than the other, it is just listening to what season one is in and where one must walk.
Now is where I want to go into "ticky tacky." The lyrics to the song, Little Boxes,
Little boxes on the hillside,Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
In trying to explain my heart to a friend, I began to explain... "We were part of this one "box," and they had these ways and these things that they do, they said that this was the way that God operated and within that box I lived for over a decade. Then we were part of this other "box," and again they too told us God operated this way and within this box this is what you do. Each of those boxes had things you did and things you didn't do and of course they didn't call themselves "boxes," they were expressions.
We would touch healthier "expressions," and we would touch not so healthy "expressions." In some there was more capacity to ask the questions, seek out real answers if they were to be found, explore community in ways that creativity and Shel Silverstein's poems expressed. In other's, well in others as we touched a corner or an edge it was made clear that this was not a circle and there was a definitive boundary, crossing of it broke community, and friendship was told to be sought else where. Other places allowed their edges to have more elasticity and for that I am very grateful.
Boxes can be pretty. They certainly can help one feel like the answers to all of life's hard, very hard questions have really good and solid answers. Except what if they don't. Except what if the questions and the answers fall outside of the scope and sequence and experience of those ninety degree corners? What happens then?
That is where my husband's reality for raising kids into adulthood comes in... Hopefully with maturation comes growth into discernment. Growth into understanding and what is life giving and what isn't. That growth hopefully propels each individual forward into wisdom and beneficial decision making practices.
As a Christian I believe in the futuristic idea of the Bride of Christ. A One. Not Methodist, not Presbyterian, not charismatic, not pentecostal, not baptist, not catholic, not episcopal... What? What does it look like? We honestly don't know. What does it look like? We honestly can't even begin to fathom it's marvelous complete nature. But there will be one. It is my belief .... The reality of which forms out a paradigm of thought and practice.
Except for now there are too many. Too many boxes. Too many divisions. Too many interpretations and translations of who and what God is like. Too many being too willing to tell all of us who God is and who God isn't and who is included and who isn't. I'm just not willing to listen as much any more.... Not to the voices of those who are box makers and line drawers. I think there is a whole lot that we earnestly don't know and yet try to say we do instead of looking at the hard questions, and embracing the fact that maybe the answers just aren't as easy and clear cut as we would want them to be. It certainly is easier when they are.. But easier doesn't necessarily allow for growth, discernment or life.
I close with this.... My therapist said once that she pictured me with like 17 books open at one time. Two of those 17 right about now are these: The Big Book of Christian Mysticism by Carl McColman and The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness by Pema Chodron. (A bunch of you "liked" her quote I posted on Facebook the other day. I didn't accredit it to her not because I was concerned but because I wanted to see if people would like what a Buddhist nun has to say if they didn't know it was a Buddhist nun saying it. Unfair? Maybe, I was just curious. The affects were interesting.)
Each of those books talks about Sticking to One Boat or going deep within one tradition.... Here is how Pema Chodron expresses this idea:
"In traveling around and meeting so many people of so many different traditions and nontraditions, what I have found is that, in order to go deeper, there has to be some kind of wholehearted commitment to truth or wanting to find out, wanting to find out what the true meaning is. Therefore, if you want to hear..., you can hear from many different places, but you are uncommitted until you actually encounter a particular way that rings true in your heart and you decide to follow it. Then you make a connection with that particular lineages of teachings and that particular body of wisdom...... The point is that it's best to stick to one boat, so to speak..., because otherwise the minute you really begin to hurt, you'll just leave or you'll look for something else........................
Stop shopping around and settle down and go deeply into one body of truth. He taught that this continual dabbling around in spiritual things was just another form of materialism, trying to get comfortable, trying to get secure, whereas if you stuck to one boat and really started working with it, it would definitely put you through all your changes. You would meet all your dragons; you would continually be pushed out of the nest. It would be one big initiation rite, and tremendous wisdom would come from that, tremendous heartfelt, genuine spiritual growth and development. One's life would be well spent. He stressed that his students should stop just dabbling in spirituality to try to feel good or get high or be spiritual....
It's best to stick with one thing and let it put you through your changes. When you have really connected with the essence of that and you already are on the journey,everything speaks to you and everything educates you... You know that the vehicle is the one that works for you."
I have loved my journey within the reality of the expression of Christ upon the earth. My journey with Christ's spirit and even within church communities at times. I would still very much categorize myself as part of the Christian faith. That is my One. That is my boat. It has definitively put me through the ringer, broken my heart and put it back together again. Except, I just can't be made of ticky tacky, and I can't exist within the lines of a box that are super imposed upon me telling me that this is God and every other box isn't or doesn't have as good or full expression.
Jim articulated it this one way this week. "We are on the R and D side right now and that doesn't go on the assembly line just yet." Research and development. No! Not to create another box but towards discovery and towards life and fullness. What does it all mean? What will it all look like? I don't know... I'm not willing to say I do... My little dualistic self has break downs at times these days. I liked black being black and white being white and yes being yes and no being no, I liked round peg and round holes. Because it was easier. Because then I had these clear cut answers that I could rest well at night knowing I had them... But He who went into Samaria and into the temple has a way of overturning tables and mindsets and it is Him I follow... Even to the ends of the earth...... Whatever and wherever that may be!
So this is a journey. A journey into places I do not know.. I am taking what Moses spoke about when he invited the children of Israel into the deep darknesses of the Lord and allowing myself to be led and allowing myself to ask questions, and allowing myself to not have answers... Because in the deepest of darkness one encounters the Lord in the most magnificent of ways that alters courses and breaks down walls... aka lines of boxes............
No comments:
Post a Comment