reflections on dark nights

        I have three saints’ well maybe four (not sure about Julian of Norwich, if shes a saint), saints that I follow, St. Francis, St Teresa of Avila and St. John of the cross. Three out of the four are known mystics; perhaps St. Francis was a different type of mystic. But anyways, I have been studying for CPE as well as personally about Dark Night of the Soul.  I thought that I would share with you my thoughts on dark nights of the soul.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul provides an overview. But I have more where that comes from!

I felt very connected to the town of Avila when I was there many years ago and could not explain.  As I learned more about her I came to know St. John as well and knowing that the deep separation from God that I had felt many times was not some freak thing that was happening to me. But rather I was one of many, many people, saints, sinners, great thinkers, and average folks throughout the ages who knew the obscure time. I feel as if I might be one of those persons whom were born with the awareness of the longing.  For me the multiple dark nights have always been a powerful redirection and reorientation in my life, but the experiences have always been incredibly painful during the process, and in the reentry process.  There is no length that a Dark Night must be or a maximum of when it must be over. Periods of dark night are also not uncommon over someone’s lifetime.  

A view of a dark night

To better understand the dark night of the soul has helped me to reframe and create new perspectives on life. The obscure nights helped me to learn how to be ok to be angry with God and to know that the pain is real and not imagined. I also feel that it helped me to understand and fully see the deep pain that is all around us, but that the pain is from humans not being able to know or even sense that deep connection that was embedded into them from God’s whisper into the dirt.

Anything Dangerous?

Anything Dangerous?

           

This semester I am entrenched in two New Jersey State facility’s, the only women’s prison in New Jersey, and a state Psychiatric hospital (yes the same one from previous entries). Both of them are very similar and also very different. But both as the same questions, ‘anything dangerous on your person?’

            I know not to bring cigarettes ,knives, plastic bags, anything sharp and so on to both places but something dangerous I think I bring. I bring knowledge, books and compassion to both places. Why are these dangerous you ask? Because knowledge gives you the power to rise above, to see differently, to challenge yourself to be different well remaining true to your core. Compassion brings the danger of knowing yourself as a human and not a number or a patient or a level of privilege.

            Jesus in his time was very dangerous not only because he discussed and sometimes screamed justice for all people. He also was a boundary crosser in a time when crossing boundaries meant all kinds of things. Jesus was also radically dangerous when he met the sick in there infections, ailments, and contagious. When he met the poor on the street and invited them in for a meal. He lived on the edge he was dangerous.

            But are we dangerous today? To we live on the edge and yell out for justice? To meet the sick in the hospitals and on the sidewalk? What about the poor? Do we determine that others will help them and we do not need to do anything? I think that as people of faith we are not dangerous enough, we don’t live on the edge.

            Granted where the edge is, remains different for each person. But learning not to judge as much the poor off the county I work in has made me dangerous, because I see not the poor in them, but the humanness of them.  Forcing me to see a bit through the eyes of Jesus, who did not see the condition but the human in a condition. Not pathology but a person.

            So yes I bring danger with me when I enter into these places.

Don't Sell Yourself Short!

            So about a month ago I started a Mary Kay business. I started to have fun, talk about great products, make some extra money, and just to get out of my own head.  Each week we get points for what we do, 50 points for meeting attendance, 50 points for other things and so on and so forth. Last week it turns out I shorted myself almost 800 points! I was under the impression that a sale was 1 point as in you sold stuff you got one point. But no no no, it is 1 point for each dolor. I sold 800.00 worth of product so I got 800 points plus 300 more! This made me the queen of sales for the week, and that was awesome I wont like. But it was not the take away for me.

            I have been chewing on this idea of selling yourself short a lot. I know that I do it all the time, saying ‘oh I’m not good enough for that job/class/internship/church/ect’ or ‘oh they are to perfect to be friends with me’ or ‘I’m so stupid, all I’ll ever be is stupid’. Now I know this is not true at all, but when you get into a cycle like this it’s hard to get out of it and thus you continue to sell yourself short.

            This led me to Jeremiah 1:4-1:10, or titled the call of Jeremiah. I keep telling myself especially in the last year that God does not call the accomplished, or the best or the heroes, or the people that know what’s going on. God calls the right people for the right call, and then equips them for the right ministry’s, and develops and encourages growth of gifts innate within the person.

            So many of our Biblical hero’s where zeros. They told God, so not me I am not worthy go pick someone else (and then point to someone else). But like God said to Moses, you are worthy in my sight and I appoint Aaron to help you. God 1, Moses 0. So who are we as the Beloved Children of God to sell ourselves short?  God will take care of you, me, and us as well as those we have yet to meet.*

*This line inspired by the hymn God Will Take Care of You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijytLs96yig

i carry you with me

            Today I learned some sad news. My camp the one where I lived life fully for the first time is being sold. So goes my dreams of a wedding there (I had the colors and the locations planed in my mind, I just needed the SO), the hope that my niece would get to go to MY camp, that others would get to go an have transformation experiences under the stars and with the fireflies. But this is not to pass in the way of life in this moment or in God’s plan. I think of all the memories I have of this place. How I had my first true telephony, how I found my first boyfriend, holding someone’s hair out of there face on there 21^st birthday at 1:15 in the morning. Canoeing with said boyfriend on the creek and finding a skull, ending Harry Potter with the 7^th book, How sweet the grass smelled when it was cut, dancing around the fire pit, breaking a window within an hour of my arrival. Driving my brand new car on its first journey in my hands from home to camp. I grew up a lot that summer; it was a major life bridge for me.

            I will not lie and tell you I have not shed some tears over this. I was just talking with my therapist about how much I loved that area because of all of the good that went with it. The peace, the quiet, the stars, even the crop duster.  All of it mattered and still does. Somehow I thought I would always have the physical place of my camp, but this is not to pass either. However I have camp in my heart. I have the friends I kept from there, the learning’s I did that summer, the pictures and the treasured relationships I had with the kids. Camp was a study in conflict management for me, intra and interpersonal. I keep them close to my heart all the time. I think of the e.e. commngs poem “i carry your heart with me”

A picture from summer 2007, when I was a counselor at Camp

i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                       

  i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

A time,

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            As my second to last semester of Seminary draws to an end, I think of the past three years and all of the changes that have happened in my life. I came to seminary thinking one way, desiring different things then now, feeling differently, and in a much different health state.  I wrote my admissions entry about how I was interested in Eco-Theology, and while I still am my call and its related desires have turned my heart more towards behavioral health. I listen to many of my seminary friends and they all have similar changes they have undergone.

            In class yesterday my friend Chris played “For Every Season” by the Byrds. Based from Ecclesiastes 3:1-9, titled ‘a time for everything’. Almost every funeral I have been to has had this verse ready its sort of like the 23^rd Psalm-death stuff. But I have found more within the past 18 months of my life that this is a poem/scripture that is all about life.  With the season of spring supposedly coming in the Northeast where I live I am preparing my seeds to plant my veggies for the summer, I’m stressing out about finals and trying to figure out what I’m going to do after graduation. But I see that everyone around me has this happen too.

            I am taking CPE this semester at a Psych hospital. As followers of my blog you know that this is something very near and dear to my heart and the place where I meet Jesus in the other every moment. I lead a group called “Morning Centering” where we listen to music, I give a talk, they sometimes talk with me about the message and then we finish with music. I was not at CPE for about a week and the area that I do the group on had completely changed. The dominate personalities of the area where discharged out of the hospital. I had mixed feelings about this, I was excited that they had reached according to the hospital a level of wellness. But I was sad that I did not get to say goodbye to them.

            There absence changed the group dynamic completely, with a woman who was quiet now taking a large leadership role.  One of the first times I was with the group it snowed like crazy and I talked about how snow is the poor mans fertilizer. And how sometimes in the winter when it all looks dead it is merely regenerating, resting, renewing. A message I need to tell myself often and that soon the spring flowers would be blooming, and that they would be beautiful because of all the moisture in the ground.  Thus leaving us to contemplate a time for everything, a season for our lives at this moment, a chapter of the book of life completed. A time that we cannot always see…

Worship from the Floor

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            In late February my niece turned three and I went home to my parents house where she lives with my sister. Being that I was home I went to my home church on Sunday morning. Stevens has a hall instead of a sanctuary where we set up chairs into rows. Addy my niece feels free to run from us to our neighbors who also got to the same church, and to other friendly faces, then to the toys, and back again. This particular Sunday she was running all over the place having a great time and making everyone smile. She was running between my mom and I, who was on the computer running the PowerPoint. About one minuet into the sermon my niece started yelling for Aunt Betty. To calm her I went and sat on the floor with her. We did the ABC puzzle that is her favorite at church. The pastor preached and I still heard the message, but it was in a new way for me to receive. I like to watch the speaker it helps me stay focused on the person and to remember the message. I don’t remember quite what the message was (sorry Gene!) but I remember the feeling of knowing my niece was beloved in this community and I was too, we where perfectly welcomed in worship and to sit on the floor well doing so.

            But a church I was involved in had terribly uncomfortably pews and the kids would kick them and get yelled at or get the dirty look. I was super uncomfortable growing up in a church where you could move. They quickly sent the kids to Sunday school, chasing them away from worship. So I was led to think how often to we chase ‘kids’ or all of the children of God who are a little different and who want AND need to sit on the floor. Having my passion for disability studies, I think first of those ‘least of these’ who are differently abled. But what about people who have been wounded by the church and are trying to believe again. Do we force them into the ‘pews’ of their past that helped contribute to the pain and woundedness? These are questions I don’t have answers to but I wonder what if we all worshiped from the floor.

Do No Harm

            I love this concept, this idea, this way of being of doing no harm. But lets be honest how often are we doing harm when we think we are doing good. I love quinoa, its great, its nutty I can use it like rice for a different flavor, and its whole wheat. Its good for me, but its not good for the farmers of it.  Because of its recent growth in popularity the price of it has shot up and now the people growing it can’t afford to eat it.  So in doing myself no harm, I am harming others.         But really what I see from do no harm is rather do the least amount of harm possible.  We are humans, we do harm its in our being. But sometimes its doing the least amount of harm in order to do good, the third rule. In supervised ministry, I get a lot of flack from my classmates about my feeling on this. My professor this semester happens to agree with me that it’s about harm reduction.

            My most recent encounter with this and one that I think about often  is my internship at the food pantry. The pantry has limits on how much each family size can pick, such as a family of 1 person can get six cans of soup, and a family of 5 people get 12 cans of soup. The food pantry is meant to be supplemental to food stamps, other government benefits, and to help you save money elsewhere (i.e. the money you don’t spend on food to feed your family can go to help pay your mortgage so you don’t become homeless).  Now most of our clients are so very thankful and do not try to buck the system. But there are a few who do. So in doing the perhaps harming them in a small way by telling them they can not take more soup then there allotment, I create good elsewhere by making sure that there is soup for everyone who needs it.

            But likewise sometimes I do just cause harm even though I don’t mean it.  I was training a new shopper (we are a client choice pantry where it is set up like a grocery store and clients get to chose there food from the category’s and within limits), and I was explaining the meats and meals section. This is where you find spagetio-s and caned meets. 

            “So this is where caned chicken and stuff like that is. I guess that you might find caned turkey here as well. I’ve never seen it though” I said.

            “Its good” says the client we are shopping with “you can do a lot with it”

I felt so stupid and that I had done a great amount of harm. Showing my privilege in my lifetime of never having to eat caned turkey, or caned any meat.  But in that moment I learned that the client was doing the least amount of harm to me. She could have reacted a lot differently, but she was doing good. Taking what could have been a very hurtful moment and making it into a teaching moment.

Staying in love with God...?

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I have been reflecting a lot recently on the section of “stay in love with God” from Three Simple Rules, a way of Wesleyan Living by Ruben P. Job. I have read it three times, once for me, once for pastoral formation and once again for supervised ministry. The rules are simple, do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God.  Now I have trouble doing all three, and argue quite vehemently about ‘do no harm’ as interpreted to ‘do the least amount of harm possible’ I’m not very popular with my classmates when I argue this point. I digress this is for another post. 

            But staying in love with God has been the hardest for me lately. As those of you following my blog have hopefully figured out, its been a crapy 15 months for me.  But for me the struggle with my mood disorder, and the complete disorder of my relationship with God and my own spirituality and faith has been heavy on my heart.  I say that I am angry at God, but that is the way to place a word to far more complex problems.  It’s a wondering, a wandering, a hopeing, a where the F* are you God!, and Hi God its me Betty, I’m leaving a voice mail…

            So I am trying to do my best to stay in love with God. Acting in a way that reflects the morals and values that I hold dear, trying my best to lift people out of the mess with there help. Trying to teach good, not evil and encouraging others in there own faith journey. But how do I stay in love with God when I wonder where God went. I know that God is, and that God loves me. But I miss the days when I knew God was around me.  It also does not help that I am trying to figure this all out well in Seminary, where God is 90% of the time the focus of academics. Even outside of the class room God is always in the conversation as we whine about our theology, bible, and practical theology classes, asking do we really need to know this random stuff about The Investiture Controversy?*

            So how does one stay in love with God when your not quite sure what that is now, how to let go of what it was, and how to mold it for the future?

                                                                                                               

*Throwback to Church History I, the main thing I remember from this class, in terms of uselessness for the history of the Church… (maybe it will be on Jeopardy some day)

How Holy the Conversation

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        I started working at a food pantry at the start of January to fulfill the requirements of my supervised ministry class. I was unsure of it as this is something I have never ever considered as a site for ministry, for me. But I love it already. I do intake interviews, shop with clients as we are a client choice pantry(items are out on shelves and clients get to chose the variety of the item. I.e. tomato soup not clam chowder), and find and refer resources to clients. Today I finished the first incarnation of the big bad book of referrals and resources. Its about 2 inches thick of paper, I also got to give my first referrals from it! I would post a picture but I forgot to take one today!

            As someone who often looks to the very ordinary as evidence of the Divine, I was reminded of this again. I had a very holy moment with a client today as we both shared a lot in common, I was able to use my knowable to help steer her to some resources. Then we went shopping; I encouraged her to keep up with her hard work and acknowledged her strength in asking for help. We talked about what could be done with the food items, like beans and rice, blueberry cobbler and so on. As we where checking out she asked how long I had been there and I told her three weeks, She was amazed and asked me what bought me to the pantry. I told her it was my internship for my M.Div and then we had a conversation about faith. I had already felt a kinship with her the moment she walked into the office for the interview but then she affirmed she felt it too.

            It was a warm reminder of just how holy the work I’m doing is. I was struggling a bit to see the connection between food pantry and ministry other then ‘they are hungry feed them, Jesus told us to’. But it is more then that it is the conversations, the affirmation of a persons strengths, the reaffirm that they are the beloved of Gods. Yes that is the ministry of the pantry

Geting Brave

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*warning I drop an Fbomb in here*      

   This January term I am taking a class called “Ministry with Persons with Disability’s”, so far I am loving it. Today we talked about my area of passion Mental Illness/ Behavioral Health. We had a speaker in the morning who is an educator and pastor in the field of cognitive disability’s and mental health he also known the pain of depression. In the afternoon our instructor gave us a PowerPoint presentation and a women asked the question “why don’t people just tell”. I felt that pesky Holy Spirit rising in my stomach and told it to quiet down. But she went on and another classmate gave her answer and then the Holy Spirit burst forth and called me to tell my story.

            Telling your story of MI, is something painful, courageous, daring, stupid and a host of many other things.  I told they good the bad and the ugly. I discussed how I lost my job, got discriminated against in the seminary by people who I thought would care because they are Pastors by profession. And just how wrong I was. How I was wounded deeply by the church cut to my core, and how I felt that I could not go to church again because I was afraid to get hurt again the way I got hurt in the past. As a seminarian I know that one church does not reflect the entirety of the UMC or the whole Christian church, but it got me thinking about those not as ‘hearty’ with the stupidity of the church saying ‘fuck this shit’ and walking away forever. This hurts me even more then my personal wounding.

            But with the assistance of that dam pesky Holy Spirit, I got brave and preached it. I was not intending to preach it. My classmates thanked me for speaking out and offered encouragement. But also knew the grim reality’s that I and others like me might face in the shadow of the church.

            My favorite Gospel is Mark. I like how its quick and dirty and Jesus just does what needs to get done, its not flowery or sweet with a nativity story its dirty! Its messy, its crazy. Its also the gospel of the dimwitted disciples(another post to be made). But most importantly it’s the gospel of courage to me.

            Mark 16: 1-8, the original ending of Mark, recounts how the women came to do the final tending of the grave of Jesus. But then a young man dressed in white tells them

 “⁶But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.”

They end up running away in amazement and terror. But something happened, Marks not the only book that makes up the New Testament. We have acts, we have Paul’s letters and the other pastorals, so they must have told someone.  That or we have an elaborate fairy tales on our hands.  But I think that it is more that they took the courage of the faith they had in Jesus who was a great prophet to them, maybe they knew he was God.  They where likely still afraid and I would be, but they decided that faith was greater then fear. That the courage to share that faith was more important then the fear. 

       I am still afraid of a lot of things regarding my MI, how will I manage it as someone who will be losing there parents insurance in two years, might I have to go inpatient, how will I afford this, will the church let me ‘in’, can I get ordained, can I get a job in ministry, can I get a job period? Lots of fears will my potential future children have MI like me. Could I willfully and knowingly bring that upon a child?           

  But it takes all of my courage to walk on, to know that I will manage. I will make it work; I will find a church that will ordain me, a job in ministry. It will happen. It might not happen in the way I expect it to or plan it at all, but I have to have the courage to know that it will somehow work out.