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.

God is a Knitter

Even God is a knitter (in addition to being a potter, an artist, a poet, fire, and lots of other creative pursuits). The Psalmst tells us,

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in Your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.”

Psalm 139:13-16

As I wrap gifts for CHRISTmas this year for the first time ever I get to give a ‘grown up’ handmade gift. Not an ornament, not a foot angel but a scarf. Last winter I got the fantastic idea that I was going to learn how to knit. I had done it before so really it was just going to be getting back on the bicycle. How wrong I was, knitting for me was not like getting on a bicycle, or maybe it was as learning how to ride a bike for me was very difficult but more on that another time.  After a tense December for a multitude of reasons I looked upon January as a time of new beginnings, a way to restart to learn something new.

            Again I had no idea just what I was getting myself into. Susan who taught me how to knit and I would sit on Sunday nights and watch ABC’s Once Upon a Time and knit together. Even though she taught me our techniques where different but both still produced knitting. She was a knitter who would rip out messed up stitches and I would just let them be. I’m not really sure why I did not feel the need to rip the stitches out. Granted in my first scarf this led to a HUGE hole. But she also told me that knitting reflects the state of our souls. I think of knitting as an embodied prayer, the clacking of the two sticks together the conversations that go on during group knitting, the bumping of hands that meet when trying to show how to hold the needles just right. That first scarf became a goal scarf for me; it was a sign that I could do something good, after a time of feeling that I was only capable of failure.

            But back to the Christmas scarf, I started this scarf in my room at Drew casting on 30 stitches. Then knitted a few rows in the international terminal at JFK, a few more rows in Antakya Turkey, then some more on the road between Tarus and Nevisher Turkey. More on the Turkey trip some other time. Then I got home and worked on it on and off, trying to work out my frustrations with life in those sticks and fiber. Trying to knit the holes of my own life together. I had thought from the start that I would give this scarf away. But about half way though I wondered how I could give this scarf to anyone with all of these broken feelings that I had fed into it in the process of turning it into a scarf.

            But then I thought of the person I was giving it to. Someone who fully gets the brokenness that I feel, for they have felt it also.  Working to battle the holes and the frustrations, the sadness but likewise the joy that I worked into that scarf. So I give this scarf to this person with all of this, knowing that all of the individual stitches work together to create rows of bumps, that form into inches, that form into the scarf. Knowing that this person and I are knitted together forever in our souls just like this scarf.

A Year of Thanks 2012

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            A thanks to the friend who ‘caught me’ and made me go get help

            A thanks to the friend who let me cry on her bed

            A thanks to the friend who taught me how to knit

            A thanks to the classmates that helped the Holy Spirit to dwell and open me

            A thanks to the co-workers who taught me

            A thanks to the folks I ministered with, for teaching me, and letting me be part of your life, your secrets, and your hopes

            A thanks to the people in my life who understood

            A thanks for the couple who bought me pancakes on Palm Sunday

            A thanks to the roommate who shared her bunny with me

            A thanks for the courtyard conversations

            A thanks to the folks who I traveled with, who made a dream possible

            A thanks to the teachers who where willing to go to bat for me

            A thanks to the folks who I know that I can sick on others to fight for me

            A thanks to the people I’ve met this year who get where I’m coming from

            A thanks to face book for keeping me intact, and connected

            A thanks for pharmaceuticals

            A thanks to the people who are part of my ‘team’

            A thanks to Barnes and Noble for keeping me stocked

            A thanks for glue, that has allowed me to glue part of my life to paper

            A thanks to Amazon for keeping me stocked on just about everything

            A thanks to the TV show Rev. for helping me to keep things in perspective

            A thanks for the time of darkness to learn how to see differently in the obscure

            A thanks to the time spent on the bus for two weeks

            A thanks to Hope

            A thanks to journaling

            A thanks to art, and music

            A thanks to the inspiration that helped me hit my first home run, and experience my first post sermon high

            A thanks for the detour

            A thanks for the five day time out

            A thanks to the jerks who made me stand up to them, and restored my courage

            A thanks to the internet for information, and comradely,

            A thanks to the worlds best nurse

            A thanks for Sunday night TV watching

            A thanks to community, even when it is complicated

            A thanks to ‘all in this together’

            A thanks to the Turkish public works man who said ‘Panik Yuklu’ to us

            A thanks for the steak knives going to butter knives

            A thanks for tea

            A thanks for my carpet

            A thanks for dreams, not dashed

            A thanks for new dreams to be dreamed

            A thanks for loss, and the grieving and mourning that come with it

            A thanks for new experiences that, challenge, uplift, push down, and push back

            A thanks for my air conditioner

            A thanks for Snapple, and my Snapple dealer

            A thanks for freinds who celebrate with you, and weep with you

            A thanks for the scholarships I get to go to school

            A thanks to all that have taught me this past year, good, bad, indifferent, what I want to do, what I don’t want to do, life lessons of all sorts

            A thanks to those who made me learn something on my own. 

<3

Of the light

As I sit here procrastinating about completing my final papers and I realy wish that I could focus on procrastination because I do it so very well. 

But continuniting on with the advent theme that this week has bought forth, I think to a conversation that I had this week.  A friend of mine and I where discussing many things but it was clear to me that this friend needed to see how much they where loved and needed to see that light that God has bestwed upon each of us within us and around us.

            They call this time of year the season of light, ironic because its dark at 4:45pm now. I am one who does like a good twilight but its hard to see the light when I’m in class or otherwise occupied for most of it. Its also cold now, so even when I could be not otherwise enaged and enjoying the light it involves wearing shoes and my coat.  True fact I do not like to wear shoes.

            So the light is very fleeting, in my basement apartment we have no overhead lights, A fun surprise to walk into in August. My roommate and I for our first week survived with my one touch lamp, the stove hood light, and the bathroom light. It was then that I was perhaps most grateful for the light that nature provides. Now that we have been settled in here for a semester, we have more lights including my roommates wonderful ‘illuminate the world’ lamp.

(c) 2009 Betty L. Ga***n Shelter Island NY

            I am blessed enough to have many sources of physical outside light as well as other persons illumination. For some people they think they might only need one or the other to survive.  But I would like to counter that you need both. As one is something that you can see even with the untrained eye or soul, the other takes some time to see. I do assert however that you can learn to see both types of light in new ways even if you know how to see them presently.

            But back to my friend, I told them it was clear to me that they where reflecting God’s light and love unto the world and they had been bestowed some very powerful gifts that are not given often by humans to one another.  It was my question to them “why is it that if all these other people see the light in you, why is that you can not see it in yourself’.

            I don’t know the answer to this question for anyone other then myself.  Julian of Norwich states in the long text of  “Revelations of Devine Love” that even when someone seemingly in Augustinine terms to have ‘fallen so far’ that they can never return to the light. There remains a flicker of  light of the divine within them, that can be rekindled at anytime and thus lead to return to Devine. Whatever the Devine is to you.  

(c) 2007 Betty L. Ga***n High Falls NY

So dear friends as we march into finals, the end of the year, the winter holidays, the shortest day of the year and then perhaps a short break. We would all do well to continually rekindle the light within is to let the warmth of it fill every cell of our being. To see ourselves as creatures of the light, ones that are beloved even when we are not in the light, ones that are beloved.

There is too much light! Or Anticipating the Coming Light

 

           Each week at my home church I act as the projectionist. Our worship space is a hall so we have lots of light and windows.  This is great normally but this Sunday in particular our projector was struggling against the light. Why you ask? Because there was so darn much of it.  We do not have a screen like most places who project things, for a variety of reasons so we show on the wall. 

            This Sunday was very sunny and well it was a fun game trying to figure out where the light was coming from.  For me in this once instance there was too much light. Often though there is never enough light, we are always searching for something to light our way. 

            This made me think about the flowers and other flora that keep sending out roots for water and leaves and vines for light.  It still amazes me that even in areas that look completely dead they are anything but.  How often do we look upon others that we see as empty, dark, dead, with out light.  I know that I am personally guilty of this more often then I would like to admit. In spite of this I do try to seek the light in each person.  Is there ever enough light?  In this time of advent, with the clocks set back we settle in to darkness at about 5 o’clock where I live both places of the week.  It seems dark and it gets darker each day more and more.

 But we are headed to the light, both in reality and metaphorically. December 22 is the solstice and this year even though it is only one minute of darkness longer then the day before. It is still the darkest.  That’s the great thing about waiting in advent, anticipating, preparing. With the risk of sounding totally corny, at the end there is a light.  A light that is open to anyone should they desire to seek

Shelter Island, NY Summer 2008 (c) Betty L. Gan***n

 **Yes this is indeed a sunset, but it is one of my favorite pictures of light capturing**