November 18, 2006

I have for the past few weeks been not well in my soul. I have been frustrated by God's apparent absence and the loneliness of believing I am facing the world on my own. I have been mad at what I have considered as my role to play amongst His people: Am expected to be there for everyone; is it was my job to walk with those He brings into my life and yet have nowhere to set my own pack down for awhile? It is a season of disharmony inside my being.
 Is it that I carry myself with such a sense of independence that everyone figures I need no one? (Perhaps my acting training has turned against me) Is it that I am so afraid of letting people close that I hold them at arm's length?
Recently I spent a day alone with Papa. No phone, no computer, no one but me. I crawled through events that shaped the way I thought of myself and the world around me.  
There are times when I have been able to turn off the tapes that play in my head and forge onward, but before long they start to play again and I become powerless to do anything. It's times like these that our view of both our God and ourselves becomes distorted by the such. Obviously this has been one one those times in my life.
I was very calm as I crawled through everything today - that was not what I was expecting. I was expecting God to come and break me and then build me up again. Instead it was the two of us sitting down, looking at the lies that have held me and what the truth of the matter really is.
I picked up the book Abba's Child by Brennan Manning. The place where I left off the last time I was re-reading it was marked by a nail. The same nail the I stepped on while I was walking barefoot through a prayer labyrinth at camp a summer ago (it hurt, but didn't puncture the skin) dealing with the same memory that broke me when I was five. Brennen helped me to remember who I really am.
I started reading on the page marked:
The ordinary self is the extraordinary self - the inconspicuous nobody who shivers in the cold of winter and sweats in the heat of summer, who wakes up unreconciled to the new day, who sits before a stack of pancakes, weaves through traffic, bangs around in the basement, shops in the supermarket, pulls weeds and rakes up leaves, makes love and snowballs, flies kites and listens to the sound of rain on the roof.
while the imposter draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in it's belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.
Writing to a New York intellectual and close friends, Henri Nouwen stated, "All I want to say to you is, "You are the Beloved," and all I hope is that you can hear these words as spoken to you with all the tenderness and force that love can hold. My only desire is to make these words reverberate in every corner of your being - 'You are the Beloved.'" Anchored in theirs reality, our true self needs neither a muted trumpet to herald our arrival nor a gaudy soupbox to rivet attention from others. We give glory to God simply by being ourselves.
'Shelley, you are the Beloved.' Wow. I really needed to hear that. All that has happened to me does not make me into what all the lies have been telling me. I need to be reminded of that often. 'You are much more than your collection of unhappy memories. You are much more than what you might do for other people. You are worth much more than that because you belong to Me. Accept your position. You have never fully accepted your place as My child!'
Oh, Papa!! Forgive me!
Manning went on to share a story of Mike Yaocnelli, the cofounder of Youth Specialties as he went on a retreat at L'Arche (the Ark) community: 


He went hoping to draw inspiration from the mentally and physically handicapped people who lived there or find solace in the presence and preaching of Henri Nouwen. Instead he found his true self. He tells his story:
It took only a few hours of silence to hear my soul speaking. It took only being alone for a short period of time for me to discover I wasn't alone. God had been trying to shout over the noisiness of my life and I couldn't hear Him. But in the stillness and solitude, his whispers shouted from my soul, "Michael, I am here. I have been calling to you, but you haven't been listening. Can you hear me, Michael? I love you. I have always loved you. And I have been waiting for you to hear me say that to you. But you have been so busy trying to prove to yourself you are loved that you have not heard me."
I heard Him, and my slumbering soul was filled with the joy of the prodigal son. My soul was awakened by a loving Father who had been looking and waiting for me. Finally, I accepted my brokenness... I had never come to terms with that. Let me explain. I knew I was broken. I knew I was a sinner. I knew that I continually disappointed God, but I could never accept that part of me. It was a part of me that embarrassed me. I continually felt the need to apologize, to run from my weakness, to deny who I was and concentrate on what I should be. I was broken, yes, but I was continually trying never to be broken again - or at least to get to the place where I was seldom broken....
At L'Arche, it became very clear to me that I had totally misunderstood the Christian faith. I came to see that it was in my brokenness, in my powerlessness, in my weakness that Jesus was made strong. It was in the acceptance of my lack of faith that God could give me faith. It was in the embracing of my brokenness that I could identify with other's brokenness. It was my role to identify with other's pain, to relieve it. Ministry was sharing, not dominating; understanding, not theologizing; caring, not fixing.
What does all this mean?
I don't know....and to be quite blunt, that is the wrong question. I only know that at certain times in all of our lives, we make and adjustment in the course of our lives. This was one of those times for me. If you were to look at a map of my life, you would not be aware of any noticeable difference other than a slight change in direction. I can only tell you that for the first time in my life I can hear Jesus whisper to me every day, "Michael, I love you. You are beloved." And for some strange reason, that seems to be enough.

Before I sign off for the night I want to share another story Manning included in his book. I also want to invite you to respond to what I've written. Let me know I'm not alone.
Manning writes:
It is like the story of the hurried executive who went out to the desert father and complained about his frustration in prayer, his flawed virtue and his failed relationships. The hermit listened closely to his visitor's rehearsal of struggle and disappointments in trying to lead a Christian life. He then went into the dark recesses of his cave and came out with a basin and a pitcher of water.
"Now watch the water as I pour it into the basin," he said. The water splashed on the bottom and against the sides of the container. It was agitated and turbulent. At first the stirred up water swirled around the inside of the basin; then it gradually began to settle, until finally the small fast ripples evolved into larger swells that oscillated back and forth. Eventually, the surface became so smooth that the visitor could see his face in the placid water. "That is the way it is when you live constantly in the midst of others," said the hermit. "You do not see yourself as you really are because of all the confusion and disturbance. You fail to recognize the divine presence in your life and the consciousness of your belovedness slowly fades."