It feels apocalyptic right now. A worldwide pandemic, a potential break-down in food distribution systems, cataclysmic weather patterns, violence, economic struggles, and now something no one expected, killer hornets! It’s enough to make us go crazy. That is, if we didn’t already have a story to guide us through. A story that tells us there is not only a way in the wilderness, but the wilderness is the way.
“Stories hold the world together,” as storyteller Michael Meade has said. There’s a wonderful story hidden in the Bible that can help us find our way through these chaotic and uncertain times, a story of the woman clothed with the sun with the moon at her feet. She wears a crown on her head of twelve stars and she represents the people of God, the goodness of creation itself. We come across her in chapter twelve in one of the books most of us have spent our lives avoiding, Revelation. She appears on the scene just as a war is breaking out in heaven, giving birth to something new while fighting off evil in the form of the world’s most powerful dragon. He was so powerful, in fact, that he had seven heads and he swept a third of the stars from heaven with his tail.
Just as she gives birth to a son who is to be a great leader for the nations, the dragon tries to devour her baby. But God saves him, and gives her the wings of an eagle to fly off into the wilderness to be nourished there, for a time and times and half a time, as the story goes. This is when the dragon gets really angry and declares war on the world. But the woman watches from the wilderness, where she is strengthened and nurtured by God. While God and all God’s angels fight the war in heaven, eventually defeating the dragon forever, the death of evil .
She is nourished in the wilderness, and so are we. This motif is in many stories in the Bible. The way is made clear, not in the heat of battle, but in the forced retreat to the wilderness. None of us go there willingly, or so the story goes. Hagar is banished to the wilderness and finds the way, led by God. The Israelites escape to the wilderness and find a whole new future. Jesus is forced into the wilderness by the Spirit and finds the strength to carry out his mission there. We are tested in the wilderness, but it is also the place we are taken to be nourished, nurtured and learn to depend on a power greater than ourselves. It’s the place where we let go and learn to trust in God who shows us that there is not only a way in the wilderness, but the wilderness is the Way.
The Wilderness is the Way.
It feels like we are all on a very long wilderness journey, thanks to COVID19. The days are long without much direction, we are anxious about how our needs will be met and often wondering what to do next. We need a story to guide us, to hold us together, to tell us who we are, to ground us in something bigger than the evidence of the day. The woman clothed with the sun steps into this dark book of revelation and into the darkness of our world, and reveals something new. This something new can be a navigation point for all of us as we try to figure out what to do with each day’s chaos. God is doing a new thing, even and especially in the wilderness, in the uncertainty of our days, in the chaos of our world.
We may feel like we are at the end of a story, but the woman clothed with the sun shows us it just may be a new beginning. This feeling that we are doomed and that chaos is the only thing that rules the day is actually a trick the seven headed dragon, and the chaos monsters of our world, play upon us. The darkness of chaos is always trying to convince us that the world is full of doom and gloom and that our best days are behind us. But the woman clothed with the sun tells us, “don’t fall for it.” Resist and wait, resist and pray. God will surely come and give you rest, nurture and a way forward. Giving you the uplift of eagle’s wings just when you need it the most.
The seven headed dragon would have you believe that chaos is in control, it exists to create the chaos of uncertainty in the world. But it also feeds off of our lack of faith, our fear. Revelation tells us that God wins the war in heaven and it’s the death of evil, forever. It’s a scenario that plays out a million times a day, all over the world. Though the dragon takes its bite, love always wins. Love is the most powerful force in the universe.
This story shows us that God walks through the dark hills of our lives, too, lifting us up when we have no more strength to fight. Saving the evidence we have created out of goodness. God gives us rest and nurture, even in the middle of the fight. God not only makes a way in the wilderness, the wilderness becomes the way itself. To new life, new creation and the experience of God’s love invading the world.
Trust that God will meet you when you face the chaos monsters of your days, and give you what you need to find rest, renewal and peace. God will even fight the battle for you, when you are ready to let go.
Check out more hidden stories of women of the Bible in this free resource, click here to download the free PDF
There are little sprouts coming up in my garden from seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago. It’s kind of a miracle. Since I planted these seeds, my garden has experienced torrential downpours, a tornado and even frost. These sprouts shouldn’t be appearing, and yet new life is bursting into view. The seed has abided in the very substance of it’s being, the ground, and together, they are forming something new – nourishment.
The word abide comes to mind as I watch these tiny miracles spring from creation itself. To abide means to continue without fading or being lost. To take refuge and root in that which is greater than ourselves. In so many spiritual traditions, this is the core concept. abiding in the Creator, in God, in the Great Spirit. Jesus speaks of abiding in God as God abides in us. There is a oneness at the core of this abiding, a merging with that which gives life that allows us to “continue without fading or being lost.” A Power greater than ourselves meets us in the darkness of our world and nourishes us, turning us into something new, giving us the strength to nourish others.
To turn towards the practice of abiding is to turn towards something greater than the winds that toss us about or the events of our lives that threaten to lead us down pathways of despair. We need this nourishment each day of abiding, it is the very thing that keeps us spiritually alive. It is the path of life, our very refuge.
It can be difficult to practice the very thing we need the most when all around us seems chaotic and driven by fear. But remembering to abide can be a practice that not only saves us in these times but changes us on the other side. Taking some moments throughout the day to develop this practice can provide a rootedness that can carry us through our lives and through difficult times. In fact, these thin spaces of our lives, when the veil between heaven and earth is cracked open through suffering, can be the perfect time to begin or perhaps begin again.
Here is one of the practices I use to abide. Feel free to adapt it or develop your own.
Centering Prayer: This is a practice that has been used by monastics for hundreds of years, but Fr. Thomas Keating really brought this practice into the mainstream. There are many videos of him discussing it on Youtube and you can readily find them by doing a search with his name + “centering prayer.” Sometimes, I listen to them while driving. He is the real pro and I recommend learning the art of the practice from his videos. Being a musician, I like to innovate a little. I adapted my version of this practice several years ago. You can use a word or a phrase that helps you feel connected to God. I often use the word, “Creator” but it can be a word such as “love” or “grace” or “peace.” The important thing to remember is that anyone can do centering prayer, it is available to us all. Sit in a comfortable position, breathe deeply for a few minutes, slowly. As you breath in you say the word at the tip of the inhale of your breath, say it in your mind. Then breathe out slowly. Repeat this for 10 to 20 minutes (or however long) as you seek to connect with God. If your mind drifts off, just gently get back into the practice. It may take a few minutes for the mind to settle. When I have trouble settling my mind (often), I add a little soundtrack of Tibetan prayer bells, which again can easily be found on Youtube. The bells help my mind to sink into the breath. Somehow, the vibrations of the bells are very calming.
Maybe you are like so many people and may have problems with the God concept. So many people have been raised to believe that God is wrathful and punishing or indifferent and uncaring. But God is unconditional love itself. Something that is hard for us to fathom. If you have trouble with the concept of God, try this acronym: G.O.D. – Good, Orderly Direction. God desires to move us to a place of sanity in a world that sometimes feels like it is overwhelmed with insanity (Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results).
We need new practices to solve old problems, to confound old narratives of hurt and pain. Or maybe taking old practices and making them new. Centering prayer, as Thomas Keating has said, is a form of “Divine Therapy,” that over time, quiets the mind and helps us connect to the heart. In other words, to abide, to continue without fading or being lost.
As we return to God throughout the day in prayer, we discover a miracle. God abides in us, giving us strength, growing our internal resources, giving us hope even in times of uncertainty.
Here’s a little piece of a song I love, created with Rumi’s poetry and a wonderful composer, Conni Ellisor. It’s called “Kiss the Ground” and the lyrics really remind me of the importance of being grounded in that Power that is greater than myself. Enjoy!
In a post 9/11 era and the age of the global pandemic, we are waking up to the new reality of collective trauma. It’s not something most of us want to discuss over coffee, in fact, we’d really rather avoid any unpleasant conversation about trauma in general. Yet, here we are, trying to get centered in a time that feels as if “the center cannot hold.” (W.B Yeats) The truth is, we can find a center that holds, that is, if we learn to cultivate it. But first, we need to understand why its so difficult to find. Our feelings give us clues.
Living in a culture of collective trauma often feels like we may have lost access to a loving, hopeful or joyful self, the very center of our being. It seems the evidence around us points only to the tragic loss of safety or sanity. And that is the core issue, that we are trying to gain a sense of peace, sanity and stability from outside of ourselves, trying to construct a center from things that simply cannot hold.
When we find ourselves in the grip of fear and trauma, we begin grasping for solutions. Where we may have once lived in a world that seemed to provide a measure of stability, we find that our usual framework may have lost its ability to sustain us anymore. Though it may seem easier to reach outside of ourselves for solutions, the key to healing the wounds of collective trauma is to go within, but that is easier said than done.
Trauma affects us in many different ways, but one of the main coping mechanisms that can hinder our healing is hypervigilance. It is a state of being constantly on watch, born from the expectation that something horrible is about to happen. In hypervigilance, one constantly feels the need to control and manage one’s environment. Most of us experience it as anxiety, some as anger, but it is also there in addictions to media devices and the constant news feeds of the ongoing tragedies of the world. Our hypervigilance gets confirmed over and over again by our news feeds through the evidence of terrible events unfolding all over the world. Add to that the violence occurring in one’s own life or community and a hypervigilant state then becomes justified. We are caught in an unending loop of needing to monitor and control an environment that seems to be spinning out of control. We can easily become trapped in hypervigilance and this can keep us from taking the healing journey within. Hypervigilance can also keep us in a state of fatigue and exhaustion. Because it’s exhausting to constantly be on watch.
Collective trauma also generates the feeling that the world, events and our lives are moving very fast and it is difficult to slow down. Media seems to play a prominent role in maintaining a hypervigilant state, though it can also provide opportunities for healing when its used wisely.
What we all too often fail to experience in our culture is any true acknowledgment and would be healing from the deep psychological wounds of trauma. But how do we even approach these wounds that seem to overwhelm us at every turn? The pain seems so much greater than the solution. In addition, the places that once seemed to keep peace and order seem to be less available. Churches are closing at an alarming rate, massive expanses of wilderness are being co-opted for natural resource development, the places that once brought peace seem to be bordering on extinction.
When Jesus, the great healer, walked among us, he shared the radical notion that the kingdom of God, the place where the healing happens, is within. Jesus left us a pathway, the Spirit or Holy Spirit, as a guide to this realm within. Whether you think of it as a kingdom or a realm or a dimension, it’s the same thing, he told us that we must go within if we are to discover our authentic soul life awaiting us, that part of us that is eternal, indestructible, connected to God, connected to love. The Christ Spirit is a companion to walk with us on this journey. The Great Healer walks among us still.
If we continue to seek out what is hidden in our hearts, the image of God within us all, we will begin to catch some initial glimpses of the possibility of healing. But we cannot do it alone, we need others to walk with us. Somehow, this inward journey is easier to do in a supportive community.
Stabilizing Community
As we take the risk of an inner journey, we need communities that provide stability for us to experience moving from a trauma driven way of functioning in the world, to a love infused way of being. To risk healing requires nurture from others. There are communities out there that can become places of healing for us if we seek them out. Even now, as we are learning to connect virtually, Zoom meetings are popping up everywhere. Churches are forming virtual small groups, 12 step programs are forming regular Zoom meetings, group therapies are going online now and so much more. You will find that if you ask God for direction, to supply your need to connect to community, you will find connection. Sometimes we just need to take the first step and ask for what we need.
Just as collective trauma is contagious, so is collective healing. Our journey inward to sit with pain, to bring it before the Divine Light and risk loving love into being is a pathway to overcoming fear in our ourselves and in our world. As we learn to cultivate the Center within ourselves, we will naturally help others to find it, too. Healing is contagious!
We are due for a collective healing and it begins in each of our hearts, each day. Claim some territory in your heart today for healing, slow down, breathe, meditate on the heart. As you do, ask God to be present and feel the wounds of fear letting go. Keep coming back to the prayer of the heart and to the community of prayer, the heart among hearts of love will surely find the way to God., the Center that holds.
P.S. Here’s a meditative song to help you on your path to finding a prayerful state within. I wrote this song after beginning to practice the first step of a 12 step program: “I am powerless over…..” Fill in the blank. Sometimes this step takes up a long portion of my prayer time! Naming all the things I’m powerless over helps me to enter into God space, where I’m letting go of control. “Surrender” is always a third option, after we’ve exhausted fighting and fleeing, we can just surrender to whatever God is trying to do in our lives and let it unfold.
Have you ever played the game where people sit in a circle and a story is whispered in someone’s ear, then passed on by whispering to the next person, then the next? If so, then you understand the challenges of biblical translation. By the time the story reaches the end of the circle, the details have usually changed. Sometimes, even the meaning of the story has changed, too.
Translating any language is a tricky job, particularly when it comes to the ancient languages that make up the Bible: Hebrew, Greek, and some Aramaic. Details are often lost in in the great circle of time that spans almost two thousand years of biblical translation. Oddly, the details that seem to get lost the most in the Bible have to do with the stories of women.
In all fairness, when you’re tackling something as monumental as the Bible, you can expect that some stories will just get lost, or rather, hidden in plain sight. After all, the original stories have been whispered from two thousand years plus! It just so happens that many of the stories that have been lost in biblical translation are about women, especially powerful women. Women who were called by God to lead God’s people. The good news for us is that they haven’t been lost forever. These days, women’s stories are being excavated like buried treasure, which helps us locate some of the lost pieces of women’s history. Including some of the hidden fragments of our own stories that have been missing for a very long time.
How did the stories of powerful women, warriors, prophets, and heroes, become so buried in the Bible? Wouldn’t we want to celebrate and honor these women of renown?
One of the main theories that has been developed by biblical scholars such as Wil Gafney, Elizabeth A. Clark, Tikva Frymer-Kinsky, Esther Fuchs and many others, is that gender bias played a huge role in the process of the hiding.
Since most biblical translation throughout history has been done primarily by men, and most often through the lens of a patriarchal culture, women’s stories were largely out of focus, in the background, hidden or completely buried. Nothing against men, but, when a good portion of Christian theology was formed, there were a few influential men who had some pretty twisted theories about women.
Some of these men were responsible for creating the foundational concepts of biblical theology as we know it today. Our beloved church fathers from the fourth and fifth centuries: Augustine, Ambrose of Milan and John Chrysostom,1 among others. They were men of their time, a time in which women were viewed as utilitarian – producing babies and serving men. What they saw in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 oddly enough, looked a lot like the world around them. A world in which women had very few rights.
For example, Ambrose of Milan wrote in his treatise, On Paradise, “even though man was created outside Paradise (an inferior place), he is found to be superior, while woman, though created in a better place (inside Paradise) is found inferior. For the woman was the first to be deceived and she deceived the man.”2 It’s odd logic, but somehow we bought it. The belief that women were inferior to men and should be viewed with suspicion due to their so called “deceptive” nature colored the lens through which our church fathers interpreted the Bible. This belief then colored the interpretations following them, and ultimately many of the belief systems that were foundational for how we’ve practiced Christianity for a very long time.
Some scholars think that the church fathers just didn’t understand Hebrew all that well. It makes sense, it’s a complex and fluid language. Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, Hebrew scholar, believes that there are many female prophets (and women warriors) hidden in the masculine grammar. 3 What else did they happen to miss?
Through insisting on male dominance as God’s design for humanity and hiding the women who were in leadership roles in Hebrew culture, former biblical interpretations have often created an imbalanced and unfair view of God and people.
On top of that, the insistence of these interpretations as “right” has made for a lot of human suffering for women. But today, all of these things are under the microscope, so to speak, of biblical studies. What they overlooked is changing the way we read the Bible, which is good news not just for women, but for everyone.
Explore more lost stories of women of the Bible in this free resource, download your free PDF here.
Elizabeth A. Clark, Women In the Early Church, (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, Inc. 1983) p 27-76. [↩]
Elizabeth A. Clark, Women In the Early Church, (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, Inc. 1983) p 30. [↩]
Wilda C. Gafney, Daughters of Miriam, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018) Preface. [↩]
“Nobody escapes being wounded, we are all wounded people. When our wounds cease to be a source of shame and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.” – Henri Nouwen, “The Wounded Healer”
The Wounded Healer is a human archetype that’s been around for thousands of years. In native culture, the wounded healer is the shaman or holy man/holy woman who heals themselves and others through becoming a channel for the Creator’s power to flow through them. They often use their wounds as a source of information for healing others. Jesus became the great Wounded Healer (the topic of Nouwen’s book) as his wounds became a source of healing for the wounded of the world.
It’s a beautiful idea, that our wounds could become a source of healing. But if you’re like me, you might initially balk at the thought of placing your wounds in the service of others. After all, if you’ve been on the earth very long, you soon learn from the school of hard knocks that you have to heal yourself before you can help anyone else, right? But here is what Nouwen is getting at and it’s also the real genius behind Jesus’ core teaching of “love one another.” The way to unleashing the wounded healer within isn’t in the fixing of our wounds or the wounds of others, it’s in the loving.
We so often confuse fixing and loving, and it’s easy to do.
When Jesus told his followers that the most important thing was that they love one another and love God, he knew they were broken people in a broken world. The thing is, he wasn’t telling them to fix the world or fix each other, he was telling them to love each other. It is somehow very important as we find solutions to the problems of the world like hunger, homelessness, climate change, violence and oppression that love leads the way.
Loving is different than fixing. We can’t fix each other but we can love each other, and this is where the magic happens, this is where the healing begins. In fact, Jesus was clear on this point too, that we need not get involved in trying to fix each other, but loving, loving one another is necessary for our own healing. Because it is love that connects us as human beings. People tend to suffer from loneliness, isolation and abandonment without love. Without love, we are just doomed to live out the nature of our wounds.
Healing our wounds is really important to human thriving. The field of psychology informs us that if we don’t heal our wounds, then they become the pain that we inflict on others. We project the dark attributes of our wounds onto others because we are trying to find some kind of method to cope with them. When we are not able to go through the healing process, we tend to project our pain outwardly, it’s how we manage the emotions we can’t process. Because we’re projecting the material of our wounds such as hurt, fear, mistrust, jealousy, it makes it difficult to connect with people, to love and have intimate relationships. Without healing our wounds, we are controlled by our pain.
But, as it turns out, the opposite is also true. That when we project love onto others, we go in the direction of love, in ourselves as well as outwardly. Love begins to give us messages about who we really are, because love is inside of us, the most powerful force in the universe. Love leads us to healing. We begin to crave more love as we get to know love, as we seek to love without conditions, we want more of that in our own lives. It leads us to seek our own healing. If we get into a program of healing, then our wounds can give us the information we need to move forward into friendships, love relationships, intimacy and a sane, manageable life. We become wounded healers.
Healing happens as we learn to give and receive love, as we share our brokenness with other human beings who are also broken. It took me a long time to really accept this. Because I always felt that I had to fix things, situations, problems; that in my ability to fix impossible situations, I could be spectacular and finally be worthy of love. I found out, in ten years of being the pastor at one of those churches Pope Francis has called “the frontlines of the world’s pain” that I was wrong. I couldn’t fix anyone or anything, all I could do was love broken people and eventually, learn to love myself. I learned that if I let love lead, solutions to problems would arise and I could see the way clearly.
Check out Sherry’s latest book: reflections from a pastor on homelessness and her spiritual journey.
The act of loving one another actually gives us access to our wounds. Because often, they are buried so deeply within us, we can’t reach them by ourselves. We need others to become mirrors for us so that we can locate them, have language for them. Sometimes our wounds are buried beneath layers of a false self that we’ve developed to survive because the pain of these wounds has been too overwhelming for us to process. Our real self or true self goes into hiding to survive. But the genius of Jesus’ teaching, “love one another,” is that as we risk loving instead of fixing, something deep within us begins to vibrate, God’s love, hidden inside of us all. It wakes up like a sleeping giant and begins to shake these layers of the false self as we connect with others through love. We begin to realize there is a truth inside of us that is much more powerful than our pain, that is Divine love. It shines out from inside as we risk loving, as we realize we are broken. Somehow our hearts need to break so we can believe that love is inside of us, love rescues us from within because it is innate in us all. We were all created with the image of God within, we just have a hard time believing it. Love holds us steady, loving others stabilizes us as we take the healing journey.
There is a wounded healer inside of us all. As counterintuitive as it might seem, we find our healing by putting our own wounds in the service of a greater love. God begins to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
As the poet Rumi said, “the wound is the place where the light enters you.”
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Occasionally I meet a holy family. This is my term for a homeless family with a baby. I call them holy because I always think of the traveling Mary and Joseph, rejected and forced outside, exposed to the elements, with the task of doing something Divine.
Such a family walked into the community meal with a baby boy, not quite a year old, with blue eyes and blonde, curly ringlets. The couple had become newly homeless and were living in their car. I tried many different techniques to help them get into housing, working with other agencies, helping them with paper work, but nothing stuck. Even with all my best efforts, it seemed I was unable to find a solution for this family. The layers of their predicament were thick and seemingly impenetrable. They would appear and disappear with great irregularity.
Randomly, they would come into the meal, covered in grease, dirt, and the fatigue of the streets. I would hold the baby, give them supplies, sometimes put them up in a hotel—and my heart would break again. The church did as much as we could financially to help them but after a year of coming and going, they just couldn’t get on their feet. It was so discouraging.
One Thursday night, one of my new mothers from the church came to the meal and noticed that the baby, now almost two years old, had blackened feet. She took a wash cloth and some soap from the kitchen and washed his feet. I had bought two gallons of milk for the meal that night, and she filled a bottle with fresh milk and fed him. The baby laughed at her, feeling safe in her arms. She noticed the dark circles under his eyes, and how tired the baby seemed. She called me that night after the meal, crying.
“I don’t know what to do, I can’t stop thinking about this baby,” she said through tears. “He just looked at me with his eyes, it was like he was crying for help and I just feel like I have to do something.”
I tried to console her. I knew she had made a connection with the baby boy and that he reminded her so much of her own little boy. Her heart was genuinely breaking over the situation.I assured her I would check further into what some of the options might be, though there didn’t seem to be any great ones presenting themselves immediately.
There was the Department of Children’s Services that we could call to come and investigate options for the baby’s safety. I explained to her that I’d done everything in my power to try and get them to commit themselves to the family shelter, but they would have to split up and they refused to do so.
She wouldn’t let it go, her heart had become involved. “I have some money if you think it would help, I can get together some supplies for them, whatever you think.”
“I’ll look into it this week,” I said, and thanked her for her generous offer.
The next day I made some phone calls, tried to track down the couple, but they were nowhere to be found. They had no address other than their car, no one seemed to know them, they were part of a hidden population and they were hidden well.
After church on Sunday the young mother lingered, sitting in the back of the church crying.
Now there are few women in my church from Africa, they are refugees of war-torn countries like Sierra Leone and Sudan. They knew something about the dangers of being homeless with children in tow. One of the mothers, Sarah, from Sierra Leone was forced from her home during a rebel invasion. Sarah’s baby was ripped from her arms and murdered in front of her. The atrocities they have lived through put our problems in perspective.
These two African now American mothers, Josephine and Sarah, began to comfort her and talk with her about this baby’s condition and what might be done.
“In Africa, we would never let a baby live on the streets,” Sarah said. “He would be taken to an auntie or a cousin. Someone would take him in. I don’t understand how we let this happen here in America. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
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The three of us were standing around the young mother who was sitting in the pew, trying to comfort her and come up with a solution. I shook my head. “I guess in America, we are a different kind of village. We have to have the system step in, if we call DCS, the baby will be taken into state custody and then put into the foster care system, it’s not guaranteed that the baby will have one home, it may have many in that system, it’s not perfect, it’s just the system we have, but it does often work out in favor of the child’s safety.”
“I just want to take him home,” the young mother said. “I want to feed him and bathe him and make sure he feels safe. It’s killing me that he’s not.”
“We have to do something,” Josephine said. “We can’t just let these babies live on the streets, we have to intervene.”
The women reasoned through the situation and decided that we should, as a church, call DCS. The only problem: there was no way to locate the couple, and she was expecting another child, due in two weeks.
The next community meal, the couple did not show up. Perhaps they intuitively knew something was going to happen. I haven’t seen them since, and as I asked around—no one knew where they went. I had no words of comfort for the young mother. Only, that these are just the kinds of situations we encounter when we do this type of work. It’s hard, but sometimes all we can really do is pray and keep searching for some kind of miraculous solution, giving what we can give, doing what we can do while we wait. Sometimes, even I have a hard time heeding this advice because my heart breaks, too.
I grew up in a very small town. In a small town, there is a culture of remembrance. People remember your personality—the things that made you unique—and your family. There is a deep well of recognition. Even in this day and age, there are no homeless people in my hometown.
But in the city, people fall through the cracks. I don’t know where they go. There are places to hide, even in plain sight, where no one will ever find you. It haunts me just like it haunted this young mother that a baby did not have what it needed to survive, that a little one so tender could be at risk in a great big world. This precious, new life, in danger of slipping through the cracks.
As an urban pastor, I’ve tried to create a culture of remembrance, but it’s hard because sometimes I feel as if my one, precious life is slipping through the cracks, too. There is something exciting about being in a city with its opportunities, but if you are from a culture of remembrance, it’s difficult to stay in that forgotten place.
I often admire the African refugees in my church because they stick together. They are surrounded by their culture here in the city. Even though they joke with me that they have “left the village behind” to fit into the urban culture, this is not really true. The village lives inside of them like my hometown lives inside of me. It guides them to take care of their neighbors’ children, to look out for one another, to be kind, and to protect the vulnerable. They have always carried the village in their hearts and as long as they do, they will never feel lonely.
I’ve learned so much from them and they have become the very heart beat of my church and ministry here, they have so much to teach us about how to love. They are so grateful to be living in what they call a “great country,” free from the kind of violence that drove them from their homeland. Here, they can use their gifts, pursue their humble dreams, educate their children, and make a life for themselves. And yet, they do not understand why we have so many holy, homeless families.
I’m not sure what will happen to the holy, homeless family but I pray for their safety and for the well-being of the babies. I pray for a new world in which we cherish all the sacred, holy families in our communities. I have learned that the only home we truly have is the one that is carried in the hearts of others.
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Thank you, Adele! Appreciate your words, hope you and family are well. Take care!
Thank you, Carol, for your sweet words. Miss you both!
This is lovely and helpful, Sherry, both the thoughts and the song – thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Adele! Appreciate your words, hope you and family are well. Take care!