The Wilderness is the Way: Navigating Chaos

The Wilderness is the Way: Navigating Chaos

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

Abiding, Not Fading

Abiding, Not Fading

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.

Today, take some time to abide.

Rev. Sherry Cothran, M.Div. – Author, Singer/Songwriter

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!

The Hidden Gift of Winter

The Hidden Gift of Winter

Tis the season of the longest night. Darkness arrives earlier and the sun takes its time waking in the morning. We are worn out by the Christmas rush and feeling the long stretch of winter’s yawn, inviting us into stillness.

In this time of speeding up to slow down it is not uncommon to sense feelings of sadness creeping in around the edges of our hard earned joy, once we slow down, that is. But if our first instinct is to chase the sadness away with some kind of distraction, we would be robbing ourselves of the hidden gift of winter. The wondrous gift that is given silently in this season of the longest nights.

Ancient holy people referred to this time of year as “thin space,” a time when heaven moves a little closer to the earth. Whenever this time of year approaches, it can be both wonderful and frightening.

For Christians, it’s also the season in which we celebrate the birth of the Christ child. Another event of the heavens that prompted the angels to inform humans that even though the whole world was about to change forever, there was nothing to fear. Tidings of great joy delivered into frightful times.

Following Jesus’ birth, Matthew’s gospel tells us that the infant boys were massacred throughout the region of Bethlehem by order of King Herod. But, as the angels said, we simply have nothing to fear.

I’m not sure why heavenly events are also terribly fearful, or why the emotions of sadness and loss accompany supposedly joyful holidays, but these are things I’ve come to accept…sort of. Or let’s just say, I’m working on it.

I suppose it’s all about perspective. When I can view winter solstice and the annual always-coming-before-I’m-ready re-birth of the Christ child as an opportunity rather than a burden, things get better.

I’ve come to realize that each of us is given the tools of our lives, and when we begin to apply these tools to our partnership with heaven, we soon find that we all have one material, a very necessary one without which we can become nothing at all. It is our own woundedness. Our wounds hold years of stored loss, sadness, and layers of grief. Like a big gray, cold, blob of hardened clay sitting there inside of us, uninvited, wanting to be expressed, wanting to become something useful. Often stuck and keeping us from moving forward.

But Old Man Winter brings a unique opportunity with his spinning wheel of transformation, always turning. It’s a great season to go sit at this wheel of time and learn how to work with the material of our pain. Reaching in to pull out a little evidence, a little substance to offer up to the spinning wheel.

Stubborn pain and loss sits there, shapeless and dark, and has become a constant reminder of what has not happened in our lives. We need to take it in hand and shape it into something, but we have no idea how to do that. We would love to believe that our lives could become a vessel of good, but we don’t know how to work with it, we are not artisans of our pain. We’ve never worked with anything so stubborn and hard, so unwilling to be molded into something practical.

We reluctantly pick up our blob of pain, we spin the wheel, we poke some holes. We cry, we get therapy, we join a 12 step group, we do yoga, we go to church, it gets worse, it gets a little better, maybe our pain is becoming something more than pain. At least we are willing to acknowledge its existence.

The point is, it will never move if we just let it sit there, we have to touch it, throw it on the wheel of transformation, scream at it, caress it gently, add water, pray to God to show us what it is to become; pray to God to give us a clue about what to do, the master potter, who knows our pain by heart.

We need a Higher Power to help us sort out the information of our grief and lift from us the burdens, the overwhelming emotions that are too heavy for us. What happens in this process is nothing less than amazing. Season by season of working with grief, we see God, the master potter, working with us and turning it into a vessel we can use, a vessel that can be filled with joy to pour out to others.

Eventually, the season that we dreaded so much becomes a springtime. And we have something forming on the wheel of our lives, a new thing, a vessel, that we can use to hold love.

If we see grief as something we need, if we understand it is our grief that holds the vital information we need to move forward, then we can accept this winter as being one of the greatest transformational periods of our lives. If we don’t seek to distract ourselves from it. Rather, taking the risk of turning into it. With God’s help, and with the help of a group or a community, we can see this winter as an opportunity.

God takes the information stored in our big blob of grief and turns it into something we can use to hold our wholeness and become that fully alive person God intends for us to be.

It will get messy, no doubt, you will get your hands dirty, there will be ugly tears, and sorrow, but each time you press against the edges, it takes a different form. As you identify your grief and offer the layers to God to be lifted, something new begins to appear, a hollowed out place within, big enough to store joy, peace and love.

This is God’s promise to us and it will be met as we become willing.

At the heart of this season may be a dark night of the soul, but it is also the place where we find God looking back at us, ready to meet us and get to work with all the various materials of our pain. Saying, just as the angels said on the dark, silent night in which the Christ child was born, “Do not fear, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy.”

Each Christmas is an opportunity for the Christ child to be born anew in all of us. From the churning chaos of the wheel of time, out of the elements of pain, comes joy.

“How Silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.”

Boundary Fatigue

Boundary Fatigue

When I was a child, two things kept happening. One, I was always stepping on bees and getting mercilessly stung. Bees were more abundant back then and I was barefoot most of the time, I didn’t like shoes in the summer, still don’t. Second, I seemed to have a knack for finding the one, live electric fence in the whole world left on when kids are playing around it, the one that held within its boundary a few stray cows and a couple of half broke horses.

The other day I was taking a stroll through a lovely botanical garden. Around one of the flower beds was situated that long, painfully familiar, barely visible string of wire with a nice little sign that read, “please pardon the electric fence, it keeps the deer from eating the flowers.”

I was slightly offended by it. Who cares if the deer eat the flowers? High voltage fences are more dangerous than the deer.

Running into an electric fence feels like being hit in the stomach by a projectile basketball, forgetting to catch it first. With enough voltage to scare off a nearly one ton cow running through you all at once. As if that weren’t enough, there are the accompanying feelings of stupidity as it dawns on you that you forgot to remember that one, nearly invisible boundary you were never, ever supposed to forget.

The bee stings weren’t quite that bad, but always delivered a pulsating ache that stopped me in my tracks, eliciting a familiar shriek that beckoned the neighbor or Mom to come running , bee sting remedy in hand, at the call of that special cry. Tobacco was the best medicine, much better than the green stuff in the plastic vile, tobacco really does the trick, with a little spit thrown in to draw out the pain.

Everything in this world has a boundary. A bee, a flower, a field of stray cows and half broke horses, a little girl roaming the world barefoot.  Even the wilderness has its own kind of boundary called survival and our lives have a boundary, too, called death.

My best friend told me that I didn’t have a problem with setting boundaries, rather, I had boundary fatigue from other people trying to tear them down.

“There’s a difference?” I asked.

A beautiful, ripening tomato reaches its boundary for potential if it isn’t plucked off the vine within the window of its ripeness.  A storm reaches the boundary of its territory before conditions change and it dissipates. A whale will eventually reach the boundary of what seemed an endless sea when its migration is complete.

A person with great potential for love will put a boundary around her heart reasoning that it will keep others from coming near and perhaps wounding her more deeply than before. She thinks that she will not be able to bear the pain again. She feels stupid for forgetting the one thing she was never, ever supposed to forget. Little by little, by the grace of God, others who care for her dearly teach her how to build safe and healthy boundaries.

In my grown up life, I’ve learned that I can still walk barefoot in the grass, I just have to be careful around the clover. I’ve also learned that wherever there are domestic animals, there is likely going to be some kind of barrier, maybe even a high voltage one. I’m much more careful around farms. I’ve learned that it’s okay to set boundaries around my time, work, relationships and love. I have control of the voltage,  But I also realize that I can draw these boundaries way too firmly when I am too hurt, too lonely, too tired or too empty. Keeping healthy boundaries is all about keeping myself healthy.

It’s okay to make mistakes when we are trying to figure out where the boundary markers are. In fact, we most surely will draw our boundaries too firmly at first, or not enough. We learn, we try again, we observe ourselves, we reflect, we make adjustments. We learn balance as we go along. We most likely will not be very good at setting boundaries when we begin. But over time, we’ll get better. We’ll know what to do to get back on track.

These days, I keep a pouch of tobacco in my purse, strictly for medicinal purposes.

 

The Wounded Healer Within

The Wounded Healer Within

“Nobody escapes being wounded, we are all wounded people. Whether physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually. The main question is not, ‘How can we hide our wounds, or hide from them?’ but ‘how can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ 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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