I remember the first conference that CFDM NW held for spiritual direction training. It was retreat based and we were together for a week. It was twenty years ago and two days into our retreat, 9/11 happened.

As we sat together in grief and stunned silence, we began to learn about discernment. We also began to learn about hope. Gerald May writes about John of the Cross in “The Dark Night of the Soul” saying in John’s thinking, “memory is not just a storehouse for experience; based on the past, it also fuels the imagination in looking to the future. Memory is the ground of dreaming.”

We dreamed that God was doing something outside of our understanding and yet we would be held. Remembering faithfulness in the past that fuels our imagination of a future in which God is still the same – active and present, will love us into the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free… (Gal 5:1)

Disruptions in life are guaranteed. Currently mine include a pandemic, of course; a spouse’s imminent retirement; a litter of seven puppies—very busy Mini Australian Shepherds; and why not develop a serious gardening addiction to ensure there is no margin…?!

Yet amid this whirling dervish, I left a masked birthday party recently with a lighter step, and humming, “This is how it feels to be free,” a Phillips, Craig and Dean tune from long ago.

“Free from what?” the person beside me asked.

“Hatred, I guess,” I said, surprised at my own answer. I knew there was unresolved tension in the relationship with another guest, but I wouldn’t have named it hatred! Yet the expansive sense of loving freedom where there had been a decade-old barrier, begged for a term of equal intensity in contrast. It was a given moment when grace prevailed, and we simply stepped in.

How is it that we can live so fully in the wonder of grace, yet harbor pockets of sludge that cloud parts of the image of Christ being revealed in all of us? Thus is the state of our beauty and brokenness.

The older I get and the more I reflect on my own journey with God the more I realize how often I have misunderstood or misconstrued some of the fundamental truths of who God is and how God interacts with the world. I have sometimes made subtle assumptions that may seem connected to deep truth but in reality do not reflect the essence of truth. They end up creating a kind of shadow version of reality. A “dark side” if you will that, left unchecked and unexamined, can create a vision of life that is anything but 20/20.

One of these assumptions I am now trying to re-think has to do with an understanding of creation that I have unwittingly allowed to shape my awareness and experience of God in ways that actually do more harm than good.

In a recent re-reading of the final chapters of Acts, I was struck anew by how frequently the winds are against Paul as he travels toward Rome. It’s a story of struggle, of being slowed down, losing all your cargo, two weeks adrift, seasick, shipwrecked, and eventually being dumped off in a port and having to walk the rest of the way.

Oh boy does that sound like life! Just when you think you have your sails trimmed perfectly to the wind, a health crisis shifts the wind, or strife in a relationship worsens, or a job or vocation loss causes waves to slop over the side of your boat and you’re swamped. Or a global pandemic uphinges everything and you don’t know which way is up.

Paul and his shipmates are at a port named Fair Havens. For some reason, and against Paul’s advice (because after all, what’s better than the advice of a tentmaker and religious zealot when it comes to maritime navigation?), the centurion in charge decides that they should push ahead to Phoenix to wait through the winter months. Now I agree that wintering in Phoenix is better than summering there (just kidding--this isn’t THAT Phoenix!), but why would anyone think that wintering in a place named “Fair Havens” wouldn’t be lovely?

I am a member of a Zoom discussion, prayer group that meets weekly, dealing with the issues surrounding our personal, racial understandings and our nations difficulties concerning racial hatred. This past week we had a very lively conversation around our nation’s longstanding violence toward Asians. As we neared the end of our time, I suggested that we spend some time in silence, after which we began to share with one another what God might have been saying to us during that time.

Racial problems seem so deep and so difficult to heal, and I commented that I need to learn to trust that God will show us how we are to proceed. A member of the group lovingly suggested that what we are doing is what God wants of us at this time. She said that we are on a journey together of prayer, learning and discovery and God is present in this moment, with us now, not simply in the future.

“What if we view this desert of Lent as not just a time to reflect or to lament, or to confess or to fast, but a time where we learn to be free?” – Megan Westra

Cari*, my seventh-grade friend, was from a big and big-hearted Catholic family. She ate fish on Fridays and “gave up something for Lent.” Weird, I thought. Too bad she isn't a Christian. We don’t have to follow all those rules. (Ours were normal rules like “girls don’t wear pants or cut their hair” and “no watching Bonanza on Sunday nights”…) Later my friend, Diane*, also Catholic, did the same. Neither explained to my satisfaction the why behind the practice, so I dismissed it as an archaic custom for the uninitiated. (Click here for more on Lent.)

Curiosity about the origins and beauty of Christian traditions beyond my own, found me in the second half of life. I could hear Paul (Ephesians 4) telling me that the church in the world is Christ’s “body” not our brilliant enterprise, that each has something to contribute and much to learn from one another about what it means to experience the life of God--for ourselves and for the sake of others. I listened—mostly.

Ah, February, the month we celebrate love. Valentine’s Day comes with so many expectations. Or maybe none, if we are protecting ourselves from disappointment or a rejection of a “manmade artifice”. It may even come with no thought of it at all, until we walk into a store showering us with ploys to buy hearts filled with chocolate or the perfect card professing our love. Or during a pandemic, the on-line site inviting us to buy, buy, buy; so that our loved one feels loved.

I have been slowly savoring The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty, a beautiful book by German author and luthier, Martin Schleske. Schleske shares stories from his life as a violin maker — a luthier — making deep connections to the spiritual life. He tells of the adventures he and generations of luthiers have had finding their own “singing trees” — trees that luthiers know have the best wood for making violins.

”The heart of a violin maker comes to life when he searches, with all his senses attuned, for the wood for his own violins”, says Schleske.

He describes the posture needed on your search as, “the Law of Grace, which says: you are powerless to create the essential things, you can only receive them. But you can make yourself receptive.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” - Luke 2:13-14

This year, it may seem particularly difficult to find joy. So much of what we have come to expect from the season looks different this year. Family traditions are frayed; in some cases, this holiday season is unrecognizable from what it has “always" been.

Yet the angels still sing! Joy isn’t dependent upon happy feelings. Joy lives deep in our hearts and can be present whether we feel happy or sad. Joy is a Fruit of the Spirit, given by the Holy Spirit as we lean into relationship with God.

The U.S. presidential election is imminent. If there is anything that reminds us we are ultimately not in charge of outcomes, it is world events. Thus, we continue to experience higher than normal levels of physical, socio-political and economic uncertainty. The prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray can help us become individuals who rest in the love of God in uncertain times. It can help us become people who express God’s love when we find ourselves at odds with those who hold perspectives different from our own.