For many of us, this past year has felt like we have been in a desert. The familiar routines and ways of life have gone and in their place, boredom for some, and for others, the stressful juggle of home education and work – a number of us are struggling with the financial implications of Covid-19, and loneliness, anxiety and even despair have become our constant companions.
I see this season as a wilderness and I name it such because we have been thrown off course, our plans and goals and dreams are on hold, as though we have wandered from the path and unwittingly, we have stumbled into an unknown terrain. This alien territory throws much at us, and seems to have also sucked much from us.
We find ourselves, perhaps, in a landscape that looks, and certainly feels desolate, unfamiliar and bewildering. We do the daily things that we need to do for our families and for our homes, but these things are not necessarily life giving – this uninvited and unexpected new normal has brought with it pain and sadness, confusion and loss – a weariness hangs over us all, and lack of connection, leaves us feeling empty, and we are grieving.
I have two choices in my response to the landscape that I have been thrust into – I can embrace it and surrender myself to life in this wasteland and to what it potentially might produce in me, or I can struggle with it and kick against it, yielding to the inevitability of loss and isolation. I can plough my own furrow, or choose to adopt a different posture.
I also know, in my head, at least, that Abba Father has not sidelined me, overlooked or forgotten me. He has not abandoned me or given up on me. It is not that He doesn’t know what to do with me. He is not shocked or surprised at what we are all going through, at the difficult decisions we are having to make and at having to bear the consequences of the careless actions of others.
In many ways, we have been stripped and are left bare and naked, because in the desert there is nowhere to hide. The real me is being exposed and I believe that God is posing two questions. To those who have ears to hear, He asks, ‘Am I enough and do you trust me?’. Deep restoration is found here, in the answer. YES, you have to be enough, and YES, I choose to trust you. It is in this YES, whispered perhaps, tentatively at first, but nonetheless voiced from a profound need for encounter and connection, that our hearts can start to heal.
On those days when I am low, I have to choose Him – how can I yield to one that I do not trust? Sometimes these places and seasons of being stripped cause us to turn again, and see what was there all along, though we knew it not. God wants us – a people for Himself. This is all He has ever wanted. I don’t think He cares too much about what we do for Him. His longing is that our hearts be His, and in this, there is wholeness.
Abraham. Moses. Joshua. Jacob. Joseph. David. John. Desert experiences feature in all their stories – it refined them and strengthened them. It honed them and humbled them. The desert prepared them for what lay ahead, and ultimately, it formed them.
Let us not waste our sojourn in this particular wilderness. Let us allow Him to hold us and watch over us, to feed us and care for us, that it, too, may become a redemptive part of our story. I pray for me, and for you, that as we collectively navigate this harsh landscape, we would allow ourselves to be nourished by God alone, and there, that we would find healing.
He found him in a desert land,
And in the howling waste of a wilderness;
He encircled him, He cared for him,
He guarded him as the pupil of His eye.
Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
That hovers over its young,
He spread His wings and caught them,
He carried them on His pinions.
The LORD alone guided him,
And there was no foreign god with him.
He made him ride on the high places of the earth, And he ate the produce of the field;
And He made him suck honey from the rock,
And oil from the flinty rock,
Curds of cows, and milk of the flock,
With fat of lambs,
And rams, the breed of Bashan, and goats,
With the finest of the wheat—
And of the blood of grapes you drank wine. (Deut 32:10-14)
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by June Friesen, photo by June Friesen,
As I look back over the years of my life many things have captured my attention and time. Those things have changed with time because of where I lived, my age, the age of family, events in the lives of people around me and in the world. While the past year in which we have experienced incredible changes not only personally but also within community these affected each one of us in different ways because we are unique and different.
In order to embrace healing as we move forward, there will no doubt be things in our lives as individuals that will be different. Each one of us will heal differently and at different times. As I think back to an event in my life that happened over ten years ago, I too had to make a definite decision that would/could affect whether I would ever walk again; or if I walked what kind of mobility I would have.
photo by June Friesen
Hiking in Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley with my daughter in law and granddaughter, a step on a leaf covered path had a branch hidden by leaves, my ankle turned, I fell, sitting right on my ankle and heard a snap. As I pulled out my leg I knew I was in trouble… stubborn as I am I crawled up to the cabin where my son awaited to transport me to the hospital. The whole story in itself is one miracle after another. However, the greatest miracle of all is that the orthopedic surgeon said the morning after surgery that it was a real mess and he did not know if I would ever walk again; or at least normally. As an active walker, I decided immediately that I would follow all directions given (as patients tend not to do) and within a year, I was not only walking but also running and jumping – not bad for being 60 years old and still today I can walk, hike, run and jump. BUT the KEY to all of that was following instructions plus prayer.
My friends, the key to all healing and wholeness, whether physical or spiritual, is following instructions. During the past year, we have struggled with a contagious disease that spread worldwide and has changed the course of every life worldwide. For many, it has also affected their spiritual life. The Psalmist shares some encouragement for us in Psalm 51.
Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life. Tune me in to foot-tapping songs, set these once-broken bones to dancing. Don’t look too close for blemishes, give me a clean bill of health. God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don’t throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails! Give me a job teaching rebels your ways so the lost can find their way home. Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God, and I’ll sing anthems to your life-giving ways. Unbutton my lips, dear God; I’ll let loose with your praise.
There are so many different pictures here and since each one of us is different, we will find the healing in our lives differently than another. Are you and I open to taking action in following God’s direction/instruction that applies to our particular situation? Maybe one needs to clear out the negative thoughts that have been nurtured during this past year. Maybe one needs to mend their spiritual relationship with God or maybe with another/other persons that have been hindered/broken this past year. Many times, I have heard the past year referred to as being a time of chaos. God has now opened the door for us to another year. God is offering to us a new beginning. God has given us all life experiences. These are all gifts that will enable us to find healing. This is an opportunity for us to enable a fresh start/beginning for God. Let us embrace God’s instructions to us so as the Psalmist ends – ‘our lips too will be unbuttoned and let loose with God’s praise.’ Amen.
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by Kate Kennington Steer, all images by Kate Kennington Steer,
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another fight.
If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain,
Winter won’t come again.
(Traditional)
It has been a very grey January outside my window, and although I resist turning on a light as soon as I wake up in the morning then leaving it on all day beside my bed, there have been some days where the daylight grey has rendered it impossible to read, even at midday, without the imposition of electricity. I hear my anger rage at the blankness of a filled-in sky driving me to consume earth’s precious resources. I catch sight of my disappointment when it feels like it has rained every day for six weeks and I have not seen the sun. I surprise myself with the resentment I feel when putting on a light, and its reminder of my dis-ease with shadows and penumbra inside and outside of myself; and of my reaching for easy hope, a quick fix, rushing to push past any grief, refusing to look at the hurts, declining the opportunity to ‘sit with’ the uncomfortable.
I note all this resistance in me as I continue to watch the light’s fall across the second half of my year’s exploration of the equinoxes, solstices, and the Celtic practices that surround the celebration of the ‘cross-quarter’ days marking the midpoints in between.
February 1st/2nd/3rd offers up multiple gifts to this season of grey: the Feast Day of St Brigid; Candlemas (the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Feast of the Holy Encounter); the Celtic festival of Imbolc; and lastly, the Saints day of Simeon and Anna. All four are intimately connected.
In 2015, I wrote a piece for the Godspace blog on Saint Brigid and her primary work as healer. She is known as the saint of birthing mothers, and her Feast traditionally marked the beginning of Spring. Named after Brig, the Celtic Goddess of Fire, she became the ‘bridge’ between Celtic and Christian communities in Ireland. Fire is also an important element of Candlemas, since as the name suggests, it was the day all the church candles were blessed. It is a Church feast day intimately connected with Mary, the mother of Jesus, as it celebrates her ritual cleansing and re-entry into the public life of the Jewish Temple, as well as the formal service of presentation of her baby to the priests and Temple congregation. There feels like so much richness to explore in this ‘co-incidence’ between the coming of light out of darkness and the celebration of the sacred feminine. As at so many other Celtic ritual occasions, fire marks Imbolc as the festival of Light. Lastly, light is central to the rituals enacted around the Feast Day of Simeon and Anna, the elder and the prophetess who witnessed the child Jesus’s entry into Temple life, who are known for recognising, articulating and proclaiming this Jesus as the bringer of Light in the Darkness, that fulfilment of the Old Testament’s promise of a Messiah (Luke 2:22-40).
Imbolc, meaning ‘in the belly’, brings an invitation to allow my body to be a vital guide for this ‘dark’ half of the Celtic year; it invites me to express both the dark and the light, the winter and the spring, through my body. The quality of light from November to February has a felt impact on my body, my mind and my spirit. My seeing is transfigured because of light’s blankness and flatness on grey days, and its low, acute, blinding angles on days where clear winter bright light appears. Yet discerning what ‘wisdom of the gut’ my body is trying to direct me towards, is something I find much harder to see. What in me needs ritual cleansing perhaps? What in me needs celebrating? What in me needs proclaiming?
All I know is that the very fallowness of winter is an invitation to rest in what I do not know. In this rest there is a paradoxical urgency which I must heed, before I make any habitual mad dash towards spring and all the symbols of hope offered by that season. For there is hope to be found in the stripped back, stark skeletons of winter, where what is spare and sparse is what is revealed to be beautiful, if I have eyes to see. In this season, there may be years where the seed has already been planted deep underground, and is already growing, unseen and unfelt, in the dark. Yet, this season also offers the possibility of jubilee, a year where the earth is not forced to be productive, where the year offers the possibility of restoration and restitution to the land, and all those who might glean from its dark riches.
This too is the eternal truth at the heart of the Feast of the Holy Encounter. Simeon the elder names the Christ-child as a light for revelation. Yet this light does not have the quickly graspable qualities of hope, or the glory of what Barbara Brown Taylor calls ‘solar Christianity’. Simeon prophesies that the Messiah is ‘a sign that will be opposed … so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed’ (Luke 2.34-5 NRSV) or as The Message translates this verse:
This child marks both the failure and
the recovery of many in Israel,
A figure misunderstood and contradicted—
the pain of a sword-thrust through you—
But the rejection will force honesty,
as God reveals who they really are.
I am stunned to realise that God is working with my default behaviour, my defensiveness, my stubborn rejections, my negative reaction to whatever God may be unfolding if it involves undergoing any kind of pain or discomfort. Further, I am staggered that it is not the fact of the Christ’s existence which is to be the revelation; he is the revealer, yes, but it is we who are to be the revelation: our innermost thoughts are, our True Selves are. And this unveiling will happen through misunderstandings, through contradictions, defensive rejections, and hurts: in other words the holy is hiding amidst all my shadow places… amongst all the tones of grey… amongst all the dark middle miles of my intestines, ‘in the belly’ is all the places I do not want to look.
Behold, grey might be a vehicle for revelation as much as any other colour. Grey can be a Christ-carrier in even its most unappealing state: it does not have to be pierced through or burned off or diluted, it is holy as it is, and it can bring ‘recovery’.
So the wisdom my gut offers me this year is that the beginning of February is a smorgasbord feast full of multiple offerings and opportunities for a holy encounter, for an #epiphanyoftheordinary to be released through the tiny flame of the candle before me. What waits to be revealed as holy is already redeemed, that fire is already lit within me, if I will only open my eyes, heart and gut to receive the vision and be wholed.
So let the holy encounter with the very belly of winter begin.
Did you miss the first post for today? Check out Ron Friesen’s post: Do You Want to Be Healed?
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guest post and photo above by Ron Friesen,
Photo: Virginia G. Piper Chapel, St. Vincent de Paul Dining Room, Phoenix, AZ
It is a beautiful, spring Sunday morning in the Virginia G. Piper Chapel on the campus of the St. Vincent de Paul Dining Room on the Human Service Campus, a 13-acre campus that serves between 600 – 1,000 people experiencing homelessness.
As a chaplain with people experiencing homelessness, one of my joys is to lead the chapel. On this day, I have planned to add an anointing service to the worship experience. David joins me and leads the small group of six men in a few choruses and hymns.
As I stand at the small lectern, I am overcome by the smells not uncommon among those experiencing homelessness. Sitting about four feet from me to my right is a man, probably in his mid-50s’s, who brings with him a very strong odor. It is more than just not having a bath for a few days.
I share a short homily based on the Gospel narrative of the lame man lying at the pool of Bethsaida. Here is the narrative:
Sometime later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. [4] [b] 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:1-6).
Jesus asks the paralyzed man, “Do you want to get well?” When I share in a small group, I ask for interaction. We talk about the price this man would have to pay if, indeed, Jesus heals him. I am sure he was known in the community as the “lame man by the pool.” Who would he be after he was no longer lame? Some admit that being healed of their addictions, broken relationships and other issues might undo their identities of themselves and in their community.
After the homily, I ask if any of the worshippers wish to be anointed for healing. Slowly, one by one they come forward. I anoint each man and pray with them. The gentleman whose presence had caught my attention was the last to come forward.
As I anointed him, he wept. I put my arm around his shoulders, he put his head on my shoulder as I prayed for him. As we walk out of the chapel, I notice I don’t smell the odor that filled my being when he walked in. Walking toward the main campus, he says to me, “This is the first day in my life I have felt really loved.”
A one-time encounter. Not unlike the many one-time encounters we read about in the Gospel narratives. I never met this man again.
I wonder if, he, the “never loved one” fully embraced his new identity as “the beloved?’
What of you and I? If Jesus came into our lives, how would we answer his question, “Do you want to be well?”
What self-identity or community identity have we bought into? What is the price of being healed?
Bio for Ron Friesen
Ron Friesen, a native of British Columbia, Canada, has resided in Phoenix, Arizona since 1981. As an ordained minister with Mennonite Church, USA, Ron has served as a pastor, hospital chaplain, hospice chaplain and a chaplain with people experiencing homelessness. The last twenty-two years, Ron has been a bi-vocational minister while he worked as a professional mental health counselor in a community health center, a psychiatric hospital and a prison. Ron continues to be an adjunct professor at Grand Canyon University. Ron recently became a Certified Spiritual Director through the Christian Formation and Direction Ministry – Arizona.
Ron is married to June Friesen, a frequent contributor to Godspace. They are the parents of two adult sons and the proud grandparents of two girls who live with their parents in northern Virginia. Ron recently took up photography and hiking as a hobby. Ron’s life purpose is “Love God, love those who love God, and love those who don’t know God loves them.”
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by Christine Sine,
I love breath prayers and the exercises they encourage me to create. I have several that I use on a regular basis especially, at the moment, when such exercises are one of the top recommendations for coping with the stress and anxiety of this season.
I often adapt the breath prayers and the exercises I create in conjunction with them, to the liturgical season in which I find myself or might use invitational prayers to welcome the presence of God in the rhythm of my life. I have prayers for welcoming the new year, for spring, summer, autumn and winter. I have others for seasons of grief and pain or anxiety. All these help me not just to centre myself on God but also remind me that God is present in all the seasons of the year and of my life.
Today’s exercise is adapted from a prayer posted on Facebook by my friend, Bob Holmes, otherwise known as The Contemplative Monk.
A breath prayer is a simple practice that provides a way to leave behind our rational, linear-thinking minds and aline more intimately with our spirits and the spirit of the living God. It encourages us to let our words and our intellect fade away and invites us into holy presence and spirit-filled being.
For this breath prayer, you will need a quiet and comfortable place in which to sit, a candle to light, some quiet contemplative music to listen to and a shawl or blanket to wrap yourself in.
We will begin with a prayer of invitation. The prayer I am using was written to welcome the new year but I continue to use it as a reminder that the year is still emerging in every new day, a sentiment that was reinforced for me as I read Psalm 50:1 (TPT) recently.
The God of gods, the mighty Lord himself, has spoken!
He shouts out over all the people of the earth
In every brilliant sunrise and ever beautiful sunset,
Saying, “Listen to me!” (Ps50:1 TPT)
You may prefer to begin with another Psalm like Psalm 23 or engage in another practice that enables you to relax into the peace of stillness. “The monastics call this entering the cave of our heart. The Franciscans sometimes pray with their head lower than their heart to remind themselves that it’s our heart first in approaching God.” (Bob Holmes)
I am posting this in both video and written form because I thought that some of you, like me might prefer to listen to rather than have to read through the exercise, particularly if you decide to use it on a regular basis over several days.
Let us begin:
Make yourself comfortable, light your candle, wrap yourself in your blanket or shawl, take a couple of deep breaths in and out, relax with the sound of your quiet music and enter the cave of your heart with a prayer.
A new day dawns,
A new year emerges.
Let us open our eyes and our ears.
To see and to hear.
There is hope
In every sunrise and every sunset
All around the world.
The light of hope will guide us.
Let us enter the cave of our hearts,
Entwine our hearts with God’s,
And allow the eternal in us
To welcome the wonder of each day.
Sit quietly, with your hands in you lap, palms facing upwards in a position of receptivity. Relax your shoulders, your jaw and other muscles where tension accumulates.
Relax and breathe.
Take three deep breaths slowly in through your nose and out through your mouth. Follow your breath into your lungs and imagine it infusing your blood and flowing into your heart. Release the weight of the day and slowly center yourself into the cave of your heart.
Breathe in the wonder of this moment.
Let the stillness soak into your being.
Slowly breathe out the fears and anxieties of the past.
Turn your thoughts away from your concerns for the future.
And allow your breathing to settle into a slow natural rhythm, breathing in, breathing out.
Breathe in your awareness of God’s forgiveness.
Breathe out, let go of what holds you bound.
Breathe in your trust in God’s guidance,
breathe out thanksgiving and gratitude.
Hold the name of Jesus in your hands.
Savour the specialness of his companionship.
Loving, compassionate, caring.
Imagine him walking beside you.
Let your face relax into a soft smile
Breathe in quietly saying “Je…” and out again saying “…sus”.
Allow the rhythm of your breathing to take you deeper and deeper into the divine presence.
Hold your shawl or blanket closely around you.
Embrace the presence of Jesus around you and in you.
Imagine him guiding you into the eternal arms of God.
Sense God welcoming you with divine healing and comfort.
You are Beloved, you belong, you are home.
Breathe… embracing your belonging,
Release your gratitude like a dove.
Breathe… allow yourself to feel the joy of God’s presence rejoicing in you.
You are precious in God’s sight.
Take your time, savour this moment of intimacy with the divine.
Soak in the presence of God, breathing in and breathing out.
With your inward breath saying “Je…” and with your outward “…sus”.
“Let all else fall away as you rest in divine presence, being, belonging, home and at peace.”
End with this prayer:
Deep peace, O creator of light.
Deep peace, O giver of life.
Deep peace, O lover of souls.
Let your peace reside in the depths of my being
And take root in the center of my heart.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us and abide in us forever.
Amen.
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breath prayer cards
Here is this week’s contemplative service from St Andrews Episcopal Church in Seattle. Enjoy! And in case you wonder about the feature photo I post each week – this is of the beautiful stain glass window at the back of the sanctuary at St Andrews Episcopal church. I love the elements of cross and world and holy spirit all woven together.It can provide a powerful image for reflection and contemplation.
A contemplative service with music in the style-of-Taize for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. Carrie Grace Littauer, prayer leader, with music by Kester Limner and Andy Myers.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756 with additional notes below.
“Tis a Gift to Be Simple” – The traditional words and music of this folk song are from the American Shaker tradition, public domain.
“Deep Peace” – is a Celtic blessing song with text and music by Ray Makeover, copyright 2009, Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.
“Christe Lux Mundi (Christ You are Light)” is a song from the Taize Community. Copyright and all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé.
“Kyrie for January 31, 2021” – Text and music by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY).
“This is My Father’s World” – is an American hymn with text and music by The Rev. Maltbie Davenport Babcock, 1901, public domain. This alternate arrangement is by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY)
Thank you for praying with us!
I am always intrigued to see what the next Godspacelight theme might be and the direction in which it might send me. This most recent one, Time to Heal, sent me spinning more than a little.
Let me explain. It will say more about me than those who decide the theme, but I heard it in a particular way – as a command, rather than an invitation. Rather like an irate parent who declares, after much procrastinating on the part of a stubborn child, ‘Time for bed!’ I heard something I am sure was not intended – an expectation that we had had quite enough time to feel our pain and needed to get on with our healing.
I know that is not what was meant. It is a script which comes from childhood years, where I was encouraged to not make a fuss, and suffering was minimized as a protection for my parents. So I easily hear to get on, not to dwell, lest I be holding my own pity party.
But I’m not ready to move on from this season. Here in the UK, numbers are still catastrophic. Lives and businesses have been lost. Children are missing school friends and growing up with words like ‘lockdown’ at the front of their vocabulary and trying to ascertain whether the adults behind masks are smiling. The corporate anxiety is palpable. Living on the outskirts of a city and not allowed to travel, I’m longing to see the sea, always my place to encounter God. At times, I’m indescribably sad, though at others I can distract myself in various ways.
So I had decided I could not contribute this time. Until I suddenly realised there is another way to hear that phrase. Not ‘Time to heal – hurry up!’, but ‘It takes time to heal’. Of course! Yes, that I understand only too well. A lot of time. Much more than people think.
William Worden describes the tasks of mourning, a more helpful way to think about it, in my view, than the rather linear way that the oft-quoted stages of grief can appear to be. The first is to accept the reality of the loss: which in this pandemic is not just the tragic toll of death, but so much more. Loss of confidence, of hope, of connection in so many ways. You will have your own list. Take a moment to voice it. The second is accepting and working through the pain. This takes equal amounts of courage and time. Courage not to plaster over the cracks but allow ourselves to feel all that is there and find honest and real ways to express it. Time both because we will not be able to face it all at once and because things will slowly emerge we have not yet seen. Only then can we begin the equally brave task of adjusting to new ways of being which comprise Worden’s next two stages.
God, it seems to me, never rushes us. Jesus walked with his disciples on the road to Emmaus and heard their story, only then putting their sadness in the context of the greater picture of God’s story. So wherever you are on the journey to recovery from this pandemic, or if like me you have not even started it, know that you are held in the arms of a gracious God who holds all your tears in His bottle and who knows your story – past, present, and all that is yet to come. He will help you write the next chapter.
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