The wait continues and my emotions go up and down.Today the chaplain visited. She told us we have good coping mechanisms. Though I don’t always feel it I know that it is true, and you are all helping. Prayer, long morning walks listening to the kookaburras and photographing the cockatoos on the roof, sharing the story on my blog and the writing of poetry all help. And now I find myself grieving for the things I could/should be doing – like preparing for the Celtic retreat next week and getting ready to go on vacation with Tom. Life does go on but it feels the fabric has been ripped.
Tears, tears, tears,
So many tears.
I shed them for my mother
And her suffering.
I shed them for myself
And the turmoil of my pain.
I shed them for my friend
Fresh diagnosed with cancer.
Tears that drain me dry,
Tears that shout this is not right,
Death does not conquer all,
Christ’s sacrifice is not in vain.
God has the final victory,
Death’s slow embrace,
Will give way to God’s eternal light.
In the last couple of days several people have sent me links to NPR host Scott Simon’s tweet feed about the death of his mother. Like me he has not been embarrassed to share openly the pain, the tears and the heartache of these final days. I read and cried through this poignant article of how his mother became the collective mother to 1.2 million people who followed Scott on twitter, finding great comfort in what he shared. Many of his followers I suspect remembered their own moments of loss and grief as they read what he wrote. Some I am sure will be better able to cope with death in the future as a result.
I too have been amazed by the comfort others find in my journey. It makes me realize how important it is to share these types of events. We are all vulnerable people, so afraid of death, embarrassed to share how deeply it scars us, afraid to admit the ache it leaves inside us. We go to great lengths to hide from it and to hide it from the world. Yet it is one of the few certainties of life.
Thank you for continuing to share this journey with me. I still have no idea how long my mother’s final journey will take. I would like it to be quick, I don’t want to see her suffer, but I also realize it is in God’s hands. Thank you for your prayers and support and comments – they are much appreciated.
I continue to sit by my mother’s bedside. Thank you for your prayers and supportiveness. Particularly appreciate this poem sent to me by Heather Jephcott
You Lord are my place of safety
Since finding you I need no other
Having experienced your shelter
I knew I need look no further
You keep me secure
locked in Your vastness
You are my maker, creator of all
the one whose giant hands
hold this entire magnificent universe
You not only made me
but gave to me a place of safety
a place where I am secure,
locked in this sanctuary
a place of peace, hope, love and joy
you not only hold the keys
but are this place
You save me from the onslaught of the dark
helping me to cope with times of sadness, difficulty
You are the rock on which I build my life
no shifting sand that varies with the days
but solid, safe, secure
You save me from the worst in me
keeping my brokenness for your use
within your kingdom
to remould it into something of beauty
where you are king and I am not alone
You fill me with hope
calmly expressing that you are
all the security I need now and
throughout the eternal ages
this hope glows bright now
becoming stronger, more dazzling
each passing day
On July 27th a dedicated team demonstrated the ultimate support for Mustard Seed Village by installing the final support beams on our first building.
Thanks to the extreme generosity of Greg and Nathan Abell, Martin Bayley, Brad Glenn, Dennis and Andrew Todd, and many others who have been praying and have helped in advising and procuring supplies, all the remaining beams were raised today by 4:30 p.m. Our team of volunteers were exhausted.
Tom exclaimed, “Thanks be to God for the miracle of having all the beams up!!!”
We are looking forward to seeing most of you at the annual Celtic Retreat, Saturday August 10 during which we’ll have a luncheon dedicating of the erection of our first facility in the Mustard Seed Village.
There are still plenty of opportunities to volunteer your construction talents to the project! Next up, we need to get the roof on as soon as possible! If you have carpentry skills and are interested, please contact us and let us know.
Thank you for your continued prayer as the Mustard Seed Village dream unfolds. You can join us in God-inspired future through prayer, volunteering as we continue construction on the village, and through contributing financially. If you haven’t already seen it, please check out Graham Kerr’s invitation to support construction of the village.
Check out more photos in this Facebook album
I am sitting here in the hospital beside my Mother’s bed watching her life slowly ebb away. It is only a month since our joyous celebration of her 90th birthday. Just after we left she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and her condition has declined rapidly.
It is the hardest but in some ways the most important thing I have ever done. I am now staying at the hospital sleeping on a couch beside her bed. Sometimes I read to her or recite her favourite poems. Sometimes I hug her and assure her of my love. She is still conscious and I thank God for these precious last days with her.
It hard to watch your mother die,
To watch the spark that gave me life
Grow dim.
To see the much loved face
Grow gaunt and lose its smile.
To hold the hands
That once held me in love
And try to comfort through the tears.
It is hard to watch a mother die,
To watch this last hard journey
Grow harder every day.
To know I will not share
Tomorrow’s moments of delight
Until I too prepare to cross the veil,
And on the other side
Find once more that loving smile.
Today’s post is by Kimberlee Conway Ireton, author of The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year and the forthcoming memoir Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis. Kimberlee is a regular contributor on prayer to this blog.
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
—Philippians 2:5
“Spiritual transformation in Christ moves toward the total interchange of our ideas and images for his.”
—Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart
As I drive home across the Ballard Bridge, a new billboard advert looms large in my vision. Most of the time, this billboard’s message is tame. Annoying, but nothing that jars or upsets me.
Today, though, my eyes are bombarded with the image of a beautiful woman in a sexually suggestive position and the enormous letters of a lascivious message, both of which are trying to tell me that if I buy this particular product, I’ll be a sex goddess like the model on the billboard.
I look away quickly as I realize what I’ve seen. I feel assaulted, this image calling to mind all manner of others I’ve seen over the years, all of them clamoring for my attention. These are not the thoughts I want to occupy my mind.
As my year of prayer unfolds, I want more and more to be more like Jesus, to have the mind of Christ. In Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard insists that our thoughts, when captured for Christ and fed on the images and ideas that Jesus himself fed on, will transform our entire lives. But he warns that there are special dangers that we must guard against. One of the gravest is the images we admit to our minds.
Images are powerful things. They make ideas concrete and accessible. In the case of this billboard, the image elevates the idea of sexiness to an ultimate good. And because images work on us at the level of emotion, they are not under rational control.
I have long known that what I see affects me deeply. It is why I long ago stopped watching TV news and later stopped watching TV altogether. What I am learning now is that I am not alone. Images affect everyone on a level that is beyond rational control, working deep within us to shape our ideas about reality—and so shape who we are.
This, I think, is why St. Paul exhorts the Philippians to focus their thoughts on good and true and beautiful things:
Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Phil 4:8)
Willard emphasizes that heeding St. Paul’s instructions “is a fundamental and indispensable part of our spiritual formation in Christ.” We become who we are largely because of the thoughts that fill our minds. And the thoughts that fill our minds in turn depend largely on the images we feed them.
This is why the billboard near the Ballard Bridge bugs me so much. And the thought that my six-year-old daughter and all three of my sons are seeing it, too, makes me sick to my stomach. Young as they are, that image is shaping them even more than it’s shaping me. It makes me angry.
But one thing my year of prayer is teaching me is that everything can be a call to prayer. So I take the sickness I feel in my stomach and I take my anger, and I let them direct my mind to Jesus.
Over the weeks since that billboard appeared, it has become a call to prayer. As much as possible, I studiously avoid even glancing at it as I drive across the bridge. Sometimes I forget it’s there, and I see it before I remember to look away. Either way, whether I see it or manage to avoid it imprinting on my brain again, I pray.
Mostly what I pray is the Jesus Prayer: O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Have mercy on us, sinners all. Have mercy on the men who see that billboard and are aroused by it. Have mercy on the women who see it and are ashamed of their own bodies because of it. Have mercy on the company who thought it would be a good idea to put up this billboard.
I can’t always control the images I see, but I can control how I consciously respond to them. I can let images both beautiful and base call me to prayer—beautiful images to praise and awe of our even more beautiful God; base images to intercession for our fallen world that so desperately needs Him to save us from ourselves.
If you want to join me in getting rid of the garbage that clutters our imaginations, why not begin by eliminating from your life one magazine, TV show, or website that regularly serves up ugliness, unkindness, or smut? It’s always a good idea to replace a bad habit or thought with a good one, so make a plan: what will you do during the times that you usually engage with these images you’re eliminating? You could read or memorize Scripture, pore over a favorite art book, or listen to a favorite piece of music—something that puts images of beauty, truth, nobility, and excellence into your mind instead.
In this final installment of our Pilgrim in Residence Series with Mary DeJong, Mary literally brings it home by painting a powerful picture of what it’s like to return from a journey and the impression our journeys have not only on our souls, but also on our communities and ultimately the world. Read Mary’s first post in this series here and her second post here.
If you’ve enjoyed her posts, you can learn more about her book or joining her on retreat or pilgrimage here and follow her blog here.
“IT IS A STRANGE THING TO COME HOME.
WHILE YET ON THE JOURNEY, YOU CANNOT AT ALL REALIZE HOW STRANGE IT WILL BE.”
-SELMA LAGERLOG (1858-1940)
COMING HOME: A STRANGE RETURN
It is in the going out that we discover what is really going on, both in our inner-heart’s landscape and in our physical home places. The journey away from home brings with it fresh perspectives and abilities to see our normal lives with a new sense of discovery and sensitivity. We return with a posture of being newly awakened — attuned to and aware of the Spirit all around us.
The daily challenge is to carry over the quality of the journey into everyday life. You want to integrate the new ways of being and thinking into your life as you move into the final stage of pilgrimage: reincorporation, or bringing back the boon.The intentional space created by a pilgrimage not only leaves a mark on our lives, but elbows out new permanent places in our spirit. So, while home once again, the hearth is not how we left it. And it will stay in a state of strangeness until we are able to assimilate our lessons and experiences into stories of transformation and actions of justice.
Pilgrims return home with wisdom and the driving responsibility to share the truth gleaned from the profound experiences of the pilgrimage. The story that we bring back from our journeys is the boon.There is a universal code of sorts, which requires the pilgrim to “share whatever wisdom you’ve been blessed with on your journey with those who are about to set out on their own journey” (Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage).
The challenge, and bitter truth, of coming home from a pilgrimage is that we soon learn that what is a pearl to us is mere pennies to others, especially if our epiphanies are conveyed as nothing more than novel curios. But how can we even begin to describe the depths to which our soul has traveled? Ultimately, it is our changed life that must tell the story of our journey; no picture slide show or souvenir will scratch the surface of the truth found at the sacred center.
Because of this journey to the sacred center, and the perils experienced to get there, you are transformed. And because you have changed, so will your home. You have encountered the Holy-experienced God in a fresh new way, and as a result of your sacrifice and struggle, you will not relate to your world or those in it as you did before.
Your challenge is to now live into the new edges of your life, inhabiting the unfamiliar spaces created by pushing through the trails of your inner-soul landscape. These are the places where dynamic opportunities lay for you to share your wisdom and bring back the boon of your journey. You must create new ways of relating to your home – to those within it and surrounding it, which are imbued with the meaning of your journey.
In Joseph Campbell’s popular book of essays, Myths to Live By, he described something pertinent to our theme of sacred journeys: “The ultimate air of the quest if one is to return, must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.” This parallels the belief of the ancient wisdom teachers that the ultimate answer to the sorrows of the world is the boon of increased self-knowledge.
Interestingly enough, this responsibility resonates with Frederick Buechner’s definition of vocation as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” It seems clear that the great value of a pilgrimage is to return with a knowledge of self that will enable one to engage the world’s needs in an authentic and passionate way.
Upon re-crossing the threshold home, the mystical methods of pilgrimage begin to unravel. The freedom from systems and modes begins to dissipate as sacred time quickly returns to linear time, and sacred space is replaced with vistas of cityscapes. It is all one can do to refrain from hiking the pack right back onto the shoulders and heading straight back out the door. It becomes evidently clear that there is real work involved in unpacking the gifts of the journey and relating them to our homescapes.
For years I have been challenged with the notion that ultimately, the pilgrimage calls us to return home and live forward on behalf of something other and greater than ourselves. This idea that the road out actually causes us to be beholden to something back home is something that I’ve been personally working on for years. For our lives to truly reincorporate and reflect the stories of our journeys there must be effects behind and beyond our front doors; if there isn’t, the travels and travails of the road quickly get reduced to petty ramblings and narcissistic knock abouts.
Ultimately, the greatest influence we can have on ourselves, our families, and the world around us is to live out the effects of our sacred journey on behalf of Other and the Future. I acknowledge that this could appear trite and formulaic; however, the notion’s simplicity allows for a focus of energy around a transformed state.
I believe that when Campbell talks about a “wisdom and power to serve others” on account of our wayfaring, he is getting at a fundamental aspect of the gift of pilgrimage. We go out on these personal, intimate soul-adventures to connect to God in fresh, inspired ways. But if these encounters aren’t having a greater result on the world around us, they are worthless. I believe that by applying our gained wisdom on behalf of Other and the Future, we are re-gifting our communities and the earth with our God-given blessings encountered on the road.
Living on behalf of Other and the Future is a scalable metaphor; that is, it may refer to simply anyone or anything other than yourself and decisions that impact the future. In broader, and more challenging terms, “Other and the Future” is a way of embracing all of life, especially those that are without voice and marginalized in society, and intentionally orienting lifestyle decisions that will have a positive outcome on our earth and future generations.
As a result, our personal sacred journey is global in both scope and impact, and we are invited to transformative micro-practices that overhaul how we view our homes and home environments. Our return home requires us to leave the door open to the world just beyond its threshold, maintaining a posture of looking out for opportunities to give of our blessings.
SET UP WAYMARKS FOR YOURSELF,
MAKE YOURSELF GUIDEPOSTS:
CONSIDER WELL THE HIGHWAY,
THE ROAD BY WHICH YOU WENT.
-JEREMIAH 31:21
We long for and are called to a journey that will not only renew and refresh us, but also transform the very lives of those around us. The gifts of the pilgrim’s path are ultimately not to be pocketed away and subsequently displayed like a well-traveled trinket or souvenir. The ancient call to go on pilgrimage is ultimately an archetypal instigator to recover one’s sense of self through God so that, upon returning home, the boon of the journey can be translated for the benefit of the greater good, for the common good, for all and for our future. Other and the Future become touchstones for our journey, tangible waymarkers to which we can apply our transformed lives.
Through the ancient practice of pilgrimage, we are challenged to live forward into deeper understanding of ourselves and our God-given talents and gifts. Because the inner-journey has righted priorities and passions, we embrace the gift of relationships in our lives — loving and respecting those who have been given to us to nurture. We answer the call to apply our gained wisdom to justice, knowing that however we employ our calling that it must somehow serve the Other – those surrounding us in need of a voice and advocacy. We respond to the realities of our planet with care, concern and conviction, knowing that if we don’t, our children’s earth-home will be one less hospitable and fecund. We leave home on our journey only to come back with a greater sense of it, with a greater impression of how to serve it, and an inspired way of how to live in it. We live forward with a renewed sense of knowing home.
__________________________________________________
GO FURTHER…
Questions to contemplate about your journey…
How will home be different after I return?
How will I be different after my return?
To whom am I beholden and how can I live on behalf of these relationships
to revitalize my personal homescape?
Questions to reflect on in the comments below…
What were the waymarkers that truly transformed you?
In what ways can you continue living forward out of these places of transformation?
– See more at: http://asacredjourney.net/2013/07/mary-dejong-3/#sthash.PbKnaUHT.dpuf
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