All Some Wonder

All some wonder ... that's what it said ... I swear.

(You have to know your hymns to appreciate this post ... I'm just saying.)

So here's what happened.  I'm going to preside over a Memorial Service for the very first time on Monday.  It won't actually be at the church, but at the nearby homeless shelter.

And since it's at the homeless shelter, I have to come up with my own music.  Ah ... no problem.  I have an ipod and one of those really cool ipod stereos.

Of course, I have to print up a lyrics sheet too.  And that's when the Twilight Zone hit.

How Great Thou Art ... that was the hymn I needed lyrics for.  I had downloaded Loretta Lynn's version of it from itunes, so of course I googled "loretta lynn how great thou art lyrics."  Afterall, I wanted to get her version.

A myriad of sites popped up.

I clicked on the first one, blocked out the lyrics, and pasted them into the Word document I had prepared.  I read the lyrics and hummed to myself as I formatted the page.

Oh Lord my God ... When I in all some wonder ...

WHOA, wait a minute.  All some wonder?  That's not right, is it?

I googled the lyrics again.  This time, I went to a different site.  And there it was ... I'll be darned.  "When I am all some wonder."

Dear God, you can't tell me I've been singing the wrong words all of these years!

I panicked.  Then I looked at the words again.  What the heck is the theology behind God's all some wonder?

Is it like, "You know, we all need us some wonder ... all some wonder"

Or maybe, "all ... some ... whatever ... regardless of the number ... it's wonder!"

Since I couldn't make the theological connection, I reasoned that those words couldn't be right.

So I googled again.  This time I left the "Loretta Lynn" part off.  And then I thought, wait a minute, duh, I have a hymnal right here!  I flipped to the back, found "How Great Thou Art," flipped forward again ... and ... and ...

VINDICATED.

You know that feeling of "everything is right with the world?"  Yeah, that's how it felt.

All some wonder ... it's an interesting concept, but nowhere near as profound as Awesome Wonder.

God, Change My Thinking

During the last 6 ½ years that I have been involved in ministry to women recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, I’ve had the opportunity to hear every story imaginable and see every human reaction to that story imaginable.

I see the women struggling to understand what God is “doing” in the midst of it all.  Some are convinced God has packed up and left town.  Others, on the opposite extreme, find a peculiar comfort in the idea that God has “sent” this situation upon them in order to “test” them.  However, recovering addicts are not the only people who pitch their tents at either of these two emotional and spiritual extremes.  For many of us (myself included), emotional reactivity is often the name of the game.

I remember the first time I heard someone speak to the idea of being emotionally high.  It seems that we can become addicted to our emotional reactivity.  One reason is that our emotional reactivity is so familiar and ingrained into our hard-wiring, changing it can be as challenging as changing which hand we use to hold our fork.

This brings me to my point.  To me, changing my emotional reactivity is about changing my thinking.  I am incapable of changing my thinking by myself.  I have to ask God to help me.  In fact, I make this request of God nearly every day.  In the spirituality class that I teach, I invite the women to “speak” their intention to God where this idea is concerned by getting down on our hands and knees, putting our foreheads to the floor and saying out loud, “God, change my thinking.”  I would guess that on any given week, between 35 percent and 55 percent of the women will join me in this exercise.  Some of the women find this to be the most enjoyable part of the class.  Others, for reasons that I do not know and do not need to know, find it impossible to pull themselves out of their chairs and join us in this exercise of humility.

“God change my thinking” can also translate to “God, keep my emotions in the middle.”  That not only means checking ourselves when tempers flare, but not going euphoric when something really good or exciting happens.  In either case, we are giving ourselves that “hit” that feeds our emotional addiction.

To borrow from 12-step language, if we truly believe that it's a good idea to decide to turn our lives and our will over to the care of God as we understood God, then this applies to our emotional reactivity.  This is an area that I want most of all to turn over to the will and care of God.

St. Francis is credited with writing a prayer that begins, “God make me an instrument of thy peace….”  I think that’s an excellent prayer for all of us to use in beginning our day.  Perhaps repeating it several times a day is helpful as well.  Likewise, not only do we look to God to make us an instrument of peace in the lives of others, but also within ourselves.  In other words, “God, teach me to calm myself down.”

God, change my thinking.  AMEN.

All over the map ...

It's been nearly a year since I have posted anything to this blog.  That's hard for me to believe.  That being said, I think we can expect this post to be all over the map.

This setting once served as a way or mode of expression.  Yeah, that's right -- I think the blog's subtitle is "processing the God stuff in my brain."  I've been thinking about this blog lately, and the other one I used to write on a regular basis as well.  There's a part of me that feels as if I should delete them both.  "I've moved past this stage in my life."  There's another part of me that wants to keep them, but doesn't necessarily want to write anything in them.  And then there's the third part of me that is trying to convince herself that I really could get back into the rhythm of writing a post on a regular basis.  Heck, if I can spell the word rhythm (admit it, this is one of the hardest words to spell in the English language), I can write a post at least once a week.

What if I combined the two blogs?  This one of course is called Just Enough Grace for Today.  (That is sounding awfully lofty lately; awfully churchy.)  The other is called Why So Serious?  I can answer that question for you.  Although my intention is to use that blog as an outlet for being silly, the truth is, I am entirely too serious for my own good.

If I combined the two blogs, what would I call them?  Just Enough Serious?  Why Grace?  Serious Grace?  Why So Serious Today?

Frankly, I don't feel like being so compartmentalized any more -- God blog here, silly blog there.  What does that say about my characterization of God?  That God is no fun?

Jesus certainly is depicted as a jovial, happy sort of a fellow.  Oh sure, the prophets peg him as fitting the bill of the "man of sorrows," but I'm just not buying that.  Yeah, I know he was sorrowful to the point of death in the Garden of Gethsemane and that his sweat poured down his face like blood.  But that was an isolated moment.  (Even Jesus should be afforded a moment or two of drama.)  In fact, I wonder if his ability to say, "... not my will, but thy will be done..." had just as much to do with Jesus being a good sport as it did being obedient.  (I have to tell you that typing that last sentence made me feel absolutely heretical.)

That brings me to an important point.  This blog needs to "listen" to my other blog.  This blog needs to hear my other blog saying, "Why so serious??"  Yeah, why do so many Christians get so serious about their faith?  Why is it that when I preach, I feel myself half-scowling on the inside?  Usually, I joke around with people, but when I climb into the pulpit, look out.  Here comes serious.  My preaching professor even said to me this semester, "You're quite dramatic.  How does the congregation respond to you?"  I think he meant this as a complement of sorts.  I think he was speaking to a certain intensity.  But really, I would love to find a way to lighten up just a little.

Maybe one way to work at lightening up is to seriously (there's that word again) begin looking for hints in the gospels of the sense of humor of Jesus.  (Or at least imagine it.  Certainly that's allowed.  Yeah, we'll call it "guided meditation.")  Returning to my earlier statement, I'll bet Jesus had a vicious sense of humor.  He would have to!  In fact, I wonder if Jesus was tempted to turn to the Roman soldiers who were scourging him and say with an obvious smirk, "Is that all you got?"

I wonder what would happen if all of us, instead of asking for strength and comfort and peace when we pray, asked instead for a kick in the pants.  "Dear God, please shake me up today.  Knock some sense into me.  Push me off my arrogant pedestal.  Make me laugh at myself.  Send 10 or 15 people who will make fun of me today.  Help me lighten up already!  Then perhaps I can speak more effectively of the joy that comes from living a life of faith."

I think I can open myself up to God changing my thinking in this manner.

Big God Smack Down

I just read 4 blog posts by a friend of ours who has taken in a foster baby. She is very playful in her writing and has inspired me to be a bit playful as well; at least in the title of this post.

Today would have been a great day to preach. The passage was the story in Genesis 32 where Jacob wrestles with the man/God/angel of God (depending on your translation and inclination). Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years ago, I first related to this story of a person who tried to micro-manage God-breathed outcomes.

For me, the pivotal part of the story is when the man/God/angel of God responds to Jacob's request for a blessing with the question, "What is your name?" Jacob answers "Jacob." Now you have to flip back a few pages in Genesis to appreciate this part; or at least this is why it resonates with me. If you look at the passage that records the birth of Jacob and his fraternal twin Esau (Gen. 25:26), we are told that Jacob follows his brother out of the womb, "grasping" at his brother's heel as he makes his exit. Apparently "grasps the heel" is a Hebrew idiom for "he deceives," which Esau confirms after Jacob tricks him out of his rightful blessing as the eldest and Esau replies, "Isn't he rightly named Jacob?" (Gen. 27:36).

As we continue to follow Jacob to the land of his uncle Laban and see the "tactics" he uses to influence the color of the lambs born to his uncle, which determines whether they will belong to Jacob or Laban, we understand that Jacob's "deception" is about acting on what he believes to be God's will; bringing it about by his own means. Let's face it, Jacob is a self-made man, but God doesn't need anyone's help to bring God's will about, and that seems to be one of the lessons behind this Big God Smack Down wrestling match.

I was reading a Melodie Beattie book this morning that confirmed much of the same thing ... that when we tell God what we want and need and then surrender those very needs and desires back to God, we speak the language of letting go. Conversely, when we pursue what we want and need as if our efforts are the only thing that will bring them about, we do nothing but exercise control, sometimes to the point of appearing a bit obsessed. Beattie's point is that in acknowledging what we want and need and then letting go, we are in essence saying to God, "...But you know what God? I don't want or need anything badly enough to have to be in control of receiving it. That the one thing I don't want."

This particular habit of giving God a helping hand is standard operating procedure for most humans. I think it has something to do with one of the biggest misquotes in Biblical history: "God helps those who help themselves." Far be it from me to put much stock in Wikipedia, but ... here's what that little website has to say on this pesky phrase:

The phrase "God helps those who help themselves" is a popular motto which emphasizes the importance of self-initiative. The phrase originated in ancient Greece, occurring as the moral to one of Aesop's Fables, and later in the great tragedy authors of ancient Greek drama. It has been commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, however the modern English wording appears earlier in Algernon Sidney's work. It is mistaken by many to be a Bible quote, however the phrase does not occur in the Bible. Some Christians have criticized it as actually against the Bible's basic message of God's grace.

(I know some people will cluck their tongues and roll their eyes to read a Wiki quote, so go ahead and Google it yourself and see the results. Bottom line, it's not in the Bible.)

Oh, but I digress!

Apparently, Jacob believed that God helps those who help themselves; or at least that God needed some assistance now and again. It is not until he had this encounter with the man/God/angel of God at the Jabok River that Jacob finally comes to understand that we all have the choice of wrestling with God or wrestling without God. For whatever reason, Jacob has decided that being a self-made man and being terribly clever and being willing to impersonate his brother, etc., to achieve ends that were God's anyways is not all that it was cracked up to be. "Sure, I know how to get stuff on my own, but God ... Ok, seriously, I really would prefer to have you in charge of the blessings." To me, that is what Jacob is saying or implying in this refusal to let go.

"Coincidentally" (I always put quotes around this word when speaking on spiritual matters), Richard Rohr wrote a post on his email devotional yesterday about this same passage from Genesis. Rohr writes, "When we struggle with God we always lose, and only later do we know that such losing was, in fact, winning. That is what we mean by 'falling upward.' Wrestling with God, with life, and with ourselves is necessary. The blessing usually comes in a wounding of some sort and for most of us it is an entire life of limping along to finally see the true and real blessing in our life."

Losing that is winning. Our Pastor said something similar in sharing a story of a man who is asked by a long-time friend, "Do you still wrestle with the devil?" Oh no, the man answers, now I wrestle with God. The friend replies, "Wrestling with God? How do you ever hope to win?" The man concludes most poignantly, Oh, I don't. In fact, I hope to lose....

Isn't it right that we are all named "Jacob?" Don't we all need to stop manipulating and controlling and live as if we really believe that God's ways and plans are far bigger and better than our own?

I know I'm not through with the Big God Smack Downs of my life. In fact, I'm relieved to know that God is always so willing to engage. In those moments when I resist hearing God's will, or am impatient for God to act, I need to start wrestling and hold on for dear life, until I resolve to lose.

Working it all through the dough

Yesterday I was reading from the lectionary for this Sunday. The suggested gospel passage comes from Matthew 13. I was supposed to stop at verse 30, but my eyes continued down the page, finishing on this nugget in verse 33: He told them still another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough."

As is my habit, I closed my Bible and meditated for a few minutes on a particular phrase from the 17-verse passage I had read. I found myself gravitating toward "...until it worked all through the dough."

I have only made bread a few times in my life, so it's hard for me to completely appreciate this parable; this metaphor of bread dough and yeast. But I started to think about other baked items I have made and the importance to the finished product of "working" all the ingredients together. In fact, I was making waffles this morning and just like clock work, when I got to the bottom of the batter, there was some "lumps" of waffle mix that somehow had not gotten mixed into the batter. With waffles, it's not so bad, but with cakes or even pie filling, the chunks of flour or egg or shortening that somehow escape the blending process can reak havoc on the taste and/or texture of the finished product.

What's the big deal about not working yeast through bread dough? I googled it of course, and here's what I found out. I expected to read that the dough simply will not rise as much if your kneading efforts are lacking, but apparently, according to this web site, it lackluster kneading results in bread with a "coarser" texture. (Not terribly appetizing, but not the end of the world either.)

Clearly, Jesus is applying this yeast/dough metaphor to the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven (Kingdom of God) among us. In the book Living our Beliefs, author Kenneth Carder presents the Methodist understanding of the Kingdom of God as follows (slightly paraphrased):

• The Kingdom of God, announced and inaugurated by Jesus Christ, has tangible social consequences in society.
• The Kingdom is both inward in the heart and outward in the world.
• The Kingdom is both a present reality – wherever God’s will is done – and a future hope.

I cannot with 100% confidence declare to you that Jesus was speaking exclusively of the "inward" or "outward" kingdom of God, but I can tell you that I chose for my meditation to focus on the inward Kingdom ... the Kingdom being formed in me.

So, many paragraphs later, I return to my original line of thinking. What does it mean in the "inward Kingdom" sense to "work it all through the dough?" A few weeks ago, the message I preached in church included the statement, "God will have first place in your heart, or God will have nothing at all." "First place" hints a little at what it may mean to work it all through the dough, but I think there is more.

You hear people talking about being a 7-day-a-week Christian versus a Sunday-morning Christian. Certainly, the Christian faith proclaims the notion that our faith should "show up" in our daily lives. The Methodist church in particular was built on the concept that the life of faith includes being personally transformed into the image of Christ and being an agent of transformation in the world.

I like that word ... transform. I think it translates nicely to the yeast/dough concept of our inward kingdom. If a young child were to ask you, "What does yeast do when you add it to bread?" it would be accurate to answer, "It makes the dough rise, honey." But a more precise reply would be that the yeast transforms the dough.

Usually, yeast is used to denote sin, not the Kingdom of God, so this metaphor of Jesus' is particularly interesting. Yet for a culture that spent a great deal of time making bread (and if you think about it, considering it was women who carried out this chore an undeniable 100% of the time, I suppose we can surmise that Jesus took particular care to address women in his teaching), the idea of inward transformation was confusing enough that a powerful, clear metaphor was necessary. The legalists in Jesus' day insisted that it was outward action that mattered most ... fasting, tithing, giving alms, sacrificing, observing purification and cleanliness rituals, praying; that is the way to salvation and transformation. But Jesus challenged this thinking, telling the religious leaders point blank, it is what comes out of a man that defiles him, not what goes in, pointing the way to the concept and importance of inward transformation.

It would be trite and simplistic for me to conclude, "So ... I asked myself, how can I incorporate my faith into every area of my life? That's the message here ... working the yeast into all of the dough." I don't think that is it, because that sounds like outward concentration, not inward transformation.

I guess I don't have the answer per se. I know that God is doing a work in me, in each of us, every day. I know that I cannot compartmentalize my soul, sectioning off pieces that can and cannot be worked through. I have to give God access to every nook and cranny of my inner being and I confess, I'm not sure how to "do" that. Maybe it is more a matter of "intention" than "action." Thomas a Kempis writes, "You must purify the eye of the intention, then, that it may be steadfast and right, and you must keep it fixed upon Me, far above all objects that might come between us." Whether I succeed outwardly or not, then, my intention should always be to focus my gaze upon God, upon the image of Christ.

I have a yoga DVD that I use from time to time. The yogi often speaks of "gazing with soft eyes" when describing where your eyes should be pointed in one particular movement or another. Perhaps the legalist gaze with hard eyes; determined, self-willed stares that puff up their egos but do little to profit their souls. Perhaps this "soft eyes" gazes keeps one's intentions pointed in the right direction, but suggests that softness and gentleness are better agents of transformation in the Kingdom of God.

Working it all through. Kneading the dough. It does not connote a gentle process to me. Yet I imagine an experienced bread maker is very gentle in the treatment of the dough, concerned for the quality and taste and texture of the finished product. I think we can assume that God's actions toward us in this kneading process are likewise.

Gratitude

I cracked a joke on a post I wrote yesterday about how I sometimes imagine God looking down at what I am doing and saying, "Oh thank MYSELF that Tammy is on the job." That brought up an interesting question...

Does God feel gratitude?

We like making God in our own image, meaning we like to assign to God an entire gamut of human emotion. What exactly IS gratitude and does God experience it?

Enter dictionary.com, which gives the definition for gratitude as follows: "A feeling of thankfulness or appreciation, as for gifts or favors."

Now why would I even question whether God feels gratitude? On some level, it seems to imply "surprise," a certain "not knowing." You feel gratitude when someone does something unexpected for you, for example, but nothing is unexpected to God, is it?

As I was typing that last sentence, I thought about one of the stories of creation recorded in the book of Genesis. It says after each day of creation, God said to God's self that what God had created was good. Is that gratitude ... or appreciation?

We feel grateful for the gifts and abilities we have ... sometimes even for our inabilities and weaknesses, when we recognize the growth that comes from them. If all that we have is a gift from God, would God feel grateful for a gift or ability or quality and strength that God had given us? Again, I'm not saying God does not appreciate creation, but is that the same as gratitude.

OK, dictionary.com defines appreciation as follows: "The act of estimating the qualities of things and giving them their proper value." Obviously, God sees the quality of each of us and gives us value, more value than we would ever give to ourselves, or expect to receive from others. But is that gratitude?

A month or so ago, my husband and I read The Shack by William P. Young (we're a bit behind the times). The character in the book who represents God the Father consistently says the phrase "I'm especially fond of him/her" when referring to different people. (The interesting thing is that God the Father says this about every person in the book when talking about them.)

Is being especially fond of someone the same as gratitude? I mean, I can imagine God looking at his creation and smiling and nodding and saying, "Yep, still good ... I'm especially fond of that one" but "Thank MYSELF for her..." seems to imply a certain dependence, which I don't believe God has on any of us.

Does it make God seem mean or cranky or any less unloving to suggest that God does not experience gratitude? God loves us, God appreciates us, God is especially fond of each of us ... but grateful?

I think I have committed a lot of words without really coming to any formal conclusions. Perhaps I can say again that I will not be so presumptuous as to believe that God is grateful to the point of dependence on me.

"Thank MYSELF you're done writing this post!"

Doubt

I can't help it ... sometimes I doubt myself. Just like the dry and balmy Houston weather and 100+ degree temperatures that have us crying, begging, pleading for a relief from the drought, I feel a certain spiritual drought going on.

A few weeks ago, while preparing a lesson on prayer, I was reading up on the importance of silence in prayer. Some people think that silence is all about listening (or at least pretending to listen) to God. I agree that we can't listen to God until we shut the heck up, but silence plays another role in our prayer life. Silence, according to Jane Vennar, author of The Way of Prayer, helps us to recognize and honor that God is often our silent companion in life.

God is always there, but God does not always make God's presence known. Heck, half the time, we hardly give God's presence a second thought, satisfied to tool along our chosen paths, but sometimes ... every now and then ... we feel we need some tangible proof of God's presence. And that's when the silence gets to us; or at least that's when it gets to me. I want tangible proof of God's presence and God's tranformation. Instead, I get silence.

Tangible proof. Is that redundant? Proof you can touch, feel, see, hear, taste ... that's what I'm talking about. Things are slowing down or changing or transitioning in the outreach ministry I'm involved in at the church where I work. In fact, if you follow the link in the previous sentence, you will see outdated numbers and activities. (I desperately need to update this section of our church's website.)

Maybe I coasted just a little. Maybe I became complacent. We made a decision about 7 months ago that we (me and a team of 3 other women) could no longer make the "trek" to Bonita House 21 miles away to teach spirituality to the women there. Right around the time that this decision went into effect, one of the client groups that I was ministering to at the closer location down the street up and moved to Bonita House. (Yes, moved to Bonita House.) Here I was saying "we" were too busy and otherwise engaged in ministry to continue at Bonita House and an entire client group of women was pulled out from under us like the proverbial rug. Meanwhile, another new "connection point" that I have been working on for over a year still has not materialized. I just can't seem to get my feet in the door at this place!

I was pondering all of this last week in the midst of a pity party for one and I realized, I was being a little greedy. I thought I had made progress by telling God that I had "accepted" the smaller numbers of women and I was thankful for any "crumbs" I could get. Then the thought hit me (you know ... those thoughts that go BAM in your head like a freight train?) that I needed to practice some gratitude. "Crumbs???" my brain screamed. "Seriously, crumbs? This is a feast. It is God's feast prepared for you, and whether you can see any precious tangible evidence or not, God is still doing significant stuff. Crumbs! Hmph!!!"

A few days later, the after shocks of that freight train went away and I started doubting myself again. (I'm starting to feel a little like Gideon, who kept demanding that God show him "signs" to affirm that he had been called to deliver the Israelites from those menacing Midianites.) I was more or less laying out my fleece this morning as I prayed. I apologized to God for asking for a sign or some kind of confirmation, but I asked anyway.

Now here's the thing ... God is very patient and kind. I mean, no one handed me a piece of fleece at church today covered with dew and said, "Hey, Tammy, is this yours?" but there were things ... stuff ... conversations ... situations ... encounters that felt like God confirming that God wants me around. It is hard to articulate, but it seemed to be there.

Sometimes I get it into my head that God "needs" me to do this stuff. I would never say that out loud (though I did just write it, now didn't I?), but the noise in my head can approach that thought at times. I suppose I believe God is looking down at me and saying, "Oh, thank MYSELF that Tammy is on the job!" Truth be told, I need to do this stuff for my state of mind, my assurance that I am involved in something that matters. In these moments of clarity, I admit that God is pretty darn generous and gracious and merciful to make use of the likes of me to do anything.

Doubt can be paralyzing. It is paralyzing. It is even painful. But more than anything else, it's a little stupid.

I don't always get to see tangible evidence of what God is doing, but if I truly embrace my Methodist faith, then I can believe that I am transformed by the Spirit of God, and used as an agent of transformation in the lives of those whom God puts in my path.

All fleece aside, how amazing is that?