Back to the Basics

I am reading a book about the theology of sport. (It is called A Brief Theology of Sport by Lincoln Harvey--see, I wasn't kidding, it really is about the theology of sport!) Now, any of you who know me at all are currently asking yourselves, "Why, Kathy, why???" because you know how very little passion I have for sports in general (except, maybe, for curling--which hard-core sporty friends usually argue hardly counts. But it totally should!). That disinterest can probably be traced back to an unfortunate experience in early elementary school involving extra phys-ed classes during lunch hour for the coordinationally-challenged. (Bad idea. Bad, bad idea...)

Well, anyway, I'm reading it for a book group that I'm part of this winter, and for no other earthly reason. Although, I'm sure it's not a terrible book, if you care about things like sports and theology. (I'm partial to the latter, but still not sure why we have to bring sports into it.) There are three chapters left, and the promise of tea and dessert to come will probably urge me on to the end--plus, presumably there will yet be someone who will be happy to tell me why this book was important to read.

However, even in the midst of my moderate disinterest, I ran across this quote tonight:
God, though completely perfect in himself, freely elected to open up his life, making room for the creature to share the endless life of loving communion. (p. 82)

God is love, the author has just finished pointing out. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in perfect communion of self-giving and self-emptying. God, in God's very nature, is love. And just because God can, God makes space within that communion for us, his creation, to experience and join in that loving communion.

If you're wondering what this has to do with sports--I'm not sure, I haven't made it that far yet.

But this idea that God freely and voluntarily invites his creatures to share in the loving communion that is God--this stopped me in my tracks tonight.

It stopped me because it speaks so powerfully of welcome, of self-giving, of making room, of sharing, of hospitality. After a week-end that was filled with images of airport protests and a terrorist attack at a  Quebec City mosque during prayer--a week-end in which I couldn't quite bring myself to believe that this really is the world in which we're living right now--it spoke a message of prophetic hope to my troubled spirit.

It strikes me as a much-needed reminder that as God's people, we are called to radical hospitality. As we learn to lean into God's welcoming love, and as we ourselves experience communion with the God who loves us more radically than we can fully comprehend, how can we help but open the circle and make room for one more, then another, then another to join in loving community with God and with one another?

I don't quite know what this looks like, in terms of my regular daily life. Theology for me has to meet the ground. I'm a practical theologian--tell me how to do it, or I'll quickly lose interest. I suspect that, rather than it being inaction as I'm sometimes tempted to believe, the most important action that any of us can take--in these days or in any days--is to make space to receive God's invitation to know the love of God that is for each one of us. Prayer, meditation, worship--these are not wasted time, but the most essential groundwork we can lay. Unless we can ourselves rest in God's love, we won't be able to truly extend the kind of radical loving hospitality that our world so desperately needs.

And as we come to know God's love in our own lives, then I think it's a natural next step to mimic that love and that hospitality, by inviting our neighbours into that same communion--into community. To welcome the stranger, to practice hospitality, to seek out relationships with those who are not at all like us--people of all kinds of walks of life. As God welcomed us, we who are wholly other than God, so we will learn to welcome those who are other than us.

28 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12: 28-31)

Maybe it's not so complicated after all...

On Driving to the Conditions: A Sermon to Myself

This week, my mandate is to take a week off my job. To rest. To 'work hard at not working'.

How many times have I heard myself tell the people whom I care about that it's okay to rest, to stop doing, and to choose to make looking after oneself their main priority? How many times have I encouraged people to seek out the rest or support that they need to regain their health? And why is it so very hard for me to do the same?

I don't rest easily, especially not on command. I'm far better at taking care of others than I am at taking care of myself. But this week, because people who care about me have said that I need to do this, I am reluctantly laying down my to-do list and trying to find ways to care for myself and to tend to my own spirit.

That's how today I found myself heading out for a long walk in the woods. I grew up in a home that backed onto public reserve land, so my backyard and playground was essentially Canadian Shield and mixed forest. The safe place where I often find myself when my spirit is unsettled and I need to meet with God is in the woods. Something deep within me is at home when I'm walking along the riverbank, or strolling through the woods, or clambering over granite outcrops. This is where I'm most at home. This is where I so often encounter God's presence.

As I was walking today, I noticed that my travels were slower than they were the last time I found myself in this particular wood. Our January thaw (the longest period of above O temperatures in Winnipeg in January since 1873!) has resulted in snow that has melted, turned to slush, and refrozen, and now today it is topped with a light dusting of freshly fallen snow. This makes for treacherous sidewalks, with a rutted, icy surface that is hidden from sight by a layer of soft whiteness. It is easy to trip, or to slip and slide, unless you slow down and watch where you're going. The path through the woods was fairly well-traveled, at least in a narrow lane, but if you weren't careful it was easy to fall off the edge of the packed surface into deep snow along the sides.

It got me to thinking about how sometimes the conditions in which we travel mean that we just have to slow down. A path I could travel at a decent clip when I was last here in September demands a slower pace in these January conditions. The freeze-thaw cycle has resulted in the emergence of beloved Winnipeg potholes, which has resulted in slower driving along some routes near my home in order to avoid costly repair bills. As an occupational therapist, I work in orthopaedic surgery, where I know all too well that if some folks with impaired balance or mobility don't slow down and stay indoors on icy, stormy days, there will be an influx of new hip and ankle fractures waiting to be fixed.

None of these things are a judgment. They just are. Slowing down is part of life--it's the nature of our humanity. There are seasons in our life when we need to care for our own needs, and sometimes that necessarily means making adjustments to our schedule so that we can appropriately adjust our pace to the conditions. This week, it means that I have taken my work email offline, and hidden my work phone deep in a drawer in an effort to create space for healing. For praying. For napping. For reading. For losing track of time. For breathing deeply. For wandering in the woods.

Because it would be foolish to ignore the conditions through which I find myself traveling in this season, and to simply insist on carrying on as if business as usual is a viable option. And it would be equally foolish to tell myself that it's a sign of failure or not being good at what I do that I need to take this time to care for myself. It's not because we've forgotten how to walk that we are slower and more clumsy in January snowbanks than on October's bare paths, and to suggest that's the case would be bizarre!

So, I guess this is permission to get cozy with a blanket and a book and a mug of tea, and to lose track of time, even to doze off on the couch for a while. It's permission to slow down, to rest, to acknowledge that I've pushed myself past the point of good health, and to make the necessary adjustments with thanksgiving that I have people who care about me enough to help me to see past my blind spots and who support me in the stopping and the not-doing.

An Introvert in an Extroverted Church

I've been attending a local church for the past nine months or so, pretty consistently, and it's starting to feel like a place I would like to set down roots. It's nice to have a church that feels like home, after a couple of years of wandering. I am not someone who likes "church shopping," as it's called. I prefer commitment to a community. If I could, I think I'd skip the first two to three years at a church, and jump right into the phase where you know and are known, without all the awkwardness of "getting to know" on both sides.

Regardless, I'm now at a church that I really, really like. There's just one thing--it's the most extroverted church I have ever encountered. And I am perhaps the most introverted person you could ever run across. I vividly remember a youth ministry course in which we did the Myers Briggs Type Indicator to learn more about our personalities and how they might impact who we are as we do ministry. In that class, the prof reminded us that while we'd ultimately end up with a particular type based on sets of opposite personality inclinations, all of them are in fact continuums and "nobody is 100% introvert." Except, according to my results, I was.

Right now, I am an introvert who has been highly stressed and managing crises on a couple of different work-related fronts for the past several weeks. While things are starting to get better, I've pushed myself to my limits lately, and there's a cost to that, as most of us have discovered at some point in our lives. One of the costs of that is that I can only recover what's been lost by guarding my alone time. That's how my energy returns.

My new church, on the other hand, has been shaped by extroverted leaders. Weekly worship includes lots of times of congregational conversation--sharing prayer requests and church news items by open mic, and having a sharing time after the sermon where people are invited to speak their responses to the sermon at the mic. Never have I been invited to more social gatherings, lunches at people's homes, etc than I am weekly after Sunday worship.

I love it. I love the ways that this congregation is working hard at being family to one another, and at sharing life with one another. I have appreciated the warm and genuine welcome. I love the way this congregation is embodying what it means to be the body of Christ.

And yet, I find it a weekly struggle to engage in this community as a person who is profoundly introverted, and who works hard at not one but two extroverted jobs throughout the week.

And on days like today, when I'm living so close to my own limits already, by the time I got home from church and errands afterward I was feeling anxious about insignificant things--a reflection of the cost of doing too many social things with too little reserve.

I think it's okay to live with this tension for a while. I wonder if the gift of Kathy to this congregation might even be found in the fact that I am an introvert in an extroverted community--a gift of balance in some way that I cannot yet articulate. And I wonder if the gift of the congregation, by the same token, is that its beauty is found in its extroversion. (For a fabulous book on this subject, I highly recommend Introverts in the Church by Adam S. McHugh.)

But now, if you'll excuse me, I need to put the groceries away. And clean the apartment. For the rest of the day. By myself.

One Word 2017.

In the past, I've never been very good at New Year's resolutions. I've halfheartedly tried to make this tradition my own a few times, but I'm not sure the resolution has ever truly made it past January. And this year, 2016 ended with a fair amount of stress--I finally finished my 2016 Christmas shopping today--and so the mere thought of having to resolve to do (or not to do) something extra beyond daily survival is altogether too much for me at this moment.

But last year I ran into this one word idea (oneword365.com), and it really worked for me. The idea is to pick a word that can provide a focal point for you in the coming year--something that can shape who you want to be or how you want to live. 2016, for example, saw me choosing to walk with the word "enough"--as in, I am enough, just as I am. I chose it (sometimes 'it chose me' seems more accurate) after several experiences in which I came to realize just how much the impact of belonging to a church where I could never seem to overcome the barriers erected because of my gender and marital status left me recognizing a lingering sense that who I was would never be enough. So, 2016 was about choosing to remember that who I am is enough.

My word for 2017 seems to have chosen me as well. I have the sense walking into 2017 that this is an overarching lesson that God is inviting me to lean into at this stage of the journey. I have a feeling this is not going to be easy, and I'm a bit reluctant to say 'yes' to this word for that reason. I would much rather skip past the hard, get a break from the relentless pressure of taking a deep breath and walking forward into difficult choices or seasons of personal growth.

My word for 2017 is 'held.' I'm recognizing just how much I resist allowing myself to be cared for, never mind giving myself permission to care for myself. I feel guilty, I don't like feeling weak, I'd rather push forward until I reach my absolute breaking point and then see if I can't squeeze a little more from the stone. To simply allow myself to be held by God, to stop and let go of the need to care for others and even for myself, and simply to trust God to hold me--that's excruciatingly hard for me. And important. 

So, in 2017, with whatever challenges it has already brought and with whatever challenges lie in store, and even in the seasons of joy and excitement, I want to commit to time spent in God's presence, simply learning to stop and be held by the one who loves me more than I can understand.