Seeing and Being Seen

There's a healing story in the Bible that doesn't get enough attention.

In fact, it happens over and over and over again.

It's not as flashy as the paralytic who picked up his mat and walked, or the woman healed after twelve years of hemorrhaging, or the man born blind having his sight restored.

But I'm convinced that it was just as transformative.

It's the miracle of being seen.

It's the miracle that was given to Levi, the tax collector: "As he was walking along, Jesus saw Levi son of Alphas sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, 'Follow me.'" (Mark 2:14)

It's the miracle received by the woman known only by her past ("what kind of woman this is who is touching him--that she is a sinner"), until Jesus turned to toward her. "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment." While the others saw only her past wrongdoings, Jesus commended her for her great love. (Luke 7: 36-50)

It's the miracle received by a Samaritan woman who found herself alone at the well at noon, avoiding the contempt-filled gazes of her peers who had long since come and gone from that place, avoiding the full heat of the midday sun--who would soon run back home from her encounter with Jesus shouting, "Come see a man who told me everything I have ever done!" (John 4:29)

And so many others.

I'd noticed how many times Jesus restored sight to the blind in his earthly ministry, but not how many times he'd given people the gift of being really and truly seen, until recently.

After ten years of fighting for legitimacy, for recognition, for a place at the table, I made the decision to move on from the church body that had become home for me. The decision wasn't one that I made lightly, and it's taken me some time to be ready to think about what might come next, especially when the closing of the particular ministry I was working for brought grief upon grief.

But then one day, something miraculous happened. As I started to talk with a few folks about what my next steps might be, and tentatively took a few steps in that direction, I found that people were taking me seriously. Really listening to my story, all of it--the grief and the struggle, but also the things that give me deep joy and delight. They gave me the gift of reflecting my strengths back to me. They invited me to consider finding a place among them.

They saw gifts in me, and reflected those gifts back to me so that I might see them too.

And I realized the power of being seen, really and truly seen, for the first time in a very long time.

It has made all the difference.

And now I find myself wondering how it was that I had somehow come to believe that the only way to find my place in the church was to avoid being seen, to hide behind other (mostly male) leaders, in order to find a place at the table.

And I grieve for all those who are seen first of all by the church as issues to be discussed, whether because of gender or sexuality or ability or age or any of a number of other categories that fail to see the beautiful, beloved child of God underlying all of it.

And I pray that we might do better--that I might do better. I pray that God will give me the eyes to see, and the ability to convey to others that they are seen, that they are beloved, that they too are children of God, created in God's image, just as they are.

In Defense of Evangelism

When did "evangelism" become a bad word?

To be clear, I'm not questioning how "evangelism" might have become a bad word among many who do not claim Christian faith. I have vivid memories of my own of a particular preacher I heard in my teenage years who gave a pulpit-pounding message about hell that left a particularly bad taste in my mouth that I can still remember to this day. I'm sorry, if that's been your experience. Really, truly sorry.

Instead, I'm talking about how "evangelism" has become such a bad word among those who are committed to Christian faith.

I'm wondering how it was that one of the few times that I can remember biting my tongue and choosing not to speak up for my viewpoint in one of my undergraduate Christian spirituality classes was the day that I chose not to speak up and discuss how it came to be that I identified as an evangelical Christian. I remember the professor looking directly at me when not one person in that forty-some student class would admit to identifying with the evangelical stream of Christianity, and then saying to the class that he understood why it would be a difficult position to publicly identify with at our Mennonite institution.

And now, as I journey away from the evangelical tradition within which so much of my faith was formed, I notice how well the Canadian church does with engaging issues of social justice, and how little we talk about evangelism.

And as much as I have wrestled with my evangelical tradition over the way it sometimes tends to see people as 'inside' or 'outside' in a very black-and-white way, or how it can tend to instrumentalize relationships as a tool for evangelism, still a little voice inside of me whispers that there has to be a better way, that surely the gospel is still 'good news.'

You see, my faith is one of the things that is most precious to me, and it was thanks to friends who cared enough to answer my questions and to invite me to explore what it meant to me to be a Christian that I have this faith today in the first place. It was thanks to the friend who welcomed my questions and doubts, who stayed up with me well past midnight to explain the 'four spiritual laws,' who invited me to try actually reading the Bible to see if it might hold answers to some of my questions, who patiently taught me how to pray at (very) early Friday morning prayer meetings, who invited me to attend chapel services with them, that I am who I am today.

I am a product of evangelism.

And none of it was gross, or forced, or pressured in any way.

It was rooted in pointing me toward God, in gently and respectfully answering my questions, in inviting me to consider new perspectives, and in insistently suggesting that a Christian faith could be a living source of strength and direction.

Walter Brueggemann wrote a book called Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism: Living in a Three-Storied Universe, in which he calls evangelism the act of inviting people to experience the biblical narrative for themselves, and to choose this story as the definitional story of their lives. He suggests that evangelism isn't only about inviting outsiders to become insiders within the community of faith, but also about inviting insiders who have grown complacent to be reincorporated into the vitality of faith, and inviting the children of believers to become "belief-ful" adults. I love his well-rounded perspective on evangelism, and why it's important on so many levels. I love how he does so without talking about techniques, numbers, or growth models.

I think I'll always carry with me the deep belief that I was given by my evangelical tradition that there is good news in the Christian faith that's worth sharing, wherever the journey may lead from here, and I worry that there will be pressure as I move into new traditions to hide those beliefs. I worry that if I express that evangelism has value, people will label me with all kinds of images that just aren't
consistent with what I believe evangelism is all about.

But just because we haven't always gotten it right--have often gotten it wrong, in fact--doesn't mean that we should throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Does it?

A Heart of Flesh

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; 

I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." 

Ezekiel 36:26

I was flipping through Facebook recently when I came across a video by The Work of the People featuring one of my favourite theologians, Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche. In it, Vanier's thoughts on this particular passage from Ezekiel 36 caught my attention:

"That sounds beautiful. But if instead of saying heart of flesh you say a vulnerable heart, it sounds less exciting. And if you want to define vulnerability as capacity of being hurt...So, 'I'll change your heart of stone, which is protective, and give you a heart where you'll be capable of being hurt,' that sounds less exciting. But that's the reality, is that if really we start being concerned about people and loving people, well, necessarily we'll be hurt. So growth then (is) about how to grow through being hurt."

To be candid, I never wanted to work in "the inner city." I vividly recall being a part of a small group at one point in time where most of the members were interested in collectively volunteering for an evening at a soup kitchen. It didn't work out in the end, to my great relief.

My hands definitely trembled a little the first evening I ever showed up at a House Blend potluck, uncertain of what to expect and who I would meet inside, but my heart of stone had already begun cracking open through a Scripture story that had come to new life for me several months before. It was the story in which Jesus is speaking to a full house--literally! The house in which he is teaching is packed full right out the door, so that there was absolutely no space for anyone else to enter. A group of friends arrived, so the story goes, carrying a paralyzed friend on a mat, intent upon bringing him to Jesus so that he might be healed. They aren't deterred by the crowds; instead, they creatively climb up to the roof of the house, cut out an opening, and lower their friend right in front of Jesus, crowds or not. It's hard to ignore a man suddenly hovering right in front of your face, and he receives the hoped-for healing that his friends worked so hard for. One day, as I read that story (which can be found in the Bible in Mark 2), what became clear to me was that there were probably so many other people who would have liked to meet Jesus that day, but for whom the barriers were simply to great and who lacked resources like the four determined friends who dug their buddy a new way to get to Jesus, who walked right by disappointed. And I wondered who today might be wanting to encounter God's love and healing, but finding the inadvertent barriers created by Christian churches and institutions simply too great to allow them access. My stone heart began to shatter.

So, when I arrived at House Blend, in spite of the trembling, God had already primed me. And from that very first potluck meal together, I fell in love with this community of people who embraced me unquestioningly as one of their own right from the start--and who have embraced so many others in like manner. But you cannot love people without also accepting the vulnerability that requires--a reality that I saw unfold over and over as new people came into our community over the three years that I was part of it. Stone hearts became flesh.

And vulnerable hearts are indeed capable of being hurt, and mine certainly was when the community that I loved so deeply dispersed this past fall, and at so many other points along the way.

And yet, I would do it all over again--will do it all over again someday--because in spite of the hurt, there is a beauty that is only accessible to us as we become vulnerable and capable of being hurt.

My prayer these days, as I look around at the Church, is that we would become open to allowing God to replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh, even though that means accepting vulnerability, opening ourselves up to hurt and failure and weakness and a whole host of things that we would rather reject. This probably means that we have to abandon some of our ideas about what success looks like, and to wonder whether in God's Kingdom there is a different sort of economy at work.

Because the deep beauty of the good news of Jesus Christ has never been more clear to me than it was in those most vulnerable moments. I suspect that recognizing beauty always requires us to open ourselves to a degree of vulnerability. Can it really be any other way?

One More.

Words have been hard to come by lately.

Four months after the closing of House Blend, which was not only the ministry that I worked for but the community that embodied the Kingdom of God for me so often throughout the past three or so years, I guess it's fair to say that I'm still grieving what was lost, and trying to make sense out of not only the loss but also what it looks like to continue to move forward from here.

We always said that House Blend was a community, but it wasn't a church. That was true, I think. And yet, in many ways, it was the Church for me through so much of the three years that I was part of the House Blend community, and it showed me a way of being the Church that was different from anything I'd experienced before, or have experienced since.

And while I belong to a wonderful church now, and appreciate the people there so very much, I miss the unique beauty that was House Blend. The unique perspective it gave me on what it looks like for God's Kingdom to come to dwell among us.

I miss sitting down at a table to share a meal constructed from the offerings of each one present, to laugh and cry together, to learn the hard way what it means to practice forgiveness and to embody mercy, to witness the truth of the fact that each part of the body is valuable beyond measure and that we all need one another.

I miss lighting the candle, gathering the community in a circle in the parlour to pray together, sharing our highs and lows from the week, and speaking words of peace and blessing over one another. I miss how our prayer times could create a safe space for us to rest even in the midst of really, really hard weeks.

What I wouldn't give for just one more potluck, one more time to sit around that table together, one more chance to speak words of blessing and love over this community that has been, and still is even in its absence, so very dear to me.

I ache for the members of my community who have experienced the closing of House Blend as yet another abandonment, and I long for them to know that they are loved and held in God's embrace even now. I pray that they will know that the love they experienced was real, even in the pain of endings. I pray that I might know that, too.

I also ache for all of the people who didn't get to experience the unique beauty of being a part of this community, who didn't get to taste and see God's goodness embodied by this body in all its beautiful diversity and honest vulnerability.

And I long to see the kind of diversity, vulnerability, and hospitality that I experienced at House Blend reflected in the larger Church. I think that the Church at its best is all of those things, and I hope that we'll have the courage to step outside of our comfort zones to make the Church a place of radical welcome for all of our neighbours. Because in doing so, I am confident that we'll experience God's radical welcome to us more clearly than we ever have before.

I wanted to write this because, like many people who encounter seasons of grief, one of things that scares me most is that I will forget the beauty, the welcome, the care, the love that I experienced at House Blend. I don't want to forget that it was real, and true, and good. I don't want to lose the goodness of what was, in the wondering and praying about what will be.

I know this is a less composed blog post than most. These are the words that I have to offer today, and so I share what I have as a prayer--of thanks for what was, of expression of what is, and of hope for what is yet to be.

When You Can't Pray...

I was sitting across from important church person recently, when he asked me to tell him about my
spiritual life in the past year.

I knew the answer that I wanted to give--thanks to my evangelical heritage, the children's song rings in my head readily, although I was well into adulthood when I would have heard it for the first time: "Read your Bible, pray every day, and you'll grow, grow, grow."

The problem is, I could not in good conscience claim to have even come close to that standard in the past year, and I'm through with pretending to be someone I'm not in order to be acceptable to the church.

But the answer that I wanted to give--to be honest about this season of life in which prayer has been hard--was also clearly not the answer I wanted to give to this person I barely know, not without first at least sketching for this man who doesn't know my story the traumas that I've walked through in the past twelve months with my community, and the struggle to find the right words to bring that pain to God.

And, to be honest, while my spiritual life has looked dramatically different this past year, I also don't feel like God has in any way been absent, or like I have at any point turned my back on God.

Prayerlessness doesn't mean faithlessness.

Weeks later, and I'm still dissatisfied with my attempt to answer his question that day. But I'm also convinced that it will help if we claim the courage to talk openly not only about our spiritual successes, but also about journeying with God through the dark nights of the soul, to normalize these experiences.

So, today I want to share a few of the things that I've learned in this past year of struggling to know how to pray, in the hopes that there is some common human element to the struggle and that, in sharing my experiences, someone out there may someday feel less alone when they find themselves in a similar spiritual landscape.

1) Just show up. 
There were days, when the trauma was at its freshest, and my own sheer exhaustion and, yes, burnout, were at their peak, when I had little capacity for words. The experiences were so fresh and raw that it was hard to process them even the little bit required to put them into words. On one of those days, I found myself in the chair in the corner of my office that serves as my dedicated prayer space. I just sat there--no words, no thoughts, no intentional practice to shape my being there. I just showed up, wanting to sit in God's presence but with no idea about how to make that happen.
As it turns out, sometimes just showing up is prayer.

2) The body has many members.
Faith, I think, is more of a communal venture than I have sometimes been led to believe. This past year has, if nothing else, taught me a great deal about the value of Christian community. When I couldn't pray, most weeks (although not always) I could still show up at worship, where more often than not I was met with at least one person who promised to be praying for me in the coming week. After many nudges from others, my introverted self learned the value of sending a quick text to a trusted friend to say that I was having a hard day and could use prayer. For most of the year, in sickness and in health, my community met weekly for Tuesday evening potluck and prayer, and the familiar shape of the liturgy of evening prayer gave me an entry into prayer, even when I was a ball of emotions. Meeting with my spiritual director every month gave me the reassurance that I wasn't walking alone, and that I couldn't stray too far off the path without someone gently and compassionately nudging me back in the right direction.
Prayer isn't just an individual spiritual practice. We were made for community, and letting others share the journey with you is a spiritual discipline--one that has been especially meaningful for me in this past year.

3) Prayer doesn't require words.
Many times over the course of the past year I have found great comfort and a sense of stability and connection with God by spending some time in the wilderness. Being in the midst of God's creation has long been one of the places where I most readily sense God's presence. Sometimes when the words just wouldn't come, I could manage to put one foot in front of the other and spend an hour alone, in silence, hiking through the woods. And, inevitably, I came out of it feeling like I had met God there.
At other times, I found lighting a candle to be a tangible reminder that I don't walk alone, that Christ's light will ultimately overcome the darkness.
Or I would spend some time walking the labyrinth at a park nearby, letting my body do the praying when my head could not.
As it turns out, while words are normally my go-to prayer language, they're not always necessary.

Lest this start to sound prescriptive, let me be clear--these are some of the places that I have met God this year, and some of the lessons that I have learned about prayer in the process. They are not a list of fool-proof ways to conquer prayerlessness. What I really want to say, I think, is that it's normal for there to be seasons in life when prayer is hard, and if you find yourself in one of those seasons, I hope you will know that there's no shame in being there. You are not alone.

And if the practices that normally make you feel closer to God feel hard during that season, remember that there are a whole lot of ways to pray, and that if "read your Bible, pray every day" isn't working, and if the words won't come, it's okay. Words aren't the only way to practice faith. I wish I'd done a better job at articulating that on the day I met with important church leader. I wish I'd risked being misunderstood to speak the truth--prayer as I've normally understood it has been hard this year, but God has met me in these less familiar places, and I'm most grateful.

A Different Sort of Christmas

It's no secret, really, that 2017 has been a particularly hard year for me. From start to finish, this year has brought with it many losses and a great deal of pain--not least of which has included walking with my community at House Blend through the decision to sell the house and then to close the ministry, as well as personally navigating the loss of my calling to pastor this particular community.

I find myself carrying the grief of these losses into this Advent season with me, and as the celebration of Christ's incarnation among us draws closer and closer, I find myself acutely aware of the grief that sits alongside the celebration this year--the grief that, even as we remember and proclaim the Good News that the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, this community that incarnated God's love for me so well for the past several years is conspicuously absent this year.

Journeying with this community over the past few years has also given me the gift of new perspective that has invited me to check my privilege and to remember that Christmas is not a season of joyful celebration for everyone. For those who have lost jobs, for those whose families are a source of pain more than delight, for those who are lonely or who walk with the struggle of seasonal depression or who are struggling to overcome addictions, along with so many others, the merriment of Christmas  can, and so often does, serve to increase the sense of isolation and pain that they walk with daily.


I find myself longing for a Christmas story that is big enough to be good news for this season of my life, and for the friends I know for whom Christmas is an annual and unwelcome struggle. I'm longing for a Christmas story that will be good news not only for the mostly-comfortable, but for the aches and pains of a world that knows that deep down things are not right and need radical change.  For a Christmas story that won't just affirm the status quo and support the present order, but that will shake the foundations and stir our desire for a new kind of Kingdom to emerge.


This year, I resonate with Mary's song: "He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away with empty hands."

Zechariah's prophecy, too, stirs a longing for change: "Because of God's tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace."

This year, as we remember the birth of a baby long ago, may we hear the echoes of the voices of the prophets who foretold his coming to a nation longing for change. May we have eyes to see beyond the peaceful image of a baby cradled asleep in his mother's arms to the miracle of God with us, the Word made flesh, come to dwell among us.

This story is big enough to be good news for all of us. Big enough for the hungry, for those who sit in darkness, for those who long for peace. May we give it the space to be so, today and every day!

Merry Christmas, friends!

With Fear and Trembling

In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy,

God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee,

to a virgin named Mary.

She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendent of King David.

Gabriel appeared to her and said, 'Greetings, favoured woman!

The Lord is with you!'

Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.

'Don't be afraid, Mary,' the angel told her, 

'for you have found favour with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son,

and you will name him Jesus.

He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David.

And he will reign over Israel forever; his kingdom will never end!'

Luke 1:26-33

My home phone rang, too late at night for it to be a casual social call or a telemarketer. It was one of those phone calls that seems to make your heart stop, even if only momentarily. An already difficult situation had become urgent. Would I come right away?

It's odd, looking back, the particular details that stand out in my memory all this time later. I remember how my hands shook as I hung up the phone. I remember getting into the car and trying to drive, teeth chattering not so much from the cold air but from the adrenaline suddenly surging through my body. I remember trying to take deep breaths, one after another, to calm myself while praying for the adrenaline to subside enough so that I could drive safely to where I needed to be.

I remember getting there, trying not to let anyone see how much I was shaking and shivering, hoping that what I couldn't hide would be quickly dismissed as due to the cold weather.

I remember the person who gave me a hug, and pressed a mug of hot tea into my hands. Even in the moment, the grace being offered touched something deep within me.

I remember having no idea what to do, but doing it anyway.

*     *     *     *     *

"Don't be afraid, Mary," the angel told her.

Those words catch my attention, won't let go.

Mary, did your hands shake, your knees tremble, your teeth chatter when that angel appeared to you and turned your everyday life upside-down?

Do we sanitize how very confusing and disturbing it must have been for you to have an angel appear suddenly in the middle of mundane village life, in the middle of growing up and dreaming of marriage and wondering what the future might hold, in the middle of helping with chores and preparing meals and laughing with your friends?

Do the angel's words, "Don't be afraid," point us to the fact that to have an angel appear, to find out that you are to give birth to the Messiah, to learn that this is all to occur while you're still an unwed virgin must have been earth-shaking news?

Was there a tremble in your voice when you spoke the words, "I am the Lord's servant. May everything you have said about me come true"?

Mary, were you scared? 

*     *     *     *     *

I have wondered where God was that day, when I found myself thrust into a situation that felt so far outside of my comfort zone that it might as well have been happening to someone else, somewhere else. 

But then I remembered Mary, remembered the angel's words to her, "Don't be afraid."

I've always pictured Mary as serene, peace-filled, and trustingly obedient. 

But today, I find myself wondering if her hands were shaking too.

And I find myself wondering if, just maybe, showing up in spite of the shaking hands and trembling knees and chattering teeth is the point.

Maybe faith isn't always serene and peace-filled, confident and full of optimism. Maybe sometimes it trembles at the fearfulness of it all.

After all, if God can show up to a young woman in a small village like Nazareth, if God can be born in a stable and have his first cradle be a feeding trough, then maybe it's still true that God most often shows up in the least likely of places.

Like in young women who tremble with fear even as they reaffirm, "I am the Lord's servant."

May it be so.