Too Muchness

Redondo Beach, CA  I was about 6

I've been thinking and learning a lot about trust these last few weeks because of this book I've been reading.

Not because the book has anything to do with trust, but because readers are encourged to take time to listen for God in the small, quiet spaces of our days.

It's in the listening that I've uncovered or discovered, maybe begun to re-cover pieces of my childhood.

I have no idea where the discoveries will lead, but I'm finding in the act of setting aside weekly time to just BE with God outside, to look, rest, be open--that this form, the act of making room--is allowing for the discovery.

Throughout her writing Laura Barkat weaves in the challenges of children from families of alcohol and divorce, homes where trust issues, loss and leaving are all a part of growing up.  She shares her own personal struggles and the words resonate with me--my family was like that.

I've seen how I carried my defenses and behaviours, my attitudes and fears about trust and authority into my grown up-ness and into my marriage.  Not in a good way.

What led to this revelation? Making a space, small at first, for God to drop in His light.

Here is an illustration from writer Gertrud Nelson, cited by Barkat:

"These children (at the seashore) did not have the wherewithal to jump straight into the ocean,

 vast and powerful as it is. In fact, they barely wanted to stick their toes in the water.  

So they stayed in the sand and dug a hole, a potential water container on a much smaller scale.

In time they saw fit to begin coming and going to the larger body of water, 

carrying back a bucket at a time to fill their mini-ocean.

Says Nelson, "In endless space we create a fixed point to orient ourselves: a sacred space....

What is too vast and shapeless, we deal with in smaller, manageable pieces...
we turn our backs on what is too much and 
slowly create the form that will contain the uncontainable."

Form then, not discipline, per se becomes the buffer and the 

eventual conduit between the individual and the Divine, 

between the child and the ocean, between you and me and the sky."**

God is speaking to me, revealing things to me, not because of any discipline or 'have-to's' or shoulds on my part but simply because I've created a conduit, a container, a small place for Him to start to pour healing in.

As I said, I have no idea where this will lead, but He is a faithful, kind Father whose greatest joy is to bring me into healing and freedom.

I'm looking forward to the journey.......with my bucket and shovel in hand.

**From Week 5 of "God in the Yard--Sky: Gratitude"
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Linking with Jen and the Soli Sisters and with Jennifer for Story Time

Sabbath on the Page

Outside on the deck the view unveils secrets--fir branches on the tree below jostle and sway, yet there is no wind.

Looking at the leaves in the shadow and sunlight

--top light

--bottom shadow

lightly floating like sky-dwelling jellyfish in an ocean of air.

Why do they move? 

OH.

Was that a squirrel doing a flying-branch landing?

I've never seen that before and certainly not from this vantage point.

Have things been going on like this all the time and I never saw it?

Hmmmm.....What is God doing that is unseen to me?

I've felt that 'nothing is happening' the way I want it too, anyway--in ministry, in outreach, in pouring out life to others.

God's just quiet.

And I think, "Ahhhhh, He's moving behind the scenes. There is plenty going on.  You just can't see it. Yet. But you're getting better at waiting...."

And I realize I'd never notice the dancing, light-filled leaves and the bending branches if I didn't stop to rest.

They're silently moving, like His Spirit.

More than I'll ever know.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Isaiah 30:18

"Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you....

blessed are all those who wait for him."

Shavuot-Pentecost

                                           

She read about it in a book. The calendar says today is the day--May 15th.

"Seven sabbaths (or fifty days) after Christ's Resurrection the Jews were to celebrate the grain harvest. 

A sheaf of barley, the first grain to be harvested, 

was to be taken to the temple as the 

firstfruits offering to the Lord.

The Jewish people called it 'Shavuoth,' 

that is "weeks", in Hebrew.

The Greek word Pentecost means 'fiftieth.'"

She remembers what it says in the Book, when Jesus' disciples gathered for Pentecost,

^"2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind 

came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.

³ They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire 

that separated and came to rest on each of them. 

⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit

and began to speak in other tongues 

as the Spirit enabled them."

She's been sitting outside lately and noticing the sound of the wind. Watching the trees move, branches holding the darting birds. They jump and sing, noisily declaring their message.

She listens to each one, every one with a different call in their own 'language'.  

She thinks, "God must have made have each one unique so He could hear their voice in their all-at-onceness in praising Him."

And she wonders if God is calling while the wind is falling and if anyone else can hear it........
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Linking with Rosilind in Croatia for the first time for

Contemplation

This post is fifth in a sporadic series on a book I'm reading that is changing my life: God in the Yard, by Laura Barkat. This is not a book review, per se, but perhaps a book invitation...

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I've 'marked out a temple' (She said that's one meaning of the word 'to contemplate'.)

I've said, "Here I will worship God inside invisible walls with a view to His Creation."

I'm looking and listening for Him because I'm tired of paying attention to lies--the lies that say, 'you have to be DOING something all the time.'

Why is it a lie?

Because God did it all in His creation.  And it was good (I believe He repeated that point more than once.) And He said it was finished again when Jesus died.

And then he said it was really done when Jesus rose from the dead.

So I'm sitting out in the yard, looking at nature. 

Chapter 3's 'And you?' question prompt from the book begins, "Words communicate differently than nature because...."

"....words take planning, prior thought, a particular form," I write.
My thoughts continue. 

"Nature (i.e. God's creation) just IS.

We need only observe it and ask the Creator about it.

(Why do we always want to explain things?)

There is no explaining it apart from God."

'And you?' question again. "I think my inner landscape is crucial to contemplation because....I cannot see the dark things Jesus has set me free from without His light shining on them."

LL Barkat writes of a "childhood past that's also somewhat dark.  In other words I bring a shadowy inner landscape that may be crucial to the contemplation process." (p.26).

I've scribbled in the margins of my book, 

"There wouldn't BE any shadows if there was no light."

When Jesus came announcing to the Pharisees (John Chapter 8) "I am the light of the world," (verse 12), it freaked them out.  The Law of Moses they knew, the ordinances, fast days, Holy Days, sacrifices they all knew.  Why didn't Jesus talk about that?

But the light? Why does that matter?

Because Jesus came to expose the Enemy for what He is.   He wants us to be set free.

Our pastor said, "The first step towards victory is seeing your enemy." 
How that so fits what I'm reading.

I didn't realize until I sat outside on a glorious sunny day this week, watching the world fill in with its greens and grays, shadows and shade, you can't see the true colors of anything until there's enough light.

I wondered,
Do the shadows from our past cast our character?
Do they change where we stand in the light?

I'm contemplating that a little deeper these days as God brings me closer to Him.

How about you?

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Linking with Jen and SDG and 

with Michelle for Hear it on Sunday.