A Tiny Piece of Sand

Have you ever noticed how a tiny piece of sand or an eensy bit of a stone can start to feel huge when it gets caught inside your shoe? Once it catches your attention, it pulls your focus in close. At times, the focus gets drawn in some so closely that the bit of sand is all we can see. Everything we perceive is seen through that particular lens. It’s a natural thing to happen.

Over the last several weeks, it was really hard to keep my focus from being fixed on a “little bit of sand.” After surgery in July, a complication arose that finally took a second surgery to correct. I am just now beginning to see my way clear past the recovery phase.

Even while we were with family in Texas, I had to work hard to keep this problem from consuming all my focus. I was able to enjoy being with family, but all the time the bit of sand stayed at least at the corner of my awareness.

How often, in our lives, does our attention get drawn away from what is most important and ends up being fixed on our discomfort? We may even begin to wonder how others could not be aware of this bit of sand. Surely they must see how large it looms, and yet they truly seem unaware. For me, it reminds me to have perspective on my own life; it also reminds me that I too am unaware of what is happening in the life of someone else. As God’s grace is sufficient for me, let me also offer it to others.

2 Corinthians 12:7b-9a

Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Still Small Point

I awoke in the middle of the night and found it hard to go back to sleep, partly because it is hard to sleep propped up on pillows so that a surgical drain stays in place, partly because my mind is filled with reeling thoughts from my reading on church leadership from my D.Min. classes, from a conversation with a young colleague who finds that being sole pastor of a small struggling church can be isolating, from concerns of nestlings that have difficulty leaving the nest, from senseless shootings in DC only one block from our beloved AnnaMaria, and lets face it, from awareness of my impending 60th birthday next week.

Does that single run-on sentence give a small sense of a world that keeps swirling around making it difficult to find peace?

Years ago, in a novel by Dorothy Sayers, a character writes eight lines of a sonnet ending with an image of a spinning world asleep on its axis at a “heart of rest”, but cannot find the right turning for a concluding sestet, and then finds the perfect words written in her notebook by someone to whom she owes her life but who makes no claims upon her. Building on her words and images, he turns the sonnet to a re-sounding, re-echoing heart of music, asleep.

A still center. A still small turning. A still small point. In the work I have done over the last year using Parker Palmer's Courage to Lead© format, one of the important images for me has been that of holding a small bird cupped in my hands. In this discernment work, that small bird represents the person who is the focus of a clearness committee. It's not up to me to launch the bird into flight, or to dissect its abilities. My work is simply to hold it in my hands, keeping my focus on the person, asking a few open and honest questions.

Tonight as I found it difficult to return to the embrace of somnolence, I saw that small bird in my hands as myself in the hands of God's Spirit. God will not force me to fly before being ready. God asks of me some probing, open, honest questions that allow me the privilege of taking time to see myself more deeply, and that allow me to know I am held in a loving, trustworthy embrace. I don't know that sleep will return tonight. That doesn't really matter. What matters is the still small turning, the still small point of God's hands cupped around me in the midst of a swirling universe. I am held. I am loved. I am able to fly when ready.    

Luke 12.7:

But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Surrounded by Grace

Hezekiah 3:16—“God helps those who help themselves.”

I vacillate between not wanting to be a burden and knowing that others want to offer aid. I generally choose the former route. It’s not that I’m trying to be a supermom/pastor/person, but that I’m trying not to impose on anyone. Okay, I will also admit that I do not like looking weak or incompetent. Over the last several weeks, I have had to admit once again that I cannot do it alone. If it weren’t for those around me, I would fall on my face time and again. The closer I get to 60, the more I know I need others.

I could make a long list of those who have made it possible for me to keep going, and who have reminded me that I don’t have to always keep going. Some of those are family like my wonderful sister-in-law Barbara. Some are staff like Jen and Kate. Some are lay leaders like Judy Brown and Cathy Tong. Some are the terrific staff at the Wound Care Center at Virginia Hospital Center. So this week, my note comes a little late as I recover from outpatient surgery. I am grateful that God’s grace comes so much more abundantly than I can ever imagine. Whether in the midst of calm or storm, I am surrounded by our loving God who works through human vessels.

[BTW, if you have been trying to find the book of Hezekiah in the Bible, you won’t be able to find it. While Hezekiah was a king, there is no such book. It makes a great citation though for famous phrases that surely must be in the Bible somewhere, but aren’t. The quote above is actually from Benjamin Franklin. For other Hezekiah citations, see this list.] 

Galatians 6:2

Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

Waves of the Spirit

This week, I sat out at night on the deck hearing the cicadas, crickets and other insects make enough racket to almost drown out the sounds of traffic and the AC condenser—almost enough. Probably my favorite nature sound of all is to hear the waves at the beach. That was one of the best parts about camping at the National Seashore Campground on Ocracoke Island. We were close enough to be able to hear the waves all night long. There was no electricity at the campsites, and generators could not be used after 10 p.m.

The motion and sound of the waves somehow reminds me of the Spirit at work. It is always at work, lapping the shoreline, sometimes gently, sometimes with great gusto and even seemingly brutally. It is always at work but I am not always attentive, especially to the gentle sounds. God’s Spirit is at work in my life, in your life, in the world without fail. Sometimes we notice it, more often not. We tend to notice more when there is the great whooshing of the wind, the roar of unbridled waves in a storm. We notice and are more likely than not discomfited as our lives are disarranged as a shoreline is reconfigured by a storm.

Over the last several months in particular I have been trying to listen, to discern how God’s Spirit is moving in and through Christ Crossman UMC. I hope you have been listening too. This Sunday as we celebrate the Season of Creation in Ocean, I am going to be listening and watching intently as our children receive Bibles, and as our youth share about their experiences in mission this summer. Where and how are their lives being shaped by the Spirit? Where and how is the Spirit shaping the shoreline of our community?

Exodus 14:21b

The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided.