Category: Christianity

A new commandment, Anger, Christian Witness, Christianity, Committment, Community, Compassion, Faith, Gun violence, Hemmed in, Here I am, Lord., Jesus, Jesus Follower, Justice, Life pathways, Magnolia Court Motel

The Car at Magnolia Court

kathymfindley
Magnolia Court Motel, Macon Georgia

In my normal outings, I frequently ride with my husband past the Magnolia Court Motel. It’s the one with a gas station in its courtyard where a pool used to be back in the 50s. It’s not a place you would want to stay on your vacation. In fact, I doubt anyone goes there for a vacation. Still, it’s always at capacity, because people live there. It’s not in the safest part of town. Magnolia Court itself is not safe. I know that because TV news frequently reports that homicides happen there.

For the past five years, I have seen a dingy, old, light brown car in front of the last unit of Magnolia Court, closest to the street. The same brown car, day or night, is in its parking space. I don’t think the car ever moves and I have wondered if it needs repairs. I assumed that the owner of the brown car didn’t have a job, because the car never moved. I hoped, though, that the owner of the brown car worked an 11 to 7 shift somewhere. I wouldn’t have known that, because I would never go past Magnolia Court at that time of night. Not in that neighborhood!

For five years, I never once mentioned that car to my husband. For five years, I silently looked at the dingy brown car and wondered who was in the motel room. Who was he or she? I always thought it would be a male, so let’s go with that. Why is he living there? Does he have a job? Is he young or old? Does he need food? Is he ill or disabled? Does he have friends or family? What does his room look like? Is it decent or dirty? How does he feel about his life? Does he know about Jesus and God? Is he okay?

My next thought was, “I would never go up to his door at Magnolia Court, knock on it and ask him if he’s okay or if he needs anything or if he knows about Jesus.” Just as quickly, my thoughts switch from the man (or woman) with the dingy brown car at the Magnolia Court to these hard questions . . . What could I do, as a Christian, to see if this man needed help? How could I help? What would I do? And what do the answers to those questions say about my faith?

I don’t know, of course, but I imagine that in a similar situation, Jesus might have gone straight to the inn and checked on the people. Finding out how they were doing might have led him to heal one, encourage another, give another a basket of food or do all the blessing-kind-of-things Jesus always did.

Last week, we drove by Magnolia Court. The dingy brown car was not parked in its place. I looked around the Court to see if he had changed rooms, but the car was not there. I felt my heart quicken and my mind rushing through scenarios of what might have happened to the man in the end room of Magnolia Court. I was sad. Guilty. After about ten minutes, I managed to move on with my day and not think too much about the man.

Today, we again passed by Magnolia Court, twice! The car was gone. The man was probably gone too. I never saw him. I never checked on him. Why would I? Who would do that sort of thing in the violent, unsafe world we live in?

I don’t want to be trite about things like faith, but honestly, I really did wonder “What would Jesus do?”

“WWJD” might be an old, overused, trendy slogan, but for me this is just being concerned about a man I never saw.

I don’t have any idea what Jesus would do, but I suspect he may have done lots of things, including something similar to what he did with the tables of the money changers. You see, turning over those tables was about doing what is just and right. Jesus might have turned over some tables or lamps or nasty mattresses at Magnolia Court Motel, because it is a place of violence, drugs, and all manner of things that harm people.

I felt my heart quicken and my mind rushing through scenarios of what might have happened to the man in the end room of Magnolia Court. I was sad. Guilty.

Kathy Manis Findley

I have to wonder now, probably will always wonder, what became of the car at Magnolia Court and, more importantly, what became of the man who lived in a room at Magnolia Court Motel. As far as I can tell, he never left his room until the day he left. My thoughts of him over five years of trying to eavesdrop on his life yielded nothing for him. For me, it became an examination of just exactly what kind of faith I have and in what ways am I willing to go out into a world of need where God’s people live in shadows like Magnolia Court. It became a self-examination that prompted me to ask myself, “What do you intend to actually do when you proclaim yourself as a Jesus follower?”

So this is not a morality tale to urge you to examine your faith. It is for me. I am the one who needs to examine my faith, to ask what Jesus would do and then to admit what I will or won’t do. As for the old, dingy, brown car and the man who owns it . . . well, I did do one thing that Jesus would do. I blessed the man I never knew, whispering under my breath as we passed by this morning, “May God go with you and give you peace.”

This is one of my favorite Christian songs. It brings me to tears every time I hear it, especially on the day of my ordination in 1992. As the words were sung that day in a duet by my husband and best friend, my heart sang, “Here I am, Lord.”

Belief, Christ’s face, Christianity, Compassion, Iconography, Immigration, Paula White, Sacred Art, Social justice, Taking immigrant children, The Christian Church, Trump, wind

Showing Christ’s Face to the World

kathymfindley

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Mother of God, Protectress of the Oppressed.  Iconography by Kelly Latimore.

On many fronts, I am troubled today by the appointment of Paula White as head of the White House’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, a successor to previous administrations’ faith-based office that coordinates outreach to religious communities. The news reports point out that she is neither seminary trained nor qualified to hold this position, and yet the president identifies her as his “pastor.” I cannot help but wonder: When did it become acceptable to evangelicals to tolerate a woman as their president’s pastor?

It appears that Donald Trump has employed a Pentecostal televangelist from Florida, an outsider whose populist brand of Christianity mirrors his own conquest of the Republican Party.  She is in many ways a quintessentially Trump figure: a television preacher, married three times, lives in a mansion.

And like her president, Ms. White has survived accusations of financial misconduct and ethical improprieties. Among Christians, she is a divisive figure because of her association with the belief that God wants followers to have wealth  — commonly called the prosperity gospel. This theological perspective is highly unorthodox, and is also considered heretical by many Christians.

The Rev. William J. Barber II, who organized the Moral Mondays protests in North Carolina and who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, calls White’s appointment “a very ominous sign” and signals that “Christian narcissism” has come into the White House. He said this:

The so-called prosperity gospel is a false gospel that can be compared to the theology that justified slavery because of economic prosperity. It is an attempt to interpret the gospel to be primarily about personal wealth and personal power, which is contrary to the theology of Jesus where the good news was always focused on caring for the poor, the least of these, the stranger, the sick.

I just spent five paragraphs trying to show Paula White’s face to the world when what is infinitely more needful is showing Christ’s face to the world. With that in mind, I feel compelled to switch focus to the theology of Jesus that insists upon caring for the oppressed.

Some of you may know that I am an iconographer and one who is very interested in the theology of icons and their call to holy introspection. An iconographer colleague of mine gave me this wise counsel:

Look at the eyes first and see the light that shines through them. Stand reverently and quietly before the icon until the image speaks to you.

Icons hold a spiritual effect, a history and a message. So in thinking about caring for the oppressed, I turn to two icons depicting the Mother of God and her Son. 

The first, an icon by Kelly Latimore, is Mother of God, Protectress of the Oppressed. Russian Christians for centuries have called Mary the Protectress of the Oppressed. While some icons embrace traditional forms, this one has been re-imagined. It reflects current political morés related to the treatment of refugees and migrants at our southern border. Christ has assured us that He will always be found among the poor and oppressed. In that light, this depiction of Mary is a refugee mother and child behind the fence our government has erected to separate them from “God-fearing Americans.”

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Mother of the Streets.   Iconography by Br. Robert Lentz, OFM

The second icon, written by Brother Robert Lentz, OFM, is Mother of the Streets. Each year, larger numbers of homeless people live in the streets of our cities — jobless workers, battered women, the untreated mentally ill, or simply those too poor to get by. They tend to be “invisible” to us. This icon depicts the Mother of God as the mother of those on the streets. Her garments, and those of her Son, are covered with jewels and gold decoration, making manifest the hidden worth and dignity of street people, who are living icons of God. In 1984 the Catholic bishops of the U.S. declared, “To turn aside from those on the margins of society, the needy and the powerless, is to turn aside from Jesus. Such people show His face to the world.”

It matters whose face we show to the world. It matters whose face we see. We can choose to “see” the Donald Trumps and Paula Whites of the world, or we can turn our eyes on Jesus. It matters whose face we “see!” And it really matters whether or not we will be found in the city streets, on the border and at the fences, at the margins of society where so much oppression holds sway. It really matters whether or not our every day, holy acts of compassion show Christ’s face to the world.

May God create in us compassionate hearts. Amen.

 

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On another note, please pray for me as I look toward my kidney transplant currently scheduled for November 12th at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. I am so grateful that you are walking with me on this journey that often felt so frightening. Your thoughts and prayers mean so much. If you would like to read the story of my illness, please visit the Georgia Transplant Foundation’s website at this link:

://client.gatransplant.org/goto/KathyMFindley

A “Go Fund Me” page is set up for contributions to help with the enormous costs related to the transplant, including medications, housing costs for the month we have to stay near the transplant center, and other unforeseeable costs for my care following the transplant. If you can, please be a part of my transplant journey by making a contribution at this link

https://bit.ly/33KXZOj

Change, Christianity, Knowing, Love, Relationship, Transformation

A Deep Unknowing

kathymfindley

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Arkansas’ White River. Photo by Darla Young.
“The fog was rising from the White River at Bull Shoals. I decided to walk a nearby trail. The sun was showing it’s appearance thru the foggy forest of lightly autumn painted leaves. I looked to the left and this was my sight.. I’ll just leave it at that..  It was beautiful!!” 
— Darla Young

When the fog descends in a forest, the path ahead looks very unknown. Even if you know the forest path well, suddenly it’s unknowable. The stunning photo by Darla Young reminds me of a phrase I heard last week: “a deep unknowing.” I’m not sure what a derp unknowing is yet, but it seems to me to describe an inner state of being that actually frees you from indecision. With a deep unknowing, you move from your inner core into the “right” places. But let’s get away from deep unknowing for a minute.

A good friend gave me a wonderful birthday gift — a journal with a lovely decorative cover that says, “She believed she was loved, so it made her brave.” Knowing that you’re loved may well be the most important thing you’ll ever know. The kind of love we need knows no boundaries and loves us exactly as we are, unconditionally. That kind of love is not easy to find. There are no guarantees that we will enjoy the emotional benefits of unconditional love. But we can be watchful for it, patiently seeking it and knowing how and when to reject love that is not genuine.

An important way of living into love is to be contemplative enough to know who we are, to embrace our true self. No masks. No disguises. No attempts to please another person and, as a result, realize that we’re not being true to ourselves. Richard Rohr recently wrote about what he calls, “the True Self in God.” 

You are not your gender, your nationality, your ethnicity, your skin color, or your social class. These are not qualities of the True Self in God. Why, oh why, do Christians allow temporary costumes, or what Thomas Merton called the “false self,” to pass for the substantial self, which is always “hidden with Christ in God”

So when we embrace our true selves that are “hidden with Christ in God” we find that we live and breathe in a different way. We find ourselves suddenly loving ourselves, and loving others as we love ourselves. What a novel idea! It’s a timeless idea that is as ancient as the Christ who taught us about love long ago. It is a state of being that places us squarely in God’s law of love. In some ways, we are transformed as something deep inside gives itself over to pure love, for self and others. Cynthia Bourgeault explains the law of love that compels us through “a deep unknowing.” This is how she says it:

As a Christian, when confronted by a tension between a religious certainty which leads me to violate the law of love and a deep unknowing that still moves in the direction of “loving my neighbor as myself,” I am bound to choose the latter course.  — Cynthia Bourgeault

I am pondering the idea of “a deep unknowing that still moves in the direction of ‘loving my neighbor as myself.’” I think it must require engaging in frequent contemplation and spiritual discipline to discover within myself a deep unknowing that prompts me to follow Christ’s example . . . as opposed to a decision of my will that eventually wins out to achieve the same result.

Perhaps the spiritual discipline I undertake can identify all of the indecision, confusion, stubbornness, refusal of love toward others, and cover it with that deep unknowing that still leads me in the direction of eventually knowing my true self within the perfect will of God.

May God make it so.

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On another note, please pray for me as I look toward my kidney transplant on November 15th. I am grateful that you are walking with me on this journey that often felt so frightening. Your thoughts and prayers mean so much. If you would like to read the story of my illness, please visit the Georgia Transplant Foundation’s website at this link:

http://client.gatransplant.org/goto/KathyMFindley

A “Go Fund Me” page is set up for contribution to help with the enormous costs related to the transplant, including medications, housing costs for the month we have to stay near the transplant center, and other unforeseeable costs for my care following the transplant. If you can, please be a part of my transplant journey by making a contribution at this link:

https://bit.ly/33KXZOj

 

 

 

 

Christianity, God, God's presence, Images of God, Teresa of Avila

God is Nowhere and Everywhere!

kathymfindley

Life seems to be a marathon search for God, a search that never ends, but rather continues unrelenting in the soul. It is no secret to realize that the soul has need of God. Or perhaps it’s better that I speak for myself: My soul has need of God.

But the God I need is not the “God of our Fathers.” That God is not big enough, complete enough, for me. I long for another presence of God in my soul. I long for a God that I can experience as both father and mother.

In my defense, there are hints throughout early Christianity and in Holy Scripture that God transcends “male” and “female.” 

In Genesis, for example, women and men are created in the “Imago Dei,” image of God, which suggests that God transcends socially constructed notions of gender. 

In the oracles of the eighth century prophet Isaiah, God is described as a woman in labor and a mother comforting her children.

And the Book of Proverbs maintains that the feminine figure of Holy Wisdom, Sophia, assisted God during the creation of the world.

Clearly, limiting God to masculine pronouns and imagery limits the countless religious experiences of billions of Christians throughout the world.It is probably best that we heed the words and warning of bishop Augustine, who once said, “si comprehendis non est Deus.” 

If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God.

But getting back to my own search for God . . . In the over-used saying about “searching in all the wrong places,” we might find more truth than we expect. God as male; God as female; God as Spirit. Does it really matter so much? Regardless of our God image, we all search.

Some people search the heavens to find God, studying the constellations for a glimpse of the Divine. Others are certain that they find God in nature. Others scour the Scripture for God. Others are convinced that their own devout meditation and prayer will reveal God. Still others count on the religious rites and sacraments of their faith traditions.

The reality is that God seems to be nowhere and everywhere, waiting for me to find my own unique way of connecting. In the end, it is likely that I will not find God through my search, but rather come to the deep conviction that God was never lost to me in the first place. Saint Teresa of Avila may well have said the truest, purest words on this idea of searching for God.

We need no wings to go in search of God, but have only to look upon God present within us.

— Saint Teresa of Avila

 

Christianity, Contemplation, Introspection, Lent, Life Journeys, Reflection

Hallelujah!

kathymfindley

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Those of us who are Jesus people should take note that there are only two days left for “Hallelujahs!” Ash Wednesday is upon us, and that marks two significant things: first, Jesus begins his journey to his crucifixion; and second, we, if we choose to, will join Christ’s journey by traveling our own spiritual journey through the forty days of Lent.

Each of us finds his or her own spiritual path through these Lenten days. Some might enter into a time of self-reflection. Others want to realign their lives to a clearer focus toward God. Some choose to give up things while also taking on life-giving practices. Still others focus on repentance, and others intend to rid themselves of distractions and selfish desires. Some of us just need to take these Lenten days to breathe, slow down, contemplate life, listen for God’s whisper.

How we spend our Lenten days may include prayer, fasting, meditation, Bible reading, taking focused labyrinth walks, service to others, reading poetry, and many other disciplines that can draw us closer to God. 

In two days, some of us might choose one of these Lenten disciplines. But until then, we can fill our hearts with hallelujahs as we contemplate the many life graces we have received. So today, I want to proclaim “hallelujah!” for a caring and loving husband . . .

for a family that is present for me when I need them, 

for a place to live that is more than just a house, 

for a church family that is community for me, 

for my medical care team who take such good care of me, 

for friends from afar who make the effort to continue to build our friendship in spite of the many miles that separate us, 

for friends nearby who listen and love and care, and then listen some more. 

Hallelujah!

Hallelujah for all of that. And Hallelujah for a good and graceful God who gives us life and breath!

Hallelujah!

So I invite you to shout out a few hallelujahs for all the graces of your life. And after the hallelujahs, may you take your journey through a Holy Lent, and on the journey, find quiet joys and a peaceful path. Amen.

 

 

I invite you to listen to a beautiful arrangement of Michael Cohen’s “Hallelujah” performed by Pentatonix here:

Christian Witness, Christianity, Faith, Sexual abuse

Evangelicals, Clean Up Your Act!

kathymfindley

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It’s hard to imagine a greater illustration of Christians losing the plot than when they defend predators. — John Pavlovitz.   Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images.

I so hate to publish this photo. But it is a fitting image for these troubling days for people of faith. However, just so you know, this post is not about politics. It is about ethics, morality and living one’s faith authentically. I happen to be a follower of Jesus, and my Bible speaks to me about “loving the least,” allowing little children to come to Jesus, and calling peacemakers blessed.

So from that sacred place, I simply cannot comprehend persons of faith who claim faith in Jesus while defending a sexual abuser. As John Pavlovitz states so eloquently,

I don’t know how to understand the mind of a man or woman who attempts to profess devotion to Jesus while simultaneously defending a molester—and I’m not sure I want to. That’s a darker place than I think I can go without losing hope or sanity. I can’t imagine how a human being can so horribly distort the “love the least,” “blessed are the peacemakers” message of Christ, enough to stand on a wooden or social media platform—and knowingly bless a man who rapes, patently excuse violence to a child, or passionately campaigns for a predator. It’s all about as stomach-turning as it gets.

– John Pavlovitz, https://johnpavlovitz.com/2017/11/18/christians-defend-predators/

Pavlovitz goes even further.

There are few bastardizations of the life and the message of Jesus . . . as grievous as taking the side of rapists and pedophiles and genitalia grabbers—but this is where we are now. With the Evangelicals embracing Donald Trump and with those now rallying to the defense of Roy Moore, this is what we’re watching in America . . . Regardless of the Bible verses they drop or the high-profile ministries they wield or how sanctified they try to sound—when Christians defend predators, they deny Jesus and they sell off their souls. It’s really as simple as that. 

Yes, indeed. It’s really as simple as that. To my brother and sisters who call yourselves Evangelicals, clean up your act! It’s past time.

And may God help us live our faith with integrity, hold the vulnerable among us in high esteem, stand firmly against those who would cheapen our faith, and allow the life of Jesus to inform our thinking and guide our steps.