Category: life

Awakening, Call, Calling, Change, Discovering, journey, Kidney Transplant, life, Life pathways, Perseverance, Preaching, Rebirth, Self Awareness, Spiritual growth, Spirituality or Religion?, Transformation, Wholeness

“Me!”

kathymfindley

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When I was younger, my primary life goal was to make people like me. It was something of an obsession, and it caused great harm to my spirit. For you see, I thought I had to be everyone else’s image of me. So “me” became changeable and malleable in the hands of a variety of other people. In my mind, they just had to like me.

The conundrum of life: how to accept that not everyone will like me. Maybe even most people won’t like me. So here’s the sad, but inevitable result: “me” became someone I didn’t even know. I lost myself in the impossible quest to be accepted and liked.

Then came the metamorphosis. It happened around age 47. I think what started it may have been reading the book by Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter.

My sisters in cyberspace, you should read that book. The thing that nearly frightened me enough to make me put the book away is the descriptor after the main title. So here’s the title of the book, in all of its feminist fullness: The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine.

Well, when I read part of the book’s description — the “journey from the Christian tradition” part — it scared me to death! I had no intention at all to journey away from my Christian tradition.

I read the book anyway, and it changed my life and launched me into a journey I could never have envisioned. Sue Monk Kidd led me on an incredible, circuitous journey through fear, anger, healing, and eventually, awakening and transformation. Of course, I could never see myself turning away from my deep connection to what Kidd described as “the deep song of Christianity,” But I did discard the voices that kept me in my place, and kept me quiet, for so many years of my life.

When those discouraging, disparaging voices were silenced, I heard my own voice, finally. With clarity, my voice declared “me,” exactly the woman I was meant to be, precisely the woman God was calling to ministry. By embracing my full humanity and my spirituality — that looked very different than my religiosity had looked — I found myself.

“Me” was awakened, out in the open, in the middle of God’s world and smack dab in the center of God’s will. Oh my! Now no one would like me! When my words spoke Gospel truth, people didn’t like me. When I tenaciously followed God’s call to ordination, people didn’t like me. When I dared to preach (from a real pulpit) lots of people didn’t like me. When I worked as an advocate for women and children harmed by violence … well, no one at all liked me then because I refused to back down.

I like this quote from Denzel Washington:

“Some people will never like you because your spirit irritates their demons.”

There it is! The real, unadulterated truth! So as my spirit continued to irritate everyone’s demons, I was finally living my life as “me!” And that, my sisters, was a good place to be.

I hope you are in your own “good place.”

—————————————————————————

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

http://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 near the transplant center, and other unforeseeable costs for my care following the transplant. If you can, please make a contribution at this link: 

https://bit.ly/33KXZOj

Aging, Exclusion, Freedom, life, Possibilities, Retirement, Women

I Refuse to Disappear

kathymfindley

5465C6E4-7A61-4177-AF37-C8CF97B048C2

I refuse to disappear! All my life, I have experienced forces and people and systems that wished for my disappearance. As an advocate for victims of violence in the court and criminal justice systems, powerful people just wanted me to go away. As a child advocate, the foster care system definitely wanted me to disappear. As chair of the Little Rock Commission on Children, Youth and Families, the city power brokers wanted me gone so that they could pretend rather than acknowledge the reality of caring for the real needs of children and families.

As a pastor, I spoke truth every week, often controversial truth that the congregation might resist. I was never one to shrink back or hide. I was never willing to disappear when proclaiming the Gospel compelled me to speak. I was always fairly brave.

But I digress. The past is the past, and even now, in retirement, I often feel very much like people want me to disappear. I am resisting the way people do “placement,” that is the way people place me in a category called retirement. It feels as if others are most comfortable acknowledging my past career but forgetting that I still have talents and gifts and creativity. So here I sit — placed in one of three slots: 1) a carefree retiree that enjoys a traveling, active lifestyle; 2) a retired “old person” who can’t really do much anymore; or 3) a shut-in who is too disabled to be an active part of society.

But sitting has never been for me. I’m terrible at it. I have never allowed others to set me aside. I have never allowed people to insist on my disappearance.

These days, though, it’s a struggle. Invitations to preach or speak or teach are few and far between. It is true that I have health issues that slow me down. It is also true that a part of retirement includes challenges. But I want to resist being dismissed as irrelevant. I want to urge people to pay attention to my abilities. I want to continue my career in ways that are possible and appropriate for me. I do not want to disappear.

I refuse to be small and quiet. I refuse to hide my fire. I am still capable of disrupting the universe. I am still going to do the next right thing. 

I love these words shared by women just like me who simply won’t disappear. And I love the writing of Glennon Doyle who speaks a lot of truth, inspiring and uplifting truth. She calls out to women, especially, inviting us to be the persons we want to be even when outside forces try to hold us back. “It’s not a woman’s job,” she writes, “to get smaller and smaller until she disappears so the world can be more comfortable.”

Amen, Glennon!

Faith, Friendship, Hope, Indecision, Kidney Transplant, life, Life Journeys, Loneliness, Mustard seed faith, Uncategorized

Mine Is a Lonely Road

kathymfindley
8808506F-1DFD-468B-B945-9D1E379E483E
Into the Blue, Painting by db Waterman

Mine is a lonely road on a journey of one. 
To be sure, I have a dear, dear life partner
And a family
Friends all over the world.

Yet, I am making this journey all by myself.

All around me, friends are working, vacationing, writing, preaching

All those things I long to do 
Simple things, but out of my reach.

In the meantime, I am dialyzing for hours every day
Willing myself to eat less, much less
Focusing on healthy 
Exercising through pain

And waiting for a kidney transplant.

Friends are still working, vacationing, writing, preaching
All those things I long to do, still out of my reach.

Waiting for an organ transplant is lonely.

No one I know is doing the same thing.
But everyone knows someone who had one
And died
Or did poorly
Or maybe they even did great
But I never hear much about them.

Waiting for an organ transplant is lonely.

I cannot help but second-guess myself
Why the risk?
Hard decision.

A Good decision about a dangerous thing takes time
Maybe years
Info rattles around in your head for a while
Moves on as it discerns the rhythm of your spirit
Then listens for the whisper of God
And at last finds its rest in your heart

And then you know.

Friends are still working, vacationing, writing, preaching
All those things out of my reach.

They stop their busyness long enough to give me counsel
Everyone knows someone who had a transplant
And died
Or did poorly

And so they tell me that
With all the medical details they know
And mostly they don’t know

But I am holding the good decision in my heart
The right decision 
The one with all the risks
Just like life
Full of risks.

Mine is a lonely road.

But I am ennobled to move forward in good hope
My mustard seed faith is enough
I leave them in the dust
All those who are working, vacationing, writing, preaching
All those things out of my reach.

I  leave them in the dust
All those who knew someone who had a transplant
And died.

Because I am not moving toward death.
I am moving toward life
And light.

Alone.

Still lonely.

Determined to persevere
Until the road ends.

“God’s Will”, Discernment, Faith, Fear, Grace, Indecision, John 14, life, Mysticism, peace, Prayer, Relationship, Risk, Teresa of Avila

I Need No Wings

kathymfindley

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When accusers declared that the thoughts of Joan of Arc were figments of her imagination, she frequently answered them with this shrewd and sensible retort: “How else would God speak to me?”

This is one of the BIG questions most of us have asked ourselves again and again: How does God speak to me? 

And these big questions follow:

How will I know when it is God who is speaking?
Could this strong intuitive thought inside me be God speaking through my inner self?
Can God speak to me through other people?
How do I find God, hear God, feel God?

Richard Rohr, arguably one of the wisest thinkers of our time, wrote this in response to some of our big questions about God:

Intuitive truth, that inner whole-making instinct, just feels too much like our own thoughts and feelings, and most of us are not willing to call this “God,” even when that voice prompts us toward compassion instead of hatred, forgiveness instead of resentment, generosity instead of stinginess, bigness instead of pettiness.

Rohr goes on to explain that mystics like Augustine, Teresa of Ávila, Thomas Merton, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Thérèse of Lisieux, and so many others seem to equate the discovery of their own souls with the very discovery of God.

But to be honest, this post is more about me than it is about the people I admire as spiritual giants. This post is about me making hard life-altering decisions. I admit that making decisions frustrates me, especially at the most critical turning points in my life when I have felt most intensely the need for God’s guidance in the decision. It was easy, as a younger minister, to be confident that whatever I was thinking was “God’s will,” that God had complete control of my thoughts, decisions and actions, that every sermon I preached came “from God’s own lips.”

The passing years brought doubts, questions and the determination to hear God ever more clearly. In the past few years, my most daunting decision was whether or not to have a kidney transplant. My thoughts fluctuated between deciding to leave well enough alone and live my remaining years on dialysis or taking a risk on transplant surgery that has the potential of either making me worse or making my life infinitely better. This has felt like a life or death decision, and I prayed many times, “God, you have to tell me what to do this time. I don’t trust my ability to make this decision.”

Which brings us back to the BIG question: How will I know when it is God who is speaking?

How will I know when “God has spoken” about this decision? 

So let me go ahead and say this out loud in the vernacular of my Bible Belt inspired religious training . . . How will I know “God’s will?”

Now it’s out there where I can really see it. I can theologically skirt around it, but the bottom line is about that errant teaching ingrained in me that if I try hard enough, I will know God’s will about every important matter, and even about not-so-important matters, i.e., “We both wore blue today. It must have been God’s will.” And then there’s the other faith statement declaring that one has (spiritually) reached some decision, a much better statement actually: “I have a peace about it.”

Running as fast as I could from such theological beliefs, I ran way past a simple, quiet faith in a God who wants only my best. I ran past the faith that once told me not to let my heart be troubled or afraid and that the grace-gift I had received was a Comforter who would be with me forever. I ran past the simple truth that I really can have peace about a decision. I ran past the promise of Jesus:

I will ask the Father, and he will give you another comforter . . . to be with you forever. You know him, for he lives with you and will be in you . . . You will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.  (From John 14)

I’m still not certain I have mastered all the questions on the matter of hearing God. And I definitely do not have all the answers. But relying on the promise of scripture is a start. And listening in on the experiences of holy people — people who seem to have a more direct line to God than I ever hope to have — is of immense value to me. The beautiful Carmelite saint, Teresa of Avila, is one of my go-to holy people. This is one of her thoughts that speaks to me powerfully in times of indecision and confusion, times when I doubt my ability to discern God’s direction, times when I wonder if God even hears my prayers.

However quietly we speak, He is so near that He will hear us: we need no wings to go in search of Him but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us.   — St. Teresa of Avila

I need no wings to go in search of God. 3B5858AA-997E-4D5C-8695-5D41049B2B90

When I can sense God present within me, I can believe in my own decision about a transplant, and any other decision for that matter. But I know that it takes a lifetime, and a lot of life experience, to be able to trust in a spiritual — perhaps mystical — union with the mind of God. It takes a lifetime of relationship for most of us to trust our intentions and our purity of heart enough to believe that our thoughts are God’s thoughts, that our decisions and actions are God’s. But when that day comes, I have an idea that it will feel like a “peace that passes understanding,” like a calm ability to quietly trust myself and trust God at the same time. 

May God’s Spirit make it so in me.

Amen

 

 

Chronic illness, Comfort, Darkness, Despair, Emotions, Faith, Grace, grief, Holy Spirit, Hope, Illness, Inspiration, Introspection, life, Light, Pain, Romans 8:26, Silence, Sorrow, struggle, Trust, Wisdom

To the Other Side of Silence

kathymfindley
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Barbara Resch Marincel, lifeisgrace.blog

Today is another “Wordless Wednesday.” My friend, Barbara Resch Marincel, is a sister blogger, an insightful writer, and a photographer extraordinaire. You can see one of her amazing works in the image on this post. The image reminds me of a dark time that is slowly changing with the glow of new light. And in that light, the flying birds speak to me of the wind of the Spirit. Barbara’s images are a gift to me, always bringing up a range of emotions.

Here is a bit of how she describes herself on her blog, lifeisgrace.blog.

Blogger, writer, photographer, in varying order. Finding the grace in the everyday—and the not so everyday, while living a full and creative life despite chronic pain and depression.

If you take a few moments of your day to visit Barbara’s blog, you will find enchantingly stunning photography that speaks of joy, pain, life and grace.

Back to “Wordless Wednesday.” So many reasons to be wordless. Some people may not have adequate words to express joy. Others cannot speak of deep sorrow. Some of us have no words because of pain, while others are wordless because they have fallen into the depths of depression.

There is no end to the reasons people are wordless, no end to the seasons in which they find they are without words. I have lived in that season many times, and in that place I could not speak of my pain because words were completely inadequate. I could not speak the pain out loud to any friend, and even for prayer, I had no words. Silence was my close companion.

I love that my friend, Barbara, entitles her blog post “Wordless Wednesday” every week, because in the middle of every week, she reminds me of my seasons without words. Her art is a reminder for me to give thanks that I survived those times, and celebrate that I am now on the other side of silence.

But will not forget that it is no small feat to get to the other side of silence. I must remember that it is not easy to endure silent, grief-filled times and to the other side of them. While living in my seasons of unspoken angst, one passage of Scripture brought me comfort and hope.

The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 
— Romans 8:26 (NRSV)

When grief has stolen our words, when we cannot speak and find ourselves in silence, may open our lives to hope, trusting the intercession of the Spirit’s sighs that are far deeper than words. 

Thank you, my friend, for “Wordless Wednesdays.”

And thanks be to God for allowing me to move to the other side of silence.

Amen.

Beauty of Nature, Challenge, Courage, Discovering, journey, life, Lostness, Moon

Freedom on the Journey and Hope Along the Way

kathymfindley

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To live without roads seemed one way not to get lost.
— Naomi Shihab Nye

It might be good advice — traveling a journey without roads. It would eliminate the decisions one must make when roads cross. It would eliminate the uncertainty when the path ahead seems unclear. We wouldn’t have to plot a course and explore all the possible routes. We might experience freedom on the journey that we have never before experienced.

I have to admit, though, I am a person who is all about road metaphors for life. I am a lover of walking labyrinths and walking the sacred path. I am constantly assessing my journey by the many kinds of roads I travel. I rejoice on smooth, friendly roads and despair on rough, ominous roads. I walk my path with trust, experience courage and wise discernment at the crossroads, and believe that I will end my journey in hope.

So the idea of “off road” living is a new, and somewhat disconcerting, prospect. And yet I am intrigued by the quote of Naomi Shihab Nye, “To live without roads seemed one way not to get lost.”

So I spent a few minutes pondering her words. With no roads, we might find ourselves discovering new places and making new paths, never fearing that we’re lost, but leaning into the exploration with anticipation. Without roads, we might wander aimlessly, passing beside astounding wonders we have not seen before. Without roads, we might find ourselves leaning into the beauty we find on our uncharted and circuitous path, beauty once hidden from us because we stayed on the road. Without roads, we might experience freedom on the journey.

The poet says that without roads, we don’t get lost. That may be a plus for us, since the fear of getting lost keeps us from the sheer, unbridled joy of exploration. Once we have dismissed that fear, we are free to roam, to discover and to observe all the beauty that lives off the path.

I think Naomi Shihab Nye’s thought about the lack of roads is an interesting parable. Its a parable about real life, and the best lesson from it may be that it is our fear keeps us from the full and fresh experiences we could embrace. When we stick too close to the roads we have always travelled, we will experience only what exists on the roads and directly beside them, nothing more. But when we have thrown off the fear that holds us hostage, courageously take leave from our familiar path, and venture into the wilderness to wander freely, we might see and experience more than we ever thought possible.

I’m not so sure this will work for me, but I plan to try some wandering that takes me far beyond my safe path. I plan to experience the emotion that comes from the fear of being lost. I plan to allow myself to be forced to place all my trust in where my heart takes me, and in God, who always gives grace to wanderers.

So the poet says I will not be lost, because there are no roads on my journey. I will not know what things I will see until they emerge before me. I may not know where I am, but I will not be lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye wrote another poem that seems to speak to this very unfamiliar concept of traveling life’s journey without familiar paths to count on. These are her words:

Where we live in the world is never one place.
Our hearts, those dogged mirrors,
keep flashing us moons before we are ready for them.
― Naomi Shihab Nye

What does it mean that our hearts “keep flashing us moons before we’re ready for them?” It sounds like a gift, that our hearts flash moons before us. It sounds like grace that, on our journey, we will see the wonder of God’s creation glowing above us in the night sky. We will be compelled to look up, gazing into a moon that changes constantly, reminding us of the waxing and waning of our lives and giving us hope to hold on to.

Thanks be to God for the freedom of the journey and the hope.

Covenant, Friendship, Introspection, Jephthah's Daughter, Judges 11, Lent, life, Reflection, Rhythm, Women

Together Through Lent

kathymfindley
0373B40D-24BE-4EAE-8E78-3357B8EC97C7
Watercolor art by Kathy Manis Findley. The watercolor — “Together” — represents the spiritual covenants we share with one another, bonds that strengthen our faith. 

I have always thought of Lent as a spiritual journey we take alone, a solitary season of introspection and self-reflection during which we contemplate our own spiritual well-being and our relationship with God. For me, Lent has always been alone work. But what if it wasn’t? Suppose I experienced Lent with my community — the close community of people with whom I share my spiritual life.

I cannot help but recall the story of Jephthah’s daughter as told in Judges 11. When she faces a terrible crisis that will result in her death at the hands of her father, she makes only one request of her father. “Do what you must do, only grant me this one request: Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my sisters.”

So she will take this journey up into the hills with her sisters — to mourn, to reflect, to pray. She will not make this journey alone. She makes the journey with the sisters who surrounded her in life and now in death. They climb up into the hills together.

Lent’s forty days represent the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring the temptation of Satan and preparing to begin his ministry. He was there alone, and most often the Lenten journey is a time for reflecting alone. But I think that perhaps there is spiritual benefit in making a Lenten journey together, in community, joining together through invisible rhythms of friendship and caring.

As I make my Lenten journey this year, in my mind I will take my community with me. There into my alone places where God comforts me in my contemplative moments, in my repentance and in my penitence, I will be more mindful this Lent of my spiritual circle of friends. I will make a covenant with them in my mind and heart. I will send them positive thoughts as they make their Lenten journey and I will pray for them intentionally and faithfully.

It will be a together Lent, inspired by the sisters who went into the hills with Jephthah’s daughter where they spent a season of grief in community, together.

I hope that, together, we might embrace a sense of community as one of our Lenten spiritual disciplines, that we might journey together for these forty days, praying for one another, seeking together the serenity, the reflection and the transformation of Lent.

In that spirit of prayer, I leave with you this beautiful prayer written by Rabbi Naomi Levy:

The rabbi in me would like to offer a prayer for you.
I pray you will learn to see you life as a meaningful story.
I pray you will learn to listen to your soul’s insistent yearning.
I pray you will learn to believe you can transform your life.
I pray you will learn to live and shine inside your imperfect life
and find meaning and joy right where you are.
Most of all I pray you will uncover a great miracle: your extra-ordinary life.

— From Hope Will Find You by Rabbi Naomi Levy

Complaints, Contemplation, Courage, Discovering, Emotions, Introspection, life, Mental health, Mindfulness, Reflection, Self Awareness, Vulnerability

What’s Underneath?

kathymfindley

A07A5421-F042-40D4-A143-32391BBC79FBToday, a friend’s blog posed a provocative question. It was provocative enough to stop me in my tracks. Likely, I was right in the middle of a tirade of complaints when this question challenged me. This was the question: “If I let go of my complaints, what might be underneath?” *

The question presented a plethora of thoughts for me. It opened up that place underneath just for a second. But then I quickly moved back to the complaints. I have many. Or at least I believe I have many reasons to complain. But I’m realizing that complaints are surface things. They live outside of us and do not always reflect the inner emotions we are truly feeling.

A complaint develops easily and blurts out what’s on the surface of our lives. It flows easily off the tongue and falls upon any willing listener. The empathy we receive from that willing listener keeps the complaints alive. If someone listens to us and responds with caring about our complaint, it is then cemented. We have given it life, perhaps life beyond what it deserves.

This brings us back to the probing question: “If I let go of my complaints, what might be underneath?”

If gratefulness for the obvious graces that we have received replaced the urge to complain, we would be surprised at the result. If, instead of lodging a complaint, we spent some time exploring what lives “underneath,” we might well gain true insight into our emotional state. 

So we would do well to ask ourselves what’s underneath the complaint we speak out loud? Is it true that our complaint rises from a deep place inside of us but hides the emotion there?

If my complaint, for instance, is that I am overworked, perhaps underneath is the constant feeling that I’m being taken advantage of. If my complaint is that I have to endure an illness, perhaps the feeling underneath is that I fear suffering, even death. If I am terrified of death, perhaps I am not certain I left a good and lasting legacy. If I’m languishing in retirement, perhaps the emotion “underneath” is that, now that I am not “ministering,” I am questioning my self-worth.

You might be asking why this is important. It is important because whatever lives inside of us holds the power to harm us physically, emotionally and spiritually. What could we do instead of complaining? 

  • We might begin with silence that moves us a bit towards serenity.
  • Next, we will practice mindfulness that helps center us.
  • We woukd do well to contemplate gratitude for the graces of life. 
  • Then we should pray for insight, comfort and healing, not only praying for what we need from God, but also listening for God, abiding for a while in God’s presence.
  • Then we must take time for what might be the most important practice of all: introspection and self-reflection.

One of the primary goals of introspection is to better comprehend our inward life and to learn to focus it towards fulfillment of self. To go there is to invite vulnerability, healthy vulnerability that softens the hard places inside me that are wounded. Then we need to pull up from our inner resources just a little bit of courage.

When all is said and done, each of us is given a critical choice: do we complain about all that is not right? Or does courage enable us to look underneath our complaints and discover what our true emotions are?

For myself, I have to ponder these questions: What am I grieving? What have I lost? What do I fear? Underneath my whining and complaining (which I am very apt to do) I will find a gift, a treasure that is my very soul and spirit, and the emotions that abide there.

And as a bonus, I will have found a better way to live my “one wild and precious life.” **

* From A Network of Grateful Living

** From a poem by Mary Oliver. 

Brokenness, Change, Chronic illness, Discovering, Emotions, grief, healing, life, Loss, New Normal

On to a New “New Normal”

kathymfindley

7519DB43-1B31-43A9-9528-84655345CC44I’m getting to know myself. Again! Moving through life takes one through changes large and small. We slip past the small ones pretty much unscathed. But oh, those large ones! The large changes are another story altogether. Sometimes they cause us to miss a step or two. Sometimes they stop us right where we stand. Sometimes they throw us all the way to the ground. But they always get our attention.

Chronic illness is one of those ‘knock-you-to-the-ground” changes, especially when an illness happens suddenly. In a recent New York Times article, Tessa Miller shares how sudden illness changes one’s life and how chronic illness changes life forever. 

“Seven Thanksgiving ago, I got sick and I never got better,” Miller writes. She goes on to describe the conundrum of chronic illness. 

When I was diagnosed, I didn’t know how much my life would change. There’s no conversation about that foggy space between the common cold and terminal cancer, where illness won’t go away but won’t kill you, so none of us know what “chronic illness” means until we’re thrown into being sick forever.

I can identify with the changes Tessa Miller describes. The onset of my chronic illness five years ago was sudden, unexpected and permanent. My kidneys failed — simple as that. And I entered into the unfamiliar world of daily dialysis, a world I never expected to be in. And, yes, it was life-changing.

Tessa Miller makes another very insightful point. She explains how, once you find yourself in the fog of the changes you’re facing because of a chronic illness, one change presents the biggest challenge – the change in your relationship with yourself.

There is no debate: when chronic illness disturbs the equilibrium of your life, your relationship with yourself changes. You grieve a version of yourself that doesn’t exist anymore, and a future version that looks different than what you had ever imagined.

Chronic illness can shatter career goals and life plans. You learn learn a “new normal” in their place. But the acceptance of a “new normal” comes after the trauma. And trauma does happen, trauma that necessarily calls for therapy, either formal or informal.

Emotional work definitely needs to be done, and emotional work around chronic illness can look a lot like grief therapy for a passing loved one. You lose your self, at least temporarily. Your self changes.

So make sure to spend some time looking for YOU. Intentionally. Being open to whatever you find in yourself. Practice seeing yourself as the person you are instead of the person you were. Looking in the proverbial mirror gives you an image of the new version of yourself. Get to know her. Celebrate her resilience. Above all, be patient as you get to know her. You may be surprised at how much you like and admire her.

 

 

Change, Discovering, Illness, life, Loss, Pondering

Giving Primary Energy to Primary Things

kathymfindley
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Abstract energy formation

Yesterday was “one of those days.” I spent the day pondering my illness, the constant medical processes in my life, my sense of isolation and my losses. It seems I have failed in the work of giving primary energy to primary things. In fact, yesterday I gave up a great deal of energy obsessing on circumstances I cannot change. But there are circumstances in my life that I can change, and I made some promises to myself: 1) I will try to get out more;  2) I will work on dwelling on life’s positive aspects; and 3) I will focus on primary things and put secondary things on hold.

I received some unexpected help with Number 3 late last night. It was in the blog of Guy Sayles,* a friend I haven’t heard from in years. Stumbling across his thoughts was a serendipity for me. This is part of what he wrote.

I don’t want to reach the end, however soon or later I reach it, and have to admit that I’ve given primary energy to secondary things, toured the periphery rather than made a pilgrimage to the center, and complied with external demands instead of responding to the internal and eternal Voice. For the love of God—I mean it: for the love of God—it’s time to discover or rediscover what I most deeply believe to be true in response to questions like:

What keeps people from knowing, deep in their bones, that they are God’s beloved children? How can we help each other to know?

How can we trust that, because of God’s vast and self-giving love, there is “no condemnation” by God and “no separation” from God? What do communities enlivened by such trust look, sound and feel like? How can we fashion and sustain such communities?

How do grace and mercy heal our brokenness, even when they don’t cure our illnesses or end our pain?

How does love displace fear—in individuals; in families, tribes, and communities; and among nations?

What are the ways of life that place and keep us in harmony with the “grain of the universe”? How do we learn and encourage one another to honor them?

What does it mean—what could it mean?—that Jesus calls us his friends?

There are more. Questions like these shape my vocation now. I can’t number the times the Spirit used the poetry of Mary Oliver to call me back to my calling. It happened again last week. After she died, these words were everywhere:

“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

That has been my question for a very long time, for years in fact: What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I really must answer that one, knowing that what’s left of my life is much shorter than it used to be. It’s time — it’s past time — for me to give primary energy to primary things, and that’s not a bad idea for you either. For you see, we only get one wild and precious life — just one!

 

* I invite you to visit the blog written by Guy Sayles at this link: https://fromtheintersection.org/blog/