Alone, Chronic illness, Community, Covid-19, Isolation, Loneliness, Worship

What Church Feels Like

February 11, 2022February 11, 2022 Revkathy

My Church ~ First Baptist Church of Christ, Macon, Georgia

Such a beautiful place to worship, isn’t it? To me, this image of my church is both beautiful and mournful. This image of my church sanctuary is a picture of what my church experience feels like these days. The image of an empty church brings several words to mind—empty, quiet, lonely, dark, worshipful, silent, desolate, disconsolate.

I cannot sit in these pews right now. My doctors say it is to risky for me because of my suppressed immune system following a kidney transplant. The social risks that others are able to take are not risks that I can take. Worship ideally happens in community and I am separated from my community. Isolated.

I feel sorrow about it. I miss my friends, my Sunday School class. I miss the sound of the organ and the voices of the choir. I feel very alone and isolated, a prisoner of Covid19. Even though I am an avid Zoomer watching our worship and even teaching my Sunday School class, it is not enough for my soul.

I admit that I dwell too much on the aloneness of it all, the feeling that I walk my journey without spiritual companions. I feel a deep need to worship in a sanctuary, a soul-need for me. I sometimes feel that I am simply watching the livestream of worship, not worshipping at all. I watch many churches and sermons just to make up for it.

I even fear that when it is safe enough to be back in public spaces, I will have decided that it’s just easier to stay home. Most of all, I find myself forgetting the highest and holiest remedy for aloneness—God’s promises to be with us always—recorded in so many passages of Scripture.

Fear not, for I am with you;
    be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
    I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. 
— Isaiah 41:10 ESV

Thanks be to God.
If you have a few minutes, spend them quietly as you watch this comforting video.

“You Do Not Walk Alone” traditional Irish blessing
Original music by Elaine Hagenberg

anxiety, Comfort, Community, Compassion, Emotions, Faith, Fear, God's presence, God’s promises, Grace, grief, healing, Irish Blessing, Isolation, Life Journeys, Soul

You Do Not Walk Alone

April 30, 2020 Revkathy

Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged,
for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.
— Joshua 1:9

Sometimes our reliance on Scripture fails us. We still believe. We still hold on tightly to our faith. We still delve into Biblical promises that we find throughout Scripture. Yet, the trappings of our faith seem to fail us. We feel alone, walking life’s journey alone.

In the past many weeks, several friends and former clients have shared with me intense feelings of being alone. Some of them are not physically alone, but others are. From every one of them, I hear the inner cries of aloneness. They have thought through what might be the source of their despondency and, without exception, all of them believe that the isolation of the coronavirus is causing their distressing feelings.

It’s not helpful, of course, to remind them that they do not walk alone. It does not help to assure them of my presence with them, even if separated by miles and circumstances. It does not help to tell them that they are surrounded by a community of faith. It does not help to tell them that their circle of friends will always walk with them in solidarity and comfort. It does not help to recite to them endless Bible promises that declare God’s abiding presence.

What they feel in their spirits supersedes any spoken assurance I could give, because aloneness is very real, very pervasive in the throes of this pandemic. It’s about many things: actual separation from friends and family; fear of contracting the virus; loss of normal routines of daily living; loss of employment; heavy responsibilities for aging parents; deeply held fears of the virus harming their children; pervasive uncertainty about the future. This list could continue for several lines of writing.

The isolation, the fear, the uncertainty — all of it is simply taking a significant toll on so many people. One effect is that sinking feeling of being alone.

One of my long-time friends said this to me last week as we chatted online: “Kathy, I am in this house with my family, so I should be grateful. But why do I feel so burdened, so despairing and, in the deepest recesses of myself, so completely alone?”

Of course, her words broke my heart. In years past when she was in crisis, I would simply go to her. Today I cannot do that. Even if we were not in this shelter-in-place situation, I could not go to her now. I am in Georgia and she is in the UK. Chatting online, talking by phone and Zooming will just have to do. That’s the best we can do.

Fortunately, I am learning a new pastoral care skill: how to be fully present with someone who is thousands of miles away. I am learning that compassionate care has no boundaries. I am learning that, if I am willing to enter into a soul-to-soul conversation with another person, we can be truly in one another’s presence. I think it’s a grace gift from God specially sent to us in these days of pandemic.

So if I can find my way into my friend’s person’s soul-space, in spite of miles of separation, she tells me that she does not walk alone anymore. And suddenly, by God’s grace, I do not walk alone either.

I must share with you a beautiful video I watched in our church’s virtual worship experience last Sunday. Please spend a few contemplative moments listening to the words from an old Irish blessing and watching the serene images. May it bring you peace and remind you that you do not walk alone.

Community, Contemplation, Freedom, Inner joy, peace, Uncategorized

The Path to Inner Peace, Joy and Freedom

March 10, 2020March 10, 2020 Revkathy

Peace, joy and freedom. All three are needed things, soul things that make us content. They are not easily gained, however, as the daily routine we call life attacks them on a regular basis.

How troubling it is to lose one’s sense of peace. A number of life situations can result in a loss of soul-peace — worry about illness, financial concerns, difficulty with children, caring for aging parents, moving to another home. It would be impossible to complete the list of things that can steal our sense of peace.

F96B5DE4-5888-46C4-8956-5E9B8C79538E Perhaps we should go one step further, though, and acknowledge that our loss is not merely the loss of peace, it is the loss of peacefulness. That loss can be disconcerting at best and devastating at worse. All of us long for a deep and abiding sense of peacefulness. We sometimes cry out “peace, peace, when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14)

Joy! At times, it can be hard for us to feel joy. I think it is because we’re not at all sure what joy hidden inside the soul feels like. For joy is not simply happiness over something that has come to us — a new house or car, a life milestone like graduation or a wedding, a celebration of the birth of a child. Such things seem to bring joy, but our actual response to such events is a brief burst of happiness. Genuine joy — soul joy — happens when something inside of us deeply responds to joy and we tuck it away safely in our hearts. And that kind of joy is not a brief response to a happy event, it is an abiding, spiritual state of being that comes with a grace-filled assurance that Christ came to make sure we live our lives ‘more abundantly.” The message from Jesus comes to us using various words:

I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.
(John 10:10, paraphrased)

I came to give life with joy and abundance.
(The VOICE translation)

I have come in order that you might have life—life in all its fullness.
(The Good News Bible)

Living “Life in all its fullness” seems to be the end result of abiding joy, in the soul and in the heart. Even when we listened to the song our children learned to sing, “I’ve got that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart,” we somehow knew that true joy was internal not external. That joy resided in our hearts and in our souls.

CCBEBC8B-56E7-44EF-A9D0-C73F395A35E6 Finally freedom — the kind of freedom we have when peace and joy is hidden in the deepest recesses of our being. Freedom does not leave those who practice gratefulness, prayer, meditation and confession. It is at the altar of confession that God offers us assurance of pardon. It’s the opposite of the soul’s bondage. I cannot help but recall the words of the Apostle Paul about the nature of Christian freedom that so boldly introduce the 5th chapter of Galatians:

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of bondage. (Galatians 5:1)

Frederick Buechner added a new dimension to our longing for peace, joy and freedom with this powerful thought:

Unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you,
there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me.

Therein lies the crux of living the Christian life: an interconnectedness among those who follow Christ, a community of faith in which each one supports the other. It is an interconnectedness that transcends differences of opinion, different ways of practicing faith, disagreements about which hymns are more appropriate in worship or, even more trivial, what kind of light bulbs should we use in the sanctuary.

Our interconnectedness ensures that each of us will have the will and the faithfulness to enjoy the kind of peace, joy and freedom that abides in us when we “do not forsake the assembling of ourselves together and when we exhort and encourage one another. The Message translation by Eugene Peterson calls it “spurring each other on.” (Hebrews 10:25)

Perhaps caring for one another — exhorting, encouraging and “spurring each other on” — is the message of this beloved hymn that so often informs our worship and our community when we sing it together:

Brother, sister, let me serve you;
Let me be as Christ to you;
Pray that I might have the grace to
Let you be my servant, too.

We are pilgrims on a journey;
We are family on the road;
We are here to help each other
Walk the miles and bear the load.

I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the nighttime of your fear;
I will hold my hand out to you,
Speak the peace you long to hear.

I will weep when you are weeping;
When you laugh I’ll laugh with you;
I will share your joys and sorrows
Till we’ve seen this journey through.

When we sing to God in Heaven
We shall find such harmony,
Born of all we’ve known together
Of Christ’s love and agony.

— THE SERVANT SONG, Words and music by Richard Gillard

In our deepest time of prayer and contemplation and in the sacred refuge of our community of faith, our souls find peace, joy and freedom — for all of us, for each of us.

May God make it so. Amen.

Change, Church, Comfort, Community, Covenant, Faith, Family, Friends, healing, Inspiration, Kidney Transplant, Loneliness, Loss, Music, Relationship, Rest, Rootedness

Nearer, Still Nearer

November 28, 2019January 8, 2020 Revkathy

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Transplant Day Seventeen
November 28, 2019

Sometimes an old hymn — a hymn the contemporary church has discarded from its worship — can eloquently speak to the heart. There are many hymns I call hymns of the heart because they touch me so deeply. In these days of recovery when I find myself away from home and separated from friends and family, a particular old hymn comforts me. One line specifically inspires and moves me — “Shelter me safe in that haven of rest.”

The hymn, “Nearer, Still Nearer” was written by Lelia N. Morris and published in 1898. Here are two stanzas of the hymn text.

Nearer, still nearer, close to Thy heart,
Draw me, my Savior — so precious Thou art!
Fold me, oh, fold me close to Thy breast;
Shelter me safe in that haven of rest;
Shelter me safe in that haven of rest.

Nearer, still nearer, while life shall last,
Till safe in glory my anchor is cast;
Through endless ages ever to be
Nearer, my Savior, still nearer to Thee;
Nearer, my Savior, still nearer to Thee!

Finding myself away from my communities of support, I feel the separation acutely. I feel the loneliness of “apart” time. I feel a breach of relationship and the loss of my covenant community. I know it is necessary to be near Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida for this month so that the transplant team can closely monitor my care. But I miss my home and my faith community and my friends and family, and even my stray cat. I feel isolated at a time when I most need their support and encouragement. And although I strongly feel their prayers from afar, the “afar” part is not so great. I feel vulnerable and I need to feel nearer to my people.

So this hymn that expresses nearness to God is for me a timely expression of my faith and a picture of my current reality. In your contemplative time today, may you be inspired by listening to this beautiful hymn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCF2D98szaU

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“Nearer, Still Nearer”
Lelia N. Morris, pub.1898
Copyright status is Public Domain