-Matthew 10:39 (the Message)
Saturday, 13 December 2008
My House (God's House?)
The house I am talking about is God’s house. It is a place where I have started to go when I need to talk with God on his own turf; when I need to see the world from his perspective. I don’t see the world the same way most of you do. That doesn’t make me better, in fact some days I think it is more of a curse. It just means I have to work very hard to see the world from your perspective. Sometimes, I need a change of pace.
The world that I live in is one that is very symbolic. Every attribute of something means something. When I am wearing polyester, I am usually feeling manmade (haven’t decided if that’s a bad thing yet). When I eat cookies, I am feeling at home, when I drink lemonade, I probably don’t like you. It has made interacting very difficult, but I am learning how to do it.
Back to my house...the house? God’s house. God has shown me one room of his house at a time. I don’t get a guided tour. I see the rooms as I need them. So far, he has shown me four. Why don’t I give you the guided tour of this house and maybe you will be as blessed by it as I am. Come in the door and turn around. This is the entry to the house. The door is huge but at the same time small. When size would intimidate me, it is just big enough for me to fit through. When I know and welcome that I am in the presence of greatness, it is big enough for a giant. It is handcrafted with love by my Father. He built this house for every one of his children to call home, but they’re only home when I’m okay with it.
The door is big and solid and creaks when you open it because of all the years it has been the gateway to this house. It has windows in it so I can still see the outside world but it is solid enough that that world can’t get through on those days when it hurts. You would expect the stone tile floor to be cold and harsh to the touch, but the huge shag rug welcomes me, even beckons me. There’s a huge closet in the entry and it has a whole lot of shoes in it. Some of them shoes I wore when I was a kid, some of them shoes my parents wore that I might try on someday. All of them are shoes that mean something to me. I haven’t figured out why yet, but there aren’t any coats or hats in the closet, just shoes and black marks where some have been kicked off in a mad rush to curl up with Dad.
The entry way takes you into the main part of the house. It is huge and open like some of those houses you see on Home Makeover, but the areas are separated just enough that when you can’t handle one room, you can take solace in another. We’ll start at the left and work our way around the same way I found them.
First we have the healing room. It’s kind of like a sunroom, but last time I checked, there are windows in sunrooms and they aren’t rough hewn and made out of stone. So I guess it’s not like a sunroom. Either way, it is the first room I found in the house. When I walk into the room, I am always astounded by how big and small the room seems at once. It is big enough that God in his giantness can be comfortable here, but small enough that one person trying to hide from the world can feel secure. The floors are made of huge stones, something like you would expect the dwarves of folklore to have carved but so large, they would have had to work with Giants to move them. The masonry was done by a master, someone who really knew what they were doing and had all the time in the world to make sure it was done right. When I’m sitting in here, I feel like it is a fortress where nothing that hurts can get through.
There is a massive fireplace on the far wall. It’s big enough that I could probably sit in it and spread my arms out and just touch the sides of it. There is always a fire crackling here. The pop and snap of the sparks is comforting, like the chaff that gets burned away in the refiner’s fire, but it’s not my chaff. The logs burn eternally. It never needs to be stoked. It just keeps going, and when I need to, I can come and warm my hands on the flames. When the world has been so cold that my soul is worn, I can have the permeating glow refresh me. I don’t even have to say anything when I come here. Dad knows when I’ve come and he comes and sits with me and pulls me into his lap and wraps his arms around me and lets me cry when I need to, sigh when I need to or whatever else my soul needs at the time to leave the world behind and come home.
When I am ready, and sometimes that’s sooner than I think, he takes my feeble hand in his and takes me over to the table. It’s a massive stone table, carved just as masterfully as the stones in the floor and the fireplace. The warmth of the fire keeps it from being cold to the touch so it is a warm and inviting place. There are two chairs at this table. One is a massive wooden chair with leather upholstering on the seat and back. The timbers that were used to make it were probably massive cherry trees and haven’t been cut down that much. It kind of looks like those chairs you see in the movies about medieval times that the Lord of the house sits in. You can imagine who gets to sit in this one. The other is less ornate. Just the right size for any of us human folk, it is for the guest of the healing. Anytime someone needs to come here so I can say something to them or give something to them or have them see me give something away, they get this chair. It’s a smaller version of the other with less carving and detail but still just as masterfully made.
I don’t usually sit down at this table. I like to spend as little time as possible here (I’ll tell you a little bit more about why later) and sitting down just makes you want to get comfortable and stay. I don’t rush the work we do here, but I don’t want to stay any longer than I have to. We tend to use the table because I can take my emotions and the hurts and relationships I have and we can put them on the table and look at them. I can choose to pick them up and touch them and explore them a little if that’s what I need, or I can pass them to someone else to have them look at it. Sometimes I give it to God because I am having trouble releasing it and he puts it somewhere where I can’t find it and sometimes I give it to my guest. Usually, that is only so I can see why they don’t need it and I can give it to God.
I learned here that my feelings have texture. Guilt and shame were compacted by years of ignoring them into a solid ball, kind of like a fishing weight, and it sucked the energy out of me the longer I held on to it. I put it on the table and tried to give it to the people who I held responsible for it and they already knew how much it hurt to touch it so they wouldn’t pick it up. I gave it over to God and he put it somewhere and I’ve never seen it since.
The goal of the healing room is not to spend my day wallowing in the past and the hurts. The goal is to be cleansed and freed of them so I can walk purely into the throne room. That is the next room. This is a place of Glory. I can come here with all of my baggage and when I’m not doing what God wants of me, but usually, He will ask me to come back to the healing room with Him if I try. He doesn’t demand it and I only go to the healing room when I’m ready, but he asks that I be clean before coming to the throne room. This is the room where I fulfill my purpose in creation: adoring my Lord and Saviour. I fall on my face and worship Him. The angels are here and I can see them singing, but I can’t hear them in the usual sense. They are singing but it is directed at God so it can only be heard by Him. I am blessed by it and my soul is encouraged to join in, but I can’t really hear it.
The floors here are made of marble tile; they are white with grey marbling. There are flecks of gold and silver in the tile as well. When you come into the room, the throne is to the left, the angels are straight in front of you and the cross is to the right. There are massive stone pillars on either side of the throne and there are other people here who have been through the healing room and have come to fulfill their purpose. They lay prostrate to the throne, worshipping the Lord of al creation. There are others here, bent at the foot of the cross. They haven’t found the healing room yet because they have just found the reason for all of this being here. As each one realizes the gift that was given to them, God puts a comforting hand on their shoulder and invites them to the healing room when they’re ready.
For me, I am here for the throne. I don’t throw myself down in prostration anymore like I did when I first found the throne room. I come in and I kneel. I try to keep both the throne and the cross in sight. It’s hard with them being on both ends of the room. I keep asking God to move them closer together, but he said he built it this way for a reason. I am okay with not knowing that reason and trusting that I am here to worship. I used to get an overwhelming adrenaline rush when I came to the throne room. I would look at how many people were here and how much room there was and say “Wow, I should bring a whole bunch of people here so they can see this too!” But now I know that it is not me that brings people to this room but God. People will see me go into this house and see the peace I go out into the world with and God will speak to their hearts and ask them if they want some too. That is how I will bring people into this throne room: by living each moment trying to retain the peace that I find in the healing room and the love that I feel in the throne room.
I mentioned earlier that I spend as little time as possible in the healing room. That is because, though it is wonderful when I am cleansed and freed of something, it is a means to an end. The things we are working on in the healing room are to make it easier to stay in the throne room. When I enter the healing room, I know good work is going on and I want to work through it quickly because I know I get to be in the throne room next and it will be so much better.
This brings me to the third room which I found last week. It is not so much of a room as the yard. There is a terrace in the northeast corner of the house which leads out to gardens that go on forever. The main thing here is what I call the Journey. All of us start out in life on a path. It may be one that is seemingly already laid where someone has walked it before and actually put a pathway down that looks like a bike path, or it may be a path full of briars where everywhere we turn, the nettles are poking us and the vines are cutting us. It could be a path that has not been laid out but has been made easier by the Father. This path looks more like a lawn that has been trimmed and manicured but goes off in the distance so far that you don’t know where it leads. Each of us starts out on one of these paths. They run side by side with a chain link fence between them. The fence is high enough that you can’t climb over it so the only way to go from one path to another is through the gates along the way. You can cross through as many times as you like and often times you don’t know which one you are going to. I have walked all of the paths at different times in my life. I tend to stay away from the briars now, but the pathway is on the left, the lawn is on the right and the briars are in the middle so when I want to cross from the path that is hewn to the place that is not, I have to go through the briars.
Now, you’re probably wondering why someone wouldn’t just stay on the path for their entire life. There’s something you should keep in mind here. The cement pathway may already be laid, but think back to the last time you walked on concrete? How long were you able to go before your knees hurt? Eventually your ankles and your hips would bother you too. The spine is never a happy camper with that. But what happens when you take your shoes off and walk on the grass (not the stuff that grows in hard clay. We’re talking soft ground with lots of peat)? The shock on your bones isn’t so bad. You can walk longer. The only problem with the grass is you have no idea where it goes or what path you will take to get there. Sometimes it will go forward, sometimes you will double back to relive an experience. You never know where you are going or how long it will take you to get there. The thing that I can never keep in the front of my head is that these paths all lead to the same place. At the end of our journey, we will all come to the throne room. The path meanders out the back way until it comes in the side door, straight into the throne room where we will stand in worship for all time with no need of the healing room or the garden. For some reason, I can never remember that when I’m getting frustrated with the path I’m on.
Last time I went to the house, we were working in the garden. I was struggling with the path I have taken. God wanted me to use the gate to cross over to the lawn, but Richard is on the concrete and I have been too so he was basically asking me to go through the briar to get there and be where I can’t see Richard anymore. I’m probably going to find out that Rich isn’t on the concrete path, that he’s really on the lawn, but we’ll see how that pans out. This one is taking a little bit longer than usual. By the time we finished working, God had changed gears. We were in a new room. We had gone back in the house and now we were in the kitchen. I’m still not sure what the significance of that is, but that’s where I am. The kitchen is in the center of the house. That’s why I said it’s like one of those home makeover houses, because the kitchen is in the center of the house and all of the rooms come off of the kitchen. When you want to go from the healing room to the throne room, you have to go through the kitchen. From the throne room to the garden, through the kitchen. I don’t usually notice the kitchen because the purpose is not to be in the kitchen. The purpose is to get to whatever room I need to be in to accomplish the task at hand. This time, we stopped in the kitchen. What God has told me so far is that he wants me to stay here for a while. I have always been about the room I am going to. I have always had to have a destination. He is asking me to live here, Right where I am, to enjoy this moment, these people and these circumstances. I spend my life planning for the future. I spend hours making spreadsheets and flow charts laying out how I am going to reach my goals and I never actually enjoy this moment, the beginning of those goals. He has brought me to the kitchen and asked me to do nothing. That is my act of worship at this moment.I hope my world makes just a little bit more sense to you now and I hope you can benefit from God’s house. It doesn’t make sense to everyone and it doesn’t help everyone, but maybe it will show you something more about yourself, God or possibly even me that will make your life a little bit easier to live and bring you that one step closer to God. I hope that someday I will see each and every one of you in God’s House, singing with the angels
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Moving on
Mama Bear and Baby Bear. Oh the moments I've missed. She's a beauty isn't she? And that was 5 years ago.
Friday, 14 November 2008
The Talk
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
The Movement of Life
Saturday, 25 October 2008
Surrender - a song
the altar calling from the canyon floor below
The still dark night has ended
and its a long way home
I hear a whisper on themorning wind
my Beloved calls and beckons me come
a voice so familiar it draws me nigh
but its so different I'm pensive to go
I give myself in sweet surrender
put my life in your hands
give my heart to your will
open my spirit to your sweet, sweet love
and surrender
more to come...
Thursday, 23 October 2008
Self Control
Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be sef-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."
Saturday, 18 October 2008
Recentering
Say prayer starts to dry up on your tongue. Sacred literature becomes fallen leaves, blows away. Meditation brings no serenity anymore. Devotion grows brittle, cracks. The God you bow down to no longer draws you.
Say you bow down anyway. You repeat your mantra along the line of your prayer beads, continue chanting the divine names, melodious. You reread the scriptures, go to mass. Why not? THe things of the world are no competition. You long ago lost interest in material gain, in social status, in interpersonal drama. This wretched limbo lasts for years.
Say each of the familiar spiritual rooms you go to seeking refuge are dark now, and empty. You sit down anyway. You take off your clothes at the door and enter naked. All agendas have fallen away. You grow so still in your nondoing that you forget for
a moment that you are or that maybe God is not. This quietude deepens in proportion to your surrender.
Say what's secretly going on is that the Beloved is loving you back. That your first glimpse of the Absolute was God's first great gift to you. That your years of revelation inside his many vessels was his second gift, wherein, like a mother, he was holding you, like a child, close to his breast, tenderly feeding you. And that this darkness of the soul you have come upon and cannot seem to come out of is his final and greatest gift to you.
Because it is only in this vast emptiness that he can enter, as your Beloved, and fill you. Where the darkness is nothing but unutterable radiance.
Say he knows you are ready to receive him and to be anihilated in love.
Can you say YES to that?
YES. I had forgotten. But now I want to find that path
again.
Thursday, 2 October 2008
that felt better
So I stood at the crossroads a week ago. God had given me the strength and discipline to stick to my diet and get outside of myself. I found myself confused again about how to maintain a balance between loving myself, loving my friends and loving God. ...
Ultimately, it comes down to one thing. Choosing to not come back to this crossroads. The left path goes around ina circle and always comes right back to where I am right now. This time I am choosing to go right. To the left is a rocky road. It starts out smooth and has me perfectly able to cope, but the road always gets rocky about the time my PMS sets in. I have a choice. The right hand path is a little rockier on the smooth parts, but it doesn't get as rough when I am PMSing. On the right hand path I am higher up on my list of people to take care of. If I don't take care of myself, I will never be able to take care of others. The right hand path doesn't come back to this crossroads. I goes to a turning point. No choices, just a path on which I am able to be confidant of myself no matter how close I am to that time of the month. So here we go...
To Michelle,
I am sorry. My awkwardness has led to an inability on my part to support you. I call you when I am lonely and write you when I want to be useful. You have been there through so much for me that I want to be there for you but I don't know how. I hope you will continue to let me love you. It is rare that I find someone in this world who has as high a priority on loving people as I do, but I found that in you. You want to love people the same way I do. With integrity, honesty and understanding. You challenge yourself when you think you may not be living up to your own expectations of yourself and I believe you want to see yourself through God's eyes. To see the beauty he sees and to understand why he saw the need to create you as you are. I wouldn't have you any other way and I don't know how to tell you that in the place you are in right now.
To Jen,
You found God. It hurt while you did it, but you found him. You came back with an unwavering understanding of what God wants from you. I have been pushing you away because I am jealous. I still get confused sometimes whether I am doing what God wants from me. Everything I do is hard and I don't know what the quick fix is. You changed so much that I need to get to know you again. I wish I was more important than family to you but I know that will never happen. Not with the family you have been raised in. I want to find a place in your life, to learn how to love you and to support you. You are my soul friend and I like that.
How do you say the things to people that society says we are not allowed to say? We are not allowed to say "I hurt" or I don't know how to handle this". We are to pretend we know what we're doing and hope it works and learn when those things don't work. I have always wished there was a person that would show me how to do things. So here I am. I have chosen the right path and turned the corner. THere is no turning back. I hope I still have my loved ones at the other end of this path.
Monday, 15 September 2008
Frustration
Friday, 8 August 2008
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Thanks mum
I like the color of my hair
Ive got a friend who loves me
Got a house, Ive got a car
Ive got a good mother
And her voice is what keeps me here
Feet on ground
Heart in hand
Facing forward
Be yourself
Ive never wanted anything
No ive, no ive, Ive never wanted anything
So bad...so bad
Sunday, 29 June 2008
An epiphany
"I just realized why I struggle with humility. I think all smart people do."
Friday, 20 June 2008
Maintenance
Friday, 6 June 2008
The Cure...ok so not so much, but some hope anyway
Monday, 2 June 2008
the Duldrums
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
The Beast
My "Little" Quest
Friend
God the Unchanging
Friday, 9 May 2008
Worship Again
Ze O, Ze O
through credit, through concerto,
through Sonata, through Prelude,
All my life is in you
I bring my voice with the angels
To worship at your feet
and you make your home
within my heart
so I live Ze O
It needs a lot of work, but it's not bad for a first try. I'm going to consult with the songwriting teacher at my old school and get his help with it as well. I'm really excited since this is the first time I've had the confidence to ignore the fact I've never written a song before. I mean, there's no time like the present to start right? And if I'm going to start a Christian band, I've got to have a repertoire, right. I need to be careful with this too though. Some of my friends may be overwhelmed with how quickly this change has happened so I need to ease them into it and be understanding when they cross the boundaries. I'll need to be firm with where my boundaries are, but people will learn as I go.
Heavenly Father,
I have a prayer in my heart. I pray that those I touch, would feel your love for them. I pray that those I have hurt would understand that I take responsibility for it and find it in their hearts to forgive me. I pray that you would show me how to live a life devoted to you without excluding people who don't know you. I pray that you would give me a place to worship every moment of every day.
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Worship again?
All who are thirsty
All who are weak
Come to the fountain
Dip your heart in the stream of life
Let the pain and the sorrow
Be washed away
In the waves of his mercy
As deep cries out to deep
(we sing)
Come Lord Jesus come
Something I have learned over the years is to trust the instincts God has given me. He has shown me that he is craving the intimate time we had together when I wanted nothing more than to be with him. Honestly, I have been missing them dearly. It's just so hard to maintain a balance and so easy to maintain the excuses. I have always believed that if something is truly important to you, you will make time for it. I lost my devotional bible though. It helped cause there's a lot of stuff in the bible. I never know where to start with devotional time. I'll have to see if I can find it today. On the other hand it was only $40 so I could probably replace it if I needed to. I haven't been living to chase God like I used to. I think I use the excuse that I don't want to be alone on that quest and I keep trying to get my husband to come with me, but I can't let that hold me back any more. I am missing out on the sweet consolations God has for me and that's nobody's fault but my own.
Sunday, 4 May 2008
What are you?
Aaaahh...
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Reality
1. I am stubborn as an ox. Some people would be frustrated by this, but I try to only use it to help people. Lately I have been using it to get other people to let me medicate, but I like to know that I have done everything in my power to help someone. I know that sometimes I cannot help, but I want to be the one my friends come to and go away saying "I really feel like she tried her best."
2. I am good. It feels good when I do things for other people. My favorite phrase is " you made my day". Goodness is hard to describe as it is something that has always come naturally to me. It means I have compassion for the wounded and the weak, kindness for the broken, patience for those who need it and love for anyone who wants it.
3. I am wise. Every time my instincts have said " this should be a certain way" it has turnd out to be true. I still jump into things too quickly and don't know how to get out of a situation my instincts are warning me about, but at least I know what the right thing to do is. I don't know how to live this one and not come across as pushy. It would be kind of awkward if I met someone and just started telling them they had to isten to me because I am wise, but this is not about how to get people to know things about me. It's about what I have to be proud of.
4. When faced with hard decisions, I don't choose what would benefit just me. I keep other people in mind. If me being satisfied is going to be a detriment to other people, I am willing to make a sacrifice to protect them. I am still learning how to make more decisions that protect me, but that will come.
5. I am not selfish. I wouldn't say I am selfless yet, but I may get there someday. I put others before myself. It used to be to my detriment but these days I tend to look out for me and give where I am able.
I wish I was able to put that I am honest on the list, but as of yet, I still struggle with the truth. Part of that is that I am not comfortable with the truth that is my life yet. It is disappointing. I wanted to be a huge star with a massive folowing by now. That was an unrealistic dream, but I still wish I could have achieved it. Honesty is something I have always struggled with. When I was a child, it was because the only time the truth really mattered was when it was going to get me in trouble. I was creative enough as a child that I could make up a new reality that was pretty believable. I almost had my parents convinced a couple of times...almost. Now I have been hiding from the truth for so long that I am afraid of it now. I wish I could face it, but what if it hurts? (I have just noticed that 2 words that are very interchangeable for me are hurt and disappointment. How to accept disappointment without hurting and how to set myself up for success I think are 2 huge things I will have to face)
My mom has been trying to teach me that it's not the destination that matters, but the journey to get there. The disappointments in life color our journey. Just because something doesn't turn out the way you expect doesn't make it a failure. It makes it an event. Something that happened that minutely or majorly changed the course of our journey. I got beat up when I was in Grade 10. I'm still not really sure why. This minutely changed my journey as it's the reason I ended up changing high schools. I had a baby when I was seventeen. This majorly changed the course of my journey as it started my quest to find the truth about God and be true to myself. I married a winderful man. This changed the course of my life, but I'm still finding out the impact it's had. The truth would be easier to take if I stopped thinking of it in good andbad, pain and joy, black and white, all or nothing. Instead if I were to see the truth that is my life as an event that is good for some, bad for others and for others just a blip on the radar it would be a lot easier to take.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Friend
Saturday, 19 April 2008
Landini Cadence
In a typical Medieval cadence, a major sixth musical interval is expanded to an octave by having each note move outwards one step. In Landini's version, an escape tone in the upper voice narrows the interval briefly to a perfect fifth before the octave.
So I heard a cadence coming in my life. The chords were progressing from the I to the IV to the ii. I knew the V and the I were next. I was quitting school and focusing on TELUS. Leading worship would not be a major part of my life anymore. Just as I had this figured out and I thought I knew what God was doing, he had other plans for me. He has just shown me that what I thought was a final, perfect, closing cadence, was actually more like Landini's version. I brief change which affected the texture of the music, the mindset I approached my craft with. I went to choir at Glenmore over a month ago and I thought it was going to be some epiphany type experience where God showed me that yes, this was the path I was supposed to be on. Instead, it was one of the most confusing and terrifying experiences of my life. Previous to joining Glenmore Temple, I was advised not to share the experiences I had at Pavillion as it may affect their first impression of me. One thing I know very well is that I'm not very good at keeping secrets. People could tell I was an experienced singer right away and encouraged me to take the leap to sing with them in front of the congregation the following Sunday. The leader made sure I knewthat would not be the case, but the fear crept in so quietly that I didn't even notice it until I had missed the next 3 weeks of choir. I felt so bad about it that I didn't feel right about talking to the choir leader, especially since she was on her 1 month of maternity leave having her 3rd child. The pastor and I have had some difficulty getting together so I couldn't share my experience with her. In a nut shell, I was terrified of even speaking to people in leadership because of how hurt and manipulated I felt by the last church I went to. I know that the people in this church aren't following selfish ambitions and I know they are not going to hurt me like the other ones did, but I think the thing that stopped me from getting back on my feet was that I was afraid I had disobeyed by not going back to choir. Nowhere did God say without question that I was to be in choir, but he did impress it on my heart that I was to try to get back into leadership eventually. What if I was due for another repentant conversion experience? I don't like them because their exhausting and I always feel like a worm at least for a moment during the experience. I love that God has forgiven me and I would hate to have another mark to look back on. God showed me that I'm okay. When I'm faced with my own possible disobedience, I am reminded of how much of a wretch I thought I was when I was a teenager and he showed me that that's not me anymore. I am no longer the prodigal. His grace isn't amazing because of how much of a wretch I am, his grace is so amazing because I have been restored. My voice is not heard among the scoffers anymore. Instead I sit with the angels crying Holy, holy, holy. God will restore me to my calling when I am ready. He needed to show me that not all church leaders can be trusted. Now he needs to show me that there are some church leaders that can be trusted. You'd think this would be an easier journey. At least I know that I am spending it at the foot of the throne instead of the foot of the cross.