New Joy Springs

joy in new resurrection

2010-04-06T13:09:00.003-04:00

Not surprisingly, inspiration and desire to write for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com came this Easter weekend, and I wrote some of what was in my heart and mind. Belinda was delighted to receive something from me again, so here it is, posted today, the day after I wrote it:

Resurrection, Revisitation and the Big Picture

A post by Meg

We are in Eastertide, living freshly with the remembrance of our status as an Easter people, people redeemed by the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, people who live in His resurrection power if we have surrendered our lives to Him, accepted His redemption, and His lordship of our lives.

As we revisit and re-member these timeless truths in extra special ways for a few days each year, we are reminded once again of who we truly are. My daily readings at this time are in Deuteronomy, full of God's reminders to His people of all that He had done for them, and of the power and promise of living in that remembrance, and the consequences of not doing so. It seems that all of Scripture does that...calling us to be our true selves, to live in the light of our destiny, to remember that we are part of God's Big Picture, and that the small details of our everyday lives are also part of the big picture of our whole lives.

God gives us other ways to re-member Him and ourselves and our lives, through revisitation, and of course resurrection of much that has hurt us or died in our lives and our hopes and dreams. Always being true to His promise to make things new, we find Him busy restoring, renewing and refreshing us and others, even as we, in our human tendency to doubt His faithfulness, expect things to not go well or to not work out. Of course there are many situations that cannot be changed, but somehow God can restore what He was trying to do with us in them, and bring us to a fresh realization of His presence with us at that time and His ongoing commitment to work with us, our choices, and the decisions of others.

I have never forgotten the quote by an unknown author: "Our lives are shaped by those who love us, by those who refuse to love us." We can lament the latter truth, and rejoice in the former. It seems a timeless truth, but far above and beyond it is the timeless truth of God's abiding, faithful, intervening love for us, which shapes and moulds us, and leads us forth, through all our trials, into eternity with Him.

This Easter marks the fulfillment of plans we are making to revisit some scenes of hurt for me in my earlier adult life, alongside reconnecting with friends and enjoying a special tour to places unseen. For me it is extra special because the trip is across the ocean and back across several decades in time. As we planned the trip, I felt the Lord nudging me to make it a pilgrimage of revisitation, so that He could show me His resurrecting power. I have felt His guiding hand in the details, and have grown in joy as I see the results in my spirit.

In this process He has also resurrected the song I wrote about on July 23rd, 2008. It is also what I have chosen to sing as a solo at a special upcoming service. With the choosing and the singing come the remembrance of the occasion of hurt in which God spoke to me through the words of the song, reminding me of His call on my life, His commitment to the fulfillment of His purposes in my life as I would journey onward from that place and time, looking forward and not backward, not worrying about what others would think of me, but rather rejoicing in my place in Him.

I believe this song is for all of us who live and abide in Him. It is a song about the call of Jeremiah. We are called to a prophetic role in relation to this world, and we all feel so unable to fulfill it, so dependent on His strength and power. And that is how it will always be. Let us this Eastertide celebrate these truths in all our lives:

Oh the Word of My Lord (Song for a Young Prophet)

Chorus:
Oh the word of my Lord,
Deep within my being,
Oh the word of my Lord,
You have filled my mind.

Verse 1
Before I formed you in the womb
I knew you through and through
I chose you to be mine
Before you left your mother's side
I called to you my child
To be my sign

Verse 2
I know that you are very young
But I will make you strong
I'll fill you with My word
And you will travel through the land
Fulfilling My command
Which you have heard

Verse 3
And ev'rywhere you are to go
My hand will follow you
You will not be alone
In all the danger that you fear
You'll find Me very near
Your words My own

Verse 4
With all My strength
You will be filled
You will destroy and build
For that is My design
You will create and overthrow
Reap harvests I will sow
Your word is Mine

CCLI Song #740510
© 1978 Kevin Mayhew Ltd
Damian Lundy

joy in more kindergarten lessons

2010-01-28T08:28:00.003-05:00

In my January basement cleaning I discovered a personal lesson to share, through listening to a radio program. It was short and simple and worth sharing. I offered it for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com, and Belinda put it on the Wednesday slot, about walking with Him. I was honoured. After not writing something for their blog for so long, I hit the spot that suited me for this time! Here it is:

Getting the Stories Straight, Caring About the Details

by Meg

I listen to an interview on CBC radio as I clear the basement room and clean the floor. The producer of Slumdog Millionaire gives the real story about how the child actors from India were treated by their company. It sounds more than fair: wise, careful, insightful, culturally relevant, generous. I am convicted. I remember joining the chorus of critics and mentioning my concerns on a blog post last year the week after I,among millions, was very touched by this movie. Like so many people I assumed that the "information" I read was true...that there was unfair treatment, etc. The producer stated that their well thought out plans for present and future provision for these actors were all made before there was public outcry and inquiry into their welfare,before the movie won lots of oscars and made tons of money.

I thought of how many times I have been wounded by people not getting the story straight about me, to the point that I have learned to stop caring a lot of the time, or just to assume that it will happen that way. I recall our experience in Africa - being slandered and misunderstood, charged with false motivation and self- interest. Then I put it down to culture clash, jealousy, spiritual warfare. But it's often hard for me to remember how easy it is to do, how prone we all are to latching on to an impression, some hearsay, and then running with it. How often do we have the passion to get the whole story? How often in my life as a missionary was I guilty of a "smaller" version of the sins that were visited against us?

I ponder my future plans: to sit with others to hear their untold or mistold stories; to be the safe person who allows the unexpressed to be spoken, the trauma to be revealed, the hurt to be healed.

Jesus says that it is being faithful in little that counts. If we can't do it there, we can't be trusted with the big stuff.

I turn back to my floor clearing, picking up the little bits of stuff that could get in someone's shoe, finding missing pieces for some treasure yet to be discovered in the boxes still needing sorting. I am more than ever thankful for this humble, hidden task, and opportunity to pray, to ponder, to listen to the world talking on the radio.

In these later years of my life I am learning more kindergarten lessons. I expect it will continue til the day I die.

joy in outrageous grace

2009-12-24T14:14:00.003-05:00

Another reason to write an occasional post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com came this Christmas season, so on December 22nd I was posted again....what it says about how I am feeling is self-explanatory. Here it is:

Outrageous Grace

by Meg

I stood in the still cluttered kitchen, holding the sparkler. I said to myself, I am standing here holding and watching this sparkler because it is reminding me to be in the moment, to celebrate God's unexpected gifts of joy in the midst of sadness and dullness. And I am doing this because these sparklers ended up here in my kitchen because of my daughters, my lovely daughters who are far away for Christmas on the other side of the world. I am cleaning my kitchen for the church choir party, and, in the midst of this chosen drudgery, I am celebrating all that life has given me.

I had lit the sparkler thinking it was a joss stick that the girls had put on that shelf, and I thought I would check its scent and see if it would add to the Christmas atmosphere I was creating for the party. Everything was deliberate and planned, necessitated by organizing it by myself, after years of spontaneous Christmas happenings energized by twenty years of family milling around, pulling me into the moment. Now the unexpected sparkler pulled me into a moment of reflection, wonder and celebration again. Outrageous in a way, to my Martha style preparations.

Isn't that just like God?, I thought again to myself. We are caught up in the daily grind, the tasks, big or small, that fill our days. We are also caught up in the troubles of others, and our own. They weigh us down, and the feelings around them add on tons. We look for alleviation, for special grace to pull us into a new space of joy. I had depended on that for many years, I realized a few weeks ago. Now this Christmas I would recognize more by absence than presence of chosen vessels of grace, beautiful creatures from my own womb, for whom I had chosen to make a dream that wouldn't include me. Ah yes, that choice sparkles in my heart again. Yes, that gives me joy, that freely made choice, that freely given gift.

I check my emails, finding out more news about others' trials and joys. More untimely deaths and illnesses. I phone my friend who struggles with depression and share words of hope and encouragement. I pray through my list, mindful that the number of those with cancer has increased. I sit with a neighbour during her chemo treatment, finding appropriate topics of conversation, reflecting on the apparent smallness of my trial compared with hers. We go to a Christmas party with lots of dancing. The best dancer and most beautifully dressed person is another friend who is still not sure of the status of her own body after two surgeries and multiple treatments for cancer. It was only seven months ago that I was praying for her, thinking she was dying. Here she is glittering and wigged, the life of the party, delighting her husband and family and friends.

The choir director phones me to thank me for giving them such a wonderful time. Our 100 year old always-in-the-family piano had thrilled to an excellent touch the night before as our choir brought our joy and skill into renditions sublime and ridiculous of Christmas music. Outrageous gifts of joy in the midst of a town submerged under snow only the week before, the party cancelled first time around. Now, delay had brought more joy, more celebration.

The words of a much loved song came to mind:

There's a lot of pain,
But a lot more healing;
There's a lot of trouble,
But a lot more peace.
There's a lot of hate,
But a lot more loving;
There's a lot of sin,
But a lot more grace.

Oh Outrageous Grace!
Oh Outrageous Grace!
Love unfurled by Heaven's hand
Oh Outrageous Grace!
Oh Outrageous Grace!
Through my Jesus I can stand.

There's a lot of fear,
But a lot more freedom;
There's a lot of darkness,
But a lot more light.
There's a lot of cloud,
But a lot more vision;
There's a lot of perishing,
But a lot more Life!

(Chorus)

There's an enemy
That seeks to kill what it can't control.
It twists and turns
Making mountains out of molehills.
But I will call on the Lord
Who is worthy of praise;
I run to Him and I am saved! ..by..

(Chorus)
Godfrey Birtill
Copyright 2000
Thankyou Music/PRS

joy in new things to say, a new focus

2009-11-26T19:23:00.003-05:00

Hey - I felt inspired to write from time to time again for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com....so this is what came out...had to be genuine, and didn't want a me focus unless it was really gritty...not too chatty...yet this seems a little heavy...what comes next time may be lighter...I'm not real heavy these days..there's a sort of evening process going on...a settling...but I have an ever deepening focus on my sweet Lord and what He wants to say to me...so that is what I want to share, when I feel right about it...here it is, for now:

Me Too

The words jump off the page. But, hey, I've read this passage countless times. Why now? Why me? Am I all that bad?

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brother, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. James 3: 9 - 12

The memory comes that in the past I have always told myself upon reading this that it doesn't apply to me, that I am not one of those people who curses others, one of those bad people. Or at least that I'm not ALL bad.

But today, with my heart open to God in fresh ways, I stop, and listen, unafraid and ready to hear. Somehow I know I can face this in myself, at last, and in the moment of confession, find forgiveness. I trust my heavenly Father enough to know He loves me so much, and He just wants to do more refining. I instinctively feel that He is saying to look beyond the hyperbole that Jesus so frequently used, the exaggeration, and to see that even if my "tree" or "spring" is not all bad because of the bad that I do, that He needs me to see the destructive effect of what I sometimes do, and the potential for it to become much worse.

Yes, He knows I really mean it when I praise Him, when I lead in our worship team and belt out the songs I love. He knows I really do trust Him and seek to honour Him in my life and choices. He takes me seriously, and He knows I take Him that way too. But because He is my father, and He wants to bring me closer, move me further, grow me up even more, He has to touch that spot, and today He's done it and I didn't say ouch.

So I reflect, how do I curse? What have I done that merits that description? Ah, it is my critical spirit, that lurks behind my thoughts and comments. I don't always say things out loud now. But in the past I did. I often had to qualify praise for others, bring them down in some way in the eyes of others. Maybe it was only to close friends. But the bent was still there.

I remember that weird dream a few months ago. I was shown a funny little man, almost like a mischievous leprechaun, with an orange turtleneck shirt and funny brown tights, a jaunty cap, a jutting chin and a sharp nose. "His name is Legalism", the voice in the dream said. This was in the context of all of us in the dream being shown the evil parts of ourselves.

Again, I had been struck with the word. I am not one to think of myself as legalistic. Heaven forbid!!! I'm all out for a generous way of relating to God, while obeying His requirements, but not holding people's toes to the fire about rules and appearances. But again, I was open to see what God was saying. Again I had identified my critical spirit as the culprit.

Okay, so it runs in the family. I come by it honestly. In fact, that was the major thing I found fault with in my mother!!! How typical. My critical spirit was critical of her critical spirit. And I listened to her tongue qualify the faults of others, while to the world she presented that wonderful sweet spirit. Hmm...something hit home again.

Thank you, Lord, for Your gracious lesson again. Thanks for letting me find it in Your Word, and not have it come through the rebuke of friend or foe. Thanks for making me ready to hear and see, and ready to change. Help me, Lord, to leave the judgments of others to You, and just be the one to praise and bless.

joy in moving on, in changing pace and letting go

2009-10-24T10:02:00.002-04:00

Unexpectedly I have come to the end of this blog writing for now. I will write one when I have a website for my life coaching, but the story I share here for the blog www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com tells how I felt sure it was time to stop and give myself more brain space and time for my studies and future business. It is an education to me even in the way God led me to this decision. But I feel confident about it, and ready to let go. When I have my new blog on my new website, I will post a link to it here. Other than that, as far as I know, I won't be writing anymore on this blog. It has been a good season, and although there have been few comments on this site, those on the other blog have enriched my life and encouraged my writing immensely. Now I need to write more specifically for a life coaching audience, and for my studies. I am somehow tired of being more random about my writing....so it is good to move on, and keep growing into new challenges. Here's the story:

Change of Season - Change of Pace

by Meg

I returned to Ontario to the signs of late fall and approaching winter. I got my snow tires put on and speculated about the days to come. I don't mind the rain, and the cozy feeling inside the house. It is home. All the time we were away in British Columbia I dreamed of home, our house by the river, our quieter pace. The hustle and bustle of so many places out there was a lot to contend with; I noticed how much it affected our friends. There were precious quiet moments - a walk on the beach, or by a rushing stream with salmon leaping and spawning. And most of our friends have quiet hearts in the midst of hectic lives. As I have, or seek to have.

Yet the addictive tendency to busyness is inside of me despite my quiet home and town. My whirling brain often doesn't allow me to settle at night. My plans for the future collide with each other as each day's demands compete. Reality checks come in various ways.

Such was what happened last week when I wasn't able to post on Saturday. I had been praying about whether or not I should continue to write my posts. Not because I don't love writing. And not because they take a lot of time to write. But they occupy brain space during the week: mulling over what would be relevant to say, wondering about what is really appropriate to share from my own life's experiences, past and present. By the time Friday evening came I had been planning to write and knew basically what I wanted to say. I had had internet access all week at moments in the places we were staying. Friday night's venue had been fine for that before. Then I discovered Thursday night that there was a new password for it. I got that Friday morning and got on fine - I fully expected to be able to get on later when we came home tired from our long day of driving and visiting.

For several hours I battled the system gaining an inch and losing it again, slipping in and out of access to the browser but never getting into this site. What was God saying? Eventually I had to let go, let the dreaded thing happen - I would not be able to fulfill my commitment to a Saturday morning post. By the time I got access in a restaurant mid morning B.C. time on Saturday Belinda had already posted on my behalf.

My reflection upon it all reached the conclusion that I really need that bit of brain space for my main focus. That I need to give up this opportunity to have more available energy and thought for the major plans God is calling me to. I realized, sadly, that it is time to say goodbye for now.

I told Belinda that when my life coaching business website is up and running, sometime in the new year, that I will have a blog on that, an opportunity to reflect in a way that has a devotional flavour and yet fits with the world of Christian life coaching, that world of purpose and passion, focus and faith. I asked if I might have a link to that blog on this site and she said that would be great.

A few days after that decision I saw the leaping, spawning, dying salmon. It was an amazing sight, so unexpected on that last day of our busy "holiday". I have pondered upon it as another sign...these salmon live out their life cycle and make some final courageous leaps upstream before they spawn their eggs and then die. It is as if my decision not to write these posts anymore is like those dying salmon...I have been swimming upstream for a long time, I have made some major leaps to bring about a new phase of my life, I have already deposited my spawn, sown my seeds, laid my eggs for this new season of my life. But if I am to go forward into it, I need to let that old part of me die, as the new part is being prepared for birth, in a new form.

So here I am. I am moving into a new season, changing my pace. I am letting go and moving on. It is bittersweet. This has been a precious time in my life. Writing these posts has been healing and strengthening. Getting feedback on how they have touched others has been affirming and deeply encouraging. But that is not enough to keep me in this "space". I have to embrace new things and to do that I have to let go of some former things. Thank you, dear readers, for sharing this space with me - for reading and commenting, for inviting me into your lives through your time and focus. May the Lord continue to bless us all as we trust Him for future days and ways. Bye for now.

joy in new food for thought and pilgrimage

2009-10-10T00:01:00.001-04:00

When this is published I will be having Thanksgiving weekend with relatives on their farm and enjoying one of their own turkeys for the special meal...how appropriate. But I wrote the blog post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com a few days before, when we were at a camp we knew long ago. I have to get my secure wireless connections when I can...and I appreciate that learning for my journey too, that planning ahead and preparing for the future, while resting in the day...

Here it is:

Food for Thought and Pilgrimage

I knew this trip would be a pilgrimage...not just a visit with my daughter, old friends and a few relatives, seeing old and new places. I knew there would be lots of opportunities for reflection on life, ministry, calling, past, present and future. And there would be lots of food.. at chain restaurants in the middle of big cities,at Irish pubs with singers, at a bistro with a roaring fire in a rainstorm, in the modest homes of friends on missionary support, or in more elaborate homes with hillside or oceanfront views owned by friends very blessed financially. Each of them living out their Christian lives with many blessings and many trials, each of them with their own reflections on ministry, service, vocation, God's leadings, each of them with their own stories of moving around from one place to another or staying put for many many years.

Take today for instance. We are experiencing gorgeous early fall weather on an island off Vancouver Island, the sun blazing in the window as I write in the home of the camp cooks at a wonderful Christian camp which has flourished for more than fifty years. My husband built their first rowboats in his first summer in Canada in the 50's. The founders of the camp still live here in their 90's, setting up the camp after spending years living in a boat called the GoForth and journeying up and down the B.C. Coast spreading the gospel. They have spent their lives on this coast and in this camp. We had lunch with other camp staff who have been planted here for many many years also, never, as the husband said, having been told by God to go elsewhere. Our hosts, on the other hand, have moved every few years, blessing various ministries with their cooking expertise. Their daughter came out with us to Uganda in her mid teens to help us homeschool our daughters, and had what she called a "pivotal" time with us there.

This morning we meandered our way to the wharf and considered taking a rowboat out on the very breezy water, and thought better of it. Then the sailing director came down to prepare the four Catalinas for the campers who had just arrived. We had a lovely chat with him instead, hearing how God opened the doors for him and his wife to leave their ministry as worship leaders and pastors in a church where they were burning out. We reflected on balance in ministry, self care, and being led of the Spirit into ways of service where we can work with teams and not wear ourselves out doing too much.

I reflect on the motel room excellent wireless connection the Lord provided for me two days ago to take my Life Coaching online exam, which I had been too busy to finish studying for before we left on this trip. I muse about His constant provision and protection over me and all His children, and yet I long to be able to get on with new work and ministry and not keep having so many lessons of trust and patience to learn. I champ at the bit to know how the future will look, how I will combine my coaching with my counselling studies, and my dreams of ministry and creative ventures. It might seem I am still the driven person I have often been.

I go now, however, to read a novel on the porch in the sun, to bless God for His constant faithfulness to me again and again, and to put my trust in His timing and leading for yet another day, another journey, another phase of life. I look forward to Thanksgiving with our only B.C. family on their turkey farm and another look at life through the eyes of others. There are many reality tests on this trip, and all of them call me to reflect, to observe, to share and to trust, to forgive myself and others, and to move ahead in trust. This is my daily bread today, my food for thought and pilgimage.

joy in points of connection

2009-10-03T18:27:00.002-04:00

I am sitting right now in my daughter's room in her apartment style residence in B.C. It is a beautiful fall day...we have just come across on the ferry from the mainland...it's surreal to see my daughter in her new space, her new home, her new life...it's a very good life, with God's leading all the way, His protection and His provision. But it's weird for me all the same...Empty nest syndrome I guess...letting go. I've been so blase about it all...now the reality is hitting me. But it's great to be here, and she is the biggest connection for us out here...long may it last...our connecting across the miles, as with so many friends whom I'm meeting and writing about in my post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com today:

Points of Connection

Connecting has been the order of the days on this 27 day trip in B.C.. Before we left we had lined up lots of connections - lunch and dinner arrangements, places to stay, people to see, all to reconnect with the people we knew in days gone by. Now, a week into our trip, I am reflecting upon the underlying themes of this journey, this kind of pilgrimage. God always has so much to teach us as we connect, because it's really all about connecting more deeply with ourselves and with Him, as well as with others.

Indeed that is what it's been - the physical ways of connecting and making arrangements have just been metaphors for connecting in other ways. Conversations for me have focused in on the deepest level - how are these friends growing older? What is most important to them now? What visions inform their lives? How do they interact with those that inspire mine? How do they live out their Christian faith in context of various churches and denominations?

A common theme has been, not unexpectedly, that these friends, like we, are often dissatisfied with many versions of Christian fellowship. They, like we, will not settle for "rules" that seem superfluous or even alien to true Christian realities - levels of church politics, status or elitism. Not surprisingly these are continuing versions of what connected us in the first place. And of course the ones who have remained friends, or have become better friends now, are those who share a certain distaste for anything phony, legalistic or pretentious.

Most of all what unites us is a delight in each others' company, a warmth of acceptance and sharing of our humanity. For me this is a special delight, not only with these friends but with my daughter who is the biggest reason for this whole trip.

Each day has brought more depth and points of connection. Today we spent with a friend and her husband, a friend with whom I shared deeply over the years over a decade ago. It was as if the years had rolled away and we were back at her table affirming each other and bringing our gifts of discernment to bear on each others' lives. Only this time it was even better. All that has happened to each of us has only deepened our friendship, left on the shelf for years.

How could I expect anything else from my precious friend, and my precious Father? He is the author of these relationships, the keeper of our lives, the planner of the future. We walk in His grace and favour, and He, on our journeys, makes the points of connection.

joy in celebrating God's goodness to me

2009-09-26T00:01:00.001-04:00

When you read this I will be in British Columbia, on the third day into our nostalgic trip, and our visit with our daughter newly settled out there. As I prepared the post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com ahead of time, the theme that emerged is one that has been springing up more and more from within me these last few weeks. I found it came out so smoothly with this song attached to it, as its true voice of what I feel so truly and deeply at this time in my life. Here is the post:

Lord, You've Been Good to Me

My mind whirls as I remember the way this trip came to be. It was born as a simple dream to see our daughter settled into her new home in the province of her birth, British Columbia. A dream to spend Thanksgiving with her so she can bear our Christmas love to her sibling, our other precious child, far across the ocean in New Zealand. But God had much more to the dream than even I could plan - a gathering in and celebration of our life from before Uganda, a first holiday for me, a first flight for me, a first reconnection for me, for almost ten years. Each detail has come to fruition almost as soon as it was conceived. Every person we have contacted to see has been able and eager to see us. Our itinerary reads like a bus tour with each day carefully and delightfully planned. The only difference is that we are the bus drivers, in our rented Honda Civic. My conclusion: this trip is totally a God-thing.

So, with delight I prepared the final details of packing. By the time you read this we will be two days into our visits, already seasoned travellers again, picking up on expertise born of routine travels as missionaries for almost a decade, a decade ago. My heart will be even more overflowing with gratitude for God's faithfulness and graciousness to us and me through all our lives. I look forward to sharing stories of our visits with many old friends, and opportunities to remember special moments of the early days of our children's lives. I have no doubt that they will shine with the luminiscence of God's overshadowing mercy and protection and provision.

There seems no other song more fitting to share with you at this time, one that we have sung recently in our worship times at church, and one that has run through my mind, and out my mouth many many times in these weeks: Graham Kendrick's "Lord, You've Been Good to Me". I have been able to find a section of it on You Tube performed by Graham and his band, but I wouldn't want you to miss out on all the words. Here are both, to bless you as they bless me:

Lord you've been good to me
All my life, all my life
Your loving kindness never fails
I will remember
All you have done
Bring from my heart
Thanksgiving songs

New every morning is your love
Filled with compassion from above
Grace and forgiveness full and free
Lord you've been good to me

So may each breath I take
Be for you Lord, only you
Giving you back the life I owe
Love so amazing
Mercy so free
Lord you've been good
So good to me

Copyright © 2001 Graham Kendrick
Administered by Make Way Music,
www.grahamkendrick.co.uk

joy in loving the land

2009-09-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

Today I am at a seminary retreat in a lovely setting. I wrote this post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com as a follow up to last week's. It has been healing for me to write them, and to see what I end up saying.

Loving the Land

by Meg

Last Saturday I reflected upon the impact of selling our family cottage. I spoke of the liberation from the weight of memories, of the heaviness of family system "rules", however unspoken, and the connection of those with a physical place, the family cottage that had been part of my life from its beginning. Writing that story was liberating, and in doing so I was reminded again of the importance also of celebrating all that was wonderful and good in that place and those memories. I said I would share what I had written in the summer of 2008, when selling the cottage was not really in our thinking. I reread these words and they bring alive again what I truly feel. I am grateful to have them to share now, in this season of letting go of the physical symbol of that part of my family heritage. ......

I lay this morning on the cottage living room floor on the mattress from the uncomfortable sofa bed moved up from my mother's apartment last year when her cancer got the better of her interesting life in Windsor. I mused upon the cedar beams and the pine boards of the cathedral ceiling Dad and she envisioned and built in 1969.

I recalled the many evenings of square dancing and sparkling fires, slide shows and card games, with several generations present. Almost forty years later I celebrate the way my parents put their vision into a building, now labelled a knockdown cottage. I mused also upon the recognition in my spirit that these parents, so different from me in so many ways, like me needed a vision to keep them going. Like we all do. They needed to create a world that represented their love of nature, their desire for company and fellowship, their appreciation of simplicity and beauty. The openness of the big windows on three sides, and the huge totally screened porch spelled out their desire for connection with the land and world of Muskoka. Lying in the lovely early morning sunshine on Canada Day, 2008, I celebrated these dear Canadians, my parents, Dorothy and Cyril, in this year of my mother's death a few months ago, almost 95, twenty years after my father's death, and I remembered their vision and the heritage they have given me, in this cottage, and in my life, as I set aside the stories of tension and misunderstanding I also carried within my being. I rejoiced, and found new joysprings in these stories in the beams above me, in the windows around me, in the trees and lake that beckoned to me, that they and I loved together for all those years. This is a deep part of my Canadian heritage, these parents who in their own way were Canadian pioneers and settlers, like so many people I know and love in this part of Canada that has now become my permanent home...Muskoka, land of those who love the land.

My understanding of God is that he has put us here to love the land, as well as to love people. He doesn't want us to love it more than we love Him,or people, but I do believe He has so much to teach us through His creation, and through the simplicity and richness of living life in deep connection with the land. Just as loving people teaches us so much about Him, and certainly about the nature of love, so loving the land has innumerable lessons. Perhaps our family cottage was the first place where I really learned to love the soil beneath my feet, the stones glistening under the water, the loons calling at night, the sunset saying "Good night", the sunrise saying "Good morning". I have relearned these love lessons again and again, as I have been privileged to live for short or longer times in northern Alberta,Scotland, Jamaica, British Columbia and Uganda, and to visit England,Wales,Israel, Egypt, the beautiful maritime provinces and to drive west through the Rockies. I live them here each day, in my home on the river in a Muskoka town. God calls me through every leaf and breeze, as through each person I meet. My prayer now is that I will always remember to hear His voice through each new encounter with land and person, and through the heritage of memory of family and land shared with them.

joy in liberation from the weight of memory

2009-09-12T08:51:00.002-04:00

Here is today's post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. Already our blog manager, Belinda, has commented on it, and on the liberation from memory that comes from writing. I so appreciate that comment, and also look forward to sharing from my own archives next Saturday the blog post I wrote here about our family cottage heritage when I first began this blog. Stay tuned.

The Weight of Memory: Reflections on Selling the Family Cottage

We glanced up at the window across the street from the lawyer's office as we exited after signing off on the sale of the cottage that had been in our family since the mid-1940s. "Isn't it interesting that the lawyer's office is right under Mum's old window?" I said to my sister as we got into the car. "It sort of underlines the heaviness of this whole thing, doesn't it?"

She agreed, as we drove away reflecting again on the various stages we had gone through this year and a half since our aged mother died beside that very window, in the seniors' home we had brought her to so that we could be there for her in her last days of terminal cancer. The precious year we had with her before her death was unforgettable. We could not forget either the conversations we had with her about the cottage, the assumptions we had made that we would do all in our power to keep the cottage, preserve it for the future generations.

Yet now we had made this decision, made it in peace and prayer, and the sale had gone smoothly and been a win win for all concerned. The intolerable burden of responsibility had been lifted off our shoulders, and we had given the next generation of family time to realize that what we would have kept alive if we could have afforded it was really only a dream, a version of unreality that we did not want to promote, even a snare and a delusion to bind them into future conflicts, both inner and outer. We did not want to wish on them the carrying of a dream that would turn into a heavy load. Let alone the work and worry.

For me, as I walked up and down the hill at the cottage many times these past few years, I realized more and more that selling it meant saying goodbye to my family system in a way that was very liberating. For our cottage was not just a building and a dock on a lake - it had been part of a network of relatives' cottages, a community that had been both comforting and confining, and, ultimately, a constantly bittersweet place of many melancholy memories. Our cottage experience had bound us into obligations and rituals that often snared and obliged us and taught us the tyranny of family rules that had nothing to do with God's plans for families and their blessings upon the children.

Even the good memories kept me haunted and held, weighed down and reflective. Instead of just enjoying the outdoors and the beauties of nature I was confronted always with scenes from the past...and the ones I treasured most were the most distant...yet even they were full of sadness, the sadness that lay about our extended family like a cloak, the sadness that was sewn into the fabric of our beings from such an early age that it seemed normal.

Now we are free from the physical reminder of all of this...now we just remember, and have more choice, perhaps, about how and what we remember. 'Sometimes the weight of memory is just too much', I had said to myself a few weeks ago. 'Sometimes we need to be free from a place that binds us too closely to those memories.'

I reflect upon how my mother would see things from a heavenly perspective, liberated herself from the family rules, from the obligations that overshadowed so much of her own life. She had also been a sensible person who was willing to encourage others to move on, to make new choices. I cannot help but feel that just as we were free to make this decision because of her death, that she also would be with us in spirit in this choice, that she would not want us to feel guilty or that we had let her down. She might even have said something like I said to myself, knowing what she had learned in her own life but probably could not articulate while she was alive: that we should not live our lives held down or back by the weight of memory.

A Postscript: I would not want you to think I have undervalued the family legacy here. It was a joy to discover what I did share as we left, and will continue to share. I wrote a letter to the new owners and left it with a copy of the booklet my father had written, with my editorial help, of the history of our cottage community, from its earliest connections to the whole history of Muskoka pioneers. I also told them about how my father had made various items of furniture we left in the cottage, and how my mother had made the curtains and bedspreads we left for them too. There were many treasures we took with us, but we left those, and several paintings with interesting connections to our parents. It was a joy to tell these stories, and our agent said it touched him so, and felt we would be welcome visitors to the new owners. With our children we also took many photos of loved places, to keep forever as reminders of all that we loved the best.

Next Saturday I will share the post I wrote on my own personal blog over a year ago, about the great things of that family legacy at the cottage and how I saw them in their best light. That will be a liberating thing for me, now free from the physical burden, to share those good reflections and memories, and choose what I wish to preserve for posterity myself.

joy in God's faithfulness, and my girls' faithfulness too

2009-09-05T08:01:00.002-04:00

I searched my heart and mind again yesterday about what was most important to share this week. I could have taken some of the lines from the song I had the privilege to sing in church last Sunday...solo. Or played with words and made up some clever stuff about great spiritual truths that speak to me every day. Yes, I have lots of blog material for years to come, it would seem. But what seemed most personal and universal to share this week was becoming an empty nester and saying goodbye to my daughter as she headed off to university. Because it really wasn't about that, but about God and how He has taken care of my girls, and how they have allowed that to happen by their trust and their own care. So I celebrated that, and added in the song that came...not a seemingly very profound song, but a suitable one. A simple one, full of simple truth, which is really what life is all about. Simple truths. So here is my weekly blog post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com...the comments when you read the post on that blog are always rewarding and interesting.

Faithful God, Faithful Girls

She won't be home tonight. At least not to this home. She flew out west very early yesterday morning. I said goodbye to my baby again, companion for this summer while my other baby settled into Bible school in New Zealand. Now they are both gone, from here, but not from my heart, nor me from theirs. Until now I have been so happy for them, so thrilled at how their plans have worked out, that I haven't had much time to miss them, or think about missing them. Now here we are - empty nesters.

Interesting that in just three weeks we will see one of them again! How's that for a pining Mum!!We actually arranged the trip for very practical reasons. Share Thanksgiving with her so we can send her to have a Kiwi Christmas with the other one, then welcome the other back for a few months a little while later. Now I am so delighted that it will not be long before I see my daughter again, my dear friend. And I am delighted that she feels the same way.

But what is my song today? I can only sing that refrain "What a Faithful God have I". I think back on these years of child rearing...through all the adventures...moving with them to Uganda in their very early years, moving suddenly back to a new part of Canada in their early adolescent years, moving them from being missionary kids to being small town kids. They coped so well, all the way along, with so many transitions, so many times of being different or misunderstood. And through it all they kept their faith alive, a real, gutsy faith. Then they tested it out in Bible school, and in revisiting Uganda. They got on the family airplane track again, and stepped out into the big wide world, the post 911 world, alone, trusting, scared and faithful.

And as they have grown up, I have too, but I have also become more childlike in my trust. When I wondered how she would get from the ferry to the university residence with her big suitcase, backpack, carry on and satchel, God provided. First He gave her a contact with a wonderful out of the box type of church, then they asked her if she needed help settling in. All I had done was pray for something to work out for her.

I could go on and on with the details of God's faithfulness in provision and protection, and their faithfulness in seeking Him and trusting Him. What more can I say? What is more important than to thank Him every moment for His faithfulness, and trust Him more and more.

These seem the most important words for this week. I have many more words in my own heart of His provision for me too, many too private to share. But God knows how I feel, and how grateful I am. That is enough. So it seems the words have run out, and there is only song. Let's share it together.

joy in using metaphors - again

2009-08-29T08:56:00.002-04:00

Well, here is my post for this week for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. What is really fun is to read it on that site and see the comments, which really mean a lot to me, and can be lots of fun too, like today's! I find the discipline of writing the post as a regular thing for that blog a real challenge. It has moved from a sort of self-indulgent outlet, an avenue for my "voice" to a discipline to find something worthwhile to say to others, kind of like giving a homily as our pastor does. I appreciate that I can do it with humour and hope to do so more. I learn a lot from reading the work of my fellow "blog princesses", as we dubbed ourselves a year ago, when I was invited into the team. Now I see it as a chance to grow in my writing, to understand myself better as I see what comes out of me, (or wants to come out, and then I have to evaluate it), and as an opportunity to connect the parts of my world together and show myself and others how all of life is spiritual.

Living Watersheds and Dancing Metaphors

Last week several people commented on my post about Algonquin Park and Niagara Falls with the greeting "Happy ICLW!". I, despite my plea for preservation of beautiful natural wonders, didn't know the meaning of this acronym and dutifully did an internet search about it. It seems to be a toss up between "International Comment Leaving Week" and the "International Center for Living Watersheds". I was intrigued by the latter, knowing The Park to be a watershed, and a living one because it is protected and maintained as a vital and fresh one. I also of course began to see spiritual parallels right away. In my single days in the renewal movement in Toronto I edited a small magazine I called Living Letter loving the apostle Paul's injunction to be ambassadors for Christ in all we do and say. So for me the image of a "living watershed" is similar, except of course it can't be found in scripture.

But the connections with other scriptural images are obvious, the clearest one being that out of those who are in Christ will flow streams of living water. Stepping up from water to a watershed in its other meaning brings more theological reflection: a watershed is "an important period, time event or factor that marks a change or division." (Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary) Can't you see the metaphor? We need to be people who create events or are catalysts for periods in people's lives to make important choices happen, changes for the better, changes that may mean a decisive turn, even a division that needs to happen between the old and the new in their lives. What an exciting metaphor to contemplate - to be a living watershed!!

Now to gather in more wool from my week: the message on Sunday evening by our pastor used a metaphor from the news story of a collision between a bread truck and a steel truck on the Burlington skyway. She called her talk "When Bread Meets Steel". She said this was the stuff of the Christian life - negotiating the collisions in our lives between the soft life giving things and the harsh realities. Those sorts of collisions are also watersheds.

Now I'm going to jump even more with my metaphors: steel looks negative in this previous story, but there is a way in which we can see it positively. More on that in a moment. To keep connected to our watershed metaphor let's imagine that as we give life through living water and are people who continually supply that, in Christ's strength and abundance, then we, like the bread of life, provide food for the journey on which such collisions happen. And we can only have the strength to withstand life's tough things ourselves and be watersheds for others if we ourselves have met a lot of steel, and had the strength of the steel built into our very beings.

Streams in the Desert speaks to this again, on this very day I am writing:

I stood once in the test room of a great steel mill. All around me were little partitions and compartments. Steel had been tested to the limit, and marked with figures that showed its breaking point. Some pieces had been twisted until they broke, and the strength of torsion was marked on them. Some had been stretched to the breaking point and their tensile strength indicated. Some had been compressed to the crushing point, and also marked. The master of the steel mill knew just what these pieces of steel would stand under strain. He knew just what they would bear if placed in the great ship, building or bridge. He knew this because his testing room revealed it.

It is often so with God's children. God does not want us to be like vases of glass or porcelain. He would have us like these toughened pieces of steel, able to bear twisting and crushing to the uttermost without collapse.

He wants us to be, not hothouse plants, but storm-beaten oaks, not sand dunes driven with every gust of wind, but granite rocks withstanding the fiercest storms. To make us such He must needs bring us into His testing room of suffering. Many of us need no other argument than our own experiences to prove that suffering is indeed God's testing room of faith.

And if you feel dragged around in my dance with words and metaphors, please forgive me and take what you will out of my indulgence. I will end with yet another metaphor that came alive again this week for me, about words and their uses. I had to ask forgiveness for offending and hurting people with my words on several occasions, and I remembered the slogan I once hung over my desk and should definitely place prominently again: "O Lord, may my words be sweet today, for tomorrow I may have to eat them".

As I can't get away from metaphors this week, may I say that I hope there is life in my words this week for you, as bread or as water, and may they strengthen you as you develop the steel you need to withstand the storms of life.

joy in finally exploring Algonquin Park

2009-08-22T09:38:00.001-04:00

I had many possible ideas for my weekly blog post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com, but this is what came after a glorious day in Algonquin Park. It seemed to fit so well as a comparison with our trip to Niagara Falls two weeks ago, and my musings upon that for last week's blog. I am enjoying finding so much spiritual truth in these experiences of nature...I look forward to many more.

Set Apart yet Close By

Last time it was Niagara Falls; this time Algonquin Park. Another day away, another natural wonder. So many times we've driven through The Park, on the way to somewhere else, intent on making time on the journey, not oblivious to the beauty, but not having or taking the time to experience it.

Finally the day came, a day set apart for the purpose of exploring this amazing place, of finally venturing off the highway and into the wilds on either side. And it was made simpler and more special this first time by our friends...excited explorers who have walked all the trails but one, and many times at that.

Like experiencing The Falls I felt immersed: enveloped by miles of trees and all forms of ground cover, aware of the potential for hours of gazing and drinking in the glory of natural beauty, witness to the wonders of divine creation far surpassing any man-made wizardry.

Returning home sun-kissed and wind-blessed I pondered the difference between The Falls and The Park. Both are visited by millions of people. Both possess an ongoing capacity to fascinate and enthrall and absorb the attention of humankind. Yet here there is space to be part of the beauty without being overwhelmed by the people. Of course it helps that there is no city surrounding parts of The Park! Duh, Meg.

And that's really it. Before there was a chance for a city to grow up around its special wonders, The Park was set apart. The Falls got the city, the theme parks, the hotels, the casinos and restaurants, the endless tide of commercialism. The boundaries weren't drawn in time to preserve the wonder and direct the way attention would be given.

So here I go for the spiritual parallels again. Guess you could feel them creeping up on you. Intentionality in drawing boundaries, setting things apart for their special purposes, matching things in appropriate ways. I was jarred by the dissonance at Niagara Falls between natural stupendous creation and man made hideous cheap thrills. I didn't have to deal with that at Algonquin Park. The human creations were tastefully serving the natural creations, framing it and setting it off, enabling greater appreciation of it instead of exploiting it.

What are the lessons to learn more than just appreciation for the creation of national parks? How can we apply this to our own lives? How do we make choices for ourselves so that we can be integrated and resonant like the world surrounding The Park, instead of disrespectful and dissonant like the world surrounding The Falls ? How do we take what is most precious in our lives and preserve it by drawing boundaries and keeping it set apart and sacred? How do we hear God calling us to do that, to bring into balance and harmony our connection between ourselves and His wonders in our world and our lives?

I am grateful today for so much food for heart and soul, mind and spirit, as well as fresh air and exercise for my body, and a feast for my eyes. I have travelled to many places in the world. I have had many spiritual experiences. But today I have enjoyed communion with the Lord of lords in a fresh and deeply personal way just "around the corner" from my home.

We can find such places and moments in many ways and days in our lives. They may already be set apart, or we may draw those boundaries ourselves. Either way, God waits to speak to us through them, as we set ourselves and time apart to seek His face in their midst.

joy in seeing and enjoying the presence of God in nature

2009-08-15T07:14:00.002-04:00

Well, it's a warm Saturday morning and I am cleaning the kitchen and preparing for another busy day: finishing laying resilient flooring in our bedroom, taking the old windows and other stuff to the dump, buying eco friendly toilets at the Home Depot special, tidying other areas of the house, and somewhere in there getting out for a bike ride, a walk with my husband, and a quiet time on the steps down our hill by the river, where, such a short distance from our house, I can feel immersed in nature as I sit surrounded by wild flowers, (some of them weeds in my front garden), and look up the river where I love to canoe. What a privilege to live where I can connect with nature so quickly. Yet it is often hard to organize my time so that I do choose what is best for me and make this connection. It is indeed a parable about being swallowed up in the busyness of life and forgetting the most important things. I am grateful that this summer I have had opportunities and reminders about making space for the grandeur of God, and for my own self care, in simple ways in my daily life. Our short half weekend away to Niagara Falls brought another such experience and reminder. I wrote about it in my regular Saturday post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. Here it is:

Explore the Roar

We paid our admission to the Maid of the Mist and got into line with hordes of people at Niagara Falls. Complimentary postcards were thrust into our hands: Explore the Roar they said. A proclamation and a challenge. We were in for a little adventure. Since 1846 these little boats had been providing a thrill for those seeking to get a little closer to the greatest source of electrical power in the world. We were in for a roar all right. And a soak, I thought, as we donned our large blue ponchos, ready to look like oversize versions of those bags they put flyers in to throw them into our driveways.

Friendly line-mates compared Niagara thrills with us, agreeing this was the best. "There's a moment", this Kilimanjaro climber excitedly proclaimed, " when it really feels like you are coming into the presence of God". That's it! I thought. That's why we do things like this. We want a memorable experience that takes us closer to the author of natural wonders, something that takes us out of ourselves and reminds us of our smallness in the face of creation.

Satisfyingly soaked, we smiled our way on the elevator ride back up to the souvenir shop and hunted for a hot cup of tea. Another line for that, with another friendly person. A worker for the Midway rides, she enthusiastically recommended some sites to round out our day. I politely listened, then gratefully took our Earl Grey bags in cardboard and water to a table by the window overlooking the park. Our next destination, for a rest on a bench until the drops of rain started. What a blessing amid Midway madness, strange creatures glaring at us from atop buildings and peeping from doorways and windows, that there were flowers, benches, grass, sanity and peace in the midst of the competition with Mother Nature for first prize in thrills.

Why should we need more than the roar of the Falls? Drenching from its spray and a confrontation with our vulnerability in its wake? Recognition that without the motor power and the soundness of that small craft we would be bobbing (if we were lucky) on the water or sucked under by the current?

Recalling Aslan's roar and realizing how easily we underestimate God's power, I contemplated our spirituality, our church life, our Christian events. What do they resemble? Are they like the Falls, the spray, the roar, in their (super)natural wonder and magnificence? Are they even like the natural serenity of the park, the trees, the flowers, the grass, the unhurried quiet away from busyness? Or are they like cheap thrills ( or not so cheap) - Ripley's Believe It or Not, wax replicas of real people, cheesy imitations of real beauty, the list goes on. Do we try to dish out "spiritual" experience like souvenirs, T shirts stamped "Been there..done that..."? You know the deal. What's the "take home" from church/prayer time/worship for you/me? What are we looking for?

And could we say, as with Niagara Falls, that we get what we look for? That finding the "real thing" is only for those who really want it? That there are lots of substitutes beckoning to us all the time..so near, and yet, needing a search, a definitive choice, a saying no sometimes in order to say yes.

If we want to explore the roar, if we want to taste the peace afterwards, we may need to be sure, be ready, and be willing to be satisfied with nothing but the real thing.

joy in finding new "wealth", and truth

2009-08-08T00:01:00.001-04:00

Here is my post for today for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. Again, challenged to find a way to share my experience and understanding in a true and useful way, I have endeavoured to summarize new reading and learning. The challenge of course is to live it out.

Real Wealth

I've been hearing, reading, and talking a lot about wealth lately. When I was preparing for my garage sale last week I listened to a CBC program about money and happiness, and the correlation or lack of between the two. A famous Canadian Christian multibillionare said he was no happier or less happy than he was when he began his business, and still lives in the same house he had back then. A saliva test survey discovered that many people who have more money show much more of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva. They also feel guilty about their wealth. Longstanding Christian friends who visited recently were expressing concern about how the prosperity gospel is creeping into a movement they had formerly respected. Their summation of that gospel was that one gives to get something for oneself, to get more - the actual epitome of a worldly mindset that is against the true giving, freedom from care attitude of Jesus and His followers.

There were a number of years in my young adult life when I sought to live the Christian life by avoiding wealth as I understood it and so remaining not only poor monetarily, but poor in terms of living out my talents and gifts and relationships in the fulness I believe God intended. Now as I prepare for later years and take stock of all I have learned and experienced, I find myself needing fresh input and insight. As I prepare to coach others, I am a learner myself.

My Life Coaching homework and lessons this week were about wealth and mindset. There, in the secular foundational course book we use and then discuss from a Christian point of view, was a wonderfully stated position about wealth. It made me realize that I, as a person who has always despised wealth in many forms, sought to work for the poor and underprivileged, and continued to be frugal no matter what my net worth, discovered that, in light of the course material's parameters, I really have a poverty mindset in many ways. Not about monetary wealth, but about any kind of wealth. And that in having such a mindset I can easily be displaying a very worldly way of being - which is worrying about not having enough, believing I don't or won't have enough, and so remaining in a place that is out of sync with a truly Christian worldview. (I can imagine I am actually in 'good' company with many Christians, for the body of Christ is rather skewed in its attitudes in many ways.)

In our text ( Becoming a Professional Life Coach) by Patrick Williams and Diane Menendez can be found these nuggets of wisdom and truth:

A real sense of personal wealth comes from knowing that we always have a reserve of whatever resource we're focused on. (p.269)

Real wealth comes from experiencing more than enough of whatever is at issue. (p. 270)

Scarcity is simply a habitual way of thinking...and robs clients of the ability to feel appreciation for the abundance they do have in many areas of their lives. (p.276)

We focus on the importance of having a sense of abundance - a reserve of sense of wealth - in key areas: relationship (or love), time, vision, money, career and contribution. (p.276)

Sometimes clients discover that in order to create a true sense of wealth for themselves, they need to simplify. For example, they may discover that to create a wealth of time, they need to have a smaller house with a smaller yard to mow. (p.277)

These expanded views have helped me get out of the box in thinking about wealth. They are new companions along the journey to gaining a truer understanding of what abundant living as a Christian is really meant to be, to examining my assumptions and those of others about what it means to have the mind of Christ and a truly Christian worldview.

Let us not be afraid to receive truth, a wealth of truth, from many sources, and to trust in the abundance of understanding in seeing that all truth is God's truth. That is indeed wealth available for us all, as we prayerfully engage in life in all its fulness.

But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. ( Phil. 4:9 KJV)

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us. (Eph. 3:20)

joy in songs from memory again

2009-08-01T14:38:00.002-04:00

Another Saturday, another post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. And a garage sale as well. Now I am enjoying savouring comments from my post, and rejoicing again at how God uses the past and the present and weaves them all together, whether in garage sale connections or writing songs on blog posts.

Second Childhood?

Those of you who follow my blog posts may not be surprised at whatever I will end up saying. After all, the empty nest approaches, and I am already rambling about the teapot song in midlife crisis and re-singing simple worship songs from long ago. None of us, particularly me, can predict what will come out next.

Like when I put my personal search engine to work in my own brain to choose a song to sing solo for a special service coming up. What was that? I asked myself. The words from the 70s emerged from the cobwebs of my memory. I want to be a child again came, the words and the title, from the Fisherfolk song I loved in my Scottish days, days of yearning to be part of that Community of Celebration, that group in which people from all over the world lived in community on a remote Scottish island, wrote lovely songs for the renewal movement in the mainline churches. Some of you may remember those blue and red songbooks: Sounds of Living Waters and Fresh Sounds. Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end. More songs coming out my ears.

But I digress. I want to be a child again. Why do I want to sing that song for our church community? I guess that when I sing solo I want to sing for sure from the very core of my being, express my child-like faith, renew my own childlike trust in my dear Lord, sing of that ever present innocence deep within my own heart.

What a blessed place to go. Second childhood. Perhaps not second. Maybe eternal childhood. The eternal experience of being a child of God. Our only true calling. Our only necessary calling. Resting in that total dependence upon Him, that total trust in His loving care.

I am glad to be singing this song again. In more ways than one. Why not join me?

If you want to hear it, you will need to go on to the Fisherfolk website, and look for the CD called Be Like Your Father. You can order it from the Community of Celebration for 15 USD.

I Want To Be A Child Again
Copyright 1975 Celebration
Diane Davis Andrew

Chorus
I want to be a child again;
I want to see the world
Through five-year-old eyes;
To walk with my Lord
Wherever He may lead,
To put my trust in Him.

Verse 1
Make me a child, O Lord,
Make my song joy,
My heart free,
My life a dance,
A dance of praise to you.

Verse 2
We must become as children,
Simple and trusting of heart,
To enter you kingdom, Lord,
To rest in peace with you.

joy in expressing sentimental and spiritual truth in a song

2009-07-25T08:34:00.002-04:00

This is my latest post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. It is easy to see how it arose in me, and in my life this past week. My daughter still at home called it "sentimental". I guess it is. But that doesn't mean it's not spiritual, as in life-giving. And it certainly speaks emotional truth to me, and even Biblical truth. I think what is most important is that it is real to something within me, and something without me, and the connection between them. It helps me to make sense in a spiritual way of what is happening in my life. But even more than that, it points to the source of all truth, to Jesus, and to the power of the Holy Trinity to preserve my life and that of my family. It affirms His sovereignty in our lives, His care, and our trust in Him.

Turning Round the Corners of the World

We were saying goodbye outside the US Security gate in Terminal 1. My other daughter cautioned my husband not to take any more pictures. We heard the annoyance of one officer arguing with other passengers. Three of them joined in a huddle, their holsters bulging, while my daughters, husband, three young friends and I stood, each waiting to give and receive our hug, and send my younger girl, my grown up baby, through the gates and on to the other side of the world. As I awaited my turn, saved to the last, tears sprang quickly to my eyes, and the first words of Sydney Carter's song leapt into my consciousness:

"One more step along the world I go"

I whispered to my daughter of this special confirmation, and that I would write more about it to her, as it felt such an affirmation of God's seal of approval on this mighty new embarkation: a high school graduate on her way to a half year at Bible school "down under", the furthest point we could choose from home to send her, yet somewhere that felt so safe and sure and full of promise and hope, a place to consolidate her sure foundation in Christ, and prepare her for her life journey.

We had sent our older daughter to a linked Bible school in a castle in Britain two years before, and the growth and learning and friendships that came out of her time led to many creative and important decisions. She is soon to leave us for her university studies, now chosen with confidence and excitement, her connections with a vital local church there already made.

How wonderfully my prayers have been answered. And why should I have doubted my Lord? He has seen me through so many journeys and brought me safely home again, always home to Him, who watches over me as the apple of His eye. How could I ever doubt that He would do anything less for my children?

One more step along the world I go,
One more step along the world I go,
From the old things to the new
Keep me travelling along with you.
And it's from the old I travel to the new,
Keep me travelling along with you.

Round the corners of the world I turn,
More and more about the world I learn.
And the new things that I see
You'll be looking at along with me.

As I travel through the bad and good
Keep me travelling the way I should.
Where I see no way to go
You'll be telling me the way, I know.

Give me courage when the world is rough,
Keep me loving when the world is tough.
Leap and sing in all I do,
Keep me travelling along with you.

Sydney Carter
author of Lord of the Dance

Such a simple song,yet so profound,embedded in my heart from early days of worship leading in the seventies, days of my own exploration and launching out, risking and wondering.

I look back and see that all that I sang about, all that the words say for all of us, have come true. He has indeed looked at everything "along with me". He has indeed given me courage, made me loving, and even able to "leap and sing in all I do" when the world has been tough and rough. I could truly take this song as a signature tune for my life.

So now, I sing it for my daughters as they turn round the corners of the world, and as I move forward into a season without them close by. I need to pray, as profoundly as ever before, for myself as well,

And it's from the old I travel to the new,
Keep me travelling along with you.

Psalm 121: 7-8

The Lord will keep you from all harm -
he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

joy in dancing teapots

2009-07-18T05:10:00.002-04:00

This morning I am preparing my daughter for takeoff...not really a time to think about teapots. But I share the post I prepared for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com...showing today...I had more fun writing it than any other post I have written so far...good thing I got it done ahead of time before this marathon prep for a journey across the world.

The Dance of the Teapot

Last week I found out that Beauty and the Beast may be performed locally this autumn. I fantasized out loud about what part I wished I could sing. Mrs Potts came immediately to mind, but only for her beautiful song. "But I wouldn't make a very good pot", I said to my friends. I think my vanity about appearance would have overridden the joy of singing that gorgeous love song.

Of course I have always loved teapots. If I became a collector, I think it would be of teapots. I have some of my aunt's collection, destined to be kept because most of them came across the ocean from Scotland in the mid 1800's with my great grandparents, and graced family tables, along with their oversized sugar bowls, for many years since. I proudly use them from time to time, determined that a beautiful teapot should not just be on a shelf, but part of a social experience.

My lessons on a potter's wheel have also convinced me that if I were a potter I would want to make teapots. So much grace and beauty and skill all in one item. The spout of course makes all the difference to a really usable teapot. No point having your tea dribble off the spout and on to a tablecloth. I always check that out in stores, and pass on my inherited wisdom to anyone willing to listen.

Then there was the time I visited a "kindergarten" class in Uganda and pulled something out of my head and experience with which to entertain these children. I sang the teapot song, with actions!!

I'm a little teapot, short and stout.
Here is my handle; here is my spout.
When I get all steamed up, then I shout:
"Tip me over and pour me out!"

I think I chose it because I love the actions and the tune, and the delight and silliness of the song. I didn't think about cultural relevance at the time; after all, my Ugandan friends are used to boiling their tea with milk, if you please, in a regular pot on the fire, then storing it in a thermos.

My new favourite author, Sue Monk Kidd, has now brought teapots into my vocabulary of spiritual symbolism. In her book on midlife spiritual crisis, When the Heart Waits, she takes the teapot song to new heights, with her story of a tap-dance recital at the age of five dressed up as a teapot. I am so envious. I am learning to tap dance all over again to recapture some childhood delight. That's part of my midlife crisis. Still, I don't think my silliness would drive me to do something similar on the stage of Beauty and the Beast. (I don't know how they perform it live.) I'll keep you posted on that one.

Sue says that "the dance of the teapot is the dance we all do in the dark night":

We're containers filled with an ego elixir we've brewed ourselves. When the heat is turned up inside and the old begins to burn away, we must offer God the handle and the spout of our lives. God tips us over and pours us out. The "me" is poured out: the self with a lowercase s, the old ways of being, the old ways of relating to God. We're emptied so that we can be refilled with new and living waters.

Midlife is a time of tipping over. It is a good time to learn that simple little song. It gave me a way of thinking about my experience that wasn't mysterious and threatening. I was dancing a childhood dance, that's all. And if I ever got to feeling terribly 'spiritual' about it all, I imagined myself in that ridiculous teapot costume and that took care of that.

"Tip me over and pour me out" is the underlying theme of the spiritual dark. (p. 150)

The possibilities strike me - a new movement - Teapots for Jesus!! - see the headlines - Mrs. Potts, Evangelist for our Time!!

I think I can just content myself with taking myself less seriously as I struggle with my darkness. God knows...He's with me....even in my teapot.

And for sure, if you think I've gone potty, maybe I have!!

joy in new truths about transformation and butterflies

2009-07-11T09:16:00.002-04:00

Here is my weekly post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. I wrote it yesterday, then this morning when I got up there was a power out for a short while, then a tire with a nail to get fixed, a daughter to send off to work, and dishes to be washed. Now I can put this forth again, and enjoy the comments already on the team blog, encouraged that what I threw together out of my experiences and reading came out in a way that made sense and blessed others. I suppose it doesn't need to bless anyone, and I shouldn't look for that validation, but at this point in my writing I really appreciate the feedback. It has been just a year since I was asked to begin writing for this team devotional blog, and having that discipline and opportunity has brought about a lot of transformation in my life. I wonder about writing more things and ponder what they will be. I suppose, like my blog posts, they will just come. Beginning to read the work of Sue Monk Kidd, I am encouraged to write, because she is someone who has written what is true for her. There seems nothing contrived or formulaic about her work. It comes from her heart, which is where I try to come from.

The Inner Maze of Waiting

We sat on the porch, musing about our coming empty nest, brainstorming about things for my husband to do as I set about building a new career and pursue some well established new directions. Yet even I am finding this waiting stage strange. I am excited about new possibilities, grieving things and ways of living left behind, and absorbed in helping release my two emerging butterflies from their chrysalids. Two weeks ago they were my sparrows, now they are my butterflies, in some ways still struggling to break free of the confining boundaries of their cocoon/chrysalids. These daughters are starting out on the big road of life in a new bigger way. Yet my husband and I are also working through these stages of transformation ourselves.

I love the butterfly/transformation message so much that I wrote a whole thesis about it for my Master of Religious Education twenty five years ago. It is indeed a universal symbol, not just for Christians, but something deeply embedded and understood in the human psyche. It doesn't take much for us to love a butterfly symbol for tattoos or jewellery, lawn stakes or placemats, clothing or wall plaques....we feel that little rush of delight in its beauty, its joy and message, that it really is possible to become new, to undergo complete transformation.

Sue Monk Kidd, in her book, When the Heart Waits, expressed it this way:

I found myself staring at the chrysalis, at this lump of brown silence. It overwhelmed me with its simple truth. A creature can separate from an old way of existence, enter a time of metamorphosis, and emerge to a new level of being. ..In that moment it struck me clearly that the waiting process actually has three distinct phases that need to be maneuvered: separation, transformation, and emergence. I knew that I had come upon the inner maze of waiting.

Probably the biggest lesson I am learning in this inner maze is to rest and trust, to not need to know the way out of the maze, for me or for my dear ones. I have come as far as I have in this particular transformation because I learned to wait and let things develop naturally. However much I chafed at the slowness of that process, in hindsight of course I saw how each stage was so necessary.

Yes, God does indeed "make all things new". That is His delight. However, it doesn't mean that he does it instantly, like a magician. He takes the time He needs, the time we need, whether we think we do or not.

And He brings His wonderful law of spiritual ecology into full force during that slow process:

Romans 8:28.
" And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

I remind myself, as I write these words, of God's continuous message to us all, His wonderful, terrible declaration:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55: 8-10

God is in charge. He has His way of bringing about His plans in our lives, which interweaves with our own longings and desires. While we wait in the inner maze, He works mysteriously, using natural processes but according to His ways and thoughts. Like the caterpillar who enters a chrysalid, we surrender to death to our ways and enter the maze of waiting, and if we wait patiently enough, in His time we emerge into the transformation needed, and wonderfully possible, in whatever phase of our lives we are.

joy in finding numbered buoys and answers to prayer

2009-07-04T07:28:00.002-04:00

Last weekend our extended family and friends rented a pontoon boat to see more of the bigger lakes near us. We had one gorgeous day, and one rainy day, both paid for in the package. My daughter and I got our power boat operator's cards, but I felt the load of responsibility for the driving. The map was excellent, and I quickly realized how essential the numbering on the buoys was.

Here is my story about some of the spiritual lessons learned, written for my regular Saturday post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com

Lessons on the Lake

We'd gone in a circle it seemed. The eight of us in the pontoon boat were pondering where we were. The big lake had no familiar landmarks for us. The steadily falling rain and wind beating against the canvas and plastic only increased our sense of lostness in the grey Sunday afternoon. Yesterday had been a glorious day in our rented boat, a special family weekend plan to look over lake life while we could.

Now I, the driver, was particularly worried about how we were going to get to our destination and then back home in time to turn in the boat. I wondered aloud if we should stop at a dock and see if some cottager would take pity on us and help us find our place on the map. But how to tell who was home in the midst of the drizzle? Hardly any other boats were on the water, and we, the brave but seemingly foolish ones, had ventured forth to make the most of our investment.

"Let's pray", came the suggestion, and we all agreed. A moment or two later the proud towers of the new resort beckoned like sentinels from the high cliffs beyond. We moved in their direction, and recognized the familiar numbered buoys in the waters ahead. At last we would be able to match three dimensional reality with the map we had been trying to follow. With sighs of relief, we found our place on the map, and reoriented our course.

Reflecting upon the possibilities of what might have happened, we were quick to note God's faithfulness in meeting our need when we put our only hope in Him. Too tired to eloquently spout parables or draw fine object lessons to impress each other, we tucked in our vulnerability and hung our hearts on the reward to come of making port for a break in the journey, and finding our way home again.

Half an hour later, cheered by steamy cappucinos from the trendy lakeside nautical shop, we piled in again for the next leg of the journey, relieved that there were fewer islands to provide circles to get lost in again.

Somehow it seemed to me that God wouldn't let me have even a boat tour without a reminder of my need for Him. I'd wondered what I'd learn most about on this voyage among million dollar boathouses. I already had a distaste for that lifestyle. No need to learn more about that. But I did need a reminder that even in my genteel poverty but seeming wealth for a weekend it was not right to even have the luxury of looking down upon others with material riches. Out there on the choppy waters in the pouring rain I and we were in the same "boat" with everyone else on the lake....completely helpless without a map and numbered buoys.

joy in trusting in God's care for my children

2009-06-26T19:25:00.002-04:00

This is my weekly Saturday post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. Again, I searched my heart and mind for a way to articulate some of what is going on in my life, in a way that can touch others. In the process, again, I have learned more for myself.

His Eye is on My Sparrows

A blue jay alighted on the railing as my friend and I conversed on the deck. No sooner there and it was gone. But in that instant I saw its lovely form, bigger than I imagined, of course, because I hadn't seen a blue jay up close before. I muse upon that this morning as I think about my "sparrows" about to fly from the nest very soon. The younger one graduated last night, with honours, from secondary school. A long journey ended, a long period in the nest over. She will literally fly away in two weeks to Bible school in a far country for five months. The older one flew away two years ago,for a year to Bible School and travel in six countries, in Europe and Uganda, her childhood home, and then came back to the nest again for a year. Now she will fly again soon, to study on the other side of our country. Already she has become an award winning writer and a travelling photographer. Her photos of African women hang in a gallery exhibit in our small town.

I rejoice that my sparrows know how to fly, in more ways than one. I have tried to provide for their needs in the nest, and help them find their wings. They said I had given them those in their Mothers' Day card. So I guess that job was well enough done. They, my vulnerable ones, have been my very intensive responsibility for more than eighteen years. Now they, beautiful birds, bright blue jays, but vulnerable sparrows, need to fly from this nest. The time has come.

I also am learning to fly again. Not so much literally, but at least figuratively. I need to push myself out of the nest of familiar ways and launch my business in life coaching. It will be easier to do that with my young sparrows out flying on their own. But it won't be easy for any of us. We will always be thinking of each other, wondering how the flying is going, wanting to preen each others' feathers, for my sparrows are good "mothers" to me too. They have taught me a lot about learning to fly, and helped me find my own wings again.

But my greatest, my only true comfort, is that Jesus is watching us, and, if that is so, I should not worry. How hard it is for me to rest even more in Him as I place my sparrows more consciously in His hands. I remember the old song, and play it for you here, with sweet images that remind us of this abiding truth, even as the way it is sung can slow us down to listen.

joy in a new perspective

2009-06-19T17:33:00.003-04:00

I'm at the library, furiously getting this up for tomorrow for my spot on www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com, because our internet is down at home. Thank God for public computers. I am glad I am lightening up a little, so here is my set of words on a sunny day...

Seeing Things as We are

No it's not a typo. I really did intend to write, "Seeing things as WE are". I got that from this quote from The Talmud: "We don't see things as they are; we see things as we are." Well, so what, you say! Another clever quote. What does it have to do with you and me? Good thought. We need to examine and think about all the stuff that's thrown at us every day, in this culture. Things move so fast and we struggle to keep up. Today has been a slower day for me and I feel guilty. My inner gremlin is working on me telling me I am not doing what I should be doing today...I am wasting time and not accomplishing much. Those rule makers in my head can work overtime on a gorgeous sunny day like today. Why? Because I see things as I am - according to the voices in my head.

We talk a lot about inner gremlins in my Life Coach training program. For they are what keep the kinds of people who like to become life coaches from marketing themselves confidently, and most of all they are what keep the kind of people we expect to coach from making significant changes in their lives. They are what keep us all from moving ahead. And of course one of the reasons they do is because we somehow believe that these voices are interpreting reality as it really is to us, and that they know better than other parts of us, like our hearts, or our guts, know what is going on.

I suppose one of the gremlins I deal with almost on a daily basis is that I feel so stupid about not learning about those voices a long time ago, or not paying attention to what they really were. Why did it take me so long to learn what I have been learning? And then, when I turn away from that gremlin, turn down the volume on that voice, I hear that sweet voice of the Holy Spirit reminding me that at least I am learning this now, and that God can restore the years that the locust has eaten. He can make up for the time I've lost listening to the wrong voices, for the negative influences of my family of origin, or our culture, or imprisoning mindsets that keep me blocked and locked up within the expectations of others.

If we have the mind of Christ, if we have the Holy Spirit to comfort and guide us, then we can move toward a merger of seeing things as they are, and seeing things as we are. Of course we won't get a perfect fit...not until Heaven, but if we know for sure that our perspective in this life is shaped so much by who we are and where we have come from, then we are more able to tune in humbly to hear God's voice and take on His viewpoints and to remember that with Him, "All things are possible."

joy in finding something to be sorry for

2009-06-13T00:01:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I know days ahead what I want to write about for the Saturday post on www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. Sometimes it just happens, ahead, or the day before. This time it happened by a conviction of the Lord into my spirit, and, like I said at the end of the post, I was glad to have something I could say sorry about, something I could write in a humble way about, that is true of me, something that does not make me sound like some sort of saint, but like an ordinary, struggling Christian who is trying to learn to grow in Christ, to grow in my humanity, to be more loving, and more aware of my own failings, and yet accept God's grace to fill me up with His love.

Flint Removal

Grumpy weeks are good ones for making me humble. For me it takes a while. First I go through the complaining stage, reciting to myself all the reasons I have for feeling the way I do. Somewhere in there God begins to challenge my heart, and I take a closer look. It's not that I don't have lots of reasons for needing God's grace to cope and hang in, to give out and to keep going. It's just that the most important thing to God, and really to others, is how I do what I do. What's the point in coping, hanging in, giving out and keeping going, if I don't do them with true grace and gentleness? That was what I always found fault with my mother about, and others who had "power" over my life. If they were harsh, and they often were, I wilted and cringed. Of course I have that capacity well built into me, despite how much I hate it. I may come across as gentle to some, and may indeed be gentle inside, but often it is harshness that lashes out, especially with those closest to me. I am grateful that today I can share challenging and helpful words from Streams in the Desert (of course) that have spoken deeply to my heart, and my need in this area:

When God conquers us and takes all the flint out of our nature, and we get deep visions into the Spirit of Jesus, we then see as never before the great rarity of gentleness of spirit in this dark and unheavenly world.

The graces of the Spirit do not settle themselves down upon us by chance, and if we do not discern certain states of grace, and choose them, and in our thoughts nourish them, they never become fastened in our nature or behavior.

Every advance step in grace must be preceded by first apprehending it, and then a prayerful resolve to have it.

So few are willing to undergo the suffering out of which thorough gentleness comes. We must die before we are turned into gentleness, and crucifixion involves suffering; it is a real breaking and crushing of self, which wrings the heart and conquers the mind.

That breaking and crushing, that wringing of heart, is really a daily thing, which the great saints knew and embraced so well. I want to be gentle. This I truly know. With all my heart. I want "thorough gentleness". So that means I must embrace all that will create that in me.

This reminds of what my daughter said when she was so mad at someone who hurt her regularly. She said she was always glad to have something to apologize for to that person. It helped her to deal with the other issues, helped her to stay humble and in a place of openness to growth. When I struggle most with attitudes in others, that is when I most need to look at myself, and learn the lessons of my own untamed heart.

The servant of the Lord must....be gentle. (2 Tim. 2:24)

joy in linking old and new again

2009-06-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

This is my weekly post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. It was simple to write, and lighter than I have often written. It blessed me especially to be able to use the song I love so much.

Summer - Season of Questions

As I reflect upon the coming summer months, I realize that summer has always been a season of questions for me. Each year as a school girl I had the opportunity to make plans that reflected the questions I asked or was allowed to ask about my life. There was uncharted and unprogrammed time to plan. Even if it was a summer job I had to take I at least could ponder the type of job I wanted or was willing to take. There were many things that I hoped would happen that didn’t in those months, many plans I would have liked to make. The point is that I got to ask some important questions that were key to who I was or wanted to be.

I wouldn’t be sharing this now if I didn’t feel that my experience in some measure has been true for all of us, if not all the time, then at least some of it, if not in summer then at least sometime. But summer can be a metaphor for such a time because we likely don’t have to be so preoccupied with survival, at least weather wise. There is sunshine and a bit of a holiday mood, space really for moving outside of the box of our usual preoccupations and for bringing on board something new and exciting, and time for reflection. Such a season is essential in our lives, and is similar to the day of rest we try to have each week. We step outside our routines and reflect upon the deeper issues of faith, vocation, purpose, and our relationship with our creator and our saviour. We can open our hearts and minds more widely to hear His voice, and realize that the really important questions are the ones He asks us, for, whether or not we listen, they are the only real questions that a Christian has to answer.

For me, I find those questions embodied in a lovely song we often sing at our church. This song means all the more to me because I spent two very significant summers on or near the island of Iona, in Scotland, the home of the Iona community, who copyrighted the new arrangement to the song. The lilting but haunting Scottish traditional tune evokes deep memories of the questions I was asking those summers, and the choices I sought to make for my life. It was not an easy time, but I am grateful for all that I learned. My prayer for all of us this coming “summer” is that we would each be open to the essential questions God is asking us about our lives, and that we would have the courage to answer them.

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known,
will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?
Will you set the prisoners free and never be the same?
Will you kiss the leper clean and do such as this unseen,
and admit to what I mean in you and you in me?

Will you love the "you" you hide if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?
Will you use the faith you've found to reshape the world around,
through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

Lord your summons echoes true when you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.
In Your company I'll go where Your love and footsteps show.
Thus I'll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

Text: John L. Bell b.1949; Tune: Scottish traditional: Kelvingrove ;
Graham Maule.© 1987, Wild Goose Resource Group, Iona Community, GIA Publications, Inc.

joy in growth in listening and learning

2009-05-30T00:01:00.000-04:00

Each week I try to find something timely and timeless to say for my Saturday blog post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. And each week the simplest place to write from seems to be from my own brokenness for that is the place of growth and healing for me, and so I trust it must be so for others. This week has felt like I didn't have a lot to say...I am tired and have lots to do and lots more to learn...but the fruits of last week's sharing prompted an email from a blog reader leading to more helpful thoughts to share, and connect with past learning. And so it goes on, as life does, getting simpler in more and more ways. Here it is:

Leading with our ears

Another week of ruminating on how to connect with others in helping ways. Another week of pondering the connection between suffering and sustenance for our souls. Another week of visioning for a future profession and ministry: how to be a life coach and one day a counsellor/therapist coming from an authentic place within myself.

In this process I have been joined by a blog reader who does her own writing, research and ruminating on similar subjects. This week she shared some powerful words from Larry Crabb's book, Soul Talk. :

Every person who relates with people - whether as coach, counselor, spiritual director, therapist, pastor, elder, caregiver, spouse, parent, friend or mentor - needs to speak Soul Talk. And that means we must stop talking so quickly out of what we think we know and learn to lead with our ears...If we learn the discipline of silence as we engage in conversation and think passion as we quietly listen, perhaps we'll spend less energy figuring out what to do as experts and more energy allowing the powerful life of Christ to surface within us and be released in the words we speak. We'll leave behind the sandy foundation of expert knowledge and savvy wisdom and build instead on the solid rock of divine energy, on the foundation of life with the Trinity.

Crabb's message is the key to this process is to experience and function out of our own brokenness. We don't need to become superhuman and expert, we just need to come alongside and be human and listening to the hearts of others, and sharing as we are led once we have permission to look in on their stories.

I recall a similar message in one of our texts for the foundational course in Christian counselling, William Kirwan's Biblical Concepts for Christian Counseling. He bemoaned the lack of empathy, genuineness and warmth in much Christian counselling, the prevalence of Job's counsellors who label people's issues and say "There you are!" instead of asking, like God in the garden asked Adam and Eve, "Where are you?". He urged us to ask the right questions and listen for the true answers about where people are, allow them to speak for themselves and be part of the process of solving their own problems:

Good listening helps to keep the counselor's responses close to the counselee's feelings and experiences, permitting corrections of any misunderstanding the counselor may have. The active listener is open to being corrected. When answering the counselor's question, "Where are you?" the counselee must have the freedom to correct any misapprehensions by saying, "No, not there; I am over here." Often such freedom is not allowed in Christian counseling. The counselee's problems are forced into preconceived molds or categories. The theological points made by the counselor may be accurate, precise, and even profound, but they still may not fit the counselee's problems. If the counselor is to know the right doctrine to apply (as Jesus always did), it is essential to understand exactly where the counselee is. (p. 140)

Furthermore, as my blog reader friend Magda said so well, we need our wounds to help us become better healers and helpers: "The wounded heart listens differently than the person who has never experienced pain, either in reality or through denial."

We do not need to be afraid of suffering, of wounds, or of not having the answers for others. We just need to come to others in our own brokenness, with our wounded hearts and Christ's open wounded hands, and open our ears before we open our mouths.

joy in connecting my future work with all that I learn each day

2009-05-23T00:01:00.000-04:00

Once again I have the privilege this week of sharing about some new learning of my own. My weekly blog post for the team blog, www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com, is attached here, with the message that is on my heart for this week, born out of reading I have been doing, that has also been directly relevant to my own inner journey, and to the plans and training I am doing for future work. I hope it is helpful to you.

Placing a "higher value" on suffering

I have never forgotten her words, spoken softly but firmly as she taught our teleconference class in Christian life coaching. That was back in April of this year, the first month of my wonderful training. My classmates from Singapore, Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and more places, and I, from Muskoka, Ontario, listened and engaged through the long distance phone lines and dutifully took our notes about the differences between regular and Christian life coaching. The main difference that stood out for me was encased in her words: "We place a higher value on suffering."

Those words were in some ways a truism for me, a "duh". Okay, so we get it. We Christians know all about suffering and its value, I guess, or are supposed to. But in this day and age of the prosperity gospel, the wonderings about whether we are doing something wrong if we have difficulties, we need to be told that. Especially in the world of life coaching. For that is where we are trained to help others to fulfill long dormant dreams, to live their best life, to be the person they have always wanted to be, to move forward in spite of the obstacles and negative mindsets that may have plagued them all their lives.

A.B. Simpson is quoted in Streams in the Desert (where else? This little book is jampacked with big truths about learning through suffering):

Trials and hard places are needed to press us forward, even as the furnace fires in the hold of that mighty ship give force that moves the piston, drives the engine, and propels that great vessel across the sea in the face of the winds and the waves.

It's not just about enduring suffering and growing from it...it's about its necessity in the Christian life. And so its necessity in Christian life coaching.

Another aspect of this theme is given by Thomas Moore about depression in his book, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, and his chapter called "Gifts of Depression":

Maybe we could appreciate the role of depression in the economy of the soul more if we could only take away the negative connotations of the word. What if 'depression' were simply a state of being, neither good nor bad, something the soul does in its own good time and for its own good reasons?

Depression grants the gift of experience not as a literal fact but as an attitude toward yourself. You get a sense of having lived through something, of being older and wiser. You know that life is suffering, and that knowledge makes a difference. You can't enjoy the bouncy, carefree innocence of youth any longer, a realization that entails both sadness because of the loss, and pleasure in a new feeling of self-acceptance and self-knowledge. This awareness of age has a halo of melancholy around it, but it also enjoys a measure of nobility.

It really is possible, at every level, to rejoice in our trials and our sadness. Not only can they produce great inner growth and push us forward to better achieve our goals and dreams, but they can even provide a satisfaction in themselves, a quiet knowledge of God's presence in them, and of our greater awareness of our own companionship, with Him, and with ourselves.

I am so deeply grateful that when I develop my Christian life coaching business I can incorporate all levels of experience, my own in my understanding, and all that my clients will be going through. I will not be coaching them to get out of their depression, or get past the difficulties in their lives, but I will have the privilege of being with them in the midst of them, encouraging them to place a high value on them, and receive all that is possible from and through them. This then can be part of the abundant living that we are promised.

joy in being challenged in my humanity

2009-05-16T00:01:00.005-04:00

This is my latest post for my regular Saturday contribution to www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. It was satisfying to discover what I wanted to write about, and to do it. It is fresh for me.

"All That Is Here Are Humans"

This week I was helping my daughter with a class presentation about the effectiveness of UN Peacekeeping in the world. One of our sources was Romeo Dallaire's book, Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda ,his account of the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990's when he was in charge of the ineffective UN force at that time. What he experienced and witnessed drove him into despair and madness for a time, and through his faith and therapy and the faithful love of his wife, he came back to sanity and health and is a powerful voice in the world today against the hypocrisy of many policies of our western governments.

I was riveted by something he said in the introduction:

Engraved still in my brain is the judgment of a small group of bureaucrats who came to "assess" the situation in the first weeks of the genocide: " We will recommend to our government not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans".

Besides the rage I feel along with him at "man's inhumanity to man", and the unspeakable evil that was unleashed in those few weeks, I ponder these words in the wider context of all that we and I do in so many contexts each day.

All that is here are humans.

All that is here are humans.

What does it really mean to say that?

How many times do we say that in one way or another to ourselves, or in our actions or our inaction?

How many times do we refuse to take risks, to move out of our comfort zones, in order to help others in their "humanity"?

How many times do I demean my own humanity, and that of another, a friend even, by not being willing to risk my reputation, my pride, my comfort, in order to reach out to them?

I find I have to ask myself this question more, rather than less, as I move on in my Christian life. I am struck more each day by the judgmentalism of Christians, and my own judgments, not only of others, but of myself.

I feel I have many more new levels to explore in my spiritual journey. After more than 40 years on this journey, I often feel I have only begun. I am more and more grateful for the new challenges God is bringing into my life: study and work in the areas of coaching and counselling, which really means learning, growing, and giving (and of course receiving) in the arenas of validating personhood and giving life.

But I know that what matters to Him, and really to me and my growth, is what is going on inside me. As I seek to grow to be more like Him, am I becoming more human? He became fully human. So it is completely spiritually "logical" that growing in Him means growing in my humanity. How often do we or I think that way? Even to ask myself that question in this way seems new for me.

I need to remember this every day: All that is here are humans. Then I need to decide what I am called to do because of that.

joy in facing more spiritual challenges

2009-05-02T00:01:00.001-04:00

God sure must have great things in store for me because He keeps blessing me with more and more emotional hardship. The stronger I become, the more challenges I face, within myself and in relationships. It just never seems to end. And when sickness comes along with all its lessons, the challenges grow ever greater. If I did not love and trust my Saviour so, I would give up, and throw in the towel, and say it is not worth going through all this pain, again and again. But I trust my Lord is faithful, and He knows what He is doing, and He is trying to teach me "how to bear the beams of love" with greater humility, awareness, and grace. His grace. These are the main lessons for this past week, written for my regular Saturday blog post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com.

Daily Bread for the Three D's

We can only cruise so long before the crash comes, if we don't take care of ourselves. It's usually my mother heart that does that to me, and as we have seen in my last two blog posts, God has blessed me in my journeys on behalf of my daughter's goals. But still my body has had the bigger say over my heart. I have a cold I can't shake easily and it is so frustrating. Whatever is bothering me bothers me even more, whatever is hard is extra hard, and so I could go on. It is easy to go into the darkness when you are sick, and frustrated. The three D's come up trumps if I don't defeat them: Doubt, Discouragement and Despair.

As I have listened to my heart this week and observed my moods closely, I have realized with horror how easily I could give up on my dreams and God's promises. I am grateful for these words that jumped off the page from Streams in the Desert on April 30th, in the midst of my darkness:

And the ill-favoured and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well favored and fat kine...and the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears. (Gen.: 41: 4,7)

I was amazed and arrested at the following interpretation of this passage:

There is a warning for us in that dream, just as it stands: It is possible for the best years of our life, the best experiences, the best victories won, the best service rendered, to be swallowed up by times of failure, defeat, dishonor, uselessness in the kingdom. Some men's lives of rare promise and rare achievement have ended so. It is awful to think of, but it is true. Yet it is never necessary.

S.D. Gordon has said that the only assurance of safety against this tragedy is "fresh touch with God", daily, hourly. The blessed, fruitful, victorious experiences of yesterday are not only of no value to me today, but they will actually be eaten up or reversed by today's failures, unless they serve as incentives to still better, richer experiences today.

"Fresh touch with God," by abiding in Christ, alone will keep the lean kine and the ill-favored grain out of my life.

From Messages for the Morning Watch

joy in finding God's faithfulness again

2009-04-25T00:01:00.000-04:00

This is my post for today on www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. It continues the story from last week, of my visit to Missionfest Toronto and what God did for me there. It is a lovely story, another example of His continuing faithfulness to me in my life, whatever my struggles and wonderings.

More Than Enough For Me

Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.
Psalm 37:5

He who promised is faithful.
Hebrew 10:23b

Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?
Numbers 23:19b

Some of you who read my post last Saturday will remember that I went to Missionfest Toronto, primarily to make it possible for my daughter and her friend to hear an inspiring speaker. I wondered what God might have for me, the ex-missionary, the Life Coach/Counsellor-in-training, and how I would react again to the big splash of Missionfest this time, in the context of my experience of it over many years since its beginnings out west, which I shared in with my husband in our earlier life as missionaries.

Well, I still struggled with the feeling of Missionfest being like just another big trade fair in a huge facility on the outskirts of Toronto. I didn't like the darkened auditorium in the middle of the day to hear a worship band that was way louder than necessary, and I was concerned at the fervency that didn't seem to be there anymore in the atmosphere. I missed the excitement and hubbub of activity and spontaneity of earlier years, and I noticed the numbers of booths seemed reduced, as well as those who attended.

Nevertheless I was blessed, as always, by Brian Doerksen in concert, a Christian worship leader/songwriter whose faithfulness, personal testimony and sacrifice have always impressed me, not to mention the anointing on his music, simple as it is. My daughter and her friend were not disappointed in Shane Claiborne, the speaker they had come for, and talked about his message for the rest of the weekend. They found the information they wanted from YWAM (Youth With a Mission) and Urban Promise. Other friends we bumped into were excited by words and resources that blessed them for their upcoming mission trip. We shook hands with Michael Coren and chatted candidly with him about current issues on his program, and I spoke to several colleagues of my husband's from days gone by.

My friend and I managed to make it into the latter part of the Women's Forum, and appreciated the affirming and solid, although familiar teaching. I wondered what God might do about the new directions in my life. I was not to be disappointed. As we were instructed to join in threes to be prayed for by the speaker and each other,one of the hosts at the back table came over and joined us. After we prayed she asked me if I was a teacher, sensing something in the way I prayed for her. The conversation opened up, and we discovered we had both been missionaries in East Africa. She is more recently returned and going through some of the struggles I have wrestled with since our return eight years ago.

When she saw Life Coaching on my card, we talked about making a probono arrangement where I would coach her for free in this transition phase and she would help me by being my client as I am in training! I had been thinking that coaching returned missionary women could be one coaching niche for me. So here I am now, one phone coaching session already done, and another one going on in person in Toronto as you read this. God is so organized!! Instead of me worrying about how to try out clients, He hands me my first one - a very lovely lady,confirming my conviction that my being and doing are interconnected in this new "ex-missionary" phase of my life. This gift felt like a firstfruits of His promise to me of faithfulness of leading me into a whole new life ahead of me, of which Life Coaching and counselling are a part.

That made my day, but it was only noon, and we planned to stay around a while, so we went to one workshop, on Arts and Mission. When I found it was about a TV type video website I wondered what it would have to do with me. The founders and organizers of Images of You TV (www.ImagesofU.TV) were very professional and courteous as they shared about how they promote mission and Christian events through their TV style website. ...and then I found an inspiration forming right there in my head - I asked pertinent questions in the session and afterwards..and...lo and behold: a vision for a future video section of my business website to share voices and stories from Africa...beginning with my husband's return trip there this summer - an opportunity to honour him and his life's work, and my many friends, Ugandan and missionary, who are still there. As if that was not exciting enough, the organizer overheard my discussion with the other volunteer workers and said she wants to do a story on Jim and his past work and trip when he comes back. God is opening up a new way to use my experience as a missionary, to bless what I have been and known, and to find new ways to bless those with whom so much of my big story of missionary life has been connected.

I had stepped out in obedience to make something happen for my daughter. God met me where I was, in transition between the past and the future, and danced in the present with me. Regardless of atmosphere or lack of it, my own kind of cynicism or preparation for disappointment, He showed His faithfulness to me and to the promises He has given me, in the past and the present, for the future.

There was more than enough for me, in a quiet and yet satisfying way, at Missionfest. I am reminded again that it's not about the event, and never is; it's about God and what He can do when we trust Him and believe His promises to us. We move out in our sailing craft on to the open sea, and then we open His sealed orders.

joy in doing an old thing a new way

2009-04-18T00:01:00.002-04:00

I've enjoyed reflecting on this latest jaunt to the big metropolis of Toronto out of Muskoka's wilds! It's nice to have a change and a break, and see how others live, and once again rejoice that I can return to a "simpler life". As my reflection for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com shows, I am approaching this Missionfest in a new relaxed way, not hyped up the way I used to be, and not apologetic about my new way of walking through my Christian life. I look forward to sharing how it was when I write again next week.

Sealed Orders

As you read this I will be moving around Missionfest Toronto, milling with the crowds at the hundreds of booths of mission societies and Christian organizations. We will be well provided for at a beautiful facility near the airport, with all the latest "mod cons" as my Brit friends would have said. When the time comes my daughter, her friend, my friend and I will attend workshops of our choosing or cram in to hear the next famous plenary speaker or worship artist. All the info we could possibly need about it, and much more, will be in a glossy program handed to us in our first moments. An amazing way to be with the rich to learn about how to serve the poor, either in money or in faith.

I hearken back over twenty years to Missionfest Vancouver, held in the gymnasium of Burnaby Christian Fellowship. We were newlyweds, staffing our booth for ACTS, Africa Community Technical Service, the small mission my husband founded and ran, overhead and salary free, out of the basement of his home in North Vancouver. It was in the early heady days of missions finding their voice in the mainline body of Christ. We were taking courses on being a World Christian, and giving talks about our work with cut and pasted newsletters, home made displays and African artifacts. Our tiny children bounced around as I taught action songs to Sunday school groups like "I am a House of Prayer". Ah, those were the days. I knew who I was, and what to do. Life was busy and exciting. We were missionaries who had a message, whether sitting at a booth at Missionfest or talking in a church or writing up the latest info on our doings in a newsletter. I used to say that it was much more fulfilling and uplifting to be part of Missionfests than to go to "charismatic" conferences.

Now I visit so my daughter and her friend can hear a wonderful speaker espousing a simple life, Shane Claiborne, a guy who often gets sent away from churches because of his clothes, until he tells them he's their guest speaker. I wonder what else will be relevant to my life? I am excited that Missionfest has come this long way in those twenty plus years. Or am I? What does it say about the western church that this vision has been enriched and fulfilled over and over again, even if it is held in a posh place in a big city? I suppose that is the way things happen here in North America. And if it results in people making important choices to support various mission efforts or answer a "call" to the "mission field", then I guess it will have fulfilled its mission.

Well,I'll wait to tell you next week how it was. I am sure God will have some precious moments for me, whatever their content. He will continue His journey with me, walking me through my life with His "sealed orders". One thing I know for sure now, although it has taken some time to get there: I don't need to apologize for not being a "missionary" any more. I don't need to prove my human "doing". My human "being" is enough for my life in Christ, and enough for me.

This is thy work, these are thy possibilities; contentment to sail with sealed orders, because of unwavering confidence in the wisdom of the Lord High Admiral.

F.B.M. (April 16 in Streams in the Desert)

joy in running for our lives

2009-04-11T00:01:00.000-04:00

Here is my Easter weekend post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. I am always amazed at how I can take disparate elements that are running through my thoughts and experiences in any week, and tie them together with God's grace. But then, that seems to be what God does all the time in our lives...

Running for our lives in Easter Joy

Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. Habakkuk 2:2

I shall never forget the words of a girl I walked with on the island of Iona on the west coast of Scotland in the summer of 1976. I was a Christian; she wasn't. I was troubled and worried; she wasn't. I was carrying the burdens of my life and the world on my mind and heart; she was making choices and getting on with her life with vibrancy and joy. As I poured out my concerns and hesitations to her, she said "You have to run to meet things."

Those words embedded deep within my spirit. Mind you, it took some time for them to bear fruit. And it has taken time to really understand what they mean. She had an understanding and a secret about life that I had not yet found, despite my adventuring into life in Scotland, and my attempt to embrace a radical Christian life. I am not recommending that being a non-Christian is the way to go. But I have often found that we Christians lack the zest for life that an Easter people should have. We have kept on the graveclothes instead of putting on the garments of resurrection. We can become so caught up in our struggles that we lose our vision or don't know how to find the one that is best for us.

This Easter season I can celebrate that God provided me with a vision that I can both realize with some comfort and also run to meet. In a dream last fall he dropped the words "Life Coach". I got up and did an internet search and discovered a wonderful Life Coach training program. They were interested in me, and all my training and experience fit with their requirements. They were grounded in reality, certified and able to provide both solid secular international accreditation and a Christian track, with Christian teachers and students! It seemed too good to be true. I tested the vision for awhile, prayed it through, talked with others, let it die for a season, and then applied. Now I am in training and loving it. It fits with who I am and have been, and who I want to be. It also makes me and empowers me to run to meet the future, call forth what I need to become next in my journey to be all that I can be. And it brings me to life, resurrection life, after a season of many dormant dreams. It calls me and allows me to be what I dream of being, and to help others to do that too.

I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't been listening and watching, and getting ready to run, and running at times to meet the future. Often I would run into the wrong places or take off too soon and then have to slow down, I was so eager to be off and running. Despite my struggles, my faith was telling me that God had something for me to take me into the future in a new way, to make sense of the struggles, to use them to help myself and others, and to ignite my passion so I could ignite it in others. It fit with the revelation that was in my heart,that was written deep on the tables of my spirit, by God's hands.

Streams in the Desert again speaks to us about such expectation:

The old homely proverb says: "They that watch for providence will never want a providence to watch for," and you may turn it the other way and say, "They that do not watch for providences will never have a providence to watch for." Unless you put out your water jars when it rains you will catch no water.

We want to be more businesslike and use common sense with God in pleading promises.Those who come to the bank in earnest present their checks,they wait until they receive their gold, and then they go; but not without having transacted real business....Our heavenly Father would have us do real business with Him in our praying. (April 6)

Living with hope and vision enables us to run the race of our lives with zest and vigour. Trusting God to provide what we need to do this is like running to meet things. When we know how to do that, we can proclaim it to others. I want to be someone who does that with joy and enthusiasm. I don't want to have to go to my non-Christian contacts to get my energy for my life. I respect theirs, and learn from it. But I shame my own heritage, my own understanding and fellowship with God, if I do not, despite all the warfare and discouragement, believe in His providence over my life. I shame His joy in my life if I do not run with joy the race set before me. Only then will others see what I have and want it, and come alive themselves, not only in Christ, in His resurrection promises for our heavenly destiny, but also in the visions for the rest of their lives.

Don't ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive,and then go and do that.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Harold Thurman Whitman

This Easter season may we all come more alive than ever before, in Him, and in the visions for our lives, and may we run with joy all the rest of our days.

joy in seeing clouds from both sides

2009-04-04T00:01:00.005-04:00

I've been experiencing, and sharing about, lots of "angst" in my life. Readers have emailed me or made comments on how they have been touched by my honesty and how it has helped them. Of course that blesses me. It is one of the silver linings in the clouds in this season of my life. But most of all I have been growing greatly, not only in my awareness of my humanity and my ability to cope with it, but also of God's power and greatness in my life, His warfare on my behalf, when I am willing to look at things His way, and to TRUST Him. That is my big time learning and walking these days, stepping out in faith and obedience, and trusting His goodness and faithfulness, despite my fears. Of course the more I have done that, the more my adversary has sought to bring his devices against me. And so I have had to delve deeper into my knowledge of the weapons available to me in Christ. That of course has been another silver lining in my clouds, because I have been forced deeper and deeper into my experience not only of my pain and humanity, but also of God's provision and resources available to me. Knowledge has come off the pages of the books I read over the years, off the notes of the seminars I attended. I am dusting off the prophetic words spoken over my life, my destiny, and wedding them with God's promises in His word to all of us. Today's post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com is a witness to this work in my heart and spirit. Long may it continue, for me, and for you.

Both Sides Now...and Always

"I've looked at clouds from both sides now"....The familiar strains of Joni Mitchell's famous song filter through my mind, bringing back the vague and dreamy phases of my youthful wonderings, pain and struggle. The 60s began the trend of a refreshing honesty and reality in reflective love songs. Now as I approach my own personal sixties I struggle with the spiritual realities of "clouds" all the time.

There are lots of human truths in her song, but it has always bothered me because it doesn't seem to give much hope. It doesn't give a way through the experience of clouds, except to adopt an "older but wiser" attitude to stuff. That's fine as far as it goes, but it can leave us feeling sad and empty, robbed somehow of the deeper joys of living, and the rewards of facing pain and struggling with it to receive the joy after the tears.

More than that, for those of us who know the reality of living with Jesus Christ within our beings, it can never be enough. Our knowledge of truth goes way beyond it. As well we know the dimension of spiritual warfare, and the continuous assault on our hearts, minds, relationships and circumstances by the adversary of our souls. The three main weapons he uses are all D's: Doubt, Depression and Despair. They come in many forms, but clouds would be an adequate description, it would seem. Not really the clouds that Joni saw, of illusions or delusions, but dark thunderclouds, or relentless grey clouds pouring endless rain, sleet or snow upon our hurting hearts.

But the great thing is that the story does not end here. It is only a beginning. When we have the big picture we can see beyond the clouds; in fact we can see into the clouds, to the "silver lining". But we need our spiritual eyes, the eyes of Jesus living within us, and we need to be armed with the knowledge of the truth about who we are, Whom we belong to, and how to fight our adversary.

Streams in the Desert once again speaks forcefully to our cause:

Get into the habit of looking for the silver lining of the cloud and when you have found it, continue to look at it, rather than at the leaden gray in the middle. Do not yield to discouragement no matter how sorely pressed or beset you may be. A discouraged soul is helpless. ...Flee from every symptom of this deadly foe as you would flee from a viper. And be not slow in turning your back on it, unless you want to bite the dust in bitter defeat.

Search out God's promises and say aloud of each one: "This promise is mine." If you still experience a feeling of doubt and discouragement, pour out your heart to God and ask Him to rebuke the adversary who is so mercilessly nagging you. The very instant you wholeheartedly turn away from every symptom of distrust and discouragement, the blessed Holy Spirit will quicken your faith and inbreathe divine strength into your soul....

Oh, if our eyes could only behold the solid phalanx of strength, of power, that is ever behind every turning away from the hosts of darkness, God-ward, what scant heed would be given to the effort of the wily foe to distress, depress, discourage us!

All the marvelous attributes of the Godhead are on the side of the weakest believer, who in the name of Christ, and in simple, childlike trust, yields himself to God and turns to Him for help and guidance.

Let us now, whenever we are in a cloud, of whatever kind, remember to look at it from both sides.

They looked...and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. (Exodus 16:10)

joy in reflecting on connections between pain and purpose

2009-03-28T06:00:00.001-04:00

This is my post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. this week. It came, as usual, out of reflection on personal issues, combined with devotional readings and my own understanding of how God is working in my life.

Fires in our inmost being

I am pondering a lot on pain and grief these days, as I witness the pain of others, whether celebrities or friends, or try to cope with my own. Pain and grief come in many forms, and for the most part are usually unbearable or hard to comprehend. We know so well of those who turn away from God because of the sorrow that has come upon them. And we can all mouth the plain and obvious truth that it is by far the better thing to turn to God in our pain, and grow closer to Him because of it.

Some schools of Christian thought would say that the abundant life should be one where we are able to live without pain. Much confusion has come from such thinking, I believe, for pain is a great motivator and teacher. But we must all be wary of not becoming bitter in our pain, or tempted to despair. And how often we know of how hard it is to console others, and also ourselves, with God's incomparable truth when they are in the midst of the fire.

In my pain this week I have turned again to timeless words quoted in Streams in the Desert:

God often has to burn His lessons into the depths of our being by the fires of protracted pain.

Physical force is stored in the bowels of the earth, in the coal mines, which came from the fiery heat that burned up great forests in ancient ages; and so spiritual force is stored in the depths of our being, through the very pain which we cannot understand.

Like Joseph, let us be more careful to learn all the lessons in the school of sorrow than we are anxious for the hour of deliverance.(March 22/23)

I and we must trust that the fire of pain burning within will become a fire of passion and compassion which will give life and warmth to others in days to come. I and we must choose to lay down our need to know why things happen the way they do, and build upon our trust in God's mercy and grace, and His capacity to work all things together for good.

More than that, we must trust that, like Joseph, in whom were planted visions, dreams, prophecies, promises and great abilities, we may, through our suffering, come one day to "possess the land" promised to us by God. The very depths of our pain can build into us the capacity to fulfill all that God has called us to be and do, if we will embrace the way in which the lessons come.

All you can apprehend in the vision of faith is your own.Look as far as you can, for it is all yours. All that you long to be as a Christian, all that you long to do for God, are within the possibilities of faith. ..Accept for yourself all the promises of His Word, all the desires He awakens within you, all the possibilities of what you may be as a follower of Jesus. All the land you see is given to you.

Streams in the Desert (March 26)

joy in sharing sorrow, and in pondering deep things

2009-03-21T08:05:00.003-04:00

This has been a week, as so often, of pondering deep things, but perhaps more so in conversation with others, of talking of the lives and death of famous people we were attracted to. It seemed fitting to weave it into my blog post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com:

"Sometimes there's God so quickly"

These words from Tennesee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire,were quoted in the Toronto Star this week as an epitaph to the life and death of Natasha Richardson, exquisite actress of the Redgrave clan, and beloved wife of the wonderful actor, Liam Neeson. Her sudden and tragic death captured much sadness for my daughters and me, recognizing the beauty of the love in her marriage and the intensity and authenticity with which both she and her husband have acted their screen and stage roles. We are not much given to ogling famous personalities, and we don't watch TV, but we are touched by all kinds of people and I appreciate our profound conversations. We pondered in a similarly honest way about the tragic death of a local high profile person in Muskoka, who died with her daughter when her ATV drove off the ice into open water on a large Muskoka lake at the beginning of March break. I had heard this impressive woman speak, spoken with her once at a women's luncheon, and last sat opposite her and her daughter at a fundraising event for Africa organized by my own daughter. I did not know her personally, but her intense way of working and approaching life attracted my interest. I know nothing of the personal faith of either woman. But what is obvious to all is that they lived their lives with passion and intensity, seeking to demonstrate in their art or their community service, their marriages and their family lives, their desire to love and be loved.

I am sure I am not alone in my continuing interest in love and death and the forms in which they come, their intense expression and their roles in the lives of all I know or hear about. My interest and concern are always about the quality of spiritual and relational life for everyone, in public and private, and whether or not they have lived and died in the knowledge of God's incredible love for them.

I return in my thoughts again this week to meditating on the words I quoted in my post last Saturday, by William Blake:

And we are put on earth a little space
To learn to bear the beams of love.

Gerald May, a psychologist and leader,teacher and author in the spiritual formation movement, also quoted these lines in his book, The Awakened Heart. His amplification of them helped me in my pondering the implications of the word bear in this context. He has said what I was beginning to articulate for myself as I searched dictionary meanings and the internet for comments on the phrase 'bearing the beams of love'.

There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake. It is the human desire for love. Every person on this earth yearns to love, to be loved, to know love. Our true identity, our reason for being, is to be found in this desire.

I think William Blake was right about the purpose of humanity; we are here to learn to bear the beams of love. There are three meanings of bearing love: to endure it, to carry it, and to bring it forth. In the first, we are meant to grow in our capacity to endure love, beauty and pain. In the second, we are meant to carry love and spread it around, as children carry laughter and measles. And in the third we are meant to bring new love into the world, to be bearers of love. This is the threefold nature of our longing.

Gerald May: The Awakened Heart

Well, you may say, it's all fine and dandy to work this out conceptually, but what matters is how we live it. Absolutely. What we really share about on this blog, and what others do in so many ways, is our struggles in living out these eternal, timeless realities. For indeed, "Sometimes there's God so quickly."

joy in learning about loving

2009-03-14T09:24:00.004-04:00

Hi again - I learned again from writing my own post for http://www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com/. I didn't know what I was going to write on til I began to wrote, nor how I was going to work it out. And so it taught and blessed me to write it. I hope it blesses you too. Here it is:

Learning to Bear the Beams of Love

"And we are put on earth a little space
That we may learn to bear the beams of love."

William Blake Songs of Innocence and Experience

I have always loved these words, ever since I first met them in my class on the Romantic poets in my second year of studying English Literature at university. They were like pools of water in the dry land of cynicism and godlessness among many writers through the centuries. Those words, along with other noble sentiments from some of the few Christian or Christianized poets, playwrights, essayists and novelists that one can find among the pages of history, helped me to hear God's voice when I wasn't regularly feeding on His Word.

But I believe the words themselves are timeless, even for devout Christians. We can struggle, even in our devotion, to discern what life is all about. The cacophony of demands upon our time, the confusion and terror in the global village, the ever increasing war upon our inner peace and joy - all of these add up to one question: What is worth doing?

And in the end I believe we come back to that same place that most people do, whether or not they are Christian. They come back to this timeless truth, that life is all about learning to love and be loved. As Christians we may explore those truths in deep and wider ways as we experience the glory and wonder of God's unconditional love for us, but I imagine, and know for myself, that the challenge is huge in a human sense of just learning to love and continue to love those human beings with whom we have regular contact.

I am often heard to quote this Irish saying:

"To live above with the Saints we love, Ah that is the purest glory;
To live below with the Saints we know, Ah, that is another story."

And I must freely admit that the context for my sharing it has been my own cynicism about other Christians and their attitudes, particularly when I have been hurt and misunderstood by them. So the lesson, the learning for me, of course is most of all about the poverty of my own spirit, my own love, as one of the Saints about whom others might share that saying.

I have been struck by the particularity of love, and the way that God helps us to show it, when we partner with Him in bearing beams of love. We have seen that in the beautiful details of Susan and Brenda's story about their father and their family, in Belinda and Brenda and Robert's caring for their mother, in the details about rubbing backs and sharing breakfast, in waiting for doctors and praying with folded hands. We have heard it before in the struggles for Frank and Ang and Nicky, and all those we pray for, through this blog and in all our private realms.

I recall the amazing way God worked out the details on the last morning of my mother's life. For months I had wondered if she might die when I was at class at seminary in Toronto, when I would be out of town for 24 hours. I didn't consciously pray that I would be present when Mum died, but that was indeed my desire. Mum began to go down quickly a few days before I would go to class, and I had told my professor that I wasn't sure if I would have to miss class one week. But it was hard to make plans each week for transportation and all the rest, as I was using buses in the middle of the night, or rides with a friend. Somehow I made the decision, on March 30th of last year, that I would not take the offered ride and that I would miss my class. My spirit was telling me, as I was learning to bear the beams of love for my mother, which was not easy, that this was such a time. Yet I didn't know how fast it would be. The very next morning I went in to see Mum when I would have been walking in to my class in Toronto. She was already unconscious, and she died in my arms a few hours later. I had time to call my sister and nephew to be with us, and together we watched her cross the threshold into the presence of God and the time at last to live above with the Saints we love. Until the end of my days I will be touched by that beam of love that I was able to bear.

It is always a thrill when we see others learning to bear these beams. We bless Belinda and Susan as they speak for all of us yearning to be there for others, leaning on God's grace. I think we will always feel like beginners in this school, and I guess that is okay, for then it is really not about us, and yet we have the privilege of making beautiful stories out of all kinds of brokenness, in His love.

joy in opportunities to continue to share, from the past and the present

2009-03-08T12:59:00.008-04:00

This past week I posted two blogs on the team devotional blog I write for: www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. My usual day is Saturday, but often I put a draft which can be used any day. So with our administrator away with her ailing mother in England, someone else is watching over the account. I continue to appreciate the wonderful opportunity to share in a way that challenges me to articulate and to examine my own thoughts and feelings, in the light of God's teachings...and to make them public.

Here are my two posts:

No Shortcuts to Fulfilling God's Vision (posted Sunday, March 8th)

I saw Slumdog Millionaire this week. I hadn't planned to; my daughter and I just went on the spur of the moment. It's hard to talk about its impact. Yes, it had a happy ending, but it was a rough fairy tale. For someone who has seen a lot of roughness in Uganda, it was hard for me. I have sat on the floor in front of thugs pointing an AK47 at me and my family. In a sense I have never fully recovered from the trauma of that incident. Yet it was mild in comparison with what goes on every day all over the world: Christian martyrdoms, about 500 a day, terrible tortures, horrendous crimes. Even regarding the production and follow up of this movie there have been concerns about fairness in the treatment of the child stars from the real slums of India. Throughout the movie I kept my head down a lot, not wanting to imprint on my brain scenes of horror and violence.

But above and beyond all that I have to agree that this story is a powerful one about vision. It was the sense of destiny that kept the hero moving ahead against all odds, until he achieved his goal and dream - to be united with the love of his life. His faith and vision ignited faith and vision in her and enabled her to rise to that destiny. The power of that faith spoke to the brother who had the power to help to make it happen, despite his own lack of faith and vision, his own compromise and corruption.

I am excited about the power of vision. If I weren't I wouldn't have applied for and been accepted this past week into a training program to become a professional Christian Life Coach. Life Coaching is about helping others close the gap between their vision for their lives and the realities they live with every day. It is about implanting in others what God has implanted in me, and what I have to ask others to encourage me in, and have to grow in faith about every single day.

Proverbs 29:18 says "Where there is no vision, the people perish." This is so true. We may not perish physically, but we may perish morally, emotionally or spiritually, if we have no vision, and certainly if we do not have God's vision for our lives. And we know that He works with our visions and dreams, the desires of our hearts, and weaves them into the visions for our whole lives. His grace makes Romans 8:28 true every day, and more especially as we move forward very intentionally in obedience to our calling and vision.

But there are no shortcuts. I was reminded of that as I went onto www.biblegateway.com this morning to find the correct reference for that verse. All across the top of the website was a moving ad from a Christian university saying "There are no shortcuts to the fulfillment of God's plans for you." It was a highlighting of my reading for today in the Bible League Devotional Planner: "We live by faith, not by sight." 2 Cor. 5:7 And as if God was determined I should never ever forget it, Streams in the Desert for today had these words:

There is no way of learning faith except by trial. It is God's school of faith, and it is far better for us to learn to trust God than to enjoy life...The lesson of faith, once learned, is an everlasting acquisition and an eternal fortune made; and without trust even riches will leave us poor.
(from Days of Heaven on Earth)

The hero of Slumdog Millionaire got the money and the girl. We like him getting the money because he didn't cheat, and he went on the program to win the girl. So the fairy tale rings true as they always do, to teach us universal truths, as this one teaches us about the power of vision. But for those of us who know Jesus Christ, and who have our vision for our lives caught up with Him, we must be willing to pay big prices for the fulfillment of that vision, must accept the hardship of having no shortcuts, and must learn true faith by trial.

As I write my mind is flashing back, visually and audibly, to a scene at a conference a few years ago. Members of a Christian worship band were praying over us. One of them began shouting over me: "FAITH! FAITH!! Woman of FAITH!! You are a great woman of FAITH!! It is FAITH that will change your circumstances!!!!". Well, five years down the road, I can see how faith has changed my circumstances, and brought me further along the road to the fulfilment of my vision, of God's vision for my life. And indeed there have been no shortcuts. And often each day I can still feel like a beginner in the school of faith. But I have a faithful Father, who undergirds me and leads me on, and empowers me with faith, through His Holy Spirit.

And the Lord answered me, and said, "Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come." ( Habakkuk 2: 2-3)

This is a version of the Lord's prayer that I wrote for a reflection session at our church in May of 2007. It was subsequently published in the church newsletter. It was a very helpful exercise for me, and others, to put my own words and thoughts into the structure of the Lord's Prayer. I could have edited it and made it shorter, but somehow it seems appropriate to share it as I wrote it then. I suggest it as an exercise for you, especially in this season of Lent.

The Lord's Prayer According to Meg (posted Friday, March 6th)

Our Father, who art in Heaven....

Daddy God, my heavenly father, shared with all who live, creator of the universe, father of all, who dwells on high in heaven, as well as in my heart, who dwells in me and in the hearts of all who seek you, who want to be with you now and in heaven,

Hallowed be your name.....

You are holy to me...I call your name holy to all...may I always do so...may I always keep your name holy...may I always call others to do so too...may I see your name hallowed in all the earth, as the day of your coming approaches....

Your kingdom come....

I long to see your kingdom come here on earth...may all that you are and all that you give me and all that comes from you and all that you want to see happen...may it come to pass in every way and place and time...especially in my life, my heart, my home, my relationships, my town, my province, my country....

Your will be done....

I want to do your will...I want to see others do your will...today, and every day...from now on...not my will, but your will...knowing that what you will is best for me and for all, higher and better and truer and freer...even when I don't understand....

On earth, as it is in Heaven....

Here and now...in the future...here on earth...I want to see all that you already see from heaven...all the possibilities and hopes and dreams you have for all of us...that you have had from before our lives began...from before time began...I want to see that happen...may all that I am be available to help that happen....

Give us this day our daily bread.....

Daddy, I ask and trust you for all that I need today, for me and for all your children, all that our bodies, minds and hearts need to grow and become all that you call me and your children to be today and in the days to come....

And forgive us our trespasses....

Daddy God, forgive me and all your children for all that I and we have done and said, all that I and we do and say, all that I and we will do and say today and in the days to come that will go outside of the boundaries you have laid out for me and for your children in our words and actions....

As we forgive those who trespass against us....

I know that we can ask for this forgiveness if we are willing to give it to those who trespass our boundaries, who violate us and abuse us and misunderstand us, and that the more I and we understand our own brokenness and sinfulness and weakness and recognize how unable we are without your power to do what you call us to do in loving others and even ourselves....the more we will be able to accept others in all their weakness and brokenness which causes them to do the things that hurt me and others....

And lead us not into temptation....

Daddy, I need you to order my steps today...to go before me and walk beside me...to lead me into all that you want me to do and be...we all need you to do that...so that we will not stray into situations and relationships that are dangerous to us or to others...so that we will not trespass your boundaries in our thoughts and words and actions....so that we will not get into the kind of trouble that is really of our own making....

But deliver us from evil....

Since you know us so well, Daddy, we can rely on you to see us out of trouble that will come our way, that becomes evil or is already evil, but we ask you anyway to protect us and take us through and out of all that is evil, in situations and in people, in our own thoughts and emotions, because you are faithful and you know we seek to follow you and be all that you want us to be....

For yours is the kingdom...

It's really all about you, Daddy. You set it up and you have your plans...you know the end from the beginning....

The power....

You could do it all for us...for you have awesome, total and unlimited power to do all that you want...after all you created the universe...and you give us your power....you want to use your power in our lives...to be and do all that we need...so that we may be and do all that you need us to do in our lives, in this world....

And the glory....

Your majesty and your glory are unbelievable and beyond description...and you want to bring your glory to pass in our lives....you want to share your glory with us....you want all that we are and do to shine with the witness of your presence...

Forever and ever....

I can't imagine forever but I believe it....that all this is true and always has been and always will be and that you can make it all so...that just as you have been and will be forever so we can be forever with you....

Amen....

So be it, Daddy....may I always believe and know and do all that I have said here...may I mean it more each day...may I always seek to live according to these words...may we live according to your words....your plans...your dreams....and may all that you offer us bring to pass all our words and plans and dreams that you delight in.

joy in celebrating quietness and trust

2009-02-28T07:58:00.004-05:00

I wrote another post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com this week, because there was a gap that I offered to fill. I had written a piece for our Lenten church newsletter, so I adapted it for the blog, and there it was. I didn't get around to posting it on the day, so here it is now.

Some Quiet Words for Lent

Speak up with confidence!! That seems to be the message of the world. Proclaim yourself out there. Usually we see those who do lots of that as the confident ones. But so often God’s message to us is the opposite of what the world says.“In quietness and confidence shall be your strength”. (Isaiah 30:15) That was the translation of the words in the version my grandmother quoted when she gave me that verse on my confirmation day in Windsor, January 13th, 1963. I can still see the words in her homey rounded handwriting on a vellum card, pasted on the black inner lining pages of one of my grandfather’s Bibles that she passed on to me. Dear Granny Kay, dear, dear wife of my saintly grandfather, a beloved Canadian bishop who had died in London, Ontario seven years before that day. She and he exemplified that verse for me, and for many others. Their quiet strength, their humble trust and confidence in God helped to build the bedrock of my faith’s foundation.

I have been reflecting on that verse for more than just a Lenten season or two. In particular I have been pondering it in relation to many events and concerns in my faith journey that I have the privilege of sharing with you on this blog. Knowing that you will be waiting for encouraging words on my day to write gives me reason to more intentionally reflect on ways that God speaks to me as I go through my days. It is an incredibly rewarding experience. Perhaps when we each have to pull together thoughts for others we come up with much that enriches our own lives and thinking. And what is really important is what the words do for us, for all that really matters is what is going on in our own hearts, and between us and God.

Our constant inner chatter, surface voices or deep truths expressed in the riddles of our dreams, is known to God as well as to us. He knows and hears it all, and seeks to have His loving words break through the chatter, bring His voice of truth into the bedlam of our fears, hopes and dreams. And how else can we hear His voice than by being quiet? That doesn’t mean taking a vow of silence for the season of Lent, or not sharing our concerns with others. It might even mean finding our voices in new ways, as I have done through writing on a blog. Each of us will know what it means to be quiet, just as each of us will know what it means to have our confidence in God, and finding our strength there. Some of the other translations for Isaiah 30:15 use the word trust instead of confidence, making it very clear that it is our trust in God that gives us confidence.

My prayer for each of us, and especially for myself, is that in this season of Lent, as we prepare ourselves for the commemoration of those great events which are the source of our confidence and trust, the death and resurrection of our mighty humble Saviour and King , Jesus Christ, is that we will find new ways to be quiet within our hearts and minds, and new ways to grow in confidence and trust in Him.

joy in giving tribute to a dear friend and her words

2009-02-28T07:52:00.003-05:00

I was pleased that I was reminded this week, again, of special words of a friend in Uganda, and pleased that my weekly post on the devotional blog, www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com, could give me opportunity to give tribute to this friend in a public way. It was the Lenten season Ash Wednesday service that gave me the connection, words and concept wise, with her words. Here it is:

Down in the Dust - with Jesus

"For dust you are and to dust you will return." Genesis 3:19

The familiar words jolted my memory during the Ash Wednesday service this week. I am not a religious Christian, nor a religious Anglican. I hang loose to various rituals and customs in my denominational tradition. But neither do I shun them at times because I am confident that God can speak to me in any way He chooses, even in church. So this week I chose to attend this special service, confident also that there would be a great message, as there always is, from our gifted and wise female pastor/priest, Kelly. So I had the ashes imposed, and began the season of Lenten reflection with a black sign of the cross on my forehead. It didn't last long, so I didn't have to worry about parading my piety out in the world. I got what I came for - an opportunity to reflect quietly in a shared and sacred space.

Dust was on my mind, and the phrase repeated by my dear Ugandan friend, Canon Marie. She used to say that the only D.D. she wanted was "Down in the Dust." The D.D. of course we were speaking of was the title of Doctor of Divinity, an honorary or earned degree. "Down in the dust", she said, "down in the dust with Jesus." Canon Marie's comment was typical of her honesty and her humility, two of the qualities which had drawn us into close friendship during my family's missionary years in Uganda. Together we began an English Bible Class which still operates more than ten years later, and eight years after our departure from that beautiful land.

But it wasn't just a saying for my dear friend Marie. It was a reality she lived. Up before dawn every day she did heavy digging in her vegetable garden, eager to make a little extra money for her family at the local market. Then a full day doing ministry in the church and home to prepare an evening meal for her husband and family of boys. Her long years of service in the church had been recognized with the title and honour of Canon. However she was a woman, and she was a friend of "the whites". She was my friend, when people didn't understand us, when people didn't like us, when people told lies about us, when people told lies about her, and the supposed advantages she had gained through being my friend. When we suffered deeply from the prejudice that eventually turned to danger and sent us home to protect our family, I could do nothing about the suffering that came upon her. I often wondered, and said to her later, that if I had known what she would suffer for being my friend I wonder if I would have pursued that friendship which brought me so much comfort and opportunity for ministry.

I believe Canon Marie has known and continues to know what it means to be "Down in the Dust". And she knows also, as I do, that it is the only safe place to be. It is not safe to be "special", to be in an important position, to be in special ministry or in any way "above" others. Soon enough something will happen to bring us down into the dust. And when we are we know for sure the joy of His presence with us, as He walks with us along roads of suffering and sacrifice, which eventually bring us into the resurrection freedom He has promised for us.

I am glad I can remember these words and principles this Lent. And I shall never forget them.

joy in knowing He knows my heart better than anyone

2009-02-21T08:44:00.003-05:00

Life is getting simpler for me...in all its complexity. Simpler inside because I don't run away so much from what I feel. I acknowledge it to myself at least, and don't try to have all the answers. And my security in God's knowledge of me, and His unfailing love for me, is growing deeper every day. Last night my daughter had her second showing and sharing of her journey in photos of stories in Uganda last summer, her return to the home of her childhood, with my other daughter joining her. Both times we had between 25 and 30 friends and acquaintances. Both times she did so well, and we enjoyed hosting with Ugandan food and blessing our friends...but it's all work, and all tiring, on top of the rest of life. But it was a joy, and it also brought up many past questions and issues for me about our life there, and the big story that it will always be in my own life. So, along with work and study and all that life has brought this past week, I wrote my blog post around midnight last night, having the comfort and simplicity of a song I found this week by the same artist who did the one I posted last Saturday. It is simple and deep. The way I like to be. Here is the post from the devotional team blog I write for on Saturdays, with the song: (www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com):

No One Knows My Heart Better Than You

The end of a long evening, a long day, a long week. I reflect on many conversations, many questions in my mind and heart, many wonderings about relationships. Some moments and conversations were filled with deep understanding on many levels. Some were filled with tension and confusion, causing my mind to swirl. Sometimes I wished I had not shared as much as I did. Some times I wished I had shared more. Sometimes I lay awake pondering it all. But the place of comfort and peace was in my Heavenly Father's presence. I crawled into His lap in my heart, and accepted His love, became His little child again, and rested in the knowledge of the depth of His knowledge of me. It didn't matter anymore how much I was understood or not by others, because He understands me, and I see by His touch in my life in so many ways that He is able to work out what I need to happen to move ahead, despite the agony of living,as this song expresses it.

So here is this comforting truth, expressed for us all, in a song.

No One Knows My Heart Better Than You

Standing at my window, hidden by the night
Harboring the private wounds, safe and out of sight
There's an agony in living, but there's a comfort in the truth
That no one knows my heart better than You.

I can face a lot of people with this sanguine act of mine
Guarded by the eloquence I sometimes hide behind
But it's a veil of false pretenses that You can see right thru
'Cause no one knows my heart better than You.

Part of me is reaching, and part of me holds back
But when it comes to You I am a doorway
You're free to walk into
'Cause no one knows my heart better than You.

Words and music by Susan Ashton, Billy Sprague and Wayne Kirkpatrick
Copywright 1991 Birdwing Music/Sking Horse Inc. ASCAP/Emily Boothe, Inc. (BMI)

joy in not being "moved"

2009-02-14T08:37:00.003-05:00

I wrote this post last night for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. It came out in a dry way, I felt, and I was unsatisfied with it, but had to put it on because Saturday is usually a day on which I am committed to write. I even wrote to that blog's administrator to say that she could put something else up if she liked. But as I read it this morning, and the comment from an encouraged early morning reader, I realize it was probably a good thing that it was dry for me, because it is about having a rock based faith that is immovable, that dwells below our circumstances and emotions. So I am encouraged today by my own post, by my own words. And I remember a prophetic word spoken over me, unsought, a week ago last night. Part of it was about God developing a strength in me that would enable me to survive all the storms coming my way. I feel as if I have been in some more emotional storms this week, and my response to them has been to quiet down, batten down my inner hatches, and weather the storm, kind of grimly at first, but now with more of that deep joy of knowing that God is in charge, will bring me through, and is using the storm to develop my strength and resilience.

Here's the post:

Let Nothing Move You

This week I have been pondering these words from 1 Corinthians 15:58. They jumped off the page for me a few days ago and have been dwelling in the back of my mind and heart ever since. I assume God is trying to say something to me personally, give me a rhema word, a special message for me. And of course He's right on, when I give myself time to be still and let Him be God.

I go through my days, trying to sit back from myself and ask if I am being "moved". Now of course I believe that He wants us to be moved, to care deeply, about many people and situations, to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who are rejoicing. So I don't think He's talking about that.

I believe He's talking about developing that quality of inner stillness that is not dismayed, that deep trust in God's faithfulness that holds on no matter what, that capacity of knowing and dwelling in the depths of His spirit, far beneath the ever changing forces moving all around us.

I have to say that is the only way for me. That deep place of quietness is the only place to be, the only way to be truly at home in God and in myself. Otherwise I will always be pulled out of myself, tossed here and there, reacting to each stimulus,and often over-reacting.

That deep balance comes only from His presence deep within my being. As I look back on my life, as I look within myself from the vantage point of many years of walking with God, I understand more fully why He gave me that life verse when I was only 11 years old, from my dear grandmother: "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength." (Isaiah 30:15)

joy in the daily promise of new life in Him

2009-02-07T08:41:00.002-05:00

Today my post written a few days ago was published on www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. I am seeing the fruits of it already, and rejoicing in God's faithfulness.

Raised to a New Life

I am home sick today. So are my family. I am in recovery, but they are at the stage I was in two days ago. All I wanted to do was sleep, and reduce the ache in my gut. I ate hardly anything. It was hard to pray, hard to feel positive about life, and the deep cold outside did not help, except to make me not feel so bad about staying indoors and not working. These are the days to ask ourselves what our faith consists of, how we hold on to the dreams and visions God has given us, how we see ourselves as human beings, rather than human doings. There is little I can do to prove my worth today, except to get through it, and to keep my faith and trust and hope alive. I am sure there are so many days like this for so many people, and there have been many before for me, without being sick, many days when I had only the words God had given me to hold on to.

I share today some of those words that I read in a Daily Prayer each day, taken from the website of the ministry of John and Stasi Eldredge: www.ransomedheart.com. You can find the full two page text of this prayer under the section on their website called Going Deeper- Daily Prayer.

Jesus, I also sincerely receive you as my life, my holiness, and strength, and I receive all the work and triumph of your resurrection, through which you have conquered sin and death and judgment. Death has no mastery over you, nor does any foul thing. And I have been raised with you to a new life, to live your life - dead to sin and alive to God. I now take my place in your resurrection and your life, through which I am saved by your life. I reign in life through your life. I receive your life - your humility, love and forgiveness, your integrity in all things, your wisdom, discernment and cunning, your strength, your joy, your union with the Father. Apply to me the fullness of your resurrection. I receive it with thanks and give it total claim to my spirit, soul and body, my heart, mind and will.

My life is beyond this body, this hour, this day, this circumstance. I must never forget that, nor must you.

joy in the morning, whatever the day

2009-02-04T08:27:00.003-05:00

I am writing posts for the devotional blog, www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com, whenever they come to me, and they are being used on other days than just Saturdays, sometimes. So this one was posted today:

Joy in the Morning, Whatever the Day

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Psalm 91:14

The anthem at church this Sunday was "Joy in the Morning". It spoke of the joy there would be "on that day", presumably the day when God would make everything right, and good and beautiful. I thought that what I really care about is the joy that I need, and try to find, and that indeed is available to all of us, every morning. I thought of my waking thoughts earlier that morning, and my ongoing reflections on joy versus happiness. It seems time to share them.

My struggles often seem the worst in the middle of the night, and the very earliest waking hours of the morning. Sometimes I come to a place of peace before I rise; other times it comes when I am upright and moving forward, accomplishing some simple tasks, and settling down to speak and listen to the Lord, through prayer and His word. This morning he reminded me through this scripture verse of His power to give me the kind of joy that lasts, that sustains and satisfies, whatever else is going on in my life. It is His love that gives us the power to "sing for joy and be glad all our days."

I remember the joy of singing His praises on Sunday evenings in the worship team I love so much. There I always truly know that God is present in His praises, that singing the words of His faithfulness indeed has power to change our minds and emotions. And that is one time where an external experience, of worship, can change what is going on in the inside.

But in general what I believe we learn in the Christian life is that it is joy, not happiness, that sustains us. In the poem called "The Gift", that I quoted last week, there is the line "You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness." (William Stafford) And happiness is like that. It is not something lasting; it depends on circumstances.

The insight for the day on January 29th in the Bible League's 2009 Devotional Planner highlighted this counterpoint:

Joy is not the same thing as happiness. The word 'happy' comes from the word 'happenstance', which means "a chance happening." Happiness depends on happenings. Joy is a state of being. It flows from the inside out. Let God be the well from which your joy springs - no matter what the circumstances. Have you ever felt joy even when you weren't happy?

This reminds me again of a principle that has become ingrained into my thinking through the words of a mentor. I was taught to recognize when I was looking to "happenings", events, improvements, relationships, changes in others and situations, to make me feel better about my life. The saying " If....were better I would be okay" has come to sum up a dependence on "happenstance" to bring me or others a sense of well being, okay-ness, safety or joy. Learning to let go of that dependence has opened me up more to the capacity to find true joy in living, even if I am not happy.

I believe that is what God is calling us to when He says, through Paul, to "Be joyful always." (I Thessalonians 5:16), or through the psalmist reminding us of His capacity to empower us to do that through His unfailing love.

joy in connecting time with the timeless

2009-01-31T07:05:00.002-05:00

Here is my post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. I'm off to see some ice fishing and do some cross country skiing...that's my use of time today!

Time, the Timeless, and the Timely.

My times are in your hands. Psalm 31:15

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12

It seems my life is ever an inner dialogue about the interface between the timeless and the timely. Whether I reminisce about long dead family members and their impact on my thinking, the legacy of my mother's furniture and life, the complexities of missionary life or parenting, or simply trying to decide how to organize my basement and how that fits with the existential issues of life, a constant theme in my thinking and writing is expressed in this timeless phrase.

I search for it on Google to see how much it is used by others and discover over 700 references spanning make-up, architecture, decorating,cooking,clothing, poetry, religion, philosophy, music, and so on. I recall the seminar at a Christian writers' conference that impacted me the most. The author teaching the seminar is an editor of several top thoughtful Christian magazines. He urged that every article and piece of writing, especially Christian writing, needs to use the timely to hook in the reader in order to share timeless truths. In a sense that is what we do on this blog. We take the daily doings of ordinary life and weave in universal themes, eternal truths, and epic issues of concern.

I particularly enjoy finding Christian and human truth expressed in words that are not typical Christian jargon. There were many years of not doing that for me, but they left me feeling that much was left out of the expression of my experience and my observation of the experience of others. While being a regular worship leader who enjoys much of the modern music written for our contemporary services, I gravitate toward much of the secular music around to articulate the agonies of human existence and relationships. My faith has to be expressed in very honest ways.

Now that I am in the second half century of my own life, my concern for such honesty has only increased, even as my faith and assurance have deepened. And with them both has grown the passion to make the utmost use of every moment I have, while at the same time 'taking my time' to do things well, to only do what really needs to be done, and what I am truly equipped and called to do. Eliminating the superfluous needs to be a daily quest, whether it be in my basement, my thinking, or my dreams, while appreciating the opportunity to see a snowflake fall or watch a squirrel jump from tree to tree. Today is all I have. This moment is all I have. And I need to live each day and moment in that awareness, but with joy.

I have just discovered a writer who in this past century sought to live each day fully by writing poetry every morning. More than that, he was a Christian, a serious one. William Stafford wrote in a "deceptively simple" way, they say, but actually wove in complex themes as he mastered in his writing a blend of the timeless and the timely. He didn't need to say the name of Christ to teach a timeless truth. His life and his poetry said it for him. I offer one of his poems for us here today to remind us of the choice we are offered, each day and moment.

The Gift

Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.

It's the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.
You get killed now and then, violated
in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about).
You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait
and pray, and maybe good things come - maybe
the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.
You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.

It's a balance, the taking and passing along,
the composting of where you've been and how people
and weather treated you. It's a country where
you already are, bringing where you have been.
Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,
turning the world, moving the air, calling,
every morning, "Here, take it, it's yours."

William Stafford

joy in weaving together the past, the present, and the presence of memories

2009-01-24T05:00:00.001-05:00

I've had special joy again creating this post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. I am amazed how timing works. I had it in mind to use this poem, to share about my mother's death, and didn't know when I work it in. I never dreamed I would connect it with the buying of a new sofa! But somehow my furniture tales seem to offer me lots of fodder for this sort of thing. So here is another furniture tale..another treasure...perhaps a tear jerker for you as well as me...for this week.

More About Treasures - from a Heavenly Perspective

Our new couch arrived yesterday. You can see it as the featured bargain on www.thebrick.com. The Grace sofa. I loved the name, but didn't buy it for that. It is our very first new sofa, replacing the second Salvation Army thrift store one which did us well after the first SA one, both of which now live in the basement. The room really needed this new sofa, to match the quality,at least in looks, of the ancestral furniture that came after Mum's move from Windsor, and her final move to Heaven. I think she would approve of my choice. I did the best I could with the upper edge of the lower line of sofas. For many, this would not be a big deal. For me it was. Like when I moved that amazing antique family dresser into our bedroom, and mused about that two weeks ago. An astute observer of my life commented on how I had brought something of value into my heart, connecting the intimate bedroom with my heart. That really struck me, along with the whole experience of valuing things, and myself, and our home, and the connections between.

For years I prided myself on not having valuable stuff, yet somehow found it fitting that after years of getting by with second best I inherited so much beauty through my family line. As you have read, I have been learning to connect it with my spirituality, and my innermost being, for I never want to live out of harmony with the core of my being. So now it seems that these new treasures are some of the "treasures of darkness" the Lord promised me from Isaiah 45. From the darkness of much unhappiness in my family of origin I have been graced with what was beautiful. And I am finally taking that beauty deeply into my heart, allowing it to heal memories of much that was not beautiful in attitudes of those who, like these pieces of furniture, were giants in my life.

I have learned to understand that they did the best they could with what they had at the time. Their harshness and criticism came out of concern and the patterns of parenting they had received. But they were also reliable, solid, and sensible, like the furniture, and graceful in very practical ways. I had always appreciated that and relied upon it. Now I live with the daily memory of that in the midst of these reminders.

I've written before about knowing Mum went to join Dad in Heaven, about how it was hard to believe that sometimes because their faith was not very up front most of the time, and of the assurance I had in my heart of the final destination of all the family members known to me. That has been a constant relief and blessing to my heart, and will always be, until I go to join them one amazing day. And sometimes all of that brings tears to my eyes which I welcome in the midst of my otherwise rather stoic approach to life, another treasure (or curse) from my family line.

Such tears sprang hot to my cheeks as I read this lovely poem given to me after Christmas by a friend at church. Somehow a fuller meaning of my mother's presence in Heaven had not really registered. Yes, I knew intellectually that she would be healed and whole and happy, as I had never seen her before. It took this poem to break open that reality in a fresh way to me:

Merry Christmas from Heaven
Copyright 1990 by John Wm Mooney Jr.

I still hear the songs
I still see the lights
I still feel your love
on cold wintery nights

I still share your hopes
and all of your cares
I'll even remind you
to please say your prayers

I just want to tell you
you still make me proud
You stand head and shoulders
above all the crowd

Keep trying each moment
to stay in His grace
I came here before you
to help set your place

You don't have to be
perfect all of the time
He forgives you the slip
If you continue the climb

To my family and friends
please be thankful today
I'm still close beside you
In a new special way

I love you all dearly
now don't shed a tear
Cause I'm spending my
Christmas with Jesus this year.

The poem said what Mum probably always wanted to say, but the words hardly ever came. She thought she had to be perfect, so she put that on to me. She didn't really know what God's grace could do for her, and therefore for me, so I had to fight to find that for myself. Now I can relax and know that Grace has healed Mum. And yes, she is close beside me "in a new special way." Those words echo what she said before she went into surgery about fifteen months before her death, the surgery from which she never really recovered. As she said goodbye before they wheeled her away, she said "Wherever I am, I won't be far away." Those treasured words kept me going through all the hard moments that followed, through her anger and defiance, her confusion and distrust, until she finally surrendered her life into God's hands, as I held her in my arms, saying through my tears, "Good Mummy, good Mummy."

Now, as I rearrange the old furniture, or use the 150 year old teapots, or sit in Mum's favourite wing chair by our new Grace sofa, I can hear Mum speaking to me from Heaven, and say back to her again, "Good Mummy, good Mummy."

joy in sharing intuitive and spiritual truth through more metaphors

2009-01-17T08:58:00.003-05:00

So....lots is happening....lots of truth and growth, ups and downs...I don't try to express it all publicly anymore...that is good. But when I do, it brings even more joy than before. I try harder to craft my words, and examine the words and concepts. And so there is greater fruit. Such is the case with my latest post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. I waited, because of life's happenings, to post it until now, although it was ready there yesterday to appear at 5 a.m. on the blog. Now that I post it here, it has already had some very positive feedback, something that often happens, but somehow today's meant even more. You can read it on the comments on that blog. But I worked hard on this post, even though it came easily. And it was full of intuitive truth about my own life. Not that my others haven't been, but this one was especially meaningful, because it comes out of a longtime metaphor for me. Even then, it is only a snippet of the truth we can get from tree metaphors. I will explore that more I am sure. A whole blog could be dedicated to the truth from trees!!!! Here it is:

The Tree God Knows

Here in Muskoka winter I muse about trees outside our window.I can look at them many ways: they can be beautiful and artistic as they glitter in the sunlight. Deciduous trees can look lonely and stark without their leaves in barren brown-ness. Evergreens stand out so much more in the winter, their plenteous boughs preserving the essence of Christmas trees throughout the bleakness of winter months. As I drive up the highway I notice trees in winter in ways I often don't in summer. The cold and starkness of life highlight the strength and individual outlines of trees. Summer shows their composite foliage; autumn overwhelms with brilliant contrasts of colours, but the story then is more of the leaves than the trees. So winter is a time to see the true outline of trees, their basic shape and the beauty or not thereof.

Such is true of all of us. It takes the hard seasons to show what we are made of, whether our lives are truly in balance and we have what it takes to withstand the tests and trials of time. That balance comes from strong and deep roots, well proportioned trunks and gracefully arranged branches.

Trees abound as metaphors for personhood throughout literature and scripture. Psalm 1 reminds us that the righteous person is "like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither." (v. 2b.) Trees appear in our dreams and we instinctively know what they mean. We can see a painting of a tree and identify with it. A friend once wrote a poem about me as a bonsai, an intricately formed miniature tree, recognizing how life had stunted my growth in certain ways, yet kept the form and grace. That was how she saw me. God spoke to me in a different way using the tree image just a year ago.

Of course He knew that I love to think of myself as a tree, that I long to be an oak of righteousness. He has called me one for many years. But one day He wanted to show me something more specific. I was sitting prayerfully with my trained spiritual "friend" and she asked me to ask God to give me a picture in my mind of how He saw me at that time. Instantly I saw a childish drawing of a tree. The trunk was thick and strong, but not well proportioned. It was far too wide for the height of the tree. The leaves were bright green, obviously on bushy branches, but no fruit or lovely graceful branches were visible. It was like a green lollipop atop a huge brown stick. Alive, strong, very strong, but not beautiful, graceful, appropriate or able to grow up well. It was a picture of me: strong but defensive, out of proportion, needing pruning, deeper roots, and greater upward and outward growth in the branches, not the trunk.

Then she asked me to ask God to show me what He wanted to do with me. Again I instantly saw the tree in the picture moving. The roots began stretching deeper and wider, the branches extended gracefully out in many directions, and the trunk grew taller, lost many layers of defensive bark. The whole tree became well proportioned.

In this past year that kind of growth has been taking place. I have often thought of those pictures, and been grateful for their dynamic and multi-faceted, intuitive truth. The growth continues, and always will. And many times, like today, I am reminded of the need for the storms and stress in my life to foster that growth. Just on a day when I was so frustrated with the continuing storms I read this poem:

The wind that blows can never kill
The tree God plants;
It bloweth east, it bloweth west,
the tender leaves have little rest,
But any wind that blows is best.
The tree that God plants
Strikes deeper root, grows higher still,
Spreads greater boughs, for God's good will
Meets all its wants.

There is no storm hath power to blast
The tree God knows;
No thunderbolt, nor hurricane;
When they are spent, it doth remain,
The tree God knows,
Through every tempest standeth fast,
And from its first day to its last
Still fairer grows.

quoted in Streams in the Desert

joy in making space for tomorrow

2009-01-10T05:00:00.000-05:00

Hello again...here is my weekly contribution to www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com....I'm so spellbound by life these days that I don't have much to say or rather I am too busy to say it..

,,,,,,,

Making Space for Tomorrow: Rearranging the Furniture in Our Lives

All of my life I have enjoyed moving furniture around, creating spaces in rooms, making "little houses" my sister and mother said. Whenever we were travelling when I was younger, and stayed in motel rooms or on board the Empress of France crossing to live in Scotland for a year, I would take a corner of the room and set up boundaries with whatever and make my little house, set up my dollies, and play. Somehow I learned to make myself at home wherever I was.

In other ways it was hard for me to settle, and has been in my life. Many times I have had too much stuff, and had to take time out of my life to sort and get rid of things, like I am doing a lot in the basement these days. Other times it seemed I did not have what I really needed to make me feel at home, as if my room itself was restless. Often I didn't know what I really needed and God had to show me. I guess in so many ways I had to learn to get rid of the old, the makeshift, the not good enough, to make room for the best in my life.

I have been thinking a lot about things like this since I took the time out this year to put my house completely in order before I go on with my studies and my future plans for work. I have built up a backlog and have to find out what to keep and what to let go, in every kind of way. I have lived so many lives already, pushed myself into many roles, and often not taken time, and space for me. God has always found His space in my life, but often we were both on the run, keeping up with each other, He with me and I with Him. And also He was saying to me, "Make space for tomorrow, Meg. There are big things coming."

He said that to me a year ago through a scripture verse that astonished even the spiritual friend/director who gave it to me, through our connection brought by the seminary course in Spiritual Formation.

It was Isaiah 54: 1-5, especially, verses 2 and 3b:

Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left.

God was telling me to stretch my tent curtains wide, to get out of the box, to be ready for expansion in every way. I already felt so stretched and expanded!!!! Well as the year went on, I did do that in my heart and mind in every way I could. And now, as I let my body and my house catch up with this journey, I have delightful surprises.

Now maybe for some of you it is hard to keep up with the connections I love to make between my material possessions and my spiritual life, in an unusual way. But from what I have learned it is typical for my personality type preference, INFJ, in Myers Briggs language, something I am trained to administer. All the different parts of my life have to be connected for me to feel in harmony, including my possessions.

Well, now, with a house full of my ancestral furniture, I had an interesting experience. Our dining room has hosted two sideboards, both over 100 years old, from two sides of the family. The first one was my mother's dresser, her mother's before her, and it became our first real sideboard after Mum's move in 2007. Then last summer the "monster" sideboard that dominated the cottage came to live here too. The dresser didn't seem to belong anymore, and yet I couldn't imagine using it as a dresser for me. It was too special. I could make do with the painted cheap one in our room, even if the drawers would always stick and the handles hurt and it wasn't really big enough.

Then I began to think that really it could come to live in my bedroom, that it would look great, and that it would be okay to let go of the old crummy one. And my sister said it was about time I had some decent furniture in our bedroom!!! Now that it is there something deep has settled in my being. Making space for the "new", letting go of the old, has brought new life and solidity to our room. The new is actually old, as in family and heritage, and it seems God is really saying that is part of the new new for me.

Embracing the future can mean embracing the past in a new way. Making space for God's plans can mean making more space for ourselves, our heritage, our history, and as we embrace it in deep personal ways it can bring new healing and joy into our lives. I have been doing that in many ways these past years, and it never ceases to amaze me how it continues. This "new" furniture in my intimate space, our bedroom, is a new version of the old. God works deeper as He works wider. Expanding our horizons can sometimes just mean rearranging the furniture of our lives, letting go of some old stuff, and enjoying the new arrangements.

joy in finding new reflections out of Christmas lessons

2009-01-03T05:00:00.002-05:00

Well, it's that time again, new year or not, for my weekly post on www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. I so appreciate the regular challenge and opportunity of writing something for this blog, and doing my best to make it something worth reading in a devotional, reflective way. Speaking of being reflective, I am enjoying doing my final synopsis for the set of excellent courses I took this fall at Georgian College on Saturdays in Teaching and Training Adults. They were a refreshing revisiting of teaching and learning theory for me, without high pressure performance and evaluation. The final synopsis involves really sincerely reflecting upon my perspective and philosophy as a teacher. I have found it very enlightening and helpful, both for my past as a teacher and any future teaching I will do, and also for my understanding of myself and my orientation to learning, to people, to students, etc.

Here's my blog post for the team blog:

Taking Christmas Lessons into the New Year as Word-Made-Flesh

Incarnated lessons continue into this new year for me. Yes, indeed, our bodies remind us of our needs, and overcome our mind control when we need them to. Such was the lesson I learned on Christmas Day, written about here a week ago. But the lessons of incarnation are much bigger than that. Jesus was God in human form, but He was the Word. He was the Word that created the world and is the Word that still recreates it; He was and is the Word that heals people's bodies and minds miraculously. Words have power and are incarnated in many ways. We are His words in so much of what we do, and we know the deep conviction we feel when our words do not bring life.

I am reminded of these complexities as I do a teaching assignment on learning styles and multiple intelligences. I remember the ratio of communication from former classes in counselling - that the verbal component of communication is only 7%: the rest is made up of body language, context...all the non verbal stuff. I am excited that one of my Christmas gifts is a subscription to Scientific American Mind, which can keep me up to date in a popular sort of way with brain research. An area of fascination for me is EMDR, a form of trauma therapy using bilateral brain stimulation that helps to release traumatized emotion trapped in the amygdala,a small mass in each brain hemisphere deeply connected with memory and visual learning. Our bodies and minds are so complex, as well as the interaction between them. Would that they were as simple as the computerized system on my car that tells the mechanics which little part needs to be replaced or repaired.(and at such cost!!)Yet how wonderful it is that our complexity is so often overruled by God's simplicity, His healing and overcoming words.

My nephew's gift to each of us this Christmas was his words: not the oft repeated phrases of our Christmas greetings, but words specific to each of us, embellished with drawings and poems well chosen. I felt understood, cherished, and challenged. My daughters and niece have often written such insightful penetrating words, gifts of time and themselves in unforgettable ways. Others too, family, friends, mentors, acquaintances, strangers - I am touched by their words of affirmation and blessing, and they by mine. My daughter's photo story book about our life in Uganda (described in last week's post) was a word made flesh, with power to bless me, even as they disturbed me, with tears. I am sure those tears were not just grief, but joy in her creation, joy in our life there, joy in this reconnection.

My sister shared with me from her monthly digest of meditations a very insightful article on these aspects of incarnation. I share some of them here with you now:

Spend a few moments with the central image of the (Christmas) story: a 'word taking flesh'. How does your own word take flesh? It begins in your mind, heart and soul, but takes concrete form 'in flesh'. Sometimes it takes flesh in language, sometimes in gesture, sometimes in a facial expression, perhaps even in a work of art.

A word or an idea cannot simply remain in our minds and hearts and expect another to receive it. To effect or create anything, it needs to be expressed. It can't do anything if it's bottled up. It has to come out somehow. A clenched fist is a word made flesh. A smile is a word made flesh. A spoken word is an idea, a concept or a feeling made flesh. A blueprint for a building or a work of art is a word made flesh.[...]

Jesus as Word-made-flesh does not come to rescue God's people from a dark and dangerous world, but to embrace that very world and to teach us how to embrace it in His spirit, to find abundant life in its abundant possibilities. [...]

It is the Word-made-flesh, Jesus born on Christmas Day, who is grace upon grace and the best and fullest sign of our own possibilities as words made flesh in our own right - for we are created in the image and likeness of God. In the very person of Jesus, God reveals humankind's highest and most glorious possibilities, and invites us to discover our highest potential and destiny in Jesus.

Adapted from: Corbin Eddy's Who Knows the Shape of God? Homilies and Reflections for Year B (Ottawa: Novalis,2002) pp. 37-41

May we, as we go forward into a new year filled with the lessons from the Christmas season, be empowered with a greater sense of God's creative power at work within us and others, through our words and actions, through every way in which we show and experience the Word-made-flesh.

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us; to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Ephesians 3: 20-21

joy in rejoicing in this year, and looking forward to the next

2008-12-31T12:46:00.002-05:00

What a prosaic title....but of course it's what we are all doing, I trust. It has been a hard year, and also a wonderful year. I have grown so much, and learned so much, and there is so much that I am grateful for, so much to look forward to, whatever the difficulties and trials of life. I trust it is the same for any of you reading this.

My plan to start a new blog will have to wait until the new year...part of the whole thing of being realistic and not binding myself into boxes and rules that I don't need to...keeping dates that don't matter and trying to tie things up neatly instead of just letting them be what they are...so whenever it happens, I will have a new blog...and tie this one into it...it doesn't have to be neatly at the end of the year or the beginning of the new one...

To anyone who reads this from time to time, bless your hearts and days in the year to come!!!

joy in God's incarnated lessons at Christmas

2008-12-27T05:00:00.000-05:00

This is my weekly post again for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. Life is too busy now to try to write daily posts, so at least I am doing this much!

Incarnated Lessons at Christmas

Christmas is a time for celebrating God's greatest "invention" - incarnating Himself in a human baby body, and speaking to us of His love, His servanthood, His humility, His sharing in our lives, by drawing us into His journey to and birth in a stable manger. We talk often in sermons and books about the lessons we learn from this, how God continues to incarnate Himself in our lives in so many ways. But it still feels to me that I don't expect Him to. I somehow believe that certain events are separate from who we really are, even when we are with family and friends. And then He surprises us again with new evidence of His awareness of us, new speech through the language of our bodies.

Such was my experience this Christmas day. My daughters and I had created a lovely Christmas atmosphere, for ourselves as a family, and for our guests later in the day. While a bit pressured, those preparations were meaningful and fruitful. We enjoyed the moments of giving and receiving gifts carefully chosen for each other. That seemed enough for me, being with my family and enjoying their joy, their company. I was not prepared for what happened. My older daughter had saved a special gift to the last. It was a photo book of her recent photos from the trip to Uganda this year by both our daughters, blended with photos from their childhood there, mostly taken by me. She had it made into a beautiful bound book by Mac. It is called THE RETURN HOME. As I moved from page to page, seeing the combination of past and present, familiar faces and places, all sensitively bound together, I cried and cried. "It takes a lot to make Mum cry", my daughter had said to someone the week before, in another context. And it is true. And here I was, on Christmas morning, blubbering my eyes out over photos I had seen many times before.

My body was telling me that there is so much grief still to heal, so much joy still to celebrate, about our years in Uganda. Amazed and overwhelmed by this incarnated sign of God's love, I had to stop and put it aside, and get on with preparations for our Christmas dinner guests.

We had a delightful meal in every way, with meaningful conversation and delicious food. Games and laughter followed for hours. A friend from Toronto phoned to share her good news after months of trials. A neighbour dropped in to join us for dessert and games. It had been a great day. Our guests left in mid evening, all of us in cheery form.

I was tired and went to bed early, suddenly aware of huge fatigue, wondering if I had a bug. My stomach warned me of impending events, and I tried to stave off the wretched moment. I could not believe it was happening after such a special day. I had not overeaten and no one else seemed ill affected by the food. The pain would not go away, and the relief was swift, but there was more to come. Sleep came after many hours, and the next morning I asked the Lord what it was all about.

Somehow I knew it was not a bug, or food poisoning. It was my body telling me that there is too much going on in my life. That there is so much left to heal, and that I ignore my emotions and they come out through my body. I need to pay more attention and take better care of me. God was doing me a favour by incarnating truth in a way that I would get the message.

Later the next day he gave me a conversation with one of the guests, at their drop in gathering down the street. She saw the incarnated lesson clearly, and, from her own very parallel experiences, of mission life, sudden loss and great grief, and ignoring her own emotions, added her words to God's message. He made sure I would receive this sign of His love to me, His personal agenda of concern and care for me in the midst of this season for others.

And that is His constant message to each and every one of us. We are individually so important to Him that He cares enough to give us suffering in our bodies to pay attention to our needs, and to readjust our focus. We can never do without incarnation, with our bodies to tell us what we need to know. I think we as Christians, let alone as humans, so often ignore and abuse our bodies, and think that spiritual truth can only speak in disembodied ways. But so often it is the opposite. God knew that from the very beginning, of course. And He continues to graciously tell us what He knows, every way He can, every day. What a good God.

joy in Christmas in the global village

2008-12-20T08:16:00.002-05:00

Here is my post today for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. Hope it strikes a chord with you too:

Christmas in the Global Village

Headlines declare the truce in Israel has come “to an explosive end.” My mind jerks back to the plate I bargained for in the silent auction at the Salvation Army Thrift Shop. I know my $25 will go to a good cause this Christmas. The plate was hand made in Jerusalem, beautiful coloured glass outlining features of this city I have loved and visited. How are those we knew doing in the midst of all the turmoil? I remember how chilly it was in the shepherds’ fields near Bethlehem on Christmas Eve in 1995 when we made our pilgrimage with our children to fulfill their wish on our way to missionary life in Uganda. No donkey bore us there. We took the tourist bus, glad to be safe from the mobs in Nativity Square celebrating a messiah in a keffiya, that leader now dead whose words did not give life.

The radio interview with a family therapist gives wise counsel about family system issues that are likely to crop up at Christmas gatherings. I reflect upon my learning in my counselling training, flashing forward a few years to the time when I will sit with people and help them sort out their deep personal issues that keep them imprisoned in negative patterns. I hope to be someone who will give life to others through my words.

I sit at the car repair garage, wrestling with the latest verdict about my computer controlled newest secondhand car. Several hundred dollars will replace a heat sensor and allow the Check Engine light to go off again. I mutter to the mechanics that I really belong in the middle ages with a horse and buggy.

We send photos to friends in Africa of our family standing in deep snow in our back yard by the Muskoka River. How will they spend Christmas? Much as they did when we lived among them, going to church, maybe having some meat in their usual routine meal, maybe not. Sharing a few cards among friends, but no tree, no old family dishes, lace tablecloths, special turkey on a platter such as we will share this year, with friends and family. Their candles are more likely to be needed for light than for the decorative effect I will create.

I listen enthralled in a pew in an Ontario village, feasting on selections from The Messiah by the choir at my nephew’s college. The maestro celebrates the timelessness of the words and music, for him, for us all, citing the thousands upon thousands of times he has conducted these songs in his relatively young life. Mural paintings depicting the Holy Family and the saints cover the high walls like elegant wrapping paper. I muse upon this explosion of life giving words, music and art in a humble snowy village in the depth of Canadian winter.

My daughter writes an essay on the much ignored world issue of the death every day of preventable diseases of more than 26,000 children. We speculate together on the world responses and causes – indifference? corruption? ignorance? confusion? How do I respond? How can I sort it out in my own heart? Where and how can I give life in the face of such odds? How do I put it together this Christmas?

Life giving words come through the car CD player as I navigate the latest snowfall.

I’ve looked for love in so many places
Trying to find out where I belong
Wandering through this barren land of longing
Looking for the place called home, a place called home.

You said “Come to Me all you who are so weary
And you will find true rest for your souls”
Lord, let these words of life speak into my heart
Anywhere I am I can be home.

You are my home, You’re my true home
I am safe inside the shelter of Your love;
You are my home, You’re my true home,
I am free to be child once again.

Oh, I ‘m free in You.

You are my one true destination
The place I eternally belong.
You made me from the earth and then You breathed into me life
Redeemed from my sin and brought me home.
…….
My heart is restless, till it rests in You
My heart is restless, till it rests in You.
Until I dwell in You
Until I find my home in You.

Brian Doerksen “You are My Home”

joy in making new starts, and making new rules

2008-12-17T14:16:00.003-05:00

I guess there are lots of times for starting over. And starting anew. Seems with me, even if I like doing this, it is also stressful. Anyway, today, as well as learning to use our new snowblower, going for a swim in the new rec centre for the first time in the two years since it opened, I decided to open a new blog and start afresh with a new approach. I am going to call it My Sacred Scrapbook, and use it to share in a similar way to what I have already done, but with greater freedom to do a lot more random stuff. The way I set this one up, I had to put joy somewhere in the title each time. Now those were just my "rules". But it seems in some ways I get to be my own kind of stickler for rules. And then I can find them confining. I have been really challenged by seeing a few other blogs, most notably one called Holy Experience. It is done in a way that says to me to do it that way. Some of us need to find our own way to do things, and some of us need someone else's example to follow. So I am going to set up this new blog over the Christmas holiday period, and get the look sorted out in a more deliberate way and enjoy having it ready for the new year. I will also find out how to make sure that people who try out this one can find me on the new blog. I am going to do research looking at other people's blogs, and share their addresses here too, as recommendations. So I will be putting my energy into that in the next while, as well as writing my usual Saturday posts for the devotional team blog, www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. It is through that blog, which incidentally tied for 3rd place in the Canadian Blog Awards Best Religion and Philosophy Blog category, that I have met some other blogs. There is really some interesting stuff around. It all challenges my creativity, and my writing style. I love that. So may we all enjoy the new starts that are coming our way, and be willing to make them, and to keep moving on, at our own paces, finding His joy in our creativity and courage.

joy in the bleak midwinter

2008-12-13T05:00:00.002-05:00

This is my weekly post for www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. I'm in a very positive mode myself these days, but this reflection is borne out of past times of struggle, and my capacity now to use that learning to reach out to others.

Blessings in the bleak midwinter

“In the bleak midwinter. frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago.” I look at the words of this old hymn and discover it was written by one of my favourite poets, Christina Rossetti. I guess even in Victorian England she knew what it was to watch the snow endlessly falling, and feel overwhelmed by winter.

So many people are feeling like that these days. Despite the wonderful winter sun, reflecting off the mountains of snow on our deck, the cozy heat inside, cheery plans for Christmas, gratitude for so much that I have, I can be overcome by winter’s intensity. Yes, I am learning to embrace it, and love it, and to do more outdoor activities, after many years of winter in milder climes. I remind myself, in this eighth winter in Muskoka, that every Christmas in Uganda I felt strange, that I often shrunk from the intensity of the heat there, and longed for the changing seasons, the brilliance of fall, the sweetness of spring. When I lived in Scotland, or in British Columbia, I adjusted to the rain and dark days, and missed the brightness of winter snow in Ontario. So now I have lots and lots of it, and I am learning to love it.

Nevertheless, I think of what winter does to so many people, bringing extra hardship, perhaps even death with inadequate heat, or, at worst, by exposure through no place to stay, even on the streets of Toronto. I think of people sleeping on the vents in the sidewalks on Queen St., their sleeping blankets and bags left there for the day. How many people dread winter just because of the depression that will come? My own inner struggles open my heart to such people.

This is one treasure of darkness, of bleakness, to the extent that I know it. I wrote on July 30th of how God had spoken to me about such treasures, years ago when we went through many harsh things in Uganda. I find in today’s reading in Streams in the Desert, that Mrs. Charles E. Cowman also took those words from Isaiah 45:3 as a rhema word from God to her heart. No surprise, given all the meditations in her precious books. As so often, the excerpts she shares from others speak profoundly to us all, across the years, and the differences in our circumstances, for we are all united in our understanding of suffering.

“In the famous lace shops of Brussels, there are certain rooms devoted to the spinning of the finest and most delicate patterns. These rooms are altogether darkened, save for a light from one very small window, which falls directly upon the pattern. There is only one spinner in the room, and he sits where the narrow stream of light falls upon the threads of his weaving. Thus’, we are told by the guide,’do we secure our choicest products. Lace is always more delicately and beautifully woven when the worker himself is in the dark and only his pattern is in the light.’

May it not be the same with us in our weaving? Sometimes it is very dark. We cannot understand what we are doing. We do not see the web we are weaving. We are not able to discover any beauty, any possible good in our experience. Yet if we are faithful and faint not, we shall some day know that the most exquisite work of all our life was done in those days when it was so dark.

If you are in the deep shadows because of some strange, mysterious providence, do not be afraid. Simply go on in faith and love, never doubting, God is watching, and He will bring good and beauty out of all your pain and tears. “ J.R. Miller.

The shuttles of His purpose move
To carry out His own design;
Seek not too soon to disapprove
His work, nor yet assign
Dark motives, when, with silent tread,
You view some somber fold:
For lo, within each darker thread
There twines a thread of gold.

Spin cheerfully,
Not tearfully,
He knows the way you plod;
Spin carefully,
Spin prayerfully,
But love the thread with God.

(from The Canadian Home Journal)

joy in letting go and letting God

2008-12-07T20:07:00.003-05:00

This is Advent, a season for opening up more and more to God, and, I believe, for letting go...seems as we approach Christmas we let go of various things, money being the chief one!!!But somehow for me, it is about relaxing..not that I do much of that, but I think relaxing from feeling I have to do things a certain way. So what that translates into with this blog is that I will write when I do, and I don't know when that will be. It will certainly be once a week, on a Saturday, because that is when I publish a post on www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. So I always put that same post on this blog. But other than that, I am just going to let it happen, and if it doesn't, then fine. I am not going to be religious about my blog, as in observing a sort of ritual about it. And I certainly don't want to write something for the sake of it...and I get quickly sick of hearing my own "voice" as it were. More than five months of this blogging has been a great discipline, a great outlet, healing and challenging. It has also left me feeling exposed at times, as I have shared some personal stuff and really put myself out there. So I want to be sure that I am comfortable with what I am sharing on a long term basis, and also that I am saying something worth saying. So, to whomever reads this, blessings on your beings..and may you continue to walk hand in hand with our heavenly Father, with Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

joy in the new song in my mouth

2008-12-06T05:00:00.001-05:00

Well, the modem got here on Friday, which was a great blessing so I could upload my weekly post for the devotional team blog I write for, on Saturdays now, instead of Wednesdays. It has been good to have a wee break from blogging, and it's good to be back online, so to speak! Here's my special post for the week, which comes out of my session with my Spiritual Director a week ago.

Hearing and singing a new song in my heart

“Now relax, and go in peace into each new day and trust me mightily for the future.” These were the closing words I wrote down that God spoke into my heart in a time of deep communion with Him several weeks ago. I have become used to God speaking such words to me, and have recorded them for many years now. God knows that I need to hear from Him in other ways too. He has placed people in my life to give me landmarks in my progress and upward growth. A few days after those words directly from God to me on my own, my spiritual friend quoted these verses to me:

I waited patiently for the Lord;
He turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
Out of the mud and mire;
He set my feet on a rock
And gave me a firm place to stand.
He put a new song in my mouth,
A hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear
And put their trust in the Lord.

Psalm 40: 1-3

As she read these words, as she had received them from God, I realized that despite my many years of walking in companionship with the Lord, I had still been in and out of a slimy pit, a muddy emotional uncertainty about His ultimate view of me, His faithfulness and promise of good things. These words reflected the recent shift within me to a place of deep and absolute conviction in His goodness. I was on solid ground. Not only that, as I listened I heard in my head the very new song as God declared He had put it in my mouth.

This is my song of praise to You,
For who You are and all that You do;
From the moment my life began
You have been faithful.

It was a song I had heard somewhere but never sung myself or in our woship team. I was eager to get back home and find out who wrote and sang it and learn it fully so that I could sing this song to the world, so that “many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.”

I knew God was saying in this line that all my struggles would be used as a sign, a witness to the world of His faithfulness, when others would see how He had brought me through in a way that only He could do. I remembered the lessons I used to teach to others about the big picture lines in the Old Testament. I learned them myself through a Perspectives course where we would look for the line in various stories, psalms and passages that would show why God had done mighty deeds, such as the slaying of Goliath, “so that all the world would know that there was a God in Israel”.

I realized too that the song He had put in my mouth, flowing out of my heart, was like the recitation of His deeds in the mouths of His people in the Bible. They reminded themselves of His faithfulness to them in the past in order to stir up their faith in Him for the future. In a similar way I could tell His story of my life to draw others to faith and trust in Him.

Even now, He reminds me of words He spoke to me through a stranger at a Renewal conference over 25 years ago: “Let go of the pen with which I (God) am writing the story of your life. When I (God) write the story of your life, what beautiful stories I (God) will write.” Now I thank you, Lord, for this beautiful story that I am writing,(which comes from You), and I thank You for this beautiful song, written and sung by another, but written and singing in my heart forevermore.

Faithful Father

Father, I can’t explain this kind of love
This kind of grace
I know I still break Your heart
And yet You run to welcome me

This is my song of praise to You
For who You are and all that You do
From the moment my life began
You have been faithful.

Father I love the way you hold me close
And say my name
I know when my life is through
My heart will find its home in You

This is my song of praise to You
For who You are and all that You do
From the moment my life began
You have been faithful
You will be faithful
Forever faithful
Father

This is our song of praise to You
For who You are and all that You do
From before the world began
You have been faithful
You have been faithful
You will be faithful
Forever faithful
Father.

Words and Music by Brian Doerksen
Mercy/Vineyard Publishing

joy in a forced change of habit

2008-12-03T12:47:00.001-05:00

Our modem died yesterday and a new one is coming in the mail. Interestingly enough, we are all glad to have the break from the temptations of technology. I am at the local library now, having got exercise walking over. But I have a busy day, and I am going to take a rest from blogging as well. It is good, always, to rest from anything I think...God did.

joy in making spaces in my day

2008-12-02T08:42:00.002-05:00

I find it hard to really say I am slowing down, but I am taking things as they come. When I was studying too much for the season of my life, or pushing too much with the combination of work and home, I was not able to respond with my whole heart to each relationship and conversation, need or opportunity that came my way. I was agitated inside about everything else I had to do. Now that for some time I have taken time to clear up backlogs and create spaces for everything in physical ways in my home (remember your teacher who said "A place for everything and everything in its place"?) I am more able to give space to people and their needs. Before when I did that it would add extra pressure to everything else, or else I would not be fully present to the person. Now when my daughters want to discuss things, need me to look at their work or plan something, I can connect with my whole being.

Last night a pastor friend down the road invited me for a late evening walk on the snowy roads. It was great to be free to walk all over the downtown with her sharing about our days and relaxing by using our muscles before bedtime. My spiritual director whom I met with on Friday in Toronto was so delighted that I am on my "own program", not someone else's, that I am making my way, finding my way, on my own with the Lord, and not feeling I have to do things a certain way to please others, but to know I am pleasing God by what I am doing. She has been longing to see that in me for a long time.

I find as well that when I do this, making space for myself and others, then of course there is more space for God. I delight even more to commune with Him, because my sense of His presence has increased, and my sense of His blessing on my life is greater. When I was overtaxed then I felt resentment more easily, against myself and my failings, against others, and so indirectly against Him, because somehow I mistakenly believed that it was His will that was leading me to have to get so much done so quickly.

My prayer is that I will even more deeply celebrate His presence in my day, and that as I make more spaces in every way, that what is fitting for each space, physically, or emotionally, or whatever else, will all become clear, and a continuing growth of His order in my life will emerge. Yes, this is the journey I have been on for a long time. I am just putting clearer words to it, as the shape and rhythm emerge more clearly.

joy in lessons learned in Muskoka weather

2008-12-01T07:30:00.003-05:00

I sit beside the office window that looks out on the snow covered street. My daughter and I have just returned from the school, where we learned the cancellation notice had gone out just after we left the house. Her trip to Toronto is off. Such is life in Muskoka in particular in the winter. I am grateful for being cozy inside, with lots to do. I am also more used to winter driving. Nevertheless the child in me prefers not to deal with harsh reality so much of the time. I didn't grow up here. I lived many years in Windsor, London, Hamilton, Toronto, Scotland, North Vancouver, Uganda. I am still learning to embrace and love winter. Lots of changes. I embraced rain, fog, and harsh sunlight. Now it's snow and snow and snow. How much there is to learn in life, about weather and dealing with it, let alone about everything else!!! And I have so many comforts and pleasant boundaries, even with all that is difficult for me. How much I learn as I grow older about not comparing myself with others, about seeing things from their perspective, and about not expecting them to understand mine. It becomes easier not to try to prove things, to explain things. Especially when I know that my heavenly father keeps track of it all, knows it all, understands it all. As my intimacy with Him increases, then my need to be understood by others decreases. What else works? And in time, what needs to be revealed, about myself and about others, will be. That is where the joy is. Let it snow.

joy in the new song in my mouth

2008-11-30T05:00:00.003-05:00

Today I am rejoicing because of the confirmation God has been giving me of His work in my life. When I met with my spiritual director on Friday afternoon at Tyndale, she was excited to see the growth and fruit in my life, and her confirming scripture verses were exciting to me, of course, as always. One verse was from Psalm 40: " He put a new song in my mouth". As soon as she said that, I began to sing this song in my mind:

This is my song of praise to you
For who you are and all that you do
From the moment my life began,
You have been faithful,
You will be faithful,
Forever faithful.

I couldn't remember at the time who sang it or where I had heard it, but when I got home I was able to find it on You Tube of course, and it is embedded in a medley of songs by Brian Doerksen, which I share here now with you.

joy in making an offering to world issues

2008-11-29T00:02:00.004-05:00

My daughter and I discuss her assignments for her World Issues class. Her deep heart expresses itself through her choices: modern slavery, child soldiers, invisible victims of war in Northern Uganda, the ignored plight of the southern Sudanese. Two years before my other daughter did projects on the genocide in Rwanda, won acclaim for her film about the needs in Kenya, spent a Christmas in an orphanage in Kenya. This summer both daughters returned to their childhood home in Uganda, on their own, reconnecting with former playmates who today are successful, healthy and happy.

I continue to battle for professional and financial survival back in small town Ontario. Gone are my missionary days, when I was free to work without pay, create and carry through projects, help various poor friends, respond to needs on our doorstep. Even gone are the days of sitting by the bedside of the daughter of a friend dying of AIDS, through no fault of her own, weeping with her friends and family. I shall never forget the day I arrived at the home of another friend in time to see her shrivelled body placed in a rough wooden coffin. In four years she had gone from a bouncy vital laughing woman to a tiny shrunken drug crazed victim of AIDS. I didn't know the reason, but I saw the horror before my eyes.

In those days I felt connected to world issues. I lived among them and made my offering in these various ways. Now I wonder how to do that. Yes, I support other missionaries, yes I helped my daughter adopt her own foster child, yes I am training to help people in the western world with their private agonies. I see misery and pain before my eyes every time I go supply teaching. What is my offering? I have been a Sunday school teacher and now a worship leader. I go to Worship conferences, not conferences on AIDS and world issues.

Now I have a little platform on this blog, and on my own personal blog. I have reflected much on God's gracious work in my own heart, His healing presence in my own life. Yes, it has blessed others. But what does it have to do with these huge world issues? Each time I have attended Christian concerts with my daughters or worship conferences with famous worship leaders I have been so impressed at how they used their platform to address world issues. They themselves have not been able to serve as missionaries for long periods of time. Their calling is to lead worship, to write songs, to give glory to God through their music and words. But they have realized their power, and used it to point their audiences to these needs.

I was reminded again of that power when I found this video from one of my favourite worship bands, Third Day. I share it now with you. As we move into Advent, preparing for Christmas, it is indeed a fitting time to remember what is going on in the wider world, and do what we can, each day, through prayer, or whatever other means, to do our part, as God leads.

Today, on this platform, I make this offering.

joy in the benefits of a flexible schedule

2008-11-28T05:38:00.002-05:00

I have often complained to myself and sometimes to others about not having a full time job, but also been glad of the flexibility of supply teaching, studying and planning the other things I am. Today is a day to celebrate this flexibility. It is a school day, but because my younger daughter has a PA day, and my older daughter needs to look at the University of Toronto and go on their tour today, I can take the day to go with them and we can enjoy our day together. I can even fit in a visit with my Spiritual Director, with whom I would usually talk on the phone since I am not a student down there myself these days. So I am off to make us a big breakfast and hit the road...what a blessing there is only a light extra dusting of snow and the driving should be fine...all three of us can drive...we'll keep the coffee business going too.

joy in making use of experience in a creative and helpful way

2008-11-27T07:59:00.002-05:00

This week I have been working on a lesson/presentation for my Adult Education training course on Saturday. We are allowed to teach about anything, and have to make it dynamic in 10 to 15 minutes. One of my classmates, knowing of my experience of living in Africa, suggested I do something about the differences between what people think and what actually happens when you visit and live there. That inspiration led to my developing a lesson about a crosscultural communication issue that is actually difficult and annoying to deal with, but common to all foreigners visiting Africa. I have called it The Mzungu Factor. Instead of talking about my own experience, I was able to make use of a search engine to find many instances of the same experience for others in their blogs, as tourists, volunteers, missionaries, whatever. It has been helpful to me as well, because it has focused something I found hard, as my daughters did, an ongoing experience of a kind of racism. There are historical reasons for it rooted in colonialism, and with all of us coming from the rich west it is understandable. However, that still doesn't change how it can feel, and so the benefit of my "teaching" about this is that it can prepare people for such an experience and help them to prepare to deal with it. If any of you want to know more about what I am talking about, just leave a comment with your email address and I will send you an attachment with my Powerpoint presentation. For me, as my title says, the joy is in making use of my experience in a creative and helpful way.

joy in being more aware of world issues

2008-11-26T09:56:00.002-05:00

One of my duties these days is helping my younger daughter with her homework in Grade 12 with her courses in World Issues and Canada and World Politics. Although I have quite an awareness and concern about these areas, I have gotten behind on the specifics. Being thrust into them through this role with my daughter is helping me to get caught up. I am grateful and it is coming at a good time. My own goals and concerns for personal, professional and financial survival are getting sorted out and clarified, and beginning to be realized, and so I can feel that I can take time to read the newspaper intelligently, or bother to engage in a discussion at church or supply teaching where I won't get lost in feeling I am not up to speed. I will also be able to more prayerfully engage in these concerns, and maybe one day write about them.

joy in a burst of joy in my heart

2008-11-25T02:42:00.002-05:00

I am up in the night, early morning rather, because of the joy in my heart. I received truth about myself last night, from someone who listens to my life in a profound way. I will try to express some of the depth of what I experienced in a post I will write later in the week for the whateverhesays devotional blog. I am switching my day to post to a weekend, likely Saturday, to make it easier for me to process during the busy week. The joy in my heart right now is from being heard and understood, and having the truth spoken back to me in a new way that takes me out of my doldrums. For that I am so deeply grateful. God is so good.

joy in seeing light at the end of the tunnel

2008-11-24T11:32:00.003-05:00

The darkness of winter is setting in. I have had a lot of emotional turmoil the last few days, held well in check, but there nonetheless. One way I have coped often is to have a vision for the future. This morning, in the midst of a carefully manicured version of my turmoil, I phoned the life coaching group that I want to train with, and was able to talk about how they do their work in a Christian way. It was exciting to me to realize that it would be a good fit, which is what had happened in our first conversation. This is especially meaningful to me right now because of how I am feeling. If it gives me a greater sense of order in my life to have a vision of where I am going, work wise, as well as in my spiritual life, then it helps me to cope with the daily ups and downs. So I am grateful for this sign of God's blessing today, and even more so because in my conversation the person said they had to go to a meeting and I realized I had caught her at the perfect time for both of us. God has been faithful to me again. I am blessed and trust I can carry that blessing through this day.

joy in a sabbath rest

2008-11-23T09:04:00.001-05:00

Maybe not a lot of rest...but some...and time for worship with others...it is good to have a sabbath that we are free to celebrate in the open. Not so for many.

joy in creating order

2008-11-22T07:07:00.003-05:00

I'm off to my second last course in Barrie - glad I won't be driving in snow or rain...glad the courses are almost over..glad they have been so useful and interesting.

Sarah is safely in NYS for a gathering of MK's [ translate missionary kids] , Rachel is working at home, we are moving ahead on finally fixing up our kitchen slowly...I am creating order in the basement in a long term full way that is taking so much more time than I thought it would...I did teach one day again...so I am able to take life in more of an ordered way that goes with my pace...learning to do that is good...going to bed early because I am fighting Sarah's cold...we must take life as it comes..

May blessings lead and follow us all as we keep in order!

joy in God's tenderness and compassion

2008-11-21T05:55:00.002-05:00

"A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out." Ias. 42:3

Today's verse at the end of the morning Daily Light reading reminds me of the movie I watched with my daughter last night: August Rush. What a lovely movie, about faith and inspiration, courage and trust, and belief in a dream overpowering everything else. And about God's sovereignty and protection, and also about Satan's destructive power. It was all there, although not explicitly intended, I think. You would have to see it to understand what I mean, but it would be well worth it, as well as full of wonderful music. It encouraged me so much, as I watch the lonely child in me desperately believe for my own dreams, and those of others, in the face of so many obstacles, but having the power not only of my dreams, but the friendship of my almighty saviour, who will do and not do as this verse proclaims.

joy in finding my voice again..and seeing more evidence of God

2008-11-20T03:26:00.004-05:00

Not sure how long it has been since I gave myself a rest from daily posts, articulating my thoughts and just putting on favourite music. I actually found that it took more time to search for music on YouTube than it takes to write a post. But it was helpful for me not to seek to express stuff for a time, and to do bottom line stuff about my life in the Lord. That seems to be the theme these days for me anyway. There is lots going on in my life on the surface, and just under the surface, and way down deep below the surface. But it seems some of the angst is subsiding. It seems that my level of trust in the Lord is growing and covering the floor of the basement of my heart. I like that image - just came up with it. It's as if I've had..and probably still do...lots of raw patches on this floor of my heart...areas where it hurts to tred...where the floor is rough and cold and bare and hard. Now it seems there is more of a soft layer of carpet over more areas...as if there is more trust in God's total love and care for me.

An extra blessing came for me when Belinda, the organizer of the devotional blog I write for, http://www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com/, emailed our team to say that my post had been quoted on another blog. Marilyn, the writer on that blog, had quoted the line from yesterday's post, "When he came into the room, the air changed." ( see her blog if you like, http://asgoodadayasany.wordpress.com). It was such a blessing to have Marilyn say that our team blog is one of her favourites, and also to expand on the theme in those words I quoted about my grandfather.

Most of all I have found my voice again because I woke up in the night...3 a.m. with the words "Psalm 84" and so of course got up to read it and see what God had to say. I read it in three translations, NIV, the Living Bible, and The Message. Check it out. The main gist I'll refer to today is that I have come through the "Valley of Weeping" and am stronger because of it. I am blessed because of it. So it is a confirmation of what I often quote from Streams in the Desert.

I also found myself singing "Who Am I", the song I embedded yesterday, from Casting Crowns. The line about the Bright and Morning star thrills me. Think of all the names there are for Jesus in the Bible. I must study them again. I have a whole book about them. But somehow that name is so amazing. He can only be God when we call Him that. I can feel so often that I have known God so intimately for so many years, and yet there is so much I don't celebrate. I guess that can be true about people too. We can be so caught up in negative issues about people in our lives that we don't stop to celebrate the positives...the amazing things about them...and even about ourselves.

joy in quietness and confidence

2008-11-19T05:00:00.001-05:00

This is the post I wrote for my weekly devotional post on www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. It came out of the huge snowstorm we had this previous Saturday night. I didn't know how it was going to come out when I began to write it, but I am pleased it weaves in themes from my family heritage and my own past life.

The Voice in the Darkness

Three hours driving carefully into the blackness of the night, the white flecks of snow driving mercilessly at our car, mercifully shod with snow tires only two days before. My eyes strained to follow the path laid out by those ahead of me, my arms steadily gripping the wheel, my heart quietly speaking, "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength."

Forty seven years before those words had been pasted by loving hands on a white card on a black page by my Granny Kay, her gift to me for my confirmation, my public profession of faith within my denomination. All the way home, as I stared at white on black, my mind and heart pondered, as many times before, the meaning of those words written so long ago, black on white on black.

The rounded characters of her English style handwriting on that white card spoke to me, as always, of the comfort, warmth and kindness of her character. Dear Granny Kay, specially beloved second wife to my widowed grandfather, precious and dear, Bishop W.T. Hallam, an outstanding evangelical Canadian Anglican bishop in his day, but most of all a man of God, a servant of Christ, of whom my cousin said, "When he came into the room, the air changed." It was one of his Bibles that Granny Kay passed on to me on that special day.

I didn't fully appreciate the significance of those words until many years later. I think at the time I thought them odd, as if they didn't speak enough of great exploits that awaited me in my life in Christ, as if they didn't promise great weapons to fight the battles I felt lay before me. After all, I always felt I carried the mantle of spiritual leadership from my bishop grandfather, and that my destiny involved rising to responsibilities within the body of Christ that were weighty and solemn.

Such was the confusion of a child reared in the church without enough nurturing of deepest needs. Yes, Granny Kay's deep faith was there, expressed largely in an Anglican way, carried with deep and loving humility, the fruit that had won the heart of my grandfather after many years of friendship to his family as she served her own mother and graciously worked at her profession as a Home Economics teacher and area supervisor. I spent many hours with her in her own widowed years, reading to her from the Book of Common Prayer, and hearing her talk of sensing "Will's" presence with her in her room. We shared the bond of our faith and our love for my grandfather, who died when I was five, but who had baptized me as an infant and held me and cherished me often in my early years.

What was the confidence of which she tried to speak to me? Who else was there to help to guide me into that deep trust? Yes, she exemplified that quietness and confidence. How was I to find it in the midst of the turmoils of adolescence and young adulthood? How was I to make those words come off the page of my life, be the white light of guidance on the black pages of experience?

I found many through the years who taught me about confidence in Christ, who fostered my growth in spiritual gifts, gave me opportunities for leadership in the body of Christ, spoke prophetic words over my life and encouraged my sense of destiny. Some were noisy and some were quiet. And the spiritual climate in so much of the body encouraged a seeking after new words, new teaching to shine light in the darkness and illuminate His word in my life. But as the years wore on, like the long journey in the night with the almost blinding snow in my face, it was His quiet voice that began to speak more loudly in my heart. "You belong to Me. That is all that matters, and that is the source of your confidence. Your confidence is your trust in Me. I am faithful. You can rest secure in me."

The almost blinding snowstorms of life have knocked lots of stuffing out of me: my self confidence in my abilities, my pride in my family heritage, my record of spiritual leadership as a missionary, my academic awards, the letters after my name. All of them are rubbish in some sense, and so they should be. Granny Kay and Grandad knew that. That was why they wore their mantles of leadership and achievement well. I seek now, so many years later, to have my strength, like they did, in the quietness of the confidence of my trust in my mighty Saviour and Lord, my friendship with the creator of the universe, who tells me I belong to Him. I am His because He created me in His image, and I need nothing more to make me worthy of His love. And I need nothing more than His righteousness, His gifts, to make me able to stand in His service and His presence, in this world and the next. These are the secrets, the keys to my identity, my worth, my confidence and my trust.

WHO AM I by Casting Crowns

Who am I, that the Lord of all the earth
Would care to know my name
Would care to feel my hurt
Who am I, that the Bright and Morning Star
Would choose to light the way
For my ever wandering heart
Not because of who I am
But because of what You've done
Not because of what I've done
But because of who You are

I am a flower quickly fading
Here today and gone tomorrow
A wave tossed in the ocean
Vapor in the wind
Still You hear me when I'm calling
Lord, You catch me when I'm falling
And You've told me who I am
I am Yours, I am Yours

Who am I, that the eyes that see my sin
Would look on me with love and watch me rise again
Who am I, that the voice that calmed the sea
Would call out through the rain
And calm the storm in me

A wave tossed in the ocean
Vapor in the wind
Still You hear me when I'm calling
Lord, You catch me when I'm falling
And You've told me who I am
I am Yours

joy that He knows better than I

2008-11-18T05:00:00.002-05:00

This song from Joseph, Prince of Dreams, has always spoken deeply to me:

Blessed is he whose faith is not offended
When all around his way
The power of God is working out deliverance
For others day by day.

Though in some prison drear his own soul languish,
Till life itself be spent,
Yet still can trust his Father's love and purpose,
And rest therein content.

Blessed is he, who through long years of suffering,
Buf off from active toil,
Still shares by prayer and praise the work of others,
And thus 'divides the spoil'.

Blessed are you, O child of God, who sufferest
And canst not understand
The reason for thy pain, yet gladly leavest
Thy life in His blest Hand.

Yea, blessed art thou whose faith is 'not offended'
By trials unexplained,
By mysteries unsolved, past understanding,
Until the goal is gained.

Freda Hanbury Allen

joy in our Beautiful One

2008-11-17T06:00:00.001-05:00

Here is a lovely song, one I played a lot a few years ago. It has passion and power, and since God has been doing some more beautiful things in my life, I will use it to celebrate Him for that, and for who He is.

joy that He knows my name

2008-11-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

Another favourite - this one has quite nice photos to go with the music.

joy in my strong and perfect plea

2008-11-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

I remember when I first heard this song. I could not believe how incredible the words were:

Before the Throne of God Above

joy in knowing what matters when it's all been said and done

2008-11-14T06:00:00.001-05:00

Another all time favourite, bottom line song for me:

joy in trusting His faithfulness

2008-11-13T06:00:00.000-05:00

Here is another of my favourite (worship) songs, and certainly expressing the bottom line for me:

joy in knowing God knows what He is doing

2008-11-12T06:00:00.004-05:00

For my weekly devotional blog on www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com I just shared these words and this song "All I Can Say" by the David Crowder band:

This week I don't have the words of my own to express what God is doing and what is happening within me. I have to trust that God knows what He is doing, and that, as this song from David Crowder says, He was washing my feet when I didn't realize it. So I thank Him for what He is doing, and share this very deep song, trusting it will speak to a similarly deep place within you.

joy that He will raise us up

2008-11-11T06:00:00.002-05:00

This is one of my all time favourite songs...not written for worship, but, in this case, used for it. It has obviously been put together with footage related to work in Africa, and that touches me deep in my heart. I do not know the work mentioned at the end that it promotes, but likely it is a worthy cause. May the song and the video bless you today.

joy that He is everlasting

2008-11-10T06:00:00.002-05:00

Why should we worry? Here's another song by Brian Doerksen and his band reminding us of God's everlasting presence with us.

joy in singing holy truth

2008-11-09T06:00:00.001-05:00

Something for our sabbath day....Brian Doerksen and his band...singing You are Everything...

joy in a new voice singing

2008-11-08T06:00:00.002-05:00

I am tired of hearing my own voice in this blog. I am also exploring You Tube in a more deliberate way, looking up Christian music artists and seeing some of my favourite songs and how they are sung. I may even look at other music there too and see how I can share that as a celebration of worship, and what God has done for me, and you. I am going to share a music video each day, I think, for awhile, unless the Lord leads me otherwise. What I find is that many songs I love are not sung well, or else the video created to share the song has images which don't fit my taste. So I am going to look for ones which do both well. Here is the first one I have found, for this coming week.

joy in taking refuge in the Lord, and in humour

2008-11-07T07:54:00.004-05:00

Strange contrast between these two, perhaps. They reflect my musings these days. Global issues swirl around us, local tragedies, mundane but important concerns, arranging snow tires, cleaning sheds, sorting the basement, getting supply teaching jobs, wondering when the snow is coming, planning lessons and making a portfolio, all these make up my days, along with making meals, cleaning up, all the usual stuff. We celebrate our current safety here in small town Ontario, our peace and refuge in Christ, and I make a plan to read the comics every day. Little signs of treasuring moments and making choices to stand apart from the pressures of life to get perspective.

Our refuge in the Lord gives us perspective, when all is busy and often unsettling. Reading the comics and laughing at stuff on the radio or in the paper (we don't watch TV) activates a part of us separate from our trials and preoccupations also. I remember how much my strong, often angry mother used humour to refresh us when she was dying of cancer. It was one of the ways my sister and I felt close to her in the last year of her life. We with her share that sense of humour. What a saving grace it can be for any of us.

I rejoice as I grow in the recognition of the depth of my faith and the rock that it is, and also in my humanity, in being able both to weep and to laugh, and to seek ways to use humour to help. There is a lovely Christian woman in my Adult education training courses who is a certified laughter coach!! She goes into seniors' residences and other places and teaches people how to laugh, even in a physical way, just to activate certain parts of their brains!! Cool idea. Reminds me of how God at times has given me the gift of holy laughter under special anointings of the Holy Spirit. He has known how much I need it.

I see, without expecting it, how I have made another link between taking refuge in the Lord, and laughter. Remember how Sarah laughed at the news of what God intended to do in her life. I will take another lesson from that, and "laugh at the days to come", like the woman of God in Proverbs. As I faithfully take care of my household and all that is entrusted to me, I will trust that God will enable me to laugh in the future, to rejoice.

joy in feedback and insights from others

2008-11-06T07:56:00.002-05:00

I am blessed when I get comments on my blog or by email from readers. I am often surprised as to how what I say impacts others. I am grateful of course, but also realize that sometimes people pick things up in a new way, or take it in a new direction...take something particular for their situations, or have a new insight. That is stretching. It makes me examine what I said, and the intent that informed it within me, often unconscious or at least deeper than I thought.

My nephew Brian is one who reads my posts from time to time in the midst of his busy life, and he did something interesting with my blog on being a new creation. He said that every moment we can do acts which are graces from God which are new creations. That was a lovely way to work with that truth, and a testimony to God's work through our incarnated lives...that we are Christ's hands and feet and minds and hearts here in the world. That is truly awesome and also terrifying in its implications.

For me, as a writer of this blog, it makes me realize more fully that each word I say can influence a reader and that I need to be very aware of that power and very prayerful about what I say. I guess that is particularly true about what I write on the team devotional blog, and I look forward to discussing these implications when we meet as a team in a few weeks. God keeps stretching me, and for that I am grateful.

joy in developing a theme

2008-11-05T07:22:00.003-05:00

So here we are again - Wednesday, and my post is up on www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. I learn so much from writing for that blog, not least being the privilege of our blog being nominated again for the Canadian blog awards. The blog won 2nd place last year, before I was part of it. Let's see how we do this year. I will be meeting the other writers in less than two weeks' time. We have come to love each other through our writing.

My post today reflects the theme that I have been developing. I want to do more with it, but I needed to find a way to put it on to Whatever He Says that would speak to a broad range of readers. Hope it has worked.

Here it is:

Here in the Grace of God I Stand

"It is your business to learn to be peaceful and safe in God in every situation."

I read the words in Streams in the Desert and agreed with their truth. It was freeing because it was true. And they expressed what I have been trying to live and accomplish in my own life. Somehow they resonated with my understanding that the concepts of taking responsibility for our own stuff, not dumping it on others or projecting it outside ourselves, and yet resting in God and depending on Him can all be wedded together in our understanding and experience of Christ. I didn't know how it was true but I knew it was true.

This is a truth I want to proclaim to others, to help them to pull themselves up short like I have done when I was complaining or excusing myself about why I had the right to feel miserable or ungrateful. Yet I wonder how it will be received. Will others, especially those who are gripped with depression and intolerable circumstances, experience it as freeing or imprisoning? Will it become one more truth that is piled on top of others which just serve to condemn them further in their misery and inability to rise above their circumstances?

I don't know. I'm not sure how to present them, how to express them. But I do believe that if they are true, that truth will do its work. It will speak, like the words of scripture, straight to the heart of those who need to hear it. My job is not to figure out how, but just to speak their truth, as I am led.

So then I pondered why it is possible. I left the pondering with my deeper spirit, and let it speak to me. A few days later I woke up singing that childlike song, " I am a new creation". It seemed almost too simple for the complex issues I have been facing, and that I know others face. These days of increasing adult weariness and worries seem far from my years of singing this song delightedly to children, playing my guitar, leading worship and Sunday school, making butterflies and teaching about transformation and freedom in Christ.

The words washed over me: "I am a new creation, no more in condemnation, here in the grace of God I stand. My heart is overflowing, my love just keeps on growing, here in the grace of God I stand....and so on...."

"Here in the grace of God I stand." Ah, these are words I understand now. These words I live, every day, inside and out. I stand, when I want to rest, I stand when I want to sit, to lie down, to give up. I stand and I stand and I stand. In His strength and in His grace. His grace alone.

A child's song with an adult's punch line. Seemingly light and frothy, it flies like a butterfly into my spirit and lands a solid truth. Plunk. Like Luther I stand in the face of ignorance, stupidity, and outright destruction of truth.

Heavy words to describe the daily battles, but that is what they are all about. Sometimes they are just in ourselves and the little things that happen day to day. But it takes God's grace to stand in the midst of them, with lightness in our spirits, with overflowing joy, and with a willingness to praise Him for all that He has done.

And that is the connection. Because we stand in His grace, we can be peaceful and safe in any situation. Because we are new creations in Him, we can stand, without condemnation, from ourselves or others, with lightness in our spirits, never forgetting who we are. We are always His little children, but we stand boldly, with those big adult words, "Here in the grace of God I stand."

joy in standing in God's grace

2008-11-04T07:10:00.002-05:00

I got up very early, put on the clothes I set out last night, and prepared for a morning of teaching. There were my butterfly earrings, chosen because they match my outfit, because I am teaching little children today, and because they remind me of being a new creation. Years ago I wrote a whole master's thesis in Christian education on being a new creation in Christ and how to make that happen for others. Butterflies of course were a big part of the symbolic stuff I used for workshop plans etc. So they have always been precious to me and many Christians as a symbol of our new lives in Christ.

But for this morning I am trusting in the last line of the song, "I am a new creation". Those words are: "Here in the grace of God I stand." I claim these this morning when I am tired and a bit overwhelmed again with all that is on my plate. I stand in God's grace, and so He will supply all that I need to stay standing, metaphorically speaking, to not fall, to not falter, to not give up. That is where we all can stand.

joy in following God's finger in His friendship

2008-11-03T07:40:00.003-05:00

"Where God's finger points, there God's hand will make the way."
"It is no small thing to be on terms of friendship with God."

These two anonymous quotes jumped out at me from Streams in the Desert again. We are following God's direction and directions, or certainly seeking to, and we are trusting God's provision when we do. We are also walking in fellowship with Him, sensing His blessing on our personal choices, His encouragement in our trials, and His delight in our individual talents and gifts, etc. etc. I shudder when I think of those who are into lockstep legalistic interpretations of God's will and work in our lives. Yes, I fear to displease Him, I am in awe of Him, but He is my friend, my beloved friend, as well as my Saviour and Lord. How else could I enjoy His company and believe that He has wonderful plans for my creativity and my particularity. He is like a wonderful parent who is excited about each new stage I go through.

How much we all need to think about this as we go forth into each new day. I woke up thinking about lines from the song " I am a new creation". I was pondering them in new ways, in a daily kind of way. I will blog about that for tomorrow I think. But the point is that God is always making things new. I must find that verse in Revelation. And so as I go into this new day, with many things on my mind, much to do, I also have so much to celebrate, not least my friendship with my all powerful, all loving God, creator of the universe. I believe as I follow His finger into this day, it is all part of following it into all my future, and seeing His hand provide for all that He is opening up. May it be so for all of us today.

joy in God's confirmation

2008-11-01T06:07:00.002-04:00

I couldn't have got on the computer if I had tried last night, with the girls and their friends and their plans. Even though we don't like Hallowe'en, we don't want to deprive the neighbourhood kids, so we each did our duty running to the door. Jim and I were enjoying watching Amazing Grace again, that wonderful story of William Wilberforce. I was basking in the peace of my session on the phone with my dear Spiritual Director from Tyndale, with whom I chat once a month now. We could both see the fruit of prayer and growth in my life this past month. She read from a psalm as usual and I considered quoting from it this morning, but that can wait. The main thing is that we both could feel the calm and strength that have grown in me by God's grace. It is wonderful when you have the opportunity of sharing with another who hasn't connected with you for awhile. And who has ears to hear God's voice as well. That was such a blessing.

Now I am preparing for another Georgian Adult Ed training course and need to prepare for the long early morning drive. As I sit here with my dear cat Velvet basking beside me, I rejoice with all that is so good and peaceful in my life.

Earlier this week a line from Streams in the Desert jumped out at me and I knew I would be sharing it:

"It is your business to learn to be peaceful and safe in God in every situation."

What good words those are. I guess I have been trying to live that for some time now, in many ways all my life, and what I have shared has been the struggles I have had as I worked on that. But it is also good to have it confirmed in these simple and stark, but true and helpful words from another.

May God continue to speak to each of us today, in our hearts, and in the words of others, and in His word.

joy in communicating well, in growing with others

2008-10-31T11:06:00.004-04:00

I am not preparing my posts the night before as I thought...at least not since then..so part of writing this later in the morning is that I have had some important chats with a friend and my daughter and rejoice in growth in learning from each other. That is a blessing in this time of working at home...getting more organized and giving myself some space to catch up with myself...it makes it easier to articulate things in communicating with others...that solid growth over these months continues then in new ways..

Even as I sort I am listening to a well written novel in which the characters are sensitively portrayed and realistically developed and it is not only learning for me as a writer but as a person who is training to help others more...all of this helps with my personal growth...I am grateful for God's activity in my life in these simple ways. We have so much to learn from others. I look forward to my monthly phone chat with my spiritual director from Tyndale seminary. That will happen later today. God is so good to us, working deftly to train us and help us grow.

May He bless us all today as we seek to grow in Him and to grow up into all that we can be.

joy in little details, and accepting ourselves

2008-10-30T08:28:00.004-04:00

The wintry sun blazes at me through the window on my left as I write. This is another chosen day to not teach so I can get more of the backlog cleared in the basement. Also I found the pain in my left foot still a nuisance as I moved around the school on Tuesday. It added to the fatigue that is still so deep within my body, emotional and physical. So I accepted all that and chose to spend a few days healing in many ways and working on the more advanced stages of sorting Mum's and my stuff in the basement. It is all a legacy of running too hard for some years.

I was excited to learn this morning in an email that my niece, whom I support financially as a YWAM staff member, based in New Zealand, has been granted missionary status for her two month furlough here in Canada in the new year. I recall the complicated arrangements we had to make for our health during our stays in Canada during our missionary years. I am so glad for her. She is out in Indonesia at the moment, doing pastoral visits to all their outreach teams, in difficult countries. What a blessing to look back over the years and remember that it was on her visit to us as a family in Uganda many years ago that she recommitted her life to Christ. God is so faithful, and she has been so faithful to Him for all these years, so earnestly seeking His will.

My daughters are praying and dreaming into their futures. One is looking in great detail at university options, and visiting them with friends around her work schedule. The other is planning her "gap year", wondering now about sailing the Mediterranean following the journeys of Paul with the Bible school network that the other daughter was part of in a castle in England last year. I am so glad they, like my niece, can find godly ways to have adventures that are satisfying to their souls in many ways.

Meanwhile I think about snow tires, boxes of stuff to be sorted, getting enough sleep, arranging house repairs with my husband, taking time to settle deep within myself in the midst of preparations for my long term studies again next year.

Enough to stay and pray in the day.

joy in finding (again) the timeless in the timely

2008-10-29T07:50:00.005-04:00

Not unexpectedly my post for today came out of my drive home with my daughter last night. It was extra important, because this is my weekly post on the team devotional blog, www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. I wondered when I was thinking ahead if such a thing would happen. And there it was, so clear, on the drive home again. It pleases me also to weave in my daughter's sensitivity as well as my own. God is good, way more than good!! I wanted something fresh and of the moment. My own life is chugging along, lots of stuff on the burners, nothing burning hotly at the moment, just keeping warm. And that is good for me in this season. But sometimes blog posts are best when they are hot!! Here it is, but you can see it best in context on the blog itself.

Cast me gently into morning

Another long drive home up the highway from Irish dancing lessons together. One of my deep hearted daughters sits beside me as I navigate the darkness in the high winds of the approaching storm. She turns up the volume on her Sarah McLachlan CD and says "Mum, listen to this. It was a special song for me in Uganda last summer. It's not a Christian song but for me it was like God's voice speaking to me, and me speaking back to Him."

Answer

I will be the answer
At the end of the line
I will be there for you
While you take the time
In the burning of uncertainty
I will be your solid ground
I will hold the balance
If you can't look down

If it takes my whole life
I won't break, I won't bend
It will all be worth it
Worth it in the end
Cause I can only tell you what I know
That I need you in my life
And when the stars have all gone out
You'll still be burning so bright

Cast me gently into morning
For the night has been unkind
Take me to a place so holy
That I can wash this from my mind
The memory of choosing not to fight

Cast me gently into morning
For the night has been unkind

Sarah McLachlan

My daughter shares how this song spoke to her in her darkest moment where she felt without hope, despite her relationship with the Lord. The song gave her hope, words to cling to, and helped her come into a morning of new trust in God's direction for her life. She is still on that journey, growing closer to God through the darkness she has known, understanding her own depths more clearly, and in them finding that there is no darkness too dark for Him.

Her experience of course highlights mine. I remember my struggles at her age, and reflect on how I walked away from trusting God for a time when I came into dark places, and chose lesser lights to lead me on, and then through going further into my darkness found His light again. I was so grateful that my daughter had used her pain to lead her deeper into God's love, had had the courage to embrace her darkness and let God be the one to cast her "gently into morning."

I reflect how just that morning I found several notes in a journal I created for my father over 25 years ago. It surfaced in my sorting of my mother's papers. Of course the passages I had copied out especially for him had come from my own treasured notes from years before that.

I had written, "My night allows the light to enter.' I don't know where I quoted it from. I only knew it was true.

Another note was a quotation Dad had been the first to give to me in earlier years, quoting it from the radio speech King George V had given in World War II. It was one of those treasures from my reticent shy father that told me he was a man of deep faith underneath all the reserve.

I said to the man who stood
at the gate of the year -

"Give me a light that I may tread
safely into the unknown."
And he replied
"Go out into the darkness
and put your hand
into the hand of God.
That shall be to you
better than light and
safer than a known way."

M.L. Haskins

My father's voice, my daughter's voice, my voice, the voices of secular singers, other writers, kings...whatever the medium, God speaks. God refreshes lights as He allows more darkness. He layers the metaphors...my daughter shares about inner darkness as we drive on the winding dark road home. A CD player, an old black notebook, handwritten notes from a loving daughter, me, to my father, heartfelt sharing from my loving daughter to me, her mother. So the circle goes, so the journey goes, ever onward, and upward, out of the darkness, through the darkness, gently into morning. Our heavenly Father leads us gently, faithfully, weaving threads like golden braids through the years, through the generations, through songs, poems, sayings, radio broadcasts, through others' words. The timeless and the timely, always together.

joy in trusting God's control

2008-10-28T06:36:00.002-04:00

I have to set off to a town almost an hour away. It is a cold morning and I am helping my daughter with an assignment before I leave. It feels like the days are beginning when I will need to write my blogs at night to be posted in the morning, so that I feel composed when I write. I am trusting the Lord this morning, and grateful for my work, but time is running out, so I will begin that new routine tonight. How I feel this morning is not a reflection of my true feeling, but my energy is directed into my day ahead, so I will bless you all for now, and know we are all in His loving care, and write what I had intended to write tonight to be posted tomorrow. As the Scots say, "Cheerio!"

joy in an attitude of gratitude

2008-10-27T08:53:00.003-04:00

I am grateful to be back safely from lots of driving up and down the corridor to Toronto. I am glad that I found a way to deal with Toronto that avoids the worst part of the 400 and the 401, by using Highway 27. When my sister and I went with the friend we were encouraging to take some of her stuff to the back door of the secondhand store, all three of us were impressed with the attitude of the young man who helped us. My friend had talked with him before and commented on his wonderful positive attitude. He immediately spoke of how he had learned that from his mother, a woman of great faith. And he also spoke of the fact that even though he hadn't adopted her Christian faith himself he honoured it because of what he had seen her do with her life, and how she had coped with everything in her life with an attitude of gratitude.

This is nothing new to any of us. But to be reminded of it in such a way was priceless. All three of us find the challenges in our lives almost knock us to the ground at times, and yet we too know this secret. We can admit that we don't practice it enough outwardly or openly, so that others know how much we feel that way. And we agreed that we need to practise it more inwardly than we already do. So, out of the mouth of this young man we heard as much as in a sermon.

This morning I woke up reviewing the many challenges in my life and the many hurdles ahead of me, and reminded myself that I like challenges, that in some sense I thrive on them, even if they can exhaust and overwhelm me at times. So I resolved that my tasks these days are to organize myself better so that I can continue to meet the challenges I want to meet, and I have to meet. And I believe that through God's grace and in Christ I will be able to do what I need to do, and that He will lead me through the challenges I have no choice about, and to the challenges that are best for me to set my sights on for the long term future, and continuing in those I have already chosen that are right for me but will take a lot of ongoing work and courage. I trust Him, and I am so grateful for the opportunities to grow in that trust, and in an attitude of gratitude.

joy in knowing He will keep us

2008-10-25T06:56:00.002-04:00

" To Him who is able to keep (us) from falling and to present (us) before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy - to the only God our Saviour be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! " Amen.

If I were to write nothing else on my blog, this should be it. What more is there to say? Life is challenging, but God will keep us, if we have given our lives to Him.

I am off to my wonderful next Adult education training course in Barrie today. How good to look forward to something knowing it will be well done, challenging, and full of benefits, yet not too overwhelming with all that is already on my plate. Then my sister and I meet and go on to Toronto to see a friend and encourage her. I would be happy to stay home today by the fire and rake the leaves and get some more rest...ahh that would be nice. But I will have strength for the day, and peace, and trust for His keeping power, and His protection.

I am learning more and more to "stay in the day", and trust for tomorrow. Then I can find my joy in the moments, along the way, savouring all that He does as He keeps me, safe in His loving care.

joy in having the Christian choice

2008-10-24T07:30:00.004-04:00

My daughter and I watched The Hours last night, based on the life and work of Virginia Woolf. As writers, students and teachers of literature, and creative people we responded to the acting and presentation of the film and story but were appalled by much of what happened. There was a romanticization of immoral choices as well as a stark dramatization of the harsh experiences of life and relationships. I admired and appreciated the acting and the sensitive portrayal of the characters and their settings. But I could only feel as a Christian that this was another example of the hopelessness of life without Christ, and the amazing possibilities that would have been available for the characters in Christ. Whatever the existential struggles I have known and still do, my fundamental worldview is a Christian one, and I know who I am in Him, and the security of my hope. I am so grateful, and am renewed in my commitment to help others to know Him and to grow in Him.

joy in knowing God's strength is enough

2008-10-23T06:50:00.003-04:00

I am getting ready for another day of supply teaching. The crush of various responsibilities hits me at once in the midst of family, deadlines, and all that I leave behind undone as I go out to do work that I am grateful for. And I don't know what kind of day awaits me. As I grow in my capacity to handle my new supply situations with less anxiety, I can enjoy my days more, and have more trust for the future. Of course it certainly helps that my husband is getting the medical preventative attention that he needs and that nothing drastic is happening at the moment.

So much of our lives are like this. We each balance our own combination of pressures and pleasures, and trust for God's sufficiency and strength. That is all we can ever do. And certainly the increased crush reminds us of our dependence upon Him. And yet we are always so.

"All of you is more than enough for all of me....For every thirst and every need..." So the words go. They were ringing in my ears as I got up this morning. Let's share them together on video from You tube. May we count on His "supply" today!

joy in remembering we are preparing for destiny

2008-10-22T07:32:00.002-04:00

Just checked the devotional team blog I write for on Wednesdays, http://www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com/. Yep, there is my post, written last night, and scheduled to appear at 7 a.m. on that blog. It's exciting what this technology can do. I don't enjoy or understand technology except in the limited way I learn to use it to assist what I want to do. So, thanks to our wonderful blog editor, Belinda, I am learning a little more, and being part of a wonderful team of bloggers. We call ourselves the blog princesses. We shall be meeting face to face in November. For me that involvement, as this blog, is a little piece of the destiny God has called me in to. I didn't know where each step would lead, but I sensed His leading when I began. And it was part of the fight I was engaged in to move on from where I was, and to work with and against my difficulties in order to become stronger and more effective. These principles were all described in the devotional we heard on Saturday morning at the worship conference I attended. It was such an important word that I used it for my devotional for today on Whatever He Says because I want others to hear it for themselves. We must prepare for our destiny by fighting against the three D's. Please read all about it below, or by going to the blog itself at the address link above. Thanks to all of you for assisting me in reaching my destiny, and joining with me in our battles.

Preparing for Destiny

"Now we must fight". Fighting words for a morning devotional speaker at a worship conference. But there she was, obedient and petite, small but mighty, giving forth the word the Lord gave her in much prayer before she came up from the U.S. to bless the many hundreds of worship leaders who gathered in Cambridge this past weekend for the Unite in Worship conference. Tricia Rhodes, recent author of Sacred Chaos, had a word for all who are being beleaguered by the three D's: Discouragement, Defeat, and Despair.

Using I Samuel 17, the David and Goliath story, as her basis, Tricia powerfully spoke into the tired hearts of many who are struggling to maintain vision and remain hopeful in the midst of too many difficulties. Tricia sees the three D's as an onslaught on the western church, a systematic undermining of Christians of all levels. Sharing from her own journey, she described her loss of dreams, her setting aside of the many promises and prophetic words that had been spoken over her life, and her deep pain over her son's abandonment of his childhood faith.

Tricia urged us to respond to the three D's by fighting, as David fought Goliath. We are not to be intimidated by the size of the enemy, his taunts or his weapons.

She gave three reasons to fight:

first, because God's worth demands it, secondly because our need requires it, and thirdly because our destiny dictates it.

The honour of God's name is at stake. We must fight, even if we don't win, in order to honour God. If we don't fight we will be defeated before we know it. We must fight because if we don't we will not obtain what we need to do what we are called to do. And our destiny demands our fight because that is what will take us on to the new level of effectiveness and intimacy that is His constant desire for us.

The battles of today are the victories of tomorrow. They are the preparation for our destiny.

And it is our intimacy with God which will fuel our fight. That is where we will find our courage, our energy, our strength. He will be the source of our joy to keep us fighting.

Our weapons, of course, are prayer, and His word. And prayer is not some complicated deafening rush and hyped up meeting type of onslaught. It is simply an embracing of our need, an acknowledgement that we can't do it on our own. It is just a leaning on the Lord. And it is His word that gives us what we need to learn to trust the God who gave it to us. When we know Him through scripture, then we know what He can do, and wants to do, for and with us.

That was the message for the conference. But it is really a message for all of us, every day, every hour, every moment. We must fight. It is the preparation for our destiny. And it is the only way. The alternative is unthinkable.

joy in sharing with family

2008-10-21T09:44:00.002-04:00

This morning we have snow in the air and on the ground. Our cat was taken aback when the door was opened for her to have her morning airing and she saw a white wet blanket for her paws. No go for her. But I was happy to put my boots on to go out, and to laugh about the lawn chairs that still have to be put away. We all agreed it is beginning to feel like Christmas. And I am going to have my sorting load lightened by sharing it with Sarah who is at home a lot with fewer shifts for work. The days when I am not teaching I can get into that more. My sister and I went through more of Mum's papers and photos last night and it is so much easier to share these heavy things. And it is wonderful to have family who understand implicitly and have their own interest. These are precious gifts from God. Today I am so grateful for a cozy day with the snow outside to make it easier to work in the basement sorting with Sarah. Enough for the day, and to live in the moment in the task in the relationship, knowing it is all part of God's care and goodness.

joy in turning to each thing

2008-10-20T10:39:00.002-04:00

I had never thought of the passage in Ecclesiastes 3 in terms of boundaries. But today I did. As I mused upon what to write about, I realized that my experience in this moment in this day and this week is one, as it is so many moments, days and weeks, of turning to the next thing that needs to be done. The capacity to do that is God given for each of us, and the peace to set aside what we have been doing and move to something else and then revisit the other things is a requirement of coping with life.

I have done a lot of thinking about boundaries lately, and I realize that there are boundaries around all these things. And as always with boundaries, they are there to keep things in, and keep things out. And that is what we need in so many ways with situations, relationships and tasks. If we have elephants to eat, we need to take them one bite at a time, and likely in small doses, with lots of other types of tasks in between.

I am grateful that today I can turn to other things. I have much to process from the worship conference, much going on with many relationships and responsibilities. I am glad that some other tasks which are important or urgent have come forward to be tended to. Focusing on them helps me to step back from the intensity of other things.

There are many aspects of the Time for Everything passage in Ecclesiastes. I am just musing on one, but I find it a helpful focus as I set about my day. May it be helpful to you too.

joy in being part of powerful worship

2008-10-18T02:36:00.002-04:00

I am at the worship conference. It is a great joy and blessing, even though I am on my own and having to drive around a strange city and find various venues with maps and God's guidance. World reknowned songwriters and worship leaders are giving workshops and there are many hundreds of dedicated people in attendance. Last night it was a great joy to hear Robin Mark and his band lead us in some of his popular and anointed songs. I sat with longtime friends, husband and wife, who are pastors in a nearby town. I haven' t seen them for about six years.

So there is much to take in, and much to use in future days. I don't have time to write about it now, but I am sure it will make a big difference to my approach to creative ministry, giving me language and confidence for the future. It is wonderful to be part of this movement in this generation, and to know that God is calling me to continue further in this area of ministry.

I look forward to another day of workshops and worship, and trust that the Lord will continue to watch over my driving. My leg is sore and my foot is bruised, but I am walking okay for the most part. God is faithful and will continue to be, as I am faithful to Him and His calling.

joy in not driving with my left foot

2008-10-17T07:03:00.003-04:00

Last evening before supper I must have thought I didn't have enough stress in my life so I accelerated instead of braked as I brought the van into the carport. The woodpile absorbed the shock of the impact of the crash which shook the house. Everyone came running to see what happened. The van seems basically fine and will get checked out on Monday. I came off with a very sore left foot, mostly in the instep. I will hobble around today at the Unite in Worship conference which I had arranged to attend from August. I get to hear famous worship leaders and attend electives in various things to help me be a better worship leader. Tonight I will also see a dear friend in that area who is attending the concert given by Robin Mark. God is good. I will still get there.

My sister is staying at our place for her own reasons and she will be available to my husband when my daughters go to Toronto by bus tomorrow to join me there in the evening for other engagements for them on Sunday. God took care of us in the crash and is taking care of Jim. The doctor says he didn't have a real mini stroke in that it didn't show in the brain scan, but he is being put on preventative treatments and will see a specialist next week finally.

So except for my sore foot I am feeling excited about the conference and relieved about Jim and so grateful to my Heavenly father and His host of angels who took care of me last night. Mind you my foot is sore and I am sure glad that it is my right foot I use in driving. I will be driving my own smaller car so I trust my right foot will perform better than it did last night!!!!

I like this poem and agree with it....so despite all the worries I mused about lately, I am rejoicing today:

Overheard in an Orchard

Said the Robin to the Sparrow
"I should really like to know
Why these anxious human beings
Rush about and worry so."

Said the Sparrow to the Robin
"Friend, I think that it must be
That they have no Heavenly Father
Such as cares for you and me."

Elizabeth Cheney

Blessings and protection for you too today!!

joy in knowing He can do miracles

2008-10-16T05:27:00.002-04:00

"Difficulty is the very atmosphere of miracle - it is a miracle in its first stage. If it is to be a great miracle, the condition is not difficulty but impossibility.
The clinging hand of His child makes a desperate situation a delight to Him."

quoted from Streams in the Desert, Oct. 14th

These words ring with biblical truth, and God's truth. What else can we believe when we have faith in Him? For anyone reading my recent posts, you can see the mixture of the honesty of my human struggles, in their depths, and the reality of my faith in God's power. These are the two counterpoints of my life, and, I would imagine, of yours. Whatever the level of consciousness or expression of these realities, they are there for each one of us who seeks to live in communion and faithfulness with our Heavenly Father, friend and saviour, and who chooses to work out all our struggles in His way, His timing, and His power.

As well as expressing these thoughts this morning, my waking thoughts were of the joy of seeing His work in so many ways in my life and the lives of others. One example for me is the miracle of writing this blog and being part of the devotional team blog www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com. Both of them have brought me some amazing experiences. To know that others read my blog regularly and receive nurture and encouragement from it is so wonderful. I don't want to write just to express myself or imagine that others might read what I say. I want to write what is going to make a difference for others too.

Sharing my own experiences only makes sense humanly and spiritually if that sharing is a blessing to others. And in God's economy that is what can happen. My weakness becomes His strength. It is another form of Him using difficulty as the first stage of a miracle. God is a god of contrasts, of counterpoint, of turning things around.

I guess I could go on and on about that, and I expect I will, in one way or another, as the days go by. For those of you who read my blog, I thank you for sharing my journey, and for letting me know that you do. Thank you for telling me from time to time that something I have said or quoted has made a difference for you. I pray that today will be a day where in every difficulty you will sense God's presence and believe for His miracles, as I will.