Noisy and Crowded or Silent and Spacious

I try to pay attention to rhythms of work and rest in my life and the life of the blog. There seems to come a natural time to slow down, do less and create Sabbath space. I have been reflecting deeply the last week as I prepared for Ash Wednesday and Lent to arrive. I have been discerning what my Lent practice needs to be. This time of discernment has made it clear that my life has been fairly noisy and busy of late and I have been craving quiet and spaces of silence more and more.

It is this awareness of my fairly noisy life that has led me to decide to take Lent to explore silence and space. To find a better balance of both in my life and let myself rest and restore for a busy season of caregiving that will arrive post Easter.

As I enter this season of silence and space I have decided to have Chaplainhood take a Sabbath rest as well. I will return to sharing my words and heart with you all sometime after Easter.  Until then one last poetic reflection



FORGIVE MY NOISE 

God, Christ, Spirit,
Forgive me for not hearing
Your words of wisdom and guidance.

Forgive me for filling my life
with so much noise
and "important to dos"
that I have forgotten the
importance of Holy Silence
and just being.

Help me to be passionate
about finding space
for this Holy Silence and being.
The place that quiets
all my "should dos"
and helps me find the
energizing and co-creative living actions.
AMEN

Lent Week 3: Permissive Space

If you have been following me here you will know that the Lent blog and extra post of last week found me in a pretty vulnerable and raw place.  I had indicated that I was taking a spiritual time out and doing something different. This week’s Lent practice found me sitting on the floor with my daughter, markers and colored pencils in hand, coloring together the picture that went with her coloring practice she has chosen for Lent.  We would take turns reading the prayer and blessing that went with the picture with some days her asking for us to read it together.

I have found so much joy and renewal in this space with her. There is no pressure to have any deep theological thoughts, only the space to be together in a quiet contemplative way in God’s Holy presence. The simplicity of this space and practice is feeding my soul in a way that the other two weeks have not. It has been in this quiet permissive space of just being that I have found the courage to completely toss aside what I thought was to be my own personal Lent devotional and ask CJ if I could join her for the rest of Lent and color with her.  Her grace continues to be abundant to me and her welcome of me into what was to be her private practice is joy to my somewhat battered and weary soul.  It is in this permissive space that I am finding my own soul healing.

This week she got her picture done first and asked me if she could help me finish mine.  The process of working together, trying to figure out how we both were going to work in the same small space brought some laughter as our hands danced around each other.  It was also an exercise in me letting go of the exact colors and patterns I had in my minds eye so that she could contribute her own creative mark.  The result was not only a beautiful picture, but also a restoration of an element of fun and creativity in our relationship that had been lost in the stress, busyness and the fact that I had been so deep in my own soul over the last months. Her words at dinner one night hit straight to the heart when she said, “ I have missed this part of you.” Meaning the playful, teasing mother I try to be. 

Once again the grace of her permissive space was what enabled my more serious, goal driven self to give way to a more playful me. It has been in the permissive space that I have found the ability to let go of the need to blog every week through Lent on my creative process and great insights. And thus giving way to more space for my daughter, my family, laughter and a renewed sense of self.  And others are noticing, commenting on how much happier I am now.

This coloring together in permissive space is something that has connected us in a new way, finding something else that we both love to do together.  I just purchased a book of abstract spirals to color.  Last weekend we worked on the first one together.  It’s been a busy week, and she has already asked when we can color together in the book again. And so this morning practice has grown into a shared interest that moves beyond the space of a Lent devotional and into the Holy space of our daily relationship.  And for this I am grateful.

I’ll be back here every now and then through Lent and beyond when nuggets of inspiration and wisdom come to me needing to be written and shared.  But in the mean time, you can find me coloring myself whole again and restoring the more playful parts of my relationship with my daughter in this wonderful, grace-filled permissive space.

Lent Week 2: Hunger

So I must admit I struggled with this weeks creative lent practice. The word was hunger and the creative words just would not come. The more I tried to force some creative words from my brain and heart the more they would not come and the more I hungered for something creative. I found it a bit ironic, but then again one of the questions was what was I hungering for. Perhaps my struggle answered the question for me. I finally found a creative release on Saturday when I took the following staged picture. Even setting it up was a creative outlet that fed my hunger for creativity.

As I planned and staged the picture I found my thoughts centering in living in a culture of plenty (at least of stuff) and how there are other things that we might hunger for and is our fascination with stuff really just trying to ineffectively feed these hungers, almost like trying to feed a physical hunger with plastic food. 

What thoughts does this picture hold for you?

This week I am supposed to be journeying with the words fasting and penitence. But it’s been a hard week with death, difficult ministry and deep continuing education reading. My soul is tired and overworked and feeling a bit selfish in the fact that facing and living with these words was more than I could handle. A good friend suggested it might be time for a spiritual time out from the deep, intense place I’ve been residing. She is right, so this week I am joining my daughter in some simple coloring mediation. I’ll share with you what this break in the journey produced.

Lent Week 1: Prepare

This past week my creative Lenten journey had me contemplating the word prepare.  Much of my thoughts centered around the process of preparing my soul and also that of the process and preparation in being a guide to my daughter in her first exploration of a set time of contemplation. Part of the journey is for me to embrace the raw result of initial creative flow, perfect result or not.  Journey with me now through the raw, unpolished words of my heart and pictures of my eye.

 

PREPARATION

I prepare to set aside this time,

This time of planting seeds of quiet in my soul.

I prepare to be a partner with my daughter,

Showing her how to set aside time.

Showing her how to plant her own seeds of transformation.

Together we plant seeds of hope,

In preparation for the days to come.

We start with the black of ashes.

Preparing to move each day closer

To the creative color of the new life of Easter.

PLANTING TIME

Unseen planted in my heart,

Just like seeds planted in the spring soil.

I may have an idea of what will burst forth,

But really it is not until the blooms/fruit emerges

That one sees the full beauty.

Right now my soul is being prepared,

Fertilized

Turned into a nourishing ground for

The seeds of transformation to be planted by God.

It is still early,

The tools being gathered and prepared.

Come back next week for the creative journey with the word Hunger.

Creative Journey Towards Transformation

Dry Spell, that’s where I am.

The creative words have vanished.

The deep thoughts have flitted away,

leaving a dry sandy place where

creativity once resided.          

But Sand with a little bit of water and hard work

can become a beautiful work of art.

So I wait for the water to well up,

wetting the dry sands of my creativity.

So that once again words may come.

This was the poem that spilled out of my soul a couple of weeks ago. And it was upon opening up my journal to this poem on Tuesday that I finally found my direction into Lent. I realized that I have allowed busyness of life to suppress my creative spirit. And have been neglectful of the creative space in my life. This thought had been brewing for a couple of days after I found the resource Hungering For Life (which can be found here). This is taking me on a creative exploration of a word each week of Lent.

My daughter also asked to do her own lent practice this year. At eight the idea of giving up something was too intimidating, but she embraced the idea of a contemplative coloring time each morning. We worked together to come up with her own creative “packet” for lent and now start our mornings together in my office, me in my chair – she on floor. I am coming to look forward to that time each morning in my office.

           

In the interest of helping me honor this creative space I am making in my life, my plan is through lent to simply post the results of the previous weeks creative contemplation. Please continue to journey with me through this creative space. I hope that you may find your moments of creative transformation as you journey here with me.

This week I am working with the word prepare: join me here next week to see what came forth.

Seeing in a Whole New Way

First of the series taken on Ash Wednesday

Scanning through my Facebook feed shortly before Ash Wednesday I saw a post of a friend telling about choosing to give up color for Lent and inviting her into this journey with her by posting our own black and white photo each day. The idea intrigued me and I was still not sure what my practice for Lent was to be so I decided to join in. However, I did not have guide or plan for this, it was something that would be figured out as I moved deeper into Lent. What began as my interpretation of giving up something quickly began to transform into a deep spiritual practice. Just like other spiritual practices, this one had much to teach me. Now that Easter Sunday has passed, we have celebrated the resurrection and entered out of the darkness and back into the light of Easter season, it seems appropriate to ruminate a bit here on my experience and lessons learned.

First off, I am a planner to the nth degree; so entering into something that is with out specific instructions and without a formed plan is very uncomfortable for me. I found myself setting boundaries. The picture can’t be just anything and it must be something that has some type of deep connection to the Lent journey. I must not just post the picture, but must reflect on it a bit. These “rules” were helpful for me, until life happened in the midst of Lent. I found myself caught up in the actives of the day and rushing at the end to get something/anything up. Sometimes I had a great picture but was so tired I just could not get the reflection out. The “rules” got forgotten some days and even once I did not get a picture up. My first lesson of this practice was grace and that even when I did not follow my “rules” exactly the intention of the practice was there undergirding my engagement of it. Looking back now some of my favorites of the series of photos were the ones taken in the midst of life happening.

Second, it was a lesson in perseverance and the importance of community. About half way through, I was tired, really tired of remembering to take the photo and finding the words to write. I really wanted to just get to Easter and that last picture that would finally be in color. There were moments where I truly thought about giving it up, but instead pushed forward letting the intention of the journey carry me forward.  In this time it was the comments and likes of my posted photos that kept me engaging the practice. It was not only just me on this journey, but those who were seeing anew through my practice. Sharing my practice so publicly gave it new meaning for me, particularly when I myself felt I was just slogging through.  I am grateful for the encouragement of my Facebook community that came one like at a time.

Lastly, one cannot really fully give up color unless you are unable to see in color. Color surrounds our daily life. But looking at pieces of my life through a black and white photo with all the color striped away, I found myself seeing to the heart of the photo. I saw my family in a new way and in a deeper way; I saw to the center and deep heart of love.  Without color to distract my soul I saw in a new way and connected to my life in a much deeper way. I discovered that black and white is color. It is the color of seeing past the surface and into the depth of what is truly happening in that moment in time.

My Holy week took on a completely different meaning as I prayed each picture I took. I found myself savoring each day of the week with a slow pace to Easter instead of the rushing push to get to the happy part.

I have seen Lent and Holy Week in a wholly different way and with it came seeing my world with new eyes and at a deeper level. Because of this way of engaging my journey to Easter, the Easter colors became so much more vibrant, celebratory and meaning filled. For that and so much more I am giving thanks.

Easter Sunrise