Friday 17 July

[Photo from Dimitar Kazakov on Unsplash]

This week, I have spoken to a couple of people who described a good part of their experience of the last months as ‘feeling flat.’ I guess we can all identify those moments or seasons when we don’t feel much of anything … nothing much to complain about, no depths of despair, but no great highs of joy either. Aside from the emotional flatness, physically we might feel lacking in ‘umph’ or energy, socially we may be a bit withdrawn, and perhaps we also find our thinking or decision-making lacks its usual sharpness. 

That pretty much describes my week. I got home from an intense weekend, my mind had been busy with possibilities and processing future plans, and I just sort of … flopped. 

Of course, when we feel flat we can wonder at all the things that might be wrong. Am I depressed? Am I heading down the wrong track? Is there something wrong in my marriage? With my work? Have I moved away from God? Yet  while any of those things may be true, it could simply be that our bodies, minds and emotions need a break. Perhaps the intensity of our circumstances - which could just as easily be positive intensity as negative - has left us a bit flooded and our system needs to reset.

These are the days when it seems tempting to stay under the covers until noon, to ignore all our phone calls, or to binge-watch junk TV shows. And there’s no rule against these sorts of coping strategies, only they don’t actually make you feel any better. Truth is, we tend to do these things because the flatness makes us a wee bit anxious. Rather than just be with the discomfort of this feeling, we want to avoid it or numb it just a bit. We’re worried about what may come to light if we simply let it be.

So what should we do when we feel this way? 

I don’t know about you, but when I feel flat I need the safe container of my usual rhythms. Maybe just a touch ‘lighter.’ So, I need to move my body and I might choose to walk the dogs rather than go for a run. I need to read and reflect, and I may choose a devotional that’s a bit less demanding, or perhaps engage in a more structured journalling exercise that I don’t have to think too hard about. And it might sound silly, but when I feel like this it helps me to avoid video in my online conversations and stick to audio. I guess there’s a need for everything to be lighter than normal.

This reminds me of one of the workout programs I have done, in which the trainer coaches her crew to ‘lighten up but don’t quit.’ It’s okay to switch out our weights, to choose something that feels manageable for right now, without needing to come to the complete standstill of hiding under the duvet and eating ice cream for three days straight. It’s so much harder to get going again if we stop dead in our tracks. But it’s quite right to ‘live light’ for a little while.

These are some of the practices that help me in these moments:

• To get outside, to be in nature. Beauty is restorative.
• To pull away from social media and remember what is most real in my life. 
• To focus on one or two simple and light practices that I can do TODAY and then again tomorrow. 
• To breathe or meditate, to ground myself in this moment. 
• To practice gratitude. 
• To be around people who know how to show soul hospitality - allowing me to be me without trying to fix, counsel, or judge. 

What is your ‘safe container?’ What are the rhythms of your life that nurture you, that you can fall back on when you feel flat? How can you make those rhythms light and manageable when needed?

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Monday 6 July

The only thing I know for sure is that I don't know much for sure. You feel me?

I come to this flaccid conclusion by virtue of having lived a few years. And the longer I live, the more I realise that I might be right about a few things. But then again, I might be wrong about a whole lot.

Never fear, dear reader. I am not having a crisis of faith. Not that there is anything wrong with doubt and questions ... they can be the very thing that is needed to move you into a deeper and richer place. But no, I have weathered a few storms and am very, very grateful to find myself on solid ground. That is, God is good and Jesus is the rock (if this throws you into a tizzy, feel free to chat).

As for the other stuff, so much of it is point of view.

[Photo by Matese Fields on Unsplash]

I was helping to facilitate a team debrief today. And there's nothing like having a group of people in the room together, all talking about an experience they have in common, to realise that no two people see things in exactly the same way. You can talk about it until you are blue in the face, and still one person sees purple and the other sees green. Do you want to fall out about the precise hue of this colour or that one? Or do you want to open your eyes and try your best to take in the purplish strain of that greenish turquoise that they see so clearly?

Don't even get me started on culture. It turns out that the correct ways of doing things that - consciously or subconsciously - I was brought up to observe, are not universal. While it is second nature to me to keep the noise down so that I don't disturb my neighbours, that is simply not a value here in Spain. Sharing the music is sharing the joy! And when I arrive or leave a party without greeting each and every person, for some people that would be downright rude while for me I am simply not wanting to make a fuss, grab the limelight, or disturb the hubbub of the group.

When it comes to character, I have to face the rather terrifying reality that I am as likely as the next person to have blind spots. That's the thing ... we are blind to our own spots! Isn't it astonishing how easy we find it to see those faults in other people to which they are oblivious? And you can bet your Aunt Nelly's inherited collection of silver teapots that they can see your blind spots just as easily. I know ... it sucks. What this means is not only can I not be certain of what I think I know, but I can be absolutely sure that I don't know what I don't know (yet). Did you get that?

Where does this leave us then? In a no-man's land of uncertainty and relative truth? Well, possibly, but that is not my intention. I think it leaves us adopting the posture of a learner. Not just as a child, not just as a young adult, not just when we are new to a culture or to a role, but forever. How would it be for us to engage in situations, conversations and relationships with a deep conviction that we have something to learn?

• There is something this person sees that I have never seen.
• There is something this culture values that I haven't learned to appreciate.
• There is something in this situation that I haven't thought of yet.
• There is a way of doing things here that is new to me.
• There is something to see in me that is uncomfortable and yet so important for me to see.
• There is an adventure to be had here that I hadn't known to anticipate.
• There could be a better way to do this that I haven't learned until now.

The world seems to be in a strange space right now. We are in great need of a sure and steady rock on which to stand, and at the same time we are suffocating for the lack of breathing space in public discourse. Honestly, it makes me want to withdraw from the conversation when the dialogue is so strident, so dogmatic; when everyone is so convinced of their own goddamned rightness. 

How would it be for us to try, just for a while, to be learners? How awful would it be, really, to admit that maybe we don't know all that there is to know? And maybe, just maybe, we might be wrong about a few things? Or if not wrong, then could there also be another way of looking at things? What do we risk by stepping away from our old certainties in order to take in what lies just beyond our view? Could there be a larger vision, or a broader horizon that awaits us? 

Could it be that the world does not need more leaders who can persuade others of their own, strongly held point of view? Maybe the world needs more leaders who are willing to learn and to listen, who can ask a good question and then be quiet. Maybe we need fewer experts and more disciples? 

I wonder.

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Wednesday 1 July

I love this quote, and I don't think it applies only to spiritual directors. I love the idea that we can go through life - into any circumstances, or with any people - with our antenna up, actively seeking out signs of God with us.

I love the curiosity this implies, the sense of not having an answer that's all tied up, but of being on an adventure of discovery. How would this approach alter the way we engage in conversations and relationships, I wonder? Is it possible that it might lighten the burdens of responsibility we carry, to have 'the answer' or to 'do things right?'

Today, we hosted the family that used to live in the house we rent. They are leaving Spain and are in a process of saying farewell to the significant people and places of the last 9 years. In amongst the coffee mugs and the muffin crumbs, it felt sweet to listen out for the whisper of God at work in their lives and the lives of their kids.

Today, we also celebrated the birthday of a friend, a wind-swept bunch of us seeking shade on a sun-baked beach. I find myself wanting to be around these people, to have more time to dig for the divine treasures to be found in relationships and in the unfolding process of sharing life.

Today, there were moments of kids being overwhelmed, moments of peaceful walking with the dogs, moments of connection with the wider family and workaday moments of emails, training questions and planning. How would it be for me to engage each of these scenarios with a desire to discover the ways God is making his presence felt in it all?

 You know the really great thing about this posture of a detective? It's that we are bound to discover something good - most likely, something much more good than we had hoped or imagined. So, here's to listening close ... here's to be detectives of divinity. Who's with me?!

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Sunday 28 June

I was chatting with someone the other day, when she described herself as not being skinny. ‘I’ll never be skinny,’ she said. And then she added, ‘I know that’s what you’re all about, being skinny.’ It took me by surprise, not because she said it with any critical undertones, she didn’t. But because of that word: skinny.

[Photo by Ivan Dodig on Unsplash]

It’s actually true that this is part of my story. At one point in my life, I was ALL about being skinny. I would run my hands over my body, searching for any telltale padding that would be evidence I was failing. I distinctly remember taking a photo of myself in a swimsuit, and then marking with a black marker on the printed image the curves of my thighs that needed to be eradicated. I stoked my self-loathing with determination to eat less and exercise more, seeking to bury under this furnace the true pain of my soul.

You see, the integration of my being had been dismantled early on in life. While I don’t know enough to say categorically that this happens to all of us, it does seem pretty much true across the board. Whether it’s being told that big boys don’t cry, or being touched inappropriately, or being forced to do things our bodies intuitively told us to be scared of, we come to think of our bodies as separate from and mere containers for the rest of who we are. Speaking for myself, from a young age I had learned to think of my body as something that would betray me, that made me vulnerable. It was a battle I tried to win both by making myself very small, and by fuelling the type of anger that creates a force field of self protection.

This is a road that leads inexorably to disintegration. Out of touch with pain, it becomes impossible to feel joy. Unable to feel at one with oneself, it hard to foster intimacy with anyone else.

My journey of formation - this lifelong process of becoming in which each of us is engaged - has been one of moving towards integration; of learning what it means that every dimension of my humanity is intricately connected with every other part. My spiritual state, I have come to realise, is not separate from my physical self. My body is not simply a container for my emotions, my intellect and my personality.

This was not something I learned in church, growing up. Our family was always active in our local evangelical fellowship, which meant going to church for prayer meetings and youth group during the week, and often going twice on a Sunday. We learned some great truths about what God is like and how we are to live as his people. And we also learned some wonky things that were not so helpful, either by what was said, or by what was left unsaid. In all the years I was surviving the school day on an apple and a carton of no-fat yogurt, all the years I was making myself sick when I felt I had eaten too much, all the years I was trying to figure out the confusing tension between being attractive to and vulnerable at the hands of men, never once did I hear a sermon that mentioned the body. Not once.

There’s no judgement here, I don’t think this is unusual. Our ways of thinking have been so impacted by Platonic thinking, and the philosophical thought that followed. In a nutshell, Plato (whose objective was to describe a systematic understanding of the soul) argued that the highest part of the human being was reason, followed by two further dimensions of spirit and base appetite. It was reason, Plato believed, that gave us a likeness to the divine. Neoplatonism took Plato’s thinking even further and argued that since non-physical God was all good and the source of light, then matter was darkness and the source  of all evil. According to this way of thinking, a person’s goal should be to deny the material part of herself since it must be what separates humanity from God.

It’s a long and convoluted story, but essentially Christian thought grew in the petri dish of a culture that separated the physical part of the human from the non-physical part, calling the physical part bad and the non-physical part good. We are still in the process of working out this massive heresy. The healing will take some time.

[Photo by Stacey Gabrielle Koenitz on Unsplash]

In my own process of learning and growing, I have become convinced that every dimension of our beings is inextricably interwoven with every other part. This means that what I believe - my tacit as well as my intellectual beliefs - is worked out in how I think about myself, about God, and about the world around me. It also means that the way I live in my body is far from being incidental to or divorced from my faith. In fact, if I am being saved from a way of being in the world that leads away from life and goodness, and into one that leads towards comprehensive flourishing, then that should have implications for how I live in my body - how I eat, how I move, how I am in the world as a physical, flesh and blood person.

I have to confess that I still have moments when I long for skinniness more than I long for health. I still have judgemental thoughts against my body and am tempted to see it as an object to be whipped into shape, rather than as a true expression of who I am. Nevertheless, I am on a journey of learning how to pause, to listen, and to wonder … to listen to what my body is telling me about how I am really doing, and to wonder how I can live more deeply into the invitation to work out my salvation in my flesh and bone.

How about you? What message does your body speak about what is most true of you? In what way does the way you live in your body give expression to the non-physical parts of you? How are your professions of faith and your embodied humanity at odds or in sync with one another?

Thursday 25 June

It's more than 100 days since we went into a State of Alarm here in Spain. And for the last 3 months, there has been a stillness over the valley that's spread like a carpet below our home. When I’ve been waking in the morning and looking out from my balcony in the clear air, I have been aware of birdsong and peace. When I have walked the dogs in the woodland near our home, it has been still and quiet. The days may have been busy, with various online connections and work-related assignments, but the stillness has felt like a big inhale and exhale, a deep breath at the start and end of each day.

Over the last couple of weeks, Spain has been returning to its usual rhythmic hum. This week, international borders have opened and, although I haven’t been too aware of it yet, soon the valley will fill with the sound of planes landing and taking off at the airport. The roads, for a while so quiet with just the occasional vehicle passing, are back to the normal buzz as people race in and out of Malaga and along the coastal highway.

Now, when I walk the dogs as I did this morning, we hear the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of vehicles passing, one after the other along the road that marks the bottom boundary of the hill we skirt around. The sound disturbs my thoughts and makes it difficult for the dogs to hear me when I call.

Distractions reassert themselves, are you finding that too? It’s all good, this return to work and the ability to move around more freely. Yet it is undeniably true that I miss the quiet, the opportunity to breathe.

Yesterday, I listened to an interview with John Eldredge (by the way, if you haven’t yet tried his ‘One Minute Pause’ app do check it out, it’s great). In the interview he said that we live in a sort of madness. Our western culture, he said, imposes on us a way of life that is crippling in its pace, its level of distraction, and its demands. Our bodies and minds, let alone our emotions and our spirits, were not designed to do well when pushed and pulled in these kinds of ways.

What does this mean for us? Was our 3 months in home confinement time enough to reset? Did it give us sufficient opportunity to consider the way we want to live, and to make choices about how we might put that into practice? Have we been able to adopt any new rhythms or practices that we can confidently take with us into this great ‘return’ to whatever normal is for us now?

It takes time to build a life, to be intentional about how to construct our days. It takes time to bump out of the rut of old patterns and to establish new ways of being in the world. Perhaps, like me, you realise that the new things you have been trying - maybe a little more time reflecting, or a daily walk - still feel a little fragile in the face of the daily grind. It could be that these new habits need a bit more time and effort before they become solid, and that right now you find yourself easily knocked back into the rut of distracted living.

How would it be for us to resist the relentless draw to be busy, the pressure to fill our free time with the stuffing of entertainment, connectivity and consumerism? Is there any residual goodness from home confinement that you want to keep hold of? Perhaps it is not so important to reply to an email as soon as it pings for our attention? Could we leave our phones on charge elsewhere in the house and thus create a margin of peace around waking and bedtime, to allow us to be with ourselves before we have to be with the world? What practice of reflection, or meditation, or creativity might we incorporate into our daily lives as an act of rebellion against the media invasions that foster a sort of madness in our minds?

The environment may be still no longer, but I want to fight for my own inner stillness. How about you?

 

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Monday 22 June

I find myself facing a bit of a dilemma.

[Photo by Josiah Gardner on Unsplash]

Do I write about the weekend of outdoor fun we had? Only there are some people who are sensitive to us having a little too much fun (true story) and we ourselves are cautious about giving the wrong impression of our hard-working lives to those who pay our salaries. And then I'd have to argue for fun and adventure being a reasonable part of any believer's life, not just missionaries, since our lives are, after all, intended as a message that declares Good News.

Humm, that one's a little problematic.

Maybe, then, I should write about Father's Day? That ought to be a safe bet and gives me yet another opportunity to brag on my very braggable husband. A bit awkward though, since I might find myself in memoir mode, writing about fathers of previous generations. As any writer of memoir will tell you, expect trouble if you start telling your side of a family's complex and many-layered tale. Especially if they're all still alive ... and can read.

Gosh, not such a good idea, that one.

Right, well then, I could write about my day. And the meeting I was part of in which three fifths of the participants spoke for 90% of the time. And yes, they did all happen to have penises while the other two fifths did not. But oh, people start to get really quite uncomfortable when one raises such anecdotal observations about these topics that are so open to personal interpretation. I'm sure they meant no harm, and perhaps I was hormonal today?

Communication really can be ever so tricky, can't it? So, perhaps I shall just leave it there.

Saturday 20 June

In the prayer poem known as Psalm 31, we read this:

Be strong, and let your heart take courage

All you who wait for the Lord. 

During this pandemic, I think we have all felt what it is to wait for something. The kind of waiting that offers no indication of how long it will last. The kind of waiting against which it is useless to fight, the kind we are powerless to control. Perhaps we have felt what it is to wait in a place of enforced inactivity, when we feel the pressing from every side and yet can do nothing to manoeuvre ourselves further along. 

Some of us have experienced waiting in a place of fear, anxiety or dread. Others of us have waited with impatience, railing against the circumstances. Some of us have felt resignation, the step-sister of surrender that leaves us weary or defeated rather than filled with hopeful resolve. Still others have refused to acknowledge the discomfort of waiting, preferring instead to drown out the feelings that irritate and trigger our places of brokenness, with entertainment, an unending series of online connections, and Amazon purchases.

However you have responded to the waiting, I feel you. Waiting with no definite end-date has to be one of the most destabilising experiences we know. We wait for a health diagnosis, hoping mutely for a positive outcome. We wait to get a new job, cycling countless times through hopeful determination and disappointment. We wait for our estranged daughter to pick up the phone. We wait for a financial breakthrough. We wait to get unstuck in a relationship or in circumstances that are not of our choosing. We wait to meet our soul mate, or for the person we admire to return our affections.

[Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash]

Waiting is so often unchosen. Think of Abram and Sara waiting for a child. Or Joseph waiting to see if his dreams would be fulfilled. Consider the Israelites waiting for their release from Egypt. And think of Anna and Simeon waiting expectantly at the Temple for a sign of the Messiah.

We wait. Indeed, as believers our individual stories unfold in the context of a Great Waiting: for the purposes of God to reach their fulfilment, for his sons and daughters to be revealed, and for everything to be caught up in Christ's reconciliation of all things to the Father. We wait with all the same emotions we experience in smaller ways over lesser waitings - sometimes with anxiety, with impatience, with resignation, often with weariness and every so often with clarity of vision and hopeful resolve.

And as we wait, we are changed. All waiting has the potential to achieve a wonderful, redemptive change in us. We are deepened through waiting. We come to see that we are not the captains of our own ships, rather that God is ever moving towards us with a heart of committed compassion and goodness. Waiting brings to the surface all the doubts and questions lurking in our minds and hearts. And waiting refuses, on the whole, to offer answers to these questions. Rather waiting, if we are willing to move more deeply into it, can become a place in which we come up against the bedrock of our deepest knowing and, in the end, find ourselves held fast. Eventually, we become like a weaned child with its mother (Psalm 131), finally ceasing our restless striving and coming to a place of rest.

What is the nature of your own, very personal waiting? In what ways is God at work in you, during the bewildering place of waiting? What is becoming more real to you, as you wait? Who or what offers you life and light in the darkest moments of unremitting waiting? 

All you who wait for the Lord, let your heart take courage. 

When in your waiting you feel ashamed and alone, take courage.

When others fail to understand you, take courage.

When your slowness through this passage of suffering seems to surprise people,

When you feel you have to justify yourself, take courage.

When people avoid you, avoid the places of deep loss and grieving in you, take courage.

When you wonder if you will stay here forever, take courage.

When you wonder if you've done something wrong, in order to find yourself here, 

yet you've replayed every decision and can see only that you did the best you knew how, take courage.

When you feel like a fool for having believed that life would be different from this, take courage.

When you're tempted to simply resign yourself to this disappointing or dreadful reality, take courage.

When all sense of hopeful vision has deserted you, take courage.

When the waiting sees to go on forever, take courage.

Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.