Category: Life

B Is For Beloved

I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. ~Henri Nouwen

Beloved. Have you embraced your name?

Or maybe other designations come to mind. Bruised, Bitter, Blemished. Branded by the past, befuddled by the present, barely worth a future.

The choir piece was new to me. I was tired and discouraged, not sure I wanted to be perched on this hard metal chair, fighting to stay in tune with a wobbly voice singing a half pitch flat in my ear. I was sick of the daily battle to do it right–this life, this high bar to hurdle. Faith hidden in a haze of self-condemnation.

I looked down at my score, as the accompanist pounded out the melody.

And the Father will dance over you in joy!
He will take delight in whom He loves.
Is that a choir I hear singing the praises of God?
No, the Lord God Himself is exulting over you in song!*

I found the lyrics impossible to believe.

Many of us careen through life, bouncing from egomania (why isn’t everyone like me?) to self-loathing (why do I have to be me?) to numbed disconnection (is there any ice cream left?). Look at our bowed shoulders, our shifty, mis-trusting glance–it’s obvious. We’ve forgotten our name. Beloved.

In the words of Henri Nouwen, “Becoming the Beloved is the great spiritual journey we have to make.” Becoming what we are, versus attaining what we wish we had.

In the beginning, God created. And the pinnacle, the climax, the glorious, dazzling finish was not a snow-capped mountain range, a lush tropical island, dolphins cavorting by the shore, or cute puppies in a furry pile. When did creation move from good to very good?

“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image…” From its opening pages the Bible unfolds a story about the irreplaceable value of you.

Beloved

I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.

I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother’s womb.

I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace.

I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child.

Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved

Read Psalm 139 and remember your name. B is for Beloved.

What are you like when you feel loved?

Welcome to our series, An Alphabet Adagio. We are savoring the story of the Bible, the story where we are found, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail so you won’t miss a letter. Next time: C is for Companion.

*Mark Hayes, And the Father Will Dance Zephaniah 3:14, 17 Psalm 34

Photograph by Melanie Hunt, Drawing by Randi Reed, 16.

Email this page

Tags beloved

Faith Life

A Is For Artist: You Are Never Alone

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date September 25, 2013
8 Comments on A Is For Artist: You Are Never Alone

A thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. ~Charles Dickens

Could there be art without an artist?

What price will you pay for a puddle of paint, a dried wad of clay, the recorded crash of pianos overturned, a photo of my errant thumb?

Could there be beauty without a creator?

Imagine molecules in meaningless motion–flash, stench, noise with no meaning, chaos with no aim.

Then take a walk in the cool autumn air, damp with rain’s promise. Breathe the earthy scent of yellow ochre leaves scattered beneath burnt umber branches, in eye-pleasing harmony with the distant violet hills.

A true artist, a creator is in residence.

In the liar’s alphabet, A is for Alone, Abandoned, Accidental. We are well-acquainted with his dreary theme song–do you recognize the lyrics?

No one cares.
I’m on my own.
Some people may get lucky, I don’t.

Of all creation, humans alone are deaf and blind to the ambience of God.

Why?

Because life is broken, and so are we. Bright dreams turn to ashes, the crowd walks away, the screen fades. With the ring of the phone, or the clearing of a throat, hope is doused, and we feel deserted.

I wonder if, in our darkest hour, the rest of creation holds its breath, waiting for our re-illusionment, for grief-clouded sight to clear. “Look up, look around, look beneath, can’t you see?”

The Artist Decides

Genesis means “origin”, the story of how it began. The composer raised his arms, the painter filled the palette, deft fingers hovered over the keyboard, and in the last silence, in that hushed and holy moment, what was in the heart of the Maker?

I love you.
I am as close as your soon-beating heart.
You are here by the artist’s design.

What seems to be lost never left you. What seems withheld has been always. What seems impossible will be anyway.

The Artist is here and he has only begun.

Have you listened to the wrong alphabet?

Photo by Melanie Hunt

Email this page

Tags artist, creator

Faith Life

An Alphabet Adagio

In the beginning was the Word. ~John, the apostle

It starts with an alphabet.

A wondrous journey begins when a child masters the mystery of words. Do you remember that crayon-colored moment, when, in a blink of understanding, black scribbles on paper became something so much more?

A is for apple, and adventure.

The world began with an alphabet carefully arranged, with words flung into the void. And the world is sustained, alphabetically. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning, and the end, Jesus announced.*

The Word of God, an unusual name. God speaks to humanity in the form of a person and as revelation, fashioned into consonants and vowels we can understand. Words, laser-like, penetrate past our defense to the dark questions we’ve forgotten. “Is there a God? If so, what is he like? Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I so messed up? Is there any hope for this beautiful, demented world?”

God answers with a story, plotted on onion skin paper. The story of Jesus, the Christ.

We’re careless with this treasure, the Bible. Though we hold dynamite, we act as if words are lifeless and safely contained within dry-inked boundaries.

We shop the Bible like a discounted warehouse. Aisle two–rebuke for our teenager. Aisle ten–the encouragement bin, all-purpose verses for every occasion.
Or we hold the Bible like a magic eight-ball. Close your eyes, open to a random page, and point. There’s your answer to whatever question, maybe.
Or we cut and paste the Bible, tailoring its wisdom to suit our taste.

We don’t treat other true stories this way, do we?

An Alphabet Adagio

Adagio: a musical term meaning, play slowly and calmly, at ease. The composer invites us to enjoy the experience, not rushing to the finale.

In the coming weeks, we will savor an alphabet adagio, a slow and thrilling look at the story we find ourselves in. We begin with A is for Artist…

Have you thought about the power of alphabet?

[Subscribe to e-mail to ensure you don’t miss a letter!]

*Revelation 22:13

Email this page

Tags words

Faith Life

On The Other Side Of The Spotlight: Karen Hearl

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date September 11, 2013
15 Comments on On The Other Side Of The Spotlight: Karen Hearl

The greatest thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last…. ~C. S. Lewis

Karen Hearl was not what I expected.

Face it. Leaders who love the center stage, eyeing with suspicion any threat from the wings, are a dime a dozen. Proud, competitive spirits hidden beneath layers of insecurity are as common as lip-stick stained Starbucks cups.

But Karen was not common.

You can find her in the photo, on the left, her head higher, her smile wider than the rest. But Karen stoops, her arm, as always, drawing someone to her heart.

Meeting Karen

I knew her by reputation–as a legend, a ground breaker, earth mover, people shaker of her generation. But seven years ago, blown by the winds of chance and the Spirit, we landed in the same church, and I needed Karen’s help. We met one hot July day over grilled prawn salad and herbal iced tea, and shared our stories.

After listening for a while to her impressive pedigree, I toyed with my lemon wedge, dejected. Who was I to ask Karen to join my team? I should be following her.

I was about to launch a new ministry, with a difficult to explain, you’ll just have to experience it kind of vision. I needed leaders with a certain kind of heart to join me in creating a safe, loving, open-armed community for disconnected women–centered around Bible Study. Karen listened to my sputtering spiel, and grinned, “I will do whatever you want me to do–set up tables, make decorations, bake cookies–anything you need, I will have your back.”

And my back she had.

Having led for many years, she submitted to my leadership. Every week, she came ready with a word of encouragement, a story of God’s faithfulness, a challenge that lifted my chin above the mess of the moment. Though accustomed to life in the spotlight, Karen now turned the spotlight on everyone around her.

How rare and refreshing! An intelligent, confident, passionate, hold-nothing-back leader who openly celebrates and self-forgetfully advances the reputations of others. For too many of us, sharing the spotlight is more painful than not being in the spotlight at all.

Spotlighted leaders crowd the stage with yawning frequency. But spotlighters are rare–those who strain every muscle so as not to miss a moment of someone else’s glory. You will be delighted when you meet them, beaming behind the spotlight, and maybe you will think of Karen.

Karen Hearl (1939-2013), with her husband Alan. Adieu, dear friend.

Who has been a spotlighter in your life?

Email this page

Tags leadership

Faith Life

A Painting Lesson

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Paint is a forgiving teacher.

My painting class begins with white-canvas panic, a daunting challenge for unskilled fingers, and eyes unaccustomed to seeing.

The waiting palette, with its glistening piles, forces me to look hard at what is before me, to pay attention to something besides my own tiresome concerns.

I glance around the studio and whimper. “Someone tell me what color the small flowers are. How do you make the color copper?” I beg for pity, it is the paint that obliges.

“Just dip your brush and remember what you know. We’ll go wherever you lead,” the pigments promise.

In what feels like chaos, I shift colors and shapes around the canvas, and they graciously move. They yield without complaint to a different tint, a new placement in the picture, even their erasure for the sake of the whole.

In the painting above, the objects have been so brush-battered I imagine I can hear the orange (reshaped, pushed off the side, informed it is not, after all, the main focal point) groan in protest.

And the poor chrysanthemum. How many times can it endure having petals scraped and reapplied under my muttering inexpertise? But a day later, I am still fussing with edges, and the paint allows me, it forgives.

What The Painting Will Tell You

Art experts claim, “Your paintings will be your best teacher.” But the lessons don’t stay on the canvas. Somehow life must imitate art.

Be forgiving, stay pliable, bend to the brush of the Artist.

Graciously fade back when the story is not about you; in the spotlight, shine for God’s glory.

Don’t be afraid of the ugly stages. Wait with hope for beauty to emerge.

Make a statement with your life, a purposeful, well-drawn composition, pleasing to God’s eye.

Be your truest, purest color, but learn to harmonize with others around you.

Find beauty in the midst of shadows, but remember to look for the light.

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10

What lessons have you learned from your efforts?

Email this page

Tags painting

Faith Life

Walk With Me

The glory of God is man fully alive. ~St. Irenaeus

Does God still long to walk with us?

The Way We Were

As is his habit, he arrives first. While we lace up our Nikes, he enjoys the cool evening breeze. We walk beneath towering trees newly planted, beside chanting streams echoing his voice, “It is good, it is good, it is very good.”

How easily our hearts open and the words come. With run-on sentences, our gestures wild and our breath quickening on the hills, we recount the discoveries of the day, and he smiles.

It sounds like babble to us, but he savours the music of humans drinking deeply of life.

We Walked Away

The day of our fatal mistake, he waited as usual, and we hid. Behind the bushes we trembled with emotions new to us. Fear and shame, the inexplicable desire to avoid the love we craved, churned in our bellies. We limped away, our hearts now set on following the dangerous, solitary road of self-will, but God never stopped longing, he never stopped waiting for us to come.

Some of us heard his whisper, “Where are you?” From its first pages to the last, the Bible records the footfalls of those who dared come out of hiding.

Enoch walked faithfully with God.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.
I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.
Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, LORD.
And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’.
And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.

Revelation presents a vision of the beautiful end to our story, when “the nations will walk” by the light of the presence of God.

Does God seem distant, aloof to your need? He’s there, he’s waiting to walk with you again.

Genesis 3:8 Genesis 5:24 Genesis 6:9 Genesis 17:1 Leviticus 26:11-12 Psalm 89:15 Micah 6:8 John 8:12 2 John 6 Revelation 21:22-24

Are you keeping him waiting?

Photograph by Kimberly Hanson

Email this page

Tags walk

Faith Life

Too Small To Fail

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. ~St. Augustine

My best days begin with the reminder to be small.

The setting was a beautiful back yard garden, the occasion, a fundraiser tea. My low-key task of the moment was to help arrange a display of Melanie’s stunning photograph note cards for purchase. I held up the bluebird photo, and we commented on the visual dissonance–a feathered beauty perched on vicious, unyielding wire. The bird seems unconcerned, care-less of the pointed barbs the rest of us rightly avoid.

Because we don’t know how to be small.

Staring at the photo, I notice how generous a space the bluebird enjoys. Plenty of room to gaze at the meadow, to dance in the rain, to spread its wings and soak in the sun. The barbs are present, but powerless.

Small Enough To Fly

Lately, God and I have played ping-pong with my thoughts. I judge someone, and he deftly bounces my similar flaws over the net. I express outrage at maltreatment, and he returns a reminder of my own carelessness toward others. I cry of injustice, and he lays down his paddle with a question, “How do you plan to become more just?”

God is not unkind, but merciful. He is reminding me the barbs only hurt because I’ve gotten too big.

When I measure others by the standard of me.
When my pride can’t handle the slightest offense.
When I long to change everyone else in the world except the one person I can change.

Me.

He’s urging me to be small, so I have room to fly.

“Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep-sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.”
― Andrew Murray

Are you learning to be small?

Photograph by Melanie Hunt

Email this page

Tags humility

Faith Life

A Return To Wonder

We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.
~G.K. Chesterton

Can we find a way to wonder?

In these jaded decades we have learned the hard way to peer into faces and facts and faiths and assume the worst. Leaked information, offshore accounts, we soak in wire-tapped wariness. Nothing can be trusted.

Your view of God, the Bible, and humanity is merely your interpretation (so we are firmly told) colored by your experience, your tradition, your bias. Others have their own beliefs, as skewed as yours.

Truth has become a personal choice, and drained of any wonder.

Scholars term this malaise a hermeneutics of suspicion, a phrase coined by French philosopher Paul Ricoeur to describe the doubt that hangs like a brown, bitter fog over our struggle to understand.

Doubt Has Its Place

When lies are spread as smoothly and generously as peanut butter and jelly on soft bread, it’s good to question. It is wise to doubt. It is prudent to wonder what goes on behind the curtain.

And it is good to search for answers, to refuse to think second-hand or let others believe for you, to stop swallowing pre-chewed theology while your brain snores gently in the other room.

Wonder Is Our Home

But suspicion was never meant to be our settled state. We were made for wonder, because there is One who is wonder-ful. The Bible points beyond our experience, bias and personal beliefs and informs us Truth has a name. His name is Jesus.

Look at me, learn from me, walk with me, my words, my life, my incomparable act of love that permeates all of human history. Gaze at my creation, marvel at my redemption, weep with joy for answered cries. Look for me at work wherever unqualified love, indescribable beauty, long-suffering justice have their way.

Let go of suspicion and cultivate a hermeneutics of wonder.

Are you learning to wonder again?

 Photograph by Melanie Hunt

Email this page

Tags wonder

Faith Life

Bitterness Does Not Become You

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date July 30, 2013
8 Comments on Bitterness Does Not Become You

There is only one way of victory over the bitterness and rage that comes naturally to us–to will what God wills brings peace. ~Amy Carmichael

Bitterness.

It’s a wheel lock. It’s a leaky pen. It’s the hard plastic packaging you bloody your fingers on every time.

It’s a jar you can’t open, a box you can’t reach, the bicycle in the driveway you trip over in your hurry.

It’s a chain cuffed to your ankle, bill collectors at the door, a snarly guard dog and a sinkhole at your feet.

And he knocks at the door, eyes full of sympathy, the guy with tools. A key, a pencil, some scissors, his own muscular hands, and long stretching arms. A hand to help you over, chain cutters and checkbook, dog treats and wood planks. Whatever you need to leave the land of bitterness and regret. Because you will never be whole unless you do.

Oh, he knows how badly you were wounded. He sees the tear-splattered trail of hurt that never seems to find a satisfying end. He remembers your shining hopes, shattered on that distant day. He tastes your disappointment, your longing for what might have been, what should be now, what can never be again.

He notices how bitterness has been your poorest friend.

Jesus offers his tool box. “Let it go.”

Behind The Bitterness

“When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger.” Timothy Keller in Counterfeit Gods.

Psalm 73:21-26

What has bitterness ever done for you?

Photograph by Melanie Hunt

Email this page

Tags bitterness

Faith Life

The Gift Of Fog

It is by suffering that human beings become angels. ~Victor Hugo

The fog lingers, sending an icy chill into a mid-summer morning. I shiver on the cool wood bench, willing the sun to break through out of pity for my thin sweatered self.

Beauty often comes wrapped in fog on the California coast.

And human beings love our comfort, don’t we? When it’s hot, we dream of icy waters. As winter winds howl, we imagine lying on warm sand.

When surrounded by the crowd we pray for solitude, and then anxiously wait for the phone to ring, a text or tweet to rescue us from the silence.

In a controlled environment, we adjust the thermostat, a comfortable 70 degrees no matter the season. The chill, the searing heat, is not of our choosing.

If I had the power, I would be tempted to prune away your pain. The green waste bin would fill with difficult people, ugly uncertainties and any twinge of critique or crisis. You would never have to sit in the damp fog of suffering.

I would be your helicopter parent, your well-intentioned friend, my own self-protector, hovering with a blow dryer at the first hint of mist. And so deny us both the gift.

The gift of empathetic depths, of heroic heights, of generous breadth.

The Gift of Fog

Coastal Redwoods lend a living metaphor. Their roots send nourishment to the rest of the tree, as is expected. But, unusual for their species, these giant trees reach high with mitt-shaped leaves to grab, not curse, the fog. Through tiny pores, the nutritious water travels through leaf and branch to nourish the roots below.

The same languishing fog of my morning misery brings life and health to trees around me. Can it be that the cold swirl of adversity holds a gift for me as well?

We are biologically wired for challenge–we thrive when we are tested. Growth, nourishment, the warmth of the blessing often come wrapped in fog.

Dear brothers and sisters, whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy. For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything. James 1:2-4

What have you learned from the fog?

Email this page

Tags adversity