Forty Days without Facebook: I am Listening

This year I decided to give up Facebook for Lent. I am a Lutheran and we can, but are not required to, choose something to fast from or abstain from as an act of purposeful spiritual renewal for the forty days of Lent. This is partly because Jesus went out into the wilderness for those forty days prior to re-entering the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

I chose to take myself away from the social media platform, Facebook for those forty days. This was mostly because I found myself daily wasting hours of time scrolling through senseless memes, reading political discourse that constantly upset me and actually activated feelings of emotional distress and fear because of it. I felt that each day and each moment I was looking at my own life through the lens of “moments” that I could post on Facebook to show my friends and family just how precious my grandkids are and all the fun things we do together. Maybe I hadn’t really been “present” in those moments, but thinking about how it would look to others. To be honest, this is the one thing I missed the most, the inability to share moments of joy myself, or to see the joy and happiness that others posted. It became blatantly apparent that I was, am “addicted” to the social connection we get to be a part of on this and other similar platforms.

I began to set my purpose for this time of fasting by examining what I actually wanted to get out of this time. In January, I felt a strong need to get to a place of “listening” more. I felt God was telling me to listen more, to listen to what the Holy Spirit was trying to tell me and to what others were telling me when I was with them. I needed time to be quiet with my voice and with my responses, my posts, my political views, my memories, and instead fill myself up with silence, prayer, listening, contemplation and reflection. I chose “Listen” as my word for 2020.

I began to use a journal that my daughter, Michelle, had gifted me for Christmas.

The title is I am Listening: Guided Journal Practice, A Journey in Hearing from God, by Tammy Weisweaver. (Available through Amazon) This little book gave me some prompts to reflect on each day and I could easily respond to each one and then reflect on it weekly during this time. So I made the commitment to undertake this fast to see what I would hear from the Holy Spirit. I began to really listen.

            What did I hear from God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit during those forty days? I will share some of it with you now.

            I needed to slow down on this journey through the wilderness called Lent by tuning into the Holy Spirit around me and truly listen to the mysteries. God is trustworthy and I can put my trust into the presence of God in others, and myself in nature’s beauty, and life’s sorrows. I am loved and the Holy Spirit is with me all the time.

            I heard that I should not listen to the lies. Politics don’t really matter, but everyone, even politicians, are children of God too. The world is large, but God makes himself known to us in small things. I can be authentic and I ought never assume anything. Things don’t always work out how we want them to in our small understandings of the world. There are many layers to everything.

            I heard that I needed to surrender my will to God and that by trying to control things. I am trying to be God. I cannot be God. I heard that I could trust the Spirit to lead me. The truth will be revealed.

            I heard God telling me to relax, to take care of myself, to rest, to enjoy this time of quiet reflection and quarantine. My own health and that of those I care about is important. I heard that I should look for the things I am grateful for and I did that. I surprised me how many blessings I have been given.

            I prayed more often and more fervently during this time and I wrote out my prayers and named those I prayed for. This lead to more focused prayer time and I felt the presence of God more strongly. The Holy Spirit was with me, and those I prayed for, through all of it. Everyday I felt that I was listening and God was responding.

My gratitude list:

~the love of my mother

~doctors who care

~grandchildren

~my children

~words

~sunsets, sunrises, sunshine

~family

~birds

~glass of wine

~friend’s voice

~my marriage

~kid’s climbing trees

~pictures

~physical health

~rain, yes-even rain that nourishes the earth and promotes new life

I partnered with the Lord when…

~we walked together through the wilderness

~I prayed

~I trusted

~I was kind

~I sought the truth

~ I had an open mind

~I accepted His strength in me

~I was loving

~I relaxed and let go

~I rested

~I kept moving

~I reached out to others

~In stillness and new life

~I stayed positive

~I celebrate communion with others virtually

What did I let go of? (Still working on it!)

~resentments

~fear

~pride

~control

~regrets

~weakness

~shame

~impatience

~denial

~failure to accept

~pain

            As you can see, there was a lot there…and there has been a lot going on in our lives that has been a source of fear and pain. I believe that because I felt the presence of the Spirit so strongly with me during this time. I will continue to listen and spend time thinking about and consciously work on letting go of things that are hurting me, fully believing that God can work in us even as we cannot do it ourselves, if we are open, if we listen.

            May God bless you and restore you this coming Easter weekend. I am anxiously awaiting the good news!

Beginnings

I’ve taken my grandchildren down to the dock to look for ducks and turtles, but nothing seems to be moving on the water today.  It’s very quiet. Perhaps we’ve scared them off with simply our presence.  This does not bother the kids though.  They have found a few pebbles on the ground and are anxious to toss them into the water.  They love to see them splash and the sound that they make.  I, myself, love to watch the circular rings that form and I snap a picture.  It is a surprisingly unseasonably warm and sunny day.  I begin to think about the start of this New Year, and fresh beginnings.  What is it about this year that brings me to a new beginning?

I have begun to delve into my family history again after a very long break.  I was very involved with it around the year 2005, but or some reason, I compiled all that I had up until that point and then I put it aside for a while. Life happened! There continued to be a longing in me each time I thought about it that there was still much to be known.

Since that time, my own immediate living family has grown by leaps and bounds.  Two of my children have married and brought with them their own extended families.  As of today we have 5 grandchildren ranging in age from 5 months to 8 years.  It is no less than a miracle that this much life has begun and blessed us in such a short span of time.  Life keeps marching forward.

Yesterday, we took 3 of our grandchildren to visit the Eiteljorg Native American museum in downtown Indianapolis.  This is a museum that holds so much information and many artifacts from Native Americans who lived in Indiana and from around the country and the world.  As I was looking at one of the exhibits, I read a quote from a Native American Cherokee descendent,

“Time as a river is a more Euro-American concept of time, with each event happening and passing on like a river flows downstream.

Time as a pond is a more Native American concept of time with everything happening on the same surface, in the same area…and each event is a ripple on the surface.” – Dave Edmunds (Cherokee), professor, 2001

I immediately thought to myself, “Yes, for me, time flows forward like a river…  That’s exactly how I view it!” (A very Euro-American viewpoint!)  Life keeps marching forward, no looking back, lest I turn into a pillar of salt like the wife in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  But something stops me here. I know I could be wrong as I begin again to study and search the family history trying to put the pieces together that weave a story of our family. I stop and think, “What if we really do ripple out from each other more like rings on a pond?” What if we don’t look back, but look around us and seek the circular pattern that is made when something strikes the water?

This image haunts me.  Circles all growing one inside of the other, rippling outward to a larger circle, a circle of life. I do find myself waking up at night and thinking about my ancestors being a part of my circle of life today.

As I stare out into the dark night sky, and see the many stars, I recall how God spoke to Abraham saying,

“And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;” –Genesis 26:4

I say a prayer to the God I know…and to the ancestors that can hear me.

“I want to know you! I want to know your stories, your loves, your music, and your faith! I want to KNOW you!  How have your lives influenced me and mine?

Reveal yourselves and your stories to me and I will record them so I and my own family don’t forget!”

And then I start to think about circles, and I envision one small stone dropped in a pond and the circles continuing to grow and spread all around, yet still in the same pond.  The stories of my families are numerous…just like the stars…yet somehow connected.  We are connected through our DNA and through the stories I know and the ones I only imagine. So I take a deep breath and realize that I am just one of the many descendants of Abraham perhaps.  It is a challenge of discovery for me. Where exactly did my circle in the pond begin?

As I study the different websites, I look at a random name of someone who could be a descendant.   I am looking at an unknowable face with a birth date and a date of death. Maybe I know the names of a few of their children and perhaps even more. At the same time, I know there are clues about that person that I am missing.  I so want to know.  I continue to hunt for them like I’m on a mysterious family treasure hunt.

I am hoping that one day it will all start to make sense for me, that I can accept the mystery and the questions that I have to leave unanswered. I must trust that this is the beginning of a marvelous story. It’s only when I realize that I am only at the beginning of this journey that I can actually sleep, trusting that the stories will be revealed to me as my research continues. The story of my families will unfold.

Somehow this circle of life image has struck a larger cord for me as well as I, we, face this New Year, 2017.  There are so many changes that are coming quickly down the river at us like a rapid current.  Our lives will be changed perhaps in ways we don’t want.  This can be from political changes that will undoubtedly happen this year in the coming weeks, or we could be blindsided by any number of different situations…I don’t want to be a “Negative Nelly” about it and I don’t want to look back.  Perhaps I just need to look around at the ripples instead of being washed away like a river.  “Bring it on!” I say to myself as I study my family tree and discover stories of families who continued to survive the concentric rings of life branching outward from Abraham to, me…to us.

Would I have followed my mariner husband across the ocean on a ship similar to the Mayflower to a new world with so many unknowns? Would I have survived the loss of several “Mary’s” as infants and still passed the beloved name on to the next female infant?  How many tears were shed for those babies? Would I have survived the “revolution” of the Revolutionary War? Would I have sworn my loyalty to a newly formed government and been willing to offer up even my life to support them? Would I, or even could I have continued to face life after half of my family died in the Long Crane Indian massacre? (Even as I think about how horrible it must have been, in looking at the history of how “we” (White settlers) took so much away from the Native Americans. Somehow I don’t blame them for fighting back!)

Would I have looked forward to a new regime when my two sons died of dysentery during the Civil War? Would I have been proud to earn a medal defending Washington DC during the Civil War when my very own brother had died in combat at Spotsylvania? Would I have carried on my life with breast cancer and two young children after my husband committed suicide with a shotgun at the start the Great Depression? These are just a few of the stories that I’ve discovered in reviewing my family history. These are some amazing stories of survival after losing much. And yet after all of that, my family is still here. We have survived, are surviving.

Madeline L’Engle in All that was Good writes

“If I affirm that the universe was created by a power of love, and that all creation is good.  I am not proclaiming safety. Safety was never part of the promise.  Creativity, yes; safety, no.  All creativity is dangerous…to write a story or paint a picture is to risk failure.  To love someone is to risk that you may not be loved in return, or that the love will die.  But love is worth the risk, and so is birth, its fulfillment.”

So I end these thoughts about beginnings with this simple prayer.

No matter what the future brings or what is about to happen in 2017:

Take the risk.

Rachel Held Evans on her blog encourages us to:

“Finish the book.  Pursue the relationship. Begin the ministry. Push the boundaries. Join the march. Write the screenplay.  Do the dishes. Plant the onions. Carry the child.  Roll around on the floor with your giggling toddler as if the world was even fractionally worthy of his presence.”

I could add to that as well; “Complete the family tree. Tell the stories.”

So I tell myself that this New Year is beginning and will be different.  There will be difficulties to survive amidst the laughter and love we enjoy.  I will continue to live my life and investigate my history. The sun will come up in the morning and set in the evenings.  The circles of life will continue to grow and carry us outward, onward, and forward. 

Gail Mehlan

Resurrection Parade

 











In the face of a culture of death
a world of killing fields
a world of walking dead
Christ is at the head of the resurrection parade
transforming our tears of betrayal into tears of joy
giving us dancing shoes for the resurrection party

And this glittering joker
who has danced in the dragon's jaw of death
now dances with a dance that is full
of nothing less that the fullness of God

this is the dance of the new creation

this is the dance of life out of death
and in this dance all that was broken
all that was estranged
all that was alienated
all that was dislocated and disconnected
is reconciled
comes home
is healed
and is made whole
      
Amen.

From the Roots of Life Prayers, July 17, 2016

https://www.facebook.com/RootsofLifeCommunity/ 
 

Today Again

I don't know why it is so hard to re-read journal entries from the past, I don't know what I am afraid of.  The feelings are just feelings.  I am not the same person I was in 2004.  I have grown, I look to God for my support and my guidance.  The anxious feelings come and I dismiss them, let them go.  The sadness for what our situation was sits upon my heart, and I know that I am really not sad today.  I do have feelings of uncertainty.  I still fall prey to the disease of addictive thinking.  I just wish Mike would call us.  That's all.  I want to know he's okay.  You, Lord, heard my prayers in the past and hear my prayers today.  Please take care of my son, Mike, today!