Showers Bring

“In the depths of winter, I finally found there was in me an invincible summer.” ~ Albert Camus

As has become my habit these days, this month’s desktop wallpaper calendar has woefully missed the mark. I started the process of determining a theme in plenty of time. I really did. The execution was the step where things fell apart. I had determined to use the common phrase, “April showers bring May flowers,” as inspiration for the design. Given the facts that we reached mid-month with no motivation in sight, and the rhyme implied an obvious correlation, I decided to give you a combo April/May version. Sort of the surf and turf wallpaper variety. (Only no surf and no turf.) Just point – click for the supersize version.

I think my Mama may have used that rhyme on one of her Spring bulletin boards. She was an elementary teacher, and therefore professionally obligated to hang all kinds of cute and inspiring things on her walls. It’s a familiar phrase, and in my neck of the woods, April often does bring showers with its windy days. I’ve always thought it was a courageous (and impressive) statement to make. Finding the faith, hope and vision required to see flowers in the midst of dripping rain is not always an easy task.

I’ve realized through hard experiences that there is no more devastating a process than reaching the conclusion that a situation you’ve invested yourself in is hopeless–incapable of fulfilling the hopes of your great expectations. And, whether the situation is in fact hopeless or not doesn’t always matter. It’s the reaching of the conclusion that shakes us, especially when those hopes are so intricately entwined with the core of who we are and what we want our lives to be like. It wears us down. It disappoints us. It sickens our hearts. It shatters our assumptions. It rattles our confidence in ourselves. It challenges our view of who we are and who it’s possible for us to be. No, being hopeless and in despair because of it isn’t often something to which we aspire. That situation doesn’t usually make the “bucket list.” However, I imagine that when any of us come to kick the vessel of life we’ve been given, we’ll each find that hopelessness factored in at some point on the journey. It’s just a part of the pageant sometimes.

Standing in a rainy downpour, it’s hard to see the flowers expected a few weeks down the road. It’s hard to see for the dripping in your eyes right now. In the storm, it’s hard to envision the blossoms as anything more than washed out ground. It’s hard to believe they are germinating. It takes quite a lot of courage to know they are.

There is an inescapable joining of faith and hope. A connection. For hope to be sustained regardless of disappointing situations or people or actions, we need assurances, evidences, signposts. We need faith–an “invincible” faith that lets us KNOW our deepest hopes will somehow be realized. Of all the books and philosophies and conversations I’ve been privy to in my following of faith, the most exquisitely simple definition I’ve found is this:

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (hebrews 11:1)

Faith makes hope reliable. It gives it credibility. And, let’s face it. In the midst of the showers (and depths of winter), we need to know our hope is more than fool’s gold. We need that credibility. It makes it possible to see what isn’t apparent. It shows us May flowers during April showers. It gives us the “invicible summer” that Camus articulated. And, amazingly, it’s revealed right there by the real foundation of any working faith, God Himself. Faith is to understand and rely upon our God, knowing that in His wisdom and might and bigness, and despite any circumstance or choice or shortcoming, He can sustain and govern the fulfillment of that deepest hope in us.

We hope for the flowers, for the flowering of our lives in ways we’ve imagined, in ways we’ve assumed were possible. And, in the downpour of disappointment, we can still know the blooming is on the way.

Faith. And hope. I want to live in that place where I know what the showers bring. I’ll get there.

Grace

“We communicate grace to one another by holding space for people when they are hurt or terrified, instead of trying to fix them, or manage their emotions for them. We offer ourselves as silent companionship, or gentle listening when someone feels very alone. We get people glasses of water when they are thirsty.”
~ Anne Lamott, in an interview with Amazon.com

(holding space. thank you.)

8th Day of Thanksgiving: From Point A to B

Yesterday I was privileged to sleep a little later. Quiver is normally an early riser anyway, and he was kind enough to keep a handle on the boys’ excitement while I slept. In case you’re wondering, two preschool boys whispering to one another “Shhh! Mommy’s asleep” is never as quiet as they intend it to be. But, I always love the conversations I hear through our walls when I’m in that almost-awake state.

Saturday’s conversation from the bathroom involved Quiver telling Little Drummer Boy the story of MY life over shaving and teeth brushing. I’m not sure how it started, but it was a much-simplified account of places and houses and times. LDB seemed to assume that he was present in Mommy’s tummy for everything before the world he now knows. I couldn’t help but smile as Quiver quickly attempted to move the conversation along from the explanation that no, LDB was not actually in Mommy’s tummy for the whole of my life. “Where was I?” If anybody wants to take that one, please go right ahead.

I can tell that Little Drummer Boy has been trying to wrap his mind around time and places lately. The boys and I recently drove through my hometown on our way somewhere, and he was amazed that Mommy lived there as a girl. He was amazed that Mommy ever lived anywhere but our house. He was amazed that Mommy was ever anything other than what he knows me to be. Sometimes I’m amazed myself, and when confronted with those other things, it can be quite a heart-searching ride. Last week he asked me WHEN I was a girl. My first reaction was:  17 seconds ago, never, too many years gone by, and all of the above. My answer was “a while back.” That’s the best I could do at a weary 10:16pm when all the really profound questions come out of his mind and all the really dumbfounded answers come out of mine.

At their young ages, my gifts are sort of in a perpetual state of now that I sometimes envy. Last weekend’s trip to the zoo could just as easily have been this morning. Saturday can always be tomorrow morning. They are slowly growing to treasure experiences, to remember them and place them in context, to see their impact on the structure of life. I find myself growing in that same way again.

This Thanksgiving season, I’ve been looking at the signposts in my life–those moments and situations, like the crescent moon, when I realized “I don’t have the whole picture, but I know it’s there.” Putting those experiences in context, I can see how much bigger a life is that one single decision, than a series of decisions–how much bigger God is. The path from point A to B sometimes detours through points C to Z, and we are quick to call the pitstops “mistakes.” We find ourselves somewhere we never thought we’d be, and in assessing the destination, we overlook the path.

I am so thankful that God is a God who reveals Himself often most eloquently and immediately in times of wandering. I’m so thankful that He isn’t found only at the destination, but at all points in between.

The song is true. Often the times you lose your way are the times when you find out who you really are and what you’re about. When you realize you’ve overlooked something, sometimes you learn how to really see. The “wrong turns” in my life are moving me toward a more humble way of seeing the world and the people in it–a real view that can’t coexist with cliches and simplistic truisms, a view where faith MUST meet the road. It’s a blessing that’s been hard-wrestled. And I’m thankful for it.

This-worldliness

“I discovered later, and am still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness, I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes, failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own suffering but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.”

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(thanks to my friend, Julie — one of her favorites)

MIPOTW: Temperamental Ideology

Shock. My last Most Interesting Phrase of the Week was posted on March 23. I’d say I’m a little behind. It’s not that I haven’t seen anything interesting–quite the opposite.  More accurately, I’ve been so interested in so many things that my mind’s been a little muddled.  You’ve heard it before. It’s a chronic problem that sometimes results in fruit rotting on the vine, creatively speaking.  But, MIPOTW is back with a thought-provoking vengeance–so much so that this one is showing up in the big wide column in addition to its typical spot in the wander zone to your right.  Why the special treatment, you ask?  Well, it’s because this one relates to my 2009 theme word concept, harmony.

The phrase: “It’s not about ideology.  It’s about temperament.”

I heard it while watching a recent segment of Charlie Rose on PBS.  It’s a quote from Joe Scarborough, co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC.  His subject was the Republican Party in “crisis”, and I agree. But, the statement prompted my thinking on wider issues of temperamental ideology.

Ideology is temperamental.  Try as we might, we can’t always fit it neatly into every situation and make it come out all pretty please with sugar on top. Ideology is a tough nut.  Sometimes it’s the life of the party. Sometimes it’s a loner. Sometimes it doesn’t play well with others. Sometimes it walks softly. Sometimes it carries a big ‘ol stick and doesn’t mind whomping somebody’s noggin with it. Ideology is a squirly beast.

My handy dictionary.com tells me that ideology is “the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group.”  And, I suppose the large group status there gives ideology its particular tendencies toward watering down, blind leading the blind, or zealot crusading as individual iterations emerge.

I started reading a book this weekend called The Signature of Jesus by Brennan Manning. The introduction began a dialogue on the challenge of why beliefs don’t always play out in actions. It highlighted the difference between belief and faith (half-baked for now, but more to come), and reminded me of the harmony (and sometimes disharmony) found in temperamental ideology.

I’ve been pondering beliefs quite a bit of late–in particular, maintaining harmony in beliefs across a variety of situations and social issues. “It’s about temperament.” Trusty dictionary.com tells me that in addition to “the combination of mental, physical, and emotional traits of a person,” temperament also refers to the musical “tuning of a keyboard instrument… so that the instrument may be played in all keys without further tuning.” It’s early meanings include “to mix properly” like in tempera paint. [music and paint--two things I can easily get behind] Ideology in harmony with living–where the rubber meets the road–requires some fine-tuning in order to be played equally across any musical key.  It requires proper mixing. Apt combinations. Stretching out the tiniest variations from the pure tone of truth. The smallest additions and subtractions.

Don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not searching for an all-inclusive amalgamation of beliefs where anything and everything goes and where to be is to be true. That doesn’t work for me.  I’m talking about defying situational ethics and beliefs in favor of standing behind true God-defined realities that stem from the heart of an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-now, ever-loving righteous Creator.  Tall order.  But, I’m more convinced each day that if it’s true at all and true for me, it’s true for everyone. If it was ever relevant, it’s still relevant. If it can be mine, it can be anyone’s. If it works here, it will work there.  And if it doesn’t, likely it’s my own temperament about the issue that needs to be brought into harmony with the Flesh-clothed Word’s intent.