On Worship

Worship has been difficult for me this last year.

Through ups (a few major ones) and downs (big), I have had trouble finding true worship.While my emotions were intense, unbounded, as I was tossed from the top to the bottom like a small boat on the great sea, the worship service seemed even keeled and calm. While I was living the drama of the greatest rejoicing and greatest despair of my life, the worship service offered the same peaceful and composed practice designed to draw me to God. While I had changed and was changing every moment, often in ways that caused me to feel torn apart, the worship service was as tranquil as ever. How could I find my way to God when there was no opening to express my deep emotions? Just that, how?

So I spent time meditating and praying on that. I spent time with a group planning a new contemporary worship service. I spent time in church feeling unable to connect. I spent time on sabbatical from church. I even spent time at a seminar on the role of liturgy and worship in spiritual formation (imagine!).

Then I thought about spiritual formation.

I thought about being conformed to the vision of me that God has. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to Face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.” Imagining myself as the vision that God has of me, led me to think about my own responsibility for my own spiritual formation. If I am not open to being spiritually formed by God, I won’t be. It is that simple.

That is when I began to realize that the barrier to worship was in me, not in the service. Worship is an experience only bounded by what I bring to it as God is always there offering an unbounded communion. Ralph Waldo Emerson says, "The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship." From sun light to dark, from deluge to drought, from calm to storm, nature responds with constancy of being in the existence that God has created; nature responds with worship. Worship is the state of constant communion with God, a state of grace, a state of joy, a state of nature; it is what I was created for. Worship of God, our creator, redeemer, and sustainer, is both personal and corporate, full of particularities and universalities, both internal and external, both defined and beyond description For Max Lucado, "Worship is the thank you that can't be silenced." Surely, that is the eternal response of nature. Regardless of the experience, nature responds with worship, with thanks. God is always pouring out the communion. It is up to me to open my heart to receive it. Sometimes it is easier, sometimes it is harder but the communion is always there. Maybe by opening myself in a worship service that seems unable to meet me, I will find a communion that I could never have hoped for or imagined.

I think that is called growth. What else would God send in this season of new life.

Thanks be to God.

Walking Through

Today is better. Not as good as yesterday but much better than Sunday. Sunday was a dark place full of regrets, missed opportunities and deep longing for another ending to my brother's journey with cancer.

I am so glad to be here, not there.

Today I am able to take lessons from my brother and go forward with life. That is good; that is affirming; that is living with love.

I have been thinking about how Will was able to become so talented at doing so many things, how that actual process works. When he chose a new activity, he read books on it, he talked with knowledgeable people about it, he practiced it as much as possible and he focused his mind on it. He really focused his mind on it.

Now it is my turn to really learn how to grieve and get the gift of learning how to do that activity. I have found that when I become really aware of what I am feeling that I can focus my mind on those feelings and get through them. That it is possible to walk through those deep, deep, emotions and make it to the other side. Then those emotions are less scary. That is just it - they are less scary. Because deep emotion can take me over, pull me in, and take control of everything that I am in that moment. And in the next, uncountable moments as well. But when I focus my mind I can see a way through.

What is that way? For me it is the way of love. For how could I grieve if I did not love? How can there be grief without love? When I focus my mind I can open my self to the reality of Love, of God, of Oneness, being here every moment. Even in that moment of overwhelming grief. Then I can begin to remember that Love is over all. Overwhelming grief is a reminder to turn back to Love and to turn back to resting in faith in the eternity of Love.

On The Other Side

Will died.

February 10, 2010. 2-10-10. Six days before his 57th birthday. He slipped away about 2:45 AM while Kathy, Tom, Jenny and sister-in-law Sandy loved him. Such a gift they gave him; such a gift he gave them.

And now we are all grieving. Sometimes desperately, sometimes with a whisper that is easily put aside. But the knowledge of grieving is always there; actually it is always here. For now.

I am told it will turn to joyous memories, that it will turn to warm remembrances. I know that is true.

Almost.

For me the truth is that the joyous memories and warm remembrances do become more constant than the grief. But the grief never goes away. Rather it becomes part of me and my understanding of life. Grief increases my focus on what is important, keeps me in the present and loving more often. At least that is what has happened before and I can only hope that will happen again. Because losing my brother, my only sibling, is my hardest loss ever.

I am reading a book a friend gave me that is helping me put words to the experience I am having. Right now it is guilt. Guilt that I did not know my brother better, do more things with him, share my life with him more. I know that is very common feeling and I have had it before as well. It hurts anyway.

I also know that all my emotion can be creative fodder for newness in my own life and in my art. It can also continue to open doors for relationship with others as has been happening through this whole process. This emotion can also lead me to be more gentle with myself and others and more open to God in my life.

Yes. But when?

Faith, still a big word for hope, got me through Will's illness and death. Now we are both on the other side. Where will faith take us?

January 2010. New year, new beginnings and beginnings of new endings. Today I am contemplating how embracing endings can lead to the gift of now as the fear of endings drifts away. My brother, who has been living with Stage IV cancer for 2 1/2 years, is now in the terminal phase. We received this news right around Thanksgiving, processed through the darkest days of the year, celebrated his return from the hospital at Christmas and now, in the New Year, are living with this news. As is he. As are Kathy, Tom and Jenny. And as are all those who love him.

Right now he is with each of us, in body and spirit. My brother is all about being in his body as he used it zealously all his life for sailing, biking, karate, kayaking, rock climbing, hiking, back packing, water skiing, wake boarding, just plain walking at top speed and activities that I am sure I have failed to mention. He pours his spirit into those activities as well as he is a great lover of what he does but his spirit may be a little more visible in his photography and other art work. And, ironically for some, in his lawyering. It is a spirit that greatly values the beauty in each other person and a spirit that respects the life path of each of us. It is a spirit that looks for the humor in every situation. And, now, this spirit is revealing itself to be even more gracious and bountiful with love as it journeys on, briefly, in his body.

The end that is a beginning is coming. Possibly the new beginning comes before the new end. Maybe there are many endings and beginnings during this time or during all times. Maybe the possibility of experiencing an ending as a beginning is happening every moment. It is just harder to embrace when the ending is unwanted. If I cannot embrace the ending, I cannot receive the new beginning. So how do I embrace this ending? Faith is of course the answer but faith in what? That God is? That God loves us? That life will still be full of love after my brother has died? That Kathy and Jenny and Tom will have happy lives without their husband and father? That my parents will be able to live on after their only son has died? That being an only child will be something that I will embrace?

Faith. It is a small word for a very big hope.

I am working on a blog for the first time. Since spring is just about here, it is time for new things to come out.