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Helen Keller–A Woman of Faith and Action

Earlham School of Religion Worship, March 14, 2013

Audio: Helen Keller Sermon 3.14.2013 Woofenden
(Thank you to Jessica Easter and David Johns for lending their voices)

Helen_KellerA

“I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do.” ― Helen Keller

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” ―Helen Keller

“Happiness does not come from without, it comes from within” ― Helen Keller

“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.” ―Helen Keller

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” ―Helen Keller

“Love should not be viewed as a detached effect of the soul, or an organ, or a faculty, or a function. Love involves the whole body of conscious thought—intention, purpose, endeavor, motives, and impulses—often suppressed, but always latent, ready at any moment to embody itself in act. It takes on face, hands, and feet through the faculties and organs; it works and talks, and will not be checked by any external circumstance once it begins to move toward an objective. Love, the all-important doctrine, is not a vague, aimless emotion, but the desire for good united with wisdom and fulfilled in right action.” –Helen Keller

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart” ―Helen Keller 

A young child.

A water pump.

A child who is blind and deaf.

A teacher who persistently spells.

W-A-T-E-R

Into the hand of the child.

Over,

and

over.

In an attempt to communicate as the icy well water pours over the child’s hand.

These may be the familiar images that arise when you think of the woman whose life story we explore today. Helen Keller.

This iconic story of overcoming the loss of physical sight and hearing has become a beloved tale of resilience and perseverance as this frustrated child becomes able to communicate, attends school and college and travels the world as an advocate for those with disabilities. Helen Keller the poster child for the blind and deaf.

Images you might not be so familiar with: Helen Keller the Swedenborgian theologian and Helen Keller a prophetic voice for social change. It is these two I want to bring forward today.

But first…beginnings.

Helen Keller was born in 1880, an energetic, curious, and alert child.  At age two she suffered a serious illness that left her completely blind and deaf. Keller spent the next few years of her childhood struggling to communicate and connect with others, going into rages and tantrums of frustration with her inability to interact with the world around her.

In looking back at this time of life, she writes, “Truly I have looked into the heart of darkness, and refused to yield to its paralyzing influence.”[1]  Helen’s life changed dramatically when she was gently and firmly taught by her teacher and guide, Annie Sullivan.  It was Annie who opened up the world of language to Helen, and through language gave her the ability to connect to ideas, people, and life around her.

Helen was an inquisitive child, asking questions and wondering about everything. She writes: “As a little child I naturally wanted to know who made everything in the world, and I was told that nature had made earth and sky and water and all living creatures. This satisfied me for a time, and I was happy among the rose trees of my mother’s garden, or on the bank of a river or out in the daisy-covered fields.”[2] Keller learned quickly and was a voracious student. Alexander Graham Bell had assisted Keller’s parents in finding her teacher Annie Sullivan and later recommended Perkins School of the Blind as a next step for her education and growth.

As she soaked up her studies, she began to ask more questions, questions about God and Jesus and religion and justice. “I inquired about God, and again I was baffled. Friends tried to tell me that God was the creator, and that he was everywhere, that he knew all the needs, joys, and sorrows of every human life…I was drawn irresistibly to such a glorious, lovable being and I longed to really understand something about him. I persisted in asking questions about God and Jesus ‘Why did they kill him? Why does God make some people good and others bad? Why must we all die?”[3]

It was during this time of questioning, while at Perkins School for the Blind, Helen was introduced to the writings of 18th century mystic and theologian Emmanuel Swedenborg by John Hitz, a colleague of Alexander Graham Bell’s, whom she later would call “the foster-father of my soul.”[4]  Hitz gave her a Braille copy of Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell when she was fourteen years old. Hitz warned Keller that it might not make sense to her at first, but that it would in time “satisfy (me) with a likeness of God as loveable as the one in my heart.”[5]

When Helen began reading Heaven and Hell, a new opening in her spiritual life began.  “I was as little aware of the new joy coming into my life as I had been years before when I stood on the piazza steps awaiting my teacher. Impelled only by the curiously of a young girl who loves to read, I opened the that big book… My heart gave a joyous bound. Here was a faith that emphasized what I felt so keenly… The words ‘Love’ and ‘Wisdom’ seemed to caress my fingers from paragraph to paragraph and these two words released in me new forces to stimulate my somewhat indolent nature and urge me forward evermore.”[6]

Helen’s engagement with Swedenborg’s teachings was life-long; she avidly read and wrote about her spiritual journey and how God shaped her after this first encounter with the writer.  “It has given color and reality and unity to my thought of the life to come; it has exalted my ideas of love, truth and usefulness; it has been my strongest incitement to overcome limitations.”[7]

It is clear from Helen’s writing that her faith was core to who she was and from it her life arose. When we look at her legacy and her phenomenal life-long mission to help those who were blind, deaf, or disabled, her work for the emancipation of women and the equal rights and care for all people, we can see the threads back to her theological grounding.

Helen’s ability to live fully, despite her disability is one that has been greatly admired by many. Her physical disabilities gave her much she could have complained about, or fallen victim to, but instead she chose to approach her life’s limitations as teachers and opportunities for internal change.

She credits her approach to challenges to her spiritual path. She states, “Long ago, I determined not to complain. The mortally wounded must strive to live out their days for the sake of others. That is what religion is for—to keep the heart brave to fight it out to the end with a smiling face.” [8]  She saw her challenges as opportunities for growth and internal transformation as she took to heart Swedenborg’s teaching that “Limitations of all kinds are forms of chastening to encourage self-development and true freedom.” [9]

Helen knew in her own being that God had called her to important work to do in the world, and that she needed to continue to do her own internal work in order to follow this call to bring reformation to others.

She writes about feeling like Joan of Arc at times, willing to follow the voice that says, “Come” through any hardship or struggle. As her life progressed, we see her moving through the obvious struggle of functioning without hearing or eyesight with incredible strength, tenacity, and dedication to internal and external reform. Keller scholar Dr. Ray Silverman remarks that Keller “saw herself as a social reformer devoted to relieving human suffering.” [10]

The reform that Helen fought for was often expressed as a need for external outcome, such as women’s right to vote and economic equality. Her spiritual writings, however, called for a reform of the spirit as well.  She spoke up for educational systems that were not exclusively focused on the intellect, encouraging compassion, consideration, and empathy as worthy educational goals.[11]

Seeing the need for systems to be transformed strengthened her commitment to be a voice for internal transformation; she believed that transforming individuals would contribute to changing society as a whole. She drew heavily on Swedenborg’s teaching that humanity without love and pity is “worse than a beast,”[12] and spoke to the recklessness of the power of thought when it is used for harming others. She called for reformation of the human spirit, and a spiritual vision where love, wisdom, and useful service prevail.

Throughout Helen Keller’s writings and speeches, she shares that the overarching message that she drew from the teachings of Swedenborg was one of God’s love for all people—regardless of their religious beliefs and allegiances. Having read the many volumes of Swedenborg’s writings, she sums up her reading of his central theology with three ideas: “God as Divine Love, God as Divine Wisdom, and God as Divine Power for use.”[13]  She shares her vision for this eminence of God’s love for all people as she reflects who God is by saying, “Such teachings lift one up to a mountain summit where the atmosphere is clear of hatred, and one can perceive that the nature of the Divine Being is love and wisdom and use, and God never changes in God’s attitude toward any one at any time.” [14]

Helen’s life, teaching, and writing was a continual outpouring of this love from God to all people as she became a sought-after voice for social reform. Silverman touts Keller’s widespread engagement with these movements.

“Helen did indeed carry the banner of social reform to all, and fought valiantly to raise consciousness about the plight of the handicapped. But Helen’s social reform did not stop at combating preventable blindness.”[15]  Silverman goes on to outline Keller’s work with the suffrage movement, speaking up for social injustice and against racial prejudice and corrupt politics, denouncing business greed, and openly speaking against the horrors of war.[16]

She shares her draw to see God in all religious paths when she writes: “Instinctively, I found my greatest satisfaction in working with men and women everywhere who ask not, ‘Shall I labor among Christians or Jews or Buddhist?’ but rather say ‘God, in thy wisdom help me to decrease the sorrows of thy children and increase their advantages and joys.'”[17]

She writes about being told by “narrow people” that those who are not Christians would be punished. She describes her soul being “revolted” as she considered the possibility of the wonderful people she knew who had lived and died for truth as they saw it ending up in hell. Helen was able to reconcile her Universalism with her Christianity through Swedenborg’s teachings on the symbolism of Jesus Christ. “I found that ‘Jesus’ stands for divine good, good wrought into deeds, and ‘Christ’ symbolizes Divine Truth, sending forth new thought, new life, and joy in the minds of all people, therefore no one who believes in God and lives right is ever condemned.”[18]  She went on to write often about this view of salvation and how it informed her life, action, and teaching.  Helen’s theological understanding of God being one who created and loves all people came to life in her work, as she advocated for those who were not being seen by society at large.

Through Helen’s beliefs and her own disabilities, she becomes passionate about issues of equality and the care of all people.  According to Dennis Wepman, author of one of the many biographies of Keller, she had “been long distressed about poverty and its effects on American children. She had also become a staunch suffragist—an advocate of women’s right to vote”.[19]  Joan Dash, another Keller biographer, connects Keller’s actions for justice to her own experience of feeling on the margins. “When she visited the foul-smelling slums of New York, she was reminded of her hopeless and powerless existence as a child,”[20] which spurred on her work to bring hope to those who are suffering.

As we hear stories of lives such as this one, I notice it is easy to write ourselves out of the story. The person we look to is in some other realm or possibility. We tell ourselves we can’t expect to be one of “those people” who leaves an impact on the world. We draw a line between ourselves and the mothers and fathers we look to for inspiration. Helen Keller’s story calls us each to action and contemplation, work and theological reflection in our own lives and ways.

Her words echo with us…

“I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do.” 

We are only one. But we are one. I am one. You are one. You cannot do everything, but you can still do something.

Helen calls us to live a life of action and a life of beauty and contemplation.

Helen Keller’s life calls us to do. Arising from our faith in a loving God, to do something that we can do in the world.

She calls us to give bread to those that are hungry,

Stand for those that are oppressed,

Serve a God of love,

And bring the beauty of the fragrant roses to the world.

2013-03-14 12.03.57

[1]  Helen Keller and Ray Silverman, How I would Help the World (West Chester, Pa.: Swedenborg Foundation Press, 2011), 7.

[2] Keller, Silverman, and Keller, Light in My Darkness, 22.

[3]  Ibid. Page 23.

[4]  Keller and Silverman, How I would Help the World (West Chester, Pa.: Swedenborg Foundation Press, 2011), 28.

[5]  Ibid. Page 29.

[6] Ibid. Page 32

[7]  Ibid. Page 11.

[8]  Ibid.

[9]  Helen Keller , My Religion. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1927), 144.

[10]  Keller and Silverman, How I would Help the World, 35.

[11]  Ibid. Page 42.

[12]  Ibid.

[13]  Emanuel Swedenborg and Jonathan S. Rose , The New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2000), 298.

[14]  Keller and Silverman, How I would Help the World, 77.

[15]  Dennis Wepman, Helen Keller (New York: Chelsea House, 1987), 33.

[16]  Keller and Silverman, How I would Help the World, 18.

[17]  Ibid. Page 10.

[18]  Keller, Silverman, and Keller, Light in My Darkness, 88.

[19]  Wepman, Helen Keller, 68.

[20]  Dash, The World at Her Fingertips : The Story of Helen Keller, 129.

 

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“Being Broken Open” Sermon Video and Text

“Being Broken Open”
Preached at Joint Worship for Earlham School of Religion and Bethany Theological Seminary
Richmond, Indiana
September 14, 2012

Readings:

“My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” Psalm 51:17

“God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3

“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. God has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.” Isaiah 61:1

“It is our wounds that enable us to compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to find other people or to even know they’re alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of.” – Rachel Naomi Remen

“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.” –Rumi

Jesus Walks with the Disciples on the Road to Emmaus and Appears to them in the Breaking of Bread
Luke 24:13-35

It was a warm August evening, Seattle Washington warm that is, the breeze gracing the 75 degree mark, and I was sitting at Café Presse, trying to get some words on the page and write. I sit at a narrow bar, looking out through large plate glass windows to a crowded terrace, filled with couples, girls on an evening out, and what looks like a visit with out-of-town parents. A man pulls up on his bike, another cruises in behind him, they lock their bikes and make their way towards dinner or a glass of wine. A young mother walks by, ear buds in, 3-year-old daughter skipping along in tow. The sun is at that golden time and Indy music lilts in the background.

Not many blocks away, three over and up two steep hills to be precise, is where I had been all afternoon. At Swedish hospital, where I have been all summer in a Clinical Pastoral Education program and where I had been answering calls all day as the on-call chaplain. After walking down the hill, and out of the sterile smell of sanitizing gel, into the fresh air, the faces lingered with me.

The woman I had just sat with and listened to as she told me of her long and desperate struggle with chronic illness. She tells me of suffering. Of feeling helpless, discouraged and not knowing where to turn. She had grabbed my hand, looked me in the eyes and asked,

“Where is God if I’m suffering like this?”

Earlier I stood with a couple, brand-new parents as of three and half days ago. We were in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, hovered over the infant bed where their son is hooked up to 6, (“just count-um” the mom says to me), different machines that are helping him breathe, eat, pee, be medicated, and monitor his oxygen, heart and his ongoing seizure activity. His father expresses wonder at what their son’s future may look like after the stroke he had when he was 48 hours old. His parents are teary and shaken as they tell me the story. “We’re optimists, we feel lucky we brought him in when we did”. I move into another room. Family is gathered, is it time to say goodbye to their grandmother? Can the family be at peace? Another room. A homeless woman, pregnant, denying recent drug use but testing positive. “I’ve had a lot of loss in my life”, she shares, “people just keep dying on me”. I listen. And wonder, what does the future look like for her? What does the future look like for her child? And I wonder: Where is God in this suffering?

When I stand in these rooms, when a chronically ill woman grabs my hands and looks me in the eyes and asks “where is God if I’m suffering like this?”, my brain quickly starts churning through the theological explanations, the constructions that can help sort through the laws of providence, the origin of evil, the power of human freedom. Her eyes bring me back to the moment at hand. And words bubble up in me: “God is here. God is in this suffering with you. God is walking beside you, holding you, strengthening you and will never leave you.” She starts to cry and I see something change in her face. The anxiety lowers slightly and for a moment she’s being held, apart from her questions and worries and pain. In her brokenness she touches something bigger than herself, a Loving Presence. So often feeling illusive, so constantly available.

My time as a hospital chaplain this summer was humbling. As chaplains we witness brokenness, pain and suffering. Day after day after day we’re exposed to these snapshots, moments, these sacred spaces where people are encountering their own mortality or the mortality of one they love. We walk into rooms where the people we encounter are facing the day where “everything changed”. We witness these moments and stand by to be a presence, a space to acknowledge, reflect back. We’re reminded daily that no one is immune to being broken.

You all know this. This is not a message that is confined within the walls of a hospital. Each one of us have our life stories, the places in our lives where we have encountered loss, or change. We are not immune to brokenness; we’re not exempt from pain and struggle. I believe each of us, when we sit with the question of “what was a time where ‘everything changed’”, we each could find a story. Loss of job. Serious illness. Children leaving home. Divorce. Moves. Internal conflict and confronting our inner battles. Loss of a loved one. Walking through loss with those we love. Seeing the brokenness in the world around us. Shootings. Starvation of millions of children. Mental illness. War. We could name so many.

And why? Why all the brokenness?

In our scripture today, Luke 24:13-35, we see this image of breaking…breaking of bread…Jesus was seen in the breaking of bread. The disciples were walking along the road, talking with Jesus, walking with him, hearing about the scriptures, telling stories, experiencing the companionship of Christ. But they didn’t know who he was. They had walked all day with him, but it wasn’t until they sat down for dinner, he picked up the loaf and broke it that they recognized him. It was in the opening up of the bread, that they saw him as the person they had spent the last three years with. It was in the breaking that they saw Christ.

I wonder if we are not the same way. It is in the breaking we see the Divine at work in the world? It is through brokenness that we encounter and are formed by our Creator?

Texts from my faith tradition, Swedenborgianism, offer the idea that physical things represent spiritual realities and particularly look at imagery in the scriptures and how God’s message comes on a variety of levels. In the book Secrets of Heaven Emanuel Swedenborg expounds on this passage from Luke.  Secrets of Heaven 3863 reads:

“It came to pass when Jesus sat down with them, that He took the bread, and blessed, and breaking it, gave it to them, and their eyes were opened and they knew him”. By which is signified that the Lord appears by good, but not by truth without good, for “bread” is the good of love.

This passage illuminates the image of bread as goodness, as love from the Divine and offers the idea that God appears to us not merely in truths without good, but in the goodness itself. Jesus had been walking with the disciples sharing wisdom and truth and stories, teaching them and their hearts burned inside them. Yet it is not until they are seated at the table and he breaks the bread that they recognize him as the Christ.

Walk with me in this way for a moment. What speaks into our lives in this image of bread breaking? If bread is a symbol for love, if we see Christ in the breaking of bread, could one not posit that when our hearts are broken open, we’re given a precious opportunity to see how the Divine has been molding us and teaching us along the road and in the breaking we see God with us?

Before we move any further I want to clearly state my theological stake in the ground: Hurt, suffering and pain are not God’s will. I do not believe for a second that the Loving God of the Universe ever wishes for, or could even contemplate inflicting pain on the human race. The origin of suffering, evil, pain is another sermon—but I will give you my current theological cliff notes: there’s a bigger system going on here and God is not the cause of suffering. God is the God who is with us in it, walking with us and accompanying us. God is the force urging and bringing good out of struggles and using pain to break down the places in us that are stuck, that need to be moved. God is the God who is walking with us.

It is out of these places of struggle that we can find the Divine One molding us, breaking us out of unhealthy patterns, breaking down the view of ourselves and our views of God that are not serving us, and flowing in with healing and renewal. Marianne Williamson, a contemporory spiritual teacher puts it this way:

“Spiritual progress is like detoxification. Things have to come up in order to be released. Once we have asked to be healed, then our unhealed places are forced to the surface.”

There are parts of us that need to change. Our old way of being needs to change. We all need transformation. And our world needs transformation. Pain and suffering in the world often alerts us to systems and structures that need to be exposed, broken down, rebuilt, redeemed.

It is not a clear-cut system. The rules aren’t: do everything “right” and you will not experience pain and loss. We live in a much more complicated ecosystem. Our own inner-beings are complex and filled with paradox. We live in a world where there is freedom to make choices, choices that have consequences. And we live in a world where our individual choices and our communal choices ripple out and the collective affects us. Sometimes bodies break down. Sometimes people die in accidents. Sometimes people we trust betray us. Sometimes we do our best and things don’t work out the way we planned.

I don’t like it honestly. There’s still a piece of me that is attached to the idea that there is a set of rules that one could follow that would make it all “work out”. But that doesn’t seem to be the system. The system seems to include times where we are worn down, cracked open.

So, when we encounter these seasons, be they a moment or years, we can choose to encounter them as a sacred space of opportunity. A time to choose something new and to look at ourselves and the world differently. When we encounter times of brokenness and suffering, knowing that it can be an opportunity for transformation can change us and guide us in how we encounter and lean into brokenness.

This past winter I took a class from Carole Spencer on the Christian Mystics, the great teachers, contemplatives and prophetic voices of the church throughout history. We saw that across the mystic traditions, there is a similar three stage process that is outlined: purgation/being emptied out/being broken, illumination, infilling God’s presence, and unification—being connected and united with God. As I was taking this class I was walking through a dark time in my own journey. When we read St. John of the Cross, and he talks about “the dark night of the soul,” I could relate. I found great comfort and power in having words to name the feelings of darkness and great strength in knowing that this could be part of a journey closer to God.

The darkness, the brokenness became an opening, a crack for God to break through to cracks and crevices in my soul. Parts of me that I had held “within my control” were crushed and things I had counted on were no longer true. I wondered how I could even consider being in ministry when I was so flattened and broken. Weren’t we called here to seminary to be taught and built up as ministers for God? How on earth could I ever contemplate being there for others on their spiritual journeys when mine was crumbling and being flattened?

When we encounter these times when we feel we have nothing to give, times when God is working us over, chiseling away, forming us in the refiners fire, blowing away the chaff so hard we feel we might be blown away with it or be consumed by the heat. During this time I wrote a song, or a song came to me. I found strength and healing putting voice to my feelings of helplessness and I found the Divine One’s hand on my back when I was able to cry out, like the psalmist, lamenting the dark places and groping around to feel how God was working with me, standing with me. I share it with you this morning, (because we are talking about vulnerability after all…and we’re all friends here right?) as an offering, a witness to the Sacred breaking in. As I share it, I invite you to close your eyes and let the Sacred speak to you, move in the cracks of where you are today.

Broken ©Anna Woofenden 2012

You call to feed the hungry,/To comfort to those in need.

You call to clothe the naked,/To offer some relief.

My soul cries out,/My soul cries out.

I’m broken,/I have nothing left to give.

You say You’re always present,/Closer to my heart.

In trial and in struggle,/In restless night’s apart.

My soul cries out,/My soul cries out.

I’m broken,/I have nothing left to give.

I feel the pain around me,/I ache with loss and fear.

How can I keep on going,/Will You hold me near?

My soul cries out,/My soul cries out.

I’m broken,/I have nothing left to give.

I am the one who’s hungry,/I’m lost and I am raw

All I have to offer,/Myself empty and flawed.

My soul cries out,/My soul cries out.

I’m broken,/I have nothing left to give.

Surrender to Your journey,/Formed by the fire.

I have no strength left in me,/It’s You that I require.

My soul cries out,/My soul cries out.

I’m broken,/I have nothing left to give.

Giving voice to these feelings and finding witness in community we can find wholeness. God can flow into those cracks and broken places with gentle healing, strong molding and formation and reconciliation and hope.

As I’ve been preparing this sermon I’ve felt resistance – to sharing this topic, singing a song of lament, wrestling with what could be a “downer” of a topic. Coming off of this summer, I want to bring you a cheery message. CPE is great. Go God. There’s part of me that wants to wrap it all up in some pretty little theological box and hand it to you. To tell you that this “seminary formation process” is as glossy and smiling as it looked on the brochures when we first applied.

But that would not be honest to the message that’s on my heart, and that would not be the gospel truth for this morning. The truth the Divine One is teaching me is that life is messy. And if I’ve learned anything this summer doing chaplaincy work, it’s that life is messy and no one is immune to this messy. There are no magic religious fixes, no pithy phrase that can wipe away struggle, grief or doubt.

And while we’re at it, being formed for ministry is messy. And painful. And just so we don’t leave anyone out, being human is messy and each of us are formed through engaging in it. Henri Nouwen talks about the “wounded healer” how we are formed through our struggles and wounds and how, if we allow it, these wounds can become a source of powerful ministry. He writes:

“…ministry is a very confronting service. It does not allow people to live with illusions of immortality and wholeness. It keeps reminding others that they are mortal and broken, but also that with the recognition of this condition, liberation starts.”

As I came back to school, just a few days after finishing CPE I was so ready to be a student again. A full course load and a stack of books greeted me as welcome change after the summer in the hospital. I had put in my 11 weeks of learning and giving, gotten my certificate and was ready to focus on my classes, disappear into the readings and put the memories of death and suffering, trauma and loss behind me. But it turns out it doesn’t work that way. My body and psyche are still processing the summer and demanding attention to give space for healing of secondary trauma, to move through the compound grief that piled up. I hit a point last week where I cried out. “I didn’t sign up for this!”  A gentle reminder came back from a colleague. “Yes, yes you did. That’s part of the ‘formation’ process. It’s in the fine print. You consciously agreed to God rearranging your life in answer to call to ministry.”

Yes, yes I did. We all did. We continue to. It is what forms us. Engaging in the lives we encounter, engaging in our own process of discovering authenticity and wholeness, it’s part of what we signed up for. It’s part of our formation for ministry, our formation as spiritual beings. As we heard in one of our readings this morning from Rachel Naomi Remen,

“It is our wounds that enable us to compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to find other people or to even know they’re alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of.”

Because here’s the secret, that I know all of you know: it’s in the brokenness that we see the Divine at work and that we are formed. The presence of God that walks with us through the joys and the sorrows, the pain and the celebration and works us down to the core of who we are created to be. The way you can look back at a difficult time and see how you grew closer to God in it. The humbling that comes when we are honored to witness loss with another. The theological de-construction that takes you to the place of wondering and doubt that you never wanted to encounter. The reminders we receive to hold life as precious and sacred after a loss. The intentionality we can take into who we are and the choices we make as we’re healing from struggle. It’s in these spaces of brokenness that we are reminded; we glimpse that which is true all along. We are not alone. We cannot do this on our own.

And that’s where another gospel message, the good news, shows up: the gospel of community. We can experience the power of being a community that can walk with each other through the joys and celebrations and in the struggles and dark times. I see in this group faces that know brokenness and that know community and know the joy of God’s Spirit moving. I feel a spirit here that offers a place for people to come and be real, to bring their whole selves. A place where those that are struggling can give voice to it and can feel God’s love and care, in the message and in being lifted up by this group. And I hear a deep passion and desire from this people to be this to the community, to our current ministries and our future ministries, to the world. That you are here, gathered together today, because you know that people’s lives are breaking, that there is loss and pain in the world AND you know the power of God’s love and healing and the power of people who are humbly looking to be the hands and feet of God. Conduits of the Divine work in around us.

Because at the end of the day, we are vessels, vessels infused with Divine Light, urging and pressing to be received and to flow through us. We are vessels that are cracked and broken, broken wide open to receive God’s ever-flowing energy and love. We are humans, all of us, walking broken in a broken world. Does that sound depressing, maybe, or maybe it’s beautiful. We can wallow in the brokenness, or we can dance. Dance as we’re broken open. Dance as we tear the bandage off. Find the beauty, because in the brokenness that the Sacred flows in. It’s when we surrender to something bigger, because we realize we have no choice left, that the Spirit moves. It’s when we’re willing to walk knowingly into a room filled with pain and suffering, to be present, engage, and witness and name the Divine urging and pressing to be received. If we are willing to be broken open by the world and filled to overflowing with God’s love. Then broken is beautiful. Broken is sacred. And broken is holy.

 May the God who breaks us open, the God who heals the brokenhearted, the God who walks beside us every step be with us all. Amen.

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Holy Week Contradictions

Image

I heard an interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently.  In it he talked about the ongoing deep work that is needed as South Africa moves from Apartheid and three centuries of oppression and domination of people with white skin over people with black skin. Krista Tippet, the interviewer, posed the conversation of how one would know whether the work Bishop Tutu had been doing had “achieved” it’s goals and what “recovery” looked like for the people of South Africa.  Archbishop Tutu responded with this story: I recommend listening to the interview. The story is from: 22:52-25:21

TRANSCRIPT: “I think that we have very gravely underestimated the damage that apartheid inflicted on all of us. You know, the damage to our psyches, the damage that has made —I mean, it shocked me. I went to Nigeria when I was working for the World Council of Churches, and I was due to fly to Jos. And so I go to Lagos airport and I get onto the plane and the two pilots in the cockpit are both black. And whee, I just grew inches. You know, it was fantastic because we had been told that blacks can’t do this. And we have a smooth takeoff and then we hit the mother and father of turbulence. I mean, it was quite awful, scary. Do you know, I can’t believe it but the first thought that came to my mind was, “Hey, there’s no white men in that cockpit. Are those blacks going to be able to make it?” And well of course, they obviously made it — here I am. But the thing is, I had not known that I was damaged to the extent of thinking that somehow actually what those white people who had kept drumming into us in South Africa about our being inferior, about our being incapable, it had lodged somewhere in me.”

This story stopped me in my tracks and brought home the deep contradictions that each one of us hold in our beings, in our words, in our history, in our actions, thoughts and feelings. Here is a man who has dedicated his life and his work to breaking down oppression, bringing justice and raising up the worth of all people.  A man who himself has rich black skin and a heritage of the people’s that he is dedicated to opening up a way for, even this man wrestles with the contradictions inside himself when the very thing he’s fighting against bubbles up in his own being.

Contradiction.

Here’s another example: The next day the huge crowd that had arrived for the Feast heard that Jesus was entering Jerusalem. They broke off palm branches and went out to meet him. And they cheered: Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in God’s name! Yes! The King of Israel!” (John 12:14).

In the same city, just a few days later, the same Jesus Christ was raised up in question in front of crowds of people.  The story goes something like this:
“Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers and the people, and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us; as you can see, he has done nothing to deserve death.  Therefore, I will punish him and then release him.”

But the whole crowd shouted, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!”(Barabbas had been thrown into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.)

Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. But they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

For the third time he spoke to them: “Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.”

But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed.  So Pilate decided to grant their demand. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will (Luke 23:13-24).

It’s uncomfortable to place ourselves in this story, particularly if we are part of the crowd on both days.  But are we not part the crowd? Is there not a place inside each of us that sings praises and asks for God to save us one day and then calls for crucifixion a few days later? Have we not stood in the shoes of Bishop Tutu? Seeing inside ourselves the very things that we have been working to change in the world around us? We are filled with these contradictions between how we want to live and how we speak and act and think and feel.

Through these weeks of Lent, as part of my practice, I have been striving to name these contradictions, these tensions inside. It is uncomfortable work and makes me squirm to realize how much like these crowds I am.   How I can cry out to God, “save me” when life is feeling difficult and I think God could remove the challenges, and then soon after deny my need for God or even reject God’s presence in the people around me.  I have noticed disconnects between my words and my actions, between my ideals and my reactions.

There is something disturbing to consciously name these contradictions. There is something liberating and freeing in naming these contradictions.  To name that we carry selfishness and arrogance within us as we strive to do good and follow God and to admit that we are sinner and saint, villain and hero, benevolent and selfish and throughout it all—loved by God.

What’s this? Loved by God? Even when we speak critical words? Even when we are arrogant and vindictive? Even when we go against what we know we are called to?  And here is the gospel, the good news, and the power of the Lord in our Holy Week Contradictions.

Let’s go back over the stories…we’ve noted the contradictions between the crowds cheers on Palm Sunday to the denial and calls for crucifixion just a few days later. We’ve noted the way we operate in these contradictions in our own lives and how we are continually in flux in our thoughts and actions.  Where is the Lord in all this? Jesus Christ, that of God, God Incarnate, gospel message to us, an example of how God acts in the world. How does Jesus respond throughout these stories in the gospel? Jesus consistently meets them where they are. With love and compassion. With truth and accountability. With forgiveness and reconciliation.

Even to the point on the cross where Jesus calls out, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Can you imagine being called to that level of forgiveness and compassionate response? Can you imagine being embraced by that level of understanding for the contradictions we hold in ourselves and being gently held and encouraged to continue to show up, to observe and name the contradictions, to keep inviting the Lord into our lives and move us in ways of reconciliation and wholeness?

What does this look like? How do we do this? I believe each one of you have wisdom to bring to this conversation and I look forward to hearing your responses. To frame our conversation I’d like to offer us two doorways for receiving and connecting with God’s work in each of us.

Mystical theologian Emmanuel Swedenborg writes, “If we believed that—as is truly the case—everything good and true comes from the Lord and everything evil and false comes from hell, then we would not claim the goodness as our own and make it self-serving or claim the evil as our own and make ourselves guilty of it” (Divine Providence #320).

There is such freedom from suffering and guilt and freedom from arrogance and pride when we integrate this concept into our lives. We can integrate this teaching by holding and returning to an awareness of our thoughts, our words and our actions.  And as we live this teaching, we let go of the strength of the thoughts and habits that have been ingrained and plague us, or as Bishop Tutu said, the things that have become “lodged” in us. The misshapen ideas of who we are and our need to beat ourselves up or clamber to be better than others. We can spend more time dwelling in the land of wholeness and peace where we know that we are a vessel and that we want to surrender and have the Lord be the one who is forming that vessel.

And the second doorway that I want to suggest is to develop a practice of asking the question: “Where is the Lord in this?”   We asked this question of our gospel readings this morning and found the Lord being the constant presence of love and strength, healing and forgiveness, reconciliation, persistence, and hope.

And we can ask this question as we navigate our inner and outer lives.

Where is the Lord in a heated interaction?
In the deep breath we take?
In the flash of insight opening us up to a third way?

Where is the Lord in the contradictions of grief and loss?
In the comfort from a friend?
When we reach out to grasp at something in our places of great darkness?

Where is the Lord when we are convicted with a way that we are living in arrogance and pride?
In the challenge to be changed?
In the gentle spirit that we can be held in as we change?
Is it the humility of seeing ourselves in others?

As we walk into this Holy Week…let us notice the tensions and the contradictions, in the gospel story and in ourselves. And let us explore these two doorways. To remember that all good comes from God and all evil comes from hell. And to ask the question, “where is the Lord in this?” Drawing on God’s presence to be in us and through us and guide us. And loving us when we shout out “Hosanna” and loving and when we cry  “Crucify him”.

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You Are a Pumpkin | Being Emptied Out

“You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.” When I hear these familiar lines, I’m drawn to the second-half of the equation. Let’s talk about the dancing and this joy-filled clothing. “You brought me up from the grave, you spared me from going down into the pit.” Rescue and new life—excellent! I’ll avoid even acknowledging that the pit is there…thank you very much. Let’s stick with the new life, the joy and the springtime states. They’re pretty, new and shining, light and fluffy.

But look outside for a moment.  Fall is upon us. Look outside. The leaves are dying and falling to the ground, the plants are curling up and drawing in. Things are rotting, decomposing, returning, dying. The cycle of the seasons around us reminds us… Surrender comes before growth. Cycles and seasons are part of the journey. The pathway to life is through death. Death to our self, to our agendas, to our need to control. Birth to the idea that God is God and we are not.  Nature displays in front of us, that part of spiritual life is the process of being emptied out. There are internal parts of us that need to die, in order for the Divine Life to flow through more freely.

Or another way of framing it: You are a pumpkin.

A pumpkin, filled with the seeds and muck, mixed with hope and new possibility, and baggage and old stories. Terrified of the pain of carving, while yearning to shine brightly.  You are a pumpkin. A pumpkin in the hands of the Carver. Anticipating the scooping out, to make space for the light.

Stephanie Eden, a friend and brilliant singer/songwriter paints it this way:
She says: These are the lyrics to a song I wrote this past October while carving pumpkins with my children.  It is inspired by a sermon given by Pastor Jonathan Rose a number of years ago on the process of being emptied out, and it’s titled: Hollow Me

Hollow Me
By Stephanie Eden

One October a pumpkin grew
Full of seeds and thoughts
She said I don’t wanna be one of those
That sits around and rots
Pick me now cause I wanna be
Like other pumpkins I’ve seen
With a picture and a warming light
For the kids on Halloween
But the other pumpkins warned her
It’s a process you can’t handle
Being scraped and carved right to the flesh
Till you’re cleaned out for a candle

Hollow me hollow me hollow me
And make me shine
Make me shine

The pumpkin she was determined
Her fate was in decoration
But with the first stab of the knife she thought
Time for reconsideration
They were right she thought I’d be better off
As a pie or on the vine
Why wasn’t I satisfied as a big orange squash
Why did I want to shine?
But the carvers hands were gentle
And she could sense the jubilation
As he held her and he made his plans
In great anticipation

Hollow me hollow me hollow me
and make me shine
make me shine

As he began to scrape inside she found
To her seeds she was attached
She was afraid without all her junk inside
She’d be more likely to get smashed
But she noticed too a feeling
Of freedom as she was emptied
All the space and possibilities
Like holding light instead of seeds
Though she never had felt pain
As a pumpkin on the vine
The pain could not come close to how
Good it felt to shine

Hollow me hollow me hollow me
and make me shine
follow me follow me follow
if you wanna shine
make me shine

You are a pumpkin.  You have a choice. Each of one of us have a choice. We can stay on the vine. Comfortable and secure, yes, but in the end, probably just a waste, rotting away.  You have a choice. Each one of us have a choice. We have a choice to allow, or in moments of bravery and insanity, even invite the Carver to take out the knife and begin to hollow. To open up to the emptying out that Christ calls us to, and that Christ walked. Welcome and invite brokenness and being emptied out? Careful what you wish for…but Christ did. Or at a minimum, Christ boldly and deeply accepted this path, wrestled with it and brought new life from it. Christ rose again.

I think that in our culture we often like to try to put a little more space between these polarities—to separate the dying from the rising again. We put space between the scooping out of the insides of the pumpkin to the brightly shining jack-o-lantern. We want to create distance from re-birth to the death. We can be drawn to only focus on the newness of life, spring, flowers, shining lights twinkeling from the pumpkins. These are all lovely things to focus on, but I believe that in separating the pieces of the cycle, death and life, light and dark, springtime and fall, we can loose the profound message for each of us in our spiritual paths.

Swedenborgian theology, my faith background, talks about the process that Jesus went through throughout his life, culminating with death on the cross.

It outlines this process into two states: One, being emptied out and
two glorification or resurrection, new life.
A passage from Swedenborgian theology states:

“The reason why Christ experienced these two states, the state of being emptied out and the state of being glorified, is that no other method of achieving union could possibly exist.  This method follows the divine design.

The divine design is that we arrange ourselves for receiving God and prepare ourselves as a vessel and dwelling place where God can enter and live as if we were God’s own temple. We have to do this preparation by ourselves, yet we have to acknowledge that the preparation comes from God. This acknowledgment is needed because we do not feel the presence or the actions of God, even though God is in fact intimately present and brings about every good love and every true belief we have. This is the divine design we follow to go from being earthly to being spiritual.”  True Christianity 105, Emanuel Swedenborg

In order for God to flow through us, the vessel needs to continue to be cleaned out and cleared out. The shining of our light requires being emptied out, being carved, being formed. We can probably all probably pretty quickly think of a time in our lives or an area of our personal and spiritual growth where we have felt the carving, the cutting, the spiritual surgery, the scooping of the goop. Maybe when we lost a loved one, or transitioned jobs. It came upon us when we came up against challenges in relationships, experienced a health crisis, a spiritual crisis. We wrestle when we encounter doubt, struggle in the day to day work.

This is the work. To be emptied out and to be filled up. The emptying is painful. And powerful. It’s part of the design. It’s part of the cycle. The seasons.

But the other pumpkins warned her
It’s a process you can’t handle
Being scraped and carved right to the flesh
Till you’re cleaned out for a candle

Hollow me hollow me hollow me
And make me shine
Make me shine

This link between the suffering, pain and death and the new life, resurrection and hope is one of the cruxes of the human experience. Recently I’ve been reading a number of memoirs and autobiographies and I’ve been struck by this theme. I’m touched by the honesty and vulnerability that is brought forth in these human stories and it leads me to reflect on and wonder about my own story.  If I was writing my life auto-biography, would I have the guts to lay out this level of honesty? To expose my seeds and goopy insides to others?

Sure, it’s easy to be open about the mountaintop moments and the ah-ha’s in our spiritual life. The challenge is, do we share about the places where we are broken, where we’re being emptied out, the times when we wondered about this whole “God thing”, the days when we continued to make the same mistakes, listen to the same old stories and live in ways that were far less than saintly. It’s this that sticks with me and challenges me.

The pumpkin she was determined
Her fate was in decoration
But with the first stab of the knife she thought
Time for reconsideration 

They were right she thought I’d be better off
As a pie or on the vine
Why wasn’t I satisfied as a big orange squash
Why did I want to shine?

A few weeks ago, in worship, a colleague offered his vulnerability to the group and invited us into the story of Jesus’ healing the man with the withered hand in the gospels.  He pointed out that before the man was healed, Jesus asked him to stand up before everyone and reach out his hand, and show his vulnerabilities.  My whole body tensed as he recounted the text, just imagining God calling me to stand up and articulate my brokenness, my wounds, my scars to the people around me. So much of me resists this, and yet, somewhere inside I feel the wisdom. Not to spew my life history at every turn as if spiritual community is one big therapy session. But to, in those moments of sacredness, present with God and human community, to be strong and courageous and reach out to the Healer in the presence of others. To acknowledge that part of the process of spiritual life IS the emptying out, that that is intrinsic in the process of shining. The call, the challenged, is to look honestly in ourselves and see what is blocking the Divine Light from shining through. What are the places in us that are stuck and stagnant? Where do we need to look a little deeper and see how our places of challenge and struggle can be transformed into wisdom and strength by the Great Carver? Or as Rumi puts it: “Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure”

I wonder if that’s what these authors did, in sharing their stories.  Is this part of the spiritual process of Anne Lamott, John Woolman, Roberta Bondi, Thomas Merton, Pema Chodron, Dorothy Day and so many others who share their life stories, their spiritual journeys, in the pages of autobiographies, memoirs, blogs and journals.  In the written word they walk through the suffering, line by line, in snapshots and in full-color. The dialog of the challenges, the pain and doubt lead to places of transformation. In these lives laid before us, a sacred offering to the larger community of faith, we can see God at work.  We can see God working through the life of a brilliant, addicted, depressed writer as she bares a child, finds God in a new way and steps into a daring journey of discovering faith. We can see God in the workings of at early church leader, as we see Christ’s light shining through division and mis-understanding, in leading and being silent.

Be it through the written word, honest preaching, held conversation, or solitary prayer, we can feel Spirit beckoning. Beckoning us to surrender to the Carving. Urging us to bravely look inside and examine and begin to let go of the things that are blocking the Light. Bravely inviting the Carver to hollow us, cleanse us, and shine Divine Light through us.

Because this healing is not just for each of us. This call to vulnerability is not about me or you. There is a greater call to healing through our brokenness, restoration through our vulnerabilities, resurrection through inner-death. This challenge to dig into our muck and guck and be cleared out is not simply a personal exercise. There is a world of brokenness, there is a God of Healing. As we walk through this process individually, we can be part of changing the collective. As the Light shines more and more brightly through each one of us, the Light in the world strengthens and spreads, widens and enlivens. The baptism of spirit offers all new life, cleansing and hope, each and every day. As we die to our own ideas of how life should be, as we loosen our grip that clings to the past and the future, as we release our needs to be in control and have it all together…God seeps in, rushes in, moves in our midst. Moves to bring healing to the all.

 Though she never had felt pain
As a pumpkin on the vine
The pain could not come close to how
Good it felt to shine 

Hollow me hollow me hollow me
and make me shine
follow me follow me follow
if you wanna shine
make me shine

“You Are a Pumpkin” or “Being Emptied Out”
by Anna Woofenden
A sermon for Joint Seminary Chapel
(Earlham School of Religion and Bethany Theological Seminary)
Preached 9.30.2011

Posted on

You Are a Pumpkin

“You Are a Pumpkin” or “Being Emptied Out”
 A sermon for Joint Seminary Chapel
(Earlham School of Religion and Bethany Theological Seminary)
9.30.2011

Video:

Text:
“You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.” When I hear these familiar lines, I’m drawn to the second-half of the equation. Let’s talk about the dancing and this joy-filled clothing. “You brought me up from the grave, you spared me from going down into the pit.” Rescue and new life—excellent! I’ll avoid even acknowledging that the pit is there…thank you very much. Let’s stick with the new life, the joy and the springtime states. They’re pretty, new and shining, light and fluffy.

But look outside for a moment. What day is it? September 30th.  Fall is upon us. Look outside. The leaves are dying and falling to the ground, the plants are curling up and drawing in. Things are rotting, decomposing, returning, dying. The cycle of the seasons around us reminds us… Surrender comes before growth. Cycles and seasons are part of the journey. The pathway to life is through death. Death to our self, to our agendas, to our need to control. Birth to the idea that God is God and we are not.  Nature displays in front of us, that part of spiritual life is the process of being emptied out. There are internal parts of us that need to die, in order for the Divine Life to flow through more freely.

Or another way of framing it: You are a pumpkin.

A pumpkin, filled with the seeds and muck, mixed with hope and new possibility, and baggage and old stories. Terrified of the pain of carving, while yearning to shine brightly.  You are a pumpkin. A pumpkin in the hands of the Carver. Anticipating the scooping out, to make space for the light.

Stephanie Eden, a friend and brilliant singer/songwriter paints it this way:
She says: These are the lyrics to a song I wrote this past October while carving pumpkins with my children.  It is inspired by a sermon given by Pastor Jonathan Rose a number of years ago on the process of being emptied out, and it’s titled: Hollow Me

Hollow Me
By Stephanie Eden

One October a pumpkin grew
Full of seeds and thoughts
She said I don’t wanna be one of those
That sits around and rots
Pick me now cause I wanna be
Like other pumpkins I’ve seen
With a picture and a warming light
For the kids on Halloween
But the other pumpkins warned her
It’s a process you can’t handle
Being scraped and carved right to the flesh
Till you’re cleaned out for a candle

Hollow me hollow me hollow me
And make me shine
Make me shine

The pumpkin she was determined
Her fate was in decoration
But with the first stab of the knife she thought
Time for reconsideration
They were right she thought I’d be better off
As a pie or on the vine
Why wasn’t I satisfied as a big orange squash
Why did I want to shine?
But the carvers hands were gentle
And she could sense the jubilation
As he held her and he made his plans
In great anticipation

Hollow me hollow me hollow me
and make me shine
make me shine

As he began to scrape inside she found
To her seeds she was attached
She was afraid without all her junk inside
She’d be more likely to get smashed
But she noticed too a feeling
Of freedom as she was emptied
All the space and possibilities
Like holding light instead of seeds
Though she never had felt pain
As a pumpkin on the vine
The pain could not come close to how
Good it felt to shine

Hollow me hollow me hollow me
and make me shine
follow me follow me follow
if you wanna shine
make me shine

You are a pumpkin.  You have a choice. Each of one of us have a choice. We can stay on the vine. Comfortable and secure, yes, but in the end, probably just a waste, rotting away.  You have a choice. Each one of us have a choice. We have a choice to allow, or in moments of bravery and insanity, even invite the Carver to take out the knife and begin to hollow. To open up to the emptying out that Christ calls us to, and that Christ walked. Welcome and invite brokenness and being emptied out? Careful what you wish for…but Christ did. Or at a minimum, Christ boldly and deeply accepted this path, wrestled with it and brought new life from it. Christ rose again.

I think that in our culture we often like to try to put a little more space between these polarities—to separate the dying from the rising again. We put space between the scooping out of the insides of the pumpkin to the brightly shining jack-o-lantern. We want to create distance from re-birth to the death. We can be drawn to just think about the newness of life, spring, flowers, shining lights twinkeling from the pumpkins. Of course, these are all good things to focus on, but I believe that in separating the pieces of the cycle, death and life, light and dark, springtime and fall, we can loose some of the profound message for each of us in our spiritual paths.

Swedenborgian theology, my faith background, talks about the process that Jesus went through throughout his life, culminating with death on the cross.

It outlines this process into two states: One, being emptied out and
two glorification or resurrection, new life. A passage from Swedenborgian theology:

“The reason why Christ experienced these two states, the state of being emptied out and the state of being glorified, is that no other method of achieving union could possibly exist.  This method follows the divine design.

The divine design is that we arrange ourselves for receiving God and prepare ourselves as a vessel and dwelling place where God can enter and live as if we were God’s own temple. We have to do this preparation by ourselves, yet we have to acknowledge that the preparation comes from God. This acknowledgment is needed because we do not feel the presence or the actions of God, even though God is in fact intimately present and brings about every good love and every true belief we have. This is the divine design we follow to go from being earthly to being spiritual.” True Christianity 105, Emanuel Swedenborg

In order for God to flow through us, the vessel needs to continue to be cleaned out and cleared out. The shining of our light requires being emptied out, being carved, being formed. We can probably all probably pretty quickly think of a time in our lives or an area of our personal and spiritual growth where we have felt the carving, the cutting, the spiritual surgery, the scooping of the goop. Maybe when we lost a loved one, or transitioned jobs. When we came up against challenges in relationships, experienced a health crisis, a spiritual crisis. When we encounter doubt, struggle, and in the day to day work.

This is the work. To be emptied out and to be filled up. The emptying is painful. And powerful. It’s part of the design. It’s part of the cycle. The seasons.

But the other pumpkins warned her
It’s a process you can’t handle
Being scraped and carved right to the flesh
Till you’re cleaned out for a candle

Hollow me hollow me hollow me
And make me shine
Make me shine

This link between the suffering, pain and death and the new life, resurrection and hope is one of the cruxes of the human experience. Recently I’ve been reading a number of memoirs and autobiographies for classes and I’ve been struck by this theme. I’m touched by the honesty and vulnerability that is brought forth in these human stories and it leads me to reflect on and wonder about my own story.  If I was writing my life auto-biography, would I have the guts to lay out this level of honesty? To expose my seeds and goopy insides to others?

Sure, it’s easy to be open about the mountaintop moments and the ah-ha’s in our spiritual life. The challenge is, do we share about the places where we are broken, where we’re being emptied out, the times when we wondered about this whole “God thing”, the days when we continued to make the same mistakes, listen to the same old stories and live in ways that were far less than saintly. It’s this that sticks with me and challenges me.

The pumpkin she was determined
Her fate was in decoration
But with the first stab of the knife she thought
Time for reconsideration 

They were right she thought I’d be better off
As a pie or on the vine
Why wasn’t I satisfied as a big orange squash
Why did I want to shine?

A few weeks ago, in worship, a fellow classmate offered his vulnerability to the group and invited us into the story of Jesus’ healing the man with the withered hand in the gospels.  He pointed out that before the man was healed, Jesus asked him to stand up before everyone and reach out his hand, and show his vulnerabilities.  My whole body tensed as he recounted the text, just imagining God calling me to stand up and articulate my brokenness, my wounds, my scars to the people around me. So much of me resists this, and yet, somewhere inside I feel the wisdom. Not to spew my life history at every turn as if spiritual community is one big therapy session. But to, in those moments of sacredness, present with God and human community, to be strong and courageous and reach out to the Healer in the presence of others. To acknowledge that part of the process of spiritual life IS the emptying out, that that is intrinsic in the process of shining. The call, the challenged, is to look honestly in ourselves and see what is blocking the Divine Light from shining through. What are the places in us that are stuck and stagnant? Where do we need to look a little deeper and see how our places of challenge and struggle can be transformed into wisdom and strength by the Great Carver? Or as Rumi puts it: “Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure”

I wonder if that’s what these authors did, in sharing their stories.  Is this part of the spiritual process of Anne Lamott, John Woolman, Roberta Bondi, Thomas Merton, Pema Chodron and so many others who share their life stories, their spiritual journeys, in the pages of autobiographies, memoirs, blogs and journals.  In the written word they walk through the suffering, line by line, in snapshots and in full-color. The dialog of the challenges, the pain and doubt lead to places of transformation. In these lives laid before us, a sacred offering to the larger community of faith, we can see God at work.  We can see God working through the life of a brilliant, addicted, depressed writer as she bares a child, finds God in a new way and steps into a daring journey of discovering faith. We can see God in the workings of at early church leader, as we see Christ’s light shining through division and mis-understanding, in leading and being silent.

Be it through the written word, honest preaching, held conversation, or solitary prayer, we can feel Spirit beckoning. Beckoning us to surrender to the Carving. Urging us to bravely look inside and examine and begin to let go of the things that are blocking the Light. Bravely inviting the Carver to hollow us, cleanse us, and shine Divine Light through us.

Because this healing is not just for each of us. This call to vulnerability is not about me or you. There is a greater call to healing through our brokenness, restoration through our vulnerabilities, resurrection through inner-death. This challenge to dig into our muck and guck and be cleared out is not simply a personal exercise. There is a world of brokenness, there is a God of Healing. As we walk through this process individually, we can be part of changing the collective. As the Light shines more and more brightly through each one of us, the Light in the world strengthens and spreads, widens and enlivens. The baptism of spirit offers all new life, cleansing and hope, each and every day. As we die to our own ideas of how life should be, as we loosen our grip that clings to the past and the future, as we release our needs to be in control and have it all together…God seeps in, rushes in, moves in our midst. Moves to bring healing to the all.

 Though she never had felt pain
As a pumpkin on the vine
The pain could not come close to how
Good it felt to shine 

Hollow me hollow me hollow me
and make me shine
follow me follow me follow
if you wanna shine
make me shine

As we continue our time of shared worship, you’re invited to get your hands dirty and engage in these questions.

What are the areas that you have been emptied out?

What are the areas you’re resisting?

What fears come up when you think about letting God carve you?

What does it look like to surrender to being cleared out?

What would it feel like to have the Light shining through more brightly?

Invite the Divine Carver to continue to shape you. Immerse your hands in the seeds, with the gook and yuck, acknowledging and embodying that part of the process of shining involves walking through the valleys, the brokenness, the shadows, the pain.

Where is God hollowing you right now? What needs to be emptied out? What light is bursting to be shone, that needs the surgery to let it free?

Wash your hands, remembering the power of your baptism, the promise of new life, of resurrection of the Light of Christ shining through you.

How do you see hope, new life and light moving in you?

Light a candle and hold it high, Christ’s light in you as you move in the world.

We’re also reminded in this process that this is not merely individual work. It is a collective effort to each take part in bringing more of Christ’s light into the world.

Sending Out: Reflections on Wholeness

 All:                   Busy, normal people: the world is here.
One:                  Can you hear it wailing, crying, whispering?
Listen: the world is here.
Don’t you hear it,
Praying and sighing and groaning for wholeness?
Sighing and whispering: wholeness,
All:
Wholeness, wholeness?
One:
An arduous, tiresome, difficult journey
Towards wholeness.
God, who gives us strength of
Body, make us whole.
All:
Wholeness of persons: well-being of individuals.
One:
The cry for bodily health and spiritual
Strength is echoed from person to person,
from patient to doctor.
It goes out from a soul to its pastor.
All:
We, busy, “normal” people: we are sick.
We yearn to experience wholeness in
Our innermost being:
In health and prosperity, we continue
To feel un-well,
Un-fulfilled, or half-filled.
There is a hollowness in our pretended
Well-being:
One:
Our spirits cry out for the well-being of the whole human family.
We pride ourselves in our traditional communal ideology,
our extended family.
The beggars and the mad people in our streets:
Where are their relatives?
Who is their father? Where is their mother?

All:
We cry for the wholeness of humanity.
One:
But the litany of brokenness is without end.
Black and white;
Rich and poor;
Hausa and Yomba;
Presbyterian and Roman Catholic:
All:
We are all parts of each other,
We yearn to be folded into the fullness
Of life—together.
Life, together with the outcast,
One:
The prisoner, the mad woman,
The abandoned child;
All:
Our wholeness is intertwined with the hurt,
One:
Working with Christ to heal the hurt,
Seeing and feeling the suffering of others,
Standing alongside them.
Their loss of dignity is not their loss:
It is the loss of our human dignity,
All:
We busy “normal” people.
One:
The person next to you: with a different
Language and culture,
With a different skin or hair color—
It is God’s diversity, making an unbroken
Rainbow circle—
All:
Our covenant of peace with God, encircling
The whole of humanity.
Christians have to re-enact the miracle
One:
Of Good Friday:
The torn veil, the broken walls, the
Bridge over the chasm,
The broken wall of hostility between
The Jew and the Gentile.
The wall between sacred and secular?
There is no wall
There is only God at work in the whole;
Heal the sores on the feet;
Salvage the disintegrated personality;
All:
Bind the person back into the whole.
For without the one, we do not have a whole.
Even if there are ninety-nine:
Without that one, we do not have a whole.
God, who gives us strength of
Body, make us whole.
“An African Call for Life” from An African Book of Prayer by Desmond Tutu

PSALM 30
(Psalms for Praying by Nan Merrill)

All praise to You, O Beloved,
For You have raised me up, and have not let my fears overwhelm me.
O Compassionate One, I cried for help, and You comforted me.
You, O Love, helped me release my soul from despair;
You gave me strength to face my fears;
Now love is awakening in me.
Sing praises to the Beloved, all you saints, giving thanks to Love’s holy Name.
Love withdraws when we close our hearts, yet ever awaits an open door.
In the evening we may weep,
Yet joy comes with the morning.
In my prosperity, I had lost sight of Love, I found power in my wealth.
In your mercy, O Beloved, my foundations You shook,
and in recognizing my separation from You,
I was dismayed.

I cried to you for help; to You,
I pleaded for forgiveness;
“What profit in my riches if I am separated from Love?
Will emptiness praise You? Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear me, O Beloved, and be gracious to me!
O Love, hasten to my assistance!”
And You turned my mourning into dancing;
You set me free and clothed me with gladness.
My soul rejoices and is glad in You;
Songs of gratitude fill my soul rising up to You, O Beloved.

Amen