Crumbs

Though we seem to hear a lot about dieting and cutting down on the abundance of food available to us these days,  my world is full of people for whom the idea of food is more of a burden than a blessing.  For many of the children in my life, eating is a challenge that causes a myriad of complex difficulties and makes food an area of stress and profound anxiety for both children and parents.  The ability to get any kind of sustenance from food is difficult often for many different and varied reasons.  Ideas for helping children start to want to eat abound and vary depending on the specific eating challenge.  Some common suggestions include being careful not to show your own anxiety and allowing power struggles to take over by forcing kids to eat.   Children may first need to get used to even the smells of food.  Allow delicious smells of food  to pervade your home.  Come close and kiss your kids after yourself eating something that they can smell and taste on your lips.  Encourage them to simply play with food, touching and feeling it without any pressure to eat.   Sometimes it is helpful to start introducing just little crumbs of food in a way that is not threatening or scary.

Like my children for whom eating is not a pleasurable and life-giving experience, our society is full of aversion to spiritual food.  The very thought of giving sustenance to our souls causes many to gag.  Again the reasons for this aversion are many and varied and usually very understandable.  Many would disagree that food for our souls is even necessary.  I do believe that we are spiritual beings whose souls do crave spiritual relationship with God and with one another.  Yes, maybe I am wrong.  Remember, I am a wondering mother!  So tonight I wonder.  I wonder if without pressure and with fun, others might somehow smell the aroma and warm comfort of God in my home and on my breath.  I encourage myself and my children to play with the idea of God and activities that facilitate the growth of our souls.  Sometimes I wonder how best to introduce those little crumbs of joy and love in God that can be welcomed and tried by others.  God's crumbs may be the beginning of a lifelong adventure in tasting the goodness and love of a God who cares and wants to be in relationship with us.

Those Ashes

The wood in our fireplace crackles and the steady beat of a fan spews out warmth in our living room as I write this evening.  Regularly I take a precious bucket load of fine ash out to our compost; a special delicacy and topping of potash that I am told will help the growing in our garden as things warm up and spring comes again.

Who would think that ashes would have a sacred place through history?   It is of strange comfort to me that they do.  A place for us after the fire and the burning.  Meaning in the left over ashes of our lives. Hope beyond hope in the grey and lifeless.

Seasons for the burning and the ash.  Take comfort in those seemingly useless and dull remains.  They too, spread over our lives, bring hope and nutrients of growth.  Dreams destroyed and energy burned.  The gift of seemingly nothing.  Keep on going, leaving space to grow.

Before the spring emerges, a time of paring down.  Appreciating the ashes.  Leaving room to listen to that still small whisper, faint in our hearts, that may be God.  Sit and listen in the ashes of these days.

Wondering in Expectation

Watch.  Wait.  Wonder.

Important words and a significant  attitude of heart for us all.

Expectations can be confusing.  Some of us have learned through bitter experience to let go of any kind of expectation from life.  Others are full of expectations for these days and year ahead.  Most of us stand somewhere in between, hoping and expecting, but deep down doubting that anything of significance will really be different.
I am sure Mary, the mother of Jesus, stood with us in mixed expectations as she gave birth this night so many years ago.

A baby.  God with us.  Emmanuel.  Unexpected and unrecognized by most.

Tonight in our hearts let us be still.

Watch. Wait.  Wonder.  God is with each of us in the depths of our hearts and souls, longing for us to recognize His being in our hearts in the ordinary ways of our days.  We are deeply loved.  Each of us was created carefully and uniquely in love and care.  Let go of all the religious debates and superficial wrappings of His gift.   Let us feel his Love this night in our souls.

Wishing the blessings of God with us in love and hope tonight.

Abba

I wonder what that small little word made up of the first two letters of the alphabet squared means to you?
For some of us it brings thoughts of a rock band Abba (cadabara) and in turn the wonderful surprises in the mystery of abracadabra.  The word also immediately transports me into the loving arms of the Daddy Father God.  I am reminded of the passage in the Bible where the apostle Paul says to the Romans, "So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God's Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, "Abba, Father."" (Romans 8:15)  In the language of that time Abba means Daddy or Papa.  God does adopt us as His own, longing to be in close and loving relationship with Him like a loving Daddy.

Hung high, up some stairs and around the corner in a corridor near that same art studio that I visited on the weekend was another wonderful painting that has settled in my heart.  "We love Abba" was sprawled across its vibrant and colourful canvas.  Although I have no idea of its actual context in the mind of its creator, part of what I love about art is the unique reactions and creative process that continues in the canvas of each heart that the work is touching.   I was immediately brought to the heart of God and His adoption of me when I saw that painting. God  for me is vibrant and colourful, a caring and loving Father who adopts and includes us in His heavenly earthly family. 

Unmistakable in the painting  were dark spears emerging from the canvas. I was not surprised.  Those spears  brought the paradox of my faith and the complexities of fear to mind.  I thought of the sharp crown of thorns on Christ's head and  the spears that often pierce hearts when the word Christianity or God is mentioned.  Often our reaction to God is one of fear.  Even misplaced Christians use tactics of fear to try to draw others to God.  God repeats over and over to those encountering His presence "Do not be afraid!"  God is our loving Papa.  As Paul states, we are not to ever be in bondage to fear.   The very good news of Christianity is to bring love, not fear.  As our Father, God is full of overwhelming joy and love in our presence.  Like the Father in the story of the prodigal son that went away and then returned home in humility to a wonderful welcome of love, the very thought of us causes God to smile and run toward us in loving embrace.

Still, considering my Christian God does bring sharp fearful spears of unknown to me.  My faith is not always comfortable.  I am not sure that we are always on target in our interpretation of the words of the Bible.  Too often they seem to divide and pierce rather than unite.  I am so hugely sad and sorry for all the pain that Christianity has and is causing many.  

Still, I believe that Christ was God.  I believe that God is our loving Abba father.  I take it all, colour, radiance, love and spears and try to myself live the life of love and unity that is the strong fabric of the whole of God's being both in Christ and the Bible.  It is not easy or clearly explainable.  It involves both joy and sorrow, love and fear.  Through it all I am convinced that the vibrance of love wins.  As Paul so clearly says, let's not fall into that fear.  Join the love of adoption by God.

Abbacadabra.  Abba.  Father.  Love, not fear.  Love.

Unexpected Creation

Family members have been asking me where the blogs have gone over these last weeks.  It seems that these blogs are for us all a good way to keep updated with one another as we are scattered in the various places we call home.  I am not good at expressing my feelings over the phone, and even though sometimes I feel my writing is cliche and repetitive, as one daughter exclaimed, she actually looks forward to her daily dose of cliche and sharing laughter with her mum!

This weekend I  got to spend time with another daughter in her art studio.  Amidst the clutter, pungent smells and stark utility of the place one large work of art particularly grabbed my attention and settled deep in my heart.  It was a unique creation of blue propped up against a wall in the studio, mysteriously eye catching because actually it was a huge home made tray, originally created to catch the paint drippings from other works of art hung above it.  In the process of the paint flowing down, paper thrown on top and bare feet captured in the drippings, an amazing work was created, completely inadvertently and by surprise in the process of working on other more intentional pieces.

I was deeply encouraged in my own heart in the process.  Most of my life is focussed on helping to let the beauty and unique attributes of others unfold in the canvasses of their journeys.  With my big family, I feel like I have a whole lot of canvasses hanging from the rafters that need attention.  I am that tray underneath, functional and full of all the drippings!  It was a gift for me to think that maybe without me even noticing, a work of art is being created in the tray of my life as well.  Part of that tray painting reminded me of the delight of finding fossils.  Even though we don't often consciously realize it, our lives are great beds of fossils that create beauty and story to be saved and discovered.  All of our lives work together to form those works of art that we may ourselves never really see or appreciate fully.  Still, they are often the most beautiful and wonderful creations of all.

Be encouraged in being who you are created to be.  Even those functional trays bring beauty and encouragement in the process of doing their ordinary work!  Look with creative and discovering eyes at the patterns and fossils left in your own journey.  We are all works of art created in the unexpected with surprising delight!

Our Stories

Already the homework has started.  Homework is especially challenging for my girls as these early assignments in high school seem to invariably involve the telling of their stories.   We all have multifaceted and layered life stories that often trigger single stories for others.  I have recently been deeply impacted by Chimamanda Adichie's TED talk about the danger of a single story in our lives.  For our children the label of foster child and adoption brings up many presuppositions of a single strand story that can be dangerous.  As my daughter wrote about her life yesterday, she started by writing that every cell in her body was resisting the writing of her story.  Recently she was at a summer camp where she was able to share many strands of her story in great detail for the first time.  She spoke to a small and caring work crew group who embraced her, prayed for her, and saw beyond any single strand in her story to accept the whole complex person she is now.  For now at school, she decided to write two stories.  One is for her teacher, including several strands of her life with details of her past.  The other emphasizes other superficial single strand parts of her life and will be the one she shares with the class who she does not know well or trust.

Conscious awareness and acknowledgement of the many strands and layers of our stories is an important part of growth for us all.  Coming to understand the reality of the many strands that influence us in the present can take many years and is an ongoing life process of self discovery in itself.  In the writing of several strands of her life my daughter stepped over some difficult hurdles that will bring ongoing healing and self understanding and acceptance.  It was important to walk beside her on this difficult road yesterday, helping her to integrate and accept all of who she is in her understanding of herself.

For all of us, it is important to continue to discover and remember the many strands of our stories.  Some strands are full of pain and shame.  Like my daughter, we will want to chose carefully who we share these with.  Still,  human relationship is central to our being.  Find someone who can help walk with you in the telling and acknowledging of all parts of your story.  There are parts of the stories of my children and husband that may not be helpful to share with me.  In some traditions people share these parts with their priests or wise healers.   Find those healers for you.  They may be counsellors, trusted friends or writing.  Discover the adventure of the diamonds and strong multistranded ropes within your own soul.   Uncover and embrace the fullness of your whole story.  Be careful of the safe tendency to create those safe single stories both in yourself and others.  They are dangerous in the end and rob us all of the immeasurable richness of all parts of what it means to be a human being.

One Step at a Time!

Gears shift and grind.  Labour Day brings reminders of the pain and joys and struggles of the birthing process that encompasses all new beginnings in life.

Life is full of ebbing and flowing, rest and activity, words and silence.  After a time of blogging silence, it is time for me to step forward again.

As in so many things, we need to just take one small step ahead at a time.  Sometimes it will feel that those steps only take us backward, but it is the showing up and attempting to take the steps that makes all the difference in the end.

A couple of my children started at a new and very large high school this week.  The anticipation of this new beginning has brought many fears and challenges over the last months.  Finally the day of actually going to a new school has come!  The general impression of my girls has been of love and kindness by those around them.  They have noticed angels of kindness in many ways this last week.  A schedule was changed quickly and easily.   Though a record of unnoticed overdue library books followed them to the new school and could have prevented them from getting their text books, forgiveness and mercy was extended and the textbooks were given.  A support aide drew close to one daughter again and again in several of her classes, giving support and friendly care and guidance.  Several teachers went over and above in their friendly love and care for the new individuals in their care.  One fellow student obviously was not able to sit still and caused disruption and challenge wherever he went, but my girls noticed the teachers extending love and care again and again.  They in turn felt accepted and understood by the care given to others.

Stepping forward to the new beginning of this September I am reminded again to go forward with the intention of goodness, love and mercy.  I am confident that even in my own stumbling efforts and uncertainties just one step at a time, that God's goodness and unfailing love will chase after me. (Psalm 23)  May we take those faltering small steps of kind words and love extended.  We may not see how they are noticed.  Be God's hands and feet of kindness and love and understanding forgiveness caring for others these days!  One step at a time.