Deliver us from the ruins

As I was going through my morning prayer in Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, the response caught my attention.  "Rise up, O God! Maintain your cause: Deliver us from the endless ruins."  I don't use the word "ruins" often, so I paused and considered it for a moment.  I thought of images of destruction and desolation, of a burned out house I had recently passed in a neighborhood near where I live.  But the word "endless" seems to suggest more, something lasting or recurring.  I think of patterns, cycles, traps; the ways we get stuck, and the reasons we do things ("because this is the way we've always done it").  I think of systems and triangles and entanglements; grudges and grief and resentment.  It's like maintaining the status quo while the walls fall down around you.

The more I live and learn, the more I realize that the ruins are inevitable.  We are mortal and fallible.  Death and failure attack each of us.  My heart is heavy with the news of two deaths in the communities I have served, and many more I know struggle with the death of dreams as jobs end and friends seek out new roles and callings.  Death, both physical and metaphorical, brings into question the faith we hold dear.  It hits us with the reality that we are not in control.  Although we pretend to have it all together, it just takes one blow to shake our foundation, leaving us sifting among the ruins.

During my recent sojourn at Virginia Theological Seminary, I heard the story of their ruins.  After a fire in 2010 destroyed their chapel, the worshipping community had to discern what to do.  As the fire was accidental, the insurance company provided funds towards rebuilding, but because the old building was historic, the city demanded that the old chapel would have to be rebuilt as it had been.  The cost was prohibitive for replacing the old structure, and the old footprint and layout weren't conducive for the functions of the space.  Finally, a compromise was reached.  The remaining chapel ruins were left as a memorial garden space.  The walls were taken down to knee height around the perimeter and the bell tower was left in place.  Grass grows where the pews once stood, and there is no roof to block the view of the sky.  There is an altar table in the space, reminding you of the sacred nature of the ground on which you stand.

In the space, you are surrounded by the noise of rebuilding as the new chapel goes up adjacent to the old chapel grounds.  For me, it is a fitting metaphor.  We will occasionally find ourselves in the ruins and we have to decide where to go from there.  Will we be buried within them?  Will we allow something new to be built from the ashes?  Will we mark the sacred space as a memorial, much as our biblical ancestors took the rocks of the ground where they stood and built altars in the places where they encountered God?

I've loved the phoenix of Greek mythology, which rises out of the ashes, reborn.  I just learned that the bird was also a symbol used by early Christians.  And it makes sense--our Gospel is based on the truth of the resurrection, the idea that new life can come from death.  What if we were able to face death and change with hope instead of fear?  Could we see the potential of new life; mysterious, uncertain, yet eternal?

I believe in resurrection.  I've seen it too many times not to.

May we all be renewed by the reality of resurrection as we face our own ruins and start to build again.

Family systems

I've been on a bit of an unintentional blogging break.  First it was the end of the semester chaos, followed by my own re-entry into the academic world as a student in a doctoral program.  After an intense three weeks of summer school, my brain was pretty fried.  I went from thinking "I should write about this" to the inability of forming coherent sentences.  But I've missed writing, the words on the page, and the internal reflection that precedes it.

After my three week journey away from my family for school (my longest trip away), I am now immersed back into the lovely and frustrating disorder of life at home.  John is now away on a business trip, so I've been caring for the kids solo (and wondering regularly how exactly he survived the three weeks with his sanity intact).  I've scheduled an array of activities each day, each with varying levels of success, and most of the day's activities are completed by noon, opening up the afternoon to boredom (them), impatience (me), and misbehaving (us).  One day, I tried to eat up some time and fulfill obligations by taking the kids to visit my family.  We managed three hours of driving for a two hour visit that ended in tears and screaming by at least four out of the five of us.  I spent the drive home going through my family systems learning over the past few weeks, which was all well and good in the relative peace of kids shamed into quiet in the backseat, but lost its practicality upon the return home when anger and rudeness reigned again, awakened by the demons of hunger, hurt, and fatigue.  It's no surprise to me that we default to our family of origin strategies when we are stressed, and there's nothing like returning home to up my anxiety levels.

But then I checked my phone and I had the sweetest voicemail from my almost 92-year-old grandmother, making sure we got home okay.  She said that I looked tired, and though things hadn't ended well, she so enjoyed our visit.  Then she said that I was doing such a good job as a parent.  That is perhaps one of the kindest thing she has ever said as she was certainly seeing through the eyes of love.  I feel that I did nothing to demonstrate effective parenting.  My kids were rude and out of control, and nothing I did seem to matter, other than making me lose my cool.  I called her back to let her know we were okay, and we talked a while longer about random things--the declining state of the world, how much the kids have grown.  And then she said that it's so hard to be a parent and she prays for us every day.  Perhaps it was the family systems talking, but I heard some of her own grief in that and so much empathy and understanding.  It opened me up in a way that is pretty amazing considering the walls I've built up over the years.  And somehow, when someone later remarked to me that I should cherish these days when my kids are little because they grow up so fast, I was able to smile for a change and believe that maybe this day is an unexpected gift.

Dream On

My daughter is a slow riser like me.  She often crawls into my bed, still groggy, retreating from the joyous singing of her brother, a morning person.  As we snuggle, she eventually wakes up enough to ask, "Wanna know what I dreamed?"  And of course I do.  Her dreams are vibrant and detailed, and I'm always amazed at how much she remembers.  My dreams usually vanish as I open my eyes.  When I recently had to keep a dream journal for a class, I realized that the majority of my dreams are focused on anxiety (at least the ones I remember).  I am losing teeth, getting lost in narrow passageways, and running late trying to get somewhere (sometimes without any clothes on).  Her dreams are ones of connection and beauty.  She describes colors and storylines with multiple layers.  They are silly and sweet and usually about the two of us spending time together (although sometimes we take the form of fish or unicorns).  There are plot twists and happy endings, and the retelling takes longer than I imagine the dream actually lasted.  She is my artist, my imaginative storyteller, painting pictures with her words.  Each night when we say our prayers, the kids put in their requests for specific dreams, a wish list to God to fill their slumber with visions of Harry Potter, mermaids, and puppies.  The requests are often answered, and I shouldn't be surprised as the Bible points out that God is in the business of dreams.

My girl is full of dreams even in her waking hours.  She keeps an evolving list of what she wants to be when she grows up: a vet, a pet store owner, an artist, an author/illustrator, a mommy.  She wants to juggle all of these careers at once while driving her pick-up truck (which she has imagined down to the finest detail).  Once she gets an idea in her head it's impossible to shake, so we are off on a search for a watch with purple flowers and a pink band or mermaid sunglasses.  Shopping for clothes is often a nightmare as the selections don't always match the clothing she has designed in her mind.

She has yet to learn that our dreams don't always match reality, and that's a lesson that I don't want her to have to experience.  But it seems that is what growing up is about.  We shed our dreams and pick up more manageable goals.  We surrender fantasy and imagination for a dose of the practical.  It's been a constant tension for me--how do I nurture her spirit while also helping her to develop the coping skills for when things don't go according to her plans?  How can I recapture my own sense of wonder and dreaming so that we can share the beauty of the world as she sees it?

It's interesting (and probably not a coincidence) that much of what I'm reading these days talks about the necessity of play for us all, and the intersection between play and spirituality.  Stuart Brown and Brené Brown both speak on the importance of spending regular time doing things that appear meaningless.  That's counter-cultural in our world that teaches that success is all about doing, and the measure of our importance is how busy we are.  Who has time for play?  But to my children, everything is play.  How many times do I implore them to stop playing around in the bathroom and brush their teeth?  How often do I tell them we don't have time to play around, we have things we need to do?

But perhaps they are on the right track and I'm the one who needs to wake up.

Scripture says that unless we change and become like little children we will not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3).  And I think, maybe that's what people mean when they say to cherish these times, that I will miss these days of my kids being little.  I get so frustrated thinking that I'm not succeeding in teaching them all they need to know, but maybe it's the other way around.  Maybe I'm not letting them teach me all they know.  What am I missing out on by thinking that my way is the real truth that they need to embrace?  Perhaps the truth is that the kingdom of heaven is here in their wonder and joy, in their faith that things will be taken care of, in their certainty that they are loved and special, in their belief that God is with them and cares about their dreams.

What would my dreams be if I truly lived like that?