intentions

Living with intention

I've long admired my students who seem to live their life with much more intention than I did at such a formative age.  I don't recall knowing my life path until long after I graduated from college.  I don't even recall considering that I could/should pave my own path.

I remember my childhood being filled with down time, play, and siblings.  It wasn't until I was in high school that I remember my mother carting us from one activity to the next.  Even still, the hustle and bustle of my youth seems to pale in comparison to the life of a teen today.

Some of life's greatest lessons I've learned from students.  For fifteen years, I've followed their example to search for the right path. The one that would surely lead me to happiness.  The one that would make me successful.  Funny how the one question I've asked of them - what happiness and success are you seeking? - I've failed to ask myself.

A question I've asked myself recently, however.  And I wonder if seeking answers intentionally is really the right path.  I know in my own mind seeking answers - reading, praying, meditating with the idea that I can find them - sends me running in circles and chasing my tail.  The harder I look to find inner peace and happiness, the farther away it seems.  The harder I try to know my spiritual self, the less defined she seems to be.

I've long valued the worship traditions of Holy Week - contemplation, reflection, introspection, turned to hope.  There have been many powerful expressions of these messages in worship.  One year, we hammered a nail into the cross to emphasize our role in Christ's death.  Other years, presiding pastors have washed the feet of the people to show God's love.  This year, the pastor encouraged us to write down a burden on a post-it note stuck to our bulletins with the promise that there would be a point during the service to free ourselves of that burden.  When the cross was brought into the sanctuary, we each brought our note, our burden, and laid it at the feet of the cross.

It seems to me that laying our burdens at the feet of the cross contradicts our human desire to live with intention.  Intention, to me, implies control - control over our own destiny, shaping each endeavor to maximize success and minimize failure.  Laying down our burdens - letting go - frees us to simply live. 

Perhaps this is the lesson for me at this time in my life. To live.  Simply. to. live.

Perhaps it is time to throw away the adverb - to live fully, to live purposefully, to live with intention.

"I meet you in the stillness of your soul."  This phrase found in a daily devotional given to me by a very special woman hones this idea of simply living.  Being still, simply being requires no movement on my part.  It encourages me to stop being intentional, purposeful, to stop seeking and finding myself.  It gives me permission to let the Universe do the work.

My burden, my sin, which I left at the foot of the cross, was this . . .

Being absorbed in my pursuit of self, in my desire to connect myself with my greater purpose. 

I've been fooling myself that being fully present in this pursuit is the same as being present in the moment.  I've failed to see that the present moment is often not about me.  The present moment is where life is - with the people I love, with someone else in control.  Not by my intention.  

The present moment is in living!

Through Mary's Eyes

Just after my son was born, we celebrated our first Christmas as a family.  That year, we traveled to my husband's hometown and found ourselves in an unfamiliar church to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Without the normal church music responsibilities, I found myself clearly focused in a new way on Christmas - focused on what Mary must have felt on that holiest of nights.  What was her childbirth like?  Did Mary feel the hand of God through her labor as I had felt Her in mine?  Did Mary have the loving breastfeeding relationship with her child that I had with mine?  Looking into my sons eyes that night, I remember feeling more passion, more love, more emotion than I had ever known.  Surely Mary had that experience, too.

My son is now seven and despite the new outlook on Christmas I had not made the shift with Jesus' death until tonight.  For the first time, I focused on Mary's thoughts and emotions as she watched her son accused, beaten, tortured, mocked, hung, as she watched him breath his last.  My heart hurt at the very thought!  I wept. 

Did you know that Mary was there at the foot of the cross when her son died?  His siblings had abandoned him, his followers had abandoned him, but Mary did not.  In fact, of the few folks who stayed with Jesus until the end, all but one were women.  There are few roles for women in the Bible, but perhaps this role is the most important.  She stayed!

Samuel Barber wrote a beautiful piece which helps us see the crucifixion through Mary's eyes.  We were privileged to hear one of our very talented voices sing this piece tonight.  Here are Barber's words:

At the cry of the first bird

They began to crucify Thee, O Swan!

Never shall lament cease because of that.

It was like the parting of day from night.

Ah, sore was the suffering borne

By the body of Mary's Son,

But sorer still to Him was the grief

Which for His sake

Came upon His Mother.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

Four weeks of meditation and now we enter the season of Lent.  I'm welcoming Ash Wednesday and this season of reflection with open arms.  Yes, because the inward look at self as a spiritual being is right up my ally.  For some, Lent is a time of fasting.  For some, Lent is a time of prayer.  For some, Lent does not exist.

For me, Lent is what I hope for every day of my life - a time to sit quietly with God, a time to examine myself and my humanness and all that it brings.  

Meditation has truly helped me do this these last few weeks and I am eager to see where meditation takes me.  

Some days, I feel like I'm failing at meditation.  Some days, I am hopeful.  Most days, I am in awe of the number of thoughts my mind holds in one space.  But, the quiet moments are delightful, renewing, energizing.  I do notice more patience in the way I live each day and more patience with myself.  I do notice that I'm not always allowing the things around me to "get me going".

I'm hopeful this Lent to make connections between what I know of my Christian faith with what I'm learning about spirituality around the world.  As I learn, I hope to reconcile the unrest within my heart and find that place of balance and peace that I believe is the thread that connects all spiritual people on earth.

May this season of Lent be a time of meaningful reflection for you, too.  Peace be with you.

Purple

Lent is quickly approaching and it is my FAVORITE time of year.  Most people will identify their favorite time of year by holidays, seasons, or birthdays.  So, I knew I was unique when I definitively discovered that I love the church season of Lent. 

I love everything about it!  I love the contemplation, self examination, the change in mood of the liturgy music and hymns.  I love the sacrificial way of being, putting away of the Alleluias, fasting, focusing on the poor.  But, mostly, I LOVE the color purple.

Purple has long been the color of Lent in the church (at least those that acknowledge the season of Lent).  I've known it to be the liturgical color, but wondered how that came to be.  I discovered that the use of liturgical colors other than white or black is really a relatively modern phenomenon, dating back only to the 1960s when the Roman Rite was adopted by the Catholic church under Pope Paul VI. 

I also learned that purple is a color that holds both a cool color (blue) and a warm color (red) making it a balanced color.  It is strongly associated with spiritual understanding and the crown chakra which is located at the top of the head.  It seems to be a favorite color of very creative and eccentric types and Leonardo da Vinci said that meditation can be enhanced by the use of purple light (i.e. from a stained glass window).  I'll have to try that.

So, perhaps, in light of my recent self reflective, spiritual journey, inside my own head and heart, seeking balance and a deeper connection with God, it is easy to understand why purple is my favorite color!

One thing that has been interesting to me in my journey is that religion in the east and west are so different, yet there are strong threads that run through each.  Some of the books I've read recently discuss this and much of my findings about the color purple reflect this as well. 

This discovery connects with my developing belief that there is no one right and true faith.  That faith is context bound, broken in our humanness, yet connected by one larger presence.  So, maybe purple is my yin and yang, hot and cold, east and west.  Maybe purple is the color of my faith!