We’re quickly closing in on the end of the school year here in good ol’ east central Indiana. My students are antsy, and so am I. My colleague Abbie and I are getting ready to begin a really cool project with our students. For the entire month of May, our students will complete a self-directed project based on those topics, writers, texts, or themes that we were unable to cover throughout the school year, but the important part of the project is that they will not only choose their topics, they will also design their final essay/project based on their research. We’re really excited to do something that we think is pretty cutting edge for high schoolers. Of course, we’re requiring them to complete certain things during their course of study, but for the most part, it’s up to them to carry out the study while meeting with us once a week to discuss their work. I’m sure this project will beat the pants off of the ECA (end of course assessment) they’re required to take for the state.
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The Muncie 70.3 is twelve weeks away. I’ve been training, but this next week I put the pedal to the metal as the miles increase from here on out. I need some help with accountability, and I know that it’ll be obvious if I don’t train well, but I tend to skip workouts because of exhaustion from work. I’m hoping if I post MyTrainingSchedule here, some of you who read this and who correspond with me on Facebook or Twitter will help keep me honest. Seriously, I’d love it if you ask me once a week or so whether I am sticking to my training or not. I am generally pretty disciplined, but every little bit helps!
I’m also working on moving back to a mostly paleo diet for the fueling of this adventure. I’ve been “cheating” a lot and drinking beer, eating wheat products, and snacking on ice cream. None of these help me accomplish my goals: the alcohol makes me tired, the wheat makes me bloated and gaseous, and the ice cream makes my joints ache. When I eat paleo, I feel so much more energetic and clean. I am sure the food I eat will make or break my venture.
I’m also in need of losing a few more pounds so I don’t look like a sausage in my new Muncie Area Fun Squad tri-kit. If I train consistently and eat properly, I have no doubt that I’ll lose the 15 pounds I need to lose by July 13. Incidentally, I am pretty proud to be finishing this Half Ironman the week before my 39th birthday. Now I just need to finish a marathon by next July, and I will have accomplished both of my “before 40” goals. Maybe my “before 50” goals will be an ultra-marathon and a full Ironman! Haha!
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When I heard the news about the Boston Marathon bombing, I had several reactions, none of which I believe were any different than those reactions had by others: shock, dismay, fear, compassion, anger, love, and pretty much every other emotion a person can have, all rolled into one. I feel this way every time I hear of a tragic event like this one.
Now, a few days later, I just want us (humans) come together to provide healing for the victims, healing for the family of the two young men, a legitmate (not hate-influenced punishment) for the remaining bomber, grace to those people who can’t get past their hate, and safety for those folks who are part of big, un(or poorly)guarded sporting events like marathons. I don’t want people to be scared. I don’t want people to be angry. I don’t want people to seek revenge. I want peace. I want justice. And I want grace. I want to imagine.
I am slowly coming to realize that joy is not necessarily an outwardly expressed, chipper, I-am-so-happy-because-everything-is-fine type of feeling or attitude. Joy is an inwardly felt, deep, intense, I-am-so-connected-with-Jesus-I-can’t-help-but-feel-any-other-way-(at this moment)-and-I-can’t-help-but-share-this type of feeling or attitude. And, it seems as if everything I read about joy indicates that it’s cyclic. Of course, the goal is to be in a permanent state of joy, but because we have other human emotions, the permanence is varied depending upon the presence of those other emotions.
For example, according to an article by Sylvie Supper titled “Spiritual Joy in the Works of St. Bernard,” St. Bernard believed that joy is one of four inner movements. The other three are sadness, love, and fear (361). Supper quotes Bernard’s own writing: “If sadness follows fear, it brings despair. If joy comes after love, it brings laxness. Let joy then some after fear, for fear dreads what is to come, whereas joy finds happiness in what is present and possesses the object of a prudent security. Joy must therefore put fear to the test. And a tested fear is nothing but prudence. Sadness must follow joy, for whoever remembers sad things will embrace joyous things with moderation. Thus sadness must balance joy, and a balanced joy is nothing but moderation” (361-2). The part of this statement that resounds with me is this: “Joy must put fear to the test. [. . .] Sadness must follow joy, for whoever remembers sad things will embrace joyous things with moderation.” I find myself telling my students that bad things happens in order to help us recognize the beauty and grace that surrounds us every day, but St. Bernard says that remembering sadness will help us “embrace joyous things with moderation.” What that says to me is that if we remember sadness, we’ll realize that joy is temporary and subject to change. We won’t let ourselves be swept away by joy, but we will realize the beauty of that joy, because we remember the sadness we’ve experienced as well. On this earth we must recognize there will be highs and lows. We should expect them, and remember each to temper the other. Now I feel like I am talking in a circle: joy, sadness, joy again, sadness again.
In order to illustrate the various types or levels of joy, St. Bernard sets up an excellent metaphor involving drinking: a taste is the joy of God we can experience during life, drink is the joy that is experienced by the souls of the saints, and inebriation is the experience of joy at the resurrection of the body (364). In this life, we can only taste; we can’t become inebriated. He quotes Psalm 35: 9, but I think both 9 and 10 help to better explain this idea of the inebriation of joy: “Then my soul shall rejoice in the Lord, exulting in his deliverance. All my bones shall say, ‘O Lord, who is like you? You deliver the weak from those too strong for them, the weak and the needy from those who despoil them.'” It’s as if the speaker’s entire body is steeped in deliverance, and why would that not bring an intoxicating, inebriating joy? “All my bones shall say” I am filled with the joy of the Lord. How many times has my whole body said, “I am inebriated with you, Lord”? Not yet. Not here. St. Bernard, much like John Wesley from the last post, says that inebriating joy will come later, that it’s not this-worldly.
Jubilus cordis is “the very music of the heart,” which is only found when our hearts experience “the deepest and most intimate joy of the soul united with God” (366). This intimacy is given to us through the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, and it is felt as if from an intimate couple, such as two individuals who marry or who are deeply, intimately bound. Supper says that this intimacy “is a certain experience of God that communicates to the soul [God’s] sweetness and the joy of [God’s] presence” (366). This reminds me of the song “You Are So Good to Me” by Third Day. The chorus says, “You are beautiful my sweet, sweet song,” which seems like a version of this intimacy with Jesus that’s prevalent in Song of Songs.
Finally, Supper explains that though St. Bernard focuses on the inner workings of joy, joy cannot help but radiate our from us. We should have a desire to share our inner joy with others. So, for Bernard, as for Wesley, this inner attitude becomes an outward attitude. Something we just can’t help but share. I suppose first you have feel joyful inwardly, which is my difficulty. I’m not sure if I should expect this joy that can’t help but radiate to be a knock-me-down kind of joy, or just this occasional sweet, peaceful, sort of pukey feeling I get in my soul when everything seems to be right with God. I think it’s the second one, because it seems to be tempered with fear like in the first part of this post, but I also think St. Bernard thought it was the first one, too. Joy is subtle and joy is blatantly obvious. Basically, joy boils down to, again, a relationship with God. Joy is part of the fruit of that relationship. It’s a part of the fruit I wish I could taste more frequently. I want to be inebriated with joy. Here. Now. I don’t want to have to wait for it. I’m the Veruca Salt of the spiritual fruit: I want it now.
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Supper provides a nice little glossary of terms St. Bernard uses for joy:
gaudium: signifies all kinds of joy
laetitia and exsultatio: signify the exultation of those who have found God, opposite of bitterness; confiteor: the praise of whoever gives thanks to God
hilaris: one who gives joy, the radiation of the face
jucundus: someone who leads another to joy
congratulatio and congaudere: shared joy
alacritas: fervent and driving joy
delectare: delight found in resting in God
jubilus: the inner song of the soul united with God
My first goal of 2013 is to cultivate joy. In my last blog post, I wrote that in order to cultivate joy, I would “do things which me bring me joy. Embrace the random. Enjoy the mediocre. Don’t stress over things I can’t control. Live in the moment and revel in those I spend my time with. Put down my phone or my other distractions and really love and live the moment.” For me those are the beginning steps to cultivating what I perceive to be pure joy. Because I am not the most joyful person, I decided to learn from what others have written about joy. What is joy? How does joy work? Is joy the same thing as happiness? Is joy what some mystics call ecstasy? Is joy something that one must experience every day in order to be considered joyful? I suppose I had (maybe still have) many, many questions about a theological, psychological, and behavioral characteristic I claim I am going to cultivate this year.
I intentionally used the word cultivate for what I intend to do with joy. There are really three types of cultivation. One type is more like refinement, which would require that I already possess some amount of joy that I simply plan to nurture and shape into much more mature, refined joy. This is not the type of cultivation I will be accomplishing. I will be using a combination of the second two types of cultivation: improving by the care or study of joy and fostering the growth of joy.
Much like a farmer cultivates crops in a field or a scientist cultivates specimens in petri dishes, I plan to plant, encourage, maintain, and harvest this joy. I plan to do the backbreaking work of starting from the ground up, digging little holes, planting little joy seeds, growing little joy plants, and then harvesting whatever little joy flowers or fruits grow from those plants. This is a whole new endeavor, and I didn’t even buy crop insurance. I’m not sure this is the sort of thing that can be insured. I’ll either come away with a bouquet of flowers or a peck of fruits from this year of cultivation, or I won’t. The pursuit of joy is mostly up to me and my willingness to work for it. Sounds weird: work for, cultivate joy.
Similarly, much like I have studied for the past few years to cultivate my knowledge of literature, I hope to study to cultivate my understanding of joy. I started by reading four articles, which is of course where I would start with this damn rational mind I’ve been given, but I plan to pay more attention to those people in my life who seem to be joyful. How is it that they can experience joy, when there is so much sadness, so much angst, and so much depravity in this world? Do they maintain certain habits? Do they hold certain attitudes? Do they rely on their spiritual lives, whatever religion or non-religion they may be? How do they seem to be so filled with joy?
Naturally, I first turned to John Wesley for thoughts about joy. Not because he was necessarily a joy-filled man, but precisely because he strove toward joy and sometimes fell short, did I turn to Wesley for wise words about the topic. In the article titled “John Wesley’s Moral Pneumatology: The Fruits of the Spirit as Theological Virtues,” Joseph William Cunningham writes: “The cultivation of spiritual virtue is abstract from community. Believers develop the holy tempers of righteousness, love and peace in relation to their neighbour. The fruits of the Spirit, though inward dispositions of the soul, are always socially oriented” (284). When I read these lines, I had three thoughts. First, I was elated that he used the word cultivated because that’s my word! (:)) Second, I was thrilled that he used the virtue, because when I was writing my goals for this year, I had in the back of my mind Ben Franklin’s thirteen virtues. Third, all theological concepts work best, and are meant to work best, when practiced in community. We are not designed to be solitary beings.
On a more serious note, I really was elated when I saw these lines, but it was more because it has always seemed that joy is an inwardly focused theological concept; joy is about how I feel, right? The above quote made me think of the many ways in which joy is much more outwardly focused. Though Cunningham doesn’t list joy here in this passage, I can’t help but think joy comes in community, that joy is an “inward disposition” that should be “socially oriented.” I’ve experienced joy in my life, and usually that joy was felt in community. I have been in love, which was joyful. I have won competitions, which was joyful. I have experienced God, which was joyful. I’ve sung spirituals and released my pain and suffering, which was joyful. In every situation, while I was the person experiencing the joy, there were others experiencing it with me. I am not sure I have ever experienced joy alone. And if I have, my first inclination was likely to share that joy.
One reason I may not be the most joyful person is that I abhor those shiny, happy Christians I grew up with. Seriously, you can’t possibly be that happy all the time. Joyful? Maybe. Shiny happy? I doubt it. I was thrilled when I was reminded that Wesley struggled with the concept of continuous joy. Later in the same article, Cunningham quotes Wesley: “A will steadily and uniformly devoted to God is essential to a state of sanctification, but not an uniformity of joy or peace or happy communion with God. They may rise and fall in various degrees; nay an may be affected either by the body or by diabolical agency, in a manner which all our wisdom can never understand or present” (285). In other words, all of those people who told me I had to be happy to show my Christian faith were wrong. My will has been constantly (or nearly so) devoted to God. Only the outward signs of the fruit of the spirit have wavered. We, in this lifetime, cannot be filled with “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). We are human, yes? Perfection is something to be attained.
My quest for an understanding of joy was likely fueled by reading An Unquenchable Thirst. Much like the author Mary Johnson, I fell in love with Mother Teresa when I was young. A drawing of Mother Teresa with the words Living Saints in large, bold letters graced the cover of time magazine when I was about 18 months old. There is no way that image could have impacted me like it did Johnson, but I grew up having a knowledge of saints (likely from my mom’s Orthodox family) and having a certain reverence for Mother Teresa. I read everything I could about her, and I believed I had been a nun in a former life (okay, really I still believe it). There is simply something that appeals to me about living with other women whose thoughts are directed toward God and others; there is something that strikes a chord within me when I think about regulating my day with service and prayer. I have always thought that I might experience more joy in a place that was filled with Christ’s love.
When I read Johnson’s book, I learned what I knew deep down: sometimes things aren’t what they seem. I had always assumed, until the August 2007 Time Magazine article, that Mother Teresa was the most joyful woman on earth, and if I believed what Cunningham writes about Wesley’s thoughts of joy she might be: “Joy is a theological virtue implying habitual self-sacrifice and service of neighbour, even in the midst of sorrow and despair. The desire to love and serve is animated by true joy in the Spirit, and cultivated through commitment and practice” (286). Half-heartedly I agree with this. Before I read Johnson’s story, I (maybe) would have whole-heartedly agreed with it. Joy seems to be fed by giving to others, but I worry, now, if giving everything to others renders us not joyful but broken. Theologically, I suppose that very brokenness is where some folks would say that God works when we can’t. You know, the “Jesus works through our brokenness” idea? I am not sure I can buy that line of reasoning anymore, not the brokenness reasoning, but the idea that if we sacrifice and serve, we’ll be joyful. In fact, Wesley himself writes: “Yet it cannot be denied that many times joy is withheld even from them that walk uprightly” (Cunningham 286). Does pouring one’s whole self out into others and loving and serving provide joy? Yes, but not always. No, but sometimes. Maybe.
So, here I am at the end of my first consideration of the cultivation of joy, and I have studied and learned what one person thinks about joy. After thinking about how to cultivate joy, do I feel more joyful? Not yet, but I am hopeful.
New Year’s Eve asks us to look back into the past year in order to assess where we’ve been, and it simultaneously begs us to look forward with hope that our future is brighter than, or at least as bright as, our past. Everybody and their brother is posting their reflections and their resolutions, so I figured why shouldn’t I. At the very least, this post will give my friends a heads up about the resolutions I’ll be breaking come January 3rd or 4th.
Obviously, if you’ve read this blog in the past year, you’ll notice that the past 365 days haven’t been a cakewalk for me. While my life has been incredibly blessed, I’ve had a really difficult time recognizing my blessings and reveling in them. My goals for this year in no particular order were:
Eat paleo.
Watch less TV.
Exercise in a variety of ways (including swimming) while running (barefoot) a race a month.
Meditate.
Read more, including the Bible and Common Prayer.
Play and find my inner hippie again.
In short, do things which bring me joy. Relax.
Listing my goals out like that reminds me of Benjamin Franklin and his list of 13 Virtues or John and Charles Wesley’s tabulations of their moral behaviors. I suppose if I am going to list my resolutions or goals, I should keep track of how well I am doing with them in some manner. I don’t. I ate mostly paleo and lost about 50 pounds (I did gain some of that back this holiday season!). I can’t say I’ve watched less television; in fact, I may have watched more (Oh, Mariska, how you tempt me!). I did exercise a lot, but not as much as I would have liked. I finished my first triathlon, so that’s pretty decent. I totally left out meditation and prayer for a good portion of the year. I felt so disconnected, and I am not sure whether my lack of meditation caused the disconnection, or if I didn’t meditate because I felt disconnected. Either way, I didn’t spend enough time alone with my thoughts and God. I read a lot more, but not the specific texts I mentioned I would focus on. I played more, and playing was lovely. I did things which should have brought me joy, but they didn’t always. Instead I feel as if I just focused on the negative, even when I swore I would focus on the positives. I’m a realist; it’s difficult for me to be to be positive. I am going (to try to) to fix that this year. #PollyAnna2012 will become #joyful or #merrymaking or #radicaljoy for this year.
In short, I want this year to bring less of this:
And much, much more of this:
Speaking of this year, here are my goals in order of their current importance to me and my mental and physical well being:
CULTIVATE JOY: Do things which me bring me joy. Embrace the random. Enjoy the mediocre. Don’t stress over things I can’t control. Live in the moment and revel in those I spend my time with. Put down my phone or my other distractions and really love and live the moment.
CONSUME CLEANLY: Eat better food. Drink less cider and more water. Put into my belly those foods which will best fuel my body for physical activities and mental joy. I’m going to attempt to jumpstart this with a new Whole 30, beginning on January 7. I want a clean slate and a clean body for the new year.
EXERCISE: Exercise in a variety of ways (including swimming) while running at least a mile a day. Finish a Half Ironman triathlon before my 39th birthday. Carpool or walk or ride my bike to work every day. Use the body and the buses for transportation as frequently as possible.
BE INTENTIONAL: Watch no TV, except an occasional movie. Use social media for no more than half an hour each day. Replace the time spent on nothingness and meaningless conversation with strangers with pursuits of intellect and kinship. Meditate, pray, read, and contemplate theological and academic things. Practice silence. I also would love to finish this dissertation.
PLAY: Play and find my inner hippie again. In the spring, I’ll start a disc golf club at school.
STAND UP: Begin standing up against injustice in a real and tangible way. Use grace and love to resist those things which are unethical or immoral. Help the Burris GSA, Prism, to be more active and visual by bringing meaningful activities into my students’ lives.
These are my hopes, dreams, goals, resolutions for 2013. I hope to use Sunday mornings to write in this space about these goals and about current events. I will begin tomorrow morning, though it isn’t Sunday, by writing in depth about that first goal of practicing joy. Practicing joy will no doubt be my most difficult goal, but for me it is by far the most important. I can’t have another year like this year. Any suggestions you have about cultivating joy are welcome! How do you cultivate joy?
For some running inspiration, join us with this challenge:
I’m spending my winter break at home by myself. Well, more accurately I am spending it at home with five cats, three dogs, a fish, and some outside birds. More importantly, however, I am spending it in a quiet house. I decided to use the time I’d be home alone to give myself a spiritual retreat of meditation/prayer, silence, and reading/writing. Of course, this retreat isn’t as focused on spiritual matters as I would like it to be, because it has to be equally focused on school matters as I work to finish this dissertation re-proposal. I’m enjoying the fact that my typical day is looking somewhat contemplative at least.
For the past several days, since the day after Christmas (so when my mini-retreat concludes with Bec’s return on Sunday evening it will be a five day fast from normality) my day has looked like this:
Instead of using the alarm clock, I’ve been getting up whenever I feel like waking up. Most mornings it’s been between seven and eight in the morning.
After getting dressed, the first thing I do is put a pot of water to boil on the stove, set on low, so I can make a French press of coffee when I get back from walking the dogs.
I take a nice, slow walk with my dogs and give them lots of extra love once we return home. I take care of the cats, feed the birds and the fish.
I make coffee, eat breakfast, and have a bit of prayer/contemplation time with the help from Common Prayer and some fragrant incense. I light my St. Jude candle and pray for assistance with this dissertation, because it seems like something I should ask for help from the patron saint of the impossible.
Once I’m finished with morning prayer time, I read whatever text it is for the day for my dissertation and I take notes on the text.
I stop to make lunch/dinner, and I spend time doing some physical activity (riding my bike trainer, walking, shoveling snow) to make my thoughts congeal. Then I write a bit about the text I read that day.
Finally, I have allowed myself only an hour and a half to use Facebook, talk on the phone, text, email, or meet with friends. The rest of my day, from whenever I wake up until 9PM is spent in contemplative silence. At 9PM, I watch a bit of TV while trying to fall asleep.
I’ve noticed that during this week my thoughts have become clearer, my energy has gone back up, my spiritual life has turned for the better, and I don’t really miss talking or watching TV. I’d love to take a week long silent retreat at a convent or monastery some time, where I can’t even have a computer and can only use the land line telephone to make calls.
I’ve made some interesting discoveries about myself this week, too. The first is that I need an intense amount of what my friend Amy calls “self-care.” Here is what I wrote to another friend of mine about the dark night I went through this November; it was the worst one I’ve experienced to date. “I’m also not being preachy (okay just a little bit) when I say that even Jesus had to take a time out once in a while to feed his soul. Families complicate that, and so do friends sometimes, and it’s hard to strike a healthy balance between the two. I find that sometime the ‘should’ rules bind me in to the point where I can’t have fun or enjoy life even when I don’t have something I ‘should’ be doing. That’s the point I was at in November (the very bottom of the barrel), and, yes, I’ve always (since I can remember) struggled not with the notion of killing myself, but of sometimes feeling that I’d be better off in another place or that my life is too overwhelming to keep living. I have only been in a really bad spot like that a couple of times in my life and I had a really hard time getting out of it this time. It made me realize that sometimes for me the ‘should’ is taking care of myself, even if it means doing things at the expense of spending time with others. You know I love a good conversation and some good quality time, but I had to take a weekend to ‘go to a conference’ to get my perspective back. Thank God for my friend Amy, who is a hospice chaplain. She didn’t realize that she was going to have work in her off hours. Since then, I’ve tried really hard to make at least half an hour for myself before anyone else is up. I get up at 4AM most mornings to get time to run, pray, worship, and feed my soul. I am super tired sometimes because I am so not a morning person, but I find the trade-off to be worth it.” I owe my sanity to my friends Sarah and Daniel as well. I am not sure any of them really knew how fragile I was that weekend, but I had a hard time even enjoying anything, let alone learning anything at that conference.
Sometimes—I’ve learned about myself—I am really high maintenance in the emotional department. I can be dark and brooding, and I am sure it is difficult to be my friend. However, I am so thankful for those people who stick by me and who keep me laughing (or at least smiling) when I really question why I am here at all. I’m not saying this to be melodramatic or to draw attention to myself, but I am saying it because I know there are others out there who feel the same way. I wonder probably too frequently what is the point of my existence, and before you think it, yes, I do love the existentialist writers, particularly Dostoevsky. I do know, somewhere deep down inside of me at all times: there is hope, there is help, and there is healing. I’ve experienced it again and again through my friends and through my faith. There is a purpose to all of this, but for me it’s difficult to understand.
I’ve learned that when my faith suffers, I suffer. When I get in a place like I was in November, that dark and scary place, I can’t feel God or connect with God in any meaningful way. Do I keep searching? Yes, but it feels as if I just keep finding nothing at the bottom of dark, dark hole. There aren’t many people who I know in my life who would admit to this feeling, but I am sure we all have it at least fleetingly. I think too much, I rationalize too much, and I don’t just “let go and let God,” as the cheesy saying goes. Well, I can’t do that. And I do think it’s cheesy. I prefer my theology with a dose of reason and my faith with a dose of doubt. Though I am in a much better place now than I was in November, I still wouldn’t say I’m a bucket of sunshine and rainbows. Full of hope, but realistic about it.
One of the books I read over break, which had nothing to do with my dissertation, but which helped me to think about my faith in new ways was An Unquenchable Thirst by Mary Johnson. The book is basically about her long struggle as she lived as a Missionary of Charity for twenty years of her life. Many of her theological struggles are mine, many of her relational struggles are mine, and many of her solutions are mine as well. The place where the book challenged me the most was near the end. Johnson leaves the Church: “I don’t tell Father Bob about the still, small voice I heard within. Look inside yourself, the voice said. God is like the best parts of you. From there it was a short step to God is the best parts of you. [. . .] I tell him that the freer I become, the more beautiful I grow” (522). I am not sure that I can follow her to the point of leaving the Church, but I can certainly respect her ideas and would love to bring them into the Church. From her story, I can only imagine her being able to relate to God in such a manner (one without the presence of hierarchical church structure). In many respects the Church has made God out to be the best parts of it, so why as individuals can’t we believe that God is the best parts of us? The peaceful, loving, grace-filled, compassionate parts of us. Near the end of the book Johnson writes about the way most people remember Mother Teresa as being filled with joy, almost nonhuman in her joyfulness: “I feel odd to prefer the human to the perfect; maybe that’s why I don’t fit anymore. I want earth, not heaven” (523). I think I must be super selfish, because I want both.
I find that when I keep a balanced perspective about theology, when I realize that some of my understanding of heaven comes from Scripture, and that much more comes from experiencing God’s love (and human maliciousness) here on earth, I can relate to God much more clearly. Just this morning, after four days of “retreat,” I was finally able to pray again (it’s been a long time coming), to feel as if God heard my thoughts, heard my prayers. I felt as if I was literally in the presence of God. As I prayed for others, I felt their names, their faces, their difficulties come rushing forward to meet my lips. This experience wasn’t from me, but was it from God? Do I owe this to some divine breakthrough or is it more the fact that I am just relaxed? Have I just given myself enough self-care to be open enough to be in the presence of God? Have I tricked myself with contemplation and incense? Have I tried harder this week and somehow tricked myself into feeling God’s presence? Is it the beauty of the snow? Is it having time? Is it the lack of stress? Is it an emotional spoke in my menstrual cycle? These are the questions I ask myself when I start to feel to deeply and can no longer rationally explain my theological ecstasy. I want both the rational and the completely irrational, the earth and the heavens, the justice and the grace. I want to enjoy the mystery. God, I want.
The ideas you find here are solely mine, but I have made every attempt to give credit to any sources I may have used. You should not associate the opinions or ideas written in this blog with my employer, colleagues, or peers. Nothing that you read here is meant in any way to represent anyone else's opinions or ideas, nor is it meant to cause injury to anyone else.
Reason Breeds Insanity 