20 Years and Counting, Sabbatical 2010

I just returned from two wonderful weeks of Sabbatical in Arizona—two weeks by myself exploring new territory by myself. What a difference 20 years can make.



I began (really began) following Christ 20 years ago. My daddy had died, my husband had left, and my children were grown up enough to have begun leaving home. And I met the Living Christ. I had known Jesus all my life, but in 1990, I received an invitation to “follow me” that has changed my life.

It all began with a question I asked him, “Who the heck are you, anyway? Will the real Jesus please stand up?” I’ve laughed over that question for a long time now. It seems Jesus is still standing up! Who knew how little I really knew about him.

Then a funny thing happened about 10 years ago. It was as if Jesus stopped, turned around, and said to me, “Will the real Sheila please stand up! Just who the heck are you, anyway?! Who do you want to be? You have a part in your own becoming!”



That’s what this Sabbatical was all about, reflecting on the last 20 years, and the changes in my life that have come about as a direct result of following Jesus.

I was reading my Engaging Scriptures verses this morning, from Matthew 10, and my eyes fastened on verse 39: Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

20 years ago, I began the process of “losing” my life. I thought I knew so much then—I knew who Jesus was. I knew what it meant to be a “good” Christian. I knew what it meant to be a good wife and mother, and a good witness. I was good at being good. One of the first verses that Jesus gave me to learn was Galatians 1:10: Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Now, you’re talking to a really good “people pleaser”. I had tried for 40 years to do it “right”, and to make everyone happy. And I had no clue how much of myself I had given up in the process. But the first thing it seemed Jesus did was draw a line in the sand and say, “Sheila, if you’re going to really follow me, you’ll have to make up your mind that pleasing people will not be on your agenda anymore.” Who knew?

And I prayed one of those radical commitment prayers (rcp) way back then, “Lord I want to trust you so much that I’ll follow you even if it looks like I’m going the wrong way.” Those rcp prayers are prayers that you’d never pray if you knew the outcome!

In the process of finding out who Jesus was/is, and finding out who I am, everything got turned kind of topsy turvy, and I lost both Jesus and myself a few years back. Everything got really dark, and I realized how little I knew about myself or about him. Everything I knew about everything got shaken—even my foundations were shaken until I wasn’t sure I could even call myself a Christian anymore. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to call myself a Christian anymore.

Slowly but surely the pieces of the puzzle have fallen back into place. Jesus doesn’t really look the same to me anymore. Like the Magdalene, I’ve learned I can’t hold onto my favorite “form” of Jesus anymore. And Sheila certainly isn’t the one I knew 20 years ago. Following Jesus has changed everything: my life, my faith, my politics, my hopes and dreams. I’ve discovered to my surprise that I LIKE living on the edge! I’m smart, too—not genius, not really, really smart, but a whole lot smarter than I ever thought I was. And curious?! O my gosh, I’m curious. I seriously didn't know I was curious! And I have this tendency to do exactly what I’m told NOT to do. I love pushing the envelope. And that “pushing the envelope” has tended to rattle not only my cage, but sometimes those around me. But a friend told me several years ago not to give up on Christianity—that there was a lot more to it than what I knew from my short-sighted perspective. The last two weeks has given me time to see just what has changed in my life.



Since I drove myself to Arizona, I had lots of driving time and I had the chance to listen to some wonderful conversations I had downloaded from the Evolutionary Christianity website with Michael Dowd. I remember the first time I wrote the word “evolution” in my journal probably 12 years ago. I kept waiting for lightening to strike, but it didn’t. I love what the new science is revealing to us about the Universe/God/the Pregnant Void. I “yeehawed” may way through at least 10 of these conversations literally shouting “YES” in my car all the way to Arizona and back home. There is so much MORE to “God” than I ever imagined, and a so much more expanded way to read Scripture, and such a larger point of view than I could ever realize.

And I perused through a number of books while I was there in Pine—what else does one do with so much snow and 4 days of solitude??? My favorites were a Wisdom trilogy by Cynthia Bourgeault: The Wisdom Jesus, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, and The Wisdom Way of Knowing.



What I found in my listening and reading experience is that Christianity has the potential to being HUGE! Years ago I heard a “prophetic word” from a Kansas City pastor: “The face of Christianity will change in one generation.” It IS! From the very, very old ancient way of knowing to this new huge evidential way of knowing, the Holy is being revealed again to us in our time. And we get to be in the thick of it! Watching it unfold is an amazing thing! It’s been said that we are both hospice worker and midwife—watching something die and helping give birth to something new.

Occasionally I wish we could get another name—sometimes I feel the word “Christian” has been so stigmatized and so abused that it hurts, and I confess, sometimes shames me. But I chose today to still call myself “Christian”. I so love the man Jesus and what he did and what his life is still doing today—what he’s still calling us to.

So, 20 years later, I will firmly say, “This has been a great journey!” My life has expanded until sometimes I feel I’m about to burst. My ideas have been challenged, and my viewpoint has broadened. I LOVE being human. I LOVE living here on this beautiful blue planet called Earth. I LOVE finding Jesus in ALL people and ALL things. I LOVE being able to hear another’s religious views and NOT feel called to get them to change and be like me. I LOVE knowing there’s so much MORE, and that I don’t have all the answers. I LOVE the knowing that I don’t have to wait to die to find heaven—it’s here IN me and all around me. If I look with heart eyes, I’ll find heaven in you, too. I found heaven on I-10 in West Texas, in the deserts of Arizona, in the mountains, in those awesome spiritual vortices (red rocks) around Sedona, and I saw heaven in the most gorgeous sunrise yesterday, right here on my own deck.



My challenge isn’t to judge someone else’s life and their salvation; my call is to do my own work and let Love transform me, trusting everything else to that Consciousness that’s so much bigger than me.

I sat in church this morning and pondered for a few minutes just how delicious to me it is to have roots in the very, very old wisdom way, and to have wings to fly and explore the new. What a paradox life is. And what a joy it is to live it following Jesus—and unexpected challenge and pleasure. I’m glad he calls me Beloved—I am his and he is mine.

I found this little poem before I left for Arizona:

I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
John O’Donohue

When I got to Spirit Falls, Bhodi (my host) gave me this book to look through:




On the back cover was a quote that became my mantra for the week as I saw my “plans” being dealt the death blow: Everything is unfolding exactly as it should.

Perhaps my life HAS been carried like a river by its own unfolding, and guess what, I AM surprised!

Sabbatical 2010, Day 2

December 23, 2010

The day started early; I woke up about 5, thinking “Blinded by the Light…”

Here we are in Advent, looking for the Light, and when we find it (or it dawns on us), it can blind us. Makes me grateful for slow sunrises—but even those, at their apex, can blind us. I wrote a very long poem a few years back; I was reflecting on the “born again” experience and comparing it to an actual birth process—imagine coming from the darkness of Mother’s womb into the brightness of this big new world. All I want to do is close my eyes to protect them from the light. Not really sure where these reflections will lead today, but that’s what I woke up thinking about…

Morning prayer: Compel me to know your ways o Love; instruct me upon your path. Ps 25

I had a wonderful drive today. I was surprised, there’s hardly any “boring” strip of land, even from I-10. Beautiful hills, and almost mountains. I finally decided that I really should get off the Interstate, at least for a few minutes, so I detoured to “see” Ft. Lancaster Historical Park—o my gosh, what a beautiful sight.

First of all, I saw a real working Texas oil well,



then a deer, then another. I even had to stop my car for the second, as the 4-point buck bounded across the road, then leapt (with ease) over the fence. Shortly, I saw a sign, “HILL”, and another, “slow to 45”, so I did. And when I rounded the bend, what a beautiful sight I saw, a canyon! I was at the top, and the road was descending to the “fort” at the bottom.




The park wasn’t open yet, but the drive was breathtaking, unexpected, beautiful, miraculous!




Later I took another detour toward the Davis Mountains—not far, just far enough to enjoy the drive. Pulled over, had lunch and pulled out my paper and brushes. I was using Bienfang watercolor brushes, and the red “dumped”, but I loved it anyway. I played with the paints until a bee buzzed into my car, only about 15 minutes, but it was fun.





I arrived in El Paso at a little after 2. I’m just down the block from UTEP, where hubby went to school. It’s been a good day. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. It’s taken me two days to get across Texas, and tomorrow I’ll drive through two states in one day! I plan to go to midnight services tomorrow night in Tucson, then on to Pine Christmas day. The weather’s been great – what a gift!

Sabbatical 2010, Night 1, Sedona TX

Mother and I left home this morning about 8 and drove (with Tom meowing in our ear) to Columbus, where I passed Mother and Tom off to Sandy. She will continue on to Leander and spend a couple of weeks there with my brother Marshall and his wife Sandy.

Then I continued my drive to Sedona. It was a wonderful drive--I forget how absolutely beautiful the hill country is, even on the Interstate.

There's a couple of things I want to do every day--one is post an update and a quote; the other is sketch or draw something along the way. So, that's the reason for my rough drawing--suitcase and shoes at rest. Me, too. I have a feeling it will be an early night. But before I sign off, I want to log in my quote for the day. I'm nearly finished with Cynthia Bourgeault's The Wisdom Jesus. It has been a delicious book. This morning I read this wondeful quote from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightes us is, in the deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."

So, I'm off for the night. I'll check in again tomorrow.

Anyone who knows me knows I've struggled with Christmas for many years now, but I'm really learning to love Advent.

I wasn't raised with Advent,and never experienced it until I spent my time in the Catholic Church. I tried to celebrate it the usual way, with wreaths, calendars, special prayers, etc., but that never really worked for me. Advent for me is praying with my art.

Way back in 2003, my artwork came back to me--I think Mary gave it to me. I hadn't touched anything resembling art supplies in years--too busy chasing God, but in 2003, toward the end of November, I began dreaming of mandalas, so I began working with them. That was my journey back into art work, and without me realizing it, it was my introduction to praying with art. And I didn't realize then that I was in the Advent season.

Advent 2003 didn't find me any closer to they Mystery of Advent--it was still just a season on the calendar. But slowly, I've come to notice over the past few years, that Advent brings me a precious slowing down (even in all the hustle and bustle). Something begins to pull me back, slow me down, and turn me in. Last year, Andy said it--Don't struggle with Christmas; celebrate Advent. Look for the Light. So I did. Last year was an art journal. Look back a year on this blog, and you'll find it. This year, it's icons. I had the privilege of sharing my love for icons (something else I discovered during my time in the Catholic Church) with our Christian Formation class last week, and I knew I wanted to paint an icon. It's not egg tempera--may never be, but it is on wood, and I did "real" gold gilding! That was an experience! And I've thorougly enjoyed the experience of working quietly and meditatively this week. This has always been my favorite icon: Christ Pantocrator. This image is supposed to be the "sterner" image, but I love it.

Now, the paints go up, and the studio gets put back in some kind of order, and I won't use it again until next year. I leave next week on Sabbatical. I plan on doing some art while I'm gone, but in small doses. So, I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas. O, by the way, I read something this past week that made me stop in my tracks. Did you know that WE are the reason for the Season??? Because God loved us, Jesus came.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Merry Yule to all my friends!

A Thinker's Favorite Thing - Thinking!

Fantasize – to create, to imagine, to have daydreams, to indulge in fantasy (imagination or fancy, especially wild, visionary fancy), unnatural or bizarre mental image, more-or-less connected series of mental images usually involving some unfulfilled desire…

The last definition, that’s the one I think best describes what my mind used to do—indulge in a more-or-less connected series of mental images usually involving some unfulfilled desire.

So, yesterday afternoon as I pulled dead grass, weeds and wild berry vines out of my “flower” beds, I spent the whole time thinking.

Think – to form or have in mind, to conceive, to hold in one’s opinion, to judge, consider, surmise, determine, resolve, work out by reasoning, to purpose or intend, to form an idea, to recall and consider, to have the mind moved steadily toward, to reflect and remember, to discover, invent, or conceive, to work out, solve, or plan.

For the better part of my first 40 years, I spent most of my “down” time fantasizing the “what if’s” of my life, imagining often how it should have been or could have been, you know, if only…

But this last 20 years has been spent, for the most part, thinking. And there is a difference, a huge difference.

Perhaps a thinker fantasizes when she’s convinced there’s nothing “more” for her. Perhaps a thinker’s fantasies begin when her curiosity is truncated and her questions answered with, “Because I said so”, or “That’s just the way it is”, or even, “Because the Bible says so.” Those answers to questions tend to close the book. There’s nothing left to do but fantasize.

So, why am I going here? Why am I writing all this down? Why do I even want to think about this and write my thoughts down?

“Idol thoughts are the devil’s workshop.” Wow, where did that come from? That was not a statement heard in my house when I was growing up. But thoughts outside the norm or questions (especially regarding God and/or faith) weren’t especially well received, and the answers I received most often were the ones given above. And I have heard that old quote before.

As for women? Ever since Eve, we’ve been pretty much been identified with the devil’s workshop, and our thirst for knowledge was what started this abomination of sin anyway. Unfortunately, not much in our Scripture encourages a woman to think. Especially Paul, bless his heart. A woman’s head was to be covered, and her mouth was to be closed. Her husband was her “answer man”, and only in the privacy of her home. And what about Paul? Well, Paul was our hero when I was growing up.

When I entered the Catholic Church at the ripe old age of 52, several people there asked me a question that really got my attention. “Why is it that Protestants and Evangelicals quote Paul all the time or preach from Paul’s letters? The sermons are rarely from the Gospels, and no one quotes Jesus.” You know, they have a point.

Paul didn’t seem to particularly highly regard the opinions of women. And what Paul wrote mattered, a lot. His thoughts, opinions, and revelations filtered into my culture: a woman’s place is in the home, and her God-ordained “job” is to care for her husband and children, submitting to him in all things, of course. You know, “the little woman standing behind her man” thing.

If you’ve listened to me much over the last few years, you probably already know this is one of my sticking points. I don’t believe Paul’s opinions were always “revelation from God”. Dammit, I think a good many of them were just his opinion, patriarchal opinions at that. The God I’ve come to know and love gave me a brain, a mind. My God encourages me to expand my mind, to gather knowledge, to think, grow, and fully experience life. My God blesses a woman’s questions and her thinking mind. And the God I know doesn’t demand we check our thinking minds at the door and “just believe by faith”.

So, off my rant, and back to yesterday. What got me started on the joys of thinking until my thoughts ran their course? What got me to asking questions until there were no more answers?

Maybe it’s Karen Armstrong’s new book, The Case for God. Maybe it’s Karen Armstrong herself. She’s just a smart woman. She’s intelligent. She’s an intellect.

You know, when I was growing up in East Texas, the word “intellect” was almost as bad as the “n” word. When a person was called an “intellect”, it wasn’t a compliment—it was rather spit out through clenched teeth and implied “uppity know-it-all”. And to mention “intellect” in the same breath as Christian? Well, there was no doubt which one was the obscenity. Today, I kind of look at that in wonder. What were we so afraid of? Why was it so much better to “have believing faith” than to be a thinking “intellect”?

Something shifted in my psyche a number of years ago when I learned a little something about the word “heresy”. That word comes from an old French word, “haeresis”, which indicated a school of thought, and an old German word, “hairein”, to take. Somewhere along the line, if a person began to think for themselves and to think outside the box, they became a heretic. What’s wrong with that picture?

So far, I think my favorite parts in Armstrong’s book have been her discussion of Socrates (wow, I really like that man!), and her chapter on Silence. I’ve learned something in my own “thinking” experience. It’s one thing to think and be challenged until your thinker zzzzztttt’s out and you come to silence, and it’s a whole ‘nother thing to “be silenced”. Socrates challenged his pupil’s until they came to silence, to “unknowing”. To sit with Socrates, to ask him questions, to come and sit at his feet was to know you were going to be undone. And “undone” is good. Jesus has done that to me quite a number of times. Paul just makes me mad, but Jesus challenges me, over and over again, until I’m “undone”.

Sit with Socrates long enough, and you wind up being pushed to silence. Sit with Jesus long enough—silence. Moses discovered that visiting often with God invited him to silence. So did Job. Armstrong points out that the burning bush was Moses’ initiation into God, but he eventually wound up in a “cloud of unknowing” at the top of a mountain, in utter darkness, completely speechless before God.

Have you ever been there? Speechless, completely undone? I have. I called it a “loss of faith”. For nearly three years, sitting in darkness, scared to death that I had sold my life out for nothing. Where was God? What was I supposed to do with this man called Jesus?

Either my eyes have become accustomed to the dark, or dawn seems to be coming. Haven’t gotten a lot of answers to my questions I’ve asked over the last 20 years, but I am getting more comfortable living without answers. And, if I come to an easy answer, I let the questions fly, and my thoughts dig until my mind zzzztttttts out again, knowing that no knowledge of God ever gives me pat, easy answers. Nothing in Scripture or in my own imagination ties God down to being what we think God’s supposed to be, or doing what we think God’s supposed to do. My knowledge of God never lets me get away with being angry at my brother or ostrizing “sinners”—you know, loving them, but hating their sin. In fact, the God I know doesn’t let me get away with “us” and “them”. When I sit with God and my thinker, I usually find it all coming back to me…my opinion of others, my anger, my resentment, my culturally-acceptable norms. The only one that sends another to hell is me, and I find that the only plank that needs to be removed from an eye is usually the one in my own eye. Jesus never lets me sit very long and accuse the other. Instead, he reminds me to search my own heart. Like Socrates, Jesus reminds me often that the unexamined life isn’t worth living.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve met up with those who would remind me where I come from, and with love in their hearts and great concern, they would try to lead me back to the “truth” I’ve strayed from. They usually quote a lot of Scripture to me. I don’t mind. I’ve been there, and I’ve done the same thing. But I won’t go there anymore. Armstrong says it well in one of her discussions of Augustine, Scripture and science:

“…It would be absurd to interpret [certain] text literally. God had simply accommodated the truths of revelation to the science of the day so that the people of Israel could understand it; today a text like this must be interpreted differently. Whenever the literal meaning of scripture clashed with reliable scientific information, Augustine insisted, the interpreter must respect the integrity of science or he would put scripture into disrepute. And there must be no unseemly quarreling about the Bible. People who engaged in acrimonious discussion of religious truth were simply in love with their own opinions and had forgotten the cardinal teaching of the Bible, which was the love of God and neighbor. The exegete must not leave a text until he could make it “establish the reign of charity,” and if a literal understanding of any biblical passage seemed to teach hatred, the text must be interpreted allegorically and forced to preach love.”

And it’s kind of hard for me to go back to a literal interpretation of the Bible, when I’ve come to love and respect story, mythos, allegory. O my how much bigger Scripture has become when I’ve let it be what it is—a growing revelation of God to a people, a story told orally for many centuries before every being set to pen, truth, not fact. So I don’t feel compelled to argue my case from Scripture anymore. I’d always “lose” anyway. I’d rather just let it be what it is--another chance to sit with Jesus for a while and ask him questions. Let him reveal my heart, my fears and my demands, then let him challenge me until my mind goes zzzzttttt…and my heart softens, and I come away in silence again.

New Painting - Emerging

I've been working on this for the last couple of days. It's done from one of my SoulCollage(r) cards, and it's painted in acrylics. I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. Inside all of us as women is a young one emerging, as well as an older, hidden one who helps us along: maiden, mother and crone. I also thought of my grandaughter who's definitely emerging, with her mother and her grandmother nearby. We become who we are by standing on the sholders of those who've gone before. I think I heard that somewhere!

Namaste!

PS, a later addition

She Is

Maiden, Mother, Crone
Cocooned, Emerging, Guiding
Daughter, Mother, Grandmother
Seeker, Birther, Wisdom...

She Is

October's Journal Pages

You know, sometimes we get too busy or too distracted to plug into our creative side on a regular basis, so it really helps to have an incentive. Our 3rd Act crones are working on collabrative journals over the course of a year, so each month I have an extra "push" available. This month, I was given 4 white pages to be creative on--it's usually only two, so this was really cool. And I had so much fun.

What's really neat about these journals is there's no plan when we begin. All of us have talked about how special it is that the Muse shows up and something wonderful happens with each journal. This month, it seems Spirit was speaking: "Wake up, and stay awake!" It's good to be reminded.