Paying Attention in November-Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving

I absolutely cannot believe it is Thanksgiving again. I am so sure it was just last week that I wrote about last year's community service and my silly dinner events;that it was the month of daily gratitude posts. But here we are. Tonight was the community Thanksgiving service. It's one of my favorite things here in my little world, and it serves as kind of a marker for me in this community. Tonight was really pretty amazing. It was held in the big Catholic church, the same one it was in the first year I attended, shortly after I moved out here. I remember sitting there in that big church that first year, all alone. I looked around me and wondered if I would ever belong in this place, ever fit in. I remember feeling very, very alone. In every subsequent year I have been more a part of this service, singing as part of a community choir, doing a reading, then being part of the clergy presence. This year, I was one of the service planners. I read, our choir sang and, the best part, I got to give the blessing. Yep,I stood in the front of a huge Catholic church and got to bless people. That little Catholic girl in me that used to play Mass was jumping up and down so hard I could hardly contain her! It was really a lovely service. We had readings from Scripture and from history and some prayers and lots of music from various groups in the community. This was followed by bars and cider and coffee in the basement. God was of course happily and tangibly all over it! In the beauty of the music and the language and the fact that it was the Catholics and the Presbyterians and Lutherans and the Baptists and the Evangelicals and Episcopalians and the Methodists and the nondenominational community church folks all coming together to be thankful and mindful and prayerful and joyful in God's name and to take up an offering that will benefit those who are the least in our community in the coming year.

It's been a long day with a few too many things in it in a week that has been much the same...I am way beyond tired, but I wouldn't have missed this thing for the world. Church can just be the best fun sometimes.

Paying Attention in November-The Strugggle

I have been trying not to think much about the whole falling shoes business. There is no point to thinking about it. When last I heard from the "official world" there were ten similar situations on the desk, I was in the second five. This was the first desk. There are two more desks before we get to the decision place. Yep lots of hoops before we get anywhere near knowing anything. So I figure the back burner is a good place for this. I have done everything I can do except for the praying...and you all are doing splendidly in that department, too. I can tell. And I was doing pretty well with this. I had kind of stopped obsessing. I had started sleeping again, smiling again, having fun again. I have been thinking about other things, my newly interesting social life for example....which is way more fun to think about than this thing. Until today. Today I was hit with a new thing. Today I found out that I am going to have to disclose information about this thing to people that I would just as soon not have to.....While it is in process, before there are conclusions , I must say, "yep, there are shoes, they fell, here's the story, all the details...." It seems never to end, the consequences of what I did because it was the right thing, the only thing. My first response this morning was to just quit. I want to give up, run away, hang it up now. How many more surprises like this are there I wonder? There have already been so many costs to this thing. I am wondering what else I could do, what else I could love besides this job. Or maybe wanting to love it is asking too much. Having had that once....I should perhaps just be grateful. I know I can do other things, I have. I have in fact done lots of other things. All the way from managing a hardware store to professoring. I am resourceful, and I could find a way to do with less if I had to. I do not like this place. I want to be back where I was before this morning, back in the place of faith that said "no matter what." I also want to settle back into being ok with not knowing and not feeling like I have to act. I really don't want to do anything stupid....like tender a resignation, pack up the dog and run off into the sunset!

It is almost Advent. Advent is very up there for favorite liturgical season. Usually I love the waiting, the sense of anticipation. This year I'm not so sure. Anticipation hasn't been my favorite thing of late. I've ordered an Ignation Exercises book I plan to start in Advent. I've started daily yoga again. The intentions are good. I have started asking God very directly for a good ending for this thing. As I've said before that has not been my prayer style. But desperate times, you know. Way back at the beginning I was told that if everything went very very fast I could know something very early in the new year. If that were to happen, and the outcome is the best possible one, it could mean a great deal to me in some very important ways. So that is what I am asking for. And hoping. God is holding my life. Yes, I know. In the fear and the darkness, in the pain and frustration. The faithheart knows while the rest of me is having my little meltdown. I think it might be time to find my wing and head for that back burner again.

Paying Attention in November - Coming Around Again

Finally! As I put my key in the lock of the red door this morning I had that sense of coming home after being too long gone. It's been six weeks since I had preached or celebrated--the longest interval since ordination. As always, I was in early to have that time of peace and quiet. Time to fold and stuff, organize and fuss and this morning, time to just sit. I needed that time. It was a full weekend, full of fun social things that brought me God's grace in many ways. But sometimes there is need of this direct time, unmitigated by anything else. Just God, me and the silence.

I knew it would not be for long. The organist and the choir would come, and with them the teenage granddaughter playing the flute today and the toddler grandsons for the Sunday school. And soon the altar guild person, the acolyte, the lector...each with a greeting, a comment, a question. But for this little time, silence was.

By the time the processional started I was not touching ground. Practicing the anthem, running the hymns, greeting folks, seeing people come....old and new, I could feel the joy in me growing. As the service began and I looked out at the congregation assembled there, I realized anew I much I do love these people whose lives God has joined with mine. They are such a varied mix, young and old, long time members, Episcopalians since birth, mixed with folks who are visiting with us for the second or third time and for whom church is a new and actually kind of dicey prospect. L is there every Sunday now and this of course is a great joy to me. He often brings along a friend or two. Our kid population is growing too, we had six for the once a month Sunday school today!

The singing, the praying, the preaching, the chance to offer the bread of heaven to these hungry souls....each precious moment felt very new and special again. God's presence was so tangible it almost overwhelmed me at times. More than once the tears almost came. Perhaps it is good to take breaks to appreciate things anew. Clearly it is good to be back where I belong.

Note: A version of my sermon from today can be found at the The Feminist Theology Blog

Paying Attention in November-Turning the Corner

I'm not sure what exactly has occurred, but I seem to have turned some corner. I don't know if it is simply the passage of time, or grace or the presence of something new to think about, or the fact that even I can only worry about something for so long, but I seem to have just....let it go a little. It started with the weekend when I slept through the night and woke up rested. It was not a fluke. I have continued to have better nights and more peaceful mornings. Sunday morning my first conscious waking thought truly was "God is good...all the time." And I have a sense of feeling "lighter" in some way about things. Nothing has changed, no word has come from "officialdom" about my future. But somehow it matters less. Maybe it is because I am having a little fun, or choosing to look for the positive. Perhaps I was just getting really, really tired of being in that lost and anxious place. Or maybe my heart finally won over my brain...with a little help from God and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Soul Sisters dove into Discipleship tonight. Unfortunately for most of the group, it was not a happy swim. Soul Sister C was not with us as she is off visiting her son, but S and A did not find Bonhoeffer to their liking at all. This came as a let down to me as I am finding this book to be such a gift, and I do think what I've read there has something to do with what is going on right now for me. I resonate so strongly with what he says, I feel affirmed by Bonhoeffer's theology, that my own difficult experience is contextualized, validated and given greater meaning by understanding it as part of a work of discipleship grounded in grace. What he says makes sense to me and excites me. It's visceral. I want, as I said to the SS's, to roll in this book like a dog in grass, to apprehend it with all of my being. They on the other hand feel let down by the message. They find him "dry and churchy." Sigh.

I wish that I could articulate theology better, to help them understand how it is that this works for me. "Explain it to us, Kate," they say. "Tell us how it is you understand this." And I cannot. I only know what is in my heart. And for that sometimes, words are simply not enough.

Paying Attention in November-Gratitude

This time last year I was spending a whole month just being grateful. Every day I was finding things to be thankful for, and it changed my life. This year that would be a much bigger challenge as life is a little pinchier, a little closer to the bone than it was 365 days ago. And yet...if I look just a little, I can surely find things to be grateful for now as well. Indeed in some ways that is part of what makes this thing so very painful--the fact that I love my life here so very much and do not want it to change or end. But today I have been thinking about the things I am thankful for, kind of having my own private Thanksgiving, a little early.

So I am officially grateful for:

• My wonderful boss who has had my back in all that has been happening, who asks how I am doing in all of this and who tonight took me along to a local event, just because she thought I might need a little outing with the girls
• Her boss who similarly has made a point of telling me of her support and belief in me
• All of the love and support and prayers of my fabulous friends IRL and in blogland who have called and e-mailed, commented and hugged, left blogstones, spent time, left notes, provided perspective, made me laugh again and just generally let me know that you all are here and I am not alone with this stupid pile of shoes. You are all God's gifts to me
• L's safe return to the world
• My congregation who has just rolled with me for the last nine months and seem to just accept me
• Date nights
• Smaller clothes
• People who watch my back just because we are all in this place together and they care
• My courageous clients who manage to go on in the face of odds that would simply knock me over, and who teach me the greatest life lessons every day.
• Yoga (and the return of the daily practice)
• Books
• Paint and my new found courage to play with it
• For the fact that this Sunday I finally get to celebrate the Eucharist again....six weeks has been way too long.
• That I have not despaired and, despite fear, my faith heart has continued to prevail in leading me back to my Wing where I find my safety in the surety that indeed God has my life.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is for today what comes to mind. Thanks be to God.

Paying Attention in November-Thoughts on Fear

I have been thinking about fear today. The slave in this morning's Gospel who buried his talent, certainly that is where he was coming from. And since fear has been such a strong theme in my life lately, it got me thinking about how I might be "burying" or constraining myself as a result of my own fear. I feel it in myself...this unwillingness to risk, to live as flagrantly as I might once have done, even when I know something is the right thing to do. I did start reading Bonhoeffer. And like at Convention, suddenly there is a larger context here. The choices I make, the actions I take, they are part of something larger, or perhaps ought to be more consciously so. The choice I made that ended up landing me in my little puddle of hot water pales before the life and death of the camps. And yet I do find myself asking myself now and again...."if I had known, if I had known..." Because Bonhoeffer did have that at least, a fairly clear sense of how much trouble his resistance would cause. I don't know if that is better or worse. If someone had said to me, "Kate, if you do this......shoes will fall. No doubt it is the right thing to do anyway, but be warned, it could have these consequences..." would I have said "I am still doing it because Jesus said this is what we are to do and I am following Jesus?" Or would I have been as afraid as I am now and have buried the idea, kept silence, let someone else figure it out, cut and run.....

The fear now is an ugly thing. It makes me smaller and narrower. Like the slave, I bury things that I am given rather than investing or sharing them or flinging them out there to see what would happen if they landed on good soil and took root and grew. I find myself holding back from love, protecting my heart from those it would naturally go out to. My light is not shining, I am not salt or yeast. As I read next Sunday's Gospel, this gives me great pause. Because as always when we do not do the Gospel work, of course it is the least who suffer. The poor in body or mind or spirit, the ones who need us most. The ones my fear locks me away from. It is a vicious circle. And only I can can end it--with God's help of course. But God will not force my hand. I must chose. The talent was handed to me. What will I do with it? Time will tell.

Paying Attention in November...Riding the Life Coaster with God

For the first time in a very long time I slept well and did not wake up in a panic in the middle of the night. When I did finally come to this morning, it was not in my typical state of anxiety and sadness. I might have even been smiling a little as I woke and said a prayer of thanks for just an easy, delightful night of fun conversation, laughter and feeling just....well...good!

It was particularly needed yesterday as there had been some things in the day that had brought me face to face with the whole lurking life event yet again in a way that was particularly painful. I'm afraid if it had been a night alone it would have been really tough. But as it was, I found that over six hours went by in which, other than filling R in a little bit about what's been going on, I didn't think about it all! I have to think of course that all of this is no accident. God is all over it. I had been thinking about that little "nudge" to R for a long time, but I was reluctant for all sorts of what turn out to be silly reasons. So I finally did a really sensible thing and prayed about it and kept getting a sense that it really was the right thing to do....and finally did. I also prayed to be a little more courageous and transparent and authentic when I was with him...and of course God came through on that front, too. We were both able to say some things about our histories and our fears, our boundaries and expectations that created a good basis for a beginning friendship.

Today has been a good day too. A little work, a little play, some time conversing with a friend, nothing too pressing. Time to savor some good memories. It was kind of an early Sabbath. Tomorrow is forecast to be warmer, so after church the plan is to clean the gutters. Not my favorite pastime, but one that needs to be done--and time is seriously running out, I'm afraid. But for the rest of the night, it's dinner and knitting and a little Bonhoeffer, as we start Discipleship this week in Soul Sisters and I have to get my first chapter read. Dinner is the rest of last night's Mexican, so that will be easy. So that's next on the agenda. For tonight in this moment, all really is well. Thanks be to God.

Paying Attention in November-Back to the Future WW Version

Well as of this morning, as a lifetime member of Weight Watchers, I could return to meetings for free, as I have once again reached my "goal weight." Not that I necessarily want to go there at this point, but it just kind of struck me as interesting, the way things kind of come around and go around in life.

In the three years or so prior to my move across the state I was a faithful WW member and had lost a whopping 132 pounds. I had a great group and a wonderful leader, and the support I found in that program was a great part of my success. I had maintained my loss for about six months prior to my move, and kind of thought I was "over the hurdle" when I moved out here. I was wrong. The group here was very different. The leader somehow could not understand why I wanted to come every week. She seemed to have the attitude that since I wasn't paying (as a "Lifetime" member I got to come free) I was simply taking up valuable chair space, and that there should be no reason for me to "need" to be there. She made it clear that she did not want to hear my opinions about things...she was the leader and no newcomer upstart should be offering tips or suggestions to her meeting. So needless to say after a couple months of this warm and loving treatment, I stopped going. Now I am not blaming her for my weight gain. But anyone who has been in this struggle knows that accountability is important. And I had lost mine. And then we factor in a new place, loneliness and isolation and the fact that I was an emotional eater...a recipe for extra pounds! I was managing to hold the line for a while through getting a lot of exercise until I was thrown off a horse at my riding lessons. Unable to sit on my posterior even for yoga for several months....they started creeping back, and by the time I had been here four years, half those pounds had found me again. As of today they are gone. Ever since my ordination two years ago I have been losing weight. It's partly desire and effort and partly the "side effect" of a medication that has suppressed my appetite, which I do not complain about, believe me! And I have to admit, lately, it's been a lot about stress as well. The girl who used to eat when upset is now a person who can't eat when upset. Who knew this could happen!

So in honor of this return at long last to the WW magic number, yesterday I went to the local clothing store where there was a 50% off sale and had me a little retail therapy, purchasing a flirty little top for future date nights (hope springs eternal), a sweater and pants, all in a size that is six down from the one I was ordained in a little more than two years ago! When I started this process the first time I did not have a number in mind. The program gave me one. I don't have one this time either, and I'm not saying I am "done" now. I started out with the idea that I would "just try it and be curious about the results" then and it worked and I have been that way this time and plan to continue with that plan as it seems to be working so far. I do like my new clothes though....especially that top. Now if I just had someplace to wear it.

Paying Attention in November-Before and After

I look at him and I wonder if he ever thnks about his before Before life got so complicated, before he had all those other people to answer to, before the labels, before things started to go down this path instead of that one. Because I think about my before. Before complications, before questions, before I decided that one choice had to be made, never imagining what the cost would be. I wonder sometimes, had I been given the gift of foresight would I have made the same choice, felt the same need to do the same things? I'd like to think so, because no matter what the outcome, it was still the right thing in that moment. It was, by my best discernment what I was called to do in that situation. And when it comes down to it, what else can we do but what we beleive we are called to?

Our lives are linked,his and mine, in some way that I certainly did not plan, did not choose. It was a simple Bible study. He was there and I was there and God connected our lives. It was very clear to me that I was to go back and see him. I did not want to particularly. I don't like jails. But it was very clear that this was simply an....expectation. So I went. And went again. And over time a bond formed between this unlikely pair....the streetwise beyond his years young man and the definitely no-so pastor....and always, always....God was there. Through jail and the house and the apartment and jail and now out again it is always God who connects us to ourselves and each other, who holds us both in the dark places and the joyful times. It really is very simple. Really.

Paying Attention in November-On the Hard days

Mornings are definitely the hardest times still. It is the first thing that hits me when I wake up, this unfinished business, this thing that hangs over my life and stands to alter it forever. This thing over which I have no power. I have been dreaming a lot since the falling shoes event. Complex and endless sagas full of interweaving plot lines full of complications and drama. I am often called upon to save someone or take some risk. I often wake up before I get to find out whether or not I succeeded at my quest. And when I wake up, it is there. The great unknown. I spoke to someone last week who is "processing" a piece of this. There will be no news any time soon..late December maybe, but more likely January sometime. That is a very long time.

Fear is a very sneaky thing. It just nibbles away in such tiny little bites that sometimes you don't even know its having at you. It whispers its little half truths so seductively that you can be lulled all the way into a new country of terror before you even know you left your safe home.

I'm afraid all of this is making me a bit bold with God. I find am pleading more in prayer. I don't know quite how I feel about that, but I guess I am certainly in good company throwing myself on God's mercy. I find myself asking for specific outcomes, not something I generally do in prayer, and I'm not sure how it sits with me, to tell the truth. But when I wake up and find myself at the same time crying and praying, it comes from where it comes from....and all I can do is pay attention.

Paying Attention in November-Sunday, Sunday

It was church, church and more church today....I started with the Presbyterians because my Soul Sister S's choir was having a Cantata and I like to go support my local friends when they are having stuff! Prior to going there I had stopped off at my place for a quick choir rehearsal for the Thanksgiving Eve Community Service at which we are singing, and to drop off my food for today's Harvest Feast. After worship with my Presby friends, I headed back for the feast. L was there with a new friend from CH. It was clear he was happy to be back among his church community and was getting a kick out of bringing us a new person. They both enjoyed the dinner and N says he liked our worship service and plans to come again.

After we were all well-stuffed, my fellow priest and team member M and I grabbed our vestments and headed up the highway to a neighboring town. We had been invited to participate in the installation of one of our colleagues, a Lutheran pastor, who is taking on a five point team ministry position. Our organist, who is also a friend of his, played organ and piano music for the service. M and I got to lay our hands on S with all the local Lutherans and it was generally just a lovely celebration. Afterwards, we all retired to the church basement for some good Lutheran coffee and an assortment of homemade Icelandic and other Scandinavian goodies, the names of which I cannot pronounce, never mind think about spelling.

So its been a rather ecumenical sort of day, full of music and prayers and fellowship of all sorts. God was present in the expected ways of course....in the prayers, the liturgy, the Eucharist at the installation service, in the moment when all of us gathered to lay our hands on S and bless his new ministry. There was then, as there often is in such moments a tangibility of Presence, a movement of Spirit energy that is just somehow more there. But God was also there in being able to look across the room and see L laughing with another member of my congregation, all dressed up in his suit for his first day back at church. God was there in the abundance of good food and laughter we shared as we ate together and enjoyed each others' company. God was there as we presented our Intercessor with a plastic-canvas cross-stitched United Thank Offering box that M and I found for her at Diocesan Convention. She tirelessly heads up our UTO drive year after year after year and when we saw the boxes we just knew she had to have one...they were just, well...cute like her! And right now I am finding God's peace in being home at last with nothing more to do, no place else to be for the rest of the day.

Paying Attention in November - Good News Edition

L is home! I got the news as I arrived at CH today that he was there, too! I hadn't heard from him for a few weeks but had heard through the grapevine that there was a chance he might be arriving there at least temporarily while he looked for a place. He is very thin, but oh so happy to be out in the world again. The staff was able to take him over to get his clothes from storage this afternoon, and tonight he was going to have a chance to call his mom who is recovering from cancer treatments. Sunday he will be back with his congregation for worship and we will be able to feed him up at our Harvest Feast. As always, it is ever so much better to see him in regular clothes and walking free! He brought amazing drawings that he did in jail and had many stories to tell. He also has every card and letter that anyone sent him and he totally lights up when he talks about how much he loved getting that mail from "RevKate's peeps." He's talking about the future, a job, school maybe, finding a place. He seems hopeful and positive, ready for a new start. As always, we are both so very grateful for your prayers.

Paying Attention...Quest for Fun Edition

6:00 p.m. In fifteen minutes I have a coffee date. Details to follow.....................

Later....the details. OK. It was I'd say about an 8.5 on the first date scale. He is nice, pleasant and polite. We talked work, politics, families and a little bit of below the surface stuff about ethics. We laughed a little. It was....comfortable. I will say this....there are certain advantages to having a job where I meet and talk to people all day long. It kind of makes dating a piece of cake, I just sort of fall into that mode and off we go! I also didn't feel very much like impressing anybody tonight....probably not a bad mindset for a first date either, all in all.

I was home about ten minutes and he called and wanted to know if I was free for lunch tomorrow. Uh-oh.

What is really just all too funny about this....Saturday night I went to a fundraiser with a friend. it was a dinner dance and I had no date to dance with. I left feeling pretty sorry for myself and was grumbling to God about it. I don't usually pray for specifics in my prayer life, but this time I did. I asked directly if I could please just have a date, and soon! God could I think be having a good laugh right now. Be careful what you ask for!

Paying Attention in November # 2

My clients truly are my teachers. The first person I saw this morning is one of my best. He never fails to make me laugh at least once when I see him. And he has taught me so much about compassion and forgiveness and moving beyond what afflicts you that sometimes it takes my breath away. V could so easily be a bitter angry man, given all that has happened to him, but instead he was telling me how he has decided that he feels compassion for his father who abused him, and that he realizes that if some of the hard things that have happened to him had not done so, he may not be the man he is. So he has come to peace with the events of his life, and on a good day, even feels gratitude for them. God was all over that hour.

Paying Attention in November

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now." Matthew 6:34a The Message

Given that the calendar is an arbitrary thing, and life has its own seasons that sometimes do or do not correspond, perhaps the simple change of a month need not determine a change of practice after all. The days called November may or may not bring news that will tell me anything about my future, as least as others have the power to determine it. They may have as much waiting and unknowing in them as did the days called October. It's likely that I will have as much need as ever to ask the question, "where is God in this, anyway?" So it may be a good thing to continue to develop this habit, this practice of just generally being on the alert, to be looking for God, not just in this hard thing, but in all things. Or maybe especially in all things, in other things.

It has been so easy to get consumed by this life predicament of mine. To see it as the only thing that matters, the only thing that is. Even as I write that, I feel more than a little chagrined with myself. While the world is going to h**l in a handbasket about the economy, a friend is suffering with pain over loss far greater than my own could ever be, I am having my own personal little meltdown. But there it is, it's simple truth, it's just hard to get past it sometimes, this incredible preoccupation that envelopes me. But I really want to try. I want to get bigger. I want to try to stretch myself to find God in more ways here. To try to get back to the original intention of this practice a bit and see if I can see how many ways God is doing things in my life and the world around me. I want to see if I can find some joy again. I want to take a leap of faith this month somehow and act as if I do believe what my faith heart says....that God is holding my life, that God's dreams for me are grounded in love, and that whatever comes....it will be some kind of well that I can, with God's help, live into.

A New Month

So somehow it got to be a new month. C asked me today what I was planning to do for November. I told her I was planning to avoid being hit by any more falling shoes, though I knew she was talking about the blog. Was I going to keep doing a daily post? Looking for God? Daily gratitudes like last year? Truthfully, I don't know. I don't feel a commitment in me at this point to anything, and yet I know that now more than ever spiritual discipline is vital to the health of my soul. I am treading spiritual water here and it would not be very hard some days to simply stop and let myself be sucked into the vortex that wants to claim me. I know I cannot let that happen and it would seem that being accountable by writing something daily in this interactive compassionate witness space would make the most sense as a hedge against that. The question is...what? Something as in anything, or something specific? Perhaps I should just keep on keeping on looking for God....it seems, after all to be working so far to hold me up in the darkness that is now. Any input will be gratefully received.

God Watching Day 31 The Final Edition

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now." Matthew 6:34a The Message

This was today's offering from Inward/Outward

Scattering New Blessings
by Edwina Gateley

Often we anxiously seek the will of God,
as if God had gleefully hidden dreams for us
deep in unfathomable places.
As if it were God's intention
that our whole lives be spent
in endless searching for signs and directions
buried in obscurity.
The will of God is that which brings us
peace and fullness of life.
The will of God is the seed of our dreams
ever gestating with possibility
and longing to leap forward
scattering new and surprising blessings
in our gray reality.

It was one of those things that I had to read and read again. It especially hit me in light of how scared I am right now and the struggle I am having with trying to believe in "all will be well" as something more than an abstract act of my faithful heart. I have been so amazed by the last several years of my life, how it's all come together. How I finally found all of these things that I love to do in a place that I like being with people I love...so many blessings scattered. God's will manifest? Apparently.

So my reality right now is indeed pretty gray. I cannot see the seeds of dreams nor do I feel that anything is gestating here. But then, as my former mentor priest used to say, "God is God and I am not, thanks be to God".....perhaps that is where God's dreams come in....God's dreams that are bigger than mine could ever be, able to see light in darkness, life in death.

So this is the end of the month of official watching for God. It was a little more intense than planned, a little more challenging. But I am grateful that I was looking for God on purpose as all this hard life stuff transpired. It kept bringing me face to face with that famous question "where is God in all this anyway?" I must have asked myself that a hundred times this month. And I kept finding the answer. In whatever it was, God kept showing up. Not always where I expected, not always where I wanted. But there. Always there. Because that is assuredly is what God is doing. Being there. So when God says, "Do not be anxious" there is a good reason not to. So said the faith heart to the worried brain at the end of the long month of watching God.

God Watching Day 30

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now." Matthew 6:34a The Message

My friend D read this wonderful poem at the closing prayer service at Diocesan Convention this weekend. Since I don't seem to have much to say tonight, I'd thought I'd share it with you.

Famous
by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

God Watching Day 29...Day's End

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now." Matthew 6:34a The Message

One breath at a time, one moment at a time, one prayer at a time....another day is passed. God is holding my life...my life is in God's care....I know with my faith heart that this means that all will be well. It's just my brain I am having having trouble with. The pictures it paints are dark and have nothing to do with any kind of "well" but look far more like the end of life as I know it, the loss of much that that gives meaning to my life. All will be well....yes I believe but what will well look like, and when will this well come?

I'm so glad not every day is like this one. I am grateful that it is over and praying for a better tomorrow.

God Watching Day 29...early post

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now." Matthew 6:34a The Message

I seem to be having a very hard day today. It's only just past noon and I have been in tears twice and have been close to one of those panic things and we won't even talk about my stomach and it's opinion on the whole affair. I have no idea what's up. Yes I had to do some "stuff" that connected me back with the thing, make a phone call to get some information, leave a message for another person...but these are the folks who are supposedly my advocates, so it's not like there was any real scary stuff going on. I suppose it was just the stir factor. And yesterday I spent about forty minutes in the presence of someone who is directly related to this business. Staring across a table in a meeting in fact. It was hard. Very. So I am having worry thoughts and anxiousness, struggling hard not to go to the worst case lose it all scenarios that my brain wants to create. I'm trying to hold on to a phrase that I heard in a lovely song that I listened to in a CD that a friend gave me, "God is holding your life." I'm trying to just let that hold me, to remember that my wing is always there to run to, and that I am beloved and called by God and prayed for by the greatest group of friends anyone could hope for.