sufjan, seven swans, and the love of God

I've been absent from my blog for a while, mostly because anything I would have wanted to write down was ultimately too personal for such a public space. It's been a time of purging for me, I think.

What I will share for now is a bit about one of my favorite artists Sufjan Stevens. This picture is from a concert of his I attended at Prospect Park. Here he is opening the night with his song Seven Swans. It was raining the entire concert, and I ended up having to go to the concert alone. The worst part, however, was a crazy fan behind me who kept screaming into my ear and singing along loudly off-key. Oh, and she was weeping between songs. I kid you not! Yes, I had to move away.

Something about Sufjan's music really speaks to me. Although he's received criticism for the new direction his album Age of Adz has taken, I find it very raw and relatable. The journey of life and faith is not always lightly strummed banjos and hushed voices. Sometimes it's loud chaos and questions. But, ultimately, as the song Seven Swans says, "He is the Lord," and when we run away, he will chase us because of his love for us.

I'm reminded of Psalm 139 (read it if you aren't familiar with it). The truth is, we can't really run from God even if we wanted to because God is everywhere. When we think we're running away from God, we're actually running to God.

I'm also reminded of the verses, Romans 8:38-39 (ESV):

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing can separate us. Yes, not even ourselves. Amen to that!

trust

These days I have been taking time to meditate on a single sacred word as part of my spiritual practice. So far I think I've chosen peace, hope, promise, and another word I'm not remembering. It's been interesting because each word tends to bring out a different kind of meditating experience.

Today I chose to meditate on trust. It was a struggle in the beginning to focus and be comfortable with silently meditating on the word. After a few minutes, I finally seemed to settle in, and that's when I started to cry.

If you've read my recent entries, you know that I'm working on addressing my fears. The opposite of fear would be trust, right? Yeah, well, I realize how difficult it is for me to trust God fully and completely. My trust it quite small, it seems.

As I sat meditating on the word trust, all the areas of my life where I don't trust God fully came to my mind. And in the midst of meditating on the word, I found myself praying that God would help me trust more fully...and that will mean doing things differently...and that's hard...which is why I need God to help me trust in God. It really is an utter dependence on the Divine.

Lord, have mercy.

a new look, a new pic

I decided to update my blog template, and I decided to unhide my profile. I had hidden my profile a few years back when I started my dating blog. Yeah, remember that thing? Well, I'm considering deleting my dating blog altogether. I mean, I know my friends were amused by all my dating disasters, but...I'm at a point where I don't find my stories funny anymore. I think they're just plain SAD. :-\ But, yeah, the new pic? That's my new online dating profile picture. LOL.

Okay...I will say a few things on this blog about how I feel about dating right now: It SUCKS. Dating in your late 30s as a woman? HARD. (Yes, I have accepted the fact that at 37, I have passed my mid-30s.) Dating as person whose career is ministry/chaplaincy? Complicated!

Yeah, okay, so my blog has a new look. My dating profile has a new pic. Maybe I need a new attitude. Poop.

fear and pride

I have been wanting to write a blog entry for a few weeks now, and I'm not sure how I can synthesize all my thoughts from the last month in a few paragraphs. I will try...

Since I last blogged I celebrated a birthday, sadly watched the building momentum I had with a new guy fizzle out, worried and prayed about my dad who suffered a stroke, welcomed the sunshine after a long and depressing winter, worried and prayed for a friend and her new baby, rode my bike a few times in the nearby park, had an incident with a man who had a hard time accepting "no", lost two pounds, struggled with loneliness, and changed my online dating profile picture.

I've also done some reading on the Enneagram and have discovered quite a bit about myself as a Two. Without going into all the details about being a Two, I will say is that some of the significant self-discoveries have been about my fear and pride. Apparently the root sin of the Two is pride. As selfless and as loving as we'd like to think ourselves to be, we tend to be martyrs and have a hard time forgiving those who don't appreciate our selflessness. There is also this tendency to think we deserve something for our goodness, and we have to come to terms with the fact that our altruistic efforts aren't really always so selfless after all.

In regards to work, I think I've matured a lot and believe that most of the time, I really do want the best for the other person. In regards to love, however, I realize I still have a long way to go. I realize I'm still deeply hurt and offended when someone I choose doesn't choose me back. It boggles my mind, really, that such a thing could happen. Yet here I am somehow unable to maintain a successful romantic relationship...so what does that mean?

Connected to the above, I realize how deep of a fear of rejection I have. My lifelong shyness is based on fear of rejection. It's better to be shy and not noticed instead of being open and then rejected. When I find myself stuck and unable to move forward in life, it's fear of rejection. I am realizing how at least some of my inability to move forward with building a denominational affiliation is the fear that they won't want me. If there is anything that I ever want deeply, being rejected from it will nearly destroy me...at least it feels that way. It sounds dramatic, and hopefully it's not as strong of a feeling as it has been in my life.

This whole process has made me wonder how secure I am in the love of God. If I really have that much fear still operating in my life, then it would seem I have very little understanding of God's love and my belovedness. Again, my pride tells me, of course I know God loves me! I've been a Christian forever! I tell other people God loves them all the time!

I desperately want to know what it means to have God as the Ground of Being. My being. Otherwise I'll continue to operate out of pride, fear, hurt, and pain instead of the love and freedom I have as a child of God.

friday is MY day

Friday is my birthday. I admit, I love celebrating my birthday. I know some people who try to keep their birthday on the down-low. I don't necessarily advertise it everywhere I go, but I certainly don't hide when I have a birthday coming up.

I realize one reason why I enjoy celebrating my birthday is that I feel like it's the one day of the year when I can legitimately make it about ME. I think part of the reason is that I have been taught throughout my life to always do for others, and so I spend a lot of time making it all about someone else. And, yeah, okay, it's all about God in the end, but still...

In my more recent adult life, I've been learning the importance of taking care of myself instead of always being self-effacing and, as a result, self-destructive. It's amazing how much damage I had done to myself thinking I was doing the "Christian" thing by always giving to others. My goal is to never give out of such emptiness again.

Celebrating my birthday is about celebrating me, and celebrating me is about celebrating life. Celebrating my birthday is about celebrating the person God has made me to be, and celebrating the person God has made me to be is about celebrating the God who made me.

I feel superbly blessed.

the theological wrestle

Things were far easier when I could wrestle with theological issues without it having a possible impact on my career. Wrestling with theological issues is far weightier now as a person who needs the endorsement of a denomination in order to become a certified chaplain.

I know I have journeyed from the more fundamentalist views that were instilled in me throughout my childhood. I won't say it's all bad...I can attribute my knowledge of Scripture to having been forced to memorize verses in school and at church. What remains most vividly in my psyche, however, is a general fear of doing the wrong thing and of somehow disappointing God.

I journeyed from there, and, sure, there were times when I felt joy in being a follower of Jesus. Maybe there was less fear of doing the wrong thing, but there was still a lot of emphasis in trying to do the right thing. I suppose you could say that my faith had moved from fundamentalism to a more contemporary version of evangelicalism (because the older concept of "evangelical" is not the same). I wanted to be a missionary. I wanted to please God.

And then I found myself battling a time of deep despair and depression. Very little made sense in my life. I still had a close relationship with God, but I was angry and disappointed. I blamed God for all the shit in my life and wondered if God was really all good.

And then I went to seminary. I do believe it was one of the best decisions of my life. I didn't necessarily come out of seminary with more answers, but I came out of seminary with more peace with the unanswered questions and the mystery of God and our life in God.

My theological views have also been shaped by my work as a chaplain, and I believe they have been shaped for the better. Yet this is also where some of my greatest struggles with denominations come into existence.

Recently Rob Bell has come under criticism for his book, Love Wins. I have not read the book, but neither have many of the critics. He has been called a universalist and a heretic.

Would I consider myself a universalist? Not at all. Would I be considered a heretic? I guess it depends on who you ask. And maybe they'd consider me to be a universalist of sorts, too.

This week I spent some time with a transwoman, a woman who was born a male and had a sex change operation to be a woman many years ago. She shared stories about her life and about her fears of being judged or misunderstood. And can I tell you? This woman (who is Baptist) has a far greater understanding of how much God loves her than many Christians I know. And yet many Christians would never accept her for who she is.

It was so much easier when I could attend a church because I liked the people and they liked me. It didn't matter if there were disagreements. But now? All the areas of debate have now become more serious issues as I am in need of finding denominational endorsement.

I just wish I knew where to go from here. *sigh*

anger

These past few weeks have been rough at work. I've had a lot of emotionally draining situations these days. The thing that is bothering me the most though is that I have gotten angry and have had confrontations with two co-workers. I'm not sure how significant it is that they both happen to be men in their 30s, but that has been one of the common denominators. Their personalities, however, are very different and the issues/circumstances are completely different. Each time I've had the rules/regulations/policy/procedure (whatever you want to call it) on my side. Sometimes I wonder if it's just that men don't like being told that what they're doing is wrong, but now I'm wondering if there is anything about me that contributes to these confrontations. Then again, why should I feel badly that I'm having confrontations? Isn't it better to confront than to let anger build up?

Unfortunately you can't control how the other person will respond. In the first instance this week, I became angrier when I felt like the person wasn't hearing me. His tactic was to give me his excuses, and make it seem like I was the one making a big deal about nothing. He said something about how I could be mad if I want to, which only made me angrier because I don't need his permission to be angry. What I needed was him to acknowledge why I was angry instead of trying to dismiss or brush it off. I got the sense from him that he does not deal well with someone expressing anger towards him, and I wonder if it's at least in part because I'm also a woman. He accused me at one point of treating him like a child. My purpose was to treat him like a colleague, a professional, but apparently he heard the voice of a woman with some kind of authority over him. Sorry, dude, but I think that was you, not me.

In the second instance, well, there has been more than one with this fellow. We bump heads, but I do my best to treat him as a professional. Our work with patients should not suffer just because we don't get along. I brought up something with him today, not to provoke anything at all but to be in conversation with him about what was best for a patient. He was starting to become defensive which I didn't understand until he brought up a separate past issue. I realized at that point that he's still angry with me from a past instance. WTF? Really? That's when I started getting angry because at that point I felt like he was just being mean. I tried to talk reasonably and reestablish what the policy is, but then he closed off the conversation saying he wanted to finish his work and go home.

Alrighty then...

*sigh* This isn't exactly interesting blog material. I just needed to vent somewhere.