Asides

get used to different

I was slow to jump on The Chosen bandwagon. But now I am leading the parade. We are planning to watch it as a parish and I am looking forward being together. And I am looking forward to Season 2.

But this picture for me is not about Season 2. It is about the caption: “Get used to different“. That should be my motto. Things are changing and my life is looking different. But there is one constant: Jesus. So focus on Him. Live with Jesus now and stop holding on to the past! Let life flow and let Jesus be Jesus.

The old is gone

Today is Easter Sunday. The liturgy was lovely this morning with a very good sermon.

Today’s gospel (John 20:1-19) has Jesus and Mary meeting at the tomb. Mary does not recognise Jesus until He calls her by name. I wonder how often we do not recognise Jesus in our daily lives? Yet more: I wonder if I ever close my ears and do not hear Him calling my name? The Resurrected Lord is alive and active now – Jesus lives. The moment is now for my life and my relationship with Jesus. The past has lost its power.

I was thinking this morning about how Easter is the proclamation of how the old is dead and the new life is full of possibility (Matthew 19:26). Letting go of the past is not always easy. I have found that moving from “I am …” to “I was …” an almost impossible leap. My struggle has always been that I allow things that I do to define me. I find it hard to accept that I am much more than the sum of my parts. And I am much more in the eyes of Jesus than in the eyes of other people.

Blessed Easter to you! It has been a life-changing one for me this year. I feel the power of the past has lifted and I am called to a new life. Not sure what it will look like and I am sure that I will have periods of darkness. But this new life is full of possibility – full of Jesus.

… not-so-bad-days

I have a very stressful day. I have to visit family and then see my counsellor. The counsellor has been my life-line in the last couple of months. And has literally talked me off the ledge a couple of times. My darker side wonders what the point of it all is – the talking and the talking and the talking. I know I feel better after talking. But I am impatient and want things to change. And there is always this voice in the back of my head that questions his motives. And what is the end of it all? Simply for me to live with depression?

I follow The Depression Chronicles on Instagram. I often find it very helpful in expressing or putting into pictures what it feels like to live with depression. Yes, there are bad days – darkness and hurt. And there are not-so-bad days. But often these do not look much different than the bad days.

So what is my point? I am thankful for the people who help me – and they do help. The people who support and encourage. The people who do not belittle the struggle. The people who stick around and do not leave when the going gets hard. The people who look after the little things – Did you eat today? Did you take your medication? And the counsellor who keeps listening even when I question his motives. The people who are love in the hurt and who reflect The Light in my darkness.

In intimacy betrayed

Today we read the Passion according to Mark during our Good Friday liturgy. It has all the normal parts. But this year I was struck by how Jesus is betrayed by a kiss, a sign of intimacy and emotion.

Immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; and with him there was a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard.” So when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Rabbi!” and kissed him.

Mark 14:43-45

My relationship with Jesus calls for intimacy – inwardness. If it is all outside of me – in ceremonies and rituals, dogmas or creeds – it is not yet a relationship but rather an ideal and Jesus is not a person but an object. The moment that it is Jesus and me, when He knows me and I know Him from the inside out, it is a relationship. I can only have intimacy with a person. The moment Jesus ceases to be an object but becomes a Person present right now, I have intimacy. From this inwardness must grow the outer – “follow me”. So love calls me into intimacy and love grows from intimacy.

I was struck by how the cross is about people. Jesus’ suffering and pain is His most human moment. The moment He is alone before God with His hurt and burdens, He is truly human. But for the world at that very moment He is an object. Only a person could betray Him with intimacy.

Most of all I was struck by how Jesus could only be betrayed by someone with whom He was intimate. The betrayal of the cross is that those who know Jesus but refuse Him. The betrayal was closing yourself off from the Person. Only a person who has a relationship with Jesus can really betray Him. I was struck today that when I close myself from Jesus, when I shut Him out of parts of my life, my intimacy betrays Him. And how an outward sign – a kiss – is the proclamation of inward betrayal.

I love you

Today is Good Friday. I am preparing to go to church for the liturgy. But I thought I would share one picture for the start of the day:

While I do not normally go for the more gruesome pictures of the crucifixion (I have not seen The Passion), I think that the caption says it all: I love you. In the midst of everything that goes on in my life – and the second life that I live in my head – that phrase means more than anything.

May you have a blessed Good Friday and hear the voice of Jesus say, “I love you”.

happy place?

I had never really thought of a happy place until someone mentioned it to me. In fact, the person knew my happy place before I did. I like the idea. Maybe I should call it my “hermitage” or my “cell”? It is not always a physical space – for me it is also when I teach or talk ideas with some people. But it is a “place” where I relax and I am more “me” than other places.

This is my happy place – sitting outside in the sun reading with a cup of tea. The notebook is my journal with my favourite pen. I listened to a meditation for calming anxiety, and read some of the article on Kierkegaard. Allowing myself to stop from the pressure I place on myself is a strange (and still somewhat awkward) feeling. Yet knowing that I can return to this place, physically and emotionally, is a really nice and calming thought.

Do you have a happy place?

a new self?

This form of despair is: in despair not to will to be oneself.
Or even lower: in despair not to will to be a self.
Or lowest of all: in despair to will to be someone else,
to wish for a new self.

Sickness unto death, 53-54

One of the things I have found is that I like to escape. I often dream of a change of context in the hope that it will fix all my problems. A desire to run away from my problems and look for the solution outside – a new Prayer Book to make my prayer life perfect, a goal to reach to be happy.

But most of all I wish I was someone else. It is sometimes an overwhelming thought – “just will yourself to be not you“. I would like to escape “me”. The “me” that I see is all bad. I often wish I could be someone else – someone who is everything that I am not – comfortable around people, articulate, sociable.

While that thought is often very strong I am also aware that “me” is God’s creation. When I really look at myself I know that I have been blessed with many gifts – I am a good teacher, creative, and can see patterns. And, of course, real “me” is nothing like the imagined “me”.

I need to learn to love me for me because “me” is God given. I am not perfect, and there are many places I can improve, but it is not all bad. The person in the mirror is not a monster like I imagine him to be. The direction I need to move is upwards and inwards. “Me” needs to move towards the God who created me in His image and loves me completely in Jesus.

You are more …

This is completely for me. Depression and faith often battle within me sending my head into a spin. I really like when they speak of knowing all the lines – my head knows but my hearts doesn’t feel it yet! That is what life, for me, with depression is like. Like two people battling inside of me.

God is the middle term

The name Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin, mandatum (to command). There are a number of things that Jesus commands – the washing of feet and the Eucharist among them. But maybe we miss the point? Are we looking at the signs and are not seeing to what they are pointing? Here is the second part of the gospel for today (in APBA):

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:31-34

The Vulgate used the word, mandatum, in verse 34: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another“. At the start of these holy three days the readings remind us that it is all about love. And they remind us that I am personally called by God to be a follower of Jesus and enact His love to those around me.

The washing of feet and the Eucharist are signs of God’s love. The washing of the feet is a sign of service and humility. In the Eucharist it is Jesus Himself who says “for you”. I am always drawn to those words, “for you”. These three holy days, the cross and pain of Jesus, are “for me”. This Jesus meets me personally and says “for you” – one on one. The love of the cross is personal and individual – Jesus loves me now.

What does this “love” look like for me? Jesus says “as I have loved you”. Love is the sacrificial giving of the self to the other. It is placing “you” above “me” in my choices and actions. Or, to put it another way, to be open to God working through me. To not close myself off from God. To allow God to be the middle term in all my relationships.

Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between a person and a person. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between person-God-person, that is, God is the middle term.

Søren Kierkegaard

Solitude is for criminals

In antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages there was an awareness of this longing for solitude and a respect for what it means; whereas in the constant sociality of our day we shrink from solitude to the point (what a capital epigram!) that no use for it is known other than as a punishment for criminals. But since it is a crime in our day to have spirit, it is indeed quite in order to classify such people, lovers of solitude, with criminals.

Sickness unto death, 64 (Hong)

I “googled” the word “solitary” and the only results I got were related to prisons. People who are being punished are removed from the general population as punishment. The only use our culture has for solitude is for punishment.

What of those who freely seek solitude? What of those who freely seek solitude for God? Are they misanthropists or religious fanatics?

I have become more aware that I need time alone for balance. Not doing yoga or chanting but time without other people to be “me”. Often I read (and drink tea) or simply close my eyes and allow myself to experience the world around me. Even the half an hour to say Morning and Evening Prayer by myself have become essential to my sense of balance.

But solitude is not the same as being alone. I can be with people and feel very alone – I have a general sense of “existential loneliness”. Solitude is something much more than the absence of people.

When I slow down and embrace the solitude, God speaks. And I return to the world with God’s strength to be a better “me”. In the solitude I hear God calling me to friendship with Him and with people He places in my life. Solitude is not an escape from the world but an openness to God. And whether I am with people or by myself I desire to be open to God in the situation. I need alone time for my mental health and I need solitude for my spiritual health.