The Contemplative Cottage

“I dream of a Love that even Time will lie down and be still for.”

When I was in my 20s, I used to say, if I marry, I won’t marry until I’m 30.  I could count on a few fingers men who had touched my heart–men who also only saw me as sister and friend.

Love–the covenant, life-long-promise kind of love–remained a distant hope.

“There is plenty of time,” friends and family would say, during seasons when I’d flail and founder, and demand a reason for my singleness.

Now I am 40, and can look back at two decades of dating experiences (less than one hand could count) and a brief engagement–infrequent, glorious and often painful forays into the realm of love and heart.  The Lord took me on a journey this past year after I caught another glimpse of this longed-for- Love, and promptly reached out with both hands and held on like one drowning, squeezing out its life.

I have felt a lot like Elijah impatiently pleading with God at the mouth of the cave.

Patiently and gently, the still small voice responded, “So you want to be married? Good, let’s take a realistic look at what you call love and what you would bring to a future marriage.” Through the verses of the old standard, Proverbs 31, God asked the tough questions: Do you have your house in some sense of order? Do you have an understanding of how you deal with stress and discouragement? Are you following My call on your heart and willing to make it a priority? What are your habits, good and bad? Are you able to nurture a relationship? Are you financially and emotionally stable?

I reeled and was silent in the face of such Love. Love that sought my best, not just for me, but for all whom I am in relationship with. Love that wasn’t interested in coddling me or worried about my reaction.  Love that would speak its peace and then still be there in the morning.  The kind of Love I longed for, but didn’t know the first thing about how to give or receive.

And then God had a heart-to-heart with me about the difference between love and longing.

Longing is that deep heart-desire for a kindred spirit, a person who knows me intimately, a person who loves me even when I’m not likable; the desire for comfort after a hard day, for a hand to hold in fear; for the kiss that curls the toes.

But the focus of longing is on me and what I desire.

Love was not in my relational earthquakes or the wind or the fire, the tumult or anxiety, the intensity or the tears.  Longing, yes, but not Love, a Love that simply loves, without demanding payment.

Now, the desire to be loved is good and wonderful, and this desire has a place in relationships, but actions rooted in this longing are not the same as love.  Love places the beloved at the center–not a desired response, not the fulfillment of my longing to be loved.

Am I giving love or longing? Am I seeking to do and give what is loving for the other person, or only what will garner a fulfillment of my longing?

It is a question that is changing how I approach all relationships.

But what do I do with the longing?

I write this only as one in the midst of asking the question.  I believe God is the only One who can bear and fulfill the full intensity of our longings–no person can be our fulfillment.  Deep friendships , family, and covenant relationships have space for the mutual sharing and fulfilling of longing—for love, intimacy, encouragement, delight.  However, I am persuaded that even then, the call is to love those in our lives first, and our longing’s fulfillment comes only as a grace-full gift.

I am practicing giving God my longings and giving others love.

“Words don’t mean anything.”

I found myself saying that a lot in 2009.  Words I read.  Words I wrote.  Empty.

It’s not surprising that I started mixing up my letters, using wrong words, and consistently neglected endings.

There were too many words to keep track of, to remember, to reach out and try to capture, kicking and screaming, from thought to paper, sometimes jumbled, sometimes ridiculous, rarely loved enough to reveal their beauty.

The last few years, I drank from the fire hose of academic theology (and drowned)…books and ideas coming so fast, I lost the larger text of my life in a cascade of others’ ideas and opinions. I lost my words.

And the books which once gave me so much comfort lost their life, “just words on a page.” Not flesh and blood. Incarnation stripped away and the meaning with it.

Too, so much of life became virtual words, 140 character snippets of breath-taking moments, so easily sent into the ether, so easily erased and forgotten.  What about the heart and love they expressed?

(I love hand-written letters, taken out and read tenderly over the years, testimony to a life lived, honored by safe-keeping, ribbon-bound, in a special chest.)

Losing my words, especially my prayer words, woke me up.  Now, drinking from the Word is reconnecting life and heart, text and meaning.  I see that what I lost was not simply a string of letters and punctuation, but Someone to talk to, Someone I trusted to welcome my heart and reply with His own.

“In the beginning was the Word…” John 1:1

God with us. Love spoken into the world with flesh and letters,  bound with ribbons of an Always-Presence everywhere I look.  Word-who-took-on-skin, this Love, can hear and respond, can still speak today through frail earthly language.

Human words may crack under the weight of meaning.

But You do not.

Lord, may the words I speak and write be rooted and planted in Love.

From a Christmas sermon by St John Chrysostom (349-407 AD):

“What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of days has become an infant. God Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger…

For this God assumed my body, that I may become capable of God’s Word; taking my flesh, God gives me his spirit; and so God bestowing and I receiving, God prepares for me the treasure of Life…I take my part, not plucking the harp nor with the music of the pipes nor holding a torch, but holding in my arms the cradle of Christ!

For this is all my hope! This is my life! This is my salvation! This is my pipe, my harp! And bearing it I come, and having from its power received the gift of speech, I too, with the angels and shepherds, sing:

Glory to God in the Highest! and on earth peace to all of good will!”

Winter Morning

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” John 10:10

A year ago I stumbled upon a blog called A Holy Experience. The captivating poetry of Ann Voscamp’s writing, photos of her life on a farm, and the background music of David Nevue’s piano playing, created a soothing and healing world. It was one of the blogs which inspired me to start The Contemplative Cottage.  Yesterday, as I took some time to lose myself in its many pages and Advent meditations, I discovered Ann’s gratitude practice, One Thousand Gifts, which has created a “gratitude community” of folks and bloggers who have taken up the practice themselves.

The practice is simple: list what you are thankful for and thank God for them.  Keep adding to the list over time until you reach 1000.  List 10 things a day or spend a quiet morning or a Sabbath day making a longer list once a week.  Take the nearest scrap of paper and start writing.

What brings you joy today? Makes you laugh? Whose presence are you thankful for? What beauty do you notice and take delight in? Who or what touches your heart and mind?

Ann describes these gifts as God’s “I love you” and our grateful response as a practice of worship.  She says that making the list made her want to look for more of these grace-full experiences.  Knowing from my own practice of paying attention to the beauty in nature, intentional looking leads to seeing more and more of what would have been unnoticed.

The word that comes to mind is abundance.  Rather than seeing a glass half full or half empty, this practice suggests that the glass is overflowing, just waiting to be noticed.  I am going to take up Ann’s challenge and start making my list.

“When in all gifts we find God, then in God we shall find all things.” George MacDonald.

photo: Susan Forshey

Good Morning

I often wish I knew how to respond with life-giving and healing words, so as I read through Colossians the past two days, Colossians 4:6 jumped out at me. During lectio divina, a key moment is when a word or a phrase seems to come off the page and my own heart answers with a little flutter, “Yes, I want to know more.”

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.

The English translation is curious, because the direct suggestion “Let your speech…” seems to be followed by an effect, “so that you…”  This didn’t make sense to me—how could I practice a certain kind of speech that would in turn provide knowledge about how to speak?  But looking at the Greek, I realized that I was interpreting “gracious” as a human quality,  akin to cordial or courteous, or hospitable. These are good qualities for conversing, yet knowing how to practice them appropriately in a given situation is tricky.  

Gracious in this context is actually grace, or charis–a divine influence upon the heart.  For me, grace is not an obligation, or something earned, or a gold star for good behavior, but the gift of God’s own presence saying, “I love you.”

The text suggests that the first step of speaking is my heart listening to God’s love for me and for the person with whom I am conversing; that speech flowing out of conversation with God, flowing out of a heart itself salted by God’s “I love you,” will be life-giving and tasty.

Christina’s World and Pennsylvania Landscape