Sitting Still Among the Rocks (March in review)
Dignity for Refugees, How to be Present, Hallelujah on American Idol, Finding Refuge in the Lord's Prayer, and 5 Songs for April
Here we are again, ending another month. The grace that was to come has passed through us. In some senses, it has paralyzed me. In other senses, it has blown me open. Let me see if I can look back and catch any glimpses.
After 7 years of HARD prayerful work, my friend Christina has opened Jubilee Hall. A bright spot of belonging in the wasteland of outer East Portland, Jubilee Hall is a place where refugees can work and have dignity here in America. And I could drink their chai all day. A pretty great article was written about them on Oregon live: Portland coffee shop brews opportunities for refugees and immigrants.
The cherry trees have started blooming, bringing a bright pink pop against our usual grey skies and minds. It’s as if they’re saying, “Hey! Wake up! Remember me? You thought I left didn’t you?”
To be honest with you, this month has been full of fits and starts. I’ve had several days where I’ve woken up generally annoyed with the world. Which, in my immediate world, never rubs off nicely. If there’s one thing I’ve been working on in my adult life, it’s this: to be able to be present. More specifically, to talk about hard things and remain connected to each other relationally. To not leave the room. To grow my window of capacity as Curt Thompson puts it. What does it look like to grow inwardly in grace? What does it look like to let God set my feet in spacious places even as the anxieties that come with parenting and the news of the world seek to crush me? I’ll tell you what it feels like: a balloon expanding and stretching inside my chest with twine wrapped around it. The twine tears and eventually flings off. The balloon doesn’t burst. It becomes full and present - alive. That’s what it feels like.
As an end-of-the-week ritual, my husband and I like to watch American idol together. (Yes, we’re becoming those people.) But we love it because the show (now) is actually really honoring to our humanity. So many different kinds of people come in, belting their little hearts out, telling the world their story. One story that really caught us with tears in our eyes was Cam Amen’s audition. Growing up in foster care and caring for his younger siblings, he sings with tears in his eyes and a shakiness in his voice Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand right here before the Lord of song
With nothing, nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
That’s what it looks like. That’s what it looks like to let God grow His grace in us. Guts and courage, and inner peace and resolve, to stand in the midst of a life “gone wrong” and say Hallelujah anyway.
So when news of the world seeps through my phone or newspaper, tv or radio, and bleeds all over my heart, I am left with a heaviness that says no not again.
For some of you who know me, it takes ALOT to make me angry. And mass shootings is one of the things that sparks the flame. Especially schools. Especially elementary schools. I’m not going to get into all the stats and graphs with you. I’ve done quite a bit of that on my own and trust you to do the same. What I will say is we live in a country that has more guns than humans. With the recent news of the Covenant Christian School shooting in Nashville, TN, I found out that the teacher of the three 9 year olds that were murdered was my friend’s sister.
And I can’t stop thinking about her.
There is absolutely no reason any civilian needs to own an assault rifle. There very purpose is to kill as many people as possible in the least amount of time. Why are we allowed to own these? With American teen mental health plummeting starkly since 2012, (Jonathan Haidt gives very illuminating research in his most recent substack,) wouldn’t it behoove us to make AR-15’s illegal? Or at least harder to get?? Some say it’s for their protection. From who? The government? Because for the past 10 years, statistics show we’ve been killing ourselves. We need protection from ourselves. Lord have mercy. For we know not what we are doing.1
But I can’t keep spiraling. This past week I’ve had to find something to grab onto. The anxiety of losing my children to random acts of crazy people with AR-15’s in their school will swallow me whole. There is only so many petitions I can sign.
In the last days
the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.3 Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Isaiah 2:2-4.
“The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold, and it has overturned the order of the soul.” - Leonard Cohen
The wisdom of God lies beneath the blizzard.
I go into my room and shut the door. Teach me Lord. I have no peace. There is no peace out there. How did you do it? How did you remain a deep presence of peace in a world so hostile to you? When you pray, say this2:
Our Father in Heaven
This address the question Who are You God? A Father to all across all boundaries. Race, class, religion, gender…Very quickly, I need to switch “my” to “our.” He is speaking to a widely diverse crowd here. Jesus’ prayer invites us to join him in the Trinity’s beloved relationship. But as we know, our spirituality or religion can very easily turn into a weapon to rule over others. So we turn to the next thing Jesus says to say:
Hallowed be Your Name
This addresses the question How should we talk about God? This arises out of a deep Hebrew tradition that we cannot know God’s name and we cannot control God for our purposes. He is infinitely beyond our grasp. Thinking of Jacob asking God, “what is your name?” He doesn’t get one. But instead he wrestles with God and receives a new name and is sent to reconcile with his brother Esau - the enemy! Upon seeing his brother, Jacob says, “seeing your face is like seeing the face of God.” This is what prayer can do. Change my heart from seeing the enemy into the face of a friend. Lord help me want it. But we can become abstract and hyper-critical in our reverence for God. So we turn to say:
Your Kingdom Come on Earth as it is in Heaven
This addresses the question, what do you want? What are you hoping for? What is my desire? Jesus knows that what *we think* the Kingdom of God should look like can quickly look very prideful. A false sense of spirituality - puffed up. So he continues to walk us further into the prayer:
Give us Today Our Daily Bread
This addresses the question, how much is enough? This is rooted in our physical needs and our need to be with one another. A disembodied spirituality becomes cold and abstract, arrogant. “God” becomes
three angry letters in a book,
And there the logical hook
On which the Mystery is impaled and bent
Into an ideological argument.
(See Edwin Muir’s poem: The Incarnate One)
Yet, in case we think we’re getting the daily bread thing down, Jesus brings us to the fulcrum, the point at which the entire prayer pivots:
Forgive us as we forgive others
We know that there are several tables at which we eat where there are grievances, conflict, people who aren’t there because we no longer speak to one another, people we thought we once knew but no longer recognize. It is very common in this world, just as it was when Jesus was alive, that people would not be seen together for fear of reputation, and even their lives. Jesus sits at these tables anyway. He addresses our question, how do we begin again? When I/we are in these ruts of alienation and estrangement, how do we release one other of the pain we’ve caused? Sometimes we don’t even know what caused the pain in the first place. Why did we have our conflict to begin with? So again, Jesus takes our hand:
Don’t lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil
When we read through the narratives of Scripture, we see time and time again the temptation to mirror what we hate. You insult me, I insult you back. You intimate me, I intimidate you back. You commit violence against me, I commit violence against you. There is a false safety in being violent. Jesus is being very counter cultural in addressing the question, can violence save us? His answer is powerful. No. Rather He invites us down the narrow road of contemplative non-violence. We know very well the temptation to use violence, in thought, word or deed, against our fellow Imago Dei. We could and have gone down that road of chaos. It ends in death. Oh God, deliver us from evil.
Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory
The final question Jesus address is can you let go of power and prestige? We could get to the end of our Christian Life and still think it’s all about us. We see it happen all the time. I see it within myself. I have an insatiable desire to be important, to be heard. But why? Jesus invites us to let go of all of this. Herein lies a spiritual maturity that allows us to truly call the Father, Our. This is a life-long practice we must yield to if we want any hope against the blizzard of the world. As we journey through the prayer again and again, we let the Holy Spirit do it’s long and faithful work in us until we are called home, knowing that our work here is done.
5 Songs For April
(Listen at: 5 Monthly Songs Worth Repeating)
I Want to be Well by Sufjan Stevens
Every Drop Counts by Rosie Thomas
Untitled by Interpol
Tales From the Loop by Philip Glass and Paul Leonard-Morgan
Quietly Yours by Birdy
For an empathetic and searing look into the work of restorative justice after a school shooting, watch this: MASS
This concept of journeying through the Lord’s Prayer is taken from Andrew DeCort’s beautiful and challenging book: Flourishing on the Edge of Faith
Yes! All of this! I love we both wrote about The Lord’s Prayer!
Beautiful reflections Janelle. Your hearts capacity to feel and love is so apparent in your writing and your life. I am blessed to be your friend.