OVERCOMING DROUGHT

Just like the seasons, life brings times of fulfillment and creativity, or attrition and what feels like an absence of life.

Over the last year, many events beyond my control have put me in a place of coping.  What do I need to do today to make it a great day, rather than, “It’s a great day!"  I’ve been sitting on this bench for a while, my life having shrunk to meet the challenges of emotional and physical limitations.  My enthusiasm for spiritual life tends to correspond to those limitations.  Reluctantly, I find myself attending a service more out of convenience that devotion.  Coincidentally, it always seems to happen on the 1st Sunday of the month when my church offers communion, always bringing up the notion of confession and cleansing before partaking in the Eucharist.

Aside from holiday events, I’ve been sitting in the same pew, on the same side of the aisle amongst the same people for the last 7 years.  The crowd today was larger than usual and there was no room in my pew or the pews around it.   My eyes had to scan further up and across to a sparser area, where I found a new perspective on the podium, the choir and my old place.  It was a welcome perspective that made me reflect on how I have been stewing in the same place for a long time, and that a change is welcome.  I do not want to be stewing in that place any longer.

The sermon was appropriate in terms of considering our prayer life and what it avails.  Truthfully, my prayer life is all over the place, from moments of intense worship and praise to exasperated and desperate pleas for intervention.  The pastor spoke about how we engage in prayer represents our definition of God.  Indeed, at times it would seem blasphemous to try to replace a view of God that we have held onto for most of our lives or have been taught the limitations of.  Then, I was transported to a very impactful AHA! moment of my life, where that exact thing happened, a wall was broken through and I was released into a new relationship with my Lord.

Four years of intense training in Clinical Pastoral Education gave us ample opportunity to dig deep and openly among trusted peers.  The extreme nature of care in a Level 1 Trauma facility makes one rely a great deal on other resources, but there are times when those resources do not seem like enough.  It was during the latter part of my residency that I was sitting among a circle of 6 peers and a supervisor, all ministers, and openly admitted that sometimes God is not enough.  Not for me, not for the patients.  It felt like I was admitting to a lack of faith and defeat under the circumstances.  It was not so.  It was my own limitations that were defeated, and I recognized my egocentricity almost immediately.  God was and is and will always be, regardless of my definition of Him.  How presuming for me to think that I could imagine the depth and breadth of His person, based on my own interpretation of Him.  I was catapulted beyond the teachings of my seminary education, beyond my childhood traditions, beyond my personal experience into something so as barely to put a finger on.  Fortunately, still something even greater.  It was freeing and hopeful in the midst of despair, as it has to be if we are to turn to Him in our lives, in our world and in our death.

I am grateful for these threads of a new bench on which to rest and a new perspective on God which have come around again.   Finally, I feel some healing under way.  It is spring, timely as it is to suit the mood and the coming celebration of the resurrection and I choose to trust God in His mysterious unfathomable leading.  Seasons prevail and with each one we grow and harvest what we can until the final harvest that opens us onto the eternal spring.