The Places You've Lived that Live in You ~ Part 3

 

This week you’ve named the places and spaces you’ve called home.  You’ve honored people whose lives and light you connected with.  You’ve reflected a bit on the lessons you learned that you carry in the soil of your soul.  Now, I invite you to ponder the family narratives you were taught and caught.  Every family has a gospel…but sometimes it isn’t such great news.  Maybe you come from a family where the story was “Not enough”.  You’d come home with one B on your report card, and your parents would berate you, making you fear you would never get into Harvard with those grades.  Maybe you come from a family where everyone was against you or out to get you.  Maybe you come from a family where you always had to be optimistic.  Every family has propaganda.  Psychologists call this “Your Family of Origin Story.”  You were served these stories alongside bowls of mashed potatoes passed around the table.  You consumed these stories sometimes without realizing what you were digesting. You were served this in parents’ reactions and responses.  You picked this up as part of your beautiful survival technique, as we all want to make sure we don’t get kicked out of our tribe.  While your family probably didn’t sit around a fire telling these stories, the truth is our families still have a narrative that can be subtle and subversive and gets into our souls to inform the stories we tell about ourselves.  There is a great line in scripture, Jeremiah 31:29, “In those days people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’”  In other words, the sins of our parents don’t need to confine or contain us.  As the mystics say, the truth may set us free, but first it may make you miserable!  Did your parents ever say to you, “In this family, we (fill in the blank)” ~ tell the truth; do whatever it takes to get ahead; never ask for help because we help others; are there for one another.  Or maybe it wasn’t as explicit…more implicit.  You asked for help, only to have your parents say, “You are on your own.  Gotta learn sometime to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.”  Listen to the phrases that still reverberate in the cobwebbed corners of your soul as you rewind and remember the places and people that still rest and reside in you.  Amen.

The Places You've Lived that Live in You ~ Part 2

 

One of my favorite stories in the book of Exodus is after God’s liberating love made a way when there was no way by parting the Red Sea…as you’ve all seen in the movie The 10 Commandments.  After Miriam led a worship service on the other side of the Red Sea, she took a tambourine into her hands and singing prayer/praise to God.  After the people of God had walked a few steps into what would be a 40-year-long journey, they didn’t know it, because if we knew then what we know now, how many of us would choose to travel the roads that have brought us here?  A few steps into the wilderness, the people start mumbling and grumbling about how much they miss Egypt.  You know, where they were enslaved and forced into hard labor.  You know, where there were whips and oppression.  You know, where they barely had enough food to live on and longed for freedom.  You know…the good ole days!?  One of the truths of Exodus is that even when the people of God leave Egypt, Egypt doesn’t leave the people of God.  It takes time to get the soil of oppression out of their souls.  In fact, some might suggest that we are all still enslaved, captive, beholden to something.  This could be everything from addictions to drugs, alcohol, work, shopping, vacation, meaningful experiences, and even needing to be needed. 

 

The soil of the places you’ve called home still resides in your soul.  You will compare where you are to where you have been.  For example, one of the truths of growing up in Iowa was that frugality was next to godliness.  Couple this with the fact that I grew up in a working-class family that rarely had extra money, and I won’t spend one cent if I don’t have to.  This can be good.  But it can also have consequences when I delay a decision, pouring money into something that is clearly broken.  Look back over the places you’ve lived because there were lessons from those places and people left in you.  You may want to jot down one lesson you learned in each place you’ve lived.  I learned about Minnesota nice, New England stoicism, Wisconsin love of all things cheese and football, and now Florida family that connects people to people beyond DNA.  You can make a few notes under each rectangle about the good and not-so-great lessons of the land where you’ve received snail mail and where you laid your head down to sleep and prayed the Lord your soul to keep.  May this invitation awaken you to the way that the soil of a space gets into your soul and impacts the story you tell yourself today.  Amen.

Places You've Lived that Live in You ~ Part One

 

Iowa…Minnesota…New Hampshire…Wisconsin…Florida.  Those are the five states that I have called “home”.  Those are the places where the soil of that space has left a lingering impression on my soul.  During the summer, I invite you to listen to the story you tell yourself about yourself.  We are meaning-making people, and we do this through story.  From the stories we tell, which evoke and provoke emotions, we form conclusions that we believe are based on facts.  Often our conclusions have been shaped by our experiences and encounters…which are limited by the places we’ve been and the people we’ve met.  For example, I have never been to Asia.  My best friend in high school was from the Philippines, but that doesn’t make me an expert.  Sure, he shared with me about his life, travels, and the racism he endured, encountered, and experienced.  Too often, we take our encounters and form strongly held opinions based on what we believe is the truth. (Or you could re-read that sentence, substituting the words “my truth” at the end.)  When we sprinkle our limited experiences with a bit of education through podcasts, books, or Facebook posts that often confirm our already tightly held convictions (because what you click online persists and insists we stay hooked to our devices), we might start believing we are just a bit below Einstein on the IQ scale.  As Anne Lament says, “Of course we believe our opinions are correct!  Otherwise, we’d get new opinions.”  It is true…and heartbreaking.  Sometimes, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, others, God, and the world reflect where we’ve been, what we’ve encountered, and who has left their fingerprints on us.  No one is “self-made”; it is biologically impossible, psychologically dangerous, and theologically contradictory.  The “you” that stares back from the mirror is a messy mixture of places and people.  Plus, all the other voices we explored last week that want to tell you what to think, do, act, and believe. 

 

This week we will explore the locations we’ve lived in that still live inside us.  Over the next several weeks, we will break down components of the recipe of your life that come from the past, guide the present, and will shape the future.  Today, get a large piece of paper.  You can tape two 8x10 pieces together, or if you have 12x18, that will work too.  On the left-hand side, in the top left corner, write the year you were born.  Drop down a few lines and draw a rectangle, leaving space around that shape.  Inside the rectangle, write where you were born.  For example, I would write, “Cedar Rapids, Iowa," the proud home of Quaker Oats, where you can smell that factory for miles!  Continue along the timeline of your life, drawing a rectangle for each move you made.  When I was a teenager, we moved to Des Moines, Iowa; then I moved to Pella, Iowa (where I experienced Dutch culture) for my first year of college, and then back to Des Moines.  Eventually, I moved from Minnesota to New Hampshire (where our children were born) to Wisconsin, and now to Florida.  You should now have a wonderful row of rectangles denoting the many places that still live in you.  Next, around each rectangle, draw circles to represent people who were part of your life.  For example, around Cedar Rapids, I would draw a circle for my mom, one for my dad, one for my older brother, and one for my maternal grandmother, who lived with us.  I could also draw a circle for my uncle and his family, who lived nearby.  As I move along the timeline of rectangles, I can add circles for friends in Cedar Rapids, then Des Moines, where I met my high school friend, and onto seminary, where I met my wife.  In New Hampshire, I would add two circles for my children.  Some of the circles persist over time and regardless of place; other circles fall away and now are Facebook friends only.  Please note that this is NOT about perfection or exhausting every circle possible.  I encourage you to spend a few minutes doing this, then set it aside; we will come back to it this week.  May you discover prayerful and playful ways in which where you have been is still part of the soil in your soul, growing in the garden of your life.  Amen.

Prayer

 

God of stories that wrap around us, sometimes blessing and other times binding us, sing to our lives with Your liberating love.  We hear how You long for us to sense Your presence in ways that fill us with peace.  And we know that this isn’t always our experience every minute of every day.  When the strings of someone’s story hurt or harm us; when we are pulled in a direction we’d rather not go; when we feel confined by someone else’s words, help us.  Remind us that You are writing upon our lives at this very moment a melody of hope, peace, faith, joy, and love.  Remind us that You long for a world of peace, shalom, not simply an absence of violence and death ~ but thriving/flourishing.  Remind us that You number our days, and invite us to reflect on Your goodness and grace, which can be crowded out by other voices that want us to buy now because supplies are limited.  Let Your limitless, unknowable Presence loose in our lives in these July days.  In the name of the One who was born in a barn, walked on water, was transformed on a mountain, died on a cross, and came back with the wounds of the world to show us Your “Yes!” to life and love, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

Where You are At

 

I am wondering ~ are you having fun playing with the threads of stories in your life, or does it feel like a tangled/twisted mess, or maybe both?  Sometimes we enjoy looking, listening to, and learning from our various stories that compete in our life for attention ~ other times it is exhausting.  Where are you at?  What is stirring within you as we enter July?  Each new month offers us the opportunity to see where we are:

 

Physically

Emotionally

Spiritually

Relationally

Culturally

With ourselves

With others

With God

 

You may want to add another category to this list.

 

Then, take a few moments to pay attention to your full self.  Are you feeling energized or exhausted, or somewhere in between?  Are you feeling enthusiastic, depleted or somewhere in between?  Are you and God in a good place or having a tiff?  Does that reflect a tiff you are having with someone close to you?  Or how are you feeling about the world? 

 

Each month is a chance to be awake and aware of where we are and how we are.  May this second day of July open you to God’s love meeting you in this moment.  Amen.

The Conflicting Stories of Our Life

 

I hope you are noticing that we live in multiple stories going on at the same time.  You are part-taking, participating in many plays/narratives/stories all at the same time.  One of the stresses and strains of our world is that each of these stories is competing to be number one in your life.  Our stories want our allegiance, attention, and affirmation.  Beginning to sort through the threads of narratives woven into the story of your life feels like looking at the back of a chaotic tapestry.  Yet on the front or on the side you offer to the world, we try to present a coherent picture.  Have you ever felt like you are trying to make sense of the messy or chaotic, and contradictory threads of your life?  

At the same time, we are told that we can author our own story.  That you are both the writer, director, producer, and leading role in the play of your life. 

Hold the tension here.  On the one hand, many voices are trying to take the pen from your hand and tell you what to do, be, think, and show up.  On the other hand, we are told that you are responsible and accountable for your life.  We are constantly swimming in the waters between the shores of free will and limited agency.  Yes, I can make choices.  Yes, I often use other people’s insights and information for those choices.  Yes, I can feel stuck between a rock and a hard place with limited choices ~ except when I am in the cereal aisle at the store.  Good Lord, who needs that many options for breakfast! 

When have you felt like you had to conform or contort your story to fit inside someone else’s?  To be sure, there are times I want to do this for my family or friends or someone I love.  There are times I resent having to carry a narrative that is like that suit jacket I talked about on Monday ~ two sizes too big.

Have you ever broken or branched out of a story to write something new, different, only to have people tell you to get back in line and stick to your knitting? 

On Sunday, we will begin a new sermon series on your story.  Yet, I do so, realizing and recognizing that parts of your story were given to you.  You didn’t decide where and when to be born…nor did you get a choice of biological parents.  I didn’t get to decide to be born in Iowa in the mid-1970s.  I didn’t get a vote when my parents were forced to move.  I wasn’t asked which high school I wanted to attend.  I did have some choice in college, but even then, I limited myself to what was nearby.  Before we start to explore the paint on the canvas of your life, I want you to realize that some of the color choices on the palette were already there.  Play with this image today, letting it awaken you to the moments when another person played editor to your story ~ this could have been welcomed or unwelcomed.  For example, when we had children, they edited our story in trying to take their needs/emotions/thoughts into consideration.  Let’s keep playing with this idea as a way to enter the mystery of the story that is your life.  Amen.

The Stories of Our Life

 

What insights did you glean yesterday from listening to the diverse stories you heard around you and contributing to the stew of stories within you?  I know when I look at the economic and political stories I hear, they are often heartbreaking.  When I pay attention to the stories of people I encounter each week, I hear many feeling disheartened and dismayed.  Then, I match that up with the stories I hear right now of people doing what they can, where they can.  Sometimes I do wonder if the story of our church slips and slides into, “Do more!”…which can also feel like, “Not enough,” that I felt when I got a C on my report card.  This is but one small example of the ways the stories (Notice the use of the plural here) of your life are all jostling around your mind/heart/soul.  Because the various stories of people around us are not always neat and tidy, don’t fit perfectly together like puzzle pieces, we still try to put everything into a coherent picture.  Do you notice yourself negotiating and reconciling the information you receive from a multitude of sources each day?  This leads you to a conclusion, which can be that things are going to you-know-where in a handbasket, or that things will get better, or that everyone is against you, or that the system is rigged, or that people are broken.  Once our minds are made up, this becomes the overarching narrative, and any external evidence that contradicts it is thrown out by the judge and jury in our minds.  For example, if the world is completely broken, not only will Facebook keep serving you stories to support that point of view, but you will quickly dismiss any story of hope as naïve or foolish.  Or if you believe that humans are basically good, you will spend a lot of calories trying to find one redeeming quality of the person you just met who seems to be mean.  This isn’t about being right or wrong but noticing and naming the ways our brains are wired and how that was given to us by moments in the past.  Return today to those sentence descriptions of the narratives in our world you wrote yesterday.

 

What story does our church tell?

What story does your political identity tell?

What story does your economic bracket/background tell?

What story does your neighbor/friends/peer group tell?

Where are these stories aligned, and where is there tension? 

 

May your reflections be grounded in the One who can hold the beautiful diversity of Scripture together, so that they can also hold your complex/contradictory stories together too.  Amen.