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.

The Stories in Our Life

 

From wearing shirts that were a size too big, to rolling up the bottoms of my jeans so I didn’t step on them when I walked, to a suit coat that you could’ve fit two of me inside, I grew up wearing hand-me-downs.  But the truth is, that wasn’t the only thing given to me by my family.  Our families also pass down narratives from generation to generation.  You are still living inside (or bumping up against or trying to break free from) the story of your family of origin.  Some of the stories are about expectations around holidays, who brings the potato salad to the family reunion, what is “acceptable” attire at a meal, and which conversation topics are permissible, and which are off-limits.  You were formally taught these rules of your family, usually by saying something that earned you a swift punishment of some form (mine was being sent to my bedroom without dessert).  But we also caught these narratives, like a contagious virus, informally from listening to our parents and relatives at gatherings.

 

What stories did you hear growing up? 

 

What expectations were both spoken aloud, maybe dripping with shame or guilt, and which ones were shared through stares of your grandparents that could melt an ice sculpture?

 

Last week, I introduced you to Family Systems Theory.  And one more component is that we carry with us the stories of our childhood into our adult years.  You have blessings and brokenness from your family of origin.  Pause and ponder with me: what is one lesson you learned growing up that you are grateful for?  And what is one lesson that feels like a burden too great to carry alone?  I know that for me, I give thanks for my parents' sense of humor.  I also felt the weight of needing to get straight A’s in school and often falling short.

 

This week, I want to invite you to consider the multiple stories that you, like a seamstress, weave together day by day in your life.  You are given stories from the church, politically, from social media, economically, culturally, and from your peer group and neighborhood.  Sometimes those stories are in harmony with each other.  We tend to have a bias toward keeping our stories in congruence with each other.  Because when one story disagrees with or is in tension with another, it feels like nails scratching down a chalkboard of your soul.  When the diverse and different stories collide within us, we force ourselves to resolve this tension.  Or ignore it.  Or mush them together like different colors of Play-Doh. 

 

In one sentence, what story does our church tell you?  What stories do you hear in your friend group? Or maybe you have different friend groups who tell two widely different stories? What stories do you hear culturally or economically or in the algorithm of your online platforms?  Are these stories comedies, tragedies, dramas, or mysteries?  Do these stories inspire you or drain all your energy?  Take a few moments this morning and ponder the stories you are hearing and how that impacts/influences the story you tell yourself about yourself.  Let’s sit with the patchwork quilt of stories we are all trying to bring and blend in our lives this week as hard/holy work of these days.

Prayer

 

Creator and Cultivator of this beautifully broken system called “life,” there is so much that pushes and pulls at us.  Voices within us offering unhelpful, hurtful, color commentary on what we said at that meeting and people trying to give us advise/fix us/save us and systems that tell us just swipe the credit card or click purchase online so that we can enjoy our best life ever.  Help us amid the chaos within us and around us.  Quiet us amid the demands of life that demand we put on our cape and fix everything and everyone, even though they resist our efforts.  Draw near to us.  Settle our Martha-like ways that believe we can’t just sit here with You, O God; we have to do something.  Unsettle our Mary-like ways that believe if we just watch one more sermon online or read one more book or attend that Zoom conversation, we will totally reach enlightenment, might even levitate off the ground.  We are both Mary and Martha; we are both compelled and complacent; we are both constantly moving and exhausted; we are both servers and students, but sometimes we feel like we are always making the wrong decisions.  Remind us, God, that life is not a test; life is awakening to You in the messy mystery with no neat ending.  So may we breathe and be with You here and now, as well as then and there every moment for the rest of this year.  Amen.