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. 

The Big Five Needs

 

Steve Cuss has taught us a great deal about Family Systems Theory.  He talks about the big 5 false needs in our life: Control, Perfection, Knowing the Answer, Being there for everyone, and Approval.  Do you see yourself in any of these?  I wonder if Martha struggled with the Big 5; I know I do.  Cuss reminds us that in systems, there is reactivity ~ and once someone becomes anxious ~ everyone catches that.  There is that cliché: if mama ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy.  Maybe that happens at a meeting or at church; if the pastor ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy.  We also all operate on assumptions.  We make assumptions about Martha ~ the perfectionist and control freak, just like our cousin who had to take over the family picnic last year, even though you are perfectly capable of picking up the potato salad!  Sorry, just had to get that out.  We make assumptions about Mary, the lazy one who would rather pick daisies than do some honest work for once, like our nephew who is still trying to get hired as a CEO right out of college; kids today, am I right?!?  We have predictable patterns where I keep doing what I normally do, but end up with the same results.  I know this week has given you a lot of information.  Breathe and be with me.  Know that you are beloved, especially when all of this feels too close to home.  Remember that grace isn’t earned or deserved; grace is given again and again by a loving God who longs for us to see God’s presence in the systems of our soul to be ourselves.  Amen.

Shattered Glass

 

On Monday, I pointed out that often our minds love to fill in the gaps in a story.  We all have biases that block us from seeing/hearing/connecting to others.  We tend to see people not as they are, but as we believe them to be.  And sometimes, because they resent and resist such characterizations, the relationship cracks and crumbles.  Why do we do what we do?  Why do we say what we say?  Sometimes we don’t know.  We are all in the middle of a story called “Our Life” that we don’t know how it will end.  As author Margaret Atwood says, when you are in the middle of a story, it isn’t a story at all.  Just confusion like a glass shattered or wood splintered.  The story starts to take shape as the sharp shards of glass are swept up to see what can be salvaged, or the piece of art begins to emerge from the whittling down of the wood.  It is only when the melody finds harmony or the notes begin to create what is a symphony.  In the messy middle, which is where most of us find ourselves, there isn’t much of a story.  In a world addicted to certainty, confidence, and being correct, this reality rubs our souls raw.   I am not sure what cliffhangers you carry with you today.  It could be medical, as the doctor adjusts your medicine, or you wait for an appointment with your therapist.  It could be spiritual, as you wait for God to send you a neon sign, text message, or wait for the pony express to bring a telegram.  It could be waiting to see if that frozen conflict has any hope of thawing.  Or culturally, as the world waits to see if peace is possible and if humanity can ever stop hurting and harming each other.  We get a glimpse into the lives of Mary and Martha.  We don’t know what happened the day before or year before in their relationship.  But we do know what happened to us last week with our sibling, and so we inject and project that onto the screen of Scripture.  We don’t know what happened last year to that neighbor with that political sign, so we are glad to fill in the gap of our knowledge with certainty that all people who vote that way or go to that church or have that bumper sticker are like that.  We are in the middle of a story, our own as well as our family story and cultural story and our church’s story and the bigger cosmic story of God’s world.  These stories can be in tension with each other, and we are seeing/living through the cracks in the stories colliding right now ~ like eggs dropped on the floor.  May you and I continue to awaken to the truth that we don’t know what we don’t know.  Or I like to say that the older I get the more I don’t know..and I realize/recognize I may never know.  So I sit in the mystery of life that isn’t a puzzle to be solved but a way to be in the world here and now with love that truly makes a family.  Amen.