Boxing Lament, Creating Playlists, and Backwards Parties: Spiritual Practices for a Busy Generation

I was talking with a clergy colleague/friend recently about an intergenerational study she is putting together for her congregation about spiritual disciplines.  We talks a bit about the different resources she is (and could) pull from.  There are a number of books about spiritual disciplines published.  I had never heard the term “spiritual discipline” until I was in college.  I was introduced to the term and the concept through Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline.  My family and church community had certainly practiced spiritual disciplines (some better than others), but I had never seen them all laid out and talked about as a whole. 
In the years since, I have read a number of such books at different points in my life.  Each has a slightly different tone and focus.  Most recently I read Who’s Got Time: Spirituality for a Busy Generation by Teri Peterson and Amy Fetterman.  It is one of the newest titles in the Young Clergy Woman Project imprint with Chalice Press.  Peterson and Fetterman are both youngish pastors and they wrote this primarily for people in their generation.  People who grew up with computers.  People who grew up moving frequently and far from extended family.  People who are marrying later and later or not marrying at all.  People who struggle to find work and if they do expect to change jobs regularly for the rest of their life.
Peterson and Fetterman do a great job of suggesting ways to practice spiritual disciplines (both classic and new) in the busy, hyper-connected life most of us live.  I really appreciated their practicality and creativity.  As much as a I respect Foster’s work, Celebration of Discipline doesn’t include a chapter on social media. 
Here’s a sampling of some of the ideas that I found interesting (they cover more traditional disciplines, like fasting, too).  Chapter two is called “In the Body,” and it explores “ways we can exercise our spirits as we live in flesh and bone.”  One of their suggestions is to incorporate a piece of scripture into a boxing (or kickboxing?) routine.  They say “Amy’s personal favorite combo includes Psalm 61:1 and goes like this: Hear *jab* my *jab* cry *right hook* O *left hook* God *backfist*.”  I may or may not actually try this one myself, but a physical lament sounds awesome!
Chapter four is all about using music in the life of faith.  One of my favorite ideas from the chapter I already shared on the blog—making playlists.  They suggest peace and righteous anger playlists.  I made a wait. hope. expect. playlist that helps me to wait with hope during this period of my life.
They also have a chapter on rituals that I found inspiring.  They wonder “How do we organize our hopes, dreams, fears, realities, loves, losses, and find a sense of the Holy in the midst of them? How do we mark these life events that don’t have rituals already attached to them the way marriage or kids do?…We believe there is a way to create ritual that makes meaning out of the lives we live now, as twenty-first–century young adults” (ch. 5).  One of the examples they give is a “backwards party” when one of their friends was moving away.  They started by saying goodbye, ate dessert, then dinner, and ended with saying hello.  It was a ritual that helped this group of friends to transition to a new phase of their friendship.  I haven’t started any new rituals yet, but I’m thinking of opportunities.
There are lots more ideas in the book, and I would encourage you to check it out for yourself if you are looking to grow in your spiritual walk.  I would add a note that I am a bit more conservative in theology than the authors, and a few ideas I’m not sure I’d be comfortable trying.  But that doesn’t mean they don’t have lots of good ideas and true thoughts.  

Post at Fidelia’s Sisters (and other ways to read my posts)

1. Today you can read my writing at Fidelia’s Sisters, a publication of The Young Clergywomen Project, about learning to camp alone.  I remember finding this website while I was still in China but planning to start seminary a few months later.  I was searching the internet for information about clergywomen, because my personal experiences with them were few and far between.  That was within TYCWP’s first year and I was thankful to find out "I’m not the only one” through Fidelia’s Sisters.  Now that I’m ordained, I’m a member of the group and I have learned a lot from interacting with young clergywomen from many traditions—I don’t always agree with everything—but the breadth of Christian tradition has been a blessing.  I’m excited to have my writing join the story there!  And welcome if you have come over from there!
2. Lots of you follow this blog via my links on Facebook.  If you want to be sure to not miss any posts (either because I forget to post the link or because it is possible to miss things on Facebook), you can subscribe via e-mail and you’ll get an e-mail when new posts go up.  Find the “Follow by E-mail” box in the right-hand column and enter your e-mail in that box.  Or, if you follow lots of blogs you can use a blog reader, which collects all the new posts of blogs you read in one place.  I use Feedly, but have also heard good things about Bloglovin’.  I am a recent convert to using a reader, and can’t believe I waited so long—it makes it so easy!  Thanks for reading!

Personal photo of camping at Ionia State Recreation Area, September 2012. 

Sunday Afternoon Prayer: My Mother's Day Prayer

God who comforts people like a mother comforts her child (Is. 66:13),

I have such mixed feelings about this day.

I love my mom.  Thank you for her. 

Thank you for her love and dedication.

Thank you that she always believes in me and thinks I’m great.

Thank you for her prayers and that she taught me about you.

Thank you for her gift of teaching and all I’ve learned from her—how to read, how to bake, how to play softball, how to serve, and how to love.

And I'm thankful for my many friends that are moms.

Being a mom is a hard calling.  Make your presence known to them when they are awake at 3am feeding an infant or cleaning up vomit.   

Give them wisdom as they begin to instill values and habits in their young hearts.

Help them to teach their precious ones about you and model a life of faith.  May all of these little ones grow up to love and follow you.

But there is also sadness in my heart on this day.

I wish that I was a mother, too.

I know that it is a hard calling, and I wish that it was mine, too.

My heart is full of wonderings…

Where do I fit when it seems that motherhood = womanhood?

Will there be a day when motherhood is my calling?

How long might I have to wait?

How do I keep my baptismal promises to the children in my community?

And there is sadness in my heart that the church hurts women today.

Instead of a place that pours salt into already open wounds, 

may we be a place of honesty and love.

May we be a place where it is okay to shed tears for the children you wish you had,

or the children that lived only in your womb,

or the child that has wandered away from then family,

or your own desire for an good relationship with your mom. 

Today in particular, may we be a place of lament, as well as praise. 

May we be a safe and loving community and not an exclusive and hurtful one.

So God, take my thanksgiving and questions, joy and sadness. 

Help me to live with it all. 

Comfort me on the dark days.  Comfort others for whom this is an excruciating day.    

Help me to know that you haven’t forgotten me, like a mother who doesn’t forget the baby at her breast (Is 49:15).

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Personal Photo, May 2013.

Singleness is Sanctifying, Too

I’ve often heard that marriage is sanctification.  Sanctification is the theological word for becoming holy or becoming like Christ.  In a good marriage, people learn about themselves and getting along with others.  There is no denying God uses marriage to help people grow in their faith and become more Christ-like.  The problem is that every time we say this, it implies that you can’t really be sanctified if you aren’t married.  It reinforces the notion that serving God as a married person is better than serving God as a single person. 

Sanctification does not require marriage.  There are many ways that God sanctifies us.  Even more, marriage is not necessarily a better or quicker way to sanctification.  In fact, singleness can be part of sanctification, too.  Being single is a different training ground, but I truly believe it too can be fertile soil for becoming Christ-like.    

 One area of fertile soil is identity and trust.  Without another person, I am forced to deepen my identity in Christ.  I am not tempted to think that my boyfriend or husband is able to complete me.  I am who I am not because of my relationship status or who I am connected to.  I am a baptized daughter of God.  This is true of all of us who are in Christ, but being single takes away a temptation to find identity elsewhere. 

I have learned to trust God in different ways than if I was married.  I don’t have another person to rely on.  If I don’t have a job, there is no one else to support me.  If I have a stressful meeting, no one is waiting at home to comfort me.  If I need to make a decision, there is no one to help make the decision.  Instead, I live by faith.  I am learning to trust that God will provide for my needs.  I am learning to trust that God hears my prayers and binds up my broken heart.  I am learning to trust that God leads me and guides me in decision making.  Being single is fertile soil for sanctification in trust.     

This might sound counter-intuitive, but I have found being single to be a place to learn about community and hospitality.  You have to be intentional about developing community, when you don’t have built-in community with your spouse (although I would argue you still need to develop community with others when you’re married).  It takes work to maintain relationships.  There’s a learning curve to relationships—I have had to learn how to be vulnerable and let others in.  But those relationships can be sweet, friends that are family.  They are a community that has walked through some dark valleys, empty desserts, and sun-filled meadows with me.  I am better at all of the one-anothers we find in scripture because of this community.

 

The really awesome empty tomb cake my mom made for our Easter celebration!

Being single is also an opportunity to offer hospitality to others.  Before even offering hospitality, being single has given me a different insight into what it is like to be at the margins.  I don’t fit into what society expects, and it has made me more conscious of other people who might be feeling a bit out of place.  I want my life to be one that welcomes people in and gives them a place to feel at home.  What I desire to offer isn’t the stereotype of hospitality: dinner parties for couples or huge family dinners.  There is freedom associated with singleness and the type of hospitality I can offer.  I don’t have to figure out which family I’m going to spend holidays with.  This year, my parents came to celebrate Thanksgiving at my apartment with some of the refugees I work with.  At Easter, I took a family to my parents’ house for dinner.  I still have lots to learn (sanctification is a process, after all), but it is definitely a way that God is forming me.   

Getting married is not the only way to become sanctified.  There are plenty of sanctifying experiences and situations that come along with being single.  And so for all of us—whether married or single—my prayer is that we will “grow in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church” (Ephesians 4:15, NLT).


Personal photos taken on Iona, Scotland and at my parents' house in Michigan, taken in January and March 2013.

New Lines to Womanhood

I recently read a review of the award-winning HBO show Girls in the April 2013 issue of Christianity Today.  The show focuses on an early 20s woman named Hannah as she tries to figure out adulthood—jobs, renting, friends, boyfriends.  It is a coming-of-age show, written and directed by 26-year-old Lena Dunham.  “What’s new about the show is that these women, like many real-life ones, are working from a rough script.  The lines that signal ‘womanhood’ are absent, coming later or not at all, or look quite different from the lines our mothers followed” (pg. 70). 

Like the author of the review, Katelyn Beaty, I also fit into the category of real-life women working from a rough script.  When I was younger, I assumed that I would follow those traditional lines to womanhood: I would meet a nice Christian guy (probably in college), get married shortly after college, buy a house (unless we were missionaries living overseas), and have kids.  I would work before the kids were born and maybe part-time after.

None of that has happened in my life, so far.

I don’t regret my life—it has been full of unique experiences I would have never had if my 13-year-old-self’s life plan had come to fruition.  But at the same time, I have had to figure out new lines to womanhood.  Maybe I should say I am trying to figure out new lines to womanhood.  One day at a time, I am living the life God has called me to and trying to find the lines.

To be honest, it can be a lonely and confusing place.  I don’t have that many role models.  There are portrayals in the media, Girls and Liz Lemon in 30 Rock come to mind, but TV show characters tend to hop from boyfriend to boyfriend, sleeping with them all.  That isn’t part of my life, but the church is a part of my life.  The church gives me stability when everything around me seems to be changing.  The church gives me a community of people who love and care for me, but also don’t quite know what to do with me.    

That’s why I am writing this.  So far in my life I have kept my experiences and feelings about being single pretty private.  I’ve only let the closest circle of my friends in.  But that needs to change, so I am going to be writing more about this part of my life in the future.  I hope to write about the joys, the sorrows, the practices I find helpful, and the habits that are unhelpful.

By sharing my story, I want the 12-year-old girls and boys in my congregation to see what life looks like if you don’t marry early.  I want the 22-year-old woman who just graduated without her Mrs. Degree to have hope that God has beautiful plans for her life even if they feel unconventional.  I want the 45-year-old married pastor to have a glimpse of what it looks like to be in this space and how he or she can be hospitable to people who don’t fit the mold.  I want the 60 year-old who never married to have the permission to tell his or her story, too.  

I want the church to warmly welcome people into community, no matter who they are.  Beaty asks “Are our churches places where women like Dunham can know and be known?  Where their ambitions and dreams are encouraged, not squelched or made to fit into old scripts of womanhood that don’t speak to them?  Where a story is told and retold that speaks to their deepest desires and orients them toward wholeness and self-giving instead of self-gazing?” (pg. 71).  I hope and pray that sharing more of my story can help the church to be such a place.  I hope that together we can develop and affirm many paths to adulthood. 

                 

Top photo by Wally Gobetz, used under a Creative Commons License.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/8416119593/.

Bottom photo is a personal photo taken August 2012.