The Triple Goddess:The Original Holy Trinity

Newgrange

The Hypogeum

* "God is not two men and a bird." Elizabeth Johnson quoting Sandra Schneider
Johnson, Elizabeth. Quest for the living God. New York: Continuum. 2008. p.208.

I wish I had a photograph of this...

me & Baby N
on a little towel
in the grass
by the water

he
spins the wheels of a bitty VW van, his favorite toy
tracks airplanes & helicopters in the sky above us
stretches up to watch the boats coast down the canal
investigates the grass, tentatively
wiggles & bounces watching bicyclists stream past on the bikepath

generally keeps company with his mama

"What does it mean to be chosen by God?"

The question derived from today's Gospel reading - a passage about being chosen by God and now being a friend of Christ, rather than a servant. Pastor J posed it to the congregation and then gave us five minutes to discuss it with our neighbors in the pew. Whoah. Huge!  I put my head down - not ready to chat about this.  The conversations around me wandered away from the topic. I have no idea what it means... and I know it means so many things. What does it mean to me? Do I even believe it? (& how does it relate to last week's message about acceptance & pruning by God?)

Walking home I remembered reading some encouraging and challenging ideas about being chosen by God in Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved. I want to claim his words as my answer to the question... but really I'm still trying to understand & believe it.

"Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that call us the 'Beloved.' Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence." p. 28

"Becoming the beloved is the great spiritual journey that we have to make." p. 32

"First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to remain realistic enough to reminder yourself of this." p. 49

"Secondly, you have to keep looking for people and places where your truth is spoken and where you are reminded of your deepest identity as the chosen one. Yes, we must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotion, feelings or passions to seduce us into self-rejection." p. 49-50

"Thirdly, you have to celebrate your chosenness constantly. This means saying 'thank you' to God for having chosen you, and 'thank you' to all who reminded you of your chosenness. Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are not an 'accident' but a divine choice." p. 50

"When we claim and constantly reclaim the truth of being the chosen ones, we soon discover within ourselves a deep desire to reveal to others their own chosenness. Instead of making us feel that we are better, more precious or valuable than others, our awareness of being chosen opens our eyes to the chosenness of others." p. 52-53

"The characteristic of the blessed ones is that wherever they go, they always speak words of blessing. It is remarkable how easy it is to bless others, to speak good things to and about them, to call forth their beauty and truth, when you yourselves are in touch with your own blessedness. The blessed one always blesses." p. 67

And I think this is the link between last week's message & this week's:

"Becoming the Beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about an doing from hour to hour. ... When our deepest truth is that we are the Beloved and when our greatest joy and peace come from fully claiming that truth, it follows that this has to become visible and tangible in the ways that we eat and drink, talk and love, play and work." pp. 39-40


Nouwen, Henri. Life of the beloved: Spiritual living in a secular world. NY: Crossroads. 1993.

Suddenly my best treatment option was my worst. (It would require 6 weeks of no lifting and no activity beyond a leisurely stroll. Great for a suburban minivan mama, but prohibitive for an urban pedestrian family.) We went back through the possibilities, covered all of my questions, got me more info, and even brought in a nurse practitioner that the doctor deems especially gifted with these treatment options. Speaking up made a real difference in the methods we'll use to treat my body. And it's renewed my optimism about and my commitment to the treatment plan.

I need a lot of quiet time alone. Or at least, a lot more than I can get in a one-bedroom apartment with a husband, baby and cat.

Now that spring is here, I'm slipping out for an hour or so on Sunday afternoons while my guys are napping. I find a little peace, soak in it, and carry it home in me as much as possible.

(Sometimes I wish I'd soaked in just a little bit more.)
(Sometimes the guys agree...)

Our pastor preached on Sunday about the prolific zucchini of the Pacific NorthWest. Gardeners here tend to let the zukes go and so there are many of them although none are perfect like they would be if the vines were pruned. God isn't that kind of gardener. God, the pastor said, does not accept us as we are. God prunes us.

I frowned and muttered to my son, "God does accept you as you are." My husband smiled.

If Baby N could understand, I'd tell him that God doesn't "prune" us, as in doing something deliberately to us. Life does it, un-deliberately. The cutting away and reshaping that produces us is a condition of being alive and in relationship with other living things. God is our partner and is present with us, functioning more like a midwife than a surgeon.

A girlfriend recently wrote to me about "peeling away the layers of the onion." She's talking about going deeper in understanding her essential self and her work in this world. She told me that each time that she thinks she has found the one true kernel she learns, again, that there is more to peel.

She's onto something powerful and real. As long as we are alive we are always "peeling the onion," always in motion. Certainly there are fallow seasons, but to find one thing and settle on it forever is to become stagnant. It's death.

I think my friend, my pastor and I are all talking about the same family of things. In life, we are cut back and shaped. Some of it we do intentionally, like my friend peeling her metaphorical onion. Some of it comes unbidden, a blighted branch, such as the death of a loved one or a heavy depression.

In all of this we have agency. We can choose how to engage or retreat; how to interpret and respond to the changes wrought in our lives. We may accept or decline God's company in the midst of it.

Back in college I was fixated on the phrase "the sacred in the ordinary." Today, my life feels overwhelmingly... ordinary. I have to really search to find what's so special in life. Right now the zucchini and onion are reminding me of where to find the sacred.

To be engaged in the pruning and peeling, the fallow rest, and the producing motion, all of this isn't special. As in, it's not outside of the ordinary. It's not supernatural. Rather, it is wholly (& holy) natural. It is the condition of an ordinary human. It's for everyone. And the shape we grow into bears witness to presence of God with us.