Category Archives: Spiritual Stuff

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The Internet Kills Community! Except When It Doesn’t

First, a big welcome to those of you who’ve made your way here thanks to the Fellowship of Prayer! Come on in and stay awhile. This blog is named after the Blue Room in our house, which is the arts and crafts space we set up in what used to be our dining room. We are well stocked with everything you need for your stay: glitter glue, play-doh, googley-eyes and more.

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Two articles crossed my screen recently about the Internet and its effect on community. First:

Whenever Two or More Are Gathered… Online — Sojourners

My editor passed along this link in response to some of stuff I wrote in Sabbath in the Suburbs about my experience taking a tech Sabbath each weekend. The article describes a very vibrant, supportive community that formed via Facebook in the wake of a friend’s death in Iraq.

I noted that there was a physical dimension to the community—it did not take place solely online; in fact the author actually moved so she could live closer to several community members. Certainly there are online communities that get along and get deep without ever meeting face to face… but most of the ones I’ve been a part of are either physical friendships that are kindled and stoked online, or online friendships that deepen to the point that people want to meet face to face. Examples of the former include my group of friends from Rice, who have had an e-mail list for going on 20 years now. Examples of the latter include the RevGalBlogPals and the Young Clergy Women, both of whom have annual conferences now.

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Second is this article about digital Sabbath that my mother sent me:

We Don’t Need a Digital Sabbath; We Need More Time — Atlantic

The blurb summarizing the article says, What if our technology isn’t the problem? A look at “Digital Sabbaths” and the dangers of holding our gadgets responsible.

But the article isn’t really about that. I thought from that description that the article would pooh-pooh tech sabbaths, but in fact it’s a fairly good synopsis of the ins and outs of them. Here is the vital bit:

When we make a Sabbath and push back against the many claims on our time, we are, in some ways, rebelling against this speed-up and the intrusion of work and labor into our domestic sphere…

It’s for all these reasons that a Sabbath, digital or otherwise, can be reinvigorating. When we take a day away from our tools and create a day entirely under our own control, we create that “palace in time” where we can meet our friends and family and, finally, connect.

If one concedes the point that a Sabbath for restorative reasons need not proscribe technology, it may seem pointless to argue against the digital sabbath. What’s the harm?

The reason is that if we allow ourselves to blame the technology for distracting us from our children or connecting with our communities, then the solution is simply to put away the technology. We absolve ourselves of the need to create social, political, and, sure, technological structures that allow us to have the kinds of relationships we want with the people around us. We need to realize that at the core of our desire for a Sabbath isn’t a need to escape the blinking screens of our electronic world, but the ways that work and other obligations have intruded upon our lives and our relationships.

I think that’s a little facile, and this issue of “blaming the technology” is strange. Yes, putting away the phones and iPads isn’t enough to make a radical change in one’s life and world. But I’m almost willing to say that radical change is impossible without putting them away now and then.

I think about this from an incarnational point of view, which comes from my faith tradition: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Technology, by and large, connects us with people across the miles (which is valuable) but it distracts us from the physical world immediately around us. Setting aside these gadgets is the first step to reconnecting with the real fleshy people right there with us.

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The Pre-Lenten Roundup

Margaret got the baby in the king cake at church on Sunday. By Sunday evening he was living the suburban dream.

The other day I surveyed my Facebook friends to find out what people are doing to observe the season.

Besides reading this OF COURSE.

I have done a variety of things for Lent, ranging from nothing special to taking on an additional discipline, such as morning prayer or devotional reading. If you are inclined to add a spiritual discipline, may I recommend my friend Mary Allison’s practice of writing a letter each day? If you’re in Memphis you can even take a workshop on the topic!

I was recently drawn to this blog that describes “speed creating,” in which this inventive fellow spent 30 days making an amazing new thing each day. What would it be like to have Lent be a season for tinkering? It doesn’t have to be elaborate, like the thread light:

I like the idea of creating something for Lent. It speaks to me of the tradition of repentance, but in a novel way. One definition of repentance is to “go beyond the mind that you have.” What could be more in keeping with that than to repurpose the things of our lives? After all, we are moving toward Easter, the ultimate story of transformation and repurposing. Death gives way to new life. An instrument of violence becomes the place where God’s forgiveness is proclaimed.

But as captivated as I am by these practices, I will be giving something up instead. I am in a Meister Eckhart-ish place, who said that the spiritual life is a process of subtraction.

The truth is, I am feeling like Bilbo these days: “thin, sort of stretched, like butter, scraped over too much bread.” I am feeling the need for some space, friends. So something is going to go.

I’m a little wary of Lenten fasts as nothing more than self-help couched in spiritual terms: I’m going to give up sweets so I can lose some weight! Self-improvement is a good thing, but is a new exercise regimen during Lent really devotional at heart, or is it a second chance at the New Year’s resolution? (That said, I think some people take the hand-wringing a bit far.)

When I give something up, it is a reminder to breathe and pray, to experience radical contentment, and to remember that the object of my fast is not the “one thing needful,” as much as I may crave it in that moment.

An example: a friend of mine is going to give up bread, so that the only bread she consumes during Lent is communion bread, what we call the bread of heaven. I’ll bet you good money that she will lose weight during this time. But do you see how weight loss is not at all the focus?

I still haven’t decided what I will be giving up, but it’s been a topic of conversation in our house. The girls have suggested we all give up desserts. I think we’re going to do this. Dessert has become a point of contention in our home—I am soooo tired of the constant needling, the negotiating, the comparing of cookie sizes. Having that whole issue off the table (pun intended) feels very spacious to me. But I’m still pondering how it connects us to Spirit.

What do you think? Those who observe Lent, what will your practice be?

One final thing. To those folks, mostly non-religious or de-churched, going around saying “I’m giving up Lent for Lent”…

Yes, I’ve heard that one.

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Henry Miller’s “Happiness Project”

I was inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project to develop my own personal commandments two years ago. (Hers are in the sidebar of her website and include things like “do it now” and “be polite and be fair.”)

It was a useful exercise… though it also felt very self-helpish. But it turns out other people were developing personal commandments way before the personal development craze of the 1980s and beyond. Benjamin Franklin, for one. Here are Henry Miller’s, which I ran across last week on the Improvised Life website:

I especially like #3 and #7, and am intrigued by #6. What does that mean to you?

For what it’s worth, here are mine, which I call intentions.

  1. Live MaryAnn’s story.
  2. Love God * Love Others * Love Yourself.
  3. If it’s not working, reframe it.
  4. Spend it all.
  5. Practice “yes-and.”
  6. Do small things with great love.
  7. Laugh, sing, breathe.
  8. Love what is.
  9. Show up * listen * tell the truth * let go.
  10. Hold fast to what is good.
  11. Today is their childhood.
  12. Make friends with time.

Do you have personal commandments, guiding principles, or intentions? I would love to hear them and/or reasons why such statements are not meaningful or helpful for you.

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On Heretics and Adversaries

I don’t know exactly how these dots connect but I’ve been thinking all day that they do.

Today is Galileo’s birthday. According to the Writers Almanac, “though Galileo was tried and convicted by the Church for heresy, he was never tortured or excommunicated as the dominant narrative goes—in reality, he remained a loyal Catholic his entire life.”

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My theology professor, Shirley Guthrie, won my respect in seminary for speaking a good word on behalf of heretics. He strongly cautioned us against dismissing them altogether. “Heretics generally go way too far in their arguments,” he said. “But you should always give them a hearing. They are usually emphasizing something that is being ignored in the tradition. They are pointing out some aspect of theology that the dominant voices have disregarded.”

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One job of the clerk in a Presbyterian congregation is to report to the rest of the session (church council) the official correspondence the church has received. Our clerk scans these documents and sends them electronically to all of us. He scans every last piece of it, even the stuff he finds objectionable. At our last meeting, he drew our attention to one of these documents in passing. “I don’t agree with what this group stands for,” he said quietly. “But somebody spent a lot of time and care putting this document together, so I pass it along… and it’s up to you to decide for yourself what you think.”

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Last night I dreamed I was moderating one of the presidential debates. I was very aware that the opinions expressed by the candidates were dramatically different than my own. I was also aware that as the moderator, I would be on camera too. All of my reactions—an eyeroll, a cranky retort—would be broadcast on national television. I would be judged on my ability to give the candidates an opportunity to express their point of view.

Some of them went places in their rhetoric where I could not follow with integrity. But some, like Guthrie’s heretics, were expressing values and attitudes that they felt had been lacking in our country over recent years. That, if nothing else, was at least worth a hearing.

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Why don’t you add a story now.

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Today’s Thought, Compliments of Carrie Newcomer

Carrie Newcomer has written the soundtrack to my life for fifteen years now. She posted this quote on her Facebook page yesterday:

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?  -Gabrielle Roth

We’ve gotta get the dancing in there sometime this week; otherwise, check, check and check.

Hope you have space for the same. Peace, friends.

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Beauty in the ‘Burbs

a cartoon map of Fairfax County, where I live

Yesterday while driving around I was listening to On Being, an interview with John O’Donohue, an Irish poet and philosopher:

I suppose I was blessed by being born into an amazing landscape in the west of Ireland. …It’s the Burren region, which is limestone. And it’s a bare limestone landscape. And I often think that the forms of the limestone are so abstract and aesthetic, and it is as if they were all laid down by some wild surrealistic kind of deity…

I think it makes a huge difference when you wake in the morning and come out of your house. Whether you believe you are walking into dead geographical location, which is used to get to a destination, or whether you are emerging out into a landscape that is just as much, if not more, alive as you but in a totally different form. And if you go towards it with an open heart and a real watchful reverence, that you will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to you. And I think that was one of the recognitions of the Celtic imagination: that landscape wasn’t just matter, but that it was actually alive.

I love O’Donohue’s comment and resonate with Celtic spirituality in general, but it’s a struggle to put it into practice. I live in the suburbs, where the landscaping is planned and the trees uprooted and replaced by younger ones, more conveniently placed. The whole point of the suburbs is optimization: to have the right sized house vs. yard, to have enough green space but not be in the country, to be close to amenities and culture without all the nasty challenges of living in The City. I understand the impulse behind trying to find that middle ground between urban and rural, but too often, splitting the difference means getting the worst of both worlds, not the best. (Let’s just say that, in the suburban restaurant dead zone I live in, it was a HUGE deal when the Chipotle opened. We still wait in vain for a Starbucks.)

The suburbs don’t just happen, like a landscape over thousands (millions) of years. We make suburbs happen, and the result isn’t always all that beautiful. Living with a “watchful reverence” in a place where nothing is truly indigenous is a challenge.

But why not try? Do I not have an open heart too? Is there a beauty to be found in the suburbs?

Yes. There is an aliveness here. I will try to see it.

Yesterday evening I took the girls to the Rec Center for some ice skating. They’ve been taking lessons, the cost of which includes six free practice sessions.

With an open heart, I saw beauty there. I saw fathers off of from work, picking up snowsuit-clad toddlers who had fallen on the ice, all akimbo. I saw a teenage girl with a worn brown strap around her waist. The strap was attached to a pulley with the other end in her teacher’s steadfast hands as she attempted a double axel. The contraption kept her upright, again and again as she stumbled. I saw a woman my age carefully practicing her spins. Maybe she’s preparing for a competition or maybe she’s just skating for the love of it. I saw a girl Caroline’s age with a Cinderella helmet on top of her hijab.

And I saw my girls, stepping out on the ice, leggy and cautious as fawns. They fell, again and again, mostly with a smile. And by the end, they were wobbling and gliding, gliding and wobbling.

What’s the beauty where you live?

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Worry is the Work…

Many years ago, I ran across this pithy quote:

Worrying is like being in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but you don’t ever get anywhere.

I have no idea how it came to me. I was a young teenager and my parents were separated. They later divorced, and we kids moved to Dallas with Mamala. I was to enter a new school halfway through my eighth grade year.

Remember junior high? The painful awkwardness? Add a traumatic family experience, then throw in a dash of being the new kid amid people, many of whom had known each other since kindergarten. And do all that with just a semester to get one’s bearings before high school.

There was plenty about that that was worrisome.

But I tried to put it all out of my mind, because it doesn’t do any good to worry, right? Even Jesus says so.

Wrong. (Sorry Jesus.)

Fast forward almost 20 years, when I was pregnant with Caroline. My favorite book about pregnancy and childbirth had a chapter called “Worry Is the Work of Pregnancy.” In it the authors made the following counter-intuitive case: Worry is actually useful and helpful. And when well-intentioned people advise us not to worry, they are actually keeping is from doing very important psychological and spiritual work; namely, to mentally picture ourselves in that situation, to plan for contingencies, to prepare for the unexpected.

This chapter was a tremendous relief.

I am a talented worrier, and there are all sorts of worrisome aspects of pregnancy and labor. What if the fetus isn’t healthy? What if I get preeclampsia? What if I don’t have the kind of birth I want? What if the baby needs to go to the NICU? What if we can’t ever get breastfeeding to work?

Making worry one’s work means taking these fears to their logical conclusions by asking, “Well… what if I need a C-section? What will that be like? What do I need to know in order to feel good about that outcome?” That felt so much more sensible than trying not to think about all those unlikely scenarios because “there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.” Yes, there is. Even the practice of seeing one in the situation is a help. Even if the worst-case scenario never comes to pass, it is not wasted effort. You are stronger for looking at the fearful possibilities and saying, “Here is how I will handle that with strength and courage.”

As you can see, this is a productive kind of mental exercise. Worry is not the same as fretting. It’s not healthy to let one’s life be consumed with anxiety. Rather, worry is engaging Shel Silverstein’s Whatifs and saying, “Show me what you’ve got.”

I know a dear family with three sweet children. Their oldest contracted a disease that required a bone marrow transplant. Unfortunately, his body was too compromised, and he died. Their other son also has this disease, though he was asymptomatic for a long time. One night the mother asked the father, “What are we going to do if this disease progresses in J?” The husband answered, “We will go back to Minnesota and go through the bone marrow process again.” He was kind, but matter-of-fact: That one’s easy.

And in fact… they did have to go back to Minnesota. And things are going very differently for their other son. It’s not my story to tell, but he’s doing well.

I had my first mammogram last week. On Friday the doctor called and asked me to come in today for some additional views of a spot they couldn’t see clearly. Statistics were on my side; genetics were on my side. I knew that chances were good that the additional tests would reveal nothing of concern. And that’s exactly what happened.

But I did spend some time with the Whatifs. What would I do if there was a problem? Whom would I tell? What would I need? And those questions did not consume the days between the doctor’s call and the appointment. They gave me something firm to stand on today.

So I guess you could say, I worried…

But because I worried, I wasn’t afraid.

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A Rising Tide Lifts All Books

The cover of Ruth's devotional guide. Don't you want to go to the Holy Land?

My friend Ruth Everhart and I both have Lent Devotional guides coming out this year. You can read about both of them here at RevGalBlogPals.

It is easy to get into competitive mode with one’s creative endeavors, and to feel like if one person does well, then that means less of the pie for you. And let’s be honest—few of us are going to order two Lent devotionals. (Let’s be honest even further and say that for many of my readers, one Lent devotional is a stretch. Ahem.)

But Ruth and I are in a writing group together, and we scheme about creating a writers’ guild that would support, cross-promote, maybe even co-publish our work. If she does well, I’m happy. It’s also good for me. And vice versa. And if either of us does well, it’s good for the RevGals, the grandmama of online communities that I was honored to help form more than six years ago. (Grandmama? Yes. It’s kinda like dog years.) And one hopes that the reign of God is somehow illuminated too.

But what we all want, at the heart of it, is to write and be read. So order one of these books.