Relativity & Enduring

Someone accidentally drew my attention today, to the fact that the blog has gone unattended for... a while... nearly four years. Yet it seems a blink-of-the-eye until I stop to reflect on all that has happened, and then again it can still seem a blink-of-the eye. Or maybe one of those "wrinkles" in time...or a quantum leap of some sort...

In the middle, my mom died, my dad's dementia went into high gear~as did various other medical issues he had~my kitty died, one of the new adopted baby kittens died when anesthetized for her spaying, my dad died.... three more new kitties came into my life ~ and a son-in-law...  I could go on...  And that's just the mere microcosm of one woman's life...

So I've been living, not just thinking, about loss. About transiency. About what endures. About life. About death.
About faith.
About hope.
About love.
About reality and illusion.
About relativity and perspective.
About the saving of starfish, one at a time.

In the end, my family therapy teacher, Edwin Friedman, was right: "There are those times in life when all you have is yourself, your Book, and your God." Ed was a rabbi turned psychologist, a somewhat odd, but very wise man. 

If you're very lucky and/or very blessed, you might also have a friend who helps you save the starfish that have washed up on the beach. One.by.One. I am a lucky, blessed woman. Thank you JCC. 
I love you.

At Long Last

A dance improvisation with my longtime friend and classmate, Marina Gobins Walchli, performed at the 2011 gathering of Interlochen Arts Academy alums, "1969-1972 or so..."   Video by Lawrence Probes.

30 years and counting...

I realized, yesterday, that my ordination happened on the summer solstace--the "longest day" of the year-- the day with the most sunlight, in the northern hemisphere. My husband & I joked about what manner of metaphoric meaning might be contained therein, as the 30th anniversary of the ordination came...and went...a moment in time...a moment marking the passing of time...a moment representing more than half  of my life-time...

It was a beautiful day in New York: warm, but not too hot, nor humid.  Idyllic. A perfect day.

Minstry, however, is not always like that, on the outside. Yet in a deeper sense, it is... Ministry is about being with others in the contexts of their lives. It is about incarnational embodiment of the Gospel. It is about the unexpected popping up in the midst of the ordinary, the hum-drum, the up-and-down days. It is about bath & meal & conversation: font, table, and pulpit. Ministry is about suffering & joy; consternation & celebration; or, in Frederick Buechner's words, about "Comedy, Tragedy, & Fairy Tale."

Thirty years have come and gone since that summer solstace of 1981; it does not seem possible, most of the time.  And yet, as I think back, I see faces and remember names, across places & spaces... A child baptized, and buried three months later; another child receiving first communion--soon to be, herself, ordained! ("Grace: God's love given freely." --and if she is reading this, she knows who she is.) I remember the single mom struggling with her four children and living in poverty; I remember the retired church-men (yes, men) gathering to talk and do "handyman" work around the church. I remember the work-release programs of the upstate prisons, and the ministry of hospitality of the Ladies' Aid, the Frauen Verein, and the LCW... the forthrightness of GF:  "So, what are you in for?" Inmate: "Manslaughter."  GF:  "Oh. Have some cake?") ...  precious memories, precious times. Thirty years later, new memories are being forged, new relatonships born, nuances of ministry explored...

...like that of having found myself ecclesiastically homeless, in 2004, for reasons far beyond the scope of this blog -- and being welcomed into a new church home, in the city.... St. Luke's, the Lutheran Church near Times Square... first as a member & later, as pastoral associate. Word and Sacrament, there, support and sustain the healing work of pastoral psychotherapy; the practice deepens and enriches the ministry at St. Luke's --  interlocking circles of Word, faith, & grace.

Creativity Consciousness...

I just finished reading yet another book about providing psychotherapy with trauma survivors. It had some fresh perspectives on conceptualizing the work... but in the end, after all the theory had come and gone, after certain examples sounded technologically "dated" only 4 years after publication(!) -- one sentence stood out for me:  that certain interventions "can be accomplished in a variety of ways, limited only by the creativity of the patient and therapist." (italics, mine)

This is one of the "gutsiest" sentences I've read recently, flying in the face of recipe-like protocols, cost-management of treatment, and what I believe to be an over-dependence on quantitative outcome measures. Creativity -- of both patient and therapist...  I hear the phrase suggesting a collaborative, mutuality of imagination; a foray into the mystical places and workings of the brain, mind, & spirit that I call the "land of no words."  It is where science meets art, inspiration, and the wisdom of the ages. It is also the way I work, as a therapist, a liturgist, a preacher.

Creativity, I think, is both movement and stillness; action and state-of-being. It is both a hallmark and a part of the birthing process of healing. Creativity enters into what now is with possibilities of what else could be. Creativity envisions what is -- and is not -- already there to be seen; the expected and unexpected, the up and the down, the inside and the outside and everything in between... it is the conjurer of paradoxes like the mobius strip, and conundrums of perspective.

Eventually "it" lands in the concrete words and behavior of the therapy room and/or the sanctuary: healing movement in sacred space, and God is present in the mists of mind, in the midst of human meeting.

Movement in Stillness ~~ Words out of Silence

"When there is too much, there is not enough."   (anon.)

2010 was kind of like that.  Winds of change rippled, and sometimes ripped, through my life, bringing a new life-partner, wedding, and step-children as well as the scourge of bedbugs, an assaultive barrage of jackhammers as my apartment building's facade was "restored," and an acute hip-to-knee injury.  When there is so much movement, a counterpoint of stillness is needed; a silence of word in order for the healing movment deep within to give rise to new words to share.

But now, as turns and jumps return into and out of my dancing, and the chaos of an apartment upended recedes into a new state of order, as solitude and family life become integrated, the joining of word to contemplation, here, begins anew~~with gratitude.

Gratitude, gratefulness, appreciation, thanksgiving... to God and to all those near and far and dear who have given their support, love, prayers, helping hands, joy, laughter, kleenex, new phones, more kleenex, humor, more kleenex, and their hearts.  Not unlike 1990, the year in which I lost my voice and was "listened into" a new one; not unlike 2001 with its September story; 2010 has become another year measuring time into "before" and "after." 

In the "after," there are new roads to travel; new paths to carve out ahead.  There are new dances to learn; there is new space set apart, inside and out.  Today, I own my ambivalence about change, and pray thus, "O God, change is all about us and within us, but in your steadfast love and faithfulness, I will~~and do~~put my trust."  So be it; amen.

September 12th, "Live, from New York"

It is the day after the day before.

Much was said yesterday, about the new designation of September 11th as "a day of service and remembrance" (or is it the other way around?) -- which is great.  But what about today?  Do we serve and remember for one day only? 

The names and faces of so many wove themselves through  my heart and mind yesterday, and to a greater and lesser extent remain there today.  Some are living and some are not.  Some are healthy and some are not.  Some have become impoverished in the last eight years; some have not.  Some have left New York; most have not.  It is their home. 

And that is why I think September 12 needs to be held up as image and metaphor, not just of life "going on," but of how life goes on; of how we treat one another--how we respond to human sorrow, need, and pain.  In 2001, the subways began to run back into Manhattan again on September 12th.  I was on one of them.  It was the day when volunteers, not just first responders, were able make their way downtown, and uptown, and wherever they were needed.  Sometimes there was nothing to do, but just "be" with the eye-witnesses of the day before.  Sometimes, it was just about being together, supporting one another in comprehending what had happened.  Sometimes there were tasks to be done; recovery workers to support; sorrows to be held and griefs to be borne. 

Eight years have passed, and though September 11, 2009 was quite different that its counterpart of 2001, September 12th is much the same -- except for all the construction on the subways, and their failure to run anything close to normally today, and the appalling lack adequate money to help the suffering survivors.  Still we remember, lives lost and found; still we serve, because there is need.

It is always, now, the day after the day before.

Link to photos of Tribute in Light

Body, Brain, & Spirit

"The brain is part of the body."
I don't know who said it first; I think I heard it first from Francine Shapiro, at the 2003 conference of the EMDR International Association, in Denver. It was a moment that has stayed with me, and is ever present these days as I am developing my thesis proposal for a second level theological degree.

"The brain mediates...everything."
I don't know where I first heard or read that, either--but it is profound, and leaves me pondering more questions than responses to them. If the brain mediates "everything," how does the brain mediate the Spirit / spirit? How does the brain mediate God? What does one make of, in James' words, "the varieties of religious experience"? And what of the rest of the body in religio-spiritual experience? In Brainspotting with clients their "felt-sense" of religio-spiritual experience, that "felt-sense" is noticed, most often, somewhere below the neck--but not always... yet the phenomena of the experiencing itself is brain-centered.

"The human brain was not designed for the demands of 21st century urban life."
I read that recently, or something like it, in a couple of different places. I am not sure if I agree or disagree. While I have a visceral desire to agree wholeheartedly--I also feel a pull back from doing so. The brain's ability to adapt, to accomodate, to change, to grow, to heal--is phenomenal, as is that of the whole human body, and indeed the whole creation. (That said: I do not believe that the human brain was designed to meet the demands of hyper-excessive sensory stimulation, nor the concussive effects of explosions such as those experienced by far too many Iraq war veterans. If anyone doubts the effects of vibrational energy, here they are, in most negative form.)

So what about creation theology... and the need to hold together creation (& covenant & renewal) and redemption? In our "transitional eschatologies" (S. Mark Heim, A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends) what does care and repair of the physical aspects of creation look like? What recognition of ultimate versus penultimate healing and wholeness needs to be acknowleged? Yet however we define it, describe it -- it's all still mediated by the brain, which itself is part of that creation...

Where I'm going with this, what I want to explore, think, and write about--one day--is a theology of the brain. That's way "too big" for the current academic exercise, of course... but it's what's driving it. Brain and its relation to body, and the relation of both to God, and vice versa-- through that wonderful Lutheran Confessional Theological lens, which can do no other than root it all,sooner or later, in grace.

For now, I'll keep reading, exploring, learning, thinking.... and maybe write some of those thoughts here in the future.