Reflections on a Journey

In the Fall of 2003 my husband and I made a decision which drastically changed our lives and the lives of our children: we joined an Anglican (not to say, Episcopalian, :D) church. This was, admittedly, a rather odd time for a Bible-believing Christian family to join an Episcopal church. The consecration of an openly partnered gay bishop in the state of New Hampshire had just occurred, and the Episcopal church was making headlines in both the secular and religious media.

Quite frankly, many people thought we were nuts! Both my husband and I had impeccable evangelical credentials. That we would even entertain such a move was beyond belief. I spent a lot of time explaining how the parish we were considering joining was not that kind of Episcopal church. I took pains assuring both friends and family members that the bishop of the diocese and the rector of the parish actually believed the creeds of the church and believed that the Bible was the Word of God; to be followed as our rule of life, not merely as a book of culturally-dated suggestions. (It helped that our rector was a former Baptist who had attended an evangelical college in Southern California :D)

Our journey into the Anglican church did not occur quickly or easily. We visited the church, on and off, for over a year. I met with the rector privately, we prayed and talked through our process with our friends and family, and we read books written by and about people who had made a similar journey before we made the decision to commit to our current parish. It was both an exhilarating and frightening change for us. It was clear that the Spirit was leading us here, but scary to venture into a tradition which was so different from what we had previously known.

I come from a Baptist background. My mother and her father before her were Baptists. I was raised, "catechized", and baptized in a Southern Baptist church not five miles from our current parish. I left home and attended an evangelical university, and my husband and I attended evangelical churches in Southern California after we married. When we moved back to the Central Valley we chose to worship at the large Baptist church my parents attended.

But, for reasons I couldn't describe well back in 2003, I needed something more than my experience of worship in the Baptist church. Something was missing. Even though my husband and I went to church with our children every Sunday, even though I taught Sunday school and used my gifts as a psychologist to give seminars, to speak at the women's retreat, and to talk to MOPS groups, my soul felt as though it was withering. I couldn't explain what was happening to me, but I had a different spiritual experience when I visited St. John's.

In an attempt to "sit on the fence" and experience the best of both worlds, I would often run downtown to our current parish and attend the 10:30 mass after the early service at the Baptist church was over. I would slip in and sit near the back. As the mass began I could feel myself being swept up into a larger drama that the church catholic has been reenacting since its inception. I knew I was both observing and participating in something that was so much larger than me and my existence at this particular point in time. I knew that for that moment, I was, quite literally, joining with "angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven." It was the first time I had truly experienced myself as part of the larger body of Christ.

During the mass I was repeatedly touched by the Holy Spirit in ways I can't even begin to describe. Every visit, as the procession of the mass started, the people bowed in reverence at the cross as it was being carried by the crucifer past their pew, and I shivered. These people, with bodies bent, were showing respect for, and giving deference to, the cross of Jesus Christ and all it represented -- not the gold, not the literal piece of metal on a pole, but the sign, the symbol of the very reason by which we are able to even approach the altar of God.

Involuntarily, the tears would well up in my eyes and start to trickle slowly down my face. And then, as it was time for communion, and I observed people from every walk of life line up to accept the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, offered for their sins and mine, the tears would come more freely. By the time I knelt at the altar and crossed my open palms to receive personally "the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven", I was weeping.

I experienced the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist in ways I had never experienced Him before. I found Christ literally present, not merely symbolically recalled. I found myself, with the other members of the congregation, entering into and sharing in the paschal mystery of Christ. We, as a body, were joined with Him as the perfect sacrifice, made acceptable in the sight of the Father.

What I discovered at St. John's was the necessity of liturgy, or, literally, "the work of the people." My work; indeed, my duty, is to offer myself and my praise to the Living God, in the only way I can - through the sacrifice of His Son.

It is for this I was made.

And so, to my rich evangelical heritage my new-found Anglican faith adds a crucial component: an emphasis on Eucharist to go with my already well-developed emphasis on God's Word.

Thanks be to God for them both!

The End of the Day

O gracious Light,
pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven,
O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed!

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,

and our eyes behold the vesper light,

We sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,
O Son of God, O Giver of life,
and to be glorified through all the worlds.

BCP, 112

Tractor Therapy

This has been a hard week. I was sick, my two younger kids were sick, my husband was away for two days to attend meetings for work, my neighbor was being a jerk (later blog!), and life was just generally very busy. As a result, I had little time to contemplate on all the goings-on in my life.

Luckily, Saturday was lawn-mowing day! This meant I got to hop on my John-Deere riding lawn mower for about two hours and ride up and down and around our two-acre property. There were no phones ringing that I "had" to answer, no delightful children yelling, "Mom" (at least that I could hear!), no other activity in which I could, or "should", be engaged - just me and my mower.

I have found mowing to be a very contemplative activity. I know the task well, and have done it so often, that I don't have to think about what I am doing. To which my husband now adds, "That's why you run over so many sprinklers with the mower!" I think he is being sarcastic, not enlightened, so I will choose to ignore him right now and continue with my contemplative musings...

This Saturday morning, with every lap of the mower, I could feel my head clearing. Stuff that had been waiting to be emotionally and spiritually unpacked was finding its way into my consciousness, and into relationship with the One who made me. Eventually, the hum of the lawn mower engine was drowned out by the deep sense of calm and peace that I found in communing with God and inviting Him in to investigate the deep spaces of my soul.

What I found was that my perspective on things changed when I had time and space to filter the week's experiences, and my reactions to them, through the grid of prayer and relationship with the Lord Jesus. I find that God is a great mirror; a gentle and loving, but also painfully accurate mirror. It is with Him that I see myself most clearly and experience myself most honestly. So, as I was sitting upon my bright green and yellow tractor, I found that my irritation with others softened; I could see my own sin in the happenings of the week more clearly (not always an easy task for me). Gratitude for the important people and things in my life came back to the center, and I repented of my impatience and self-centeredness which I displayed numerous times throughout the week, particularly with those closest to me.

So, after two hours I hopped off my tractor a somewhat different person than when I hopped on. Hopefully some of that change has stuck, and I am a little bit more like the Lord Jesus today than I was yesterday.

I guess I'll find out next Saturday...

Twin Musings

I love watching my children's relationship with God blossom and unfold. One of my greatest delights as a mother is to witness their internal response as they sense the movement of the Holy Spirit in their lives. In the past couple of weeks I have been able to observe or participate in a couple of such interactions.

During the church service on Mother's Day my six-year old son was sitting on his father's lap listening to the reading from the epistle appointed for the day. It happened to be the passage out of Revelation 21:10, 22- 22:5

"And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,...And the city has no need of the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the lamb..."

As the lector was reading this passage I happened to glance over at my son. I noticed that he was staring intently at the stained glass window located above the southern entrance of our church (pictured above). I watched as he began tapping his dad excitedly on the arm, but, my husband, who was listening to the reading, ignored him. J. looked up again at the window, then back to his father. Finally, I saw him take his hand and gently put it on his father's cheek in order to move his face into a position in which he, too, could view the stained glass. It was as though he was saying, "Dad, you don't just have to listen to him read about it, you can actually SEE it. LOOK, isn't it beautiful!?"

He was excited that he had made a connection between the window he was seeing and the Scripture he was hearing read aloud in church. I was excited because I could see in him an attunement to spiritual things and an internal "yes" response to the Lord Jesus. May it ever be so!

The second event occurred just two days ago. My six year-old daughter brought me a picture she had made for her older sister. She wanted to tell me about the picture she had drawn of Jesus' crucifixion. Apparently Holy Week made quite an impression on her this year!

She proceeded to tell me, as a good classical education student should, a narrative about the picture I was seeing.

It went something like this:

B: "This is Jesus on the cross. He is very sad. He is saying the words to that song that daddy sang after Fr. Dan washed your feet and all the lights went out. You know, the one about God leaving him."

Me: "You mean "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" from Psalm 22 that the choir sang on Maundy Thursday?"

B: "Yes, that one. See how his mouth is open and he is saying that?"

Me: "Yes, I do. You did a nice job. Who are the two people there by the cross?"

B: "Mary and John, of course." (Becca likes to use the words, "of course" a lot!)

Me: "What are they doing?"

B: "Mom! (indignantly) They are crying. Wouldn't you be crying if your only son or your best friend was dying on a cross for all the sins of the world?"

She gets it! Praise God!

Enough said.

Lessons From An Icon

Since becoming a liturgical Christian, I have loved celebrating the fact that Easter is not just a day, it's a season. It is 50 days of “Alleluias” and remembrances of the reality that is the foundation of our faith. Because of this, the knowledge that the Lord is risen, and sits at the right hand of the Father at this present moment, has taken on a new meaning for me. Death, and all that it entails, has been conquered. “Christ is risen from the dead! Trampling down death by death! And upon those in the tomb, bestowing Life!” There is now a remedy for the deep rift that exists within my soul, the rift of being an eternal creature damned in a temporal existence, separated from God by my own sin and the reality of the Fall.


My favorite icon is called “The Harrowing of Hell." It sits in the corner of our dining room, in a position which allows me and my family to view it whenever we sit down at the table to eat, do crafts, or homeschool. This means that it is within my view, and therefore available for my contemplation, for a good part of any given day. It depicts Jesus standing over the broken gates of Hell, perched on two coffin lids configured in the shape of a cross, pulling out Adam and Eve, holding each by the hand and bringing them up, out of Hell, to be with Him. Standing by, watching in the background as witnesses to this long sought-after event, are many of the Old Testament saints ranging from Moses to Jesus’ forerunner, John the Baptist.

I find this icon especially comforting when I am faced with the realities of grief and loss in my own life. It reminds me that the story is not over. The endings I have experiences do not constitute all of reality. What I see as an ending, is, in reality, a beginning, and a continuation of “Reality” for those whom I have lost to death or geographical distance.

Since Easter Sunday of this year I have either experienced personally, or been made aware of much personal grief and loss. In mid-April our delightful 2 year-old chocolate lab, Gracie, was diagnosed by the vets at UC Davis with cancer. She was given about 4-6 weeks to live. This came as quite a shock to our family. We love this dog. She is truly a beautiful Labrador Retriever and her personality is as equally impressive as her appearance. She is the faithful companion one always envisions when thinking about getting a dog. I realize that she is “just a dog.” At present, thank God, I am not losing my husband, children, parents, close friends, or my own life to cancer. I am losing “just a dog.” But, I am also losing part of me. I have loved this dog, and loved her well. I have exercised my care-taking role as an heir of Adam and Eve and have nurtured this small part of God’s creation. I find that I am more myself because of it.

I realized about a week after her diagnosis that the hard part of this for me was staying connected to Gracie during the dying process. I admit, to my shame, that it would have been easier for me if she had died soon after finding out that she had cancer. It is hard to continue to care for her, love her, and relate to her when you are cognizant of an imminent “death date.” Now, I know in reality, we all have a “death date.” We just don’t always know the day or the hour, and so we don't focus on our mortality. Knowing that she, animal though she is, is going to die soon has been a challenge for me. How do I love her and pour myself into her when I know she is going to die at anytime, and certainly within the next few weeks? How do I stay in and embrace the tension between life and death that I am faced with here in the present moment?

Since her diagnosis I have often asked the Lord what I am supposed to learn from this time. As I sit to type this she is lying in the room next to me. She is sleeping and her breathing is somewhat labored due to the cancer and the steroid she is on to slow the cancer growth. Well, when one asks God a question, one should at least be willing to hear the answer. Last week he gave me a small part of that answer...

On Thursday I stopped into our church office to pick up a check for our upcoming Youth Group activity. As I was speaking to our parish administrator, our rector, who happens to be the man who introduced me to the beauty of Anglican worship and piety, the priest who baptized my children and taught my catechism class prior to my confirmation, and who heard my first and most recent confession; this man, whom I consider a friend, pulled me into his office and asked me to shut the door. I knew this was not a good sign...

He proceeded to tell me that he had accepted a call from another parish, and would be leaving our church in mid July. It was one of those moments when time almost feels frozen, and all I could do initially was feel. I could hear my heart pounding in my head and I had to remind myself to breathe. For a brief second the sadness felt overwhelming. There is was again, that gut-wrenching, familiar feeling of grief and loss; familiar, yet so unexpected and out-of-the-blue on this sunny May afternoon. It served as another poignant reminder that I am a creature and not omnipotent. I am not the one in charge; it is not “my will” that is to be done.

Now, it’s not that this news was totally unexpected. God, in his great mercy, had given me some warning. But despite “knowing” at some level that this was a possibility, the reality of losing both he and his delightful and indescribably talented wife, still generates profound pain and a reaction from deep inside me which says, “No, this is not right!”

But what is it that is “not right?” It certainly is not his call to leave. As I listened to him talk about his process and reasons for leaving it was more than clear that God’s hand was in this decision and had given both he and his wife clarity about His will in the matter. That this will be for their ultimate good and the welfare of His church, I have no doubt. For that I am thankful.

What is “not right” about this is the reality that I will be separated from people I love dearly; separated from people whose hands have, quite literally, shaped and molded much of my current piety. When I look at my family and our spiritual formation, Dan+ and Brenda's fingerprints are everywhere.

God did not fashion our souls for separation; connection was woven into the very fabric of our being. It is part of what it means to be made in the Imago Dei. No, separation is an unnatural state which we are forced to accept while we live this side of eternity. But I don't have to like it. Indeed, I shouldn't like it, for it reminds me that I was not made for this world, but for eternity.

So, for now, when I look out into the back of our property to the grave we have dug in preparation for Gracie's death, and when I am tempted to count down the days till July 15th when Fr. Dan and Brenda leave our parish for Indiana, I look at my icon. And, when I look, I am reminded that because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, separation, no matter how long it may be, is not permanent. Someday we all (yes, Fr. Dan, even the dog - see C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, Chpt 8) will be united again. And until that day, "...all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

An Experiment Begins

I never thought I would start a blog!

However, recent life events have convinced me that it was time to start journaling about some of my thoughts, feelings, and experiences before my life passes by and I fail to "process" or meditate upon the message that these life events, and my reactions to them, have for my maturation and growth in holiness.

I am, as the blog title suggests, an introvert. I need space and time to reflect upon my world and my experience of it. I need solitude with God and quiet time in order to "refuel" myself. In the reality that is my world, time restrictions often mean I don't often take time to reflect upon, much less write about, what I learn in my quiet spaces.

Since I already spend a good deal of time on my computer during any given day, I am hoping that this blog will be a venue in which I can capture and reflect upon some of the "whisperings" of my soul as I contemplate life's journey and my part in it.

So, my experiment begins!