paravanes:meditations

Why would God choose to live and die as a human being in order to atone for, or extinguish, our sin and sinfulness? There is no human experience God, as Jesus Christ, cannot know and understand and empathize with. He knows our humanity because He lived it. Childhood vulnerability. Teenage angst and frustration. The challenges and tedium of adult work and relationships. The love of a parent, and the frustration of sibling rejection. Betrayal. The joy of close friends. The sadness of standing by the burial place of a loved one. Unjust ethnic and political oppression. A slow, painful death at the hands of enemies. Loneliness. Spiritual conflicts with the will of God in the Garden of Gethsemane. Death. The tearing away of self from home, friends, family, and even the body. He has known and will forever know all we know, have known, or will know. The story doesn't end there...Sunday's coming!

Listen. Do I listen for God? Do I think listening for God is a useful, time-worthy activity? I can call it prayer. I can call it meditation. I can call it "quiet time." Whatever term I use, the question remains: do I listen for God? Do I expect God to fight His way through the noise I create and contain in my life, compel me to sit down and be still, and then force feed wisdom to me? Yes, God is still speaking. Despite what others say, God is not changing His mind about our need for personal holiness, community caring and compassion for others, and a Spirit-filled heart. God is still speaking, but who's listening? God is not telling me I need to pray five times a day, or position my body in a certain manner, but God is telling me I need to be still and listen. I need to clear the noise from my life for a certain number of minutes per day and just listen to God. Is this too much to ask? Why do I resist the need to become quiet before God? Will I be reminded of my failures ...

"I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken." --Psalm 16:7 & 8 On the way home from work a few days ago, I listened to a Christian, "call in counseling" program. I don't like to fiddle with radio or CD controls while driving in busy traffic, so I listened to nearly half an hour of free (or perhaps quite expensive ) advice dispersed via the airwaves. I am not opposed to counseling, or visiting counselors, or working with counselors because I think a wise, sensitive counselor who has taken the time to know a client can be very helpful in certain situations and under certain circumstances. After listening to this program, however, I wondered why someone would call a total stranger and ask these types of questions: "Should I stay married to someone who has no interest in working on our marriage?" "Will God heal my illn...

About ten years ago, I discovered a book edited by William L. Andrews, Sisters of the Spirits: Three Black Women’s Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century . All of the autobiographies here are fascinating, but Zilpha Elaw's captured my interest most deeply. Zilpha Elaw, an African-American woman and itinerant preacher during the early nineteenth century, published her memoir, Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travels, and Labours of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw, an American Female of Colour , in England in 1846. Elaw's autobiography is one of three republished in Andrews' collection. Mrs. Elaw, a free woman and native of Pennsylvania, traveled throughout the mid-Atlantic slaveholding states, preaching to large, sometimes racially mixed, audiences despite the threat of capture and enslavement. Elaw went abroad to continue preaching in England. It is believed she planned to return to the States in the late 1840s, but no records of her activities after 1846 are a...

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway." --Mother Theresa When I was a preschooler, my father and I planted tulip bulbs in the backyard of our house. The bed where the tulips were planted bordered an alley behind our yard, and was close to the gate which opened onto the alley. I remember anxiously awaiting the arrival of the flowers from these bulbs. I remember my mother telling me (years later) these bulbs were "championship" bulbs, and as the house was relatively new to our family, everyone was quite proud of decorating our first yard with plants which would offer beautiful blooms for years to come. After a dispute with some neighborhood kids, we returned home one day (the following spring) and found our tulips broken, the rendered stalks tossed around the flower bed. Disappointment and anger welled up within us, and those responsible were never identified. Now, decades later, tulips are my favorite symbol of spring. I've planted them in my...

...courtesy of Paulo Coelho's Warrior of the Light (HarperCollins, 2003). "A Warrior of the Light always keeps his heart free of any feelings of hatred. When he goes into battle, he remembers what Christ said: 'Love your enemies.' And he obeys. But he knows that the act of forgiveness does not mean that he must accept everything; a Warrior cannot bow his head, for if he did he would lose sight of the horizon of his dreams. He accepts that his opponents are there to test his valor, his persistence, and his ability to make decisions. They force him to fight for his dreams. It is the experience of battle that strengthens the Warrior of the Light." --Paulo Coelho, The Warrior of the Light , a companion to The Alchemist . It is an incredible comfort to know God never allows a "too great" opponent into my experience. When I am approached by what I consider to be that "too great" opponent, that approach is God's invitation to me to see more and s...

I stumbled upon Amy Carmichael's writings earlier this winter and have had the joy of burying myself in them during my devotional reading time. I have officially designated her a "Spiritual Sister." How much could I, an African-American woman living in post-modern North America, have in common with Carmichael, born in the mid-nineteenth century in County Down in Northern Ireland? Carmichael spent most of her life (1867-1951) in India as a missionary, creating and sustaining a community of worship (The Dohnavur Fellowship) among those who escaped domestic violence and child abuse. Today it is typical to criticize missionaries from previous years on the grounds that they should have stayed at home and taken care of those nearby, instead of traveling around the world to impose an alien set of beliefs on others.The record is clear: some, perhaps many, missionaries brought hubris , a superior attitude, and a lack of regard for the humanity of those they claimed to serve. Still...

Valentine's Day slipped by a few weeks ago, but this thought has remained with me into this new month of March. I have stopped reading most popular, so-called "women's magazines." Being a true romantic, I realized much of what was written in these magazines and addressed to women on the topic of how to find and keep love was, largely, what we used to call "poppycock." A recent issue of Essence magazine (no, I am not providing the link), ran an article on how to effectively practice the "art" of sexting. Oprah's magazine runs regular features by Dr. Phil on how to have a conversation with a life partner, including suggestions for specific phrases and word arrangements. Never mind that Dr. Phil knows neither of the parties. While standing in the line at the grocery store, I have the option of reading magazine covers with titles like: "Find love in 30 days", "Keep him coming back for more", or "How not to sabotage your lov...