2009 June « The Painted Prayerbook

Archive for June, 2009

Mapping the Mysteries, Revisited

June 29, 2009

Mapping the Mysteries © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Year B, Proper 9/Ordinary 14/Pentecost +5: Mark 6.1-13

Over the weekend, as I was working on my book, I revisited the story of “Old Elizabeth,” a woman who was born into slavery in the southern United States. Reading her words again, I found myself struck in particular by the ways she sought to know the presence and guidance of God. Elizabeth was raised in a system that sought to define who she was, and, by separating her from her family, distanced her from those who knew who she was. Yet she walked in close companionship with a God who offered solace and in whom she knew she was something other, something more, than what her masters had allowed.

Elizabeth received a call to preach when she was twelve years old and still living in slavery. It would be years before she would be able to fulfill that call. The path by which she did so was marked by struggle and by grace. She tells that shortly after receiving her call, she “was moved back to the farm where my mother lived, and then sold to a stranger.

Here I had deep sorrows and plungings, not having experienced a return of that sweet evidence and light with which I had been favoured formerly; but by watching unto prayer, and wrestling mightily with the Lord, my peace gradually returned, and with it a great exercise and weight upon my heart for the salvation of my fellow-creatures; and I was often carried to distant lands and shown places where I should have to travel and deliver the Lord’s message. Years afterward, I found myself visiting those towns and countries that I had seen in the light as I sat at home at my sewing,—places of which I had never heard.

I find myself thinking again of Elizabeth and her journey, both to freedom and to fulfilling her call, as I reflect on this Sunday’s gospel reading. Even if our call is clear (and it isn’t always)—as Jesus made his instructions to the disciples in this passage quite clear—the way by which we live into our call is rarely well-defined. This fact is both a challenge and a gift. As an ordained minister/artist/writer/retreat leader who has carved out an unconventional path (which has often involved providing responses such as “no, this isn’t a sabbatical; yes, this is my real ministry; no, I haven’t left the church”), I continue to find it both exhilarating and also sometimes daunting to discern and forge and navigate this mysterious road that provides no map for the way ahead. Yet the presence of God goes with us in even the murkiest, darkest, most fog-laden stretches. Here, too, I find myself thinking again of Elizabeth, who said that “in every lonely place I found an altar.” She challenges me to do the same as I seek the way of Christ.

Mark’s telling of Jesus’ sending of the disciples bears similarities to Matthew and John’s accounts. Last year I offered a reflection on Matthew’s version of this story. As I turn my writing energies back to the book-in-progress, I invite you to visit last year’s reflection, “Mapping the Mysteries,” by clicking here.

Blessings on your path!

[Elizabeth’s quotations are from Memoir of Old Elizabeth in the book Six Women’s Slave Narratives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.]

[To use this artwork, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.]

Posted in art, Gospel of Mark, lectionary, Ordinary Time | 2 Comments »

Circling around Again

June 21, 2009

Stories and Circles © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Year B, Proper 8/Ordinary 13/Pentecost +4: Mark 5.21-4

This coming Sunday, the lectionary gives us a reading that’s among my favorites in all of scripture. In this passage, a version of which Matthew and Luke include in their gospels, Mark gives us the story of two healings that are intertwined with one another. This text stands among my favorites because, in addition to giving us a double dose of remarkable healings, the gospels structurally connect them in a way that reminds us of a crucial element in our search for wholeness: our healing must be linked to the healing of others. Healing is not solely a personal endeavor, this passage tells us; it occurs in the context of community. We seek it not only for ourselves but as part of the flourishing of the wider world. Our wholeness is bound together.

I offered a reflection on Matthew’s telling of this story last year, so, particularly as I’m continuing to direct most of my writing energies toward my book-in-progress (prayers very welcome!), I invite you to visit that post by clicking here. I wish you many blessings in these days of Ordinary Time.

Posted in art, Gospel of Mark, lectionary, Ordinary Time | Leave a Comment »

Stirring the Sleeping Savior

June 15, 2009

Reading from the Gospels, Proper 7/Ordinary 12/Pentecost +3: Mark 4.35-41

As often happens, I find myself struck by the ways that the landscape of the lectionary intersects with the landscape of my own life. Pondering Mark’s telling of how Jesus stills the windstorm that springs up during their evening crossing of the sea, I think of doing battle last week with a bout of anxiety that had pressed hard upon me. I generally experience myself as a pretty calm person, blessed both with a natural disposition and acquired skills that enable me to move through my days with relative equanimity. Yet last week, as I grappled with a summertime deadline for the new book I’m working on [In the Sanctuary of Women], my stress exacerbated by preparing for a trip that would disrupt my already-tight schedule, I experienced a level of anxiety that was foreign to me. In the midst of it, I had trouble recognizing my normally calm self.

Like the disciples, I called on some help in the midst of the storm. A series of conversations with my wise sweetheart helped me return my focus to where it needed to be: on the book, not on the looming deadline. As I became able to reorient my attention, my anxiety began to slide away. I modified my travel plans in a way that reduced my stress, gave myself to the delights of reconnecting with friends and family in the places I visited, and when I returned over the weekend, I took some Sabbath time before diving back into the book.

We Christians sometimes describe anxiety and fear as the flip side of faith, casting them as opposites and chastising one another—or ourselves—for not having enough faith to still our fears. It’s true that faith and fear have a hard time living together. Fear and anxiety can seduce us into a frantic loop in which our perceptions grow so distorted that we may completely lose the path that would carry us through our fears. Like the disciples, we become swamped. They were right to feel afraid. Yet their perception that their reality was defined solely by the storm only increased their experience of being overwhelmed. The presence of the storm was not the whole truth of their situation—a fact that the sleeping savior in the stern would soon remind them of.

There is plenty of cause to be anxious and fearful in these days, and for better reasons than a looming book deadline. Anyone who’s not feeling some anxiety probably isn’t paying enough attention to what’s going on. Living in denial is not the same as having faith. Whatever the sources of our anxiety, faith helps to provide the tools we need to maintain our vision and to see the truth within the waves that seek to command our whole attention. Faith asks us where we are turning our sight, and what we are allowing to define our reality.

Pondering all this, I revisited an article that Sharon Salzberg, the noted author and Buddhist teacher, wrote for the January 2002 article of O Magazine. In her article, titled “Choosing Faith over Fear,” Salzberg writes,

Faith demands that, despite our fear, we get as close as possible to the truth of the present moment so that we can offer our hearts fully to it, with integrity. Faith is willing to engage the unknown, not shrink back from it. Faith doesn’t mean the absence of fear. It means having the energy to go ahead, right alongside the fear. The word courage in English has the same etymological root as the French coeur, which means “heart.” With courage we openly acknowledge what we can’t control, and place our hearts wisely on our ability to connect with the truth of the moment and to move forward into the uncharted terrain of the next moment.

We might (and often must) hope and plan and arrange and try, but faith enables us to be fully engaged while also realizing that we are not in control. To be able to make an intense effort—to heal, to speak, to create, to alleviate our suffering or the suffering of others—while guided by a vision of life with all its mutability, evanescence, dislocations, and unruliness, is the particular gift of faith.

When the sleeping savior stirs in response to his disciples’ cries, he doesn’t tell them to have no fear. He instead invites them to examine why they are afraid—in essence, to consider how and why they have let the windstorm rule their reality—and calls upon them to have a measure of faith that will accompany them amid their fears and help to restore their vision.

How’s the weather in your world this week? Are there any storms raging that have you feeling overwhelmed with anxiety or fear? Where might you find help amid the storm? How might God be inviting you to shift your attention in a way that helps you recognize that the storm does not have the final word? Instead of experiencing fear and anxiety as bullies that leave us feeling helpless, how might it be to receive them as messengers who invite us to refocus our vision? How would it be to pray that God would turn your anxiety into energy for moving forward?

Time for me to return to the book. Letting go of my anxiety is helping me work better, but it doesn’t lessen the amount of work yet to be done! No new collage this week, but if you’re looking for some artwork to accompany this passage, I invite you to visit several earlier collages that I created for watery themes. Clicking on each image below will take you to that image’s page on my new website, janrichardsonimages.com. Clicking the title below each image will take you to the reflection where the collage originally appeared.

In every landscape, may you know the gift of faith. Blessings.