Benedectine Monks 3

The Waters of Liberation. For SheLoves Magazine.

I’ve lived on the banks of a river that is the stuff of legends—those storied waters that cradled civilization and was the bridge between life and death for the ancients. It is obvious why Egypt is called “the gift of the Nile” once you spend a couple months in the sandy, dry heat. No life could exist in such a desert without those blessed waters.

I conversely now live in one of the most lush deltas in the world. Bangladesh is situated in the fertile plain that lies between the melting Himalayan snow, the waters of the sacred Ganges flowing out of India, and the largest bay in the world. Here the 700 rivers mean life—and death. When the monsoon rains come and the rivers flow outside their banks, many people who have nowhere else to go in this overpopulated land, have to move and rebuild—again.

I’ve seen the same waters meant to bring life, carry destruction instead. How can it be?

I’ve always loved order. I think that is what drew me to organized religion as a teenager who hadn’t been raised in the church. I finally had a set of rules I could follow. There were lines in the sand dividing the good and the bad and I knew just what to do to stay on the right side of that line. It felt like freedom was in the certainty.

I didn’t act like someone who was free, though. I used my freedom to condemn, separating myself from those who didn’t stay on the side of the line that I called good. I became a stagnant, festering pool; there was no living water flowing through me to others.

So, I thought if rules brought death, I’d live free of them. I ran from the church of my youth. I pushed back against the limits to see what being boundless felt like. It felt utterly terrifying. I became a flood, destroying everything in my wake. That wasn’t freedom either.

I’ve lived with a carefully measured faith and no faith at all. Both were destructive. I searched every place I could for a real taste of liberation, but I still felt chained inside...

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May 16, 2016 Contemplation, Prayer

Always We Begin Again. For SheLoves Magazine.

I spent so many years wishing to go back.

The years between college and the real world were marked by a struggle to find my place, a kind of limbo. I was truly on my own for the first time, a stranger in a city not my own. I was stuck in a place between the dreams God had called me to and actually live them out.

As I was looking for myself, I found something else.

When I think about that time, I can still feel the sticky heat coming off the bayou. I can feel the breeze blowing through the live oaks that hung down like arms reaching out to embrace you. With my feet dangling into the murky waters off Gulf Coast docks, I spent hours discovering a God who was gently whispering His love for me.

God’s voice was as real to me as the jazz music that invaded every corner of the Quarter. In those early years of my adulthood I felt like I had arrived at a new realization of who God was.

I left that place behind and violent storms have since changed the landscape where I discovered God anew. They changed me, too. I married, lived abroad, returned home. I became something new again—this time mother, twice over.

Somehow, in all the landscape changes over the years, that tangible feeling of God’s Presence got swept away like the apartment I lived in next to the beach, crushed under the raging winds of Hurricane Katrina.

I kept trying to recreate those moments when I had heard God so clearly. I longed for my seminary days when I could spend hours debating theology or discussing faith stories. I struggled to hear God in the same way, but the winds shifted and I couldn’t hear it anymore...

THIS WEEK I AM WRITING AT SHELOVES MAGAZINE ABOUT OUR LONGING TO GO BACK AND HOW GOD SHOWED ME THAT WE MUST ALWAYS MOVE FORWARD, EVEN IN THE WAYS WE FIND HIM. JOIN ME THERE...

January 2, 2016 Contemplation, Presence & Stillness

A Year Without Resolutions {The shift from “achieving” to simply “being”}. For Her.meneutics .

This year I am not making New Year’s resolutions. I am not jotting down goals and dreams, in hopes of becoming a different version of myself. Instead, I am exploring something new this year—or rather, something very old.

It all began when I visited a local monastery for some quiet reflection. Being a busy working mom, I was feeling out of touch with time for my own spiritual development. Driven by to-do lists, I felt the need to set some spiritual goals instead of just practical ones. The Monastery of the Holy Spirit, sitting on 7,000 acres of untouched Georgia woodlands, became the perfect retreat for New Year’s Day reflections a few years ago.

I was taken by the beauty of the place and intrigued by the life of the forty monks in community there. I attended a retreat at the monastery later in the year, praying and learning alongside the monks. The common prayer and meditative readings were unknown to me as an evangelical, but still sparked a deeper contemplation around God and his gospel truths.

The following year, I returned to the abbey church, listening to monks singing midday prayers while asking God to guide my year ahead. I have always loved how New Year’s puts us in a mindset of reflection and reordering. It’s especially needed as another year comes to an end, and we’re left feeling more defeated than inspired...