Restoration 5
A New Way of Seeing (Saved For Each Other). for the Mudroom.
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.
–The New Zealand Anglican Lord’s Prayer
I wanted to savor each ship of chai in the tiny aluminum cup. I didn’t mind its heat on my hands even though my scarf already stuck to my chest, wet with sweat and humidity from the monsoon rains on the horizon. I gulped down my tea though because there was work to do.
I was twenty-four when I spent two months living with two local social workers and daily visiting the largest slums in Asia with them to assist in schools and women’s training programs. It was the summer I finally met the Jesus I’d been chasing for a decade.
Ever a rule-follower, when I started attending church at fourteen I took the systematic approach to becoming a good Christian. Pray a prayer and get saved (rededicate your life to Jesus if you mess up) and get baptized, check. Go to church and find places to serve, check. Study the Bible, check. Go out and tell people about Jesus and bring them into the church so the cycle can begin all over again with them, check.
I am forever grateful for the foundation I received as a teen hungry for love, community, and purpose. I learned to talk to God like a friend, to be responsible for my own spiritual growth, to love the Word of God, and to serve others. But that was only part of the picture. The Jesus I wanted so desperately still eluded me.
I was taught the world was a dark, scary, sinful place I needed to shield myself from. It wasn’t going to get any better until Jesus came back and saved us from it all. I thought that is what church was for—a place to prepare and equip us to go out and bring others into the hope of a world better than this one. We were saved from something and we had a mission.
But in the muddy paths between the tin and wood slum houses, I found a community that upended everything I thought I knew about what Christ came to do in this world, about God’s work of reconciliation. Like the early church, they truly depended on each other for everything. It was there I started to realize the Kingdom of God was already here, that we could be bearers of the goodness of God right here among each other.
In those days I saw poverty, hunger, trafficking, injustice, and suffering like I had never seen before. I also saw families God had restored, lives that had been made new, people willing to suffer to help others, and children clinging to the hope that this life could be better because of the Good News they came to that little church to listen to each week. I saw Muslims, Hindus, and Christians working together to make their little corner of the earth a better place for each other.
Every Sunday the kids we taught during the week showed up in tattered dresses and suits, smiling and calling out, “Namaste, teacher!” We sat and laughed over those hot cups of chai for a few minutes and then rolled up the mats we sat on, packed up the drums, and swept the floor. Class would start early the next day, and we had lots of families to visit.
The church building was swept away moments after the Sunday service was over, returning to its purpose as a schoolroom. But the Church dispersed throughout the slum to care for her people. Church didn’t stop with a worship service. My friends went out to talk to people about the lack of nutrition they experienced, about the injustice they encountered, about education for their children, and job training for women. They went out and really listened to the problems people were experiencing and asked how they could help.
“We are so quick, as human beings, to get our salvation and then make it personal. It’s all about Jesus and me,” said Civil rights activist, community developer, and Bible teacher, John Perkins. “What would happen if we organized with the expectation that God is going to use us in one another’s lives—if we recognized the importance of those around us to our own spiritual growth?”
The interdependence Perkins talks about is what opened my eyes that summer to a whole new way of seeing. I saw how each person’s life was tangled up in the others. This is a bedrock of Asian communal culture. It should also be a bedrock of communities of faith around the world, working together to see the Kingdom coming among us...
CONTINUE READING AT THE MUDROOM
Learning the Language of Hope. for the Mudroom.
Shame was a language I learned early, right along with how to say “please” and “thank you.” There was an unspoken etiquette we learned growing up in the Southern United States. The tea should be sweet. You should address people older than you as “ma’am” and “sir.” I knew the taste of collard greens and banana pudding, as well as the proper use of the phrase, “bless her heart” to camouflage your disdain for someone in a prayer. We were known for our hospitality and kindness. We were always polite and proper—to people’s faces. Appearances mattered, often more than anything else.
I spent a good bit of my childhood being lulled into summer evening bliss by the rhythmic rocking of wooden chairs and the tinkle of the wind chimes hung on a long porch. My sister and I spent days down by the creek, running as fast as we could past our grandpa’s beehives. Our hands were stained from the red clay and black muscadine juice, calloused from shelling peas and stirring pots of beans.
But during those lazy afternoons on the porch, the stories flowed like molasses, sweet and sticky in the summer sun. Oh, that girl down the road the got married a little young. We all knew why. That neighbor had a liking for the bottle, everyone said. Shh, don’t say it too loud, someone might hear you. But wasn’t there a guy in school whose momma just got out of the hospital? You know, for taking too many pills?
If you stepped outside the cultural expectations, you would be the talk of the town. One thing I never learned was the language of grace. We were never taught to talk about all our failings or about the healing we can find when we say it out loud. We didn’t know what life could be like when we admitted our mistakes and asked for help. We just knew to sweep the dark corners of our lives under the rug, afraid someone would find out and whisper about us, too.
It was never said explicitly but the implications were clear. Don’t let people see your weaknesses. Manners matter more than transparency. And, for goodness sake, keep up appearances.
When I started attending church in my teens, I wrapped a new layer of right actions around me like a bullet-proof vest. I knew just what to say and do (and what and who to avoid) to appear like the best Christian. We talked all about a personal relationship with Christ, but what I really gained was another set of standards I needed to uphold.
Years later, after lapses that certainly made me the talk of all the good folks I knew in my church days, I longed for Jesus but I wasn’t so sure about his people. I knew I was a horrible mess and I was hungry for someone that could offer me more than appearances. I’ll never forget the kind people that poured into hurting students in the college ministry where I finally discovered a different dialect. They replaced the language of failure, shame, and secrecy with words like vulnerability, lament, mercy, and restoration...
CONTINUE READING AT THE MUDROOM
Living as a Learner
“Oh, boys don’t wear mehndi,” we were told when our six-year-old proudly displayed the bright red paisley design he got on his palm during a recent celebration. We’d seen young boys on the streets with the designs and he just wanted to be included in the festivities, but a trusted friend told us it is a bit taboo. I nodded and made a mental note for next time. There’s always something new to learn.
Learning to live well in a new culture is like being a small child again. We are helpless without the guidance of others. Some may think this ends after we’ve learned where to shop and how to navigate public transportation, how to have a simple conversation or what hospitality looks like. It doesn’t, not if we want to be good students of culture and open ourselves to truly connecting with people in our adopted home. We have to make choices every day to set aside our pride and to place ourselves under the wisdom of those wiser than us.
Humility looks like being embarrassed when we are told to always serve tea in dainty teacups (now knowing why we got funny looks when we gave our guests our enormous American mugs. More is better, right? Wrong.). It looks like serving dinner at the end of the night instead of the beginning like we’d do in American because here visiting first is a priority and serving the meal means the visit is now over. We can’t ever assume we understand and we can’t stop seeking to go deeper in respect for and a willingness to learn from our neighbors.
We need to know how to respect the traditions of our neighbors, how to walk the line between what we hold onto from our own culture and how we fit into our new one. I wear the local clothing (not all foreigners here choose to) but my young daughter doesn’t need to. We fumble with attempts to learn the language but our kids go to an English school and only know a few phrases in Bangla. We eat Bengali food for lunch but don’t deny our son his Nutella.
I am not a natural at humility or taking correction. It actually takes a lot of work for me. While I can easily submit myself to the wisdom of people in my adopted country, I often am rigid when it comes to taking direction on issues I think I know a lot about. I’m not happy about this. God is leading me to the roots of this pride, the insecurity that fuels it.
Feeling like a child again shows me how little I know and I am working to allow trusted people to speak into my life in more than just issues of culture. I especially want to look to those with a different perspective than me. I want to read more books by and follow people on social media who are outside my own culture, faith tradition, and race—people who can speak into blind spots my own experiences have left me with. In areas I know I am weak, I look to those who are strong. In areas where I think I am strong, I remind myself I’m not as capable as I think I am. I still need some work. Okay, a lot of work.
It may not come naturally to humble ourselves but that is why we work at it. When it comes to wanting to belong in a place or to a people, sometimes it is easy to say, “here I am; teach me!” When it is a group we aren’t sure we love yet, a people who rub us the wrong way—it takes a little more effort and is that much more necessary.
Yes, I’m like a child in a culture where I am an outsider. But in so many other ways as well I am like my kids easily take correction on their spelling words. They know their mom knows a few more things about the English language than they do in first and fourth grade. But they don’t exactly love it when I point out their bad attitudes or unkind words. I remind them that I am trying to help them grow into better people and make a mental note that I need to take my own advice. All of us children need reminders that correction is loving, humility is necessary, and we should never stop trying to grow.
In what areas of learning do you feel you are weak?
How do you work towards humility in your life? Does it come naturally to live as a learner?
What steps are you taking to take correction and move towards understanding, in what areas of your life?
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Moving Toward a Life of Listening, Learning, and Loving
The question stayed with me for days but I didn’t have an answer. In one of my online tribes a question was posed: What do you know so well that you could teach on for 45 minutes without notes?
I could easily ramble about some things I am passionate about for 45 minutes but I am not expert enough in any of them that I could truly teach about them. I realized how much of my life is that of a learner. I joke that I would go to school for the rest of my life if someone else would pay for it. I have a thousand different interests and I dabble in many of them, but I am expert in none—save my own life experiences that I invite others into through my writing.
I have poured countless hours into writing, editing, learning about the craft and the industry, building a website, making connections. But, what is the purpose of this thing I pour my time and my heart into? What do my readers come to my writing hoping to gain?
Earlier this year, overwhelmed by language study and culture shock of a huge international move, I stepped back from writing. When the words started tumbling out again, they sounded different. I realized I needed to step back and ask, “What do I really have to say?”
When I started sharing my writing online several years ago I invited others to quiet the noise without and within and listen for the One voice that mattered. I have encountered God in my writing and in my life in those years and my faith has shifted as a result. How could it not in the midst of the changing seasons of my life, motherhood, geography, and the cultural context of the world and church around me? My writing has changed because I have changed. I have changed because I have listened. I have placed myself under teachers who have guided me. I realized my writing has been guiding too—toward a life of listening, learning, loving.
I have dipped my toes into the waters of what faith looks like through different practices and in different seasons. Together we’ve gone on journeys into contemplative prayer, social justice, mental health, transition, and more. And I am not an expert in any of these areas. But I am learning more every day from those who are and from the God who wants our lives to fully embody a life of loving Him and others. And I think there are others out there who don’t want to sit still and let the noise of this world overtake them. They too want to sift through the noise to find what God is saying about how to live in this world.
I’m no mental health authority but I can share how fear and anxiety has shaped my faith and maybe we find we have similar wounds. I don’t know all there is to know about interfaith dialogue or international life but I know what it looks like to sit with my Muslim neighbors and try to love them better. Maybe you want to know what that looks like. I struggle with contemplative prayer more days than I manage to sit with silence but maybe we can walk toward life-giving practices of faith together.
In Four Gifts: Seeking Self-care for Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength April Yamasaki talks about how the word “Listen” positioned at the beginning of the great commandment struck her as vital to the commandment itself:
Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ – Mark 12.29-31, NLT
Yamasaki says, “If we are to love God, we need to listen. If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, we need to listen. As far as great commandments go, listening ranks right up there with loving. Listening and loving go together.”
No, I’m not an expert on much. Not even on listening. Just ask my husband. I am full of pride more often than I am humble. I like to hear my own voice and have to work on being still. But in my journeys in faith, in loving cultures not my own, in stumbling toward seeing my part in God’s plan of restoration, I have seen the truth that I must listen to God and listen to others if I am to live a life of love. And this is the journey I invite you to take together with me. Maybe we can make some space in this noisy online world and be still to listen together. I don’t know about you but I would be happy to be known simply as a listener. Let’s be known for being humble learners and fierce lovers!
I want to hear from you. I am listening with you. Keep the conversation going in the comments or on social media:
How are you listening to God? What areas do you struggle in your practice and experience of faith?
Who are you listening to in this noisy world clamoring for our attention? Do you place yourself under the teaching of a diverse group of people? Where do you feel you are lacking in what you are learning or who you are listening to these days?
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The Process of Restoration. For SheLoves Magazine.
Light filtered in the bay window, glinted on the freshly painted walls. I stood in the dining room of our first home, still in awe that it actually belonged to us. Five months pregnant with our second baby, I set out to clean every surface and set up each room just perfectly for our new arrival.
But the dining room table that had belonged to my mother-in-law didn’t fit in this shiny, new space. Thirty years of life had made deep scars in the surface of the table. The once beautiful dark wood now had deep gouges and dings, marring the whole look of the room.
I was thrilled when my dad offered to resurface the table, putting a new coat of paint over markings left by three children and the grandchildren that followed. My dining room would look perfect.
***
In our do-it-yourself culture, where those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps are celebrated, we don’t talk about it. Maybe there are whispers in a bedroom or across the table. But in our sanctuaries, in our living rooms, in our families?
Certainly it’s taboo to talk about in public, lest we be accused of judging others. Lest we appear as less than the shiny, perfect people we want others to see. We don’t name it sin. We don’t air it in front of others.
We hide the blemishes, gloss over them with another coat of paint. Those dings and gouges in our souls don’t fit into the glossy appearance we are supposed to keep...
Come to my dining room today. Sit a while and let's talk about the condition of our souls. Do you need restoration? Read on.
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