Just Be

 

Sometimes faith comes down to the one basic simple assurance that “God is with me in this moment.” I’m not looking to Him to comfort, enlighten, convict, reassure, make confident of, acquit, or anything else. 

Our present existence is melded. And that is enough.

It took a bit of living, and getting over, the “religious” life to arrive at the point of God’s simple presence being sufficient, without my turning, at first light of daily dawn, to actions required of Him: saving people, holding so and so accountable, turning a particular situation around to my liking, making things right in relationships, clearing my name of an injustice, ending poverty, persecution, ignorance, willful rejection, hurt, anger, and on and on and on—the drumbeat of “let’s roll up our sleeves, God, and see what, primarily, You will do!!

I’ve come to experience that having none of that go through my mind is frequently best. 

A steadiness of listening, hearing, seeing and comprehending elicits a more objective, and certainly less self-occupied, perspective. 

I’m not asking God to see, I’m knowing he sees, and I’m now seeing right along with Him.

In this way, I can just be. 

God can just be. 

We can just be, together.

Not in eternal sunshine and happiness. But in whatever mood, dilemma, or personal enigma—free of solving, fixing, praying, lamenting, or jumping to hyper conclusions, be they joyous or fearsome. 

All goes directly and non-dramatically to God in a silent, penetrating connection between Him and myself, keeping the lanes of my heart and mind clear to continue to just abide and live out all God has transformationally wrought within me thus far. 

That is the surety that makes this possible. That is how I don’t regress. That is how I don’t let people hold me to their expectations of how I used to be, or how they remember me being, or how I ought to be (and me, them). 

That is how I prevent the failures and ignorance of yesterday from reappearing and polluting the present, no matter the triggers or attempts to bring those errors to the surface.

We have gained so much with God! And we have lost so much, in a good way, to gain it!

Let us be His redeemed, His forgiven, His made-right in a multitude of ways. Let us be His made strong. 

And let the calm and grace of that strength we share with Him, permeate. 

And be enough. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

Giving Up the Ghost of "Community"

When people wax nostalgic about “community,” what they are, in actuality, imagining or thinking worthy to emulate is a coterie of like-minded people who “go along to get along” (with those "going along" in a "show up and shut up" or suffer silently sort of way). 

When, however, someone with a varying or outright opposite or contrary viewpoint enters in to that community, or a longtime member demands too much from the group due to questioning or evolving perspective, or doesn’t contribute according to standard, that person becomes an outsider and most likely will never “fit in” until they “tow the community line.”

Sometimes they are booted out. 

Sometimes they are finger-pointed at and passively or aggressively confronted.

Sometimes the person wastes no more time and simply moves on. 

I truly believe that the ideal of “community” which most people adhere to, hope for and curate, is nothing more than group think and group act. 

Which is why “church-hoppers” will never find their church “home,” and why, in the current state of partisan politics, Democrats will rarely, if ever, concede greatness to a Republican, and a Republican will rarely, if ever, concede greatness to a Democrat. 

The beloved quest for diversity-in-community will never achieve its goal until people—each and every individual, young and old alike—stop being threatened by differing viewpoints and the people who hold them. 

Confident, assured individuals who are at peace with themselves will be sincerely inquisitive and able to carry on a mature, respectable conversation without shouting down another (either silently and internally, or outwardly). 

The potential for influence, after all, is only as great as one's ability to open their own mind--especially one that may heretofore have been closed--to thoughtful consideration of another's context and perspective. 

It's called a willingness to change, or a humble willingness to consider all the facts and not change, but also not force another to transform, or refuse their right to believe what they believe and be who they are.

In the end, I posit that “community” as most people dream it—to be with others who “think like I do, believe like I do, and act like I do” is actually quite detrimental, and no place in which I am pining to live. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

Nothing is a Thing

 

Recently, I toured an open house wherein the floor plan did not follow a traditional utilitarian layout. I noticed that many of us walking through the home found this oddly disconcerting, and, pondering with furrowed brows, we questioned what might become of the space, how it could best be put to “good use.” 

In short, our gut reaction was to solve how to “fill” the open areas.

And it struck me, this obsessive tendency to functionality, to make productive, to "waste not want not," to never have it occur to any of us to just leave it empty.

I realized that we do this with much of life.

We do it with weekends.

We do it with years.

We do it with children.

We do it with ourselves.

We try to figure out how to purposely fill   all    of    the    space. 

We forget, or perhaps never knew, that empty space is actually a thing. An entity to itself.

Empty walls. 

Empty weekends.

Empty prayers.

Emptiness is what often leads to completeness, to filling, on its own, what we have tried to force into being.

But only if we see it that way and grow comfortable with its initial, sometimes vulnerable, awkwardness. 

What we find is, that the empty, the nothing at all, possesses its own sufficiency. And over time, we welcome it as a coveted balancing friend. 

It isn’t meditation. 

Nor New Agism. 

It isn’t, you guessed it: anything. 

It is nothing. 

Nothing at all. 

And that is what makes it a thing. 

A quiet, often misunderstood, but essential, thing. 

We make room for it then, as we would for every other thing.

But when we make room for the nothing, there is going to be less room for the other somethings: the volunteering, recreating, schooling, socializing, media-consuming, television-watching, over-thinking and active distracting. 

These other highly prioritized fillings—these perpetual doings-of-something and stuffing of spaces—must now move over, or lose out to entirely, the exonerated empty. 

Nothing, realized and finally embraced as a concrete something, is unleashed to liberally supplant the void that always-doing-and-filling something naively created. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

The Blurring of the Line

 

Why do we worship spiritual and religious authors and mystics, and, if we are honest with ourselves, do we extrapolate them onto God, or God onto them?

copyright Barb Harwood

Opinions and the Identity of Standards

 

In the last several days, I have been party to rather hyped-up and strongly-stated opinions about innocuous topics: brands of foods, the way people behave at a craft show, and—two that I am particularly guilty of—how people drive their vehicle and my frustration that the only lanes open in the grocery store are self-checkout!

What dawned on me as I pondered this need to “major in the minors,” as a throwback saying puts it, is that this stating of opinion as if Chicken Little herself was clucking it is merely a need to assert standards. 

My standards, the rest be damned!

From how people grieve, to political affiliation, to where they shop, standards have become enmeshed with identity, and in order to feel something—what it is I haven’t quite figured out yet—we assert our standards the same way some people flaunt tennis shoes or an expensive auto. The only difference is, the tennis shoes and car are nice to have around because they don’t say anything (and when an Audi or GTI speaks, well, that is a sweet and welcoming sound!).

What startled me the most as I pondered this movement-to-unequivocally assert—mincing no words—is that when I do this, and if I continue to do this, I will simply become old and crotchety.

How’s that for an identity! Egads!

If most of what folks are positing with such dour tone-of-voice vehemence (in boldly ungracious consideration, I might add, of those around them who they know to be polar opposites) actually mattered, it might be different. 

The problem is, we make it matter—to the point that anyone not living exactly as we do are harming the earth, society or culture, or not caring about it one whit (and not caring, we say, is the same as overt harming). 

The reality check is this: do we really think we are going to influence anyone to change to our standard by rudely and passively-aggressively stating our preferences within, or outside of, their earshot? What do we hope to gain other than to shame them and make them feel, or appear, small?

Over time, the self-promotional verbal complaints or statements we use to justify the standards that manifest our identity, age us because they inhibit the maturating process of sincerely curious dialogue and warm compassion which arises through the consideration of context, unthreatened by where other people are coming from. 

Maybe those we’ve deemed less-than in contrast to our revered standards do care! Maybe they are producing good in the world that we are not privy to? Is it negated if it isn’t our version, our way?

In order to shed this old blanket of haughtiness going forward, I am thinking it would benefit me to practice using a filter on my heart, mind and mouth that considers whether what I am about to hand-wring over is really of any consequence, and then ask myself why I am desiring to get so worked about it in the first place. 

And then I’m going to find something--anything--to either do something about without yammering, or to simply be without yammering. 

Sort of like a young child, to whom the world is not an enemy to be conquered.

Copyright Barb Harwood

On Becoming a Grandmother

In the quiet, cold stillness of this 5 a.m. first of December, in the cusp of new life, lies the gift of stepping into a steady, perpetual presentness of God’s grace. 

All of the learning, the hard-won, “wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger,” can now bear fruit in the older with the younger, the Grandmother and the Grandson. 

That complex, simple grace—so pure it takes half a lifetime to even begin to fathom—marks and plants the fresh bloom of being that today holds entrance into all of the goodness and wonder of the years already lived, and those yet to come.

It is a grace that breathes at all times:

In response.

In perception. 

In giving no mind to that which no mind, or heart, need fret over. 

In loving and being that love—not sentimentally or self-centeredly—but in grace. 

His grace, which forges:

Goodness.

Strength.

Trust. 

Realistic hope.

Lightness of heart.

Joy, playfulness and innocence unperturbed and not distracted by out-of-line factors and persons.

And forgiveness of the kind that doesn’t take offense to begin with.

In this birth of the younger and the older, grace culminates. 

God has made what He began so long ago, beautiful in its time. 

His good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, is poured into my lap. 

This first day, today, of the older and the younger.

Indeed, He does make all things new. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

A Question to Ask Ourselves

 

"We strive and reach out in ways that aren't good for us." 

The above quote is from a sermon of a pastor who led a church I once attended. 

The quote dates from 2007, and during the course of the last year or two, I finally understand what the pastor was getting at. 

His insight serves, I believe, as a really thoughtful impetus for each of us to "Take-stock-of-where-I'm at" and address "Why-I-feel-out-of-sorts no-matter-what-I-do-or-think-I-ought-to-do."  

For me, it helped immensely to turn his quote into a question:

"How am I striving and reaching out in ways that aren't good for me?"

Which, in order to arrive at the answer, led me to yet another question:

"What are my motivations for striving and reaching out? And are those motivations resulting in my striving and reaching out in ways that aren't good for me?"

copyright Barb Harwood