Unempty Moments

I can't remember anything but her underwear.

I can't remember the day or even which convalescent facility we were in. I can't remember what my mom was telling me or what I was wearing.

What I can remember is her underwear. They were big, literally granny panties. Soft cotton. Conservative white and new baby pink. No lace or ruffles.

I can remember how they folded softly in my mom's hands. She caressed them absentmindedly as she spoke.

We were moving my grandmother into a new facility.

We were in the repeat-the-same-question-every-five-minutes stage of her dementia, not yet to the frantic wheelchair racing or the evergreen season of suspicion. She hadn't yet looked desperately into my eyes and asked if I could find her mother.

But still, we were scared, my mom and I. Missing the mother and grandmother we once knew. The woman who remembered her legendary spaghetti and meatballs recipe and walked loops around her apartment complex with friends bearing names like Petey or Marge.

The fear hung silent between us as we unpacked her clothes, a few books, some pictures of toothy grandchildren for her bedside table.

Henri Nouwen talks about patience as one of the cornerstones of the compassionate life; impatience the deterrent that keeps us tapping our feet, checking our watches, and missing the glory of God.

By this point in the story, (like you I venture to presume) I should have been tapping my feet, checking my watch and writing off another summer afternoon as "empty, useless, meaningless."

But I didn't.

The counterpoint to impatience, Nouwen describes another rendering of time when we experience the moment as "full, rich, and pregnant." When "somehow we know that in this moment everything is contained: the beginning, the middle, and the end; the past, the present and the future; the sorrow and the joy; the expectation and the realization; the searching and the finding."

This was one of these moments. Watching my mom delicately fold my grandmother's underwear. In this moment I was gripped by the thought that love need be nothing more than this simple, intimate act.

It became an unempty moment.* A moment I didn't want to get away from. A moment filled with the glory of God.

To this day, this afternoon represents a rupture for me. A rupture that signaled not a fracture, but a deepening. A deepening love for my grandmother. A deepening respect for my mom. And a deepening gratitude for every humdrum moment-turned-miracle I had left with both of them, together in one room, folding underwear, in an unempty moment.

***

*Precious moments was already trademarked.

Why am I here?

I’ve started taking a spiritual writing class. It must be good because it’s already spurred a million blog ideas and an existential crisis with just one assignment: why am I here?

Not why-do-people-exist or what-is-the-meaning-of-life, but why am I HERE at this juncture in my life. At this computer in this house with these roommates waiting to drive this freeway into this job to do these tasks.

One answer is this:

February 2006, San Jose, Costa Rica

In class I usually sat in the back, jammed against my neighbor in the filled-to-capacity classroom. There were strange wooden pillars inconveniently placed throughout the room, forcing us to cram together in clumps. Our professor, Don Mike, would pace back and forth like a lion waiting to go in for the kill. His sporadic mumblings sounded like growls and soon he would be roaring. My jaw would clench as my heart pounded. He would reduce my beliefs and upbringing to egocentric self-validation. A means of exclusion. Judgment. My faith was offensive, a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty God. A darkened city on a hill. The tasteless salt of the earth. The hypocritical light of the world. The hair on my arms would stand up and it would feel like I’d swallowed a car battery. If anyone, he’d be the one to know when the church was being ineffective; he used to be a Catholic priest.

He would be panting by now; his gruff voice would crack as he condemned American Christianity and everything it stands for. I felt personally attacked as he recounted the horrors of conquest-driven, smallpox-bearing missionaries and money scamming “Gospel of Wealth” televangelists. The blood of every person killed or exploited in the name of God since the dawn of time would stick in the crevices of my guilty hands.

By this point, the pulsating vein in the middle of his scrunched forehead looked ready to burst. I would forget that he coined himself a “recovering Catholic.” I would forget that he did not hold a monopoly on truth. And while I hated him and everything he was saying, I still began to believe that maybe I was the enemy.

***

That’s part of it. That’s part of why I’m here. Writing this blog. Working at this nonprofit that serves the rural poor. Thinking these thoughts.

It’s the why of a life built around overcoming a stigma that my faith is self-serving, self-fulfilling, self-consuming. It’s a why of a life working to not be the world's enemy, the poor's enemy, my own enemy.

It’s not the whole why and it’s not the whole story. But it’s a part. It’s not the best part or the most redeeming part or healthy part.

I’m reminded of a quote by Henri Nouwen (honestly, when am I not?) in Compassion:

"Action as the way of the compassionate life is a difficult discipline precisely because we are so in need of recognition and acceptance… But even setting up a relief program, feeding the hungry, and assisting the sick could be more an expression of our own need than of God's call.

But let us not be too moralistic about it: We can never claim pure motives, and it is better to act with and for those who suffer than to wait until we have our own needs completely under control."

Today, HERE, I am grateful to drive into a job that acts with and for those who suffer and for a God that is using my needs, my why’s, my unclean motives, to accomplish His call.

Basking: The Remix

All last week I was planning to write about how I came to bask in God’s love. But I couldn’t.

I felt silly. I felt like the stories I wanted to share were silly examples of positive self-talk and self-absorption.

I talked myself out of their importance. I started to doubt if I'd really made any progress. I started to doubt if learning to love myself has really helped me love others better.

As I sought to write about these fits of unwarranted compassion, these moments where God spoke to me and set me free, I realized I am not yet fully free.

As I seek to set others free, I am realizing just how trapped I still am.

Am I really better off? The accuser mocks my progress. I've done nothing. I'm no good. Can I really love and serve others better now?

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had moments of freedom and seasons of basking. It doesn’t mean God isn’t calling me to share these stories of freedom I’ve experienced.

I have heard God. He has spoken to me through words and images, friends and strangers.

And it turns out he’s pretty kind. His words are life-giving. His words are Love.

But this last week I’ve been hearing words that aren’t so kind, that aren’t from Love. Faced with a fear of leading a new book club at my church to share and grow with women struggling with eating disorders, this voice tells me I don’t need to lead because I’m ill equipped. I’m too shy. I’m too busy. I’m too scared.

God must be crazy to want me to lead this book club because I am the least qualified of anyone I know. My friends are friendlier, kinder, more hospitable, more empathetic, better suited to this ministry.

I feel ill equipped to love people, to lead people, and to make an impact.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: I don’t lead, I don’t try, I don’t engage, and then I’ve proven that I was ill equipped in the first place.

As soon as these thoughts flood my brain, I’ve abdicated my responsibility. I’ve lost out on the gift that I am and the gifts that God has for me.

Another thought that’s been plaguing me is that I’m being selfish for starting a ministry within my church community. I feel like I’m taking the easy way out. That somehow this ministry is second rate because I’m not directly serving the poor.

I absolutely believe that God has called me to this ministry. And I still feel guilty.

Where’s the freedom in that?

I’m not so different than I was three years ago when I scoffed at the idea of basking in God’s love. I’m still tempted to base my worth on my actions and efforts. On my poverty reduction and social justice scale. I’m still tempted to earn God’s love.

But I can’t.

I am loved. Period. That is the reality of who I am.

Henri Nouwen said, “Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved."’

As a response he says, “The great spiritual task facing me is to so fully trust that I belong to God that I can be free in the world--free to speak even when my words are not received; free to act even when my actions are criticized, ridiculed, or considered useless.... I am convinced that I will truly be able to love the world when I fully believe that I am loved far beyond its boundaries.”

This week I will share the silly stories of positive self-talk and revelations that have speckled my journey of learning to bask in God’s love. I really do believe this basking, this experience I've had with God's unconditional, unconventional, unfathomable love, has shaped and formed me to love others better.

Let the basking begin.

I say I want to know your story, but I haven't even asked

When I look into your eyes, I can see your story.

But that's as far as I get.

What is love?

What is kindness?

Where does my story stop and your story begin?

I've spent my whole life writing my own story.

I haven't had time to listen to yours.

Why am I paralyzed in fear?

Why is it so hard to look past my story for one minute?

What is it that I'm scared of?

Am I scared that your story will be different, or do I fear that it will be the same?

I say I want to know your story,

but I haven't even asked.

I can live with you for a semester and not even know you.

I can live with you for a lifetime and never even know your dreams.

I want to know you, I really do.

What story do I believe in?

That this is it, this is all?

Is there a heaven or a God?

Why haven't I learned that your story is my story?

That when I ignore you, I discount myself.

When I'm scared of you, it's really me that I'm afraid of.

If I really knew His love, would I be scared?

His love is supposed to drive out fear.

I want Your love to be my story.

This was one of my journal entries from March 31, 2006, in the middle of my religious and ontological crisis. I'm discovering more and more the importance of stories. Discovering more and more how to let His love be my story.

But these questions still linger, still hound me.

If I can barely make sense of things in my own head, how do I find the space to let others' stories in?

Looking back, I can see these questions, in fact all of my journal entries from that year, were steeped in loneliness. A loneliness and an insecurity that led to hostility toward myself and others. A loneliness that I (and I think everyone) still struggle with.

I just finished reading Henri Nowen's Reaching Out, where he speaks about the dichotomy between loneliness (a needy, grasping place) and solitude (a posture of secure identity and contentment).

He writes, "As long as we are lonely, we cannot be hospitable because as lonely people we cannot create free space. Our own need to still our inner cravings of loneliness makes us cling to others instead of creating space for them."

This journey to love myself is also a journey to love others. To create space for others. To allow their stories to become my own.

I am striving for a spiritual life that "makes [me] so alert and aware of the world around [me], that all that is and happens becomes part of [my] contemplation and meditation and invites [me] to a free and fearless response." Nouwen

God, please allow your love to be my story, so that my heart may be opened to others' stories.

Un Regalo Para Mi

A Guatemalan Fit of Unwarranted Compassion

Okay, okay, I've gotten some feedback that the term "Fits of Unwarranted Compassion" is confusing. Am I talking about my own compassion towards others or God's compassion toward me? And if I am talking about God's compassion, doesn't the word "fit" seem a bit too sporadic and haphazard to describe something as constant and pervasive as God's compassion? Well, the answer to all of those questions is yes. Yes, these Fits of Unwarranted Compassion describe unexplainable feelings of compassion I've felt for other people. Yes, they describe God's compassion towards me. And, yes, the term "fit" is too careless a word to attribute to God's compassion.

The fits describe my own view of God's compassion, at first. In the midst of anger and despair I started experiencing this beauty and this meaning and this purpose and this joy that I couldn't explain and felt I didn't deserve. I eventually came to call them (because I love to title my life) Fits of Unwarranted Compassion. For a long time I viewed them as unpredictable bursts, fireflies of meaning in my otherwise dark night of the soul--fits. I didn't see them as connected. I didn't even see them as God. The fits more accurately describe my own fitful recognitions of God's hand at work.

I guess the only way to explain it is to describe one to you. I'm going to tell you about a more recent event in my life, when I'd already identified these fits as God's love. But I'm hoping it will help explain what I mean by these fits and why I am so profoundly grateful for them.

This summer I had the chance to lead a mission trip to Guatemala with a group of college students from Point Loma Nazarene University. Guatemala has long been a place I have wanted to spend time in--either visiting or living there long term. For a million reasons, this trip was a gift from God. For now, I'll share just one of these reasons.

For five entire weeks, I didn't have to produce anything.

Nothing.

I work as a grant writer for a great organization where production and polished writing and attention to detail means not only personal satisfaction but critical funds for our programs.
As much as I love my job and the people I work to support, I needed a break. And God knew that.

He literally handed me this trip on a silver platter, forcing me to take the breather I so desperately needed but never would have taken had I not been offered this trip.

And breathe I did.

For five weeks I turned into an inarticulate, Spanish mumbling, VBS kid song humming fool.

And it was wonderful.

There was nothing to produce. Nothing to polish. My thoughts and ideas could remain unfinished, unexpressed, unanalyzed, and unclassified.

There was no grant to be proofed and no blog to be wrapped up nicely. No catchy punchlines or taglines. No persuasive arguments or marketing campaigns.

No to-do lists. No feelings of being behind or inadequate.

Five weeks of simply soaking it all in.

And it was glorious.

It may sound selfish, but I believe God knew exactly what he was doing. I came back from that trip with new vision and hope and excitement for my job, my relationships, and the ways God is living and moving and breathing in me even when I can't explain it.

One of my favorite quotes from Henri Nouwen (sheesh, three Henri mentions and this blog is only a week old!) says, "If we lack the strength to carry the burden of our own lives, we cannot accept the burden of our neighbors."

I believe that is true with all my heart. When I'm overwhelmed with work or questioning my relationships or obsessing about how good I look in a bathing suit, there's no way I can reach out to others. When I can't even get a handle on prioritizing a to-do list, how am I supposed to care for others and carry them?

While I believe this truth with all of my heart, I only know it in fits. Luckily, God knows it all the time and he knew five weeks in Guatemala was exactly what I needed, not only for me, but so that I can be the best steward of the life he has given me.

It is experiences like these that I call Fits of Unwarranted Compassion. And all I can say is gracias.

I Love Lucy to I Love Aly

"Your Absence Has Gone Through Me Like Thread Through A Needle. Everything I Do Is Stitched With Its Color"

Today, July 28th, would have been my grandmother's 85th birthday. When I was little I was convinced my grandmother and I were identical twins. Never mind the 60-year age difference, Nini was my soul twin and sister. Miraculously, we loved all of the same things—her homemade spaghetti and meatballs, reruns of I Love Lucy, bedtime stories like Make Way for Ducklings, and rummy tournaments that lasted over a decade. She also had a keen interest in my gymnastics practices, the third grade spelling bee, and any boy I had a crush on from elementary school through high school.

It wasn’t until she passed away that I discovered the secret behind our enduring bond: her love for me.

Turns out we didn’t just so happen to love exactly the same things. She made my interests her own. She made my trials and letdowns her own. She made my excitement her own. Now she may have been more apt to enjoy an I Love Lucy episode with me than a Power Rangers episode with my brothers, but I highly doubt she had an unbiased interest in the Agatha Christie novels I would recount to her in murderous detail or how a velvet leotard did not provide the same amount of cooling power as a Lycra one during a four hour gymnastics practice in a gym with only a declining swamp cooler to combat the sweltering heat. Always my biggest fan and partner in crime, Nini actively looked for ways to connect with me, to value me, to listen to me, and to encourage me. She made me feel loved and valuable no matter what.

Whenever I read Compassion by Henri Nouwen (which is about once a year), I am reminded more and more of Nini. Nouwen says, “When we have discovered that our sense of self does not depend on our differences and that our self-esteem is based on a love much deeper than the praise that can be acquired by unusual performances, we can see our unique talents as gifts for others.”

My grandma’s unconditional love gave me a sense of self and confidence that helped me see myself as a gifted and valuable person. Not to espouse selfishness, egocentrism or self-addiction, but I am becoming increasingly convinced that the key to loving others starts with loving myself or at least starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, there is something lovable and redeemable about me. Why else would Jesus command that we love others as ourselves? What reason would I have to believe that others have gifts and talents to offer the world if I don’t believe that I have anything to offer?

We all have a natural aptitude for selfishness, that’s not the issue. Self-centeredness has nothing to do with truly loving yourself and everything to do with seeking to fill the gaps in us that ache for love and acceptance. One of Nouwen’s antidotes to selfishness while interacting with others is to “Pay attention in a way that they begin to recognize their own value.” Perhaps we could apply this advice to ourselves as well. What if we paid attention to ourselves in a way that allows us to recognize our own value? And what if this belief in our own value spurred us to value others, to serve others, to encourage others? When we believe we are loved and valued, we can shift our focus from seeking attention to seeking to love.

Thanks, Nini, for using I Love Lucy to help me believe I Love Aly.

Happy Birthday to the woman who paid attention to in a way that I began to recognize my own value.