Being Made Whole

Eighteen days left in Lent. I've done something for Lent over the last 3 years, and I find myself grasping for ideas, thoughts, plans about halfway through each time. Thinking about it, I recognize this as true for being halfway-ish through my life - if the self proclaimed prophetess was right in telling me God would give me 90 years. It's both freeing and anxiety-provoking to have a due date (an expiration date, an end?). 

I don't know what I expected mid-life to be, but sitting in my egg chair in the sunroom of my childhood home would not have crossed my mind. When I began my "work tourism" lifephase, I could not imagine it ending. I loved going new places, meeting new people, experiencing how people encountered life in different ways. When I finally landed in Memphis and met J, one way I knew he was "the one" was because I didn't want to move somewhere else away from him.

Memphis became home for about 7 years, then the school-itch returned, and we were off again. Two moves and 9 years later, we landed back in Alabama for reasons noted in earlier posts. Like the move to Memphis, the timing felt right; I had a knowing interiorly we needed to return, and my mother died 6 months later (I posted a reflection about this last year during Lent here.). Now, I work with teenagers and drive almost the exact route to work which I took to high school.

My grandmother once asked me when was I ever going to come home. As a woman who never lived outside of Alabama, I think my distance in my young adult years baffled her. She died when I was 30 and living in New Jersey. I don't know if she would have understood how this piece of land with a house felt nothing like home at the time. . .too many ghosts, too much silence. . .the pall of a culture which danced on the graves of women's aspirations, accomplishments and dreams. 

So I went searching, under acceptable guises, of course, and really, did I even know I was searching? A part of me did, I think, and when I landed in Berkeley I found a community of believers who trusted deeply in the healing power of Christ. As we completed our confession every week and the liturgist said, "Friends, believe the good news of the gospel." We replied, "In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven and are being made whole." The weekly repetition of the phrase worked its way into the cracks and crevices of my soul, feeding whole areas of my being and knitting together the rifts I had felt for decades. I still add "and are being made whole" each time I participate in confession because forgiveness is amazing, but the wholeness which comes from relationship with God is life-saving.

Augustine wrote in his confessions, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Somewhere in that statement there is a truth about finding home. Home isn't an address, but an expansion of our souls toward God, by God, in God, through God, then in that homecoming, we co-create (with God!) a space for others to discover the same, and we are opened to those ready to be our guides as well. 

Being back in Alabama is not always easy. This house still holds ghosts and sometimes silence, but they do not threaten to overtake me as they once did. Part of the grace of my life is my partner and friend, J, and in his spaciousness, I have been encouraged in my own - the expansion of my soul, the welcoming of home. And I find God in our life and the ways we walk this life together. I find, over and again. God's love is making me whole.

PRACTICE

Lectio Divina: Read the following passage through after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

Acts 17:23-28, NRSV

 23For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26From one ancestorhe made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,  ‘For we too are his offspring.’

Photo credit: https://gaiaorion.com/products/wholeness-oil-on-canvas-90-x-90-cm?pr_prod_strat=e5_desc&pr_rec_id=fc33e333d&pr_rec_pid=4465649745969&pr_ref_pid=4469702361137&pr_seq=uniform