“My hope is that the description of God’s love in my life will give you the freedom and the courage to discover . . . God’s love in yours."
- Henri Nouwen, Here and Now

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Living Doxology

Living Doxology

Why let another day pass as the same,
sky as crystallized blue, ground the color of humus--
and not simply rejoice?!

I am living each day with a
newfound independence--
trading correctness for mindful gestures--
all of which means, at this very moment,
that I am loved by something/by Someone
so much bigger than I am.

Why imagine? Imagine why
we continue this cycle of living
that can too easily feel
clunky like charcoal at the bottom
of a shoe, resisting light:
a dialogue with Sisyphus' strategician.

I'd like to create for myself
a mechanism in which to remember Spirit,
motion mightily like tenderness,
like living life under a soft cotton blanket
and opening out the edges to embrace the world--
not afraid of cold feet.
Spend an hour smelling cinnamon;
another one relishing the taste of water.
Listen to the scratching sound of pen against paper.

I will steep my life for awhile in joy,
savor the seasons.
Live Doxology in Laughter:
This is my work.
This is my labor.

A poem written 12/3/2009 by Elizabeth G. Campbell

Friday, November 13, 2009

Peace

Sometimes we don't know why life offers us what it does or why we make the choices that we do... But I don't believe that it is mere impulse or choice--- Sometimes the path set before us, I believe, God leads us on... And I won't explain this theologically here or try to describe in many logical ways or words here... I think it is just something we know... and if I could describe it in any way, it would be with one word: peace.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

I am grateful

I am grateful for the one that I love, who reminds me that forgiveness is real and also that I can truly be myself! I am living into this grace.

Friday, November 6, 2009

A Prayer

Inevitable. Baby-steps. Wondering. Imagining: All leading towards a fear of regret? God, how can the choices in our lives fill us with a sense of life and wonder, so that we can walk in peace? How can we hold each other during our choice-making, comforting and catalyzing... so that we dare to make the choices that bring out our deepest, truest truth?

These words have been floating in the back of my mind over the last few days, as I continue to find myself awash in choice-making and wondering which way to turn. I am writing a theological reflection about conflict as quotidian and therein I establish this point: That conflict is not something to be feared as it is often part of the process towards something greater and may, in fact, enable us to reach a more prayerful and communal goal or hope?

This day I ponder the choices of the week and I wonder how I can continue to live life as I always dreamed... God, in your grace.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Thinking about Lilies


Mary Oliver has a lovely poem in which she uses this phrase, thinking about lilies, and yet that is not why I am writing this post. I write this post instead to announce a new part of my blog called "Stories: Lil Epiphanies." Here will be a place where I will work on nurturing and crafting little epiphanies in process, stories that are in the midst of creation. Suffice it to say, this blog author has been inspired to do something that she should have began awhile ago... Amen.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Life Exploring



I am at the pinnacle of something important, breathing words of reverence, of honesty, of self-care and challenge. I long to enter the song of soulfulness and there reveal the timbre of the drone, playing underneath it all...

Wonder

I am struck by the wonder of raw emotion-- when we uncover deep truth in the performance of rite. Sitting as a participant and member at Erin's wedding today, I was reminded of this very fact: of the gentle, marvelous beauty of love.... of knowing another person so deeply that you are willing to let your soul be known... In all the many defenses that we have in this society--- resorting to the games of busyness, blame, and bureaucacy-- still there remains, in spite of the noise and voices offering otherwise, the deep knowingness that all one truly desires is to be loved. OH, to feel such love! Wonder.

Listening...

A few times this past week, my heart showed up--- echoing its longing and speaking its mighty language-- and I had to listen. Stop. Pause. And this is so important. As I am in this time called "seminary formation," I find it so easy to revert into one of the many habitual patterns of ministry and attend to all the needs of those around me.... but in doing so, it can be a never-ending fountain, and sometimes all one truly desires is to give simply-- Just give. And know that this giving is enough. Receiving is also important. It is so important. And in as far as it is possible to express this unselfishly, I desire to have the opportunity to do more receiving the next months... this Advent... and therein discover the gift to which I have been called. But now, it is time to listen!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Wisdom


If I want to learn about wisdom, I feel like I had better take the time to walk in another's shoes for awhile-- I would prefer to follow the footsteps of a 80 year-old man. That is one thing I have discovered today.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Photograph Prompt: The Sandwich

I wrote this tiny reflection from a writing prompt at our SFTS "Writing Colony" meeting.... I found the opportunity to write that evening incredibly therapeutic. I did not know what I would write, except that I was given this photo that touched something very deep within--- A woman was in between two walls.... At first thought, I thought I knew what I was writing about... But then I realize that something more profound was twinged. This is what I wrote:

Sometimes this is me, sandwiching myself between two abstractions-- the bridge--- sometimes I am there for important reasons- redemptive reasons, positive reasons, reasons traditionally worth writing about or, at the very least, celebrating. But, other times, sometimes, at these times the abstractions become paralyzing firm towers that resist, quantifiably and definitionally, moving. Then, although I tend to be a bridge, instead I feel like some hard piece of steel that lacks ligament and lightness. Then, I am trapped by perspective; perspectively-speaking. Then I look at the photo once more and realize that what I am seeing is not only, in fact, as I see it. If I take one or two steps back or forward, I am no longer in bondage. But how to meet the place where boundaries are to be blurred and still maintain some solidity and yet refuse to become dogmatic categories that prove mathematical equations but will never figure in anyone's life?

How do I allow myself to step into the natural flow of life that is both black and white and gray at the same time and live graciously with this discovery? I am something of a life explorer and something my pondering gets me in trouble; but, although thinking deeply is risking business, the refusal NOT to do it at all is even riskier. And so you might not ever agree with me, and I may never agree with you-- or more, correctly stated: They may never agree with "them" and "them" with "them" likewise-- But why feel brutalized by these senseless demands: The thems squared, whether in fact algebraically the same or not, are simply and complicatedly people. And so are you. And perhaps it is time to spend some time celebrating and pondering what this person thinks!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

FREEDOM

Recently, in my Religion & Literature class, I found myself untangling a very difficult subject: "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter from Dostoyevsky's "Brothers Karamazov." I have wanted to read this book ever since I first heard about it-- and I cannot even recall when that was... Perhaps when I read "Walking on Water" during my semester abroad in 2003... At any rate, here, six years later, Dostoyesky is with me again-- as well as "Walking on Water." Both authors tell us to consider anew the NOTION OF FREEDOM-- and the meat of the subject, theologically, is that the freedom Christ offers us is everything. Now, when we are talking about freedom, we don't mean the kind of freedom that is often spoke of-- the freedom of individual rights, etc., etc. This freedom is more monastic-- like the innate heart-freedom of responding to God's call... Christ gave up the ability to take our freedom... We even have the freedom not to respond to him. This is sooo much more gutsy than I have ever seen or known.


Dear God, give us the courage and grace to live out from what we have learned and been told. Amen.

The Incarnation





Words from Madeleine L'Engle, "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art":

"Perhaps for the Christian the Incarnation is the best example of that magnificent 'probable impossible.' It has been called the 'scandal of the particular,' for to many people it is scandalous that the Lord of the universe should condescend to come to his people as an ordinary man, with every human restriction. Why would ultimate power choose to limit itself in such a humiliating way? Is this really what love is about? The answer to this question has challenged artists throughout the centuries. How can this probable impossible be real?"


The second photo is entitled "Kenosis" and a photograph image of a work of art by my friend, Peter B. Daniel

I do not like you.. but I will use what I "don't like" to judge you

People ask me, after finding out that I am a Christian: Are you conservative or liberal? To that question, I offer a number of responses... Yet, regardless of what I say, I continue to have the same dissatisfaction. The thing is, whether conservative or liberal, members of both sides seem to be very eager to say how the other has failed to grasp the Kingdom, how the other should be excluded-- somehow... how the other needs to be more loving or more orthodox. This I find very dissatisfying. I desire to begin the hard work of changing myself and encouraging those around me to do the same-- rather than merely pointing to another as the object of my dissatisfaction. And yet, I am doing that just with these words.... Oh, the depth to which we can be moved and learn!

Saturday, October 17, 2009

A hope...

To live with harmony with each person... to believe in the potential of all..... to meet violence with a more beautiful & powerful strength........... May we all be carriers of such passion!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

A Photo that Makes me Smile

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Fragmentary Thoughts on Love



"Whenever you speak / A word of love to me / It turns into a star / And ripples in my heart."

Claudia Hae In Lee

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A Beautiful Prayer

"O Christ, You ask us, first of all, to live in the Spirit of childhood. In putting our trust in You, we accept to be vulnerable, and we can live from your love in all simplicity, close to those who have no protection, close to the very littlest. Enable us to welcome the Kingdom of God: Your presence amongst us."

Prayer from the Community of Taize

Dostoyevsky Resonates with My Sermon

About Ivan & The Grand Inquisitor in "Brothers Karamazov": “Both of them understand the mystery of the Gospel as the mystery of divine/human freedom, yet they cannot accept it. They are in bondage. In rejecting the deliverance offered to them in the God-man they have chosen to be the man-God; the man who rules the Tower of Babel, or any tyranny in any time and in any place. . . . For the sake of his idea, he condemns Jesus who is the Word become flesh.” (The Bruderhof, The Gospel in Dostoyevsky, 7)

Galatians 5:1 “ For freedom, Christ set us free.”

"This is not just an idea invented by scholars. It is the costly action of God in his freedom. This freedom has awful consequences. We have the freedom to defy the living God who has created us. What we term the Fall is an act of freedom. It is a negative freedom, however; it is that of rebellion" (7)

This past Sunday I preached about how can we encounter the LIVING God-- and not just keep God, at a distance, as an idea............

Empathy...

One of the hardest things for me, not to do, is to be empathic... And yet I feel like I have been giving myself a bit of a break-- and that there is always more that I could be empathic about (in the right circumstances).... And yet, in order to enter this wide and new realm, I feel that I need some great canvas of compassion to wrap around me--- I need a safe space to land, where I can say whatever is on my mind... and heart... and soul. And yet, the time to make excuses or to bargain is over... and sometimes it is simply about plunging and diving into this new space. God, teach me to continue to learn. I have been on many mountaintops and valley-places, and in many ways I have found a settled rest-- But encourage me to continue digging, to delve into something new, and see if in my delving I discover the delicacy of home....

Monday, October 12, 2009

A New Impulse to Write

Someone shared something with me the other day that convinced me that I need to write again... or perhaps it wasn't so much, even, the sharing of someone... but I, in fact, remembered-- moved by the impulse of something beyond human-- that it was time to stop messing around and share something of my heart on these pages again.

Part of the title of the blog entertains the very essential question: What is home? Is it something that someone can find or discover? When I think about the specific place and geography of where I am from--- Upstate, NY--- still a lot of idealism stays with me: This is the land where you can see the leaves fall and the hills change colors with the autumn. This is a place where the landscape is not yet fully ruined by the plastic, box-line architecture of modern suburbia... This is a place where children can still be involved in play and not so fully scheduled that they have forgotten the definition of fun.

Then too: What about home am I searching for? Well, the answer has nothing, really, to do with Upstate, NY-- although I miss the place--> I think, tonight, home for me is more about being in a space of connection & unity--- where I am in touch with the truest love there is..........

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

A lovely Poem

This poem stopped me in my tracks this morning---- speaking to many images that made me wake up--- the industrial worker, the child naming a star, the banana leaves filled with rain.....

The Unnamable River

1.

Is it in the anthracite face of a coal miner,
crystallized in the veins and lungs of a steel
worker, pulverized in the grimy hands of a railroad engineer?
Is it in a child naming a star, coconuts washing
ashore, dormant in a volcano along the Rio Grande?

You can travel the four thousand miles of the Nile
to its source and never find it.
You can climb the five highest peaks of the Himalayas
and never recognize it.
You can gaze though the largest telescope
and never see it.

But it's in the capillaries of your lungs.
It's in the space as you slice open a lemon.
It's in a corpse burning on the Ganges,
in rain splashing on banana leaves.

Perhaps you have to know you are about to die
to hunger for it. Perhaps you have to go
alone in the jungle armed with a spear
to truly see it. Perhaps you have to
have pneumonia to sense its crush.

But it's also in the scissor hands of a clock.
It's in the precessing motion of a top
when a torque makes the axis of rotation describe a cone:
and the cone spinning on a point gathers
past, present, future.

2.

In a crude theory of perception, the apple you
see is supposed to be a copy of the actual apple,
but who can step out of his body to compare the two?
Who can step out of his life and feel
the Milky Way flow out of his hands?

An unpicked apple dies on a branch:
that is all we know of it.
It turns black and hard, a corpse on the Ganges.
The go ahead and map out three thousand mile of the Yantze;
walk each inch, feel its surge and
flow as you feel the surge and flow in your own body.

And the spinning cone of a precessing top
is a form of existence that gathers and spins death and life into one.
It is in the duration of words, but beyond words -
river river river, river river.
The coal miner may not know he has it.
The steel worker may not know he has it.
The railroad engineer may not know he has it.
But it is there. It is in the smell
of an avocado blossom, and in the true passion of a kiss.

~ Arthur Sze ~

Monday, June 29, 2009

The Wisdom of Fools....

I continue to find myself fascinated in re-definitions of wisdom and power-- One I found in a book entitled "Contentment" by Robert A. Johnson & Jerry M Ruhl.....

"There is an old proverb that God wanted to hide wisdom so that no everyone would indiscriminately find it. Accordingly, God decided to place it in innocent children and fools. It is hard to get wisdom out of an innocent child, and we would never think to get it out of a fool. In both cases it is fairly safe..." (page 51)...

What am I thinking?
It is time to hang out with more children & "fools"!!

Sunday, June 28, 2009

I woke up with a question this morning... (well, sometime during the morning): Am I living my life the way that I've always wanted and dreamed (Shyam's question)? How can I relax whatever fears I have and continue to live into the moment-- compose that "Little Guru" story I am always crafting in my head, lay to rest too many considerations about the future-- all will come to fruition soon--- and just be me! :) I saw a woman, holding a baby in a sack that holds the baby to your stomach, and I was awed by the simplicity and beauty. I want to be simple and beautiful. .... in the way that is me. I am... and will continue....

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

poetic musing....

Today was brilliant and lovely... What did I learn??? Or what am I experiencing? The reminder of the beauty of not acting, of calm, of rest.... These things are filling me now, and it is like there is new air flowing in my lungs, and somewhere, deep within, my heart is singing...

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Wow.

I am now a candidate for Ministry of Word & Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Word & Sacrament: Literature meets Religion..... Being a candidate has stopped me, delightfully, in my tracks-- like another kind of deep conversion. I am so happy. I feel so happy. This is meaningful......... and not about me, alone.

Friday, June 5, 2009

New Day

Wow. Today the day greets me with the usual lethargy and fatigue of the last two days. I feel like I am trying to make up sleep deficits from the last year... But it is so good to try to stay still... or rather, stay still, sleep, and type. This is a good discipline. I feel like I am back at Taize at the silent retreat, where I learned the beauty of just staying still and felt God inspiring me simply to use the time to sleep-- Totally not a cop-out!

At the moment, I have this strange propulsion to sleep and read at the same time and am wondering if my mind and body would be content with reading my dreams for awhile......

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Edge?

What is edge? It has been so long since I last wrote her, and with the advent of the summer and what I am hoping will be a plethora of new time... mostly to WRITE, I feel like I need to begin with this blog in the beginning. Hmmmm, a very good place to begin, as Mary Poppins said. Wow-- ?!? No, you might be wondering: How much sleep has this blogger had? But, before digressing too far, what is the purpose of this blog? It seems to me that this space is mostly for story telling. Storytelling and musing... and for me, in this genre, edge is always paramount: Edge is the tension-point, the point of incarnation (where two opposites meet to create something new, even if just momentarily). I desire to use this space to write and give birth to the stories in my heart and mind... that they might find a place to live.... even if just ever so briefly.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Latest Poem

I wrote this for "Seminary Night Live" yesterday evening... It is still in the editing stages but I felt ready to be shared with the world.. at least the virtual world. ;)

Enjoy!

“I Hear Seminary Singing”

Part 1

I hear seminary singing—Not, perhaps, in the usual Whitman-like way: proud, robust, positing presumed pragmatic strength.

… And yet, as a matter of fact, as a matter of course, as a matter of mere mentioning, perhaps these songs are just as palpable and true.
Perhaps Whitman himself would be pleased.

What carols do I hear?

A jubilant registrar sings, alchemizing empty schedules into full & hoped-for ones – just that stamp, that golden seal.
She does it all.
Another sings out existential phrases, pondering postmodern complexity, recognizing one’s liberation in contrast to their own ancestors’ worldview:
When will the blame game be gone?
The brother beside me sings as well—although his he does by traveling abroad.
Still another with daring heart, awash in the angled-nuances of life-- she sings her heart into being.
She lights a candle.
Amidst every painful reason not to, she becomes Easter personified

We sing theology.
We sing vulnerability.
We sing the faith.
We sing to celebrate.


I tear-up, open-heartedly, when my classmate preaches.
We are flamboyant and fortunate.
I wonder and worry about saying goodbye in a few years:
We are dreamers and earth-shakers, and sometimes we remember,
We recall what brought us to these castles in fairy tale Marin.
Then….
I hear seminary singing:

In the chapel services from 10:15-10:45,
A woman typing a memo in office space,
Another advocating for the homeless,
Still another wanting more to serve,
Another trying to come home—
In whatever way that means.


Amidst promises and pains of irrelevance and relevancy.
Seminary sings
And the song is beautiful!

For as I walk up our prodigious hill,
I stop for a moment, catching my breath.
A small cleft in the sidewalk discloses like surprise:
A lizard moving in and then quickly out of view.

I think: This lizard is like Grace.
So suddenly Grace appears.
It is in this that I realize our Grace,
That when seminary sings,
the I becomes the We.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Realization

Today I struck upon an important realization: Letting Go. It is hard to let go, especially when you care so deeply... But to care for something and in something that is not mutual, it brings a kind of violence: a short-sided unhappiness, a gritting your teeth and bearing it. Our society speaks so much about love: It infiltrates our music stations and general music collections, but what about the simply beautiful task of putting down self-criticism, of laying down blame, of stopping to judge the other and simply hold them, lovingly, hand-in-hand, with their vulnerability. Some of us might want answers. I certainly know that I have felt this way. But what I want more deeply... what the ego cannot give..... is the simply joyous task of ceasing the endless cycle of want... so that I can be present to today.... and in today, I found so many precious and beautiful things... as well as a new friend. I wonder when I look back at this post: What will I think? Such naivety. Such sappiness. Such lack of true insight. But to that critic then and to this critic now I say the only thing I know: You are loved, Elizabeth-- even when you do not feel it. Go and dare to show that same love to others. Mean it.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

"For Presence"

I just received this beautiful poem from the Panhala listserv.....

For Presence

Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to
follow its path.

Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.

May anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.

Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.

Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

Monday, January 5, 2009

Homecoming....

Being back home in CA, which I reached last Monday-- I have only been home one week... In this time I have learned (and been reminded of) a number of things: More on the four letter word that has been captivating my attention, how to drive to the South bay two times, how to roller skate, how to fall asleep with a lot on my mind, and how to drift into sleep with thick slumber, how significant it is when someone takes the time to listen as well as speak, give as well as receive, that I want to meditate, that I need to keep praying, that stories can be so profusely inspiring that you feel like you are putting together colorful gems from which you create something greater, and that love is not needing someone to be happy but rather more so working and hoping for another's happiness ... I have learned that I am not as old as I might think, and I have noticed that my hair is growing longer. I really can be simple. I panic. Yet, I am not panicky. I doubt and want answers. Sometimes, I don't want to know. I like raw, sweet carrots as well as running in the rain. When I am around true friends, my whole beings feels ready to radiate. At times, knowledge declares but wisdom listens.......

I have also learned that sometimes the truth hurts-- but, cliche as it is and most likely sounds, it sets us free. But we cannot lay aside our connection to the One from whom all things come--- Anchored amidst freedom & with freedom, we can live more open-handed... We can learn to love and not need to possess. We can let go as well as hold close. I have learned that I am still learning. Sometimes I don't want to learn at all. Sometimes I am so grateful for all the learning that I feel like a little child doing somersaults down a safe hill in my back yard.

Would that we could all dare to understand the truth that propels us?! Would we resist using each other as pawns but rather recognize all the uniqueness, all the wonder, all the potential. Friendship. Yes, I am still learning.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Birthdays are all about Facebook Love. YAY!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Integrity

Integrity: It makes sense that it is all about integration--- that all the parts of your self make up a whole, a unified whole. I am striving to embody integration in the fullest sense.... while keeping my heart open to those around me.