This I Believe, Too

Well, I shared my "This I Believe" with my small group today. I'm including it here because I changed quite a bit since the last time I posted it. What a great experience to share that. Someone else read it out loud a second time and that was wonderful and hard to hear someone else reading my personal words.

btw - I just read ReverendMother's Harry Potter sermon...it is amazing! Check it out. I feel too lazy tonight to create a link...just go to my link list and click on that and go to her archives till you find it.

This I Believe

I believe in faith. I have faith in faith. I have since I was a little girl. As far back as I can remember I have been aware of a loving presence inside me, in the eyes and words of other people, and in the hugeness and beauty of nature. I haven’t always been able to describe or articulate this faith. It seems I struggle to now more than ever. But it’s always been there, like a steady current running deep under a sometimes stormy ocean. If I had to describe who God feels like to me in a stream of consciousness sort of way, I’d use words like infinitely and agonizingly patient, ridiculously lavishly loving, terrifying in scope and power, amused at human silliness, heartbroken over human pain, absurdly funny, profoundly, beautifully, agonizingly mysterious and incomprehensible, ever ever ever present, ever approachable, always offering an invitation, and eager for intimacy with us.

When I was 10 years old, my grandfather died. It was that week that I was supposed to go to my first sleep-away camp in the mountains. I can’t remember if I wanted to go. I know that I had to miss the funeral. But I went. I’m not sure if my parents agonized over this decision, but there I was, up in the mountains for one week with lots of other 4th graders. I was sad and lonely and confused. But it was the first time I slept under the stars. I remember staring up at the pine-infused black night sky, covered with stars – such a contrast to the sky of my city childhood. I was awe-struck and full of wonder and questions. We sat around a campfire every night and sang cheesy Christian songs. But I loved it. “Spirit of the Living God, fall a-fresh on me. Meld me, Mold me, fill me, use me”. I so remember this song, and the Sunday school sign language that went along with it. I felt the Holy Spirit with me those nights...present in the night air, in the gathering around the campfire, in the sweet off-key lilt of the children’s voices. And at the end of one of these evenings, the head camp counselor invited anyone who wanted to ask Jesus into their hearts to stay after. Writing this now, I cringe. This theology freaks me out. But I felt a pull and a curiosity and something kept me seated on that log bench, even though it drew snickers from my friends. I remember my counselor leading me to a large flat rock in the shadows, under the stars and we prayed for Jesus to enter my heart. I think I hoped something big would happen, or that I’d at least feel some kind of flicker inside me. But nothing. Just the prayer and then off to bed. I remember being confused that I had to ask Jesus. Wasn’t he there already? What would keep him away? Well...I no longer believe in the need to say the right words for God to be with me. But I do believe something shifted in me that night...if for no other reason than that night has always stayed in my memory in a very potent way. I do believe in Jesus as a living present reality active in our world. I believe something cosmic shifted with his birth, death and resurrection. I pretty much believe in the Nicene Creed, as it attempts to put words to great mysteries that can never be explained by words. I believe that all matter is inherently good. I believe in the achingly beautiful stuff of the physical world: the way my baby smelled behind her ears, the pudgy pudge of her baby feet, the feeling of my milk letting down, the smell of the air in northern California – salt and pine and cedar and sweet grass, the shock of diving into a mountain lake, my husband’s warm body under the sheets, the sound and smell of rain, a cat’s purr. It’s all so damn gorgeous and it all points to a creator so in love with us. I believe in the church...in its ability to do great good and healing and exploring and reconciling and storytelling and feeding and encouraging. I believe in church bells. Every time I hear them it feels like a voice from another time and place, calling to me, reminding me that time is passing, reminding me that another time exists super-imposed on this one, reminding me how insignificant I am but also how very significant. I also believe in you, my fellow women at the well. I believe in your stories and in your dreams. I believe in the pilgrim heart that lives within each of you. Besides all this, I believe that the most important thing we can do as parents is to stay in love with our kids. I believe that guacamole is the best food on the planet. A close second is linguine with melted brie, basil, garlic and tomatoes. A close third is warm sour dough bread fresh out of the oven smeared with butter. I believe in the light and hope I see in my two daughters’ eyes. And at the end of the day, I believe that all will be well... that all is not well, but that all will be well. That it really is all right. And even though I’m trying to claim my own thoughts and express them without fear, I must end with a quote from my love Madeleine L’Engle: “I mean these words. I do not understand them, but I mean them. Perhaps one day I will find out what I mean. They are behind everything, the cooking of meals, walking the dogs, talking with the girls. I may never find out with my intellectual self what I mean, but if I am given enough glimpses perhaps these will add up to enough so that my heart will understand. It does not; not yet.”