Daily 5 - Day 208

Today's Daily 5:

1. Lunch was provided at work today because of some training inservices that are going on for most of the staff this week.
2. Got a bunch of necessary stuff for work done today
3. had a few encouraging emails from friends
4. Supper at Mom and Dad's
5. Mom and Dad loaned me a car to drive from their house to the church service I attended tonight and back again and then Mom gave me a ride back home to Grandma's
6. Brian and Jenn Johnson from Bethel Church in Redding, California were leading worship at the service I went to tonight.  It was fantastic to just worship unreservedly like that for a while.
7. Ran into a new friend from my house church at the end of tonight's service.  Was nice to say hi and give/get a quick hug
8. Thankful for chocolate tonight
9. I experienced a "fire tunnel" tonight at the church service - a fairly random experience that I've always deliberately avoided in the past.  So, it was a conquering fear thing, and I figured, hey, I respect these people who are doing the praying, and it's been a rough time lately and I could use some extra prayer, so why not?  Glad I did it - whatever anyone thinks of this kind of stuff, (and I have lots of skeptical opinions of my own) tonight I felt God's presence simply in the midst of walking through a line of people praying.
10. Did I mention that it was great to worship like that?  Seriously made me want to move to the church the Johnsons are from and just hang out there all the time :)

Made Female: Thoughts again on International Woman's Day

A few years back, while still in university, one of my church history classes included a day of lectures on Liberation Theology and Feminist Theology.  In the midst of that lecture, the professor distributed a copy of a document, written by Rachel Conrad Wahlberg in 1978, after a period of reflecting on the Apostle's Creed.  Would I use it as a creed in a liturgy?  No.  But did it challenge me incredibly, help me to see God differently, as a more loving being, by drawing upon images that already existed in scripture?  Yes.

And so, today, on International Woman's Day, I'm sharing "The Woman's Creed" with you again, prayerfully, thinking of this God I serve who created and values me as a female.  And how very cool a thought that really is.


I believe in God
who created woman and man in God's own image
who created the world
and gave both sexes
the care of the earth.

I believe in Jesus
child of God
chosen of God
born of the woman Mary
who listened to women and liked them
who stayed in their homes
who discussed the Kingdom with them
who was followed and financed
by women disciples.

I believe in Jesus
who discussed theology with a woman at a well
and first confided in her
his messiahship
who motivated her to go and tell
her great news to the city.

I believe in Jesus who received anointing
from a woman at Simon's house
who rebuked the men guests who scorned her
I believe in Jesus
who said this woman will be remembered
for what she did -
minister to Jesus.

I believe in Jesus
who acted boldly
to reject the blood taboo
of ancient societies
by healing the audacious woman who touched him.

I believe in Jesus who healed a woman
on the sabbath
and made her straight
because she was
a human being.

I believe in Jesus
who spoke of God
as a woman seeking the lost coin
as a woman who swept
seeking the lost.

I believe in Jesus
who thought of pregnancy and birth
with reverence
not as punishment - but
as wrenching event
a metaphor for transformation
born again
anguish-into-joy.

I believe in Jesus
who spoke of himself
as a mother hen
who would gather her chicks
under her wings.

I believe in Jesus who appeared
first to Mary Magdalene
who sent her with the bursting message
GO AND TELL...

I believe in the wholeness
of the Savior
in whom there is neither
Jew nor Greek
slave nor free
male nor female
for we are all one
in salvation.

I believe in the Holy Spirit
as she moves over the waters
of creation
and over the earth.

I believe in the Holy Spirit
as she yearns within us
to pray for those things
too deep for words.

I believe in the Holy Spirit
the woman spirit of God*
who like a hen
created us
and gave us birth
and covers us
with her wings.

*the Hebrew word for Spirit is feminine

Somehow hope

It's Monday again, and I'm struggling.

I'm feeling lonely.  A bit isolated.

Wondering about the state of a relationship that is precious.  Telling myself that I'm just being neurotic.  And then going on with the neuroses, seemingly unable to halt them.

I'm missing my roommate.  I process best aloud, talking with someone who I know is safe, and she was great for just letting me talk, get the crazy events of my "i work in a soap opera" days off my chest, so that they could dissipate and I could breathe again.

These days I live with Grandma, where every thought needs to be filtered, because any information she garners, she can and will share with everyone you know.

Let's just say that verbal processing isn't so much an option right now.

At least not at home.

Home.

That's a whole other topic.

The room looks like it's mine now.  I've unpacked most of my things.  I put together the "altar" spaces yesterday, unwrapping all the little items from their boxes and arranging them across the surfaces.

But it doesn't feel like home, and I wonder if it ever will.

If it will ever be anything other than "Grandma's basement".

If it will feel safe.

My happiest moment of the weekend was just before coming fully to conciousness this morning, when, just for a moment, I lay there and thought I was in the bedroom in my last apartment.

I watch for that apartment each morning as I go past it on the bus.

That was a happy place for me.  A place of healing.  A home.

And now God has led me elsewhere, and I'm struggling to be at peace with that.

It's not a particularly unique struggle, but right now it is consuming my days, my thoughts.

I find myself longing for something else.  Feeling unsettled, and "inbetween."

If I think about it too long, the tears build behind my eyes and I wonder if I will survive this latest step.

This move from a place that was healing to this whole other painful, awkward place.

Ironic that it is taking place during Lent.

The first Lent in several years where I am struggling too, to find my footing.  Not fasting in any of the traditional ways.  Forgetting at least three times a week to pick up the Lenten reading books I'd committed to using, and then guiltily "catching up" the following day, usually while I lean against the counter in the  tiny basement bathroom, waiting for the toilet to stop running, in case it doesn't stop and I need to take the lid off the tank and mess with things to make it stop.

It's Monday morning, and mostly, I want to cry.  Because my heart hurts.

And then I want to whine a little, too.  Because while I trust that God is in these places, too, they make me antsy and uncomfortable.  They hurt, and I don't like them.

So I listen, over and over, on repeat to Anis Mojgani's Shake the Dust.  Because the human heart beats a hundred thousand times a day.  And somehow that is hopeful.

And I ponder over and over these lines from Richard Rohr "Memory creates a readiness for salvation, an emptiness to receive love and a fullness to enjoy it. Strangely enough, it seems so much easier to remember the hurts, the failures and the rejections. It is much more common to gather our life energy around a hurt than a joy, for some sad reason. Remember the good things even more strongly than the bad, but learn from both. And most of all, “remember that you are remembered by God.”

Because I am remembered by God.  And there is hope in that too.  Even in the moments when I don't like what He is doing, I am remembered by him.

And because, in the absence of someone with whom I can process aloud, I can show up here, and write out my thoughts, and talk myself into somehow hoping, just for a little bit longer.