Beginnings – Page 2 – SparrowSong

I’ve noticed that when I can’t be still, when my OCD tendencies kick in and I’m operating on overdrive when I’m spinning in circles in a wild attempt to fix everything, that I need to stop and pay attention. Something is going on under the surface. Instead of numbing through activity and efforts to keep things under the illusion of control, I must be willing to sit with the discomfort. And this…this is hard.

As author, researcher, and speaker Brené Brown says, we all have ways of numbing. For some, they come in the more blatant form of substance addiction. For most of us, it’s subtler. We escape the pain of conflict, life, or difficult seasons or relationships with Facebook, food, television, or shopping…even cleaning. Not that any of these things are bad. They are all necessary and good in moderation. But the question is…are they bringing us pleasure and rest, or are they deadening our senses so that we feel we can cope?

Although I often retreat to unhealthy spots, God continually calls me out of these places, reminding me, “Come out of hiding, you’re safe here with me…You’ve been on lockdown and I hold the key…..(Steffany Gretzinger & Amanda Cook, Bethel Worship)” He is perpetually opening my eyes to the world around me, helping me learn that it’s connection, not escape, which helps me survive. Brené Brown also states that letting go of numbing and powerlessness is one of the ways we cultivate a resilient spirit and embrace wholehearted living.

This reminds me of what the great poet Rumi said, “Your task is not to seek for love, but to see and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” It also brings to mind a recent worship song, by Phil Wickham, but also sung by McKenna Sabin, “Your Love Awakens Me,” which states:

“There were walls between us,

By the cross you came and broke them down…

You called me out of the grave. You called me into the light.

You called my name and then my heart came alive.

Your love is greater. Your love is stronger.

Your love awakens, awakens, awakens me.”

It’s a continual process, but I ask that this day, moment by moment, I can allow His love to lead me out of the darkness and into the light, to break every chain, to awaken me. As poet e.e. cummings once wrote,

“I who have died am alive again today…

now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened.”

As I walked my dogs the other morning, I looked out onto a world made new. The crisp azure sky highlighted jagged mountain peaks covered in a dazzling fresh coat of snow. Cat Stevens’ song rang out in my mind, “Morning has broken, like the first morning. Blackbird has spoken like the first bird. Praise for the singing, praise for the morning….” Creation is continually sustained and remade, just as we are.

The new year and decade remind me that no matter where we’re at, whatever regrets we have or roads we may wish we had taken in the past, whatever has us feeling trapped or stuck, it’s always possible to find redemption for the areas in which we fall short and start over. As the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke prompted, “Let us believe in a long year that is given to us new, untouched, full of things that have never been.”

Leeana Tankersley writes about the prayer of St. Benedict used to call the saints of old to the holiness of repetition, “Always we begin again.” As an intention for each new year, day, or moment, it reminds us that all of life is about the openness for continual renewal. As Tankersley writes, “…that’s what so much of life is–learning how, and learning how again, over and over.”

Colombia has one of the oldest standing guerilla armies in the world and a long-standing internal conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands, affecting over nine million. Executive Jose Miguel Sokoloff and a group of peacemakers led their native country in transformation over several years during the holiday season.* Initially, they covered a path from the jungle where the guerillas hid with Christmas lights and left a message stating, “If Christmas can come to the jungle, you can come home. Demobilize. At Christmas, everything is possible.” The message worked and soldiers began to lay down their arms. The next year, Sokoloff’s group put bouncy balls that lit up into the rivers with personal messages inside from families who had soldiers fighting. Several soldiers a day returned home. Eventually, as many as 17,000 laid down their weapons.
If this kind of societal transformation is possible, what is conceivable within our own individual stories? Will we allow the things that break our hearts to also crush our spirits? Will paths that fizzle out become dead ends or opportunities to forge a new road? Will each new day be a reminder of the time we’ve lost or of all that awaits? Emily Dickins exhorted, “The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience…DWELL IN POSSIBILITY.” If we are open-hearted and open-minded, willing to embrace a life that will consistently surprise us and a Creator that will continually transform us, the possibilities are endless. We can always begin again.

*(1) Lisa Shipley, “Christmas after Christmas: How a Colombian ad exec helped demobilize guerrillas by advertising peace,” The Bogota Post, December 3, 2017.

Category: Beginnings

“Your Love Awakens Me…”

“Always We Begin Again…”