This week Jason was on vacation. We kicked it off with Trunk or Treat at church, Sunday night.
Monday we had Halloween at Kim and Heather’s and I can’t believe I took zero pictures! We had pizza and watched Insidious. I love traditions. The boys stood out front and scared the older kids that were trick or treating.
Tuesday the kids had Fall Festival at Vanguard and I only got one photo of Jason manning the balloon game. The kids had a blast though.
Thursday we headed to Landrum for lunch and then stopped by Landrum Eclectics. What a cool place. We snagged Saint Francis and he’s in our front yard now.
Rounded out our week with some cooking and games. What a fun staycation we had.
One of my favorite things about church is seeing everyone face to face. So many of us spend a lot of time in front of a computer or some other screen. Sometimes we are just so busy going about our days that we don’t just stop and really see each other.
Can you imagine for a minute, what it would have been like some 2000 years ago, to have met Jesus face to face, in the flesh? To have him come over and just gaze at you? Can you close your eyes and picture that in your mind for a moment?
Jesus face to face.
Him seeing you.
On any given day, I am honestly often too distracted to notice the spirit of love that dwells within me. But noticed or not He is still there, loving me, holding me, and gazing upon me with grace.
And that is one of the things I love about church. For a few hours, we all get to come together, and for a bit, we lay down our distractions and SEE each other. We set our gazes on Jesus and find He has been watching us all along. And we remember that every moment is holy. We are welcomed home.
I wonder what would happen if we stopped scrolling. If we fasted from striving and just stepped away from places and spaces that leave us feeling hopeless, angry, anxious, and depleted.
What if we sat with those things within us that we want so badly to escape and instead of scrolling or striving, we just met Jesus face to face.
What would that feel like? To take our anger and tell it to Him. Our disappointments, our fears. Our guilt. Instead of lashing out in our flesh, to dig in. To pray what we want to post, to sit quietly and listen. To read Jesus' words.
How might we change the world if we practiced resting and remembering who it is we follow.
What anger might be replaced with love?
What fear might be quieted with peace?
What disappointment might be blossomed into hope?
If we could stop searching and rest. And remember the One who never takes His eyes off of us.
I finished a great book last week, The Gift by Edith Enger. She is a 94-year-old renowned psychologist and also a Holocaust survivor. She arrived at Auschwitz at age 16. Her parents were executed the day they arrived at Auschwitz, and that first night, Edith, a young ballerina, was made to perform for Josef Mengele, a nazi known as the Angel of Death. Her life was spared and she spent months in Auschwitz before going on to the so-called Death March. She was rescued by a black American soldier in Gunskirchen, who saw her hand move in a pile of dead bodies. She weighed 70 pounds. If you have not read her story, please go check it out!
The book was a collection of her clients' stories from years of her practice, interwoven with pieces of her own story. She shares the 12 most common imprisoning thoughts/behaviors she has encountered over the years and her tools for overcoming them.
My favorite story from the book was near the end. Several years ago Edith was invited to attend a ballet portraying her own story, a retelling of the night she had to perform for Mengele. She says “In that theater with my daughter, watching moments of my past being brought to life on the stage, I knew again what I realized that night in the barracks- that while Mengele had all the power, while day after day he chose with his grotesquely wagging finger who would live and who would die, he was more a prisoner than I was.
I was innocent.
And free.”
Something in these lines unlocked a deep truth that was transformative for me in my own story of victimization. When justice does not come for the oppressors, I was reminded that they are already imprisoned. They are imprisoned by their power, their shame, and their endless hungering. They are imprisoned to the self. As they perpetuate more suffering and selfishness these bars grow tighter and their chains weigh them down. They will never find wholeness or freedom in the pursuit of their own glory. They are starving.
Mengele never was brought to justice by human standards. He fled to Argentina and changed his name. He drowned while swimming in 1979 after suffering a stroke in the water. Helpless, powerless, sinking from the weight of his own body. He was identified posthumously via forensic evidence.
Was he ever free?
What prisons, Oh God, would you have me unlock within myself? What chains?
Thank you for showing me that you have designed us all to be free when we walk in your Spirit of love, and also to be prisoners when we walk in the Spirit of selfishness, anger, wrath, greed, vengeance, and pride.
Help me be a woman who stands in Your love and freedom even as I advocate for love and freedom, even as I honor my personal story and the experiences of others, that true Justice belongs to You, and Your design is perfect.
“they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. For all the peoples walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.”
Micah 4:3b-5 NRSV
Looking at this picture of my son right before he was baptized. The face of God's love on him, and on his Dad.
How does a young man cover himself in body armor, take up rifles and murder a classroom's worth of children. Why? And what on Earth, God, can we do about it?
I am so so tired of praying over all of the hate. I am tired of the words God keeps giving back to me: Love, it's love, Aimee. Love is what fills a heart to such fullness that evil will not find a space to creep in.
The absence of love creates a cavern of hunger that will endlessly grasp and degrade. Where there is no love there is emptiness, and it is the kindling for hate, anger, pride, greed and violence.
I know it isn't for me to change the verses in Micah above, but if I wrote them I would edit to this: 'but they shall share their vines and their fig trees. They will look for those who need shade and carry them over and no one will be forgotten."
When we walk in the name of the Lord, we hurt for the hurting.
How do we beat our swords into plowshares? Our spears into pruning hooks? Do we value the cultivation of "love one another"?
Are the things I say online and out loud in my home, are they cultivating love? How about what I am reading and consuming? What about my teens? Are they being filled with loving interactions and seeing the Spirit at work or are they hearing empty platitudes and judgment?
Show me Lord, how to make my swords into plowshares, and my spears into pruning hooks.
Help me advocate for peace and love in all circumstances. With my life, for the marginalized, to my children, at the polls. Regardless of the cost, let me stand for love.
Jay and I were talking about Jesus as a baby, and how did that work? At what age did he have awareness of who he was? I actually have no idea, but it is something to wonder over. Jesus, wordless and in a diaper. Being cared for, cleaned, and fed by human hands.
At a ripe old age, we will eventually revert back to our baby selves, but in old bodies. I saw this with my Mema. Age and dementia took her away piece by piece. I remember wondering where the rest of her was. Was her spirit still there? Was she trapped inside or was she just slipping away, and how much of ourselves do we shed, what is left that goes on?
When she could still shower on her own I remember standing outside the bathroom door just listening, making sure all was well. When she got out of the shower she was crying "Oh God, oh Lord, please help me. Please Jesus help me. I am so tired." Over and over again. It was so sad. So much of her privacy had been taken from her that I just stood and let her have her moment. She was so tender and vulnerable. Still aware enough to know she was slipping away from herself. I remember thinking, "Where are you, God? Why are you making her suffer this way?" The moment passed and after a few minutes of quiet, I knocked on the door, helped her dry off, and get dressed.
Later that morning she sat on the porch with her lunch and sang to the birds. She marveled at how beautiful the day was and what a gift it was to sit in the sun. How gorgeous God's creation was. There are a million things I could tell you about my Mema. How she buried a son and then went shopping for her other two children at Christmas. How she would laugh and sing and play and cook, and sometimes her eyes would well up with tears. How she made up amazing stories and made us feel so loved.
When she endured hatred, pain, and loss it seemed God also filled her up with love. Her tenderness made space for love. She was radiant. Even that day in the bathroom crying out she was still radiant. Emptied and filled.
Jesus took the world aback with his tenderness. Born in a manger, rode on a donkey, befriended the exiles, defeated death by dying, and said things like "the least shall be the greatest."
Mark says as he hung that Jesus said "My God, why have you forsaken me?" Luke tells that He said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." John records Christ's words as "It is finished."
Emptied of His human life, He would be filled with enough love and mercy to save the entire world.
Oh, this Christmas that we could think of life and death this way. We will be emptied and filled with eternal love and mercy from our first cries to our last exhale. That we would spend our days sharing with others with the radiance of God's love, even as we cry out for more.
Christmas is such a busy season. I was thinking about what to say for the welcome at church tomorrow and my brain is frazzled and multi-tasking. Presents and plans and gatherings. Opportunities for service. Making sure it all gets into the calendar. Wrapping and cooking. All beautiful gifts of the season. But, So. Very. Busy. And I am a person that loves white space much more than a full calendar.
Baby Jesus we are told, was born in a manger, no room in the Inn. From what I understand about that time period, mangers were actually extensions of the home, often a lower level where animals were kept. This means someone did make space and offered what they had to welcome Mary and Joseph. Jesus came into the world via imperfect hospitality. For many of us, imperfect hospitality is just about all we have to offer this time of year, and I really think it is a beautiful gift.
This Christmas, I am trying to throw out perfection and embrace the messiness. Remember that Jesus both extended welcome and accepted others hospitality. He was not worried about appearances, or place settings. He didn't offer a cold shoulder, but wide open arms. And that is what I hope to bring with me this season.
I love dance. For me it is equal parts worship and fun, spiritual expression. The way I feel most alive as my spirit and body come together. Movement for me is holy and healing. It is one way God replaces my garments of grief with clothes of joy.
These past two years, our collective world has been enveloped with death and suffering. Our country specifically has experienced political polarization and it seems that we have moved further from each other, retreating into our own tiny islands of isolation (my personal coping strategy) or lashing out via our social platforms.
I have often forgotten to dance. Stopped listening to the music of beauty and truth, stopped looking for what is right and good and true. These things we must slow down and look for. Slow down and listen for. Tear our eyes away from what is hard and awful for a bit to remember. It is a miracle that we are here. That we have bodies with life breathed into them by God. That as believers we are gifted and filled with love, purpose, and life. That we are more fully alive when step off of our islands, move towards our neighbors and give these gifts away.
This video below, by Jordan Feliz, is such a celebration of the life I hope to live. Passing down a legacy of love, of welcome, of invitation to a life of joy as these earthly attachments diminish.
You can't watch this without feeling free and full of purpose.
