Lisa notes

Get in the house

By LisaNotes July 19, 2013 Community 16 Comments

3pigs

I’d never seen lightning like this. A few Wednesday nights ago, it was more than a thunderstorm. I’d call it a lightning storm.

But I wasn’t scared.

Because I was in the house.

When storms threaten, you need a place to go. A place where you belong. I was in mine. I could see the flashes of lightning through the blinds, but I was protected in my bedroom, husband by my side.

When storm clouds gather in other ways, I know to get inside, too. Where it’s safe. Where I’m protected.

It may be lunch with my sisters, physical and spiritual. It may be a Facebook message thread with encouragements to stay strong. It may be a group of three in my living room gathered to pray it out until the storm has passed.

We all need love to stay strong. And while we all have God’s love, we need each other’s love, too. Because that’s where we’re safest, when we’re totally surrounded by love.

The winds blow and the rains pelt, but nobody can blow this house down.

Come inside. Until it’s safe to go back out.

* * *

Where do you feel you most belong? Where is your safe place?

It’s not over

By LisaNotes July 17, 2013 Church, Encouragement, Music, My stories, Worship 33 Comments

The song had already been planned. Been practiced. And now been sung. “It’s Not Over” – a powerful one.

But for this Sunday morning, although we didn’t know it yet, it wasn’t really over.

Because God wasn’t finished with it yet.

Everybody’s in the middle of something. All the time. We’ve all got our things. Maybe it’s a chronic ache in the body or an interruption to our plan or a relationship bump we can’t get past.

So my mind that morning was going to my things, wondering how God was going to work them out.

The song was reminding me to keep the spark of hope burning. But what happened next lit it on fire.

As we sang the last notes, Pastor Mark stepped on the platform with intention. He’d heard from Pastor Priscilla. She’d been awake between midnight and 3 a.m. a couple nights earlier and felt compelled by the Lord to look up scriptures on the word “over.”

She’d printed out a list for herself and emailed a list to Pastor Mark. Why? She wasn’t sure, but she was obedient.

And that obedience turned into a word for the whole church.

Pastor Mark invited her to share it with us. When the Word goes out, it doesn’t return void. She encouraged us with verse after verse about God taking us over, him being over all, death having no power over us.

Over and over we heard that when God is in something, it’s not over.

After she stepped down, we sang the song again, this time with new depth and power, believing stronger and wider.

When God is in it
There is no limit
When God is in it
It’s not over, It’s not over

I’ve been singing it in my mind ever since.

May you find hope today in God, too.

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
Isaiah 43:19

Here’s the song:

It’s Not Over
Ricardo Sanchez
LYRICS

 

CHORUS
It’s not over, It’s not finished
It’s not ending, It’s only the beginning
When God is in it, All things are new
 
VERSE 1
I know it’s darkest just before dawn
This might just be the hardest season you’ve experienced
I know it hurts; it won’t be too long
You’re closer than you think you are
You’re closer than you’ve been before

 

So look to the sky
Help is on the way

 

CHORUS

 

VERSE 2
Something is moving, turning around
Seasons are changing, everything is different now
Here comes the sun, piercing the clouds
You’re closer than you think you are
You’re closer than you’ve been before
 
So look to the sky
Help is on the way
Our God is faithful
He’s faithful to say
 
CHORUS

 

BRIDGE
When God is in it
There is no limit
When God is in it
It’s not over, It’s not over

* * *

Oh, God, the places you show up

By LisaNotes July 15, 2013 Jesus, One Word 2013: Jesus, Worship 17 Comments

oh-the-places-youll-go-dr-seuss

Mark (not his real name) is still a teenager, I think.

If he were cleaned up a little (okay, a lot), I could picture him sitting at the round table outside at Sonic on a Saturday night with my own teenage daughter and friends, eating chili cheese tots and slurping down a strawberry fruit slush.

Instead, I see him sitting on a stump in Tent City under the overpass playing with a stray mutt. Or at the library to borrow the internet.

Or at Manna House where he’s just as likely to be helping as being one of the helped.

Oh, God, the places you show up!

In homeless teenage boys I don’t expect to find you. Except that I do.

After everyone’s been served one hot meal, we package up extra to-go styrofoam containers with barbecue and cole slaw for Mark.

He gets extras because we know what he’ll do with them: he’ll carry them back on foot to the homeless camp to share with those he takes care of and who take care of him.

I couldn’t have known, Jesus.  

And I don’t know what to do with you there—except to acknowledge I see you and to give you glory for showing up in the most unexpected places and to love you more because of it.

Wherever you want to show up, and in whoever you want to slip into, may I honor you there as holy.

May I keep eyes open to you not only in pastors and Christians authors, in worship leaders and charity CEOS, but also in vagabonds and the disturbed, in the hungry and the least of these.

To see you more is to love you more.
To love you more is to love others more.

On Wednesday night a thunderstorm pops up at Manna House so Mark asks Jeff for a ride. Not back to his tent. But to the library where his friend will be hungry for a meal.

Jeff tells me the story later nonchalantly, but I know better. The cab of his truck became holy ground that night because Jesus was incarnated in two more humans—in my well-groomed (albeit sweaty by then) Christian husband and in our teenaged friend Mark working out his mission in a crazy world.

O, Lord. I see you.

Please grace me to see you more.

* * *

In my year of One Word 2013: Jesus, I never know where he’s going to show up next.

Where have you seen Jesus this past week?

Jesus-one-word-2013

“Occupy Spirituality”–Book review

By LisaNotes July 12, 2013 Book reviews 5 Comments

We invite you to deep listening and deep acting.

 

Please remember you are not alone. Move from “me” to “we.”
     – Bucko and Fox

Occupy-SpiritualityOccupy Spirituality is a spiritual dialogue between a 72-year-old priest, Rev. Matthew Fox, and a 37-year-old mentor to homeless youth, Adam Bucko.

Elders are only useful if they first listen. Then truly dialogue as equals. Spirit works through the young, not just through the old.

 

As Thomas Aquinas put it in the thirteenth century, “the experience of God must not be restricted to the few or to the old.”

Prompted by the Occupy movements that have taken place around the globe since 2011, Fox and Bucko talk to each other about how to make a spiritual difference for good in the world.

  • How to connect experiences and concepts
  • Where to seek the God of life instead of the false god of religion
  • What to do next both in and outside of organizations to make a difference

The Aboriginals say that God sings every being into existence, and your job is to find your song and then find how it matches up with other people’s songs, so that you make music together.

It’s not a comfortable read. Sometimes I couldn’t follow their points. Other times I disagreed with their conclusions. And other times I too clearly understood when I would rather not have.

The question is not “Who is angry and why?” but “What are we doing with our anger? What is the most effective use of it?”

But that made it a profitable read because it pushed me out of my comfort zone.

I challenge education that does not lead to creativity, since creativity is what most distinguishes us as a species. There is no excuse for education (or worship) that bores people.

Should you read it, too? If you have any interest in spiritual activism, yes. If you like learning of new outlets for moral outrage, yes. If you want a glimpse inside the hearts of many young people, yes.

I define the priest archetype as being “a midwife of grace” so that means that all of us, when we are doing work that is healthy for others, are priests because we are midwives of grace.

 

. . . Often it is better to start new “institutions” than to waste one ’s limited time and energy trying to convince dead ones. Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead.” You need to be able to smell death. And to smell where new life is also.

* * *

Occupy Spirituality will be available September 3, 2013.

Thanks to Above the Treeline
for the advance review copy of this book

This stinks

By LisaNotes July 10, 2013 Church, Homeless, My stories, Worship 42 Comments

stinksI want to change seats.

I had been trying to do a good thing, but on second thought, it’s too much for me.

It’s the smell.

I walk into Outdoor Church (well, technically Indoor Church today because it’s raining). I scan the crowd for the right seat. I don’t want to sit by the cleaned-up Christians like myself because otherwise what’s the point of being there?

So I choose a seat near the back by an older gentleman that is quite obviously different from me.

But two seconds in, I want to sit elsewhere. The stench is too strong. A mix of cheap cigarettes and no bathing for days (weeks?) is a horrible combination.

Outside, it’s not so noticeable.
But inside, it stinks.

If I get up now, would it be rude?

I glance at the old man’s clothes out of the corner of my eye. Ragged blue jeans, holes up and down. Worn-down tennis shoes. Dirty socks. Dirty shirt. Dirty cap sitting on his dirty knee.

I preach to myself,

Don’t walk out.

Don’t move to a chair farther away.

Don’t squirm in your seat or turn your head or take fewer breaths.

 

Just sit here.

It’s the most radical worship I can offer in this moment.

Just sit here.

Because how pathetic am I? I’m ashamed of my own shallowness. How can I walk away from repulsiveness when it’s an inside job?

Outside, it’s not so noticeable.
But inside, it stinks.

I stink.

Breathing in contaminated air, I sense my own need for grace. For a fresh blowing of the Spirit.
Again.

The preacher quotes John 3:16, and my homeless friend mumbles it along with me. The teen praise band sings on with “Oh, how he loves us” and Pastor Mike reminds us the clear message today is God loves each of us, just as we are, and I can’t help but grin at how God is playing this, working on me with such divine finesse.

After the service, I ask the gentleman, “How’s it going?” as I pick up his cane I accidentally kicked over. He starts talking and I lean in hard but I can’t discern many words. No teeth combined with a muddled mind makes him hard to understand. So I just smile and say “Uh-huh” and “Yeah” and “Wow” when each seems appropriate.

I interrupt to invite him to the hot meal prepared next door but he keeps talking so I eventually slide on out while he’s in mid-sentence even though I feel guilty about it.

I take a big gulp of fresh air. Even in the rain, maybe especially in the rain, it tastes delicious.

And I thank God.

For keeping his seat when I sit down beside him with my stink.
For pressing in closer instead.
For not waiting until I’m cleaned up and sanitized before he accepts my worship.

Oh, how he loves us.
Just as we are.

* * *