The Unending Miracle of Love

I felt my heart “strangely warmed,” like what happened to John Wesley at Aldersgate in 1738 when he knew for certain that he was saved, The same thing happened to the two travellers on the road to Emmaus. While they didn’t recognize the risen Christ walking with them, their hearts knew. They said later, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

I have experienced this before. A sudden warm spaciousness fills my chest whenever I sense that something is true and very important to God.

And the important truth that set my heart ablaze were these words from The Cloud of Unknowing, written by an anonymous Christian mystic in the fourteenth century.

It is God, and he alone, who can fully satisfy the hunger and longing of our spirit which transformed by God’s redeeming grace is enabled to embrace him by love.

modern-abstract-art-painting-warm-embrace-1024x512

 I had often imagined God embracing me. But me, embrace God?

The mystic continued,

No one can fully comprehend the uncreated God with his knowledge, but each one, in a different way, can grasp him fully through love.

I pictured our six-year-old grandson. He was draped over Fred one Sunday in church with his soft cheek pressed against my husband’s leathery one. One hand was cupped under his opa’s chin and the other, fingers splayed, was buried in Fred’s wiry hair and massaging his scalp. A woman on the worship team looked up from her djembe drum, and seeing such a display of affection, was brought to tears.

 Truly this is the unending miracle of love: that one loving person, through his love, can embrace God, whose being fills and transcends the entire creation.

I closed my eyes and opened my heart to the image and words of the mystic. I imagined myself embracing God: my Father, my Mother. For a sacred, eternal moment, I rested my cheek on my Abba’s leathery face and encircled his neck with my arm. My spirit was satisfied as I caressed God’s temple and soaked up his sighs with my fingers.

Whenever I return to the thought of embracing God or the image of our grandson and Fred or this painting by Jaison Cianelli, my heart is strangely warmed again. Truly this is an unending miracle.

 

Thoughts for your Lenten pilgrimage:

  • Imagine being embraced by a child who adores you.
  • Imagine God enjoying your embrace.
Credits: “Warm Embrace” by Jaison Cianelli. Used with permission. Italicized excerpts are from The Cloud of Unknowing, chapter 4; Author unknown, edited by William Johnston.
© Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2014 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013, 2014  http://www.estherhizsa.wordpress.com.
Posted in Lent, Mystical, Popular Posts, Praying with the Imagination, Stories | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Resisting the Sirens

siren 2 I remember the first time I identified the delicious desire to disappear. I felt enticed to float away into another world where nothing was expected of me. Sirens,* born of innocent angst, sang to me from the shore. They continue to this day, luring me out of life and into the snack cupboard and one television series after another.

Withdrawing from the world and enjoying a distraction or two can be a welcome break from stress, physical pain, or repetitive thoughts. But habitually retreating from reality takes its toll.

Excessive disappearances deaden my senses and dull my hearing. I become unmoved by beauty and unaware of tastes. God’s Word bounces off me like rain on pavement.  I find myself not caring about people and stuff that matters. And I don’t care that I don’t care.

It’s not depression. I made that diagnosis when I read Kathleen Norris’s Acedia & me. It’s acedia, a term used by the Desert Mothers and Fathers in the fourth century, which means “the absence of care.”

Norris writes, “The desert monks termed acedia ‘the noonday demon’ because the temptation usually struck during the heat of the day, when the monk was hungry and fatigued, and susceptible to the suggestion that his commitment to a life of prayer was not worth the effort.”

We too can suffer from the same affliction. Norris explains, “When life becomes too challenging and engagement with others too demanding, acedia offers a kind of spiritual morphine: you know the pain is there, yet can’t rouse yourself to give a damn.”

Acedia preys upon us in weak moments and uses the lies and fears instilled in our childhood to undo us. The demon/Siren finally departs only after it has detached us from God and others.

If I don’t want to drift onto the rocks of apathy, I need to reattach myself to God. I must turn my back to the beguiling Sirens and ground myself, like the trees in Psalm 1. They are “planted by steams of water, that yield fruit in due season, and their leaves flourish. And in all they do, they give life.”

So for Lent I’m taking a break from Doc Martin, Chummy Noakes, and Christopher Foyle and hanging out with Jesus and his friends: real people with unscripted lives.

“Shush!” I must say to the Sirens and choose, each day, to re-enter life instead of watching it.

  *In Greek mythology, the Sirens were dangerous yet beautiful creatures, portrayed as femme fatales who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. (more)

Questions for your Lenten pilgrimage:

  • What lie or fear do the Sirens use to detach you from life?
  • What daily practice grounds you in God?
Credits:
“Siren” by Edward Armitage, 1888
 Acedia & me by Kathleen Norris, Riverhead Books; New York, 2008. pages 5, 3.
Psalm 1:3 Psalms for Praying, by Nan C. Merrill
© Esther Hizsa,
An Everyday Pilgrim 2014
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013, 2014  http://www.estherhizsa.wordpress.com.
Posted in Lent, Popular Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Desire to Disappear

Disappear by SIMindy“Sometimes I wish I could disappear,” I told Father Elton once while I was doing the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises last year.

“Of course you do,” he said. “You want to do as you were told.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“That memory you had of yourself as a toddler, when you were crying and your sibling squeezed your cheeks…”

The image returned in full force: I’m sitting on the couch with my mother beside me. She is holding our baby brother, and my four-year-old sister and six-year-old brother are in front of me. They’re angry. One of them squeezes my cheeks together so hard I feel the flesh pressed against my teeth. I hear: Be quiet! Nobody asked you to be here.

I inhaled deeply and returned to the present, to Father Elton’s kind eyes and safe words.

“You were expected not to exist, something you couldn’t do,” he said.

“But I keep trying.”

I remember the first time I was tempted by the delicious desire to disappear. I felt drawn to float away into an imaginary black hole where nothing was expected of me.

But under that temptation is a deeper desire: the desire to be heard, welcomed and comforted, the desire to be real and accepted.

These are desires God longs to fill and prayer opens up a way for God to do it. That is why Ignatius asked “retreatants”* to spend an hour a day fully present to God.

Each morning I would sit on the couch in my study and ask for the grace I needed to pray with a gospel story and imagine myself in it with Jesus. Then I talked with Jesus about what I saw or felt and listened to his response.

I met with Father Elton weekly and shared what I had experienced in that dedicated time of prayer. “Jesus never seems to get tired of showing me how precious I am to him,” I told Father Elton more than once.

Every time I did, he smiled and nodded, as if he could see me materializing before his very eyes.

Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
– 
Psalm 37:4 (NIV)

*

Questions for your Lenten pilgrimage:

  • Are you carrying a painful image from your past?
  • Is there someone kind and safe you could share it with?
* “Retreatants” are people participating in the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, either as a 30-day retreat or for one hour a day over the course of seven or eight months.
Credits:
“Disappear” by SIMindy. Used with permission.
© Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2014
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013, 2014  http://www.estherhizsa.wordpress.com.
Posted in Childhood, Ignatian Spirituality, Lent, Spiritual Direction, Stories | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Closed for a Reason

closed signWords bounce off my heart like rain on pavement. Not just any words. God’s words. They won’t go in. It’s like I’m closed, locked up tight.

I sit with my Bible open on my lap and remember another time when I felt like this. We were on vacation in the arid little town of Osoyoos. I wrote,

After breakfast we got into our friends’ blue Honda and headed north. On the way we passed a fruit stand with a red and white CLOSED sign on the door. The curtains were drawn, and I imagined the owner safely inside reading a paperback and sipping coffee. That’s me: CLOSED. I’ve had enough truth for one season, thank you very much. I don’t want to witness any more train wrecks or hear any more bad news from the TV, from the mirror, or my bathroom scales. I need no more evidence of how messed up we all are or how little I have to show for my life. I know “the truth shall set you free,” but that’s assuming you survive the shock of hearing it first. Solomon, in all his wisdom, should have added another verse to Ecclesiastes 3: “There is a season to be open and a season to be closed.” I was certainly closed for the season.

As I remember that time I am struck by two things. First is the fact that I noticed my desire to shut out both God and my feelings. Sometimes I can go along in life oblivious to the big CLOSED sign I am wearing around my neck.

Second, there was a reason I was closed. Recent events triggered memories of others from long ago and I didn’t want to go there again. The steady drips of the “truth” they told turned into a downpour and I quickly closed up shop.

I read the scripture passage again searching for a thought that might penetrate my heart. This line does it: “Without you nothing makes sense.” I sit in the silence and open the door a crack so God can slip in.

“What happened?” God’s voice is soft and gentle. “Tell me, what’s going on for you?”

God’s questions, like the hand of Moses, strike the rock of my heart. Out gush words, my words, and God hears them all.

Questions for your Lenten pilgrimage:

  • What makes you close your heart to God?
  • Can you leave your shop closed while God slips in to listen?
Credits:
“Sorry We’re Closed” by justmakeit. Used with permission.
Scripture verses:
Ecclesiastes 3
Psalm 16:2 (The Message)
Exodus 17:5-7
Excerpt is from “Astronomical Units” by Esther Hizsa in Stories of an Everyday Pilgrim (unpublished as yet).
© Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2014
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013, 2014  http://www.estherhizsa.wordpress.com.
Posted in Lent, Popular Posts, Stories, Stories of an Everyday Pilgrim | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Facing the Page

deadline

Deadlines intimidate me, especially when writing’s involved. I’ve learned the wisdom of waiting for a wave of creativity to carry me and not try to struggle against the tide. But a deadline says: Get going. You’ve used up your quota of procrastination. Now is the time. Jump.

Thursday afternoon I plunge into cold water that is over my head. Will my sermon come together by Sunday? I feel this way every time I write one and God always comes through. Just the other day someone reminded me of this verse in Isaiah. “For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, ‘Do not fear; I will help you.'” With a little more confidence, I begin to swim in the choppy sea of thoughts and words, until I am called to dinner. “I’ll be there in a minute,” I say. I’ve made some progress, but the shore doesn’t seem any closer.

Friday I face the page again. Which way is the current flowing today? I lift my hand to God and jump in. The word count hovers like a shiver of sharks. Big chunks have to go. I sigh and offer up one poetic bit, then another. I surface for lunch then dive back in. At three o’clock I get on my bike. Bruce Cockburn’s “Pacing the Cage” plays in my head as I ride and I wonder if the deadline is my friend.

After supper Fred relaxes with a book. Isn’t this what Friday nights are for? I return to the page and attend to what emerged during my ride. Then I put the PowerPoint together. Images drift in. I exchange one find for another, collect what I need.

Saturday morning I have a two-hour window to practice out loud and time myself. The clock frowns. I feed the sharks again, take a deep breath and start over.  This time I catch a current of emotion when I hear myself talk about empathy. Word and image, and sound and meaning converge: solid ground under foot.

Saturday night I turn through the pages in my mind while I soak in the tub. Something’s wrong with the last section, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Three in the morning I’m awake floating on the page again, wondering if it’s a structural problem and what I should do. Then I see the connection under the surface and dive down to get it. Yes, that’s it. I reprint the page and go back to bed.

Sunday morning a few of us gather to pray before the service. After a moment of silence one fellow says, as he often does, “I have a word from the Lord for you.”

I’m listening.

“You are up high and must jump into the cold water below. You are afraid to jump, but a feather floats down from heaven and carries you with it.”

feather on water

And I remember a quote from Hildegard of Bingen that said, “I am a feather on the breath of God.”

“God will be with you,” he says.

And God was.

*

*

“Listen: there was once a King sitting on his throne.  Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the King with great honour.  Then it pleased the King to raise a small feather from the ground and he commanded it to fly.  The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along.  Thus am I a feather on the breath of God.” – Hildegard of Bingen

Questions for your Lenten pilgrimage:

  • How was God with you today?
  • How was it different from other times God helped you?
Credits:
Deadline” by Jonathan Bliss. Used with permission.
“Feather on Water” by Megan Yungwirth (who was ten years old at the time!). Used with permission.
Scripture verse: Isaiah 41:13
Pacing the Cage by Bruce Cockurn
My sermon on Luke 15 “Celebrating with the One who Welcomes ‘Sinners'” can be heard at http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/90311604/Sermons/140223.mp3
© Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2014
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013, 2014  http://www.estherhizsa.wordpress.com.
Posted in Lent, Stories, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Ash Wednesday

Brian Whelan The Way 16 x 29 45 bd Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. – Luke 9:51

Pilgrimage

Ash Wednesday
He’s on the road
PUT waiting for me

today we begin
a forty day walk
to Jerusalem

I lace up my shoes
and follow
PUT from a safe distance

but it’s bound to happen
His eyes will catch mine
and I must summon the courage
PUTnot to look away

for in His loving gaze
questions arise
PUTmemories
PUT
hopes
PUTand fears

and we will
carry them all
PUT to Jerusalem

*

Questions for your Lenten pilgrimage:

  • Where have you seen Jesus on the road?
  • What are you carrying?
Credits:
The Way by Brian Whelan. Used with permission.
“Pilgrimage” by Esther Hizsa from Stories of an Everyday Pilgrim, 2015.
© Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2014
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013, 2014  http://www.estherhizsa.wordpress.com.
Posted in Lent, Poetry, Stories of an Everyday Pilgrim | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Judgment Day

scalesI couldn’t believe my eyes. I got off the scale and on it again. The reading was the same.

It’s been months since I’ve been to the gym. I knew I’d gained weight, but this was ten more pounds than I expected. Sheesh!

I mounted the cross-trainer and got to work. Thirty minutes went by at a snail’s pace. I panted and tried not to stare at the slim, fit people around me. While I passed the time, I made a mental list of all the foods I would have to give up eating forever. Losing this weight was going to take a lot of time and persistence.

When the half hour was up, the machine congratulated me for burning 350 calories. Hmm. Only 34,650 more to go. And that’s just the first ten pounds. I sat down for a while to catch my breath then wandered into the room with the weights and another scale.

“Oh, what the heck,” I thought holding a glimmer of hope that this scale would deliver better news.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I got off the scale and back on again. I weighed ten pounds less than I did on the previous scale. I wanted to kiss my new friend. Before I let myself get carried away, I went to the front desk and talked to the woman who had checked me in. “I just weighed myself on both scales and…”

“Don’t trust the one in the other room. It’s really off. I keep telling the manager it needs to be recalibrated.”

“Really?” My whole body lightened.

“Really.”

“This one, in this room, is accurate?”

“That’s right.”

Wow. I lost ten pounds in thirty minutes. 35,000 calories gone. Poof!

I picked up a pair of five pound dumbbells and pumped iron like I was Jillian Michaels–for a whole ten minutes. Because I could.

dumbells

Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. -John 1:16

Credits:
Scary Scale [explored] by Chelsea Panos. Used with permission.
Dumbells by Garen Meguerian. Used with permission.
© Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2014
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013, 2014  http://www.estherhizsa.wordpress.com.
Posted in Humour, Overeating, Stories | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Secret Place

icecream storeI was in New Life’s Community Free Store the other day and found a book called The Ice Cream Store.  I scooped (!) it up. I loved reading Alligator Pie to my kids when they were young. Here was another book written by Canadian author Dennis Lee that I could enjoy reading to my grandchildren. One of my favourite poems in the book is “The Secret Place.” What a wonderful invitation to return to God in the secret place where we were made. Thanks, Dennis!

The Secret Place
by Dennis Lee 

There’s a place I go, inside myself,
  Where nobody else can be,
And none of my friends can tell it’s there–
  Nobody knows but me.

It’s hard to explain the way it feels,
  Or even where I go.
It isn’t a place in time or space,
  But once I’m there, I know.

It’s tiny, it’s shiny, it can’t be seen,
  But it’s big as the sky at night…
I try to explain and it hurts my brain
  But once I’m there, it’s right.

There’s a place I know inside myself,
  And it’s neither big nor small,
And whenever I go, it feels as though
  I never left at all. 

Even now that I am grown up, I can lose myself on the circumference of life. But when I return to that tiny, shiny, spacious place where God welcomes me, I am home.

“My frame was not hidden from you, I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.”
– Psalm 139:15

 SONY DSC

 

“God is the still-point of a turning world.”
-Thomas E. Clarke, SJ, Finding Grace at the Centre

Credits:
Knit Together by Kelly Dycavinu © 2011. Used by permission.
http://kellydycavinu.wordpress.com/
“The Secret Place” by Dennis Lee in The Ice Cream Store. Toronto:HarperCollins, 1991. Illustrations by David McPhail. Used by permission of HarperCollins Canada.
  •  
© Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2014
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013, 2014  http://www.estherhizsa.wordpress.com.
Posted in Childhood, Mystical, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Cost of Love

heart in sand by jennaki_evie

All this talk about embracing our weaknesses is fine until someone gets hurt. I’m less inclined to romanticize the notion when I see how my failings have wounded others or how theirs have wounded me. When that happens, I’m tempted to hide behind a suit of armour.

Yet I can’t love others without being vulnerable. And that isn’t easy. I take a big risk when I allow people to see that I fear rejection, need approval, or desire control. Pharisees judge me; Moriartys exploit my weaknesses; and the offended pigeon-hole me (“Oh, there she goes, doing that annoying thing again”). Even if a person, as kindly as possible, tells me how my failings affect them, I still feel ashamed.

How do I embrace my weaknesses without getting hurt?

I can’t. It is the cost of love. It is the cost of taking up my cross and following Jesus.

A few weeks ago, while our contemplative group was in silent prayer, I remembered how our weaknesses endear us to Jesus. Then I sensed him inviting us to allow them to endear us to each other. That invitation shifted the focus from me to my neighbour.

Could I consider their shortcomings a precious part of them?

It wasn’t long before a good friend “went and did that annoying thing again” and ruffled my feathers. My first instinct–I can’t help it; it’s just the way I’m wired–was to figure out how he could have done it differently. But I also discovered two deeper instincts: the desire to find the empathy to love him even more, and the urge to sit back and watch what God would do. Often God does more in the process of smoothing feathers than he could have done if they had never been ruffled in the first place.

If I’m going to talk about love on Valentine’s Day, I want to move beyond romantic notions and talk about what real love is. I Corinthians 13: 4-7 says (amplification mine) “Love is not self-seeking. It always protects the vulnerable, always trusts that there is something bigger going on, always hopes that God will bring something good out of everything, always perseveres in the belief that this is the only way to live.”

 

Credits:
Love in Sand by Evie Prastacou  Used with permission.

© Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2014
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013, 2014  http://www.estherhizsa.wordpress.com.
Posted in Poverty of Spirit | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Lucky Bums

laughter-david-naman“Lucky bums!”  That’s how theologian Karl Barth described the poor in spirit who inherit God’s kingdom. Ever since someone mentioned that in our contemplative group, we have the urge to call each other “lucky bums.” It reminds us that we are blessed because of our weaknesses, not in spite of them.

It’s hard to resist our culture’s compulsion to distance ourselves from our shortcomings or treat them as temporary problems we must overcome or fix.* Most of us spend our lives trying to correct our inadequacies and assume this practice pleases God. We envision the model Christian as one who goes “from strength to strength.” Communion liturgies praise the Lamb who heals the weakness of our soul, and we presume our frailties are abhorrent to God. But they are not.

“Our weaknesses endear us to God,” says Rob Des Cotes of Imago Dei Communities. The Good Shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to find the one that has gone astray and joyfully, lovingly carries her back to the fold. The Father runs to embrace the smelly, shameful prodigal and welcomes him home.

One evening I led our contemplative group in a meditation on Jesus’s radical teaching. I wondered how to integrate what we had just learned about our blessed condition with the sacrament of communion. A thought came.

“We often come to the Lord’s table offering up our dark side to God. We are ashamed of it and want him to take it away along with our sins,” I said. “God will indeed dispose of our sins, but he doesn’t take away the parts of ourselves we don’t like. He wants us to love our whole selves as much as he does.”

That night we received the body of our Lord, broken for us. As we did we also received the One who loves and heals our brokenness.

And He received us!

Jesus loved to eat with tax collectors and “sinners.” Here he was doing it again. Aren’t we a bunch of lucky bums!

  

Credits and Acknowledgements:
“Laughter” by award-winning photographer David Naman. Used with permission. “Laughter” will be published this year in Treasure Art Magazine Yearbook 2014, Volume II’
The Laughing Statues
are in Vancouver by English Bay at Morton Park.
Scripture references: Matthew 5:3; Psalm 84:7; Luke 15.
Celtic Communion Liturgy adapted by Imago Dei from Celtic Daily Prayer.
*Rob Des Cotes in “Meditation on Matthew 5:3” at Belonging to Life Retreat Nov 16, 2013.
Rob Des Cotes is director of Imago Dei Communities, an ecumenical network of Christian faith communities based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
© Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2014
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013, 2014  http://www.estherhizsa.wordpress.com.

 

Posted in Poverty of Spirit, Rob Des Cotes | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments