Lent is a great time to think about all our relationships.

This is a  “tool”  that works for healing relationships. Read it out loud several times every morning and night or whenever you can. Plug in the person’s name you want to improve your relationship with.

My experience is either it will improve, or the emotions are neutralized.

My Commitment:

___________I promise to TRUST you enough to tell you the truth and treat you LOVINGLY, gently and with respect, in my thoughts, words and actions, whether in your presence or not.

___________In every interaction I will look for and acknowledge the highest and best in you as I surrender to LOVE, our true nature.  My connection to my Source and nurturing my relationship with you will always be more important than any issue.

___________If anything unlike LOVE comes up, I will hold us in my heart and listen as we each learn to speak, experience and beRESPONSE-ABLE for our own realities. I will be there, for and with you, keep communication open and keep LOVE conscious, active and present

AS WE HEAL!

Written by Dr. Michael Ryce. Shared with his permission.

-Peggy Johnson

“Then Jesus was led into the desert by the spirit, to be tested by the devil.” -Matthew 4:1 (Unvarnished New Testament, Andy Gaus trans.)

This Lent, I decided to give up sweets.  The first few days after no cake or chocolate, I dreamed that I couldn’t stop vomiting.  According to the dream app on my smart phone, vomit “can represent a symbolic ‘purge’ of ‘distasteful’ emotions.”  I have noticed this March that as I have given up sweets, I have also given up some of my, dare I say, self-destructive eating habits.  This month I have managed to squeeze in exercise, eat smaller meals, and return to a level of hunger and satiation much closer to what I believe to be my natural rhythms.  Have I had and do I continue to have slip-ups? Oh yeah, but I’m also becoming much more conscious of my habits.

The story of Jesus’s wilderness time has always perplexed me.  What temptations and questions did Jesus really struggle with while suffering the infernal heat of the desert?  What comes to mind is the idea of exorcism.  Exorcism is a “ceremony used to expel demons from persons who have come under their power” (Britannica).  “Satan” doesn’t play a big part in my fears anymore because the world has enough human-generated chaos without evil deities’ presences.  However, Jesus seemed to be going through some sort of refining process while he fasted.  A part of him left so that he could carry on his work.

When we mature and leave behind unattractive behaviors, isn’t that a sort of purification?  When we overcome an addiction, can’t that be an “exorcism” of sorts also?  Does it necessarily matter if a demon was involved or not?  What matters is that we are better.

Indeed my dream was telling me that I sweated off a heaviness I’ve been carrying with me for some time.  This heaviness would make me punish myself by eating and eating way past when I was full, and eating more just to show myself how bad and dirty and despicable I was.  Bad me. So bad.  The Ego is a tricky monster.  The Ego-that part of yourself that speaks lies so loudly you almost have to believe them.

Well, thankfully, I’m in no wilderness.  I’m in an apartment in Birmingham. There aren’t any demons here.  I’ve turned on the kitchen light.

-Cedric Rudolph

Several years ago I was face down on the floor. I had heard of people being brought to their knees by life…and I was prostrate. I lived a good life on the outside, had all of the “trappings” a middle class life could provide, a loving supportive  husband, 3 amazing children… yet, here I was crying with my nose to the floor boards, calling out to God, “what is wrong with me????”

What I heard when I finally stopped crying out and drowning out what the Holy Spirit was trying to say, was “Be still and know that I am God”, “be still and know”, “be still”, “be”. At that moment I just stopped hollering at God and just “was”.

I wish I could say all my problems within my heart, mind and soul, just disappeared, but I can’t. Life got harder and changes developed…..but within it all, I didn’t find myself prostrate on the floor again. When I felt the horrible anxieties bubbling up inside me, I made myself sit still…” Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), and He is ultimately in control.  THAT I can live with and count on.

-Emily Hill Barrett

At 10 years old, a boy named Eliseo Medina left Mexico to join his father who was an immigrant farm worker in the San Joaquin Valley in California. When he was 12, Eliseo dropped out of school to join his father picking grapes to support their family. When he was 19 he met Cesar Chavez and over time became one of the most skilled organizers in the United Farm Workers.

Above: Medina leading picketers outside the Talisman Sugar Cane Co. in 1972, during his time with the United Farm Workers. Source: Huffington Post/AP

 

Eliseo Medina rose from a 12-year-old immigrant farmworker to the second-highest ranking officer in the SEIU, the fastest growing union in North America. He learned a lot about power along the way. How power is used, and abused, and corrupts. How hurting people can organize to gain power to make life better for their families and communities.

Last fall, leaving a meeting with President Obama about immigration reform, Eliseo Medina came face-to-face with a group of undocumented immigrants who had driven 42 hours from Arizona to urge Congress to pass immigration reform. They told him their stories – stories of people dying in the desert trying to get to a better life; children crying themselves to sleep because their parents had been deported; families living in constant fear.

This encounter took Eliseo back to his roots and caused him to reflect. He had spent his life organizing the powerless to gain power. He had become one of the most powerful men in the labor movement. He had brought his power to bear on the cause of immigration reform. But was he doing enough?

After some soul-searching, he decided that it was time to escalate.

 

It was time to claim real power.

It was time to fast.

It was time to join the Fast for Families – to fast for the 1,100 families being torn apart by deportations every day.

It was time to fast for those whose hearts are hardened, those whose eyes are closed, who refused to hear the cries of God’s people, who do not know that our children are their children, our sorrows their sorrows, our joys their joys.

Eliseo fasted for 22 days with other national leaders in a tent on the National Mall outside of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in an effort to bring about immigration reform.

I asked him, “Why a fast? What difference would that make?”

“I have organized strikes, boycotts, marches, rallies, union drives. I’ve been arrested for civil disobedience. All of these things are aggressive in nature, they are coercive, and they cause your opponents to withdraw, to become defensive. Even a hunger strike is coercive in nature; that is different than a fast.”

Above: During their 22-day fast on the National Mall, Medina and other fasters had audiences with numerous national leaders, including President Obama. Source: CNN/Getty Images

 

“A fast draws other people toward you. They want to know why you are willing to make such a sacrifice for a cause that they may not understand or agree with. The nature of a fast, especially a fast done in community, is that it creates a space for dialogue, for relationship, for community, for conversation, maybe even for conversion. A fast is a powerful thing.”

As the body grows weaker, the spirit grows stronger.

As the body grows weaker, the BODY – THE COMMUNITY – grows stronger.

When I heard Eliseo speak of his fast, I wanted nothing more than to be a part of it. I felt it would change me and free me and bring me the peace and radiance that I saw in the fasters. I too have spent my life marching, lobbying, petitioning, demonstrating and organizing for social change. I thought, maybe at this point, there is something more powerful we can do for families living in fear of separation – we can hold a community fast like the one held in Washington. This idea was confirmed for me when one of the immigrant community leaders also listening to Eliseo speak turned to me and said, “Angie, we spent 5 days in the desert with no water! I want us to do this fast!”

We began with a 24-hour fast when Eliseo and others who had fasted for up to 22 days* came through Birmingham working for immigration reform.

We are now fasting on Wednesdays, along with the growing Fast4Families movement around the country. I invite you to join with us, to experience this new kind of power.

I also invite you to join with us in prayerful consideration of a

Holy Week Fast for Immigrant Families.

What more humble way to walk the Way of the Cross carried by Jesus,

Whose own family suffered the plight of an immigrant family?

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

2nd Corinthians 12:9

-Rev. Angie Wright

*Note: There are many ways to fast. What is right for one person may not be right for another. Here are some resources to guide you:

http://houseofprayerexperience.com/2012/11/fasting-for-beginners/

http://www.cru.org/training-and-growth/devotional-life/personal-guide-to-fasting/

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/adding-fasting-to-your-prayer-life.html

http://www.compassion.com/get-involved/fasting-tips.htm

Trust.

That is my theme for the year. It is barely the end of the third month and my knuckles are white and exhausted from holding on.

Who knew a person could learn so much about a word in 3 months. What “trust” meant to me on January 1 is so very different from what it means to me now. So little time, so much change.

I have had several HUGE life events going on at once. With each one, my gut has been screaming loudly at me about what choices I should make. But, I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to try to ignore my gut, my heart, and control the situations with my head. There were choices that were easier in a lot of ways. There were choices that seemed “nicer.”  I could help someone else, possibly help us at the same time (if all worked out, even though it didn’t seem like things would work out at all), and I wouldn’t have to step out of my comfort zone. I really like when I don’t have to step out of my comfort zone.

I kept thinking, and had other people remind me, that “trust” was my theme for 2014. I kept hoping that meant that I could passively let it all happen to me. to us. to my life. And we would all win.

My gut kept telling me I was being a fool, and as gastrointestinal issues tend to do, my gut won out.

In one issue, the most important issue, I finally had to face that what was romantic and beautiful on paper, would equal disaster to the person most impacted by this decision, and everyone else involved. No matter how much I wanted one thing, that very thing would be the worst case scenario.  And so many people would lose.  But, the reality is that people have already lost. The person that has suffered the most loss, is the person I am most responsible for. And no matter how much we all wanted this to work, it wouldn’t. Not because anyone was unworthy or didn’t want it to work. Not because I didn’t want it to work. It just couldn’t. And giving that bleak situation the most hope involves really difficult, awful decisions that make so many people unhappy. But,  happiness isn’t my business.  I can’t make this romantic or beautiful. I just have to offer the most hope to the one I am responsible for.

In another issue, I wanted to help a friend. I would benefit too, but she would benefit most. She would get out of a less than ideal situation and have something she very much wanted.  I turned away a stable choice to choose her.  Then, when down to the wire, she could not come through on her end. Not because she didn’t want to, or because she is somehow less than.  Simply because circumstances came together all wrong. And we were left scrambling.  The realization that I had chosen trying to offer this person her best shot at the expense of my family’s stability was an unpleasant moment. As a friend said,”I didn’t have to sacrifice nice to choose wisely”, but somehow, that is what I have been doing for far too long.

Does anyone remember the van I sold to a “friend” who never paid me and never looked back?

I kept trying to trust in others to do the right thing, or to make things work out for all of us. But, what I missed, is that the answer was inside me all along. Literally, physically shaking me.

Trust.

Finally, I see, this isn’t a passive act.  I have been blessed with a gift, the most amazing gift.  My intuition has shouted at me, roared at me, and I have ignored. I have hoped for the best, for the easy, for the safe. I have doubted my own ability to deliver the bad news, the hard news, the RIGHT news.

Trust is not a passive act. It is a balls to the wall, full throttle, contact sport.

I have been gifted intuition. I have been gifted the ability to call out to God/Goddess/Universe/Inner Self, and then sit in stillness, and listen….feel….notice…RESPOND.

And then, I have to trust in that message that comes through and my ability to transfer it. Who am I to decide that the message isn’t desirable.  Perhaps the news I perceive as “bad” is the best thing that ever happened to the person receiving it. Perhaps it is the kick in the pants they need, or what saves their family (or our family) from going under, or what would have prevented them from the best opportunity of their lives.

I don’t know. And it isn’t my job to know. My job is to offer up honest questions and earnest pleas for direction. and then to listen. And to trust that my gut and my heart are receiving a message that is true. and above all, that I have the strength to follow through on what I then know to be right, no matter how hard it seems.

Trust isn’t about sitting back and waiting for everyone to be happy. Trust might not make anyone happy at all, and it is surely not going to be easy. But, it is about doing what is right.

That is what I have learned in the first 3 months of my year of “trust.” I have to admit I am terrified of the next 9 months and wondering what I will learn by December. But I am trusting that at the end, even if my knuckles are cracked and bleeding, that I will have finally learned to let go, to breathe, that whatever is meant to be will simply be. And that I will have listened. That it will have been right. And that I can truly, finally TRUST.

I grew up going to York Baptist Church in York, Alabama.  Mild-mannered small Southern town congregation. Pre-megachurch days.  Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but I don’t remember actually doing anything in particular during Lent.

In fact I almost certainly wasn’t paying attention, but I don’t think Baptists actually “did” Lent.

Individualized expressive actions were implicitly suspect somehow, with worship services kind of kept to a fairly formalized minimalism  as I recall.  For example, communion was taken with the congregation remaining seated in the pews; walking up the aisle was pretty much restricted to weddings and funerals.

And, much unlike us at Beloved, certainly no one would have considered ‘rocking the house’ in church, although due to the totally square nature of the music this would have been  unlikely if not impossible anyway.

I only bring all this up to say that even after a certain amount of ‘studying up’ on Lent (a result of being at Beloved),  I still only have a vague ‘intellectual’ understanding of  Lent’s personal importance, particularly as a specific period of time.  It was not a frame of reference in my ‘religious upbringing,’ you could say.

Anyway, I gather that Lent can involve fasting, renunciation, empathy with suffering, preparation for renewal perhaps, but truthfully I’m not sure at all that I actually ‘get’ Lent, so I’ve  found it difficult to get a handle on the Reflections.

Yet I also understand that at least at Beloved there is nothing in specific that Lenten Reflections are supposed to be, or to be about, which apparently means that I should mention here that something about ‘repentance’ comes to mind just now, although it’s too ephemeral to ‘reflect’ anything definite.

Be that as it may, regardless of the season I’m obliged to repent every day for my wrongdoings, or rather for the wrongs that I am constantly doing.  For me, repentance is of necessity a daily affair; otherwise by Lent each year I’ll have built up far too many unaddressed failings to even keep track of, let alone renounce.  I’m talking landfill here.

This includes all those unintentional or unrecognized hurtful deeds that just ‘come naturally’ from my inherently flawed perceptions and behaviors in life at any given moment.

Thoughts, words and actions; these are the main three things that I trust in God’s guidance for, not only because they are the arenas of the three main gifts, but because these are also the three main routes along which I’ve always gotten myself into trouble.

Actually, much more important to me in my prayers are requests and thanks for God’s assured guidance in always trying not to do wrong in the first place.  Of course ‘not doing wrong’ is a preposterous idea, since lousing things up in the eyes of the Lord is one of the basic traits of humanity.  A persistent design quirk; the urge to sidestep the Holy.

Negativities notwithstanding, I feel certain that God wants me to focus on the positive energies,  on absorbing and reflecting the light wherever it can be encountered.

In my experience this is a tall order indeed; in fact it’s beyond me.  That’s where grace and faith come in. And thus always being thankful for the Light, wherever we may be blessed to find it, which can be more or less anywhere, and which is in fact everywhere, even when it’s only visible at the end of a tunnel.

-Davey Williams

How deep was Jesus into His suffering and reflection by now?
How was he doing, out there in the desert all alone with his thoughts of impending death and the promised resurrection, with no food to eat?
He had to be hungry. We know He was introspective. He must have been sad.
He had to have been afraid. Satan was there.
And Jesus was human, too.

How is your journey barely two weeks into Lent?
Are you hungry for God’s love and the promise of eternal salvation?
Are you looking inward at the essence of you and becoming closer with God?
Are you afraid? How is Satan tempting you?
You’re human as well.

Have no worries children of God.
He loves you beyond measure, beyond boundaries, beyond time, beyond belief!
Wait faithfully, joyfully and reflectively to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and the fulfillment of God’s promise to take us home.
Satan is among us most of the time, but
God is with you and within you all of the time.

-Lynn Phillips