Reading
Constructive Wallowing
I am a little behind on my goal to read a book a week, but I’m catching up and wanted to share one of my recent finds with you, Constructive Wallowing by Tina Gilbertson. I got it from a clearance table at Barnes and Noble, intrigued by the titled, and it did not disappoint.
Gilbertson writes a funny and easily accessible guide to allowing yourself to feel all your range of emotions, without guilt or regret, and having felt them to move on with life in the best frame of mind and emotional health. One of her niceties that will stick with a reader is her pointing out that the word wallow contains the entire word allow. This is to help free you to let yourself wallow and not be trapped by all the negative connotations we normally reserve for the word. We are allowing ourselves to be ourselves.
For me, after years of experiencing St. Ignatius’ advice on accepting my feelings and exploring them for all available meaning and use (seeking God in all I feel and experience), her advice feels very authentic, doable and constructive. Her book is fun to read and she peppers it with a wonderful array of quotes from notable quotables.
I’ve already passed the book to a friend who was also intrigued by the title when he saw me reading on my lunch break, but the link above is for the book on Amazon, or it would be worth a search at a local B&N.
Enjoy your day, beloveds. Remember that our God is love, not anger, judgment, remorse, regret or hatred. Our God is love and when we pause to ponder ourselves and the word around us, God is loving us more than we can comprehend. Let every voice and noise which threatens to drown out that love be silenced.
AMDG, Todd
A Gift to Myself in 2017
I was inspired recently by a friend who was finishing up a year of reading a book a week in 2016, and I honestly wondered if I could do the same. After some reflection, I’ve decided to take on this challenge in 2017, and I’m starting now in 2016’s Advent Season.
I can’t begin fully describe the deep blessing it has been to choose and read The Wounded Healer by the late Father Henri J.M. Nouwen this week. I’ve read many of his books, and I’ve owned this one for a long time, but I hadn’t applied the effort to read it. It is God’s steadfast grace that Father Nouwen is spending this time with me this week. This is most definitely not just going to be a new year’s resolution, but a gift to myself in 2017.
Father Nouwen has written a guidebook that though several decades old still has these amazing bits of wisdom to instruct and inspire. He focuses on several core values like compassion, presence and hope in ministry. He leads us from an expression of frantic faith based in worry and shame to a living faith in the shadow of our human suffering and joy that affirms our human connection to each other and says to the hurting and confused, “I am here.” He writes, “For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.” Amen.
This is not a book like others of his that I have read in the past; this is a wholly different experience of Father Nouwen’s wisdom and gift. I recall reading his book In The Name of Jesus over and over when Teresa and I were in seminary, but The Wounded Healer strikes a different chord, a more human chord that grounds us firmly in the life of humanity, with all its struggles, failings and beauty. It challenges us to lay aside the formulae of conversion and salvation, the easy words and ritual and habit, and to be fully present, without judgement and recognizing God’s pervading love. “It is not the task of Christian leaders to go around nervously trying to redeem people, to save them at the last minute, to put them on the right track. For we are redeemed once and for all. Christian leaders are called to help others affirm this great news, and to make visible in daily events the fact that behind the dirty curtain of our painful symptoms there is something great to be seen: the face of God in whose image we are shaped.”
I’ve made new year’s resolutions before, and failed. I’ve made new year’s resolutions and succeeded. I make this one with hope and with the joy of God’s blessing on this week’s reading. What will you give to yourself in the coming year? Choose something good, ok?
AMDG, Todd
Reading As A Pastor
One of the things I struggle to do as a pastor is to sit and read well. I mean to really sit and read. I mean to read with comprehension and transformational engagement. It’s easy to skim, to seek out bold type points or numbered lists and emphases… but it’s much more difficult for me to sit and abide with a text.
There’s always, and I do mean always, a toilet to be fixed somewhere on our congregation’s campus. There’s always a task that is screaming to be prioritized: 1) update the marquee sign out front, 2) finish the bulletin, 3) the bank is waiting on paperwork, 4) print handouts for special events this weekend, 5) get an update on a terminally ill member, 6) mow the church’s lawn, 7) print the bulletin, 8) review the kid’s class material, 9) fix the toilet in the basement men’s room, 10) rain gutter repairs in the courtyard, 11) prep and finish message notes for Sunday, 12) contact volunteers on worship participation, 13) update the website, 14) send an end-of-the-week email on Sunday’s potluck lunch… and I could go on.
When do I stop and challenge the easy reading (which can lead to easy preaching)? When do I stop and read things, and read in ways, that help me stretch and grow? How do I make time for the growth I need as a pastor to continue to be helpful to the people who look to me for theology and insight on things spiritual? Today, I decided that I’d take a chunk of the morning to pick up a book I recently ordered online, and I’d sit and read for at least an hour. I grabbed the book and trooped off to Starbucks, popped in my headphones (with Jewel pulled up on Spotify) and I did nothing but read for an hour and half. Nothing was ticked off my task list, but I’m feeling a revitalization from the exercise.
Specifically, I’m doing some the reading that I need to do for a coming series of messages and blogs on “post-patriarchal Christianity.” Not quite so specifically, I need to make times when I’m not glancing at news feeds, to do lists, Facebook and the emails on my phone, and am focused on my reading with comprehension and intention.
Being “paid to read” is a challenging part of my vocation. It’s a blessing and a curse. It challenges my assumptions about what I am always producing in a day’s work. It pushes me to recognize that I need to read well. Reading for a congregation is just as important as speaking to a congregation. Reading for my congregation doesn’t mean that my congregation doesn’t need to read for themselves, no more than my speaking to or for them about God means that they don’t also speak to and for God. It means that I need to read well. I’m trying to read well.
Feel free to ask me what I’m reading. In fact, please ask me. My maternal grandfather Johnny Watkins often stopped me as a young boy and asked me, “Where are ya at in the Word?” He wanted to know where I was currently reading in the scriptures for growth and knowledge of God. I’ve never outgrown the need to be asked that question. Where am I in the Word? Where am I in the words? Where, when and how am I reading? Reading is a crucial element of my vocation to which I’m renewing my intention and practice. I invite your participation and conversation.
AMDG, Todd
Believing in Your Goodness
I’m not only trying this month to write about my belief in your goodness and my desire to be your pastor, but I’m also reading. One book I’m spending time with is Eknath Easwaran’s “Original Goodness,” his book on The Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. His book “Love Never Faileth” is also amazing.
Here’s a just a snip that I read while on a long walk, yesterday, and a doodle I did this morning in my prayer and reflection time.
“When I was growing up in South India, just half an hour’s walk from my home was a lotus pond so thickly overlaid with glossy leaves and gleaming rose and white blossoms that you could scarcely see the water. One of the Sanskrit names for this most exquisite of flowers is pankaja, “born from the mud.” In the murky depths of the pond a seed takes root. Then a long, wavering strand reaches upward, groping through the water toward the glimmering light above. From the water a bud emerges. Warmed by the sun’s rays, it slowly opens out and forms a perfect chalice to catch and hold the dazzling light of the sun.
The lotus makes a beautiful symbol for the core of goodness in every human being. Though we are born of human clay, it reminds us, each of us has the latent capacity to reach and grow toward heaven until we shine with the reflected glory of our Maker.”Eknath Easwaran, “Original Goodness” 1996, pages 10 & 11
Be blessed in your day, my friends, for you are good.
AMDG, Todd
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