Yoga

So, my husband, Phil, started going to yoga. And as I'm not one to like being left out, I decided to join him. It's a good thing our teacher is so good- natured, because she has some pretty goofy, clumsy students on her hands now. She, of course, is slim and gorgeous, and looks fabulous in every pose, so I just pretend I look like her.
We go twice a week, and sweat like pigs (and look a little like pigs too). I think she won my heart, when at the end of the first class, she bent in a yogic bow honouring us and all her teachers, and as she bent low, she gave a little moan of pain....

Ahhh. She's human! Okay, I can work with her.

The first class was also filled with lots of skinny young things in spandex, and it took all my, "I'm beautiful just the way I am" self-talk to make it through the class. Since then, there have been a few older folks here and there, and students who show up in shorts and T-shirts, so that helps too.

And occasionally I can do something better than somebody else, which helps the bruised ego. Okay, yoga isn't about being better than others or looking good in spandex, or

being young; it's a spiritual discipline, that grows my relationship with myself and my body. But until I get really spiritual and ego-less, those are the things I notice the most.

So I've got lots of room for improvement. If you live in the Waterloo region and want

to take yoga from a great instructor, check out the teacher Asia Nelson. Or if you want to take the same class that I am, so you can definitely be with someone who won't make you insecure by how flexible and stylish I am, we take the Wednesday evening and the Saturday morning Ashtanga classes. http://www.pranalife.ca/.

Back on the Treadmill....Sigh!

Well, I'm home from two weeks of travelling and attending and giving presentations, and it's time for me to get back to work. I am definitely hitting the "Why am I doing this?" phase of the journey.

I'm tired. I'm just tired. I've started an on-line course for one of my final important credits, and the readings bore me, the discussion questions bore me, and I took one look at the next assignment and said out loud, "You're kidding. Do I have to!?"

I am not in the mood for esoteric discussions on the nature of God! It's not the professor's fault. It is study-fatigue.

So. This is what this journey looks like too. Boredom. Study fatigue. Flagging vision. I feel so DONE with the preparation. I just want to get out there and DO.

Thanks for loving me anyway.... This too shall pass.

Home again

Well, I'm home from the "Gathering Leaves" event in England. It was wonderful. I took absolutely no pictures, and am hoping that the many pictures my friends took will find their way to me eventually.

At the Newark airport, I looked up and rubbed my eyes to see dear friends Paul and Beryl Simonetti waiting for the same flight to England. After some mutual astonishment, we happily settled down together. Their seats ended up being right behind mine on the (packed and cramped) flight. They generously allowed me to share their rental car for the drive from Birmingham airport, and poor Paul patiently endured our cries of "turn here!" and "Close on the left!" and "Don't stop; we have the right of way!" etc. as we careened down the left side of the road and perilously navigated the high-speed round-abouts. (I think God creates special guardian angels just for foreign drivers on English soil.)

Purley Chase was wonderful, and I highly recommend it as a low-cost, warm, centrally located spring-off point for touring central England. Anne is a trained chef, and the food was fantastic. Purley also runs many spiritual retreats, and hosts events for reasonable rates. It is near Stratford and Warwick Castle, and many other sights. Tell them Alison Longstaff sent you.

Before our event, Paul and Beryl and I spent a lovely day at Warwick Castle, a wonderfully preserved medieval castle. We saw a show about eagles and hawks, full of dry British humour and real birds of prey. We climbed up some steep spirally stairs to a magnificent view across England. And we got thiroughly haunted by the resident ghost. Lots of fun.

I am now jet-lagged, and feeling much older than I am, but the trip was worth it.

With luck, more about the actual event later, with pictures.

Jolly England

I certainly have been lazy updating this blog.

I am fresh back from Convention and am now in the middle of England at Purley Chase Retreat Centre, preparing for the upcoming "Gathering Leaves" which starts on Friday.

http://www.purleychasecentre.org.uk/

It is green and wet and rainy, and the folks are lovely. It's just myself and the staff. (I'm very early.)

Coincidentally, I discovered Paul and Beryl Simonetti at the Newark airport, waiting to get on the same flight. They sat immediately behind me on the plane. We couldn't have planned it better. So I was saved having to find and ride two busses (and a lot of walking in the rain) because they offered me a ride in their rental car. Tomorrow we will go see Warwick (sp?) castle. They are at a B&B in the area.

I hope to take pictures, etc, but right now I'm surprised I can even finish these sentences....

The Mother Clothed with the Sun

(artwork by Anna K. Cole)

"The Mother Clothed with the Sun"
Alison Longstaff
Pentecost Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Church of the Good Shepherd
Acts 2: 1-4, Rev 12: 1-9,13-16

Well, I set myself a tall order when I accepted the preaching gig for today. There are three themes going on for us this week: first, it is Mother’s Day, which though secular, does have certain spiritual overtones; this is also Pentecost Sunday, which is celebrated throughout most of the Christian world and is considered the birthday of the Christian church; and finally, in connection to the birth of Christianity and uniquely Swedenborgian, we are beginning the build up toward the birthday of the New Church which happens in just over a month, and which Swedenborgians celebrate on the 19th day of June.

So, how do I combine Pentecost—with it’s rushing winds and tongues of fire—with gentle, loving Mothers’ Day and June 19th?

For me, the logical way to tie all of it together is with the image of the woman clothed with the Sun. In the text from the book of Revelation this woman gives birth, which makes her a mother—a mother clothed with the sun, making her perhaps one of the most beautiful mothers found in the Bible. She is clothed with the sun, which means (in Swedenborgian terms) that she radiates love. The natural sun is pure fire, and it represents God’s love to us: the same love that filled the disciples at Pentecost and urged them to go out and spread this love throughout the world. That is why tongues of fire appeared above their heads. They were lit from within by God’s love for the human race and all of creation. And that is why they could speak in every language, because God’s love crosses all cultural barriers and longs to sweep all peoples into his loving embrace.

So, who is this Mother Clothed with the sun, and what meaning does she convey? To start with, she probably represents the same thing that all princesses, damsels, and wise women represent in all the fairy tales—she represents all that is soft and beautiful, nurturing and life-giving in the human spirit. She represents all the gentleness, compassion, and tenderness that typify the archetypal Mother. No, we flesh and blood mothers never achieve such a perfection of gently beauty. We are clumsy and goofy and we get zits. We have PMS and bad hair days, and each of us has our emotional and spiritual stuff that we have to work through—which means we often fall seriously short of motherly perfection. But that’s not the point. We still honour motherhood, today and every day, for the loving care our mothers did achieve, and for that incredible, God-given, self-sacrificing love that we have all seen and long for and cherish in our human community.

In Swedenborg’s writings we discover that this Mother clothed with the Sun represents "the church." But be careful: "church" here does not mean the specific religious group we belong to or even more abstractly, organized Christian religion. The Mother clothed with the sun represents the great collective of all the good people on the earth who are trying to live good and conscientious lives. This collective crosses all denominational boundaries. And any one group that claims they are IT, has missed the boat. In particular, the woman clothed with the sun represents all those people who are able to incubate, nurture and give birth to a healthy, living understanding of what it means to live a life according to God’s Word, which means God’s love. Sometimes, that is you and me. And most specifically, this woman represents God’s love. She radiates such love that the only way to describe her is "clothed with the sun." Have you looked at the sun lately? It can be blinding in its brilliance.

So, in our story from Revelation we have a beautiful damsel in distress, she is in labour, which is probably the most vulnerable time ever in a woman’s life. And right then a dragon appears! (I hate it when that happens)—a big red one with seven heads and ten horns. This dragon’s sole intent is to eat up the tiny new baby. That’s just creepy. What is this dragon doing in God’s Word? What message is it telling us about our human struggle to become loving people? This dragon is identified as "Satan" which in Hebrew means "Tempter" or "Adversary." The dragon represents all the things that distract us from God’s love and make us afraid. The dragon is a natural side-effect of being born not omniscient, not omnipotent, and not omnipresent. We can’t help it. We just get afraid. We worry about things, and then we try to control things and manipulate people so that we won’t be hurt. And we tend to invent formulas and rules and we think they will be our salvation. We are scared of the dark, and we line up our defences so we’ll be safe. We can’t help but be sure that there is a monster under the bed. We are afraid to trust God. We are afraid to love. Loving can feel WAY too vulnerable.
God knew this is what we would do, and that’s why the dragon is in the story. It’s not a warning; it is just what we do while we are learning. The dragon continues to be in the story and cause problems until it is no longer in the story. Eventually we stop being afraid and we stop trying to control things and we open up to love. God knows this will happen too. That is why the dragon disappears from the story, never to be seen again. The dragon never wins. In the end, fear never wins.

There are many theories out in the world about this dragon, with most of them full of fear, and asserting that this dragon is or will be some specific earthly organisation at a set time in history doing some bad things. *Sigh.* The eternal and timeless nature of God’s love and God’s Word is never so limited and specific. God’s Word speaks to all humans of all time, and is uniquely designed to do so. No one story, not even one abstruse and fantastical prophecy in the Bible is secretly about helicopters or bar codes or which nation controls the land west of the Jordan river. God’s Word is incapable of being so limited. The Bible is about spiritual human dynamics. It is about the individual journey of the human heart towards God. It is about our struggle to learn to trust God and trust the process. We don’t need to be afraid of any story in the Bible. Even the number 666, or "the mark of the beast" is simply describing the nature of religion when it stops teaching love. When we are loving, we embody the best of what is human. But when we forget compassion and loving-kindness, when we think we need to be afraid and to judge and to make religion about rules and a certain lifestyle, we look more like a beast. We become inhuman. The number 666 is a simple spiritual representation of "getting it all wrong." 666 means we completely missed the boat. *Buzzer sound* "Try again. " And the beauty is, we can.

Yes, sometimes we are the beast. Sometimes we are the dragon, but God’s plan is for each of us eventually, finally, and completely to become a part of the enormous, beautiful, blindingly radiant woman clothed with the sun.

So, in our story, right on cue, the brave knight shows up to rescue the princess, or in this case, to rescue the new mother. There is a great battle with swords and everything. Swords are "truth" or in this case remembering that love and compassion are the heart of the life of religion. You and I battle the dragon with our swords when we hold fast to the thought, "I am to treat each person with loving respect because he or she is a child of God." Period. The dragon and his thinking would say something like: "There are the right sort of people and the wrong sort of people. I don’t respect the wrong sort because they believe such-and-such, or they wear such-and-such, or they like such-and-such.... Those people are the problem and I am okay so long as I reject them." I would guess we’ve all been on both the giving as well as on the receiving end of such an attitude from time to time. It is no fun. It does not feel good. It does not feel like God.
Fortunately, the dragon has no power over God’s love. It is finally cast out of "heaven" in the story, which means we eventually really, really learn that the fearful, judging way of doing religion doesn’t produce heaven in our lives. We really get that it doesn’t belong anywhere near heaven. That is when the dragon is cast out of heaven.

This arc in the Bible that tells the story of the Mother clothed with the Sun and the Great Red Dragon has a sort of muddled, repetitive nature to it. It seems like the dragon is cast out for good, only to show up again and make more problems. There’s something familiar-sounding in that. Isn’t that how it so often goes in our lives? We think we’ve licked something, and then it shows up again in a slightly new form and all the trouble starts again. That’s just the way things go on this epic journey. It’s not our fault. It’s the shape of things. Maybe it’s in the Bible, not to tell us we are losers, but to give us heart.

Remember, the Bible is also the story of the journey Jesus made on his path from human infant to Divine Human. That means even Jesus had to battle this spiritual dragon, and it didn’t want to go away for him either. I think we see it when the devil promises him "Just bow down to me, and all the world will be yours." It must have been very tempting to want to simply force us all to be good—to take control, to remove the process and zap us all into instant perfection. We can be so slow to learn! And we do such horrible things to each other in the process! We did such horrible things to Jesus. He must have been tempted to simply eliminate all the struggling and pain and suffering.

But He also knew that to do that would not be the most loving thing, though that can be hard for us to understand. Eliminating the struggle for us also eliminates the overwhelming joy and triumph we will feel when we finally reach the end of the race. This spiritual journey is a marathon, and it is worth every drop of sweat and every ounce of stamina and patience and endurance. It draws these qualities out in us, and teaches us compassion. Good things take time. Very good things take a very long time. If it wasn’t worth the time it takes, God wouldn’t have created it the way it is.

So, on this lovely Mother’s Day, celebrate all the forms of love in your life. Honour everyone who has "mothered" you on your journey—old and young, male and female. Celebrate all the ways this church and others have been a spiritual mother to your spiritual life. And celebrate the good home this church has made—that we make for each other here by trying our best to be as fair and loving as we can be. And on this Pentecost Sunday, let the love of God so shine in your life, that you—that we all—can be clothed with the sun, if only for a little while.
God’s blessing on us all on this Pentecost, Mother’s day Sunday. Amen.

"Though the human body is born complete in one moment, the birth of the human heart is an ongoing process. It is being birthed in every experience of your life. Everything that happens to you has the potential to deepen you. All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honour these possibilities."
-John O’Donohue- Anam Cara (pp 6,9)

This blasted cough!

When I committed to writing this blog, I committed to writing all the faces of my journey, even the less pretty ones.


Well, I have finished up two BIG sessions of training---my CPE and my six month internship---on pratically the same day, with great relief and triumph and excitement for the future! ("I will get my house clean and get in shape and catch up on my email and...")




And I promptly got obnoxiously, stubbornly SICK.






I descended into the cough from hell. Tickling, persistent, deep seated, exhausting. I cough and cough and cough and cough, feeling like I'm just, almost about to get at that tickling, and never quite satisfying it.

Agh!



I'm exhausted!

I'm so frustrated!

Nasal congestion joined the team and brought a sore throat along.
But it's the COUGH!




Somebody just shoot me.


I guess I need to make a lot of noise, and use up lots and lots of Kleenex.

I thought I had turned the corner Friday, but I'm back at it again today and wondering how much longer it can go on? I don't want to take anti-biotics, but I will if I have to. It's starting to remind me of when I had walking pneumonia....

Stink.

This is not what I wanted.

Internship farewell sermon: "I Believe"

“I Believe”
Alison Longstaff, March 30th, 2008
St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church
New Dundee, Ontario
Psalm 16; John 20:19-31


Today we heard the story of Thomas—of the famous “doubting Thomas” who needed to see and feel and touch the risen Lord, in order to believe in His resurrection. Doubting Thomas, the one who needed proof, the one who prompted God to say, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Believe. Belief. What is belief? In our culture, we have come to define belief as “confidence in something’s accuracy.” It is a purely mental exercise which involves approval of something as true. “Belief” in Christian circles has taken on such an identification with the rightness of ideas that it has become pretty well divorced from our heart reality and how we live. Indeed, we Christians seem to be reduced quite easily to squabbles over minute differences in our theologies when we could be working in harmony to live and love better, to reduce the suffering on our planet. We seem to prefer to spend our time getting huffy and drawing up battle lines over our different theological interpretations. We kick the beggars into the ditch in order to make more room for us to fight. What ever happened to us beating our swords into plowshares?

Belief. The original meaning of “belief” was not so much about ideas or statements of truth as it was about love. The origins of the word “belief” can be traced back to Proto-Germanic, and it was based on a root word for love. The German word “liebe,” which means “love” comes from the same source. Indeed, “believe” could be translated into “be-love” which is much closer to what it really meant. It was about living what we loved. It was about committing to a way of life. The original Christians “believers” committed themselves to a life of love and service to their neighbours, not to a framework of theological theories. They committed to caring for the widows, the orphans, and the homeless because they loved the vision of a world transformed by such a life. They saw themselves in the homeless and widows, and they treated them as they would want to be treated. The way they lived was a commitment to the Golden Rule in every corner of their lives. How the meaning of the word “belief” has changed through the ages!

There is an old story from first century Palestine of a mischievous man who asked Rabbi Hillel, a famous rabbi of that time, to teach him Judaism while standing on one foot. So, while standing on one foot, Rabbi Hillel responded: "Don't do to others what you wouldn't have them do to you. That is all the Torah (God’s Word); all the rest is commentary.”
What a great story. I believe it speaks to all faiths of all time. Christianity can be simplified to the same basic tenet. It is about treating others as we would like to be treated.
What we are talking about is compassion. Compassion, which could be another translation for the “good will to all people” that is prophesied by the host of angels to the shepherds. Wouldn’t this indeed bring peace on earth, “good will to all people”? The Dalai Lama has stated: “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” More than one scholar has observed that the fundamental uniting element of all the major world religions is the Golden Rule–to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. How would the world be different if only we all lived according to it!

Our rules and creeds and theological theories tend to divide us. Our hearts and love and human compassion tend to unite us. It is this realization that brings a whole new meaning to the Lord’s words to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” It speaks to our tendency to be exclusive in our Christianity. It could be read as, “Blessed are those who have not met and come to love Jesus Christ as their Saviour and still have come to live a life of goodness and compassion.” Indeed, wouldn’t such people, be they Buddhist or Jewish or agnostic, by virtue of living the golden rule, find their lives and relationships transformed in blessed ways regardless of what religious organisation has their signature of membership? I would imagine their lives are certainly more peaceful than that of any Christian “believers” who are busy squabbling and fighting over points of dogma. Who would you say is more blessed?

And so it is with you and I, be we Swedenborgian or Lutheran or Baptist or Brethren, we will find we are blessed by living the Golden Rule, regardless of our denominational affiliation. People of faith the world over do not necessarily believe every word of their traditional creeds, but they belong because they long for a blessed life. They long for belonging, and for their lives to have meaning and purpose. We belong, because we need community and we long for meaning. Don’t we all, especially when we are feeling that our own efforts are getting us nowhere, long to believe that there is some transformative power for good in the universe that can set things right, because our efforts repeatedly fall short?

Author and speaker Karen Armstrong has found that when we commit to a spiritual way of living, we are transformed by that commitment and by the living of it. It is in the practice of living a way of love that brings transformation, that lets us glimpse God. It is through ministry to others that we can feel the sense of what is sacred. Just as we experience in the Holy Communion, a very mundane act can become transcendent, and we can feel God’s presence.

So, to believe, is to be love. “Believing” is not when I say with my lips how I understand God, but when I show with my hands and my feet how I understand God’s love in the world. Though this may sound very un-Lutheran, it isn’t at all. When we commit to living the Golden Rule, the process of doing so brings God’s grace into our lives. And I think every Lutheran would agree that confession of faith leads to a changed life, a kinder, more thoughtful, more intentional life—that they are not separate. My Lutheran classmates to a one say, if one’s lifestyle does not show God’s grace in action, one has not yet been transformed by it.

So, while our culture says “belief”means trust in certain ideas, we have seen that believing is not and cannot be separated from how we live and how we love. When we commit to living a compassionate or “Golden Rule” way of life, it changes us. Even when we are not sure if we “believe” as our parents or teachers say we should, living as if we believe opens our hearts and changes us, and we can be transformed into better and better people. This transformation helps us to believe, and this belief helps us keep living in more and more compassionate ways. We need to live as if we believe, and God does the rest. Or, “fake it till you make it.” Through believing, we are told, we will find life in Jesus’ name. We are to “be living” in His Name. As the terrified father of the demon-possessed boy says in Mark: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)

So, back to doubting Thomas. Doubting Thomas needed to see and feel God’s wounds in order to believe. I have tended to judge him for that. When I have heard this passage, I have liked to think I would be one of the blessed who believes without seeing, not the obnoxious one who needs proof. But the thing is, lately I realize how much I do identify with Thomas. Sometimes I want physical proof that my God has not died and is still with me. I would guess, whether we like to admit it or not, that we all go through this at some time or other in our lives. But perhaps this is why Thomas is part of the story. Perhaps he is exactly part of the story to reassure us and remind us that we are still lovable despite our doubts, because we all tend to have times of terrible doubt. Maybe it is okay to need a little personal attention from our God to get us through. Jesus doesn’t begrudge us anything if it will bring us closer to Him. He comes right to us where we are to show us his hands and feet and side if that is what we need. I have needed to learn not to judge myself for struggling to believe. Belief is such a struggle sometimes exactly because it is an action of the heart, not just the head. It is related to the word dis-couragement, which comes from the French word “coeur” for heart. When we are dis-heartened, God comes and en-courages us. He fills our hearts up again. He does whatever it takes.

Speaking of discouragement, or, at least things that are sad, today is my last Sunday here as your intern. I must say, it has been a great experience working with you and for you, and one I will never forget. It seems as if this placement was uniquely tailored to what I needed, almost as if the Holy Spirit had a hand in things. God knew what I needed. You welcomed me with warmth and acceptance even though I am not Lutheran, never treating me like I was strange, or like I was infected with some dangerous religious doctrines. You allowed me into your family with open arms and warmth, and it has been very healing. From where I’m standing, this congregation definitely lived the Golden Rule, welcoming a stranger into your home with warmth and hospitality. Thank you so much.

Goodbyes are hard. I tend to go numb and firmly insist that I will see you all again so that I won’t feel sad. The truth is, time passes faster than most of us would like, and I may not be able to come around nearly as often as I would like to. But I firmly believe—I love to believe this—that there is no time in the world of our hearts, and that whatever time passes in this busy physical world, we will remain connected in our hearts, and each time we meet again it will be as if no time has passed at all. Isn’t that how it always is with good friends? Goodbyes are just making room for new, joyful, hellos.
And goodbyes are rarely permanent. Following the theme of Easter, I hear I will rise to preach for you again in just one week. Bonnie will be on vacation and somebody thought it was a good idea to get me to come back to fill the pulpit as she rests. So, “Ha-ha! You can’t get rid of me that easily!” Or, “I’ll be back.”
So, goodbye, and hello. I will always love you guys. I will miss you. And I’m sure I’ll be back. In the mean time, thank you so much for your loving care. Amen.



“believe”. Dictionary.com. Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/believe (accessed: March 26, 2008).