Spaces We Are Making
The Forty * Convergence Community
For years now, Convergence Community has referred to the Lenten season as ‘The Forty.’ It is the 40 days of intentionally entering the broken and dark places of our life — that we might smash our current conceptions and be reoriented to an intimacy with God, self & others. These are days to be sober, to face what is truly going on in our lives — both in and around us.
In an effort to face life —we need to start with vulnerability. And I’ve found few writers who capture such qualities quite like the poetry of Padraig O’Tauma. Let the words sink deep . . .
Opening Collect
God of watching,
whose gaze I doubt and rally against both,
but in which I nonetheless take refuge, despite my limited vision.
Shelter me today,
against the flitting nature of my own focus
and bring me to the calm place
in which to stand.
And when I falter, which is likely,
give me both the courage and the kindness to begin again with hope and coping.
For you are the one whose watchfulness
is
steady.Amen.
Padraig O’Tauma, ‘Hymns to Swear By’
I doubt. And yet, I accept the refuge.
Does that ring true for you?
There is a childlikeness in his line “give me both the courage and the kindness to begin again with hope . . .”
When I begin again, it’s hard not to be the cynic. My failure; other’s failings; they are all a recipe for cynicism, not hope. And yet, the writer call for it.
I am thankful for his language of “hope and coping” — it is an honest nodd to a life that is full of heartbreak and struggle. Why can’t we say this in the church? Why can’t we be honest about the nature of coping; of dealing with difficulties. But even withing faith (or doubt) there must be coping. We must learn healthy ways of facing our lives.
I have found over the years of entering into the season of Lent, that it is aided through art, poetry, and music. Ben Howard’s ‘These Waters’ have been on repeat as I think about entering TheForty. Take a listen . . .
I won’t claim to get everything about this song. I’m using it as much for the feel of the song as the lyrics. It’s sober but bright. It is contemplative and hopeful in tone.
See these waters they’ll pull you up . . .
Usually the language of being on water would be one that it would overtake you, and bring you down. Drowning is first a descent. I think Howard is a surfer, so maybe he’s referring to the way the water raises you onto your board. I love the juxtaposition what our usual understanding of the waters might be, to what they are doing here. May we always be willing to find a little vertigo in our understanding of the world, so we won’t clean to our expectations.
. . . let these songs be an instrument to cut,
Oh spaces ‘tween the happiness and the hardness.
This language of cutting ‘spaces’ intrigues me. If we are reflective enough upon our life and vulnerable enough to admit it, I’m sure we have found ourself in a middle place between happiness and hardness. Maybe this is the everyday. Life isn’t always a celebration. But in the same way, life isn’t always a grueling marathon we cannot finish. Sometimes, we are in between. It’s not descript. It’s not seemingly profound. Can we see beauty in our life even the mundane?
Down these roads that wander as lost as the heart,
Is a chance to breathe again, a chance for a fresh start . . .
A chance to breathe again.
A chance for a fresh start.
This may absolutely be what Lent offers us. Forty days to breathe deep.
And as a community, we will spend the 40 days as ‘an instrument to cut spaces’ — some new spaces, and some spaces that we’ve been working on for some time.
RELATIONAL SPACES:
We are affirming safe spaces in TheForty. We are making relational space — uncontrived, uncontrolled, and open space.
In many circles of faith or spirituality, there is generous time given to the testimony — the telling of the story of conversation or reconversion, of enlightenment or change. It is a moving thing, to listen to the testimony. But testimony, if told or heard unwisely, can be a colonization of a single experience into a universal requirement. Jesus fed me when I was hungry, we hear, and those who are hungry feel bereft. Jesus healed me when I was sick, says the healthy, and the burdened feel more burdened . . . Faith shelters some and it shadows others. It loosens some, and it binds others.
He goes on to write,
What I do know is that it can help to find the words to tell the truth of where you are now. If you can find the courage to name ‘here’ — especially in the place wher eyou do not wish to be — it can help you be there.
- Padraig O’Tauma ‘In the Shelter’
Somebody needed to say it, right? Just because someone has a different experience than me doesn’t mean they are wrong — but it also doesn’t mean that I’M AT FAULT. Why do we automatically hear someone going through a good thing and consider where we went wrong as we go through a hard thing. Or why do we, when going through something great see those who are struggling and feel a sense that we have done something right — to deserve the good stuff (unlike them). Oh, it’s such a faulty way of seeing the world.
Let’s own where we are. Whereever that may be. What might it look like to tell the truth about where you are now?
- acknowlede the moment
- accept the transient nature of life (you won’t always be where you are now)
- be open to the sameness and the differences of other’s experience of their own “here”
Consider even writing down a simple and short statement that helps you say “Hello to Here” >
LIMINAL SPACE:
We are acknowledging, within TheForty, that we are often living within unsettled spaces.
Limen, the Latin root for liminal, is the word we translate as threshold. When you are in the threshold of a doorway, you aren’t inside the room or outside; you are in between the two. Being in liminal spaces may bring a sense of excitement and newness that is exhilarating; but because we are leaving what is known, familiar, and comfortable and going into foreign, new, and stressful territory, it can also be lonely, disorienting, and discouraging. - Ron Martoia, ‘The Bible as Improv’
I’ve been watching Pete Holmes somewhat biographical sitcom, ‘Crashing’ and it’s fantastic. In an episode called, ‘The Atheist’ he has a conversation with Penn Jillette, the magician and well-known atheist. Their conversation is insightful. Here is just a snippet . . .
HOLMES: … I’m enjoying the certainty I get from my faith.
JILLETTE: You don’t have certainty.”
HOLMES: I do!
JILLETTE: No, you don’t.
HOLMES: I do!
JILLETTE: You can’t get certainty just by willpower. You can’t force yourself to believe things that you don’t have evidence for. You just can’t do it. You can’t force certainty.
HOLMES: Yeah, but this… this is all I have. I mean, I can’t… This is how I was raised, I can’t just… put it aside because you make some sense. I mean… it’s hard for me to admit that you’re making some sense.
JILLETTE: Yeah, I dig that. It’s hard to change. It’s really hard. It’s hard for someone my age to admit that… the Beatles weren’t that good! [Laughs]
The scene ends with Pete wandering the street in a dazed and confused state. When we enter uncertainty it is often jarring. Sometimes we slowly enter into it like a long tunnel through the mountain pass; but at other times it is an “off the cliff” moment that we never saw coming. In referencing this episode I’m not trying to glorify atheism — it is however, a crashing against this notion that a life of faith is ultimately about providing certainty.
With uncertainty comes compassion. What I have learned most often is that rigidity and tidy, bound-up thinking is often translated into a lack of compassion, empathy, or grace.
Does any of this ring true for you?
RESTORATIVE SPACE:
We are making space for newness in TheForty. No matter what your experience (or lack thereof) of Lent in the past — we talk about how TheForty isn’t meant to be a time of brooding self-loathing. It can be forty days of considering the way in which God’s WITHNESS is closer than our own breath.
‘There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.’
- Marshall McLuhan
One of the most hopeful ideas that has been shaping my perspective can be articulated by this quote of McLuhan. Convergence exists, in a large part, to champion the inward look — practicing contemplative living. We become more compassionate — more couragous — more loving — as we grow in awareness.
. . . and in any heart where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is liberty. Now all of us, with our faces unveiled, reflect the glory of the Lord as if we are mirrors; and so we are being transformed, metamorphosed, into His same image from one radiance of glory to another, just as the Spirit of the Lord accomplishes it.
- 2 Cor 3:17–18
The language of “unveiled faces” is a reference to Moses when he came down from the mountain after being with God. When he was on the peak with God, the story says his nearness to God was visible.
But an understanding of the Moses story offers is that when he covered his face, or veiled it, it was so people wouldn’t see that the further they got away from the mountain of God — the less “glory” showed on Moses’ face.
This is what is so profound about Paul’s words here.
All of us with unveiled faces, reflect the glory of the Lord as if we are mirrors.
We aren’t some crappy, broken, smudged up mirror either — but a real reflection (unfading) of God. This is what Paul seems to be saying. Rather than dredging through the sewer of how terrible we are — Paul elevates our thinking about how we need not hide. We need not veil ourselves.
May this Lent be one where you carve out spaces for others and yourself to access what it is to be HERE in your life.
My this Lent be a season when you become a little more okay with the uncertainty and vertigo that comes with being unsettled and inbetween.
May this Lent also the beginning of a refocus that you are a reflection of the Divine.
