Never tidy. But Always Sparkling, Always Alive.
How do we live in the uncontained magic of the life of faith?
I’m kind of obsessed with our tiny, fledgling youth group. A collection of fifteen tweens and teens, two of whom are my own, most of whom live in the most interesting, wild, beautiful city in the world. A city where being connected to the story of Jesus is on purpose feels extra, far outside the norm. It’s hard enough to be a teenager. But to be a teenager in New York City? And to be a teenager who is wrestling with what it might mean to love Jesus? That feels like A LOT.
My friend Tim and I lead the group together. Tim has the benefit of being younger than me and not a parent. He’s a guy. And he has a mustache. All of which means his cool factor is several notches above my own. (He’s also not currently posting awkward videos of himself trying to learn outdated tiktok dances, so that helps.) As a group, we’ve been talking about who we want to be for each other and what it might mean to be part of a spiritual community together. And we’ve been talking about what it means to practice, like literally practice, our faith.
How can we adults present the life of faith as something engaging, winsome, and important without relying on some of the more troubling ways the spiritual life is often given to young people? How do we avoid loading teenagers with shame, offering faith as a set of rules and Jesus as official rule master? The Jesus of the gospels tells stories about lost coins and lost sheep being found, plants growing from tiny seeds into flourishing, life-giving trees, and connection with the Divine as a force that invigorates those who receive God’s life and transformation to express that love beyond the boundaries of our comfort and into the social edges of our cultures. We are the lost coins found; and then we become the finders, invited to join God on the margins of our particular communities, in the lives of those who the world often fails to give honor. This is not a spirituality for black and white morality. It’s a spirituality that stretches us to hold the pillars Jesus spoke of: Love for God, Love for neighbor, and Love for self. Interpreting what that means, and connecting with the Divine Love who shows us how to live is the uncontained magic of the life of faith.
But it’s no simple task. We like containers. And, honestly, we humans need them. And the temptation is to present spirituality in a container that is too basic, too tidy. Here’s what it is to be a Christian, the church often teaches: believe these things, then change your behavior. But behavior modification rarely sparkles. And Jesus sparkled. That’s why people followed him in the first place. He was often saying and doing things that not only rang true, but that transformed lives when it was put into practice. Jesus invited his followers into a relationship with a God who loved like a parent: gathering her chicks, running after a lost son. Beyond containers.
And still. We need those containers. My co leader Tim gets this. And he has been thinking and talking to our students about what it means to bring prayer and other spiritual practices into their lives in a way that opens them up to the Love that is already waiting for them. Connection with God is like magic. Connection with God is like the Force. Connection with God is available and it transforms us.
In the series Harry Potter, Harry and Hermione and Ron all have access to the power of magic, but they access it differently based on their gifts, their personalities, and the way life has shaped their sense of self. The magic is available, but part of learning to use that power is learning to know themselves. They learn from each other. They learn from their mentors. They study. And they practice. Of course, this metaphor can’t stretch all the way out to express the fullness of what it is to live inside the goodness and power of a loving Creator, but it tells us something important. That there is a kind of power that is available to us, and that power can change everything. It can give us purpose, joy, and meaning. There is more to this life than the monotony of expectations, sustenance, and daily tasks. We are invited into something bigger. And the work of spiritual practice is tapping into the Love that is beyond our human monotony, and believing that it's available to everyone else around us as well.
Tim calls this practicing “The Way,” which was the term that was used to describe followers of Jesus back in the earliest stories of the apostles. In The Way, the power of the Spirit was working within the group, and within individuals, helping them see the world as the Spirit sees it, helping them become who they were always meant to be. Spiritual practice, Tim says, is the work of living life in a “complete and authentic way.” In spiritual practice, he says, “I discover what my life is for, what I value most deeply, my sense of the good, and my sense of God.”
So our time together as a youth group becomes a practice space, where we help each other understand the God who connects us, and where we explore different ways of connecting with the God who searches for us like a woman searches for lost coin, or a shepherd listens for the distant baa of his lost sheep. The life of faith is recognizing that we are each a seed planted, and helping one another stay close to the sustaining water that will help us grow and become the flourishing plant we were always meant to be.
Community is believing that we all have something important to give, and that our Source has placed in each of us something valuable. Caring for each other begins with believing that the seed can grow into a tree, and believing that there is enough water available for us and for our neighbor, so we can all thrive.
It’s simple, and complicated. It’s magic and ordinary. It’s a knowing and it's a practice. It’s a relationship and it’s a living out of that relationship. It’s the Way of Jesus. Which is never as tidy as we’d often like it to be, and is always sparkling, always alive.
A Slow Practice
In her book, Sacred Rhythms, Ruth Haley Barton talks about spiritual transformation as a mystery: “We can be open to it, but we can’t accomplish it for ourselves.” She points to Paul’s writings in Galatians when he uses the metaphor of an embryo being formed in its mother’s womb: “I am in labor until Christ be formed in you.” Or in Romans 12 when he talks about the spiritual life as a metamorphosis, the caterpillar mysteriously emerging from its cocoon as a butterfly: “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Both of these examples are outside of simple determination or control. Life happens to them, and out of the miracle, they emerge, wholly themselves.
As Barton says, “I cannot transform myself, or anyone else for that matter. What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place, by developing and maintaining a rhythm of spiritual practices that keep me open and available to God.”
This rings true to me, and I see it expressed in metaphor after metaphor in the scriptures. Today I want us to spend some time in the very first Psalm, where the mysterious growth of a tree reminds us of what it means to “create the conditions where spiritual transformation can take place.”
Will you read this slowly with me?
Psalm 1: 1-3
Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked
or take the path that sinners tread
or sit in the seat of scoffers,
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
Let’s use our imaginations for prayer:
Take a deep breath with me. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Imagine the most beautiful stream you can. You may be a mountain person, like I am. When I think of a stream I immediately remember the streams of the childhood mountains in Colorado where my dad flyfished. Aspen and pine trees, rocks and needles, sometimes a beaver dam. And always the soothing trickle or sometimes surge of water. But streams exist in all sorts of landscapes. I can imagine the stream near the beach we go to in Maine, which flows from the woods, through the sand and straight into the sea. What trees grow around the stream you’re imagining? What does the soil feel like beneath your feet? What do you do when you come to the stream? Do you sit on a rock? Do you stand? Do you spread your blanket out on the soft ground? Imagine yourself settling down. Listen to the sound the water makes.
This passage of the Psalms says that happiness or blessing is available to those who plant their lives beside the water that flows. It’s saying that we are like a seed that is planted in nourished soil, that has everything it needs to grow and become something that flourishes. As you imagine yourself beside next to the stream, I want you to watch as your Creator presses you into the soil beside the water that will sustain you.
Imagine how the tree grows from a seed. Can you watch yourself as a lime-lapsed video? Your seed sprouting into a shoot, and then a plant, every season becoming more and more itself. The water beside you keeping you fed, the soil providing you the nutrients you need.
Growth is a mystery, just as the caterpillar has no mind-control over its own becoming. But it does build its own cocoon. It does make the choice to rest in the space of transformation. The Psalmist is saying that you have a choice too. You can rest in the soil beside the stream. And as Barton says, you can develop and maintain “a rhythm of spiritual practices that keep [you] open and available to God.”
What does that mean to allow yourself to be that tree growing beside the stream of water? How are you giving yourself space to be open and available to God?
Take some time in the presence of the Spirit to ask for help in allowing yourself to stay beside the water. Ask for help in creating space to be open and available to the growth that is waiting for you. And ask your Creator to do the mysterious work of transforming you.
Spend some time in silence.
A List of Things
Here’s Ruth Haley Barton’s book Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. I highly recommend it.
This article focuses on TikTok influencer Britney Dawn Davis, who reinvented herself from a fitness/diet guru gone bust (currently being sued for “deceptive trade practices”) to a Christian influencer selling hand-painted bibles, and tie-dyed jackets that say, “Yahweh, not my way.” You guys, I just can’t with this world we live in, and what is called Christianity at this point. It’s devastating. And once again, I need a new word to call myself now that Christian is taken by a very strange, anti-Jesus religion. Maybe we should go back to calling it “The Way.”
This week Amy Julia Becker has a short piece in Time Magazine asking “Where are all the children’s books featuring kids with Down syndrome?,” middle grade and YA novels in particular. Is it particularly difficult for authors to develop characters with an intellectual disability? Maybe an important next step in shouting the worth of people with Down syndrome is convincing the publishing industry that “characters with intellectual disabilities have stories worth telling too.”
I’m always fascinated by personality. And, as a mom, I think a lot about who my kids will grow to be and how much of their childhood spirit will still be present in their adulthood. This article about the science of how personality is set from childhood was super interesting.
It’s Down Syndrome Awareness Month! And to celebrate I’m part of a nine-book giveaway on Instagram. You have until the end of today to enter!