Longing for More

I have a new favorite book and it is by an author that I have loved for a while now. "Longing for More" by Ruth Haley Barton is a discussion of women's spiritual transformation. While there a lot of great books out there about spiritual formation, I love this one for several reasons.
1. Ruth describes transformation as a journey that takes place along the path of life. So, it is spiritual transformation to learn to be a wife or mother. It is spiritual formation to learn to love your own body. Ruth embraces the idea that the spiritual disciplines are to help us find the significance in living life as it is laid before us.
2. Ruth devotes one chapter to the role of women in the church. Her scholarship is outstanding but I like what she says because it is born of her own experiences. (If you pick this book up, make sure and read the endnote about 1 Timothy. I learned so much!)
3. In the last chapter, Ruth summarizes the entire book in a way that I have always felt but never been able to articulate. The reason we have to talk about why women should be transformed is that we are trying to be like Jesus. Ruth is not advocating a feminist movement within the church because that is all about women. She is saying that women are called to be like Jesus and their paths have been blocked by some old ideas. It is time that the church be the advocate of all of their members being transformed into the image of Jesus.

Amen!

The Temple

We live in a compartmentalized society. It is considered wise to keep our lives and our thoughts in seperate containers. Seperate church and state. Family and work don't mix. The physical and the spiritual are not supposed to impact one another. I have bought into this thinking in many little ways.

One of the big ways I have bought into it is in my body image. I have believed that what I think about my body does not matter to God. God is concerned with the heart, not the body. Right? Well...my body is the temple of God. Doesn't that matter to Him? I don't think He cares if I have a perfect figure or clear skin. But, does He care if I honor my body? Does it matter to Him if I loathe my reflection?

Yes, I think it does matter to Him. You know what else? I think that most women focus on what they dislike about their appearance. I have talked to many friends about this lately. Every one of them could tell me what they disliked about their body. Many of their complaints centered around weight and the desire to airbrush one location. My five year old came home and asked if she could get highlites in her hair. She's five. She said that a girl in her kindergarten class got them and she wanted them too. I said no. My four year old told me that she wanted to wear makeup to school all the time because it makes her prettier. I said no.

Here's what I know intellectually and am wrestling with emotionally: the images I see on television and in magazines are not real. I am created in the image of God and I believe that embodies the physical too. Why can't I live like I believe it?

Do you think about this stuff too?

Reading Like a Writer

I am an avid reader. Reading is like water to me; it is required to stay alive. When I am reading, I travel wherever the book takes me. I have been known to read while eating, bathing and, I’m embarrassed to admit, driving. I just love it!

I am also an aspiring writer. It is a lifelong dream that got new wind blown in it about a year ago. So, I set a goal to read one book a month that will help me become a better writer. I’ve a read some really good books by really great authors. They share their secrets of the trade with people like me who only dream of doing this for a true living.

In that mindset, I picked up Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. The title sounded perfect for someone like me. Even the author’s name seemed prosaic! I was ready to love it.

Ms. Prose took me by surprise. Rather than applauding readers like me who devour books in hours not days, she chastised my reading habits! Ms. Prose preached that writers should read like anorexic’s eat. Each word should be carefully separated and chewed on until all the flavor has been sucked out. Then those fully chewed words should be connected together in a flavorless string to seek the meaning behind them. I got hungry just reading it!

Perhaps I am alone in this deal but I read for the escape of it. I read to learn of a life or place or story that I do not have access to in my own world. I read to connect to someone else’s narrative and experience. I do not read to pick them apart calorie by calorie! I read like a recent dieter at Thanksgiving dinner. I read to soothe emotions and fill up empty places. I gorge myself until I can hold no more. Then, I explode in a torrent of words myself…usually on the page!

To be fair to Ms. Prose, I haven’t quite finished her book. I’ll keep plugging through but I have to tell you, it’s not a Chinese buffet! In fact, I think it is a Lean Cuisine frozen stir fry…sodium free.

The Park

My kids love to play at the park. Just this week we went to a park close to our house. The equipment is normal playground kind of stuff. There are some monkey bars, a few swings, three slides, and some great lookout points. There is even a merry go round! What makes this park unique is it’s setting. On one side is a lake, home to ducks, swans, and geese. On another side is a waterpark and swimming pool. The other two sides are surrounded by streets and homes. To carve out the playground, there are blue Lincoln log barriers in the ground. They are bolted together to form the perimeter of two kidney beans smashed together. The Lincoln logs also hold in all the mulch that pads the ground for little feet to walk on.

At our visit to this park, I was so amused watching my kids and their reactions to the barriers. I told both my four year old and my one year old that outside the blue line was “No-no”. The areas surrounding this park could be dangerous and I wanted them to stay inside the lines. Being a toddler, my one year immediately put one foot up on top of the barrier and looked back at me to see if that was alright. I said, “No,” and he stepped back. Then he went to another section of the barrier and tried again. I repeated my no and he moved on. For twenty minutes he tried new places to see if the answer changed. Twenty minutes in the life a one year old is a long time! In that twenty minutes he missed playing to continually test the rules.

My four year old is a little different. She is, without a doubt, my strong willed child. But today she watched the antics of her little brother while she played on the slides. When he finally moved on to trying to eat the mulch, she was ready to make her move. She is pretty afraid of the geese that live on the lake because they are so loud. So, she didn’t want to go that way. She knew that the waterpark was closed so that didn’t really interest her either. Instead, she saw a basketball goal in a driveway across the street. She loves basketball. While I was busy pulling mulch out of the baby’s mouth, she worked her way across the playground equipment and got a huge thrust going down the slide that faces the basketball goal. That was enough to put her just beyond the barrier and she made a dash for the basketball goal. I caught her with one foot in the street.

If my five year old had been there, she would have never even tried out the barriers. She would have played on anything she could reach. Her only glance would have been in fear toward the swan, who charged her one time! She might have mentioned that she wanted to go the waterpark again this summer.

Each of them sees those blue Lincoln logs differently. One as a test. One as a dare and one as a wall. I’m sure there are some really deep parallels to draw here about how we should be content with the space God gives us or how we should view obstacles in our path.

I’m happy if one of those lessons speaks to you. I’m content to marvel at how different each of my three blessings are.