My all-time favorite writer is Frederick Buechner, a Presbyterian minister and teacher who took the words of one of his professors Paul Tillich …
“We want only to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard ... that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation.”
Buechner took the phrase “Now and Then” as the title of the second book in a series that chronicles his spiritual quest. What he so beautifully says is that every now and then … we get God.
Each of us has these occasional glimpses of glory. Every once in a while the beauty of God, usually some event, even simple ones like listening to two branches from an apple tree clack together and know that it can be the voice of God talking directly to you.
Or, sitting on a sad little holy dock, lost and alone … maybe with a dog;
Or coming home to find that there are people who are being church in the holiest senses of the word because you’re in desperate need of it from them … and they haven’t been to church in years. But they are there for you.
Or maybe IT IS in Church when choirs happen to get it all just right for once and the congregation is left in stunned silence of the majesty of perfection and for a second or two they are perfect like God is perfect.
The thing is … you have to live through a lot of shit to get to these moments.
Often painful stuff … heart wrenching things that leave you without a voice to speak … or anger that is fierce and rises from deep within, often anger that was years and years in the making … and you know the anger and frustration is ripping you apart but you allow it to continue because of the hurt … so you keep getting ripped apart.
But in the midst of these things … the beauty of God’s ways of doing things can burst through for a second or two … and something new is created.
I am not the same now … as I was then.
I know that I’m not.
Yet I also know that I seem to find myself intimately involved in … a new act of creation.
Deep shit right?
But … it’s true. Now I appear to others the same but different. The memories of hurt, both that I inflicted on others and the hurt inflicted on me remain very real feelings. I can still be intense but am … softer. Lost smiles are raised from a place like hell …where there is no laughter … be it in the center of the earth or in the house that you live in.
When I left Union Mission all of my books were packed up by my Mom, Nanci- my- almost-sister, my daughter Kristen and Keller Deal. They’re in boxes at my Mom’s house. I just couldn’t bear disassembling what I’d spend 23 years putting together so they did it for me. Nor do I care for the continued disassembling of Union Mission by others who own it now. It’s painful and sad stuff.
Sitting on the beloved back deck …with Goddess …in the warm sunshine … surveying the yard that we’ve worked hard to transform into a work of art … suddenly the strangest of thoughts inexplicably burst into my head.
I remembered a book that was published in 1983 that I read and loved which is now buried in boxes somewhere at my Mom’s house.
My yard is being created. It is no longer now what it was then. A lot of work and investment has gone into it. Some parts were painful. But it is more beautiful and fulfilling now … than it was then.
And I believe that God is trying to say as I studied the creation of a new yard and made me remember a book from Seminary … is that I am too.
Though I have no idea what the end product is going to look like …
Hell I had no idea I’d ever have babies at 21 who would grow into the most wonderful family, go to Seminary on a lark and help transform a church, become an author of books and blogs … be at Union Mission for 23 years helping create work the likes which has never been seen or be living alone with a dog … but … I can feel creation happening!
I have felt this way a few times before.
Every now and then.
