Luke 3:21-22
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

And on the third day after her birth, Chris and I brought Gracie home from the hospital. A huge “Welcome Home” sign made by our neighbor’s kids and a pink paper bow festooned our front door. As I opened the car door and placed my foot gingerly into the driveway, I winced a little, the pain of delivery still acute, and drew in my first full breath since we’d buckled her car seat into the back of the Jeep. I’d been determined not to be one of those new moms who insisted on making the journey home riding in the backseat anxiously monitoring every inhale and exhale. No, a baby wouldn’t change me that much. Instead, I just contorted my body in the front so that I could place my hand beside her tiny mouth and nose, alternately offering prayers of thanks that she was still breathing and prayers of petition that we’d not be hit by some careless college student on the way to our house. Miraculously, she breathed all the way home. I, on the other hand, drew in only a bit of oxygen through fearful gasps as Chris braked hard at two different stoplights.
But here we were at last. Sucking in the hot and sticky Eastern North Carolina summer air, I shaded my eyes from the bright sun and processed slowly over the threshold, as if emerging from a long trip in the underworld. Chris carried Gracie in, a little carelessly I noted, still tucked into her seat sleeping with her head bent all the way over onto her right shoulder. Inside the den stood the cradle my father had built, dressed in pure white linens and waiting to receive this particular divine incarnation. And so I unbuckled and pulled the belt over her head, unpacking her loose limbs which startled suddenly as I lifted her, and just as quickly settled as I drew her into my breast. A tiny, helpless bird of a being. She was not a beautiful newborn, covered as she was in a dark down, her head pointed and her nose swollen due to a lengthy second stage of labor. And yet she could not have been more alluring. Her perfection was indisputable fact, no matter how loud the desperate colicky wails, no matter how many times I changed the soiled white linens. She was my beloved and with her I was well pleased.
Somewhere in the recesses of my limbic brain, I too must hold the memory of my mother’s perfect love. At some point in time, I know she must have been well-pleased with me. Had she not been, I’d be unable to function in this world. Yet we displease each other so often now, it is sometimes difficult to remember our primal bond. I forget that I am a beautiful, lovable child of God, born through two beautiful and lovable parents. Parents who once crooned over my own breathtaking beauty, just as their own parents had crooned over them. Parents who gazed breathless into my eyes and saw their love reflected. Would that, instead of all the desperate ways we strive to be seen and understood, we could each of us, look into the clear lakes of our own eyes and see ourselves, perfect and whole and well-pleasing. Would that I could, just once in a while, take my own breath away.

Reflection on the book of Ruth

The book of Ruth tells the story of two women, Naomi and Ruth, who are respectively mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Naomi is a Judean from Bethlehem. Famine forces her to move east with her husband, Elimelech, and her two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, to the far side of the Dead Sea. They settle in the fertile country of Moab, where other gods and goddesses are worshipped. There they make a life, the sons eventually marrying Moabite women. Yet, after a time, her husband and her sons die, and she is left a widow with no close male kin in Moab to care for her. Without this security, she decides she must return to her homeland where she has heard the famine is over, but admonishes her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, to go home to their mothers' houses and await new husbands. Orpah, after initially resisting this plan, acquiesces, but Ruth clings to Naomi, saying to her:
"Do not press me to leave you
or turn back from
following you!
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die --
there will I be buried.
May the LORD do thus and so
to me,
and more as well,
if even death parts me
from you!"

And so Ruth accompanies Naomi to Bethlehem.

The Hebrew word for widow means "the leftover piece." To be blunt, Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah are the husks left when the grain of their husbands' lives had been consumed. They appear, in this culture, to be worthless, empty shells. Yet the book happily ends with marriage and the birth of a child, the fullness and fertility of life restored.

Look at this story as a story in our world today, as well as a recurring inner drama.

Where do you see people in the world like Naomi and Ruth, people who would seem to be no more than the empty shells of bygone lives?

When you divert your gaze as you pass them on the street corners holding homemade placards, politely nod at them in the nursing home halls that reek of antiseptic, hurry past them in the silent office cubicles on your floor at work, or silently seethe at the unresponsive, television-watching ghost sitting on your living room sofa, what is the worth you assign them?

What do you imagine their dreams of security look like?

What contribution might these leftover pieces yet make?

What possibilities for restoration, new life, and abundance might yet exist within them?


Who are the Ruths who might walk with them on their
journeys home -- clinging to them, loving them, placing
faith in them, feeding them, appreciating their wisdom,
and recognizing their holiness?

What landscapes, places and nations appear as dried out husks – lifeless, worthless,
used up drags on the rest of the world?

What might it take to secure a future for these forgotten lands?

What worth might there yet be in these broken shells? What unseen fertility? What new purpose? What potential fullness?

What might these shadow lands have to teach us about
about our own incompleteness and one-sided develop-
ment? How might they remind us that there are other
worlds in which it is the poor who are blessed?

How is Ruth’s story yours? Who is the widow within, the barren and broken one who is forgotten or kept out of the way lest she drag the brighter parts of you down?

What was the grain that she, as husk, used to surround?

Of what value or worth might there yet exist within her? What aged wisdom might she offer? What does she know about life and love that other parts of you do not?

What might happen were you, like Ruth, to walk with her, cling to her, and honor her as wise mother? Or, like Boaz, see the widow’s worth, supplement her meager rations, and redeem her as a rightful member of the community?

What might happen were you to make her your bride? What divine child might be born from your union?

Reflection on Mark 10:35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you? And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be babptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"

When my daughter, Sudie, was two, she caught her father and me in an embrace, forced herself between us, and, clutching my legs, looked up at her dad and announced, “My mommy. You go away.” It is a precious, funny memory to be sure and also a reminder that, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes in Gift From the Sea, we all long to be someone’s one and only. On some level, we all long to retreat behind the nursery door to be nursed, worshipped, and adored by the mother center of our universe.
Though what we recognize as our center shifts many times over the years – from mother, to lover, to vocation, to family, to God – the feeling that connection to it brings to us is constant. When we are there, holding the right hand or the left, or even the hem of a robe, all is right with the world. And while we may be happy to serve, we are also happy to lord it over anyone who tries to come between us and our love.
As any parent of more than one child knows, however, it is not possible for the center to grant a place at the right hand or the left, at least not without terrible consequences. Yahweh learned about these in the Cain and Abel saga. No, the center must stand as center for all. God’s power and love cannot be apportioned through some elaborate organizational chart. And I think that perhaps this is what Jesus is trying to say to James and John and the ten. Though the power that flows through him is God’s, it does so because Jesus knows how to connect. The disciples, James and John, and the rest of us, will have to plug in ourselves. We cannot drink Jesus’ cup and we cannot be baptized with Jesus’ baptism and we cannot carry Jesus’ cross any more than we can suck at our mother’s breast forever. We must find the center for ourselves and through ourselves.

Reflection on Mark 12:28-34

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'

According to the Shema and Jesus’ interpretation of it, the very first of the ways I am to love God is with all my heart. Yet there are some mighty dark places within my heart, places I’ve not been able to expunge through repression or denial, or even through analysis. I know how to love with my heart’s brighter qualities – courage, fortitude, responsibility, honesty – but how do I love God with the controlling and selfish parts of my heart? What love is there in that withered chamber in which pessimism has taken up residence? And what about those other dark rooms, those whose doors I’ve been too frightened to open? How do I love God with a heart so full of unlovable rooms?
Perhaps I begin by entering into a conversation with my unknown familiars, offering them, if not understanding, than at least the respect of being truly heard. My ignoring them seems to only make them nastier. And who knows? Maybe God, after all, is big enough to contain all of me – the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the love and the hate. Maybe God would like for me to be big enough too. Maybe loving God with all my heart means loving all my heart.

*Previously published in The Bible Workbench

Reflection on 2 Samuel 18:31-33

Then the Cushite came; and the Cushite said, "Good tindings for my lord the king! For the LORD has vindicated you this day, delivering you from the power of all who rose up against you." The king said to the Cushite, "Is it well with the young man Absalom?" The Cushite answered, "May the enemies of my lord the king, and all who rise up to do you harm, be like that young man."
The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!"

Often I find myself in battles with my daughters that feel like the battle between David and Absalom. Though our battles may not have physically maimed us, they have indeed killed off little pieces of our souls. I am humbled to realize that I am capable of thrusting spears into the hearts of those whom I love most in the world, those whom I have borne and nursed at my own breasts, those to whom I have vowed my undying protection. As well, I am struck dumb by their need to wound me, to overthrow me from my petty household throne, and to make me a slave to their narcissistic adolescent demands.
I’ve been told to develop thicker skin, to ignore their claims of hatred, and to laugh at the ridiculous. Yet as I look around at other families and read stories like this story of David and his beloved son Absalom, I see clearly the murderous nature of the parent-child relationship. I believe with all my heart the battle cry – “I hate you.” I feel the poison of their anger slowly sicken me. But even more, I feel the blackness of my own shame when I send out the troops to battle them.
Yet I also believe without reservation that we love each other deeply. The love and the hatred do not cancel one another. Rather they stand forever in tension. The hatred provides the friction love must scrape up against in order to recognize itself. Absalom must grow up and rule his own kingdom. And David must defend his sovereignty. These opposing duties, instead of eradicating love, serve to expose it, painful though this exposition might be. Unfortunately for David, it is not until he has won the battle that kills his son that he realizes he’d give his own life to hold him again. We too must decide how much we are willing to kill or be killed in our relationships. How much we are willing to give and how much we must take. The tragedy of the human heart is to have to hold such oppositions. The beauty is to be awake in the midst of them.

*Previously published in The Bible Workbench.

Reflection on Mark 10:2-9

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her." But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."

A little more than ten years ago I married my husband, Charles. It was a second marriage for both of us. A second chance at happiness. An opportunity to “get it right this time.” We’d both been written bills of divorce by our former spouses. We’d both been deeply wounded and were hoping, I think, to find in each other someone with whom we could trust our broken hearts.

As we worked with our minister on planning our wedding ceremony, I recall him advising that we remove the “and the two shall become one” language from the service. We of course agreed. Though we were joining, not only ourselves in marriage, but also our children into a new family unit, neither of us lived any longer under the romantic notion that we could become one flesh. Even if that were a desirable condition, and I don’t think it is, Charles and I were and are both far too independent to ever promise such a merger. Though we complement each other in many ways, we do not hope, to borrow the famous line from Jerry McGuire, to complete each other.

Completion, wholeness, becoming one flesh, for better or worse, is necessarily individual work. Yet I admit, as a spouse, I do indeed try to take on some of Charles’ quest for wholeness, just as he, invariably, takes on some of mine. I see his blindnesses and try to compensate, just as I know he does for me. Most of this goes on beneath the radar of consciousness. It’s a waltz that’s become second nature. But every once in a while, one of us will step mid-dance on the other’s toes. Sometimes it’s just an irritating interruption in what we’d thought was seamless choreography, but at other times, it’s a leather-penetrating stomp that reminds us we are indeed two separate people. Generally we just grimace and wish the other were a better dancer, while silently trying to regain the former rhythm of our relationship. Though increasingly, particularly when our feet are bleeding, we stop the music, hold up a mirror, and say, “Look!”

I’d lie and say these are beautiful moments of growth for us both, but they aren’t. They’re painful and scary and hard. Because every time we hold up that mirror, every time we ask the other to take back some or another projection, every time we say, “Wake up!” we must risk our togetherness for our individuation. We must take back our parts from each other to be whole. Where we will be and who we will be when we finish reclaiming those parts is anyone’s guess. But I’m betting that we’ll still be dancing together.

*This piece has also been published in The Bible Workbench. For more information, please go to bibleworkbench.org.

The process of discovering our truest, most authentic selves is so often a journey through some of the wildest, toughest terrain imaginable. Yet within this wild inner landscape of strife, broken relationships, sleepless nights, and even tragedy, we also unearth our richest treasures -- those pieces of ourselves abandoned long ago as we drew the masks we show to the world.

Stories, particularly the stories found in myth and sacred texts, provide us with a lens through which we can view the workings of our own souls. By seeing the characters within a story as aspects or layers of our selves, we gain a deeper understanding of our own complexity. We unveil, not only the hero within, but also the villain. Often we find an inner trickster, Aphrodite, witch, and savior. Always we realize that being whole is not merely about being good. And ultimately we learn to love ourselves, brokenness and all.

Contained here are my personal reflections on this process, primarily through work with Bible stories and parables, but also through close examination of other sacred texts, myths, fairy tales, and poetry.