Blog Body and Spirit Sinew

I am a slow receptor in the worlds of social media and rapid technological evolution. But today with my 40th blog post, I am ready to allow that I have been given new dimensions in my journey of Spirit with my participation in these modes of connection and communication. Writing this blog, receiving responses, interacting with others have all challenged, deepened and refined my experience of the Holy and sharpened my longing to continue the pilgrimage.

I am profoundly grateful for the almost immediate connection with friends and acquaintances, especially those from past lives and worlds and those in far corners of the world. How joyful it is to find that even though we are not where we were and we are not where we are going to be, we are on the road of faith and exploration, sometimes sashaying down the same path, sometimes needing to offer explanatory notes to one another! In my expanded community I am often led to directed to green pastures or still waters or the banqueting house where my heart is comforted and restore and my mind is challenged and sharpened!

Sometimes when I sit down to write a post, I envision myself as both Desert Amma and desert seeker, opening myself up to the Holy with the familiar refrain, “Give me a Word!”  The writing of this blog has been an opportunity each week (almost) to pose that request to myself in the Presence of the Holy. I have found that each time I ask, I am given, by recollection, by prompt from the world around me, from deep within me, a reflection on my experience of the Spirit, each week, each season, each encounter. Thus, it has become a spiritual practice that both deepens my trust in God, but connects me with others to whom I am linked. Occasionally I hear from some of them, and then the energy is multiplies as I can listen to how a Word from one triggers a Word in them, and we become tied to one another is sympathy and love.

This spiritual practice also pushes me to prayer, not only the well-trod Anne Lamott prayer, “help me, help me, help me,” but prayers of petitions and intercession for this world in all it fragmentation and infection, for the people of God–in general and in particular– who need the merciful and beguiling touch of the Holy One in body, soul and spirit. I am pushed to recall how varied and complex this world of God’s creation is, and even though I inhabit only one tiny corner of an urban community in Southern California, I can still participate in the healing of the whole world by my prayers and caring in countries and communities far and wide across the globe.

I suppose it is not surprising that along with the gift comes the shadow and temptation. The competitiveness that I tried to lay to rest when I left school threatens to raise its very unattractive head when I begin wondering who and how many readers I have and what they really think. Then I remember that am called to be faithful, not necessarily wonderful, and that if I answer the call of the Holy to me, I don’t have to be anxious about the quantifiable outcomes. The pull to egocentricity and discouragement can be brought into my own practice of presence, where I can say, “Loving God, here I am! Help me, help me, help me!”

I also recognize that I miss the up close and personal touching, hugging, patting, bumping, interrupting, open-ended unending conversation that body to body, face to face encounters provide in the gathered people of God. I am not sure if virtual potlucks will ever become a fad! But in the meantime, I celebrate this new dimension of my faith sojourn, replete with those I know, those unknown to me, but known to God.

And now may the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believeing, that we may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Romans 15:13