Living new stories

“When our own little stories begin to feel self-contained and inescapable, that’s when things are tragic.  Maybe on some level you feel that way.  Trapped.  Unable to change the story of who you are.  Unable to change your behavior or attitude or outlook.  So caught up in the events around you, so caught up in the identity you’ve had so long that it clings to you like a skin suit.”

                                                                                Nadia Weber-Bolz, in  sermon on the death of John the Baptist

______________________________________

my life is my story

I have written it

(others have edited it)

for 64 years

it has been,

variously,

a comedy

a drama

a tragedy

there have been moments of great joy

the birth of my children

that moment when I stood as the newly elected pastor

of “the big church”

moments of sheer terror

when I realized I was in fact

at age34 the pastor of

the “big church”

moments of despair

when patterns of thinking and behavior

sabotaged my life

there have been times when I have loved

and felt loved

and times when love seems to have

left

the building

there have been moments when I felt

valued, needed, and effective

and moments when I felt

despised, rejected, ineffective

times when I felt I had friends

times when I felt very much alone

my life is my story

and now

inevitably (Erik Erikson warned me)

I am reflective

wondering about the final draft

wondering if even now

so far into the manuscript

I can change the story

redeem it

if I can find within me

that sense of self I have always sought

find the friends I have never managed

to gather around me

if I can be the person I have always wanted to be

or is my path set

the story inescapable?

Sacred Presence means

the story is never fully told

never inevitable

with Sacred love there is no final draft

that leaves one trapped

in identities and patterns

that cling and bind

The presence of the sacred means we are not trapped by our stories

It may, and does feel like it sometimes

But we are not trapped by our stories

We can always, always, live a new story. 

A story written by a God

who loves us more, and can do

“immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3) according to the power at work in us”