The F-Words

Our community experienced a trauma this past week - someone shooting their way through an argument in a college computer lab. It's a piece of news that seems to appear too frequently these days, and shakes us to our core.

What does it mean for us to try to create safe communities and neighborhoods in a societal culture that is so addicted to fear and violence? Do we know how to argue with each other--experience conflict--without pulling out a gun and shooting?

They say human beings have three physiological responses to threat: FIGHT, FLIGHT, or FREEZE. The first is the epitome of strength, while the other two are usually seen as weakness. If we have guts, we turn and face the threat with teeth gritted and muscles readied (or guns drawn!) ready to fight. But, if we're weak and cowardly, we either turn and run the other direction, or we freeze like a deer in headlights waiting for our brain to kick in and tell us which of the other two options to take. Psychologists would tell us that there is no right or wrong, good or bad...all three are natural and programmed into us.

However, I suggest there is a fourth F-word that we could get a bit more proficient in when we encounter threat or conflict of some kind: FOCUS. Perhaps this response is best exemplified in the animal world by the maternal instinct of protecting one's offspring in times of threat and how apparently super-human feats of strength can result. When her child is threatened, suddenly a mother's strength, energy and ingenuity can become hyper-focused.

Most of the time, threats or conflicts that come into our lives are not life-threatening in the immediate moment. We need to be careful not to react to them as if they were. We can use the adrenaline to focus ourselves, let it teach us, push us to open ourselves to myriad of options we may have for response, open us to clarity, lift us to a higher understanding and perspective rather than a more desperate one. With FOCUS, conflict can open a doorway for us to become a better person--gaining greater skill, greater wisdom, deeper connections and more inner strength. We can allow the conflict to focus us more deeply on what our motivations, our expectations, our bedrock foundations, and our values are.

Creating Sacred Space

Today I'm considering creating sacred space. It's a calling for me these days. What does it mean for me in my life...for my small congregation in the middle of a busy city, on a noisy intersection, and be sacred space? I suspect it has to do with time, with relationships, with aesthetics, and grounding.

A space becomes sacred when somehow God's presence makes an appearance. Or...more likely...God's presence has always been there, but our eyes and hearts become open to recognize it.

I'm sitting here at my computer, hoping that this corner of cyber space that is my blog will become sacred space at least for a few moments for whoever might happen upon reading it. I watch and dream of our little historic church offering the engagement and enrichment of sacred space to those who happen upon us. I like to think, in both spaces, God might make an appearance. Both spaces require time from me and others, they embrace relationships, aesthetics of template and temple have been important, and both are grounded in themes and theology.

I'm enamored at the moment with an image from Celtic spirituality, written about by Margaret Silf, in a book called Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way,(Brewster MA: Paraclete Press, 2001), of groves and springs. Groves of vegetation and springs are few and far between in this desert climate, though they are here, and called "oases" or just simply "washes." But there is something sacred about them...a clump of diverse trees, underbrush, sharing common ground that is fed by the life-giving water of a spring...or an occasional collection of runoff rain...or a hidden reservoir.

This type of sacred grove has long been a place of rest, rejuvination, and reconnection to weary travelers. Silf retells the story of the weary band of Hebrews wandering through their desert land, grumbling and complaining for many long years...yet continually finding God's surprising sustenance popping up here and there. I pray that our community might continue to be and become even more such a "sacred grove."

Intentions

I believe that when God speaks...no, usually whispers...it's very much like living water in the desert.

We're at the start of our monsoon seasons here in Arizona, and during that time thunderstorms spring up out of nowhere; they disappear just as fast; they may rain down vital moisture - but the atmosphere is so dry the rain can't get to the ground...or it might come down in such fast and furious torrents that the rocky ground can't soak it in and it turns into flash floods. When God speaks to me, to any of us really, we may or may not be able to listen. We may be overwhelmed, flooded out...or we may stand with our heads turned skyward and tongues out wishing a few drops would survive the fall to the ground where we stand parched and waiting.

This blog will be an attempt to allow living water...as it flows to me...to flow out again. I hope it will be a voice in our desert experiences of life and faith. If nothing else, it will be a time for me to wait and watch and listen for God's living water and desert voice to speak so that my thirst may once again be quenched.