Have you noticed how life gets all mixed up?  It seems more and more that few experiences are clear cut.  You know, like when you were a kid and your birthday was the best day of the year.  Or Christmas was sheer, pure fun and excitement.  It wasn’t confusing.  The feeling was one, and it was joy.

But as we become older, it happens more and more that feelings on any given occasion are layered.  I’m thinking about all of this in the midst of the season of Easter.  My beloved friend, Susan, is one who marks Easter as one of the happiest, most sacred days on her calendar.  She is a follower of Jesus, and her faith is born of this celebration.  But today, she weeps.  Today she is tinged with the complexity of emotions.  She yearns to lift a glad spirit toward Heaven (and I know in her own special way, she will), to celebrate this date circled on her calendar and yet, her heart aches with heavy pain.  This Easter marks the one year anniversary of the passing of her cherished husband, Billy.  She is still sorrowful amidst the Easter hallelujahs and family festivities.

Friday was Good Friday.  It’s a day of grieving in the Christian church.  Many years, I’ve sat on a church pew crying my eyes out as we remembered the death of Jesus.  It is a somber tradition to grapple with our thoughts and emotions around the death of God’s precious Son, Jesus.  I’ve noticed for many, many years that it often rains on Good Friday, and there has been comfort in such.  Sure enough, this year, it rained… was grey all day.  But this year, I wasn’t crying in a church sanctuary.  I traveled for four hours with my dear daughter and her boyfriend to hear a friend in concert.  We talked and laughed and sang old and new songs the entire trip.  And once we were there, we were there… in the moment, filled with joy and happy, happy feelings.  The place was packed and people were eating and drinking and clapping and dancing.  The people in that place were about joy, not sadness.  And by the way, would you like to know the name of my friend’s band?  They are called ‘Joy Kills Sorrow’!  On Good Friday, I was reminded that joy kills sorrow.  It just seemed like something Jesus might say.  For a moment that night, I thought I caught a glimpse of him on the dance floor.

I do believe that Christ is alive and happy.  I do believe that Billy is up on a ladder in Heaven fixing someone’s broken window and that Jesus is passing him the tools he needs.  I trust that when we are sad on Easter morning, God gets that.  As well I trust that when sheer happiness steps up on a Good Friday evening, it is perfectly blessed to appreciate that.  I believe with my whole heart that God, the Maker of the Universe and you and me, loves so completely that we need never question if we are getting it ‘right’.  I also believe that God, like every truly loving parent in the world, wishes so much for all of us to be happy.

If you are happy today, then be happy.  If you are sad, then be in those feelings.  And if you find both feelings present, then gently honor the rising and falling of each.  No matter what, no matter how we feel today or the next day, God is alive and in our midst.  If we truly believe in the mystery of Easter, we have every reason to turn our smiling tear-filled eyes toward Heaven and simply give thanks for the love that sees and understands all.

Three years ago, I walked away from my teaching career.  I walked away from job security, good health insurance, a ten minute commute to work, and financial stability.  If I wanted to treat my daughter to a mini-shopping spree, I could.  If I wanted to go to the movies and have dinner out, I could.  I got my teeth cleaned every six months, had my annual female check-up, and didn’t sweat it too much when my dog needed to go to the vet.

But you see, I felt this urging for something more.  I felt I needed to find a vocation that would bring me back to working with individuals in ways that focused attention more on what was within rather than on what was without.  Does that make sense?  Well, somehow it did to me, and so with much prayer, I went to graduate school and obtained a MA in Counseling.  Am I counseling now?  Yes.  Am I working and being paid as a counselor?  No.  It has been a year since I graduated, and life is ever unfolding and teaching.  I’ve yet to find full time work.  I’ve yet to find that conventional job that returns me to a conventional lifestyle.  I run into to people all the time who want to know what I’m doing now that I’ve graduated, and many times I fumble it.  I feel like I need to say what they expect to hear, to fit into what we all thought was coming.  But what can I say?  I walked away from teaching, have incurred huge debts for college loans, and am not earning my keep as a counselor.  No.  I pretty much tell people that I’m working part-time as a teacher… as a teacher.  What must they think as they walk away from such absolute insanity?  Isn't that what you were doing three years ago? 

What I fail to say is all the other rich, out of the box things I am also doing and loving.  Might I list a few here?  I am writing daily.  I am preaching.  I am leading retreats.  I am a working artist.  I am a Spiritual Director who works both formally and informally with those who thirst for matters of the Spirit.  I'm about many things that don't fit into a category or carry a title.

So, here’s what I want to say.  Here’s what I’m practicing saying today.  I am loving life… that’s what I’m doing, and I’m available to help others love their lives as well.  I have no idea what tomorrow will bring… and isn’t that exciting?  I am living closer to who I am than I ever have before and it is… frightening and unstable and wide open and devastating and glorious.  I freak out often.  But I’m not freaking out by choosing to do things I don't believe in.  I’m not freaking out because I’m so exhausted from doing things I don’t believe in that I don’t know what I believe in.  I’m not freaking out because I'm listening to the worldly powers saying that I’m not good enough or valuable enough.  I respect me.  I respect the God of my life enough to say, “I sure as heck don’t know what You have up your sleeve, but I’m game.  I’m listening and following this unnamable calling, and I trust that You are love and all that I need to do is… trust and allow the love to ripple on.”

What am I doing specifically this day?  I’m going to wash my dishes at a slow pace.  I’m going to watch the goldfinch outside at the feeder as my hands appreciate the warm soap bubbles.  I’m going to send cards to those who are suffering.  I’ll talk with my family and surely tell them how much I love them.  I’ll hold my little dog since she is sick again, and through my breathing and touching and praying, I trust that she’ll feel the healing love of the divinest mysteries linger close.  I’ll give thanks to God for the green woods that hold me and for urging the surging life in me to green up some more.  I’ll play… oh, who knows with which art form… but I’ll play myself into something that might touch another heart, and stir a bit of financial support.  At some point today there will be some arbitrary voice come into my head that will say something like, “Shouldn’t you be doing something more productive?  Shouldn’t you be doing something more concrete that either earns some solid money or produces something more valuable than clean dishes in the drainer?”  Most likely, at that juncture, I’ll scan the internet for current job openings.  Chances are, I’ll apply for more counseling positions, work in the church, and yes, even new teaching opportunities, because there is still this part of me that wants not only to serve others and follow calling, but to play it safe and fit into what seems more normal.  But should this holding pattern continue wherein no job is offered, I’m making peace with this life, this fertile life I’ve always wished for, and I promise to honor the artistic play God is enjoying in the process of creating me.

So, I do hope the questioning will continue.  I hope people will continue to ask me what I’m doing now with three degrees and lots of certified titles behind my name.  I’m ready to share some authentic conversation.  It might still leave some folks scratching their heads, but chances are where there’s head scratching there’s also soul searching (unless of course, it’s just lice… and in that case you’ll want to be much more practical than philosophical!)

Where does hope begin for you?
This week-end it was in a small town on a small campus... a Friday night in America where people came together to look into the sweet eyes of hope.  It was Relay for Life at Bridgewater College, and this is a story about the unequivocal root of hope, which is always love.

Here's my Dad.  When I was a little girl, he was a professor at Bridgewater College.  It was a nurturing place for our family, a place that gave us all gifts that carry us still.  We have always known this small town as home even years later when we all live in other places.  We always find that something we are missing when we return to this valley of green.  And now, years later, our family finds my daughter at home on this campus surrounded by friends and celebrations and years of growing into her own life.  And she calls me and says she wants to honor her PaPa at Relay this year.  So, we make it a secret surprise for my Dad, and invite lots of friends to purchase those endearing luminary bags to both support the good work of the American Cancer Society and to give thanks that Dad overcame Kidney Cancer.  And on a beautiful Friday night, we gather with so many others to celebrate life, this good, hard, wonderful life.

And Dad walks his survivor lap...

on this campus that has harbored so much love for him and in him over these many years.

And we all clap.  We clap and we clap.  We offer Dad and all these other survivors the ovation they so richly deserve.  They have persevered.  They have weathered the storm or are weathering the storm.  We want to say to them... you inspire us, you remind us to love every ounce of love out of this life. Your life yells at us... wake up, be happy, and love, love, love!  Take nothing for granted and be there.  Be there for the people who fill your heart with warmth and joy.

And then there is this moment, where he finds her and she finds him... generations apart, so different in so many ways, but here they find one another on this sacred ground in a holy embrace.  No words can explain.  No need.  Every cell can feel it.

What does he think as he takes this walk?  What does he pray?  What does he hope?  He is a man of humility, of gratitude, of deep passions for knowledge and beauty and compassion.  We pray for him, for those who go before him, for those who follow.

And then the second lap begins, one in which the caregivers join their loved ones.  Do you see?  My mother is now alongside of my Dad.  She greets a friend from our church.  She beams at these young ones who bring honor to both she and her beloved husband.  How can anyone question the power of good or that it exists in these times?  Look at the hands linked together behind my parents.  This is hope.  This is hope.

This is hope walking here, together.

And this is beauty.

And this is laughter.

And this is grace.

We drove back home today in the pouring rain passing green fields and grey mountain ridges.  We know that life is like this, giving and taking, ebbing and flowing.  But we are assured that there is ever hope, that all we really have or need is each other, and that this life is good.  This life is truly good.  I'm still clapping.  Thanks be to God.

When I was a little girl, there were certain requests my mother gave me that I wasn’t especially fond of.  One was washing silverware.  In a family of five, it always seemed like standing at the sink washing the daily silverware took forever.  The other small favor was to take in the laundry from the clothesline and fold the clothes.  That wasn’t so bad since I got to go outside and listen to birds and feel the fresh air on my skin.  What I disliked was socks.  Clothespin after clothespin of socks.

What's the big deal, right?  I knew my own socks well enough.  And I could discern my mother’s socks quite easily.  But my two brothers loved those white athletic socks which to me all looked the same.  The problem was that to them they were not all the same.  Some white socks belonged to David and some white socks belonged to Chris, and I was the lucky oldest child who had the unique privilege of sorting and matching their freshly laundered socks.  Don’t even get me started on the proper matching of my Dad’s many black, navy, and brown socks.

I guess at some point, either I or my brothers fussed about this minor detail enough that our mother took a black sharpie and put initials on my brother’s socks, so we’d all know which socks belonged to which brother.  Good solution!

So, now I’m all grown up and the only problem I have with socks these days is the adult mystery of how the dryer eats socks, and how we always end up with one odd sock!  (By the way, that never seemed to happen when socks dried outside in the sun!)  What is a problem is that I have many more concerns than matching socks, and sometimes I get lost in the heaviness upon my heart.  That was true the other day.  I was frustrated by the madness of bureaucracy and all those man-made obstacles that pull us away from being present to ourselves and others.  I hate wasting purely good time on serving a master of nonsense! And of course, alongside of that fact is the fact that I’m keenly aware of so much suffering… everywhere it seems.  Daily we all have to dig our way out from under hardships, illnesses, and broken hearts. Sometimes it feels more than any of us can bear, doesn’t it?

So, in the face of all of that, do you know what I did?  Do you know what tended me that day?  Socks on the line.  I was at my parent’s house, and they had both put in a full day, and I noticed the clothes on the line.  I watched my Dad’s shirt flap on the line, and my mother’s kitchen towels and a row of clothes pinned socks.  And I suddenly found myself grabbing the clothes basket and walking through the fence gate to fold Dad’s shirt, to smell Mom’s kitchen towels, and to match up that row of socks as my heart grew lighter and my eyes glistened with gratitude.