Summer Letter: A letter on Life… being Remade and Renewed

It’s been such a long time since I’ve written most of you… confirmation was the last letter of this sort. Life has been full, the journey continues, and Jesus continues to deepen the life around me, teaching me that some things are more than I make them, and others less. Let’s see.. how to sum up in a nutshell…or how not to. Entering this new walk of life by becoming a real part of a Church was perhaps the most terrifying thing I have done yet. It opened new doors to commitments I hadn’t dreamed of being able to make 2 years ago, and brought me into a place where peace seems possible. The conflict of an overactive mind in futile form wrestling with ideas of absolutes that are far broader than my little heart can picture continues to drive my running… both the physical kind in which I pour out my heart to Jesus, and the sort which seeks a constant activity. My gentle Savior’s constant words to me in each situation are peace, be still.

Since confirmation, I followed Him, in a different sort of relationship with Him, towards trying to embrace the desires of His heart differently. While my mind is still conflicted about the commitment to this Catholic Church, my heart has no doubts, and I know I am part of His Body here. In those final weeks of the semester, I found the interior conversation unable to keep up with the pace without. I am filled with wonder at the way Jesus reopened the hesitant love that had been bottling up inside… well, He did more than open… as I journeyed into a confirmed place, confessing my faith and professing a desire to further do so with my life, I offered the little casket I had formed and insulated and put my heart in out of fear. He took that offering, and crushed the casket in His hands. It seemed for a while that things had never been more radiant that to be in His presence, to receive Him in the Eucharist in a different way that I had received Him before… to offer up praise in weak voice with all my being in unity with the others, singing our life songs in the psalms. It was bliss. I had always loved litrugy, but now I found myself absolutely craving it… perhaps because of the rarity of actually making it to morning prayer on days other than Sunday. Academics became more of a conversation as relationships changed, and in this little world of seminary on holy hill, a sort of veil opened up.

Everything ended in such a rush… the ordinations on May 30th of our Dominican Brothers Fr. Raphael Mary and Fr. Peter Do… the racing off to my first Marathon in San Diego… completing that race used up a kind of frantic attempt at immortality… the superhero way I try and make life, the god-way I try and create time out of nothing but drained adrenal glands… I didn’t hit my limits on that run, it was an amazing experience… that entire week finishing papers and engaging in conversations for most of each day when not at work; come Saturday morning for the ordinations, my soul had reached exhaustion and I got into avoidance mode, seeking to create that sanctuary where I could be still enough to learn the rest my God was constantly urging me to take, to be in Him rather than seek to do for Him… as if I had anything of myself to offer. Less than 16 hours actually in San Diego, I finished my first marathon in 4 hrs, 5 min and 21 seconds…and as soon as I hobbled off the marine training headquarters where the race ended, began looking for the next adventure.

June started quietly; and Jesus began answering the prayer of a weary heart that didn’t know how stop its running, attempts at doing for, and learn to be with Him… in a very strange way. The part of my life that knew it was thirsting for a depth that involved more than constantly skimming across surfaces, to sink in and be lost… that ached for a fire to burn up and never stop consuming to eat up my heart… also realized that I had forgotten how to drink deeply of the cool streams, had ceased to feel the heat of the fire. But of the life-extremes of quenching and burning are fulfillment of grace, I started seeing… my endless questions led me from that brightness and star-struck, enamored confusion of confirmation into the darker labyrinths where closer acquaintance with God became taken for granted though the struggles of daily life arose a little more intensely. With one of my jobs ending for the summer, I wondered and worried how I would find work, and began the first real interviewing period I’ve ever done in my life. My resume was readily received in a lot of varying occupations… I interviewed and visited a Montessori school, a movie rental store, for an administrative position, etc… but my own very part time job at the Hergl Center was where I was brought back to. I am so grateful to God for the Director and Assistant Director at work, and all my coworkers… He has taught me so much about peace and rest and movement that is freed by taking that peace and rest over the year I have worked there. I have really come to love our girls and associate a certain sense of “home” with it; it was one of the first places of stability in my life out here, before I had any sort of religious community, and so it became a way of finding Jesus always drawing me back to Himself there.

Increasing my hours at Hergl, I also found an unexpected opportunity come up in being offered the position of nondenominational chaplain for a hospice care organization called Angel’s Hospice. Being called and asked to interview for the position, my reaction was: Lord, I am so young, how can I offer anything to the dying and grieving? But as I prayed, I felt it was something I should at least give the opportunity to be a possibility to continue carrying learning Jesus’ rest and peace, and to let Him carve me into a channel of His grace. As each worry about survival came up, I had only to look at the places He had integrated into this part of my vocational calling (whatever He makes that into), and see His grace all around me. While as I am called to face death for His sake all day long, the journey of everyday is walk to point of surrender and then dancing in the surrender. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light…He gives me the grace to see that, even if I haven’t fully unburdened my heart into His care. Easy and light are not the same thing. J A friend lent me a book called the Unbearable Lightness of Being… at a time when each day seemed to have so much weight in it… as ridiculous as I found parts of the book to be, it occurred me to that our being was made to be light, in the presence of light, full of light… and for some reason I was finding that acceptance of such a grace as unbreakable.

Grace is such a hard thing to accept, the undeserved gifting of mercy… when one spends all one’s energies fighting for survival… to not let the multitude of thoughts take over too much, to not use more hours than are in the day working, to lie in stillness when the possibility of doing is endless. But post-Marathon, I found something in me breaking. Jesus, the more I ask Him to be close, increases an ache in me, and breaks something more in me. It seems my being must not be light enough for Him. Last week I remembered what it was to hope contemplating Heaven and being enthralled with His love, in a very weary state of being. He watches me take up burdens everyday, and offers Himself… if I would only give in. He asks me to fall in love… to let go of the controlling urges and discipline enough to let Him lead the steps and be still enough and content enough to wonder at His feet that He can really be unexpected. I am relishing the sense He is showing me… when I was weakest and weariest, He held me. I asked Him where home would be for this wanderer, and in my heart, I felt He gave back something of a smile… of course with Him, but what does that mean in a beautiful, but exiled world? Wherever He holds me… that is what rest is coming to mean, to be held… sometimes in retreat, others in the middle of the action.

I am grateful His grace is greater than my weak love and faith… He continues to provide housing and more than I could ever ask for… means of support and thriving, reawakening my spirit to the possibility of dreaming deeper and in more vibrant color in the fire of His love.

Held in His hands,
Hannah

 

His Mansion Day 3:Fellowship, que qui es fellowship?

I recently returned from an evening staff fellowship where I think I experienced a Jesus I couldn’t have imagined because I grew so many self-focused expectations and fears. I thought before I came here I had cleared away self, I has disposed of all the things within me that kept me apart from Jesus: I wrote yesterday of the difference between oneness and sameness… and I realized that individuality is something I so desperately assert… what am I afraid of losing? As if getting close to Jesus will force me away from the only way I know how to discuss with Jesus, experience Jesus, through myself. So where did I go with this throughout the day, the realization that God created distinction with the purpose to achieve unity… only difference, not sameness, can achieve unification, which was an interesting distinction with Jesus… He was same with God, but unified with God. I guess in my community, if I am to see people as Jesus, then my distinction makes something like unity possibly with them. Maybe I don’t understand unity and community.

If I am God’s workmanship… and He is in me, Lewis defines my union with God as “a continual self-abandonment- an opening, an unveiling, a surrender” (33) of myself. I am learning through trial and error how to live in this His Mansion family. I did not know what to expect with work crew, so going out for a morning run at 4.45, I was not sure if I was making a wise decision energy-wise or not. I got to see the red sun coming up over the hills… and this morning I ran into it. I felt some unexplainable excitement as I mulled over words exchanged in many different circles… all of us hiding things and all of us trying to feel Jesus in ways that make intangible existential. I am exploring the own cravings of my heart… I get so selfish with heaven… even as I work on life with others. It is not hard for me to be agreeable unless I am lost in thought. That reminds me of something I spoke with Jesus about last night in a group of people… Jesus did not keep Himself aloof and above time, He placed Himself within and engaged wholly so as to empty Himself of all rightfully His and love me. I thought about that as I prepared my heart for work this morning… I asked Jesus for strength and grace to think before I responded… to keep my heart submitted and to remind me of my Master as I worked… for though Jesus is my Lover, His jealousy over my, in my very self, requires the best and all of me.

My work assignments started off with light cleaning of offices, etc… and all throughout the morning, I was told I reminded people of a girl named Annie who used to work here. There must be just something familiar about me, because usually wherever I go, people tend to recognize someone else in me. I am actually glad for that, if that can impart some hope or joy… bring a smile to someone’s face. It started a conversation, which came straight from a heart tonight. Something about a remembered loved one strikes chords within us that reverberate into an openness with others. I am sure I have been the most raw with my heart and experience with others here so far when able to relate my struggles through my love affair with Jesus or love for another. Something really melts inside the heart about that love… the love for my Master, which I claim as my compulsion. So lunch rolled around, I sat with new people… I am trying to get around the eating room, and meet everyone living here. I think that is part of the best required of me every day.

And then in the afternoon, I was assigned to wood stacking, which I enjoyed, because I put my whole being into organizing, carting, and stacking those split logs. But  I was thinking about “self-giving… is absolute reality” (Lewis, 37) and the whole-hearted engagement of Jesus in His self-giving. It was purposefully a reckless abandon. I spoke to Him for help before the say began, because I rarely trust myself… so after running, I looked up to Jesus, as His beaming face rose above the cow pasture near my living quarters… asking, “Jesus, today I am tired, so help me please to work… not half-heartedly, but with an eager spirit. I need to remain joyful in hope, not just dragging through the day but persevering with vigor, Help me to share and expect that with which I am offered amongst all God’s holy people.” Laying wood, I got lost in my own thoughts again, and occasionally engaged in fellowship. Not as much as I could have, should have. There’s tomorrow for more. I tried singing a bit at first, but retreated to the recesses of my mind where many thoughts were pondered, some lost en route.

Yet evening fellowship triggered hope again. I was feeling rather lost here, as if I could have an entire, productive day and let my mind just sit where it was… be unchanged with my Jesus. But that is a result of disengagement. One of my sisters was having a rough time this evening, and my engagement was different than anyone else’s… again attempts to rationalize, reassure, make everything OK… explain away. Rather than feel or hope. Oh how life can desensitize. The hope I regained for life here was something I hadn’t dreamed of finding in this little community. I have verbalized to some that it reminds me of the Village (M. Night Shayamalan)… an almost commune-like place out of the world… so much peace, our own ways of doing things. Yet as I told one of the founding members, I have found this place to be more open, just the opposite. I was encouraged by conversation tonight that Jesus is proved in the heart of my work ethic… as long as I am not trying to pay for my salvation in that process… I am in love with Him, and saw a similar love in the family I fellowshipped with: transdenominationalism… one of my biggest distinctive struggles in the church. But these people realized from life that my Catholicism doesn’t make me love Jesus any more or less than my previous fundamental years… it’s a pendulum swing, I am sure, but maybe we humans can never achieve the desired balance. O Jesus, we strive for balance, yet You do not give.

I think I have wrong desires, if I want what I was not meant to have… static over dynamic. I love You, my Jesus… reveal to me why my heart strives to be like Martha but I long to be a Mary and wash Your feet… but Your feet may have now been set before me… or perhaps You are asking to wash my feet here, first. Move, Jesus… I will match You in this dance.

Seeking to offer the hands of Jesus,
Hannah

 

His Mansion Day 2: Exposure through Voluminous Dialog

This daily computer journaling will, I think, serve as a culmination of all my daily thoughts and dialog with Jesus and others…. Though soul-exposure tends to be riskier the more I realize the necessary danger of it all. I have still been contemplating a lot of life I learned about these part two years at Davis: this past semester especially, something I called the lost art of linguistic living in a prayer project for Psalms class… really it is the act of speaking into being… realizing that I cannot be in heaven with Jesus alone was a severe enough blow, I though, but realizing that my imagination was not as independent in figuring Him either was hard to come to grips with. Jesus and I are engaged in a fascinating conversation lately about the misconceptions I apparently formed or just realized needed to break… the story of my life, traveling through a cycle of orientation, where all is “too good” for complete reliance in my opinion, then disorientation where I find my language through the desperate ache in my soul, and reorientation which is eventually gifted to me… sometimes through a person, or maybe a fuller realization of the grace given so abundantly to me. My Jesus is simply dazzling.

Church was a new and adventurous experience for me… we gathered in the chapel here on the hill of His Mansion and engaged our hearts individually before God in 10 minutes of silent conversation/meditation/reflection. I realized an old struggle for stillness before God… I am constantly in motion of thought at least… though all around me may be silent, I am a whirlwind inside. Always running… my most contemplative moments are those had in pure exhaustion or while my body is fully immersed in physical activity, such as my runs. There my mind finds a stillness to be looking for Jesus, and I am truly reverted to my naturally childish state of simple questioning and probing thought. Jesus pieced that realization together for me beginning in that 10 minutes and up through the book discussion I recently left on Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. Following our personal time, the Brethren tradition of engaging the Priesthood of all believers (men and women) occurred, in which various among us read passages heavy on our hearts and minds or shared. I am still caught in the mystery of Ephesians 3… dare I say it seems mystical to picture Jesus distributed amongst a scattered body. But He and I will keep talking about that too. Singing, and then a message on 1 Peter 1.2-25… proof of a changed life. I was most struck by the thought that purification of my being comes after an obedient confession of faith (the weight of what faith contains hits me… active loving within community).

In response to the sermon, I asked myself about my focus and my current status in loving: am I doing it all the time, and what is my motivation, focus when I do love, when I don’t love? I don’t exactly have a connection yet, but somehow in thinking of love and focus, my thoughts are drawn toward the mystery of heaven I have been discussing with Jesus for quite a long time. I think in his discussion of heaven, Lewis makes plain that the concept is embedded in love, but the full realization of it is beyond me still, for “all the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it” (19, Made for Heaven). Thus Lewis weaves my individuality into my love affair with my Savior in the hope of heaven, but I am struck by the need to step out of myself to get at heaven, yet self is something bound up in heaven. How can I love, but the ways through God has gifted me, how can I accept love, but in myself? Will this striving for heaven destroy me? I have been thinking about what it means to live heavenly now, again, and so Jesus and I began talking about some of the misconceptions I allow to affect my live when trying to live heavenly… its all the Old Self stuff, which should be considerably dead.

So, Jesus, I have many misconceptions… this heaven book makes me realize how much I have separated from reality, the needful part, by saying “heaven is a city, and a body, because the blessed remain eternally pure…” for we have it in hope now, and some form must exist in tangible reality and imagined, I think, but this allows for difference. Jesus, I wonder, have I confused a desire for sameness with unity? The poignant Lewis notes that it is unity which is achieved in the midst of difference, not sameness. There are many members for the sake of having a unified body. I wonder, Jesus, if the all the differences we are composed of dictate the individuality with which we must be loved. I am the only common denominator to my love for others, and I am learning how flexible I need to be in that love… to explore them as individuals and apply the different sorts of love. I have struggled with fragmented love, but differences do not equal fragments. Jesus, here I am at Your feet to learn the boundaries I need to love here.

This conversation is loaded with all sorts of things I have been talking with Jesus about for the whole semester… and ponderings not many have heard. His Mansion family is drawing me in… a day with my sisters exposes me to things I never knew, loves I didn’t know possible, and finding out more about unity, and living in community.

Seeking to Offer Jesus’ Hands,
Hannah

 

First Full Day at His Mansion

Hello all!

It doesn’t feel like a Saturday, but then the past few weeks have just unbelievably blended together into a fluid-like mass of time that just unstoppably flows through my hands. I think last night, I slept the deepest, fullest night’s sleep I have in a long while… almost 6 hours. Not without dreams of course, but nothing disorienting or frightening. While all the rules and orientation has been a little bit overwhelming, I am just trying to absorb the life as much as I can. Perhaps I am thinking too much about it… Deborah (deb-or-UH), one of my fellow servant leaders, has challenged me in regards to my contemplation… oh goodness, the conversation has been good so far. I know I came up here in a very intense mood… wistfully saying many life-changing goodbyes, and determining all my will to find Jesus up here… albeit His hands will look different here. I have been struggling with the idea of heaven and Jesus over the past few weeks as I knew goodbyes were approaching—how does community change after goodbyes? Honestly, I have to confess that my mind has been a bit out of sorts because of the sense of goodbye really hit me since Thursday on over this past week.

As always, my coping mechanism was automatically rationalization… but this time, I stopped myself in the process of thinking my way out: maybe I should talk to Jesus thoroughly and realize the feelings and change so that I can be effective and open in the community I am living in now. The group up here at His Mansion calls themselves a family… so I am a new sister. I am living in a staff housing building next to the girls dorms… there are 8 of us sharing 2 bedrooms: my roommates, Beth (from school), Wendy, and Rachel (who knows my twin) are fun girls… but this weekend, I have already begun work, so I haven’t seen them much: let me explain. There are two teams of us girl servant leaders headed by a mentor each. Every other weekend, the teams switch duties of being “on” or “off” supervising the residents, our sisters. There are some really neat girls up here… I think 6 or 7 still remain. And already we are getting to know one another and I am working on this being communal aspect of Christianity that I keep reading about in Ephesians 3.14-21: circumstances have even allowed me to talk with some of the girls about my Jesus, how much I love Him, who He is to me, how He has been showing Himself to me. O, but let me not get too far ahead… I need to tell you about how Jesus has shown up this first day.

I started out running on the misty, humid junglish roads of New Hampshire just after 5am, a good way to test the waters for my all-day energy metering and endurance over the hills. By 6.30am, I was back in the dorm reading through what I have decided with Jesus is my challenge for the summer, doing heavenly community in this place where its totally possible because we are all drawing nearer to Jesus. 7.45 was breakfast, but just after breakfast, Jesus and I began to work on my prayer… one of the staff members read Luke 9.28-36 about the transfiguration of Jesus…how His face became shining, and His clothes sparkling white… and how I think, His glory was so great that Moses and Elijah were needed to help bear the weight of it! As the passage was read, my mind started trying to picture this breathtaking Jesus… and I could almost feel my being start to glow as I tried to conceptualize Him. Some sort of excitement and inspiration that only Jesus brings about… Moses sort of felt it when He glowed… the glory of the Lord. I was holding out my hands as I prayed afterwards… I asked Jesus to transfigure my whole being… maybe something of rejuvenation, and help rekindle that love for Him within me that compels love for others. And so I began to look for such love today.

After getting some instructions and my rules booklet, I had 2 hours before lunch, which on Saturdays are reserved for silence and solitude… but for those of us student leaders of coverage, we could journal or read, or talk quietly. So for the first hour I wrote like a fiend, read several exciting passages in my Bible, and read the C.S. Lewis book, Made for Heaven… And Why on Earth it Matters my friend Tim gave me the day before I left. I can almost see this little haven from the world as a slice of heaven by environment alone… but I need to learn how to see it in relationship, beyond the angelic sort. You know, I did ask Jesus if He wouldn’t mind making me an angel while I served here, because I want to be as used as possible. Then Aaron (a girl, fellow servant leader), Deborah and I shared some thoughts on life, the Church, and etc… being pretty open with each other. I ventured into what I felt were risky waters, but found only Jesus there. I never share so much, is the transfiguration beginning?

After lunch, helping clean up, changing for the graduation ceremonies, we attended the graduation of four residents. It was far more personal than college… quite overwhelming, really. I am always amazed at Jesus when I hear stories or see Him moving in lives so incredibly. And we all have our own ways of seeing Jesus from our lives, we each have out own heaven to reach at… it’s a bit different for each of us. May His hands mould me as much as they mould through me. Here’s a bit of conversation I had with Him today… lots of journal time over the weekend:
“My hands are what must work out heaven into being now. I am still so absorbed in my own perceptions of self, Jesus, please flood me with Your brilliant light of loveliness, like light, here on this mountain so I may be transfigured to be like You. I am stretching out my hands to You, Jesus, maybe Your wounds will be there for another’s grace… I think I would ask for the heart, rather than the hands, of another in which to remember Your grace. It is hard to replace You’re my hands, my Jesus.” Let me learn to feel You through whatever community I find myself amongst these next days, weeks, months.

After graduation, more time with the girls and dinner… then a rousing softball game to finish off the evening. Full day, I’m going to spend more time with the girls and Jesus before bed… this life is going to be exciting.

Seeking to Offer Jesus’ Hands,
Hannah

PS. His Mansion Ministries, where I’m working this summer (til August 1st), can be read about on: http://www.hismansion.com/hmm/