Tag Archives: Health

Nov 19 2013
6 Comments
Uncategorized

stumbling toward healing

Screen Shot 2013-11-19 at 9.42.35 PM

The promise brought in by time is hardly ever known beforehand, and even if it were we wouldn’t have the slightest idea what the promise meant. We can’t know until it’s time to know, and we can’t be healed until we’re ready, really. Healing becomes available, but time brings the promise. We can attempt to rush it if we want to, but we’re likely swinging in the dark.

Rev. Becca Stevens’ most recent book, Snake Oil: The Art of Healing and Truth-Telling captivated me earlier this year (as written about here). While reading this book, I knew that one of my very closest friends would soon be ordained in November, and I also knew that he was learning more about what it means to anoint those we love, those who are hurting, those who are dying, and those who are wandering with oil.

I love the notion that anointing with oil is a kind of prayer made physical. We put our hands and fingers in oil, smear it on the flesh of those we desperately want something better for, and then hold out hope that Jesus wasn’t killing time when he said that we would take on the kind of life-bringing and truth-telling that he had been doing. We pause for a moment as flesh and flesh separated only by a thin space of an ancient substance. And somewhere in that thin space rests the deep hope and the breath-stealing promise that God shows up when we come together and ask him to.

So we know we don’t know what we’re doing, but like most things worth doing at all, when we show up and do them even while admitting that we are fumbling our holy way through something we don’t understand, God shows up.

Of course God was already there.
Of course healing isn’t buried in the molecules of oils.
But God shows up in a way that he hadn’t already,
and we even become bold to ask him to in ways we hadn’t already.

And so I woke up early the morning of his ordination, pulled out the random collection of olive oil, essential oils and Shea butter, and headed toward the stove. Fumbling over a pan and these tiny bottles that feel like tools I don’t know how to use, I followed Stevens’ recipe for anointing oil. That is, I followed it until I decided I wanted to change amounts and add other things.

Slowly the kitchen started filling up with the scents of rose pedals, grapefruit, rosemary, olives, bergamot, and lemon. I stood over the stove, noting how time has passed and the truth is a little clearer and healing has come at its own damn speed no matter how much I was ready for it to hurry up, and watched a tear drop into the oil.

Even while making my first batch of oil, without anointing and without meaning to pray, God shows up and reminds me that all this time, through the two years waiting to know what promise was on the other side of waiting in grief, I reminded of a the words a friend prayed over me two years ago in Cape Town while pushing in on my chest: “God is holding your heart, Don. He wants you to know this. And he is shaping it. And he is thrilled at what it is becoming. And when you think he is not paying attention, I pray  you will remember that he is holding your heart in his hands. He will push and prod and squeeze, but he is perfectly gentle and perfectly stern. And it is his hands that your heart is held.”

Those words came at a moment when the ground was cracking open and I was most unsure where to stand. I see now that the sky was cracking open as well, and my heart has been in very good hands through all the cracking. And the promise is a little clearer now on the other side of waiting things out.

I gave my friend the small jar with the few ounces of oil in the parking lot after the ceremony, stumbling over words about a gift and an experience and process that has been years in the making. That bottle made it to a worship service the next morning, was used to first pray a blessing over his daughter, then to pray words over those being confirmed. Those being confirmed happened to include not only people I have grown to love, but also people who have loved me and walked with me over these last two years.

Just as the scent of the oil filled the space, the reminder that if I’m willing to stumble my way through things I don’t fully understand while asking God to show up, he is good and ready to do so. And he is holding on to our hearts. And he is breaking them over the things that break his very own. And we are, all of us, stumbling toward healing in one way or another. And we can only stumble toward it in the company of others. And we can’t be in a hurry.

Well, we can be in a hurry, but it’s a waste.

Healing always comes.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

RELATED POSTS

An Unspeakable Honor
Screen Shot 2013-11-19 at 10.14.07 PM
Gracefully Critical
Screen Shot 2013-11-19 at 10.09.54 PM
So We Wait
so we wait

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Jul 02 2013
3 Comments
learning to live, social work, what they are teaching me

when it’s worth saying

Screen Shot 2013-07-01 at 8.34.07 PM

She held her hands over her mouth
most of the time she talked,
which I’ve been trained to know means
she’s not sure about what she’s saying
and she isn’t sure it’s worth someone else hearing

I find out soon enough
that her pastor tells her she can’t get divorced
even after she knows she’s gotten
an STD from him
a reputation from him
a history and an internalized notion of not being enough for him

but she can’t get divorced from him
so my only hope
and maybe her only hope is
to help her feel strong enough
to know she is strong enough
to stand up to him and maybe
to stand up to her pastor

to say that she thinks
just maybe
even though all of her life has suggested otherwise
that she is worth standing up for herself
and that she is worth having someone else stand up for her. ‘

poverty and power and religion and resources
blur the lines between
what God desires for his people
and what his people end up living through.

and it is, in fact, his people who are called
to put up a fight.
And we, then, cover our mouths as well
because we aren’t sure about what we’re saying
and if it’s worth someone else hearing.

djordan
Summar Dr.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Apr 06 2013
Leave a comment
grief and trauma, on, poems, the calendar

things regarded as dead

Screen Shot 2013-04-01 at 8.45.26 AM

I woke up Easter morning to find an email from a friend that only read:

“Today may you start seeing God’s resurrection of things regarded as dead.”

One week later, I’m not sure in what ways I’m starting to see the resurrection of things regarded as dead.

I let a lady check out in front of me today at the store, and she replied that chivalry might not be dead.

Another lady at another store had to ask me a million different questions and try to sell me on a million different offers during the checkout process. I thought nothing of it all until she leaned over the register and said, “thanks, at least, for being nice about all this, young man.”

I went to the funeral today of a good friend’s father who got sudden news of serious cancer, and within weeks, goodbyes were said and tearful thanks given for the notion that the end of life might not actually be an end at all. As much as it still hurts like hell, of course.

And so I wonder, one week after Easter, what it means to begin seeing God’s resurrection of things regarded as dead.

Chivalry.
Kindness.
The lost life of a father.

What about hope that good can overcome evil?
That generosity can overcome greedy anxiety?
That humility beats out power and success and ambition?
That justice can break its way into dark injustices?
That forgiveness is stronger than any force of revenge and retaliation.
That families can come together, no matter how they’ve wrestled apart.
That marriages can make it.
That children can make it to adulthood.
That adults can remember the joy of childhood.
That abundance can make its way to those living in great scarcity.
Abundance and scarcity of money, identity, understanding and freedom.

We don’t build our church buildings next to our graveyards anymore, and we’ve likely forgotten altogether the resurrection we’ve been counting on as a ragtag group of women and men and liars and lovers all these years.

We’ve also likely forgotten that things we’ve already written off and sealed up and buried deep as dead impossibilities are waiting, one week after Easter as much as easter morning itself, for the resurrection.

Hope, generosity, justice, families, marriages, children, adults, abundance, scarcity and equality, identity, understanding and freedom.

Chivalry isn’t dead.

Neither is the hope, and therefore the prayer, that God’s kingdom come, and his will be done, on the earth this week after Easter Sunday, as it is in heaven.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
Feb 23 2013
2 Comments
learning to live, on, what they are teaching me

worth more than a lazy saturday

more-than-lazy-saturdays

I won’t lie. To all my friends with children, jobs that carry them into the weekend, life that carries them over the edge…I wont lie. I usually sleep in on Saturdays. If I’m in town, which is becoming less and less, I don’t think twice about the thrill of sleeping in till nine or ten on Saturday mornings, waking up then only because the dogs begin to insist on it. And I wont lie that most Saturday mornings it’s the perfect thing for me to do.

Be jealous, if you wish.

Today, however, is worth more jealousy than sleeping-in-Saturdays.

This morning at eight I’m ringing the doorbell to meet for a few hours and discuss the art of counseling, to be given encouragement in y wise steps and wisdom in my ignorant steps. And coffee. To be given coffee at eight in the morning since I usually sleep in on Saturday mornings. For two and a half hours beginning at eight in the morning there is discussion over what it means to listen well, to practice well, to watch well and to craft well. Counseling is, as I’m learning, more the art of listening for what the person speaking has known all along but can’t hear himself say, can’t hear herself know. until someone shines it back on them, both sides becoming changed. This morning at eight in the morning, cup of coffee soon to be in hand, I’m ringing the doorbell ready to discuss the art and privilege of therapy.

This morning at ten-thirty, or a few minutes late because the first conversation went long…but we knew that it would…I find myself walking through another door to another meeting. I find myself, new cup of coffee in hand sitting around a huge kitchen table with people I know and people I don’t know. I find myself sitting with people who share, above all, a heart not for names or labels or agendas but a heart for the kingdom and all it involves. I find myself sitting, a little late for a ten-thirty meeting, around a table with people who have won my respect and people who quickly earned it talking big and thinking hard and dreaming wide about what it means for business and food and health and poverty and community to get smushed together in one hopeful spot. Passing the brownies, the hope of a community sitting around tables together having a party as we were this morning. This morning a few minutes after ten-thirty I find myself in the middle of a moment I wont soon forget because a little piece of kingdom come happened around that table this morning while brownies were being passed.

And at twelve forty-five I find myself sitting across the booth from a good friend for late lunch. Laughter and hats and glasses and jeans because it’s Saturday morning after all. The questions thrown out over salads and salmon about what it might mean to follow Jesus beyond harmful clichés or ceramic crosses and into the streets and the cubicles and the living rooms where vengeance is king and jealousy rages and a feeling like maybe we’re a little behind pushes fast and furious into our hearts. Passing the crackers and stacking the napkins, questions thrown out about where we went wrong or where we went right and how we might learn to tell the difference between the two, how we might assume there’s a difference at all. Back to our cars and back to our homes for errands and work and a little time for play, because it’s Saturday afternoon of course.

And then in the evening, a last minute text. Dinner around the table, prepared as we chat. Children run wildly with giggles and stories and hopeful surprises of what it mean to see their eyes and takes on the world. Sitting down in those familiar seats we find ourselves between laughter and tears because so much is known and so much has been seen. Together. There’s no catching up so only the present is told: where we are, what we wonder and what we all hope. Sweats and pullovers, secrets unhidden, because after all it’s a lazy Saturday evening dinner.

And so most Saturdays I don’t think twice, when I can, to sleep late and give thanks that I have the weekend. But today, in the hustle and the few minutes late, I give thanks that I’m surrounded by people pushing well and pushing hard and pushing often into the thin space where we’ve been taught to pray and taught what it means for his kingdom to come and his will to be done on this dusty earth now as it is in his heaven.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Jan 01 2013
5 Comments
grief and trauma, learning to live, on, the calendar

intolerance of uncertainty | thoughts on a new year

Las_Vegas_New_Years_Celebrations_0aede

It’s no doubt that the things which are the most important for us to know are the things which, once heard, feel the most obvious. The things which, once said, feel the most simple. And yet, it is these things which are often, once heard and said, the things which change us the most. The things which make the biggest impact in our worlds because even though they are obvious and even though they are simple, they are still the things which are most important and have the most impact.

A New Year’s resolution has been to read an article a workday. Workday means ultimately five articles a week, and article means a research or peer-reviewed journal article, so what to do when throwing a party or how to build biceps fastest doesn’t count as articles.

I was reading, a few days ago (because I’ve also learned that New Year’s resolutions I wait to start until New Year’s are 100% less likely to happen than New Year’s resolutions I start a few days before) an article* about depression, anxiety and rumination. I was reading for a client that I’ve been making little progress with, and also reading for myself as is almost always the case whether any of us in the field choose to admit it or not.

The article speaks to depression, anxiety and rumination, or ongoing perseverative thoughts about situations or details, as moderated by the intolerance of uncertainty. And while the phrase “intolerance of uncertainty” feels as common and as known and as obvious as any other phrase that’s said over coffee or in elevators or across lunch tables, I felt myself freeze in the phase of the written words, as if the obvious and known was suddenly becoming an answer to a mystery.

The more we are intolerant of what we can’t control and what we don’t know, the greater our anxiety, depression and stalling.

With multitudes of caveats and uncontrollable variables, the notion has stuck with me since. The ability that I, or others, have to tolerate uncertainty influences the way we see the future and handle its impending realities in the present. Since all of the future is uncertain, no matter the degree at which we enjoy misleading ourselves, my ability to tolerate that uncertainty is a predictor of my emotions, attitudes, and decisions.

Since reading this article, no doubt an encouragement to keep up my New Year’s resolution, I’ve been challenged to face each day with a reminder to myself that what is to come is unknown, and my trust in the fact that all things are done well and that all things work together is and will be a major factor in my ability to move forward well into the grief and joy that lies ahead in 2013.

Here’s to an uncertain new year.

djordan
Pine Tree

* Liao, K. Y. & Wei, M. (2011). Intolerance of uncertainty, depression, and anxiety: The moderating and mediating roles of rumination. Journal of clinical psychology, 67(12), 1220-1239.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Oct 22 2012
Leave a comment
learning to live, poems, what they are teaching me

in our honest hours

in our honest hours
of anxiety
of unsureness
of exhaustion
of insecurity
of restlessness
of loneliness
of misunderstanding
of arrogance
of boredom
of transition
of self-righteousness
of worry
of confusion
of isolation
in our honest hours
where we are altogether not our best

we come face to face
even when through a dim mirror
with the promise of how things will be
and we feel our souls
lift
weightless
weightlessly
to the sky
with the promise of how all things will be
when all things are as they should be

and then, we live more musically
in our honest hours

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Aug 31 2012
1 Comment
learning to live, what they are teaching me

a race against the clock, and a willingness to pause

It’s been one meeting after another. It’s remained a race against the clock day in and day out. Class starting, support group starting, fundraiser planning, t-shirt making, early meetings, late meetings, long board meetings where hard work is refreshing, other long board meetings where hard work makes more problems.

It’s been the kind of multiple week stretch that refuses to wait for sleep or calm or slow to arrive before it begins again.

But the work is good, and filled with life and promises of life, so it’s an honor and a privilege.

But because it is an honor and a privilege doesn’t mean it’s not stressful and exhausting.

I raced in from one meeting to try and sit with a client for counseling today. As I attempted to lean back in my chair, clasping fingers behind my head so as to help him lean back and relax and calm down, I felt my heart beating rapidly. My cell phone started ringing as soon as the client began talking, and I could feel my mind start reeling wondering which thing, which job, which person it was.

And when I glanced back at the man, he had tears in his eyes as he was telling me his story, and his hopes.

My heart slowed suddenly. My mind came to a screeching halt.

Yesterday, I was clamoring away on the edge of a nerve, and a friend came by the office to drop something off. He spotted the frazzle, came in, sat down, and closed the door.

He stilled the clock for just a second, I dumped it all out, and then it was back to work for both of us.

I think today, with that client, the cost of ignoring that slice of a moment was apparent as I turned back from wondering who was on the buzzing phone and saw those tears on his cheek. It made me grateful for someone willing to pause yesterday on my behalf, and I hope it pushes me to pause the next time.

djordan
Pine Tree

RELATED POST: not drumming alone

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Aug 28 2012
Leave a comment
learning to live, Quotes, what they are teaching me

pain is no measure of his faithfulness

Reflecting one year later on a great deal of change and uncertainty, loss and newness, anger and sadness, knowing and knowing nothing, I’m reminded by a friend tonight of the words below. On the eve of the homicide-loss support group beginning again, and the ways we try to hold the pain of great loss and injury saying both that it should not have been this way and yet somehow hoping God is still faithful, I’m reminded of these words. When I curl up on a couch with a neighbor and hear of wrestling with family and wrestling with heartache and wrestling with what we thought would be versus what actually is, and then wrestling with how to look a neighbor in the face and tell the truth about it all–– and ultimately how we try to make sense of God in it all––I’m reminded of these words.

And more than anything, I’m reminded that I need not push so hard to try to force something meaningless to make sense; to try to force something heartbreaking to be lovely; to try to force a fix on anything that is broken. I can, however, say that the heartache and loss and grieving and wrenching and uncertainty are no measure of his faithfulness. And so we fight not to make sense of it, not to make it prettier or easier to share over a game of bridge or a glass of wine, not to make it a lesson for Sunday School class that ties nicely into felt and boards. Instead, we fight only to manage to open our hands, and open our hearts, and do our best to remain open to what waits ahead. We wrestle to remember that the mess is no measure of his faithfulness.

Especially one year later.

So to my friend, thanks for the reminder.

djordan
Pine Tree

I believe in a blessing I don’t understand 
I’ve seen rain fall on wicked and the just 
Rain is no measure of his faithfulness 
He withholds no good thing from us 
No good thing from us, no good thing from us 

I believe in a peace that flows deeper than pain 
That broken find healing in love 
Pain is no measure of his faithfulness 
He withholds no good thing from us 
No good thing from us, no good thing from us 

I will open my hands, will open my heart 
I will open my hands, will open my heart 
I am nodding my head an emphatic yes 
To all that You have for me 

I believe in a fountain that will never dry 
Though I’ve thirsted and didn’t have enough 
Thirst is no measure of his faithfulness 
He withholds no good thing from us 
No good thing from us, no good thing from us 

I will open my hands, will open my heart 
I will open my hands, will open my heart 
I am nodding my head an emphatic yes 
To all that You have for me 

No good thing from us, no good thing from us 
He withholds no good thing from us 

I will open my hands, will open my heart 
I will open my hands, will open my heart 
I am nodding my head an emphatic yes 
To all that You have for me

+ Sara Groves, “Open My Hands” from Invisible Empires

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Jul 30 2012
Leave a comment
art and photography, grief and trauma, what they are teaching me

the truth in aspirations

One of the guiding tenants of my profession, social work, and what must be a guiding tenant of the Christian faith as we are made in the image of a creative and compassionate God, is one of the lines from Saleeby’s strengths perspective which suggests that we must take the aspirations of others seriously.

We are trained, of course, to allow this to shape our imaginations in our work with clients, families and communities, no matter what the problem at hand is. At all costs, we take seriously the aspirations of those we serve.

In the case of this story, they are beautiful aspirations which allow others the opportunity to live when they are realized. It is, for me, a reminder of the serious truth in the aspirations of children, and it is a a challenge to take seriously every child’s aspirations, even if they are small, because we can also, as the guiding strength’s perspective says, assume that we do not know the upper limits of the capacities of others.

Enjoy.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,