by Judy Bevilacqua

“Free will:” it’s one of the most attractive and liberating doctrines of the Christian faith - but it’s also one of the most maddening and frustrating. It’s can feel like a divine marketing ploy: “free sample,” “free test ride,” “free estimate,” “free carpet cleaning.” How many of us have gone for the free vacation stay, only to have to listen to a 3-hour, high-pressure sales pitch for a time-share condo. We vow: “never again!” We learned that free isn’t “free.”

Decisions have never come easy for me. I was a child who was not allowed many choices. They were made for me, and I learned to be passive (resistant!) and complain and criticize under my breath, rather than risk and take responsibility. It was quite late in life that I came to learn to be “the adult” and choose for myself and bear the required results. I still agonize over the outcome of every bad decision and feel shame and guilt over not getting it “right.” So free-will is a double-edged sword for me. It’s designed to produce grown-ups, but I still find myself with these pesky pockets of adolescence.

The scriptures are abundantly clear about the necessity of making choices:

“Choose this day whom you will serve…” Joshua 24:15

“I would that you were either hot or cold…” Rev. 3:16

“Let your yes be yes, and your no be no...” Matthew 5:23

“Be you doers of the word and not hearers only…” James 1:23

“Put your money where your mouth is…” (oops, I guess that one’s not in there!)

God’s desire is that we choose….He leaves so much up to us. But there’s an overarching grace that accompanies this learning curve of decision-making. I think being parented by God allows me a large space in a less condemning environment. Our proof-text is to see the line-up of bad choices represented in the stories in the Bible. And yes, there’s hell to pay, sometimes! But primarily it’s a classroom atmosphere of “let’s try that again.” King David and Peter made some rather poor and consequential gaffes. Moses and Paul made some stellar blunders! In this journey of faith, it seems we are surrounded by a “great cloud of witless-ness.” Ahhh, what a comfort! It takes some of the pressure off. It turns the heat down and the shelves the shame. I’ve always loved that proverb: “A righteous man falls seven times and rises again.” Proverbs 24:16. It’s that do-over principle. This “free will” thing would be completely scary without the knowledge of God as a loving, forgiving, nurturing and completely realistic father-mother. We get to make this very human choice…and yet, in that finite moment, we brush against the infinity of the One who is with us and in us….and over time we learn we are still “on the way home.” We find our will is slowly getting conformed to His. Whatever unique and hidden road we may be taking, it’s still a pilgrimage of faith ….He is on the road with us!

Recently I read again a favorite poem. This time, I came away with a fresh view - like a glance in the rear-view mirror - perceiving that “way has lead onto way,” in that mysterious and transformative path of free-will…and “that (God) has made all the difference.”

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Pondering the Promise of Pentecost

by Judy Bevilacqua

I love spending time with my grandkids. We have great conversations about life, food, gross insects, dinosaur minutiae, bird identification, career possibilities and - even relationships. It’s fascinating to watch them slowly develop -- like little polaroids! But though they are unaware of this process, I am tracking their development into the future, like an archeologist in reverse!

Sometimes, there are things I would love to share with them. But they are not asking the questions. They are not ready. And frankly….neither am I. There are a lot of things I’m sure God might want to tell me, but He must also wait until I’m ready. My future is now a pretty short span, (I hardly need binoculars!) It’s not the vast frontier of my youth. But still that future is all fog and smoke, only a dim path. In my nearsightedness, I must wait for wise guides to lead me there. Last night before dropping to sleep, I read this quote from an “mid-life” woman, who suddenly became aware of all the elderly women around her in Paris: "It’s as if I’ve only now developed the rods and cones in my retina that allow me to see them” [Traveling with Pomegranates, Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor]. I know this feeling. Maybe it takes old age to see old age, or ill health to see ill health. (You could fill in the blanks to this formula….ad infinitum!) The truth is: there is a reality that has been there all along, but you can’t “see” it until a certain moment in your life…..until you’re ready.

There is something strangely comforting about this whole phenomenon. We can’t just know and understand at will. We can’t just read the best books, get the degree, text our friends for advice or check Wikipedia in our search for “answers.” We just can’t produce wisdom. Wisdom just doesn’t happen in isolation, or “out of context,” or without the road-time, shoe leather and deep investment. We have to need it, to be ready for it.

In nutritional science, research shows that extracting and isolating a vitamin or mineral from the whole food usually prevents it from being well utilized by the body. Often another enzyme or protein is needed to allow that intricate “process of absorption.” If this is true for my physical body, can I grasp that there are a complex of elements that must be present for real learning to take place in the rest of me? This is Wisdom: that “assimilation” is essential for wisdom. Not just for my grandkids! This patient osmosis is vital for my own spiritual growth as well. It gives new meaning to the quote: “when the pupil is ready, the teacher will come.”

Last week, our lectionary reading from John 16:12-15, came as….“a slow wind to work these words of love” around me! Jesus was talking to his disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you."

“…but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” When we are ready…. when we need it and are asking and when our experience can support it. (God used the Montessori method long before we did!) Pentecost reminds us that the wise guide of the Spirit will give us the truth - as we are able to absorb and assimilate it.

Like my grandkids, I can’t receive all the information. I can’t bear all the truth. I’m not developmentally ready! But the Spirit knows how to guide me along and help prepare me for all that my future holds…..whether short or long. The Spirit, like that enzyme, is the catalyst that turns on the light…..

I close with a line from a song that’s been in my head this season of Pentecost:

“God only knows, when God makes His plan; the information’s not available to the mortal man” [“Slip sliding’ away.“ Paul Simon]. Ah, but it is available through the Spirit! This is the promise of Pentecost!

Swimming in the Sea of Doubt

by Judy Bevilacqua

During the travels of my younger days, I remember the deep respect I practiced (fear would be more accurate) while swimming in the awesome surf near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Then there was the memory of tiptoeing through a minefield of poisonous sea urchins, in order to enjoy the sumptuous blue waters of the Mediterranean off the coast of France. I also remember the colorful stew of sea-life, from lobsters to moray eels, surrounding a dive in the Sea of Cortez in Baja. Most familiar of all, are the many adventures in the chilly purity of the NW’s Puget Sound and traversing Hood Canal. But nothing I experienced has prepared me for swimming in the “Sea of Doubt.” Nothing.

I realized something was happening to me a few years ago. A huge backlog of denial drifted loose from its moorings and set free a raft of “questions without answers.” This was neither a comfortable nor familiar situation for an old evangelically schooled woman. I had acquired no survival skills for this condition of soul. These questions were teeming with dangerous implications. Threats of apostasy and damnation circled menacingly just under the surface. Right on schedule, the guilt to which I am prone, produced a riptide for my unstable emotions. Not safe waters for swimming! I could sink and drown out there.

Reading John 21, in a recent lectionary passage, I was moved by Peter’s leap into the sea to swim to the resurrected Christ, who was calmly preparing breakfast for his band of doubters. I was reminded of Peter’s earlier plunge into deep water as he followed the Savior. Walking those few steps on top of the sea, then….sinking in panic. What was it about Peter that so often got him into deep water with his faith? His impulsiveness has always been endearing to me; testing his own limits and God’s patience - usually at the same time. I have grown to trust Christ more easily in the wake of Peter’s failures, rather than in the light of his displays of faith. His “sink or swim” attitude seems the best training model for swimming through doubt. There’s no way around it. Best to make friends with it. Dive right in.

I remember training for my ocean swim a couple of years ago. I ordered a video that was recommended for endurance swimming. It introduced me the T.I. technique, developed by Terry Laughlin, an American swimming coach. The initials stand for “total immersion,” or what he describes as fish-like swimming. TI approaches swimming as a mindful practice done in the spirit of yoga or tai chi. The aim is to become more self-aware and to feel "one with the water." After my childhood Red Cross training, it felt so counter-intuitive! This method asks you to lower your head in the water, not struggle and strain to stay on “top.” You are encouraged to sink down into the water and relax, to let your hands move like anchors - not paddles. And most helpful of all: to swim more quietly - minimize waves and splash. Recently, this training came back to me, as I considered the spiritual swim with which I am challenged at this season of my life and faith. I am in need of new techniques to help me stay afloat in this sea of doubt. Not with the goal to conquer those doubts, and stay “on top,” or to arrive at any particular destination, but simply to learn to breathe and relax for the long haul – this “crossing over Jordan!”

Since I’ve ceased thrashing about on the surface, gasping for quick answers and easy solutions, the terror has lessened. What was weighing me down, was the exhausting effort it took to manufacture certitude. Like swimming in a wool coat, it just got heavier and heavier. Finally, I just slipped it off and found I wasn’t drowning after all. I could hear the deep silence. Could just “be still and know that (He) is God” - in some completely ambiguous way. These days, I am finding myself able to relax and sink down into my questions and fears. There are plenty of them. I don’t need to tell you what they are. Yours might have different names. These doubts are not the enemies of God that I imagined them to be. They are not the opposite of faith. Just the shadow side, the view from underneath.

I always imagined that real faith would resemble Peter’s on the water, defying the laws of gravity – at least in those brief seconds before he sank. But in the end, those whose faith seems the most real to me, are those who’ve sunk peaceably into the deep, unfathomable waters of God’s great mystery and man’s undeniable humanity - and called it home.

Ah, there’s the tension! This very suspense by which we are somehow held by God - in suspension - (even, at times, suspension of belief), is the same uncertainty by which we “live and move and have our being” in God. To quote Parker Palmer: “I thought God was in the general direction of up. But I’ve learned that God is down and in.” And maybe our own resurrection, like birth or baptism, happens in the deep water - not on, or above, or in spite of it. Perhaps Jesus experienced his own Resurrection in just such a daring and doubt-filled sea.

Resurrection Thoughts... (picking up the broken pieces)

by Judy Bevilacqua

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;a broken and contrite heart. Psalm 51:17

I thought about the idea for many years: a large mosaic that would someday grace our outdoor entranceway. Finally, about 2-1/2 years ago, I eagerly began the work. My daughter Gina helped me create the design. It was colorful and Italian in spirit, bearing the greeting: “Benvenuto,” Italian for “welcome.” Hospitality is important to me, so it was work I believed in. It started out innocently enough, as, I suppose most life-changing events do. My ignorance was bliss. Enlarging the design and mounting it on strong wood wasn’t difficult. I had been years collecting broken tiles and dishes. (We’re hard on dishes at our house!) And I had even brought tiles home from a vacation to a pottery center in central Mexico.

So the work began: hammers, tile-cutters, and goggles. There was blood and band-aids, nicked knuckles and frustration over cutting problems and confusion over glues. But it was satisfying work…even if slow. PAIN-fully slow. Oh, did I mention slow? In my mind, I had the mosaic grouted, framed and hung by the following Spring. But only a few square inches were completed by then. Other priorities and duties sapped my strength and filled my brief leisure hours after work. Before long I couldn’t even see the mosaic, it was buried under piles of rubble and debris in the utility room, neglected and forgotten.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” Proverbs 13 says. It’s true. My heart was sad. Life was hard. My employer for whom I’d cared for over 19 years, was failing. Then suddenly, she was gone….and with that a sudden retirement. Not quite as I’d imagined, abrupt and aborted. I felt oddly unprepared for what I thought would be a hopeful season – now so tainted with sadness. Then illness followed, 60 days of a mysterious virus no physician could determine. I languished all February and March in my plaid pajamas on the couch, my hearing all but gone. This event fell during Lent last year. Perfect! Then in early Summer, I learned of my mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. And late Summer, brought the devastating loss of my 5 month old grandson…..and the world turned inside out. All I knew of faith was tested. Deep underneath all this debris, in the darkness, lay all my broken pieces. I was the mosaic. Life was imitating art. God not only held the glue. He was the glue. But still I was “undone” – with no means or energy to make sense of it. My heart lay dormant for many long months.

Then….one morning 2 months ago, I awoke to yet another gray day. Only inside me, on this morning, there was light and color, and an unexpected friend: energy! I didn’t know what to make of this. Where did it come from? Oh, Grace! Just when I thought you’d lost my address! The first thing I did was go to the utility room and turn on the space heater. I couldn’t wait to uncover the mosaic and begin moving my broken pieces. I longed to coax out a pattern in the chaos: a sky and some hills, a dragonfly and a salamander, flowers and trees and wine grapes, ripe for harvest. Two Sundays ago, our scripture reading was a love song: “See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come…” I could only smile knowingly and give thanks and praise to God!

And so this Season of Lent draws to that hard familiar close. Christ is crucified, His body broken for us. There are pieces strewn all over the ground: 30 pieces of silver, pieces of broken dreams, shattered shards of hope, fractured bits of faith. And the Father-Creator’s hand moves over all that is formless and void, dark and sad and deep. Once again, the Spirit of God brings beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, inexplicable light of Resurrection after Lenten darkness, wholeness after brokenness, and out of chaos, brilliant clarity in the Light of Christ. All this from broken pieces. Alleluia!

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life - (or maybe a mosaic!)

The Pilates Prayer

by Judy Bevilacqua

With the arrival of January, the cellophane gets ripped off my shiny new calendar (mine purchased at the Victoria Art Museum, months before). A spankin’ clean New Year – free of erasure marks - tempts me to turn over a “new leaf” with the turning of that first crisp page of uncharted future. This year was no different. There I sat staring at the long list of classes at our local gym. I had recently read that your body actually gets used to a repeated routine of exercise and memorizes it. Like we all learned by rote the Pledge of Allegiance, and could recite it with no thought or effort. So too, apparently, the body learns the drill and it will eventually expend less energy and you get less benefit. Change is what shakes it up and wakes it up. Well, when it comes to exercise I need all the “bang for my buck” I can muster. My body, as well as my wallet, is facing a depressed economy, so I’m all for “expending” less and receiving more! Perusing the list of classes, I tried to find one that would prove the least embarrassing, most beneficial and with the lowest risk of fracture or cardiac arrest! I decided to try the morning Pilate’s class.

Arriving early for class, the new teacher looked far too young. But I grabbed a mat, bolstered my nerve and explained that I was a beginner, nervous and well, obviously a “senior.” Was there any advice for an old newbie? She waved her hand, as if to dispel my anxieties with fairy dust, and consoled me with these words: “Don’t worry, just remember to breathe! That’s the most important thing: your breathing. Next, learn to work from your center. Find your core. That will improve your strength and balance. And finally, don’t be distracted by what the person on the next mat is doing. Don’t try to keep up, just focus on what you are doing. Work at your own pace.”

They were good words, and during that next hour, I tried to remember them. But what I hadn’t counted on was that all through the next week, they kept on helping! But this time it was for the exercise of the soul. Perhaps, it was because of the Annual Business meeting at church, and the opportunity of turning a new page and a new leaf in our parish. Her words gave a new focus through all the prayers and the hopes, the possibilities and the challenges of that meeting about how, together, with God’s help, we can walk into an unknown future. I’m sure we’ll find some new muscles, and discover some changes to our “memorized routine.” But with practice, the Body of Christ can learn the great benefits of change and learn to build each other up in the coming year. As for me, I’m going to be praying the “Pilates prayer.”

“O Lord, keep us breathing - the breath of your Spirit.

Teach us that You are our center, the core of our being.

Train us to work from our gifts and strengths and find balance.

Help us protect the weaker parts of the body,

with gestures of gentleness and grace.

Guide our focus, so we won’t become distracted,

comparing ourselves with others.

Rather, lead us to rejoice in our unique calling.”

Amen.

The "Gift of Limits"

by Judy Bevilacqua

I just read an article in our local paper about “the worst Christmas gifts ever received.” It got me thinking. In this season of giving and receiving gifts, it might be a good idea to unwrap some of those unwanted gifts in our life -- the less obvious ones that may still be lurking under the tree, or thrown out with the fruitcake from Aunt Thelma. For New Year’s I’m going to try and look at one gift in my life that often remains unopened...unused…unwanted. That is, until I’m in deep trouble!

One of my most neglected and unacknowledged gifts is the "gift of limits." I don’t want this gift, but I need it. When I don’t pull it out of the back of my underwear drawer and wear it, I suffer -- and so do others. This gift is a bit binding, a bit restricting and not immediately comfortable. It hampers all my wild, impulsive and frankly addictive tendencies. Whether it is over-spending or overeating, or over-anything! Saying "yes" when I should be saying "no." It whispers to me when I’m being the indispensable workaholic whose body is really crying for a nap. I should be in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. I make a great martyr!

Jesus received the “gift of limits” for Christmas. He left eternity to be birthed into the restricting confines of time and space. He left inexhaustible riches to experience our exhausting poverty. He set aside limitless power and freedom to put on flesh and bone, emotions, pain, weakness, and narrow social and cultural identity. He became a vulnerable diapered baby in a cheap hotel - dependant on the likes of us! Yes, “He was in every way tempted – just like we are.” The Master became the servant and the Lord became the serf. This is what I mean by the gift of limits. God appears to do his best work through human limitations. (A quick survey of the personal weaknesses of the prophets, apostles and Holy Fathers would certainly prove this point!)

So where’s the “gift” in the gift of limits? Surprisingly it seems to be in the very DNA of “limits.” This was brought to my attention the other day, as Jack and I helped a friend prepare for a songwriting assignment that had him baffled and overwhelmed. We suggested he narrow down his choices to only a few notes, and then to give himself a short deadline to complete it. He shared with us later how miraculously that worked! Amazing. Less became more. Limits brought freedom. How many times have I experienced a surge of creativity when I only had limited time or resources to complete a project. All the juices get going! This is not to praise procrastination. But hey, we all know it works!

What other limits have I experienced as a “gift?” Steve, the grotesquely handicapped man at the gym, hobbling through a huge room of buff strangers, approaches me to share about his upcoming surgery and make me feel loved and privileged to learn of his hopes and fears. How many more amazing gifts have I received from those with very limited education, advantage or opportunity. No wonder Jesus loved the children. They were so comfortable with their limits.

The limits of age are becoming all too apparent. I’m slowing down in every way. My memory seems laced with molasses and I can’t seem to care about multi-tasking anymore. But what a gift to have arrived at the age where I value nothing more than to be “idle” with my grandkids, or my aging parents, or a friend. Or to stop and acknowledge the finches at the thistle-sock, or weep with my neighbor who only stopped by to bring me the eggs. These are but homely examples of a much deeper awareness. The reality that we are mortal after all, (sigh.) My struggles and weaknesses bind me to my human family and keep me awake to my own hunger, weakness, poverty, and blindness. Yes, like that church in Laodicea in the book of Revelation. They forgot too! I need God, and I need others.

The gift of limits is, in fact, the BEST gift I could ask for. Hmmm, so why don’t I ask?

O God, turn your Spirit loose now,

and me with it,

that I may go to where the edge is

to face with you the shape of my mortality:

the inescapable struggle and loneliness and pain

which remind me

that I am less than god after all,

that you have made me with hard limits,

limits to my strength,

my knowledge,

my days.

Facing those limits, Lord,

grant me grace to live to the limit

of being unflinchingly alive,

irrepressibly alive, fully alive

of experiencing every fragile, miraculous, bloody, juicy, aching, beautiful ounce

of being a human being……

from a poem by Ted Loder