Hope is to be found

I feel like it seems as though the winter has so easily stripped away our hope, especially when it has been as rough as this one. The brisk cold air battering against my face, my ears turning red, my finger tips quickly losing feeling and my nose running after two minutes with the cold air have been consistent since December and honestly, I AM SICK OF IT.

I miss the buds of flowers and the colors of leaves on the trees. I miss the SLUlips that come in pink, red and white. I even miss the oddly placed palm trees down West Pine. By this point, I imagine that many of us have forgotten what those joy filled colors and warmth are really like.

It was only a few days ago, with one of the randomly warm days that I heard a bird chirping. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it. I quickly found this smile stretching across my face and my mood instantly shifting. Suddenly something dawned on me. I HAD FORGETTEN WHAT A CHIRPING BIRD SOUNDED LIKE. I had become entrapped in this world of winter that made me forget the wonders of the other seasons.

I was suddenly overcome with this unfamiliar feeling that I couldn’t quite identify. It was a sense of relief, mixed with joy and aspiration for change. I continued walking and still couldn’t name it, step by and step, struggling to name what I felt. Finally, it hit me.

It was HOPE.

It was almost as if I had forgotten this word. I could only observe it but I couldn’t describe it. Hope had left my vocabulary, a place that I begrudgingly fell into. Emily Dickinson says, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all.” Hope is that bird. That bird calls out to its companions searching for food, accompaniment and guidance. It’s this searching bird that gives me a renewed sense that change is coming and the hope I had once lost may actually return.

Maya Angelou says, “My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.” May this impending change of color, joy and a renewal of spirit be a source as we prepare for the Lenten season, particularly with the relationships that we struggling with, whether giving or receiving love; that we may not be complacent with our scenery and what we have fallen into but look for the hopeful bird of change to re-enter into our lives.

Erin Twiehaus is the Campus Ministry PRAY Intern.

Striving towards the goal

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7). Being a runner, this verse has always captivated me. In fact, all competition captivates me. I’ve been glued to the TV/Internet these past couple weeks watching every possible Olympic event (Biathlon? Skeleton? Curling anyone?) These athletes throw themselves completely, body, mind, and some might say even soul into their sport. While it seems an unlikely place to find faith inspiration, I think we can learn from these Olympic athletes. We can ask ourselves the same questions they are faced with every day:

What am I working toward? (Is it Heaven?)

How much does this goal mean to me? (Does how I spend my time reflect that?)

Is what I do today going to get me closer or farther away from that goal?

We might even have to ask ourselves, “Am I even in the race?”

When we reach the end of our lives we want to be able to say we have fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith. The bottom line is, you have to be in the race to win.

Allison Walter is the Campus Ministry REST (Retreat) Intern.

LOVE

Do you ever feel like this?  

You know, that moment when nothing seems to be going your way...when all you really want is that peanut butter and jelly sandwich but your mama can't seem to make it fast enough?

Or perhaps like this? 

You know, that moment when your world has just simply gone nuts....and you have too?

Me too.  Sometimes, I feel so frustrated and defeated in my little world as a mama of two little people.  They may be little, but their demands can feel big.  They may be just barely learning about their world, but their discoveries are huge.  They may be the sweetest little things that love to read and snuggle and play trains with their mama....but sometimes mama needs to do laundry, clean the bathroom, do the dishes, vacuum, make dinner, go to work, maintain friendships and relationships, and keep smiling because life is oozing with blessings. 

Sometimes I place so much pressure on myself to arrive at work with a smile on my face, looking fresh and beautiful, with sparkling eyes that are ready to listen and mentor and answer emails and be creative and be oh-so-present....forgetting of course that I just spent the day changing diapers, wiping little noses, kissing boo-boos, teaching little people how to say letters and share toys and cover their mouth when they cough...forgetting that I just read The Lorax for the umpteenth millionth time, so proud of the excitement I maintained each time we snuggled up with their well loved, torn and tattered, favorite book. 

Sometimes I place so much pressure on myself to be the best wife, with dinner ready, house cleaned and my level of patience and delight with my little world still as strong at 5pm as it was at 7am...forgetting of course that these don't matter a single bit to my awesome husband...that all he wants is a happy, healthy wife and happy, healthy kiddos who just spent a day together playing, laughing and learning....forgetting of course that this pressure I feel is mine alone. 

In recent reflections with my beloved CLC (Christian Life Community), I have been able to articulate my need to look good and my FEAR of REALLY being known, flaws and all.  While I'm not one to wear much makeup, or dye my hair or sport all the highest clothing fashions hot off the rack, I NEED to look good.  I need to look like I've got myself together.  I need to look like I'm an awesome mama and an amazing wife with a life fresh out of Pinterest.  I need to look like I'm a rock solid campus minister with an incredible prayer life and a perfect sense of perspective. 

And recently, I fell apart.

The last 2 years have been difficult and beautiful all at once.  You can read more about that HERE: http://slucampusministry.blogspot.com/2013/09/images-of-god.html

I spent the last 2 years LOVING and LOVING and LOVING.  I spent the last 2 years LOVING my husband and our beautiful babies.   I spent the last 2 years LOVING my co-workers and my vocation to ministry and the details of my work.  I spent the last 2 years LOVING my beautiful mama, dad and brothers from 8 hours away.  And if I'm honest, I think I hid behind that love, distracted myself with it. 

And it finally caught up with me.  In my quest for perfection, I busied myself so much loving other people and things, that I forgot to be truly honest, vulnerable, broken.  I forgot to let myself be loved.  I forgot that my honesty, my brokenness, my vulnerability....even THOSE are loveable.  Recently, all of this pressure I put on myself to look good, finally burst and, much to my delight, I found myself surrounded by people so full of love, all saying “YES” to my brokenness....all saying “YES” to the vulnerability I desired to share...all saying “YES” to the raw honesty I finally let spill from my lips...all saying “YES” to the REAL me...the mama, wife, daughter, sister, friend, minister who deconstructed walls and fell apart a little. 

Valentine's Day is the day we celebrate love.  It's the day we do our best to show our love to others.  But.....what if this year, we allow ourselves to be known, to be accepted, to be loved?  What if this year, we discard our masks, deconstruct our walls and stop hiding behind our busyness, our electronics, our need to look good?  What if this year, we stop hiding behind alcohol, sex, food, religion, schoolwork, exercise, politics or whatever we name the walls we put up around ourselves?  What if this year, we have the GUMPTION (one of my favorite words) to say, “I'm ready to be honest with myself”, “I'm ready to be vulnerable”, “I'm ready to be known and loved”? 

Even Jesus, in his own blessed and broken place of vulnerability, allowed Veronica to wipe away his sweat and blood and tears and on his way to the cross.  What if this Valentine's Day, we believe so much in our own belovedness that we are honest about the walls we construct to protect our vulnerability and invite those around us to deconstruct their walls too?  What if this Valentine's Day, we whisper our truth to the God who loves us recklessly and pray for the courage to be loved....for REAL?

Julie McCourt is the campus minister for CLC.

Love in Action...

A mantra that resonates throughout my whole being these days was written in the book The Brothers Karamazov by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dorothy Day was a big fan of Dostoyevsky’s work, and her words have also been stewing within me as I reflect upon the words of Jesus and the challenge to live the Gospel. Dostoyevsky writes that “love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

It occurs to me from time to time that life is work, and loving requires a “long apprenticeship”, as Dostoyevsky also notes in the The Brothers Karamazov. The easy roads are rarely sustainable, for they are often destructive and tend to be self-focused. On these journeys our attention is often diverted as we look for pleasure rather than joy. But, it is true that I am oversimplifying a bit, for each of us are guilty of seeking what is comfortable in our day to day lives, and avoiding what is painful or difficult. There are few people I know who would intentionally walk into a lion’s den, and this is a very good thing.

Yet, learning to love requires that we begin to see the beauty beyond the agony and brokenness in our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are invited to enter both the agony and the ecstasy of one another—the joys and sorrows of those who suffer with us on our journey to God.

To look at reality as it is, then, is to begin to see what is both terrifyingly beautiful and completely broken. The old nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty” goes like this: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall/Humpty Dumpty had a great fall/All the kings horses and all the kings me/Could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again”.

The precise origin of the rhyme is relatively unknown, and it’s meaning is also uncertain. Without doing extensive research on this egg character developed within the last few hundred years in Great Britain, I will posit that it came from a place of sight—where one person noted that some brokenness

cannot be fixed by us and the systems that we create.

And so it is with us if we truly see reality as it is. We love the broken in our world and find that each member of the broken body is singing to us of ourselves. Their brokenness is rarely neat or pretty. The great temptation is to be indifferent to it all and seek our own interests. But, if we are honest with ourselves, we begin to know that we are Humpty Dumpty, and that the systems in our lives cannot piece us back together again. We need each other to be whole.

So we look to a person—Jesus, the Christ who is our hope, the One who promises to make us into “new creations” and invites us to love one another. Let us be on our way, though “learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever” (The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky).

Christy Hicks is a Campus Minister in Griesedieck Complex.