faith

Portal to Grace

/ Linda Coggin / Leave a comment


I’ve written before about the times I have witnessed the obscure glimmering through of grace, when I actually see something that was in plain sight; something I hadn’t seen before because I was too busy making up my own story that I believed was true. It was a glimmer of hope that not all is lost, that things aren’t what I’d thought or imagined. 

Another kind of glimmer is when I’m caught by something I read or overhear that seems to have a message just for me

I moved my red chair where I read in the morning.  It is across from the window, now.  A square of life right before me.  Not only can I watch all the dogs that come by, but the morning light floods in that window early.

The light of the sun and those glimmers of the grace filled light converged in the novel I’m reading, Mona’s Eyes. Young Mona’s grandfather promises to fill her mind’s eye with beauty that she will remember as she faces the threat of permanent blindness. The two seekers share weekly trips to contemplate one work of art, only one, to understand how artists speak about life and how they illuminate it.

Entering the museum with her grandfather, Mona has just left a visit with her doctor whose doubts about her sight left her somber. Her grandfather waits in the quiet for  her as she gazes expectantly at the painting of the day. When she expresses the unfairness of the fate of the paralyzed young girl that the painting portrays, Mona’s grandfather hears her lament and explains,

“Yes, but look, Mona, look at the ray of light falling on both figures.  It’s what Christians consider to be a moment of grace.  As if there were two kinds of light within the picture: the light of our universe, which renders things visible…and the light of another universe, unknown and superior.  For a Christian, the moment of grace is basically when this second light, divine in origin, breaks into the daylight of humans.”

Perhaps, that is what I encountered on a recent morning. I was just doing morning yoga in front of a collage of grace hanging above my couch. A version of those images have been on the wall for nearly ten years. They represent numinous encounters where I met both the Divine Presence and myself. 

I photographed and collected these images because of the story they represent and continue to hold: M with that pensive, longing gaze; W ’s creative spirit shining through whimsical poses; A’s imperfect hand arranged to say “I love you.” There’s a photo of Blue Mary and tin walls stuffed with prayers in a shed I came upon in the woods at the Monastery at Gethsemane. 

I framed the two shiny pennies: one that we found in the driveway the day we were moving from the US and one on the floor in the house we were moving to in Canada. You see, my mom told my children, days before she died, that whenever we saw a shiny penny to think of her. Those unexpected pennies have shown up over the years reminding us of her presence in our lives still, almost a looking after us kind of feeling,  blessing what we are up to at that moment. 

There are a few more photographs. One I took at dusk on a snowy evening, another by a Canadian photographer, and a friend’s picture of a huge oak tree that are reminders of awe and wonder in this world. Lingering still, I remember the grey bark of the sycamore tree in another photo that was a pivotal encounter with my inner ageist. These images hold stories that have deepened and been recreated over time, holding a piece of that deep centre where Spirit dwells alongside the click and clack of everyday.

Today, I read another facet of grace from Richard Wagamese’s book What Comes From Spirit: 

“Sitting in that indescribable moment within you, you realize that you weren’t looking for anything when Creator dropped something marvellous into your life… It keeps me in pure state of amazement of how when unknown gaps are suddenly filled by grace (me not having to do anything), how secretly and beautifully Creator existed in those gaps all along.”   

Creator existed in those gaps between then and now depicted in those images on my wall; moments of grace when God’s light breaks into the daylight of my own. All I have to do is rest in that state of amazement.

Choosing to Remember

/ Linda Coggin / Leave a comment

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge is one of those books that tell a precious truth in disguise.   In Men Fox’s children’s book, Wilfrid is a young boy who lives next to an “old peoples” home and he knows everyone who lives there.  His favourite person to visit is 96-year-old Miss Nancy and he tells her all his secrets. He heard his mother and father say that Miss Nancy has lost her memory.  Wilfrid doesn’t even know what a memory is so he asks everyone he knows to find out in his desire to help Miss Nancy find her’s.  Listen to the story here to discover what Wilfred learned and shared.   

In the past two weeks, I’ve been fortunate to listen myself to memories of four women in particular who have lived decades longer than me.  I realize how important it is for me to attentively listen to what I imagine is a mixture of fact and fiction lived out in their real lives. I envision the years have reshaped those memories. Like Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, we all refashion what we have been given to remember and to share.

I believe that what we remember is a way of listening to our lives. 

In A Room to Remember, Buechner writes,

In one sense the past is …over and done with, but in another sense,… it is not done with us. Every person we have ever known, every place we have been, everything that has ever happened to us— it all lives and breathes deep in us somewhere whether we like it or not, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to bring it to the surface in bits and pieces…Times too beautiful to tell or too terrible.

These are the kind of memories that come more or less on their own and apart from any choice we consciously make. But in A Room to Remember, Buechner proposes remembering as a conscious act for good in that the power of remembering becomes our own power.  And that is the essence of the stories my four dear friends choose to share with me.

Sometimes we are reluctant to talk about what really matters.  We don’t always tell the whole story.  Even in my journal, sitting alone, I disguise parts of my life because they are difficult to face. We leave out the parts that, for some reason, we are hesitate to say out loud.

The strength of the women who trusted me to listen is that they are remembering on purpose.  They are consciously recalling years that have gone by but are not gone.  Each story they share is felt and fresh and alive with both who they were at their best or their worst and who they have become. 

What do I choose to remember?

I, too, am encouraged to remember what makes me laugh and cry and warm with wonder. Remembering what is precious as gold with a new understanding of who I am and given new strength for what comes next.  

Blessing Our Dust

/ Linda Coggin / Leave a comment

For me, Ash Wednesday is the most significant part of the Lenten/Easter season. The words from Genesis are simple bodily truth: “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The ashes on my forehead are real, tangible evidence of an unvarnished truth. The mark of that dust invites us to do the necessary work of caring for ourselves and others.

Early in the day, I made soup for the Inclusive Christians’ group at University of Victoria. The group attends to their “unique voice as a student group that centers queer and IBPoC voices, following the same Jesus who disrupts the status quo, making space for marginalized people.” As I chopped, roasted, and simmered, I consciously remembered those young people who will be nourished by one another when they meet later for communion and the soup supper.  

After dropping off our soup, my friend and I attended an Ash Wednesday Taize service—very little talk, space filled with silence, candlelight, and Taize chants.  Over and over, we sang words, sometimes in a language I didn’t understand that filled me with a sense of Holy presence.  “Come and fill our hearts with your peace, Come and fill us with Your love.”

The opening prayer of releasing seemed especially fitting to me. Let me unclench my fists and release what I’ve done recently whether for good or ill, what I haven’t done and what I need to do soon.  I release fear, anxiety, impatience, pride and everything that pulls me away from you, God. 

After the contemplation and the imposition of ashes, a reading of “Blessing the Dust” by Jan Richardson completed the liturgy. At the end we were asked to put our hand on the shoulder of someone near us. My friend and I briefly acknowledged each other and then my friend put her hand on the person seated alone in front of her. Thankfully, I noticed the woman I’d seen here many times who was also sitting alone.  I took a step toward her to place my hand on her shoulder. She put her hand over mine holding on for her life and mine. Her eyes, filled with generosity, met my gaze. We left in silence with no need for words.

When I returned home, I happened to read an old blog that reassured me about the troubles I sought to release— not to ignore them but to glimpse beyond how I perceive my life in this small window of time.

Cynthia Bourgault writes that “as the heart comes alive as an organ of perception, we are able to perceive the invisible kingdom of love that surrounds us—and live it into being.”

How do I nurture my heart to perceive the kingdom of love that surrounds me—and live it into being?  I know quite well what I need to release.

Holding

/ Linda Coggin / Leave a comment

It seems like the best books I’ve read lately are, at their core, about abandonment, sorrow, and how our hearts ache.  And yet, the hearts of the people in those stories also break open with love that defies understanding. All My Puny Sorrows and The Summer of my Amazing Luck by Miriam Toews and The Color of Water and Deacon King Kong by James McBride are stories of redemption and living the lives we’ve been given in great Love. 

We all have “holes in our lives,” Miriam Towes writes, and “people like to talk about their pain and loneliness in disguised ways.” Maybe it is that we (I) really can’t honestly say what our holes of longing are but we get a lump in our throat or tears that stay in our eyes, or heaviness in our heart when we encounter that empty place. Pay attention to those tears, or whatever physical manifestation gets your attention. 

I wonder if that is what happened to me the other day. I was retreating into an episode of “Escape to the County,” a twist on those house hunting shows.  Except in this one I glean a bit more. I learn a little more about the United Kingdom where the episodes are filmed and, instead of the focus on finding the right house, the host explores the features of a community and offers the seekers experiences to get to know the locals. The goal seems to be to get a glimpse of what their life might be like in that place.  

In this case, the life change seeking couple were invited to the community Waffle Restaurant where “good food and doing good go hand and hand.”  The owner explained that the thrust of the business was to reach out to the lonely and promote opportunities for people to come together, to chat with people they might not otherwise encounter. A sign on the wall of the establishment featured a quote from Mother Theresa, Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.  The poster reminded those in the place about their ‘waffle work’. The locals in this community call it “wafflin” a play on the words ‘talking everyday talk’. 

I think it was when the owner said, “reach out to the lonely”  that the tears in my eyes disguised a hole in my life.  Perhaps that is what we all long for, a place to belong and be ourselves. Perhaps, I wished to be part of a community of people that met each other intentionally with that kind of reciprocal care.

Both Miriam Toews and James Mc Bride spin stories of redemption, finding goodness in unlikely places and circumstances, seeing people as God must see them.  Or as a member of the street community where I live said in a local documentary, “Sitting with Grace:” “You’d find so many of our negatives would fall away because you’re utilizing our strengths instead of going after us for our weaknesses.” 

I believe I did that, maybe, in my life as a teacher; finding the strength and interests of some who were only seen as someone to be fixed, remediated, turned around from whatever path they seemed to be traveling that others didn’t understand or bless.  I have a little more trouble giving that acceptance in the general population, to those who might have obvious advantages or even members of my own family.  Perhaps, I don’t sometimes give that grace to myself.

In The Color of Water, James McBride concludes that “at the end of the day there are some questions that have no answer and then one answer that has no question: Love rules the day.” In McBride’s Deacon King Kong, the goodbye often used with members of Deacon’s local congregation, “I hope God holds you in the palm of His hand,” is painted on the back wall of the church for the world to hear.  Maybe I don’t have a better way to fill our holes.

I hope God holds you in the palm of her hand. And I know what a capacious hand it must be.