I Need Thy Sense of Time, or Howard Thurman Rocks!

Oh, I have not posted to this blog in too long.  I have bad news and good news.  
Bad news first.  
I have been working way, way, too hard and too much
mired in old patterns of trying to please people 
(patterns which criticism seems to trigger and 
this has been a year of criticism at the church).  
So I stopped working out.  
I started eating too much (stress-eating).
For the most part, I stopped dancing.
I stopped going to see my chiropractor in November.  Too busy.


Then a few weeks ago my back and neck were in such a sorry state that I went back to my chiropractor.  It turns out a rib in my back was out of place.  This has happened since high school and I can usually tell, but it had been so long since I'd checked in with my body that I didn't notice until there I was on my chiropractor's table for the first time in months.  I felt it.  I told him.  He put it back.  My muscles, used to it being out of place, did not like this.  One bit. They started yelling.  Oy. Major spasms, stiffness, pain.

Several treatments later, driving out of his parking lot, I remembered something my mentor told me years ago.  If you are serving a contentious church, you need to take care of yourself to the point where it feels like pampering, until it feels indulgent!  How did I forget that?  So I called my massage therapist and booked an appointment.  I called my sweetie and said, "Let's go away for a couple days during April school vacation!"


And that brings me to the good news.  I have a sweetie!  We met online last summer and in person in August.  His name is Rich.  He's a civil engineer and works on road construction projects for the state.  

He's a middle manager, oversees several projects at once - so he knows all about having lots of responsibility and no real authority.  Like ministers.  Ha ha.  And he's very sweet and very grounded and wise, and affectionate and generous.  I am one lucky woman.  He has made this year of criticism bearable.


Recently I re-discovered this poem/prayer with them by the wonderful, the awesome Howard Thurman.  It speaks volumes right to my soul.  And I love the "Gentle Father" towards the end.

I Need Thy Sense of Time

Prayer by Howard Thurman (1951)

I Need Thy Sense of Time

Always I have an underlying anxiety about things.

Sometimes I am in a hurry to achieve my ends

And am completely without patience. It is hard for me

To realize that some growth is slow,

That all processes are not swift. I cannot always discriminate

Between what takes time to develop and what can be rushed,

Because my sense of time is dulled.

I measure things in terms of happenings.

O to understand the meaning of perspective

That I may do all things with a profound sense of leisure, of time.

I Need Thy Sense of Order

The confusion of the details of living

Is sometimes overwhelming. The little things

Keep getting in my way providing ready-made

Excuses for failure to do and be

What I know I ought to do and be.

Much time is spent on things that are not very important

While significant things are put into an insignificant place

In my scheme of order. I must unscramble my affairs

So that my life will become order. O God, I need

Thy sense of order.

I Need Thy Sense of the Future

Teach me to know that life is ever

On the side of the future.

Keep alive in me the forward look, the high hope,

The onward surge. Let me not be frozen

Either by the past or the present.

Grant me, O patient Father, Thy sense of the future

Without which all life would sicken and die.

Last week Rich and I spent two days in Maine.  I came back to dance at the New England Folk Festival all weekend.  By mid-day Saturday my heart had begun to sing.  I can still hear it, through the criticism.  Oh yes, nearly pampered. Almost right.

Singer, Song, and Responder

It is spring, a cool spring but spring all the same.  The trees have put out their flowers and/or leaves, and the birds have returned.  One recent morning, listening to a bird singing, I had a little epiphany.  That bird's brain and vocal apparatus evolved so it could sing this particular song to ears that evolved to hear it and a brain shaped to respond to it.

The song shaped both singer and listener and both singer and listener shaped the song.  The singer could not have sung a song that did not fit the shape of its throat or the sound of its voice.  A song the other could not receive or respond to would not have been sung for long.  There was a co-evolution of those three entities- singer, song, and responder.

I have been thinking about this in relation to my sense of calling, which has changed a great deal since I first heard it, as a child.  At first it just confused me because I grew up in a religion where, as female, I could not respond to it.

Many years later, after finding a religion where I could respond to that call, I heard that song again.  Had Spirit been singing it all along?  Had I stopped listening, tuning it out because of my inability to respond, or had the song stopped altogether?  Had the song changed so I could hear it, or had my situation changed to allow me to perceive it?   Both?  Sometimes I think too much and it makes my head hurt.

When it first came back my calling niggled at me - and I tried to resist it.  After all, I'd been pursuing a career as an academic for years - all those years in graduate school.  I didn't want to jettison all that effort and time.   Gradually it grew louder, or so it seemed - more insistent, harder to resist.

The first time I stood in the pulpit to share a sermon with my minister it was clear as clear, "This is what I was meant to do with my life."  My call came from and to the pulpit.  At that point it felt like there was no choice but to respond.  It was like an instinct, as irresistible to me then as singing that song was to that bird this spring.  Within a month I was filling out applications to seminary.

Looking back after eight years of experience, it feels like my calling has been tuning me, all along.  Both that song and its mysterious singer have pushed, pulled and coaxed me to change substantially as a person and as a minister.  They have tuned me to serve as I do, which changes at least some of those I serve, who in turn change me.  My sense of the source of my call has also changed.  Is it possible that Singer changes too?  I believe it does.  There are layers to this, strata that I suppose are like harmonies, to stretch the metaphor a bit further.  The song is complex.

Maybe we only hear parts of it at different points in our lives.  Maybe we will never hear the whole thing.  Maybe that doesn't matter, given that what we do hear can be this beautiful, this difficult, this challenging, this amazing.  Maybe what matters is hearing what we can hear, and responding as best we can in the moment, knowing that our response may change us enough to hear another part of song.

Much has been happening beneath the surface of my life in recent months.  I have not posted a great deal lately because it is taking a while for it all to rise to the surface.  That requires periods of less busy-ness (which I have not had) and time alone for me. As an introvert, I need solitude to hear, feel, realize.  When you listen, what do you hear?  Is that different from what it used to be?  Has your voice changed over time?