i think to much
How do you experience the Divine?
Over the past few months, God has been threading this theme through my life: People experience Me in different ways. This helped me come to embrace and accept my own spirituality, but it also has raised a lot of questions. For example, if we accept this to be true, what does it say about how the church conducts itself? It affects the style of worship, the way we preach, the way we interact with others, everything. Because in accepting that people experience God in a vast array of sensations, we must also accept that these are all valid. That there is no right and wrong, just different. Whether you experience God through the symmetry of a crystal, or the liturgy of Holy Communion, or through thinking and rationalizing your faith, or through the feeling of a bat connecting with the ball, or through a simple touch or smile from a stranger. Each of them are true.
I tend to think of people as glass jars. Our personalities, the lives that we have lived, the journeys that we have taken, everything about our beings forms this jar. Then in these jars you pour the light of God. The light is refracted and split as it pours out from all of us, in a plethora of hues and brightness and sounds. I really like this image, because it reminds me that everyone is made in the image of God, and that no matter how cracked and imperfect the vessel, no matter how dirty and smudged the surface the light is there in everyone, if we just look hard enough.
I have been struggling with my own limitations and shortcomings. I know we can never be perfect, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to be so. But it's so easy to become so wrapped up in your faults that you forget to see how far you have come. I have never been able to qualify myself my own progress, which is why I rely on others input. Example. My last piano jury, I was devastated with how I'd done. I had performed the pieces better before. But when Dr. McGinnis came out, she told me that all the piano faculty was impressed with how much I had progressed. My pedaling was cleaner, I was a lot more musical in my phrasing, when I did make a mistake I didn't let is show and continued as if it didn't happen. But all I could see were the mistakes. I knew that I had the potential for a better performance.
I have always been acutely aware of my potential and am always disappointed at how I never seem to tap all of it. Lately this has been a big deal, because at Hickman and Truman I had people that could help me see all of the good I was doing, and help me see the good with in me as well. But this last year I haven't had that, and I'm starting to doubt myself. Am I really being called into ordained ministry? Will I really be able to make a difference, no matter how small, if I go to China? How can I be fretting about how to make the transition to California when there is so many people suffering in the world? How can I minster to these people and tell them of God's love and grace when I so stubbornly refuse it myself?
I'm just tired.
Yay for family tension everyone ignores until it bursts into a wonderful fiery inferno of emotion.
Over the past few months, God has been threading this theme through my life: People experience Me in different ways. This helped me come to embrace and accept my own spirituality, but it also has raised a lot of questions. For example, if we accept this to be true, what does it say about how the church conducts itself? It affects the style of worship, the way we preach, the way we interact with others, everything. Because in accepting that people experience God in a vast array of sensations, we must also accept that these are all valid. That there is no right and wrong, just different. Whether you experience God through the symmetry of a crystal, or the liturgy of Holy Communion, or through thinking and rationalizing your faith, or through the feeling of a bat connecting with the ball, or through a simple touch or smile from a stranger. Each of them are true.
I tend to think of people as glass jars. Our personalities, the lives that we have lived, the journeys that we have taken, everything about our beings forms this jar. Then in these jars you pour the light of God. The light is refracted and split as it pours out from all of us, in a plethora of hues and brightness and sounds. I really like this image, because it reminds me that everyone is made in the image of God, and that no matter how cracked and imperfect the vessel, no matter how dirty and smudged the surface the light is there in everyone, if we just look hard enough.
I have been struggling with my own limitations and shortcomings. I know we can never be perfect, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to be so. But it's so easy to become so wrapped up in your faults that you forget to see how far you have come. I have never been able to qualify myself my own progress, which is why I rely on others input. Example. My last piano jury, I was devastated with how I'd done. I had performed the pieces better before. But when Dr. McGinnis came out, she told me that all the piano faculty was impressed with how much I had progressed. My pedaling was cleaner, I was a lot more musical in my phrasing, when I did make a mistake I didn't let is show and continued as if it didn't happen. But all I could see were the mistakes. I knew that I had the potential for a better performance.
I have always been acutely aware of my potential and am always disappointed at how I never seem to tap all of it. Lately this has been a big deal, because at Hickman and Truman I had people that could help me see all of the good I was doing, and help me see the good with in me as well. But this last year I haven't had that, and I'm starting to doubt myself. Am I really being called into ordained ministry? Will I really be able to make a difference, no matter how small, if I go to China? How can I be fretting about how to make the transition to California when there is so many people suffering in the world? How can I minster to these people and tell them of God's love and grace when I so stubbornly refuse it myself?
I'm just tired.
Yay for family tension everyone ignores until it bursts into a wonderful fiery inferno of emotion.