One day I visited a very dear woman, named Louella Thompson, the same lady who told me that God spoke to her. I was struggling with some relational things in my life and I shared them with Louella. Secretly I wanted her to agree with my point of view, but instead, she offered me this advice, “Lori say Psalm 23, five times a day – in bed before you get up, at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner and again when you go to bed. It works for me.”

I had a 40 minute drive back to the office and I was kinda ticked. I wanted real solutions to my problem. Instead I got some type of magical formula. How is saying Psalm 23, 5 times a day going to help me? Well God, being God “kicked my butt” and said you asked for her advice and just because it wasn’t what you wanted to hear, you’re going to just ignore it? So just to prove to myself that it was silly advice, I decided to try it.

I had memorized Psalm 23 as kid, but could only remember the open phrase, so I got out my Bible and refreshed my memory. I reluctantly said the psalm in the morning, then at noon, etc. Then I began to recite the psalm when I was feeling stressed, which was happening frequently. I began to notice that over the course of a day, my thoughts were pulled back to Psalm 23 much more frequently than the prescribed 5 times. Several weeks into this experiment I noticed that my heart and attitudes were changing as I focused on God’s truth rather than my own circumstances.

Once again the woman of God, Louella was right. God bless her! Saying Psalm 23 isn’t a magical solution, but the principle of focusing our thoughts towards God is life changing. Find what works for you, and allow yourself to be drawn into God’s arms.

Years later I fell in love with The Message’s translation of Psalm 23.

Psalm 23: A David Psalm
1-3 God, my shepherd! I don't need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.

True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.

4 Even when the way goes through
Death Valley,
I'm not afraid
when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd's crook
makes me feel secure.

5 You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.

6 Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I'm back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.

Eucharist - I am the Bread of Life

With a small satellite group at Westwinds we've been exploring the different ways the Eucharist is expressed and experienced by individuals. In some ways I'm kinda envious about how passionate some of my Catholic friends are about taking communion or the Eucharist.

"A Mystical Portrait of Jesus" by Dememtrius Dumm has some wonderful insight into the Eucharist, particularly for a protestant girl like myself.

I am the living water
I am the bread of life

I am the light of the world

I am the Good Shepherd
I am the Son of God
I am who I am

do this in remembrance of me
remember my deep, abiding love for you
as the Father and I are one, I long to be with you

bread and wine
sustains me
flows through me

satifisfies me

nourishes me

gives me - life-energy

physically spirituality
JESUS

Best part of my day

Best part of my yester-day, Sunday.

- Sitting with a potential new WWKid volunteer and listening to her story about her relationship with God. She is exactly the kind of person I want working with our kids! Hope she decides to join our team!

On Sunday's you can have TWO "best parts" of your day. If you haven't figured it out if it's your "game" you can change the rules as often and anyway you please!

So my second "best part of my day" was when I asked my son, Jeff, "what was the best part of your day?" He replied, "making my Moses' diorama in the art studio at church." That was a huge surprise to me since Jeff is more a sports type of dude. I was so pleased to hear his response!

Being Transformed

The other day I was working on a child dedication parent meeting. I had purchased some material designed to help parents nurture their kids’ spiritual journey. Obviously I really liked the material since I purchased it. It was grounded in scripture, hands on, age appropriate, hands-on, ya de da.

As I began working with the material, I made a few changes that fit more my style and then I just stopped dead in my tracks. As a foundational point to building a Christian home, the curriculum was emphasizing the verse “we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.”

WHY? Why start with sin? Isn’t there an earlier beginning that isn’t rooted in sin? All of my recent reading, studying, and conversations with my co-worker/boss, Dave, and his current series on Genesis 1-2 about creation and the image of God came flooding in.

No, I couldn’t start with sin, because that isn’t where the Story of God began. It began with creation, when a loving God designed and formed mankind to become His “image bearers” to reflect His love. It began with an invitation to be in relationship with this awesome Creator God; a continual invitation to be part of His Kingdom work, a continual invitation to be transformed and more perfectly reflect His image.

It feels very different approaching

a creator God who already knows me

and has all along been inviting me into relationship with Him

VERSES

a God, I don’t know yet, but somehow I have already failed and disappointed Him.

Upon reflection I was surprised at how strongly I reacted against that Roman verse. Not because I don’t believe that we are sinners, but because I’m don’t feel that it’s the right place to start a conversation about God.

I’m not the same person I was four years ago. My deeper understanding of the image of God has radically changed some of my core thinking. I think I'm being transformed into a new creation!

Facing Your Inner Self

Jean Vanier, the Canadian philosopher and Catholic social innovator founded a community centered around people with mental disabilities, L’Arche. One observer said, “Jean Vanier finds gifts where others see tragedy.” (speakingoffaith.publicradio.org, The Wisdom of Tenderness)

When asked why do we do such a bad job of addressing pain and weakness. Why is that so excruciating for us? Vanier replied, “there are many elements. First of all, we don’t know what to do with our own pain, so what to do with the pain of others? We don’t know what to do with our own weakness except hide it or pretend it doesn’t exist. So how can we welcome fully the weakness of another if we haven’t welcomed our own weakness? . . . Martin Luther King says something, which I find quite beautiful and strong. . . we will continue to despise people until we have recognized, loved and accepted what is despicable in ourselves.”

So what do you despise about yourself? What is it that you find so awful that you cannot accept? What would your answer be? Laziness, lack of self discipline, never got a college degree, had an abortion, lied on your taxes to save money, slept with someone before you got married, misused drugs, sex, food or alcohol, or all of the above? Until I am willing to face my own “junk” – my ego, my insecurities, my pride – I will remain a judgmental person. I will not accept the other people’s weaknesses. C.S. Lewis describes a prideful person as always looking down at others, so that they can feel good about themselves.

Father God. . .I pray for courage to face my “junk”,

to examine my fears and insecurities;

to face the things to cause me pain;

to become much more aware of my inner motivations.

Becoming my true-self is HARD work!

Hold me in your love, as I pray for courage to journey forward.

Patient Trust - a prayer

When I was a little kid, I used to think that if you needed to read a prayer than you must not really know how to talk to God on your own. I was stupid.

Today I find it powerful to read a prayer in unison. I love to read other people's prayers because they say what I may be thinking but have not been able to express. One of my favorite prayer books is Hearts on Fire, Praying with the Jesuits. It's a companion book of prayer that goes along with St. Ignatius' spiritual exercises.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability ---
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually -- let them grow.
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ (Hearts on Fire, Praying with Jesuits, page 102)

Morning walk - a prayer

Awareness: that is a key word in my life.

In the early morning darkness I am very aware of my surroundings.
I hear the nuts falling through the tree branches and hitting the ground;
the morning dew dripping off the leaves;
the deer lurking in the shadows, breathing quietly;
the twinkling stars shining brilliantly in the early morning sky;
the awesome silence that is so deep you can fall into it.

These are gifts from God.
Even at 5 am, out in the yard with my dog, God meets me.

Nature walks as a prayer

Allie and I walked in our backyard to find these treasures from nature. . . . perhaps the real treasure was found in holding her hand and enjoying our time together.

At the end of our 15-minute nature walk, I silently said, "amen."

Personal art as prayer

Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning, “to have possession of one’s essence.” It is a sacred circle with a centerpoint, a universal image that has long been a source of the experience of oneness and wisdom. It uses symbolic forms to draw out truth from the unconscious. These symbols help connect our inner life to our outer life. The making of a mandala requires from us an attitude of receptivity and reverence. It is a search for and a recording of our deepest self at one moment in time and serves as a container for our deepest emotions. There is something about creating a circular design, which seems to draw us inward. With its spiritual origins, the mandala appears to be a ready-made prayer form. . . . .(Drawing to God by Jeri Gerding)

Last month during my spiritual direction weekend, I had the opportunity to create a mandala. For an hour I got to “play” with a three cent paper plate and a couple of markers. At the end, we were asked to “hold” our mandala and pray with it over this next month. We were encouraged to hear the message that it shared, reassured that there is no right or wrong answer or explanation for our mandala.

. . . .here are my reflections: I’ve looked at the mandala over the last couple of weeks. I’ve turned it around and wondered at the strong bold line and the twisting green branches. I’ve noticed the repetition of circles or circular edges.

At the beginning of this part of my spiritual journey, I was concerned that I was moving away from God, that this mysterious, foreign way (for me) of approaching God would ultimately “require” me to choose something else over Jesus.

My mandala expresses a journey that started with Jesus, my heart’s desire. The journey has pushed the boundaries of my understanding of God. Some of my understandings have deepen and others are completely NEW. I feel like I’ve met the Holy Spirit for the first time. I've realized that understanding God is less important than loving Him and accepting His love for me.

My mandala represents the cycle of leaving and arriving; dying and growing; going into the desert and returning to community.

My mandala design continues to the back of the circle and ultimately ends back at the center, back at the heart. The image reminds me of an egg waiting to be fertilized.

A new creation, a new life is about to be formed. My journey has resulted in a new creation: my true-self. A true image of Lori Ann Mero Tate, the precious daughter of our Father, Creator God.

Living in the Mystery

Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne: Things that are just on the surface, easy to believe, are not the whole story. There's a deeper, stranger and more satisfying story to be found, both in science and in religion.

John Polkinghorne, had a distinguished career as a Cambridge physicist before also becoming an Anglican priest. His perspective transcends cultural controversies that see science and religion at odds. He uses quantum physics and chaos theory to think about religious mysteries and how the world actually works; from evolution and the afterlife, for example, to how the universe might make space for prayer. (www.speakingoffaith.org)

I will not claim to have anything but a very superficial understanding of quantum physics. So superficial I probably have no "right" to comment on anything a brilliant man like Polkinghorne would say. I'm not saying these things in false humility, they are true, I don't get physics.

Patterns however intrigue me. I love to find patterns or themes in my various readings, personal experiences, etc. I like to “connect the dots” as my co-worker frequently says. So when I heard Polkinghorne mention that things in the physical world can be both/and, such as light can be both wave and particle, it resonated with me. This idea that everything is not simply black and white, either/or, but things can exist both/and was not the only place I had encountered this concept of “holding things in tension.”

Einstein made a famous statement, “the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” Mystery is not ignorance or confusion, nor is it a gap in knowledge that is waiting to be filled, or a set of questions awaiting answers. Mystery can be known without being solved. It can be experienced, sensed, felt, appreciated, even loved, without being understood. This may not be easy; it requires a surrender of all willfulness, a risking of self-image and a nurturing of intuition. (Will and Spirit, by Gerald May)

There is tension in holding this deeper understanding of both/and. I want everything laid out clearly. I want to know right from wrong and in many situations right and wrong can be clearly discerned. But as I have personally grown I understand that less and less things fall neatly into the right/wrong or either/or category.

God is calling me to hold more and more things in tension. To live in a mystery in which only He holds the “key.”

Surprisingly I find myself becoming more comfortable in my “uncomfortableness.”
I am becoming more willing and able to rest in the “unknown” and not have all the answers!

Maybe this is faith?
Maybe faith is holding and living in the mystery of God.
I wonder. . .

The pond - sacred space

The other day we spent the afternoon at my parents. We had DISH installed so they will be ready when the analog signals are replaced 100 percent with digital. We figured if they had the exact same system as us, then via the phone even Jeff could help walk my elderly parents through the remote control buttons.

My parents live in a small community of about 50 houses. The little community is located between Hudson and Morenci, Michigan. This is where I grew up after leaving Detroit at age 10. I was the “city slicker” living in the country.

About a mile away from our house, down an old road that was only used by a local farmer, there was a small cabin on a pond nestled in a patch of woods. This secret hideaway was actually owned by a couple from our church, so the no trespassing sign I’m sure did not apply to me!

This secluded pond became “my sacred place.” I spent hours at the pond with my dog and journal. I went back there when I was sad, when I was hurt, when I was lonely, when I needed to think. The 20 minute journey back to the pond was therapeutic for my soul. I prayed, journal, cried, laughed. This place is in my soul.

As I grew older and first went away to college, then lived in Detroit, I always made my way back to this special spot. Once while living in Kentucky, I had had a relationship that turned south. It was crazy, but I was hurting and needed to go home. The weather forecast was crappy a big winter storm was moving in, schools were canceling, but I set out on a 6 hour drive home. It took me 9 hours to make it home.

The next day I put on some cross country skis and went back to the pond. The snow absorbed all noise and there was a deep, rich silence that I had never encountered before. The presence of God was so strong I could touch it. I finally breathed deeply.

The pond - part of my early journey

The desire for contemplative prayer has been growing inside me since I was a young girl. As a quiet, introverted child I spent time back in the woods with my dog. I would take my journal and drawing pad, write poems, journal, talk to God. There was a special place about a mile from home. It was a small pond with a tiny cabin. People from our church owned it so I knew it was OK for me to be there, though I never asked for permission!

The pond

Pond
Sacred space
Inviting, anticipating, listening
Touched by God’s Spirit
Peace

I don’t know if I would call myself a contemplative person or not,
but if I am it all started at the pond.