Abi's 13th Blogiversary!

Well...here we are with another two-year skip! 👀  Even for your wee purple abbess, the past two years have been something else all together...but it seems appropriate that I would choose 2020 -- the Purple Year -- for returning to blogging. 💜 

So many things have happened in the past two years...so many things have happened in the past 13 years! I am a very different person in so many ways--it will be interesting to unpack and process some of that here.

I spent the first few years sharing the 10-year process of my deconstruction of institutional religion, from 2005-2015. There were only a few posts during the rubble-clearing years, from 2016-2018. There were no posts last year, which was the year of leveling the ground and laying the new foundation. And this is the first post in 2020, into the third quarter of what has been a wildly liminal year, even before the corona virus changed life as we knew it.

It has been 15 years since I have actually engaged in the life and ministry of a local congregation. It seems so strange to see that in writing...and that it has been such a long period of time. It is not surprising that it should take me 15 years to work my way out of 49 years of experience and expectation...it was planted so deep into my core that I didn't even realize that lots of that stuff was there!

But I did come across an interesting post from 10 years ago about the iconic iMonk that deeply resonates with where I am today. In it I ponder what I called the Perichoretic Community, which is what I've lately been calling Core of Four (Co4). I've also been pondering a Rule of Life again, and remains the amazing fundamental concept of cHesed.

I've been talking for so many years about finally getting around to processing Perichoretic cHesed. Its time may have finally come...or not. We'll just see how things roll out. But it may be closer, since I have been attending a new church plant in my community and am slowly beginning to engage there. We will see what Papa and Jesus and Sarayu have planned for me and for that community.

Stay tuned...😎

Be blessed. 

Abi

Abi and The Last Synchroblog....

This post is part of the Final Synchroblog.  I have not always participated, but it has been a blessing to do so when able. The October 21, 2015 Synchroblog invites bloggers to imagine what they would say if they were writing their last blog post. 

Update:  10/21/15 ... the first release of links for other participants is found at the bottom of this post.  I have a feeling there will be more trickling in, so stay tuned!

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As I am writing this post on October 19th, this will also function as the marker of my eighth blogiversary.  My very first post was on October 19, 2007.  It has been an interesting eight years....

If this were to be my last blog post, I would say that I am just beginning to understand the depths of The Purple Martyrdom.  I have written 81 different posts with this label, which makes it only second to cHesed, which has 134...or 148 if I include Perichoretic cHesed posts.

What I have learned over these past eight years of processing so much purple is that pain and suffering are all wrapped up in the mystery of life.  

Peck says that the Four Tools of Discipline are techniques of suffering. If we do not learn how to experience legitimate suffering, then we stop growing or get stuck. It is the only way forward to solving life's problems -- large or small -- and growing to be who we are truly meant to be. 

The way to growth and maturity, then, passes through pain and suffering.

• Pregnancy and childbirth are full of pain...stretching, making room for a growing life triggers other mechanisms and push and shove mothers around for nine months. For those who suffer with severe morning sickness, they wonder how they stay alive and how the baby gets any nourishment.  It also permanently changes the mother's body in the process.  There is no going back, there is only establishing a new normal.
• Those babies get squeezed pretty hard during the delivery process. But I learned how important that is when our third son was delivered too quickly for all the fluid to get squeezed out of his lungs.
• Humans gain knowledge first through experimentation, and pain is an important teacher. We learn that there are a variety of kinds of pain...and we learn to bear some kinds of pain in order to get what we want.
• Pain and suffering teach us things about ourselves and those around us. They help us develop empathy when we see others suffer in ways we have suffered. They help us develop trust in those who help us bear up under trials. They help us develop a sense of generosity and sharing for those whose suffering is greater than our own at that particular moment.
• Pain and suffering are experiences of the body, mind and spirit -- because each of those areas grow...and growth is painful and must be suffered through.
• Pain and suffering are the great equalizers.  Everyone experiences them. There are no exceptions. Not even God.

But God, whose suffering began and has endured since They chose to create, teaches us how to have compassion: to suffer with another.  

Father suffers with us in our trials, even as parents suffer watching their children suffer the pain of exploration and growth and failure and perseverance to reach mastery. He knows, as we parents do, that to intervene is to abort the learning. We set our boundaries at significant injury...but our Father is not limited to fostering growth in this life. And so there are times -- too many, it seems to us -- when He allows death to teach us difficult but important lessons.

• Lessons of love and grace and mercy for those who suffer and for those who cannot stop the suffering of others.
• Lessons of faith and trust in the Ones who know fully rather than we who peer through a glass darkly.
• Lessons of justice and restoration and reconciliation and forgiveness that call us to step out past the pain and see a much bigger picture of our interconnectedness.

Jesus suffers with us because He has suffered and been tempted in all ways that humans experience...with one big difference.  He chose to suffer out of love for us. And He sits and suffers with each of us all day, every day...even as we are blind to our own suffering.  He calls for us to lean into His arms and know that we are fully loved -- even when we don't know what that means, exactly.  He calls us to love one another as He has loved us, to live in His love even as He lives in the Father's love. He bids us transcend our pain and suffering, taking up our cross and following Him. A yoke that is easy and a burden that is light.  Not because it is not difficult, but because He bears the burden with us.

The Holy Spirit -- who I call Grand Mother -- suffers with us in the being and knowing of who we really are and, more importantly, who we are becoming...according to our willingness to let Her guide and instruct us. To make disciples of our hearts and minds as She bids us let go of the lies we have believed about ourselves (and God!). Grand Mother calls us to be who we have been created to be...and She suffers when we cannot see ourselves -- and others -- with Their eyes.

To be is to suffer.

To suffer is to be called to grown and learn.

To suffer is to be called to bear one another's burdens.

To suffer is to be called to humbly give and receive help to and from one another.

To suffer is to be called to realize that we cannot know all the whys and hows.

To suffer is to be called to trust that God is actively at work, bringing good out of evil. The evil somehow must be suffered through...as we learn and grow and share and care for each other and this precious Creation in which we live.

Everyone is suffering, to some degree, pretty much all the time.  Even if there is an obvious source of pain, there will be other suffering that is not visible to our eyes. To try to measure whose suffering is worse than another's suffering is not a helpful exercise. Rather, choose to love and give the benefit of the doubt. See with the eyes of your heart...the one that is full of wounds than nobody else sees unless we choose vulnerability and transparency.

Pain and suffering is more than I can really wrap my brain around. But it helps me to know Those who see it all and know it all and have the whole mess under control as we muddle our way through the blood, sweat and tears...our own and one another's.

But every once in a while, I get a wee glimpse of what God is on about. The techniques of suffering may be the tools of discipline, but the will to consistently use those tools is what Peck calls love ... and I call cHesed: purposeful favor (grace) perpetually initiated (mercy) with deliberate affection (love).  

To the degree we trust God's cHesed for US, we will be able to endure the pain and suffering required to grow and help others grow.

If I don't ever write another post, this last one would see me through. Because this wee reality of ours cannot compare to the Reality in which Father, Son and Spirit dwell in Perichoretic cHesed -- the Great Dance into which Jesus bids us enter. Already we are to live in this Reality, even as it is not yet fully realized.  The paradox of the now/not yet is painful.

We suffer for a short while...but God is making all things new, in Their time, and I hear that it will make everything we have suffered worth it.  

I don't know how.  

It's a mystery.

Be blessed....

Abi

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Thanks to all the bloggers who participated this month. We hope you enjoy reading their posts!

K.W. Leslie – Synchrobloggery

Glenn Hager – Parting Shot

Clara Mbamalu – What is love?

Carol Kuniholm – A Final Synchroblog

Leah Sophia – Synchroblog: Creation One More Time

Jeremy Myers – If this were my only blog post, I would invite you to do one thing

J. A. Carter – Last Words

Tony Ijeh – Sharing Jesus

Liz Dyer – Last words about love

Abi's Ephiphany...9 Years Later

Nine years ago, I had an Ephiphany ephiphany...I had a vision on January 6, 2006, (with words, if that makes any sense) of a community I came to call CovenantClusters.  I had been trying to take a much needed nap (chronic exhaustion being the normal state of an elderly mother of three young boys). But instead of sleep, ideas -- actually, words -- intruded.  These words were so persistent that I asked God if I should get up and write them down.  I know it was God, because the boys all slept through the three hours I spend writing it down, very much like dictation...with drawings and everything! Over the next year, I worked it up into quite an interesting church planting proposal.

Fortunately, no one was interested it in.  Whew...dodged a bullet with that one!

Of course, at the time, I was disheartened...but over the years I have had the opportunity to learn and experience so many things that have changed just about everything concerning how I see the church. To have moved out earlier might have meant missing all of that...and probably would have meant an Epic Fail!

It is fascinating to me to see how that vision has changed so much while remaining unchanged over all these years. How I adore paradoxes.  ;^)   Most of the change has been related to changes in my perspective and perception, as my vision changed from church planting strategy to missional communitas fostering.  I also began to realize that the vision was not something that God wanted me to undertake, but was a glimpse of something that God wanted me to be able to recognize some day...something that They are working to bring together.

I don't know how many more years it will be until I bump into that awesome vision in real life, but I have plenty to do in the meantime...and both Perichoretic cHesed and Simple Living will be core components.

Today, when we remember the arrival of the Wise Men -- bringing precious gifts to honor and worship Father's Eternal Son Incarnate -- may we be reminded that we (all that we are and all that we have) are the precious gifts we are to bring to Jesus...and then relax as He leads us with gracious loving-kindness into The Great Dance.

This day.

Every day.

Special shoes not required.  ;^)

Expectantly,

Abi

Abi's "One Sentence Summary"

I am always fascinated by the pathways the Spirit leads me down!  Today's led me to the blog of Andrew Perriman, to whom I was introduced during the work of producing Wikiklesia, Volume One: Voices of the Virtual World.

Anyway, I found my way to this post, which I found interesting. The challenge was to capture the message of the Bible in one sentence. So I decided to make a wee attempt [after two years of processing, Baxter!], which ended up in their spam filter...but I copied it so I could paste it here:

Hello, Andrew! Very late to the convo, but here's my wee attempt:

From Eternity, God has dwelt as Father, Son and Spirit in 3-in-1 Perichoretic cHesed, and chose to create in order to include Their Imago Dei, male and female, in Their relationship, though the "already/not yet" process was long, counter-intuitive, difficult, subversive and traumatic, as well as intimate, gracious, merciful, loving and joyous; and it would, from Eternity, require the Incarnation of the Son as Jesus the Christ--fully God and fully Human--to "finish/begin" the recreation/adoption/inclusion process via his birth, life, ministry, death, burial, resurrection, ascension and sending of the Spirit as indwelling guide and advocate for the new brothers and sisters until Chronos ceases and Kairos is our Now/Forever reality.

From an older, white, post-evangelical, Trinitarian, American "virtual abbess"...taking a page from the Apostle Paul's "run-on-sentence" playbook.  ;^)

The first time it was blocked, it erased my "sentence" ... and I was appalled because it felt like one of those times when what I wrote could not be repeated.  But then I felt like, if this was something that was really jelled in my heart, I could repeat it.  So I did...and that is what I pasted above.  And it is close...but, I think, even better than the first attempt.  So, thanks, Spam Blocker, for the help!  ;^)

Feel free to take the challenge yourself. You can go and read all the attempts at Andrew's blog first, if you want. Or you can just jump in without being influenced (other than my wee attempt above). You can put your attempt in my comments section...I will check the Spam file and rescue you if you end up there.  :^)

This was a fine exercise for this crisp, cold and blue sky day! 

Hallelujah!

Be blessed....

Abi
 

Year Seven Begins!

Well...I was so busy listening to Baxter and Paul and John from the Open Table Conference, that my Sixth Blogiversary passed on October 19th without my notice.

It is impossible to express what an important thing it has been for me to write my wee purple posts here in my little corner of the Interwebs, as my friend Bill Kinnon would say.  Whether or not it has been of use to anyone else, I cannot say...but it has been good for me to process my journey.

I am in such a different place, in just about every way, than I was back then.  But that is the whole point of a journey, isn't it?  To travel from where you are along the meandering path that life takes is how we participate in the life of God in Jesus.

There is quite a bit of dancing along the way.  I've gotten a good deal of use out of my purple dancing shoes. ;^)

Be blessed, precious companions!

Abi's story at Ed's blog

...well, my week story is up at the Women In Ministry series. 

Http://inamirrordimly.com/

Still off line...I will try to check in from time to time.

If you haven't been following the WIM series, spend some time catching up.

Be blessed...

Abi