The Blossoming

(Here are some things I am remembering.)

The wise Christine Valters Paintner (or Christine V P, for simplicity’s sake today) asked a question and gave a little assignment in last week’s “Abbey of the Arts” newsletter. You can explore her beautiful website and sign up for a weekly update at http://www.abbeyofthearts.com.   She said, “Imagine that God gazes with delight on the beauty of who you are. What aspects of your being can you imagine God relishing? Rest in this awareness of the joy and delight of God in your own beautiful blossoming for several minutes.”

Well.

I don’t know about that.

It assumes so much! That I am blossoming. Beautiful. That God relishes all this. That God delights in me.

Theoretically, I get it. Because that is how God is, no? God is love! I’ve heard it forever.

But it challenges me, pokes a little. Because apparently I still have a few issues, a bit of healing, that needs to come after my years of growing up in a Baptist church, listening to weekly sermons, most of which ended with an altar call and the plea to get right with God so that you could be confident of your eternal resting place. All you had to do, the pastor implored, was to pray a little prayer, something like what he was about to pray (Just follow along, why don’t you? It’s easy!) And you would then be assured that you would be saved and would not go to hell when you died. Even better? If you would please take a walk down the long center aisle of the church, where everyone could see you, to let the pastor know that you had prayed this prayer.  That would really assure your fate. And all the good members of the church would rejoice with you!

I’m not sure when I prayed that prayer the first time. Honestly, I’m not sure when I prayed it the last time, either. Because I didn’t do it just once. I probably did it every week for years and years. Even though I repeated exactly what the pastor said, word for word, I was never really sure that it worked.

I guess I mostly did not grow up, then, with any deep sense that God delighted in me. Instead, I apparently grew up with a deep fear that I wasn’t getting it right. I am certain this was not anybody’s intention, not my Sunday school teachers or youth leaders or the pastor, lovely well-intentioned people, all.  Over the years, the people in my church almost became  like family to me. Church members donated money for my numerous college mission trips. When I got engaged, they gave me a lovely bridal shower. They always welcomed me back when I returned after time away. I never doubted that my church family loved me.  I just never was completely sure that God did.

When I was young, I dreaded communion Sunday. It came around once a month. I was in church for years before my parents let me take communion. It was a serious thing, the sipping of the grape juice from the teeny tiny glass cup, the eating of the miniature cracker, which was about as big as my pinky nail. If you did it and you were not properly prayed up, you might “drink the cup in an unworthy manner” and be “guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord (1 Corinthians 11: 27).  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t good.

For a long time, I felt ashamed when I had to pass the trays on to the person sitting next to me, without taking any for myself. I thought everyone  would judge me, assume that I wasn’t one of the gang yet. One Sunday, my mom whispered to me that I could have some, too. After my initial relief and happiness, I started to worry that I hadn’t properly confessed all of my sins and that I might not do this right, either.

Also, there were those pesky sermons about the “unforgiveable sin” that Jesus talks about in the Gospels, something about “blaspheming against” or “cursing” the Holy Spirit.

What if I did this unforgiveable thing without realizing it? What was it, really? Nobody seemed to know, exactly.

It is funny to remember all of this on this beautiful, blossoming Saturday morning.

God delights in me?

I still don’t think I totally believe it, if I am honest with you.

I am getting closer, though. Centering Prayer, and silence, have been the gateway for that.

Silence.

Kind of the opposite of the weekly church sermon and the altar call, with a man standing in the pulpit, expounding on the Bible, verse by verse.

Silence has healed me. Also, a thoughtful question or two.

What if my pastor had ever asked what the wise Christine V P did in her newsletter last week? What if he had said, “What aspects of your being can you imagine God relishing?”

What if he had encouraged the congregation to “rest in this awareness of the joy and delight of God in your own beautiful blossoming”?  What if this was what I heard every week instead of that altar call? How might my life have been different?

Impossible to know.

But how would I answer that question now?

Maybe God relishes that I love the birds outside the window, and that I love this little piece of land, and that I am working to help it heal.

Maybe God loves that there are lilacs on the table, that I went outside and cut a few from the bush which is heavy with them. God loves that I now know the name of the other flowering bush outside, thanks to my good neighbor, who corrected me the other day: it is “flowering quince.” And the California lilac that I planted years ago, the Ceonothus! It is so lovely. Maybe God loves that I love the bees that are on this beautiful shrub.

God loves that I downloaded a bird identification app from Cornell University and learned that the birds who descended on the feeders that I had never seen before were evening grosbeaks. God loves evening grosbeaks (I am sure of this)! God loves that I let the dog steal my blanket and that he is at my feet, and we are together here. God delights in all the new recipes I am trying from all over the world, in cookbooks that I get from the library that open up the world, so many new flavors.

God delights in all the things that delight me.

Maybe this is so?

I had never thought of it this way before. It is going to take some practice.