An Invitation Like You've Never Known

I am so incredibly honored and excited to share space here today with Erika Morrison. Erika is one of the most vulnerable writers I know. It is evident that she keeps intimate company with the Holy Spirit and thus I implicitly trust what spills out on the page as a result of her deep and genuine soul searching. Her words have always--always--reached down into my hidden spaces to reveal the scared, yet shimmering truth of who I am.  

Today, her book Bandersnatch: An Invitation to Explore Your Unconventional Soul releases. Please hear me when I tell you this: you must read this book. 

In Bandersnatch, it feels as if Erika has taken the intimacy of all her previously written whispered truths and plumbed even deeper.
And yet she does it all with a gentle yet persistent voice. She writes just like she talks in real life--drawing you in close, welcoming you in. 

Bandersnatch illumines the truth that we are weird and wonderful and beautiful and completely unique artist souls and that our fully living into and out of those creations is the very essence of our life's work here on Earth. The world needs us to be avant-garde, to practice alchemy and to be anthropologists who "gaze at humanity with a love that is an eternity long and wide and high."

Erika declares for us (because most of us don't believe it) that we are artists. We are made to create and the Kingdom of God is depending on our doing just that.

"So take your molecules and your moments and your unprecedented mess and the intoxicated music of your life and make a masterpiece that reflects the truth. Because on the other side of Jesus, art is a revelation of the kingdom, a kingdom revealing God through billions of different kaleidoscopic expressions. Art, your art, is absolutely vital because your art is how Jesus is made known to the world."

Erika and I want to know: Do you believe it? 

Please join me in welcoming Erika here today and please get a copy of this book.

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The cardinals make it look so easy. The honeybees make it look so easy. The catfish and the black crow, the dairy cow and the cactus plant, all make being created appear effortless. They arise from the earth, do their beautiful, exclusive thing and die having fulfilled their fate.

None of nature seems to struggle to know who they are or what to do with themselves.

But humanity is the exception to nature’s rule because we’re individualized within our breed. We’re told by our mamas and mentors that--like snowflakes--no two of us are the same and that we each have a special purpose and part to play within the great Body of God.

(If your mama never told you this, consider yourself informed: YOU--your original cells and skin-print, guts and ingenuity--will never ever incarnate again. Do you believe it?)

So we struggle and seek and bald our knees asking variations of discovery-type questions (Who am I? Why am I here?) and if we’re semi-smart and moderately equipped we pay attention just enough to wake up piecemeal over years to the knowledge of our vital, indigenous selves.

And yet . . . even for all our wrestling and wondering, there are certain, abundant factors stacked against our waking up. We feel and fight the low ceiling of man made definitions, systems and institutions; we fight status quo, culture conformity, herd mentalities and more often than not, “The original shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead we live out of all our other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.” ~Frederick Buechner

So, let me ask you. Do you know something--anything--of your true, original, shimmering self?

I don’t mean: Coffee Drinker, Jesus Lover, Crossfitter, Writer, Wife, Mama.

Those are your interests and investments.

I do mean: Who are you undressed and naked of the things that tell you who you are?

Who are you before you became a Jesus lover or mother or husband?

Who are you without your church, your hobbies, your performances and projects?

I’m not talking about your confidence in saying, “I am a child of God”, either. What I am asking a quarter-dozen different ways is this: within the framework of being a child of God, what part of God do you represent? Do you know where you begin and where you end? Do you know the here-to-here of your uniqueness? Do you know, as John Duns Scotus puts it, your unusual, individual “thisness”?

I can’t resolve this question for you, I can only ask you if you’re interested. (Are you interested?)

I can only tell you that it is a good and right investment to spend the energy and time to learn who you are with nothing barnacled to your body, to learn what it is you bleed. Because you were enough on the day of your birth when you came to us stripped and slippery and squeezing absolutely nothing but your God-given glow.

And who you were on that born-day is also who you are now, but since you’ve been living on this planet long enough to learn how to read this article, then it follows that you’ve also lived here long enough to collect a few layers of horsefeathers and hogwash.

So, yet again, I’m inquiring: What is it that you see before the full-length bathroom mirror after you’ve divested of clothes and masks and hats and accessories and roles and beliefs and missions and persuaders and pressures--until you’re down to just your peeled nature, minus all the addons mixed in with your molecules?

Do you see somebody who was made with passion, on purpose, in earnest; fearfully and wonderfully, by a Maker with a brow bent in the center, two careful hands, a stitching kit and divine kiss?

Can you catch between your fingers even the tiniest fragment of self-knowledge, roll it around and put a word to it?

Your identity is a living organism and literally wishes to unfurl and spread from your center and who will care and who will lecture if you wander around a little bit every day to look for the unique shine of your own soul?

One of the central endeavors of the human experience is to consciously discover the intimacies of who we already are. As in: life is not about building an alternate name for ourselves; it’s about discovering the name we already have.

Will you, _______, rise from your own sacred ash?

Because the rest of us cannot afford to lose the length of your limbs or the cadence of your light or the rhythm of your ideas or the harmony of your creative force. The way you sway and smile, the awkward this and that and the other thing you do.

These are the days for opening our two clumsy hands before the wideness of life and the allure of a God who stops and starts our hearts. These are the days for rubbing our two imperfect sticks together so we can kindle another feeble, holy light from the deep within--each of us alone and also for each other.

There is no resolution to this quest; the only destination is the process. But I hope there’s a small spark here that will leave you wanting, that will leave you with a blue-fire lined in your spine, that will inspire a cellular, metamorphic process in you; an odyssey of the soul unique to you and your individual history, organisms, and experiences.

There is maybe a fine line between being lethargic about learning ourselves and not being self-obsessive and with that tension in mind, how do we begin (or continue) the process of unearthing and remembering the truth of our intrinsic selves?

Bandersnatch: An Invitation to Explore Your Unconventional Soul was written because sometimes we all need a little hand-holding and butt-nudging in our process; someone or something to come alongside us while we pick up our threads of soul discovery and travel from one dot and tittle to the next.

We are the Kingdom people and learning your own fingerprint is something of what it means for the Kingdom to come in response to an earth which groans forth it’s rolling desire for the great interlocking circle of contribution to reveal the luminous and loving Body of Christ and slowly, seriously--like it’s our destiny--set the world to rights.

Kingdom come. Which is to say: YOU, [be]come and carve your glorious, powerful, heaven-appointed meaning into the sides of rocks and communities and cities and skies.

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Without being formulaic and without offering one-size-fits-all “how-to” steps, Bandersnatch is support material for your soul odyssey; a kind of field guide designed to come alongside the moment of your unfurling.

Come with me? And I will go with you and if you’re interested, you can order  wherever books or ebooks are sold.

Or, if you’d like to read the first three chapters and just see if Bandersnatch is something for such a time as the hour you’re in, click HERE.

All my love,

Erika Morrison

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If Erika's words above struck something deep in you and you feel yourself longing for more, you must check out her book trailer, here.

It is hauntingly beautiful.

In the end, three things remain

This quote appeared on my Pinterest feed a couple of weeks ago and, like a chill breeze that steals in under the warped door frame, it has descended down deep into my marrow. For you see, I have been awash in brackish thoughts of late.

With a few exceptions, I have taken a step back from my online presence the last six months. Five months ago, I gave birth to my third son. Three months ago, my mother began another round of chemotherapy. My withdrawal from the non-stop traffic of the internet was both a conscious and inevitable choice. I do not regret my decision but I would be lying through my teeth if I didn’t admit that, ever since, I have been at battle with doubt and envy.

My biggest frustration with the world of writing and platform building and influence is that what it requires seems so far removed from a life that bears the fruit worth reading about—a life of depth and stillness and meaning.

Writing, for me, has always felt like an intimate dinner party, hemmed in by golden light and the clink of dishes, measured in the crumbs stolen away on fingertips and the slow warmth from poured wine. There are the moments of sure knowing just as there are the heavy silences that come from the unknowing. But always, there is the table-- worn and steady, wide and open.

But my attempts to translate that way of being to the online world feel antiquated and stilted, at best.

It feels like sidling up to a busy counter with a bustling lunch crowd. Bread is broken and laughter distilled, yes, but the din of conversation is confusing to this ambivert who simultaneously wants to try new dishes and run out the door, hands pressed over her ears.

I'm sharing my words over at sixinthesticks with the brave Nacole Simmons for

 {The Conundrums of Christian Writing and Blogging: A Series}.

Join me and the discussion in the comments by following this 

link.

Emerge

My arms circled round your neck

this morning 

like a garland of hope

and although I thought it better

to refrain from

pomp and circumstance

I secretly imagined that I was

knighting you with

strength and fortitude

and

ringing you with

joy and hope 

Because I know

sweet one

that you are riding into 

both

battle

and

revelry

in the days ahead

Even on good days

there is a struggle within

That inner conflict

between

who you want to be

and

who you are

and all of it

swirling round like a storm

of 

angst

But you were made for glory

you

who are so meek in heart

Here and there

I get glimpses of

the ways that

fire has been forged

in your bones

deep and hidden

It emerges

when it must

and 

your face shines radiant

from the effort

That is the image

I will carry with me

these long days

when you are apart from me

I will cross my heart

and hope

with the saints

that you will hear the song

placed inside you

when you were but a whisper

to me

The song that was sung over you

by the One

that imagined you into being

and knows you by heart

Photo credit: Swirl Abstraction by Matt on Flickr

Brave Words: I Believe

The years, they begin to stretch a little thinner with each turn of the calendar. There is always a slight pause at the realization, an imperceptible shake of the head, a quick tightening along the jaw bone.

And then the resignation and the practiced patience. The deep breath and the tight smile. Perhaps it is habit or even a feigned fortitude. Whatever it is, it pushes forward.

It must.

But this year’s turning almost undid me. It swelled loud and frightening and red and there was a hemorrhaging of questions and unknowns. There was fear. The cinch of my belt was acute and there was an ache deep within my belly.

And I found myself asking, no, begging, the question:

On how thin a line can one continue to balance?

But hidden within the possible answer was where my biggest fear actually lurked.

What if the answer was hidden in the hard truth of

giving up

and

giving over

and

giving into?

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I'm sharing my story of unbelief over at Kelli Woodford's place today. Kelli has been hosting a series on Brave Words and here are her words on this series:

"Writers see more clearly when they can cover an experience with words. Not to hide from it, but so that what is truest and perhaps most important about the experience is made manifest to eyes blind in all other directions.  This is my reason for writing this series. 
In it I hope to allow the courage God places in our hearts access to our tongue. That in looking at the many syllables of Truth, and how they differ for each of us, we can also learn to speak them bold when surrounded by the cacophonic glare of lies.  That we can recognize how God is speaking His courage through us more often than we know.  Oh, so much more often than we know."

Believe

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.” 

-Roald Dahl

There is magic stirring in the deep places

while sweaty heads sleep

and grown brows furrow

In a twinkling

up is turned down

in is flipped out

And love spills warm and gentle

into the cracks

hewn from worry

For this magic

that is unseen

It has a force

all its own

And no manner of flailing

or gnashing of teeth

No turning away

or arms crossed defiant

Can turn it away

or disfigure its

joy tinged face

with angst and vexing

No, it has come

this magic

And all we must ever do

is hear the whisper

from down deep

that says

I believe.

Bravery Has An Underbelly

The image is burned into our knowing: the brave wield swords and slay dragons, they swoop into fiery buildings, they gallop into dark nights and stand stoically in the face of fear. Brave people do hard things.

I, however, have always felt more at home crouched small in the tight and cramped underbelly of someone else’s shell of bravery.  The proper home for my thinner blood and skin has consistently been hidden below the vast casing of another’s courage. Valiant and stouthearted I am not.

And then I hear stories of real women around the globe whose very waking is an act of bravery; women whose lives are daily marked by decisions between lesser evils and unrequited hope. I am schooled in the prevalence of human trafficking and the pains of hunger and I am confronted with my ready wealth and comfort.

It is then that I feel the weight of my brave costume most acutely and the truth of my position is revealed...

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Today I am joining all of the lovelies here at SheLoves where you can continue reading my exploration of bravery.

Won't you join me?