The White Chair

Years ago now a counselor in town referred a woman to me for spiritual direction.  He said they were stuck, he and she.  I knew the counselor because he had counseled me.  I knew him to be gifted in his vocation.  He had been a counselor a long time.  I was relatively young in ordained life.  The woman  he referred professed no religion, no belief in God.  Yet… she agreed to see me on the recommendation of her counselor.

As we sat together, the stuckness, well, it stuck out.  She sagged in her seat.  We would begin talking about something, and it always cycled back to things never changing.  Looking at anything, even in a slightly different way, was impossible.  As we talked, she mentioned she couldn*t even begin to clean her house.  Right, I thought, the counselor (and perhaps God) has sent me someone to talk about house-cleaning, something which has never been a strength of mine.   Still, pressing on, I asked the woman to think about her house.  What was the one thing that bugged her the most about her house not being clean?  That*s easy, she said.  It*s the white chair.  It*s filthy.   I asked her:  What would it take to get the chair cleaned?  

In the final ten minutes of our time together, we developed a simple plan.  She would call the furniture cleaner and make an appointment to get the chair cleaned before we next met in two weeks.  When we met, she arrived with a bounce in her step.  She sat down, and immediately told me about the now-clean white chair, and how she was cleaning the rest of the living room.  We discussed other plans she was making beyond house-cleaning.  She ended the session by saying: So this is spiritual direction!  Thank you!

I never saw her again.

Consider this:

This Lent, do you find yourself stuck somewhere, unable to move forward?   Perhaps it is something visible (like a dirty white chair).  Maybe it is a messy relationship, one that needs attention.  When you sit and think and pray about it, when you share it out loud with a good friend over coffee, maybe it is clear.  Perhaps sitting and talking with a professional somebody, a counselor or therapist, will help un-stick you so the next step is clear.  Maybe a spiritual director or spiritual companion could help.  Where are you stuck?  How do you want to move on?

Lent: An introduction

The season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, February 22.   In Early Church tradition, Lent was a time of preparation for those who wanted to be baptized as followers of Jesus on Easter.   For those of us who are already Jesus followers, this time of preparation is equally important.  It can be observed in many ways.  The Book of Common Prayer invites us to examine ourselves and repent; to pray or fast or deny ourselves particular things; to read and reflect on the Scriptures we hold Holy.  Any or all of these things are well and good if they help us re-turn our focus toward Jesus and his invitation to us to live our life more fully in Him.  But this is not meant to be an exhaustive list.  Almost anything can be turned into a spiritual practice, including the practice of living more simply, or making time to be alone, or inviting another to be our companion on our spiritual journey.  Even the practice of celebrating or being grateful for the world and people around us can be part of what we take on for Lent.  There are many things which might stand in the way of our relationship with Jesus, and many ways we can re-learn what it means to follow Him, many paths to take to re-turn to our God.

Consider this:

What stands in the way of full life for you?  What needs to be cast aside?  What needs to be renewed?  What needs to be worked on:  bit by bit, day by day?  It is different for everyone.  God has made each of us different as the stars in the sky, or grains of sand on the beach.  Yet each of us is still held special and important and precious in God*s eyes. 

The poet Mary Oliver offers this line at the end of her poem, The Summer Day:  Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?  Lent offers us good space to make a new beginning for this wild and precious life we have each been given.