Kitty Crenshaw's Blog, page 11

What Do I Do With The Pain?

Karl Knaths. Water Valley. Smithsonian Museum of American History

Hardly a day passes, Lord, that I am not overwhelmed and drawn under by the pain of someone I love. I too often allow the fear to take me to the dark places in my mind.

“When you go through deep waters, I will be with you.” 1

Ah…so pain is a given, and You are always with me in it.

A deeply centered spiritual life keeps me aware that my true dwelling place is not in this world of anxiety and hopelessness, but in my sacred center, that place of splendor where You reside. It is only in this place that I am able to hear Your voice reminding me that in You there is nothing but love and that all will be well. It is to this first love that I have to keep returning. Prayer is the discipline that enables me to return and begin to hold peacefully the many painful issues that fill my life and the lives of my loved ones. You in me expands my heart’s capacity to hold the burden without being dragged under by it.

This returning is difficult. It is a great struggle. But when I am faithful in coming to prayer again and again, I return to hope. Nothing is wasted. Your plan is perfect even though my finite eyes don’t see it yet. I sit with the pain and sense the great mystery of my tears flowing out through creation joining the flood of the sacred tears of Your people who too, hope in You. My fear transforms into sorrowful acceptance, and I wait in trust for the joy that must surely come. Today and every day I will fix my eyes on You, the perfecter of my faith, who, for the joy set before You, endured the cross, despising its shame. 2

You with me in the deep waters. You send me Your divine breath and hold me up me with Your love. You call me to manifest the victory over fear in my common, ordinary, everyday life.

The meaning of peaceful sainthood is being willing to stand at the fearful edge, under the cross, in the cross, in the pain with You, holding my pain and the pain of those I love, keeping watch for the Light. This is fertile suffering.

I need say no more just now, dear Jesus, for such a love that knows another’s pain is their nourishment, hope, and encouragement, and this I long to be through You who gives me strength.

From The Hidden Life Awakened p.23

So often when we are hurting, we run from one thing to the next, frantically looking for a quick fix that will ease our searing pain and restore things to the way they used to be. However, God is not seeking restoration but transformation. The more we submit to and participate in the mystery of this purifying work, the more we begin to experience a sense that everything, even our darkest pain, is held in Divine Love.

Our Lord reaches out from the cross to embrace us with both arms. One is the arm of sorrow, suffering, and pain, and the other is the arm of peace, love, and joy. We cannot have one without the other. The cross is the gateway to oneness with Infinity Itself. Yet we do not pass right through. We must stop and abide in the Life that we find there—the passion, the compassion of the Crucified. As we welcome our pain and unmet longings with hope, we open to the Divine embrace. We are, at last, resting in God. This is the hope that the Apostle Paul knew when he exhorted us to rejoice and give thanks in all things.

October 29

Nothing ever stays the same in our lives. Again and again we are called to let go in order to find a new way. ~Betty

My Burning Heart

Prayer is the breath of the soul, the organ by which we receive Christ into our parched and withered hearts. As air enters in quietly when we breathe, and does its normal work in our lungs, so Jesus enters quietly into our hearts and does His blessed work there.   Ole Hallesby, Prayer

Today, I choose to be still and sit with You in deep silence. My heart cannot but open when I am in this passive posture of prayer, creating a space Your Spirit cannot but pour through into my whole being.

The spiritual life is a gift. It is the gift of Your Holy Spirit Who lifts me up into the Kingdom of Love. Yours is never the voice of condemnation, rationalization, or fear. It is the voice of love and awakening freedom. It is accompanied by the deep inner burning of my heart’s recognition. I am seeking You, praying that You will answer. You are seeking me, praying that I will answer. I am disturbed, awakened, enlivened. Your voice ever so tenderly becomes my transforming flame, the fire within my burning heart.

It is to Mary, the mother of Jesus, that I look to understand how the human soul receives Your spirit. Her quiet yes mirrors the quiet yes I must make if I am to recognize your Spirit speaking to me. It is to Jesus in the wilderness that I look to understand my own struggle with the world’s brutal temptations and distractions. I struggle with the same temptations Jesus was confronted with—to be relevant, to be spectacular, and to be powerful. It was his obedient listening, his deep-rooted identity as Your beloved Son, and his discriminating choices that enabled him to overcome. I will find my way out of my own desert if I will trust my foundational identity as Your beloved child, attend to what goes on around me and within me, listen obediently for Your voice, and make discriminating choices.

There are times when a crossroad is reached, or a choice is called for. At times like these I need to pay very close attention on many levels: to consult your love letters in Scripture, to seek the advice of a trusted advisor, to heed the collective sense of the faithful, to read widely and deeply, and attend to the prick of my conscience as well as the yearnings of my heart. I will wait expectantly and pay close attention to the intuitive burnings of my heart, trusting always in your mercy. I know I do not sit with You alone, but in the company of heaven and all those I love enough to bring with me to Your table.

Your voice speaks often now and clear.
You are the fire of silence
seeking a soundless will.
You are heaven happening
when my soul is still.
BWS

The Hidden Life Awakened p.170

October 15

Suffering has so much to teach us. It is not a punishment but the divine route to complete rest in God. ~Betty

A Letter From Betty

Dear Ones

I reflect anew on my own inner journey, travel once again by memory, from decade to decade. Each of my nine decades has affirmed one reoccurring theme: a call, the cry to let go into the Light.

For years my hidden life and my visible life were in great conflict and tension. My visible life was imprisoned in guilt, fear and unspeakable pain. At the same time, the haunting Voice of my hidden life was gently inviting me to stay, to embrace my pain, to fall headlong into the suffering. At forty-two, the intensity of this relentless inner struggle sent me reeling into a debilitating clinical depression. It was here in the darkest of my times that God’s mercy not only awakened me to its Light, but to a life-changing truth: that the Light was not only the drawing power of God’s great love, but was the very presence of Divine Love Itself. I felt a surge of assurance, a freedom I had never felt before. In retrospect, I was closer to the Source of all healing, the Center of the Circle of Love than I ever could have imagined at that time.

Very, very slowly, in faith and obedience, one step at a time, I came to understand that to reach my destination, the Center of the Circle, intimacy with the Beloved would cost me nothing less than everything. I was called again and again to periods of solitude and silence, to intensive listening, to discerning choices, to depths of patient waiting and trust. Yet as I chose to yield to the draw of the Light, to gaze at its luminous field, I began to see and to perceive my visible life with new eyes, new ears, and a new heart. I began to feel this Light and Love healing and connecting all the pieces of my broken and shattered life. At last I came to a knowing of Whose and who I am, ultimate freedom, and the supreme gift of healing and wholeness. I sensed the Sacred Source at the center of the circle drawing all things into Itself and I, as His chosen, being drawn freely along with it. There was no resistance.

Entering this Light filled me with an abiding presence and peace; a quiet strength and certainty. It continues now to sweep me along in its divine love flow spilling over with the beauty, mystery and wonder of God, weaving an ever deepening tapestry of Love, the Face of Christ, the explosive story of my heart.

I have shed the green and sleeping leaves of youth
Stripped by the wind of the spirit down to truth.
Emptied and alone I stand uncluttered.
A lens for lives beyond my own:
A frame through which another's fire may glow;
A harp from which another's passion soars.
Blow through me, O wind of spirit and of life.
So simple and so humble have I come.
Pared down at last to bone
So fragile yet so fearless have I grown.
~BWS

October 1

Nothing is wasted. The water we once poured into the wine cannot be drained off, but mercifully, if consecrated, will be transformed. ~Betty

Eyes That See

Your eyes are windows into your body.  If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.  If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar.  If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!1  

Jesus

Three days after the crucifixion, two of Jesus’ disciples were dejectedly walking back to their village of Emmaus, despairing about all the horrible events that had just gone down in Jerusalem. As they walked along, Jesus joined them, but they did not recognize him. As they talked, Jesus reminded them of all the scriptures that had foretold what had just transpired. They were impressed with the stranger’s intellect and really liked him, so they asked him to stay with them. At dinner, Jesus simply broke open a piece of bread, and they instantly they recognized him! He immediately disappeared, leaving them stunned and ecstatic, remembering only then how their hearts had been burning when he talked.2 The eyes of their hearts had opened, and the light was flooding in.

Jesus came to invite all of us who have been living in darkness to open to the light. The light to which Jesus calls us is the light whose radiance shines forth from our center, a center totally immersed in the beauty and the wonder of God. “This light illuminates the eyes of our imagination, flooding us with light until we experience the full revelation of the hope of his calling—that is the wealth of God’s glorious inheritance.” 3

Remember, there is only one persistent demand made upon us by the Spirit: to be receptive to the Light—to the possibility of God with and within us. There are so many distractions and dogmas competing for our attention though, that it is just easier to stay where we are. Never, ever pull the shades on the windows of your soul. Never allow your eyes to adjust to the darkness. Awaken out of the static places you have become inured to and open into the ecstasy of new light.

The light that comes into our lives wakes us up to the reality that it is already there. As the light grows in us, gradually etching its way through our pain and suffering, manifesting itself through flashes of insight, we become aware that this light is connecting us in a much deeper way to God, to others, and to our true self. The light has a voice that speaks life and gentle forgiveness to us. The light has hands that hold and heal us from our past sorrows. The light has a name: Jesus, son of Mary, radiance of God.

The persistent yearning that sweeps us all is a yearning to see and be seen as we are and loved. When the wave of this yearning swells in our hearts and its crest is infused by wondrous light, all our barriers are pushed aside—beauty awakens within us. A momentous reality of God trembles through our veins, opening a glimpse of the Eternal. God answers with love our trembling awes.

Amazing grace
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost
But now I'm found
Was blind, but now I see.

Photo Gratitude: Jenny Miller @wild_caravan_of_unruly_saints

September 17

The wisdom of God is hiding in your heart, beyond the veil of your illusions and opinions. ~Betty

Intensify Your Desire

Mark Rothko. No. 3. Yale University Art Gallery

At the heart of our reality there is neither an endless recycling of a bland and sterile existence nor a silent and mute indifference, but rather One Who loves. In giving us his love, God gives us his Spirit which is our hope of glory—it is who we are in our truest self. It lies buried beneath the crumbling walls we have built to try to protect our hearts from the onslaughts and pain of the world. God waits and woos us in the very midst of those ruins. Even now, as crushed as we might feel, we are participating in God’s divine life. How are we to believe and live from this place? It is all desire. Ask God endlessly for more intensity of desire.

We ask tamely for things we should be haunting God for. God does not need to be coaxed to answer our prayer, but we arouse His pleasure when we demonstrate we believe He is our defender and only option. Some things cannot be given until we have prepared and proven our spirits; until God finds in us depth and greatness of faith. When we pray with intense desire and importunity in the face of His silence, we demonstrate our faithfulness and deepen our readiness to receive the goodness we seek.

Jesus, knowing his disciples would be tempted to lose hope and give up praying, told them the strange story of a poor widow who relentlessly annoyed a thick-skinned, cruel, and unmerciful judge, pleading for justice and demanding her rights. She was totally convinced he was the only person who could grant her what she needed, so she persevered with importunity. She annoyed him so much that he finally gave up and granted her what she wanted just so she would leave him alone. Then Jesus asked them, “Don’t you know that God, the true judge, will grant justice to His chosen ones who cry out to Him all night and day? He will pour out His spirit on them. He will not delay to answer you and give you what you ask for. He will give swift justice to those who don’t give up. So be ever praying, ever expecting just like the widow was with the judge.” He ended the story with this pivotal question; “When the Son of Man comes back, will he find this kind of persistent faithfulness in his people?”1

Will He find it in us? Are we depending exclusively on His mercy? To this end, let us urge ourselves to holy greed—asking, seeking, and knocking with importunity—until we become ones in whom the Son of Man finds faithfulness. May our heart’s desire for God be intensified as we respond to the Love waiting within us, continually coming to Him in prayer.

Beloved, embrace me in the dark night
of my praying, in the deep silence
of my offering, in the confrontation
of my dying.
 
Beloved, enable me by faith
to know You without seeing You, by hope
to possess You without feeling Your presence,
by love
to desire You above all desires.
 
Beloved,  grant that I might put
all faith in love for You, all hope in love for You,
to know that
all desires fail but one: my desire to be loved by You.

BWS2

September 3

In God’s goodness and time, a tremendous paradox will be revealed to us—that what we now perceive as suffering and death is in Reality a hidden time of awakening and rebirth. ~Betty