In the Garden..Mary Magdalene

One of my mother’s favorite hymns, which became one of my favorite hymns, is the old and classic song, “I Come to the Garden.” The first verse and chorus go like this:

I come to the garden alone

While the dew is still on the roses

And the voice I hear

Falling on my ear

The Son of God discloses.

And He walks with me, and He talks with me

And He tells me that I am His own

And the joy we share as we tarry there

None other has ever known.

Does that sound familiar? I learned that song when I was very young and I sang it at home

and all through my childhood in United Methodist Sunday School. It seemed a pretty, and nature-based kind of hymn. And it has that sweet “Jesus Loves Me” quality to it offering the reassurance that I am loved and that I personally matter to God --or my Higher Power.

But over the years as I fell out of, back into, and again out of churches and faith communities it was always the hymns of my Methodist childhood that were the containers –and supporters--of my hesitant, questioning faith.

Recently I learned the story of the song and I was thrilled to find there is a feminist core to “I Come to the Garden” and that, in fact, this is an Easter song and maybe even, a kind of a recovery song.

“I Come to the Garden” was written by a pharmacist named C. Austin Miles. He wanted to write a song offering, “rest for the weary.” Ready to compose, he began to read from scripture--John: 20—which is the story of Mary Magdalene and her visit to the garden where Jesus had been buried, and her discovery that he had risen from the dead.

So the “I” of the hymn is Mary Magdalene on Easter morning. It is a song of a woman who had feared the loss of a man she loved so much, the man who had been her teacher and leader, and the loss of what we she believed had kept her safe. In this garden scene –in the song-she is discovering that He and she—and we-- have a resurrection.

In recovery each of us experiences a profound resurrection and the opportunity to live again. Like Mary in that garden, we too have new lives, and we are once again known—and loved.

Happy Easter!

Father's Day on the Diving Board

He was there at the end of the diving board. He would tread water for hours watching while I practiced my dives. For years it was our Sunday afternoon ritual, and it began when I was 4 years old.  Daddy was there in the deep water, waiting for me. On those Sunday afternoons I believed that if he was there at the end of the board I could do anything. 

He would wait, treading water, out a ways from the board. He would look around and give me the sign that it was OK to dive. And I would stroll to the end of the board, tugging at my stretchy lavender swimsuit, and bounce in the air before I dove in. 

I would rise to the surface sputtering, and look for his face. He would hesitate a moment to let me right myself. I would cough and beam. He would grab the back of my suit and give me a push toward the side. “Swim to the ladder,” he would say. And he would stay out at the end of the board waiting. I remember

I remember the feeling as I paddled to the ladder. The world was perfect: I was diving in the deep end of the pool; there was no pain, and no evil in the world. There was no need or want in my life.  I was a perfect, grinning, sunburned, waterlogged four-year-old, in love with the world, herself and her daddy.

He died when I was 18. In the intervening years life happened to me and to Daddy.  By the time I was 13, he was traveling a lot, and when we did spend the occasional weekend together we did not speak of personal things. There were no talks about plans or dreams. As a teen-ager I felt awkward with my father so I would interview him about his job.  I know a lot about industrial engineering. It filled our time.

On a July evening, when he was 56, my father had a stroke and died.

Has it affected me? Of course. To have had that closeness and to lose it; to have had those timeless moments of being safe and special and then to lose him when I still needed to ask what happened.

It took years of my life, of other relationships, addictions and years in recovery for me to wrestle with those two men--the daddy who waited in the deep water and the man who left suddenly, without a word, when I was 18.

Somewhere inside, that four-year-old still wears her lavender bathing suit. She is at the end of a diving board and leaning forward to hear someone say, “You are so special.” “You can do it.”

I’ve learned a lot from listening to that little girl. I know that in romance we get some of that need met, but romance has its own path and after a while no one wants to admire us every day.  Another way to meet this need is with an affair.  Having an affair is a way a four-year-old can twirl in a 40 year-old body and hear again, “You are the only one.” 

  

In the first five years of recovery I practiced healthier solutions.  I practice in the mirror: “Diane, You are very special.” But all the praise and promises in the present cannot fill a hole that exists in the past. 

Later I learned to meet this need in a spiritual way. In the rooms I began to meet people who had a connection with their God or higher power that helped them to live believing that God smiles warmly on them.

So what is the gift from a father who left when we were both too young? It’s this: For a long time I resented the missing memories; no father-daughter chats, no drives to college, no adult conversations. But I have this other thing--a picture in my brain and in my heart of my father still there at the end of the board, smiling and waiting. 

Today I believe in a God who looks around my life and says, “Hold on a minute. We don’t want anyone to get hurt; then, “OK, go for it, I’m here.” I have a God at the end of my daily diving board that says to me, “Okay now, catch your breath. I’m here.”                                 

Your God is Too Small (Or Maybe Too Big)

Years ago I read a wonderful book called, “Your God is Too Small” by J.B. Phillips. In it he wrote about how most of us struggle with God or faith because we keep making God too small—we make or imagine him like us or maybe like a human with super powers—but even with the powers of the whole Justice League of America—it’s still a human construct and hence, according to Phillips, too small.

I thought about that this week when I was meeting with some theology students and we were discussing some new ideas in Christian theology and how there are some new ideas about God and evolution and how God may intersect physics and God and Love may be he main construct of evolutionary direction…yeah, that kind of talk.

At one point I said, “But what about a personal God?” and I got the look, and someone said, “Well, I used to believe in a personal God but then I studied…”The message was basically that believing in a personal God was kind of juvenile or “early” in spiritual formation.

I do pick up that slight judgment in other places as well. That look or word that suggests that those who (still) believe in a personal God have not matured in their spiritual development. There’s a kind of spiritual condescension, “Oh, I’m past the personal God thing. Now God is a cosmic force or a New Physics God…blah, blah.

 So me, doing my daily—very personal—prayer starts to feel small—or worse—I feel unsophisticated in my faith.

But then after confessing to my very personal God that I feel small cause I’m not making Him/Her big enough, start to think, “Whoa, isn’t making (perceiving) God as a distant, cosmic, force of the universe just another way to make God too small?” (Yes, irony: in making God so big we make him small again.)

Can’t God be galaxies-wide, loving, an impersonal cosmic force and a personal shepherd at the same time? Why can’t God (we are talking GOD after all) be BIG and small at once?

I think that Hillary Clinton can be the president of the United States and Chelsea’s mother at the same time. So why can’t God be both (and more) simultaneously?

Think about this: If we really grasp the Trinity and if we swear that we believe in this three-in-one business then why not a God who is all: all forms, all types, all sizes, all styles, all dimensions simultaneously?

The God Thing

This comes up over and over and while I used to fuss at the “God thing” conversations, now I think it makes sense. In Twelve-Step recovery it’s all about having a spiritual awakening. The steps tell us: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps…”

I remember when someone pointed that out to me. We don’t get abstinence or sobriety as a result of the steps—we get a spiritual awakening. And then, of course, as Carl Jung explained to Roland (and later to Bill Wilson) we do get sobriety as a result of that spiritual awakening. It’s a subtle but important point.

The other thing I like to think about is that it doesn’t say God. Thank you to “AA Number Three” who gave us “God as we understand Him” which opened the door much wider then the Oxford Group would ever have allowed. So we have that parenthetical statement and a Higher Power, which lets us choose.

But we do have to choose.

Here’s the other thing that I learned form a spiritual director that I like to pass on to women that I sponsor—and remind myself: Your HP doesn’t have to be a God but it has to be bigger than you. You want a “Bigger” as your Higher Power. It might be Goodness or The Ocean or Nature or Science but with our egos and our insecurity we need something Bigger.

And then—here’s another part I missed for years--you have to put yourself in the presence of your Higher Power. It’s why people who have God as their HP go to church or temple. But if your Higher Power is another kind of being or entity you still have to spend time in its presence. For example—if Nature is your Higher Power do you go on a nature walk once a week? If it’s the Ocean do you get to the beach to connect with it? If it’s Beauty are you making art a priority in your life?

Isn’t this a great question: What is your Higher Power and do you put yourself in its presence—regularly?

Your Own Higher Power

In AA we talk about choosing a Higher Power or creating one that works for you. People choose the God of their childhood—or adult-- faith. Some use their 12 step group as the power greater than themselves and others recommend using the concept of G.ood O.rderly D.irection if a Higher Being just doesn’t work.

Now I’m reading a great new book that gives us the means and the intellectual support to choose the God of our understanding. No pastel prettiness for spiritual toddlers here but a lot of intellectual food that takes grown-up teeth to chew on. The book is, “Beyond Faith: Our Role in Transforming God” by William Penick.

In his book Penick takes apart the idea of faith and of gods that are too big and indifferent or that are too small and ineffectual. He makes a compelling—and strongly supported case—that we can find (create) a God that is plausible and relevant. This is a book for spiritual seekers willing to tackle big ideas and some theological and intellectual history, but it’s worth it to get a God that works for you.