Off the mountain and out of the clouds...

If God is to be found, God will be found in the spaces between us."

~ from Padraig O Tuama’s ‘Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community’

I spent the week before this past at 2 retreats in North Carolina. (As I wrote in one social media post: I know that God loves us because They created Western North Carolina. It is breathtaking and life-giving to simply see.)

I have the honor and humble privilege of serving as a peer group facilitator for Faith Matters Networks’ Disciples of Welcome process, to support United Methodist pastors across North Carolina learning to share in and facilitate deep conversations, so was at Blue Ridge Mountain Assembly at the beginning of the week. I also had the wonderful and amazing opportunity to attend the United Methodist Deacons' gathering at Lake Junaluska at the backend of the week. (I'm a still confirmed candidate, but they were like "Erebody in!") I have been so thrilled for this week for MONTHS, and a month ago was like, "So this is vacation this year. Because between the two, I really can't imagine anything better this year."

And I still can't imagine anything better this year, having been sent forth from the Deacons' retreat.

Which is why at the end, I for real cried because I didn’t want to leave.

I cried initially because, while folks outside the retreats had been receiving from me photos of mountains and lakes, what we’d actually been doing was engaging my deep passion of sitting in conversations with folks about what "forward" might live like in ways which respect who you believe you're created and called to be, and who I believe I'm created and called to be--and discerning and developing how we're going to work to live that out lovingly and faithfully.

Because I know how often this doesn’t occur in the “real” world, and I had to go back.

That Sunday morning closing, Bishop Ken Carter shared that we need to be aware and clear that holy is not "separation" and "purity," and reminded us that "The prevenient grace of God means the image of God is in everyone. So we don't take God to people. Wherever we go, God is already there."

In the moment of his talk, I "amened," mentally rolling my eyes at “those people over there.” (Specifically for me: All of the times as church folks we insist that we are taking or giving people Jesus. Clearly, I thought, People Who Do That are the main problem.).

But as I sat on the lakeside patio literally crying so hard that I could barely see to write at first because "All of the holy is here and I don’t want to leave!" (no, this…really happened. It’s why I started writing this…) I had to give the Holy Spirit props for revealing precisely how Bishop Carter’s words speak directly into my life. Because I was busy judging everyone else so hard that I almost missed the part that's about and for my growth and transformation.

God is already "out there" and "beyond here" (here being wherever I am, or traditional church is). They don’t need me to take Them anywhere. I absolutely believe that, and know that I witness and experience it pretty much every day. I experience God through folks who are atheist and agnostic, and folks who aren’t Christian because, shocker!, an expansive God isn’t confined to practitioners of one particular faith, or “faith” at all. So certainly not just to other folks who agree with my particular understanding and interpretation of our faith.

But it can feel difficult for me to find folks and spaces in the past year or so who want to live forward and for real figure out how rather than just talking or screaming at other folks about it, or assuming they have The Answer when that mindset is itself one of the key issues. So I mostly just prefer not to deal with folks right now because our dishonesties and half-assing community are draining for me.

My purpose for being gathered in intentional beloved community was for me to “remember my baptism”—who I discovered I desire to be in and with God after I began saying a conscious “Yes” six years ago; to know that I can live it, and live it with one another; and how.

Being up on the mountain was for me, in being renewed and then breathed out and sent forth, to carry away my Self living with and in the Holy Spirit the world I continually claim I desire to see. I believe in beloved and mutual community, but have definitely been riding and waving a flag off of the, “You ain’t sh…, yo mama ain’t sh…, and your grandmama ain’t sh…!” Train for the past long while when I haven’t believed I’ve seen folks anteing up to ride for living healing and beloved community.

Yes, the irony. Yes, I know. Well, I see it now. Still don’t know that it’s entirely incorrect so much as I am now fully acknowledging that remaining at that point resolves nothing. Oh, a truth! Great! And so now what?

At the beginning of the retreat week, I acknowledged and confessed with the Disciples of Welcome peer facilitator team that I've been struggling with some serious impostor's syndrome for the past year and a half. Mine has manifested as my silently (and sometimes not silently) criticizing my colleagues and just about everyone to make my Self feel better about having had voiced and signaled to me from colleagues from specific spaces over the past several months that they don't believe I have the cachet to do what I know and deeply believe God created and called me to do.

I think I had perpetrated against me, but definitely myself began practicing the old, “If I put others down, I elevate myself” falsehood that underlies a lot of aggressive, denigrating, and self-centering behaviors and practices. And I don’t want it anymore, or in the first place, but had been struggling after several shoot downs to find a space where I could ask folks to actually support me in acknowledging and addressing it.

We sat down to chat with just the facilitators before the retreat attendees came, and were asked at one point to share what we were excited about of the week. And the Holy Spirit said, “Tell on yourself! I promise you can here!” So I did. And the group was so gracious and deeply compassionate to my blatantly confessing, “I’m excited to work on my impostor/hater’s syndrome. I found myself reading your bios and for every single person thinking ‘I could do that!’ Which is absurd, and why the Holy Spirit responded, ‘But you don’t, and I didn’t ask you to. So shush, go sit down, and learn with these folks!’”

After I named and released that in a space where I felt we all cared for who one another are as whole people, not just what people do and what credentials or reputation we carry, I suddenly felt so free to lean further into loving and building rather than feeling like I needed to prove my Self. I haven’t had a space like that in so long, and I felt like I could breathe again. Which invited me to open further to receiving the beautiful souls and gifts of the folks I was with, and so to allowing the week overall to be so awesome. Because the humans I was with in both spaces truly are phenomenal. And I know so many phenomenal people beyond the space who I feel I haven’t been genuinely appreciating and honoring, because I haven’t been able to appreciate and honor my God-gifted Self, to love my neighbors as my Self as Christ loves me.

So at the end, I didn’t want to leave--the reason behind the reason I didn’t want to leave is—because it was so much easier for me to be kind there, with others who were so kind. Because it was easier for me to be loving there, with others who were so loving. Because it was so much easier for me to be genuinely receiving and celebratory of our collective gifts, with others who are so receiving and celebratory of collective gifts.

And I was returning to a lot of spaces where too few people seem to consciously care about any that, where we are in constant competition of trying to be The One to save the world for all of us, dragging each other in the process, rather than discerning how We Solve with We/One Another. (Like, Neo didn’t want to be Neo, and Jesus didn’t want to get on the cross—he did it because God didn’t take the cup, y’all. What is with the savior syndrome???)

And I don’t like how I allowed myself to fall in with that dynamic. I was terrified of and am still curious when I will fail to sustain and share what I received and was filled with up on the mountain, of when I stop loving and start performing again. Of when I lose sight of my Self again.

Because I wasn’t really in error so much as I’m in process (which still sucks). This is what the process of learning and living grace looks like. I wasn’t pushed and didn’t fall into a vat of impostor syndrome. Like Harvey Dent/Two-Face—who in versions of his story actually was pushed into a vat of toxic goo—the malformed part of my personality (for him, disbelief in justice’s adequacy; for me, disbelief in mine) was already implanted and hiding within, and was simply activated by unfortunate circumstance. Unfortunately for my biased and pristine view of myself, this space in my life is perfectly reasonable for me given who I am, who I’ve been, what I’ve been through, and the strength of character I had thusfar developed to deal with the situation.

I thankfully and finally found a space in which I could open my Self up to see it clearly to begin to heal and transform it—to “reprogram” and realign myself.

It’s not an “Aha!” and then we’re done. It’s the discovery, then the commitment with transformation, then the work of living, then “failing” (because we don’t nail the first rodeo), then pouting and crying (for me. God often lets me have ice cream and pats my hair here), apologizing and making amends with the folks we recognize we’ve harmed if they want our apologies (including our Selves!), and reorienting, and then getting up and doing it all again. Over and over until we’re truly living the new dynamic, and not just feeding it back to folks who share it with us first.

So the real test of my growth is who I am when all is not well. Off the mountain and out of the clouds. Like Bucky having to leave Wakanda, with his fine self…

(Peripherally related: Sebastian Stan can get it, in the name of Jesus…)

So I had to go. And once I confessed and wrote through my distress and fear towards greater understanding, I wanted to go. Rather than be sad to be leaving, as I usually am after experiences like this, I got excited to go and continue practice living and loving when it’s not easy—because that’s when it matters most, right?

I'm excited because being breathed out rather than leaving means that I experience my Self carried forth on the living, and learning, and affirmation poured into me and others by Doris, Meg, Margaret Ann, Stacey, Deborah, Katye, Anita, Greg, Andy, Micky, Margaret, Brittney, Gloria, Ivan, Candace, Lauren, Brandon, Susan, Tyler, Brian, and Gareth. And a lot of other folks from the week whose names I can't remember off the top of my head, because there truly are so many.

Every time I begin to forget who I am and am desiring to become, I will reach back to this week and these spaces and these beloved humans. They will help me talk back to the voice inside me that wants to convince me that my belovedness lies in refusing others’ theirs. Remembering the way that they live and love, and so helped me to remember to live and love, will help me to remember to do that for my Self and one another. So I can be present with the world, and not just show up in it. In the words of the venerable Kirk Byron Jones, “Attendance is not presence.”

I prayed as I left Lake Junaluska and literally descended the mountain (suddenly having some sense of how Moses felt; why he always felt kind of petty; and also why we are supposed to recognize when we need a better spiritual jump start—poor Moses, thanks for going ahead!):

Reaching back to this phenomenal week full of love and giftedness is not for a fond memory of all the warm fuzzy, but rather a reminder of folks who help me believe again in our most loving, gracious, and generous beings together. In my most loving, gracious, and generous being. It's a reminder to remember that God already is, and I just need to show up, look for Them with and in others, and live them through and in my Self. And that we absolutely can live Them together. And when we do...Man!

In being breathed back into the world, may I not simply long for what we had when we were gathered, but remember who I am and who we are when we remember to gather—and so gather faithfully in God wherever I am.

May I be and live in and with the world the love, grace, and Spirit of God that I long for. May I be the transformation I desire to experience. And when I eff up, may I know that God’s got me, They’re gonna get me straight, and we’re going to be all right.

Amen & Axé.

Post-writing edit: Realizing that I had a similar experience in my meditation which led to 'The Water Bearer, Not the Water' this past June. And a perfect example for my Self that while I “understood” in June, I am now called into practice of what I have been increasingly recognizing and understanding these past several months…