Her Spirit

Please, if you can, expand your definition of "spirit"  to include a sense of humor, perhaps, or resilience, for this blog post. I simply must share my humiliation with someone, and my husband is on a plane halfway to DC and my best friend is in a meeting.

I try to visit my 87-year-old mother in Mississippi every six weeks. I'm with her now at the retirement community where she lives. As I was walking down the hall this afternoon, on my way to run an errand, an elderly woman stopped me to introduce herself. 

While at a five-day writing workshop in Winston-Salem last week, I met a woman I came to admire within hours of making her acquaintance. She is beautiful, funny, smart, and kind. She speaks freely of her love of God. And she cusses like you wouldn’t believe.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is on television apologizing for having had an extramarital affair. Like some others who have “fallen” in the public eye, he trotted out God during his press conference. Just as I was about to dismiss him for cloaking such a down-and-dirty deed with such upright language, he stopped himself and said he knew he had also hurt people of faith. He had already been through a list of folks he had let down: his wife and kids, his staff, the people of South Carolina.

In response to an earlier Her Spirit blog post, titled "Pull Up a Pew," several Her Spirit readers let me know that they like the Sacred Space website for online inspiration. Check out sacredspace.ie/ if you're looking for some alternative ways to engage the Divine during the day. Please let us know what you think, or, if you have other sites to recommend, send them on in!

As I continue to look for ways to experience the Divine when I can't make it to church and I'm craving some old time religion, I've been asking friends for suggestions. This just in from Heather: "When I'm not able to attend church," she says, "this online community brings me as much comfort as my own brick and mortar church. It allows me to feel connected--to others and to God--from my den or the coffee shop down the street."

Really, I promise I'll be in a better mood for the next post, but right now I am not a happy camper.

Lately I've found that I simply can't make myself go to church. I'm not sure what this is about, but God and I are working on it. Until we get it figured out, I've been looking for other places where I might feed my spirit.

Really, I don’t care what political or religious affiliation you claim, if any. Really I don’t. But I think it’s inappropriate to compare any politician—any mortal, for that matter—to God, as Newsweek editor Evan Thomas reportedly did recently.

"Check with the people at the nursery if you're unsure about something," said Precious as I left the house to get some new plants. He knows my habit of choosing plants that I like, regardless of what kind of sun and soil they might require. If it's purple or wildflowery looking, it's coming home with me. 

So this afternoon my husband, Precious, and I heard a car alarm. We weren’t sure, at first, if it was on the television or in our neighborhood, so we ignored it for awhile. It came and went, on/off, several times.
Just as Precious was poised to say something like, “I wish that jerk would shut off his car alarm,” I glanced out our front window. Aha! It was Precious’ car that was making the noise. Egads.

When my husband, Precious, and I married seven years ago, he chose a reading from Soren Kierkegaard for the wedding ceremony. I do not know from Kierkegaard. But this weekend as our anniversary nears, Precious and I will hear the Nashville Symphony perform the “Prayers of Kierkegaard.” Herein a quote from the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher-theologian: “Prayer is not hearing yourself talk, but being silent, staying silent, 
and waiting until you hear God.”