Tag: healing

An Open Letter to the Church Today

Photo by Maria Tyutina on Pexels.com

By: JANA GREENE

Dear Church,

You’re the one who got me in this pickle. You started it.

You said to love your neighbor. But it turns out there seems to be disclaimers to this most important of all commandments, and it’s very confusing to keep the rules straight.

Then you told me to witness to the world, make disciples of men, when what they really need is a template for what love looks like; not just what it sounds like.

So, I did that too.

You told me to pray God would break my heart for what breaks his heart, and that is the prayer that did me in. I hope you’re happy.

This was the knottiest kink in the whole chain. Because listen...

HE DID IT. I had a supernatural experience. The veil didn’t tear open but it did have a loose thread. And I did what people do, which is to pick at it until it unraveled.

And it was VERY upending and not entirely pleasant.

People were hungry. People were lonely. People had had scripture lobbed at them at every turn but were empty. I did a lot of that lobbing in the day. They were all hurting, because we are all hurting. Presence does what words can never do.

The whole, wide hurting world is looking at Christ-followers to see if they are made of the same stuff they preach. And woefully, too much of it perpetuates the separation between us and God (in reality, there is none.)

And you never told me to love myself, as one who could also benefit from that top-tier commandment. And I didn’t know how, as you taught me the human heart is deceitful above all things and not to trust it. Not to trust the voice of the God particle we all carry, that divine spark.

Church, God is within you, you told me. But he’s not the icky parts. No, he cannot be in the presence if ick. It’s too icky and you’re too human. As if Christ didn’t pick his nose or wipe his butt. As if he didn’t wail and cry, and ask the cup to be taken from him.

It’s my desire to see the Church repent for making love about doctrine and law.

Please don’t discount revival because it looks nothing like you thought it would. God is crafty that way. He isn’t bound to do it your way (or mine.)

As it turns out, I don’t mind being in this pickle anymore. Because it’s fundamentally changed me to consider the suffering of others. It should change all of us.

I fell in love with you a long time ago, Church. There is so much to love. Good news! Community! You reared our whole generation, and I’m so grateful for all the wonderful experiences I’ve had in your space. It felt like a safe space for a long time.

But perhaps it’s time for a shift?

I will always love you, but sanctuaries should not be proving grounds.

And as we all experience this great winding-up to sharing the mind of God in total, let’s remember people over policies. Politics have no place in religion, and frankly, we cannot afford the hatred that comes part and parcel with politics. Please keep it out of the pulpit. You alienate more people than you help.

So, actually, thank you for starting this, I think.

Warm Regards,

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Celebrations, Pity Parties, and a God who Attends Both

How often do I feel like I’m spiritually “getting things right”? About as often as we see an eclipse. So let’s not lean on on our “understanding” of God and lean instead into Love (which is really just another name God goes by.) And yes, this is my lame attempt at photographing the eclipse.

By: JANA GREENE

If it’s God’s will, it will come easily. That’s how you know you’re operating in the Spirit. Things will click. Things will flow. His yoke is light, etc and so on.

But also, if you are in God’s will, it will be hard.

You’ll know you have holy favor when you’re downtrodden and at the end of your rope. That’s the ol’ devil, don’t you know. And he wouldn’t mess with you if you weren’t doing God’s work.

Well, which is it? Do you see the conundrum?

This is life, and it’s both and neither. It is, so far as I can tell, it’s ALLTHETHINGS, dammit.

I can’t trust a God whose mind I have to pick apart to get it “right.”

I don’t tell my adult children, “Okay, I’m feeling some type of way about you…but WHICH way? Let’s see if you can correctly guess based on interpretation of an ancient text and my jealous, vengeful nature. May the odds be ever in your favor!”

I learn alongside my children, you see. For everything I learn about them, they learn about me. And in the process, and I feel like we are all learning alongside God, with curiosity and wonder and grieving and suffering.

It will be easy, there will be times of flow.

It will be brutally difficult.

It’s all holy favor, you see, and that’s the confounding part.

God only feels ONE type of way about you.

We need not wring our hands in an attempt to earn love, because that’s the way we have been taught to please a world of broken people and an unpleasable diety.

In actuality, the odds are always, always in your favor, Beloved. Even (especially?) when you’re most hurt, downtrodden, and at the end of your rope.

Whether you invite God to a celebration of the soul or an old-fashioned pity party, just invite him. The Spirit shows up for both.

How to be in the will of God? Just be.

Blessings, friends.

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Room Enough for Love

Ahhhh, you have to admit this is HEAVENLY!

By: JANA GREENE

When I thought I understood the hereafter in my evangelical days, I used to talk about the mansions we will all have in heaven, and looked forward to laying down this mortal burden and enjoying my “just reward” after fighting the good fight.

“Mansions!” all us Christians would insist. “We are all gonna have MANSIONS!”

In seems a strange form of idolatry now in hindsight. Entitlement, even. After all, it’s our birthright! In the end, it’s ego wanting what ego feels justified in wanting.

The way we all carried on about the specs for our abode in Heaven, missing the point and slipping into a prosperity gospel mindset.

So, God? You can give my heavenly “mansion” to someone else who struggled with homelessness while Earthside. Transfer the deed, and let it be so. Basking in the undiluted consciousness of the Universe is enough for me.

Perhaps God, you can see fit to let my address be YOU. Peace, not riches, in communion with the holiness we only get to see glimpses of here.

Although I surely won’t mind if you place me near water – perhaps a sea or a stream. I want to be cozy forever and ever, amen – safe finally and well. Whole and free in my little heavenly abode.

And I will invite all of my friends to my little UN-mansion; and that will be enough. A true just reward, eternally.

In my Father’s house, there are said to be many rooms, but I just need room enough for love.

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That Grounding Gospel – Taking God to the Mat

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

By: JANA GREENE

I do my best spiritual work from on the ground, apparently.

I can remember laying on my mat Kindergarten at naptimes at school, a skinny little girl laying curled in a ball, watching all my classmates fall asleep like falling asleep is just a normal thing people do or something.

From birth, my brain never shut up, and my home life was dysfunctional to the point of chaos. So, I would lay with my budding anxious neurosis on the vinal mat, unable to sleep; afraid to close my eyes (and afraid not to.) No sleep, only unease.

My teacher, Mrs. Carter would stand over me and holler in front of the whole class, “CLOSE YOUR EYES, JANA!” I can remember squeezing them together and doing a rudimentary version of praying. It was a crude and simple exchange with the God of my Vacation Bible School stories. Even as a child, I seemed to know instinctively that there is more help available from the Divine than we ask for or expect.

“I can’t calm my mind,” I would have said to the adults in my life, had I the language to ask for what I needed. But I didn’t. Little girls with big, grown-up worries don’t know how to self-soothe, because OF COURSE they don’t; and they surely don’t know how to articulate anxiety or ask for help calming their minds.

That’s where I remember doing my first earnest prayers – on the kindergarten mat – asking of Jesus who already lives in my heart to be seen and soothed, comforted and feel less alone.

Twenty-seven years later, I found myself on the bathroom floor of my house, battling an alcohol addiction, wishing to die. On January 3, 2001, I came to the end of myself on that floor. Wretching, sick, alone, and desperate. From flat on the tiled floor, my fist in the air, eyes tinged in red, and skin yellowing, yelling at God and no one in particular, I came to the end of myself.

It reminded me of the biblical story of Jacob “going to the mat” with God in an all-night WrestleMania event. “I’m not going to take this laying down!” Jacob was thinking. But he ended up exhausted and limping, which is how most of us end up in that mindset, if we are not careful.

I had prayed many, many times before for sobriety, but there was a different outcome on that day. A peace descended on me like a dove. In my sickness and desperation, I was met on the floor by a God undeterred from my anxiety. One minute at a time, and then one hour, then one day, week, month, year… that was 23 years ago. A lifetime ago.

“I CAN’T CALM MY MIND” I simply told him. And here’s the thing: I know the same Spirit who curled up with me on my kindergarten nap mat is the same Spirit who met me in the bathroom, me clinging to the toilet, him not at all afraid to get the hem of his garment dirty on my behalf.

I am now learning to meditate now, and it’s a challenge. My husband, who never seems to tire of my endless new “hobbies” took me to get a nice, double-padded yoga mat. I’ve been on quite the little awakening for several years now and am learning so much. I absolutely love incorporating the tools I’m learning into my faith life, which is not a conflict with the holiness of God at all, no matter what Debbie at the Pentecostal church says. (I plan to write at length about what I’m learning, if you’d like to journey with me.)

The first group meditation session I went to, I dutifully spread out my mat amongst the hippies and lovers and seekers at the group event, excited to learn this new coping mechanism. The atmosphere was thick with love and cleansing. Yet can you guess what the prevailing thought was upon getting situated?

I CAN’T CALM MY MIND.

“Okay,” I felt Spirit say, over the Native American flute music and swirling clouds of burning sage (that former evangelical ‘me’ would be scandalized by.) “I am in you and with you and around you.”

If you feel you are on the “floor” in some regard to your life, I just want to remind you that it’s a nice, stable surface from which to start. You are simply grounding, darlings. The floor is a very vulnerable place to be, but be vulnerable we must, if we are to grow. We glorify striving, when simply being is enough.

So just ‘be’ today, friends.

Just be, Groundlings. And don’t forget to breathe. And ask the Universe to make you ever more aware of his presence. If we increase our awareness of this supernatural experience, we begin to see God everywhere – in every ONE.

In you, too! Ready to see, soothe, and comfort you – meeting you on hallowed ground.

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The Driving Force

It’s okay to love all the parts of yourself.
(Mural Carolina Beach.).

By: JANA GREENE

I love the parts of me

that are most like the Source.

The parts that align

with all the Divine,

with love as the driving force.

The parts made of stardust

and deep mystery,

the parts not sullied by

my own history,.

The Kingdom of God

that’s within me?

It abides within you too.

We seekers and finders

oft need reminders

Of our identities

in the Truth.

The parts that align

with all the Divine,

make it all well with my soul.

So I’ll embrace

all the parts of me…

Not in part, but the whole.

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A Chronic Illness Wish List

By: JANA GREENE

I need to throw a little tantrum right now. Not a full-on nervy-b, but a proper little hissy fit.

I’m so grateful for the health days lately that have allowed me to do some normalsauce stuffs recently, but Ehlers Danlos is a chronic pain and illness condition. It doesn’t take vacations.

My whole body is made up of faulty collagen. The last two nights (and eapecially today,) the pain flares had been almost unbearable.

So here Is my stupid little list of wishes, compiled to get my frustration under control, and maybe remind you that you’re not alone if you’re hurting too.

I wish I could pop my shoulders out of the sockets like Ms. Potato Head, and replace them with sturdier, less excruciating shoulder joints. They pained me so severely last night, I writhed around trying to get comfortable for several hours instead of sleeping.

I wish it didn’t feel like oyster shuckers have been wedged under my kneecaps, feeling like someone is trying to jimmy them off every day.
I wish my hips didn’t roll around and sublux levery dadgum day. I can pop the joint in and out, and it’s not a fun party trick. It’s agony.

I wish I had one of those cool new “exoskeleton” robot suits. Have you seen them?? They hold you together from the OUTSIDE. Like a Transformer. I would t even care that I looked like a weirdo.

I wish people disnt give me the stink-eye when I need to park In handicapped. Look at her, walking Into the store! What people dont realize Is that every step can be a real challenge. You never know what a disabled person is really feeling In their bodies. Sometimes the fatigue makes every step seem Impossible.

I wish people’s understood that different days require different mobility aids. Sometimes you will see me using a cane. I need it for stability on Sundays and or because the pain is making it hard to walk other days. I don’t use it at all and I know that seems really confusing, but it’s quite simple – there are good days and bad days.

I live every day fully aware that I will most likely lose mobility from here on out, so the days I don’t need my cane I revel not needing It.

I wish people understood the fragility of an EDSers body, and the strength It takes to keep going. We are fragile, but unbreakable.

There is little to no stability in my joints because most of my lax connective tissue. Pain and injury are the result. I once broke my ankle in two places from stepping out of bed to go pee in the middle of the night; it just rolled. And lest you think I’m just a big wimp about pain, I walked on that ankle for eleven days before I had it looked at by a doctor. My threshold is very high.

I wish I had a decent immune system. I don’t.

I wish the migraines would cease and desist, but they are tied into some of my other genetic mutation conditions. They are a whole other Issue altogether.

And I wish I were way more zen about pain. It teaches me things, true. But I simply get tired of this shit. I am trying to live transcendently – find joy beyond suffering and camp out In the assurance that God’s got me (and I get by with a LOT of help from my friends.)

I currently have a post-it scrawled with medical appointments I need to make on my kitchen counter. Like I NEED to make these appointments – for specialists, physical therapy, another cortisone shot in my knee, major dental work, a trip to Duke next month for gastroperesis treatment, and labs galore. It had been on the counter for weeks and every day I pass it and get a mini-panic attack, on account of I’m simply overwhelmed.

Because this IS overwhelming. My job is to stay healthy enough to have a quality of life, but I sure could use some PTO days to just NOT feel like this.

Life is challenging, but we are never alone. That’s important to wish for – for God to use my crappy conditions to make others feel less alone. That’s the best reason I can come up with for any kind of suffering.

In our suffering, let’s lean into one another.

Bless us, everyone.

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God is Good (ALL the time? You Sure About That?)

Photo by Puwadon Sang-ngern on Pexels.com

By: JANA GREENE

The year of our Lord 2023 can go suck eggs. It can suck eggs, eat my shorts, lick rust, and eat glass. I’m not one for oversimplifying (I can’t stand it when people say “the whole YEAR sucked!” because I’ve learned that the same year that held loss and grief also has it’s moments too. I can’t recall many right now, but they definitely happened. Small victories like medical lab results marginally improving, family birthday parties, lunch with friends.

Well, was it a bad year? It either was or it wasn’t, right?

At the beginning of 2023, one of my acquaintances posted to Facebook this ALL CAPS EXCITEMENT BOMB, and for good reason. “PRAISE GOD, YA’LL! HE IS SOOOO GOOD! IT WASN’T CANCER!” They had a cancer scare, and it turned out to be ‘nothing.’ So I rejoiced alongside my friend, with the cringe-comment, “WOOHOOO! GOD IS GOOD ALL THE TIME!” Hey, I was an evangelical a long time. The catchphrases die hard.

The very next day, I received news that a friend who was like a sister to me was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. She was given months to live. What the actual HELL, God? God did NOT seem so good anymore, in that moment – less than 24 hours after celebrating my acquaintances’ good news.

I was angry, and it set the tone for the whole year. I wanted to retract my praise for my FB friend’s diagnosis – not because I wasn’t thankful that they’d be okay, but because God knew devastating news was coming and he let me rant about how ‘good’ he is! SO good at healing, knowing good and damn well he was going to take my sisterfriend from us.

I don’t know about you, but I like absolutes – something this world is stingy with.

God is good, or he’s not.

Either “it is finished” by Jesus, or we are all still waiting in spiritual limbo.

Either God heals or he doesn’t.

A funny thing happened on Bitterness Road though. Our close friend group rallied around our sick friend. She herself had beautiful spiritual revelations in the last months of her life. REALLY profound, amazing realizations. We – the ladies in our tribe – learned more about facing death with grace and dignity than we had never known. She too was angry for a time, because of COURSE she was!

But in her terrible struggle, she also introduced us all to a peace that truly passes understanding; a peace not sullied by all the temporal shit we contend with every day. She was going home, and she showed us all how to do it with grace.

I still say 2023 was awful, as a whole. But there were so many glimmers. The high points didn’t look like winning the lottery, or losing weight, or getting a promotion, or any of the other things we think of as manifestations of God’s love for us (that we label as “success.”)

Manifestations of God’s love show up in the grace of going through the very worst life has to offer. And I guess I’d prefer that to a holy love that only manifests as “good” things. That’s a love entirely too shallow.

Today, I choose to believe the lovingness of God far surpasses the crappiness of life.

And on days (years?) when I struggle with thinking of God as pure love, I choose to believe God is only, simply love – no fillers or by-products. We can lean into that love. We MUST lean into it.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, because my spirit knows it to be true. So maybe don’t lick rust, 2023 – you taught me a lot. But I welcome 2024 with the expectation that God is good, and the assurance that when life isn’t, he still is.
Blessed be, Friends.

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The Crying Canons

By: JANA GREENE

When I was a child, my parents sent me to catechism classes for a few months, before they decided Catholicism wasn’t for them, and I have a few spotty memories.

I have always loved big words, and I remember learning the concept of “canonization,” which is when someone who lived a really stellar life could be declared a saint. According to Wikipedia, it is also declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of saints.

The extent of my experience with “catalogues” was that Sears put out a “Big Book” and that thing was the epitome of childhood joy! The be-all-end-all; about three solid inches of dog-eared, magic-marker-circled laminated possibility. The funny thing is that when it came in the mail each year, I cried. I sobbed with overwhelming emotion. It was TOO. MUCH. If I had had the language, I would have said, “I CANNOT EVEN WITH THIS.”

There were tears later for excerpts from the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, but that’s a story for another time.)

How odd that despair and all-encompassing joy make us cry.

I still cry, but not in as much despair. At lease not most days.

Despair, when taken to liberally, only buys me more of itself. It confirms what every trauma of my life told you was truth. It makes me conduct life as if in mourning clothes – black and somber (but also a little bit enveloping and cozy.) Comforting because it’s familiar, and destructive for the same reason.

Here’s the thing: As far as I can tell, life is a tearful experience. No getting around it.

Tears are salty, either way. Whether they are generated by grief or extreme joy, there they are! Manifestations of our Big Feels, rolling down our cheeks for all the world to witness. No two spurred by identical emotion, each unique to the life experience that prescribed it.

I suspect that God is forever traipsing along behind us, collecting every single one; and not minding a bit to get his hands wet (or even snotty.) I don’t know why the image of the Almighty Cosmic Creator collecting our tears is so comforting to me. It’s validating, I guess.

So many of us were sprinkled by “holy water” to be baptized in the church tradition. How odd then that the sprinklings that we offer God so often roll down our cheeks. I like the thought that none of it goes to waste; that all tears are valid. (Are tears holy water too? Maybe they’re the holiest.)

I laugh more than I used to, too. Sometimes at the absolute absurdity of life. I mean, you can’t be serious, right? This place is crazy, man! Humanity is writhing right now. Each facet of our existences seems upended and spent. We are divided, swamped with information, fed a diet of doom, and all of this can make a very “connected” world feel very lonely.

Our instinct is to make our woe a solitary endeavor, but we’re all connected. Joy to joy, woe to woe. As best as I can figure, there are a trillion filaments of light woven between and through us all. That’s what vanquishes the darkness.

So yes, I cry. Some days, quite a bit. There are many times I “cannot even,” when my physical pain and mental/emotional pain are trying to outdo each other in a footrace, a good, cleansing cry is where it’s at. Not as a concession to the pain, but to spite it.

Being Earthside is wretched, brilliant, brutal, beautiful, and exquisite. It is a predetermined number of dog-eared possibilities.

But I’ve made it through 100 percent of the mess thrown at me so far, and so have YOU. That’s a pretty good track record. All we can do is try not to let our tears make us salty toward an open-wound world.

We become venerated by our tears. Canonized. Made whole and sainted, I think. All the really cool saints weep on the regular. I believe Jesus did, and why would he not? He rejoiced with weeping and wept with deep, abiding sorrow. He himself is the (Big?) Book of Life, not constrained by the two-thousand years of dog-eared, magic-marker-circled laminated possibility we have assigned him and called “Truth.”

Teardrop by teardrop. Emotional outburst by emotional outburst. Primal screaming session by primal screaming session. Whatever it takes to get through this stellar experience of life together.

Blessed be, friends.

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