spiritual

Stronger Together

/ Tarrah Vaupel / Leave a comment

Does this photo resonate with anyone? It does for me. This photo accompanied one of my social media posts from FIVE years ago…and it conveniently popped up today as a “memory”.

I wish I could say that it was “just” a memory…and that I never have feelings like this anymore…but that wouldn’t be true at…all… The truth is, we have all been conditioned by society and our culture to ‘push through’ and ‘push it down’…but what happens when we do that? What is the price that we pay at the end of the day for doing this with no regard or space for actually listening to and honoring ourselves? It’s costly… It’s exhausting… It’s abusive… It’s toxic… …and you will burnout…

There are times in all of our lives when we are faced with times that we simply must move forward and press on with every last ounce of strength that we have. That’s life. Happens to everyone and NO ONE is immune to times such as these. Even the person or people in your lives who seemingly “have it all together” or seem to draw from a limitless amount of energy and enthusiasm…them too.

I have learned, and am still learning, that sometimes we just need to surrender to that exhaustion. If only for a moment or two…allow yourself a moment to speak to yourself with words of compassion and love. Feel your ‘feels’, sense what your body is telling you…sit your butt still and just be. It is within those moments where God breaks in and feels with you…with all of us. IF we allow space for that to happen, of course. To be sure, God is with us through each moment of our lives. BUT when we surrender ourselves to the reality of our bodies and take a moment to “just be” in a moment of contemplation or meditation…be it sitting in our cars, in a specially created space of solitude for reflection OR locking ourselves in the bathroom for 5 minutes to “get away from it all” #thestruggleisreal. Those are the moments that we can hear and feel the tangible love, grace and strength of God alongside us. Staring back at us, and sometimes, through our own eyes in the mirror.

Our exhaustion, our brokenness, our imperfections, our cracks are places where the light enters…and those spaces make me, for example, stronger with being aware and fully present in knowing that God is with me through it and in the mess ’til the end. This “hotmess” (as I sometimes refer to myself) is stronger with God and most assuredly stronger together with all of you. Remember that YOU, dear reader, are a part of that “togetherness”…and I thank God for that.

Stardust, dirt and ashes…

/ Tarrah Vaupel / Leave a comment

From stardust we are born and to stardust we shall return.

I simply LOVE this imagery. My colleague, Rev. Stacy Tate, at Friedens UCC in Irvington, IL placed this imagery into my heart when we were preparing for Ash Wednesday worship. It is incredibly true. At our most fundamental, we are all made up of the same element that exists throughout the cosmos. When wondering and searching for the “where did we come from”…it seems to me that we came from the same place that everything came…in it’s most elemental form…a building block of our humanness that can be found in every part of the created. All “living” things on this created earth are composed of these four elements (and more of course): hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. At our core we are made up of the same pieces of the air that we breathe, the water that we drink and the ground that we stand upon. These same elements also form the stars, the planets, and the spaces between all of them and all of us. Cool, right? I think so.

Then I wonder…if we are so fundamentally connected, why do we often times feel so isolated and alone? I wonder if our disconnectedness in a world that is more technologically connected than ever before in history is actually a result of our technological advancements? I wonder if our connectedness is based more squarely on the simplicity of our five basic human senses interacting with the created world we live within?

And all of these wonderings linger in my thoughts as I think about Ash Wednesday reflectively. From stardust we are born and to stardust we shall return… Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… It seems to me that our existence and the existence of the cosmos is no “accident” or something that simply always has been. For me, everything had to come from somewhere…even when considering the “big bang” that thrust the earth into its existence came from something that was already in place in the cosmos. In my faith and my belief, I hold firmly to the idea that God, the Divine creator, the architect of life and the cosmos…spoke everything into being. With just a word, an idea, a whimsical thought or wondering…everything was flung into it’s existence. Can you EVEN imagine…

We too, are spoken into being. We are called and named as beloved children of God. In thinking about that as we begin this Lenten journey…I wonder how this spiritual journey will unfold for me throughout Lent? I wonder if I will have the discipline to take the intentional time to listen, be still and wrestle with what the day has presented to me and sometimes thrusts in my path to overcome? A quote from theologian Rachael A. Keefe from her book, “Negotiating the Shadows”, “If Lent is a spiritual journey, then the road should be treacherous and the light of Easter not always visible. We ought to arrive at Good Friday worn out from wrestling our own demons and ready to offer up all the things which hold us captive to make room for the new life of Easter morning.” Keefe goes further in addressing Ash Wednesday and the Lenten journey in a dialogue she presents between, who I believe, herself and the Divine, “You’ll go where you need to go. It’s your journey. But you said, ‘desert, wilderness and darkness. Yes, You’ve been to these places before; I’ve seen you there. But you’re telling me I need to go again–to the chaos and the brokenness and the painful places. It will be different this time. You go with intention. Look for the stillness in the chaos, the healing in the brokenness, and for the hope in the pain. I will be there.”

And so I enter with intention into this season of Lent. I enter with the knowledge that I am created and named by God and I am made up of the same elements of that within the whole of the created cosmos. I enter, humbly, into the spaces of brokenness, chaos and unknowning-ness. I enter into this journey…wondering how it shall unfold and knowing that I will journey where I need to go. I wonder how the Holy will reveal itself to me and within myself? I wonder how others will journey through this season alongside me? I wonder if my seeking the Divine in the midst of the sacred silence and chaos of life will be heard and received by me…even if it’s not what I want to hear and feel. I wonder…will I have the courage? Will I have the grit and the strength for the wrestling? I wonder…within my living between my stardust beginning and my stardust returning…how will my turning and facing the Divine alongside me and within myself deepen my faith?