The Purple Robe

On Good Friday, at ten in the morning, I went to see my supervisor for spiritual direction. Kay is someone who helps me with vocational discernment, but our sessions together are just as much spiritual direction as they are supervision. 

That day, I told her what had happened in the labyrinth in January and how Christ and I had been facing each other, sitting on the ground outside the labyrinth, ever since. 

At some point during the course of our session, when Kay invited me into prayer, I noticed the image had shifted a bit. Now, between us on the ground, covering all those many losses, was a purple robe. 

It was a plush robe, almost blanket-like. And it was covering all of my pain.

I didn't get what that meant.

But later, when I went to my church's Good Friday service at noon, my whole being was arrested when I heard our deacon read these words as part of the long Gospel text for the day: 

"Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to him, saying, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' and striking him on the face. Pilate went out again and said to them, 'Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.' So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, 'Here is the man!'"

—John 19:1–5

I stood still in the pew when I heard that. The purple robe. How was it that a purple robe had shown up in my prayer during the session with Kay not two hours earlier, and here it was again? What could that mean?

I didn't know.

I decided that was okay. It was enough to have noticed the purple robe in my prayer, enough to have heard it echoed in the Gospel text that same day, enough to keep sitting on the ground with the robe between us now, even if I didn't know what it meant.

***

We sat that way for a long time. I could not tell you how long, only that every time I went into prayer, there Christ and I still sat, on the ground outside the labyrinth, and there was the robe between us.

I appreciated so much that he didn't rush me. I appreciated that he didn't force himself near to me when I wasn't ready. 

But then one day, I was.

I went to prayer, and I was no longer sitting opposite Christ. Now we were sitting side by side. Now we were looking at the purple robe from the same side of it.

I had moved to where he was. 

When He Didn't Go Away

I count it fortuitous that I had already scheduled a session on my calendar to meet with my spiritual director, Elaine, the day after I got back from my trip to Arizona. 

A good spiritual director helps you notice what you haven't noticed on your own, and that's exactly what Elaine did. After I told her what happened in the labyrinth, she said: 

"So, you told God to go away. Did he?"

I'd been so surprised by my declaring he go away, surprised even more that I said it with the force of pushing him away with both hands, that I hadn't noticed whether he did what I asked.

He didn't.

He stood right there in front of me and took it. 

"Was there any kind of wall between you?" Elaine wanted to know. "Some kind of hedge or fence or partition, blocking you from one another in some way?"

There wasn't. It was just the two of us, directly facing each other. Nothing stood between us.

"What was he doing?" Elaine wanted to know. 

He was looking at me. He was listening.

But he wasn't anywhere near leaving. It felt like he knew what I needed better than I did, which was why he stayed put. 

So for a little while, I just let myself notice him there, standing before me, even though I'd told him to leave. 

***

The next time I met with Elaine, about three weeks later, a shift had happened in the scene. In my prayer, Christ and I were still situated at the labyrinth, but we were no longer standing inside of it. Now we were seated on the ground, just to the right of its entrance. 

I could tell he wanted to come sit next to me, perhaps even put his arm around me, but I wouldn't have it. I needed him to sit over there, across from me. 

So he did. 

And in the space between us, on the ground, sat every single one of those losses I had seen with such clarity in the labyrinth those few weeks earlier. They were sitting there, lined up between us on the ground.

Every time I went into prayer, there we were: at the outside edge of the labyrinth, sitting cross-legged on the ground, facing each other, with all those losses lying between us.

And that's where we sat for about two months.

Nothing changed until Good Friday.

How It Began

It started at the labyrinth.

I'd been invited to serve for a week in January 2016 as a spiritual director for a group of graduate students who were completing a residency in Arizona. I was glad for the opportunity, having served in this capacity before and been blessed by it. 

But I did not realize the extent to which I was bringing a weary heart with me. 

As is so often the case, God's grace was present as I sat with the students each day. I saw insights happen, and my heart grew in affection for each one of them. But outside the sessions, my heart was taking its own difficult path. 

One afternoon, I used my extended break time to walk the labyrinth at the top of the property. I made my way there and began the steps. Step by step and turn by turn, I sought to contemplate the turns my spiritual journey had taken over the course of my life, just as I'd done when walking labyrinth paths before. 

But as I drew closer to the labyrinth's center, I noticed my heart was not attending to those meditations at all. Instead, it was addressing God in a firm and direct voice. 

"Go away," it was telling God. "Go away." 

I stopped and stood still, shocked to discover what was being said in a very loud voice in the center of my chest. It felt as though my heart, in speaking these words with such force, was pushing God away with both hands. 

Go.

Away. 

***

It had been a long season of loss. 

Most recently, there had been the loss of our two cats, both 16 years old, within two and a half weeks of each other. They had died after coping with different strains of illnesses for 18 months. Toward the last six months of their lives, we were administering fluids twice daily, stopping by the vet's office at least once a week, and watching their food intake and activity in the litter box with vigilance each day. 

Eventually, they died. 

They had been like our children, since we have no children of our own. They had personalities wholly unique to themselves. They loved each other and us in their own particular ways. In the mornings, Diva would sit with me at my desk, teaching me more about contemplation than I could ever have learned on my own. During the day, they followed me around the house, asking to be attended to. At night, the four of us would gather on the bed and have family playtime. 

And now they were gone.

And I was tired and sad and angry about it — this much I knew.

But I didn't know there was more. 

***

On that day in the labyrinth, it was as though a zoomed-in lens on my life pulled back, shifting my gaze of awareness from what I could see right in front of me — the loss of Solomon and Diva — to what had unfolded in succession over the previous four years, which was loss upon loss upon loss. 

In the previous four years, I had: 

• Lost my closest friendship of 15 years through a painful breach we could not repair

• Lost another close friendship of 10 years

• Gotten entangled in the breakdown of a friendship shared by two other good friends, which led to a messy aftermath

• Walked with Kirk through the loss of his mother to cancer

• Walked with Kirk through a difficult season in his life with God

• Walked with a close friend through the acute loss of her husband

• Named an experience of sexual assault from my teen years

• Lost the expression of my sexuality for a long season through the healing process and its aftermath

• Tended to the kitties getting sick over eighteen months

• Lost both of the cats to death

There was even the loss of Still Forming, in a way, as I'd noticed and heeded an invitation along the way to shift my one-on-one ministry work to that of facilitating a community. This had meant saying goodbye to what this online space had been for many years from its beginning. It had asked me to let go of one era and open my heart and soul to a new one. 

***

I thought I had been handling it. As each of these losses came up, I'd been as responsible to them as I knew how to be.

When I named the sexual assault for what it was, for example, I went straight into therapy. While in therapy, I also worked through the loss of the friendships and all the messy entanglements they revealed. I adjusted my approach to relationships in my life due to what the therapy taught me. And I continued to meet with my spiritual director every single month. 

Even still, my heart had landed here: telling God to go away. 

***

I realized, that day in the labyrinth, that I was angry at God. And I think that anger went something like this: 

What the hell, God? What the serious hell? I've taken each loss like a punch in the gut, and instead of folding, I did the work. I was responsible to it all. I did what I knew was right to do. And now I'm tired. I'm done. Are you done yet? Can you please stop now? I'm over this. I don't have more to give. I can't take any more. Please stop. Actually, you know what? Just go away. Please, just go away. 

But he didn't.

Instead, he sat with me at the corner of the labyrinth for several more months as I processed my anger.

I'll share how that unfolded in my next post. 

Christ the King Sunday

I use a small blue lectionary as part of my sacred reading time in the mornings. It's called A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants and is published by Upper Room. Each week, you read into the coming Sunday's lectionary readings, and the readings for each day follow a liturgy that includes an opening invocation, a psalm, a daily Scripture, the Sunday readings, other devotional readings from various sources, an invitation to prayer, a hymn, and a closing benediction. 

I haven't used it faithfully, but I love using it when I do, and part of my sabbatical rhythm has been a return to this practice in the mornings — which, again, has not happened faithfully but is on the track of progress. 

One reason I love this lectionary is that it keeps me in tune with the movement of the church year. So, for instance, I was aware this past week that we were reading into Christ the King Sunday, which was yesterday — the final Sunday in the church year, before Advent begins a new church year this coming Sunday. 

Christ the King Sunday. I can't say I've ever felt a particular connection to this holy day. I could barely tell you what it signifies, actually, beyond an awareness that it is our herald of Christ as king of the universe. Theologically, in my head, I agree with that. But I've never had an opportunity for the acknowledgment of this day to touch my heart — until this past week, when I was reading into the feast day with my lectionary and noticing its connection points to this new season of sabbatical for me. 

Through the week, I found myself stopping to think of the notion of Christ as king. What does it mean for him to be my king? What impact ought that make in my life?

I thought of seemingly small things, like this return to contemplative rhythms in my mornings. It's not been an easy shift, as I've built up pretty strong habits in a different direction for some time now. First thing upon waking, I would do a quick check on my phone of my three email inboxes, my Facebook notifications, and my Instagram notifications. Then I would fill my coffee tumbler and settle in on the couch for a deeper read of my Facebook newsfeed and a full scroll of my Instagram feed. 

One of the fruits of my first retreat last month with the Transforming Community was a deep knowing that these habits needed to change. They were fragmenting and distressing my mind, body, and soul. Increasingly, I found stillness difficult. And for someone who is called to a contemplative way of life and to live out her vocation in online spaces, I knew what was happening was not good or in line with my call. 

So in the aftermath of that first retreat, I've been seeking to return to contemplative rhythms. In the mornings, this means no phone-checking and instead settling in for a while with my lectionary, the Scriptures, and other sacred reading books.

Like I said, it has been a challenge to change my morning habits. I don't do this other path faithfully every day. Sometimes I still end up on the couch, scrolling my Facebook feed. 

So, what does it mean for Christ to be my king? Perhaps it means trusting that this return to a different way of starting my mornings is truly good for my soul, that it is the way he designed my soul to live and flourish, that doing my mornings in that other way only leads to continued fragmentation and disintegration. What would happen to my soul over time if I continued to live that way? 

Can I let myself instead live under the headship of a king who designed me to live a different way and may ask me to conform my life to that way of being in the world accordingly — even if it takes me away from what I think will keep me relevant and in the know about what's happening in the world? 

This morning, at the start of a new week, I turned in my lectionary to the readings for the week leading into the first Sunday of Advent. And in the Scripture selections, I found two lines from different passages that seemed to speak to one another. 

First there was Matthew 3, which spoke of John the Baptist by saying: 

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make His paths straight.'"
—Matthew 3:3

Then there was Isaiah, who spoke of people saying: 

"Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
He will teach us His ways,
And we shall walk in His paths."
—Isaiah 2:3

The Lord's way and ways. What are those? The preparing of his path and the walking in it. What might that look like? 

These images of God's ways and paths feel connected to my meditation on Christ as king — that there is a way in which God fashioned the world to exist and for us, for me, to live in it.

Will I submit myself to those ways and paths? Will I let him be my king? 

One thing I can say is that I am back on the path and finding my way there again, through this sabbatical. I'm grateful for that. 

A Turn Toward Sabbatical

Well, here I am. 

I thought, no doubt naively, that being trained in spiritual formation and contemplative practices and soul care would render me impervious to the need for a sabbatical, but it didn't. 

I'm here. On sabbatical from my ministry. 

In this space, I'll be chronicling the journey of how I got here and how I am learning and living my way through it. I'm writing it down for me, because writing makes my journey more real and understandable to myself, but you're welcome to listen in. If these scribblings bless or nourish you in some way, too, I'll be glad. 

You're also welcome to join our online community in Still Forming's private Facebook group, where, during my sabbatical, I've invited the community to continue to gather and share their own ongoing journeys of formation with each other.

More soon. 

xo,
Christianne