Allison Campbell Jensen

Gray clouds above promise more snow to white fields below. Spotting green through the windshield, I head for the grove of conifers. And stop. Sigh. Whatever was I doing on my own, tooling around the wintry countryside looking for birds?

Then, alighting on a deep-green branch: Brilliant red body, crested head with a orange beak poking out from black mask—the male cardinal, resplendent, suddenly appeared among deep-green branches. After a moment, he flew away.

“Thank you,” I said aloud.

Then I thought, “Who am I thanking? Who am I talking to?”

At the time, benighted by certain vague ideas of religion—to pray would be to plea for help from a distant bearded male God armed with lightning bolts (how I wish I were kidding)—I did not recognize this conversation as a prayer. Now I do.

There’s plenty to written about prayer, sometimes numbered, like Anne Lamott’s delightful Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, or categorized, as in The Book of Common Prayer that we Episcopalians use: “The principal kinds of prayer are adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession and petition.” Lofty language yet helpful, once translated from church talk: oblation, for example, means to offer oneself to the purposes of God.

But for me, sometimes, prayer simply consists of conversations. One-sided? Not entirely. During a prayer vigil on the Maundy Thursday before I was baptized, I experienced this scene: many cold braided streams rush by me, yet I stand on solid ground.

Naturally, that was in my mind’s eye; “the ear of the heart” is the extra -sensory perception that St. Benedict refers to in his compassionate Rule. To discern another realm—avian or divine—I turn up the attention dial. On my knees in the garden, I see a shadow of a large bird; pretty sure it’s a hawk, although I’d have to look to see which kind. In conversation with a friend, I hear a sentence that seems simple but an unseen shadow accompanies it—a God-nudge, perhaps, to ask a follow-up question.

Hearing the tree-top high pitches of Cedar Waxwings, my eyes follow my ears. Walking and talking on the phone, is that a poke? Although he hasn’t said a word, I look down at a man in his wheelchair. His machine is starting to slip in the slushy snow. I hang up and begin to push. As it turns out, a motorized wheelchair is heavy; more people come to help.

God involved a couple more in that conversation—and, every Sunday and often during the week, conversation—prayer—brings together my faith community. In my church, we together confess we have sinned “by what we have done and by what we have left undone….”—and that’s powerful corporate prayer, a preacher from another denomination told me. Yes—and the effect is like that of the small, square door called nijiriguchi, or “crawling-in entrance,” that guests must use to enter a traditional Japanese tea house: everyone, for a moment, is at the same humble level.

For me, seeking on my own is not the way; together is.

Read Full Post »

Reading while bouncing along on the elliptical challenges me, so I was looking around at my fellow gymmies. One woman had a T-shirt decorated with a pea; and the word “Belong.” When she turned, I saw the other side, “like peas in a pod” with an image of tightly packed peas in a pod. Join a small group at this suburban church and you, too, could experience this tidiness, this uniformity, this comfort.

Comfort for her and others that I am certain would mean misery for me, however, given my unruly beginnings. Among the other anti-Establishment attitudes I absorbed, church was not valued in our family. Oh, we went to church, once. When I was about 7, Ma dropped off the three of us kids at a Presbyterian church and drove away. I do not remember the faces of the strange adults encountering an absent mother’s cast-offs—but do recall an aura of dismay or perhaps disapproval.

After that awkwardness, I was in no hurry to return to church.

In our house, the only phrases referring to God that did not also include –damn or -dammit were “God bless America and all the ships at sea” and “The Lord helps those who help themselves.” I took the latter to heart; relying on myself, I was able to use the Fannie Farmer cookbook to bake chocolate-chip cookies; to gad about creeks and woods solo; and, all on my own, clean out a former chicken coop for a playhouse. (Turns out that beforehand I should have asked the neighbor who owned the coop.)

Tops in my mother’s house—self-reliance; prominent wherever my dad was living when we’d visit in the summertime—simple orneriness. My parents divorced when I was 5, yet our parents agreed on that unspoken family value: It was admirable to stand alone and apart from the crowd.

Particularly in the early to mid-1960s when some crowds were saying hateful things about black people, outside seemed a good place to be. Yet even while our family embraced an idea of Brotherhood, in the real world, we kept to a very small circle. And we assumed those who wanted to belong to institutions—to the Elks, to a Big Business, to the Church—were not Thinkers as we were. To join something, after all, might erode that highly valued independence, might lead one to negotiate, to compromise, to cave—to lose an integrity of sorts. The sort that is never tested.

I scoffed at The Establishment, yet I yearned to step within an embrace. As I grew up, the good-hearted company of friends, boyfriends, fellow students, the family into which I married still left me wanting more. Divorced and headed toward my 40^th birthday, I tiptoed into the Episcopal Church and experienced revelations of acceptance, of openness, of love. Jesus loved those who were apart—working folks, tax collectors, even ladies of ill repute. The calls to care for the poor resonated with the values I knew from my parents. Could I also retain their lessons about independence and still belong here in a church?

I could—even while I learned that regular partaking of Divine Love does not turn humans angelic. Churches may promise the Kingdom of Heaven, they just might have leaky roofs, shaky budgets or cranky people. About two years after I was baptized, my beautiful church to which people gave gifts—lace-trimmed linens for the altars, elegant banners for the walls, an image of abundance painted behind the altar—was in dire financial shape and digging deep into a bequest to pay the staff and keep going.

Word reached beyond the walls and the bishop came to chide us lay leaders for “eating the seed corn.” In a church that allows individuals the freedom of individual thinking, several loudly complained that the bishop had no right to tell us what to do with “our” money.

And there’s the rub. To my mind, it wasn’t “our” money; it’s God’s money. But people stubbornly chose to revisit the hurt every Sunday. Their anger and my frustration finally drove me out to search for a new faith community.

For the first six months, I strove just to be there—to be and to be lifted up in worship and not to be dragged into conflicts. Finally I stepped beyond, and suggested a social justice group that was approved by the lay leadership. After it was announced to the congregation, I was caught alone in the library by a very long-time member. “You aren’t going to cause trouble, are you?” she asked. “No more than Jesus did,” I said. She scurried away.

A couple of years later, she hugged me during the sharing of the peace and said: “Love you.”

Wow. Just like Jesus.

By living in this faith community, working through tensions (when possible), living with discomfort (when not), I continue to live into a new reality that Jesus loves me and so I belong here. And, dismaying as it may feel at times, Jesus loves everyone and they all belong here, too.

Recognizing that the tidy pod of peas cannot be my ideal—I was brought up a bit too ornery for that, yet I choose to belong to a community that shares my faith in Jesus, belief in God’s mercy and commitment to the Spirit.

My vision of that belonging looks more like a cottage garden, with splashes of peonies and upstanding irises, blue and white phlox, and pink roses scented with cinnamon. Standalone sunflowers (this is not a garden limited by seasons) towering over bunches of daisies, cheery hollyhocks and lilies in all their gorgeous variety…. Imagine! Which flower am I? Which flower are you? I pray and hope and believe our variety delights God.

To get along, I’ve found it helpful to have a few rules—yes, those Ten Commandments and the commandment to love God and to love others as oneself. To these I add the guidelines posted on Facebook by Bishop Steve Charleston.

“Live for love, work for peace, dance for joy, give for hope, think for fun, climb for strength, walk for a cure, share for freedom, look for meaning, save for tomorrow, spend for others, care for all, laugh for heaven, cry for a reason, help for community, stand for justice, journey for truth, fly for vision, feel for wisdom, hide for shelter, build for the homeless, dig for answers, pray for ever, plan for a purpose, speak for solidarity, read for knowledge, teach for fulfillment, learn for curiosity, imagine for God, compromise for humility, be for who you truly are.”

God loves us, as we are. God wants us to spread that Love around to everybody else, even those not in the circle, the church or any church.

Read Full Post »

Maybe MSP Communications editor Brian Anderson had said enough farewells, as I had left the company twice already. This farewell luncheon was with another of the three men who ran MSP Communications: the sales guy, Gary Johnson. Usually I talked with Gary and the publisher, Burt, only at the meetings to discuss the latest cover of MPLS/ST.PAUL magazine.

Yet I anticipated that chatting with Gary over lunch would be enjoyable, as he’s warm, outgoing and, contrary to stereotype, sincere. Over dessert, we somehow meandered into what was for me new territory: I was looking at churches. Well, I admitted, maybe even popping into churches once in a while. (Left unsaid: to sit in the back and observe these strange creatures, the Church-goers.)

While I might have known Gary was a good Catholic—he’s a very open person—I still was surprised when he started talking about Jesus. Enthusiastically. Like Jesus was his good friend. Like Gary relied on Jesus—and he felt when he called on him, Jesus heard his prayers.

Wow, I thought to myself; this is wild. Gary is intelligent and worldly and successful—and he’s talking about Jesus. He was shaking my stereotype—that people who believe in Jesus or God moped outside the mainstream, were not savvy, maybe even not so smart. Perhaps I stuttered attempting a remark at some point; Gary said, “You don’t seem comfortable.” And so we moved on to a new topic.

But his eagerness to share his profound experience of Jesus stayed with me. And Gary’s ease and fluency in God-talk impressed me. This was a new language for me, much different than the two foreign languages, Mandarin Chinese and French, that I’d tackled only after reaching adulthood. God-talk ostensibly was in English; I started to absorb the specialized vocabulary—sin, prayer, liturgy, Holy Spirit, love—as if I were mastering an academic discipline.

I’d done that, after all, in my early 20s, when I studied Buddhism, read the great Chinese classic Dao De Jing and enjoyed Zen poetry. Each fed my mental eccentricity, however, without sparking any spiritual electricity.

On this new path toward a relationship with God, I could no longer rely solely on my thoughts, my head, my intellect; I needed to engage my feelings, my heart, my soul. Digging into feelings caused some anxiety; the thought of giving up things provoked much more. Unlike go-with-the-flow Daoism, Christianity, it seemed, would restrain my absolute freedom. Could I countenance that change, even while the prize of peace and caring as embodied by certain friends was pulling me forward? At first, I was wary.

Yet, visiting churches during worship services continued to call me. By listening to Bible passages, hearing the preachers’ messages and (sorry to anyone within earshot) warbling along with the hymns, I began to sense where this path might lead: a new way of belonging.

Dao, the Way, the first character of Dao De Jing, (also transliterated Tao Te Ching). Early Christians also referred to their new lives as the Way.

Read Full Post »