"I Can Only Imagine..."

"...Surrounded by your glory
What will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you Jesus,
Or in awe of you be still?
Will I stand in your presence,
Or to my knees will I fall?
Will I sing Alelluja,
Will I be able to speak at all?
I can only imagine
I can only imagine..."
-     Mercy Me

AS much as I love this song, "I Can Only Imagine" by Mercy Me, I don't have to imagine...I know.  I have been surrounded by Christ's glory and my heart has felt it all...awe, the desire to dance, to fall to my knees, and to sing Alelluia...all at once.  I feel it whenever I stop throughout the day and just listen. 

It happened today.  It happened only an hour ago.  I had just put the girls to bed and came downstairs to return calls, respond to emails, and transfer the last load of laundry from the washer to the dryer.  On my way from their bedroom, upstairs, to my desk I decided to stop on the landing and just listen in the silence of the house breathing. 

I sat on the landing and gave Him my heart. 

"What do you have to say to me in this moment dear Father?" I asked.  "I want to remind you that I am the source of your desire to express order and beauty.  My ideas are orderly and clear...and therefore lovely...as Love and Principle are synonymous, you can't express order and not experience beauty." 

This may seem like a pretty simple and obvious message, but for me it was merciful.  As I'd been heading down the stairs I was actually beating myself up about how much I love to make things beautiful.  I was feeling a bit ridiculous about how happy it makes me to put beautiful flowers in vases, make neat stacks of clean laundry, shelve books in patterns of color and width of spine, carefully fold antique quilts collected through the years.

It reminded me of a moment four years ago when a friend brought her sister  by for a visit.  When we'd moved into our home I'd had a stunning wall of custom bookcases built in our great room.  It housed over a hundred books I'd collected as a voracious reader.  Each book was like a good friend.  As I'd finish reading a particular volume, I would write a note to my daughters inside.  The notes would tell them where I was in my life when I'd read the book, the feelings it had elicited, the insights gained, and any conclusions reached.  The books were my way of cataloging my feelings and thoughts so that my daughters might someday know me as I was.  The bookshelf was my way of putting my life in order.  Turning it into something beautiful. 

My friend's sister saw this the minute she walked in the door.  She looked at the wall of books...some of them shelved with spines vertical, some stacked horizontally...and exclaimed, "Your bookshelf is a quilt to you isn't it?  The colors and graphics, widths, depths, and heights of each spine has been placed carefully, hasn't it?  This is your quilt of ideas." 

I wanted to cry.  I felt known. 

So when I stopped on the stairs tonight and God spoke to me of Himself as the source of my love for beauty and order, it reminded me of that moment of being known, and a wave of peace and joy washed over me...refreshing and encouraging me...to be me...to love the me I am.

I don't have to imagine how it will feel to be standing in His presence, enveloped in His love, seen through His eyes and known...and I am singing Alleluiah...when I can speak at all.

I love the way that Mary Baker Eddy describes it:

"When will mankind awake to know their present ownership of all good, and praise and love the spot where God dwells most conspicuously in His reflection of love and leadership?  When will the world waken to the privilege of knowing God, the liberty and glory of His presence..."

You don't have to imagine...just stop and let Him speak to you.

with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"I won't grow up..."

"I won't grow up,
(I won't grow up)
I don't want to go to school.
(I don't want to go to school)
Just to learn to be a parrot,
(Just to learn to be a parrot)
And repeat a silly rule.
(And repeat a silly rule)…"
- from "Peter Pan"

But this song from Peter Pan was not my anthem.  I never stopped thinking about growing up.   "When I grow up I want to be…" was the prelude to most of my thoughts as a child.  I was in a hurry to grow up.  I didn't want to be a child.  I wanted to be a teacher, a lawyer, a professor….anything but a child.  Peter Pan's sentiments above, were as far from my dreams as Never-Never Land was from a London flat.

I wanted to go to school.  I loved school.  And more strangely, at least to most of my friends, I love all the silly rules.  I thrived on them.  The more rules…the better.  Rules were something I could count on.  Rules were reliable and I liked things that were reliable.  I liked being able to know that if I brought my homework in on time I would have earned privileges.  Privileges like getting to play chess during recess.  I liked knowing that if I waited patiently with my hand raised…I would be called on.    I was a rules junkie.

This served me well through 30+ years of grade school, middle and high school, college, university…and as a teacher and principal myself.   But as a wife and mother…well, not so much.  I didn't know how to play.  I didn't know how to let a day unfold before me.  I woke up each morning with the day's schedule etched behind my eyelids.  This worked as long as my daughters were….infants. Feedings at 6, 11, and 2…baths at 10, naps at 10:30 and 2:30 were perfectly suited to my matrix-like mode of operation.  But once they became little girls I was lost.  Thank goodness my children were creative and seemed to know, instinctively, how to run and jump and make noise.  These activities did not seem to be a part of my DNA…unless of course they were cast in the framework of a ballet studio or an art class. 

But I got away with my peculiarities…sort of.  By the time our oldest daughter was a toddler I was deeply involved in my work as a spiritual healer.  Wasn't it "reasonable" that I would need peace, quiet…order.  Is it any wonder that the career paths I had "chosen" were ones where I could demand the kind of rules, systems, and schedules that made me feel most "in my skin".   Why, I would ask myself (and anyone else who would listen) didn't even Mary Baker Eddy herself have a penchant for "strict order and neatness", "close attention to detail", and "simplified and systematic way of life"?   Wasn't every Christian Scientist aware of the pin cushion story.  For those of you who aren't…here is the Cliff Notes version:  Mrs. Eddy was so aware of the orderliness in her household that once she entered her office and noticed that the pincushion on her desk did not have the pins placed in the right order and proceeded to correct her staff for not placing them properly.   I'm sure she had her reasons.  And I'm sure her's were motivated by a deep spiritual sense of Principle.

But I can't tell you that mine always were…or  how often I referred to this account (and what I assumed her intentions were) as a justification for my own obscene demands for rules, schedules, and of course, neatness.

Okay…enough about where I've been. 

This summer I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be a "child" of God.  I haven't found a single place, in the Bible or in Mrs. Eddy's writings,  where it talks about the virtues of being an "adult of God"…heck, I can't even find one reference to man as "God's grown-up".  So I have been…and this is more of a stretch than you can imagine…trying to express more child-likeness.  To be more spontaneous, playful, open to change, and eager for adventure.  And not just when I am at camp…but all the time.

As a start, for the first time in their lives our twins are spending their summer (the weeks that they are not away at camp) home with us…all day…while I work.  In the past they have been in a local school-sponsored daycamp each summer (after they came home from camp-camp) so that I could have the peace, quiet and order that I felt I needed.  But this summer I decided I could learn from them about inventiveness, creativity, spontaneity, and joy. I could learn more about what it means to be a child of God.  I am learning to play…to be flexible while I stay focused on God's presence in my life and in the lives of those who have called for help.  I have found that my heart is purer, my responses are free-er, and my thoughts are quicker…more flexible, orderly, and agile under their tutelage as child mentors.

I am learning to be playful and quiet, orderly and spontaneous…and yes, I am still obsessively neat…but the colors are more childlike and the songs that I am singing in my heart are more joyful and sweet.

Today this is the song I woke up singing.  It is one that Clara and Emma taught me last night in the dark after I finished singing them their lullabyes.  It is a song they learned at camp:

"Happiness flows in a circular motion
Floating like a little boat upon the sea
Everyone is part of everything, everywhere
You can be happy if you let yourself be
Happiness flows
Happiness flows
Happiness flows
Happiness flows!"
- Unknown

Call me if you would like to know the tune…I will sing it to you!

With childlike joy,
Kate