Shiva With the Spirit

“Open your eyes Shelby, open your eyes!”

— A famous line of heartbreak in Steel Magnolias. I sat there as a teenager, watching hundreds of times with my friends, stone cold and refusing to let a tear fall. While many of my friends watched with tears and laughter, I usually only participated in the latter. As I sat there frozen with the eyes of my heart squinted shut, as I refused to participate in something that might cause me to lose emotional control.

The truth is I was conditioned to think that tears were weak, and I knew if I let one roll, a dam would break releasing a heart shattered from years of childhood trauma. So I prided myself in my “manly” pursuit of stoicism.

As I’ve grown in age, and in pursuing the Spirit of God, I’ve learned to recognize her movement when I’m brought to unexpected tears. Rather than seeing tears as weakness, I now recognize the winds of God blowing around me. Now I try to pause and ask “what do you have for me in this moment?”

One of these mystic moments happened for me yesterday at the Museum of the Bible. I was able to lead a workshop on painting with our theological imagination. At the beginning, I led them in a liturgical prayer I wrote asking the same Spirt that guided Bezalel and Oholiqb to guide us as co-creators.

My hope was to bridge the gap between these gifted artists,  the women of the Bible we had learned about, and the living female disciples around us, noting the Same spirit that dwelled with the people of the Bible dwells with us now.

After my sessions, I headed to see the museum’s collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Magdala Stone. As I came around the corner to the ancient scrolls, I felt something sacred cover me as Lamentations and the Psalms sat before me under plexiglass and a dim spotlight.

LAMENTATIONS

For these things my eyes weep my tears flow down because the comforter that should refresh the soul is far from me.

PSALMS

A song of ascents. I turn my eyes to the mountains; from where will my help come? My help comes from the LORD, maker of heaven and earth.

Was it really these two specific fragments that they had? I wondered what life the scribe had lived before dutifully copying those words on parchment. Did they let their tears fall?

If you’ve been following me this past year you’ve likely seen my family’s journey through an unexpected diagnosis of our daughter having Leukemia. I can’t say it’s been an easy road, and yet it’s one that has kept me desperate to pay attention, always on the lookout for the Spirit.

Some of that searching led me to, once again, bridge the mystery back to those who have gone before me in Scripture through reading Lamentations and the Psalms. After all, I believe the communion of Saints includes a solidarity of searching for the great Comforter.

It gave me peace to know others have felt what I feel, and have been sustained by the Spirit when it feels like the Comforter is far from me. Lately, I have often turned my eyes to the beauty in nature around me: Where does my help come from? - My help comes from the maker of Heaven and Earth, the maker of the oak trees, Salado creek, and the Guadeloupe Bass that swim under the shade of the Sycamore.

This trip to DC feels like the first somewhat normal event after this year of searching through lament. And there I stood in the muted lights of the museum, with handwritten scrolls of Scripture, echoing back to me the Hope of a kingdom to come.

The tears fell,

and the Spirit swirled around me.

It was a movement of the Spirit deep in my bones, ushering my heart into a tenderness that only these mystical moments can bring. Sometimes I think as Christians we can get trite when it comes to quippy statements about grief. Jesus knows I’ve heard them all, and I cringe to remember times I’ve repeated them to others.

One of the worst I’ve read recently was a well known pastor claiming that lamenting was a sin because it lacks trust in God.

I’ve never disagreed more

- and I disagree with this guy on many, many things. I stood there shaking my tearful face, staring at an ancient text of lament, and marveling at the theological gymnastics it takes to think lamenting is a sin.

I don’t think we serve a God that is somehow disappointed when we lament and grieve. There’s a whole book of lamentations, and Jesus himself shed tears in a second garden when he was actively beginning the restoration back to Eden.

I’ve felt him myself tenderly wrap his Spirit around me in unexpected places like a dark corner of a museum, as he quietly shed tears with me, whispering that this is not the end. What if my unexpected tears are the Spirt’s own embodied empathy in this wounded vessel; like the Spirit sitting in Shiva within me bringing the sweet gift of shalom?

I’m grateful for these unexpected tears now, as they are a tangible reminder of how very much alive the Spirt of God is, and how it weeps with us as we all wait on the fullness of the restoration of all things. The Spirit teaches me tenderness through sorrow and connects me to the saints that have lamented before me - all just pilgrims longing for a restored kingdom.

Lament in this sense is the furthest thing from sin, IT’S WORSHIP. Crying out to the Maker of all things IS turning towards him, even through pain.

So today I’m grateful for tender unexpected tears, tears that opened my eyes, tears that led me to worship in unexpected places. And one day, like Shelby, I’ll fully open my eyes and see a completely restored kingdom with King Jesus himself gently wiping away my tears.

Come Holy Spirit, come.