"A Winged Journey Home"
Amy Egenberger
Sunday, August 21st 2005

“To God, every moment is a new beginning.” And with God, every moment is a new beginning. What I’ve found in my spiritual journey is that some moments along the way are easier to embrace than others. So, the spiritual question for me is this. How do I welcome myself, love myself and connect with God through those darker moments?

Fortunately I can choose how to tell the story. I can tell it as a victim, immobilized in an unkind world with an unkind God. Or, I can tell the story as a search for learning, to move closer into relationship with a loving, creative and even humorous God.

The first moment I will share happened just last night. I had come home from the SJA GLBT picnic and was working on this talk for today. The pieces just weren’t coming together, and the inner critic was relentlessly undermining any progress. Then I went to pick up a friend at the airport. When I got home just before midnight, I walked through the kitchen and put my keys down on the dining room table. Suddenly I noticed out of the corner of my eye a shadow. It was moving around as if it we flying, with wings, like...a bat! I dashed back into the kitchen. Maybe it really wasn’t a bat, so I peeked again. Sure enough, it was a bat. I thought, “why tonight? Don’t you know, God, that I need to get ready for tomorrow?!” I took a deep sigh of surrender and got the broom and an empty wastebasket. I moved slowly toward where I could hear and see the fast-flying creature. Just as I stepped toward the threshold, it came swooping right at my face and into the kitchen. I screamed and swooped into the other room. Then it came back my way, and I dashed away, into whatever room the bat was not. “Enough of this!” I decided to just make my way upstairs and go to sleep. I would just deal with this in the morning. So, I ran with my broom and basket, made it safely to my bedroom and closed the door fast. (I even tucked a towel under the door so it wouldn’t follow me!)

I’m still working on finding meaning in this one. It is as though the self-doubt and harsh criticism in my head that I had been fearfully battling for a couple days had materialized in the form of this unwelcome bat. Where’s the learning here that moves me in closer relationship with God? What’s the divine message for me about my spiritual path?

Well, the bat story continued this morning. I gingerly opened my door, with broom in hand, looking high and low for this little invader/visitor. There it was, hanging quietly in the middle of my livingroom ceiling. “Now what do I do?” I thought. It dawned on me that I didn’t have to do this alone! That has been a reoccurring theme on my spiritual journey. “Who can I call?” I tried three different neighbors, and wisely, none of them answered their phone at 7am on a Sunday morning. So, I thought, “I can do this.” I got a small wastebasket and a piece of cardboard. I had a plan. I carefully positioned a chair under the bat. I put on my running shoes and opened all doors of my house for the quickest exit. “Could I really do this? Do I really want to do this.” Then I remembered that I am not in this alone! God is here with me. And I called on a few angels for extra support and heard myself praying in a whisper, “Help me do this, help me do this.” Slowly I moved up toward the bat, lifting the basket all the way up to the ceiling and surrounding it’s brown sleeping body. I slid the cardboard between the ceiling and the basket. Holding the cardboard on like a lid, I ran out the front door to the backyard where I set the whole package down. And there it sits. Whew!

Another moment I’ll share that was a challenge to embrace involves another winged creature. This time it is a red bird. In attempts to share my gifts more with others, I decided to offer a collage-making class here at SJA. It was announced in the bulletin, I got everything ready and came to the Parish Center the night of the class. I pulled out my materials and got everything set up. I waited. No one else showed up. At first, I was feeling very disheartened, wondering what I’d done wrong, or what was wrong with me or my gift? Didn’t God want me to share this thing that I knew to be so great? I sat there feeling very alone. Then it occurred to me that at least I had shown up! And there in the room with the painting of the beautiful red bird, I started to feel the powerful spiritual presence with me as I made a collage of my own. I felt the brilliance of spirit radiating from the painting on the wall, and collage I made for myself that night continues to be meaningful to me. It turns out that later in the year at a SJA “Becoming Peace Retreat” in the beautiful prairie lands of southern Minnesota, I met the artist of the red bird. I shared my story with him, and he gave me a small print of the red bird that I cherish to this day.

A third winged story is about the butterfly. The butterfly has been a meaningful icon for me as an adult on my spiritual journey. I often long to be the beautiful butterfly, flying freely among the flowers. Yet, as you know there are certain stages of the process that cannot me skipped or rushed. The moment I recall here was late one summer about ten years ago. After all the to-do’s had been methodically checked off my list, the last task was to do the dishes. There I was standing in front of the kitchen sink with my hands full of soapy water. Suddenly, I stopped. And for what felt like a slow, quiet and peaceful moment of epiphany, a realization washed through me. “Oh...,” I whispered to myself. “That’s why I have always felt so different all my life.” I realized that I would find more love in relationship with women. Still stunned, and with wet hands in the air and elbows at my sides, I moved slowly to the living room and sat down. Arms dripping, I began to weep. For what exactly, I’m not sure. Relief, fear, panic at who to tell and how. I felt very, very alone.

What I’ve learned since is that when the butterfly emerges from the cocoon, the wings are wet and need to dry.

Eventually, I mustered the courage to confide in a few friends. One was a woman from my small Christian community from SJA. She was very kind, accepting and understanding. One day she came to my house to help dig up lily of the valley. Now, if you have ever dug up lily of the valley, you know how their roots become a tangled mess that shoots up rhizomes everywhere you may or may not want them. For me, it serves now as a metaphor for the sometimes-arduous process of uprooting old, unhealthy beliefs. Pulling up the myth of isolation that I believed as true. As we worked together, she asked me if I had connected with anyone, if I had met anyone in the lesbian community I could talk to, and I hadn’t. That tearful, painful and yet supportive conversation inspired me to sign up for the GLBT retreat that year here at the church. I walked in that door and was greeted with a warm welcome and a smile, even in that very vulnerable place on my journey. So, for me, SJA has been a good place to hang out while wet wings dry.

I’ve made it to several retreats since then, and have even gotten involved in the planning. The potlucks, too, like the one just last night, have become a place where a dynamic circle of support is possible for me along this journey.

In closing, I’d like to share something with you for those moments on your journey that may seem particularly challenging. It is a letter I found in my journal when I was preparing for today. It is dated April 23 of this year, and it is from God. Now, it says “Dear Amy” at the top of the original, but I invite you to add your own name in there.

Dear One Listening,

God here. I know sometimes you don’t see me, hear me, feel me... with you, in you, beside you. So, I’m taking this time to tell you clearly that I care for you. In fact, in faith, in no uncertain terms, I love you. Got that? Get that. Good.

Good, yes. That’s what I am. “God is good. God is great.” That’s Me! And, oddly enough, that’s you, too.

Bottom line is I want you to know that I love you and want you to be happy. I long for you to long more longingly for what you envision so I can help create with you.

That’s what I made you for. That’s what you and I are making you for.

Keep going.

Love,
God (a.k.a. Yahweh; a.k.a. Love)

P.S.
Thank you for being there on Earth to do my work.
Without you I am lost.
With you I am home.