Martha Johnson Bourlakas - Our One Word: Creating Spiritual Joy and Depth

OUR ONE

WORD

CREATING SPIRITUAL

JOY AND DEPTH

MARTHA JOHNSON

BOURLAKAS

Copyright 2018 by Martha Johnson Bourlakas

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Church Publishing
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New York, NY 10016
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Cover logo by Cherilyn Colbert
Cover design by Jennifer Kopec, 2Pug Design
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A record of this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-13: 978-1-64065-019-0 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-1-64065-020-6 (ebook)

For Mark, Hannah, Sarah and Elizabeth
With gratitude and love for the stories we live and share

For Margie and Martha Lois,
The women who will forever define me

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

JOHN 1:1

I came to Our One Word unwittingly. No offense to Jesus, but before Our One Word, I was embarrassed to be identified as a Christian writer or a Christian speaker. I had to be more hip, smarter than that. Christian-Writer-Speaker-Woman carries her Bible in her hand and wears a perpetual smile on her face. CWSW does not roll her eyes, dig through laundry for a clean t-shirt, drink much strong coffee, wear jeans with holes, talk about sex, listen to Kendrick Lamar. She is not me. But then I realized I was pigeon holing myself in the same ways I criticize others for doing. Assuming that being a Christian means thinking, dressing, behaving in narrow ways. Assuming that faith cannot exist alongside intelligence and creativity. Assuming that Gods community of believers is boxed in, with a low ceiling of wooden slats nailed too close together and no breathing space for difference.

When I started listening to the stories and experiences of so many other women, I realized this seemingly contradictory mashup was exactly the point. Jesus did not command One Way to live this life, which makes things complicated, and God knows we dont have time for extra complications right now. Black-and-white rules are much easier to command and follow, both for ourselves and each other. However, the so-called rules of the Christian journey are striking in their non-rulish-ness. They open up a lot of grey questions and invite more questions than solutions: Do not judge. Forgive wrongdoing. Act and speak for the marginalized and powerless. Love, love, love.

Kudos to Jesus for these important ideas and thoughts, but how do we actually turn these ideas into reality, a new way to live in the midst of all we do already? Even if we wrangle ourselves and/or our children to attend worship, we are exhausted by noon, having taught Sunday school, sung in the choir, met with the Vestry, doled out cookies at coffee hour. If we do find peace in our worship, we have classes and work and chemotherapy and parent-teacher conferences and meetings and dentist appointments and exercise and dirty dishes in the sink. Our One Word offers a chance to settle, be with ourselves, be with each other, be with the Word of God. Our One Word is a way of listening to each other, a chance for practicing creativity, a space for the presence of the Holy Spirit.

A kind of spiritual happy hour, Our One Word is a time for women to come together with no obligations, no committee assignments, no committee reports, no homework, no cost, no guilt. We sit together, share food like popcorn and chocolate that requires no cooking or preparation, drink wine or coffee or soda, and look with intent at one word each week. We discuss how each word is or is not at work in our lives at the particular moment. We view the word from all sidesetymology, meaning, how the word is used in spiritual writing, where and how it appears in literature and culture. We take a creative approach to each word that may involve writing, coloring, designing. Then we eat and talk some more.

Through this process of sitting together, eating, drinking, praying, talking, writing, laughing, coloring, we slow down and pay attention to the words and stories of each others lives. We become more aware of Gods abundant love and wisdom that exists, right along with the darkness, both in our world and within ourselves. When we are attuned to that wisdom, we start living into it. We begin listening better to each other. We begin to see hope in the brushstrokes instead of struggling with the entire painting. By breaking down the elements of the art, we move, more gently, through judgment, guilt, shame, heartbreak, disease, to joy, laughter, wisdom, nourishment, peace, love.

Franciscan priest Fr. Richard Rohr said, The history of almost every religion begins with one massive misperception, making a fatal distinction between the sacred and the profane.... Your task is to find the good, the true, and the beautiful in everything, even and most especially the problematic. The bad is never strong enough to counteract the good.

Our One Word is an attempt to work away from the misperception that we must, in order to be spiritual people, separate the sacred and profane. It is one method of plowing a more sacred path directly through this gnarly, brush-filled landscape. A method of understanding that contradiction exists at every human turn. Profound destruction and explosive beauty. Vengeful hatred and soul-stirring love. Our One Word seeks to incorporate more of the holy into the difficult world that is right before us, so we tune ourselves to Gods green abundance, rather than the dry, crackly landscape of scarce time, money, health, peace, joy. Our One Word is a beginning, an opening to our deeper connection with ourselves and each other in a fractured time. I pray these words help us question as much as we answer, grow from each others stories, give us time for authentic hospitality, and open space for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

It can be difficult to talk about Christianity in our current, or maybe any, climate. In this moment, as in all moments of history, the attention-seeking Christians holler loudest so that everyone around has no choice but to listen and look. I grew up in the Bible Belt of East Tennessee where a vocal group always tried to abscond with Christianity and chain it to a chair in a dark room where only the Select could visit. Classmates of mine repeated the rules of their churches and parents: If you are not dunked in a pool, you are not truly baptized. If you drink alcohol, you will roast in hell. If you do not get saved, you are not truly a Christian. (I never thought I would long for a return to those simple arguments, but here we are.)

As panic and anxiety intensify in our world, it seems that some, particularly white, Christian belts tighten, exclude even more, turn hateful and intolerant. Christians must only vote for certain candidates. Christians must only listen and talk to people with certain, similar beliefs. Christians only love other white Christians. I understand the way this exclusive, mean version of Christianity makes non-believers or decent Christians furious. I can understand at times wanting to discard the entire Christian story, throw it in a box with all the other basement junk, and drop it off at Goodwill or maybe take it straight to the landfill to rot with the old Pampers. In the end, the white belt will never ever, under any circumstances, be right, stylish, or attractive. Jesus never ever instructed us to hate or exclude. Quite the opposite. He instructed us, not even politely, to crawl on up out of our dark, dirt holes and start listening to each other, talking to each other, fighting for those voices that have weakened or evaporated.