I haven't blogged in a long time. I have not really felt the need to. But this feeling I have right now is worth more than a facebook status update or a tweet.
I have felt the prayerful support of so many souls over the past few weeks. I've needed it too. My recent days living in a land that is far away from my family and network of support has had me resonating strongly with Psalm 137--perhaps the only Psalm that I usually intentionally pass over. How SHALL I sing the Lord God's song in a strange land? As someone who can usually name for herself the spiritual gift of joy, I have often wondered since moving to New Jersey and getting divorced when that gift will return in full to me.
Yet the deeper I've gone into depression or fright, the more I have felt uplifted by my community. Small notes from friends back home, calls from my mom, pats on the shoulder from colleagues here in Newark have all amounted to truly feeling carried when the weight of my own world is too much for my knees to bear.

In my prayer time this morning I read "O Lord and Ruler of the hosts of heaven, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of all their righteous offspring: You made the heavens and the earth, with all their vast array" (BCP 90). Whoa. It hit me. I worship and serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Seriously? That's deep stuff. Where my current emotional and spiritual status has feeling like perhaps I'm standing on shifting sand rather than on the Solid Rock, I was reminded today of my heritage and my history. This Judeo-Christian narrative has been around for generation after generation, and each of us has seen and played out the quakes and the waters that shift our sands. Yet, here is this God whom my ancestors worshipped, adored, even trusted--this God who is timeless, and yet time and time again has inserted herself into the temporal lives of the saints who walked before us.
So I guess today I realized on a deeper level how endlessly connected this faith is. It is not just my faith--quivering and wavering at times--it is mine and the countless others' who have sought the face of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Faith for me will no longer be about how strong I am or my ego is, it will rest within the hands of those who carry me today and those who have carried us in the past and those whom I help to carry.

Wow. Amen. Thanks be to God.
"yours is the glory to ages of ages" (BCP 91).