A Life of Purpose

Every other Friday I host a "Sharing Circle" at Gender Road Christian Church.  Usually we meet in the shelter house.  Everyone brings their own chair and we socially distance.  Some wear masks and some don't.

I have been leading this group for about four months and usually six to eight meet just to share how things are for us during the Pandemic.  I usually have a question - like - name a struggle and a joy.  Something like that so that we can reflect together about our own journeys and feel some comfort in knowing that our experience is shared by others.

The very first time we met, someone shared about how she feels like she never gets anything done.  It is an opportunity - with so many activities cancelled - to clean closets or organize papers or just do those tasks that we put off.  The reality for many of us is that this pandemic has left us feeling kind of scattered and actually lost.

This past Friday much of the conversation was around how much we all miss the activities of the church.  One woman who has spent hours visiting people in the hospital and in their homes lamented that she felt like she has lost her purpose.  At first people tried to give her suggestions, but eventually we all admitted that we share that sense.  Who am I now that I can't work in the kitchen, be a greeter, worship with my friends?  What do I do now?

And the answer?  I don't know except to try to live one day at a time with our eyes open for people to love.  I write this today as I spend time with Maggie, my 6 year old granddaughter.  Her mother has a 3 hour zoom meeting today and Maggie and I have been playing games, reading, listening to music and just "chilling out."  This past weekend I took her sister - with Audrey - to Cincinnati to celebrate her 16th birthday.  We went to the Sign Museum, on a boat trip on the Ohio River, a walk in Eden Park and a visit to the UC campus.  It was  fun and really all I want is for her to feel loved by me and her aunt.  Sixteen is not an easy age - especially when you are the middle child in the family.

Over and over the answer comes to me about purpose - the purpose is to love.  To love God, to love others, to love ourselves. It is so simple to say and so hard to do.  And yet what I believe is that in this wounded and broken world - love is the greatest healer that there is.

And so, I spend time with God in prayer to get centered again and ask God to love me, to show me, to guide me.  As I gather people together in a circle, I pray that God gathers me.  This is a prayer by Ted Loder

O God, gather me now to be with you as you are with me.

Soothe my tiredness, quiet my fretfulness, curb my aimlessness, relieve my compulsiveness, let me be easy for a moment.

O Lord, release me from the fears and guilts which grip me so tightly, from the expectations and opinions which I so tightly grip, that I may be open to receiving what you give, to risking something genuinely new, to learning something refreshingly different.

O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me.

Forgive me for claiming so much for myself that I leave no room for gratitude: for confusing exercises in self-importance with acceptance of self-worth: for complaining so much of my burdens that I become a burden; for competing against others so insidiously that I stifle celebrating them and receiving your blessing through their gifts.

O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me.

Keep me in touch with myself, with my needs, my anxieties, my angers, my pains, my corruptions, that I may claim them as my own rather than blame them on someone else.

O Lord, deepen my wounds into wisdom, shape my weaknesses into compassion; gentle my envy into enjoyment, my fear into trust, my guilt into honesty, my accusing fingers into tickling ones.

O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me.