Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
After participated in some 250 listening groups, most of which I have facilitated, I am absolutely convinced that it is time to write a book about the profound experience this has been in my life (and in the lives of the many who have also participated in the small-group process). However, I simply could not get the project started.

I have plenty to say, have a bibliography, have conducted interviews with many of the participants, have written white papers to send to those who are also intrigued by either learning more or starting listening groups, but I simply have not been able to capture that intriguing approach that draws the reader into the first chapter and through the pages, chapter by chapter, until the last words draw conclude so satisfactorily that the reader closes the book and puts it aside with a sigh, wishing there was just a little more.

I’ve had friends chide me that I’m not writing any books and publishing them—but I tell you—until those first sentences come as a gift, something wonderful that you the writer yourself would like to read—it’s a little like pushing a shovel into dry clay. The creative earth is just not ready no matter how many attempts you make to force the steel into the compacted cement-like soil.

Last week I took a handful of paperback books with me to read on the airplane and in the airports in the literal hours that it takes to travel from Illinois to California, then back again. One book by Brother David Steindl-Rast, A Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness, had just bogged me down. I’d loved other works by this Catholic writer, but somehow, just did not get into the reading groove with this one. Perhaps that was because Steindl-Rast is a monk and makes a point of addressing the rational for the monastic experience to other monks in this book.

But determined not to leave half-read books lying around, I took it along with me as I traveled and found (surprisingly) that I was loving what I was reading. This must fit into some sort of principle: Give every dull book a second chance. It may not be the book’s fault. Listen to this:

“Once our heart is anchored in silence, we will be able to listen even while we are speaking. … Silence will make us hear appeals which noise drowns out: the sighs of devastated forests, the groans of lab monkeys with wired skulls, the sobs of mothers with babies at their emaciated breasts. We will begin to hear the truth that sets us free. As long as one creature in this world is oppressed and exploited, oppressor and victim alike lack freedom. Yet, ‘None so deaf as one who will not listen,’ as the proverb says.”

Somewhere in my re-reading of this book, I noted down the phrase listen with your fingertips, indicating a total absorption in the process of hearing something or someone, in which the whole body leans forward in rapt attention in order to fully hear.

Several mornings I realized that could be a wonderful title for a book on listening: I tried it out, Listen With Your Fingertips. It would also make a great opening paragraph and a first chapter.

And so in this way, from what seems like nowhere, the gift is given, “Some people feel like we listen with our ears; others insist that we listen even with our fingertips.” In a week, after months of struggle to begin a book, my creative self is aimed and pointed. I am ready to go.

But that is the point of Steindl-Rast’s writing: All the world around us is gift-given. It is we who must learn to listen.

It is we who must learn to see. “Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies! O look…!” declares Gerard Manley Hopkins breathlessly in his poem The Starlit Night.

It is we who must make a practice of being alive in the world. “Most people’s glorious gates of perception creak on rusty hinges. How much of the splendor of life is wasted on us because we plod along half-blind, half-deaf, with all our senses throttled, and numbed by habituation. How much joy is lost on us. How many surprises we miss. It is as if Easter eggs had been hidden under every bush and we were too lazy to look for them.”

It is we who must hear the whisper of the title in our hearts and realize that at last, it is time to start.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-147)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Sue Higgins is a true intercessor. When she says she’ll pray for me, she does. Everyone needs a Sue Higgins in their life. So I try to stay connected as much as I can because I know I need Sue’s giftedness of covering her friends with her prayers.

Two weekends ago, I returned on a Saturday, after a long day of air travel from San Francisco to Chicago, arriving at 12:00 p.m. I spent Sunday at home, for turnaround time, then drove the car to O’Hare early on Monday morning to fly to Philadelphia where I was scheduled to be picked up by my husband and two grandsons, one 17 and the other 11, both of whom had studied a unit of American History this last term. David and I thought it would be an opportune way to reinforce their learning by visiting the historical sites around Philly and Washington, D.C.

A couple weeks before this trip, our friend, a former United Airlines employee, e-mailed me with the news that she suddenly discovered she had five “buddy” tickets that she had to use (or lose) before March 31st. Was I going anywhere that I could fly United and she could give me one or two of these passes? However, with the merger between United and Continental, none of the employees were sure of how this all worked anymore.

I’d already booked my tickets on American Airlines to Philadelphia, but a quick exercise in totaling figures revealed that even with a change fee and paying fuel and tax surcharges on the buddy pass, I would save a couple hundred dollars in applying this ticket to a May trip to California. So I called American, my friend booked my pass (still quite confused and nervous about the procedure) and I trusted that on Monday morning I would be able to get a standby seat on the flight to Pennsylvania.

While checking my e-mail in the interregnum between the California trip and the trip to Pennsylvania, I noticed on Sunday that Sue had written, “Praying for you as you travel today, that your flights will go smoothly and that you will arrive safely.”

I appreciated this notice, thinking that it was so like Sue to remember me, but didn’t realize how much I would appreciate it once I got traveling again.

Something about being tired after a few days of board meetings, after long journeys, and the anxiety of my former United employee friend about the booking process, left me vulnerable to the travel anxiety dobbie (you know dobbies, don’t you?—they’re the little anxious gremlins, green or grey, who creep into our vulnerabilities and cause inner panic and distress). The moment I parked my car at 6:00 a.m. in the remote Parking Lot F, caught the shuttle bus from booth 5, marking on my ticket that I was between row H and J, I began to be nervous about whether I would make it out of Chicago or have to play the “Going From Gate to Gate” game, to catch a seat on a plane headed east.

Nothing I could do would settle this churning concern. I couldn’t pray my way to calm. I seemed to be too tired to remind myself effectively of how many times God had been my traveling companion and really, all bookings are always in His hands.

Then I remembered, I remembered the e-mail notice that came a day too early but actually right on time. My friend Sue Higgins had prayed for me and something had prompted her to insert her prayer into my e-mail notices, and I relaxed and just let her prayers cover my weariness, the United/Continental merger, the small airplane at the gate and what looked like too-numerous passengers waiting to board. Sue had prayed. I was covered. I could just take a deep breath and relax. My prayers might be like wisps of trailing smoke this Monday morning, but Sue had prayed.

There were four of us listed for standby on the overhead screen; I got the last available seat. I was the only passenger at the gate after everyone else had boarded, but Sue had prayed, and the gate attendant finally called my name. I arrived in Philadelphia on time as scheduled to hear the enthusiastic reports of husband and grandsons about their previous day’s tour of the Gettysburg battleground.

In the “we believe” coterie of faith, when one is prayer-less, another is prayer-ful. When one is weary, another is rested. When one is filled with fear, anxiety and turmoil, another is calm, and at peace and at a place of profound faith. “Got you covered,” David will say to me sometimes when my pace has been more frantic than I know it should be. “Got you covered.”

The work of God is so evident to me in this collaborative community of faith. Sue Higgins sent me an e-mail one day early letting me know that she was praying for me as I traveled. And I gave up the silly trauma that can come from not knowing what is going to happen and thought, Sue’s already prayed for me. She’s got this covered.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-146)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
David and I have volunteered to organize the prayer time before each Sunday morning service. So far, for the most part, he and I have been the only ones praying. We belong to a small church, which meets in a local school gymnasium, and the people who have the time to come 45 minutes early are generally setting up sound equipment, organizing childcare, unfolding chairs, mounting the cloths on the communion table—well, you get the idea. We have lots of young couples in our church with small children and David and I well remember what it was like getting everyone ready on Sunday morning. (A lot of work!)

So, David and I have prayed together (in the teacher’s lounge) for months—mostly just the two of us. We are at the stage in life where this is no longer a boring task, and we also love to have time to pray together. We feel that this work is as crucial as everything that is mentioned above. We are also grateful when, from time to time, someone else joins us.

However, because we believe that the work of prayer is the work of the whole church, I began to organize a schedule in which types of prayer could be highlighted for 15 minutes each Sunday morning, then we would spend the next 20 minutes in intercession for the worship, the people, the children’s programs, our members, and the school and neighborhood in which we serve.

February 26: Who feels strongly about prayer stations during Eucharist? Would you like to be on prayer teams? Have you had a journey into healing prayer? Are you someone who finds yourself praying for the world and the people in it (you may have the gift of intercession.) Can we set up prayer teams? Let’s respond to last Sunday’s challenge to pray for miracles.

March 6: Who feels strongly about a burden, or a need, or a personal crisis? Let’s make a list of our prayer concerns, date them, and see if a praying community (two or three gathered together) has better results than people just praying alone? What have you learned about making requests of God? Of course, we will pray about these concerns.

March 11: What do you know about prayers of confession? Since Lent is a time for self-examination, repentance and confession, let’s make sure we are building this spiritual practice into our journey. So what do you know? What has happened when you have confessed and repented? What does Scripture teach us?

March 18: What do you know about journaling your prayers? There are probably as many different ways of prayer journaling as there are people. What has worked for you?
Bring a journal and share this with those of us who get started and stop, who want to begin but don’t know how.

Let’s gather together in the teacher’s lounge and delight in the many different ways different people keep a record of their daily (weekly? monthly? yearly?) prayers.

March 25: What kind of prayer reminders have you discovered help you to develop and keep the habit of prayer? Rubber bands on your wrist? Coins in the pocket? A daily prayer guide? If something is working for you, let the rest of us know.

Let’s gather together in the teacher’s lounge for a show-and-tell of practical helps.

April 1: Have you developed an attitude of gratitude? Studies show that grateful people are actually physically and emotionally more healthy than ungrateful people. So let’s go at this spiritual practice! Do any of you keep a gratitude journal? How has this worked and what has it done for you?

Let’s gather together in the teacher’s lounge for an initial plunge into healthy spiritual practice.

April 8: How do you define worship prayer? And how is this different from Thanksgiving? What helps you know when you are really worshipping? Is it just an emotional feeling or is it something all together different than that?

Help! Today is Easter—an ultimate day of worship on the church calendar—let’s make sure our hearts are ready for worship. What do you know about worship that the rest of us need to know?

April 15: Who among us has fasted spiritually and with success? How long have you fasted? What did you learn? What if someone has health problems? How can they fast?
This one is hard.

April 22: Who has had prayers answered? Let’s look at the prayer request list we have
been gathering and see what God has done for us as a people of faith over the last nine weeks.

One of the elders of the church joined us this Sunday, and we were glad to have her. Seeing the handwriting on the wall—that I was going to have to take the initiative—I began asking people who I believe have the gifts of discernment and compassion if they would join us on our prayer teams.

Last Sunday morning early after a busy, busy week, I finally pulled a small whiteboard, the wreath stand I use by the front door during seasonal changes and found a nearly dried-up marker and made a sign. Most of the 100 or so people who come on Sunday mornings don’t even know where the teacher’s lounge is. My sign read:

PROCEED WITH CAUTION!
PRAYER WORK AHEAD
Join us in the Teacher’s Lounge
9:45-10:20

I drew a primitive arrow, filled it in with the evaporating felt marker as much as I was able, that hopefully, this scratchy sign conveyed the teacher’s lounge was down the hall.

However, as we were driving to the school, I kept hearing that little word nudging me: If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. So I left the makeshift sign and the stand I had pulled out of the dirt by the front walk and washed hurriedly with a dish cloth. No, no, no—God’s work is always orderly, deliberate and planned. If it wasn’t ready because I wasn’t ready, then the timing for this announcement and this scheme wasn’t right either.

The sign is still in the back of my car—I’ll pull it out this morning—but it keeps greeting me with the warning: Proceed with caution! Proceed with caution!

Gentle reminder from God?—probably.

I’m paying attention.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-145)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
I got in the habit of setting our dining-room table so it was ready whenever company stops past. Whenever we eat at the table, we wash the dishes, and instead of storing them in a kitchen cupboard, we simply place them on the table. If David an I are eating alone, we sit at the far end, where I can look out on the yard and where drivers in passing cars can look through our un-curtained window and see the two of us (or the six to eight of us) sharing a meal together, breaking bread.

“Don’t your dishes get dusty sitting there?” someone asked me recently. I suppose I should consider the dust factor. “Not real dusty,” I answered my friend. We do turn the plates over frequently with guests coming and going. And if they get a little glazed on top, I take a damp rag to them and that takes care of the problem—much simpler than putting dishes into the cupboard, taking them out again and setting a table.

The table gets changed whenever we head into a new season. And just so I don’t have to construct a centerpiece cold as well as find the appropriate clothes, napkins and place settings, I have started to take photo shots with my new cell phone. (I don’t know how to access the Internet, but I know how to text my grandchildren and use my camera.)

This is important to me because I think the set table always says, “We are waiting for you. You are welcome here in our home at any time. You can never come and surprise us. All is at the readiness. Sit and commune and dine with us.”

Actually, these are the same invitations God repeats into the world, over and over and over again. I’m just doing what He does—setting the table—and saying what He says—come on in; be with Us.”

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-144)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
This morning I brought a quiet lament to God, though I cloaked it carefully as a kind of reminder:

“Father, all my extra time has been taken (I know, I know—there’s always the ‘weary’ time I don’t use well) with the Global Bag Project and the Women’s Cycle of Life. This is all uncompensated time—no one pays me for the hours I put in every week on each project. But because they use my entrepreneurial, strategizing capacities (which You have given to me) and because it is a joy to do good in the world, I am happy to go without any pay.

“However, I can’t get some of the personal stuff done around here. Many of the Christmas decorations are still up or packed away and staged in the garage—crowding the car—before I can haul them up to the attic. Do You think You could collaborate in some way with me (and please not next year—I know You work in unfathomable ways, but my timetable is to get everything labored and stored in an attic where the corners have been laid with a cheap particleboard flooring—this year) and help me get to what I don’t seem to be able to get to because I’m putting so much time into these other overwhelming (though worthy) projects?”

Before leaving the house, I looked at the wreath on the coffee table that sits in front of the fireplace. I had stuffed the artificial circle of greens with real pomegranates I had brought home from California last November, copper Christmas balls, sienna-colored feather puffs I had bought at Hobby Lobby and medium-sized alliums, which I grow and harvest every year, spraying them whatever color is needed in dried bouquets. Cranberry red for the winter arrangement by the front door; apple green to act in contrast to the other ingredients that make up the coffee-table Advent wreath.

The apple-green alliums had been tossed out of the wreath, onto the carpet, onto the coffee table and were now shedding their heads and seeds wherever they had fallen. My son’s Bengal cat, Cyrano, had obviously had quite a morning. (We are cat-sitting while that family is taking a spring break in the Nashville, TN, area.)

This, Lord, is not what I meant! I shot a look at the ceiling.

Hah! Hah! I heard back. (I really did hear it clear as day, though not with my ears; I heard it with my heart.) Hah! Hah! Don’t you get the joke? You were having a little pity-party and I’m just giving you a little hand via my friend Cat.

Now I’d have to clean up the Christmas decorations, which—on the coffee table at least (thanks to Cat)—had become a mess.

Yes, finally. You got the joke, hah! Hah! Now you’ll have to clean it up.

I’ve been reading the book Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle, the Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. I copied down this wonderful quote: “Behold the One beholding you, and smiling.”

Obviously, this was appropriate to my cat in the Advent-wreath scenario. But when I copied it down, I wasn’t think of God beholding me and LAUGHING.

(Yeah! Yeah! I got the joke.)

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-143)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
During this season of Lent, the time of the church calendar when Christians prepare their hearts and souls for Easter, I have been personalizing the errors mentioned in the Litany of Penitence, which liturgical congregations pray on Ash Wednesday. I’ve been impressed that I have not been considering my soul as I ought, and this formal prayer of repentance was a good place to begin.

So last week, I took the first confession and began to work with it. “We confess to You, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the price, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives.”

This is what I wrote in an extended time of self-examination early one morning (about 3:30 a.m.) when the house and the phone and the world outside are silent.

I confess to You my past unfaithfulness…

• Watching too much mindless television; comes from fatigue; when I sleep only five hours per night, I collapse in the afternoon and try to stay awake until 9:00, but these are wasted hours, which I fill with movies or television, captured by my physical ennui.

• Not working to keep my body strong, which sometimes helps me sleep and eliminates sleep deprivation. With good sleep I can go strong all day, and keep functioning in the evening. I know this, but don’t work on it.

• Not working @what it is You have put in my mind to do; writing, painting, design projects, etc.

I confess to You my past unfaithfulness…

• Not working out areas of spiritual obedience

- better and more regular Bible study
- Sabbath Eve. practice
- reading daily offices of prayer with David

For all these things (unfaithfulness; lack of obedience) I am truly sorry and do most humbly repent. Strength, please, to carry out my desires before You and to carry out Your desires for me.

This is work, isn’t it, and I am only on the first sin of unfaithfulness, then there are sub-sins (the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives.) Oh, dear.

Today during the Eucharistic service, a young woman stood beside the cross that is at the back of the school gym where we meet to worship. “Can I pray with you?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” she answered. “How can I pray?”

“Pray for my many areas of unfaithfulness.” Well, I certainly knew what that was about. So we prayed.

I suspect that one of the reasons so many of us have a hard time discovering the work of God in our lives is that we have not done the work of self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial. When we do that work, God is there, standing beside a young woman hugging the Cross in the back of the elementary-school gym where a certain people gather to worship.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-142)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Sometimes just a little word of encouragement goes a long way. The smallest commendation, casually spoken, can warm you for days. I often hear myself saying, weeks after the affirmation, “Do you know what So-and-so said to me?”

I realized that due to my busy schedule that I had left all the person-to-person contact between the Global Bag Project U.S. office and our Global Bag Project Kenyan manager up to Carla Boelkens, the GBP Director. (We have created a small microenterprise model where seamstresses sew handmade reusable utility bags that we are marketing here in the States. We hope, of course, to provide income for vulnerable women, living beneath the poverty line, so they can feed their families, pay their rent and send their children to school.) In fact, our tagline is “Buy a Bag. Feed a Family. Preserve the Planet.” (Well, “preserve the planet” may be a little grandiose—but if everyone carried one of our beautiful cloth bags made from East African cloth, it would certainly diminish the use of plastic sacks.)

Carla Skypes and excels at keeping up her relational contacts, even when people are a world’s distance away. But I realized recently that I might have a viewpoint to share with Mary Ogalo, our Kenyan Manager, that would be different from my co-workers, and one morning I shot her a long e-mail with a list of things we were working on that I thought would encourage her so far away from our Global Bag Project U.S. discussions.

She got back right away, thanking me for keeping her up-to-date. Then she made a report of her own. It seems that a voluntourism group of 16 Canadian women had stopped by the GBP sewing room in Nairobi, left donations for 7 sewing machines, then traveled to the village of Mary’s husband, George. Mary writes, “It was an amazing meeting of 2 worlds resulting in a dairy goat project.”

Well, I had written to encourage Mary, but after receiving her e-mail went around for days saying, “Mary Ogalo wrote. They have received donations for 7 new sewing machines, and the same women started a dairy goat project in George’s village.”

 

Mary Ogalo

 
God is so present when we speak words of kindness and affirmation to one another. It actually does set off a physiological response in the soulish part of our being. Just a small word or two … “7 sewing machines and a dairy goat project” and I was happy, warmed, grateful, lifted. And these aren’t even our goats (having to do with the Global Bag Project). They are Mary’s George’s village’s goats. But I am as glad as if they were our own.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, what a long way a small word of encouragement can go.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-141)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
If you haven’t already seen this 2011 film, I strongly suggest you rent it and do so before Easter. It would be suitable for viewing the week of Good Friday.

Film critic Peter Rainer writes, “‘Of Gods and Men’” is one of the most austerely beautiful movies about the monastic life that I’ve ever seen. Based on true events, it’s about eight Cistercian monks from France in the Algerian mountains in the 1990s before being kidnapped in 1996 by Islamist terrorists.”

The conflict these monks face is that they have lived peacefully among Muslim people as neighbors while pursuing the ancient existence inspired by St. Benedict, planting gardens, bottling honey from the hives, praying the Psalms, observing the Offices of Prayer. They have served their Muslim neighbors medically and with brotherly advice and have become friends who attend regular family celebrations in the little village. However, as one reviewer explains, “But outside this Edenic existence the world is changing, as religious extremists seek to challenge Algeria’s corrupt government and begin to terrorize their fellow Muslims (starting with girls who aren’t wearing hijabs).” A group of Croatian highway workers are slaughtered in broad daylight, in keeping with the militant’s drive to rid Algeria of foreigners and other infidels.

Herein lies the conflict: With the rise of the Islamist resistance to a corrupt government and with brutality and slaughter beginning to increase, half the group feels it is expedient to leave. The other half feels that it is their loving call to stay among the people who are equally terrorized by the political uprising.

The quiet, regular Offices are observed, the habits of monastic life are then contrasted against the growing danger in the world outside. “Don’t worry about us,” the prior (Brother Christian) responds to the offers of protection from the chief of police. “We will retire by seven and lock the gates behind us.” A shot of the flimsy gates makes the viewer aware that there is no protection here from determined assailants.

Even more unintentionally stunning is the fact that discussions regarding their internal conflict to go or stay and the summarization of their beliefs and precepts that inform this discussion is the fact that the movie is subtitled. We hear the words in the film spoken in French, but on the lower portion of the screen are translations of Scripture, as well as powerful thoughts on piety and trust.

In a way the viewer is party to the dilemma. Each of us considers: “What would I do given the same circumstances?—would I stay? Would I go?”

When finally, the last vote is taken, and each brother voices his personal decision that their vows of obedience make staying the choice, there is unanimity again in the community of faith, and a rather joyful meal (last supper? Eucharistic dinner?) is shared. A small portion of wine is poured into each man’s glass, the Grand Theme from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake is played in the silence. Faint smiles pass across an old face here and that of a middle-aged one there. A kind of serenity has settled on the men: The tension has been resolved.

What they have been dreading comes. The courtyard is breached by terrorists. At gunpoint, seven brothers are taken captive and led into waiting vehicles. (Brother Amédée, 80 years old, rolls under his bed, and another is missed in the confusion.)

The last shot we see is of these believers, ill-clad and unprepared for the falling snow, marching laboriously up a steep hill into the waiting woods, aiding and assisting one another but being given no quarter by their captors. The scene freezes, the screen turns to black and a line informs us that all these brothers were murdered and no one knows exactly what happened. The remaining brother, still alive, is now 86.

This is a profoundly religious film, slow, careful in its delivery with a tension that builds simply out of the organic nature of the story. Simply, the monks are in grave danger; a beautiful place in the world is being shattered.

The New York Times states, “The theme may be piety, but Mr. Beauvois (the director) and his cast do not address it piously. ‘Of Gods and Men’ is supple and suspenseful, appropriately austere without being overly harsh, and without forgoing the customary pleasures of cinema. The performances are strong, the narrative gathers momentum as it progresses, and the camera is alive to the beauty of the Algerian countryside.”

Of Gods and Men was a big hit in secular France. What most amazes me is that according to Rotten Tomatoes, some 93% of the reviews on this film are positive. This film is almost antithetical to the preponderance of Hollywood messages. This kind of approval only authenticates a long held personal suspicion. I believe that the non-believing human holds in his or her heart a moral value of what Christianity is supposed to be and how Christians are supposed to behave. It is when we offend these cherished and deeply held understandings that we come under popular disapprobation.

The response to Of Gods and Men affirms my long-held theory; in this film the Christians are achieving a moral meaning that strikes a resonance in the hearts and minds of often jaded film-weary critics. For this reason alone, not to mention its own powerful merits, we need to see it.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-140)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
For me, the Season of Lent is always a matter of finding it. Most people who observe these 40 days on the church calendar that lead up to Easter, head into the season with a list of things they are going to do and a list of things they are going to refrain from doing. I just seem to go into Lent groping around for its personal meaning to me. I usually land on something satisfactory around 20 days in.

This year, I’m stuck on the Litany of Penitence from the Book of Common Prayer. Each confession keeps pounding itself so heavily into my soul that I’m kind of out of breath as one by one I consider them—like I had been climbing up a steep hill.

In church, a celebrant reads the confession, to which the congregation replies: We confess to you, Lord. The Litany of Penitence begins with: “We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives.”

Whoa—guilty, guilty, and guilty—guilty on all counts.

The next on the list is: “Our self-indulgent appetites and ways and our exploitation of other people.” Guilty and guilty again.

I haven’t proceeded to the six other confessions yet—these two seem to be more than I can deal with in this first week of Lent—maybe I will have worked my way through the next four by Easter.

I think I should take some time to write out all my past unfaithfulness, all the pride I can remember (so much there) and identify all the hypocrisy and impatience.

Once I’ve done this spiritual exercise, then maybe I will be able to consider what it is I am going to do to observe Lent and from what it is I am going to refrain.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-139)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
The last two weeks I have been pumping at the highest level of my capacities. I decided that if I was going to meet all the deadlines, I would just have to sacrifice what I have been laboring to achieve—those hard-won seven to eight hours of nightly sleep.

So with this adjustment in my days, I gave the talk I promised two friends I would be happy to give to their Lively Arts group. Though I had never given this talk before, and my notes were hot off my home printer, I was pleased with my topic and thought it highly appropriate for the twenty-or-so artists who were present. My theme was: “Finish the Works That You Have Started.”

“God begins an artistic work in all of us, and it is the responsibility of the artist to finish that work, no matter the agony or the level of ability, with love, and it is the responsibility of the artistic community, with love, to help one another do the same.”

“Think about the works in your life that are unfinished,” I suggested, then invited the group to name out loud some of the things that keep us from finishing what we have started. They volunteered a good list of ideas, and I had to cut off the interaction.

I told stories of the unfinished projects in my life; I identified the reasons why those products were still incomplete, then I held up an unfinished canvas I had discovered in a Goodwill store just that week. “It kind of called to me,” I explained. “Take me. Take me.” I plunked down $4 for it at the counter, wondering where in the world I would hang it. Then I realized that if for no other reason, the unfinished canvas existed to illustrate the point I was making.

“How would you finish this canvas?” I inquired. Their opinions were lively indeed. Some were sincere; some were funny (one gentleman suggested we hang it with the painted side to the wall); one woman suggested that it might be audacious to finish what another artist had started and that we ought to leave it as it was.

I hadn’t remembered that my friends had told me there would be a question-and-answer time. This was fun. I’m not in creative circles much any more, and I love the exchange of ideas. I’m often surprised that I know as much as I do about art, and these kinds of groups often remind me of what I don’t know and still need to learn.

Then one man, obviously a professional, not a newbie artist or a wannabe, asked me how I would define art. No one in my entire 69 years of life has ever asked me this question. I said so, but thinking a little more, I felt there was an answer forming in me. “Art,” I started, “is any time an artist attempts to portray…” I hesitated: Was transcendent the word? Or was it numinous? No, sublime—sublime was the word I was struggling to find.

Here is what came out: “Art is any time an artist attempts, either intentionally or unintentionally, to portray the sublime.” There. That felt right. To my satisfaction, a good number of people in the circle wrote this down.

I had a great time that evening. I didn’t go through the waste of over-preparation, nor did I succumb to the temptation of trying to be too erudite. I spoke a message out of my own life—I, Karen Mains, need to finish the works I have begun, and I would like to find a creative community who with love call me to finish what is incomplete.

But a gift totally unexpected was given to me. Someone asked me a question, and I ended the evening knowing, if not for anyone else’s sake but my own, how I would define art. This exchange, rare and unexpected for me, was both profound and exhilarating. Thank you.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-138)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Cirilo, the Mexican friend from Oaxaca who lives in our spare room during the growing season, then returns to his family in October, has declared that Americans don’t know how to throw a fiesta. He is right.

So when our son Jeremy wondered if David and I would attend a fiesta being thrown in his honor by a client whose immigration papers he had helped procure (as well as those of his whole family), we were eager to say, “Yes. Sure we’d look forward to being there.”

“Well, it’s a big deal,” he explained. “They rent a room in a hotel, all their family and friends come. They have a big spread of Mexican food on the table. They hire a band. Little kids run all over the place.”

I had a sense Jeremy was having a little trouble gathering enough friends and family appropriate to the occasion. He eventually invited students from the Spanish language classes he teaches at Wheaton College.

I would like to report that this was a grand affair. The band played loudly all night. The Mexican cuisine was authentic and great. Little kids did run around all over the place. The women—well, most of them—were elaborately dressed. The men wore cowboy boots and hats, big belt-buckles and Western-style shirts; many of them made a point of dancing a good part of the night. My two grandchildren, Jeremy’s little girl Eliana and little boy Nehemiah, were in unrestricted play heaven. There were no adults telling any children that they should stop running around.

We found empty spaces at a table; another son and his family arrived. We were graciously greeting by the host who spoke in good but somewhat stumbling English (we won’t mention my own illiteracy in Spanish). Hot tortillas were served in a basket to accompany our food. The men down our long table motioned to see if we would like a shot of tequila mixed in a plastic glass of fruit juice. We tried some.

I thought Cirilo would be proud of the way his Northern family was adapting to his Southern customs. We were learning how to fiesta. But I was particularly proud of all the “gringo” Wheaton College students who stood up, attempted to learn the steps to the dance—same steps, same rhythm all night—and then kept on dancing. Eliana went whirly-twirling, joined a circle of older girls who know the traditional steps, tried to blow through the mouthpiece of the trombone as it was resting on its stand during a break. Jeremy eventually hoisted both kids to his shoulders and danced around the floor with his wife.

I wondered how the dialogue on immigration might change if more Americans were took place in cultural “fiesta” celebrations, let their little kids run around the room together, share the wonderful food and learn the folk dance steps.

It was then I thought, Oh, how lovely it will be when we dance together in heaven, all children of the One God who has created us, who loves us and who has sent out invitations to His unending fiesta where we will celebrate in the best of ways not only one another but His Son. God often gives us vivid pictures here on earth of what will one day be in heaven. They are fleeting, soon gone, but hauntingly real.

Finally, when time has ended, we will really celebrate. We will be happy with one another, there will be no cultural or language barriers. Even the Americans will know how to throw a fiesta!

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-137)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
“Do you like honey with your tea?” I asked the young man from our church who was visiting our home for the first time. We were meeting to talk about serving the refugee and immigrant folk who come to our church, but the topics over our light Saturday night supper ranged far and wide, a typical getting-to-know-you conversation.

“Sure,” he said, then picked up the elongated bottle of special honey sitting on the counter. “Where did you get this?” he asked. I explained that it had been a Christmas gift from a friend.

“Oh,” he remarked, “we just started a beehive last summer.”

From that point on, we talked of nothing but bees. Last April I had ordered a starter’s hive and supplies from an Internet company, www.worldofbeekeeping.com. The goal had been to set up beekeeping with a grandson who was fascinated by bees. We had ordered some $499.99 of starters’ equipment—a hat with a veil, a smoker, a suit for Elias, gloves, etc—and the charge had gone through, but to my dismay, I had never received my equipment. No way to get in touch with World of Beekeeping on their Web site, and the phone number that accompanied my charge records had gone dead. I was out $499.99 (almost my whole Social Security check) and with no hive for a disappointed grandchild.

A day before Christmas, Elias and I and his mom and dad spent a happy hour poking around a used-book store in Chicago. “Look, Nina,” he said, and handed me a book on beekeeping. A couple weeks ago, my mind began to think about the enterprise again (a new brood must be ordered soon in order to insert them into a new hive in time for bees to establish themselves as a healthy colony through a long spring and summer). If I was going to do something, I would have to act quickly. So just to check, I asked my grandson, “Are you still interested in this, Elias?”

“YESSS!” he informed me eagerly and emphatically.

So as of yesterday, I have given another order to my new beekeeping colleague, Pat Mitchell, and his apiary partners. We made out a list figuring that I could share some of their equipment until Elias and I get established. The two existing bee boxes will be moved to our yard. Pat and I walked the grounds and decided where the best place would be—somewhere with enough sun, protected from westerly winds in the winter, easily accessible—and made plans to move the boxes this weekend. I discovered I had enough cement blocks left over from a summer project to make sturdy platforms for each of what will now be four hives. Did I mind if they painted the boxes creatively? Nope! Paint away.

What an amazing answer to my thoughts and prayers. Last spring we were busy building raised beds for the vegetable garden by the front driveway. Although I wanted to begin bees then, it might just have been too much for me. This way, I will have a mentor and his team of beekeepers. Though new at beekeeping, they are a year ahead of Elias and me. Even more remarkable, Pat is connected with experienced beekeepers who live “right over there” Pat said, pointing west.

I’m just looking at the loss of $499.99 as an unintentional investment. I’ll try again and see if I can get my funds returned, but I have received much, much more than I bargained for last spring when this idea began to germinate.

“Do you like honey with your tea?”

I do. I love honey in my tea. But over this particular cup of tea, I received a whole lore and love of beekeeping. From now on, it looks as though I’m having bee hives with mine (or at least a superabundance of talk about them.)

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-136)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Yesterday I did something well. Something I have been working on and which my daughter has been coaching me to do. She will be pleased. I have been working on receiving the gifts that come my way when they come; not pausing or considering and perhaps missing the opportunity, but just taking what is given with joy and gratitude.

I bought an old worn leather reclining chair at Goodwill for $14.99. I had the money. My sister had her big Jeep SUV. I’ve never been to that Goodwill—it is in one of the northwest suburbs—and I may never be there again. So I took the gift, without knowing how or where I would put it. We loaded it into the back of her car. My poor brother-in-law will have to haul it out and store it in the garage until I have the time and the vehicle to transport it home. It has no holes or tears, simply the rich leather patina that comes from years of wear.

I know, as does my daughter Melissa, and my sister Valerie, that in a Ralph Lauren-style design shop, this chair would sell for hundreds of dollars. I will either put it in David’s home study or down in the basement spare room where whoever stays there can lounge and read or watch television.

I am feeling smug and satisfied—not that I have the chair but that I saw it as a gift, a little joyous something along the way given to me by my Father God, who says to me like my earthly father used to, Now sweet. Take the gift. It’s for you. Enjoy. I thought you might like it.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-135)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
These last weeks have been so full of things that must be done that if I stayed up for 24 hours and worked nonstop for two weeks, I doubt I would meet all the deadlines on my list. I try not to over-live or over-schedule but as we all know, things come our way that we simply have to do. They are always things that were not on our list.

My prayer journal has been filled with little addendums to God: “I know I cannot do all this without your help.” “Help me to remember that you are the Collaborator in all of my life. You are my Co-worker, and I am your co-worker. I am serving alongside you in the work you have given me to do in the world.”

The big push that has come to us in an unplanned way is that we received a call from Women of Vision. This is the women’s auxiliary of World Vision. They hold a national conference every other year in Washington, D.C. Would the Global Bag Project be able to set up a booth at this convention? The problem with this wonderful opportunity was:

• Having just come through the Christmas selling season, we were low in our inventory of African-made utility bags.
 
• Neither I nor Carla Boelkens, the GBP Director were able to go. Could we find a substitute?
 
• We would have to scramble to pull signage for the booth and publicity for the attendees packets together.
 
• Could we justify the expense of air tickets, conference registration, and hotel rooms?
 
• We only had two weeks to get ready.

 
 Well, you get the idea.

In addition to all this, I had a donor letter deadline, these blogs to write, introductory training sessions for Women’s Cycle of Life coming up (next weekend) and hadn’t even designed invitations (in our home for only eight people at a time). The publicity and itinerary for the Voluntourism Trip to Africa was due so it could be published and the details and brochure for the annual trek to the Shakespeare Festival to Stratford also had to be released. Deadlines. Deadlines. Deadlines. Somewhere in the back of my mind I kept reminding myself of also having agreed to speak at the Lively Arts group that my friends Tim Botts and Natalie Lombard head.

This morning, at 3:30 a.m., as I was writing down notes in my prayer journal—reading from the Gospel of Matthew, as well as one chapter from How to Read Poetry by Edward Hirsch and also a chapter from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See by Richard Rohr—I realized that all the quotes I was underlining or writing down are exactly what I need for the talk I am supposed to give next Monday night! God was focusing my attention, dropping the resources into my lap, despite everything else bumping around in my head, the quiet of this very early hour.

The very section I was reading from Edward Hirsch concentrated on the fact that no work of art is finished until the reader, or the viewer, or the listener reads, sees, or hears it. “I take the poet as a maker who sends out a formal enticement, a provocation, a challenge. I encounter—I am encountered by—a work of art. For me, that encounter is active, inquisitive, relentless, disturbing, exuberant, daring, and beholden. Poets speak of the shock, the swoon, and the bliss of writing, but why not speak of the shock, the swoon, and the bliss of reading?”

What a great place to begin my formative thoughts for this 45-minute talk! Not only was God through my morning devotions giving me a draft outline so that come to the preparation time next Monday, my thoughts would also be pointed in that direction. Yesterday, He even gave me a tool to use as an object lesson. For my birthday morning with my sister, after lunch, we ran into the nearby Goodwill (some women might run to Nordstrom’s or Macy’s, but then we are who we are, the daughters of generations of ordained ministers, now both of us married to the same).

My eye was immediately caught by an unfinished canvas painting. Some four feet by four feet in size, its field was spattered with bright color strokes, all non-representational but exactly the colors in my basement. (And I have a bare white wall over the couch waiting for me to complete my own empty canvasses in order to hang something there.)

Without thinking much, and with my sister’s nudge (she always nudges me when we’re shopping), I swooped it up for $4. My husband’s comment on the canvas, when I showed him my find and asked his opinion, was, “It’s kind of dorky.” Probably true.

This morning during the quiet, I realized I could take it and invite the artists in Lively Arts to help me finish what another artist (maybe a wannabe artist) had abandoned. And by this I could illustrate in a participatory teaching method the concept of the work not being finished until it has a reader, a viewer, a hearer—all collaborators. Then … then I could head all this to an ending posed by some of Richard Rohr’s thoughts, that one of our roles as devout contemplatives—people who seek to view God’s in all of life, in all the world—is to breathe the beauty that we see back to Him. He uses these thoughts from Gerard Manly Hopkins from his poem “The Golden Echo”:

… Deliver it early now, long before death.
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty back to
God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.

What an amazing reality—this experience of being helped by the Maker of all Things to do His work in the world—to bring to a handful of artists words that will encourage their journey. And to have this help—totally unexpected—at a time when I’ve just been approaching the days with clenched-jaw rigor was a sweet, sweet mercy. Someone came beside me and said, How can I (we?) help? What can we do? Can we drop these thoughts into your mind this Thursday morning so you can begin the mulling process, feed your subconscious designer and be ready with it all by next Monday?

Talk about the shock, the swoon and the bliss of writing; what about the shock, the swoon and the bliss of living, living with a God who is a ready Helper and brings all His powers to bear on this, the small life of Karen Mains.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-134)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
The Wind Sculptures of Lyman Whitaker at Long Grove Village
 
 
The Chicago Art Institute Members Magazine recently featured the wind sculpture of
Lyman Whitaker. The address where his creations are on display was given as a gallery in Long Grove, Illinois. Since this is close to where my sister lives, and since I had missed her birthday due to travel overseas and she had missed mine, we agreed to set a morning aside just for catching up, lunch and a visit to see these sculptures.

I wasn’t prepared to stand breathless before their exquisite quality. Ranging in height from 5 to 27 feet, they were made from weathering copper and were so finely engineered that they moved at the slightest breath of the air. Since there was no wind the morning that Valerie and I visited, she asked if the sculptures (about 15 or 20) were powered by electricity. “Oh, no,” the saleswoman assured us. “There was that much air moving about the individual standing units.” We just couldn’t see it or feel it, but it whispered enough that all the fins and circles and paddles of the elegant structures gently rotated (or not) when touched by this world’s breath.

 
“In whom we move and live and have our being…” The wind sculptures certainly stand as a metaphor for that Scripture, which is one of many in the church’s continual attempt, as has been stated somewhere in the church fathers, “to find words appropriate to God.”

How lovely that this was a February day, in this amazing Chicago winter that has been climate beyond memory, where no crowds thronged the little stores of Long Grove Village, no vendors hawked food on the sidewalks; just a few curious shoppers, like ourselves, wandered in and out of what stores were not closed for the season. The sculptures softly, gently turned in air we could not see, but they gave witness, bore testimony to the lifewind all about us.

From Paul’s sermon in Athens:

“And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ …” —Acts 17:26-28.

Go to the Whitaker Studio website for a moment of pure meditative magic. As you watch and listen, think about the God we cannot feel or hear or see.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-133)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
“What is that guy for?” my friend asked me. We had invited a couple to go to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the question was about the first chair violinist who was tuning the orchestra with his own violin before the conductor came on stage to lead the performance.

“Oh, he’s the first-chair violinist—probably the real master of the orchestra—well at least in some ways. He’s giving the pitch—he probably has perfect pitch—and everyone is tuning their instruments—particularly the strings—to him.” Not being musically trained, I was aware that there was probably a lot of conjecture in my reply.

We had a wonderful evening. Orchestral sound is full and replete with subtleties and with a rich feast of musical balances and counterbalances. In time, following my husband’s love, I have become more attuned to the different instruments; my ears actually hear more sound and distinctive notes and phrases.

The next morning I received an e-mail from the friend who had attended the orchestra with us—for the first time, I believe. The short message read: “Last night, as the symphony was starting and the noise of the instruments silenced, and the first chair violinist tuned the orchestra, I found myself thinking of these lyrics.

Still

I’m still tuning myself to the great key, I’m still, I’m still
I’m still mining for light in the dark well, I’m still, I’m still
I’m still a frequency swaying, a leaf in the wind, I’m still, I’m still…

I’m still tuned to an instrument of greater and unknown design
I’m still looking for direction, some kind of sign
I’m still tuning myself to the great key, I’m still, I’m still

                                                                                            —Great Lake Swimmers

Tonight as I write this, it is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. I open my red-covered Book of Common Prayer and read the prayer the Celebrant pronounces before the imposition of ashes:

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our  mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

In other words, these 40 days leading up to Easter are the time when the church “tunes itself to the great key” and through the above actions “is still, is still.”

This is a time of sobriety, of careful looking inward, of having enough silence regularly over the stretch of days to consider our own souls.

“Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which coverts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those, who because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church.” —Book of Common Prayer

Whoa!—in the early church this was the season of the baptism of new believers and the restoration of old sinners.

This is a little different spirit than the one focused upon in USA Today. The article on the front page is headlined, “For some, ashes in a flash for Lent.” It appears more than 70 Episcopal parishes in 18 states brought Ash Wednesday to the streets. Dubbed “Ashes to Go,” it’s kind of a contemporary spin on if the people won’t come to church, we’ll take church to the people. “Last year,” the reporter writes, “the Rt. Rev. Jeff Lee, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, stood in full vestments in the rain at the corner of Rush and Huron.” The very first person to stop was a cab driver. He pulled his cab to a halt and called out, “Lent! I completely forgot!” I can see some purpose in this.

However, how do we become attuned with a dab of ash, in busy traffic and the rain? How do we hear the plaintive melody of that instrument of greater and unknown design? How in this scenario just described do we become still in silence, or still in waiting, still tuning ourselves to the great key? How do we?

How do we, on the bustling crowded street find the way to pray?

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins an acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit one God for ever and ever. Amen.

Be still. Wait still. Sh-h-h-h-h-h-h. Listen; the first chair violin is tuning the string section. Hush. In 40 days we will hear the orchestra play.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-132)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
“They should have paid us to sit in these seats,” I joked to the women who were adjusting their chairs in the box next to ours during the first intermission of a Saturday afternoon performance of the Joffrey Ballet.

A friend of a friend had discount tickets she couldn’t use, so David and I found ourselves at the beautifully restored Sullivan and Adler Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. Box seats, I thought as the ushers steered us to the second-floor balcony, pretty good. I was soon to learn that there are box seats, and then there are box seats.

The people in the first row of seats in our box had an unobstructed view. David’s and my seats, however, in the second row of the first balcony box, offered us almost completely obstructed sightlines. The boxes were designed front and forward so if we sat straight in our seats, we looked across the concert hall to the second floor balcony seats across us, not toward the stage.

So? you might be thinking. Just twist your bodies or reposition your chairs. Not so easy. The boxes were crowded, giving us limited room for negotiating space, and even if we twisted toward the stage, my whole right sightline was blocked by all the people sitting in the four other boxes closer to the stage than ours.

The purpose, of course, of going to the ballet is to see the dancers. Mr. Louis Sullivan, I thought, Mr. Dankmar Adler, you goofed.

The Auditorium Building in Chicago is one of the best-known designs of these two architects. Completed in 1889, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and designated a Chicago Landmark in 1976. At the time of its construction, it was the largest and tallest building in the United States. Ferdinand Peck, a Chicago businessman, wanted to develop a cultural center that would rival the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. He wanted to make high culture accessible to the working classes.

The building was equipped with the first central air conditioning system and was the first to be entirely lit by incandescent light bulbs. In 2001, a major restoration of the Auditorium Theatre was begun to return the theater to its original colors and finishes. It now is the home of Roosevelt University.

However, even in the best of plans, there is often a glitch. The glitch in the Adler/Sullivan architecture is that anyone in the second tier of chairs in the first balcony box seats, number six, right-hand side, is unlikely to be able to see the stage due to the heads of all the people in the other boxes positioned to the right of said person in said box seat. This is particularly so when the baldheaded gentleman in the first row of box seven rests his head on his right hand.

All during the first half of the opening performance of modern interpretations of classical dance, “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated,” I fumed. I do have a pet peeve when seats perched behind posts at sporting events are sold to unsuspecting fans (or when discounted tickets are not marked with the disclaimer: “Welcome to the Joffrey. You will be unlikely to see the stage from these seats.”) But somewhere midway in that rendition, I became captured by the sheer beauty of the choreographed muscularity, the exquisite physicality of the dancers and gave myself one of those all-too-frequent and necessary lectures, Oh, Mains. Grow up! You peevish, privileged middle-class woman! You are at the Joffrey Ballet! Stop pouting and just stand up. You can sit during the intermission.

This, of course, made quite a difference. If I stood, I could see. I had an unobstructed sightline of the stage. And I quite enjoyed the rest of “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated” (how ironically appropriate that title to my circumstances). We had a charming chat during the interlude before the next piece “After the Rain,” and then another intermission.

I read my program and realized that we were attending the U.S. premiere of what the notes told me was a piece of “sumptuous beauty and shimmering possibility” (who writes stage notes for ballets and concerts and plays? How much do they earn for doing this writing? Is it the artistic director, Ashley C. Wheater or Scott Speck, the Music Director?) Or maybe—just maybe, it is the choreographer him/herself who writes glowing stage-reviews… “Dancers perform intense and thoughtful choreography, exposing the agonies of indecision, doubt and hope that lie under the surface of the skin.” Oh, I see this quoted bit is attributed to the critic of The Telegraph (and where exactly is that published?).

Somewhere, while standing again for the last ballet in order to be able to see, this thought intruded. Life is full of glitches. Sometimes the most beautiful experiences are threatened by the fact that you are situated in such a way that you can only view a third of what is going on, can only see half the dancers on the stage. The exquisite beauty of this event, whatever it is—sunset streaking the sky as you ignore it while hurrying onto an evening appointment; a grandchild happily and ecstatically destroying your ordered basement with the detritus of concentrated play—can be lost because you are sitting in your seat, hurrying to dinner, craning your neck, so to speak, and allowing yourself to be filled with peeve at the Architects of this high cultural event for the common masses.

Or—or you can choose to stand through the whole performance, leaning against your chair that you have moved in front of you to act as a prop. And if you choose to stand at life’s ballets—no matter the seeming inconveniences—I promise you will see the whole thing. You will be able to puzzle about the “transforming direction of the dance” constructed by the Three Choreographers (in theological terms this is called perichoresis koinonia). Joy will rise in you. I am here, you will think. We are at the Joffrey Ballet. You may be in the middle, somewhat elevated, but that will be quite enough.

Savor each moment, large or small, give praise for the beauty of the work. Lift your heart to the Master Artistic Director. Give thanks. Let us just be glad that a friend of a friend has given us tickets to the show.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-131)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
I found three journals hidden away behind a stack of books in the bookcases in my home study ... one brief line intrigued me. I had written, “Enjoying reading and copying out quotes from Capon’s Supper of the Lamb—such lovely thoughts on being attentive.”

I do not know exactly where I copied out these lovely thoughts on being attentive, but this hidden-away journal reminded me that I had delighted in reading Robert Farrar Capon’s amazing book. An ordained Episcopalian minister, and at the time of the writing Professor of Dogmatic Theology and Instructor in Greek at The George Mercer Jr. Memorial School of Theology, Robert Capon captures in all his writing the exquisite beauty of the commonplace experience of living sacramentally. The book is subtitled “A Culinary Reflection.” Taking the ingredients for “Lamb for Eight Persons Four Times,” the author builds what simply looks like one meal reconfigured four ways into a profound meditation on finding God in life.

I pulled the book again from my cooking library, which is in the old post office desk in our finished basement and read my comments recorded on the frontispiece:

This is a mighty book with an original and daring metaphor.
Capon is an incredible writer & has made the common holy & the holy common.
Wondrous work! Would that all Christian writing was so incarnated with the meaning of the world & with the world of meaning.

So I give to you just a few of the lovely thoughts on being attentive I highlighted in one of my numerous readings of this volume:

“The whole world looks as it if has been left in the custody of a pack of trolls. Indeed, the whole distinction between art and trash, between food and garbage, depends on the presence of absence of the loving eye. Turn a statue over to a boor, and his boredom will break it to bits—witness the ruined monuments of antiquity. On the other hand, turn a shack over to a lover; for all its poverty, its lights and shadows warm a little, and its numbed surfaces prickle with feeling.

“Or, conclusively, peel an orange. Do it lovingly—in perfect quarters like little boats, or in staggered exfoliations like a flat map of the round world, or in one long spiral, as my grandfather used to do. Nothing is more likely to become garbage than an orange rind; but for as long as anyone looks at it in delight, it stands a million triumphant miles from the trash heap.”

Or how about this quote?

“Between the onion and the parsley, therefore, I shall give the summation of my case for paying attention. Man’s real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God’s image for nothing. ... If an hour can be spent on one onion, think how much regarding it took on the part of that old Russian who looked at onions and church spires long enough to come up with St. Basil’s Cathedral.”

This book is an outrageous, extravagant and breathtaking look at the real Supper of the Lamb when believers of history will sit down to an unending banquet with the Son of
God. Appropriately, the vehicle for this meditation is a work the publishers have classified under “cookbook.”

And I had forgotten how wonderfully it is written or how worthy of another read except that I rediscovered the notebooks I had hidden on a shelf in my writer’s study.

It makes you want to take up journaling again, in earnest, to finish the incomplete pages, to record life for that time, perhaps, when the timeline is waning so that I can remember what have been the real lessons—that “only miracle is plain; it is the ordinary that groans with the unutterable weight of glory.” —Robert Farrar Capon

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-130)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
I found three journals hidden away behind a stack of books in the bookcases in my home study. These were journals, none of them completed, that recorded the intents of a “writer’s life.” A writer’s life is a complicated condition that can best be explained as a writer living with the acts of writing—researching and thinking and reading and organizing concepts for the purpose of capturing it in some kind of lasting form—becoming the preeminent and dominating activity of his or her days.

I have attempted (and failed) to have a writer’s life all my life. I probably gave up on these journals when I decided that it, for me, was never going to happen.

One section actually records a schedule of what an ideal day from a writer’s life would be (I was taking a memoir writing class at the time—so my thoughts were being channeled in a “writerly” sort of way):

The best day for me is to rise early: [Hah! What has ever kept me from rising early?]

1. Do morning pages

2. Start coffee and do stretching exercises

3. Give an hour to prayer and devotional reading

4. Household straightening

5. To the desk to write—three, four, five hours

6. Exercise break after writing

7. Afternoons for study, freelance projects, organizational tasks

8. Evenings for reading.

I sigh just thinking about it! When have I ever achieved this schedule for anything longer than two consecutive days? (Real, dedicated and successfully published writers generally roll out of bed and right to their computers, not stopping for a bathroom break, or to brush their teeth, or to change their clothes, or to say hello to their families. Well, it seems this way from their biographies.)

Another entry catches more of what my days were like (still are, sad to say). This entry comes under the heading, “A mind too active is no mind at all.” —Theo. Roethke

This is a morning when my mind is jumbled by too many to-do’s. It’s like the kitchen catch-all drawer—rubber bands & old used batteries, coupons for pizza discounts, note paper with telephone messages & grocery lists, small flashlight bulbs & thermometers to grab for taking temperatures—so many things, so crowded that it’s impossible to find anything.

So yesterday, I did a little thinking about this journal and concluded that though I have never achieved a writer’s life, I have written—maybe not the best work I could have written had I not had so many interferences and responsibilities—but I have published 23 or so books (depending on how you count them), radio broadcasts and video scripts, plus all the uncounted content we’ve developed strictly for ministry products, products designed to help people grow. I needed to conclude that I would never be able to compartmentalize my writing life from my ministry life or from my just living life.
I simply needed to accept the richness of my being and reduce any activity that robbed me of the possibility to enter deeply, thoughtfully, and meaningfully into my days.

I made another list, this one catalogued all the writing projects for which I have done the initial brainstorming, reading and research and that have yet to be birthed:

The books:

1. A novel tentatively titled Summer Lightning and set in Chicago during 1968.

2. The “Speaker’s Circuit” series—about the years I spent on the road and the outrageous circumstances which every itinerant teacher faces. This to be co-written and possibly created for digital publishing.

3. A children’s Christmas book sparked by the incident where one grandson, four years old, decided he was being mistreated and was going to run away to our house—some 20 minutes away.

4. One more book in the Tales of the Kingdom trilogy, expanding it from three to four (and thus making it a quartet instead of a trilogy).

5. A book about the listening-group process, tentatively titled Listen to Me! Listen Well.

Scripts:

1. A treatment titled Lisa’s Strata, based on Euripides’ Greek play Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens refuse to have sex with their husbands until they give up going to war.

Articles:

1. “Our Table Is Always Set” (on the benefits and gifts of being hospitable).

2. “A Tribute to the Men Who Have Loved Me: Brothers, Fathers, Colleagues, Friends”

Oh well, best get moving with all this—I turned 69 this January, after all—perhaps I’ll settle for a quasi-writer’s life and be happy with the best that is possible under these circumstances:

1. Ministry

2. An intimate and happy relationship with one engaging and intelligent husband

3. Four adult children and four adult in-laws

4. Eight grandchildren, soon to be nine

5. A church we enjoy

6. Work on an international board of directors

7. Cultural activities

8. Curious intellect

9. People who often live with us

10. House and office and yard

11. An overseas microenterprise project we are nurturing along

All this—ALL THIS!—because I discovered three (incomplete) journals tucked away on a shelf in my home office.

I spy God!
 
 
 
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Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-129)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
I found three journals hidden away behind a stack of books in the bookcases in my home study. On December 31, 1995, New Year’s Eve, I recorded the dream of the night before:

Dreamed I was visited by an old friend, bearded & disguised—but the eyes were the same, the voice. He wanted me to go with him on a journey/ to share with him the responsibility of the trip. And I thought in the dream, “Oh, it really is he...” and felt wanted and warmed.”

I’m not sure what this dream meant to me on New Year’s Eve, 17 years ago. But now in 2012, it calls to me, and I understand that the disguised one with the eyes that are always the same is still wanting me to go with him on the journey and take responsibility for my share of the trip. He always is the One who really is He. And when I think of this dream, which I had long forgotten, I still feel wanted and warmed.

But I would not have remembered had I not written it down in my journal. Are you recording the whispers and events that show God’s involvement in your life? How will you remember them 17 years after they happen?

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-128)