I remember a friend, a young mother, with three children under the age of seven, saying to me (also a young mother with four children and a busy husband), “I just wish someone would tell me when I’m doing a good job. What I really want to know is that I’m not raising juvenile delinquents!”

This lament—of not knowing how we’re doing and suspecting we may be doing it all wrong—is felt by many who are plodding through the shifting sands of family life. We have a haunting sense of our own inadequacies in establishing good family-systems. And the truth is, when we think we may be doing pretty well, many of us don’t have anyone who says to us, “You know, you really are doing a good job raising those kids.”

About 30 years ago, several major universities launched research projects to discover what made healthy families healthy. Thousands of families in the U.S. and across the world were carefully studied. The cumulated data was eventually shared in a National Forum on Family Well-Being sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services. At this time measuring tools were established to help family professionals (including parents) recognize the traits of healthy families.

The traits are as follows:

1.    Healthy Families Have Good Communication
Good communication results from a loving relationship between parents. The healthy family:

a.    Listens and responds rather than listening and reacting (reacting: projecting one’s own feeling and experiences; responding: empathizing with the other person’s feelings).
b.    Develops patterns for reconciliation (including having a good sense of timing for heated discussions).
c.    Controls television viewing.
d.    Recognizes nonverbal messages (lack of eye contact, mumbled messages, etc).
e.    Places importance on intensity and spontaneity in conversation rather than on propriety.
f.    Recognizes turn-off words and put-down phrases (a comment made in jest to one person may be an insult to another) and works on eliminating hurtful words and name-calling.
g.    Encourages individual feelings, independent thinking and uniqueness.

2.    Healthy Families Spend Time Together
Times spent together are both planned and spontaneous times, serious and fun times. The healthy family:

a.    Allows themselves time to play and relax, time to dream without guilt (laughter causes remarkable physical relaxation—humor banishes the tightness and severity necessary for anger).
b.    Prioritizes activities:
   -    Why do we want this activity?
   -    What will it replace?
   -     Will it affect our life together?
   -    Is it worth it?
c.    Values table time in conversation—the dinner meal becomes an important   part of the day (activities that infringe on this time are discouraged).
d.    Maintains a balance of interaction in its time together (discourages cliques among members while still encouraging individual members to spend time together).
e.    Doesn’t allow work and other activities to infringe routinely on family
time.
f.    Occasionally participates as a unit in activities chose by individual members—other members compromise even if that activity isn’t their choice.

3.    Healthy Families Encourage and Affirm One Another
The parents have good self-esteem and pass this on to their children by:

a.    Expecting family members to affirm and support one another.
b.    Realizing that support doesn’t mean pressure (to succeed, look good, win, etc).
c.    Giving genuine approval and support to help children develop good self-
esteem (rather than being concerned about causing them to become conceited).
d.    Maintaining a basic positive mood.

4.    Healthy Families Deal Positively With a Crisis
Children learn to solve problems by living in a family that solves problems. parents give children the hope and conviction that “when things get tough we’ll be able to cope.” The healthy family:

a.    Expects problems and considers them to be a normal part of family life.
b.    Develops the skill of knowing when a problem is a problem (doesn’t become overly concerned by annoying events).
c.    Develops a skill for identifying potentially serious problems and tackling them early, which helps avoid a crisis.
d.    Allows give-and-take in negotiation—if a problem concerns the whole family, everyone gets a chance to speak.
e.    Possesses high initiative for helping itself, but isn’t afraid to reach out for help from support groups or professionals when facing a problem too big to handle alone.
f.    Stands together in bad times as well as good.

5.    Healthy Families Have a Commitment to the Family
The husband and wife share a consensus of important values. If parents aren’t committed, neither will children be apt to be committed. The healthy family:

a.    Treasures its legends and characters—the past is preserved and passed on to future generations.
b.    Honors its elders and welcomes its babies—all the seasons of life are appreciated by others.
c.    Makes a deliberate effort to gather as a people—strong families enjoy being together and make any excuse to do so.
d.    Views itself as a link between the past and the future (family members don’t end with death—deceased members are discussed so others feel acquainted with them) and instinctively warns individuals to reach out and hold other members for as long as they have the privilege.
e.    Cherishes its traditions and rituals, thus helping the family members celebrate life and one another.

6.    Healthy Families Have a Religious Orientation
A question to ask each other: How are you doing spiritually?


How frequently, when I teach on these, parents respond by saying, “That’s just common sense. We could have listed those ourselves.” That’s true. Yet when the academic community and the social services community link their research to the efforts of family specialists, it is a comfort to know that our common sense is basically valid.

These common traits gave concerned parents specific areas where they needed to improve; but the indices of well-being also allowed parents to pat themselves on the back and say, “Hey! We really are doing well—here, here and here!”

Sometimes, when you’ve got a house full of kids, and you’re wondering how you’re going to make it through the days, it’s a good idea to pull out this list and say, “Hey, we’re not doing all bad here. In fact, we’re pretty good at some of this.”

Intriguingly, most of those research studies begun 30 years ago listed a spiritual orientation as one of the common traits of healthy families—healthy families have some kind of spiritual life together. This trait is not such a big surprise to those of us in faith-based communities: Establishing healthy families, after all, is one of God’s Big Ideas.

As you consider how you’re doing if you are in the middle of the parenting juggling act,  make a point of taking time to hear God say, “You really are doing a good job!” Then invite Him to be the Teacher who helps you truthfully evaluate where it is you need to improve. You may discover that He is a better Family Counselor than you ever dreamed.

No, despite those momentary fears, you are not raising juvenile delinquents.

Karen Mains
KM2-61

About Karen Mains:

Award-winning author Karen Mains continues to write new content for her Christian blog, "Gettin' Thru the Day." Through her Hungry Souls ministry, she serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and has started teaching a mentor-writing class.

Karen and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and 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. David is completing a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and he and Karen are considering if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

This baby, our eighth grandchild, is round.

His mother had the stomach flu last night, so I received an early-morning call of desperation from my son, the father. “Mom, can you watch Eliana (aged 29 months) and Neeham (7 months) while I teach class this morning? Angela really needs to sleep. I’ll be done around 1 p.m.”

Fortunately, I have the kind of work where I can set my own hours, and while waiting for the little ones to be dropped at the door so their father could rush off to teach his Spanish class at a nearby college, I decided I was not going to try to do anything else but just play with them.

I took off Eliana’s pink winter (fake-leopard-trimmed) coat, got her started playing with the toys from the cupboard that holds stacking blocks and magnetic-footed circus people, plastic spiders in a plastic jar, easy puzzles, a big container of farm animals, and the inevitable stack of books.

Then, I stripped the baby’s brown bear snowsuit off and lifted him out of his carrier chair. My goodness!—he’s a heavy chugalug. If you hauled him around all day, there’d be no need for weightlifting exercises! “Was Jeremy this big?” I asked my daughter at a recent family gathering; she is older than her brother and seems to remember more about my babies than I do. Granted, Jeremy weighed 10 lbs., 13 oz. at birth, but did he have these thick thighs and rolls after rolls of leg fat? “Oh, Mother,” Melissa recalled, a little disdainfully (Where was my memory, after all? She would never forget such pertinent information about her children!). “Don’t you remember? Jeremy was a chunk. He was every bit as roly-poly as Neeham. You used to call him Buddha-baby.”

OK. I’ll take her word for it. Today, I tested Neeham’s sitting-up abilities. Pretty good, although his weight does tend to make him roll forward or sideways. But for the most part, the back muscles are strengthening and his balancing ability is balancing.

Two months ago, I rushed (as the result of another emergency call—Jeremy and Angela could not quite match their work schedules) over to the house to filled in for that intermediate hour where the parental tag-match didn’t work. Neeham took one look at me, crumpled his mouth into a huge pout and began to wail, What? You’re abandoning me to this lady? Who is she? What does she have to do with me? Does she do milking? Where are you going? Wha-a-a-a-a-a-a. He was not to be consoled and wept himself to sleep. At that point, I decided I obviously had not been spending enough time with my youngest grandson.

So today (after some corrective measures in between), when he came to my house, with a sister happily stacking soft Beanie Babies on all the bookcases shelves she could reach, Neeham and I played in the sunshine that was falling this winter day on the dining-room rug. Oh, now we’re friends. Everything this lady does is funny. He chortled and chuckled over my blowing air into the crevice of his neck. He thought my ah-boos were hilarious. When I changed a diaper, he pulled his feet up to his mouth (how do babies do this?), and I couldn’t resist the temptation to roll him on one side, then back on the other. Freed from garments, he kicked his toes in glee, laughing all the while. His round bald head, the darling butt baby-bare; everything was ovoid. This was pure delight to me. Now diapered, he sat on my lap on the couch where I tested his standing-straight propensities. (“Biggie boy. That’s a biggie boy!”) Soon, cuddled in my arms, his mouth latched onto his thumb and the sucking commenced. In no time, he was sound asleep. I pressed my nose to his fat cheek—nothing on earth like that baby smell.

What a happy morning. By this time, Eliana had systematically progressed through her caravan of play—first the Beanie Babies, then the farm animals set to standing by the fireplace, then the books, etc. I carefully placed the baby in his carrier and sat my granddaughter on the kitchen counter. She demanded an apple: “Ap-pop.” I sliced and peeled one and fed her tiny bits. Eliana is being raised bilingually. She looked up at the plates hanging on the soffit and said while drawing circle with her hands, “Círculo.” This word I knew, and think she is impressive making her way in both early Spanish and early English. Obviously, I’m going to have to come up to speed with some basic Spanish myself if I’m going to understand her.

The children’s father came home at the time promised; now the baby had wakened and Eliana was asleep on the living-room couch. “Your daughter’s diaper was so wet, I had to take off the onesie. It was soaked.”

“Oh, I know, Mom,” he said with a grin, scooping them both into car seats, spreading the pink winter coat over the daughter and the brown bear suit over his son. “We are just really bad parents.” And after thanking me at least four times, he and his carload were off.

Stepping back into the now-quiet house, I picked up all the scattered toys. This familiar pickup routine only takes me a few minutes. Really, I thought, I should have thanked my son. I’d had an exquisitely happy morning and had loved the fact that Eliana is content here, loves to play with the toys, sits on my kitchen counter, eating like a little bird the tidbits of apple I popped into her mouth. How great is it to know that my grandson no longer puckers and pouts and howls when he is left with me.

It occurs to me that this is one of the primary ways of getting through the days. Find something young, babyish, and enter into play. Borrow babies from a friend if you don’t have any—they’d all love a break! Serve in the church nursery. Pick up a couple kittens; dangle a string or push a ball of yarn their way. Stop at the chicken incubator in a nearby farm in the city and take time to watch the tiny beaks peck their way out of the shell, wet feathers eventually fluffing themselves under the heat of the lamps, then little chicks waddling about, bumping into other chicks.

There is something about going back to the beginnings, something about being near newness, close to fresh starts, something about rediscovering origins. Everything is tactile with babies. We hold, we nuzzle, we press our face against their skin; we pinch and tickle and pull at their soft cheeks. We give our fingers to be grasped in their tiny fists. We place them on our tummies and nap while they nap. We crawl on the floor chasing after them; we catch their ankles and roll with them protected in our arms as they chortle with delight. This sensory interaction is some of the closest connection we adults allow ourselves. It is healing all around.

Once during an extremely stressful time in my husband’s life, he spent every Saturday morning with our first grandchild, then a toddler. They ran errands together. He would pick her up and, in these days before car-seat laws, buckle her into the front passenger seat. Her little legs were too short for her knees to bend over the edge, so they would stick straight out, gym shoes pointing up. To the bank they would go, to the post office, to the drugstore. Often they’d get their hair cut in the same salon, and always, afterwards, they would buy sugar cookies at the bakery on the same block and eat them while driving home. This happened week after week. I often thought that Caitlyn, by just being so adorably new and by just being eager to go on errands with “Papa,” probably saved his life. I am serious.

How lovely that babies are given at a time when their grandparents are in the aging process.

We are watching the film How to Eat Fried Worms a lot right now with our 10-year-old grandson Elias. Evan Almighty is another kid favorite. Right now, both these films never seem to grow old to them. I love to hear my grandchildren laugh. I promise you, if you can get back to the beginnings, back to those who see the world the ways that you have forgotten to see the world; if you can rediscover the origins, you will make it through the days. And if you can find a baby who thinks everything you do is funny, you are most blessed.

After all many things in life renew themselves, day always comes after night, the seasons are on a yearly rotation, the earth goes again and again around the sun. Old friends come back into our lives. We celebrate the holidays every year. Some things always come around again. Death and resurrection are renewable. It is all “círculo.”

Karen Mains
KM2-60

About Karen Mains:

Award-winning author Karen Mains continues to write new content for her Christian blog, "Gettin' Thru the Day." Through her Hungry Souls ministry, she serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and has started teaching a mentor-writing class.

Karen and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and 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. David is completing a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and he and Karen are considering if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

The tangle of computer cords under my desk kept grabbing at my foot when I left to pull things from the copier, or to attend a meeting. I kept warning myself, Better take care of that, Karen, or you’re going to be sorry.

And I didn’t—take care of it. And I was sorry. The cords finally got a good grip around my ankle and plunged me facedown to the floor, which I hit hard with my right knee before going prone.

I really wrenched that baby. I limped for weeks and took the stairs like a two-year-old, and moved carefully even during the unconscious moments of sleep. Just when I thought the knee was healing, a small sideways motion would wrench it again. Some days I could take the stairs like an adult; other days, I’d be doing the two-step shuffle again.

Bending my knees to kneel was agony, and getting up after carefully maneuvering myself to the floor—to look under the couch, for instance, or to scrub up some kitchen spills—was a prophecy to me of old-age days to come.

So, before taking myself to the orthopedic office (I’m avoiding the medical community these days until our government lands on some kind of healthcare solution), I went back to CURVES. Would this gentle, but regular, women’s exercise rotation strengthen the muscles that were not holding my damaged kneecap in place?

Sure enough, just after a week, I was taking the stairs without pain. My knee felt much, much better (though a little seemingly innocent twist had me shuffling up and down the staircase for a day). Although improved, I’m learning that I regret it every time I feel frisky. Kneeling is still tricky.

As a side effect, CURVES exercises are also working out the sore arm and shoulder that threatened to freeze up on me—a holdover, perhaps, from the days when I lugged suitcases through the airports of the world. Years ago, a doctor diagnosed it as “luggage elbow.” Unfortunately, this was one of the physical annoyances I seemed prepared to live with, so I am pleasantly surprised with this secondary improvement.

The point of all this is that some falls are not falling down—even though our first trajectory seems to be floorward—some falls are really falling up!

I have no choice if I don’t want to become increasingly crippled but to do my exercises. My goal is to get in an hour a day. I’m not thinking about losing weight—which I need to do—or looking good—although that would be nice. I’m thinking about something even more basic—being mobile.

Now the interesting thing about just-being-mobile-exercises is that there are all kinds of side effects. My 46-year-old daughter announced that one of her goals for this year is A Severe Self-Care Regimen. That was a viral thought waiting to be caught.

As long as I was being virtuous in keeping my three half-hour CURVES appointments per week, why didn’t I just go on and add all those nitty-gritty little should-do’s that swirl around in my noggin, crowding out the more important ideas? What would that include?

•    The 7-minute workout morning and before bed that claims to be “the ultimate energy workout.” Two summers ago, I bought a mat for a yoga class (for ages 50 and up) that got cancelled. Now I could use it.
•    The steam machine with a face mask for opening pores for cleansing—hidden away on a closet shelf—was resurrected for weekly sessions.
•    Walgreens’ Alpha-Hydroxy Face Cream for Aging Skin and Walgreens’ Moisturizing Face Cream for Dry Skin (I can afford these). I use them morning and night along with the Wal-Mart-brand Equate Daily Renewal Cleanser (“with gentle microbeads that unveil youthful, radiant skin”).

Oh, you get the idea; my fall down, contrived by a colluding set of computer cords, has really been a fall up. I, a woman not given much to regimens of any kinds, am finally putting into place a self-care program I should have begun 30 years ago!

It seems to me, as I look back on my life, that every downfall has its upfall component. If I hadn’t totaled the car, we wouldn’t have discovered we could do just fine with one vehicle. If we hadn’t lost our business, we wouldn’t have learned to enjoy our marriage in these later years of our lives—because we wouldn’t have had enough time. You get the point.

This has been a good exercise for me—thinking about my downfalls. Perhaps you might want to start a list of your own. Excuse me, though—while you consider that, I need to do my morning 7-minutes (the ultimate energy workout) on the purple exercise-mat, which is spread out on the carpet, right by writing desk. It’s all about feeling good (“stress-free and vibrant, not tired and anxious,” i.e. book-jacket copy). And I certainly want that.

Karen Mains
KM2-57

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains heads the spiritual-mentoring ministry Hungry Souls (www.hungrysouls.org), which is offering an eight-month teleconference training for Wannabe (Better) Writers. This mentor-writing course begins Thursday, February 18. The curriculum will concentrate on Personal Memoir Writing and will meet twice a month by phone for an hour each session. For more details, fees, assignments, the curriculum and how to enroll, go to http://www.hungrysouls.org/events.php. You must register by January 31. Inquires can be made at info@hungrysouls.org.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new "Listen to My Life Mapping" Listening Group as well as two 3-Day silent retreats for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

Karen Mains is also continuing to write new content for this, her Christian blog, "Gettin' Thru the Day."

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and 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. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

This blog is a continuation of Blog 1-52, “The Enemy Despair—Part One.” I refer back to my book, Karen! Karen! where I write about my battle with depression earlier in my life.

There had been wispy thoughts of suicide that month—wouldn’t I be doing everyone a favor if life just ended?—which as yet hadn’t had a chance to possess me. Which would be the easiest and most painless way? These lingering vapors were only introductions to a hell through which I did not have to walk; but they fogged my mind as the blackness increased, until on some days it seemed an effort to breathe, despair had so polluted my inner air.

I hated myself for my ennui, for the dirty house, for the fact that no friends called or cared. Ugly, ugly, ugly be his name. Praise to me in my all-consuming ugliness. Think of Karen; dislike Karen. Adore this awfulness. Don’t lift your head; stay in bed today. If you struggle in this grasp you will only go deeper into the muck, the black February muck of winter.

It came with clarity and life—the thought from my husband’s sermon—he wants to destroy me. David was right, Satan’s desire is to destroy us.

Suddenly I could see the implications of my despair. The children’s lives could be ruined, their mother unresponsive to their needs and eventually resenting and hating their natural demands. Perhaps suicide, or huge psychological treatment expenses that would keep David from functioning in his ministry. It would ruin my parents if I died in this despair. The waves rippled on and on. Satan’s desire was to destroy me.

Something called to me at that moment of realization. I think its name was Love. It asked me to choose. Which did I care for most? children, husband, family, or the desperate wraith of my soul? The answer was obvious. But did I love them enough to struggle to preserve myself and them also? For the first time in my life, I consciously committed myself to spiritual warfare. I was determined that if there was power in Christ, I would find a way to escape the hold of the destroyer.

Recalling part two of David’s sermon, I realized it was my opportunity to overcome. My Christian background hadn’t counted as nothing in my life. As a child I had memorized I Corinthians 10:13:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

I knew the words of truth; my problem was how to experience them. 

I decided I would catch the enemy when he turned the handle on the door to my soul, rather than after he had dirtied the rooms with a few days’ sojourn. The worst thing about depression is it sets off dominoes of emotional traumas. It is like the back injury that causes pain to be felt in the neck although the ailment itself is located somewhere along the lower vertebrae. Helpless to discover the source of depression now that despair’s boa-embrace had severed my nerve endings, I resolved to stop everything the moment I heard the doorknobs jiggling.

When I sensed myself sinking lower than my normal moods, I would sit still and ask, “Now what is it that is causing me to feel this way? What has someone said that has discouraged me? or what have I said that I’m embarrassed about? Do I feel that David is too busy to give me attention? Am I really resentful? or am I physically exhausted and making more of things than they call for?”

I discovered that there was always a hook on which my adversary could hang his cloak.

Once the source of my growing uneasiness was discovered, it became a matter of refusing the enemy an entry. It became an intense battle to “stand firm.” It felt literally as though I were pressing my weight against a door while something heaved and shoved on the other side. I can remember fighting against giving way to my unhealthy feelings, sometimes for hours. “I refuse the power of the enemy,” I would whisper, teeth clenched. “I refuse to give in to this thing which he wants to use to destroy me.”

I would force myself to keep on functioning. Keep cleaning, keep working. Get out of the house, go to the beach, to the zoo. If you are tired, go to bed and sleep. Don’t allow yourself to brood; above all else, keep that door shut.

One morning, after several months of this off-and-on struggle, I had been in conflict for hours. Standing before the kitchen sink, tears streamed down my cheeks and dropped into the dishwater. I was weary with the heat of warfare, and certain I would go under without reinforcements.

“Oh, God,” I prayed, “I’m trying to refuse the power of the enemy in my life. I know he wants to destroy me. I have fought him over the last few months and all this morning. You have said you won’t let us go through anything you don’t think we are able to endure. I don’t think I can endure any more of this. David says your promise is your Presence. I can’t keep my back against this door anymore. If you don’t help me, I’m gone.” For a half-hour I repeated: Help me, please help me. Oh, help, God. Please help.

Soon I noticed that the door was at rest, the knob no longer turned, and when I peeked out, the black cloak had disappeared from the hook in the outer hallway.

By some insight of the Holy Spirit, some rare precognition, I knew that despair was gone for good. Though I had experienced depression in its minor and more severe forms for some eight years, I have never tasted it again since that day. It was the first evidence in my life of the practical, redemptive power of God, of His ability to deliver us from the teeth of temptation.

I was not so naïve as to think my responsibility for personal mental health was over. There were long-range life changes I had to effect. The process of building a whole person was about to begin; the armor of my self-image had huge holes that left me vulnerable to the enemy’s fiery darts. There was mending to do, rebuilding of the chain mail, a new insignia to be painted on my shield, a sword to be forged. Yet I knew the depression was gone, defeated by my Overlord. Instinctively, I was aware a battle lull had been provided for me to spend in preparation, garrisoning, and foraging for provender.

Many have been the lessons in knowing I’ve learned since that day; many have been the failures and successes. When I grow weary, my knees aching, my arms weary, when my vision seems blurred—I think back to the sink and my tears splashing in the water, back to my plea for God’s Presence, back to the instant knowledge that He had truly and finally vanquished my despair.

This buoys me, sustains me, lifts me up. It is my personal miracle of the Red Sea crossing, my water gushing from the rock, my pillar of fire by night. God’s promise is His Presence.

Karen Mains
KM1-53

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains, along with her husband, David Mains, leads Mainstay Ministries. Through their years in broadcasting, both radio and television, they also spoke internationally and between them have written dozens of books. Consequently, thousands look to them as spiritual coaches. Karen’s heart of compassion for those who are struggling and suffering has motivated her to look into her own life experiences and share what she has learned with those who need a word of encouragement. Through her writings, Karen continues to be a spiritual coach other Christian men and women.

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
- Preparing to teach an eight-month mentor-writing course on writing personal memoirs.
- Promoting the Global Bag Project and hosting fundraising "Bag Parties."
- Training retreat leaders for future Silent Retreats.

I can remember the times in my life when I thought I never was going to laugh again. I can name various passages in my life when this suspicion has haunted me. The days were wearying; the nights were restless. Everything felt grim. The days were grey.

But guess what?—laughter always does come again. In time, on its own volition, it catches us unawares and despite the pain, despite the anguish, despite the feeling that life will never be the same, never again be normal, suddenly, unplanned, without our doing anything, a belly roll of laughter bubbles up from some archived spot in our soul. We throw back our head, we howl with delight, and we think, “Oh, my goodness, where did that come from?”

If you are having a hard time getting through the days, if you are suspecting that you will never laugh again, let me make a promise to you: Yes, you will. Yes, you will.

Laughter is where you least expect to find it.

After one of those niggling days where you come home concentrating on everything that’s gone wrong, I looked out into the yard. It was September and I had filled the birdfeeders. The garden seemed to be a flitter with wings, and birdsong, and chickadees rushing at the sunflower seeds. I’d broadcasted mixed birdseed so ground feeders, the doves and the flocking grackles were feeding on the earth—suddenly my heart lifted and I laughed. Comfort just erased the worries I’d been gnawing at, little worries, not the major heartaches, but ones that can ruin beautiful days and lovely moments. My heart just healed suddenly from that day’s aggravations, and I took a coffee cup out to a garden bench and watched the riot of feathered things racing through the trees and swooping to the feeders and calling across the acres to one another—Food here! Fresh birdseed! Last one out is a pokey birdling!

After a long season of sorrow, the major kind, I decided to fill my life with the kind of people I liked, people who knew how to play. And I was happy again, and we laughed together doing unimportant but life-giving things—cooking meals, canning peaches, going to movies.

After that same long season of unending stress and loss, a son said to me, “Oh, it’s just good to see you happy again!” I had forgotten that other people watch us, and gauge our happiness aptitude, and our sorrow or our joy rubs off on them.

Yesterday, I sat with a granddaughter who is reluctantly practicing her lessons. “Here,” I said. “Let me play with you. I’ve wanted to take up piano again. Let me see what I remember.” So we fingered the chords and figured the time—one, two, three; one, two, three … and the onerous piano lesson became a laughing place. And we raced through our scales—together—When the Saints Coming In and What the World Needs Now Is Love … and a couple upper-clef trials for some piece from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Definitely, I was laughing again. And my granddaughter was laughing so much she didn’t want to leave the piano when I was done.

So, if laughter seems far away, find the people for whom laughter is easy. Shamelessly ride on the coattails of those who delight in the ridiculous. Let the people who love you report to you on your happiness aptitude. Immerse yourself, completely and forgetfully, in some childlike activity—with a child. Laugh with them all—practice laughing again if you have to. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha (it works). Get down on the floor with a child (or on a piano bench). You won’t have to look for laughter. It will find you.

This is one of the things that will get you through the days.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen and a group of volunteers are putting together a 24-Hour Advent Retreat of Silence and planning the template as well as the retreat-leader training for 3-Day Retreats of Silence. Visit the Hungry Souls Web site for more information on the Silent Retreats.

Karen is also part of an international team of men and women heading the Global Bag Project, a microfinance enterprise for women who live in developing areas of the world. The idea is to sell reusable shopping bags, made by Third World bag-makers, to provide sustainable income for them. Visit www.GlobalBagProject.com if you are interested in learning more.

She is also continuing to developing both her Christian blog, Gettin' Thru the Day, as well as her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com. She is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing,” which will be posted on her site.

One of the worst things that happens to us when we are in pain is that we enter into a kind of isolation room that sometimes seems as though it has no door. Terrible things may happen to all kinds of people, but the pain we feel is our own, no matter how common it may be for others.

In our own pain, we are alone. And if we will let it, that pain will become the sole sucking-force of our being, turning our full attention, our active thoughts, the very meaning of who we are, toward its focus.

Our job is to not let that happen. Sometimes, things are so bad in ordinary life, we just barely make it through the day, but when the day is filled with terrible hurt, no matter what the cause, we now have the additional task added of not letting it consume us.

What makes this worse is that where as once we had a culture that was built on community and interaction, we now because of busyness, the technologies, and the distances we have to go to connect with friends are facing a culture that is being built to enhance isolation.

In an article by Janet Kornblum, USA Today reported that Americans have one-third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago. This is something of a seismic shift. “You usually don’t see that kind of big social change in a couple of decades,” reports Lynn Smith-Lovin, co-author of the study reported in American Sociological Review and professor of sociology at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them. By 2004, that number had dropped to two confidants, and the findings determined that consequently, 25% of Americans have no one in whom to confide.

Smith-Lovin explains, “Close relationships are a safety net. Whether it’s picking up a child or finding someone to help you out of the city in a hurricane, these are people we depend on.”   

The USA Today article makes the point that research has linked social isolation and loneliness to mental and physical illness. If that is the case, can we not also conclude that our mental and physical (and spiritual) health improve when we are socially connected and not living in isolating environments?

So, here’s the thought for this blog: Do not let pain isolate you completely. Do not let it swallow you into itself. Find one friend. Search out an old companion. Join a group. Volunteer where people are present. Put yourself into a happy (and healthy) social environment. Become a member of an accountability group or a recovery program. Just don’t face this terrible season of life by yourself. You can open the door in the isolation room. Don’t stay there so long that you begin to think it’s normal, or you begin to love it.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen Mains, published author with a background in radio and television, has supervised more than 250 Listening Groups that provide a place for people to hear one another and be heard in turn. She leads women’s Retreats of Silence, is a spiritual coach to hundreds, and is the author of the best-selling Open Heart, Open Home, a book about using the home to alleviate the isolation in our culture.

She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Somehow, growing up, I totally missed the popular-music culture. “That’s your era, Mom,” a son will say to me. “Don’t you know who this is?”

No, I don’t know who it is. Between birthing and raising four babies, helping my husband plant an inner-city church in Chicago, taking young adults who needed a place to live into our home, and launching my own professional writer’s life, there simply wasn’t time to become an expert in pop music. Ask me about the civil-rights movement; ask me about the economics of poverty; ask me about building churches around the gifts of the laypeople or about creative worship philosophy; ask me about child-rearing theories; ask me what I read during my own young adult years (a lot); ask me about the mystical writers—I can hold my own on any of these topics. But truthfully, I wouldn’t know The White Album from Purple Rain.

Church music?—well, my father was head of the Music Department at Moody Bible Institute. It would be an understatement to say I was overexposed to sacred music. Classical music?—my husband and I have loved the world-class Chicago Symphony, and, when we have any money, have held season tickets. We enjoy the intimacy of chamber music and are supporters of the Orion Ensemble. We have profited mightily on long car-drives, listening to CD’s from The Learning Company; right now, we’re playing The History of Classical Music.

Finally, in my sixties, I am attempting to rectify my pop-music ignorance by listening to “Greatest Hits” and “Best of” albums. Recently, I’ve enjoyed Van Morrison’s Still on Top. In fact, this Sunday on the way to church, I was captivated with the seeming religious progression of his lyrics. The album begins with Gloria, Here Comes the Night, Brown-Eyed Girl, then eventually progresses to In the Garden with its amazing invocation of praise to the Trinity. What caught my attention most, however, perhaps because I have been thinking about this blog, was Stranded.

The writer is “stranded at the edge of the world,” and this is a succinct expression of the ennui so many feel caught in the “hustle and hustle” of modern life. We don’t know where we are or why, there’s no one to “give us the time of day,” and “every day, every day” we’re stranded.

All great artists, and Van Morrison’s biography seems to indicate that he is considered to be a truly great artist, voice the inner anguish and distress of our common humanity. This is one reason I need to listen to their music: What are these people saying? For whom are they speaking?

You may be one of those folks who is having trouble “just getting through the day.” If so, think about this (a thought that has been deeply medicinal to my soul during rough passages—really rough passages): There is nothing you have experienced that literally hundreds of thousands haven’t experienced before you. This thought doesn’t trivialize my anguish; instead, it comforts me. While being stranded at the edge of the world, between “the devil and the deep blue sea,” I am not alone. Others are familiar with this pain, this cessation of desire, this lostness.

Not only is there comfort in misery, but hundreds of thousands of others have found a way through the desert, through the wilderness, through the vacant lots, through the sour soil of living. Listen to the music and you will find this thread.

Morrison, on this one album, takes us through “the dark night of the soul” in Tore Down a la Rimbaud, to “can’t stand up by myself; don’t you know I need your help” in Real Real Gone, and to the lyrical moment of recovery, of finding one’s self again in The Healing Game—“Here I am again, back where I belong … back in the healing game.”

All great artists face periods when the music stops, the words go, the inner vision is blackened, the math no longer makes sense. Van "The Man" Morrison, the mystical, the magical, searching ever for “a certain quality of soul,” has known them well.

Once, at a younger time in my life, when I had exhausted myself and was real, real gone, I listened over and over, for six months, to the music of Chopin, until finally I was back in the healing game, inner-city ministry. Perhaps if you’re in one of the stranded places, at the edge, the precipice, with nowhere to go, your soul will find some peace in the music of those who know, have been there, and can sing forth that message of comfort in commonality.

We have been where you are; we have survived. Life is good again. Stay with us.

Karen Mains
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Karen Mains is the Co-Director, with her husband, Dr. David R. Mains, of Mainstay Ministries. She leads silent retreats, is a spiritual coach to thousands who have followed the Mains’ ministry through radio and television broadcasting and their writings. Karen is the award-winning author of the “Tales of the Kingdom” Trilogy, and is now crucially involved in a team that is creating a microfinance for women project in Kenya.

This blog is about—guess what?—getting through the day.

I ask people, “How ya’ doing?” And so often I hear the same response. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day,” people answer. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day.”

Believe me, I know where these folks are coming from. In some circumstances, getting through the day is almost more than any of us can do.

However, at my age (67), I’ve learned a few lessons and have advanced, for the most part, from “jes’ gettin’ thru the day” to attempting to live each day as though it is a minor work of art (some days are major works of art). And yep, some days are just plain blah!—but not many, not many at all.

After years of being in ministry, and after conversation with friends who are on local church staffs, we concluded that some 80% of the people in congregations are facing problems too big for them to handle. For these people, getting through the day is a major undertaking.

Perhaps, some of the things I’ve learned and am still learning, some of the things I’m facing and will face, and some of the life lessons I’m activating, will help that 80% who just don’t know how they’ll make it from day’s beginning to night’s end, not to mention the nights in between.

The first thing I know—I positively know—and have taught to my children, all of whom are adults now and married with children of their own, is that we all have a choice. We can make this a good day or a bad day. We can make it a good life or a bad life.

“Look,” I’ve said umpteen times during the child-raising years. “You have a choice. You can choose to make this a bad day or you can choose to make it a good day.”

As hard as this may seem for those facing horrendous situations, this is a basic interior attitude over which we do have control—we don’t have control over most of the bad things, minor and major, that happen to us. We do have control over how we will respond to it.

If you’re part of the 80% just getting through the day, how are you going to make it a good day, despite the circumstances? Do you want to choose to make it a good day? Or are you going to let all the woes, the worries, the injustices rob and cheat you of a good day and a good life?

Love to hear how some of you defeat the darkness on this most personal of levels—choosing to make it a good day.

Karen Mains
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Karen Mains is a national-award-winning author of more than 26 books. She is involved right now in helping to create a microfinance women’s pilot project in Kenya—the Global Bag Project, which seeks to sell reusable shopping bags made to provide sustainable income to help bag-makers around the world lift themselves from poverty. Her book about the refugee crisis in the world, The Fragile Curtain, won the 1982 Christopher Medal, which is awarded to works that uphold the highest values of the human spirit.

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site, www.KarenBurtonMains.com in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published. Additionally, she and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Also, Karen is preparing for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreat, which is still open for registration (see the Hungry Souls Web site for more information; click "Retreats of Silence").
 

In Jr. High I was not allowed to take part in the social-dancing classes offered by the Physical Education department. Between the position of our church, my father’s work as a faculty member in the music department at Moody Bible Institute (considered the “West Point of Fundamentalism”), and my mother’s involvement as executive secretary to the director of a conservative mission-sending organization, everything weighted me with the preordained conclusion that good Christians don’t dance. I sat out the unit while my peers learned to do-si-do and allemande left. As classmates hastened to the gym in happy herds, I sat alone in study hall.

Several years back, I had good reason to “sit this dance out.” A backache sent me home early from the office on a Friday afternoon, and in the middle of the night, I woke with one thought original and unbidden: I bet this is shingles. Sure enough, the mirror revealed a few patches blooming on my hip, and the charming Convenient Care Center doctor confirmed that, indeed, the herpes virus had been chomping its way along a neural path on the right side of my body and was popping to the surface. She started me on antiviral medication immediately.

“Oh, we’re sorry you have shingles,” commiserated many former sufferers. “They are so painful.”

But due to early treatment (and my inexplicable early inner self-diagnostic), the patches that bloomed on my skin after the first all began to fade. (Those that popped out before medication all blistered and scabbed over and itched and sent off alarums of pain when touched.) Consequently, I tucked down into the guest-room bed, hunkered beneath a feather comforter, and drugged myself into happy slumber with regular doses of Tylenol 3. Being a good Christian woman with a life full of godly projects, endless hospitality events, mentor-writing projects and endless trips on the road, speaking and teaching, this was the best sleep I’d had in decades, and my dreams were not crowded out by a mind so busy it organizes even when I’m resting. I considered this enforced interval one of God’s good gifts to me.

Sitting on the sidelines while the dance swirls around us can be a good gift. We hear things the music often drowns out; we pay attention to thoughts that active rhythms often prohibit. We sleep; we dream. Bobbing in and out of sleep; taking Claritin, ibuprofen, the antiviral, and codeine; and dosing my skin with calamine, I heard this word: “Write. Write out into the culture.” And as if to verify this, articles began forming themselves in my mind, all slanted to a secular readership.

A friend, who has been out of work for nine months, called to commiserate with me that I had been laid low with shingles. I found myself saying, “Oh, please. I needed this rest. Maybe you should look at this period of your unemployment as a gift from God. Do in it the things you don’t ordinarily have enough time to do.”

The interludes in the dance that is our life—when the music changes, or the silence intrudes—can be life-altering. They can be inconvenient, embarrassing, annoying or painful, but after we’ve lived awhile, we begin to understand that they are never outside of God’s intents. Sometimes, we need to stop dancing.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Continuing to write for her new Christian blog, with topics relevant to Christian women and men in today's contemporary world. Planning upcoming mentor-writing sessions. Preparing for the upcoming Silent Retreat (see the Hungry Souls Web site for details).

Making Sunday Special by Karen Mains
(back-cover copy)
Author Karen Mains challenges readers to celebrate Sunday with a SABBATH HEART—to make the Lord's Day so special that there are three days of anticipation ... and so meaningful that it continues to nurture for three days afterward.

MAKING SUNDAY SPECIAL is brimful of creative celebrations that take the hassles out of the Day of Rest and restore "the rhythm of the sacred"—practical exercises that will help you fall in love anew with the rest day and with Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath.

Making Sunday Special is available for purchase through Sunday Solutions, the Webstore of Mainstay Ministries.

This year, many Christian men and women are saying what a hard taskmaster God can be. Adamant means “inflexible, or persistent in maintaining a position or opinion.” God can be loving, but He also can be adamant with me—maybe they are the same thing. During difficult times in my life, He insists I attend “dance” classes. The unrelenting stress of certain circumstances can force me to perfect my steps to His sacred rhythms.

This personal “dance” is a discipline that means that I must step for an hour in intercessory prayer to begin each day. Mondays are given to praying for David and for our adult children, grandchildren, then for extended family, particularly any who are not Christians. Tuesdays are given to prayers for Mainstay Ministries and our staff; Wednesdays are for Hungry Souls. On Thursdays I pray for those artists in the popular culture who are already positioned to do God’s work—that He will draw them to Himself—and I pray for my own writing as I begin to point it to markets outside of the religious ones. On Fridays, I intercede for our sorry world. On Saturdays, I turn my heart to Sabbath, but I pray for the church catholic, for the pastors on our lists, that God will pour out His Spirit.

This adamant Dancing Master is insisting that I pore over the Word daily and take notes and memorize. This is serious business, this dance class; no lollygagging around in the hallway at the candy machine. During times of intense stress, I reinstate prayer vigils. Once, when our ministry was under financial duress, we met every day around noon in the staff kitchen—office appointments and meetings and blocks of responsibilities had to be designed around this time, each day, without fail. Step/step. Practice/practice.

Some days I felt excessively burdened in this dancing lesson—as though David and I and our staff were in an unending rehearsal but didn’t know what the production was going to be or when a performance was scheduled. And despite all the forced practices, I still kept turning right in the chorus line when everyone else was turning left (complaining and grumbling about how our prayers weren’t being answered, falling to sleep at prayer, not meaning what I was saying). Like a teenager, all too often, I arrived for rehearsals out of breath, late, and having forgotten my dancing shoes.

The prayer work in this dancing class, morning and noontime and evening, is like labor that never ends in birth, or like a marriage that is not consummated, or like a musical that investors have financed but never reaches Broadway.

“How long, O LORD, will you forget us? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand?” Psalm 13.

And during days, weeks, seasons, years in the hard place, all I hear Him say is, “Practice. Practice. Keep dancing.”


Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now:
Karen Mains has been a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men. These days, however, she is finding joy in working in teams with highly qualified adults who bring spiritual teachings into her life in fascinating ways. Maturity is a state where the teacher realizes she learns as much from her students, she receives as much from her companions as she teaches and she gives. Hungry Souls is a ministry that is a laboratory for those who seek to develop spiritual growth tools that work. Check out Karen and David’s Web site, www.hungrysouls.org.

Notice (Advent Retreat):
Registration is open for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreats. One of the Advent Retreats is for Christian women; the other is designed for both Christian women and men. See the Hungry Souls Web site for details.

T. S. Eliot writes in Four Quartets, “Except for the point, the still point,/ There would be no dance,/ And there is only the dance.”

Due to frequent heavy travel schedules, I am sometimes not able to keep in the rhythm of deadlines for blog posts (this, my Christian blog), the free Soulish Food newsletter provided by my ministry, Hungry Souls (http://www.hungrysouls.org). I get bogged down in the comings and goings. Recovering from long trips where I have been away for more than two weeks sometimes takes me days to really get back into my daily swing. However, I am learning that there is a rhythm in presence and in absence. Each one works its own good. Much of the dance of our lives is poised in the pauses.

Henri Nouwen’s remarkable little book The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ, written for those who minister, makes the point that there is a ministry of absence as well as a ministry of presence. “Without this withdrawal,” he writes, “we are in danger of no longer being the way, but being in the way; of no longer speaking and acting in his name, but in ours; of no longer pointing to the Lord who sustains, but only to our own distracting personalities. … The more this creative withdrawal becomes a real part of our ministry the more we participate in the leaving of Christ, the good leaving that allows the sustaining Spirit to come.”

The still point in the dance is the moment when we balance on our toes before plunging into the next step. When I am unable to do what I want to do (like sending Soulish Food out on time), I must remind myself that the Lord is perfectly able to fill the pause with His Presence, and that sometimes this is not a failure on my behalf, but part of the rhythm that is in His mind. This gives me ease to know that the sacred melody to which we step is filled with pattern and emptiness, busyness and quiet, words and silence.

This is an extremely difficult year for people—and for many that is going to take some time to change—until the economy improves. All of us have friends and family who are without jobs. Despair threatens and the loss of material safety-nets is almost unbelievable. No matter how difficult, however, the circumstances of my life I am still choosing to learn the art of dancing. I have made it a point to pray for those who are facing hard choices; I pray that they will step in holy rhythm (not frantic anxiety), trusting that there is a divine pattern working in their behalf.

“If we are indifferent to the art of dancing, we have failed to understand, not merely the supreme manifestation of physical life, but also the supreme symbol of spiritual life.”
Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now:
Karen Mains is wading through research data gathered from participants in Listening Groups. These groups are small, including three to four people only, and are based on an architecture of silence, listening and questions as response. The growth curve of many participating in these groups seems exceptional, and so Karen and a team of volunteers are looking into why. Karen has been a spiritual coach to many through her years of ministry and is excited about the replication potential of Listening Groups.

She is also eager to get back into her own writing, but is examining the possibilities for online publishing that new technologies offer. Have any creative-writing tips you might offer regarding online publishing?

Advent Retreats of Silence:
Registration is open for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreats. One of the Advent Retreats is for Christian women; the other is designed for both Christian women and men. See the Hungry Souls Web site for details.

We are considering the modern dilemma of feeling “out of step” resulting in a need to “get back our rhythm.”

Two quotes from Dorothy Bass’s Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time give us a broadened idea of the rhythmicity that can be found in life.

“Happily, our home is a planet where the days begin to grow longer in the northern hemisphere just as Christmas arrives. Six months later, they start growing shorter again. Spring comes to every clime, however different it may appear in Norway, New Zealand, and Ecuador, and so does autumn. Human beings respond by elaborating on nature’s turnings: in every age and place, we develop seasonal rhythms of planting and reaping, of fasting and feasting, of letting go and starting afresh. These rhythms run through the days and the weeks, stitching them together until they come full circle over the course of a year.
   
“Within the rhythms that encircle a year lived in Christian faith, season also follows season. The natural tilts and turns of the northern hemisphere, where the Christian seasons of faith originated, set the stage: Easter follows the vernal equinox, Christmas the winter solstice. But the larger motions that govern these seasons belong to the story of God—a story in which nature is present but one that nature doesn’t write. Amazingly, even though this story began before time itself and reaches beyond the end of time, it is a story that has room in its narrative for each individual who encounters it in the present day. Within the Christian practice of living through the year, the gift of time becomes a means of entry into this story, a mysterious opening into participation in the life of God.
   
“Like the orbit whose span they measure, years are round. Each one begins at a certain point and arrives back at that pint before it can run its course once more. It forms a circle.”

For most of us, unreflectively rushing through the days of our lives, one season bumps into another. We have not developed a mechanism of living deeply, or living intentionally, in this most basic of life cycles, the yearly rhythm. “Is it spring already?” we ask. “It seems as though it was just Christmas a few days ago.” “Where has the time gone? We can’t be in another year already…? You mean summer’s almost over?” These are questions that become symptomatic of how out of rhythm, how detached from the moving circle of the year we have become.

Are you living each day as though they were beads strung aimlessly on an endless string, or do you see the returns and repetitions, the cycles and “circles” within the hours, the days, the weeks, the months and the years as a holy gift designed by God for some certain purpose, as rhythms that have sacred meaning?

How are you going to learn to live in the year as a circle in time? What must you do or change in your life so you will notice the days?
Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen and David have spent a great deal of time launching the Global Bag Project, which seeks to provide sustainable income for bag-makers in developing countries by selling their reusable artisan shopping bags in developed nations. This is the aim of the project: Through microfinance, women are helped to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Every bag (and its bag-maker) has a story. The first such story is of Mary Nduta, a Christian woman from Nairobi, Kenya. If you would like to see Mary’s story, go to this YouTube link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcWFLbQ3u0M&NR=1

Other News:
Karen, through her ministry of Hungry Souls, has opened the registration for the Annual 24-hour Retreat of Silence. The Wednesday-Thursday 24-hour cycle will be for women only; the Friday-Saturday cycle will be for men and women.

Here are the details:

In 2009, the first retreat will run from Wednesday, beginning with dinner, December 2 through Thursday, ending by 4:00 p.m., December 3. The second retreat will run from Friday, beginning with dinner, December 4 through Saturday, ending by 4:00 in the afternoon, December 5.

This will make room for those who work during the days and don’t feel as though they can take time off during the week.

Our fees will be $120 for a single room with private bath. However, if you register early, by October 15, your fee will be $100. If you bring someone who has NEVER attended a Hungry Souls Advent Retreat of Silence, the welcome fee for any new attendees (and for you) will be $90. (The weekend retreat costs us $5 more. Add that amount to the fees – $125, $105 or $95.) The cutoff date for registrations is November 25. Since we must give a firm number to the Bishop Lane Retreat Center in Rockford, IL and pay for that number, we cannot return payments after the cutoff date.

Valerie Bell, Karen Mains and Sybil Towner will lead these two silent retreats again this year. This Hungry Souls Retreat of Silence is a guided retreat. We begin silence at 9:00 the first evening. If you are interested, contact our volunteer registrar Melodee Cook at Cook2210@aol.com.

If you are outside of the Chicagoland area and would like to fly in for any of our Silent Retreats, our staff or volunteers will be happy to meet you at the airport and facilitate any sleeping arrangements that might need to be made for our silent retreats.

One answer to my prayer for discipline to get myself physically in shape for the years of aging ahead has been a delightful new walking partner. This woman, who lives in the housing development across the street, meets me each weekday morning, and we do either our “short” walk (30 minutes), “high” walk (on the nearby Prairie Path; ~40 minutes) or “long” walk (3.25 miles; today we did that walk in 69 minutes—a vast improvement over when we started!).

At a certain point on the way back, we stop chatting, and one of us moves unselfconsciously into a season of prayer, making the time exceedingly rich.

A couple weeks ago, my walking partner mentioned she had memorized some passages from Scripture as an antidote to anxiety. I said, “Oh, I’d love to hear that.” She quoted two whole chapters from Acts! Everyone should have a walking partner like this. In addition to holding each other accountable to physical exercise, I can foresee myself scrambling to match memorized Scriptures with her. (I quoted four verses from a Colossians passage; she quoted another chapter—this is going to keep me on my mnemonic toes for sure!)

At one point a few years ago, our Mainstay staff had gone four pay-periods without paychecks. It was a very tense time for us. So I was observing a partial fast—a small meal every two days—and holding a noontime prayer vigil daily in the kitchen. At times like these, we begin to ask, “Are You walking with us, Jesus?” One day, I sat in silence and asked, “What is it you have to say to me, Lord? Is there something I need to hear?”

I thought I heard the inner Word, “It is coming.” So I turned to Scripture for verification, flipping the pages to Psalm 70. “Come quickly, LORD, and help me,” the psalmist cries. “I am poor and needy; please hurry to my aid, O God. You are my helper and my savior; O LORD, do not delay.” (vv. 1b, 5, NLT)

I am old enough to know there is a rhythm to the seasons in our lives. Some seasons we prosper; some seasons we taste poverty and failure. The human assignment for us all, as far as I can tell, it to learn to “dance,” to step in time to the orchestra of abundance and to step as well—learning the hidden lessons—to abasement. People in all economic levels, at all stages of education, in all work professions seem to experience these life-cycles. Our walking if filled with hills and valleys.

Frankly, I don’t know if I heard a sure inner Word on that day when I looked at these Scriptures. Nor do I know, if I did, what “it” is—“it” could be anything! “It” could be success, or “it” could be failure—both extremes hold perils. But I do know that many saints of God have trod the way of desperation before me and give testimony to the fact that they have experienced the Presence of the Unseen Who has been walking in step with them during their trying times. I really have two walking partners. One is the human woman who meets me in the mornings. The other is divine, and He meets me at points all along the day—low walks, short walks, “high paths,” and the long three-milers.

Of course, He is walking with me. If I notice it and think about it, no matter the condition of the path, we are in step.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design training material that will teach retreat leaders how to conduct retreats of silence. In addition, she is designing a Webinar that will mentor writing wanabees. The topic of that Webinar will be Personal Memoir Writing. Details are on the Karen Burton Mains Web site, www.karenburtonmains.com.

Years ago, it was the season of life when I found myself sitting in the audience of the annual spring Kindergarten Circus for the morning class. My granddaughter, Joscelyn, was part of the Elephant Dance—the last act after the Tightrope Walkers, the Seals, the Strong People, etc.

Now I had been informed of this event, but when my answering machine yielded a charming invitation from Josie the night before, I decided that no matter how busy the schedule, I simply had to be part of the audience. Of course, it was a delightful morning, filled with performing children and adoring parents and exhausted teachers.

I was a little concerned, however. Josie was part of the last act and dressed in what looked to be a very warm elephant outfit. She and her two partners had to sit in the front row under hot lights and wait for a whole hour for their turn.

“Weren’t you hot, Josie?” I asked after I had praised her for her remarkable two-stepping little dance with the other Elephant kindergartners. Pushing up her floppy elephant trunk, she shook her head up and down. “Well, maybe,” I whispered, “you could take your elephant costume off now.” She did so did immediately, with smiles and a sigh of relief.

“I’m so sorry Papa couldn’t come, but I’ll tell him all about it.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” she replied, taking refreshments from her mother’s hand. “You were here and that’s what makes it so very special to me.” Then it was my turn to melt.

Coming home, I began to build an analogy in my mind (I am a writer, after all). Isn’t much of life like the Kindergarten Circus? Everyone else comes first, doing their tumbling and fake weightlifting and rigged magic acts, and we’re sitting in some front row somewhere in a hot, uncomfortable costume, waiting for our turn to do our little two-step. It begins to seem inappropriate, or silly, or long. Then we realize that Someone is in the audience—Someone who has come just to watch us do whatever it is we do. We scootch around in our uncomfortable costume (whatever role life has assigned us), move the wrong way, correct ourselves, get back in step with the other dancing elephants.

But it’s all okay. God has come to be with us, to cheer and applaud, to wave from the audience, to say to our hearts, “I’m so very proud of you.” None of the inconveniences really matter. Nor does the fact that other people have been watching their children and don’t care that we’re hot and long-waiting. God is here. That is what makes everything so very special. “The LORD himself watches over you!” Psalm 121:5a, NLT.

Now that is a truth worth dancing about (even when life’s a little hot).

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

This is a terror to me: Sometimes I become so preoccupied that I forget certain appointments that are on my calendar—particularly the phone appointments that require no physical space and are only a notation on my Day Runner, my desk calendar and my kitchen calendar. (It’s not as though I don’t try to remind myself. I keep hearing my husband asking in disbelief when I confess that, once again, I’ve something on my schedule. “Do you write this down in your calendar?” he asks. Well, writing it down isn’t the problem; checking it with serious regularity is.)

So, I am, consequently, often having to make apologies to friends and acquaintances. “I’m sorry, I forgot” always seems so lame. And despite all the working years I’ve accumulated in a lifetime, and despite the fact I pride myself on being a conscientious Christian woman who doesn’t disappoint, neglect or inconvenience others, I’ve never really had a personal secretary to sit on this flaw in my personality. How I envy those movie moments when some important CEO is reminded that he or she has a conference call at 10:00, a luncheon appointment at 12:30. Briefing sheets, research reports—there they all are—at hand, no wonder he/she is an apogee of efficient living.

One week, having more than its weight of sorrow, I missed a spiritual telementoring call—embarrassment again (I am the spiritual telementor). This poem by Elizabeth Rooney had been sitting on my desk all week, but it seemed an appropriate message to include with my abject apology. I include it in this blog. It is a reminder that missteps are part of the dance of life—they are often the way we learn establish a rhythm, looking humiliatingly awkward as we do so. For me, missteps are a way of developing the rhythm of humility.

Opening

Now is the shining fabric of our day
Torn open, flung apart,
Rent wide by Love.
Never again
The tight, enclosing sky,
The blue bowl,
Or the star-illumined tent.
We are laid open to infinity,
For Easter Love
Has burst His tomb and ours.
Now nothing shelters us
From God’s desire—
Not flesh, not sky,
Not stars, not even sin.
Now Glory waits
So He can enter in.
Now does the dance begin.
—Elizabeth Rooney

Each day that we practice being in step with God is preparation here on Earth for the day when the dance will never end. Pray for me. I always spend a little time praying for whomever reads these little messages. (Pray that I will remember to keep my appointments so I will be practiced at keeping the Final Appointment!)

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

One Saturday morning, about 6:37, I popped into Panera Bread in St. Charles to pick up 54 individually packaged salads for the women’s retreat that Hungry Souls, the little ministry I head, sponsored. It was called “Summer Slowing for the Soul.” I could tell by the face of the woman behind the counter that she had no clue as to the whereabouts of 54 salads. Nor, after hunting around, did she have an order for them.

“Look,” I said to her, imagining what a shocking beginning this might be to her workday. “We’re not going to sweat this. Fortunately, I’m early. So I’ll just have a cup of coffee, read the paper, and if I get out of here around 8 o’clock, we’ll still be OK. I don’t want you to be upset. I too have been known to be prone to human error.”

That was an understatement.

By the time I left Panera Bread around 8:10, I’d been plied with free coffee, a huge imprinted sack with sourdough rolls, and to make up for their error, three gift certificates worth $18. I thought I had conducted myself in a kind Christian manner. Several people in the long line waiting for morning coffee particularly complimented me on my calm approach.

I did not question myself one moment, until later in the afternoon, after 52 women had successfully slowed their soul in the spring sunshine at the Catholic Retreat Center nearby, and I had hauled all the “props” back home. It was then my husband, ever the pragmatist, asked, “Are you sure you went to the right Panera Bread?”

Pure panic set in. Sure enough, there was a message on my answering machine: “Uh, Mrs. Mains, this is Mitch from Panera Bread. We’ve had your order for 54 individual salads ready since 7:00. It is now 9:00. Will you please call me?”

I certainly AM prone to human error. I had ordered from the wrong store, and I didn’t have a clue which of the 12 in my area had been stuck with 54 individual salads that were not paid for. Thank God I’d had the charity to be kind to the shocked woman who rallied her staff to fill my order.

Now I had a choice. The deed was done. I hated to think of paying an unnecessary $143 from my retreat earnings of $525. But I had obviously misstepped; what did the dance with God require of me now?

If you’re dancing with God, you have to keep dancing even when you misstep. I spent Monday morning calling Panera Breads until one manager (in Geneva) said, “Yep. That’s us. Fifty-four salads—20 Asiago cheese; 16 Fandango; 16 Chef’s Salad with chicken.”

“Well, I want to make this right. How much do I owe you?”

“Oh no, lady,” he replied. “We just mixed them in with the lunch-crowd orders. The problem isn’t with you (I knew it WAS with me); the problem is with the other management team. We’re trained to call the other stores if something like this happens; they didn’t do that.”

I couldn’t believe it! How had this reprieve come my way? I was free to go misstepping another day. (Hopefully, I would remember when making another phone order, to inquire as to location.)

Once a friend said, “Grace is God giving us enough time to get it right.” If that isn’t melody for the soul that is out of step, I don’t know what is.

For me, my daily life dance lessons seem to go on and on. Listen to this, another melody:

“But everyone knows you are obedient to the Lord.
This makes me very happy.
I want you to see clearly what is right
and to stay innocent of any wrong.
The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” Romans 16:19-20.

Keep dancing.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

Three blogs ago, I remarked that when we learn to look for God and find Him in the circumstances of the everyday, we can become breathless with how frequently He extends His hands to us, pulling us close, and twirling us in the dance that is stepping with Him.

Four categories help us to find God in the everyday. These are:

1.  Any obvious answer to prayer.
2.  Any help to do God’s work in the world.
3.  Any unexpected evidence of His care.
4.  Any unusual linkage or timing.

What is the God Hunt? The God Hunt is anytime God intervenes in our everyday lives, and we recognize it to be Him.

For instance, when I was clearing out the Annex building across the street from our office on Main Place in preparation to sell it, I discovered that a vacant building shows all its flaws. I was dreading taking on the responsibility of hiring repairmen, painters and contacting a realtor—all time-consuming responsibilities I suspected might fall on my shoulders.

Driving from home toward our main office, I kept seeing a huge commercial “For Rent” sign posted on the street of one of the neighboring office buildings. How will anyone even see our little “For Sale” sign when we put it up? I thought.

Two days later, David received a phone call from someone interested in buying the Annex, which despite its need for repairs was a lovely Colonial-style brick building. “We haven’t even contacted a realtor!” I exclaimed. “The inside still needs cleaning! The outside has to be scrapped and painted! How did they find out it would be for sale?”

It seems the woman who called David had pulled into the parking lot of our neighbors with the HUGE “For Rent” sign. She thought that sign was posted on our property. She called the phone number, realized her mistake, but that neighbor told her he thought our building would be for sale and gave her our phone number. We showed it with all its flaws on a Monday afternoon, without a realtor and without an appraisal.

In short time, we reached an as-is agreement and sold a broom-cleaned, vacuumed empty building in need of repairs to Union Local XX. I had been mourning the loss of my office in the Annex, the downsizing of our staff, the closing of our radio studio, the loss of our living-room-like planning space. I was allowing all these impossible improbabilities (not to mention the weeks I had been sorting and clearing) to overwhelm me.

Without even a little, innocuous “For Sale” sign, the building had been sold. Through this odd set of circumstances, God said to me (in that inwardly persuasive sort of way He has), “You know, Karen, I can take care of this stuff you’ve been wasting your energy worrying about.”

Obvious answer to prayer; unusual linkage and timing; unexpected evidence of His care—it’s all there. “I spy!” “I spy God!” It is easy for us, humans with myopic vision, folks who would all too often rather drag their feet during trying circumstances than to lift them to life’s rhythms (all life’s rhythms—dirges as well as festival hymns) to miss even these big God-events, let alone the diminutive occasions.

Remember, if you seek for Him in the everyday, you may become breathless with how frequently He twirls you around.

“Seek me and you will find me if you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you.” Jeremiah 29:13.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

One week, several years back, I spent a great deal of time on my knees. I wasn’t at prayer; I was cleaning the kitchen in the Mainstay Ministries office building. Because of an economic downturn, we were consolidating our office space, moving from the Annex building across the street, which had a kitchen of its own. But before I could combine that kitchen with our existing kitchen in the main office, I needed to empty and clean one kitchen, and rearrange the sadly neglected space in the other. That entailed moving the Coke machine and the refrigerator, cleaning under them, dumping and sorting the clutter that gathers in communal spaces, reposition the eating tables, storage cupboards, ditching junk and scrubbing every inch. Hardly what I would call dancing moments (I have been looking at dance as a metaphor for living in God’s sacred rhythms).

Now all this effort was complicated by the fact that somewhere in all this, while leaving my daughter’s house I took a misstep, twisted my ankle and fell to the ground. Since it was closer for me to crawl to my car by the curb and much less humiliating than scooting back up the walk to her front door, I drove off not knowing whether I had broken anything. At least I could drive.

Amazingly, after icing my foot and elevating my ankle, I was able to meet grandchildren that night at the movies (using my father-in-law’s cane, which I kept, fortuitously, when we cleared through the remains of his estate). By Sunday I was walking without it; by Wednesday I was back to mopping floors at the office on my hands and knees. This, however, was accompanied by moans and groans since during my misstep, I had also scraped my left knee like a little kid falling off a bike, and in order to get up I had to maneuver the right ankle (which had the funniest bruise—large and dark, clothing the whole joint like a 19th-century gentleman’s spat) just so. I’m sure our staff thought I was trying to gain their sympathy and attention. (Of course I wasn’t, though it does seem to me that some of them might have given me a hand, crippled as I was and as unpleasant the task.)

All the while, pressing onward in my private war against aesthetic criminality—I don’t mind living without much money, but I hate disorder and ugliness, which often happens in office places where there is no police-warden type to keep the material things in
shape—this little phrase kept nudging my thoughts: “Do you understand what I have done to you?” These words are spoken by Christ from the Gospel account where He washes His disciples’ feet. “If I then, the Lord and Master have washed your feet, you must wash each other’s feet.” John 13:1-15.

So I wasn’t dancing. I certainly wasn’t praying, but I spent a week at 370 South Main Place in Wheaton, Illinois in a kind of foot-washing season. Next on the list was clearing out and cleaning the women’s bathroom (we were condensing five bathrooms from the two buildings into two bathrooms in the remaining building). And just to make sure that I didn’t lose my battle against aesthetic crime, I stopped and clipped magnolia blossoms from the yard of the Annex we had sold. I arranged them in two glass vases for the office kitchen tables. Beauty is persistent; it will make its way up through the ashes—the debris of economic collapses, the rubble of neglect and negligence, but perhaps that is because it is also nurtured at the cost of someone’s willingness to serve.

“Do you understand what I have done to you?” No, none of us will ever understand, but spending time on our knees scrubbing up everyone else’s mess isn’t a bad place to start. This knee-work is akin to the stretching exercises ballet dancers perform at the studio barre—bending and stretching, bending and stretching. There are no pirouettes, no pas de deux of any merit until the dancers have done the secret labor of knee-work, exercises that make the muscles flexible, the body lithe and the limbs graceful.

Missteps, uncomfortable as they are, dangerous as they might be, can bring us down. And from time to time, that isn’t always a bad place for us to be.

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

One day some years ago, I got locked out of the house—for the whole day! The day was warm—a truly rare spring moment. By 5:30 a.m. I was in the yard, raking leaves and fallen twigs off the garden beds. For a dedicated gardener, after a long winter, this can create a state of total absorption (dare I say bliss?).

I had originally doled out to myself two or three hours of labor before I went to work on the writing project assigned for the day, but at 9:00, when I went to wash my hands and clean up, I discovered that one of my housemates, the last one out the door (adult son or husband) had left for work, tightly locked up, and with no thought for the fact that I was tucked blissfully into the back garden. I was abandoned in the world with no keys, no cell phone, my hair wild, my jeans smeared with mud and clogs clotted with clods of earth.

The neighbor next door was gone, same for the one in back. I decided to walk to my son and daughter-in-law’s house about one mile away. It was a great day for walking, although my garden clogs were not designed for trekking, and when I arrived at their house, I discovered they were not a home. The whole world in West Chicago, Illinois appeared to have been seduced outside by the wondrous (70-something degree) weather. So, I waited a little—just in case they showed up—then turned around and walked back to my own yard.

Suddenly, it struck me: Maybe the very best way I could step in harmony with God, who is, after all, the Master Gardener, would be to submit to reality and just spend the whole day outside, putting as much in order as my energy would allow and my muscles could stand.

Consequently, I enjoyed an absolutely wondrous gardening day and got a huge head start on spring chores. Nine beds were raked, hoed, weeded, cultivated and trenched; garbage pails of leaves were dumped in the woods for compost. And as far as my own comforts—I had taken two Aleve tablets before stepping outside, and there were bottles of water in the garage, as well as the woods nearby for any emergency physical contingencies. I simply needed to devote myself wholly to this unexpected set of circumstances.
 
Sometimes (have you discovered this?) God does for us what we will not do for ourselves. One of the daily ways I note his intervention is to find Him through any unexpected evidences of his care for me. Can you picture this scenario? The God of the Universe says, “Oh, it’s going to be a remarkable gardening day in the Chicagoland area! Let’s lock all the gardeners outside (including Karen) so they can have a perfectly happy day without feeling guilty.” Then I can hear all this chuckling and laughter in Heaven. What a divine joke! God gave me, at least, the very thing I wanted most and would not have given to myself. He locked me out.

Sometimes we are so earnest, so locked into schedules and events and appointments and responsibilities, we don’t take time to dance. We can’t find moments to waltz. God is planning this little improvisational moment in our lives, but He can’t get our attention. Is He locking you out of anything? Does He have something else in mind for your day, your season of life, your years ahead? Do you think?

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

Dennis Sherbeck was a temporary employee; he worked as our audio engineer and sound editor for our daily radio show, The Chapel of the Air, which broadcasted daily over 500 outlets nationally. Usually, the Sherbecks served as missionaries to Pakistan, and Dennis worked with us when home on furlough.

After I sat in my husband’s office one morning, I felt I had been neglectful in not getting better acquainted. He and his wife, Diane, recounted the Sunday morning when they had been leading worship in a church that was bombed by extremist followers of Islam. Six were killed that morning and many others injured. “Normally,” they explained, “we sit on the side where most of those who died sat, but this Sunday morning, since we were in charge of the service, we were sitting up front.”

Though even the recounting of this memory brought back intense feelings, which the whole family was still dealing with, the Sherbecks nevertheless added, “We had many remarkable God Hunt sightings.” The God Hunt is a spiritual game we taught to our own four children, then to thousands of radio listeners, and finally included in several of our 50-Day Spiritual Adventures, a church-wide spiritual growth event.

They told of the attack on the grade school their 11-year-old son attended, how the terrorists were delayed in their plans and arrived 15 minutes after the children had all been called back into class from recess on the playground. They told of the Pakistani Christian worker who hurried to escape but couldn’t climb over the high fence behind the school building. Suddenly, two men wearing long white robes came and said, “Let us help you.” One kneeled so the fleeing worker could stand on his back; the other boosted him over the barrier. When he turned to thank them, they were gone.

It occurred to me, as David and I listened to these remarkable stories, that in this world where death seems to be rising at the hands of lawlessness and increasing militarism, that we need to know (and teach our children, our grandchildren and others) how to find God in the everyday.

The God Hunt is a simple practice that yields profound results. “Seek me and you will find me if you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” proclaims the prophet Jeremiah on behalf of the Lord. Jeremiah 29:13-14a.

Let’s concentrate in the next few blogs on learning to go on the God Hunt—a kind of spiritual quick-stepping (in light of the dancing metaphor I have been employing to open our thinking about stepping into God’s sacred rhythms) that makes us aware of God’s daily activity in our lives. When we learn to intentionally seek for God every day, we can become breathless with how frequently He extends His hand to us, pulls us close and twirls us around.

The first question we must ask is: Am I looking for God in my everyday world?

The second question we must consider is: Am I finding Him?

Karen Mains
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Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.