By Tina Teng-Henson

Preaching the lectionary

Initially liberating: I didn’t select this passage; others have chosen it for me! 
Freedom to just sit in the texts.

Later confining: I didn’t select this passage; it is hard to connect that to this community’s life. 
I would not have chosen this passage…

Yet the Lord helps me 
find the words and
provide the words
To nourish others. 

Thanks be to God. 
But thank you Jesus for preaching topically in the Sermon on the Mount. 
I’ll take my cues from you…
Holy Spirit, speak. I am listening.

Family visiting from out of town

Anticipatory anxiety provokes the most thorough house-cleaning I’ve ever done.
I regift and donate all the items that have accumulated over the past 18 months. 
I shop repeatedly for new area rugs for each room. 
We prepare to put up the curtain for the sunporch window. 

Finally they arrive!
My husband is relieved I’ll stop rearranging furniture and cleaning maniacally.

And our time is all that we hoped for:
We bond as sisters again 
When complex dynamics in our family of origin resurface 
In a new season of life. 

Me

My brain bounces around from thought to thought
Like a frog on lily pads
Certain activities slow me down 
I always think I need others to partake in them
But really, they are best done alone…

Independence is related to freedom and autonomy
Today, I’ve taken the day to spend in quietness and peace.
I’ll read the word of God 
Just for my own soul’s nurture
And bask in His loving gaze.

Story
A few weeks ago, an older woman came up to us at Black Bear Diner, saying how much she appreciated that my friend Kris and I were there together with our families celebrating Father’s Day. She told us her parents had both passed, and she and her brother were estranged. It was so clear she was lonely. 

I turned around and stood up to give her a hug just as I realized that she may not have showered in a few days – and as I noticed a number of short gray hairs sprouting above her mouth.  She lingered behind us, and I tried to keep eating my meal but also attend to her standing there, talking to us. My friend listened gently and warmly, and the woman expressed a number of thoughts and feelings on a wide range of topics. She must have felt heard enough and so at some point she decided it was time to let us eat our meal with our families. Smiling, she went on her way. 

Benner and Moon, in Spiritual Discipline and the Care of Souls, include a lovely quote by Luciano de Crescenzo on page 128 (himself an engineer, author and actor): “We are, each of us, angels with only one wing, and we can only fly embracing each other.”  Truly, we listen and embrace others, strangers and friends, and in so doing, become messengers sent by God to love each other. 

Spiritual Direction for me has been a space in which “the process of having a personal relationship with God becomes a concrete and common sense reality rather than a nervous whistling in the dark,” as Dallas Willard writes (Moon and Benner).  My director helps embody for me the listening, loving presence of God who sifts with me the happenings of the past month of life, “in which our aloneness is banished.” Part confessor, part intercessor, teacher and guide, my spiritual director is a companion on this road that could otherwise be lonely and misunderstood. 

My husband understands. My children love me and gently turn the corners of my mouth upward. Friends give me space. But there’s nothing like a quiet Monday to sit and be alone with my thoughts. 

Tina Teng-Henson is the interim pastor of Redeemer Community Church in San Francisco. She has just completed Spiritual Direction training and is open to receiving new directees. She and her husband John have three energetic children, one hamster, and a lovely backyard in Santa Clara, CA. Come visit!