Tag Archives: Richard Rohr

Uprooting, or the big push, part 2

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When you hear the word “uprooting,” what do you think of? Maybe pulling up weeds or transplanting flowers? If people are uprooted, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I guess that all depends on your perspective and your faith.

My uprooting news is that, after a lifetime of living in North Carolina, I’m moving to Northern California for my husband’s job. Yep, I’m leaving home, leaving the South, leaving sweet tea and biscuits (oh, the biscuits), leaving family, leaving friends. (I apologize to any friends who are reading this news for the first time here. I tried to reach you all in person, but I hope you’ll understand that this is a busy/hectic time right now.)

I’m filled with equal parts excitement and dread. While I’m looking forward to this new adventure, I’m not always happily or gracefully packing up a life I love here. So I’m looking for signs of hope and words of reassurance wherever I can find them.

As my husband and I work to declutter our home to get it ready to sell, we’re moving lots of little treasures out of the house. About a year ago (maybe longer given how quickly time flies), he brought home three little gifts for me: solar-powered plastic flowers that wave in the sunlight. He’s adorable that way.

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I set them in a sunny window and waited for them to start waving. The blue one started. The red one started. The purple one … well, it didn’t start. Even after I set it out in direct sunlight for a bit, it still didn’t wave. I don’t know why I didn’t throw it away, but it sat next to the other two, never budging all this time.

Two weeks ago, I took all three flowers for a road trip. We’re fortunate to have a place where we can bring boxes and our treasures to wait while our house sells. I set the three flowers up in another sunny window sill and checked them the next morning. I took this video to share what I discovered:

Wow! I’m not one to overuse exclamation points as a general rule, but wow!!!

I never thought plastic solar flowers could amaze and delight me so much. You see, all that little flower needed was a road trip—a bit of shaking up and uprooting—before it could thrive. And maybe if that’s true of a little plastic flower, it can be true of me, too. I can thrive in a new place, uprooted, shaken up, in an unfamiliar sunny spot.

Those little plastic flowers are a comfort to me now in the moments I get panicky about moving away.

Back in March, I wrote a post called The big push. I know Richard Rohr didn’t write the words I quoted in there just for me, but they comfort me even more than the little plastic flowers. God is giving me a big push. I’ll be honest: some days it feels like a bully’s shove. But I have hope and reassurance that God is going with me and dreaming a California dream for me that I never imagined for myself.

A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh, wrote, “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” I’ll be leaving my little corner of the forest soon, and I’m looking forward to meeting those who needed me to come to them out in California. I’m trusting the uprooting will bring a wonderful change.

How about you? What ways has life surprised and pushed you? I’d love to hear your uprooting stories in the comments below.

A big push

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I participate in a women’s contemplative prayer group that begins with a time of silence during which we are supposed to listen for God, followed by a short teaching. This week’s teaching has left me sitting with a particularly challenging/unsettling/exciting quote:

The familiar and the habitual are so falsely reassuring, and most of us make our homes there permanently. The new is always by definition unfamiliar and untested, so God, life, destiny, suffering have to give us a push – usually a big one – or we will not go. (Richard Rohr, Falling Upward)

So I’ve been thinking about big pushes, trying to think of times we ask others to give us a push. Most of those times come in childhood:

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Swinging always seemed more fun when there was a friend or parent standing behind to push.

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Slides also presented good “give me a push” opportunities in childhood.

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I avoided slides like these when I was little. Too scary, too little control, too little known about what waited at the bottom.

These childhood pushes may seem scary (like asking for a push on a sled to fly faster down a steep, icy hill), but we also trust that the push will make whatever we’re doing way more fun.

As adults, we don’t ask others to give us a push as often as we do when we’re children at play. Perhaps that’s why “God, life, destiny, suffering” have to step in occasionally to do the pushing. To get us out of a hidey hole. To make us step out into something uncomfortable but right for us and others around us. To change us in ways we wouldn’t choose for ourselves.

For many of us adults, the push doesn’t seem like it will result in anything way more fun.

What has struck me over and over about the quote is the challenge to look at where I’m stuck in the familiar and the habitual and truly examine whether there is any false security. I’m also trying to acknowledge the ways God is pushing me to choose paths I wouldn’t if left to my own choice.

I remember my longtime church organist explaining his difficult decision to leave our church for another one close by. He had struggled with the decision for many months (years?) but finally submitted to God telling him to go. He didn’t like the push, especially at a time that our church was having a spectacular new organ built, but he got to the point where he knew that to stay would be willful disobedience to God. He finally accepted the big push out of what had been familiar and reassuring. We miss him, but I know he is a blessing to his current church, and I hope they are a blessing to him, as well.

Obedience is hard when there’s a big, uncomfortable push. Adam and Eve didn’t skip out of the Garden of Eden. Moses made God angry with his excuses at the burning bush about why he didn’t want to return to Egypt. While he was still the Saul who persecuted early Christians, the man who would become Paul didn’t want to believe in Jesus.

God has plans for us but has also given us free will. Because that free will comes wrapped up in stubborn hearts and minds in bodies, sometimes a big push has to happen to make us live into our best selves.

Looking back on your life, what big pushes do you recognize? How did they change you and bring you to the life you’re living today? How have the big pushes helped you live a better, more meaningful, flourishing life?