Trusting the Hoop

Today was another day of pastoral evaluations. One of those with whom I met was Kathleen Schmidtke, our new senior pastor at First UMC in Marshall. At each evaluation, I check in with the pastor about the method by which he or she is practicing the spiritual disciplines. I really like talking about this with Kathleen, since she has a real interest in new and evolving prayer practices. Today she told me about the wonderful experience she and her husband Scott had last summer at the SoulFeast gathering at Lake Junaluska. One of the workshops she attended there was on hooping--hula, not cough---there is no prayer practice that I am aware of that involves whooping cough, except that of parents praying that the steam of the shower will work.

Kathleen shared with me that when she went into the workshop, she had thought she would learn about hooping, not actually do it. She did not believe that she could still hula hoop, believing that her limberness for such a thing had fallen away as she aged (she is not really that old...;-)) The teacher of the workshop, though, convinced her that she should try it. And what her teacher said was that when hooping, always let the hoop come to you. Don't try to make it go around....it won't work that way. You cannot do it that way. What you have to do is to let the hoop come to you and go with it. Let the hoop come to you. Don't make it stay up and go around by your own coordination or lack thereof. Let the hoop come to you. Hooping, with its rhythm and repetitiveness, reminds us that God is in the rhythm of our lives, that even when the hoop does not touch you for that teeny nanosecond as it revolves around your waist, it will come back again....let the hoop come to you.

I am a person who too often has not let that hoop come to me. I have wanted something to happen so very much in my life that I try like heck, sometimes to my own detriment that I try to MAKE it happen. I have a feeling those reading this may have had the same experience. I imagine that I know what is best for my life and that it is up to me to make "it" work, whatever the "it" is. What is happening then is that I fail to let the hoop come to me---I do not trust enough, I fail to be obedient and my hoop-hope falls down to the ground ---kerrplatt.

It's about trust, all of this faith thing---about trusting our God to come to us and realizing that while we can practice being open to his coming, it's up to God to enclose us with his grace. As we think this Sunday about Christ the King and two weeks from now as Advent dawns, God calls us again to trust in the promises he has made us---he will not leave us orphans; he will give us others with whom to walk the way of faith, and at Golgotha, we are promised that all the sin, the hurt, the places of lostness that we feel, God came to us in his Son, and through him, we know that truly God is always moving toward us. He moves toward us even as we are trying so very hard to make our lives work by ourselves. Soon his walk to us becomes a dance, and as God leads, we follow, one with him, trusting that as he encircles us with his arms, our trust in him will free us to move with grace and freedom as he holds us near forever.