Whispers of the Spirit

by Anne Apple

“Don’t you know the brown part is the sweetest part of a banana?”

I’ve been asking our children that question since the day they began to reject a less than perfect banana. Advice is an interesting sociological factor. We wrap up words with some supposed wisdom and deliver it, mostly with a good intention that it might be well received. Maybe you have heard or uttered some of the same words.

Like the response to the question with the already veiled judgment,

“You don’t like the crust?”

Then the supposed scientific advice,

“Oh, you need to eat the crust. That’s where the vitamins hide in the bread. You need to eat your crust to grow smarter!”

And for a little extra world mission emphasis,

“After all, there are starving children who would die to eat your crusts.”

Or the advice I heard regularly growing up, “Pretty is as pretty does.”

The advice seems simple, relatively easy to believe.

Thinking about the advice I’ve given and that I’ve been given, guides me to think about language and how we use words to build relationships, particularly in the church. As disciples, how do we share what, why and in whom we believe?

When I’m preparing sermons and liturgies, lessons and outlines it’s like I take a nail file and work a sentence until I think it’s perfectly shaped then move on to the next sentence.  Before long I return to the previous two sentences deciding that I don’t like rounded edges, but that I now like squared edges. It’s crazy.  I write and re-write.  I type.  I write by hand. I turn on music and let my mind free flow with words. Eventually the Spirit whispers a sweet something in my ear.

Despairing over miscarrying twice, a well-meaning friend offered her advice to me and quite frankly, I wanted to throttle her. Her advice was, “Well, thank God you have two beautiful children already. This miscarrying is all part of God’s plan.”

Yes, we did have two beautiful children. And, yes, as one who trusts wholeheartedly in the sovereign and steadfast love and faithfulness of God, in some way God’s plan was being worked out. But, “No!” I wanted to shout at her.  “You don’t hear my despair and pain.  Betsy and James’ beauty and God’s plan don’t dilute my grief.  I need you to hear me, to hold on to me, to weep with me, not to throw words at me.”

A friend, Sarah Erickson, who’s working on her D. Ed. Min at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, sent me an outline for a class presentation. The presentation addressed research being conducted about the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers. One conclusion of this Lily funded study is that the ‘single most important social influence on the religious and spiritual lives of teens is their parents.’

Our fifteen year old, Betsy, came home from Montreat pumped up about being a Presbyterian.  She even bought a t-shirt that asks, “Have you hugged a Presbyterian today?”  Of the memories that stand out from her first time at a Youth Conference, one is of fighting to get the same ‘good’ seats, ‘very front, far-left,’ in Anderson Auditorium.

After church one Sunday, with great drama Betsy recounted, “Man! I sprawled out in the seats to save them for our group and these guys from another youth group came and sat on me. I moved and they roared and boasted that they got our seats. You wouldn’t believe the pushing and shoving at the doors.”  My response to Betsy was “Was your behavior indicative of how you go about building up the body of Christ?” My response met Betsy’s apoplectically rolling eyes. Fred, a surrogate grandfather church member to Betsy, listened to Betsy’s Montreat drama and responded, “Hey, just let me give you a hug. You’re a bit crazy, but you’re a good kid.”

Rosemary Banta was my Christian educator growing up and she was like another mother, a church mother. With a box fan, duct tape and sheets of plastic she created space where as a child I was taught to talk like I was a member of the early clandestine church when it was dangerous to be a Christian. This church mother invited me to use my imagination. Inside the duct tape catacombs I sang songs about Jesus. Outside the catacombs, each person in our group had to find a way to talk about Jesus, to testify to a Savior without using Jesus’ name. This church mother taught me how to use my imagination and talk the language of faith.

I’m not certain what advice we need to be offering to our children in the church. I am certain that we need church mothers and fathers; sisters and brothers, to participate in building healthy relationships for the faith journey. We need to be a family with one another: hearing and holding one another, weeping and laughing with one another, so that we might serve as a witness before a crumbling world to the glad tidings of the gospel. Those are the moments when the Spirit whispers lasting advice.