Jealousy - (of Dave, who got to sit where CS Lewis sat and what God told him there)

"You belong here,"
You told him
"You're one of them,"
As he sat
In the seats
In the very room
Where great writers
Once sat.
"No fair," I quip.
"I want You to
Confer upon me
The identity of
Being a writer,
A thinker,
An expresser
Of great truths!"
I'm happy for him
On the outside
But growl inside
Longing
For You, God
To tell me
Who I am
What gift I can
Offer You --
Offer to others.
Yet I know
Somewhere deep down
I've always known
I too am
Called to write.

Break the dam
In me
Father God!
I resist
Because I feel
Inadequate
Let the words
Flow
Like the river before me
Flows
Unhindered by fear
Pulsing with
Movement
Generated by
The power of
Your Love.
I'm tired of
Stubbornly
Refusing to be
Who I'm made
To be!
I don't know quite how
To receive the gift
Don't trust myself to
Use the gift
Work with me
Patient Teacher.

Diane Mann, 2012

Temple

Zion National Park

Hats off
Heads bowed
Lifted
Then lowered again
Hands folded
Creator bids
We enter
Are seated
Settled
Ushered to the arena
Of this place
This leaf-decorated
Holy space
My heart expands
From shoulder
To shoulder
It can hold no more
Green, gold -- blazing gold --
Orange
And that indescribable red
Bright, warm
Deep, rich beauty
Dizzying, dazzling loveliness
Mangling me
In a way that is really good
Rearranging me
Can I look upon You
God of all, God of me
And ever be the same?
I think not
So I sit
And gaze at Your works
You'll forgive me
Won't you
If I must look away
For a moment
To catch my breath
Then look upon Your splendor
Once again?
And if this pen,
My hand, my mind
Stop working in unison
To express
My utter adoration
It's because we don't
Know what else
To say
So will quietly
Rest
And simply
Bow.

Diane Mann, 2012

The Wall

I've been here before

Temple of Sinawava, Zion National Park

Having followed
Accepting the invitation
Wide eyed
Open hearted
Hope filled
Stepping down a new path
Skipping
Receptive
Joyful
Trusting
So very trusting
I entered
With the promise
Of Your Presence
To then suddenly
Cruelly
Slam up against
A wall
Hard, crashing
Huge
Damning
Dark
There I wait
Befuddled
Horrified
Confused
Hope drained
I lean flat
Against its
Surface cold
I pound
I scream
Sobbing
From parts of my Soul
I didn't know
Existed
Will the tears
Ever stop?
Banging my head against
The rock
Desperately
Wondering what
Happened, where
Did I turn wrongly?
Exhausted I can
Flail about no more
I hear a rhythmic
Beat of a heart
Jesus
It's Your heart
A distant song
Becomes clearer
Louder than my
Cries I am quieted
With Love resting on
The Chest of
Jesus, My Rock.

Diane Mann, 2012

Grace like Snow - Jammin' with the Overtones

The Overtones in Blue Pantsuits

The Overtones with Snow Falling (Janice is in the furry hat)

My High School Choir in our Checkered Long Dresses

I was raised in a church with a strong music program.  It seemed everyone, whether musically inclined or not, was in choir.  Each group of singers sang sometimes on Sunday mornings, had their own musicals and tours, and all combined at Christmastime for our huge "Round the Table Carol Sings," eventually outgrowing our sanctuary and moving the show to the LA County Fairgrounds, where over a weekend we offered seven performances of our Christmas extravaganza.  In 1977 the Carol Sings program was even televised.

Over 800 voices, a handbell choir, living Christmas cards, soloists, an orchestra all surrounded the audience, who sipped wassail, ate figgy pudding and joined in to sing many familiar carols.

At the front of the building was a stage on which the Overtones performed.  In my eyes, there were two kinds of choirs:  the Overtones and the non-Overtones (the Undertones?).  This group consisted of 12 or so super amazing, microphone-holding singers.  They toured internationally and even produced their own album. 

While we other choirs stood in rows on bleachers  around the building's edges, the Overtones, front and center, slid down slides, rode in sleighs, performed advanced, seamless choreography and even had snow falling on them as they sang.  Most memorable and creating the most envy in me was what they wore.  The checkered dresses adorning me and my fellow high-school singers seemed so "square" when compared with the slick baby-blue polyester pantsuits worn by the Overtones.  They were just all-around groovy.

I did enjoy choir, but my finding the right note was a little like searching for my car in a parking lot.  It's not that I couldn't find it; I just had to wander around a few places to get there.  Martene, our director, during rehearsals would pick a note and sing out the words "Today is a beautiful day" while pointing to a lucky chosen person who was to sing back the same words (no problem) on the same note (a problem).  My sister Susan was smart and learned to run to the restroom during this part of rehearsal.  But I sat and suffered through our leader's repeatedly trying to get me to hear then sing back the proper note.

Needless to say, I did not ever hold a microphone, and I was quite envious of the soloists who could produce such beautiful sounds with their voices.  I was in awe.  They seemed to sparkle as they sang, drawing an audience in, touching spirits, stirring souls with their voices.

I did not continue to sing in choir when I became an adult but found ways to serve more in line with my giftedness.  That itty bitty bit of envy of the performers remained, however.  I say "itty bitty," but in reality, envy has been a struggle for me for as long as I can remember.  Feeling "less than" or "not okay," often invisible, has been a struggle for me.  God has shown me lots about Him and me and how He sees me, and I've learned and am learning to live under His adoring, attentive eye, my "audience of one."

He had this super great surprise for me one year at women's retreat. I still attend the same church in which I grew up.  I had not planned to attend retreat, but someone canceled, and I was offered a last-minute spot.  Surprise of surprises, I ended up rooming with a darling past Overtone, Janice.  Thirty-plus years had gone by, but she still shined with that wide, sparkly smile with which she once graced the stage. 

We talked in our room until three in the morning.  I confessed to her my Overtone envy, and I was able to get to know her as a person rather than as a performer, a side-to-side sister rather than someone high on a pedestal (a pedestal created by envious me).  I loved seeing her heart, hearing her stories, and our just sharing with each other what it's like to be us.  We had been influenced by some of the same amazing what we call "pillars" of our church, fed by the same pastors, taught by the same teachers but because of our age difference had not become familiar with each other in the past.

Janice led a small group during retreat, and I was in her group.  We would share after meeting times about what God was showing us that weekend.  Two of the women in Janice's group, I learned, were ex-Overtones!  I had shared with them how God was meeting me in simple songwriting, helping me to find my voice while I learned guitar (I can hear notes better when playing) and what a gift that had been to me.  After our group dismissed one evening, the Overtones ladies, now all in their sixties, remained.  I'm sure they got a kick out of how still in awe of them I was!  We together sang songs.  They listened to me sing and play on the guitar a simple song I'd written then learned it and sang it with me. 

Jill sitting behind a desk drumming away, Addie singing and tapping her foot, Janice smiling and singing loud enough for me to at least feel like I was sounding just like her -- all a bit too wonderful to take in.  So I didn't take it in; I just went with it.  We sang more songs while passing the guitar around.  Just four people, not 800, no stages, no costumes or choreography -- and no disco ball like the one glittering in the center of the fair building for Christmas shows, but we all shone like stars to each other.

In the morning, Addie gave me a letter she had written to me expressing what a gift it was for her to share our souls through music the evening before.  We together ate breakfast, and I told her how our time touched, and even healed, some hole deep inside of me, something invisible, inferior and uncool - like something previously blue checkered transforming for just a time into a baby-blue polyester pantsuit. 

If grace falling can be like snow falling, I'm pretty sure I felt grace flakes gently landing on me the evening I jammed with the Overtones.

Diane Mann, 2014

Here's a link to a video of Pomona First Baptist Church's 1977 Carol Sings

My Third Ear and the Way God Made Me

     I was born with three ears.  So went the family story often repeated during my childhood.  My mom gave birth to me, her fourth child, phoned my father and said, "We have a baby girl with three ears." Surgically removed a day later, an ear-shaped skin tab occupied the space just in front of my right ear.  I didn't super much love hearing this story when I was a child because it left me feeling "wrong" somehow. However the story has a new frame from which I view it and now holds much meaning for me in my occupations.
     I am a stenographer.  I report public meetings, depositions, court proceedings and hearings.  I record each syllable spoken by every person in a room.  My job is at times tortuous, exhausting, impossible yet fascinating and educational.
     I am also a spiritual director.  Prayerfully, attentively, with focus I listen to people share their journeys with God, their experiences of Him, their longings for Him, their questioning where and whether He is.  It is difficult, way beyond me, and a calling I consider blessed.  The times I and a directee sit together listening to her heart I consider sacred, I consider holy.
     So I have these two occupations, one left-brained, one right-brained, one secular, one spiritual, both requiring me to listen attentively -- in court reporting, for each word spoken and in spiritual direction, for the heartbeat of God.
     Until recently I thought of my court reporting job as not spiritual, as more concrete.  But I recognize now, since the spirit of the Living God is inside me, I carry His and my spirit into the workplace and reflect Him in a way unique to me.  Even in this left-brained, detailed, uncreative job, I am able to be present to another person, sitting just a couple of feet away, listening to their recitations of losses, descriptions of their families, careers, vast knowledge of subjects varying from duties as a construction worker or mariachi musician to scientific facts about fringe-toed lizards.
     Most tender is when someone talks about how life used to be -- before her husband died, before an accident left her forever altered -- and what life is like now as she adjusts to the losses suffered.  A young woman in court three feet from me paints a picture with words of how she buries her partially amputated foot in the sand at the beach so others cannot see, how she was unable to dance with friends at a wedding because her dress shoe, though duck taped on, would not stay on her foot, the inspirational part about her pursuing her master's degree in industrial design while recovering from the accident involving her car rolling, skidding as it swerved to avoid a big rig suddenly in its freeway lane. Her foot had been on the dash while her friend drove.  Tom Petty was playing on the radio.  The metal of the car was sheered away as the car skid on its side.  Her toes were also sheered away.  This happened on Day 2 of her full-of-promise road trip toward graduate school, where she planned to learn engineering and design of medical prosthetics.
     I am present to listen, to hear, to record.  I use machinery, yet I am not a machine.  I am a human being with a heart, a soul, a spirit.  Only a couple of times have tears escaped from my eyes as I have listened (I have also had to bite my lips hard to hold in laughter),  yet beneath my secretarial, editor face and just a few inches down is my heart, a human heart welcoming and responding to the person before me.
     When I do not hear properly because people are speaking over each other or the speaker is too quiet, I must say, "Please repeat that," or, "Excuse me?"  Once in a while what happens when I do so is, the person shifts her attention from the attorney to whom she is speaking and begins answering the questions looking straight at me.  "Ever since my husband was taken from me" -- the story unfolds, and I am able to receive it, in a sense hosting the speaker, providing a space for her to be heard.
    I administer an oath at the beginning of a deposition.  "Please raise your right hand."  The witness looks me in the eye and says, "I do" after I've concluded with, "so help you God?"  Once I had a witness who at the end of the proceeding looked at me and said, "I came in here planning to lie.  I have no idea why I told the truth."
     Then there are the attorneys.   It is incredible to me how often attorneys talk about their lives while I am setting up my stenograph machine.  One attorney reports to me how he's doing on his new discipline of gratitude and how God is changing him.  Two others during a break share about their vacations.  One, a non-practicing Catholic, had just vacationed in Ireland, so he and opposing counsel spoke of the Catholic-Protestant tensions existing there.  His son's mother-in-law had just died, and he went to the funeral.  Having written off religion, at age 70, he found himself thinking about God often.  Why?  Because he said, despite everything he has had against the church, what impression won't leave him is watching the funeral attendees sing worship songs.  "They seemed to really believe what they were singing," he said.  "And people brought food to my son's family and to the funeral.  It's like they really do love each other."  I am collecting needed spellings from the witness, running to the restroom, gathering exhibits during breaktime, but I get this peek into another person's experience of God and how He is getting his attention, wooing him to His love heart.
     A court reporter can arrive to a job, introduce herself, administer the oath then not utter a peep the entire day.  Being seen and rarely heard, she makes herself unnoticed.  She is an onlooker sitting along the fringes of the scene, yet more attuned to the matter at hand than anyone else present.  She catches the story, discerning what punctuation to use, when sentences end and begin.  This is a skill, and this is an art, especially because most people do not speak in grammatically sensible ways.  The spiritual director also uses few words but notices much, asking questions to help the directee define her experience of God.  In a sense this act involves choosing what to punctuate, where to explore further, dive deeper, when to leave a huge paragraphical pause, waiting in silence.  I as a director am an onlooker, a witness to this unfolding story of God's pursuit of another and her responses to and resistances of Him.
   So it is that both of my occupations require super-keen hearing.
  At times I picture that new baby I was, presenting myself to the world with my extra ear-shaped skin tag.  It was a shadow of who I would be, and it is a picture of who I am continuing to become, a holy listener.

Diane Mann 2014


   

Eye Lift

We've all heard as kids and perhaps spoken as parents, "Look at me when I'm talking to you!" said sternly. What if Jesus says these same words to each of us but with kindness and desire to engage and be with us? 

"Look at me when I'm talking to you. See how I look at you and the situation you are in. Notice my heart here, my responses to you, my face, my eyes, my expressions." 

I love how He flipped this around for me this morning -- and what I saw when I bothered to look.

diane mann 2014

Come, Weary Ones

Come, weary ones
To me, you bearing heavy loads
Not meant for your tired shoulders
I have a gift for you!
It won't add another ounce to
The weight you bear
Nor another item to your to-do list
Or your how-you-ought-to-be list
I promise!
Come, your efforts exhausted
To me, your hope untraceable
I have a gift for you!
Something for which your soul longs
Something I eagerly offer
From my storehouse of grace
And love (my very heart toward you)
Custom made
Your name on it
I have a gift for you!
Come, I'll receive you
To me, I'll restore you
Here you will find rest
A pillow
For your very sleepy soul.
Come
To me, you
Come.

Diane Mann 2013

For My Sunshine Friend (A Poem for Sheryl)

Today I wish you sunshine
The kind of day that hugs you
With its warmth
Inviting you to stay
   to rest
   to ponder
   to watch
For things you've never seen before

The kind of day
Whose breezes
Bring comfort and delight
Carrying the waves, the clouds
Colorful kites
And your cares
Far away
So far away

The kind of day wherein
Birds soar high above
Then park themselves
Before you
Giving you a front-row seat
To their busy play
And joy-filled chatter

The kind of day
That lingers long
After night has come
And the favored season passes
Because it reached
Deep inside you
With its bright
Generous light

So when the storms come
And the winds
Turn bitter cold
Something
Somewhere
In your soul
Is still warm
And knows love

Today I wish you
Warm, inviting, exploring
Comforting, delightful, playful
Outreaching, generous, bright
Loving
Sunshine
Like the kind of friend you are
To me.

Diane Mann, 2014

My Part

Mine is not to strain harder to believe
     but to lean in,
            rest upon
                   and receive.


diane mann, 2013

Inescapable Love

Oh, the riches of this day
Your Presence with me, God
(Do you know how much I love that with-me part about You?)

Shine of the sun illuminating 
Warming me, heating 
The land
Melting the last patches
Of winter's stubborn snow
Causing me to try to escape 
Its harsh glare
Hot, scathing sun
A chilling iceberg
When compared
With Your burning Love
Melting stubborn me
Igniting this sometimes frozen heart
To love You
To love me
To love others

Oh, the riches of this day
You 
With me!

Diane Mann, 2013

End of a Generous Day

Gently the day

Having handed out

So many gifts

Says Goodbye

I smile

In grateful return

And attempt

To contain them all.

diane mann, 2013

An Irish Blessing - to my Carver Cousins

May the warm love of the Sun embrace you
May the joyful smiles of the Blossoms elicit a smile in return
May the tranquil peace of the Stars quiet your spirit
May the fertile soil of the Fields stir hope within you
As you create and recreate
As you toil and rest
As you give love and receive love
As you teach and are taught
In the questions and the answers
In the draughts and the winters that too long linger
In the exhilarating and the mundane
In the being and the becoming
All you were made to be

Until that happy day when again we meet --
Or greet one another for the very first time.
Diane Carver Mann, 2014

A Healing Moment

I am eight years old (and so very shy).  At the piano I sit.  No

words are sung, but the melody to "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus" flows sincerely from my heart to my fingers to the piano keys then through my home.  Does no one hear me?  Does no one see me? Repeatedly I play the music.  An hour passes.  Surely someone will notice, won't they? 

The telephone rings, and I hear my mother respond excitedly to what her friend is telling her.  "No, she didn't tell us," she says.  "No, we didn't see her.  Thank you for telling me!"  More quickly than ever, she hangs up the receiver.  "We didn't see you, Diane," she says apologetically as she walks toward me then enthusiastically calls for the others in the house to come hear my news.
     
Hours earlier my family of eight had sat through our morning church service in our typical place: the late room.  Tucked behind the back row in the upstairs portion of our sanctuary, the late room had a speaker on the wall piping in the sermon.  I had completed a several-week discipleship class and had prayed already in my bed alone, asking Christ to live in me, telling Him I wanted to belong to Him, admitting my need for Him.  But in my church's tradition, the way we made our decision public was to "go forward," as we Baptists said, by responding to an altar call given at the end of a sermon.

This was my day.  I felt a magnetic tug pulling me to respond publicly to Jesus that morning, to "confess Him before men," as the Scriptures say.  Shaky and scared but with my heart's pounding urging me on, I tugged on my mom's sleeve and asked as the invitation was offered, "Can I go now?"

"Of course you can go, Diane," my mother responded.  But we later figured out she mistakenly thought I was asking permission to leave to go to Sunday school.

Forward I went in my purple and yellow daisy dress.   The only one having responded to the invitation that morning, I stood bravely in the front of a sanctuary of 1,200 people.  I was ushered to a counseling room, where a man went over some Scriptures and prayed with me.  I next proceeded to Sunday school, feeling so sure and decided, where I sang Sunday school songs more beautifully than ever.  It was a happy day for me!

It wasn't until we were all sitting in our rows in our VW van traveling toward home that I realized no one in my family had seen me!  If they had, we would all be talking about it.  So straight to the piano I went hoping to deliver my news.

As I grew up, we told and retold this story when we would reminisce about our family happenings.  While reviewing the story was funny, it also held a sting for me because I carried a wound of feeling invisible, of being the unseen one.  Tucked in the middle of a large, busy family, I sensed that my parents were overwhelmed, and I did not want to be a squeaky wheel or add to their troubles, so I would often try to stay under the radar, thinking my needs were too much for my parents to handle.

One of the ways God has healed this wound in me is to show Himself to me as "the God Who sees me."  I have loved discovering Him in this way and all He's shown me to be true of Him and of me. My story no longer stings but brings joy because my hurt became an avenue to bring me closer to Christ.  I live more and more under His watchful, tending, loving eyes.  He is not overwhelmed with my needs but desires me to depend on Him, to run to Him and share with Him every big and little thing in my life!

I believe most parents partly do reflect something that is true of God to their children and partly fall short of representing what God's love looks like.  God is a perfect parent, and as we call on Him and go to Him with our deepest hurts, He both mothers and fathers us with that perfect love, showing us what He is really like and who we really are.

I am 51 years old (and not as shy as I used to be).  I am sitting at a table during a women's event at my church a few hundred feet from where the old sanctuary once stood.  I stand to join the 100 women around me in song.  The worship team leads us in a newer version of  "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus."   I sing this special Jesus-and-me song that forever will touch a place deep inside of me.   Several tables over sits my mother.  Unable to stand with the others because of the pain in her back, she slides lower in her chair, peering between the many women who stand between us, looks smilingly at me and waves, making certain that I see her seeing me.

I am eight years old again wearing purple and yellow daisies.   I notice my mom's delighted eyes fixed on me.  I smile and wave back.

Me in my purple dress, 1970

Lord, thank you for this redemptive moment shared between me and my mom and You.  I don't know how You could make a healed part of me feel more whole, but You did.  Sometimes Your goodness seems to overflow, and this was such a time.  Thank you for the hurts that I can bring to You, for they are chances for You to show me what Your love is really like.


Diane Mann, 2014 

Click on the link below to hear my son Kyle and his wife Destiny singing "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus."

https://soundcloud.com/anewsong4di/i-have-decided-to-follow

For Reflection:

What messages did you receive about yourself as a child that you sense may not be true about you?  Express that to God.  Be with Him in that place, and ask Him to reveal the truth about you and about His feelings towards you.  Together explore ways you can live in the truth of who He is and how He sees you.  (There are many Scriptures upon which to meditate and soak in the truth.  You may want to spend time in them, allowing them to go from your head to your heart).

Are there areas of your life that God has healed or is healing? Express your thanks to Him.

Do you have guilt over your failures as a parent?  Ask God's forgiveness for ways you have intentionally or unintentionally hurt your loved ones.  Express your sorrow, and sit with Jesus in forgiveness sensing His heart toward you.