Anne Marie Miller

Category: Hmmmm

  • last night i had a dream…

    Lunesta has become a close companion lately. I go through seasons of insomnia…usually about 3-4 months long, followed by 3-4 months of healthy, non-medically-induced sleep. Currently, I’m about halfway into one of those insomnia cycles.

    I decided last night to see if, by chance, I’d be able to fall and stay asleep without the drugs. No such luck. I drifted off into a weird, lucid dream.

    In my dream, I was given a choice to do something and the consequences would require me to leave ministry. I’d be disqualified completely. And I remember the battle I was waging in my head.

    “If I make this decision, I’ll lose my job.”

    “If I make this decision, my publisher will drop me.”

    “If I make this decision, I’ll never be able to speak into the lives of leaders again.”

    After I woke up following a very restless night of tossing and turning, I started thinking through what my dream-self was considering and realized something disturbing.

    Not one of those thoughts I had was “If I make this decision, I’ll be disobeying God.”

    Now, I realize this was just a dream and the decision I was considering in it was something that would likely never cross my path…and I realize a dream doesn’t represent my full consciousness.

    But if it was a real life situation, would I have asked myself the same questions, while neglecting the most important one…How does this affect my relationship with Christ?

    It’s easy for me to coast through life and walk a straight line. It’s actually pretty easy for me to be the good girl. But following rules isn’t the most important thing…that should just be an overflow of a lifestyle of obedience.

    Why do you make the decisions you make? Are they out of love and obedience, or out of fear for losing your position, your marriage, your ministry?

    Just something to chew on.

  • Dinner with Anne Lamott

    with moving, getting settled in, starting my new job and then spending a week in the dominican, i’ve been really behind on reading some blogs. i just caught up with brad lomenick’s blog last night and he asked a great question earlier this month which i thought i’d ask y’all.

    if you could have dinner with anyone (besides jesus)…who would you have it with, and where would you have it?

    mine would be anne lamott at a waffle house.

    you?

  • The Hole : The Hope

    i never can seem to translate what is in my head after visiting a slum. a true, third-world slum. the sights and smells and naked babies and starved dogs and sweat and raw sewage and shacks and the most impacting thing.

    hope.

    Dominican Republic The Hole Dump

  • my new favorite quote

    What is the point of neurotically skipping along the surface when all the beauty lies below?

    – Josh Waitzken

  • what’s one of your dreams?

    for the last few years, i’ve wanted to start a non-profit something-or-other that accepts donations and supports pastors who are in transition or out of work. when i was sixteen, my dad went for almost a year between pastoring and working in the marketplace. my parents cashed in his retirement and accumulated a ton of debt just to pay the bills.

    i haven’t forgotten that, and now that my friends and peers are the ones in transition or have been justly (or unjustly) released from ministry, it’s something still fresh in my mind. i am dreaming of finding a way to make this happen.

    what’s one of your dreams?

  • on other addictions:

    natalie dee

    HT: nataliedee.com (*various items from this link may not be appropriate for all audiences.)

  • MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO

    everyday, we set examples.

    (even in the tiniest bits of minutia.)

    how we drive.

    what we wear.

    what we buy.

    how we spend our time.

    my friend shared a podcast with me (here)…which honestly and boldly notes that christians are the worst at taking a day off. finding rest. family time.

    we operate 24/7.

    and with that in mind, more specifically, i’d like to ask…

    those of you who are pastors…what kind of example are you setting for the team that supports you? even if you don’t push them to go-go-go-all-the-time-like-you, what does your example say to them?

    those of you who are leaders…what kind of example are you setting for those who follow you?

    even if you don’t think you’re a leader, you are. someone’s watching. your kids. your spouse. the girl who doesn’t talk a lot that sits in the cubicle across from you. your team. maybe even your boss.

    what kind of example are you setting?

    just a little something to chew on today.

  • [[LEAP!]]

    what do you have to lose?

  • jesus brand spirituality

    i recently got a copy of jesus brand spirituality, a book by ken wilson, which came out this week. anyone who knows me well knows i love reading, but i read so much, i really only skim books to find nuggets that will stick with me.

    this book, however, had me sucked in from the first couple of pages. technically, it had me sucked in from the title. last weekend, i read it in about three hours and highlighted/underlined so many things in it.

    i’m going to have to do another post just to share all the insights, but i thought i’d share the first chunk with you now.

    i should also say that nobody asked me to review this book…this is straight up out of my own felt need to share this book with you and express that i think it is one of the most important books any church leader or believer could read.

    with that said:

    • we can only hope jesus will continue to challenge every effort to hijack his brand, because he is, and always will be, the main attraction.
    • jesus invited curious onlookers to help him do what he was already doing so that his actions would have greater impact…there were no faith quizzes to pass before you could help out; all it took was the willingness to go somewhere with jesus because you liked what he was doing.
    • jesus was a mystic who prayed with his eyes open
    • the roman empire embraced christian faith as the state-sanctioned religion. this in turn gave birth to the monastic movement as devout individuals sought a more spiritually enlivened form of faith, removed from the trappings of the empire (*my thought: we are on the cusp of this again, with people getting worn out from “trappings of the empire” and are longing for a deeper, more Christ-like faith)
    • since religion can both illuminate and obscure jesus, sometimes we need to dig to find him. a good place to dig is the gospels. here, we find jesus on a mission from god to repair the world. in his glance, we catch an invitation for us to join him.
    • caring for the most vulnerable isn’t a matter of compassion alone; it’s a demand of justice and the true sign of religion.
    • as we engage with the realities that engaged jesus’ attention, we are more likely to encounter him.
    • the gospel is a message with personal, social, and global reach. if it’s not good news at all these levels, it’s not good enough.
    • have we front-loaded people with so many matters of belief that we are, in effect, asking them to swallow the whole package as a pre-requisite for a meaningful engagement with jesus?
    • as a result of our long and productive love affair with rationalism, we tend to suffer from an anemic view of what we call “spiritual experience.”

    anything resonate with you?

    if you’d like to get your own copy…you can get it right here! i seriously can’t tell you how much this book rocks.