God in Three Dimensions: Mandy Monath

Mandy Monath, a North Carolina native, is the author of This Is Like That: Poems and Process, a collection of poems accompanied by observations on creativity and poetic craft. She is interested in what makes a poem a poem. In other genres, her recent children’s book, How Counting Came to Be, tells the story of a cave girl who thinks too much. Her essays have appeared in Christian Science Monitor and The Wall Street Journal. Mandy earned her B.A. from Salem College in Classics and her M.A. from UNC-Chapel Hill in Comparative Literature. She lampooned that experience in her romantic comedy, Manifestations of Idiosyncrasy in the Actualization of the Potential Work.

Keith Walker, the author of All That Names Us (Saddle Road Press, 2024), offers this review of Mandy’s work, This Is Like That: Poems and Process.  “So much of what I read these days feels like sophisticated word play without soul.  In these poems I feel the poet’s sensitivity, her open heart receiving the world and her discerning mind carefully turning it over and over to understand the underlying dimensions of what she sees and feels. It’s very powerful and very spiritual.  I really admire these beautiful, resonant poems and will keep reading them and letting them speak to me.”

Sarah Hollar, an Episcopal Priest and Spiritual Director, lives in Charlotte, NC, where she serves a parish, tends relationships with her husband, two children, two stepchildren, their spouses, seven grandchildren, and her wise aging mother. She also has a good number of friends. Deeply curious about the complexity of the human experience and how God is present in that complexity, she invites you to join her as all sorts of folk share their memorable encounters with God.

www.whengodgotreal.com

Creators and Guests

SH

Guest

Sarah Holler

Sarah Hollar, an Episcopal Priest and Spiritual Director lives in Charlotte, NC where she serves a parish, tends relationships with her husband, two children, two stepchildren, their spouses, seven grandchildren, and her wise aging mother. She also has a good number of friends. Deeply curious about the complexity of the human experience and how God is present in that complexity, she invites you to join her as all sorts of folk share their memorable encounters with God.

What is When God Got Real?

Here humans craft and share their personal, compelling, beautiful, sometimes difficult 17 minute story of when God got real in their life and how that experience changed them. Following their story, they consider with host Sarah Hollar how their experience continues to affect them in their relationships, their sense of self and their way in the world.

Hello, friends. I hope you are well in your soul this day.

And if not, I hope peace comes upon you soon and your time here proves reassuring.

I recently preached a sermon where I contrasted the simple,

ordered life of bees with the complexity of human life and the erroneous assumption

that humans process the world, our relationships,

and each other's behavior in the same way.

We do not, nor is our experience of God where we meet, what we see,

hear, or intuit the same.

We are wise when we acknowledge the complexity of our species and approach our

differences with a sense of wonder rather than distrust,

because those differences may be God's very intent.

This story comes from Mandy, who had an uncommon sensory experience of God.

Was she crazy, or special, with a capital S, or so well known by God that this

encounter was made to order for their relationship?

Here is her story of When God Got Real in Three Dimensions.

God got real for me, not on a mountaintop or in a hospital room,

but at the 10 o'clock service in a small Episcopal church on the first Sunday of Lent.

Maybe because I am always working at poetry, it was the liturgy,

the church's poetry, that spoke to me.

It spoke to the part of me that listens with the heart.

As poetry can do, the words of the liturgy that Sunday bypassed my conscious

mind and slipped straight into the part of the mind that deals in dreams.

The words of the liturgy hushed my restless thoughts long enough for me to sense

that God was right there.

Behind my eyes, I could see that he was there.

He was waiting just beyond the veil, as we say, and he had been waiting a very

long time for me to notice.

This veil that we weave is made from the noise and motion, the determination

and busyness of our lives.

As Thoreau thought, we fill our days with work, with striving,

with various ambitions, so tightly stitched together that we rarely pause long

enough to perceive what lies behind it.

In that Lenten service, the priest began chanting the great litany.

It's a long prayer, and when chanted rather than spoken, it's even longer.

At first, my mind resisted. We had all just been chatting happily with the same priest at coffee hour.

Listening to him chant, not his usual mode in church, required a considerable mental adjustment.

I was distracted by my own thoughts, the sound of feet shifting in the pews,

the occasional cough, the faint ticking of the heat coming on.

But then the cadence of the chant took over.

The vivid petitions rose and fell like waves, rhythmic as breath.

Spare us, good Lord, spare thy people. Spare us, good Lord, from the craft and

assaults of the devil, from lightning and tempest, from earthquake,

fire, and flood, from plague, pestilence, and famine. Good Lord, deliver us.

Amidst the rhythm of these words, the meter, repetition, and alliteration,

an image appeared behind my closed eyes, a tableau of the Trinity.

Three entities, first Christ on the cross.

Then beyond him, a great light shining out of a throne.

And finally at his side and most prominent, a gentle Holy Spirit crowned and luminous.

He was like a figure from a medieval woodcut, yet gently alive, subtly animated.

In the years since that day, this vision has never completely departed.

I have certainly ignored it, busily avoided it, but in a quiet moment, I notice it again.

Annie Dillard once wrote that if we truly believe what we say in church,

if we really understood the power of what we invoke, we would come in crash helmets.

We would wear life jackets. The ushers would lash us to the pews.

We would wear life jackets.

A typical Sunday morning is full of this kind of paradox. As we try our best

to voice the most profound and majestic ideas of creation and resurrection,

we are simultaneously confronted with our simple humanity.

We contemplate the miracle of the first Pentecost as the good-hearted lay reader

trips over the names of the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Cappadocians,

Phrygians, and Pamphylians who were gathered just outside.

We're awed by the Pentecostal flame, and at the same time reminded to sign up

for the cupboard dish supper, casseroles and desserts in particular.

Despite our human imperfections, however, we brush against the divine far more often than we realize.

In nature, certainly, but also in church, beauty is one of the things that leads us to the divine.

Beauty is not an ornament of faith, but one of its purest languages.

The rhythms of the liturgy, light through stained glass, even old wooden pews

polished again and again, all point to the peace that passes all understanding.

They are not just pleasant touches, but signposts to truth, goodness, and God.

As Keats wrote, beauty is truth, truth beauty.

In its quiet beauty, there is great power in an Episcopalian Sunday.

Over the years, the Trinity I saw has returned to me whenever invited.

The three figures there, as before, waiting to be remembered and noticed.

The gentle spirit, whom I understand as the great comforter,

has been especially vivid and sometimes nods, sometimes rests a hand on my shoulder

or on the heads of my children when some small worry troubles my sleep.

But I still didn't understand the significance of this vision.

Before now, I've been reluctant to share it.

You know how it is. We Episcopalians don't walk up for the altar call.

It's not our style.

Even when Sarah asked me to do this podcast, I hesitated.

Would this story seem too odd? Would I seem too odd or self-aggrandizing?

Even more worrisome, with the image,

my vision evaporate when exposed to sunlight, flee like a shy spirit.

I wanted to protect it, harbor it, hug it to myself because I believed it was mine.

I didn't thoroughly understand it.

Then something changed. Recently,

a very bad experience struck me to the ground with fear and grief.

For months, I tried to handle and manage, fix and conquer all on my own,

and because we humans are stubborn and stupid,

I incredibly didn't remember to appeal to that comforting vision,

to the God within my reach.

But God didn't relent. First, I remembered what a teacher once told me, don't worry, pray.

In other words, worry is arrogant. So I started doing that.

Whenever a new worry crept in, I pictured the Trinity, invoked the image of

that gentle comforter, and prayed.

I also remembered another admonition, pray without ceasing.

But wasn't that going a bit too far? Even in my desperation,

I was still proud and skeptical.

I liked my solitary walks along the waterfront, my ruminations.

I had poems to write. I wasn't sure how it would work having Jesus walking along with me all the time.

And then, on one of these walks, I was desperate enough to literally cry out

to God, help me, somehow help me.

And finally, I understood what I had seen that Lenten Sunday.

The veil had not parted momentarily that day in church. There was no veil.

There was no separation between the divine and the ordinary.

It was all one, and it was all God.

Everything. The waterfront, the water, the sky,

the bricks on the sidewalk, my own mind and body, the altar at church last Sunday,

the park bench, the dog, my arrogant pride, the candy wrapper on the ground,

my joy and my pain, even this vision.

It all belonged to God.

It is all God.

Wherever I go, I am walking in God.

This is the peace that passes all understanding.

Randy. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Thank you for your story and your time and your willingness to share it.

And I've been thinking as I've been hearing these stories, how diverse they are.

One was a mother dealing with a very sick child in the hospital stay.

One was about finding God in a job interview.

One was about God being very real in all the things that didn't happen,

all the negative consequences that didn't come to pass.

And then we have your story

today which is very different from those others and

i've been thinking of a movie i saw um about robin hood who is in sherwood forest

and he has brought back to sherwood forest aziz who is a black man he met when

he was fighting in the crusades,

and Aziz is sitting at a campfire with

a little English girl and she looks at him and she says did God paint you black

and he said without a doubt and she says why why did God paint you black and

he says because God loves infinite variety.

I love that. Isn't that wonderful? I think that that's the most theologically

accurate statement I've heard in commercial media.

Yes, that's a great, that's really a great quote. I love that. Yeah.

And so I was thinking about your encounter,

this experience you had of God that was very tangible and real to you,

but the very nature of it is ethereal and unusual.

Yes, yes. Yes, ethereal and unusual, which is one of the reasons that I was,

you know, a little hesitant, as I mentioned in there.

So, but that's okay. infinite variety.

Well, this is the thing. I have not experienced God in a vision.

That's not how God has come to me. It's not how God comes to many people,

but it is how God does come to some.

And I would imagine it's beautiful as that image was for you.

It was probably also somewhat But in the processing of it, it might have been unsettling.

Yes, I think that's right. Unsettling partly because it was so real,

and yet it's the kind of thing that you hesitate to tell other people about.

And therein lies the problem. because something that you believe is very real,

you anticipate that 99% of the people you tell are not going to think that it's very real.

So that puts you in, so where do you fit?

Where do I fit in between there?

So it makes you question yourself a little bit, I think.

Yes. Yes, and I'm curious, did you have an experience of wondering,

what is God up to in this? Why is God coming to me in this way?

I don't know that I, I probably should have asked that question,

but I think I just accepted it.

And at first I doubt, I thought, okay, well, that was cool, you know,

and that's, and it isn't, I guess I thought, was that real? Is that ever going to happen again?

And then it, it's not that it just sort of descended on me the way it did that first time.

But when I, I feel like I can call it up and it's not just like calling up a memory.

It's like recognizing a presence that's always there, whether I'm paying attention to it or not.

So if I sort of close my eyes and focus on that, it springs to life in a way.

So it's like a constant companion that I have successfully ignored a lot of the time.

So I've been surprised at the resilience of that image.

And I guess that has over time made me feel like this is something real.

This isn't just my remembering a dream or something, you know?

I agree.

So, in God's infinite variety, God has said, for this child,

for this one of my beloved, for me and Mandy, this is one place that we're going to meet.

This is how we are going to meet. That's how I'm going to be in relationship.

That is a way I'm going to be in relationship with her.

Yes, that's right. And for a long time, I think I felt like telling about it

seemed, well, telling about it seemed like, oh, you think you're so special, kind of.

And I...

When I hear other people give their kind of testimony about these sorts of things

happening or the way that they feel, someone told me, oh, I just feel Jesus

come and sit down right beside me.

And, you know, sometimes in other, some more sort of evangelical settings,

people like will raise their hands. And I have often felt like I don't get that.

You know, I don't understand. I can't feel that.

And so for a long time, I've just focused on this image. And again,

it does seem kind of fitting in a way because I'm a writer.

And so it's the kind of not only imagination, but it works with imagination.

And it was allied with imagination.

But more recently, I've felt like it gives me, not telling me,

but it makes me understand what I need to do.

And that more relates to the end of my podcast, where I just feel like it finally

occurred to me that God is in everything.

Anyway, you can ask me questions as you, we'll go in the order you want to go

in. I don't want to jump ahead.

Well, I just, I am really intrigued by the idea that God wires us as God intends for us to be wired.

And God, therefore, then relates to us in accordance with sort of our wiring.

Because you are a poet, because you see things in sort of pictures,

and in some ways, well, let's just stick with being a poet.

Then it would make sense that God would then say, okay, this is how we're going

to relate to one another.

I have two children, one who is very literary and one who is athletic.

In their growing up, when I needed to stress a lesson, I would use metaphor

and analogy about literature or things that my daughter had read.

And with my son, it was always sports analogies. Right, right.

Yeah, so I think that's right. I think it's almost like each of us has different

God receptors or something, and there's a way that God can reach us that wouldn't

work with somebody else.

And we'll work very well with that person.

And it is, I think, very much related to poetry because one thing I've always

felt about a poem is that it arrives full-blown to you.

Not the actual poem, but it's sort of like, you know, the platonic idea of a chair.

You know, like, here's a chair. Here's a wooden chair. I'm sitting in it,

right? And then there's, above that, there's sort of the general idea of chairness, right?

Which you can use that same word for a club chair, an armchair,

a rocking chair. It's all chairness.

And so there has to be this idea of the chair up there, right?

So I kind of feel like poems are like that, that they kind of just arrive and

you have an experience, a definite experience.

And then it's the poet's job to make something that somehow conveys some part,

always imperfectly, some part of that experience to somebody else, right?

Because the poem is the made thing.

And I think it's allied with that.

So having this experience having this this experience of this vision of god

as creator god in the incarnation of christ the holy spirit having seen this

in in and being so real to you um.

Since then, you've been able to be present to it multiple times again. Yes.

And so, like, when that happens, what is sort of your internal or sole response?

Well, what it's like is instead of maybe a verbalized prayer,

it is like sitting with God.

So it's like you have a prayer, a petition, you know, something that you're

thanking God for, you're asking for.

And instead of putting that so much into words, well, I mean,

it is words, but just a few words, right?

I just have this sense of saying those few words, and then God is just there.

And I feel that presence. And I can, if I'm praying for my children, for example,

I can imagine or see the Holy Spirit just, you know, putting his hand on my child's head.

And so it's very much, you know, had said in there that the image,

especially, it's really the Holy Spirit, which is the great comforter.

It's really, that was the figure that is more animated.

The others are more static. This is animated.

And so it's almost like watching a little movie or something.

I mean, except I'm part of it.

So that...

Seeing that, being in that presence, can you describe sort of what it feels

like and also in your mind,

what it feels like in your soul and what it feels like in your mind?

It feels like I'm saying, I'm worried about this. I'm praying for this.

I'm, you know, help me just, here I am.

And here's what's going on. And it just, it feels like comfort. It feels like peace.

And it feels like giving that over instead of, you know, holding this pain or

this worry or whatever. It's like, I have nothing else I can do about this. I need to give this up.

And it very much feels like that is received.

That's that's something that i'm really interested in in these in these stories

sharing these stories is if someone were to ask um so what does god what what

does having a relationship with god do for you?

What does believing in God do for you? And to be able to articulate,

When I am in relationship with God, when I am in conversation, which is prayer,

I physically and mentally feel as if I am not abandoned, alone, powerless.

I feel like I'm right. And that makes a difference in my life.

And I can go to that place, and I can go to that place, and I can go to that

place. And, you know, sometimes I have, sometimes I do have to wait, right?

I have to wait for the answer or whatever, but I have this, I have this relationship

in my life that brings me that kind of peace, comfort, confidence.

Yes, yes, that's exactly right. And I'm sure other people have felt this too,

that it's just a sense of, I can stop trying so hard.

Not that you stop trying altogether, you do everything you can,

but that you just submit to the reality that you can't control everything, you know?

And that you're giving this over to a comforting presence who isn't necessarily saying,

I'm going to fix this, but I hear you.

You know, I hear that you are worried about this.

I hear that you are telling, asking me to make sure your child gets home safely. Do you know? Yeah.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

In my sense, it is surrendering to someone who has the capacity to hold it.

Yes. And is invested in holding it.

And for me, I would go so far as to say is the most benevolent and has my best

interest at heart. Yes, absolutely.

Yes. So I can trust, I can trust this entity.

You can trust, yes, and you can also sort of, it gives you a greater capacity

to accept whatever does happen. Yes.

You know, because you're giving that over. Yes.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, just another, we can continue on this vein.

It's fine. But one other thing that I'm finding, too, is that idea that God is everything.

And that includes other people, too. So you feel kind of this kinship with people.

When I take my walk, there's this guy who is an African-American young man who walks also.

I see him all the time on my same walk. You know, we pass each other.

He does not want to say hello to me. And I have tried.

And, you know, sometimes I give up trying and then I think, okay,

I'm going to try again. But yesterday he was sitting on a bench.

And I don't know why, because he's very athletic and, you know, walks and everything.

But he just happened to be sitting down when I walked by, and I thought,

I'm not going to try to make a contact with him, but I'm going to ask God to contact him,

to pray for him as I walk by.

I'm not saying he needs to be

prayed for, but just like, if I can't get through to him, maybe you can.

That's what I was thinking. Or just like, it's not wishing, it's praying for

good things for this person.

So for whatever's going on with him that makes him reluctant to make eye contact

with people or whatever, maybe just me, but whatever's going on with him, heal that,

pay attention to that,

please, God, was what I was thinking.

So it kind of expands.

Yeah. Hmm. Hmm.

Well, I don't know about others listening to this, but I've had a really good time. So thank you.

Well, so have I. And I'm really grateful to you for asking me to do this because

it really did make me sit down and think it through, kind of. and,

as I sort of during the process I did sort of I don't know I just took another look at it and.

Was able to expand my understanding of it a little bit I think so that was really

helpful lovely lovely I really do appreciate your yes thank you for sharing oh you're welcome,

And we'll be talking again soon. All right. Thank you so much,

Sarah. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Thank you, listeners and subscribers. Thank you for your time,

attention, and ponderings.

I invite your comments and reviews. I also invite you to share your story of

when God got real. Send them along to sarah at whengodgotreal.com.

Until next time, breathe and be well.