Francis means Freedom
0ctober 4, 2022
My name is Frances, often misspelled with an “i” making it masculine. As this is my name, I'm quite familiar with the meaning: “free.” I'm not sure where that originated, but it has always felt right.
Growing up in Christian communities, Francis of Assisi met my need for a more supple side of God before I was open to experiencing a fully feminine expression of Creator in adulthood.
I knew Saint Francis as free spirited, connected with the earth and the wild. Passionate for the overlooked. Willing to run naked through the world (vulnerable) and destigmatize freedom and divine communion. Some stories about him are unverified, but their impact is what counts here. We crave a good, wild God surrounded by colorful, expressive ambassadors.
This morning I awoke and *just happened* to read an old blog post on my organization's website - one I wrote a year ago - about life's synchronicities and how the Divine Weaver weaves them all together.
A central theme of the blog was Saint Francis's prayer which I broke down a bit in the old post - regarding how God seemed to be using the image of an instrument, or tool, in my life. Mercifully, I said, each tool or instrument (people? books? scriptures? ideas?) that helps us is usually only with us for a season. Spiritual growth doesn't happen by formula. It's dynamic.
After pondering, still under the covers, what I'd written last November, I left the blog page where I was reading and was confronted with the immediate reality (via social media) that today is Saint Francis's feast day. And that there are glistening threads of the weaver all around me before I even rise out of bed this morning.
I reached up to the mantle above my bed and grasped this little cross. It's a “Saint Francis cross”
and it means a lot to me because Shane Claiborne gave it to me when he stayed in our home in 2017. His visit was a turning point for me in my leadership development because he said "yes" and because I needed that. So did our community need his message (in confronting housing concerns). His visit reminded me I could set out to accomplish good things and watch them happen.
But let's return again to that prayer.
For many who are no longer a part of the institutional church, this prayer describes the work they're doing in the world *anyway*. And I'm thinking about those beloved kindred estranged from the church this morning because I'm serving them now. I'm watching them take seriously the phrase "make me an instrument" with winsome bravery.
They've been freed from legalism and now they can hear God/Spirit more clearly. In fact Spirit was just waiting for them to break free from institutional chains and hear more clearly.
I'm talking about christians, agnostics and pagans. All hearing God more clearly. Yeah, that's not what we were taught. But grace, wisdom and free agency has been poured out on all of us. It's incredible how much of God's love we can hear with our own ears no matter how differently we believe, as long as we are freed from shame. I often wonder if that wasn't what Jesus was trying to spread. I often wonder if the good news didn't get pretty muddled. I think it was: "NO MORE SHAME."
Not just selective shame as religious circles often peddle.
"Where there is hatred let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon…"
I'm seeing it with my own eyes in the people our organization serves. And yes, God's spirit can move freely through the institution and then back outside of it. But the key is liberation. We are to be free agents. Sensing the electricity in the air like little baby spiders and alighting on the perceived breeze. Going where a fresh wind takes us. All of us.