serendipity

Musings from the End of January

2012-02-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

I am at that age where I am beginning to forget the maiden names of some of my friends. (Amy Beth, I apologize but “Lindvall” escaped me for a full 90 seconds while staring at your most recent status.) I’ve done better remembering my own maiden name, but perhaps only because of recent confusion in which my law school really didn’t know if my name should be illustrated by a novel or that obscure part of a ship, which few know, even fewer can pronounce, and no one can spell. I am also at that age where friends are having babies. (Congratulations, Ryan and Autumn, by the way.)

This is not to say I am old—I am 23—but to say that I am reaching a certain “age” in life. It is that age which most people in modern times reach in their early thirties. They are married, semi-established in their career, contemplating children, perhaps wrapping up graduate studies. The idea, or sometimes actuality, of pending children raises to their present consciousness the true troubles of the world. Or, that “future” goal, heretofore tantalizingly elusive and far out enough to not make its lack of definition troublesome, is here.

Family conflicts must be resolved. The squabbles of siblings or festering injuries of parents must be laid to rest. No more of the past. The future is arriving. If one is to face it with integrity—as in, wholeness, non-fragmentation of parts—then the family unit, both with your spouse/“new family” and your blood relatives, must face forward with one accord.

Next, assess your surroundings. Is this the house in which to raise a child? Apartment? Flat? RV? Bedroom of your parents or a beneficent stranger? Is that the car to drive them around in? Is that the car in which you can respectably be seen at work? Is the commute peaceful and endurable long-term? Can you abide the accessibility, quality, and pricing of the closest grocery store, restaurants, and schools? Don't forget about the mundane. These answers will wear at you over time, good or bad.

Now look to your left (or right- wherever he or she might be). The spouse must be the one. Not the starry-eyed “one” you dreamed about when you were 7, whose magical kiss electrifies you. But the one who will love you despite your illness, your odd laugh, your overly generous heart, your stubborn children, and will, 70 years from now, still electrify you in some way with their kiss, be it physical or simply a knowing smile.

Go inside. Not the house. Your heart. Are you ready? Have you faith? The God above lives and sent His only son to die for you-- and for every other person on this Earth who breaks your heart, from the train wreck baby sister to the forgotten, shy old neighbor who doesn’t donate to charity or even walk to the mailbox. That’s the God-honest truth, so live it.

Finally, look forward. Do you know what’s next? You don’t have to. But you should know what your next goal is. Not the bigger one way off—that’s important but hopefully you already figured that out—but what you do for the next 1-3 years. Or maybe you’ve realized that far-off, blissfully fuzzy goal desperately needs definition. The next step is in front of you, so take it. No more of this apathy, of “rejuvenating” in the fields. You did that. You-thankfully- took full advantage of those empty fields at the time when you could. There’s no looking back. You did that. Go forward, one step at a time, but you have to take a step. So take it. Now.

California Fall

2011-11-29T13:00:00.001-08:00

California falls have a peculiar feel to them. And I don’t mean to imply connotations of bizarre or inexplicable but rather unusual: Fall comes in different packages in other places.

Fall in England is stormy and cold. Its beauty comes from bluster and ancient heather. Fall in the South is still hot and humid. Fall in Colorado is splendid in color and frost; the turning of the Aspens invokes awe in its beholders.

Here, though, fall is different. There is something wistful, almost ethereal about the air. The sunlight seems sad, as if it knows its days are being shortened. The colors are muted, imaginative. If a California Fall were an instrument it would be a piano. If it were an animal it would be a pegasus. If it were a man it would be a tall and thin one, but tan with a wan smile.

I love California in Fall. There’s nothing startling or threatening about its weather, nothing gasp-worthy. It’s soft and melodic and knows itself. Driving through Southern California, I feel strangely reminiscent about childhood and old travels. Many people like to think about California in terms of its moviestars and big cities and high taxes. Fall lets you forget all that and focus on the truly ancient history of the land. It’s too cold to go to the beach, to drive with your top down, to go for a bike ride or windowshop in shorts. All the usual California activities subside and we residents return indoors to look through glass walls at the calm and serene beauty that still encompasses us. It’s not cold enough yet to turn on the heater and fill a mug with hot cocoa, so there’s a stillness to our movement. It’s almost an aimlessness, but for so short a span whatever aimlessness there is fails to be harmful and is redeemed by the pending Christmas planning and readying for winter.

We all know it’s only a season and so we can abide it, even be grateful. I’m grateful. I love stillness. Stillness alone enables preparation for movement. A quiet and reminding wind sweeps up and brushes against my face. It’s a soft hand tilting my head to the horizon, on which a muddied pink sunset displays itself. Sometimes I think heaven will be like this. That feeling that we’re only there for a little while, and thus are infinitely thankful, but the even deeper knowledge that we never have to leave, and thus are infinitely joyous. Heaven is paved with gold not glitzy plastic jewels, after all. Gold is a beautiful color, but it’s not dark crimson or splashy yellow or vivacious green. Its tan hues speak of a subtle elegance and true understated wealth. California in Fall has just such a feel.

Ahead

2011-11-02T18:52:00.001-07:00

The beauty of having a private, little-read blog is its anonymity. I can pour out eloquence, stupidity, or both, and no one cares. I can pretend the whole world is reading it because in some possible world that's true, but know in the end few people are, so I'm free to say what I will. Or safe. Or both. The tiny thought that someday someone important in my life will stumble upon these "private" musings is no bother; I'm not ashamed of anything I've said. I'm being me, and such forced honesty cultivates a good kind of virtue. I have a tendency to hide behind an image of myself more pious and polished than the true me, and the rough self-reflection here reveals that truer-than-the-projected-image self that I need to at least acknowledge, admit exists, and push toward excellence.

That said, here's a rare moment of admitted wandering to those who are still listening. I can talk at length about the drive I've had since I was 14 to enter law. I've spoken about it confidently in interviews recently, passionately to friends, persuasively in writing. But part of me can't help but evaluate my words critically even as I'm saying them. The thing about drive is it sets goals. "I want my career to engage the intersection of Bioethics and Constitutional law." The terms are too broad to fulfill definitive goal-setting needs. "I want to go to Stanford Law." That's a definitive goal. But the entire reason I want to achieve the specific goal--Stanford-- is wrapped up in the broad goal-- career in intersection of bioethics and con law. And that's a fuzzy thing to think about, even if the articulation sounds concrete.

I care about bioethics because I care about people. The most pressing social issues I feel equipped to address are the same ones that strike at one's heart. Bank loan fraud is an issue, and right now it's a social one. But I don't really care about it because 1. I'm not equipped to address it and 2. it's not an interpersonal problem. The social issues I care about are more specific: they give rise to the weighty, emotional ethical questions in the personal relationships most fundamental to civic structure: between husband and wife, parents and children, or among close family members. These are questions about creating human life (genetic engineering, birth control, abortion, adoption, surrogacy, etc.) and ending human life (assisted suicide, palliative care, healthcare rationing). And then there are the sexual issues. Sexual ethics touch on birth control and abortion, but exists on its own (sex trafficking, pornography, etc.). My broad interest in bioethics narrows to these 3 areas when it comes to my career aspirations.

Creating and ending human life. And sex. (Well, sex is usually part of creating human life, but I'm trying to distinguish them for some slight element of clarity.) See why it's fuzzy to think about even if I sound like I can articulate it? A thousand things go into creating human life and I'm not interested in those. I care about it when it becomes an ethical issue. Should we? How should we? When should we? And I'm also not talking logistically (how and when to have sex). It's when the normal methods of creating/ending human life either fail, are found inadequate, or are being questioned. For thousands of years people beget people. Bioethicists were not needed. The bioethicist became necessary when our society and its technology became so advanced new questions arose that could not easily be satisfied.

The question of "should" necessitates a yes answer to "can." For instance, it was only when geneticists and technologists began developing the ability for humans to attempt an end-run around "natural" biological means of conceiving that questions abounded concerning the ethics (oughtness/utility/purpose) of genetic engineering, artificial insemination, etc. The simple fact of the matter is bioethics addresses "new," "pressing," "societal/technological" "advancements" in creating/ending human life. (It also addresses all those adjectives regarding sustaining human life, but I'm personally not as life-driven to answer them (genetic food, eco-sustainability, etc.).)

The reason I put scare quotes around all those adjectives is because they're fluid terms. The new becomes old. Pressing matters become non-issues, irrelevant or resolved. Societal/technological definitions change from society to society and age to age. And "advancements" is merely a place-holder for "change," needing qualification because the positive spin of "advancing" is sometimes inapposite to change that drags us down. The reason "advancement" can be used, however, is because usually bioethical questions arise from developed change touted to be an "advance" to society. If society as a whole denounces a new invention, it's largely not a threat to the ethical stability of that society. (Even if someone deems it to be an overlooked asset, that person will herald it as an advancement to get society to take a second look.) So our terms seems appropriate, even if fluid.

There. I've defined (loosely) what specific categories of bioethics I care about. Those are the issues I want to address in my lifetime. Also note that I said bioethics addresses, not answers, the above issues. It doesn't matter from what side a bioethicist approaches the matter; the point is a bioethicist is trained to address the issue in such a way as to reach resolution. Even if resolution in a given situation is merely agreement by a couple parties, it's still a meaningful goal. A bioethicist rarely believes they're gifted with the answer to a medical/socio-biological crisis, but only a helpful approach.

So, here's to looking ahead to my future, and the narrow intersection between constitutional law and discrete bioethical issues I care about. Thanks for listening!

Stillness

2011-09-08T00:46:00.000-07:00

Stillness.

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10.

It’s in the Bible. God demands quiet before him, reverence of his awesomeness. But the words sound almost stilted, over-the-top. Words like “revere” and “awesome” are generally reserved for either hyperbole or tongue-in-cheek reference to lameness.

Only in reference to the true and living God are they appropriate. If the almighty inspires awe, and demands worship, adoration, then his exaltation seems just. Bowing seems equally appropriate.

These attitudes denote some posture of the heart. If one were to sketch an image tying together all the above words, if the image took shape of anything with a will and a conscience, it would be prostrate. Prostrate. The heart only bows to that which is greater.

Be still, God says. Be still before me and know.

T.S. Eliot picks up this refrain in The Wasteland: “Teach us to care and not to care, teach us to sit still.”

Among all the rhythms of our living, vacillating between caring and not caring, stillness offers a place of rest. It’s an in-between, a stasis, a lack of movement. Stillness is sitting. No motion is involved. You cannot run, cannot hide, cannot laugh, cannot cry. Stillness is void. It is the void before being filled. It is the calm before the storm, or the sunshine. Stillness moves not.

So why, with all that emphasis on stillness, do I feel guilty when I’m not busy enough? Why do I feel like I’m ignoring my calling or abdicating my Christianhood if I haven’t contributed in some significant way to the advancement of the Kingdom. It could be as simple as chopping wood or as complex as writing a legal brief—contributing necessitates action. Starting an organization, raising a family, obtaining an education, or simply praying for the nation next door all require doing something. And stillness goes by the wayside.

I’m not saying that activity is bad. I’m wondering why I feel bad when I’m not active.

I think it has to do with the kind of stillness I tend toward. I love laying in bed, watching tv, or letting my mind go blank. It’s an avoidance rather than an openness to being filled. When I get frustrated with my work or people in my life I like to be left alone. I like to forget everything and create a vacancy spot in my mind. I’m not a dweller anymore-- I’m a mover-on, remember-it-doesn’t-matter kind of person. Check bounced. Oh well. Lydia’s in the hospital. Hope she gets out. So-and-so is yelling at me. She’ll stop. D’s not home. He’ll get here.

These are the sort of self-soothing inanities I like to repeat to myself. It certainly keeps me from getting flustered, but I don’t quite feel alive anymore. Nor do I need to swing to the other side of the pendulum, create drama in a vacuum, and generally glut myself out on emotion. But it would be nice to learn the kind of stillness the Psalms mean and Eliot clearly understood.

“Be still and know.” The stillness I like is the neutral kind. The stillness God commands here is not neutral or passive. It’s an active willingness and openness to recognize the truth before you. If you’re passing by a canyon, doesn’t it take a full stop and true look down the gorge to realize what exactly that giant space is before you? You can’t just keep idling down alongside it to really know what it is. You need to look, and see. You need to stop your walking, stop your thinking about other things, stop your journey to your destination and fixation on whatever that destination means, or where the road took you before. It’s a raw encounter that brings you to full knowledge of what something is.

Knowing God takes the same. Stop. Breathe. Look. Know.

Stillness before God brings knowledge of God. Knowing God means knowing that He is God. Yahweh. If He is, and was, He still will be tomorrow. And doesn’t that peaceful reminder bring the kind of respite I was looking for, anyway?

Gratitude

2011-07-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

In the late evening the feeling overcame me. My life had changed in a moment.

Three weeks earlier three of us girls lived in a one-bedroom apartment. I love those girls, but with the stress of an impending wedding and move I needed space. I worked 60, sometimes 70 hours a week, and drove a beater of a car, built in the 90's and crashed multiple times in the past year. The air conditioning refused to work in my car and in the upstairs apartment. I'm not sure if you've experienced this, but June in Los Angeles is one long heatstroke. I wasn't quite miserable, but happiness was a bit of a stranger.

Then I married Dustin.

I remember us saying our vows, grinning stupidly from ear to ear. We partied the night away with our closest friends. Hawaii kept us for a week, sights and experiences untold and breathtaking.

Then we returned-- to a 2-story house, new car, steady job, thousands of dollars worth of wedding gifts, and of course, each other. I married my best friend for a reason other than the side effect of this new life, but I cherish the side effect, too.

Granted, the 2-story house is a temporary home for July practically gifted to us a by a kind friend. The "new" car is a couple years old and bought only due to a sharp deal. But gratitude doesn't consider such qualifications. It only tastes the chocolate truffle coffee from our new french press, it feels the cool hum of the air conditioner, and it smiles at the winding staircase across the spacious living room. The black, sporty Hyundai out front still smells new and this feels like home. It's experience, not data, that informs gratitude.

My heart is somewhat troubled at this attachment to physical objects, yet again. While obsession over tangible comfort is nothing new to me, its satiation at this level is.

At Costco today I found myself drawn to the storage aisle. Before, trinkets fascinated me. Shiny new pots and pans beamed at me with a culinary wink. A large, brightly colored comforter preened its soft cotton before my eyes. The decorative wall sconces issued a wistful sigh as I passed by.

Not now. Now I needed a place to put the pots and pans and comforter and wall sconces and their multitude of siblings. I needed storage organization.

Despite this new "need," I left without buying anything. I was repulsed by the need itself, rather than its fulfillment. I was appalled at the row upon row of cubbies and drawer chests and hanging categorizers. From the looks of it, America had more crap than it knew what to do with and for the first time I fell solidly in the ranks.

These twin sisters of gratitude and repulsion are sired by different fathers, though. The heartfelt pouring of gifts and time and love from our dear friends evokes an unplumbed depth of thankfulness from me, but the thankfulness is directed at their hearts, not the physical manifestations of their sweetness. The physical objects themselves tempt me to feel falsely safe.

When I left the law firm where I worked for the past two years, my employers and co-workers showered me with affection. I did not know what to do with all their expressions of sadness at my leaving and gratitude for my work there. I stammered in response, tripping over my words in a position that had demanded utter facility with words for the 700+ days I worked there.

Their gratitude overwhelmed me, as did my reciprocal gratitude. It was sudden, unexpected, almost unwarranted. But it expressed itself more in words and deeds than physical objects and so I could not separate the heartfelt intent from its expression. They were one and the same, and did not come in a physical package I could let my heart rest in. Their showered love left me feeling clean, and unburdened by a sickening reliance on physicality.

Now, though, the well-wishing and outpouring of love came in boxes, and shaped like a car and a house. These expressions tempted me. I could transfer my focus from the intent to the manifestation. I could look at the signifiers and forget about the signified. But when I became intentional about looking through the packages, I realized I could not ascribe away or justify or ignore the obvious truth that I was fully and deeply loved. A more potent truth lurked behind the false security of physical objects. Had these boxes arrived or the expressions been given by people of whom I suspected falsity or insincerity, I would not feel this gratitude. It is because I know, with no doubt possible, that what I have experienced these last three weeks has been nothing other than true love.

Dustin loves me truly. I know that first and foremost. But of another kind the affection comes pouring in. Cards, letters, facebook messages, emails, hugs, gifts-- these forced me to realize late the other evening that the love Dustin and I share takes place embedded in a community who likewise loves. That love transcends the transitory state of my living room full of gifts. And for that, I am deeply and lastingly grateful.

"Take nothing for Granted. Accept everything with Gratitude. Pass on all things with Grace." ~G.K. Chesterton

FOR THE JOY OF IT.

2011-04-21T02:56:00.000-07:00

“Why do all your friends get married so young?” My brother challenged me while he stared at my fridge, plastered with invitations to and thank you notes from friends’ weddings.

“They don’t! I just have a lot of friends.” My voice was defensive. “They have good marriages,” I’ve told him before, “Most of them.”

“I just make fun of things I don’t understand, that’s all,” he rejoined. It was a classic argument of ours, one of the only ones. For some reason I consistently failed to explain to my brother the motivation of marriage to my early-twenty friends. And I knew his deeper question was to me, “Why do you want to get married so young?”

My boss had tacitly asked me the same question. I asked him if I could leave early every other week to go to pre-engagement classes. He had lowered his voice to a shocked whisper as if our co-workers outside his open door cared that I was contemplating marriage: “You’re getting married??!!”

“No, not yet,” my tone was again defensive. “But it’s about time. My boyfriend and I have been dating for almost four years.” I dismissed my boss’s incredulous face with a question about work. I’d stretched the truth a little, including that time my boyfriend and I had casually dated for a few weeks the fall before we were an official couple. I wanted to come across as the rational, well-adjusted, intellectual couple who carefully contemplated the timing of their career paths, graduate school, and long-term relationship-- and decided it was about time.

That was in fact the case. But somehow it bothered me that I overreached in my attempts to prove this image, or at least, failed to answer their genuine questions in anything but the negative. The real reason I was contemplating marriage at “so young” an age (22 at the time) was for the absolute joy of it. No, not the hormonal flux of a post-teenage fling, or the passing whimsy of smitten-ness. Not for cultural reasons, or family pressure, or unexpected pregnancy, or vague religious obligations. I wanted to marry Dustin because that’s what you do when you want to spend your life with someone.

I couldn’t conceive of the question, so I couldn’t articulate the answer. I know plenty of reasons not to get married: Marriage is an incredibly arduous task. I can well imagine the arguments, occasions for bitterness, opportunities for growing apart, seemingly intolerable aggravation, risk of irreparable emotional harm. Divorce is frequent, heartbreak inevitable. And even so, I know the joys of relationship, and I know the joy of being in a relationship with Dustin. I want to codify that before God and the church and society. I don’t want it to end this side of heaven. I don’t not marry because of what I fear it might be, but I marry because of what I know it will be. I don’t let fear determine my decisions, but I do let the good.

“Marriage is beautiful.” I cringe when people say that. I agree, but I usually assume the speaker is naïve, or selling wedding supplies. But my friends have married young, and they have beautiful marriages. They display to one another the heart of God in compassion, in forgiveness, in simply putting up with one another. They will grow old together. I want that. I don’t know how else to say it.

Marrying Dustin means the abilities we have to minister to others together will perpetuate. It means that he doesn’t have to call me every morning to tell me good morning and every night to tell me good night. He can just say it to my face.

Marrying Dustin means that the heartache we accrue through any single day can be assuaged by the intentional kindness and care of the other at the end of it. It means that we can demonstrate fidelity and straightforward honesty, bareness of souls, to each other and to our community, if not the rest of the world. It means that he can pursue dreams of business and politics and professorship in ways he never could because I will be there to see to it. It means that I can pursue law and writing and bioethics in ways I never could because he will be there to see to it.

It means that if I lose my job, he is there to support me. It means that if I bear children, he is there to lead them. It means that when our friends run out on their luck, we will provide a place and provisions for them by our combined efforts. It means that when our hair grays, and retirement seems scarce, and the years of paying for kids’ braces, college, and weddings have run our savings thin, we can lean on each other. It means that when we are too old to enjoy the touch of each other’s bodies, we can sit on the porch next to each other and reminisce 70 sweet years of togetherness and passion. And when one of us dies, the other will be there to carry on under the family name and still perpetuate the grace of our Lord.

Who doesn’t want that? And if all of the above will be true, albeit all the angst and hurt and arguments mentioned above still present, why wouldn’t we enter into that as soon as we were ready? Not before, not pre-emptively, not before careful consideration of compatibility, professions, personality, goals, history, values, virtues and sins, etc., etc. etc. But when the thousands of questions have met their answers to the best we can answer, and when the interrogation of its fittingness is exhausted, our marriage still stands before us, and even at 23, all I can say is “It’s about time.”

The Humankind-ness Project

2011-02-13T18:17:00.000-08:00

To consider oneself ugly is a great disability in this world. I've fought the inclination a thousand times driving the streets of L.A., billboards overpoweringly thrusting the message in your face: only this is beautiful! Wear this makeup to look this beautiful, etc. Los Angeles culture at minimum, in thing like Keeping up with the Kardashians, or the unnervingly quick judicial vignettes of Lynsey Lohan, implicitly relay the idea that it pays to be beautiful (or famous- I'm not sure how to unentangle the two).

And it does pay to be beautiful. The average Victoria Secret model makes $89,000 a year (and let's be clear, they aren't paid for their faces. Have you looked at the faces of some of those VS models?). Jenna Moroney on 30 Rock will gladly tell you that her body gets her wherever she wants. You can get free mechanic labor for your car, better seats at the hockey game, and discounts you wouldn't believe if you know how to sport that winning womanly smile. The only thing that can beat a woman's body and good looks for getting what she wants is being a six year old girl scout with a missing tooth and a "puh-leaaaase?" while holding those to-die-for thin mints.

But it pays a different way when your self-perception overshadow's others' perceptions of your body. Low self-esteem is a popular topic regarding young girls, but its effects are only sad in young girls because its a clear predictor of implications later in life. The older you are, the more a life of low self-esteem plays out. In attitude, in decisions, in personal relationships, in career. The worse you think you look, and the more it matters to you, the less you can listen to the realistic input of those who actually care. "I'm ugly" translates to "this is ugly," "my life is ugly," and "who I am is ugly." The outside quickly digs in, and pleasure fades, relationships strain, careers stutter. And of course, vice versa. Again it's hard to unentwine such correlative aspect of self-esteem manifesting outward and a genuine "ugliness" working inward. It's clear though, that the latter is mostly a decision.

What sort of things take place in one's mind to blockade against all external input regarding your image and worth? For starters, the multi-dimensional, unrelenting onslaught of input from external sources is what can start problems with self-perception in the first place. It's a mirror, an unkind word from someone important to you, a scale, jeans that used to fit, unthinking oversight by people who do care, advertisements that predominantly showcase aberrant beauty as the standard, and a tacit cultural assumption about how you should look and live that allows no grace for deviance.

I'm all about normalcy. I will people's lives-- including my own-- to adhere to some general framework. When my life or others' strays from that expected picture, I am frustrated and restrain myself from acting too harshly, or unnecessarily.

A little bit of kindness would go a long way in this world. Everyone says that, but I'm talking about a specific, global intentionality to seek out and eliminate the things that destroy a sense of self-worth and image, and implement only the things that build up. I know my fiancee does that for me, and I'm not sure who I would be without it. Everyone needs a champion, but if we were all slightly that to everybody in our relational-circle, we'd all be a whole lot better off.

The problem is, the damage has already been done. Slight gestures go unnoticed. Deliberate efforts are absolutely deferred. "You look nice in that dress" meets deaf ears. "I think you would look good in this" is received as an insult. Already trained-to-attend-to-insult minds grasp for the down-beating, the put-down, the criticism. Criticism is everywhere, even in the complement, if that's all you're used to. It takes years and years and years of building up to reinstate whole self that has once been broken down.

Have you ever delighted in some restoration project? An old hobby, perhaps. That dog next door that never seems to like anyone, that worn out bench in the back no one seems to use, those fading cloths that need to be reworked into a quilt, that dying plant that could use intimate attention. We've all had those moments of dedicating our immediate future to some project where we commit our spare moments to that seemingly endless, sometimes frustrating, and always rewarding work of rejuvenation. At the end of the day your neighbor's dog wags its tail after the hundredth time you drop it a bone or pat its head, despite the sores on its back and intimidating growl. The bench's wood is steeped in oil, glistening in the sun, a coat of fresh paint and new springs letting it breeze gently back and forth in the yard. The quilt adorns your bed, every once-forgotten patch woven into a new design, a refreshing medley of colors and patterns that were almost thrown away. The plant blossoms, the soil moist and roots strong; the towering buds open up on deep-green stems, filled with life.

Projects are easy. They aren't persons, whole, rounded, confusing, multi-faceted souls. People who think on their own, feel on their own, put up their own barriers, mistrust, and hold your mistakes against you. Plants never coil back when you use harsh words, and if you forget a day of watering, an overdose the next day can usually make up for it. But the substance of a human remembers, begrudges, watches through sidelong glances for you to make a mistake-- justification to further entrench the distrust. Time is hardly a factor; where increased hours resulted in increased results in the quilt project, the human project absorbs time like a black hole. One moment of unkindness can unravel three months of kindness. Knowledge is limited- you have no access point to a person's thoughts. No one has written a manual on each individual. You can read an article on "how to revive a withering orchid," but no words have been written about your friend Beth and her particularity.

It is left to your spirit, and the Spirit, to assess the human kindness project. It is a one-to-one connection. The person at your door is the only other part of the journey, and you have to rightly develop a strategy. Patience stretches. Mistakes happen. Progress manifests. Regress again. On and on, the dance of kindness leads a strange and offbeat step. Always aware of the moment, your failures, your successes. "I love you" can make up for a lot, but it has to be seen in your actions as well. And to be seen in your actions is not just for love to be in your actions. Love to be seen and love to be present are not the same thing: to speak and to be heard require separate components.

May you not only speak words of kindness, but may they be heard. May you not only act with love, but may that be seen. May your attempts to build up be not only attempts, but edifices. May your assault on destruction itself be destructive, and your commitment to the growth of self-worth be apparent in all whom your life touches.

Lucidity

2010-03-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

"Nothing is important except the fate of the soul; and literature is only redeemed from an utter triviality, surpassing that of naughts and crosses, by the fact that it describes not the world around us or the things on the retina of the eye or the enormous irrelevancy of encyclopaedias, but some condition to which the human spirit can come. All good writers express the state of their souls, even (as occurs in some case of very good writers) if it is a state of damnation."

G.K. Chesterton wrote the above perspicuous statements in an introduction to a 1907 edition of Charles Dickens' The Old Curiousity Shop. One could easily mistake these opening lines of the introduction for Dickens' own writing. Only a mind from Dicken's era and a literary genius such as he could pen such acute observations, I myself first thought. I was obviously off in my ascertainment; however, the existence of two akin writers capable of writing the same piece only increases my gratitude for each and underscores the veracity of the words themselves.

Literature at once exposes and expects: it exposes the space of the author's being and shapes the possibilities of what might come. What a happy stumble that I should read these words tonight when I was earlier squinting eyes at the grass in the park in deliberation over my place in the world as a writer. Words make me want to get up in the morning, if I can write them, read them, wrangle with them when others' have written them, ignore them when too injurious to my self, or inculcate them when properly inspiring or even rebuking. I want to write, to be a writer, to speak in a room occupied by no one but me and have those same words heard by thousands at their own leisure. I suppose radio could wrought that effect, but the word not captured by the eyes, not recorded for posterity, not immutable by their position in the three dimensional world- these words do not entice me.

The subject matter trots a ways behind the shape of the words, when it comes to a race of importance. Words must be written first, then written about something. For me that something will fall somewhere in the landscape of abortion, right sexuality, American society and family, fiction, and law. It's a broad range, but I've got the stamina if my readers have the wherewithall and patience. Not too many folks like to read the same author opining on recent Supreme Court rulings in one journal and rhapsodizing about a girl's love for her horse in the next novel. But perhaps if you build, they will come. I don't happen to know any same person who does write legal treatises and short stories about farms and such, so I can't exactly predict whether my audience will be robust enough or not.

The thing that makes me writing-confident since my reading of Chesterton's intro. earlier is that I will be one and the same person writing that amalgam of prose. If literature is redeemed by describing the contours of human conditions, most particularly one's own, then my literature will be redeemed by exposing my own soul's state and perceptions in a variety of expressions-- academical, fictional, poetical, social commentary-- and it will compel. Perhaps the plethora of angles at which I approach expression will force me to a level of exposure of self and of my--our--world that I would not otherwise accomplish. I struggle at revealing anything, and gape at overtures of lucidity. By saying, in whatever fashion I find fitting, true things about the world and people I know or meet, or situations I've been in or heard of, or ideas I've wrassled or shied away from, I shall find myself at the edge of real writing.

Real writing. That's the stuff that compels. That's the stuff that simultaneously gives me a headache. I've been in a rather emotionally laden conversation with a friend recently about the intentions of speech. Is it the listener's responsibility primarily to penetrate obscure talk and understand, or the speaker's primary duty to speak precisely and be understood? It's a bit of both ideally, I'm sure we'd all say. But in reality when I speak I don't give it my all to be understood. If people truly care about me, really want to put in the effort to know me, they'll have to push past the barriers of my word choices or speech patterns. "I'm not sure if I'm going to get everything done the way I wanted these days," is a languid, and self-protective, way of getting at "I won't be ready at six like I said I would be, Thom." The one is hazy and distant while the other is sharp and a little too in-your-skin for my taste. The latter is at once intimate and yet impersonal. It says exactly what is meant, but says it in the way everybody says it and so loses its individuality and layers of nuance that only an individual can insert.

Of course the above is a silly example; in a real situation of that irrelevancy I would prefer the direct informant to the round-about intimator. In fact, I have been irritated on many an occasion by people who refuse to be explicit and instead leave you guessing at their roughly veiled meanings. I find it rude, and distasteful, when others demand my perspicacity to decipher their speech. When I want to be clear, by all means I am clear. But at key moments of conversation with loved ones when I am the speaker, however, I am afraid I often default to the layers of nuance that make the hearer work more at understanding than I did at merely getting the words out. I couch my language in "Maybes" "Whatevers" "I Guesses" and, worst of all, Silence. The nothings that string my meanings together are off-putting-- and somewhat intentionally so.

Now, that is the difference between my speaking and my writing. When I write a piece, I have something to be said. I can't gauge the intensity with which my listener is trying to understand so I can't assume her diligence. I can't look furtively over my shoulder to see if he really cares about what I am saying to know if I should clarify or shut up, so I assume he needs the clarification. Moreover, I'm not scared that I'm going to see someone stop trying to understand when I'm actually trying to be understood. I can't see the face that rejects me when they put the book down, whereas I'm hit in the face by the friend's obviously lost expression when I'm attempting genuine communication. I know I can be understood if I really want to be- but what if I'm understood and still not listened to?

This is about as much starkness about myself as I can handle even in the written word, so I shall stop. But let me say I now have a Chestertonian conviction that as a writer I need to be understood. (G.K. would probably push to say in relationships, too, but I'll stick with just writing at the present.) I can let my writing reveal, even myself, even my own idiocy, when it redeems itself by doing so. Should the state of my reader's own soul be improved or find hope or recommit to life or ponder anew a serious or happy subject, that should be enough for my fulfillment. I hope that much is clear.

Pacifying the Soul

2010-03-13T22:35:00.000-08:00

I went shopping today. I had to. I slept until 10, rolled over, grabbed a book and read in bed for another hour. After breakfast I went back to bed and slept until 2 pm. It has been probably 3-4 months since I have done that. I am not sure why I needed to, but the idea of getting up simply had no pull. So I stayed where I was.

Then I wanted to get out of the house. With no particular aim and yet a notebook paper list full of pretenses, I ambled to downtown Pasadena and ended, invariably, at Target. $270 poorer than I went in, I emerged with an area rug, 2 decor pillows, a wicker accent basket, new swimsuit, pajamas, and a host of other outfits I couldn't put back after seeing myself in them. My mother had just taken me shopping the weekend before as her birthday present to me, but this was my birthday present to myself.

I don't know whether I was externally justified in spending that much money. Perhaps. I had worked hard the last 2 pay periods to save up for a computer. I even went on a business trip over one weekend, working 13 days straight, 32 hours over the weekend. Travel weary & then sick, I triumphantly saved my paycheck, waiting to buy a new computer, the lack of which has so hampered my ability to write. Then my mom called- due to an accident I wasn't responsible for but from which I had received no benefit from my car insurance, my insurance was now doubled. My mom couldn't afford to pay my now exorbitant insurance, which she had kindly done since I got my car, and I owed $750 dollars by the 22. So I mentally forked over the vast majority of money I had earned for a new laptop- and spent the last bit on myself. No computer this month, but at least I had something to show for my hard work.

Internally, however, I have to go many more layers to find justification for my indulgences. I have decided that shopping is my money weakness. Before I had a steady job, I thought eating was my money weakness. I sweated over the $15-20 or so I spent on groceries every week and ate as minimally as possible. I hated having to eat, having to dig into my oh-so-shallow pool of resources and literally eat its result 3 times a day. Now that I have an actual income, rather than paying off my school loan right away, I have found myself indulging in... well, just indulging. Usually, it's clothes. For one, what else do I have to console me all day at work except my outfit? It used to be when people wanted to buy me things, they would buy stuff for my horses. I spent every possible hour at the ranch- what better way to have their gifts with me all day than to spend it on horse accouterments. But now I don't go to the ranch, except once every 2-3 months realistically. I spend my days at the firm. So what goes with me? Only my clothes.

So I invest in my wardrobe, and today, for the first time in my entire life, I spent more than $100 on my clothes in one stop. My mom did that for me once, for my senior prom- against her better judgment (or perhaps precisely because of right prioritization), she bought me the most beautiful dress I have ever seen or worn to this day, at well over $200. I know other kids who spent that much money on their accessories. But not me. I had always prided myself on being the most practical, down-to-earth, sensical girl in existence.

It turns out, though, that I like clothes. Alot. I like buying flattering outfits, makeup, or home decor. I love my red accent pillows. And if my roommate doesn't like the area rug I bought, I'm not sure what I will do. I was forced to part with my beloved couch, my giant, overstuffed, microsuede, pillow-backed brown couch. The one that felt like Comfort when I sank into it after 7:30 AM logic class in college- the one that we could only afford to have in our apartment because a friend's relatives loaned it to us. The one that prompted me to write the opening lines of my current novel about a girl who hated getting up from the couch, who daydreamed her lifestory in its Safety. The one on which I have a thousand memories: of napping by the fire, or squeezing seven friends on it to watch 17 Again, or getting kissed, or being sick, or eating brownies, or writing my Senior Theses- both of them.

I love physical objects. I love the rug I can dig my toes into, the fuzzy leopard-print slippers I bought at Macys that protect my feet from our hardwood floors, the long white robe that envelopes me in the cold after every shower. I love the bath-salts and oils I use in my oh-so-frequent baths. I love the creamy violet eyeliner I bought for $14- about $9 more than I ever used to pay. I love the color of my mustard yellow sweater, or my gorgeously blue Guess coat, or the white gloves I bought for our New Year's party. I love looking, feeling, knowing that I am adding to, and not detracting from, this world, and that I am staying warm and happy-in-comfort. And, I love that I buy these things on sale, that I'm buying them at places like Target, or Forever 21, not at some outrageously expensive trend store. I do stop at buying $100 jeans.

But I chastise myself for these obsessions. A properly sensible girl wouldn't need such extravagances, I tell myself. You should be content with what you have. When will you stop consuming & start producing?

With what level of material comfort will you be satisfied? a lecturer recently asked. It's a fantastic question. It captures precisely where your heart is in terms of priorities, contentment, etc. My answer? None. No level. I will always want fine things, always want more things, always be wistful at the passing windows that showcase what I do not have. You could try and overwhelm my sense of material comfort- buy me the most opulent house you could find in the hills of La Cañada, give me an unlimited budget for interior design, fill my closets with expensive outfits, and I still would not be Satisfied. Not in the way you are thinking. Desire feeds desire- it's like a cancer in its spreading abilities. More wants more. Give me one red decor pillow and I will want four. Buy me one gorgeous outfit and I will buy ten. Love me for a night and I will want you forever.

Are there limits? Sure. I don't want two houses (except perhaps a winter house & a summer house, etc.), much as I wouldn't want two lovers. There's a point of idiocy, and it usually comes in duplication. But there is an unending amount of variety in the physical world, and my heart expands to consume all that I can. Satisfied in a way? Quite often. And therein lies the importance. I know the difference between being made content for the moment and unending Satisfaction. Or, take out even the time component. Instead of distinguishing between temporary at-easeness and perpetual joy, differentiate between Ultimate happiness and anything lesser. The difference is in kind.

The mistake many speakers-of-meaning often make is to downplay genuine lesser satisfaction. Was I happy today after my shopping splurge? Absolutely. It wasn't a fake glee either. I reveled in my purchases. I reminded myself that I was taking care of myself, that I was no longer soul-worn or bereft of all tangible signs of life-protection, and thanked God dearly for my income. The best Christians can pretend as if our experience of the love of God makes all material comfort disgusting in comparison. It just isn't so. We mock the shallow people who find their only comfort in big sunglasses, tans, and the latest fashion. But that is mockable only because that is their only comfort. It is only tragic if they cannot distinguish between the genuine satisfaction of a good set of clothes and the inexorable and sweeping love of God. The two are not opposed to one another. They are cut out of the same cloth: existence and His creation.

And so I sit, adorned in my new pajamas, my fuzzy robe & leopard-print slippers, my area rug under my feet. I love it. I am fully happy of a certain kind of happy. And, simultaneously, separately but somewhat connectedly, I also am Happy because of all sorts of much more significant things than area rugs and clothes: like redemption, heaven, the love of God, and all that. Tomorrow I might lose my job. I won't get to buy things like I did today after that. I won't get to pay back my school loan and I will be in Debt. I will be miserable- a certain kind of miserable. But I will get over it. And I will still be Happy. For any Restlessness caused by not yet being coincided with that which Is all and in all only heightens my longing, feeds my desire, and I Hope with that effective knowledge that I will one day be Satisfied in all senses perpetually. Heaven's streets are paved with gold, after all.

Justice

2009-12-20T00:27:00.000-08:00

I work at a law firm. Every day I walk through halls of justice. Emblems of perfectly balanced scales decorate our walls. To us, Justice is our response to the injustices of a specialized field. I work in construction defect litigation. When a homeowner is unjustly sold a defective house, our job is to "plead" the Honorable Court; we "appeal" to a Superior Judge to right the wrong. We "pray" the Court, requesting "relief" for the injustices done to our clients.

We hope that our fierce argumentation, put forth on white, perfectly margined paper, will cause a cotton-robed arm to drop a wooden gavel on granite stone, granting our requested relief.

But what is at issue? Our very concept of Justice is reactive in nature. Is there some deeper and prior, positive virtue to which we are beholden? By which we appeal? The human instantiation of Justice, that cotton-robed figure of flesh and weakness, "rules" on a case-by-case basis. He is persuaded by similar flesh & weakness, counsel for twin, opposing powers of plaintiff & defendant or petitioner & respondent. Good men and women are unjustly imprisoned at the persuasion of this instantiation. Others are granted more "compensation" than they deserve in the sum of tens of thousands of dollars because, well, they complain. By what guidance do these rulings fall so disparately?

Intuition? Divine inspiration? Scientific analysis? Logic? Emotion? Whim? Some combination thereof- or perhaps something yet beside?

In what form does Athena transmit the wisdom of what is Just in each case? And how does "Athena's" voice fail to be heard time and time again? And who the hell is Athena?

I ask questions not because I write poorly and would like to set up my muscled, streamlined answers, but because I do not know the answers and ask genuinely.

God above, You have answered inquiring minds before. Odysseus, Job, King Solomon, St. Augustine- these have heard Your voice. You have grown in them Your mind, Your heart, so that they became wise in nature and just in deed. You ask that I love Mercy, do Justice, and walk humbly with my God. But I do not know what Justice is. I pray, I petition, I plead for the answers you have given my ancestors before me.

On second thought, it would be nice to learn the truth without enduring war or boils, or treachery or great loss. Nor do I desire to be a warrior, wander far from home, or be thrust upon a sword. So maybe I'll get back to you about whether or not I'm genuinely asking...

Words

2009-11-15T19:10:00.001-08:00

I don't know why words are such a comfort. Or why I continually begin my writings with "I" and "I don't know."

One thing I do know is that words still have the power of healing for me. To hear them said, to receive them written, to write them down- all manifestations of the heart and head via language consoles me. The words "I love you," when meant, pierce through layers of hurt and betrayal to assure and assuage once again. "I hate you" cuts and wounds, tearing deep through blood and sinew, no matter what grace and kindness have preceded these words.

And when I write, even when I know no one is listening, or maybe only a few stray eyes have happened upon the page, it little matters; I am still ebbing that steady tide in my chest. The physical weight I feel lifts and my breaths flow more steadily as words drip from my pen, or my computer, as these technologically advanced times and drive for convenience has exterminated the pleasure of gripping a pointed object and finding release in watching my words flow from it.

My words. They are not just any words. You and I, we use the same alphabet. 26 letters are arranged and re-arranged, but from those 26 symbols, tired worn out prose wheezes out or rejuvenated meanings lift from the page with the freshness of their assortment. Melville used the same toolkit as I, but we speak different terms. These are my words. My heart, my head, my insufficiencies and grammatical deficiencies and linguistic strengths, ebbing and swelling, petering and failing with their expression found in words. Words, words, soothe my soul, speak what I cannot.

I have decided that it little assists me in life to keep my words to myself. They swirl round my head, useless and aggravating, crazy-making and stupid. If I speak them, they gain a purpose. Some weary soul may stumble unwittingly across them and find new energy. Some pugnacious heart may trip over them and stop insisting on foolhardiness. Some wiser soul may reflect and leave a note, aiding me in my journey.

My journey where? This is the question that has adequately trapped my words tonight, setting the parameters for their flight. Creativity is most possible, I am told, when the limits are clearly set. It's equally true of human potential. It's still true of words spoken from the heart. The story, the terms of the day, the purpose of the moment, guide and instruct the words to be used.

So now words come pouring forth in pursuit of purpose. My purpose. Life and death are issues for later. I am not deciding to be born, nor entertaining taking my life, or any life. I am looking at the here and now, the obvious and irreducible fact of my existence, and simply reviewing, "now what?" I am reviewing, not initiating the pursuit, as my avid quest to answer this question has been years, and many universities, times, places, and friends, in the making. Why me? Why now? are questions to be asked a hundred times, to be reviewed frequently as a mooring in an oft-tilting world of shifting identities and propositions.

I am Beloved. I am here at His will. I am Chosen, and Purposed. I have no doubt. Never have. The Desire that spoke me into Existence spoke the world, light itself and the seas into the same Existence. His Great Love pulsates in me as the very heartbeat of my waking. I seek to do His bidding, not because I am a drone or robot, but a great Will of Love, broken and weak, redeemed and renewed, strong and focused on Him.

And... on many other things. Here enters the ponderings of these words, the instigation to muse. What lot have You given, or allowed, or asked, or commanded, for me? Is it happiness the way I want it? Or happiness only in the sense of goodness that you demand- or both, one enabling and necessitating the other? My heart sits with the weight of sadness. Not despair. Not destitution. Not pain-beyond-speaking. Just sadness. The kind that weighs and clings, bears down on your shoulders until you're tired simply from being. The kind that makes bed inviting and the morning sun loathsome. The kind that walks bestride you with each lifting of the leg, each raising of the head, each movement of the hands. The kind that makes your eyes tired and your back ache. The kind that doesn't quit being your bedfellow, won't move to allow for more air, and insists on dominating every blackened thought in your head.

It's not death-grief. It' not frantic moaning for help. It's a quiet sitting, knowing all is well with the world but this. It's a deep assurance that in the grand chiaroscuro of light you are a small dot of darkness and Someday you will be a different dot. A lighter one perhaps. A clearer one, surely. A different one, absolutely. Now is only now and now will pass away Later. But Now is here, with its pulsating sadness and blinding dullness. This kind of sadness is weighing. It doesn't make you stop or rethink if you should be. You know you should be. You know Goodness. You have Goodness. You partake in Goodness every day. It's just that in that partaking there is still the nowness of sadness, and somehow it's all ok.

Loneliness is the death of many, even before they die. Loneliness pervades much of our contemporary structure of society. It's in the breakdown of Family, in the commercialization of Romance, in the sexualization of Friendship, in the privatization of Church. Loneliness is the enemy of the state. It's the perfect tempter to all kinds of Satanic escape. Loneliness is the constant companion of grief, and the true soulmate of sadness. As such, I recommend not an all-out attack on loneliness, but an acceptance of it's place in life. An acceptance and not a fight. It's ok to be lonely sometimes. It's not ok to pretend you're not lonely when you are. Loneliness cannot be overcome- it must be accepted, and then displaced. Yes, loneliness can be displaced. Love, the true and ardent expression of all that we worthlessly call Love, displaces the depths of loneliness. Over time, using many people and places and experiences. But eventually, Love wins out. Every time.

I'm living proof of this. My soul cries out for the happier times, the times I consider happier. When friends and family were present, when my life was large with people and plush with activity. When I could sit with the happy buzz of chatter all around me, knowing that I was a part of something meaningful and organic, dynamic and continuing. People- family, I love human souls getting to know one another and being true to one another.

Last night I had the chance to babysit again. I hadn't played with or been around little kids in nearly six months. Academia and law firms have little to do with children. I go to the park during lunch to study the LSAT, but my eyes are frequently drawn away from the textbook to the playground. Little ones shriek with laughter, cry from falling off the seesaw, quietly take a backseat to the older and more obnoxious ones, assert themselves or posture, increase motor skills and language acquisition. The tiny microcosm of the swingsets gives me a glimpse at the next generation's economy, relationships, religion and interpersonal skills. They are tiny and being shaped, learning of everything and everyone right in front of my eyes. Little souls run around on the grass, clumsily picking up a red ball and chasing their daddies.

But sitting, preparing for law school, and watching from a distance these happy lives, is not the same as being in the thick of them. Last night I spent hours playing with a little five year old and 18 month old. I wrapped up my night by rocking the baby to sleep, singing softly to him every song I knew and ones I made up on the spot. With his body cuddled up to mine, his head on my chest and his hands softly keeping Bear close, I felt like a mother. I felt at some small level what it would be like to have my own kids, whether or adopted or biologically mine it little matters, but my kids. My kids that for 18 years would be in my house, and I would call them Family. My husband would come in, see my softly rocking our child, and I can just imagine the look of utter contentment on his face, a good man with strength and fidelity. I could picture it all, and felt the tiny baby melt into sleep in my arms, his breathing steadying and his sighs and yawns fading to the silence and stillness of deep sleep and happy dreams.

Loneliness cannot be fought, but it can be displaced. Words help. They utter, catch at and strain to express truths of the deepest sort...

Idolatry and the book of Isaiah

2009-11-05T18:14:00.000-08:00

My church is going through the book of Isaiah right now. The prophet Isaiah rails against the people of Jerusalem on the Lord's behalf, decrying them with words like "sinful," "iniquity," "evildoers," "forsaken," "despised," and "estranged" within one verse. Jerusalem "is filled with idols; they bow down to the work of their hand." They rebelled against God and do "not know... do not understand" their God. They called evil good and good evil, darkness for light and light for darkness.

What a confused people! What idiots! These are the same people who bowed down to a golden calf instead of listening to the cloud by day, fire by night, smoke on the mountains God who opened the Nile before their eyes. Seriously? Can you be that dumb?

I've shook my head in wonder at these people before. They of all people had no excuse to doubt in God- He acted in tangible ways then like He never does now. After they had tasted the manna, you would think they would say, "yup, gonna believe this guy next time." But of course they didn't.

Oh, then, the little voice starts slipping in again: they had tangible evidence of God's goodness, huh? They gave up their hearts to less than He? They obviously misplaced their reliance?

Sick with the swine flu and ordered by the doctor to not return to work until Monday, I'm facing a lot of down time at home right now. I began flipping through album after album of pictures my friends and I have compiled over the last few years. Snapshots of my life flashed before my eyes and I was swept away in memories, those captured and not captured by our cameras.

Fields and fields of wildflowers on a spring morning. Fog rolling in off the coast with the mountain peaking through on the beach. An Oxford winter and snow, golden sunshine and gently falling rain, laughter and pubs and castles and new and old friends. London cathedrals and towers. The stunning roof of Michaelangelo's hand on the Sistine Chapel. Wonder after wonder of ruins and monuments in Florence, Venice, Rome; Gelato by the river, inside jokes. Hot chocolate and churches and brilliant yellows and reds and blues of the Senoritas in Barcelona, Spain. Flashing brilliance of the snowfall outside the window of our speeding train, the Swiss Alps in the distance and French accents. Disneyland adventures, happy laughter and carefree days downtown, Pumpkin icecream and Premiering movies. Violin music, enchantingly intoxicating and delirium-inducing, solid strength of friends felt on either side like a wall none can penetrate to reach me. The birth of my own baby filly, soft and spindly and new to life and me. A wild ride down the beach, my hair flowing in the wind, the feel of surging power of the near-stallion beneath me and ocean spray in my face. A picnic in the park, rolling downhill, grass stains, stomach aches, and unending laughter. A drive through the mountains, Spring pushing its baby life through the floor of the valley, green spreading like fire across the plain below. A trip across the country, Zion and the Grand Canyon, breathtaking and devastating. Skiing downhill, whiteness ever increasing, cold biting and wind exhilarating. The sound of wedding bells at friends' weddings and the comforting knowledge they will be good and happy marriages. The cool floor of the chapel, my body lain on the floor before the altar, knowing finally nothing else mattered.

These are but a few of the most breathtaking moments in my life, when I lived so fully I could feel every component of my body, was aware of every aspect of my surroundings, washed in gratitude and delighting in life. Each I know was a deliberate gift from God, an outpouring of His manifest love fore me, both a gracious and natural consequence of seeking His goodness. "You anoint my head with oil, and my cup, it overflows."

And yet, I would give up every single moment I just described to be with a man I love.

I would give it all up, erase it all, say thanks but no thanks, and walk away- just to be with him. In some ways it doesn't matter who. It could be someone else tomorrow, and certainly was someone else years ago. My heart has long since learned to seek earthly happiness in any human form. My heart wants the physical comfort and tangible comfort of a man, so obviously less than God. I am better than the Israelites? I think not. Men may be made by God in the image of God, whereas golden calves are made by men in the image of God, but at the end of the day, it matters not where my heart has strayed. Whether it is to the castle or to the den of thieves, the range of ways one can fall matters little when neither the castle nor the den of thieves houses God.

Idolatry is idolatry.

Hebrews 12 teaches that "It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your week knees... See to it that... no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal."

What does sexual immorality or unholiness have to do with Esau's birthright? The same as any heart's straying from God. The author of Hebrews had just linked God's discipline to His treatment of us as sons. His Fatherly ways with His children is to purify us, to refine us in the fire. To endure this is to seek His holiness, to keep our hearts clinging to Him and nothing less. For our hearts to stray in sexual immorality or unholiness is to seek something less than God, to avoid His discipline, and this is akin to selling our birthright to His kingdom, which He bought with His blood.

I'm sure that stew looked awfully good to Esau at the time, and the golden calf was somehow appeasing to the Israelites in the moment. My own heart's leanings are no less absurd, when all are measured against the absolute blessings of God and the meaning far beyond all comfort and food and stability that He offers to us in His pursuit. It is a candidly bad decision to choose man or beast or stew over God and therefore sell our birthrights to being His sons.

Lately I've fallen into an atypical pattern of self-pity. I hate pity; I never pity anyone, least of all me. But for some reason I've felt justified in some sense to have a little pity party. It's taken a few hard blows to be reminded that life is just difficult, and for me just a little. There are many whose cups have been filled with a wine far more bitter than mine. What is this thing about suffering? Why must it continually rail on us, blow after steady blow, with no sign of relenting with old age or fortune or even love. The pains I must endure are far less than many I know and love. Why must it be so hard? "The Lord disciplines the one whom He loves..." Agh, what a horrible family life, with a Father so unbearably pure He can't accept anything less than perfection from His children, with a heavy hand and a quick blow at every little thing. I'd turn Him in to Child Protective Services if He were an earthly father.

And yet, it is a far different matter. Hebrews finishes the explanation of why we must endure this discipline: "For you have not come to what may be touched..." But I wanted something I could touch! I wanted something physical, not this far-off Spirit who can't stroke the hair out of my face when I am sick or hold my hand when I am scared! "For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the heares beg that no further messages be spoken to them." Ok, that doesn't sound so comforting. On second thought, when the Israelites did have God's physical presence, it sounds pretty frightening: "Indeed so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, 'I tremble with fear.'

"But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gatherings, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a bettter word than the blood of Abel... Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken." This sounds like a far more ideal place than letting your heart rely on a man or a golden calf or a bowl of stew, or even that God-on-the-mountain terror. It may include discipline of a kind that is gruesome and hard, of a focus on suffering "to fill up the completion of Christ" (?), something I am wrestling with but still do not understand. Despite the pursuit being replete with this discipline/suffering my head forces my heart to say its ok. Isn't God patently better than the Golden Calf? I have to ask. And the little moments of goodness that I have been given time and time again, even though I would give them up for less than God- I still have to recognize He gave them to me as hints, just hints, of the deep goodness He is. "Taste and see that I am good." They're just tastes, but it's enough to satisfy my heart for a time that my head is right. Eventually I will need to come to a deeper and deeper understanding of who He is... so that I can say "I know him, I understand" in a way the Israelites of Isaiah's time never did. But until then, the tastes are good enough.

"Thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."

Articulating Desires

2009-06-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

How can the temporality of man somehow be a comfort? Psalm 37 says to fret not about evildoers, “for they will soon fade like the grass.” We don’t worry because they aren’t the ultimate triumphers. They leave the picture before too long. Rather than fretting, we are to recognize that man is but for a moment, and that moment will determine a lot. For the evildoers, their time to be held accountable will come, and their brief moment on the stage of humanity will be their downfall. In contrast, the next verse says to the believer, “trust in the Lord, and do good.” Because we recognize that we only have a limited time on earth, we should dedicate ourselves to doing the things that are worthwhile. That is, evil is finite and will pass away with the end of the earth. Why then does it matter what we do? Therefore do good,Scripture says, and it seems that this is the only thing that has eternal import. While doing eThus since we are so exceedingly finite, it is only proper to do good, and rather than fret, we “dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.” Recognizing our brief stay on earth helps us settle in and be at home. Rather than being sporadic and leaving the land and not being settled into a place, it is all the more paramount for us brief sojourners that we do dwell. If you’re only going to be somewhere for an hour, you should use that time there to the fullest advantage. “Faithfulness” also has the long-term, roots sounding connotations, along with “dwell.” Again, the contrast for the knowledge of our brevity to increase concepts of faithfulness and dwelling should impress our memories.

This whole Psalm has to do with how one should conduct oneself in light of evil’s non-impression, its shortness, our life’s shortness, our need to do good. These disparate threads are tied together to frame a cohesive panegyric on living: “Delight yourself in the Lord,” “Commit your way to the Lord,” “Refrain from anger.” This is a how-to book for those seeking to fully acknowledge their finitude in their lifestyle. There in the beginning the often-misinterpreted verse comes: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Liberal interpreters often say that this verse means so long as we find joy in God we can do whatever we want, or that as a reward for doing good (mistakenly conflated with delighting in God) we will get whatever we want. My aunt pointed out to me a few years ago that this is not about God giving you the things which you desire, but giving you the desires themselves. That is, right living (do not fret about evildoers, recognize your fleetingness, do good, commit yourself to God, etc.) actually transforms your desires in life. Your desires themselves change their directedness. Rather than being focused on self, getting what you want (meaning what benefits you), you focus on others, specifically the Lord, and your heart begins to desire after righteousness and wisdom and humility and identification with Christ even if that entails suffering.

I have still wrestled with how all that works out, though. Is “Delight yourself in the Lord” a command, like a mother throwing down liver before her child and saying, “You will eat and you will like it!”? Must we train ourselves to delight in God as a matter of self-discipline to a joyless obligation. Yes and no. Yes to needing self-discipline to cultivate right desire. No to joyless obligation. Think about the appetite. It is said that some have a cultured palette, meaning that they actually enjoy finer foods. Greasy hamburgers and fake cheesy cheese flavor of Cheetos just don’t do it for them. They actually want finely sautéed vegetables and a well-marinated, moist piece of meat with mushrooms, or some sort of ethnic food. Not only is their appetite more “sophisticated” it is also exact. It knows exactly what fulfills it at the end of the day. Their appetite now (more or less) matches their bodily needs. Even in the world of food, though, a fine taste requires discipline. You can’t know the differences between various cheeses before you have tried many of them, learned their different names, and developed the skill of distinguishing between different types.

Distinguishing. That also means discerning. Quality living, if I may use so trite a phrase, requires discernment. The food critic discerns flavors, textures, weights, consistencies and can therefore make a judgment. He must know multiple flavors, multiple textures, has tried various combinations, put words to different aspects, synthesized meanings and rendered judgments. Delighting in God is the same. If we don’t know good from evil, we can’t love God. We just can’t. If we do not know the very essence of His being, then we cannot hope to find joy in Him. We must teach ourselves, or be taught, to discern good from evil, a short life versus a long life, what merits our worrying, to what we ought to commit ourselves, which emotions are beneficial. Amidst this, we learn what fulfills us, what leaves us empty, what takes away from us. We must be self-aware, self-reflective and open to others. We must be able to identify and articulate specifics about our states. I desire x. I was hurt by x. I was loved by x. I loved x. I was helped by x. I helped x. When we can make these distinctions and connections and discern meanings, we can begin to train ourselves to love rightly, to seek forgiveness, to offer sacrifice. And, in the midst of learning to love rightly, we learn what we love. Only an admittedly broken and healing man can say “I loved winning arguments and they fed a desire inside of me.” Actions are often indicative of desires. What you are doing can sometimes tell you why. There are reasons for the way you act. What motivates you? What do you want?

Jesus asks this confounded question again and again throughout Scriptures: to his disciples, the woman at the well, himself. “If it be your will, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but thine be done.” In order for him to fully expose himself to his Father he had to first discern his own will. If he did not know his own will, then he could not rightly say, “not my will be done.” He would be forever stuck in saying, “all I know is I want your will to be done,” but he would not know himself. Surely Christ’s will was not corrupt- he had desires “opposed” to God the Father, but he didn’t deny them. He allowed what he wanted, and then clarified what he wanted even more, “thy will be done.” Even Christ, limited by the multi-levels of human desire, had complex emotions.

Sometimes we don’t even know what we want, no matter how hard we try to know. This is when the Spirit can intercede for us in prayer- meaning we are trying to reach out to God about our desires. The Spirit does not intercede in prayer that is a cast-off on God. By that I mean that those who avoid the hard work of trying, skip the expression of personal desires and simply say “whatever thy will.” If it were sufficient to say “thy will be done” as the sole component of prayer, the Spirit wouldn’t have to intercede with groanings too deep for humans, and the Lord’s prayer would have been a lot shorter. No “give us this day,” no “lead us not into trespasses,” no “thy kingdom come.” Just “thy will be done.” There would not even be a recognition that we are asking for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are specifying where we want it to take place and how we want it to take place.

By refusing to articulate human desire before the face of God, we put a divine emoticon over our truer, more complex desires. Of course we want God’s will to be done! But in what? For what? Why do we care? What’s going on- what’s at stake? And more importantly, where are we in this process? The person who asks for God’s will secretly so that he can bring down revenge on an enemy has a vastly different state of heart than the person who asks for God’s will so that he can ask to be taught humility. If they obscure the reason why they come in prayer, however, neither is going to get far.

The “thy will be done” phrase is not extraneous, however. It is still holds primary significance. What did Jesus want? He wanted the cup to pass from his hand, but he also, and more strongly, recognized that this didn’t seem like God’s plan and he wanted God’s plan to happen because he trusted God and knew that God had the best plan anyway! “Best” by whose standards? one might ask. By the one who created standards, I would say. Read Hebrews and Colossians and Genesis- there’s a lot of glory going around and Christ knew he was a tertiary part of God’s not only cosmic but eternal plan. He knew it was best in all regards that he do God’s will even when his own will told him differently. So in the end, his will was right after all. That’s not a cute turn of phrase; it’s mightily important. Ultimately, Christ did not want the cup to pass from His hands, if he knew that the Father had planned differently. Since He wasn’t the one calling the shots, since He did trust that the Father had planned differently, he gladly took the cup and drank from the cup of death- and, as it turns out, life. He knew that that would happen- He knew that by subjugating his desire to the Father’s his ultimate desire would be fulfilled.

What was Jesus doing in the midst of all this praying, sweating blood, and obeying? He was delighting in God. How do you submit your heaven-given, virgin-birthed, salvific life over to death unless you know for a fact it’s going to be better in the end. Christ took the cup of death against his will because he knew of the father that “He’s working all this out… the end is going to be so amazing.” Delight. Joy in the redemption plan God created and the use of us to effect it. Glory. If we really, honestly, actually, genuinely, unhypocritically, personally, faithfully believe that God’s will is greater than our own, and we know our own wills enough to admit them to God and compare the two wills and judge His to be better—then we are doing so out of delight. Not shallow hope. If we actually believe it, meaning we think it is true (not sort of, kind of wish and hold our breaths that it is true), then we will be laughing for the thrill of it. That does not of course erase the pain of the particular. Christ still had a spear stuck in his side after wearing a crown of thorns and being pierced through the hands and feet to be nailed to a cross he had carried on the lash-torn flesh of his back. He had been mocked, spit on, denied, been a disappointment to those whom he loved deepest, and been forsaken by the Father to whom He had entrusted His life. God could not look upon such sin of the world which Christ took upon Himself. For the first time in eternity, the Father turned His face away from His only begotten Son. “Forsaken” really doesn’t near the crux of that kind of rejection.

But the joy, the joy of participating in the particulars (good and bad) of a redemption story you know with full conviction is going to be glorious (beyond compare, better than anything one could ask for), is surely delight. That kind of living is delighting in God. If you see that in your life, if you see your actions directed toward glorifying the Father, you see the manifest delight you have in your God, well, that’s indicative that your desires are right on track.

Psalm 37: 4, then, seems to be a hypothetical “if-then” statement: If you delight yourself in the Lord, then He will give you the desires of your heart. It is not a command to do this. One cannot force a heart to have a certain bent (for surely that is delight, as we have discussed), but it is a decision to orient your heart in that direction through self-discipline and training. Just as developing a sophisticated palette takes intentionality, time, and perseverance, so developing a heart that is rightly oriented to God so that it delights in Him takes intentionality, time, and perseverance. But the one who has accomplished this, whose heart is rightly directed toward God (as evidenced by the fulfillment of the law, and the other verses of Psalm 37), has the exact kind of desires that God can, greatly wants to, and will always fulfill.

Weighed Down by Heavy Silence

2009-04-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

Weighed down by heavy silence
Buoyed by light laughter,
Sounds, and their absence, have weight,
Carry meanings without words.
Words, too, weigh or life,
Transport, transgress, or cut
To the quick a listening soul.

The deaf hear not the sounds
That convey harsh critique or
Caressing praise. Words touch, too.
They bite, fester, sometimes heal
Wounds caused by other words
And sounds too much to bear.

A cry in the night pierces darkness,
Without words sounds break black,
White noise settles back in place
In light made by God's voice,
Which called forth the day.

"Bear each other's burdens,"
The sweet voice of Christ
Crushed our ears with His
Too-hard-to-obey Word,
And we stumbled under the knowledge
Of another's weight, shared
With us through heavy words.

Words carry weight, or they lift,
Transcend, transform, or gift
Us with glory: "Well done,
Good and faithful servant.
You have run well and spoken
Well of Me." In that day
You will be freed from
The words of temptation under
Which you crumble with sin.

His Word confirms and firms
Our quavering voices of praise,
Strengthening and lifting
Our now weightless, single voice
To the heavens.

Identity claims and homosexuality

2008-10-13T23:52:00.000-07:00

I have a few brief thoughts on a question posed to me the other day: Can a celibate homosexual be a member of a Christian evangelical church?

Normally I shy away from such loaded, politically fragmented and emotionally charged questions. I usually think more than enough has been said about such things, and any extra words will probably end up hurting or confusing someone more. Plus, my love of argument days are long gone. I now argue economically—only when necessary. This is one of those times.

Disclaimer: this is not a robust, nor long pondered thesis. It is just a thought, but hopefully one I will substantiate. Feel free to offer your feedback—it is a developing view and I am more than open to critique. But here goes…

The label “homosexual” is an identity claimn in today’s culture. In the past, this was used to denote a certain act, but now it seems to be used as a statement of identity. We don’t have same-sex or hetero-sex attractions; we are straight or we are gay. This language assumes that our sexual desires are properties of our very nature.

I don’t want to deny this. I think issues of sexuality touch the human soul deeply precisely because sexuality defines a core aspect of humanity. I don’t think humans are primarily sexual (there are many qualities which I think should define us first: rationality or capacity for emotion, for instance), but humans are definitely sexual. But what does this mean?

Let me posit my own view, undefended, that sexuality involves both body and soul. I know that belief in the soul is not so widely accepted these days, and amongst those who still defend the soul’s existence it is disputed whether souls have properties of sexuality. In either case, however, we all agree that sexuality involves the body. Some may posit that issues of gender and such are merely social constructs, but I don’t hear too often that sexuality has nothing to do with the body. By definition, it has to involve bodily structure if it involves a bodily act. Thus, if we are to talk about homosexual acts and heterosexual acts, we are talking in part (at least) about bodily structure.

Now, homosexuality and heterosexuality may be different than homosexual acts and heterosexual acts. I think that is what the popular argument implies. The former may be statements about someone’s person and the latter simply about a physical act. If that is the case, then let me ask the following questions.

What does it mean to say “I am a heterosexual” or “I am a homosexual”? In popular culture this means “I am sexually attracted to people of a certain sex” (either the same or the different, or both). But is this all that this is saying? Isn’t our sexuality still partly due to the type of sexual organs we have? And those sexual organs are designed (or evolved, take your pick) for sexual relationships with the opposite sex. If that is true, then my sexuality is for the opposite sex by nature: I am a heterosexual (physiologically speaking) although I may have homosexual desires or even engage in homosexual acts. A homosexual individual then is physiologically heterosexual with homosexual desires. Thus we must be careful in making a non-nuanced identity claim such as “I am a homosexual” without clarifying.

Ok, now back to the question of the church. Why is it important to care about identity claims in the question of whether homosexuals can be members of a Christian evangelical church? First of all, identity claims in Scripture are a big deal. Christ says pretty quickly that we are to renounce our self (body and soul) and take on the identity of Christ. Sacraments such as communion and baptism represent our union with Christ in his death and resurrection. We die to self and live to him. Colossians is helpful here. Colossians 3:3 boldly states, “For you have died, and your life his hidden with Christ in God.” And later: “You have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:10).

The “old self” can be any number of identity claims: I am one who worries, I am one who lusts, I am one who is angry, and the list goes on. In a non-exhaustive list of properties of the old self Colossians includes coveting, being angry, slandering, lying, being sexually immoral, etc. The old self is someone who sins in many ways, but is probably characterized by one or a few predominant sins. Dying with Christ and being renewed means submitting your whole self to His power of death and resurrection: your sexual self (straight or gay), your emotional self, your physical self, etc. If at any point you take up your old identity claims, you are denying the power of Christ in your life and excluding the fact that you are identified now only by your relationship to Him.

I can no longer say, I am a worrier- that identity has been taken over by Christ. If I act as if that still defines me, then I am defining myself outside of Christ, and frankly, any identity claim outside of Christ is outside of the church. The person who takes back his old identity is excluding himself from the church, not the other way around. On the other hand, the one who “dies to self” still has the long process of sanctification to go. He has continual trial, and will always struggle with desires of the old self, whether those desires are to worry, to lust, to desire sex with the same gender or sex with the opposite gender who is not your spouse. It doesn’t matter, in one way, which tendency is to be overcome. I’m not trivializing homosexual desires; I am taking into consideration the extreme difficulty of fighting off homosexual desires. But in any case, the person who denies the identity claim of the old self must be accepted into the church. The body of Christ is just that—those who have taken on a new identity, and yet will still fight old desires the rest of their lives.

It isn’t a question of whether a celibate homosexual can be a part of the church. It depends entirely on whether that person reclaims (accepts and thereby legitimizes) his identity as a homosexual after the saving work of God, or claims his identity as one who is hidden in Christ and admittedly has homosexual desires. The latter should be welcomed with open arms; the former has rejected the work of God.

The Problem of Doing Things Right

2008-06-11T01:34:00.001-07:00

It's worse to have things go wrong and not be able to blame yourself. If you did something wrong, at least you can have hope that it won't happen again. You learned something; you won't make the same mistake again and so the bad thing won't happen again. But the problem is, sometimes even when you do things mostly right, you still get hurt. This seems harder to me than when you do things wrong. If you do things mostly right and you can't blame yourself, then you don't have hope that changing your actions will change the outcome at all. There's just no guarantee that it won't happen again.

A couple of weeks ago, I got kicked by a horse. He was young and skittish. But I'd been around young horses for years, and I knew how to act. I did things mostly right, and it wasn't even the "mostly" that got me. I was talking to my boyfriend on the phone, so maybe that was a bad idea, but I was paying more attention to the horse because I knew it could be dangerous if I didn't. The frustrating thing is, I thought through all my actions. I spoke fairly quietly and moved slowly. I walked up gently, slid my hand down his leg, took off his legwraps. I slid the saddle off his back and he stood his ground, his eyes and ears following me, but he was clearly not alarmed. I ran my hand across his back as I moved so that I kept in contact with him. He was wary, but mostly relaxed.

As I put the saddle away in the tack room, I noticed that he had sidled up next to my gelding. I knew that my gelding might kick the young horse, so I asked him to move away. I walked up behind my gelding, wanting to get more to the side of the young horse so that he would see me (and less afraid that my gelding might kick me). I spoke firmly to him as I walked toward him and made sure that his ear was cocked on me so that he knew I was there. But when I reached out and gently touched his hindquarters, gently asking him to move away from my horse, he was startled and lashed out.

Wham! The impact of his nearly 2000 pound body of muscle forcing his hoof into my leg shoved me back a step and I cried out. Wham! He had immediately struck again, this time higher, and blood started running down my left arm, in concert with a throbbing feeling now in both my leg and arm-- mostly numbness. It didn't break anything, but I have a scar on my arm now, and a lump on my leg which will be a part of me for quite some time. The scar won't ever go away. I'll mitigate the effects with vitamin E, protection from sunlight and all around good care. I already minimized damage with antibiotics, anti-inflammation medication, Neosporin, constant bandaging, doctor visits, ex-rays and so forth. But it won't ever go away. And the bummer is, I didn't learn anything from it. I can't stop it from happening again.

My trainer told me it was probably about 30 percent my fault. It turns out that a cocked ear is not enough to tell you a young horse sees you. You need eye contact. So, I learned something, but the thing is, it's not enough to stop it from happening again. Sometimes, young horses just kick.

People kick, too, in a manner of speaking. You can try your hardest to say the right things, act the right way, be gracious and expect little, and still people can react the wrong way. You can do things mostly right, and still get hurt. It's less frustrating when you feel like a bad situation is your fault too, because then you have hope that you can change the next interaction. But when you realize that you've done things mostly right (and this only by the grace of God), and yet still things are going badly, then you can feel angry or just plain despairing. How do I change a situation, if I'm not the problem? Funny, probably most of us can only say this a few times in our life. Aren't we always part of the problem? Well, sometimes not. Sometimes, we do things right, and still get hurt.

Should I not go back to the ranch anymore because I got kicked? Should I let a hoofprint shaped scar stop me from the sport of riding I love so much? If I got kicked more than I enjoyed riding, it probably would be fairly silly for me to keep subjecting myself to the damage. I can run a simple cost-benefit analysis on my engagement in the sport to see if it's worth it. 1 kick (and a few other scrapes and scares, to be fair); 12 years of exhilaration, beauty, harmony of horse and rider. I think I'll stay in the game.

But what about when humans are the ones lashing out? At the end of the day, and you've done things mostly right, and people are still hurting you, what do you do? If they keep acting the same way, do you still get near them? I don't have a complete answer, but I have the beginnings of one. We can say "It's not worth it" about a relationship and wash our hands of a person and that may carry some benefit, but have we truly understood the cost? The sense of despair in a bad situation in which you are confident that you have acted mostly in a right manner can be overwhelming. At the very least, it dampens your desire to continue acting rightly. "Why bother?" is easy to say.

The other alternative is to keep acting rightly and keep hoping that the situation will change anyway. At a certain point, it is up to the Lord to act within the situation to bring about the change toward good. He is in charge, anyway. But if he is in charge, and you have submitted to Him, then He already has your good in mind anyway. It would be too dramatic to call it persecution, but it's a similar principle: you've done things mostly right and you still get hurt.

God has a lot to say about this principle. In fact, Scripture says that if we do things right, the world will hate us. We can't take that as a justification for a pity-party, or a holier-than-thou attitude. We have to wrestle with the fact that that means even when we do things right, we will still get hurt. God isn't above pain, and we can't be either. For God, pain is not enough of a deterrent when something beautiful is at hand. The problem is, we can't see the beautiful thing when we're getting hurt in mundane stuff in daily life. When someone is angry with me, or a horse kicks me, I don't get to see the whole picture. I just feel the anger or the kick. I don't yet see the grander plan in mind, the redemption of souls, the beauty of horse riding, the character He slowly forging in me.

I can't see very far ahead. But I do have a choice. I can choose to stay focused only on what I feel, the anger or the kick, or I can look ahead as far as I can. I'll never be able to see the whole plan in my current, fallen state, but I can trust the One who can see. I've seen enough of His work in my life to know that the vision He has for me can't be too far off from the one I want for myself, except a whole lot better. I don't quite understand how my pain fits into that larger context. I would have to dig down a lot deeper into theological beliefs (such as how Christ's glory was masked in suffering and we are asked to partake of it, or that our habituation to right living enlarges our soul no matter the circumstance, or how we are promised God's rest if we strive to enter into it, or a whole host of other truths).

The point is, I don't have to get all of it yet. I'm learning as I walk, and I'm gonna keep walking in the right way as long as He gives me the grace to do so, regardless of the frustrating moments when I do things mostly right and I still get hurt. I have a feeling that the pain and scars we rack up in this lifetime, sometimes even despite right living, won't be worthy of comparing to the life that He has promised to give us if we continue in the life to which He has called us, to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. My neighbor, kicking horse or angry human, fits pretty well in that life to which the God I love has called me.

Oh Era, why must thou confuse so?

2008-04-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

In a culture that crowns Objectivity king, we concede to each other, "Everything's subjective," and subjectivity reigns.

When the judge of Science issues its verdict from that objective 3rd-person, we silently mutter, "It's a matter of perspective."

When philosophers dispute the existence of "raw feels," we promote an ethic of "Do what feels right!"

Ours is an age that denies personhood to babies, and by the Turing test, welcomes robots to the family.

"Community matters!" postmodernity cries, so we flaunt our individuality.

As the state enforces tolerance, we hide our bigotry against the mentally inferior.

Evolution's orthodoxy, and efficiency is key: but fashion and pleasure will be our only guide.

If all logic is a matter of your starting point, and intuition fails, is there anywhere left to go?

"Falling Rain Saves Falling Rider," or "why I like the rain"

2008-03-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

It rained again today. I know, it's England, so it rains all the time (it's even been snowing lately!), but I finally figured out why I enjoy the rain so much. When I was younger, and spent my spare moments traipsing across fields and exploring the nearby almond orchards on my young Thoroughbred, Dancer, I loved the rain. For some reason, a light fall of rain always made me feel safer. Partly, it was because after a while the ground would get softer, so if my mare decided to suddenly spook at a rabbit jumping out of its hole underneath her, causing her to explode bucking and dumping me in the process, then the fall wouldn't hurt as much.

But there was something else. Today I realized it wasn't the physical safety at all that comforted me. It was the emotional expression. It was the same reason I liked to ride in a covered "indoor" arena more than out in the open. It felt like there wasn't as much room to fly around in if Dancer tried to throw me, or not as many possible ways to get hurt when we were restricted to one little area with a roof over our heads. It wasn't as if the roof really limited my possibilities of getting thrown-- I'm pretty sure not even Dancer can buck that hard. It was just that I felt more enclosed, like I was connected to everything around me more. That's it, connected.

When it rains, the falling drops connect you with the heavens. The incessant splash of successive raindrops puts you into physical dialogue with the sky. Having a roof over my head in an arena made me feel safer by making my world smaller, and therefore the potential for hurt dimmed, but when I am out in the open, with only the falling rain connecting me with the sky above, which is as far away as it always is, my world isn't smaller; I am just more connected with that greater world. It was not just me and my horse, a lonely, isolated pair. There was a tangible tie between myself and the heavens above. I was reaching up to it by protruding from the top of my 16 hand Thoroughbred, and now it too reached down to make the connection complete. I could ride my unpredictable young filly anywhere I wanted in those wide open spaces, so long as the mist of the heavens enveloped me and reminded me that there was a context for our horse&rider pair, a place in which I was located no matter how far or how hard I might fall from Dancer.

The Way Up

2008-03-21T19:27:00.000-07:00

Heraclitus once said, "The way down is the way up."

I don't know much about Heraclitus, but this statement makes me think he spent too much time thinking and not enough time living out his thoughts. Because, as any traveler of tunnels or dark places knows, the way down being the way up is only half the story. There is the going up part too. And if all you know is to go down first, you still won't reach the top. That is, after all, the goal.

"He who loses his life will find it," Christ says. Here He almost sounds like Heraclitus. But Christ gives the rest of the story. "New life," He says, "Come to Me and you will have new life." The way down, death, is part of the way up. But you have to have a guide to orient yourself to the light. And that guide has to know the way. He has to have been in that dark place before, and come out again.

Christ can give us new life because He conquered death. I have sometimes been too attracted to the dying to self, killing the old flesh, and general dark side of gaining new life in death. I focused too long on the death part and nearly forgot the whole point, the next step: new life. For redemption comes quickly, your eternal trajectory is transformed in an instant. Redemption: you ask Christ, and He simply gives you new life. Then you spend the rest of your life trying to kill off the old self as it creeps back up on you. That is called sanctification, the way up. Glorification is the goal, that final day when all deeds of darkness will be exposed, all ways of men made known, all intentions and deeds manifest. It will be a day of final reconciliation, the moment awaited by all creation, for which even the rocks cry out.

We cannot forget the way up. The continual work of the Spirit in the life of the believer is what continually points the way. Christ is our shepherd, our guide leading us through the path of darkness because He has been there before and knows the way. He leads us through darkness, even unto death itself, and then bring us slowly, steadily into a more holy life, to closer communion with God the Father and with each other. That way is sometimes very dark, as death seeks to take us back, but we have been claimed once and for all as children of the light (see the writings of St. John), and death has forever been abolished. That means our way is mostly characterized by light, for even when we see things dimly, it is because our vision is growing clearer, and we are becoming more accustomed to the light. The light is so blinding that for a long while after being in darkness we will still think we are in the dark, even when we are actually in the light. It takes adjustment, process-- and time.

When I forget that the way up is ultimately the way up, and the way down only a beginning, a preliminary to that more important part, I get lost. I get sad, tired of struggling, tired of feeling like it is all darkness, forgetting that it is mostly light with lots of darkness, especially at the beginning. And then, days like this, celebrations of Good Friday, snow-fallen nights in England with my best friends, memories of warm California sun and being in the arms of my beloved, hopes of the future, healings of the past, a striking shivering clarity that my God died for me... a mish-mash of emotions and a happy muddle of knowing that the way down is only part of the story (that the darkness that is sometimes alluring is actually just the beginning. It gets better)-- days like this and I remember, the way up is simply that, and I am being led by a very capable Man.

Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling"

2008-02-12T13:05:00.000-08:00

I read Kierkegaard today. That sounds like a confession, but perhaps it ought to be, since anything in response to or in connection with Kierkegaard is bound to be somewhat startling. I read his Fear and Trembling for my ethics tutorial, not for my own soul's benefit, but my intent did not obscure the effect: it did in fact affect my soul, in ways which relate to the "series" I have been writing recently. To begin with, Kierkegaard's writing style is compelling. The front cover of the edition I read runs thus:

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all -- what then would life be but despair? If such were the case, if there were no sacred bond which united mankind... how empty then and comfortless life would be! But therefore it is not thus...

Kierkegaard forces his reader to ask what faith really means. In one chapter, his "Panegyric to Abraham," he calls forth praise for the father of our faith and illuminates the paradox of Abraham's position. "The ethical as such is the universal. It rests immanently in itself, has nothing outside itself," Kierkegaard writes. He is espousing a meta-ethical theory which states ethical principles apply to all. The universal in this sense gives each particular (each individual) the moral obligation to follow it. Abraham's ethical relation to Isaac was that a father should love his son. Abraham's duty to follow the universal was therefore to love Isaac, not to sacrifice him. But Abraham loved God more than his son, and to show God that he was faithful, he went to the mount of Moriah to sacrifice his only son, the one whom he had waited faithfully for for 70 years, the one God had promised to him, the one which was to be the fulfillment of prophecy, the one in whom all of Israel would be born.

Abraham not only had a duty to the universal to love his son, and future generations. If he killed Isaac, he would be stopping his seed, which God had promised him would be as many as the grains of sand on the beach of an ocean. If Abraham's ethical theory had been consequentialism, he would not have killed Isaac. If Abraham's ethical theory had been anything but a divine command theory (which consists entirely in that one ought to do what God tells one to do), Abraham would not have obeyed God, for he was denying the universal ethical principle to love his son and future nations. "It is not to save a nation, not to uphold the idea of the State, that Abraham did it," Kierkegaard states, and effectively shows that Abraham's action was done solely in obedience to God, at the expense of the universal.

No one would have understood if he had killed Isaac, no one could have counseled him prior, or helped him justify what he did. "His life is like a book put under divine seizure... he never hears a voice but walks alone with his dreadful responsibility... he has the pain of being unable to make himself intelligible to others." Abraham's faith was excruciating. It was not an easy faith because he did not care about Isaac. He did love his son, but he had to sacrifice him anyway. He just did what God told him to do, trusting. His hands trembled, he would be seen as a murderer, he just had to convince himself that he was not a murderer and God had called him to do it- for an entirely inexplicable reason. Abraham could not justify his action in any way except to say that he was following God, he was showing God that he loved him in a special, exclusive way. And O, how excruciating was Abraham's act of faith, to rise early in the morning and take his only son to sacrifice.

"Isn't it true that those whom God blesses he damns in the same breath?"

The distress, the fear, the paradox of everything Abraham had to do, the trembling hand as he lifted the knife above his beloved son on the altar-- Kierkegaard returns again and again to the holy and terrible calling of the father of faith. There was no consolation for Abraham. None but that he obeyed the will of his own father, who had already proved Himself faithful to His promises. "Such a relationship to the divine is unknown to paganism." Again Kierkegaard is able to demonstrate how the faith of Abraham differs from any other ethical theory. Pagans, such as Euthyphro in Plato's dialogues, said that one ought to do what the gods (plural) command us to do, but gods cannot even decide among themselves what is right to do, much less reveal it clearly to humans-- or, more importantly, give them a promise of why they should do it.

Abraham knew God. He had seen that God is faithful, and he knew that God's character cannot change. Thus he knew that God, even in His absurd beyond-all-reason, defying-the-universal request, would be faithful to keep the promises He had given Abraham- which included innumerable descendants from Isaac. He knew God, and his relationship with God gave him a basis to love God- and so he obeyed. "If you love me, obey," Christ says in the gospels. In the gospel of Luke he says, "If any man comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple... Count the cost." He also says,

"I am the true vine... If you abide in my commandments, you will abide in my love... These things I have spoken to you that your joy may be full. this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you... These things I command you, so that you may love one another... No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that i have heard from my Father I have made known to you."

The faith of Abraham is fulfilled in Christ, who issues us a new command. It is still one of obedience, but now it is accompanied by revelation. We have seen or heard of a glimpse of the glory of God through the man Jesus. God incarnate revealed to us the secret will of His father to redeem the world. The servant Abraham did not know what his master was doing, and yet still obeyed, and it was accounted to him as righteousness. His was a faith of utter obedience, blind to everything but the fact that God was faithful, and so Abraham responded with faith. His was the road of isolation, where none could know his motives, and where he could not justify his own actions to the world of men.

Chesterton, Kierkegaard, Lewis, Milton, Spenser-- these authors are all say the same thing! They speak the same messages from old hearts, although across many generations. The knight of faith who goes forth on his journey responds only to the call of God, and none will be able to accompany him every step of the way. His is a road that begins in isolation, is made out of trembling and conflicting desires, burdens as well as blessings, damnations as well as salvation. They have choices. The knights of faith could find safety in fulfilling the universal. They could be tragic heroes, lauded in the eyes of men, justified by any ethical theory they choose. But they choose to obey God, and follow his commands which defy reason, which make him the lonely individual set above the universal.

Kierkegaard concludes, "The person who denies himself and sacrifices himself for duty gives up the finite in order to grasp on the infinite; he is secure enough... But the person who gives up the universal to grasp something still higher that is not the universal, what is he to do? If he is mistaken, there is no salvation for him." He must know God, and by knowing Him love Him, and therefore obey Him, and by obeying him leave all safety, all worldly sanity-- for no other reason.

This is the fear of the Lord.

Hiding from the Light of the Son

2008-02-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

"It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished."

These are the words of the fourth stanza in How Deep the Father's Love for Us. I have sung them many times in various church services throughout my life. Many of us, especially those raised in more Baptist-like churches, find this hymn to be an “old stand-by.” Today, however, when I sung this stanza in an Ash Wednesday church service at Wycliffe Hall here in Oxford, the words struck me. This was a stanza I had always briefly passed over, but I could skip the reality of its words no longer.

For a while I have been studying what it means to fear the Lord, and how the Lord commands us not to fear anything in the world, but stand in awe of Him alone (see my previous post). Being somewhat of a timid person (internally), this has always been both a burdensome command and a comfort. The world seems too much for me to handle at so many times. If I merely turn my thoughts to the problems around the world, I am overwhelmed. The future does indeed cast unholy fear into my heart. I feel the world's sin so deeply that I am often dark in heart, sorrowful to my soul at the broken-ness of the fallen and finite world.

Carolyn McCulley at the newly named Radical Womanhood blog wrote an article on human trafficking and girls in the sex trade in Cambodia. My heart is torn by the stories of these girls. I have no words to even begin to understand the kind of turmoil and heartache forced upon them, perverting their beautiful and precious gift of sexuality into a think of twisted extortion, of a business trade. This is but one example of the widows and orphans throughout the world which I as a Christian feel a strong call to aid. I must rise early in the morning and pray for the deliverance of these children and women. The staggering numbers of abortion performed in the US alone should have me nightly on my knees imploring God to stamp on injustice and daily on my feet using the voice and gifts God has given me to act against the injustice. If I fail to do these things, I am only letting moral depravity win. I am failing to utilize the promise of the Spirit's aid in my own life through sanctification and my external ministry of reconciling people to God and to each other. “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:19). But it is a burden beyond belief. I, weak in heart, fear the world and know not how to fear God rightly. Rather than joyfully entering into the ministry of reconciliation, knowing that I am insufficient but the Spirit within me is of He who has overcome the world, my heart fails for fear, and I am overcome by the world.

Two weeks ago, I lay in bed praying, angry at God for not giving me the strength of courage I so desperately want. I don't want to be weak, I don't want to be sad. Lift this veil of sorrow that I carry in my heart. Do not let me live in the darkness of sin which I see so clearly exists in the world. Everywhere there is evil and I succumb to its power, hoping not that it will be overcome, but merely stewing in the fact that it is not yet overcome. Do not let me sit idle, do not let me wallow in this darkness! These thoughts coursed through my head, more complaints of how things are than an adjuration to God to enact change in my soul. But I was finally earnest. I wanted freedom from the fear of sadness which threatens any weak soul who surveys a fallen world. I went to my computer and started typing a prayer, which turned into a poem (I have posted it below). And then as I wrote, in a flood of realization, a genuine revelation of the likes of Luther, Calvin, Aquinas and Augustine, I saw my own dark soul.

It was not that the world is so corrupt, though it is, but that my soul refuses to look at the absolutely unfailing promise of ultimate redemption from an all-powerful God, and instead clings to its own sorrow as a pitiful excuse for a lack of faith. The words below perhaps encapsulate more adequately the feeling of depravity I felt in my own soul for the first time. I had read Luther, Calvin, Aquinas and Augustine. I have read Scripture. I know that human nature is corrupt, but I had never felt it so literally before. And when I sung the words, “It was my sin that held Him there,” I knew in fact that it was. Not the whole world's, whose sin I so desperately bemoan, but my own, which I so desperately deny. It is not that God's promise is weaker than the corruption in the world; it is not even that I am inadequate to be a worker in the ministry of reconciliation, for the Spirit is strong within me; it is not that the brokenness of humanity is beyond redemption. It is just that my soul does not want to admit it, my soul wants to deny the power of God's promise, the work of the Spirit, and the temporality of sin. My own soul wills to damn itself, to shut itself off from the so-vivid light of hope; it is God alone who saves me from that darkness, who turns my soul upward and outward to not only see the light, but even to want it. When the Spirit breaks into my life and continually teaches me to turn away from this self-inflicted darkness, I can no longer deny that there is such a thing as the Savior's power in my own life, in the lives of others, and in my ability to respond to His calling as a willing servant.

Drawn Unto Darkness: A Prayer of Confession

2008-02-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

You made us for life,
And everywhere I see death.

You made us for eternity,
And everywhere I see finality.

You made us for laughter,
And everywhere I see tears.

You made us for wholeness,
And everywhere I see brokenness.

You made us for joy,
And everywhere I see grief.

You made us for love,
And everywhere I see aloneness.

You made us for harmony,
And everywhere I see discord.

I want to sing,
I want to dance,
I want to praise you.
And my heart is quiet,
My feet are still,
The words do not come.

Where is my faith in you?
Where is my love for you?
For you alone?
Why can’t I simply be,
And not fret about becoming?
Oh God let me be,
Let me be the one you made
Draw me out of myself
Draw me out of my fears
Teach this wayward heart
The voice of praise once more.
Mold these lips to form the words
Which glorify Your name.

Nothing taken for granted;
Everything received with gratitude;
All things passed on with Grace (G.K.C.)

I have made this my prayer of desolation,
My lonely cry of desperation.

I hurt and am afraid for no reason.
No reason but my own mind,
My own will.

But I do not will my sadness.
Sadness is what I fear.
I do not welcome grief–
Pain is what I avoid.

So why do I continue to dwell
In this sadness of my soul?
I want to break free, to laugh
To continue laughing and not stop.
For I can manage tiny spots of joy,
Interludes of grace.

But it should be otherwise.
Fear can threaten the throne of grace,
But should never win.
Nor be the thing that’s threatened
Because it already holds the throne.

Sorrow should be but a moment,
And joy should fill the day.
My tears should flow for a time,
Then softly drip away.

My heart can take a moment
To bow in quiet pain,
But for a season only
And not soon again.

Oh Lord, I bow this haughty will,
This stubborn soul,
Bent on its own destruction.
I cannot do otherwise.
I am utterly bent towards hell.
My soul looks out for the darkest way
And seeks death without resurrection.

In the darkest of places
My mind wants a sleep
Which cannot be broken.
But in the deepest of places
My soul longs to wake
To a joy that nothing displaces.

Oh God it is time
To take charge of me.
The time of my rein has ended.
I surrender fully to thee.

Please come and turn
Not only my night to day
But take my own desires
And from death turn them away.

Lift my eyes from the ground,
My face from within,
Point me out, point me up,
Save me from my sin.

Teach me love,
Teach me grace,
Hold me close,
Put me afar,
Teach me trust,
Teach me faith.

I have found my own will
To slip to despair
At the slightest threat
Or moment of fear.

I am given to fret,
Tended toward sorrow,
Teach me joy,
Teach me to follow.

I find my comfort in anything
But You– take it all away.
I have to know that you alone
Can take me all the way.

I love you, oh Lord,
But oh I need grace.
I need your redemption
In this time, in this place.

For months Lord I pledge
To live day by day
Not take you for granted
Or think I know best.
I can’t keep this pledge, though
Without being blessed.
I need the Spirit even to want
Or have desires of hope.
Send unto me your aid
As you promised long ago.
It’s a promise You’ll keep,
And that I do know.
So tarry not long,
Stay not away.
I wait for Your Spirit
That I might obey.

Fear of Man and Fearing the Lord

2008-01-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

I'm picking up blogging again; now that I'm in Oxford I have things I want to work through in my head, and that usually means writing about them. Somehow in being “across the pond,” as they say, the physical distance from all that I have ever known has created a mental/emotional space unique to this season of my life. I have fewer expectations of how things ought to be here, and fewer have expectations of how I ought to be here. I am removed enough from the past that it informs my future less, and I can analyze problems and think of the future in a somewhat isolated way before putting things back in context again. For the next few months I want to study, pray over, and discuss a few key facets of life, specifically prayer, emotions (or passions), motherhood, trust, fear, and career, and so here is my first entry of that ilk.

For the last few months I have been pondering the “fear of the Lord.” My thoughts on the topic arose partly from reading Proverbs (which I am working through now) and partly from realizing how much I fear other things. A few months ago (perhaps six now) I was struck by how little I thought of my own sins. I know certain sins I struggle with continuously, but I rarely dwell on the magnitude of those sins or on how much they impact my soul and those around me. As I read Scripture one night I prayed that God would reveal my sin to me. It was a frustrating process as the more I read and no sin became apparent, the more I became convinced that I was completely disconnected from my heart and struggling with pride. I know pride plays a huge part of my sin, but I will get to that in a later post. The thing which finally crept into my understanding as I thought, read, and prayed, was that fear itself is actually a sin. I could have easily admitted that I am a little coward in many ways. My apparent courage at various times is mostly a cover-up for the deep fear I have inside. But admitting to being fearful is not the same thing as thinking of it as corrupting sin.

Fear is indeed sin. Scripture commands us time and time again not to sin (Isaiah 41:10, 2 Tim. 1:7, 1 Pt 3:14, 1 Jn 4:18, Phil. 4:6, just to cite a few). It varies in what it says from “Do not fret; it only causes harm” to “Fear not, for I have overcome the world.” In every context where Scripture addresses fear, save one, it is condemned. To act contrary to such a direct command of Scripture is to sin. For now, I am not going to stress about all my various sins, but I do want to focus on my fear as sin, to think about and work through a concept of fear and understand how to develop true courage. Or perhaps even courage is not the right term. Will James once said that courage is “being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” As an equestrian, the phrase seems especially apt; as a little coward, I think then that courage is not enough. I can be scared and still do the things which scare me. That is a good first step. But there is a place beyond doing what you fear and not fearing that thing in the first place. I want to reach that place.

For 10 years now I have ridden consistently, being scared to death about 80% of the time I spend in the saddle and around horses. Yet not one of those courageous moments has helped me fully overcome my fear of riding. I can grit my teeth better, I am more persistent, I do the thing anyway (most the time). But somehow “just doing it” has never alleviated my fear of doing it in the first place. I know there is a healthy amount of fear that goes into riding (it might help save your life), but the amount I have keeps me from living. Living does not only entail certain actions, but the correct mentality and emotion that goes along with that.

No matter how much I understand a certain thing to be the right thing, or even how much I habituate myself to doing that thing, I am still not in the place to be able to have a holistically right approach in many situations. It is (necessary, but) not enough to follow through on spiritual disciplines in order to develop my relationship with God despite my distrust of His character, or to commit in relationships despite my fear of being rejected, or to continue riding even when I fear physical pain, or respond to larger callings in my life despite my fear of personal shortcomings. It is a good start, achieved by the grace of God in my life over the last few years, but it is simply not enough.

I need to learn to trust. To begin to trust might allow for fear; it might allow for skepticism if I still do the action which scares and causes skepticism anyway. But more mature trust demands action accompanied by a mentality and emotion to match, from the very start.

And that is where training the passions comes into play.

(To be continued...)

The Madness and Merriness of Minutia

2007-09-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

Getting Lost in Your Own Thoughts

The world can be overpowering at times: the myriad of experiences, requisite knowledge, and web of intricacies are simply too much. A single day feels likes an unwarranted onslaught of reality. Everything changes, rushes, hides, and often hurts. Today I was struck by the thought of how one single decision or split second can make a huge impact. A car enters my blind spot: the simple nanosecond of misguided perception hurtles thousands of pounds of metal into each other. The tiny thoughtlessness of not checking my mirrors twice (twice, mind you, not forgetting altogether) affects my life and another’s drastically. I thought about this potential scenario as I was driving earlier, after I left my binder in the Biola bookstore: a seemingly trivial thing, and yet I forgot my birth certificate was in it (I was supposed to be getting my passport later). Then at lunch I walked away for a few minutes from an important folder of money. Later I walked too hastily (or perhaps just as I should have) in the store and almost ran into a woman in a wheelchair.

As I was leaving the store, my hands shook a little. The events of the day were truly uneventful. I had hurt no one. In the end I had avoided the major catastrophes possible (like hitting the car next to me or having my birth certificate stolen), but only by the grace of God. I hate days like that. I wish I could blame it on my environment or physical illness or something that wouldn’t leave me the culprit of my own stupidity. Alas, for the last few weeks I have been unable to escape the knowledge of my own shortcomings, an increased frustration with my inability to just do it right. I don’t even have undue expectations of perfection. I just want to do things right. I don’t want to forget important events when I wrote them down multiple times, or not get my to-do list done, or be unable to figure out an important solution to a business problem. I’m tired of my internal excuses for simply not being better at what I’m supposed to be good at. (Like being good at writing: not ending my sentences in prepositions or using “Like,” incomplete and run-on sentences.)

Once you realize how complicated life is, it’s easy to feel burdened by the weight of understanding it, much less articulating that understanding. Think for a moment on all of the things that comprise life. I use the word things specifically, as I am not speaking of the substantive philosophies that guide our action or the political structures that support our economy. I mean simple, small things, be they objects or thoughts. Choose one day in your life (today is easy) and ponder everything quotidian it entailed. Do you remember the sound of your alarm, the smell of your roommates’ breakfast, the rustling of the curtains, the garbled memories of your dream and weighing anticipations of the day, the feel of the bristly blanket against your bare leg, and the pattern of light on the mirror—all as you awoke. One tiny snapshot entailed all of that. Skip ahead. You had to remember to go to class, grab the right binder, make sure you had your purse, keys, money, drivers license, correct car (remember where you parked it). Before that you dressed, choosing a particularly coordinated outfit in all of its array, then matched the correct jewelry and makeup. Just putting on the makeup was not one act; there were many components of 3 different shades of eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara, foundation. Did you wear perfume? Remember the scent? Oh wait, what about showering and those many products? How do any of us remember which is shampoo and which is conditioner (that entails narrowing the lens of your eyes onto a pattern of marks on a bottle which actually is a translation of thought from some distant manufacturer to your own brain). Don’t delve into how the bottle of shampoo was manufactured, or who it was tested on, or what governmental agencies were paid way too much money to approve it. It would just get too complex.

But forget about complexity. The ordinary objects of this world are too simple. Enter your thoughts about those objects. We discussed dreams and Descartes in Modern Philosophy class today. Scores of random dreams flitted through my head as I simultaneously drew up my to-do list for the rest of the afternoon and listened to Dr. Ten Elshoff imitate the “smart” skeptic with his furrowed eyebrows and annoying “Why think that?” mutterings. We thought about ways in which we can know we are awake: 1. We feel pain. 2. We have feelings of normalcy. 3. We are aware of a state of learning 4. We experience predictable things (i.e. when we walk out of the classroom we are not suddenly in Tahiti). As it turns out, though, all of those things can feel as if they occur when we are dreaming. So how do we really know what is awake and what is dreaming? I think I know, and I think I am in fact justified in that belief, but I am so far from being able to articulate that I might as well be in Tahiti.

Taking a nap isn’t any simpler than being in Modern Philosophy. If I have wet hair, do I want to first rest on my least favorite pillow so that when I’m ready to fall asleep I can switch pillows and actually sleep with less wet hair on my favorite pillow? Or do I opt for switching from the less noisy to more crinkly pillow so I don’t bug my roommates? Honestly, it’s only a pillow, but sometimes it’s hard to tell your mind that. And the list goes on. It’s tiring, really. All of those thoughts are interconnected and even though I listed a very tiny portion of them all, it is still overwhelming. Sometimes I wish I could just escape from my over-active imagination, constantly churning mind, and all of the external events and objects of the world. I love simplicity, quiet, and stability almost as much as the frenetic and adrenaline-pumping activities of the average day in my life. But why must we have the minutia? What does it matter that sponges are used to clean dishes and shoes are made for feet? Honestly, why must those things be added to the list of things I must know in order to survive in this world? I get overwhelmed thinking about why our couches are arranged they are, much less about how to run a non-profit organization, put on a conference, get into law school or save the West. I’m happy when I find time to settle my soul and watch the sun set.

What’s the purpose of the madness of men? Why the montage of the minutia? I get lost in it all, too overcome by the stoplight at the corner to greet my beloved with a smile when I’m home. Why does God create a world with such stuff when the true substance is the interconnectivity of souls? Where is the harmony out of all this chaos? All of the details and complexities, all of the particulars—I want purity, simplicity, peace. At the end of the day, I want to see the face of the living God, not a white wall or the complex arrangement of wood sticks and soft material I call my bed. I am not even bemoaning tragedy; I simply don’t understand the commonplace.

And yet, as I was reflecting on this barrage of the daily and the small, I thought about what could possibly be the motivation behind it all. I know we make life unnecessarily complex. We lose ourselves in the business of our own self-importance, we put redemption of the world on our checklist and find our identity in the exactitude of performing the mundane. Still, there is something more, something behind the necessary trivialities. God didn’t have to create us with the need to eat, or stay clean, or love, or brush our teeth or play piano. Yet he did.

A small thought tickled at the back of my mind. I’ve been ignoring it for years, but tonight it forced recognition from my conscience: the God of the universe is just somewhat carefree. Far from careless, He is merry and abundant. He lavishes things upon us, creates absurdities and insanities to delight us. Have you ever stared at a group of people, watched them interact? They are really quite silly. There are layers of complexities in their interaction, unspoken body language, intentional wording, and thoughtless actions. Humans and the world we inhabit are a tiny bit crazy. Not the insanity from sin, but the happiness of much (which is far from hapless). The Creator likes simple things, as much as He delights in the incredible complexity of the ultimate mosaic He is creating. The story of the individual finds its place in the meta-narrative, but God delights Himself in both. Here, amidst all of the junk that clutters our souls, we can allow ourselves to be lost in so much of the events and objects and thoughts required to exist. We can bemoan the necessity of vacuuming the floor, and forget the lovely look and feel of a clean carpet. We all have choices; we don’t have to do what is “necessary," but those things are only needed in order to gain what we truly want. The craziness of the cosmos can be overwhelming, but in the middle of the mad dash before the quiet rest, there is just a little bit of God-like glee.

Rest and the Weariness of Men

2007-05-20T10:54:00.001-07:00

In recognition that most of my friends are as nerdy as I am, I here submit my Pascal pull question as a blog post on "Rest and the Weariness of Men:"

Pascal had an amazing grasp of man’s wretchedness. References to the fall dot his work with deep this-is-not-how-it-should-be overtones. Because of his recognition that man is a deposed king, Pascal developed the idea that man tries to divert himself from recognizing his fallen state. For in recognizing it he would be dissatisfied with how things are, and would rather pretend that he is perfectly happy in the state he is in. “He only wants to be happy… the only way would be to become immortal. But he cannot, so he has decided to stop himself from thinking about it,” Pascal writes (Pensees 166).

Interestingly, Pascal also notes another “secret instinct” that true happiness is in rest. The King who is not deposed still seeks the same frantic activity, for if he pauses to reflect on his kingship, he will realize how fleeting and fragile it is and know that it is not true rest. From these two conflicting impulses arise the confusing state of man, according to Pascal. And yet, the same that was true in the 1600’s has been true since the fall and is still true now. Those who grasp their wretchedness have touched the depths of humanity in equal wonder and despair. Without turning to God to lift them out of this state, they try to find fulfillment on their own.
We try to find fulfillment on our own. I am certainly not exempt from this category, alive in the 21st century, typing at a computer, listening to music through surround sound speakers, talking to my roommate, taking a break to answer my ringing phone. Today I will write multiple papers, learn of the current world’s tragedies by seven seconds on the internet, respond to multiple emails about a conference I am helping to put on, go to church, go to lunch, drive to Anaheim, shop in the bustle of people and stores and bright lights and videos in the windows. I was awake at 7 am and I probably won’t sleep until 1 or 2 in the morning. Stacks of books clutter my desk, demanding to be read, the college club I am president of begs for my attention, my family called to talk, and even thought it’s Sunday I should probably work for a few hours. All in one day. The only quiet time I took today was driving to church for ten minutes (for the first time in two years it just so happened that no one else went with me). I could pray for no more than a minute and then flipped on my radio. I have yet to pause, breathe, or read my Bible (except what the pastor read in church today).

Our world little knows the concept of rest. Today is not some particularly hectic day, by my standards or most of my friends. Some of them are even more busy than I am.
We are continually on the move, our senses inundated, our stress levels high, emotionally drained, mentally stimulated, and aware of world-wide news every step of the day. Technologies meant to make work easier just made our work load more demanding. When the sun goes down, I'll just flip the lights on and keep working. The news which is supposed to keep me informed makes me worried about a problem continents away I have little time or emotional energy to do anything about. I hardly have time for my friends and family, much less the simple activities I love, like a quiet ride on my horse in the morning, or a nap under the tree, or a long walk in the park. Those things just don’t happen—for any of us.

What are we trying to find? Do we think that happiness will come any more from climbing the corporate ladder than staring at a blade of grass? And yet, our Christian culture adds a new level of stress. We are taught in church that such things are fleeting, and to keep our minds on the spiritual things. But we respond by worrying about the non-Christians in every foreign country, and we add to our daily concerns the redemption of the whole world. We see America’s materialism and frenetic state, and so build ministries to “further God’s kingdom” by denouncing such things, teaching others, providing for our fellow brethren, and working 24 hours a day to redeem culture for the glory of God. In our modern Christianity we not only seek distraction to forget about our own wretchedness, but also to forget the “salvation of others” we have put on our to-do list.

God is not the God of burdens. The yoke of Christ is light, for He is the Lord of Sabbath. We are called to enter His rest. No, we are commanded. Hebrews 4 states, “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” That promise of rest still lingers. I am not sure Hebrews is speaking of the same type of rest Pascal notes for our earthly existence, but it is awareness of that eternal Rest which enables us to rightly rest now. This does not mean ceasing to evangelize, ceasing to care for your children, ceasing to further the Kingdom or glorify God through your vocation and relationships. It simply means that striving to enter Rest is not the same as striving for anything else. It is rest in and of itself.

It is knowing your weakness and knowing God’s love. Knowing that Christ is our sympathetic priest and we therefore can go before the throne of God with confidence. It is knowing that the redemption of the world has already occurred through Christ and we only play the part he has given us the strength to bear. It is not worrying about anything but knowing that Love Himself is a provider for His children, and that we are His children. John 15 reveals Christ commanding His disciples, “Abide in me, and I will abide in you… Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” Abiding, striving for Rest, resting in the here and now is not being disobedient, nor unfruitful. In fact, it is the opposite, but it is also dwelling in the fullness of Love, being ok with being alone, sitting quietly before your God, and knowing that despite your fallenness, you are being transformed from one glory to another through faith and grace.

On Surrender and Getting Lost

2007-04-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when the world overwhelms and thought confuses, it is a grand and inspiring journey to find oneself in the midst of all the turmoil. “Finding oneself” is a universal human obsession. Identity, self, being—these are things worthy to know. Such knowledge positively impacts living, so that we might act with confidence in who we are and what we can do in this world. But sometimes, finding oneself, though a hard and seemingly worthwhile endeavor, is the last thing we should do or desire to do. Sometimes, losing oneself is the most glorious experience of all.

“Getting lost” is never a good thing. Or so it seems to be. If one is in a dark and scary wood, a path or a light seems to be the most desirable. Darkness, fear of the unknown, lack of consistency or stability—finding entails leaving these things behind. But losing oneself, that is only thrusting oneself in the control of another, or not even another, but only that which is not you. It is surrender. And yet, somehow, losing oneself is entirely different than getting lost. Losing yourself is about putting yourself where you want to be and then entirely forgetting about who you are.

This is why love songs continually choke us with felt emotion, ideas of grand adventures, old stories from history and all other such epics and meta-narratives entice us: they take us beyond ourselves. Finding yourself in the arms of your lover, to whom you have pledged your life and body, to whom you are bound in an intimate union that surpasses all earthly bounds, is to lose yourself in an utterly delicious way. Embarking on a journey for a purpose bigger than life, facing dragons and swordsmen, fighting Mordor for the sake of a fellowship—these take you out of you and put you in an entirely new and more meaningful context. Remembering heroes of old, of voyages of Christopher Columbus, fights of Independence, runaway slaves in the civil war, makes you identify—exchange or enmesh your identity—with someone entirely other. Love and epics take you beyond yourself; they make you a part of something you know to be better than self, and suddenly self makes sense.

In Matthew 16:25, Jesus finishes a rebuke of Satan and “setting your mind on the things of man.” He says to his beloved disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Getting lost might not be such a bad thing after all.

Good Friday

2007-04-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

I broke a promise to God this week. I was supposed to dedicate a large portion of time thinking and writing about Passion week, abstaining from more routine duties to find quiet time and focus on God. But I didn’t. I hardly did routine devotions. I found time to work and study and play, but not enough time to reflect on the greatest sacrifice of the cosmos.

However, God still met me. Being a God of grace, he found me and let me learn how to find Him in daily experience. This week, I have been reminded of a prayer I used to pray in 10th grade. I remember a lot of my friends and family members hurting; I felt it so deeply, and yet felt as if I was in a good place myself. My God had met me, but I felt the burden of other’s pain. I wanted more than anything else to take their hurt upon me, so I told God that I would be content living in pain every day the rest of my life so long as the people I loved were allowed to live free. I knew it was a futile prayer—God would never grant it to me—and I think it was more motivated out of anger than anything else. I didn’t see the reason for the pain, for the physical affliction, for the hurt in relationships, for the brokenness that seemed to be in every human life, and I wanted to show God that there was a way out. Mine was a smarter system: have one person take on the hurt of the whole world.

And then I remembered. It sounds silly now, to forget that something akin to that prayer was answered 2000 years ago, but I was so absorbed in the physical brokenness of this world that I could not even see the much deeper spiritual brokenness that Christ came to heal. I wanted redemption from a lifetime of earthly affliction for those I loved (family and friends); Christ wanted redemption from an eternity of spiritual brokenness for those He loved: the whole world. For one moment I truly saw, on some small level, the redemption plan in all its glory. And that memory has come flooding back to me time and time again over this week.

This is Passion week, beginning with Christ’s triumphal entry on Palm Sunday. Think of the Roman people, and the earthly oppression from which they believed Christ came to set them free. They saw only their microscopic picture of momentary affliction, and asked too small a thing from an almighty God. They praised Him as a deliverer, not knowing their true bondage. They did not ask for what Christ came to do—they did not even expect it. They wanted deliverance from a kingdom of earthly persecution; God incarnate came to deliver them from a kingdom of eternal darkness. To enable the greater freedom, Christ offered his life as a gift; His “failure” to enable their smaller freedom enraged the people, and they rose up to drive him away.

As I sit on Good Friday, listening to the words of Matthew, the promises of God from the lips of a man (the Man), I know the fleeting pains of this earth in right perspective. Sometimes we all get so lost in the dramas and present trials of our earthly lives (no matter how small or great in magnitude) and forget the greater reality that transcends earthly living. Yes, strains in relationships hurt; facing death and near-deaths of loved ones is a sobering reality; epistemic uncertainty is, well, unsettling; feeling distant from God is a great weight upon the soul—all of these things are causes of true and great grief. The brokenness of the world is crushing, to say the least. But then again, it is brokenness of the world, not of the cosmos. We have put our trust in the creator of the cosmos and the healer of this one, time-bound world. He offers the gift of perfect love, epitomized one night, one Good Friday one hundred thousand Fridays ago, so that the glory of an eternal heaven may make worthwhile all brokenness of an earth that is passing away.

Paradox of Thine (reflections on Easter)

2007-03-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

My heart aches as I reflect
On Easter morn’s black sky,
Waiting for dawn and sunrise,
As my heart awaits new life.
You who are all holiness
Killed death itself for life
That I might live for You.
.
Thou, my God, art more than me.
My feeble soul cries in memory:
That my finite fingers nailed
Infinity to a wooden tree,
Common and divine.
With feeble strength, I pierced
The side of an almighty God.
The vine Himself who thirsted,
The all-knowing who doubted,
The perfect who was all sin,
That sinners might be perfect.

It is I, Lord, coward sinner
Who mocked that precious face
And spat on You, gift of heaven
Who willed to take my place.
Look not on me, for my shame
You bore that I could look
On You makes me look away.

Broken hearts find their strength
In the brokenness of you.
And somehow your perfect power
Our weakness makes more perfect.
O, Paradox of God, take this plea
Of wounded sinner who shares
The wounds you bore for me.

What debt can I conceive
You paid with outstretched arm
And ask only that I believe.
But my faint heart cannot but doubt;
I answer not your cry, and grieve
To be the sin who made you die.
O God, lift my ashen clothes
And double-dark black soul.
You who from death’s dark rose
Restore my soul to light and life
And let me grieve no more.

I who play no part in this
Story of the redeemed
Beg you to open my clenched fist--
Redeemer, redeem me too.
Unworthy, I cannot even will
To choose the life I seek;
But you O God, who I betrayed
With a kiss upon your perfect cheek
Can make anew the soul you made
And purify the night in which I live.
O Maker of eyes, You restore my sight.
O Mercy incarnate, You give
My heart relief from its poor plight
And Sweet nail-pierced hands destroy
My grief, and wipe my tears away.
In Your praise I sing of one pure joy:
Your death my life began, on Easter day.

Discourse on Courage

2007-03-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

Today I watched my courage fade away. It is a simple story, but a resounding one in my own life. I am an avid equestrian and keep a young Thorougbred mare at a stable near school. Every so often (during off days and on the weekends) I escape to the wonderful world of horses for a brief few hours, grooming, training, riding, breathing in the sights and sounds of a busy stable. Today was to be such a day. Awake at 7:10, out to my car by 8 am. The morning sun peeked through the clouds, adding a special touch to my growing excitement. I could already feel the wind in my hair and the steady beat of my horse’s hooves against the sand of the arena. I already waited for the pause in her stride and then the lift of her forelegs as we sailed over a crosspole, then a vertical jump, then an oxer.

When I got to the stable, however, I noticed, much to my dismay, that every round pen had horses turned out in them. My mare had not been ridden in a week and so I knew better than to ride her without letting her blow some steam in a turn-out pen—without me on her. I tacked her up, waiting for my opportunity, then happily watched as a stable hand emptied one pen. I rushed to it and turned my mare out. As I anticipated, she bucked and lunged, then tore around me, the momentum blowing her mane back as if a sail on a ship. After a few minutes, though she was still unsettled, I took her back to the main arena and prepared for another glorious ride. As I began preliminary exercises on my excited mare, another stable hand crossed the arena, leading a magnificent grey Andalusian stallion. My mare pricked her ears, and the stallion arched his neck and laid his ears back at his groom.

A quick “Oh, no” floated through my mind as I turned my horse away from the stallion and trotted to the other end of the arena. I wanted no part of this stallion’s wild temper to interrupt my beautiful ride. The stallion passed, but the groom put him in a pen adjacent to the arena, in direct sight and sound of my own horse. The second the stallion was free, his nostrils flared and he leaped into the air, exploding into a fury of bucks and rears, then dashing toward the other end of the pen. At his initial action, I felt my mare freeze. I pushed her forward and began asking for her full attention, knowing that any lack of confidence or skill on my part would result in catastrophe. She went forward willingly, but through my legs I felt a tension all through her back. Her head came up as if into my lap and she danced to the side. At that moment the stallion made a sudden bolt across his pen and my mare nearly lost it. I shoved my seat deep into the saddle and drew up my reins, both asking her to go forward and yield to my hands. I drew her up into a collected trot but every stride felt like a ton of dynamite ready to explode.

My mare is unpredictable and one moment she will be a gentle angel, and the next she will be in the air and I on the ground. She has only succeeded in dumping me once in our seven years together, but I was not going to let this be the second time. After ten minutes of an agonizing ride, with the unruly stallion biting at the bars of his pen and my mare intermittently leaping and dancing, I stopped her and jumped off, sick to my stomach. I tried to find a pen to make her run some steam off, but I knew that as long as the stallion was in the pen and excited by my mare, I would never have the peaceful ride I had been hoping for. So I left.

As I put my mare away, despise of self and shame of fear crept over me. I had ridden out many wild rides—why not this time? Why did I let only my own fear keep me from doing that which I desired most in the world? The confliction of competing desires overwhelmed me. My heart wanted that ride, that rush of exhilaration, the feeling of companionship with my mare, the beauty of the art of dressage, the adrenaline of jumping, the exquisite pleasure of a peaceful canter across the arena. And yet my stomach, full of self-protection and fear of death or injury, dominated my actions. Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes writes that man is only motivated by fear, and that freedom is a small price to pay for safety and security. I find myself to prove his insight into human nature, but I despise it. I would rather put safety on the line, within reason, and live beyond myself. I would rather let the act of riding take me beyond me and lose myself in a world I adore. I desire to participate in a life of freedom and joy, and yet my own self robs me of this. There is something to be said for the moment of suspension over a jump, for the rhythm and grace of the passage, for the piercing feel of that perfect canter, that is worth all the danger. Life, in every area, draws me in to such risk, allures me to ask this question: What will be your response to dual desires for freedom and security? It asks me such a question, but gives me little answer...

Fulfillment

2007-03-02T01:45:00.000-08:00

Who wants a lofty God? No one lauds the King who sits high on his throne and never descends to the people themselves. King Henry V in Shakespeare’s play was beloved because he called the peasants his ‘brothers, friends, and countrymen.’ If God were not like that, I think I would hate Him. We of course do not deserve having Him stoop so low, and then further raise us up, and yet it seems as if He should. Somehow we think we deserve to be at His ranking, whether that means dragging Him down or exalting us. Thankfully, He does do this, and whether I attribute it to grace or justice, it does not change the fact that He did indeed humble himself for our glorification.

And yet, I feel as if He is still off in the netherworld. He is some vague, intangible Spirit who wrote compelling Words that tickle the ear and give hope to the heart, but do not deign to encompass the body. I cannot wrap my arms around Him. I cannot cry out and audibly hear His voice respond in comfort. I cannot slip my hand in His and let Him lead me when I am most scared. I cannot bury my head into His shoulder and feel strong arms take hold of me to set me upright once again.

I know that I am asking for a de-transfiguration—that instead of His human body being transformed into His right glorified Self, He rather manifest Himself again in the tangible form—but I cannot help but want this. Perhaps my faith is just not strong enough, but I still want that from Him. I am not so foolish as to think that my desires for safety, strength, stability, etc. can be gratified in any human form but the Divine incarnate. But I would like the Divine incarnate… now.

If I cannot have Him in such form, why doesn’t he give me a substitute? One could argue that He does offer such a tangible substitute in the idea of Christian marriage. And so I could easily be led astray for fulfillment of desires in an earthly union. But Scripture forces me to ponder such a desire. Any substitute for a genuine relationship with God (any aspect of Him, physical, spiritual, emotional) is simply an imposter, an idol. We all know how strongly Scripture speaks against idols.

Yet despite the fact I think God clearly says not to gratify the desires of the flesh, I think this is for our benefit. As one who has had little romantic involvement at all, I do not know what fulfillment of the flesh looks like in that sense. But I can imagine. I can imagine waking up one morning after living a life of focusing on the less-than-Divine, on the human “fulfillment” of divine desires, of indulging myself with physical comfort in its fullest form—I can imagine just how unfulfilled I might feel after that. I never want that feeling of utter emptiness, of disappointment and desolateness after putting all my hopes of fulfillment in any earthly place. I don’t think God wants that for us either, and so He calls us to continue trusting Him, to continue living on earth only in light of heaven. It is not to deny the physical, but to incorporate it beautifully into an entire self, not let it be the thing itself. And that, I think, is earthly fulfillment. (Of course, heavenly fulfillment is another thing entirely…)

On Desire

2007-02-15T00:57:00.000-08:00

Tonight, two beautiful things encompassed me: a community of friends and stunning music. I was standing in Downtown Disney, in the midst of a circle of amazing people I am blessed to call my friends, listening to Drew Tretick play his violin. His Juliard-trained fingers both coaxed and commanded the melodies to come forth, overwhelming me with the tangible sound of beauty. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, feeling the closeness of friends standing by and wanting nothing more than to suspend time once more.

A relentless thought had been nagging me all day, as I walked through rose petals strewn for someone else, noticed a name (not my own) written lovingly on the sidewalk, watched couples looking adoringly into each other's eyes. The thought, insistent and insidious, was that I was alone. And yet, it is a lie. I am in no way alone, physically or metaphysically. Right now as I type, two of my dearest friends are studying in the room with me. My mom sent me a text message at 12:30 this morning telling me she loved me and wishing me Happy Valentines Day. I returned to my dorm room to find candy and notes on the door from a girl down the hall. When I awoke later, I noticed in the light filtering through the blinds the silhouettes of two of the most beautiful roses I had ever seen. They were for my roommate and me from our group of guy friends. And so on, gifts of appreciation, tokens of love.

Valentine’s Day is a beautiful day and well worth setting aside one day out of the year to remind us of that potent and precious part of humanity, that which makes humanity and also indicates our stamp of divinity. The fact that we are made in the image of God means that to love and love well is a deep, if not the deepest, desire of our heart. I pondered this as I felt the music of Downtown Disney swell around me. Alone? Unsatisfied? Hardly. God, in his infinite mercy, has placed me exactly where I want to be. I recognize that I am blessed; I know that I am among very few people who receive such outpourings of love from their friends and family. But most of us have such blessings, if we only take the time to look around. I can imagine a different life, a ‘better’ life where I am being passionately pursued by the man of my dreams. But that is not for today. Today is not about romance for me, but is nonetheless about abounding love.

Life doesn’t demand romance to be romantic. At least, not the romance that is obsessed over on Valentine’s Day. I stood and listened to that music and knew that my God above has been asking me one question for a very long time: What do you want? It is the question he asked the man in front of the healing waters, the question he asked the blind men… It is the question he is asking me—and you. What are your deepest desires? What is it that you truly want? Do you really want to be healed? Or are you comfortable in your “pain” of singleness and prefer to mope about your lack of boyfriend/girlfriend than look around you and be astounded by the goodness of life. If you answered yes to the latter, even subconsciously as I think I did for quite a few years, then you are cheating yourself out of life.

I know my deepest desires. I want to love and be loved. Moulin Rouge depicts a perverted love so close to true love that it hurts in its beauty, and articulates it thus: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” In words, this is what I want, but I am afraid my view is so different and so similar that I could never articulate it well or briefly. But I do know this: my desire to love and be loved is synonymous with my desire to pursue God. Do not dismiss this as a cliché. I have clung to this, abandoned it, returned to it, experienced it as true. To serve and follow and know Him and all that He has set before me in who I am and who He has given me in community… This is what I desire truly, deeply, passionately. It is only the idleness of my mind, the waylaid longings born out of temptation, and the comfortableness of complaint that keeps me from living every stage of life, specifically in my ‘singleness’, in utter delight and pulsating joy for all that comprises the life of the here and the now.

The Mystery of the Reality

2006-12-28T00:23:00.000-08:00

I posted my reflections of Nativity Story at the Righthouse, but for some reason the picture I wanted wouldn't upload on the old Blogger, so here it is... Below is an excerpt with a link, if you would like to read the full post:

"It was not as glorious a birth as retrospect might lead us to fancy. We picture the radiant baby Jesus beaming up at a tired but happy Mary and Joseph while bright jewels surrounds them beneath the piercing light of the star above. But that was one brief, shining moment surrounded in a sea of darkness. The obscurity of dreams and prophecies, the doubts cast on Mary and Joseph, the stumbling donkey, the weary shepherds, the hopeless cities and soul-less soldiers. What could one baby do for that world of hurt and loneliness, betrayal and despair?"

Unfinished thoughts

2006-12-22T18:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder how starkly different our age is than any other. Technology is often blamed for a vast myriad of evils, many of which are not due to technology at all. However, the technology of cinema, while used for many goods, has risen a new evil model to the stage: the non-existent. I am thinking of the most recently released James Bond movie, Casino Royale. Men around the country watch as their hero engages in gratuitous violence, objectification of women, hard drinking, and obscene gambling. But this is not the problem. In times past, (while not playing an inverse chronological snobbery, I am simply noting an observed benefit of past times), such men still existed. Perhaps no one did it quite so well as Bond, but rough and incredibly capable yet brutish people have always existed. They simply weren’t viewed as heroes. The effects of their lives were visible in life—no one could get around the fact that when they went home at night they didn’t sleep well, or couldn’t love properly, or displayed some ill effects of their lives. In short, no one wanted to be like them (at least good people didn’t). With Bond, while the screen does depict some of the effects of his style of life (a large point of the movie), he still goes back into it none the worse for the wear, because he is, after all, who he is. Now there’s a hero.

Bond’s equal in wit and beauty displays an extraordinary act of courage and sacrifice in dying to save his life (which, I’ll admit, is a high and redeeming point of the movie) but you can’t (and shouldn’t) get over someone like that at the rate Bond does. And back he goes, to the life of one-night-stands, killing people in cold blood, and being incredibly good at what he does. In reality, Bond would be the most effective tool we have against evil—with one caveat: he comes close to it himself. Without the underlying knowledge of the consequences of destroying human life and an off-kilter concept of right and wrong, Bond’s body of steel and stunningly acute mind and self-awareness could all be aiming the wrong way. How do we keep such effective weapons pointing at the right target? Well, without a moral compass (including the ability to love openly), Bond seems like he just might be hitting bulls-eyes—on the wrong side. It is a little unsettling to think that the stunningly competent Bond need shed no tear over the death of the one person he thought he might have truly loved.

This is not to say that agents of ‘the good side’ should always be kept slightly dull, a little unprepared—just in case they did turn to evil—but to say that those sharply trained human weapons need… well, a little humanness.

I don’t know how this can be accomplished in reality—that’s the problem. Without completely shutting oneself off from the job, walking away from a murder with your hand gently around your girlfriend’s waist, I don’t see how one can stand to live. To be human is to be sensitive to humanity, at least to some degree, and while Bond’s actions of cold-hearted killing are for the greater good of all humanity (he kills those that kill.), mustn’t he at least acknowledge the humanity of even those he kills?

(Not so great) Expectations

2006-12-21T00:11:00.000-08:00

I watched today as things fell apart. They always do. I don't even know what started it, but two Christian friends were getting upset with each other-- again. Amber’s voice got higher and the questions became more intense. Julie responded in a huffy voice and her actions turned snappish and expressive of her disapproval as she tore through her Bible to find the piece of paper Amber wanted. They were supposed to be praying, but they had begun arguing about how to pray. Should they write a list of people to pray for, or simply go ‘as the Spirit led’ (a phrase that made my conservative, recently-read-Calvin’s-Institutes mind cringe)? Amber was arguing for the former, and Julie the latter, but it didn’t really matter who sided where. It only mattered that they had different expectations of what was supposed to happen and how it was supposed to happen.

Both Amber and Julie are great planners—on their feet, in an instant they have everything minutely detailed in their head, including exactly who will say what in what kind of voice specifically when and in relation to what. Yup, great planners—otherwise known as control freaks. Of course, I can’t excuse myself from that category either. I like things to go exactly as I expected, and I generally manipulate, jockey, and cajole the system so that things do go exactly as I expected. I have done that so many times, and been consequently disappointed so many times when reality happens, that I no longer dream of anything. World famous writer? Maybe. Supreme Court justice? Probably not. I don’t want to let myself hope so. Hope and expectations go hand in hand, and I know that generally expectations are dashed, and that having them only leads to disappointment, disunity, and angst. So why bother? I can simply accept what fate hands me, and continue on in life. After all, I have seen family and friends interact in that horridly cyclic entrapment of disappointment and resentment too many times. I won’t go there myself, nor will I drag other people into it. So I won’t expect—anything.

Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations, which is one of my favorite books (I love Dickens and his unimaginably long-winded descriptions of every minute detail). Ironically, though, I have written my life to be Least Expectations, and tried very hard not to be unsatisfied with how things are. The problem is, I still am greatly disappointed with reality much of the time. Even if I expect something bad to happen, and something bad does happen, well, something bad still happens. My expectations didn’t add to the badness of it, but they didn’t change it to good either.

Hope seems something entirely other than expectations. Expectations can be for either the mundane or the magnificent, but they are by and large ineffective. My uttering, “I expect such and such will happen” has absolutely no bearing upon whether or not such and such will happen. True hope, on the other hand, does something about it. Hope is placed in that which cannot be deferred (if placed well), and then aims to achieve it. It is only for the magnificent, but uses the mundane to attain it. If I hope that I will be a writer someday, well then I am very well going to write often, and try to write as best I can, all the while praying for divine aid to inspire my pen, keyboard, or whatever writing implement I implement for the purpose. Expecting, on the other hand, connotes entirely too much passivity. If I hope to somehow be affiliated with the Supreme Court someday, then I will strive to do my best in my Constitutional Law class now, and work very hard toward that goal. Yet these are all still hopes that may be dismayed. It is entirely possible that I be involved in a horrific boating accident that takes both my arms, thereby stymieing my writing career (obviously) and my ability to wave my arms wildly in court to accentuate a much-needed point. So how then does hope help?

“Hope,” Thomas Aquinas once said, “refers to the good which one hopes to obtain and the help whereby one hopes to obtain it.” Ah yes, the Helper. Paul knew about the Helper, and how “hope does not disappoint for the love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Paul stands squarely behind me, “Pressing onward, that I might receive the prize.” I am not alone in striving to attain goals. My fellow brethren in Christ strive alongside of me, and the Spirit indwells me that I might not be dismayed. He will also direct my hopes as I become a stronger Christian. Becoming a world-famous writer or a Supreme Court justice would be, well, dreams come true, but I don’t have to face a nightmare if I don’t become either one. As I grow closer to the Lord, I am learning that some of my ‘hopes’ are only misplaced expectations, and I realize more and more what my true hope is. I might be disappointed when my expectations are waylaid, but ultimately my “object of hope is something which is intelligible and arduous, or rather, something which transcends the intellect” (thanks, Thomas), and the momentary disappointments will only be part of my journey of desire toward that arduous good. And meanwhile, that ultimate hope is allowing my true hopes for this life to be fulfilled (she says as she continues to write...)

2006-12-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

Greetings, my friends. This site will be the central location for documenting all of my thoughts, as well as recording the unexpected discoveries that make life meaningful: the quotidian, the cliche-- and the serendipitous.