I'm sitting up in a bed that feels too foreign to offer me any amount of comfort. Though I am no stranger to travels, this room, perhaps this City feels particularly alien to me for some reason... I know one of my wise ass friends is going to blame it on the mormons...
I've left the light off as I type this so as not to disturb my brother who is in the adjacent bed, sound asleep. And so it is dark, and motionless and for a moment I can forget where I am entirely...
For a moment I imagine I am far from everything that I have come to know as reality... I imagine that I am lost in the truest sense of the word, lost from everyone and everything I know... I imagine that I am floating out in space, weightless, liberated from gravity...I am swimming among the countless stars and information hungry satellites... only my movements are not cumbersome at all, for I am not fighting against any water...just endless space...leading to more endless space... I am matter suspended mysteriously in non matter... I am changing without choice, I must change here, my body, my mind, my understanding won't do...I am questioning everything and I am relearning everything, I am wasting away....I am being born again. I am a supernova, and a nebula.
And out here in the cosmos, having been altered, reincarnated, somehow I have come to understand more, more about life and God and the universe... It is as though I am now physically closer to Truth, physically closer to God...not in my being, but in vicinity...and life, existence, and even death have regained a level of coherence...a level of objective meaning... and light has painted over every darkly shadow, washed over the enigmatic...
This peculiar fantasy of mine is interrupted by the noise of semi trucks, that pass by like a gust of wind outside my window... and I am jolted back into reality, and I remember again that I am in Utah, in a cheap motel room too close to the Interstate, I remember that I am caught between four walls, constrained by physical laws, I am in tension and at a loss for words, and limited in my cognitive finitude. I can't fathom much of anything or make heads from tails, I can't fly and I remain so painfully far from making any sense of this life, so far in fact from God...
most of all, I can't sleep.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Glimpse.
Today began with errands, as I am preparing to head to Idaho Falls on Monday. I had the tires on my truck rotated, picked up some last minute items and spent the day making cd's for my beloved cousins whom I will be with in a couple days. It began this way, but is ending a bit differently...
Since most of my audience is made up of close friends, most of you will know that some weeks ago I had a difficult incident occur, involving a friend. I've alluded to it of course in my recent writings, but haven't really talked about it directly... I have described it as the worst day of my life so far...and that it still remains. You see, one of the guys in my small group had a psychotic break in my backyard, and I had to make some very difficult decisions, and I had to do things that I pray I will never again have to repeat... It ended in a pretty serious physical altercation, a swarm of policeman and firefighters, a long night at the hospital and a court hearing at a behavorial health center...and that has been my last month... My friend has a heavy cross to bear...heavier than most are given...and I've tried this last year to help lighten the weight...I've tried the best that I can I think... but that evening, in one instance I felt my heart break into tiny fragments, the way that fine glass shatters when dropped against a dense surface...
Something changed in me from this day forward... I have begun to withold my love for people that is unless I have deeemed them "safe to love." I have kept people at a distance...I have been afraid to care too much because I had realized that love freakin' hurts...
I have been trying to hang on to God...to find Him in all of this...only God didn't seem big enough anymore...
I so desperately needed God to be larger than I had previously known Him to be...larger than the feeling you get at a worship service, larger than a neat bible study...larger than a $.20 raise on someone's paycheck...larger than a Monster.com, and larger yet than a Cupid...I needed God to step in and bring healing and restoration on a life that was severely broken...and hopeless without him...and I still need this.
But this afternoon, I wonder if I have had a glimpse...
Thing is, I have not met one on one with my friend since the difficult ordeal...I'm not sure precisely the reasons... I think I've been afraid...afraid of being hurt again in this way... and with some reluctance we shared a late lunch... and we talked.
Because neither of us are very good at small talk, we discussed difficult things...you know the things that really matter...(which I had thought I wanted to avoid at all costs)...but it was good. We sat together through moments of involved conversation...and moments of stillness and quiet reflection....I slowly sipped Dr. Pepper through a red, plastic straw and chewed on ice and he often stared out the large window behind me...Soon, afternoon gave way to early evening and I watched as the summer spoils settled in the streets... I could see that he was hurting deeply, it was written in his heavy eyes and the lines on his face...and I recall thinking at that moment, that I just really cared about him...and I wanted to walk by his side to share the weight again, because it was getting really heavy for him to do it alone..and I wanted him to know that he mattered...I wanted him to know how Jesus felt about him.
So where is glimspe?
I suppose it's what was uncovered underneath the carnage of everything that has and hasn't occured this year...a midst the swirl of fear and doubt...somewhere along a trail of tears...I found it again...when I thought it was finally lost....it is the cornerstone of our lives: His Love.
Since most of my audience is made up of close friends, most of you will know that some weeks ago I had a difficult incident occur, involving a friend. I've alluded to it of course in my recent writings, but haven't really talked about it directly... I have described it as the worst day of my life so far...and that it still remains. You see, one of the guys in my small group had a psychotic break in my backyard, and I had to make some very difficult decisions, and I had to do things that I pray I will never again have to repeat... It ended in a pretty serious physical altercation, a swarm of policeman and firefighters, a long night at the hospital and a court hearing at a behavorial health center...and that has been my last month... My friend has a heavy cross to bear...heavier than most are given...and I've tried this last year to help lighten the weight...I've tried the best that I can I think... but that evening, in one instance I felt my heart break into tiny fragments, the way that fine glass shatters when dropped against a dense surface...
Something changed in me from this day forward... I have begun to withold my love for people that is unless I have deeemed them "safe to love." I have kept people at a distance...I have been afraid to care too much because I had realized that love freakin' hurts...
I have been trying to hang on to God...to find Him in all of this...only God didn't seem big enough anymore...
I so desperately needed God to be larger than I had previously known Him to be...larger than the feeling you get at a worship service, larger than a neat bible study...larger than a $.20 raise on someone's paycheck...larger than a Monster.com, and larger yet than a Cupid...I needed God to step in and bring healing and restoration on a life that was severely broken...and hopeless without him...and I still need this.
But this afternoon, I wonder if I have had a glimpse...
Thing is, I have not met one on one with my friend since the difficult ordeal...I'm not sure precisely the reasons... I think I've been afraid...afraid of being hurt again in this way... and with some reluctance we shared a late lunch... and we talked.
Because neither of us are very good at small talk, we discussed difficult things...you know the things that really matter...(which I had thought I wanted to avoid at all costs)...but it was good. We sat together through moments of involved conversation...and moments of stillness and quiet reflection....I slowly sipped Dr. Pepper through a red, plastic straw and chewed on ice and he often stared out the large window behind me...Soon, afternoon gave way to early evening and I watched as the summer spoils settled in the streets... I could see that he was hurting deeply, it was written in his heavy eyes and the lines on his face...and I recall thinking at that moment, that I just really cared about him...and I wanted to walk by his side to share the weight again, because it was getting really heavy for him to do it alone..and I wanted him to know that he mattered...I wanted him to know how Jesus felt about him.
So where is glimspe?
I suppose it's what was uncovered underneath the carnage of everything that has and hasn't occured this year...a midst the swirl of fear and doubt...somewhere along a trail of tears...I found it again...when I thought it was finally lost....it is the cornerstone of our lives: His Love.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
House of cards...
It's a warm Monday evening... and the dark streets are empty but full of peace, excepting the intermittent flash of lights and an ocassional car that passes by at a distance, carrying a weary, third-shift worker or late night visitor. And though I sit at a vacant table, upon a nicely swept sidewalk, I can almost feel the asphalt as it sweats off another long summer day. The city sleeps early tonight...but I am wide awake. I have been unable to fully sleep for weeks now and though my body aches of fatigue and my mind is hardly able to lend itself to the basic function of coherence, I find that I am still far from my bed... still so far from the weaving of dreams.
Though I have been laboring through several books in recent weeks, I cracked open a new one just hours ago and completed it in a single sitting... I was strongly prompted by a friend last night, to read it and to read it with urgency... and I found that once begun, it was difficult to put down. It is one of those rare books that makes everything else in life seem like an interruption and for a time you want to be completely lost, not to emerge again until you have turned the final page.
C.S. Lewis fell in love late in life only to lose her too early... during his mourning he turned to writing in a journal, portions of which were later published as A Grief Observed. I tried to describe the book to a friend tonight, and was at a loss for words... I actually called it "good" and immediately started back peddling, because "good" seemed too lighthearted and inconsequential a term. I think it is profound. Life altering if one is willing... but it is a difficult book...and you will feel your heart break over and over again...that is if you have blood still coursing through your veins...from the foreward and the introduction to the very last word...
At the moment, I feel sad. And while I know that so many of my friends would just like me to feel better because I've been struggling lately... I can't say that I feel any better about anything, but my sorrow is at the least, different now and I think that is a good thing.
Recently, I wrote about faith being tried by fire... and it is something I have been pondering a great deal. Lewis in A Grief..., actually echoes this idea (or rather I echo his) by describing his faith being like a house of cards... Lewis had just buried the love of his life and was struggling immensely. He was actually feeling overwhelmed. And though in the past he had been able to hold strong and steady in his commitment to God at the pain of others, it was now so very different. In a razor sharp moment of vulnerability (as only deep pain affords) he admits that there had been a distancing from the pain of others and though he presumed to sincerely care about their sorrow, nothing was on the line for him personally, but now suddenly all was different. His house was crumbling...and so the elements of their construction were to be questioned...
Lewis writes:
He further adds:
After finishing the book, I met a friend for dinner/dessert and on my drive home I started to wonder about my house of cards...
See, my faith, the faith that I thought I had is being broken now...at least this is how it feels. It has been built upon some truths for sure, but probably as many falsities...built upon my own dreams and ambitions, my hopes and plans to get my share in this life. I've wanted to follow God because I thought it would mean that I could fulfill my wildest dreams and one day find a great wife, a gratifying job and have a wonderful, loving family, but mostly I've wanted to be shielded from the long winters of life, the agony and heartbreak. The truth is, these are all seemingly moral desires, and they seem common among all of humanity, but how soon do they fall to become a barrier in our fallen state? And how soon do they simply fall? Maybe my faith then has been built upon a God reduced to my limited ideas, ideas that made my decision to follow Christ more manageable and easier to swallow, my self-serving savior. The thing is, all of this has been hidden underneath a blanket, and perhaps this blanket has been my pride in the fact that I abstain from the apparent immoralities of the world, in my choosing to accept the truth of the gospel and thereby being a follower of Christ. As a result, the problematic tenants of my faith have gone undetected having been overshadowed by a camoflauged religiosity of sorts.
So the weak foundations of my faith may be my hope for a "good life," one free from too much trauma, in so far as it influences my allegiance to Christ. It is a subtle evil I think, and therefore all the more dangerous because it becomes easy to justify...And I'm not proposing that it's wrong for believers to seek happiness,...rather that we musn't seek happiness on our terms and by our incomplete definitions. Our definitions must be revolutionized, to seek His will above all else, at all costs...but it's so hard, nothing could be more demanding...
And now I consider with heavy countenance, that after all that I had thought I had learned these years... my "surrender" to God is still so very contingent on the fulfillment of my will, and therefore in fact no surrender at all...for I've come to the altar, but have kept my hands clenched tightly and hidden behind my back and have offered all of myself, all but everything that means anything.
And yet we see no sign of this in Jesus...who was obedient to the very end...
"The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that is has been found difficult and left untried"- G.K. Chesterton
The truth is, the gospel message is probably about as difficult as it gets. So much so that one day Jesus' disciples asked in wonder, "who then can enter the kingdom?" they were in utter disbelief at His teachings... And Jesus said things like, He had come to bring a sword, and that if we loved our father or mother more than Him we were not worthy of him...and that he was basically blazing a trail for us when he walked the hills of calvary with a heavy cross on his back after having been beaten, later to be nailed to it and hung to die (Matt 10:37-39). He called the road to salvation a narrow path and described two people in a field, that one would be taken and the other left... and said that whoever sought to save his life would lose it, but that whoever lost his life for His sake would find it... therein, 11 of the 12 disciples that He chose, his dearest friends were martyred. I've said all that to say that maybe we shouldn't be too suprised at a really painful life...and if we are, as I often am by trials, then maybe we have a lot of presuppositions about God...(1 Peter 4:12) And I think that is what Lewis is saying in his book. His house of cards, his supposed faith was something of an imagination...as perhaps mine has been...
And so I am at a fork in the road, arrived at by a sober look at life... a life that is in constant tension between joy and pain... and as I journeyed through the words of Lewis' journal I got the sense that perhaps our greatest joys in life lead to the deepest wounds and I think this is painted most poignantly in the example of lovers all of whom must one day be separated by death...
If this should be our cold reality, then I can no longer conform God to my image of Him... it just doesn't make sense...not matter how hard I try...it doesn't seem to fit... and so once again, the walls of my faith must be torn down...to be rebuilt...and again I must lift my eyes up beyond the city skies, beyond the clouds, and stars, to another world, where laughter is not to be followed by tears...
Though I have been laboring through several books in recent weeks, I cracked open a new one just hours ago and completed it in a single sitting... I was strongly prompted by a friend last night, to read it and to read it with urgency... and I found that once begun, it was difficult to put down. It is one of those rare books that makes everything else in life seem like an interruption and for a time you want to be completely lost, not to emerge again until you have turned the final page.
C.S. Lewis fell in love late in life only to lose her too early... during his mourning he turned to writing in a journal, portions of which were later published as A Grief Observed. I tried to describe the book to a friend tonight, and was at a loss for words... I actually called it "good" and immediately started back peddling, because "good" seemed too lighthearted and inconsequential a term. I think it is profound. Life altering if one is willing... but it is a difficult book...and you will feel your heart break over and over again...that is if you have blood still coursing through your veins...from the foreward and the introduction to the very last word...
At the moment, I feel sad. And while I know that so many of my friends would just like me to feel better because I've been struggling lately... I can't say that I feel any better about anything, but my sorrow is at the least, different now and I think that is a good thing.
Recently, I wrote about faith being tried by fire... and it is something I have been pondering a great deal. Lewis in A Grief..., actually echoes this idea (or rather I echo his) by describing his faith being like a house of cards... Lewis had just buried the love of his life and was struggling immensely. He was actually feeling overwhelmed. And though in the past he had been able to hold strong and steady in his commitment to God at the pain of others, it was now so very different. In a razor sharp moment of vulnerability (as only deep pain affords) he admits that there had been a distancing from the pain of others and though he presumed to sincerely care about their sorrow, nothing was on the line for him personally, but now suddenly all was different. His house was crumbling...and so the elements of their construction were to be questioned...
Lewis writes:
Meanwhile, where is God?... When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be-or so it feels-welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside...
He further adds:
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him...
After finishing the book, I met a friend for dinner/dessert and on my drive home I started to wonder about my house of cards...
See, my faith, the faith that I thought I had is being broken now...at least this is how it feels. It has been built upon some truths for sure, but probably as many falsities...built upon my own dreams and ambitions, my hopes and plans to get my share in this life. I've wanted to follow God because I thought it would mean that I could fulfill my wildest dreams and one day find a great wife, a gratifying job and have a wonderful, loving family, but mostly I've wanted to be shielded from the long winters of life, the agony and heartbreak. The truth is, these are all seemingly moral desires, and they seem common among all of humanity, but how soon do they fall to become a barrier in our fallen state? And how soon do they simply fall? Maybe my faith then has been built upon a God reduced to my limited ideas, ideas that made my decision to follow Christ more manageable and easier to swallow, my self-serving savior. The thing is, all of this has been hidden underneath a blanket, and perhaps this blanket has been my pride in the fact that I abstain from the apparent immoralities of the world, in my choosing to accept the truth of the gospel and thereby being a follower of Christ. As a result, the problematic tenants of my faith have gone undetected having been overshadowed by a camoflauged religiosity of sorts.
So the weak foundations of my faith may be my hope for a "good life," one free from too much trauma, in so far as it influences my allegiance to Christ. It is a subtle evil I think, and therefore all the more dangerous because it becomes easy to justify...And I'm not proposing that it's wrong for believers to seek happiness,...rather that we musn't seek happiness on our terms and by our incomplete definitions. Our definitions must be revolutionized, to seek His will above all else, at all costs...but it's so hard, nothing could be more demanding...
And now I consider with heavy countenance, that after all that I had thought I had learned these years... my "surrender" to God is still so very contingent on the fulfillment of my will, and therefore in fact no surrender at all...for I've come to the altar, but have kept my hands clenched tightly and hidden behind my back and have offered all of myself, all but everything that means anything.
And yet we see no sign of this in Jesus...who was obedient to the very end...
"The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that is has been found difficult and left untried"- G.K. Chesterton
The truth is, the gospel message is probably about as difficult as it gets. So much so that one day Jesus' disciples asked in wonder, "who then can enter the kingdom?" they were in utter disbelief at His teachings... And Jesus said things like, He had come to bring a sword, and that if we loved our father or mother more than Him we were not worthy of him...and that he was basically blazing a trail for us when he walked the hills of calvary with a heavy cross on his back after having been beaten, later to be nailed to it and hung to die (Matt 10:37-39). He called the road to salvation a narrow path and described two people in a field, that one would be taken and the other left... and said that whoever sought to save his life would lose it, but that whoever lost his life for His sake would find it... therein, 11 of the 12 disciples that He chose, his dearest friends were martyred. I've said all that to say that maybe we shouldn't be too suprised at a really painful life...and if we are, as I often am by trials, then maybe we have a lot of presuppositions about God...(1 Peter 4:12) And I think that is what Lewis is saying in his book. His house of cards, his supposed faith was something of an imagination...as perhaps mine has been...
And so I am at a fork in the road, arrived at by a sober look at life... a life that is in constant tension between joy and pain... and as I journeyed through the words of Lewis' journal I got the sense that perhaps our greatest joys in life lead to the deepest wounds and I think this is painted most poignantly in the example of lovers all of whom must one day be separated by death...
If this should be our cold reality, then I can no longer conform God to my image of Him... it just doesn't make sense...not matter how hard I try...it doesn't seem to fit... and so once again, the walls of my faith must be torn down...to be rebuilt...and again I must lift my eyes up beyond the city skies, beyond the clouds, and stars, to another world, where laughter is not to be followed by tears...
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Barrier
I've been staring at a blank "page" for over half an hour. The thing is, I feel this intense need to write and yet have no idea what it is I'd like to express. It's been sometime since I've posted anything (though I have continued to write) and there is no guarantee that these "scribblings" today will find any different end. It's strange to think that technology is changing our language... how "scribbling" and "page" among a number of other words don't directly relate to writing anymore... instead we "type" onto "webpages" or "emails" now.
I have found myself in peculiar moods lately. For the most part I've been pretty numb emotionally. I think maybe I *decided that caring too much and feeling too much is too costly...and so perhaps I've resigned in fear to distancing myself from my experience and the experience of others. I know this isn't the healthiest approach. And maybe "decided" isn't the best word to describe my experience... I didn't exactly sit down one day and resolve to take a new approach to life... it just sort of happened...At the same time I haven't been fighting these inclinations because that takes courage, and courage I don't really have at the moment...and so perhaps my passivity is my voice in the matter...my choice.
I attended club last night only to feel displaced. It was good to see people that I care about and the people that care about me... but I felt this wall of separation...this strange invisible barrier. Maybe because I thought that their lives looked somehow a little nicer, neater or more hopeful than mine...even though I know that is far from the truth. Experience tells me that we are all deeply wounded people... And I'm not sure what to make of all of this. Perhaps I feel somehow tainted because of all my doubts these days... and perhaps I fear that some of this will somehow rub off on their nicely pressed clothes, their nicely pressed lives...
David gave a message about finding God... he talked about Job and Paul and Abraham and about cutting the foreskins off wieners. But he mentioned these men to point out their unique encounters with God... how they found him under very different circumstances... Job as a righteous man found God through immense suffering, Abraham through deep obedience and trust and Paul in the midst of his rebellion... We had a time of quiet reflection and worship following the message and we were encouraged to consider how we might encounter God... and I looked across the room to see heads bowed, eyes closed...some rocking softly to the rhythm of the guitar..... and then I raised my eyes up above because I wanted to see God...but my eyes were met with the reality of a cold, impenetrable ceiling made of wood and plaster ... this barrier between me and God. People began singing...and it was beautiful...like the sound of angels...and I thought for a moment that it sounded like how I imagine heaven to be... but my eyes remained on the ceiling... carefully studying the design and I'm not sure why... maybe I was looking for a hole or crevice...any flaw that might serve as a sign that this stiff barrier was in some way porous, vulnerable. That I might find even a drop of grace falling through...
I have found myself in peculiar moods lately. For the most part I've been pretty numb emotionally. I think maybe I *decided that caring too much and feeling too much is too costly...and so perhaps I've resigned in fear to distancing myself from my experience and the experience of others. I know this isn't the healthiest approach. And maybe "decided" isn't the best word to describe my experience... I didn't exactly sit down one day and resolve to take a new approach to life... it just sort of happened...At the same time I haven't been fighting these inclinations because that takes courage, and courage I don't really have at the moment...and so perhaps my passivity is my voice in the matter...my choice.
I attended club last night only to feel displaced. It was good to see people that I care about and the people that care about me... but I felt this wall of separation...this strange invisible barrier. Maybe because I thought that their lives looked somehow a little nicer, neater or more hopeful than mine...even though I know that is far from the truth. Experience tells me that we are all deeply wounded people... And I'm not sure what to make of all of this. Perhaps I feel somehow tainted because of all my doubts these days... and perhaps I fear that some of this will somehow rub off on their nicely pressed clothes, their nicely pressed lives...
David gave a message about finding God... he talked about Job and Paul and Abraham and about cutting the foreskins off wieners. But he mentioned these men to point out their unique encounters with God... how they found him under very different circumstances... Job as a righteous man found God through immense suffering, Abraham through deep obedience and trust and Paul in the midst of his rebellion... We had a time of quiet reflection and worship following the message and we were encouraged to consider how we might encounter God... and I looked across the room to see heads bowed, eyes closed...some rocking softly to the rhythm of the guitar..... and then I raised my eyes up above because I wanted to see God...but my eyes were met with the reality of a cold, impenetrable ceiling made of wood and plaster ... this barrier between me and God. People began singing...and it was beautiful...like the sound of angels...and I thought for a moment that it sounded like how I imagine heaven to be... but my eyes remained on the ceiling... carefully studying the design and I'm not sure why... maybe I was looking for a hole or crevice...any flaw that might serve as a sign that this stiff barrier was in some way porous, vulnerable. That I might find even a drop of grace falling through...
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