For the five years I spent in junior high and high school, I had an enduring but very quiet crush on one of my friends. He was clever, a runner, a sci-fi reader, an all-round artsy, athletic sort of guy who had a curious penchant for riding a unicycle everywhere. He was a free spirit, a non-conformist and quirky, and that’s almost certainly why I liked him so much. And he had lovely legs, too.
We played basketball, talked about and listened to Gershwin, had long, lingering conversations outside the gym after our respective practices all through those 5 years. At the end of summer and the beginning of each school year, I expected all that hoping and waiting would pay off. Eventually he would, “wake up” and realise that there could be more to this relationship than just playing 21 together at the rec centre.
When the day that his slumber ended arrived, it surprised me that I was not the one who had roused him from sleep. Alas, another girl. And all during our senior year, he dated that other girl. I optimistically figured it would end after high school, but strangely, they kept on dating through the summer, then college, and finally, he married her.
In life, I have held out for lots of The Significants --things I have wanted, I mean really wanted. I have waited years in the dripping of hour upon hour, have allowed expectation and hope to fill my heart about men, mission, calling, friends, destiny, family, studies, travel. Provocative events that have shaped me and transformed how I think about life, and the Lord God, His creation and His creatures have all happened along the way. And in that happening...in all that change and transformation...the nostalgia I had for things once longed for has been replaced with presence and now-ness with God and gratitude that things did not come out as I would have planned them.
Lately I have been tempted to grasp the sinking concrete of wistful regret as I paddle around in these open waters looking to find my way, and God reminds me of Today. This day. His presence. His intolerable love, as CS Lewis puts it, that won’t give me the fleeting crushes of this life, but will lift my chin to look out past the horizon to see into the Unseen, to see a Feast, a Marriage, a Banquet set for you, for me. He will tell me it’s worth trusting Him to see it to its fulfillment, as He sees fit.
It’s been 20 years this spring that I graduated from high school, and sometimes when I visit my hometown, I will see this boy of my high school affection, now a man, a teacher and coach at our very own junior high, out running. I can still recognise his gait at a distance, that loping, gliding stride that won him so many races, and I smile and remember how much wishing went into that one boy.
But another smile follows the first, one filled with gladness that life has not gone according to plan...in so many ways.
Thanks be to God.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
18 December, 2004
12 December, 2004
predicament and pilgrimage
“In 1914, with the prize of the Pole having been claimed, Shackleton embarked on a new challenge–to cross the entire continent on foot, from the Weddell to the Ross Sea. Leaving the island of South Georgia in December, his ship Endurance battled her way through pack ice toward the continent. But while deep in the pack of the Weddell Sea, the ship was trapped and slowly crushed by the ice.”
Two images in my head tonight: a severed forearm wedged between a rock wall and a canyon chockstone and a frozen ship caught in the maw of a polar sea.
Two people, Shackleton (and his 27-man crew) and an upstart kid climber from Colorado, who once having set out for two adventures of two different sorts, both end up in unimagineable predicaments.
Shackleton in 1914, before the age of polypropylene, gortex, sunscreen, Gatorade, and PowerBars was forced to live for 14 months on a hunk of Antarctic ice that would, in springtime, break away from the continent and begin drifting out to open sea. He had set out on a hazardous but grand-glorious adventure to achieve something no one else had done. Out of his control, the sea took his boat and, temporarily, his ambition for this goal. And so, he charted a new course of action: to save all his men.
Ralston, the climber, set out on a solo hike in the Canyonlands in what seemed benign, but isolated, country. A fluke of timing and placement, a huge rock falls onto his right hand, crushing it against a canyon wall. Trapped and equipped with limited food and water, he is forced to make decisions that would, under normal circumstances, be unthinkable.
Shackleton’s journey: 15 months adrift, stranded on ice floes, a terrifying convoy of 3 open lifeboats to an uninhabited island taking 7 days, a 17-day, 800-mile journey through the world's worst seas to South Georgia Island in a modified lifeboat, and a 26- mile on-foot crossing of the island’s mountains and glaciers, which were considered impassable. All his men were eventually rescued. Not one was lost.
And so he achieved his goal: the one which was forced upon him by circumstance, not the goal of his choosing.
Ralston’s arm, wedged impossibly between stone and stone, would be his demise if he was not somehow able to free himself. His solution after 6 days of hypothermia, dehydration, starvation, and pain was to amputate his own arm. This wasn’t easy to manage with rudimentary tools, no painkillers, and only a few hours sleep in nearly 7 days.
I’ll save you the superfluous 200 pages of Ralston’s book to tell you: he survived. He broke the two bones in his arm and chopped off the skin, ligament, muscle, tendon and nerves, managed a 60 foot free rappel, and walked out of the desert canyon.
And he, like Shackleton, also achieved his goal: the one foisted upon him by peculiar circumstance. He survived.
Pain and threat of death apparently cause people to make extraordinary choices. A lucidity that does not prevail in ordinary life moves us, at great cost to ourselves, into a new realm of thought and action. What once was not remotely in the realm of consideration becomes elevated to the category of – the possible.
And here I am, a pilgrim, someone who has struck out on a journey. This journey begun not for the sake of adventure, though that will certainly be part of it always, but for calling. Jesus beckons me. And He beckons me come places that I do not wish to. Especially now.
When I set out to follow Him at 16 years of age, I had certain goals, aims, things I imagined doing for Him and in His name. Some of them, I have done, but many times, I have found myself as Shackleton and Ralston...impinged upon by outer and inner predicament, and I have not done what I desired to. My version of Future and Reality forced to face up to a Someone much bigger, smarter, wiser, and more loving than myself.
This is the point of pain and threat of death. If I do not bow my puny cosmology down to His, I am in serious danger of meeting my end. Not by Him, but by my own madness in believing what is farcical.
Will I then, lucid of mind and heart, amputate the inhibiting limb, push my lifeboat out into raucous seas where seeing into a farther place, Faith shouts Hope and Life and Jesus calls me?
Two images in my head tonight: a severed forearm wedged between a rock wall and a canyon chockstone and a frozen ship caught in the maw of a polar sea.
Two people, Shackleton (and his 27-man crew) and an upstart kid climber from Colorado, who once having set out for two adventures of two different sorts, both end up in unimagineable predicaments.
Shackleton in 1914, before the age of polypropylene, gortex, sunscreen, Gatorade, and PowerBars was forced to live for 14 months on a hunk of Antarctic ice that would, in springtime, break away from the continent and begin drifting out to open sea. He had set out on a hazardous but grand-glorious adventure to achieve something no one else had done. Out of his control, the sea took his boat and, temporarily, his ambition for this goal. And so, he charted a new course of action: to save all his men.
Ralston, the climber, set out on a solo hike in the Canyonlands in what seemed benign, but isolated, country. A fluke of timing and placement, a huge rock falls onto his right hand, crushing it against a canyon wall. Trapped and equipped with limited food and water, he is forced to make decisions that would, under normal circumstances, be unthinkable.
Shackleton’s journey: 15 months adrift, stranded on ice floes, a terrifying convoy of 3 open lifeboats to an uninhabited island taking 7 days, a 17-day, 800-mile journey through the world's worst seas to South Georgia Island in a modified lifeboat, and a 26- mile on-foot crossing of the island’s mountains and glaciers, which were considered impassable. All his men were eventually rescued. Not one was lost.
And so he achieved his goal: the one which was forced upon him by circumstance, not the goal of his choosing.
Ralston’s arm, wedged impossibly between stone and stone, would be his demise if he was not somehow able to free himself. His solution after 6 days of hypothermia, dehydration, starvation, and pain was to amputate his own arm. This wasn’t easy to manage with rudimentary tools, no painkillers, and only a few hours sleep in nearly 7 days.
I’ll save you the superfluous 200 pages of Ralston’s book to tell you: he survived. He broke the two bones in his arm and chopped off the skin, ligament, muscle, tendon and nerves, managed a 60 foot free rappel, and walked out of the desert canyon.
And he, like Shackleton, also achieved his goal: the one foisted upon him by peculiar circumstance. He survived.
Pain and threat of death apparently cause people to make extraordinary choices. A lucidity that does not prevail in ordinary life moves us, at great cost to ourselves, into a new realm of thought and action. What once was not remotely in the realm of consideration becomes elevated to the category of – the possible.
And here I am, a pilgrim, someone who has struck out on a journey. This journey begun not for the sake of adventure, though that will certainly be part of it always, but for calling. Jesus beckons me. And He beckons me come places that I do not wish to. Especially now.
When I set out to follow Him at 16 years of age, I had certain goals, aims, things I imagined doing for Him and in His name. Some of them, I have done, but many times, I have found myself as Shackleton and Ralston...impinged upon by outer and inner predicament, and I have not done what I desired to. My version of Future and Reality forced to face up to a Someone much bigger, smarter, wiser, and more loving than myself.
This is the point of pain and threat of death. If I do not bow my puny cosmology down to His, I am in serious danger of meeting my end. Not by Him, but by my own madness in believing what is farcical.
Will I then, lucid of mind and heart, amputate the inhibiting limb, push my lifeboat out into raucous seas where seeing into a farther place, Faith shouts Hope and Life and Jesus calls me?
11 December, 2004
short stuff
Another short poem of an evening.
excavation
i dig right here
beneath my feet
liquid dunes give way
on knees
with hands
and elbows
grains
running
and fingers spare
grasping empty
earth
fluid air
oh where
my bow
of burning gold
and arrows
of desire,
my spear
of night and day,
my chariot of fire?
what will i do if
digging
still,
i do not find,
i do not find
again,
my tools with which to
build,
build Jerusalem?
excavation
i dig right here
beneath my feet
liquid dunes give way
on knees
with hands
and elbows
grains
running
and fingers spare
grasping empty
earth
fluid air
oh where
my bow
of burning gold
and arrows
of desire,
my spear
of night and day,
my chariot of fire?
what will i do if
digging
still,
i do not find,
i do not find
again,
my tools with which to
build,
build Jerusalem?
05 December, 2004
bubbles
Was talking with my sister tonight and these lines bubbled to the surface while we were talking...because this is my blog, I am slapping them down...to whatever purpose, whatever end...
I’m lost
mendicant
and so I’m dreaming
wordlessly trailing thoughts through the treacle-feeling
sueños
of bannofee pie
and the creamy earthy orangeness of cooked swede
of biting chill on the last pitch
of Exum Ridge
and torn and frozen fingers reaching
of Wyoming blue and rumble-thunder fog glaring white and brilliant
of ice-driven waters
that climb down my waders
of fish slime and trout smell
and flashing glory
brown and rainbow and brook
of plátanos fritos
y la yuca prodigiosa
y dos hojas de coca en un vaso con agua hervida
¿cómo puedo yo
siendo como Lazarillo
encontrarme en un
tal Fulano día
con los sueños de
mis ojos vivos?
I’m lost
mendicant
and so I’m dreaming
wordlessly trailing thoughts through the treacle-feeling
sueños
of bannofee pie
and the creamy earthy orangeness of cooked swede
of biting chill on the last pitch
of Exum Ridge
and torn and frozen fingers reaching
of Wyoming blue and rumble-thunder fog glaring white and brilliant
of ice-driven waters
that climb down my waders
of fish slime and trout smell
and flashing glory
brown and rainbow and brook
of plátanos fritos
y la yuca prodigiosa
y dos hojas de coca en un vaso con agua hervida
¿cómo puedo yo
siendo como Lazarillo
encontrarme en un
tal Fulano día
con los sueños de
mis ojos vivos?
03 December, 2004
green
I have no courage tonight as I face getting a few things down on blog. Frozen. Like a big piece of salted cod at the back of the freezer. I feel stuck and smelly and way too briney for good taste.
Mimesis is the word that keeps running through my brain. It usually means life imitates art sort of thing, but today I can’t get over the way the ironies of my insides – all that stuff I keep inside where no one sees or hears, except the Great Eavesdropper Himself, all nasty-ugly and broken and unresolved – keep appearing in my daily life. Mimetic Inversion maybe.
I should have run the mental checklist last night before I got out of my car and pushed the door firmly shut with my foot, my hands full. I suck at the linear thinking that would have helped me remember something so critical as keys. Normally my lack in this area manifests itself in other ways, but I was distracted and out-of-sync, and I forgot.
Hovering over my muddied windshield, trying to peer past the steering column into the dark interiors of my vehicle, I caught a glint of light. And there I stood, on the frozen street outside the meeting place of a church homegroup I had never gone to before, my Bible and bag in hand, peering into the frontier...a place I could not now go without help. No keys, no car, no going home. I immediately knew this would make a great impression on a group of people I had never met, especially when I would have to roust them out on a cold night to help me, please. As gifted as I might be at mechanics and putting things together (such as a DIY Ikea loft bed that nearly cost me my friendship with my flat mate), I couldn’t quite make out how I was going to fish my door open with a clothes hanger. I laughed.
Most of the homegroup time went by before I again remembered to mention my little problem; all worry or thought of it had left me somewhere between the street and the doorway of the home where our meeting was to take place. As I shivered in the cold, a guy summoned from the group made unsuccessful attempts to get the door open, and I grew impatient with myself, realising it was going to take some doing to solve this problem. A phonecall to a dear friend at 22:15 hours, a night in a guest bedroom, two trips across town and another lift back to my car with the spare key, and I finally got my trusty Spirit back on the road today.
Last night I laughed but today I feel entirely defeated. This is how I feel in life. Outside of. Shut out. Locked out. Somehow out of my own ineptitude or lack of ability to do life, I feel unable to move across some invisible boundary where Blessing is. I do not have the key. I have been told many times by many well-meaning people that Jesus is The Key. But I “have” Jesus and have known Him for a while now (more than 20 years) and I’ve made a lifetime of very tough choices based on these two facts, and my life is shit right now. Could you please explain this to me?
How well do we do without all those desireables – those ways in which we define ourselves?
I am so and so...I am the __________ (wife/husband) of ________ (fill in a nice name),
and I am the ___________(mother/father) of ______________________ .(fill in 2-4 nice names)
I am a ________________(fill in a meaningful profession or title), because I graduated from ______________ (fill in a well-known university).
I earn ____________(fill in a very comfortable amount of money), and I drive a ___________________ (fill in a car manufactured in the last 10 years).
I live in a home that I ________ (fill in the words “own and do not share with assorted ‘others’ ”) where I can __________ (the words, “put my stuff and decorate how I damn well please” go nicely here)
....well you get it, right? I could go on. But the point: strip these away from yourself, and what do you have?
I am not past this. I cannot complete any item on this chart, not one. Probably not even if it were the Minus Hyperbole version. I want to be someone’s wife and mom and do something meaningful that I enjoy and finish a master’s degree and make enough money to actually not feel guilty about buying things like orange juice and avocados and live in a home where someone loves me, where I can hang my Georgia O’Keefe lilies and Degas ballerinas, and listen to the Marriage of Figaro without someone laughing at me.
It’s green and it’s jealous and it’s a monster, and I need Jesus, not to be my Key, but my Saviour. You see, I may hold out for all the above particulars to somehow fall into the blessing slots of my life, but God may keep holding up the same sign I’ve got my nose pressed to right now; it reads: There are NO guarantees. Promises, yes. Guarantees, no. And I am spitting mad, angry that I cannot make Him do things my way. How will I resolve this if He completely and utterly disappoints my every dream or desire? How will He still be good?
Mimesis is the word that keeps running through my brain. It usually means life imitates art sort of thing, but today I can’t get over the way the ironies of my insides – all that stuff I keep inside where no one sees or hears, except the Great Eavesdropper Himself, all nasty-ugly and broken and unresolved – keep appearing in my daily life. Mimetic Inversion maybe.
I should have run the mental checklist last night before I got out of my car and pushed the door firmly shut with my foot, my hands full. I suck at the linear thinking that would have helped me remember something so critical as keys. Normally my lack in this area manifests itself in other ways, but I was distracted and out-of-sync, and I forgot.
Hovering over my muddied windshield, trying to peer past the steering column into the dark interiors of my vehicle, I caught a glint of light. And there I stood, on the frozen street outside the meeting place of a church homegroup I had never gone to before, my Bible and bag in hand, peering into the frontier...a place I could not now go without help. No keys, no car, no going home. I immediately knew this would make a great impression on a group of people I had never met, especially when I would have to roust them out on a cold night to help me, please. As gifted as I might be at mechanics and putting things together (such as a DIY Ikea loft bed that nearly cost me my friendship with my flat mate), I couldn’t quite make out how I was going to fish my door open with a clothes hanger. I laughed.
Most of the homegroup time went by before I again remembered to mention my little problem; all worry or thought of it had left me somewhere between the street and the doorway of the home where our meeting was to take place. As I shivered in the cold, a guy summoned from the group made unsuccessful attempts to get the door open, and I grew impatient with myself, realising it was going to take some doing to solve this problem. A phonecall to a dear friend at 22:15 hours, a night in a guest bedroom, two trips across town and another lift back to my car with the spare key, and I finally got my trusty Spirit back on the road today.
Last night I laughed but today I feel entirely defeated. This is how I feel in life. Outside of. Shut out. Locked out. Somehow out of my own ineptitude or lack of ability to do life, I feel unable to move across some invisible boundary where Blessing is. I do not have the key. I have been told many times by many well-meaning people that Jesus is The Key. But I “have” Jesus and have known Him for a while now (more than 20 years) and I’ve made a lifetime of very tough choices based on these two facts, and my life is shit right now. Could you please explain this to me?
How well do we do without all those desireables – those ways in which we define ourselves?
I am so and so...I am the __________ (wife/husband) of ________ (fill in a nice name),
and I am the ___________(mother/father) of ______________________ .(fill in 2-4 nice names)
I am a ________________(fill in a meaningful profession or title), because I graduated from ______________ (fill in a well-known university).
I earn ____________(fill in a very comfortable amount of money), and I drive a ___________________ (fill in a car manufactured in the last 10 years).
I live in a home that I ________ (fill in the words “own and do not share with assorted ‘others’ ”) where I can __________ (the words, “put my stuff and decorate how I damn well please” go nicely here)
....well you get it, right? I could go on. But the point: strip these away from yourself, and what do you have?
I am not past this. I cannot complete any item on this chart, not one. Probably not even if it were the Minus Hyperbole version. I want to be someone’s wife and mom and do something meaningful that I enjoy and finish a master’s degree and make enough money to actually not feel guilty about buying things like orange juice and avocados and live in a home where someone loves me, where I can hang my Georgia O’Keefe lilies and Degas ballerinas, and listen to the Marriage of Figaro without someone laughing at me.
It’s green and it’s jealous and it’s a monster, and I need Jesus, not to be my Key, but my Saviour. You see, I may hold out for all the above particulars to somehow fall into the blessing slots of my life, but God may keep holding up the same sign I’ve got my nose pressed to right now; it reads: There are NO guarantees. Promises, yes. Guarantees, no. And I am spitting mad, angry that I cannot make Him do things my way. How will I resolve this if He completely and utterly disappoints my every dream or desire? How will He still be good?
28 November, 2004
nerve
When I first started skiing at age 5, I remember having only one great concern, how fast could I get from the top of the slope to the bottom and back up again. Repeat. Getting to the bottom of the short slope was a straightforward, two-step process, point ski tips in a downward direction and push off. Only other skiers or natural obstacles hindered me.
I can never remember a time when I did not know how to ski. This may be partly due to the fact that I never once believed I did not know how to ski. My mother fondly recalls her exasperation with this attitude. She would confer with my Austrian ski instructor at the end of our day on the slopes of Sharktooth, and she would look quizically at my mom and say “Ellen, who?”
Why go to all the trouble of lessons when you already know what you’re doing? Of course, this reckless attitude meant many painful faceplants and chaotic dispersions of my gear on the snow and once plowing head-on into Ulli, my ski instructor, and her current charge. I took them both out and vaguely remember feeling sheepish and listening to some sort of chastisement from Ulli. But, I say vaguely. All manner of negative outcome seemed to have little or no effect. I was undeterred.
I had a load of nerve in those days, misguided though it may have been, I had it. And now, I am asking myself these days – Nerve, where have you got to? Writing blogs and taking the risk to speak my mind, and thinking about being creative again, picking up my paints, restringing my guitar – dear, Lord it makes my knees wobbly. Am I up to this? And for what? Do I really believe the creative process matters...regardless of results?
And I keep looking at Jesus. Nerve of another caliber is He. I am blown away. A Creator of universes who unwaveringly faced the destruction of his earthly body and reputation, pain and humiliation heightened by the reality of who He is/was. My diminutive battles to find my nerve again pale in comparison, but they take on more meaning in the light of Him. To become is to be ever more conformed to His image. Being fashioned into His likeness, as I remember – like waking from a dream remember – who I am, who I was made to be, means fire will touch me. To burn away perverse self-protectiveness and timidity and the vacuous lies that keep me from being
united with him in his death and resurrection.
I can never remember a time when I did not know how to ski. This may be partly due to the fact that I never once believed I did not know how to ski. My mother fondly recalls her exasperation with this attitude. She would confer with my Austrian ski instructor at the end of our day on the slopes of Sharktooth, and she would look quizically at my mom and say “Ellen, who?”
Why go to all the trouble of lessons when you already know what you’re doing? Of course, this reckless attitude meant many painful faceplants and chaotic dispersions of my gear on the snow and once plowing head-on into Ulli, my ski instructor, and her current charge. I took them both out and vaguely remember feeling sheepish and listening to some sort of chastisement from Ulli. But, I say vaguely. All manner of negative outcome seemed to have little or no effect. I was undeterred.
I had a load of nerve in those days, misguided though it may have been, I had it. And now, I am asking myself these days – Nerve, where have you got to? Writing blogs and taking the risk to speak my mind, and thinking about being creative again, picking up my paints, restringing my guitar – dear, Lord it makes my knees wobbly. Am I up to this? And for what? Do I really believe the creative process matters...regardless of results?
And I keep looking at Jesus. Nerve of another caliber is He. I am blown away. A Creator of universes who unwaveringly faced the destruction of his earthly body and reputation, pain and humiliation heightened by the reality of who He is/was. My diminutive battles to find my nerve again pale in comparison, but they take on more meaning in the light of Him. To become is to be ever more conformed to His image. Being fashioned into His likeness, as I remember – like waking from a dream remember – who I am, who I was made to be, means fire will touch me. To burn away perverse self-protectiveness and timidity and the vacuous lies that keep me from being
united with him in his death and resurrection.
23 November, 2004
of bb's and michelin men
Lo, sons are an heritage from the Lord. Psalm 127:3
My sister must have this verse posted in her house somewhere. Maybe more than once. With five sons, she's got a lot of heritage floating around. In fact, I am just off the phone with her, and she has informed me that her heritage have taken over the backyard with bb guns and sabres.
The one agreement she has with them about these bb guns and their flying steel is: goggles. You wanna play...you gotta wear the ski goggles. Sure enough, they are content to look absurd and bug-like so long as they get to shoot at one another with real bb's. No kiddie snap caps for these'uns; it's real artillery, boys.
And the goggles inspire. The boys don headgear, sweatshirts, puffy jackets, Thinsulate gloves, and probably some duct tape, too. My sister's little band of Michelin Men. In the twilight, flashlights attached to the barrels of their guns, they throw themselves around in a mad whorl of energy, giggles, and shouting.
For my sister, this game of cat and mouse seems a mild improvement on her brood's other go's at backyard fun: attempting human flight from the rooftop onto the trampoline, creating and launching homemade pyrotechnics (Mom, it's just gun powder! insisted her 16-year old inventor-son), and building fires in the barbecue grill with leaves, sticks, and lots of lighter fluid: more fluid=higher flames.
I'm sure there's some sort of message in here about violence among children and the great need for cautious parenting in this day and age, but I have no desire to find it. My nephews, I am afraid, are terribly un-PC. They break all the rules about wearing helmets and looking both ways and using power tools. Thank God. They live raw. They taste the life around them, complete with stitches, broken bones, and lots and lots of bandaids.
So this is all to say that I am thinking lately about how God parents us and what freedoms He gives us and what prohibitions He insists on while He is raising us. Does He warn us every time we go out the door that the world we live in is precarious, a dangerous place, and that we ought to take care with every step, not talk to strangers? Somehow, I don't think so. In fact, I think I hear the opposite. I hear, not the hard and ruthless man that the unfaithful servant imagined in his master (Matthew 25), exacting, harsh and fearful of the future, but rather the heroic Aragorn who says that to live bravely is to live into what you cannot yet see....and that takes thumbing your nose at critics and self-doubt and then stepping into the fray.
That, the voice of Jesus our Prophet, Priest, and King, is the one I recognise each day when I muddle through difficulty and worry, self-doubt and unbelief. And that's the voice I'll obey when I am afraid and want to live in the mire of caution and safety. Goggles on! when I'm told, but bb's popping, fireworks exploding, and fires a'stoking I will go!
My sister must have this verse posted in her house somewhere. Maybe more than once. With five sons, she's got a lot of heritage floating around. In fact, I am just off the phone with her, and she has informed me that her heritage have taken over the backyard with bb guns and sabres.
The one agreement she has with them about these bb guns and their flying steel is: goggles. You wanna play...you gotta wear the ski goggles. Sure enough, they are content to look absurd and bug-like so long as they get to shoot at one another with real bb's. No kiddie snap caps for these'uns; it's real artillery, boys.
And the goggles inspire. The boys don headgear, sweatshirts, puffy jackets, Thinsulate gloves, and probably some duct tape, too. My sister's little band of Michelin Men. In the twilight, flashlights attached to the barrels of their guns, they throw themselves around in a mad whorl of energy, giggles, and shouting.
For my sister, this game of cat and mouse seems a mild improvement on her brood's other go's at backyard fun: attempting human flight from the rooftop onto the trampoline, creating and launching homemade pyrotechnics (Mom, it's just gun powder! insisted her 16-year old inventor-son), and building fires in the barbecue grill with leaves, sticks, and lots of lighter fluid: more fluid=higher flames.
I'm sure there's some sort of message in here about violence among children and the great need for cautious parenting in this day and age, but I have no desire to find it. My nephews, I am afraid, are terribly un-PC. They break all the rules about wearing helmets and looking both ways and using power tools. Thank God. They live raw. They taste the life around them, complete with stitches, broken bones, and lots and lots of bandaids.
So this is all to say that I am thinking lately about how God parents us and what freedoms He gives us and what prohibitions He insists on while He is raising us. Does He warn us every time we go out the door that the world we live in is precarious, a dangerous place, and that we ought to take care with every step, not talk to strangers? Somehow, I don't think so. In fact, I think I hear the opposite. I hear, not the hard and ruthless man that the unfaithful servant imagined in his master (Matthew 25), exacting, harsh and fearful of the future, but rather the heroic Aragorn who says that to live bravely is to live into what you cannot yet see....and that takes thumbing your nose at critics and self-doubt and then stepping into the fray.
That, the voice of Jesus our Prophet, Priest, and King, is the one I recognise each day when I muddle through difficulty and worry, self-doubt and unbelief. And that's the voice I'll obey when I am afraid and want to live in the mire of caution and safety. Goggles on! when I'm told, but bb's popping, fireworks exploding, and fires a'stoking I will go!
22 November, 2004
passenger in transit
I've travelled to probably 30 different countries in the last 20 years or so, and the inevitable experience of being "transit" is one I always dread: confined in one country in order to get to another. Security gates are closed and no visa, no amount of finagling, no pleading looks directed at the passport control officer will manage you an escape from the airport and the tedium which is about to ensue. It's just you, the contents of your carry on (which you should have paid more attention to making interesting before you left!) and the enticing eats and drinks of Duty Free...oh, and don't forget the nice toilets. For hour upon hour of riveting fun.
I liken it to the experience I seem to be having with God of late. He's got me hog-tied and in a head lock, firmly "in transit." I hate this. I hate it when I am in an airport, but metaphysical transit, oh God, help me, is another deal altogether.
I long to understand how it is I have arrived at this place in life, and I throw up a lot of questions, well...demands, to that effect and yet He devastates me with silence and protracted pauses. The one question that permeates my thinking is: is it safe to be in the hands of this God, who cuts my rope when I seem to be hanging beyond the precipice -- in thin air.
And the answer I keep coming back to, though not easily so, is yes. Somehow, as I am dangling in the void and silence, suspended only by his goodness, I feel the surge of His breath, a rushing violence of love and compassion and holiness. And, my soul and, ever so slowly, my mind believe that the love of God chooses the void and silence, pain and ache, the loss and grief -- for a time -- for my eternal blessing.
"Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning."
I liken it to the experience I seem to be having with God of late. He's got me hog-tied and in a head lock, firmly "in transit." I hate this. I hate it when I am in an airport, but metaphysical transit, oh God, help me, is another deal altogether.
I long to understand how it is I have arrived at this place in life, and I throw up a lot of questions, well...demands, to that effect and yet He devastates me with silence and protracted pauses. The one question that permeates my thinking is: is it safe to be in the hands of this God, who cuts my rope when I seem to be hanging beyond the precipice -- in thin air.
And the answer I keep coming back to, though not easily so, is yes. Somehow, as I am dangling in the void and silence, suspended only by his goodness, I feel the surge of His breath, a rushing violence of love and compassion and holiness. And, my soul and, ever so slowly, my mind believe that the love of God chooses the void and silence, pain and ache, the loss and grief -- for a time -- for my eternal blessing.
"Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning."
21 November, 2004
on going to a new church
I met a woman after church today for whom the whole experience of trying to find a new place to worship seemed daunting. A widow, 74 years old, and her former church was dying a slow death. She decided to make a break for it. I don't blame her.
I, too, am in that awful (and I do mean awful) position of having to do the same. Since moving to Denver, I have tried to get "plugged in" and "engaged" in some sort of "dialogue" with others at a local church. But, tell me, precisely how does one do said "dialogue" when said church is approximately 1,000 (?) members?
Church in America is a weird deal, and I was not ready for it. After six years of hearing the church bell in my village at 11am and 6pm each Sunday, just a block away, calling people to worship, I found myself faced with a 10 mile suburban drive to get to a warehouse-sized building and a car park at the church the size of two city blocks by two city blocks. A coffee bar loomed inside, larger than any I have ever seen in Glasgow. A book and music store. Amazing A/V equipment and a worship band that records CD's. How can this be? Is this still church? And how do I find The Church?
In my still (it's been 15 months I've been back in the States)confounded state, I wonder about Jesus' Body, His Church, His Holy Bride: do we look into one another's eyes to behold the face of our Lord Jesus as He says He thirsts...for friendship, for eyes that listen, a smile that says a holy "YES!", for a hand to hold, and much, much more (maybe even a pot roast thrown in there for good measure)?
Today I was looking at His face in Shirley, the elderly woman I shared a conversation with after church. We, both of us, on only our second or third go at visiting this new church. And we both feeling the gnaw of loneliness and the pain of having no place where we are known. How different our places in life and yet how similar we are.
I will keep going back to this church. I will choose to be amongst God's people--fringe bene's or none --getting what I want or not --finding what I am looking for or not-- Jesus promises me that He lives with us, His Church, His Bride; He will presence her gathering. And that is what I am holding out for.
I, too, am in that awful (and I do mean awful) position of having to do the same. Since moving to Denver, I have tried to get "plugged in" and "engaged" in some sort of "dialogue" with others at a local church. But, tell me, precisely how does one do said "dialogue" when said church is approximately 1,000 (?) members?
Church in America is a weird deal, and I was not ready for it. After six years of hearing the church bell in my village at 11am and 6pm each Sunday, just a block away, calling people to worship, I found myself faced with a 10 mile suburban drive to get to a warehouse-sized building and a car park at the church the size of two city blocks by two city blocks. A coffee bar loomed inside, larger than any I have ever seen in Glasgow. A book and music store. Amazing A/V equipment and a worship band that records CD's. How can this be? Is this still church? And how do I find The Church?
In my still (it's been 15 months I've been back in the States)confounded state, I wonder about Jesus' Body, His Church, His Holy Bride: do we look into one another's eyes to behold the face of our Lord Jesus as He says He thirsts...for friendship, for eyes that listen, a smile that says a holy "YES!", for a hand to hold, and much, much more (maybe even a pot roast thrown in there for good measure)?
Today I was looking at His face in Shirley, the elderly woman I shared a conversation with after church. We, both of us, on only our second or third go at visiting this new church. And we both feeling the gnaw of loneliness and the pain of having no place where we are known. How different our places in life and yet how similar we are.
I will keep going back to this church. I will choose to be amongst God's people--fringe bene's or none --getting what I want or not --finding what I am looking for or not-- Jesus promises me that He lives with us, His Church, His Bride; He will presence her gathering. And that is what I am holding out for.
20 November, 2004
a bloggy day
How do I resist the temptation to write something here, post it, read it in its entirety, and then bin it? I'm not good at this blogging thing. Perhaps that's why I seem to have some compelling and strange need to start doing it -- putting my words down somewhere and then letting others read them. Scary, really. Part of me doesn't like the risk; another part does cartwheels.
I attempted this before--starting a blog--but I had a hard time conceptualising what sort of "space" the blogosphere was: was it infinite licence to say whatever I wanted? a place where there would be "listeners", i.e. those who would want to hear my voice? a place to track and journal the quotidian?
I've gone over a few blogs out there and can recognise the goodness of giving people such an open forum for expression and of providing the opportunity to exchange ideas with the likeminded (or be challenged by the very contrary-minded!). On the other hand, I can see its downside.....lots and lots and lots of words, noise, if you will and few substantive "a ha's" being passed on. Guess you have to pick and choose which ones to read and participate in.
Please, if you're a reader of my wee blog, engage in my blether if you fancy doing so. I need 'readers' in my life right now; ones with open ears and hearts and mouths. I love to hear you, so comment, opine, let me know if anything I bring up on these pages matters to you.
Today, let the conversation begin....
I attempted this before--starting a blog--but I had a hard time conceptualising what sort of "space" the blogosphere was: was it infinite licence to say whatever I wanted? a place where there would be "listeners", i.e. those who would want to hear my voice? a place to track and journal the quotidian?
I've gone over a few blogs out there and can recognise the goodness of giving people such an open forum for expression and of providing the opportunity to exchange ideas with the likeminded (or be challenged by the very contrary-minded!). On the other hand, I can see its downside.....lots and lots and lots of words, noise, if you will and few substantive "a ha's" being passed on. Guess you have to pick and choose which ones to read and participate in.
Please, if you're a reader of my wee blog, engage in my blether if you fancy doing so. I need 'readers' in my life right now; ones with open ears and hearts and mouths. I love to hear you, so comment, opine, let me know if anything I bring up on these pages matters to you.
Today, let the conversation begin....
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