Whispering space

I really miss the habit of daily writing. It is good exercise for the soul.

I fear that my life has become full again, perhaps 'cluttered' is a better way of putting my concern. Cluttered seems more like the feeling you get when there is too much stuff around you, calling for your attention but difficult to decipher where the voice is actually coming from. I suppose some of this has to do with a normal ebb-and-flow of an active life, perhaps even a result of the annual seasons…like the Christmas one through which we just passed. But I suspect it is more than that. I miss the times of distinguishable clarity, when life and desire were simple…times during even the last two years when my awareness of need was daily, when resources were scarce in worldly terms and when the combination of the two left me regularly at the feet of God; seeking not only a way through the confusion of the unfamiliar path, but also a way to God himself. The clarity of desire aimed just simply at him, not even merely for His way, which still seems a bit self-serving, but just Him was palpable. Being with Him. Knowing Him. At the very least, wanting to.

Even as I write, I am reminded that we must just simply stop to hear Him, to find Him. Perhaps this is why this quote rings so true:

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system though which God speaks to us every hour; if we still only tune in. 

-- George Washington Carver

We just must stop…stop ourselves. At least, I must. Perhaps one of the great favors of the last two years of my life was the grace God extended to me to stop my life for me, even as I couldn’t do it myself. …or wouldn’t. …or hadn’t learned to…yet. I now realize that I have just deep preference for a stopped life…a life with space to contemplate Him. And without it, this whispering space, I don’t recognize the many weeds of entitlement growing in my spirit again. I don’t see them as weeds, as I breeze by them with the watering can of activity clenched tightly in my hand. Things I want blossom into things I deserve. Things that are blessings along the way, somehow become how I try to find my way. Objects of truth become unflowerful. Objects of untruth distort themselves into eye-catching fancy. I become no longer tuned in to the objectivity of God’s natural broadcast and become mesmerized by the glitter of a flat-screen world.

Grow in me, oh God, only the seasonal flower…the one that takes the rest of the year to stem. Draw me to your fragrance and make the sticky sweet of falsehood more and more distasteful. Only You really satisfy…thank you for the reminder and give me the courage to reject a garden full of weeds and to reach not for the water-can of activity, but for your gardener’s hand instead.

Merry Christmas '08

The Most Real Things

"...sometimes the most real things in the world are things we can't see."

-- Conductor, The Polar Express

In honor of OP's death...and life

It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of every man;
the living should take this to heart.

-- Ecclesiastes 7:2

May All Your Plans Be Thwarted

May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God who is the Father, Son and Spirit.

-- Brennan Manning

Gratitude

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.

-- Cicero

Love vs Power

Christianity does not think of man finally submitting to the power of God, it thinks of Him as finally surrendering to the love of God. It is not that man's will is crushed, but that man's heart is broken.

-- William Barclay

Freedom & Forgiveness

 

Unless you have been unfree, it's difficult to understand what it does mean to become free. 

-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

One of the things that God teaches us through living this life is the glorious power that forgiveness contributes to this idea of freedom. And, I suspect, that I can only offer forgiveness when I realize how much I need it. Is this part of what it means to be an 'eagle' (see transcript) at Tutu describes it? I believe he draws this image from Isaiah 40:31.

'Ohio' Thoughts on The Game

UM vs OSU Programs

Rivalry Week

In the famous words of MLK, "I have a dream..."...and 'a dream' may be all that Michigan has this year...but we'll root for them nonetheless.

Silence

Nothing in all creation is so like God as silence.

-- Meister Eckhart

Solitude - The Trend That Has Not Yet Arrived

I have learned much, but the time has come to realize that neither parents nor teachers nor counselors can do much more than offer a free and friendly place where one has to discover his own lonely way…This experience is frightful as well as exhilarating because it is the great experience of being alone, alone in the world, alone before God.

-- Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

Swiss Alps

An amazing scene from a recent hike in the Swiss Alps.

It is good to wait quietly...for the LORD.

21 Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."
25 The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
26 it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.
27 It is good for a man to bear the yoke
while he is young.
28 Let him sit alone in silence,
for the LORD has laid it on him.
-- Lamentations 3

GO BLUE!

Well there wasn't much 'Go Blue'-worthy in the game itself, but the tradition, the color, the stadium, and the day together were wonderful!

Everything we need

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

-- 2 Peter 1:3-4

Creatures of the day-to-day

The early Christian monks staked their survival on their willingness to be as God had made them, creatures of the day-to-day. They regarded repetition as essential to their salvation, and valued perseverance in prayer and manual labor as the core of their spiritual discipline. …it is all a matter of falling down and standing up again, no matter how many times. Typically, the desert fathers provide a gnomic commentary on this aspect of their lives: “Abba Moses asked Abba Sylvanus, ‘Can a man lay a new foundation every day?’ The old man said, ‘If he works hard, he can lay a foundation at every minute.’”

Monastic writers have always emphasized that maintaining a life of prayer means being willing to start over…. Both pride and acedia will assert themselves, and it may appear that we are so far gone we may as well give up and not embarrass ourselves further by pretending to be anything but failures. It seems foolish to believe that the door is still open, that there is always another chance. I may accept this intellectually, but I have come to appreciate its depths only through experience.

-- Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me, page 86

Difficult circumstances...

As we wait, we can fix our eyes on Jesus as a companion who empathizes with our suffering and a Savior who is working behind the scenes. Difficult circumstances seem to increase our ability to experience intimacy with Christ.

-- Ruthann Ridley

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.

-- Joseph Cardinal Bernardin

Morning silhouette

...shot taken at our annual church-wide campout.

Does he even know?

GOD MOVES IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY

His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

-- William Cowper

Understanding & Faith

…faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark. Even a man of faith knows that we’ve all got to go through enough to kill us.

-- Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

-- St. Augustine

I am a man who has hoped, in time, that his life, when poured out at the end, would say, “Good-good-good-good-good!” like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit. I am a man of losses, regrets, griefs. I am an old man full of love. I am a man of faith.

-- Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

Kalhaven Trail Ride 2008

25 riders from VSF rode 20+ miles on one of the more beautiful days of the year...to the equally beautiful beaches of South Haven, Michigan. A great day of activity and fun with friends.

A Great Sneeze

Have you ever had a great sneeze in the early morning? Quite a unique and wonderful feeling, I must say. For over 40 years, I never acknowledged such a thing. But the other day, I couldn’t help but notice that the sneeze that had just coursed through me was quite remarkable. I’ve had sneezes that seemed to produce sparks in front of my eyes. As my family can tell you, I’ve sneezed embarrassingly loud at times, because of the funny turn of a head it creates in someone else as they stifle their unfiltered expression of “what in the heck was that?” But this recent morning, my sneeze was just amazingly sudden, strong, clean (fortunately)…and though the words start to thin out here, but it was also clear, clarifying even. For one half-second, everything in the world was amazingly clear and bright. …and then, of course, my body drafted back into itself the sleeping haze of waking up from which it was emerging just a few minutes before.

What is it like to see things clearly? As kids, our perhaps as teenagers, we thought we had such clear moments, or perspectives even. As adults, though, we realize that such times of clarity are surprisingly few and far between, if they really ever occur at all. But when we allow ourselves again this child-like possibility, we realize that we do long for is the ability to see clearly again. We wish we had a good sneeze to blow away the haze of our lives. I wish, for example, that I could see what is really going on in my life…as if there is something going on, beyond what is just happening. I wonder. I suppose. I ponder. I basically want to know that I haven’t just fallen, and can’t get up. Such desire on our parts as men and women of earth often dump us off to the larger and deeper questions that both enliven and terrify us. …and, I believe, they lead us to God. What is God doing anyway? What is he doing with me? Who is he, in the first place? How do I even know? And suddenly we are miles into another universe, away from what is a rather simple question about what the substance is of what is happening in my life…other than a few surprising sneezes here and there.

Ever notice that it seems rarely possible to make a great sneeze happen? I’m being a bit coy now on the sneeze analogy and soon it will break down altogether. But I suspect there is more than irony in this simply acknowledgment. We don’t make a great sneeze happen, it happens to us. And I wonder if there isn’t a clue here to the dilemma we often create for ourselves over the questions of God I mentioned earlier. God is not hostage to my verifiability of him, is he? How could he be? Verifiability, though perhaps always of perpetual interest to some throughout time, has likely only been deified in the recent centuries. But my experience with understanding and knowing God has almost exclusively been his revelation to me, not the other way around. Even as much as I don’t like the discomfort of this notion, it holds the water; it remains true. And, I suspect, because it does so, it seems to fit with the observably long train of historical faith in him on the part of believers. The very faith that has been handed down to me, that I believe in…despite our own collective inability to see God.

GO BLUE!!!

Getting ready...for another era! GO BLUE!!!

Prayer

We enter most appropriately into [the revelation of who God is] when we listen and tell stories to one another and listen and speak to God in prayer.

And, of course, silence. Silence is indispensable. It is a commonly overlooked element in language, but it must not be: Especially it must not be overlooked in the language of prayer. It is not as if Jesus speaks the revelation of God in his stories and metaphors, and now in prayer we get to say our piece. Silence, which in prayer consists mostly in attentive listening, is nonnegotiable. Listening, which necessarily requires silence on our part, is as much a part of language as words. The colon and the semicolon, the comma and the period—all of which insist on silence as part and parcel of speech—are as essential to language as nouns and verbs. But more often than not, silence gets short shrift in our prayers. Yet if there is no silence, our speech degenerates into babble…

Prayer is our first language. Anybody can pray. And everybody does. We pray even when we don’t know we are praying. “Help me” is our first prayer. We don’t have it within ourselves to be ourselves. “Thank you” is our last prayer. When everything is said and done, we realize that all that we receive has been a gift.

But there is irony here. Prayer, the most natural and authentic substratum of language, is also the easiest form of language to fake. We discover early on that we can pretend to pray, use the words of prayer, practice the forms of prayer, assume postures of prayer, acquire a reputation for prayer, and never pray.

-- Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant

VSF Kids at Momentum 2008

Olympic Cermonies - Us and Them, Me and Us

Despite another late night, I am awaken early today by a couple of sets of thoughts that perhaps I just need to get out of me and down on paper. The thoughts revolve around the proximity of relationships with members of my family and the magnitude of mass humanity represented last night in the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic games. As I roll out of bed in anticipation of another beautiful rise of the sun, my nose is full of a tingle coming from an expectedly cool August breeze and my heart is full of my humanity – a humanity that is so limited and one in which I am aware that I want so much more. So full of want and finitude that I feel crushed by the weight of my longings, my wonder, my fears, and the things I feel I must get done.

Oh, God, you and all that you have made are so beautiful and so much larger than all of my understandings…though I can’t sleep enough in the physical world, how can I rest in you?

As I watched the opening ceremonies last night with my family, I heard one of my kids mutter something to the effect that massive use of people in the production of the many scenes was creepy. One of the commentators used the word intimidating. I wonder about what appears to be the deep differences of our cultures. Ours, informed by the beauty we perceive in our own individuality and the Chinese, informed by the beauty of the masses of ‘people’ as one. As the drumbeat of 2008 performers in unison illuminated the stadium simulataneously with both sound and light, my mind couldn’t help but anticipate heaven. It seems true that something inside us all longs both for our participation in something much larger than ourselves and for our own rightful and right-sized place in it all – one of many drummers, so to speak. Each time I see masses of people doing something intentional in unison, I am deeply moved internally. The opening ceremonies did this to me; worship does this to me more. I want both to be a part of something like this, and I want to lay down the weights that I normally carry around with me as I try to do so many things myself. We all want to part of something, something bigger than ourselves, something good, something that is aimed at a kind of glory that attributes to God what is due him.

Even as I consider this magnitude that I want to be a part of, I also recognize that I live much of the time so far away from the 4 or 5 individuals who are right around me. We live in proximity to each other. We share intimacies from time to time. But often, we live as if our very own skin, the thing that symbolically we so long to have touched by another person, were a wall that separates us from each other, even as we lay or sit together closely. There is so much inside us that we long to have reached into, that we long to reach into, that we just can’t find a way to do. And, so, even in our closeness to each other physically, we often feel far away. Perhaps this is why something big, something involving the masses of people, something that becomes the object of our shared attention together is appealing to us – because we hope that it will bring us into something, into each other in ways we often have great difficulty doing in the ordinariness and simplicity of our daily lives. And perhaps this is the soil out of which faith grows.

After such an early awakening, the sun has now risen on another day, one again full again of anticipation of the great hope in each one of us that we might participate in the beauty of each other together and each other personally, whose weight is only lifted by the same love that lifts that sun each day.

Oh, God, you are so beautiful and, thankfully so much larger than all of my understandings…I can rest in the warmth of your day, today.

Be

Be where you are, not where you think you should be.

Prayer

The value of consistent prayer is not that He will hear us, but that we will hear Him.

-- William McGill

I dream of a quiet man

I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.

-- Wendell Berry, Given Poems, pg 70

Cubs vs Reds 2008

All the Cubs colors!

4H 2008 Grand Champion

Kosciusko County 4H Fair 2008 Dog Obedience Grand Champion!

Loved

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

-- Victor Hugo

4th of July -- Freedom

OK, maybe I’m ranting a bit, but I saw a sign on Kings Hwy today that reads:

"Freedom is never given,
It is always won."

...this strikes me as nearing the peaks of arrogance. I recognize the focus it likely is referring to on the verge of this weekend's holiday, but even in that area...wow, what a statement about our own abilities to provide for ourselves. I think I would like to be more grateful, than self-congratulatory.

What I have been given...

Being out of town continually has both short and long-term challenges...for me and the rest of the family. We are confused about why this is necessary, especially when the perceived human toll of my being gone from home for weeks at a time accumulate...but we have slowly (by our measurements at least) come to the general disposition of trust in spite of the circumstances (not to say that we don't have our moments though!).

I am a bit drawn to the passage that Michelle just sent around. I'm wondering how I can let myself 'sink' further into the work I have been given:

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

-- Galatians 6:1-5

I suspect that I'm still looking for a rather sensational finish to all of this...and this feels a bit misguided or at the very least that I will be disappointed. At the same time, I'm finding a stranger (unfamiliar?) sense that I have much, much to be thankful for...even in human terms, let alone eternal ones...that somehow I can yet experience a kind of contentment from God, even if circumstances don't change.

…I'm actually kind of afraid of this notion...and feel like God might be letting me in on it slowly.

Grace breaks through when we least anticipate it. God's love is stunning, disorienting as it streams into our darkness, accepting us as we are. As we open to love, we find something surprising: instead of ironing out the wrinkles of our character -- our neurotic wounds, our anxieties, our particular psychic dead-ends -- love comes to enliven us as we are. We are breathed into by the Spirit of Life, set upon our feet to stand before God and the world in all the glory and vulnerability of our true selves. We had imagined we would become some other sort of person -- that we could escape the bedeviling flaws of our character. Instead, we discover that those "flaws" are the very openings through which love can touch us to the core of our being.

-- Phillip Bennett

Providence

When I was far from the sea’s voice and vastness
I looked for God in the days and hours and seasons.
But now, by its large and eternal tides surrounded
I know I shall only find Him in the greater swing of the years.

For all the seas are His mysteries, not to be learned from a single surf-beat,
No wave suffices Him for a revelation.
How like the seas that dower all lands with green and the breath of blossoms,
With dews that never have heard its deathless surges.

Let me be patient, then, sure that stars are not jetsam tossing,
Or meaningless waste waters of omnipotence.
Let me be patient even when man is sunk in the storm of His purpose
And swirled, a strangled corpse, under His Ages.

-- Cale Young Rice

The Deep

God takes us into deep waters, not to drown us but to cleanse us.

-- James H. Aughey

WCHS Prom 2008

...not their real dates, of course.

Birds & Flowers

I am finding an unfamiliar mix of the pleasantries and struggles of this life. I was watching the birds today and wondering why people so love to take care of them. People can be really low on resources (like me) and still find ways of feeding birds. I feel something similar and something different with flowers. It feels like life has become prematurely simple. Perhaps I still remain too enamored by things that are more complex. Perhaps I fantasize that in the complexity of things I still have something that is needed. In the simpler things, I don't feel needed, but I do feel something else...like something that can be offered. Being needed and offering things...seem to be two different things, though they look like the same thing from a certain angle.

I'm sure this is related to how I imagined life in my 40s to look. I'm sure how I imagined life in the 40s to look is related to how I saw life (or thought I saw it) in 40s for my folks. I'm not prepared to say that in substance it is truly different, but it sure feels like it is...when I think of the inadequacy I feel to navigate the system of this world. But, that is heavily marinated in where I feel needed. So much so that I associate what I have to offer with where I feel needed. Interesting how that works, in both directions, isn't it? How good I feel about myself when I feel needed; how badly I feel about myself when I don't. With either I then relate that to what I have to offer. How else could I understand what I have offer than in where I am needed? ...and now we're right back to birds and flowers. I just like to put out seeds for birds to eat. And, I just like putting flowers in the ground and watching them complement each other and grow. Do I need to do it? Well, sometimes, yes. But mostly, not really. But I just like to do it...and in a strange way and place where it's not because it is needed.

...sorry about such divergence. This feels like a bunch of ingredients without a recipe, at the moment. But I smell something cookin'.... And, definitely looking forward to the meal, when it's ready...whatever it turns out to be.

On the Tracks

Looking at things ‘straight-on’ sometimes affects your vision. For example, when you look at something straight-on, it is difficult to determine whether or not something is coming towards you or moving away from you, especially when there is some distance involved between you and the object of your attention. This seems to be true both in the physical world and in the metaphysical world. ‘Staring it down’ often doesn’t seem to produce much of the results we desire, even when the stakes for determining the outcome seem pretty high.

A train, for example, coming straight at you is almost more ominous because of the sound than because of the sight of it. And, the speed of a train can be quite significant…especially if you are tied up on its tracks. Life can feel like this, as we sometimes desperately seek to understand whether or not a train is about to run us over. We hear the sound, we think we see something big coming, but we don’t know what to do about our current situation, nor how quickly we must find a way to save ourselves from it. And the uncertainly of such a situation, whatever it is, seems to create urgency out of our fears of the worst. We simply must know and so we stare more intently at the on-coming light beam, earnestly seeking a way to know what and when we must do something, in spite of our helplessness and the inevitability of the doom we so vividly imagine.

Look at things from the side, however. Now that seems to give us some perspective, doesn’t it? Take the train example again. When I watch a train from the side, I get a much more helpful perspective on things. I can estimate how fast it is moving. I can predict the basic direction it is going, towards something or away from it. I can also see the context of the tracks on which it is running…and note things about the significance of its travel. Looking at a train straight-on rarely gives me this point-of-view. Further, a straight-on view of a train rather implies that I am in its path. A view from the side, at the very least, seems to mean that I am safe…especially since most trains have to stay on their tracks to move very quickly or they don’t go very far, especially in farm-land soil.

Often, it seems, man is intent on seeing the train coming his way and will stare intently at it straight-on. I am intent on this these days, where the predictability of the tracks from the engineer’s seat (where I have typically and erroneously imagined myself sitting) has been removed. In fact, effort for or against, it seems nearly impossible for me to get off the track of the speeding train headed my way. I know that others can see things in my life because they are looking at things from the side. In fact, I can see things in their lives as well, because I sit on the side of their tracks. So the question emerges, in my mind, what is the value of the inescapable straight-on point-of-view that I see things from at the moment…especially since I seem helpless at being able to get to the side to see where things are going?

A quote by Elisabeth Elliot comes to mind:

Either we are adrift in chaos or we are individuals, created, loved, upheld and placed purposefully, exactly where we are. Can you believe that? Can you trust God for that?

-- Elisabeth Elliot

So the gap, in those moments when I can’t imagine this, when I can’t comprehend it, based on the circumstances of my life, is not that it isn’t true…rather and simply that I don’t understand how it is true, that I simply don’t see how it is true. Often the blindness I feel, whether from the brightness of the on-coming light or the endlessness of the surrounding darkness, seems deepest when I feel the most threatened by something else. But Elliot’s question persists, can I believe that I am exactly where I should be? Can I trust that God would put me where I am?

When the chips feel down, this kind of trust violates nearly every instinct we have on self-preservation. Am I really exactly where I should be? Loved, upheld and placed somewhere purposefully? What about these words, from someone else who felt that he was somewhere other than where he should be, in trouble?

1 The LORD is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?

3 Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
even then will I be confident.

4 One thing I ask of the LORD,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple.

5 For in the day of trouble
he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle
and set me high upon a rock.

7 Hear my voice when I call, O LORD;
be merciful to me and answer me.

8 My heart says of you, "Seek his ^[b] face!"
Your face, LORD, I will seek.

11 Teach me your way, O LORD;
lead me in a straight path
because of my oppressors.

13 I am still confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living.

14 Wait for the LORD;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD.

-- Psalm 27

If I was describing the train tracks of one of my friends, I would more likely agree that this could be, that this is true. So why do I feel as haltingly excepting of this truth – that I am exactly where I need to be – for myself? Is it because I haven’t known enough yet of the source of not only life, but also the goodness the Psalmist speaks of? Or, perhaps I have known of it, but not really and fully known it.

And, what if laying on the tracks of life is the way for me to come to know this God and His goodness in the deeply personal and profound way I long to know it? I often imagine other ways of coming to know such things. Unexplainable situations, especially when they are my own, regularly reinforce the likely impossibility that I am being allowed to know something like this. And yet, a view from-the-side seems to regularly reinforce that such a thing is happening and those around me claim they see it happening…even clearly.

…now that is a ‘view-from-the-side’ perspective that could be helpful for me in my currently ‘straight-on’ view of my world.

Rest

Rest. Rest. Rest in God's love. The only work you are required now to do is to give your most intense attention to His still, small voice within.

-- Madame Jeanne Guyon

In its time...

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

-- Ecclesiastes 3:11

The Parable of the Resistance Fighter

In time of war in an occupied country, a member of the resistance meets one night a stranger. They spend the evening in conversation. The stranger tells the partisan that he himself is a member of the resistance, indeed that he is in command of it; and urges the partisan to have faith in him no matter what happens. The partisan is utterly convinced of the stranger's sincerity and constancy and undertakes to trust him. They never meet in conditions of intimacy again. But sometimes the stranger is seen helping members of the resistance, and the partisan is grateful and says to his friends "He is on our side." Sometimes he is seen in the uniform of the enemy handing over patriots to the occupying power. On these occasions his friends murmur against him; but the partisan still says, "He is on our side." He still believes that, in spite of appearances, the stranger did not deceive him. Sometimes he asks the stranger for help and receives it. He is then thankful. Sometimes he asks and does not receive it. Then he says, "The stranger knows best." 

-- Basil Mitchell

All Him

The only thing of my very own which I contribute to redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.

-- William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury

Gold Finch!

The joy of girls!

Water is wet!

He gives and takes away

I am being given things I didn’t know I needed…even as things that I don’t really need are being taken away. Perhaps this is necessary to see both things clearly.

I'm guessing others have felt this way....

Water to lower ground...

I talked with my friend, Jerry McCoy, today. I’ve missed him…as we met for quite a while earlier in the year. My ‘painting’ schedule freed up a bit, so I met with him again today. By the way, you really need to hear his ‘story’. Talk about being taken into the deep…you really need to hear it, a story of incredible loss and redemption. And, he gives to me…out of that experience. Today, he was particularly unrestrained in his challenge for me to take on a daily discipline of writing. He referenced ‘talent’ going to waste as one motivation, but I suspect it comes from an energy he is experiencing himself…he just published an 83-page photo essay on sanctuaries in Indiana. “Write one page every day”, he repeated. A tip from none other than John Grisham, but Jerry felt particularly energetic to pass that challenge along to me. I feel I should take his admonishment as more than from just him today; I can’t help but sense that this is a word from God. Particularly since I believe it was He who nudged me to do this several months ago on one long run I had with Him.

“Do it because you can’t not do it”, he said; “don’t do it because of the ‘potential’ marketability of doing so…you’ll stop too soon from the weight of all the reasons not to proceed.”

Coming from him, this seems like excellent advice, as I’ve watched from a bit of a distance as he has pursued professional photography to a very high level…without much ‘commercial success’, so far.

So besides documenting my encounters with life, in this way, I wonder what all is going on inside of me. Reporting, a bit, to him on how things are going, I mentioned that I feel like I am sliding into the stage of grief commonly referred to as acceptance. Acceptance of what, I even ask myself. As best I can tell, acceptance of the fact that life will likely not ‘return’ to a pattern of work that I have, from a career perspective, been comfortable with for 20 years. I have been trying to pry open the door of employment in fields of experience I have had for 18 months now, all to no apparent avail. While I still find my head submerged in one of the other stages of grief, ‘anger’, from time to time, by and large I feel a sense that life has changed…in terms of what I do in it, especially related to how I earn income. The shock of this, though still deafening at times, is slowly wearing off and I find more of a curiosity about the future than anxiety over the past. This seems like it would have to be no small movement, especially if I were noticing it in someone else. So, I’m guessing it must apply to me as well…though certainly in a still slightly less forgiving way.

When you can’t hold on to something, and then you can’t reach it, and then you can’t even see it very well, you seem to notice yourself looking around for something else to grab. The emotional connection with the familiar past can’t sustain energy in the present environment…as the present does its work to require a response to itself. And, with the finite amount of energy we have to begin with, there appears to something almost natural about its flow to what is around you now. Like water heading to lower ground…it just gets there one way or another, without complaining about the latest obstacle or the amount of time it takes to arrive.

Now there’s something to think about…

8th Grade Champions!

For more pics, click here.

Accept as good whatever happens to you or affects you, knowing that nothing happens without God.

-- The Didache

Indiana Snow - December 2007

Let it Snow

I’m sitting in the living room of friends and am looking out their picture window. A suburban neighborhood sets the scene. But the drama is in the magnificent snow that is falling outside. Inch upon inch, it keeps stacking up…in the street, on the car, and on every little angle on every little branch of every little tree in the neighborhood. A streetlight casts is gleam on nearby flurries as they float by to the ground below. The feeling of it all comes quite close to a life-size, Dickens-esque snowglobe. Everything quiet, everything white, everything stacking up around you…but this time not with the unspoken threat of keeping up in this world, but rather with the whisper of relaxation that might actually be affordable after all. The kind we all work so hard to get in position to achieve, when really on this night it can simply and only be received. Participated in only by watching and observing and being surrounded by such beauty and quiet that the reminiscent notion of peace on earth actually feels tasteable.

And, of course, being the end of 2007, the newest in flat-screen technology whirls its dervish of light and color in the same room yelping for attention to its world of technology. But all eyes are focused beyond its distraction to the wonders of winterland going on outside. A faint sense that the beckoning call from both voices is sourced in something deep, something that we want, something that feels bigger and better than ourselves keeps its pace…and we’re left to wonder in a private way about which is more real. I’m going with the outside world I’m seeing…though I have to acknowledge that its appeal is internal.

The two, side-by-side, force me to consider their odd juxtaposition, as I admit to myself that I actually like both. But, I also realize that part of what I like about the electronic one is the false sense of something that I can achieve by ‘buying’ it. It makes me think I am better than I am. It tells me to define myself by what I do, even more by what I can get. I am defined by the stuff I accumulate around me, it repeats. Even worse, it starts its insidious chant that I am who I am relative to what my friends and neighbors have, by the amount of stuff they have accumulated. And, I catch myself falling into its stream of pride or despair about who I am relative to whether or not I am better than they are.

Meanwhile, fantastically unique and homogenous snow maintains its silent descent to earth adding to its chorus that who I am has nothing to do with comparing myself to my neighbor, but rather in living with what I am given. After all, everything is given. The commodities god gets worried at such thinking, such realization. Because it feeds on consumption. But the world of gift releases my grip on such things and such neighbors and raises its voice to me and my neighbor to say, “Look outside…isn’t that amazing!” And we stop, for a moment, imaging who we are in light of what we see going on around us…imagining who we are in light of what we are given…imaging who we are by the Giver of such goodness to us. And we relax…and enter peace. Snow and peace kind of go together, don’t they?

Let it snow, let is snow, let it snow.

Snowshoeing in Colorado!

So many breathtaking views from our trek at Mueller Park, for more click here.

Leaves on the Path

Some like to run in the woods. I love the woods. But, I also have glass ankles, as they say. And so, after having turned my ankles over numerous times playing basketball, I prefer flat ground. The flat ground of concrete or asphalt, though I do suspect the beneficiary of such flat ground is the dull ache that persists just below my right knee. I catch myself sometimes playing over a slow ankle turn in my mind…slow motion pain. Imagined pain. But informed pain nonetheless. So, for the time-being at least, I stick to the streets even as I look somewhat jealously at some of my friends galloping off into nearby trails of green and brown blur.

Over the course of a year, the commitment to run on flat ground develops the hidden habit of foot-radar. Foot-radar is the sensory device your feet develop in concert with your brain to time your steps away of from undesired objects in way ahead. I first noticed my foot-radar when walking the streets of Grenoble, France and the almost innate ability that developed for the slightest adjustments in foot position on the sidewalk…especially when dog poop was imminently seeking out a way to get enmeshed in the patterns of my shoe under-soles. Since then, I’ve noticed a less smelly sophistication in the ability of my feet to avoid things like gravel and potholes and ice…in addition to animal dung. Foot-radar is a good thing, I think. Head to toe communication, each doing its part to avoid trouble…of one kind or another.

Trouble, real or perceived, is an interesting intruder into our psyche. Even the possibility of it seems insistent on our attention. When running on snow covered roads, my whole person seems to become riveted on what is happening at my feet. What is the surface like? Is it slick? Does it give? What is underneath the perceivable surface? This, of course, detracts from a ‘good run’, but it remains compelling. During a recent Autumn, a trail I regularly run becomes covered with oak leaves. The trail is asphalt, but it becomes so leave-covered that you wouldn’t even know that was a solid surface underneath the myriad of leaves. It is a particularly beautiful sight, even if not just for the juxtaposition of ideas it represents. It really looks like a trail…a regular earth-worn trail. But underneath is the same, trusty surface I’ve come to expect from the routine of many runs along its path.

I’m also going through a period of great unknown regarding the direction of my future. I lost my job due to a down-sizing last year and the path has been anything but expected ever since. I’m in the same places and with the same people, but everything looks different because the future is unknown. It was unknown anyway, but I didn’t know that before. Now that I do, things just look different and the radar I use to find my way is lost in some unfamiliar array.

So, the thought occurred to me during one oak-leaf-covered asphalt run that this particular path was not unlike the current leg of the journey of my life. Impossible to see whether or not things are really stable after all. All the things that I have relied for such information are now no longer yielding the data I had become so comfortable with. Is this path still firm? Especially when I can’t confirm that it is in the way that I used to? I couldn’t really know the answer to this question without running the path anyway, in spite of radar-like instincts that remind me that I need to be able to see what is there before trusting my aging body to potential ankle-turning unevenness. So I run on it anyway, feeling a new sense of something that can be trusted even when I can’t see it.

God is like this, it seems to me. At certain points along the journey, we live off the tangible feedback in our relationship with Him. We become so convinced of the trustworthiness of this data transfer that we actually find ourselves believing a very basic cause-and-effect relationship between all things…including God. This is dangerous proposition…especially since He doesn’t seem to like the ways we reduce Him to our paradigms of understanding Him.

He seems to move into areas of unpredictability in our relationship with Him. This is unsettling because, after all, the way we have built our way of knowing Him and life are now unfamiliar. But upon a close review of the people of faith – those of ancient past and those walking beside us in these days – we learn that this unpredictability is not so unfamiliar to His people. In fact, many would say ‘unfamiliar’ is a tame description of this experience with Him. Honestly, I would, too. It is not just unfamiliar, it is downright frightening. It is counter-intuitive. It is the essence of darkness. This is true because the things we are trying to protect are far more vulnerable than our ankles. And before it is over, we realize that we are entirely incapable of doing any self-preservation. Everything is at risk. We need help.

Has God ever covered your path with leaves? He has mine, using the circumstance of loss of regular employment to completely re-orient my radar of Him. And yet it is a grace of Himself that He is willing to risk our understanding of Him, in order to show us more of who He really is. Just like the strange beauty of an asphalt leaf-covered road speaks of an unseen solidness that we can learn to depend on, we learn that God is re-orienting our radar towards Him in a way that is deeper, richer, enlightening, laden with trust, and compelling for us to trust Him with more and more of ourselves – areas of deep vulnerability from which we have largely remained unaware. Such leaves help us find our true identity in Him, an identity that is not based on the cause-and-effect relationship we have experienced with Him in the past. A new kind of relating emerges, the kind that happens in the dark and that builds on things we can’t see…without putting our full weight on it.

By the way, oak leaves are still slippery...even when on asphalt.

Yes, we got SOME SNOW!!!

An Unexpected Christmas

Darlin’ (Christmas Is Coming)

So it’s been a long year
Every new day brings one more tear
Till there’s nothing left to cry
My, my how time flies
Like little children hiding their eyes
We’ll make it disappear
Let’s start a brand new year
Darlin’ Christmas is coming
Salvation army bells are ringing
Darlin’ Christmas is coming
Do you believe in angels singing
Darlin’ the snow is falling
Falling like forgiveness from the sky
If I could have anything
What would I want this new year to bring
Well, I’d want you here with me
Tear these thorns from my heart
Help the healing to start
Let’s set this old world free
Let’s start with you and me

-- OtR, Detweiler

Music is an oil that kneads my soul, pressing the truth in, letting it out. I marvel at the capture of its thought, and the rapture of discovering it. We looked and whispered at each other…listening to these words one late December rainy night. Lots of tears and lots of fears…in retrospect of 2007. Now Christmas. An end of something and a beginning of another. How can we welcome it? How can we not? The music is so painfully beautiful, so joyous. It reminds of how much I want…how much I want you. You being you, and the yous, and the You. Am I, too, playing such mournfully divine music with you, yous, and You? I often can’t hear mine, but I can hear yours.

Recently, God used Over the Rhine to cleanse me again…as they have done before. So deep the scrubbing that I ached the next day. A pain familiarly unfamiliar. A good pain. A longful one. No pretense, just yearning. For things I know about and things I don’t. But full of admiration for those who can capture it…and rapture it in me. This is the heart of Christmas, I suspect. Something in the night, darkness, where stars can shine. Your stars to me, mine to you, yous, and You. Hard to imagine, but I distrust you if I don’t believe it. Such a kindness brings healing, if not restoration…but to what, remains unclear. But to what, it matters less and less…with you, yous, and You nearby. To ornament my life with things my money can’t buy this Christmas. A tree of life…and light. Yes, even a Christmas tree.

You Give and you give and You give. And You take away, and you give. And you are given.

Not a riddle. You are mine, those given to me. Yous are you all, who continue to respond with such deep compassion to His hand on us…by offering simple kindness after simple kindness, after simple kindness. And You use it to heal me…and mine. And the circle of dance continues round and round, much better than the wheels on a school bus. A holy dance, what we barely know the tune to…but one that we recognize more and more.

Thank you for being our healing balm this Christmas…for things we do and do not know. Thank you for ringing as bells to us.

If I could have anything
What would I want this new year to bring
Well, I’d want you here with me...

He Knows...

...what He is doing! From the outside 'in'...

...and from

the inside 'out'!

Inevitably, it seems there’s always something that holds you back….

I could go faster…if I wasn’t feeling that slight tenseness in my hamstring. Or, that familiar pain starting again, just below my right knee. Are these socks damp? It feels like that dreaded blister is already lined up to attack my foot…and I just started! No air, no air, just can’t get enough air today…just can’t breathe. Oh no…not that cramp already! I should have stretched more…I can already feel that ‘pull’ of tightness in my lower back…. And on and on it goes…it seems there’s always something…I just can’t go as fast today as I would like.

…but then, I say that every day.

Not that I speak from experience or anything…I’m guessing these are just the typical ‘first 5 minutes’ complaints of any good run. So why do I do it? Why do I fool myself into thinking that this time will be different? The same reason you do. By the end of the run, I’m not thinking about any of these problems. Somehow I made it and I feel great. Great for doing it…and great, just feeling great. Plus, it is getting easier…isn’t it? The answer seems to come more by the insistence my internals present to me the next day…to get out there and do it again. After all, running seems to be making a difference, whether my time changes much or not. It has me in its grip…I should do it…I have to do it…It is making a difference in some way…It matters.

I’ve been running for two years now…and my time has dropped by over 20%. I’ve lost 30 lbs. And…I see muscle, even where I thought I would never see it again. And…I feel better. So the math works and my mind agrees that the statistics are meaningful. And, my body reminds me that the pain feels good - when it’s over…and that I don’t want to have to start over with that starting-running-again pain. I’ve noticed that my awareness of other areas of life is different, too.

One thing about running - you are forced to be aware of yourself, aware of where you are really at. The pain of a good run seems to force a certain kind of clarity. It arouses desperation. Your whole body is focused on it.

Pain shows you your limits. It creates opportunity to acknowledge and discover feelings about your existence. Pain clarifies things. It makes you ask questions. Like, how to live with what you want…especially when what you want seems to be beyond your reach. Pain is the wall you can’t get through on your own. It is pain that inevitably holds you back. And, it is pain that inevitably pushes you forward. But, by simply knowing it is there, by feeling it…you begin to see something beyond it. Pain reveals what you want. …by showing you what you can’t have.

What you want and what you can’t have. Side by side. You on one side, desire on the other. A wall in between. You can see over it. But, you can’t get through it. Sometimes what you see isn’t actually all that clear, but you know you still want something. You feel what is on the other side, you can almost taste the good that is over there. And then pain reminds you again of where you are at…especially relative to your need to stop it. Like tasting what you want, but not being allowed to stop and eat the meal.

You try to figure out if you’re half-way home yet. If you are, you use your ‘more than half way home’ knowledge to push on…you’ve made it this far, so it’s shorter the rest of way home than it is back to where you started. You push on, wanting both the relief of being done and the thing you saw over your wall…the thing that pain revealed you. Now you want two things - to be done and to have what you want. And, now that you’re more than half-way, the two things feel like they are pulling you in opposite directions. You have to finish, it hurts too much not to. You focus on finishing. But the memory of what you saw, what you want, lingers…. It is something specific…something in the here-and-now. And, it is something mysterious, hard to name, hard to specify…something almost built in…a longing for something the here-and-now can’t fill. Eden, perhaps…Eden, for sure.

…and this gets you out running again tomorrow.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about running and I’m talking about life. I think the two are connected in a fundamental way. They are connected through our humanity and they are connected to God. He has connected the two, fusing something in each of us in the here-and-now with something from Eden. The book of Ecclesiastes calls it the ‘eternity’ he has put in our hearts (Ecc. 3:11).

We discover that we are not God, after all. We discover instead that we need him. And, after years of running in this life, we learn that we need him for more than simply making our life work out for us. We learn that we don’t want him as much for our sake, as we do for his sake. But, it’s a long road home…to him. And, half the race, we don’t even realize what we’re really running towards. We don’t realize what we are running for. And, then at some point, often the result of a change in circumstances, we start to see more of the landscape…simply because of the mileage our own feet have now traveled over. And our hunger to finish grows, as does our hunger for him…and in time, the two become the same thing.

If only...

...I was 16, said he. said he!

Lighten the Burden and Wait Patiently

Sometimes life’s troubles may so overwhelm me that I cannot for a time sustain a belief in God’s loving concern for me and my fellow creatures.  In my humanity I may, like may of my biblical predecessors in the faith, despair or even rage against God.  At that point you must believe for me.  Do not insist that I still believe.  Do not whip the mule that has collapsed under the burden.  Do what you can to lighten the burden and wait patiently until I have regained my strength.  And someday I will do the same for you.

-- Daniel Taylor

Psalm 40

1 I waited patiently for the LORD;
he turned to me and heard my cry.

2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.

3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear
and put their trust in the LORD.

4 Blessed is the man
who makes the LORD his trust,
who does not look to the proud,
to those who turn aside to false gods. ^[a]

5 Many, O LORD my God,
are the wonders you have done.
The things you planned for us
no one can recount to you;
were I to speak and tell of them,
they would be too many to declare.

6 Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but my ears you have pierced ^[b] , ^[c] ;
burnt offerings and sin offerings
you did not require.

7 Then I said, "Here I am, I have come—
it is written about me in the scroll. ^[d]

8 I desire to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart."

9 I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly;
I do not seal my lips,
as you know, O LORD.

10 I do not hide your righteousness in my heart;
I speak of your faithfulness and salvation.
I do not conceal your love and your truth
from the great assembly.

11 Do not withhold your mercy from me, O LORD;
may your love and your truth always protect me.

12 For troubles without number surround me;
my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see.
They are more than the hairs of my head,
and my heart fails within me.

13 Be pleased, O LORD, to save me;
O LORD, come quickly to help me.

14 May all who seek to take my life
be put to shame and confusion;
may all who desire my ruin
be turned back in disgrace.

15 May those who say to me, "Aha! Aha!"
be appalled at their own shame.

16 But may all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who love your salvation always say,
"The LORD be exalted!"

17 Yet I am poor and needy;
may the Lord think of me.
You are my help and my deliverer;
O my God, do not delay.

No, not something I've 'contracted'...

...well, I take that back. I have contracted to help a friend on a big painting project...with a powerful sprayer. I hope I got more on his ceiling...than I did on myself.