The Draw of Honest Christian Human-beings

There’s nothing quite as drawing as an honest Christian human-being. Why does this seem to be the case? In part, because it seems like many who think of themselves as Christians, don’t seem very honest about very much. And, even before I start down the road of appearing (even to myself) to not being one of ‘these’ people, I have to be honest and admit that this only makes sense to the degree that I myself acknowledge that am often not very honest. At the very least my honesty is quite selective. So I can accuse no one without accusing myself.

That being said, though, I think Christians often fit quite nicely with many people who simply do not want to face the realities of this world, both the world inside them and the world outside them. I think an honest Christian human-being is often quite near the end of their rope in terms of what they live with day in and day out, recognizing in human terms how precarious things are…how unlike the false reality marketed by our culture things really are. Our cultural falseness, our un-reality, leads straight away from where the desperateness of real reality leads us. We are alive and we are in constant danger one way or another, and we must admit this against a culture that refuses to do so.

The irony is that in all of its falseness, our world is so addicted to so many things, to so many kinds of escape; how could we even imagine it to be telling us the truth about how good things are. Honesty, in part, is about acknowledging this, naming it, speaking it out loud, if not for the ears of my own heart, then for the ears of others.

…and it is in the so doing, that we realize the more accurate position of our humanity and, perhaps even more importantly, our need…our natural, real and true state of dependence. Our desire for true love, is recognized substantially on the cusp of our desperation. This is a Love that we cannot provide for ourselves, that can only be provided for us. And only by someone who can really love like this – God himself.

A lack of honesty, though, skips over all of this…and misses nearly everything we truly need.

There was nothing left of me. I had drifted so far away from God and every stabilizing force in my life that I felt there was no hope…My separation from Him, the deepest and most ravaging of the various kinds of loneliness I'd felt over the years, seemed finally complete. It wasn't. I thought I'd left Him, but He hadn't left me. I felt something very powerful start to happen to me, a sensation of utter peace, clarity, and sobriety. Then my mind started focusing on God.

-- Johnny Cash

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves.

-- C.S. Lewis

Honesty leads to something as magnificently wonderful, as profoundly powerful…as forgiveness. The ability forgive oneself is centered again only in something that can’t be provided by ourselves, it is something that we can experience from and with God. But we have to be honest enough to see our need for it. Forgiveness when experienced, is something like the ocean tide, it washes over us, drowning us in mercies and ebbs back to its next destination. We, though, are now part of the ocean that descends on the next person and actually become part of the delivery of it to others. This is part of the power of such a thing like forgiveness.

Honesty then, as a virtue, is a portal to the soul – our own and others – through which the flood waters of forgiveness can flow…to and from us.

To be Christian is to be fundamentally human and to be truly human, you and I must be honest and open to the saving graces of a Loving God. When that happens, we are drawn to people and people are drawn to us.

Be honest.

Mothers Day Bike Ride - 28 Miles

We had a great day biking as a family on Fort Wayne's Rivergreenway on Mothers Day. 'Mom' liked it a lot.

Running

...finding her form, wind, and speed in 7th grade.

Flat

I’m feeling really flat today…as a person. I felt this coming on yesterday. Perhaps it is because the landscape of my requirement this weekend is fairly open…or perhaps because there is nothing dramatic to anticipate. I feel tempted to find ‘jolt’ in my life. I’m wondering why. I’m reminded of Parker Palmer’s video interview…I am flying too high? Am I trying to? I’m feeling altitude in my attitude. I want to be closer to the ground, to acknowledge the humility I need and treasure, not (I hope) to avoid the pain of crashing, but more to live at my right size…not bigger than I should be. Perhaps this is a healthy kind of 'flat', even if it doesn't feel like it.

…as my emotional energy wanes and I finish even the stumbling nature of this self-identifying writing, the sun has burst into the sky, overcoming the grey of the earlier morning. My spirit is lifting a bit, but warily. What will this day hold?

No Time for Each Other

The world today is upside down because there is so very little love in the home, and in family life. We have no time for each other. Everybody is in such a terrible rush, and so anxious…and in the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world.

-- Mother Teresa

Being Human

At times I am overcome with gratitude for the range and depth of God’s love and provision. At other times, and usually without much separation, I am overcome with the dramatic inconvenience of an obstacle in front of me that HAS to move…for me to live or be happy. What a strange creature I am…being this thing called human. The conflict of this range of experience internally makes me want to grab for a middle ground, for the middle bottom of the pendulum’s swing, some disposition that will avoid what feels often like cheap inconsistency within my spirit.

But what appeals to this desire for freedom from such a thing as inconsistency? What voice values that? Who equated consistency as a hallmark of independence? Is it not true that to be fully human IS to be fully dependent.

Solitude is the Garden...

Solitude is the garden for our hearts which yearn for love. It is the place where our aloneness can bear fruit. It is the home for our restless bodies and anxious minds. Solitude, whether it is connected with a physical space or not, is essential for our spiritual lives. It is not an easy place to be, since we are so insecure and fearful that we are easily distracted by whatever promises immediate satisfaction. Solitude is not immediately satisfying, because in solitude we meet our demons, our addictions, our feelings of lust and anger, and our immense need for recognition and approval. But if we do not run away, we will meet there also the One who says: "Do not be afraid. I am with you, and I will guide you through the valley of darkness."

-- Henri Nouwen

Let’s keep returning to our solitude.

God's Glory

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word darkness on the walls of his cell.

-- C.S. Lewis

HH - 2009

Birds of Hope

I hear the birds singing loudly today...because it is beautiful Spring morning or do they sing unrestrained for the hope born this Easter morning?

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of Me.

-- Emily Dickinson

Flat-screen Fast & Easter

I fell asleep last night with such high hopes for an 'awakening' morning. It is Easter morning and I knew the weather would be quite Spring-like. And as I awoke with pain in my feet, a chill in the air and deepness of sleeplessness forfeited the night before, I realized that there felt like a lot to get through to the awakening I wanted. I finally made it to my computer. But the Lenten ‘fast’ I had just finished from the ‘flat-screen’ world of relating called loudly to me as I readjusted my ‘offline-ness’ to being on-line again. So many, so many distractions…that seem so innocuous, yet are so unambivalent in the waste of their pursuit. I wonder if the appeal of online reality (or unreality as it may be) is the illusion of choice. The belief that I can choose what I want to pursue, big or small, with the only restraint being someone around me giving me the feeling that I spend too much time doing it. Does choice offer me power, false as it may be? Do I believe in a kind of power that is simply easier to follow, easier to navigate than the thick thickets involved in real human relating?

I think the thing that caught my eye at the origin of this year’s fast were the following lines from an article, by Anne Jackson, called, “The Facebook Fast”:

Online connections are good. They can be deep and good for our souls. But when we turn them into an online community, they can, and do, impact our face-to-face interactions. When we spend more time staring at a glowing monitor than we do into the eyes of those we love, or need to love, it might be time to shut off the computer.

Among other things, I think it is just easier to choose 'away' from people. We are lazy. We are often confused, hurt, and paralyzed by how to move towards other people. And so, an option to devote more energy to our own ‘profile’ makes things feel much easier. And then there is the addicting part of self-presentation…and the deception it leads us towards about ourselves. Looking into the eyes of others is a highly personal and intimate act, which forces us into something we might not otherwise believe or know about. There are things that are much greater than the confusion and pain we often experience with others. Things much, much greater. And the false-security we are offered through non-human relating is, at the very least, a naïve and unfortunate forfeit of the greater mysteries of courage, compassion, and love.

I have found that I am far more tethered to the flat-screen life than I would like. My bills now come on it, my communication is now embedded in it. My way of participating, even knowing the world is now almost inextricably dependent on it. We, as a culture, are all about doing things fast, quickly. And much of our non-human technology is designed to help us ‘relate’ more efficiently. It simply takes less time to e-mail a bunch of people about something, than it does to call them or go see them. But on the hill greased with the appeal of efficiency I wonder about the quality of time I spend ‘getting more things done faster’. Do I really get to know people better, more deeply or do I mostly spend myself telling others about me, the way I would like them to see me. When I talk with someone or visit them, I have to listen. I have to at least act interested. It is required; to not do so would be rude. But I don’t even have to pretend on-line that I am interested in what someone else is saying.

In many ways, things that take time are better and believe it or not, efficiency is not. As I leave my fast this year, I want to acknowledge the humanity of those God has placed around me. They are for me and I am for them. We are not made to experience each other primarily through a flat screen. We are not card-board cutouts waiting for the apparel and hairstyle change of the next commercial we offer of ourselves. We are the fallen, sometimes beautiful, but more often than not messy human-beings that have the mysterious power of God, not in our presentation of ourselves, but in the participation with ourselves in the same messy lives of others, to offer to someone else. I believe more and more that ‘life is the discovery of God’…in nature, in ourselves and in others. Let’s keep turning towards this truth and away from the illusions we are enticed with from this increasingly dehumanized world.

This is part of the power I hope for from today’s Easter reminder.

Humility

My doctor says that I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, he muttered to himself, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.
-- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Hurt & Love

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.

-- Mother Teresa, "The Simple Path"

Have you found this to be true as well?

If this is true...and how often have we been willing to test it...I wonder how fear again trys to win in lying to us by only telling us about the death of pain...rather than the truth about the life that comes from pain.

Humility vs Entitlement - My Ageless War

Learn to humble yourself, you are but earth and clay.

-- Thomas à Kempis

I fear that humility has escaped me again. How and why does it get away so regularly? There are certain areas of my life that affect my ability to lose perspective on nearly every other area of my life. And when those areas are being hammered on, I go down and stay down. And the quote above reveals to me today…that humility has left my building again. Or, perhaps something else has entered my building and is trying to re-establish residency. I don’t know exactly what that is, but it seems to have something to do with the feeling that I deserve something that I’m not getting at a relational level. Let’s call it entitlement for now. I think Entitlement sneaks in through an open window somewhere in my life…perhaps the window that is opened whenever I am put in a situation where an unusual and prolonged amount of effort feels required of me.

I think, in simple terms, that I just want some help…or perhaps I just want someone to be with me. I think that is pretty close to the kind of help I think I want. But Entitlement seizes the opportunity and pours in through the opening at unexpected rates and starts setting up shop in my mind. It creates walls with substantial and shining plaques on it. One that I recognize is called Justified. The plaque reads, “You on justified in your need for help…after all, look at all that you’re doing!” And, on the back of the plaque, in some strange way that defies the fact that you should only be able to see it from the back, are the words that eek through, “You Deserve It.”

The simple reality is that when such things occur in my life, something really is being lost…even though I don’t often recognize it or know what it is. And, because this is the case, something normal is to be grieved. But grief is un-handy, it is un-tidy, it is vulnerable, it is exposing…it requires (in a healthy way) something from someone else…and therefore creates a wider imposition. It is not self-contained. We want things to be self-contained and therefore we don’t want to grieve. Entitlement knows this and rushes through an opening whenever it can, like an arrogant salesman that shoves grief to the background. Its promotional display is attractive and compelling; hard even to resist because of the utility it offers in heading off the kind of vulnerable and slow dependency that grief leads toward with God. Grief leads me to God in perceived uncomfortable ways. It doesn’t appear to offer me Relief. Entitlement offers me relief of a different flavor, an independent one, and urgent one.

In reality, Entitlement attempts to hide God as the offerer of true relief through dependence. It says I can get what I want another way. It lies about this, because I can’t get it another way. But it knows what it is doing and uses arrogance and pride and independence and righteous justification to lead me away from God – to hide Grief.

Humility doesn’t do this. And, it is willing to wait until the barf of Entitlement is in full stench. Humility says the truth, “You really can’t do this on your own. You really do need help. The help you need isn’t in the cooperation you seek from others. It is in the dependence you have on God, which allows you to give up on the keeping-on-going of things in your life.” You see there are things in my life that I don’t want to give up. And, many of these things are good things. And, it appears for a while that I can keep all the things that I like being and doing. But things change in time and circumstances and these are controlled by God, not by me. Humility whispers these things to me…. But I often don’t hear them when I am trying as hard and as loudly as I am to keep going, to not have to grieve, to not have to acknowledge that God may be changing things for me, for someone else. Entitlement says, “You do know what is best, keep going. You can get what you want if you try hard and long enough. …but don’t bring God back into it.” Humility says, “You don’t know…what is best, but you can trust God who does. Allow Him to be in it.”

So, in very simply form, I need to acknowledge what I am made of – clay…dirt really. And the only way life can be experienced from such a starting point is by acknowledging in very practical terms (like what I want right now) that God is the breather of life into dirt. Otherwise, dirt is dirt and nothing more. Only God can do such a thing, I cannot do it…in spite of what Entitlement says. I have to be willing to wait for His breath…and to receive as joyfully as only any dirt could when it happens. This is humility and how I learn it...again and again.

Money

One of money's evils is its beckoning to isolation. 

-- dana williamson 

 ...before I explain, what is your initial reaction to this simple statement?

Phil Keaggy

A master musician...a priviledge to have seen him again!

Goals, Values...and the Spirit of God

Hey, bored of TV, check this out:

http://www.ysmarko.com/?p=3953

It is usually fun to see what a bunch of people we don't know anything about thinking about stuff we also think about. Actually, it was a little fun just to write that sentence. Anyway, I think the thing that rings true for me in this domain is that while goals can (and should?) have a base in values, values can (and should?) have a base in the Holy Spirit. I find that even my values, or perhaps my expression of them, change (or develop?) over time. In other words, what is dearer to me today is not the same thing that was dear to me 20 years ago. I don't think that's a sloppy thing (though it could be, I suppose), rather a thing that is rooted and guided by the Spirit of God. He shows me and teaches me what to value. From that dynamic value-system, I orient my life in my understanding of who I am and in what I do...and plan to do (goals).

People and organizations have rotated on values and planning many times and, I suspect, will continue to do so. I find that the 'life' in values, though, is something that needs to be regularly fueled (energized, guided, updated, debunked, etc.) by the Spirit. Otherwise, even values become wooden and doctrinal-statement-ish.

Anxious?

And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

-- Luke 12:25-26

Be Patient with All that is Unresolved in Your Heart...

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.
And try to love the questions themselves.
Do not see the answers that cannot be given you
Because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
Live along some distant day into the answer.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 1929

Suffering: Does it Lead to Freedom?

It is impossible for a person not to be puffed up by his good works unless he has first been deflated and destroyed by suffering and evil to the point that he knows that he is worthless and that his works are not his but God’s.

-- Martin Luther

The Power of Freedom

Several times now I have said that our real hope lies in that no matter how oppressed we may be, we always retain some spark of capacity to choose. We can use the ember of freedom to choose to risk ourselves to the goodness of God or to continue to strive for our own autonomy or give in to the powers that oppress us. I am convinced that nothing whatsoever determines the choices we make at this primal level. Here, finally, the choices are totally up to us; we really are free. 

Ironically, freedom becomes most pure when our addictions have so confused and defeated us that we sense no choice left at all. Here, where we feel absolutely powerless, we have the most real power. Nothing is left in us to force us to choose one way or another. Our choice then, is a true act of faith. We may put our faith in ourselves or in our attachments (our addictions) or in God. It is that simple. 

-- Gerald May, Addiction and Grace

Rest. Rest. Rest in the Goodness of God's love.

There is something comforting about time after all, even as it seems to hasten us on into oblivion at times. The chance to reflect and revisit a prior time reminds me that all is well in the soul that yearns for God and that the march of time is a bringing-us-closer to something, rather than a taking-us-away. As I reflect today on the significance of things, this first day of a new year, I am reminded of a writing I wrote exactly one year ago. And, as I re-read that writing, I noticed a call to a kind of rest that has slowly deepened within me over the last year. A quote from the mystic, Madame Guyon, captures it well:

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

As best I know, at this point in time anyway, this rest is a growing awareness and confidence in the goodness of God towards mankind, towards me. Perhaps the threat we feel from the oblivion we so often dread is really based in sense of loss in the goodness of things we have experienced as we age – goodness defined on our terms, base on our own personal histories. And the voice of this loss chagrins us into brokering our sense of goodness from within ourselves and through what we experience. This, though, is really a false voice. A voice not of the peace of God, but a voice from one trying to distort peace by basing it on our own ability to manage things, to secure the goodnesses we seek. This distortion of goodness changes the game from something we desire, to something we think we deserve. And, when we operate from a sense of things we deserve, we miss the very nature of goodness. The very nature of God himself.

One of my conclusions over the last year is that God is the ultimate author of goodness. And, because this is true, my attempts to manage it based on my very limited perspective of what goodness should look like are really just sad and pitiful, at best. The fact is, I really don’t know how to write a story about goodness. But that is not my job, my role in life. My life is to be about participating in the goodness that God designs for life. Goodness that extends itself to me, and not simply to me. And the way I participate in it is largely by being willing to wait for it, rather than by trying to make it happen. And the way I wait for it is largely due to my willingness to rest (rather than work hard) and listen for God’s voice.

This is something I think I was recognizing a year ago today and something that I believe more and more in now. I don’t control goodness. I receive it. It is gift. It is something I can be a part of…something because of the nature of it, to offer to others…to give away.

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.