My Head is Full of Wriggling Fish and Other Reflections October 4, 2009

I just survived my first week of grad school.  I’m not trying to be dramatic or anything – survived really does feel like the right word to use here.  Two weeks ago I was dreaming of what it would be like when classes started.  I pictured myself in an Argyle sweater with a thermos of English breakfast tea in my hand, walking across campus with fallen leaves on the ground and squirrels bounding through them in the crisp fall weather.  I pictured myself taking notes in Systematic Theology 1 and debating hot topics in Ethics.

What I didn’t picture was every spare second of my life being crammed with studying, or this overwhelming sensation of being thoroughly humbled by my own incompetence and lack of coping skills.  I think part of the difficulty is that I went from not having a very full schedule, and not being a student for over 3 years, to suddenly having a packed schedule and being in a rigorous graduate studies program.  You know that illustration of desensitization, how if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly heat it, he’ll think he’s relaxing in a Jacuzzi instead of being cooked to death?  Well, there was no easing in process for me here – a pot of water was brought to a rolling boil and I was thrown in.  Of course my first instinct would be to leap the hell out of that pot.

Sigh.  You probably think you’ve read this before.  You know why?  Because this is what I always sound like after my first week in a new place!  Expectations are unmet, I am face to face with all of my weaknesses and disturbing tendency toward anxiety-filled meltdowns.  Then after a couple of weeks I settle in, find a routine, stop taking myself so seriously, and begin to love what I’m doing.  For someone who continues to put herself in new, out-of-comfort-zone situations, I really have surprisingly poor coping skills.

Alas, alack, it is me in all my under-construction glory.  I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how the Scriptures say that as a father has compassion on his children, God has compassion on us – he remembers that we’re frail and weak and doesn’t despise us for it.  This truth has been a sweet companion to me when I’m doing things like forgetting my shoes when I go to the Rose Bowl to go running.  Even though I want to beat myself up about it, Jesus just kind of grins and says, “Well, that was funny.  Let’s move on.”  In the nicest possible way, of course.

So back to Fuller.  Although busy and way more work than I anticipated, I think I’m going to love it here.  My classes are so good, and I’m like on code red nerd alert because I’m finding it difficult to skim my texts because they are just so interesting.  Hopefully that means I’m in the right place.  Here are a few reflections/insights on my first days here:

What’s crazy is that some of the things I’m learning are completely different than what I learned at the bible college where I did my undergrad.  I’m reading these texts that say, “For many years everyone thought this way on an issue, but now people are starting to think this way.”  And I’m always in the old school of thought.  Sometimes the new perspectives being taught are so different than anything I’ve known that I feel like there is this little man inside my mind pushing at its walls to expand it.  Weird, but cool.  A lot of people say that Fuller is super liberal, but I’m not afraid of that.  I feel like being exposed to all these different views is causing my mind to be more pliable and stretchable – I want my mind and my belief system to be less like a metal box holding a bunch of set truths and more like a flexible, woven net that can hold all these new concepts like a bunch of slippery wriggling fish.  Right?

All summer I’ve been like, oh I love theology so much and blah blah blah!  But then last week I sat down with my theology textbook and thought, holy crap.  This is tough.  I’ve been watching theology as some type of beautiful dance, and sometimes I’ve swayed a little to the music, but never really gotten in there to learn with the dancers.  And now here I am in a school of theology, and what’s made to look easy is turning out to be frustratingly full of complicated steps.  That’s always how it is when you first learn a dance…I’m excited for the day that I know the steps and can enter in with my whole self, and enjoy the dance without clenched jaw and furrowed brow, and make it look easy to everyone else.

At the Festival of Beginnings chapel the other day, Fuller’s president, Dr. Mouw, quoted Simone Weil as saying, “Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.”  He said it’s a provocative quote, but I guess I like my quotes provocative because I loved it.  It gave words to how I feel right now, standing on a hill about to run down into a valley of truth and knowledge and a lot of stuff mixed in.  I’m not afraid of having my beliefs challenged or even flipped on their backs because in the past couple of years I have decided that everything will rest on one belief: that God is good, and faithful, and true.  I do believe that in my search for truth, I’ve found Jesus; and in my search for God, I’ve found truth.  I’ve experienced firsthand how truth brings freedom, so I say at the beginning of this adventure, with hope and joy: further up and further in!

I’ve Been Fullered September 24, 2009

I’m starting grad school this month at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.  We had our first day of orientation yesterday and by 5pm, I felt like I had been chewed up and spit out.  In a good way…?  Seriously, though, even though I was thoroughly exhausted, I was also exhilarated.  I think the through-the-wringer feeling came from the fact that my life is switching gears really suddenly and fast, without slowing down first.  I feel it inside, like I’ve been running at full speed in one direction and then switch, and all my insides lurch behind the rest of my body half a second later.

I’m such a sucker for welcome week activities.  During the convocation ceremony I felt so pumped up by all the speeches about learning and becoming scholars and theologians.  After the panel discussions, lunch with faculty, and conversations with other students yesterday, I get the feeling that I’m a small fish in a big pond.  I was stripped of any last bit of pride I may have had in my own theological or scholarly aptitude.  It’s the first day of kindergarten, junior high, college all over again, realizing I’m not much further along than anyone else.  But I didn’t come here to show off how smart I am.  I came to be challenged and to learn; to get out of my own blend of Foursquare-YWAM-Anne Lamott-C.S. Lewis-Erwin McManus theology and see things from new angles.

Yesterday there seemed to be a theme of the day – preparing for one’s Ph.D. program.  Wait, really?  Yes, everyone’s already pushing us past the finish line 2 years from now and getting us to stress about the next thing.  Boo.  The problem is, that’s already my natural tendency.  So I was thankful today when I hopped on the elliptical machine at the gym and cracked open Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies which I am reading only for the second time, thank you very much.  There was a poem there, or at least I think it was a poem, by Rumi, Lamott’s favorite Persian mystic.  And it spoke to me.

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.

Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings.

Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.

Don’t open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

But Rumi, I wanted to say, I’m in school! I have to begin reading.  Then I wondered, is there  a way to go about this season of studying where it resembles playing an instrument with abandon and joy more than it resembles shutting myself up in a stuffy room and poring endlessly over dusty books?  Can I accept that I am a human being, and seeing through the distance of the next two years is not for me to even attempt?  I love studying and learning and being around others who love it, too.  During my time at Fuller I want to embrace the beauty I see in learning, and turn it into an act of worship, a sacred bending to the earth and touching my forehead to the ground in reverence and joy.

Let Your Shoulders Down September 9, 2009

Norwegians have this saying about letting your shoulders down.  As in, “I finally finished that article I was writing and now I can let my shoulders down for a few days.”  The Norwegian language is very literal, so when they talk about relaxing, it makes sense to call it what it is: letting the tension leave your body.  Lately I’ve been waking up in the morning with my shoulders up around my ears, erasing my neck so I look like a worried turtle or something.  Not to whine or anything, but it totally sucks to not be able to relax even while sleeping.

Since I’ve been back from Norway, my life has been in constant flux.  My summer in a nutshell: Reverse culture shock.  Live with grandparents, work in Santa Clarita.  Move to Pasadena, work in Pasadena.  Lose job, freak out.  Plans, plans, plans.  Start casually dating a boy.  Best friend’s bridal shower.  Odd subbing jobs here an there.  Occasional meltdowns at the uncertainty of life.  Bachelorette party in Vegas.  Get two new jobs in one week.  Car tire catches on fire and brakes must be replaced. Move apartments; live alone for two weeks for the first time ever.   Best friend gets married.  Freak out about money.  Casually dated boy moves to Oregon.  Start new job.  Last working car door handle breaks off.  Two girls I’ve never met before move in as my roommates. 

I’ve been single for (yikes) 4 years now and in that singleness, especially traveling around the world alone, I’ve started to learn the importance of being a spouse to myself.  Of being my own caretaker and advocate, the one who says, “No, honey, you’ve done enough for one day.  Put your feet up and relax for a little bit” or “Lighten up, babe.  Go have a drink and some fun with your friends.”  That may sound crazy but it’s better than the self-flagellation I’ve tried in other seasons.  But right now, as my own interim spouse, I’m flummoxed.  In all this craziness, I’m not even sure what I need.  A chunk of solid downtime?  A night to let loose with good friends?  An intense kickboxing class?  Answers A, B, and C? 

Also, I’m stressing about my stress.  Just like icing on a cake, right?  Because I’m about to start a brand new season: I’m going to Fuller Theological Seminary to begin my Master of Arts in Theology.  I’m going back to school.  Talk about a life change!  And if I had my way, I would have a few weeks to be peaceful and quiet and reflect on this new approaching season, slowly working through my to-do list to prepare for classes to start.  But instead I’ve been up to my ears in change and busyness and self-inflicted worry.  I expected a few small rapids when I first returned to the States, but then I thought I’d have a lull for most of the summer before I hit the big falls coming in a couple weeks.  Instead, it’s been constant swirling currents and I’ve had to fall asleep with my oar in my hands.

I read an Anne Lamott essay today where she discussed the idea that “when everything starts going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born.”  This summer, it’s been almost impossible for me to focus, to rest, to reflect.  Maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve been distracted, unable to ruminate on every possible scenario, so that whatever’s going to be born in this new season will delight me the way only a surprise can.

Orientation doesn’t start for another 11 days, and classes start a week after that.  So between then and now, I hope that, distracted or not, I’ll have the chance to lay my paddle across my knees, let my shoulders down and float for a bit.

Friends Blog Too! September 8, 2009

Just added a couple of friends’ blogs to the ol’ blogroll and wanted to give them a proper introduction on Eeper.  Peter Verdell is a new friend this summer; we like to talk about books and theology, he was responsible for my inaugural viewing of The Royal Tenenbaums, he’s a great singer/songwriter musician type of guy, and he owns a cat that I actually like.  Peter’s blog is called “Hi, Everything’s Great!”  He doesn’t post too often but I still enjoy it, especially his ”Open letter to the tall, thin girl @ 24 hour fitness.”  Peter doesn’t have many pictures of himself on his blog, but I like this one because it shows Peter (in the red shirt on the right) in his standard uniform and doing something he loves: picnic and a movie at Hollywood Forever cemetery (and amazingly, I have not once been able to make it out there this summer!)

The other site I added to my blogroll, anna matilda josefin,  belongs to my dear friend Matilda Blomgren, who I staffed with in Norway, along with her then-fiance Rickard.  Matilda is a unique, beautiful, intelligent girl and has a dizzying array of talents and abilities.  I think one of my favorite things about Matilda is how she has perfected the blend of tomboy and girly-girl.  How does she do it?  I don’t know how I could have gotten through my time in Norway without her, and I love that her Swedish blog now has a translation option so I can read about what’s going on instead of just trying to guess from the pictures.  The translator is a bit funky, so you just have to go with it.  Oh, and Matilda is a brilliant photographer, and really beautiful, so even if you don’t read the posts it’s nice just to have a look.  Here’s our Swedish friend in her Swedish glory:

The Last Illusion August 27, 2009

I’ve been thinking about love lately – mostly about God’s immense love for me (and everyone) and the pathetically small amount of love I have for others.  Even the love I do have is darkly stained with selfishness.  I’m aware of how opportunistic I am in relationships – I play the game of affection, of support, so that I can get the same.  Is there an ounce of disinterested love in my heart?  I’m not sure. 

Sometimes I become more aware of my selfish love (which, I suppose, is an oxymoron if you’re going by true 1 Cor. 13 terms) when I start pitying myself.  I feel sad that I haven’t had anyone to talk to lately, that I feel like my friends are too busy for me or not interested enough to take initiative in our relationship.  It seems like I can go for a while, like a day or something, loving and not asking for anything in return. But once again that desire wells up and gnaws at me, wanting to be stroked and pitied like an ugly bulgy-eyed dog. 

I need to realize that this is part of human nature…and I’m not above it.  At one point in The Great Divorce a character says this about earthly love: “[...] what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved.  In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you.”  Tough words to swallow, but true all the same.  The amazing part is, that same character,  made whole in Heaven, no longer needs anyone.  She says that she is truly in love; in Love Himself and finds herself full and needing nothing.  Oh, how I want that! 

The Switchfoot song “Let That Be Enough” comes up on one of my Pandora stations often, and the first verse always gets me: “I wish I had what I needed/ to be on my own/ ’cause I feel so defeated/ and I’m feeling alone.” 

But I also wonder…does this desire to be free from a need for love come from a desire to be so filled with the Love of God, or is it actually fueled by my American craving for utter autonomy?  Brennan Manning quoted a poet in The Ragamuffin Gospel as saying, “The desire to feel loved is the last illusion: let it go and you will be free.”  I want that so much…but what would happen if one did not need love?  I guess I don’t trust myself.  If one was able to let go of his need for love and was not at the same moment filled with love from an overflowing Source, he might become free to be an absolute terror.  A cold, unfeeling, opportunistic person.  He doesn’t need anybody, so he doesn’t help them or love them.  Disturbingly similar to a socio/psychopath, he does what he wants with no regard for pending relational consequences.  The ultimate American cowboy, if you will: free to ride out West with nothing to tie him down – not even a desire to be loved.

But, if one is free from this desire and at the same time filled with love for others from the True Source of all love…that’s when things can get interesting.  That person, in forgetting himself, would constantly pour himself out for others.  I imagine those who came in contact with his love would feel valued more than ever before, and would go away changed and with an increased capacity to love. 

In The Great Divorce, every ghost trying to enter heaven must forget himself and give up his rights: the right to love or be loved, the right to his talents and intellect, the right to be right.  It’s the idea that only the poor in spirit, those carrying absolutely nothing, can fit through the door of the Kingdom and enter into true Joy.  Could it be that the desire to be loved is the last right that we lay down before we can truly say that we are poor, and thus run barefoot and free through the grass and the open doors to the Kingdom of God?  Is it really the last illusion, the last trick mirror that we must shatter and step through to the wide open world we always dreamed of?

The Great Divorce: Read It. August 26, 2009

I just finished reading The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.  I feel like such a ridiculous cliche raving about how much I love C.S. Lewis, but there it is.  (And at least I’m not so ridiculous as to call him “Jack” – who does that?)  I remember that the first time I read the book, it was just after I graduated high school.  Hmm.  I only remembered snippets, and mostly those that are oft-quoted elsewhere.  So I was pleasantly surprised when, on my second reading, I was blown away by this book.  I seriously was writing down like page-long quotes.  The Great Divorce stirs the intellect, the imagination, and the soul – please read it, and know that it’s best read in a couple of large chunks.  Don’t worry if you have to re-read some of the weighty paragraphs…everyone does.  If they say they don’t, they’re either lying or not actually understanding the information.  Or they’ve got some Good Will Hunting thing going on.

Shall I leave you with a sampling?

For the intellect, a conversation between the narrator and the Spirit of George MacDonald on the impending death of Pity:

“What some people say on Earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”

“Ye see it does not.”

“I feel in a way that it ought to.”

“That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.”

“What?”

“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”

“I don’t know what I want, Sir.”

“Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.”

For the soul:

The Happy Trinity is her home: nothing can trouble her joy./ She is the bird that evades every net: the wild deer that leaps every pitfall./ Like the mother bird to its chickens or a shield to the arm’d knight: so is the Lord to her mind, in His unchanging lucidity./ […] He fills her brim-full with immensity of life: he leads her to see the world’s desire.

For the imagination:

For a moment there was silence under the cedar trees and then – pad, pad, pad – it was broken.  Two velvet-footed lions came bouncing into the open space, their eyes fixed upon each other, and started playing some solemn romp.  Their manes looked as though they had just been dipped in the river whose noise I could hear close at hand, though the tree hid it.  Not greatly liking my company, I moved away to find that river, and after passing some thick flowering bushes, I succeed.

Quotable Friday Vol. 32 (Monday Edition) August 24, 2009

Ask for the Morning Star and take (thrown in)

your earthy love…

C.S. Lewis, “Five Sonnets”

Oh man, how much does that one line make you want to read C.S. Lewis’s book of poetry (aptly titled Poems)?  I’m re-reading The Great Divorce right now.  The last time I read it I was fresh out of high school…I’m interested to see how I react to it this time around, being 7 years older and with much more life experience to speak of.

It’s weird: as much as I love C.S. Lewis, I kind of can’t stand the thought of books written about his work.  I mean, yawnsville, right?  Case in point: The Way Into Narnia, A Reader’s Guide.  Seriously?  I think that robs the reader the experience of discovering the land of Narnia on her own; it’s like writing a book on how to enjoy your birthday or something.  I’d so much rather figure it out alonethan have someone spoonfeed me his opinions of what C.S. Lewis meant in the third paragraph of the fourth chapter of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, you know?

Treasure of Bread and Seeds August 20, 2009

“People are prepared for everything except for the fact that beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great light.  They are prepared to go on breaking their backs plowing the same old field until the cows come home without seeing, until they stub their toes on it, that there is a treasure buried in that field rich enough to buy Texas.  They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour’s work as for a day’s.  They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart…”

Frederick Buechner

I’ve been thinking about the kingdom of God a lot in the past few months.  I was thinking about it yesterday while I was in the prayer room here on base, looking out the window at three tall pine trees, each with a bird perched on top.  I thought about the small ways I’ve let God in my life and how He’s taken those tiny openings and led me into something huge.  How it’s like Narnia’s wardrobe: it’s bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.  

 The further I go on this journey with Jesus, the more astounded I am by His character and by His kingdom.  What is His kingdom, really?  That was such an abstract concept for me until this year, when I finally started to ask myself that question.  I began to open my Bible and speak to it like a magic mirror: Show me the kingdom of God!  It wasn’t hard to find once I started looking.  I knew it was important because Jesus said that THIS is the good news…that the Kingdom of God is near.  That is the Gospel.

I never stopped to think about that until my year in Norway, when someone pointed out that the Scriptures record Jesus preaching the Gospel.  But isn’t the Gospel that Jesus died for your sins and rose again? Apparently not.  The Gospel, the Good News, is that the Kingdom of God is near!  Then what is the Kingdom of God?  I went to the passages I remembered, like the ones in Luke – the Kingdom of God is like a treasure in a field, the Kingdom of God is like a pearl of great price, it’s like a mustard seed growing into a huge tree, it’s like yeast making bread rise.

 Er…what?  Okay, so it’s valuable?  So it’s powerful?  So it’s unassuming?  But what is it?  I’ll confess – I still don’t know.  But this is the closest I’ve come to understanding it, and it might sound a little too simple: the kingdom of God is the character of God animating our thoughts and actions and words.  I like that.  Because I know that God is compassionate, faithful, loving, powerful, and always good.  He’s all about justice and peace and freedom and healing.  He likes to take care of those who can’t care for themselves, like the orphans and widows and strangers wandering through foreign lands, pale and homesick.  He lifts up people who fall and gives food to the hungry.  He loves without asking for anything in return.  He forgives a thousand times a thousand times.  

Wow.  I want to be a part of that kingdom!  Jesus told a story about what the kingdom of God is like: one day, a man wanders into a field and finds a treasure beyond his wildest dreams.  He sells everything he has to buy that field. When you start to try to figure out the kingdom of God, and you unearth the truth little by little, it becomes as irresistible as the greatest treasure you could dream of.

But it’s still abstract.  How can I make this more concrete, how can I grasp it?  One way that has helped me is comparing the Kingdom of God with the way things work in this world.  It is so different.  And the more I compare, the more I realize that you can’t have one leg in each kingdom.  It’s not like standing on the equator line with one foot in each hemisphere, or that place in the U.S. where you can be in four states all at once.  No, it’s more like trying to be a monkey and an apple at the same time; or at the bottom of the ocean and the top of Mount Everest.  You just can’t stretch that far.  

But even if you decide to strike out for the Kingdom, the world doesn’t want to give you up.  It’s greedy; it likes to stack up its pawns just to say it owns them.  The world still owns me in many ways, and I’m not proud of that.  I was born here, and all my life I’ve believed I’m a citizen of this kingdom.  I’ve lived by its values and been shaped by its culture.  I want what it wants, I’m ashamed when it tells me to be, I’m proud when it says to be.  My life path has been mapped out for me by the world.  So now that I’m deviating, everything is on red alert.  I can’t go too far without something in the back of my mind saying, Are you crazy!?  You can’t do that!  I’m slowly learning to say, Says who?

The other day I felt discouraged about how far I still was from being totally “sold out” for the Kingdom of God.  I’m like the man who found treasure in the field, and yet even as I sell all my possessions to buy the field, I doubt the treasure’s existence.  And as I part with some of my most cherished items, I feel the pain of loss and think, if I really believed that treasure was there, would I feel such pain in parting with these dusty trinkets?

However, I found encouragement in Jesus’ cryptic words about the Kingdom being like a mustard seed.  I thought about how He planted a tiny seed in my heart last year, a small desire for His Kingdom.  And if it goes like He says it will, that seed will grow into something larger than I could have imagined, bearing fruit and giving shade and beauty.  He put a small amount of yeast in me, and He won’t stop until I’m fresh and fragrant bread, broken to nourish and comfort others.  I love this line from one of Brennan Manning’s prayers: “When all I can do is want to want you, take my crumb of faith and break it like bread to feed thousands, beginning, by your mercy, with me.”

What is the Kingdom of God?  Ask, and you will receive…

By the way, I started this piece back in Norway, and it’s been on my mind all summer.  Finally finished it enough to put it up.  Even though I wrote it in pieces, hopefully it’s not too disconnected!  Do you have any thoughts about what the Kingdom of God is like?  Share!  Discuss!

Motion Sickness August 17, 2009

That’s pretty much how I feel.  I moved last weekend…for the third time in less than 4 months.  I guess I didn’t have to move so many times…I didn’t have to move to Pasadena at the beginning of the summer, but I’m still glad I did.  Subletting my friend’s apartment was a good move because that way I’ve been able to get used to living in a new city before I have to get used to being back in school and working a new job. 

I like my change in degrees. 

However, despite my efforts to lessen the pressure of change this summer, my life has been in constant motion since being back from Norway.  Or constant limbo.  Hanging out at my grandparents’ for a month, then at the apartment on Madison for two months, and now my on-campus Fuller apartment. 

Guys, it’s embarrassing how difficult all of this is for me.  I haven’t been able to get my balance this summer, and I almost wish I could just get my sea legs instead.  Just go with it, right? 

Two feelings keep coming to the surface during these days (well, especially during this move): helplessness and loneliness.  I just feel like I NEED so many things: things that cost money, or things that take skills I don’t have to set up or install, or time or emotional energy I just can’t manage to scrape up. 

And dude, there is nothing like moving by yourself to make you feel alone in the world.  Going into your new, empty apartment alone.  Sleeping in it that first night alone.  This isn’t a single girl’s desperate cry, it’s just fact.  I mean, it would be cool just to have a friend around.  Thankfully my sister and brother-in-law helped me a bit on Saturday, and that alleviated the solitary-rowboat-floating-in-an-endless-sea feeling. 

Also I’m an external processor, so I always need to talk about what I’m going through, whether good or bad.  It helps me heaps.  So lately I’ve been missing living on the third floor at Grimerud and pouring out my heart to one of the precious girls who lived there.  (Thanks, Miuky, Matilda, Nina, Dina, Synnove, and Annis for all those times). 

Anyway, I’m just trying to hold onto truth right now and not wallow in self-pity.  Today on his blog Donald Miller posted an essay about self-pity.  How timely!  It wasn’t really anything new but I need to be reminded of those basics. 

I know that this is just a season…a crazy, turbulent season of uncertainty and it, too, will pass.  I’m on a journey, and that means I’m not staying in one place too long.  Hopefully soon I will post this picture, and that will be our little sign that things are looking up.

Wayfarers All August 6, 2009

 

Sometimes I wish I had days, literally days, to just think and to lose myself in my imagination.  In Surprised By Joy C.S. Lewis speaks of his weekends in school, when he would lose himself in his books and get taken up with the wild lands of the far North.  When I read the chapter “Wayfarers All” from The Wind In The Willows, I feel like my imagination, and my heart, have enough to sink into for hours.  The Sea Rat’s final monologue touches deep places in my heart and leaves me stirred and yearning and frustrated with my insatiable greed for life.  In this scene a little homebody Rat meets a wanderlust Rat, and the traveler tries to entice the homebody with colorful tales of his wanderings and adventures:

 

And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never return, and the South still waits for you.  Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!  ‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new!  Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company.  You can easily overtake me on the road, for you are young, and I am ageing and go softly.  I will linger, and look back; and at last I will surely see you coming, with all the South in your face!

 

What is it about that banging of the door behind me?  It’s as if I’m addicted to it: the passing out of the old life and into the new.  Sometimes I see it as a little weed sprouting out of my sin nature: wanting to get away from the demands and the drudgery of familiar day-to-day life.  Other times I wonder if these longings can be seen as glimmers of spiritual longing; I’m longing for the new because I worship the God who makes all things new, the God who promises rebirth and a new and glorious body one day.  As is often the case, I’m sure it’s a muddy mixture of both.

 

Donald Miller shares the sentiment of the wayfaring Sea Rat in his yet-to-be published book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  He says that maybe our purpose in life is to just be here, in the story God is writing around us, to “take the adventure and heed the call” and to enjoy it with Him and relish it together for eternity afterward. He writes:

 

I wonder if that’s what we’ll do with God when we are through with all this, if He’ll show us around heaven, all the beauty and light coming in through windows a thousand miles away, all the fields sweeping down to a couple of chairs under a tree, and we’ll sit and tell Him our stories and He’ll smile and tell us what they mean.

 

But some people, like Oswald Chambers, like to talk about drudgery.  They like to talk about living as a disciple in the day to day, when you’ve come down from the mountain and it’s not fun anymore but somebody’s got to do it.  I think about half of the entries in My Utmost For His Highest are about the drudgery of the life of a disciple.  Now, this is a bit of a comfort for me because instead of wanting to shoot myself every day I sit in an air-conditioned, fluorescent lit office I only want to shoot myself every other day.  Once in a while Chambers alludes to the pure, raw adventure and ecstasy of oneness with Christ, but it’s rare. 

 

I wonder if Chambers, in his curmudgeonly way, has got it right while the pagan author of The Wind in the Willows and postmodern, sentimental Donald Miller are off base.  Miller talks of heaven as a place where we rehash our experiences with God and receive insight about them, perhaps turning that into a deeper knowledge of the Author of our story and hence a deeper sense of gratitude and richer worship of Him.  Grahame mentions sitting by a quiet river with a stock of fantastic memories to keep us company. But Chambers says that the adventure isn’t now – that it starts when we get to heaven.  There are definitely a lot of material from the Scriptures to back up this idea…the first to come to mind is the passage in Hebrews about the heroes of the faith,

 

“ 13 All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. 14 Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. […] 16 But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

 

In his recent podcast, “Embracing the Pain,” Greg Boyd shared this view when he reminded his listeners that this life ain’t a vacation, so stop expecting it to be!  Instead of the oft-used pilgrim analogy, he used the war metaphor…we are rebels living behind enemy lines, trying to tell as many people as we can about the Good King and the future He promises before He comes riding in and establishes His Kingdom again.  So then, while we ought not to expect comforts, luxury, and leisure in this life, I suppose we can still expect adventures – the raw kind that come with war, like secret night missions and recapturing hostages and blowing up enemy bridges. 

 

Again I find myself turning to C.S. Lewis.  You know the end of the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle?  The children finally get to Aslan’s country, or heaven, if you will.  And C.S. Lewis wraps it up as only he can,

 

But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.  All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read:  which goes on for ever:  in which every chapter is better than the one before.

 

So life here in the Shadowlands – is it more about biding our time in the brokenness until the real adventure starts? Should we insist on a beautiful life here and now, so we can laugh and raise our glasses in a toast to it at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb?  Should we as pilgrims seek adventure in this foreign land or is merely residing here adventure enough…in its own way?

 

I throw one last thought in there.  Despite his eloquence depicting the adventuresome life, later in that same chapter of The Wind in the Willows Grahame shows us another side of the same coin, highlighting the wonder of the day-to-day.  When Mole tries to shake Rat out of his bewitched wanderlust state, he tries to talk about the magic of where they are rather than where they could be — the slow but sure change of the seasons and the domestic delights around every corner of normal life.

 

[Rat] seemed to have lost all interest for the time in things that went to make up his daily life, as well as in all pleasant forecastings of the altered days and doings that the changing season was surely bringing.  Casually, then, and with seeming indifference, the Mole turned his talk to the harvest that was being gathered in, the towering wagons and their straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare acres dotted with sheaves.  He talked of the reddening apples around, of the browning nuts, of jams and preserves and the distilling of cordials; till by easy stages such as these he reached mid-winter, its hearty joys and home life, and then he became simply lyrical.

 

So can we have our cake and eat it too?  I think it’s possible.  As a stranger in a strange land, one can still exult in the majesty of a sunrise, can still become intoxicated with the fragrance of wild jasmine, can still savor the taste of a ripe strawberry.  A soldier wandering behind enemy lines can still wonder at the exquisite detail of a wildflower and revel in the refreshment of a cool stream.  I like the idea of having something to look forward to, though.  Because if you’re sitting in Donald Miller’s chairs talking over your story with God, or at the banks of the Sea Rat’s river with a “store of goodly memories for company” you’ll eventually run out of things to say, and those memories will fade a little too much.  And that’s when Aslan might twitch His tail and call out, “Further up and further in, children!  A new adventure awaits!”

 

I apologize for this uber long, stream of consciousness post.  But if Donald Miller can do it, can’t I?  I might end up cleaning up the typos and awkward bits and adding links…we’ll see.  Until then, deal and Google.

 

It would be great if you wanted to discuss these matters…ahem…leave comments.  But if not, just let the ideas roll around and bump into each other in your head and see what you come up with!