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.

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?

It’s Only Awkward If You Make It Awkward July 2, 2009

 

On my DTS in Australia, one of our favorite sayings was, “It’s only awkward if you make it awkward!”

Well, I was reading Mark 14 yesterday, when the woman comes into Simon’s home and anoints Jesus by breaking an alabaster jar of perfume all over his head.  I tried to imagine this happening, and realized that it was a super awkward moment.  Jesus is reclining at a table at a dinner party, when this random woman walks in unanounced and uninvited.  Apparently without speaking and without ceremony, she stands over Jesus, breaks the vial, and dumps perfume all over His head.  Now, anyone else would probably be stunned by this event, but I assume Jesus wasn’t.  I think He naturally and smoothly shifted gears, opened Himself up to the moment, and received the anointing.  I imagine it was a very intimate experience; so intimate that it was awkward for onlookers.  But I love, love, love how Jesus defended the woman when people ridiculed her.  He not only defended her, He honored her by saying that wherever the gospel is preached, they’ll tell her story, too.  It’s so good to know that when we step out in obedience to his call for utter, soul to soul intimacy with Him, to the point of looking awkward or attracting criticism, Jesus doesn’t leave us exposed and alone.  He enters into the moment and lets us pour our broken selves and our broken love all over Him;  He defends us before our accusers, and He honors us.