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!

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?

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!

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!

Fish Out of Water July 17, 2009

There’s a lovely passage near the beginning of A Severe Mercy, when Vanauken is telling the story of the early days of his and Davy’s love:

The walks, especially as the sun got up and began to warm us, were leisurely, full of pauses to talk to a farmer or farmwife.  Sometimes they would have us in for a glass of fresh milk.  Or sometimes we would stop and sit on a wall, eating a sun-warmed tomato, talking or peacefully silent.  Often we talked of the sad and somehow outrageous fact that in most lives, perhaps our own before long, there isn’t time for long walks and sitting on walls.  We quoted a poem by W.H. Davies to the effect that it is a poor life if we have no time “to stop and stare” as sheep and cows do.  We agreed.  Nor were we cheered by the prospect of an occasional day off from an office, for with only one day there would be a sense of time at one’s back, a time too limited to “waste” sitting on walls.  How were we to contrive a life full of time—a timeful life—where we could be quiet and leisurely, where we could stop and stare?

 For days after I read that passage, I kept going back to it in my mind.  That’s the dream, isn’t it?  As much as I love adventure, I love those landing places, when you can be fully present and fully alive.  When that sun-warmed tomato is the best damn tomato you’ve ever eaten in your life.  Van and Davy ended up learning to sail, and taking a yacht out in the Florida Keys, wading knee deep in water, getting “brown as nuts” and spearing lobster for their dinner.  They had, for a little while, that timeful life.

But I have a feeling that this life isn’t meant to be “timeful.”  Time, by nature, is not abundant but scarce.  Time never multiplies, it only decreases.  Every day our time is running out – sometimes one grain of sand at a time but for some of us, the whole hourglass is kicked over and time comes rushing out over the shattered glass. 

C.S. Lewis describes humans’ tense relationship with time, and hints at the idea in Romans of humanity and all of creation groaning and longing for their redemption and a coming into ourselves:

“Do fish complain of the sea being wet?  Or if they did, would not that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had had not always been, or [would] not always be, purely aquatic creatures?  Notice how we are always perpetually surprised at Time.  (“How time flies!  Fancy John being grown up and married!  I can hardly believe it!”) In heaven’s name, why?  Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.”

I first read the passage from A Severe Mercy last week, and I tucked those words into a corner of my mind like Charlie and his prized chocolate bar – often going to the corner, slowly peeling back the wrapper, then the foil, allowing myself a little nibble and tasting the melting sweetness of that idea all over again – the idea of a timeful life; of taking long walks outdoors and eating fresh foods and delighting in the company of my companion.  That was last week, when I was working a steady job Monday through Thursday and figured I would do that until I started at Fuller, where I would work and go to school every day and somehow survive until the next busy season, whatever that would be.

But now, suddenly, I’m quasi-unemployed.  I still have my subbing job but I don’t have the regular work.  Last week I was stressing about money and hoarding for the future and dreaming of a timeful life – this week I’m overwhelmed with free time, and also with the knowledge that I lack nothing; it’s now clear the stress and the hoarding were a waste of my energy.  So what’s the moral of this story?  Did I get a timeful life just for the wishing of it?

No, I don’t think that’s what happened.  And I still think that time’s nature does not allow itself to be abundant – for long.  But sometimes the Creator of Time does some fancy footwork and creates these little pockets, these little hollows in time where we get to camp out and rest a while, before going back to the normal state of things, i.e. swimming around and wondering why we’re getting wet and why we can’t take a deep breath under here.

It’s only a matter of time, so to speak, before we’re back on land and there’s no more Sea and no more Time and we can just be, and that will be better even than what we think we’re groaning for now.

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.

Subversive Acts June 10, 2009

“Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all.  Laugh, rest, slow down.”

–Anne Lamott

“Let Us Commence”

Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

I know what you’re thinking.  Does Joy have one original thought in her head, or is her mind only occupied by quotes from famous authors,  swirling around like plastic bags and empty coffee cups in an empty lot?  Well, deal with it.  At least until I’ve read everything by Anne Lamott and get over it.

When I first got back from Norway, I mentioned to a friend that I found it difficult to keep a quiet heart while residing here in Los Angeles.  At Grimerud, in the countryside, it was still difficult to get my mind to shut up for a little while so I could have some peace.  But it was easier.  I could take an hour long walk and not see one other person or car.  I could set myself up in one of the living rooms overlooking the lake with provisions of brown cheese, tea, and Jason Upton to aid my quieting process.  But ever since I came back, it’s like there’s a bird flapping around in my head all the time, piercing any attempts at peace with its frantic squawking.  

The problem is, I haven’t been doing what I need to do to quiet my mind, my heart, my soul.  Well, sometimes I do.  I go to Starbucks with my bag full of books: the Bible, my journal, a devotional or two, a Christian book, and a novel.  Oh, and my iPod.  I sit in the shade and drown out the sound of traffic on Valencia Boulevard and wait for the dust to settle.  Usually out of that dust comes Jesus, with some tender words, reassurances, and help for things I didn’t even know I needed help with.  These are times that lift me up, strengthen me, and buoy me for the rest of the day (or sometimes hour).  Andreas, my leader in Norway, once said that a solid affirmation from God can keep him going for weeks.

It’s true, and after these times with Him I always wonder why I waste my time on anything else.  And yet I do.  I putter around my room, I waste endless hours on Facebook, I watch television that doesn’t even entertain me, and I ruminate on anxiety-laden scenarios of the future or rejection-stained moments from the past.

When I’m alone, why don’t I do the things that make me quiet, and make me happy?  Reading good books, writing, spending time outdoors, savoring good food.  I don’t feel like a true American unless I’m busy and caught up on all the latest TV shows.  It’s such a status symbol here: being busy.  That’s why Anne Lamott says it’s subversive to rest.  You’re going against the grain, you’re that lady with cellulite who still wears shorts and refuses to wear the shame others try to pin on her.  I find myself sometimes doing my errands with a flat line for a mouth and a furrowed brow.  That’s when I feel Jesus nudge me with his elbow and say, “Lighten up, Joy.  Why are you so serious?”  

Instead of being stressed out and irritated and mad at myself for getting lost for the third time this week, can I just laugh at myself?  Can I laugh at the situation I’m in, or the feeling that I’m not what they’re looking for, or at the sight of a dog recklessly hanging his head out the window of a moving car, with the wind in his hair?  This morning on my run, as I was somberly plodding along, I saw a squirrel bounding toward a tree, trampoline-hopping off all four paws at once, barely letting them touch the ground.  I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding in a quick, spastic laugh.  

Tonight while I ate dinner, instead or watching The Office online or another episode of Gilmore Girls, I read out of The Wind in the Willows and let my heart rest in the burrows and fields and ponds of Kenneth Grahame’s imagination.

Subversive acts usually start on a small scale.

The Greatest Rides in Life (Quotable…er, Monday) May 18, 2009

“All the great experiences of life –the freedom to be, our encounters with truth, loving and being loved, daily dying to self, and so forth—are worked out in the quiet turbulence of an impoverished spirit.”

Brennan Manning,

The Wisdom of Tenderness

 

 

The truth of this idea is sobering, profound, and beautiful. The last time I read this book I commented on this paragraph in the margins, writing “What would the world list as the ‘great experiences of life’?”

I have chased after the “worldly” great experiences: the heady pleasures of feeling attractive, desired, important, and envied; the counterfeit freedom of letting loose at parties and clubs; indulging in fine meals and spa pedicures and daily Starbucks.

However, I cannot honestly say I’ve chased Manning’s great experiences. I may have ached for truth and the “freedom to be” without realizing that’s what I was hungering for. I may have performed in a particular way to earn the love I wanted, without admitting that’s what I was doing. I may have craved finding my life, and newness of life, without realizing that it costs losing it first and daily dying to myself.

What is remarkable is that, in Norway, these experiences chased after me. Or rather, God chased after me with these experiences in hand, like a lover pursuing his indifferent beloved with a bouquet of flowers. It wasn’t until I turned and let him catch me that I saw just how beautiful these things are.

And when I read Manning’s words, something clicked for me and I realized that is why I had an amazing year in Europe….because it was made up of these “great experiences” and more. At Grimerud, I felt the freedom to be – to be myself, to be sad or joyful or frustrated or broken or silly – like I never have before. Sometimes I could almost literally feel the sensation of growing into myself, like a muffin rising in its pan.

From the moment I opened myself up to truth, I encountered it in breath-taking and mind-stretching ways. My framework was bent and broken so many times until I had the room to lift up my arms and stretch in God’s truth, to dance and delight in it. Being on DTS staff taught me about dying to myself (though I am still pathetically far from this being a daily occurrence), and about loving others and letting myself be loved by them, too. I tasted the exquisite sweetness of pouring myself out for others and then freely drinking when they poured themselves out for me.

But the fact of the matter is, Manning finishes this quote by saying that these experiences “are worked out in the quiet turbulence of an impoverished spirit.” Moving to Norway and feeling disoriented, out of control, and utterly alone slowly moved me into the “poor in spirit” category.” I believe that’s what caused a door in my heart to blow open and on the other side – my first true glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven. And the world’s greatest experiences pale in comparison.

Breaking Framework April 30, 2009

“Every change in the quality of a person’s life must grow out of a change in his or her vision of reality.”

–Brennan Manning

The Wisdom of Tenderness

I feel like this is what happened to me during my year in Europe.  I think it kind of started in one of the first weeks of the DTS, when we were learning about the Holy Spirit.  Our lecturer, a little rapping Norwegian man named Jan, was talking about how the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth.  He said that if we are open to letting the Spirit break the framework set up in our minds, He can lead us into the freedom that only comes with knowing the truth.  I took Jan seriously, and I began to pray that day that the Holy Spirit would break my framework, because I was hungry for truth and thirsty for freedom.

Guess what?  The Holy Spirit took my request seriously.  I’m still sorting out what He taught me and how He changed me…it’s hard to put into words.  But in some areas of my life, I had been looking at things one way and all the sudden (or sometimes slowly) He shifted things so I saw them in a totally different way.  And that shift in perspective, that breaking of framework, set me free.  Ideas that I always believed to be truth, to be reality, I see now as lies and illusions.

The challenge now is to return to the place where my old framework was built, and to hold onto this radically different view of reality that God has given me.  I’m not worried though…when we let Him, He always finishes what He starts.

P.S. I absolutely recommend the book I took this quote from, The Wisdom of Tenderness.  Life changing.

Report From Outside My Comfort Zone April 18, 2009

 

 

“Somebody once said, ‘Everything you want in the world is just right outside your comfort zone. Everythingyoucouldpossiblywant!’”

–Jennifer Aniston

Vogue, December 2008

 

I know what you’re thinking.  Joy abandons her blog for a month and then comes back with a quote from Jennifer Aniston?  Bear with me, though.  I can’t exactly remember when I first read this quote, but I think it was when I was at the airport in Oslo back in January, killing time before our flight to Germany for a two month outreach.  I knew I was headed for 9 weeks of being completely out of my comfort zone, so I took her words seriously as a little shot of hope to help me make the flight without wanting to jump out somewhere over Amsterdam. 

This whole 8 months in Europe has been a constant string of moments, large and small, outside my comfort zone.  And when you first get out there, you feel like you’re trying to walk around underwater. It’s no fun.  But now I feel like I’m almost accustomed to being out of my comfort zone…to that anxious fluttery sensation in my chest as I enter into another unknown, potentially awkward situation.  The meeting of new people, the adapting to new cultures, the learning of new words, the discipline of keeping one’s self in the moment instead of checking out and going on autopilot as a coping mechanism.  Now I feel I’ve figured out how to hold my breath longer and move a little more gracefully in the murky waters of new, uncomfortable situations.  I’m no expert, that’s for sure.  But I think I do a better job than I ever have at least appearing to be confident and to have fun.

Now the question is: in these 8 months outside my comfort zone, have I found everything I want in the world?  Well, yes and no.  The only reason I say no is because of the incredible drought I have experienced this year when it comes to guys.  I mean, seriously…I think I’ve gone months without seeing one man I am even remotely attracted to, not to mention a guy that I might actually be interested in (and, it must be said, the reverse is true.  It’s been a while since I’ve had to turn someone down).  So, I would like to meet someone, and that didn’t happen in my comfort zone or outside of it.

But.  A husband is definitely not the only thing I want in the world, or even one of the most important things.  I really have found so many things that I’ve wanted, and so much more.  I really can’t explain it, but when I came back from outreach for our DTS debrief week, and was back together with all the students from the school, it was like all the pieces fell into place for me and I could see the big picture of this time in Europe.  The first few days I would get all emotional and teary just being in the same room as all the students – the beauty of these individuals, of what they bring to the group, of the transformation God did in each of them over 6 months – it was too much to take. 

And on top of all of that, to think of what God has done in me these past months!  The ways He’s showed me more of who He is, and how it is constantly more beautiful than I could have dreamed…the security in my relationship with Him that I’m moving into, knowing that I’m His and that His joy is upon me…finally beginning to understand that God is good and He can be trusted!  These truths are worth so much more than all the things I could ever want in this world. 

Oh, and on top of it – the rich relationships I’ve enjoyed here with people from all over the world, the feeling of love and safety and belonging and people really valuing me enough to invest their time and resources in me – sometimes I feel like I don’t have enough arms to hold all of these gifts, enough heart to be as thankful as I want to be.

I guess, in conclusion, I’d have to say I agree with Jen…or the “somebody” she was quoting.  Now the question is, when I move back to Southern California, how can I keep pushing myself outside of my comfort zone?  But I’m not too worried about it.  Opportunities tend to pop up; I just need to say yes, hold my breath, and dive in.