Mo Money Mo Problems July 8, 2009

I’ve wanted to read the book A Severe Mercy for a long time.  Okay, maybe like 2 months.  But I really wanted to read it.  It’s kind of random, but the book seems to be a modern classic.  C.S. Lewis is loosely connected…are you surprised I was interested?  But actually, he’s not the reason.  Anyway, on the back of my copy it says that A Severe Mercy is about “Sheldon ‘Van’ Vanauken and Jean ‘Davy’ Vanauken [who] were lucky enough to discover that radiant love so often written of in books, so seldom found in real life.”

This is the first of at least a few posts that I will surely publish as I read and reflect on this book, but man, this couple is…unique. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about money lately.  Probably because I don’t have much of it.  Now that I’m paying rent (and wondering how I’ll pay for grad school in the Fall) I’ve gotten serious about budgeting.  I’m naturally frugal, but now I’m taking out cash right after I get my paycheck and allotting a specific amount to every area of spending.  Like a real live grown-up!  But not having money means not having things, and not having things makes you think about how much you really need them, and whether you need them at all.

And that’s where A Severe Mercy comes in.  One night, early in their relationship, they are discussing (in an interlude during a makeout session, mind you) what might divide lovers and conquer love.  They decided that stuff can get in the way; possessions.  At such a young age, they were wise enough to see that when you over-value what you own, it ends up owning you.  They vowed to live free of such burdens, thus buying cheap stuff that they won’t mind seeing broken or stolen or scratched.  The funny thing is, they really followed through with this idea.  Van recalls the time when they got their first brand new car, which they proceeded to pound “severely with a hammer to make it comfortably dented.”  What!?  My first thought was, I do not know anybody who would do such a thing.  My next thought was, I wish I were that free.  Not just free from possessions, but free from conformity to the thought patterns of this world, that say, “You must have many possessions, and you must guard them with your life, and you must mourn greatly if something happens to them!”

Maybe reading this book will help me as I try to shake loose the desire for more more more in the midst of the more culture in L.A.  But it also might help me daydream too much about an idyllic relationship spent cavorting around islands on a yacht.  Omitting, of course, the tragic ending.

The Wind in The Willows: A Review June 18, 2009

C.S. Lewis alludes to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows as casually as if it were the story of Cinderella – as though everyone has read it dozens of times and is familiar with all the characters and even specific scenes.

This made me feel a little dumb when reading C.S. Lewis.  So, I thought what’s good enough for C.S. Lewis is good enough for me, and I checked out the little novel from the library.  It was in the children’s section, and came with illustrations.  But it’s a beautifully written little story, about 4 animals in a wood, and about friendship, and about the misadventures of a conceited toad.  Some of Grahame’s prose is delicately beautiful and heartbreakingly rich, and it’s the kind of book that you should lend a couple of hours to at a time, and finish in two or three sittings (which is not how I did it).

In the Afterword, it is explained that the book is actually 3 in one.  “There is the contemplative, pastoral, sentimental, and nostalgic story of those best of old-fashioned friends Rat and Badger and Mole.  There is the rollicking adventure of the irrepressible and trouble-minded toad.  And there is the mystical, magiccal, even visionary and dreamlike, allegory of Pan with his pipes at the Gates of Dawn.  Some readers prefer the story of friendship; some prefer the fast-paced adventure; some prefer the dream.”

I prefer the dream.  My favorite passages came out of the two dreamlike chapters, which have almost nothing to do with the rest of the story and reflect some of Grahame’s philosophical and spiritual beliefs.  I found these chapters like precious stones in a pile of gold.  They would waken something deep and piercing inside me, almost to the point of discomfort, but a good discomfort.  But some of the scenes in the story of friendship were also quite moving in their own simple, lovely way: they left me with a sweet longing for old friends and for that idyllic, slow lifestyle spent mainly outdoors, picnicking and boating.  I really didn’t care for the hapless shenanigans of Mr. Toad, but to each her own.

I’ll leave you with a couple of my favorite passages (both from the two dreamy chapters).

From The Piper at the Gates of Dawn:

Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious.  He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden.  Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fullness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper [...] All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.

‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking. ‘Are you afraid?’

‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid!  Of Him?  O, never, never!  And yet–and yet–O, Mole, I am afraid!’”

I would give you a quote from the chapter “Wayfarers All” but I might save that for its own post.  But I love the part where the Water Rat packs the perfect picnic:

“There he got out the luncheon basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger’s origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long necked straw-covered flask containing bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes.”

Let’s take that with us to the Hollywood Bowl, hey?

Animate June 17, 2009

I keep a little list in my mobile phone of books I want to read.  For almost a year, I had on that list “Greg Boyd – Woodland Hills.”  Andreas, my leader in Norway, raved about Greg Boyd all the time.  He was his disciple in the same way I follow Erwin McManus, reading his books and podcasts and quoting him in conversation.

When I came home to California and started working a job that allowed me to listen to my iPod 7 hours a day, I realized I needed to add a few more podcasts to my repertoire (which basically consisted of Erwin McManus).  So I finally downloaded a bunch of Greg Boyd’s podcasts, and lucky for me, he had just started a series called “Animate.”

You guys, this series was unbelievable.  I’m blogging about it because honestly I want every single person I know to listen to this series.  It’s all about using our imagination in our walk with God.  You know how you can go years believing certain truths about God, but then one day you actually believe it, and everything changes?  Some people say that knowledge went from your head to your heart.  For me, I always “knew” that God was my Father.  But, starting in Australia, God took me on a journey over a year and a half until I finally believed that He really is my Father…and a good Father, at that!

Greg says the reason for this head-heart disconnection is that these amazing truths about God and His Kingdom don’t actually feel real to people.  The car wash and the grocery list list, the broken heart they are nursing, the strained relationship with their mom, the flailing economy – these things feel real to people because they experience them.  People who genuinely love Jesus and want to follow Him find themselves trying to believe His truth while everything inside of them and around them says that it’s not real.  They’re sucked into selling out to the values of the culture, even though they are contrary to the values of the kingdom, because that feels real to them while Jesus and the Scriptures and an eternal Kingdom just feel like a set of beliefs.  Greg, in what could be his thesis statement for the series, says,

“You can’t fight concrete, vivid, experiential images in the mind with abstract truths and a list of oughts and shoulds.  It’s time that we recover a flesh and blood theology.” 

His goal in “Animate” is to teach people how to make the abstract concrete, so that we can actually be shaped by it.  He does this by using the imagination.  Richard Foster says that “to believe that God can sanctify and utilize the imagination is simply to take seriously the Christian idea of incarnation.”

Maybe it sounds a bit New Age, a bit mystical?  I don’t know.  If you’ve ever felt that tension I just mentioned, when you want to believe in this Kingdom that starts as a tiny seed, as a pinch of leaven, and ends as something bigger than you dreamed, but you see it (consciously or otherwise) as totally separate from true reality, then give this series a try.  Download it free from iTunes.  Start from the beginning, ride it out till the end.  Try the exercises Greg suggests and leads you through.  Let me know how it goes.

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.

The Re-entry Blues April 29, 2009

Sigh.  I’m a bit of an Eeyore tonight.  The thing is, I knew it would be difficult to re-enter the United States after 8 months in Europe.  But that doesn’t make it fun!  Here are some…er…highlights of the re-entry/reverse culture shock experience:

1. Oh my gosh, why do Americans speak so loudly?  I know, I know.  I do it, too.  But now I’m constantly cringing at the sheer volume of regular, everyday conversations.  I wonder if my European friends ever wanted to just clap their hands over their ears while I was speaking to them?  My dad, a 6 foot 5 Israeli man, is already loud and on the ride home from the airport, I felt like I was being shouted at for 45 minutes.  

2. The variety, the endless choices I am faced with every second of the day.  I came home to a closet full of clothes, a fridge full of food, and a city full of shops and advertisements.  There’s just so much, I feel paralyzed by it.  The past two nights I’ve been so stuck trying to decide what to make for dinner that I put it off for two hours until I’m starving, and then just end up eating some pita and hummus and some fruit and yogurt.  Last night I wandered around Trader Joe’s for an hour, just looking at things.  I would pick up a box of frozen quiche, stare at it blankly, and then put it down and shuffle off to another aisle.  I changed outfits three times this morning.  I can’t even decide which book to read…now that I’m surrounded by my own collection, and within a few minutes of a public library full of English volumes.

3. I think the loneliness is the hardest part.  I came home to a bit of a weird situation, because my parents left for an anniversary cruise the day before I returned home.  So I’m staying in this huge house with my little dog and my stepbrother who is in and out at all hours.  It’s a far cry from the noisy 3rd floor at Grimerud, where I could hear my neighbors’ conversations as clearly as if they were in my own room; and the laughter in the kitchen and doors slamming at any hour.  People, voices, life were at my fingertips.  

I really miss Europe and Norway and Grimerud.  It’s so frustrating when you just get used to something, and then you change again.  I feel like that’s the story of my life.  It’s not a bad thing, it’s just tiring and uncomfortable sometimes.  I’m thankful that my time in Norway was so amazing that I do have to go through a mourning period now that it’s over.  I know I just need to ride this wave out, let things take their natural course and take special care of myself in the process…but I just wish I was readjusted already.  It’s so weird to think that going back to my comfort zone actually feels like being out of my comfort zone.  I guess that’s what happens when you’ve been away long enough.  The good thing is, I’ve only seen good things come out of being in this squirmy place.  Bring it.

Quotable Friday, Vol. 31, Monday Mash-up Edition February 16, 2009

“Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?”

— Eugene O’Neill

The Great God Brown

This quote made me think of my New Year’s resolution for 2009, which I foolishly documented here.  I say foolish because, like most February reflections on New Year’s resolutions, mine carry a faint scent of shame.

After proclaiming that I wanted to “open my arms to life” in 2009, I set off on an adventure to Germany – the two month outreach phase of the DTS I’m staffing.  And guess what?  Yep, having trouble savoring life here, too.  Contentment sliding out of my grasp like a bar of soap, loneliness always hovering over my shoulder, moodiness and selfishness my constant companions.

But.  If there is one thing I’ve learned during my year in Europe, it’s that change is not an event, it’s a process.  Wait, I know what you’re thinking: duh.  (Or you would be, if people still said “duh”).  The thing is I’m not sure if I was unaware of this fact of reality or if I was just stubbornly unwilling to accept it.  I’m reminded of Donald Miller quoting his friend in Searching for God Knows What: “Reality is like fine wine.  It will not appeal to children.”  My childish need for instant gratification tends to make bold statements about changing myself, and then stamps its foot and pouts when that change takes more than a good night’s sleep.

So I’m beginning to accept that major personality and lifestyle transformation takes a few more moons than I want.  But way better than that lesson is the one I’ve learned about how Jesus sees our change.  I always pictured Him rolling His eyes and sighing loudly as I fall and pick myself up and say, “Now, this time I’ll really do it!”  In this case, reality is sweeter than fine wine, it’s more like honey.  The reality is that Jesus delights in the process of change.  He doesn’t get exasperated and He doesn’t scoff when we make optimistic resolutions. 

Anne Lamott (yes, her again) describes this beautifully in an essay about learning to forgive her dead mother.  At the end of the essay, Lamott takes a small step toward forgiveness by moving her mother’s ashes from the back of her closet to the mantel in her living room.  She says of Jesus, “I don’t think much surprises him: this is how we make important changes—barely, poorly, slowly.  And still, he raises his fist in triumph.”

It’s just another way we’re totally different, Jesus and I.  But I hope to learn to enjoy the journey of change with Him, to delight in the burning in our calves as we scale inclines, to love the wind in my hair when we run down hillsides with ease, to stretch out and rest in the valleys and be refreshed by the fine wine of reality with Him.

**Note: The above picture was taken on from a hilltop in the Beaujolais wine region of France, where I picnicked on Brie, baguettes, and wine and loved every minute of it.  I thought it was a good accompaniment to a quote about savoring life…

Quotable Friday, Vol. 30 November 28, 2008

From Surprised By Joy by C.S. Lewis:

“[...] the very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.  There, to have is to want and to want is to have.  Thus, the very moment when I longed to be so stabbed again, was itself again such a stabbing.”

And when God and His Joy didn’t show up the way Lewis expected:

“[...] being an idolator and a formalist, I insisted that He ought to appear in the temple I had built Him, not knowing that He cares only for temples building and not at all for temples built.”

How often do I do this?  God does something, draws near in a certain way, and…Joy!  But almost immediately I begin to build a temple for the experience, desperately wanting it to come again, in just the same way (but maybe stronger).  I often make the “first and deadly error”, as Lewis puts it, of turning from the object to the state of mind that the object brings; from God to the thrill of His nearness.  I try to build an ark or a tabernacle so He will stay there, so I can somehow tether his presence like a kite, anchor it like a ship.

But Lewis points out that this is in vain; He’s only interested in the “temple building.”  He’s moved on again, so quickly, leaped over to the next cold statue to breathe life into it.  Staying behind and trying to find Him where He was is fruitless – it’s attempting to find warmth from a fire that is now merely ashes.  Once He leaves and moves on, there is no longer anything special about that place; it’s cold and dead.  Lewis compares it to the women seeking the risen Jesus at the tomb.  The angel says to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here, He is risen.”  And that’s how it is with God – we have to keep chasing Him, moving where and when He moves.  It’s like the Israelites in the wilderness, always at the ready to break up camp the moment Yahweh advanced.  We must realize that He doesn’t fly on to the next place without us or to get away from us, but to keep us moving…there’s so much to do and so much to see; we’re always going further up and further in!

I Am My Own Life Coach October 5, 2008

The best part of moving to a new country where no one really knows you is that you can reinvent yourself as much (or as little) as you want.  I’ve talked about this a little here and wrote an article about it while I was in Australia.  This time, along with trying to change all the deep ish (meaning issues, not the other word) I wade through most of the time, I’m also pushing myself out of a few of my less serious boxes.

Case in point: team sports.  I’ve always hated them…sitcom-worthy experiences in elementary and junior high school continued to reinforce my loathing.

Tusen Takk October 3, 2008

I will write a real post soon (perhaps even this evening?) but I just wanted to say, Wow!  Thanks for all the comments on my Lunch Date post.  They did not go unnoticed.  Love it.  It makes me feel like I’m not just blogging into the wind.  So in Norwegian, I would say “Tusen takk” (literally, a thousand thanks).  I’ll meet you back here soon.

Ø, How I Loathe Thee! September 7, 2008

This little letter, ø, is pretty much my arch-enemy here in Norway.

Since the keyboards are different here, when I try to use the colon sign (:), this little guy pops up instead.  It just looks devilish.  And it’s common sound here, and it’s in a LOT of names.