Guarding Love

Emily and I are reading through a book called A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. Last night, the following passage struck a chord:

"Why does love need to be guarded? Against what enemies? We looked about us and saw the world as having become a hostile and threatening place where standards of decency and courtesty were perishing and war loomed gigantic. A world where love did not endure. The smile of being in love seemed to promise for ever, but friends who had been in love last year were parting this year. The divorce rate was in the news. Where were any older people in love? It must be that, whatever its promise, love does not by itself endure. But why? What was the failure behind the failure of love?

On a day in early spring we thought we saw the answer. The killer of love is creeping separateness. Being in love is a gift of the gods, but then it is up to the lovers to cherish or to ruin. Taking love for granted, especially after marriage. Ceasing to do things together. Finding separate interests. 'We' turning into 'I'. Self. Self-regard: what I want to do. Actual selfishness only a hop away. This was the way of creeping separateness. And in the modern world, especially in the cities, everything favoured it. The man going off to his office; the woman staying home with the children - her children - or perhaps having a different job. The failure of love might seem to be caused by hate or boredom or unfaithfulness with a lover; but those were results. First came the creeping separateness: the failure behind the failure" (36-37).

I'm not sure we can do anything better than to love our wives, to demonstrate the sacrificial, complete love of Christ to a world that knows little about such love. More on this idea later...

Sunbeams for July...

My father-in-law gave me a subscription to The Sun this past Christmas and I have been loving it! One of my favorite sections of this literary magazine is a section of thematic quotes called "Sunbeams". Here are a few of my favorites:

"Fame is vapor, popularity an accident; riches take wings. Only one thing endures, and that is character." Horace Greely

"Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other." Erma Bombeck

"It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid?" Richard Bach

"Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Sometimes snakes can't slough. They can't burst their old skin. Then they go sick and die inside the old skin, and nobody ever sees the new pattern. It needs a real desperate recklessness to burst your old skin at last. You simply don't care what happens to you, if you rip yourself in two, so long as you do get out." D.H. Lawrence (Check out http://blog.theaterchurch.com/2005/06/dead-skin.html for Pastor Mark Batterson's comments on this quote).

"No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our lives are made. Destiny is made known silently." Agnes de Mille

"If you cannot be a poet, be the poem." David Carradine

Shake off the Haters

I used to teach high school English in inner-city Long Beach, California. While there, my students taught me some of their colloquialisms, but one of them sticks out.

My sophomore class had been invited by our District Representative to participate in a Lord of the Rings project. All my students had to do was read the free LOTR book they had been given and then write a paper about their purpose in life. The reward? They would be the first people in the area to see the world premier of the second film The Two Towers. My students were struggling readers, so we used class time to read the text and work on the paper. One day, as students were brainstorming ideas about their purpose in life, Timothy (one of the craziest, funniest kids I've ever met), asked us if we wanted to know the purpose of his life. Well, we knew we were in for it, and we sat back to take it in.

"First," he told us, "I want to be the President of the United States... (pause) so I can turn the White House into the Black House! (fits of laughter :-))." After the laughter subdued, Timothy said, "Nah, that's not really what I want to do. I think my purpose in life is really to shake off the haters! (fits of laughter again). You know, a lot of people be hatin' 'round here. Maybe not for you, Mr. Jones, but people be straight hatin' on the West Side (more laughter)." My students knew I lived in the same neighborhood as they, and enjoyed playfully jesting that I was only using the address and really lived in posh Orange County where I belonged. Perhaps they also really thought that I was immune to the "haters" they faced every day.

In the world of counseling, there is a therapeutic technique called psychodrama, in which "an extemporized dramatization is designed to afford catharsis and social relearning for one or more of the participants from whose life history the plot is abstracted." Basically, if you were part of a psychodrama, you would be asked to play a role from your past or someone else's as a means of dealing with the pain of past. Or, in Timothy's vernacular, you might play the part of a "hater". These sessions are intense and reality and roles can be blurred.

In an effort to "unblur" and clarify, participants go through a physical process at the end of the psychodrama where they stand, and literally wipe off the role that they were playing, saying things like "I am no longer (fill in the blank). I am me." And so on. It's a relatively quick, but extremely important step, so that people don't keep you in a role and so you don't stay in a role. In essence, you're coming back to reality. You are cleansing yourself of the role. You are wiping away the past. You are shaking off the haters.

What happens when the haters from our past still feel real? When they feel attached to our very being? When a smell, a thought, a noise, or a feeling sends us back in time to relive the experience as if it happened only minutes before?

In a sense, Timothy had it right. We need to shake off the haters in our lives - those people who have wounded us, violated us, abused us, condemned us, etc. But how do we do it?

Recently, in a counseling session, I was coming to face to face with one of my "haters" and it felt terrible. My therapist recommended that I "shake off the hater" (not the phrase my therapist used:-)) by physically wiping/brushing off the person's attempts to invade my space, violate me, etc., and vocalizing my identity, my individuality, my stance.

And so I did. I stood in our living room and while shaking off the haters, vocalized reality - the reality of who I am, my rights as a person, my convictions, my boundaries, my identity, my self. I also think of Jesus standing with me, applying healing balm to the wounds that come from living with other people who sin, too. I visualize his presence and listen for his voice to tell me who I am and what is real. Selah.

Perfection and Writing

Emily recently received a book titled Being Perfect by Anna Quindlen. It's a great, short read that we can all relate to. At one point, she talks about the concept of lockstep :

"What perfection requires is a kind of lockstep. Look at that word; imagine it in your mind's eye, the forced march of the fearful, the physical opposite of the skip and the jump. Doesn't it sound like something to avoid at all costs?

Lockstep is easier, but there's another reason why you cannot succumb to it. Because nothing great or even good ever came of it. Sometimes I meet young writers, and I like to share with them the overwhelming feeling I have about our work, the feeling that every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason ever to write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time ever has. That is her own personality, her own voice. If she is doing Fitzgerald imitations, she can stay home. If she is giving readers what she thinks they want instead of what she is, she should stop typing.

But if her books reflet her character, the authentic shape of her life and her mind, then she may well be giving readers a new and wonderful gift. Giving it to herself, too."

I love that last paragraph! It frees us to write, to teach, to counsel, to doctor, to live! We have something to give to the world that only we can give. What a marvelous, liberating, invigorating thought. And I think we truly know who we are as we focus not on ourselves, but on the One who made us. Through the process of knowing Him - concentrating on, serving, worshipping Him - we find out who we are. Now, if we will do it! Set the world on fire!

Roots

Back in Idaho, we have a certain type of tree that acts more like a weed than the deciduous organism it is. The tree comes up looking like any other tree, but then it grows at an accelerated rate and invites its friends. Soon, you have 20 trees where you only wanted one. So, you decide to chop it down. "Ha!" the tree says. "You can chop me down, but I'll be back." And so it does come back, with even more friends! My mom actually liked (note the past tense :-)) these trees until they took over her yard. At the point of relocating the house so they could make room for more trees, Mom had enough. So, she got busy cutting trees. But she had learned that just cutting the tree wouldn't make it go away. Instead, she had to go down into the earth, to the root structure, and dig and cut and completely remove the root system. Once she removed the roots, the tree problem stopped.

I think of this in terms of my life. Yesterday was not what I would call a day I'd want to repeat. I spent the entire day thinking about/stressing about and wishing away unwanted "trees" in my life. By the end of the day, all I could see were trees and I had grown despondent, depressed, and even angry. The trees seemed overwhelming, even though I have been tirelessly hacking away at them. But they just haven't gone away and there seem to be even more trees now than there were when I started getting rid of them!

What a terrible place to be - hacking away at problems and seeing little or no results. Spending energy on "bettering" our lives and ending up worse. I mean, what's the point of that? I consider myself an optimistic person, but even the most optimistic personality glimpses reality when reality has emerged as a very dark cloud.

How much time do we spend on our problems? How much energy? How much of our passion is drained because we are cutting down trees that inevitably come back? Shouldn't we just give up, let the trees take the house? What's the alternative?

The alternative is dealing with the real problem.

If you had asked me at 5 PM yesterday what my problem was, I would have given you a huge list. I had gone "global" as a friend of mine used to say, and nothing in life seemed to be going right anymore - my work situation, my marriage, my relationships w/ friends, my car getting bombed by berry-eating birds (you get the picture :-)).

But then something extraordinary happened! I had an amazing, yes amazing, conversation with my wife. We talked about all of the problems and how we could fix them, but something still didn't feel right. So, we came up with some different angles on the problems, some different solutions. Still, it didn't feel right.

Then, almost as if we were sharing a brain, it dawned on us that we hadn't gone to the root system. In fact, I had been so busy hacking away at the problems that I forgot that they are, in fact, stemming from some other system. I had lost focus. My life has become a spiritual vacuum. Sure, I have enough Scripture memorized and my theology is right after years of walking close to God and countless hours of sacrificial studying at Bible College. So, I can look good and even fool myself. But, if I treated my physical body the way I've been treating my spiritual self, I would be emaciated and hanging out in the ICU!

At the root of the problem is the fact that I am spiritually malnourished. As a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual being, it makes sense that other parts of my life are starting to suffer because I am starving a big piece of who I am. And that leads to problems, big problems. In fact, of all the areas we need to nourish, our spiritual lives are most important. When it is all said and done, the physical part of us will dissipate. We are spiritual beings. We will have big-time problems in the rest of our lives if we are not spiritually healthy. Yet, how often do we talk of spiritual health? Why is it one of those woo-woo areas for Christians? We certainly take note and come to the rescue when we see someone physically disabled/dysfunctional, but do we maintain the same (or greater) level of care when someone has gone into a spiritual funk?

I think that we don't. Why? Because we are not self-aware of our own spiritual health. There are those few people we know who have connected with their spiritual selves. They have gone ahead of us and they can show the way. They invite us into conversations about spirituality, about the mystical aspects of the faith. They invite us deep into our hearts, and suddenly the world begins to make a lot more sense. Problems lose their power as we gain spiritual perspective.

I want to be that person. But, you can't fake spirituality, not authentic spirituality, which I define as seeing ourselves/the world/others as God sees us/them. It comes in the school of prayer. It comes at the table where we consume the Word. It comes in the closet of silence and solitude. It comes in the bonds of brothers and sisters who have fellowshipped with Jesus. It comes through our mystical connection with Jesus, a connection that affects every area of our lives. And through that connection, we work with him to excise the roots of problems as he guides our hands and gives us strength.

"Bittersweet" Examined

In case you were wondering about the title of this page, I'll do some backmapping for you.

The idea of "Bittersweet" came out of this prayer time on April 19: "Father, I so desperately need your help. I need courage to face the fear of the unknown. I am not in control, nor can I ever be. I cannot secure the good times. I neither deserve them nor anything else. The good and the bad are relative. Help me to accept that this life is simply bittersweet."

This prayer was birthed out of a really tough day of counseling. Here is what I wrote in my journal at Caribou Coffee:

"Dr. B and I talked about my reluctance to succeed and be happy, even my subtle efforts to sabotage good things in life. We talked it through, and I see how at the heart of such behavior is an effort to control life and protect myself from pain, disappointment, failure, etc. If I am happy or things go well, I honestly get scared of how hard the fall will be when the good times are over. So, I try to prescribe my own times of pain, failures, etc. and limit the good things so that I won't hurt when something bad happens. Dr. B. talked about how God is very aware of the pain/suffering in life. He is not surprised, so why should we be surprised when sorrow mixes with joy? That is how this world functions. Utopia does not exist here. We need not fear bad times - they are coming. Jesus even promised they would come. And He also promised that our joy can be full through Him. Nor do we need ot fear when we succeed. We do not deserve, or not (not) deserve those times. In fact, they often have little to do with us. Dr. B. mentioned the man in the New Testament who was crippled from birth. When the Pharisees asked who had sinned - the man or his parents? - Jesus responded that neither had sinned. His condition had nothing to do with him. Thus, when good times come, we should enjoy them and be thankful. When sorrow comes, we must find joy even as we embrace the sorrow. Call it joy, or call it Jesus, but it is the center we must seek in the midst of all our lives, in the midst of our bittersweet lives."

And then it happened - an epiphany! I was writing all of this when a veil lifted and I envisioned the following: "I will write a book by this title (Bittersweet). The journey of a reluctant warrior who loses his way for a season because he can't accept/deal with life as he sees it. A story we can all relate to in some way. I'm in the middle of a chapter, now. Readers are waiting to see if the protagonist will blindly continue to fall in the same traps or find his way out. They can see the whole terrain from their vantage point. Yet, as dramatic irony goes, they cannot interrupt the characters or even influence decisions. They must be content to continue reading. They are enraptured because his end may be their own. They rejoice when he moves forward and they weep when he cowers stupidly from mere shadows of evils."

That's the beginning, or the middle, or the end. Anyway, it is a start on something I have wanted to do for a long time - write a book.

More thoughts:

If we do not accept life as bittersweet, and if we do not look to Jesus for meaning, we will undoubtedly become dysfunctional. By design, we need Jesus to function in this world. He is to our spiritual lives what oxygen is to our physical lives. When we see the world as it is - a mixture of good and evil - we have to make a decision. Will we choose to truly live in this world? Or, will we try to escape and write our own reality? It is in attempting to redefine reality that we become dysfunctional. The protagonist in my story is unwilling to accept the reality of his world. Perhaps he was willing to accept the reality at one point, but was unable to deal with reality on his own. Thus, he came up with ways to deal, to cope. In a sense, he began to medicate himself to deal with life. In doing so, he strays from the center, from reality, and loses his way. But only temporarily! This story has a redemptive thread running through it. A sliver of light that reveals hope is still in reach!

So that's it - bittersweet!

Crunching Numbers

I've spent a good part of today working on finances - filling out expense reports, paying bills, budgeting, etc. To be honest, I put off doing this kind of stuff like I put off going to the dentist (by the way, it's been over five years since I last saw a tooth expert!). Yet, like many things I dread doing, once I got started on the pile of paperwork, it wasn't so bad. I'm always surprised by how much I end up enjoying working with numbers/figures. While working, I even started thinking about people who do such work full-time and I think I can understand their mindset, even if I don't want to follow their career paths :)!

I think it's important to be holistic, breaking free from categories and labels. I'm not discounting individuality, but how many of us actually need to spend more time being individualistic?! Instead, we have a lot to learn from each other and from the host of experiences available to us. What am I avoiding that may help complete me? Who am I avoiding or discounting? How many opportunities and relationships do I miss out on because I have created a comfortable, predictable box in which to operate/live? What are some practical points of action that have remained points of inaction? Who are some people that I could invest in and learn from, even if it means giving up some of my own "individuality"? Asking and answering these questions can help us be intentional about expanding our box :)!

Mortality

Not often do I think about my own mortality, but this morning I awoke to a stinging sore throat. Not exactly a death sentence, but when I thought about praying away the sore throat, I wondered, "Does God even care about something as small as my sore throat? I mean, people are dying. Wait a minute! What if I've got avian flu? What if I'm dying? What if I don't awake tomorrow?" That was my thought progression, and suddenly I began to doubt my immortality. It's such an unnatural thought - to think of dying. I think it's an unnatural thought because we weren't designed to die. We were designed to be immortal.

Yes, I actually believe that I am immortal - in the sense that this body is going to stop working at some point, but my soul, me, the real me, is indestructible and will live on. I might be indestructible in the presence of God or away from His presence, but I will live on. Even if I get avian flu, I'm not going to cease being. I will simply cease being in this body. I will certainly be somewhere. I think it is the idea of annihilation that we sometimes confuse with physical death. Annihilation is unnatural and unreal. We don't see it in the physical world, and Scripturally you can't make a good case for it in the spiritual world. We continue. We are immortal. The question is where we will spend our time once these bodies cease to hold our souls - immortalized in God's presence or away from Him?

First Thoughts...

I've finally joined the blog scene! Feels good to be broadcasting thoughts that otherwise stay in a journal or in a computer file.

Today, I've been thinking about the idea of obedience. Here's something a bit entertaining: imagine if I just did the right thing! I'm not talking about a life of perfection. I'm just talking about living according to God's set of instructions, as revealed in the Old and New Testaments. All I really need, I have. Why not act? What would it take? Simple Faith.

I usually don't do what God instructs because I don't trust that He has my best interests in mind. I don't trust the sometimes messy, painful, unclear, confusing process of obedience. Fear, doubt, impatience, expectations, etc. pose as obstacles to simple faith. In our times, one is even considered "foolish" for such faith :-). Simple-minded. However, the mind connected to the mind of Christ is the most liberated, open, complex mind of all. It is a mind enlarged. A mind connected. It is a mind that is centered, at home. A mind able to accurately understand our times.

It is time to entrust my life, more of my life, to God, to the process. That trust is revealed as authentic through action, through active obedience.

While I know that addictions are not simply moral issues (obedience issues), the process of recovery does require active obedience, active trust. I have done a lot of work to uncover the roots of my own addiction. I am now at a place of faith. Time now to step out in faith. Step - active obedience. Obedience - the positive pursuit of that which is good and healthy (spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically), not the absence of sin/evil. Obedience is a good thing, a powerfully positive force of change. It is the life of Christ. It is all that is love and loving. Not the mere action, but motivation working with action.