Swine Flu.
Six months ago, it was just another fly-by-night disease with a funny animal name, following in the footsteps of such classics as Bird Flu and Monkey Pox.
Three months ago, it was a serious problem, but one that dwelled far away in the mystical land known as Somewhere Else.
Today, it is a mind-warping, logic-breaking, pain-in-the-curly-tail bastard of a disease, spawned from the putrid, unholy depths of the ninth circle of an apocalyptic lake of fire. I half-expect the next development in this living medical nightmare to include either flying monkeys in bell-hop outfits, or chain-rattling ghost pigs rising from some local farmer’s pig pen that was accidentally spread over an ancient Anglo-Saxon burial ground.
My school is seeing attendance in classes drop left and right as more and more students fall victim to the fevers, the coughs, the vomiting, and all the other wonderful things that this latest global catastrophe has to offer. It doesn’t help that the administration here is continuing to take the “let’s wait and see” approach even after having more than one confirmed case and a local doctor telling us that the school should be shut down. The humor in all this – or is it irony? – is that my wife, the Head Nurse at the school, is forced to remain at home this week and the next, this out of precaution because of her pregnancy. So she is out of the loop, unable to help. What is more, today I and several other teachers who have susceptible family members were asked to wear face masks and Latex gloves while working with students. Have you ever seen a dentist teach American Literature to smirking high school students? Had you been in one of my classes today, you would understand what such an absurdity might look like.
Right now, there is a lot that remains up in the air. The school might close, per the insistence of the Gesundheitsamt, one of Deutschland’s equivalents to the CDC. The school might remain open despite serious concerns. The school might mangle another week’s schedule by sending students to their dorms for the majority of next week, then calling them back for a Friday-Saturday catch-up. The school might be turned into the world’s first ham-from-humans processing plant. All I know is, I’ll most likely be at home, taking the “better safe than sorry” approach, watching movies with my wife and probably blogging more ridiculous wonderstuffs.
In the midst of all this, it is nice to know that love, affection, friendship and tenderness still exist. And when those four crazy cohorts are out to lunch, there remains the silly ritual of boys at Black Forest Academy creatively asking the girls to the upcoming Christmas Banquet. Below you can watch some of this awkward goofiness unfold in my very own classroom, as one of the members of my small group takes advantage of a poetry reading exercise to pop the question to his date. I told them I felt like Cupid, but really I feel like Cupid’s grouchy and “toof”-less Uncle Roy – the one who owns the ranch down the road from Mount Olympus. The one who is shaking his fist at the sky and cursing Zeus and his pals for making bacon so delicious. “If i’ weren’, we’d'n’ have no Swine Fwu ta bagin wif!”
Yesterday, Leigh and I had our third doctor’s appointment for the baby. I had been nervous for the past few weeks, mainly because the nausea Leigh had experienced earlier, in the first few months of the pregnancy, had subsided. I was wondering if the little guy (or girl) was still in there, still alive and, if it had grown legs, kicking. My nerves were calmed, though, when we got to see the ultra-sound. It is a surreal thing to look into that compact, grainy screen and see this little alien being reclining in its tiny, cramped space. I don’t really know how to react. I mean, I smiled, but at the same time I’m wondering how normal parents respond to the sight. This goes to show that I still don’t feel like a parent – at least, not a normal one. However, I think it is pretty clear I’m not going to be a normal parent. Is anyone?
Here is the cool part. My son (or daughter – still another month or so before we can clarify that) waved at us! At one point, as the doctor pointed out the little torso and spine, the almost microscopic legs and arms, and the proportionately massive head (my kid is going to be a Mensa genius, I’m sure), we noticed one of the little arms in motion, smoothly moving back and forth. He or she was waving at us:
“Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad. How’s it going out there in breathing-with-lungs land. It’s a little cramped in here these days – feels like my apartment is just getting smaller and smaller by the day. Weird. But, hey, I’m enjoying the food you’re sending down, especially those Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups you snagged last week at the Ramstein Air Force Base commissary. More of those, please. Also, Mom, I apologize for the pressure on your bladder. I know it makes you have to pee every half hour or so, but, I gotta tell you, it’s the most comfortable pillow I can find. Don’t know why they built my apartment right on top of it, but I figure I might as well take advantage of the luxury. Dad, I’m looking forward to some reading sessions, and I’m glad to hear that you plan to skip all those lame children’s books and move right to some George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, or Jack London. When you live in a cramped little apartment like this, imagining wider, greener vistas is ideal. Apologies in advance for the kicking I plan to do in a few months. It’s just exercise – I gotta stay in shape, and Mom’s intestines will make a great punching bag.”
Yes, I got all of this out of the little wave our baby threw us. It’s nice to know our kid is so straightforward. As I mentioned, Mensa International should prepare themselves.
~bo
“We’re watching a scary movie,” I told them, “because it’s Halloween and that’s what you do.”
My wife and her visiting friend agreed to this insistence without much prodding, which was nice. So, after picking up a couple of pizzas (then driving back to the place and exchanging the one with squid all over it for the normal mozzarella and basil I ordered), we settled down to watch a modern classic, 28 Days Later. Since my hard drive crashed, I’m pretty short on movie choices, at least ones I have not viewed multiple times. I had never seen Danny Boyle’s rejuvenation of the zombie movie all the way through, so, as far as I was concerned, this was a treat. I only hoped my wife and her friend could make it through the whole thing.
What is it about being scared that can be addictive? Especially on Halloween, there is a tendency for people – and I’m referring to normal, run-o-the-mill folks – to desire a good fright every once in a while. Now, I am adamantly opposed to gorefests, particularly the ones that reject genuine suspense and fright for dismemberment and horrific, voyeuristic slashing. I would rather watch a bad Hitchcockian film than any movie Eli Roth has made. The only real scares in those movies comes from the suddencacophonous blasting of the soundtrack to startle the audience, instead of actually building the suspense and cultivating genuine unease. Thankfully, 28 Days Later, while at times extremely visceral and in-your-face, is a quality scary movie; it cultivates emotions with well-drawn characters, just like a good drama. In a way, it is a drama. A drama about zombies.
It is interesting to watch the transformation Jim (Cillian Murphy) undergoes throughout the course of the film. From wandering the seemingly deserted streets of a post-apocalyptic London, to entering into moments of tenderness and friendship with his fellow survivors, to his escape and subsequent assault on the rogue military men’s headquarters, in which he becomes “Rage” without being infected by it. His is a steelier, more calculated Rage. His is a Rage of redemption rather than damnation. I read on the Internet that Boyle and Garland, the screenwriter, did not like the ending they settled on as much as an alternate ending that found Jim dying in a hospital bed much like the one in which he awakens from his coma at the beginning of the film. They felt Jim’s character came full circle in this way rather than the way the film ultimately ends. However, one of the most delightful paradoxes in storytelling is that you don’t always have to return to the beginning to come full circle.
As far as the frights were concerned, 28 Days Later delivered. But it delivered more than fright, which, even on Halloween, is a welcomed thing.
Remember when the seasons changed when you were young, when autumn spread itself like a gray blanket over your bright summer and the sweat on your forehead and upper lip was replaced by the wonder of seeing your breath in little, wispy clouds that would grow larger as the temperature dropped?
I was reminded of such things this morning. For today is the coldest day of the year since winter thawed into spring. Autumn has no doubt come, with its gray skies and morning chill and that funny thing it does to leaves that were lush and green only a month ago. This morning, in preparing to walk my dogs, I didn’t simply grab my jacket on a whim. I searched for it. Overnight, my jacket became a necessity. Something about that makes me smile.
I walked up the road – or rather, I was dragged by two dogs who are certain something very important is going on without them just over the next hill – and I enjoyed watching my breath clouds dissipate before my face. Like most kids, when I was young I imagined I was smoking. Not because smoking was taboo or even because it looked “cool.” Smoking was adult. For some reason, even in their carefree innocence, kids are always looking forward to getting older. And adults always wish they could revisit earlier, carefree days. Double irony, it seems.
The lines of an old song I used to listen to in high school came back to me today. “You have been more faithful than the changing of seasons,” it goes. More faithful than the inevitable. Hmm, now that is something to ponder.
In the preface to his popular psuedo-memoir, Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller writes of his overarching metaphor, “I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music.” Miller goes on to argue in his book that often in our lives we find that God doesn’t resolve. This, in turn, can frustrate us and even drive us into a kind of ignorant rejection of faith. In terms of the human condition, resolution is important.
One of the silly slivers of happiness I have found lately is when Leigh and I find ourselves ensorcelled by a new television show. This has always been a reality with me. Over the years, I have proved my inability to be simply a fan of certain shows – rather, I become a rabid fanatic. I try to spread its contagion wherever I go. Such is the case with shows like Seinfeld, Ed, and, once I was introduced to them by friends with a similar passion, The West Wing and Arrested Development. There have been those shows that don’t last very long (let us pause for a moment in remembrance of the great Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) but are nonetheless wonderful. Lately, Leigh and I have become “addicted” to three shows in particular: Lost (I know, we’re John-Locke-come-latelys), Fringe, and Mad Men. However, the only one of these drugs with which I struggle is Mad Men. All technical critiques aside, I cannot figure out why I enjoy this particular show.
The Woefully Unresolved
For those of you unfamiliar with Mad Men’s concept, the show revolves around Don Draper, an executive in charge of creative design at a New York City ad agency in the early 60’s. While the basic setting – the aesthetic, the costumes, the time period and historical events - assist in the show’s overall appeal (and its recent repeat Emmy win for Outstanding Drama Series), the stories woven throughout each episode often represent a buffet of betrayal, adultery, prejudice, secrecy, chauvinism, and downright depravity. Of course, there is some humor and lightheartedness injected into it all, but the majority of the storylines deliver the characters into the tragic nature of life rather than the comic. What is more, I feel very much like Donald Miller listening to jazz; at the end of each episode of Mad Men, Leigh and I will look at each other with the same exasperated, questioning expression: Why doesn’t anything resolve?
I teach my students about the literary details of stories, as well as the purpose and impact. However, one of the things that allows for application is a story’s resolution. That is, the fact that however the protagonist and other characters feel or act at the beginning of the story, the basic structure of the narrative normally provides for some degree of change later, and leads to a resolution. I often feel as if the writers of Mad Men fear resolution, either because it will bring an end to all the exciting tension they have created, or because, once a particular problem is resolved, they will have to come up with something new. Let’s face it – either way, this is the inherent problem in series television. Jim and Pam are simply not as interesting engaged as they were when they were star-crossed lovers unable to express their true feelings for one another. In this same way, Don Draper the serial adulterer is much more exciting than Don Draper the recommitted husband.
Then again, abandoning the resolution for a story is just as bad. Think how many irate fans would have stormed the set of Friends if the series finale had not, at least in some way, addressed the issue of Ross and Rachels’ relationship. Or the number of hired assassins that would be dispatched against Damon Lindelof if he chose to blow off a resolution for Lost when it resumes in the spring for its final season.
What is it about resolution – of straight answers and encapsulated ideas – that makes us uncomfortable when, somewhere, there exists a lack of it? And, even more confusing, why am I nevertheless drawn to stories with a paucity of resolution?
Perhaps the writer of Ecclesiastes could have added the line, “There is a time to know, and a time to question.” Certainly there are moments in this journey of faith where it seems we will never be able to resolve something, be it a theological dilemma, a problem of practice, or a strained relationship. And this lack of resolution can eat at us until we become distraught, until we settle for easier answers or weaker solutions in a desperate attempt to manufacture peace. I know people who have chosen not to question something vital, not because they are resting on faith, but because secretly they fear that the question will pose too great a challenge to their faith. Often they worry that the Lord will find our struggles with doubt offensive. However, a faith that remains unchallenged stands in greater risk of crumbling than one that collides with the lack of resolution in the world.
May our faith be scarred from our scraps and skirmishes with the unknowns that exist in this world. They are noble battles. Ones through which our own battle-scarred Savior hails us ceaselessly.
This morning, a handful of students and staff at the school gathered together for a time of contemplative prayer. We were a paucity within the spacious and austere confines of the school auditorium. Enough chairs were set up for ten times our amount, and we were spread out within them almost as if our distance from one another reflected the distance from normalcy we felt in participating in such a quiet, liturgical discipline. But we gathered nonetheless, and we prayed together, sang canticles together, confessed our shortcomings, declared our belief, and entrusted our hopes and anxieties unto the One who met with us in that empty auditorium. It was a good time.
My friend, Isaac, and I had met together about a month ago with a mutual desire to plan a few contemplative, reflective morning gatherings, for both the students and staff, throughout the year. We had both gleaned much from last Spring’s Ash Wednesday service, and wanted to revisit the same atmosphere of solemn, penitent worship. So we set to work picking dates, garnering approval, and putting together the first order of worship. And planning such a service is not child’s play. Though I find, from years of practice (going back to my days at seminary working with the staff at DaySpring Baptist), that I have knack for planning worship, each time I set to work organizing and dreaming the structure of it all, I find myself battling a kind of internal deprecation that begins to bubble up inside me.
I often struggle with the idea of planning something intended to be holy. I do not believe that it is I that can make a thing holy, of course, but the mere idea that the product of my work is meant to connect people to the Ineffable fills me with a sense of guilt and shame. Just as Paul the Apostle famously wrote of the conundrum of sinfulness (“What I do I do not want to do, and what I want to do I do not do…”), similarly I battle the heavy reminder that these lofty disciplines and practices I am incorporating into the worship service - adoration prayer, lectio divina, silent confession, intercession, etc. – are so often absent in my own life. The closest I come to participation in some of these elements of worship is when I type out their name on the page of the worship guide I am working on. Do I wish I was more focused – that these disciplines were integral aspect of my daily life? Certainly. However, sometimes they seem as foreign to me as to those students and staff who came to the gathering today solely out of curiosity rather than familiarity.
Ex opere operato. The Catholic and Anglican traditions both rely on this concept which, when translated from Latin, mean, “by the work done.” Specifically, it refers to a belief regarding the efficacy of the Sacraments. That no matter the “spiritual state” of the minister or person officiating, the grace of God pours forth from the Sacraments unhindered. In other words, I could be the mangiest sinner on this earth, yet were I to administer the elements in Communion or officiate a wedding, the wonder and grace of God inherent in these things would transpire undefiled, His glory undiminished.
This is what I remind myself of on these mornings that I stand up before the group and summon my shaky voice into song. It is what I trust in when I bow my head and lead them all in prayer. Ex opere operato. What a strange and beautiful thing that God’s melodies can bear forth even through a bent or broken instrument.
Sure, I will keep on trying to incorporate these contemplative disciplines into my life. I will continue to work on the practice of personal devotion. But life has taught me that where there is dedication, there is, inevitably, waywardness and failure as well. How much more wonderful, then, is the grace I cannot plan for, control, nor corrupt.
During the time of silent confession this morning, we punctuated each time of prayer by singing together verses from “Come Thou Fount of Ev’ry Blessing.” When I planned the order of worship yesterday, I inserted the hymn because I knew that most everyone would recognize it and be able to sing along. It wasn’t until this morning that the words themselves rang true again, “O to grace, how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be … Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to the leave the God I love…”
Ex opere operato indeed.
For your consideration...
This past weekend, Leigh and I cuddled up on the couch for a movie (a standard activity for low-income missionaries, I have found). As a joke, I was reading through a list of movie options, and, for some unfathomable reason, she seized on one particular title: Alien. Knowing my wife, specifically her cinematic tastes as well as her tendency to become bored with films she finds ostentatious, chintzy, or uncouth, I tried to dissuade her from Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror flick. After all, my copy was the director’s cut, which could only mean even more cold, foreboding spaceship passageways, and several more pints of alien drool. But she persisted – “No, I want to watch that one!” – and so we sat back to watch Tom “Viper” Skerritt, Ian “Bilbo” Holm, and Sigourney “Gatekeeper” Weaver struggle to handle one tough cookie of an alien life form.
And, before I proceed any further, what is with all that mercury-colored saliva pouring out of the alien’s two mouths? Seriously, I do not mean to fault H.R. Giger on his creature design, but I’ve always wondered if it was supposed to be drool or not. The thing’s jaws drip more than Pavlov’s dogs at a hand bell recital. Are the aliens just a bit more water-based, or was the thing just really hungry every time it fell upon one of the unlucky crew members stupid enough to be clanging around in the dark looking for oxygen coils or Jones the cat? And while we’re wondering things (it is the theme of this blog, if you haven’t noticed), if the alien has acidic blood that can eat through the metal hull of a spaceship, how does this not simply dissolve it from the inside out? What kind of circulatory system does this thing have?
Oh, the joys of digression. My ever-elusive point is that I enjoy rediscovering classics. I have yet to pinpoint the exact amount of time necessary between each viewing for good movies to evolve into great films, and great films to eclipse “greatness” and pass into the realm of masterpiece. But as I sat there on the couch, eyes glued to Ripley’s exploits unfolding before us on our small screen, I was aware of this odd phenomenon of cinematic transcendence – it’s the feeling you get when you realize you are watching (or reading or listening to) something exceptional. As a lover of films as well as literature, I relish these moments. It isn’t necessarily that the work seems fresh; I knew what was going to happen and the real fun was trying to ignore Leigh’s persistent questions regarding who was going to survive. Rather, the point is that while I may have watched something for the fifth time, tenth time, thirtieth time, there comes a moment where its stellar quality becomes incontrovertible truth, at least in my own opinion. It doesn’t matter how many students and friends tell me Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is boring – it is still one of the greatest novels I have ever read and know I will ever read. While I may not bestow Alien with quite so high a praise, it does not change the fact that as the camera closed in on Weaver’s exhausted, dreaming face and then faded to black, I was silently exclaiming, Bravo, Mr. Scott. Bravo.
Of course, it is also nice when the person you are watching one of these movies with, who happens to be viewing it for the first time, tells you they enjoyed it too. And the fact that Leigh referenced the exploding chest scene in her praises solidifies her as “coolest wife ever” in my book. Sure, she said she thought we were going to watch that Johnny Depp/Charlize Theron movie about the astronaut who comes back to earth with an alien virus or something, but I won’t fault her just because she got a ground-breaking cinematic classic mixed up with The Astronaut’s Wife. Not only did she watch the whole of Alien: The Director’s Cut, she was as enthralled as I was by it, which is another argument for classic status.
I’m not so sure we’ll be watching any of the sequels, though. I wouldn’t want to spoil the mood.
Here’s to classics!
So I started writing a television show. It is something I’ve always wanted to do – that is, I’ve been interested in experimenting with the teleplay format of writing, and any mediocre writer (which, at the risk of arrogance, I fancy myself to be) should have multiple projects on his plate so as to continually tempt his creativity, yet all the while ensure that he will never finish one of them.
I have a hunch that my television show idea may either be genius or completely lame (or perhaps some quixotic combination of the two). Certainly it does not hold a comedic candle to the brilliance of “the butler story” Jerry and George came up with in the fourth season of Seinfeld, but I’m not going for comedy alone. Some people consider me a funny guy and/or an amusing teacher, but I doubt my abilities to write true comedy. No, my television show is, of course, an hour-long dramedy (there is no way my longwinded-ness could accomplish anything in a half-hour format). And, lately, my inspiration for pace and writing style has been drawn chiefly from the great Aaron Sorkin (Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 and various fine films). This is probably due to the fact that I recently acquired the first three seasons of his political drama which is keeping Leigh and I entertained in the late afternoons. All other inspiration is spilling onto the teleplay page from various shows past and present: Ed, Studio 60, Mad Men, etc. You can only imagine the mess of a script that sits in my hard drive, hidden away from the world.
If you’re not laughing yet, only read on and allow me to unveil the concept of my series. The setting for my show is a small Midwestern town (Colorado, perhaps, but I haven’t settled on anything) in … wait for it … a church. That’s right – my first foray into television writing and I’ve placed my characters inside what basically constitutes Nielson Ratings-poison. Who on earth is going to tune in to a show about a church? Specifically, how many people’s curiosities are going to be tempted by the story of a middle-aged, recently-widowed reverend who moves west with his thirteen-year old son to accept a pastorate in a large, suburban church full of ridiculous and glorious parishioners, some rich, others poor, some desperately holding on to God, others desperately holding on to their miniscule American dreams, some supporting this newly-single, somewhat liberal theologian as their new pastor, others determined to do whatever it takes to oust him from behind the pulpit that their grandfather crafted with his own hands?
Seriously, who’s gonna watch that? (Especially if it doesn’t cast Jessica Beal as a P.K. losing her innocence…)
All I know is one thing – I would watch it. Not just because I wrote it, and not just because I grew up in a small town church, went to seminary and still somehow came out believing on the other side. Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to get enough of such a story. Why? Because everything that truly matters in life would be spilled out upon the pages of these scripts. A pastor struggling to shepherd a congregation, only half of which trust him and listen to him … A modestly conservative, “All-American” town struggling within the ebb and flow of moral and social controversies … Stories of adjustment, of social dilemmas and spiritual confusion, of men losing their families and families losing sons and daughters, of choir members who can’t sing, of powerplays for elder positions, of liars justifying their lies and people of truth finding themselves in the minority, of sermons that move some to repentance while causing others to stand up and cry foul against the pastor in the middle of the delivery…
This is not a pitch. And while it is true that I’m messing around with the teleplay format, and I am writing just such a mess of stories, this post was not meant to get you wishing that perhaps NBC or HBO or AMC would sit-up and take notice.
This post has one purpose: to remind you that your life is a story, that you live within a story, and that there is wonderful drama and ridiculous comedy and tear-jerking tragedy filling every area of our lives. All we have to do is open our eyes to see it, respect it, and recognize the unique beauty in it all.
If we could do that, television scripts aren’t the only things that would change forever.
Think of all the stories that unfold within...
In order to stay connected to some amount of liturgy, Leigh and I attend an Anglican Church in Basel, Switzerland. We go to the morning service despite the fact that much of its structure and content seem to be seeker-oriented and therefore stripped of some of the elements of liturgical worship I find most meaningful. However, the church’s evening service, which meets in a side chapel of the Munster cathedral in Basel, is extremely high church; it is almost too austere, and is certainly a striking contrast from the morning service. Leigh and I used to attend the evening service, but felt out-of-place with the strict adherence to the Anglican prayer book and the fact that the atmosphere felt heavy, almost dour. While we are still seeking a sense of belonging in the morning service, there is something familiar in corporate worship on Sunday mornings, so this is where we have ended up. For the most part, we enjoy it.
This past Sunday, the announcement time included an in-depth preview of a new outreach push originating in the United Kingdom. However, what struck me was not the idea, but the purpose behind it. On Sunday, September 27th of this year, Anglican churches all over the world will hold their annual “Back to Church Sunday” event. This is an effort to draw back into the fellowship the people who have left the Church. It is all centered around one mind-numbingly outlandish idea: invite a friend or neighbor to go to church with you. Such a concept should sound familiar to those of us who are regular church-goers. It has its denominational cousins, of course. My home church in Houston designated a Sunday at the end of the summer as a “High Attendance Sunday,” the goal of which was to increase our numbers and, in so doing, hopefully draw back people who have simply wandered away from the worshipping community as if it were only a temporarily intriguing store window display.
The Official Back To Church Sunday Advertising Pack!
I know I am a cynical guy. I am well aware of this fault, and I do struggle constantly with such judgments. Still, though, I could not help but wonder, as the ten-minute promo video for “Come As You Are: Back to Church Sunday 2009″ played on the church’s screen last Sunday, how exactly the Church has come to believe that such advertisements are the way to go. We hype up the 27th of September as if simply inviting friends and neighbors to our churches on any given week were as foreign a concept as asking the waiter to cut our meat and spoon-feed us our mashed potatoes.
When did we stop inviting people to our churches? Was there a specific month, or year, or decade, or era in which we stopped caring whether or not our friends and neighbors encountered Christ through our communities of grace and hope? Did our numbers decline when we decided we didn’t care about the people around us, or did they plummet when we simply decided we had enough buddies in our churches already so there was no need to seek out any more?
This may only be the cynicism blogging (in all its glass-half-empty, bitter truthfulness), but is not the perpetuation of a “Back to Church Sunday” simply a reminder of how much the Church has failed to maintain its influence, relevance, and mystery? I know some might say that there is nothing wrong with the idea, that it may actually light a fire under some people to reach out to more than just the people who sit in pews just in front and back of them. But such a response is inherently tragic! Why hasn’t the salvation of God, that which has covered over the ugly darkness and foggy directionlessness of our lives, compelled church-goers to seek out their friends who are not in on the wonder of it all? Is it because the salvation of God is not what it used to be, or because, for decades now, we have held onto our salvation not as if it were a light, but rather a shield against the world, or a boat we have built to withstand a rising flood?
We need to be more than hospitable. We must be better than convincing. We must be compelling. And we must be so more than simply one weekend a year. In a world where responsibility is fast becoming an arcane concept, it is the responsibility of the saved to do more than simply live nice lives, speak politely to coworkers, and forward spiritually superstitious e-mails. We wonder why more and more people are leaving the Church. We think it may have something to do with the siren song of the secular world, or the rise of rival activities of interest (world religions, social interest groups, etc.), or those pesky liberals, or the sorrowful decline of moral accountability, or maybe even the devil. We’re wrong, though.
It is us. We have become dull. The faith of abundant life has turned lifeless. Our vibrancy and joy and copious grace have wilted like leaves in winter.
We are not perfect, but the world never asked us to be. In fact, what they are weary of is not our shortcomings, but the fact that we so often pretend not to struggle, or that our mistakes are not our fault when they most certainly are. The wonderful, bittersweet truth is that we are beautiful messes. We are redeemed. We are stumblers with scraped knees who refuse to quit their hopeful staggering toward home no matter how arduous the journey.
How is it possible that we are content to make this trek alone?
There is a quote by Thomas Merton hanging on my classroom wall that reads:
As long as I am content to know that He is infinitely greater than I, and that I cannot know Him unless He shows Himself to me, I will have Peace, and He will be near me and in me, and I will rest in Him.
As is often the case with the majority of us, we find ourselves colliding with an immovable fact of life that, no matter how much we want to believe is untrue, remains constant. It is strange that such concreted sections of reality frustrate us, but perhaps this is because so much of life has become relative, stretching and thinning out to fit a variety of existential interpretations. In a world where spirituality is as windblown and chaotically diverse as sand beneath a hurricane, when we slam against an unchanging fact of life, it is not uncommon for us to fail to acknowledge its immobility until we have beaten our head against it enough times.
For me, one of these fixed, unchanging realities is the concept that, as a believer in God and a follower/disciple/devotee (call it what you will) of Jesus, I will never “arrive” in my faith as well as in my obedience. This is the equivalent of a child’s assumption that once they reach a certain age, he will suddenly possess the wisdom of adulthood, which he believes is a definite, immovable attribute. Yet, as he grows, this belief wanes. He begins to notice mistakes made by his parents, his teachers and his neighbors. He develops his own beliefs and ideas and finds them quite different than other people’s. The same is true on a spiritual level – we believe that one day we will get it. We assume that there will come a time when we will be able to confidently take the reigns of our faith. While most of us are not naive enough to believe that trials will cease and we will no longer stumble, we still perpetuate the idea that such pitfalls will be as trivial as hiccups.
This is simply not true. As I was revamping this blog and reassigning archived posts to new categories, I came across several entries that found me struggling with this frustrating constant. In some of the posts, I was wistfully looking to the future, imagining how great it would be when I finally arrived. In others, I was moping about the pain in my head I received from banging it against this brick wall.
As people of faith, we do not arrive. There is no amount of training we can undergo, no perfect collection of books we can read, no number of verses we can memorize, no varieties of prayers we can pray, that will deliver us into spiritual auto-pilot. I must face the reality that I will always struggle with some temptations, and I will always have to work to keep my cynicism in check, and I will always experience seasons of frustration in my relationships. We hold to idealistic views of saints and greats wonders of men and women who, at first glance, seem to have smashed through this concrete fact. However, if we take a closer look at anyone, even Jesus, we find that loving and caring and trusting never come easy – there will always be a struggle on this side of life. I cannot imagine what turmoil must have been boiling inside the Galilean’s mind after having recognized the weakness of Peter or the impatient confusion of Judas. Washing their feet could not have been easy no matter how holy he might have been.
Thomas Merton, a fellow wrestler with the dilemma of arrival, hints at the only real answer that exists. He reminds us that the only real contentment comes not from believing we will one day be able to cruise through our beliefs, relationships, and interactions with others, but from resting in the One who truly completes us. We are messes all – we will be until we die. But He is the Presence that can make the mess worthwhile. That can make it beautiful.
May we learn to accept our imperfection. May we strive for holiness not as if it is a trophy to hoist above our heads, but as a trail into the mountains, the caps of which are obscured by the clouds of eternity. May we, in the midst of the messes we have made of ourselves, discover the sanctifying power of loosening our clenched fists and simple being still. May we live frenetic lives of rest, and come to understand that such a paradox can and does exist.
