The first peak destination
Sometime around the third hour of our descent toward Brunig, Switzerland, I was thinking, This has got to be the most arduous experience of my life. By the third hour of the descent, my twisted knee was flaring in pain at every step, and my ankles were flinching against the terrible support from my hiking shoes (expensive, name-brand footwear that let me down). Isaac and Josh had chosen a beautiful, but very tough, route up from Sorenburg to a point called Schonbiel (loosely translated, “beautiful view”), and then a gradual descent along a ridge line before plunging into lower elevation by way of switchbacks that snaked their way through numerous mountainside cow fields. Unfortunately for all three of us, some nut in the Swiss equivalent of a Parks and Recreation department mislabeled the trail somewhere around Schonbiel, so that a marker pointed us in the opposite direction for our descent. This is when the fun really began.
They were mocking me
Still on our way up
Last Saturday in the Swiss Alps was cloudy and wet. As soon as one pass of rain ended, another would begin to billow up along the far high ridge, and eventually you knew from experience that you were about to be soaked again, so you better take in the partially unobstructed view while you could. Because of this, and the fact that the top of an Alp is not necessarily the warmest place to hang around, it was best to keep moving. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, someone mismarked the trail, and we wasted an hour and a half hiking, backtracking, rehiking, and then rebacktracking our trail along this ridge, pictured below, in a simple attempt to begin our descent.
Back and forth, back and forth...
No, Switzerland, 57 doesn't go to the right!
By the time we finally decided to go against the marker and venture (go figure!) downhill, we were all a little worse for the wear. However, for the first time in a few hours, we were blessed with a considerable stretch of sunlight before being plunged back into gray gloom. It was at this point that I took my first spill upon the slick, muddy path. I did not know it at the time, laughing in spite of myself and my soiled backside, but this was the beginning of the hardship I was to suffer over the next five hours. It was not long after picking myself up and continuing the descent that my right knee began to whine with minor pain, and each time I had the opportunity to stop, I would massage it curiously, wondering why it was hurting. (A bright hiker would recognize that descending rapidly down a mountain with a heavy pack on one’s back is enough to do it, and throw in a little unsure footing and a slip and the reason for the pain would be obvious.)
Around hour three of the descent, when the trail disappeared into mucky cow crap and open farm fields soaked with rain, my knee no longer felt merely tweaked. It was screaming in agony … and we still had a considerable distance to go in order to reach the “schlaf im Stroh” (Sleep in Straw) before dark.
In the end, the Alps beat me. Actually, that doesn’t quite paint a vivid enough picture of my struggle. The Alps vanquished me. Now, I’m not the kind of person who insists he is in shape when it is obvious he is not. And ten hours of hiking in the Alps is rough enough for anybody. However, I truly believe that if my knee had cooperated instead of faltering, I would have been able to make it to our destination. There is a kind of third wind that comes over you even after your second wind has been expelled hours ago, and it will surprise you how long it lingers, pushing you forward, allowing you to put one foot in front of another, one foot in front of another, one foot in front of another…
We reached Lugern, about an hour to an hour and a half hike from our goal, around 9 PM. There was perhaps forty-five minutes to an hour of light left, but that did not matter. I was lagging behind my more capable friends farther than I had all day, and it was all I could do to make it up or down even the gentlest of slopes. We had to stop.
And so we did. And all was well, after all. There happened to be another schlaf im Stroh in that very town, and since all three of us were super-saturated with a day’s worth of high elevation weather, and all three of us were weary from wandering through countless cow pastures following a trail we often doubted we were still on, we found the musty smell of a barn and the crackling sound of bedding straw a more than adequate place to collapse for the night.
The unplanned bus ride back to our car in Sorenburg was beautiful, though.
The clouds parted long enough to snap this shot
The descent into Cow Pasture Land
schlaf im Stroh
The school year is completed, and that includes my grading of over two hundred essays. If there was ever better proof of the fact that I have not taught high school in a while, it is that I assigned a 3-4 page essay to accompany a final project in all five of my English classes, and then proceeded to give my students a final exam consisting of two essay questions. 69 students X 3 essays each = 1 naive teacher. Yet, somehow, I survived and now live to blog about it. And I have been reminded of the subtle irony of teaching. You make mistakes in Year A, and attempt to fix them for Year B, only to make brand new mistakes in Year B that you must fix for Year C. By the time Year Z rolls around and you are staggering down the home stretch toward the tape of retirement, you realize that you have never had a perfect year of teaching. If ever someone needed proof that pobody’s nerfect, tell ‘em to spend a few years in the field of education.
Of course, the best release for such stress is a little thing I have dubbed Fantasy Construction Camp, or FCC for short. Every BFA missionary who hangs around Kandern during the summer is required by the school to give two weeks to assist with the many projects that always take place during June and July, such as dorm renovation, school repairs, landscaping, and, without fail, the transfer of excrutiatingly heavy pieces of furniture up or down a minimum of two floors. Granted, some of the more merciful of you readers might think, What does he mean ‘required to give two weeks’? Hasn’t he given up ten months working at that place for no pay?
Now, now, don’t be cynical. To be indignant on such things would be to miss the beauty of Fantasy Construction Camp. I just completed my two week stretch yesterday. And during it all, my thoughts were, as George Bluth Sr. remarked excitedly to his son, “I’m having the time of my life!” Over the past two weeks, I have gotten to chisel, bust apart and shovel tile and cement from three dorm bathrooms (I had no idea three little bathrooms could produce so much debris!), – I even got to use a jackhammer; I have shop-vacuumed a dirt floor (not to be confused with a dirty floor); I have moved countless pieces of furniture from one residence hall to another (the only similarity in these pieces of furniture was the fact that they all weighed way too much to ever be moved); I have swept, scraped, Spackled and painted; I have built things and torn down other things in the same day (the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away); I have picked up and handed off at least a hundred boxes of tile; and I have pitchforked thorny weeds that bit back at me so much you would swear they were straight out of a Harry Potter book. Perhaps my favorite task is best illustrated in the pictures below.
My friend Isaac and I were assigned the wonderfully surreal task of smashing out an entire wall at the Black Forest Academy elementary school last week. We made two little classrooms into one big one. I now consider myself a pro with the sledgehammer, and while I am not yet willing to seek out a career in demolition, that particular field has definitely rocketed to the top of my “Most Fun Jobs to Do for a Maximum of Two Weeks” list. Heck, I only stepped on one nail during the entire process.
It is interesting what a little change of perspective can do for a person. It can serve as a kind of release if you are careful enough to pay attention to the differences. I tried to do just that over the last two weeks. I am certainly happy that my FCC tour of duty is over, but I don’t regret the two weeks I was pulled away from lounging on the couch or hacking away at my novel. It was good work, and I was glad to be a part of a collective effort, of white-collars made momentarily blue.
Most days, a few of us would hike up the road from one of the dorms in which we were working. We would carry our bag lunches out to a little bench that sat in the shade amongst high grass and overlooked the 18th hole of the golf course in Kandern. There we would eat our food and watch a number of folks – some elderly, some young – whack their drives, hack their chips and smack their putts (very few read the green properly). Oh, they thought they had chosen the correct way to get the most out of their summer days. If only they knew…
My head has been swimming with dozens of topics on which I might offer my own, rambling ponderances. Taking the much needed break from my blog (there was really little choice in the matter, actually, as the responsibilities of teaching simply overwhelmed all extra-curricular writing) was a good thing, but it is as if someone threw a lever and called a halt to the conveyer belt in the factory of my mind. The system is on hold but the ideas keep spilling out, piling up like the chocolate in that old episode of I Love Lucy. These ideas are often impossible to cram back down.
However, despite the large number of pseudo-ideas and points of discussion festering in my brain, I have decided that this first return to blogging normalcy should not leap for the deep end. Doing so may be even a bit presumptuous. Perhaps I need to earn that responsibility back; it has been over two months since I dove for those waters. So, instead, I offer a short ode to life that feels the equivalent of taking off your shoes and your socks, rolling up those jeans that hang a few inches too low, and wading into the shallows. And even in doing so, there still remains something sacramental in the air, the smell of baptism…
I am thankful for the little things. It is a grace to even recognize the little things when our default setting is to look beyond them and concern ourselves with only the big things, the giants in the land with which we must contend from day to day. But like pausing to stay the night at a wayside inn instead of pushing on through to Boston (thank you, Henry Longfellow, for reminding us of little things with big meanings), opening our eyes to the little things is a habit I desperately want to form in my life. The giant things demand so much of our time, but they often cast smaller shadows than we expect, while the significance of the little things … oh, their shadows stretch larger and longer than we often realize.
And so, I am thankful for the little things – the little graces.
I am thankful for that first draught of a Guinness at an outdoor cafe beneath the evening sun in Lorrach.
I am thankful for the absurdity of spaghetti eis, which holds not only the power of a wonderful sugar rush, but also the magic that can make me feel like a child again.
I am thankful for the wagging of dog tails as they lope up and down the grassy stretches between the fields of growing corn, and the way they leap into creeks to cool off after a long hike.
I am thankful for soccer balls and students that use them well.
And I am thankful for the nurses who take care of those students when they fall …
…even when those nurses fall asleep.
I am thankful for good books like these…
and, yes, these too…
I am thankful for relaxing picnics with new friends…
and for new barbeque grills…
and vineyards…
and my wonderful wife.
And I am thankful for all the wonderful people who make it possible for us to live in a place that is certainly not devoid of the little things.
And so, the question falls as questions are apt to do: for what little things are you thankful?
I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that is it somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it, but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. - Flannery O’Connor
This morning I was talking with a couple of guys who work here at BFA about the waywardness of American Christianity, or, to be more specific so as not to generalize and offend, the ways in which our “Christian” upbringing completely missed the point. Now, sitting in a little office meeting area in the early hours of a new day as outside the dawn breaks upon Germany all blue and frozen, it was hard not to feel an inkling as if we were talking about America behind its back. However, I know that the only reason I find myself interested in discussing such things is that I am genuinely concerned for the allegiance to God’s kingdom that is slowly and consistently dissolving within my home country. I think many would agree that sometimes you have to separate yourself from something (or someone) in order to understand your relationship with that thing (or person) in a clearer light.
Mainly what we were remarking was how much we notice the American Church upholds a sanitized faith. What I mean by this is that the reason most so-called Christians in America do not faithfully live out a dynamic, transformational relationship with the Christ is they believe very little of their lifestyle plays out counter to his message and will. We have all known people who assume they will wind up in Heaven one day because they were “good,” or at least because they did more good deeds than bad. We Christians tend to shake our heads at that relativistic logic. However, so many of us uphold the same idea without really noticing what we are doing. If we truly cultivated a full awareness of God’s intimate participation within our lives – if we learned how to practice the presence of God in our day to day lives – I do not think we would continue to perpetuate certain beliefs and attitudes, let alone commit certain deeds. I am not referring to such specific things such as that old, principled resolution to not watch R-rated movies or to abstain from alcohol. Quite the contrary. It is resolutions such as these that reveal the very sanitization about which I am writing, not because they are misguided or pointless decisions, but because they often reflect a person’s desire to avoid the world based on the belief that the world (a.k.a. the “secular” world), being secular and unredeemed, can only corrupt; it cannot bless. Therefore, one should avoid the darkest parts.
I remember owning an old, 8-bit Nintendo game distributed by a Christian company that offered a Legend of Zelda-like gaming experience. Instead of pieces of a “Triforce,” the hero was searching for the different pieces of the armor of God. They lay hidden all over a city. While the player commenced to searching the parks, streets, basements and shops of the city, he avoided being waylaid by undesirable punks and conniving tempters by hurling actual pieces of fruit at them. These human obstacles would then either drop to their knees in prayer (supposedly for salvation) or turn into winged demons that would flap towards you, requiring more Fruit of the Spirit projectiles to repel them. If this weren’t absurd enough, I recall one harrowing period of game play where I diligently searched everywhere for the Breastplate of Righteousness. When my options of hiding places dried up, I chose to enter a building with a sign out front that read, “BAR,” figuring that perhaps the object of my search was concealed in its basement or somewhere similar. However, to my utter shock and game-playing anger, I was immediately greeted by an angel in all its 8-bit video glory, sporting a disapproving look and informing me that I had no business in bars. This divine messenger then proceeded to take away my Belt of Truth and Helmet of Salvation, as well as my ability to fling Apples of Joy and Pears of Peace at bad guys. I was forced to start the game all over.
Sanitization. The world is dangerous. It cannot be trusted, and no good can be found within it.
Not only does this idea perpetuate an us vs. them ideology, but it only serves to make most Christians believe that if they avoid the world they are somehow living as genuine Christians, when in reality they are living only sanitized, “Christian” lives. The distance between these two lifestyles is as vast as the Pacific, and it can be frighteningly tumultuous to cross from one side to the other, not the least reason of which is that, typically, you find yourself voyaging alone.
May we not be afraid of the world or tremble in the darkness. Cultivating a full awareness of God’s presence means that he is with us even there. May we rest assured in his light, and may we take this light and shine it into the darkness to expose the beauty and wonder that is hidden within.
This is going to be a bit heady, but I want to encourage my two or three readers to keep the faith and power through…
Leigh and I recently began attending a Sunday afternoon study group composed of different couples from Black Forest Academy. We meet in someone’s home, eat lunch together, and then sit down to watch a segment from a 12-part video series entitled The Truth Project. This is a series produced and distributed by Focus on the Family, with a gentleman named Dr. Del Tackett presiding over a college-like theater classroom. Tackett systematically explores the question of “truth” as it pertains to the belief in and communion with God through Jesus Christ. Throughout each session, he endeavors to construct a powerful, apologetic-themed case for faith in God in a world that, he continually asserts, is following a careless, sometimes-agnositic-sometimes-atheistic-sometimes-nihilistic lie. I have mostly enjoyed the series (that is, the four sessions I have sat through) for its clear-cut exploration of ethics, philosophy and theology (though, the last session on theology spent about thirty seconds on actual “theology” and then moved assuredly on to Christology without blinking). While it is quite obvious that Dr. Tackett is a strict inerrantist, among other things, this hasn’t caused any significant rift between my own leanings and his. He is actually a very eloquent speaker, and certainly passionate about the view he is purporting.
However, what I found interesting was the tangent he chased during session four of this study, which we viewed last Sunday. In discussing the importance of trusting the Scriptures since it provides us the truth of God, Tackett chooses to highlight ways in which people have striven to, as he puts it, “discredit” the Word. He briefly referenced the alleged folly of the JEDP theory before flying against that ridiculous heresy known as the Jesus Seminar. However, what was more peculiar than this was when he spoke about his “personal crisis,” which came about years ago when he decided to teach a Sunday School class on II Kings (a.k.a. the whole Divided Kingdom soap opera) and ended up colliding with the odd dating of the kings Joram and Jehoram. He told the Truth Project class (those gathered in the lecture hall-like room and those of us viewing the DVD) that such a discrepancy shook his faith in Scripture to its innermost core! (Those of you readers who are unaware of this odd “discrepancy” in II Kings need only know that several different verses cite different time frames for a handful of kings, which often raises questions on the validity of the Scriptures both particular and in general.)
As I listened to Tackett recount his nervous wringing of hands over this minute aspect of some Old Testament historical chronicle, it was hard not to become sympathetically amused. Tackett feared that should he not be able to reconcile these inconsistencies in the book, he would have to assume that the entire Word of God is unreliable. Really? This is merely my own opinion, but that does not seem like simple jumping to conclusions as much as it is leaping the Grand Canyon of conclusions. But, then again, such chasms occasionally do yawn before inerrantists.
During our own group discussion afterward, I did not share my opinion on this part of the lesson. The conversation was a good one, and this was but one small aspect of the presentation as a whole. I decided not to mar our give and take with my differences. However, I cannot help but wonder what my life would be like today if I still believed in the Bible the same way Tackett does. I have thrown off the idea of inerrancy (I hesitate indefinitely to label it a doctrine since the true definition of that word is “right teaching”). This is not because I find it too difficult, or because I cannot reconcile the Biblical contradictions I notice, but rather because I find inerrancy to be an irreverent, limited view of Scripture. Let me explain.
For an inerrantist to live up to his or her logical definition, the infallibility of God’s Word is central. The Bible must be without, at least in its original form, even the slightest inconsistencies, contradictions or errors. The only way to be sure this is the reality in which the Bible dwells is to believe that the Bible was completely set forward by God Omniscient, and that human beings were hardly more than mere quills, instruments necessary only to put pen to paper (or chisel to stone) and write down all that the Lord revealed … and absolutely nothing more. While some inerrantists will not always carp to this, the logic behind their belief must center around this concept. Because of the generally-accepted belief that humans are fallen, one who wishes the Bible to be free of human error must therefore take the Scriptures – and all the history of its creation and authorship – out of the hands of humans as much as possible. Just to be safe, some of the proponents of this even hold to what is known as verbal inspiration, or verbal plenary inspiration, which is the idea that God actually dictated, word for word, the Scriptures to his chosen scribes. Some people believe these writers were actually caught up in a trance-like state as they took dictation. Considering there was no “papyrus edition” of Spell and Grammar Check back then, this idea would ensure the safety of the Scriptures from even the smallest fumbling of human understanding.
Now, whether or not inerrantists are strict enough with themselves to adhere to this particular idea, the concept is still similar and not far down the logical slope. This is why I find the idea so … uninspired. Yes, the pun is intentional. The reason for it is that inerrantists often brandish, in typical proof-texting intimidation, this verse out of II Timothy: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking and encouraging…” (3:16). Despite the fact that the Bible had not been collected and canonized yet when that particular verse and all its buddies in the same letter were written (therefore begging the question of how “all Scripture” could literally mean the Bible as we know it rather than only the Torah as the writer knew it), there is something completely wonderful about this verse that so many people miss. Many translations even package it better for us and yet still we miss it. Another way scholars have sought to capture the intended meaning of the word qeopneustoV, which literally means “God-inspired”, is to bring us into awareness of the image of inspiration. Therefore, they use the term “God-breathed.”
God-breathed. God breathed.
One day a few years ago, I asked myself the question, what other places may we find an image of God breathing? Now, if we were to examine the root of that Greek word, we might notice it appears similar to the word pneuma, or “pneuma.” This word means “breath” or “spirit” and can even be translated, sometimes, as “wind.” It was not long after pondering this image before I remembered two of the most significant moments involving God’s breath. The first was with Adam in the garden of Eden. Adam is, at the outset, exactly what his Hebrew word of a name means – dust, dirt. He is inanimate – merely the sum of his finite parts … or particles. The miracle of the story is that God breathes into this inanimate dust-man and suddenly there is life. There is the intake and expelling of breath. Adam is alive whereas a split-second before he was not. Because God breathes into him, he is now more than the sum of his parts. He has the hint of a holiness not his own, entirely a gift, but it makes him alive and well and although I would imagine still a bit dusty, nevertheless remarkably more than what he once was. Therein lies the miracle at the heart of creation.
The second place I recalled God breathing is found at the end of the Gospel of the Apostle John, where we find the disciples, abandoners all, hiding in the upper room fearing they might be next to carry a cross. And the story goes that Jesus simply appears in their midst, terrifying them. Yet he speaks softly and tenderly, “Shalom,” which is a way of declaring, “Peace be among you.” He lets them examine his wounds to determine that he is not Casper but actually their Lord and Master in the flesh. Then the Scripture records him “sending” them just as the Father has sent him. “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (20:22).
He breathes on them. I used to think this was the weirdest thing Jesus ever did, even more than spitting in the dirt to heal a guy’s blindness. (And as glorious as resurrection may be, I have to wonder what his breath might be like after lying entombed all weekend.) But the point is not necessarily in the action, even if it can be argued as a traditional sign of blessing. The point is in the meaning behind the action. Breathing. Just as God breathed into Adam, making him more than his worthless, dusty self, so Jesus breathes into his disciples and commissions them. He charges a bunch of fraidy-cat young men – fishermen, students, tax collectors, not a one of them rabbinically trained (at least not in the traditional sense) – with the task of turning the world upside down. Could they ever have done it on their own? Certainly not. But that is the point. They weren’t alone. They were breathed into by Jesus. They received the Holy Spirit. The Holy Breath. The Holy pneuha. They were made more than merely the sum of their finite parts.
Now that is what I call being “inspired.” Because this isn’t simply inspiration as we know it. It is transformative. It is sustaining. It is divine indwelling, but not of the verbal plenary-trance variety. It is real. It is the dynamic collision of the earthbound and the holy. Could there ever be anything more extraordinary? Is it any wonder that the Gospel of Matthew includes these words in its commissioning account, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (20:28).
And so it goes with the inspiration written about in II Timothy. This is why I find inerrancy to be such a limited view of Scripture. I often wonder if Jesus might remark to an inerrantist, “O ye of little faith.” Because, if everything was so divinely cut and sacredly dried in the Bible, no room for the earthbound, how much faith is required of the Christian to believe in the holiness of the Word? Compare this to believing something a bit more fitting, a bit more real, a bit more daring. Consider the ramifications of a canon of Scripture that is, yes, written by humans, that, yes, may indeed contain a few inconsistencies and, at least at the first, second and third glance, a few contradictions. And consider the wild notion that this does not detract from the reliance and relevance of the Word, but rarely serves as a reminder that the Bible is not merely the sum of its parts. It is not simply the odd conglomeration of mysterious beginnings, brutal histories, hilarious tall tales, anguished songs, desperate prayers, thunderous judgments, incredible biographies, creepy prophecies and painstakingly detailed letters (not to mention enough “begats” that would bring an insomniac to dreams). It is all that and more. It is God-breathed. It is the greatest – and strangest – of human literary endeavors made holy, made sacred, by a God who loves people even enough to entrust them with the crafting of his great story.
As such, it is the ultimate Truth Project. I don’t think Dr. Del Tackett should worry so much if the Joram-Jehoram issue doesn’t always make sense, or if the majority of scholars assert that Moses didn’t write the entire Pentateuch. You don’t have to be an inerrantist to believe that God is in control, and that the prerequisite for being made holy is that you are already holy. There is so much more to discover when we fully trust that, not despite of but in light of all our shortcomings, misunderstandings, doubtless faiths and faithful doubts, God desires our intimate participation in his plan. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
“When you look at a window, you see dust, fly specks, the crack where Junior’s Frisbee hit it. When you look through a window, you see the world beyond. Something like this is the difference between those who see the Bible as a Holy Bore, and those who see it as the Word of God, which speaks out of the depths of an almost unimaginable past into the depths of ourselves.” – Frederick Buechner
There is a scene in the film Clear and Present Danger that I appreciate, as I have come to recall it often when I have read and discussed issues in the political – or, perhaps more specifically, the religio-political – arena. Harrison Ford - in my opinion, the best of the three Jack Ryans from those films – has waded a bit too deep into a government conspiracy waging a secret war on Columbian drug cartels, and confronts one of the culprits in his office, who, like every cold-hearted, nihilistic, bureaucratic villain, laughs off his principled argument that there is black-and-white morality in the world. In that icy, hopeless tone, the villain calls out as our hero stalks away, “Gray. The world is gray, Jack!” Good scene. Gives me chills.
I write all that because I believe it applies in two ways to our position of late here in Germany. Firstly, and most obviously, the world is indeed gray. I mean this in a physical sense. It is winter here in Baden-Wurttemberg, and that means the sun rises after 8 AM and sets by 5 PM. Do the math – that is nine hours of daylight to fifteen hours of darkness, and, for those of you who do not live in locales that share a similar relationship with the earth’s axis, that means that moods tend to plummet. Its that closed-in syndrome, like the one the warehouse workers tease the office staff about on The Office. And, let me tell you, it is no fun. We wake up before it is light, I walk the dogs in the frigid, dreary, wet coldness of predawn, and we head off to school, where, before we are usually ready to head home in the afternoon, the sun has already bid adieu to the Germans. The fact that we then return to our lonely apartment on the farm away from where the majority of BFA staff members live in Kandern and the neighboring villages only adds to the depressive sense of the season. The long and short of it is that we are quite lonely these days. Weekends cannot come fast enough, but even when they do finally roll around, it is hard not to sleep in and then simply want to relax/vegetate on the couch (we’ve been watching all the previous seasons of Lost, which means we’re keeping entertained, just not active).
The second reason the quote from Harrison’s movie comes back to me today is that lately I have noticed that, along with my energy level and my general cheeriness, my outlook on existence is slipping as well. I cannot say the exact same for Leigh, but I know we are both struggling lately with purpose and satisfaction in our lives, namely in the realm of the spiritual. I’ve never been a morning person, but the prospect of cracking the guilded pages of my Bible before the rays of the dawn can spill through the kitchen window and glint against them is not something that motivates me. I realize this may come across as selfish or lazy, but that is precisely the point. It is hard not to regress inside myself, to indulge by base attitudes and not turn my heart and mind and soul and strength outward in the manner that Christ commands. It is a frightening thing to what extent a dreary mood can change your behavior, or cause you to pull back from commitments.
Growing up, my favorite time of day was sunset, and my favorite weather was cold, overcast, and rainy days. I believed I did my best writing and soul-searching in those days. I realize now that I preferred these days because I did not see a lot of them in central Texas. It was an enjoyable change of pace and view. But here in Germany, I experience them in abundance, and I never knew I could miss the sun so much.
We know God is here … with us … always. I long to cultivate the kind of intimate awareness that affected me so greatly when I studied the Desert Fathers and other Christian mystics. This road is a difficult one to traverse, but without Vitamin D, it sometimes seems impossible. Frustrations and failures seem more pronounced, weariness weighs heavier, and lifting up your eyes to look to the hills rarely affords anything but a glimpse at a darkening landscape.
If you are a praying person, you may do so for me. Pray for light of another kind.
Above the tree line, near the summit of Piz Ela, the Alp that stands closest to Burguen, Switzerland and serves as the town’s main ski and sledding slope, there is a T-Bar lift that will pull (or sometimes drag) the more advanced skiers closer to the peak where they can then turn around and race down the steep, expert-level slope. Aside from a frightening first experience with this ridiculous contraption in which Leigh and I misjudged the length of the rope’s slack, fell over the back, and were dragged along the slope for several meters, I eventually figured out the physics of this particular lift (which should be replaced with a normal chair lift as soon as possible) and allowed it to usher me upward to the peak. It was during this tense, frigid ascension that something occurred to me.
It is a difficult thing to relinquish those things which tear us down – the sins and entanglements which impede our progress through this life. But it is an even more difficult thing to submit to something that doesn’t appear like it is going to work, especially something that we may have been hurt by in the past. The forgiveness of God and the sufficiency of grace doesn’t always look as capable and powerful as we sing it in our hymns and praise songs. Gazing back down the long, gnarled path we have bushwhacked, straying from God’s purpose and God’s peace and God’s plan, it doesn’t seem like the grace and mercy that He – even He – bestows can get us back to the right path. And even as we try to submit ourselves to his leading, the road back often seems more treacherous than even we expected. At times, the T-Bar lift dragged me up a slope that seemed at least 80 degrees, and it was all I could do to hold on to the bar and wait for the path to level out again. The going – the pulling and coaxing and guiding – was not easy. But, then again, why should I have ever assumed the ascent to such a high peak could be managed comfortably.
For years, I have desired quick transformation. I was taught from an early age that the forgiveness we ask of God is immediately bestowed – even before we ask it. But the life change is not the same way. We are forgiven, but not fixed, immediately. The retooling and renovation and renewal that we desire when we seek forgiveness does not come as quickly or as succinctly packaged. It is a detailed, challenging, and sometimes painful process. Acknowledging that we have grasped hold of the wrong things is the first step. The letting go part is where we find out how serious we were in our repentance. While gripping the bar tight and rising slowly toward the peak, I realized to my chagrin that many of my earnest prayers for forgiveness have dissolved in the face of the second part – in the face of action. Quick transformation does not exist, because transformation cannot take place without commitment and effort.
Many evangelicals are not comfortable with the relationship of faith and works as discussed in Scripture, most notably in the Book of James. The idea of actual deeds being integral in the atonement process often offends many Christians, especially those who fear that accepting such a concept would thrust them down a slippery slope to a level of evangelical “catholicity” they would rather avoid. But James is very clear in his statement, “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” Repentance means to turn around – to, in essence, perform a 180 degree turn and head the other direction. Asking for forgiveness is the turning, but action – actively seeking to change your life – is found in the trembling, faithful footsteps back down the trail you have blazed away from God’s road.
The T-Bar deposited me at the top, and I realized how steep was the slope, yet after speeding down it again and again, I was confident in the lift’s ability to hoist me once again back to the top. I would not have experienced this reality, however, if I had never committed myself to the lift in the first place, despite my trepidation and uncertainty. But just think of the view, I told myself.
Just think of the view.
Yesterday was the first day of Advent. Yesterday was my birthday. Over the last few weeks, there were times when I perceived a deep connection between these two things. Specifically, the desire to wake up from a life that has begun to run rough on the rails. As another year opens and another page is turned, and I find the story has not progressed as far as I would like, I take comfort in Advent’s provision of a deep, evolving hope in the approach of salvation. Oftentimes, as one gets older, birthdays lose their sense of wide-eyed, sugar-high celebration, and progress (or, perhaps, regress) to a sense of anxiety not over age exactly, but over the feeling that the years that came before have been wasted. I hope this is not the case. The doctrine of the Incarnation – that God has offered a way to make even the most mundane and earth-bound things holy – is certainly a help on the inauguration of my twenty-ninth year.
Coming to Germany has put a strain on many things, most of which I unknowingly took for granted. The main one is friendship. Despite the fact that in my last few years in Houston I never felt deeply connected to one friend, let alone a group, I do recognize that I had some very close friends, both in that city and in places nearby. These were people that I could count on, who I knew to be genuinely interested in me (as I was in them), and who I trusted would seek to include me in the special moments of their lives. The tryptophan-laced vapor of the recent Thanksgiving holiday is waning, but I do wish to express, here on this blog, my appreciation for several good friends: Stevie, Jenny, Chris, Chad, Andy, Andrew, Audrey, Phil, Hazel, Austin, Bonnie, Kyle, Jenny, Daniel, Kristen, Seth, Josh, Grayson, Andrew, Sabrina, Paul, Taylor. Thank you, all, for caring.
It would seem things are not so easy here in Germany. While the prospect for strong friendships certainly exists, at times it is as if things have been dropped into a pressure-cooker. Too many people, to little time to sort it all out amidst the stresses of life in a different country, continent and culture. In truth, I do not feel close to anyone here in Germany, even though there are many gracious people here, and politeness is rampant. Yet, under the surface, I feel that things are already sectioning off, like blocks of Arctic ice breaking apart and drifting slowly and steadily away from each other, and if Leigh and I haven’t made the mad leap onto one of these floating chunks, we might be left alone on our own, and soon find ourselves far out to sea, by ourselves. Often, the most frustrating thing for us is that, while we know the responsibility is our own to take such a leap, we don’t see a lot of people offering a helping hand to pull us onto their flow, or even the consistency of a welcoming smile. And who wants to float the vast, frozen ocean alone?
We all have autobiographical songs. This is a truth my friend Grayson pronounced to me several years ago. Each person has at least one song in which the lyrics ring true, unique to his or her existence. However, there are also autobiographical songs that mean something to us if only for a season. Right now, I cannot stop listening to the Chris Thile version of The Strokes’ “Heart in a Cage.” With each passing day, the loneliness weighs heavier, and standing beneath the strain is not a position that affords much joy. In truth, I do feel as if my heart is in a cage. It beats out life, but whether through circumstances I have created by my own attitude, opinions, or social interaction, or because of the simple fickleness of others (I often assume the former), the life that is pumped in and out rattles alone in a cage. I believe the joy of community is found in the opportunity to spill our messes onto other people without grudges being held, simply because the very next day that person might very well splatter on me. However, right now, it seems Leigh and I have no one on whom we can spill.
Abraham Joshua Heschel writes of the “light in the cage,” a moment when we wake up to the reality that there is a much wider, much brighter horizon for us, and we choose to plunge into it and probe its depths. For me, a new twenty-nine year old, this is the magic of the Incarnation. I cling to this. I plunge into Advent … for dear life.
“Heart In A Cage”
Oh the heart beats in its cage
Well I don’t feel better when I’m fucking around
And I don’t write better when I’m stuck in the ground
So don’t teach me a lesson ’cause I’ve already learned
Yeah the sun will be shining and my children will burn
Oh the heart beats in its cage
I don’t want what you want and I don’t feel what you feel
See I’m stuck in a city but I belong in a field
Yeah we got left, left, left, left, left, left, left
Now it’s three in the morning and you’re eating alone
Oh the heart beats in its cage
All our friends, they’re laughing at us
All of those you loved you mistrust
Help me I’m just not quite myself
Look around there’s no one else left
I went to the concert and I fought through the crowd
Guess I got too excited when I thought you were around
Oh he gets left, left, left, left, left, left, left
I’m sorry you were thinking; I would steal your fire
The heart beats in its cage
Yes the heart beats in its cage
A considerable number of my students are grumbling through an assignment I handed out a little over a week ago; it is due Friday. We have been reading some of the early American short stories in which the main character encounters, and sometimes even converses with, the devil. Such a concept was a fascinating thing to writers like Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe, and in recent years those who keep an eye on both literature and pop culture have noticed a resurgence of these same early Romantic themes. The assignment my students have been given is intended to not only draw out their creativity, but to determine how closely they have paid attention to some of the basic themes that lie within the selection of stories we have read. They are to write a story in which the devil is one of their characters, and though I am only requiring 3-5 pages (thus rendering their foray into creative literature to merely a “flash fiction” length), the prompt requires they consciously explore, within their own tale, the themes of good and evil as they are presented in such haunting stories as “The Devil and Tom Walker,” “Young Goodman Brown,” or Stephen King’s more contemporary yarn, “The Man in the Black Suit.”
I expected more complaints from missionary kids on the requirement of having the devil as a character in their stories. Instead, most of the complaints have been in regards to the fact that I want them to bring in their rough drafts over the next few days of class so we can work on them all together.
“We’re not just turning in our rough drafts?” is a question that has been whined by several students today.
Another is, “We need to have a rough draft?” as if everything one writes is immediate gold devoid of flaws and a need to restructure.
And, of course, all this got me to thinking…
Why is revision such a difficult thing? From essays to life events, the concept of revision can be a wearying thing. It is not a difficult thing to want to change, but it is indeed a difficult thing to actually get started. Revision does not come without pain. Ask any writer who knows it is in the best interest of a story to lose a particular stretch of finely-crafted description or dialogue – it is not easy to click that “delete” button. Ask any human being who is struggling to clean up their act, be it from drugs, alcohol, selfishness, greed, anger, lust, even depression. Change is a tough opponent to wrestle, and in the midst of grappling and twisting and desperately scraping for a foothold, we don’t recognize that this might be one match where getting pinned is worthwhile.
I am struck with the idea that life itself can often seem like a rough draft in need of constant revision. So many of us gaze back wistfully into our past because we desire to go back and relive things and maybe, in the midst of doing so, make better decisions that we feel would have brought about a different, more satisfactory outcome. And perhaps, were we actually given the chance, we would make better decisions. Yet our lives keep spinning forward, and we are all racing with such fantastic momentum that it seems almost pointless to undertake any kind of personal redaction. Sometimes I nurse the silly wish that maybe, at the end of my life, God will send me back down to earth to do it over again. A second life. A second chance to live a life with far less mistakes, errors, and absurd little typos. But, of course, such an opportunity would almost certainly produce not a perfected final copy, but another version of a rough draft – in need of outside revision to make it acceptable. Polished.
My students grumble at having to write these stories and then tear them all apart and rewrite them, but on Friday, hopefully what they will place in my “In” box is not a mess of fragments and thoughts and random ideas glued together by conjunctions and paragraphs, but something beautiful – something that wondrously and excellently reflects who they are and what they think.
We are far from our final drafts, but life is found in the revision. We should not be afraid of being reworked and revised, renovated and polished. After all, we have a very talented Writer who is dedicated to our perfection.
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Leigh and I were recently blessed with a long weekend, and here are some pictures from the trip we took to Bavaria, and the towns of Mittenwald and Fussen, and Neuschwanstein Castle.
Our B&B and the Alp in its back yard
The alp that lives next door to Mittenwald
Mittenwald is famous for centuries of violin craftsmen
A line of mountains and an Alpine lake on the Austrian/German border
Neuschwanstein Castle! ... and some scaffolding.
On the hike back down from Marionbrucke
Leigh snapped this beautiful little church in the Alps
“I really think I’ll be okay / They’ve taken their toll, these latter days…”
So sings the hauntingly beautiful voice of Karen Berkquist, the mesmerizing vocal behind Over the Rhine, the songsmiths that most closely capture my moods of late. It is true, these “latter days” have been quite taxing, and now I sit in my little cubbyhole desk in the teachers’ offices, hunched with specific care over my computer so as not to further aggravate the lower back pain I am suffering today (that’s what three and a half hours of Monday night, blow-off-steam, adult basketball and volleyball will do to a body). Spread around me is a smattering of work I need to catch up on, but like any stretch of free time that comes as a blessing, I cannot help but squander a small portion of it by taking time to update the ol’ blog. The seventy or so essays by my 11th grade students will have to wait a little longer. My red pen is running out of ink anyway.
I have never been proud of the way I deal with stress. In college, I met stress as tranquil as a banshee with a migraine. I might never have come off as dapper as a Dr. Jekyll on a normal day, but I could certainly pass for a Mr. Hyde while engaged in combat against stress. I am still embarrassed by the manner in which I often conducted myself before such trivial stresses as set-up snags for the college coffeehouse I directed, or contending with the network printer when trying to print out the final copies of a class project. I would never be mistaken for a jolly, care-free individual. And, lately, I recognize the same mood swings as an easy temptation in which to fall.
“One thing at a time, World!” I want to scream. Even after two months in Germany, there are still so many things that are not properly established and still require so much help that I am losing track of what I need to do next. Recently, I found out the reason our Internet was not being set up by Telekom was not because they were slow, but because, according to their records, our account did not include it (forget about the fact that we asked for it and complained about it to them numerous times). Not only this, but Internet itself is impossible to receive at our farm apartment, way out in the cornfields, unless you have a satellite that can accept service being beamed from a nearby town. This costs A LOT of money. We have a friend working on this for us right now, but I am not getting my hopes up, and so Internet-usage has dwindled to the few and far between moments of free time Leigh and I can find during our busy days at school. Once we are at home amidst the corn, we feel cut off from the rest of society, and, in reality, this is not far from the truth. In addition to this major problem, we still have banking issues, shipping issues, and I just found out that Match.com is charging my credit card for services I never requested (until today, I have never even been to that ridiculous site). So, obviously, the stress is here. And still, to my right sits the folder full of essays and a stack of rubric sheets awaiting a grade.
The worst feeling that accompanies the rolling waves of stress (for they always come in crashing waves, rather than one gentle lap against the shore of my equilibrium) is that I often do not feel as if I have arrived, as far as life itself is concerned. There is always the dangerous thought that, eventually, everything will be squared away and I will be fully engaged in the living of a life that I have, until now, only been growing into. One day I will have time. One day everything will make sense. One day I will be the person I have always wanted to – or dreamed I would – be.
Lies! It never ends. In one way or another, the waves do not stop. And it is not simply a missionary thing…
And so, I will plan to get to those essays tomorrow, to finish them and hand them back to the students before the week is over. I will wait to hear from my friend about the Internet mystery. I will bring the correct banking documents in order to work with another friend on our account troubles. I will hope some boxes arrive in the mail soon. I will keep taking Ibuprofen in hopes that my back pain will subside. I will keep thinking. I will keep breathing. And, in the midst of it all, I will pray for an awareness of the Presence. Perhaps the simple knowledge of Its nearness will comfort the stress, will still the raging waves.
May you come to an awareness of the Presence. May you not become captives of the thousand inevitable stresses of this life.
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Some images from the last few weeks…
Atop Hochblauen, overlooking Switzerland
Chillaxin in Riedlingin w/ Mark and Luke on Adam and Laura's balcony
Andy, Roy, and Meredith from The Office
From left to right: Ryan, Roy, Kelly, Pam, Andy, Meredith, Jim, Angela, and Dwight
