Irrational August

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
—Madeleine L'Engle

It is no secret that I despise the month of August. The heat, the weight of work, the physical and emotional exhaustion, it all feels crushing... But this August has been especially hard to bear. In the span of a week, two of my oldest Summit connections were dealt death blows in their families: one lost their 17-year-old daughter, the other his 88-year-old wife just 12 days before their 66th wedding anniversary.

Now in the same span of time, I will attend two funeral services... One for a vibrant girl who was just about to begin adulthood, the other for a gentle soul full of humour and grace—both loved Jesus, and both loved people. It is no easier to go to one service or the other. Death is the great thief, thrusting itself into our safe worlds and snatching away those we love; snatching our security from under us. 

Death happens to other people. . .until it doesn't. 

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

—John Donne

As I pulled on my swishy black dress today, I reached for the right necklace to wear with it—the necklace with winter-bare branches etched in silver, my 'Aaron necklace'. It seemed the right thing to wear to Elsie's funeral. Elsie was a toddler when Aaron and I met. I've watched three families from that Semester lose loved ones too young. Stephen's brother was 27. Aaron was 30. And Elsie was 17. 

 Alice Noebel was also too young. Yes, she would have been 90 next year, but that's too young, because death isn't how it's supposed to be. And I know that Jesus turned death on its head, making it the gateway to the New Kingdom for those who believe... But it wasn't supposed to be part of this world. Not until one of God's image-bearers reached out her hand to take; to make the choice between tov and ra for herself. 

That is what we all do... In big or small moments, we decide for ourselves what good or evil are. And sometimes we choose evil, saying it is good—while eschewing the good, experiencing it as evil. Our stubborn choices bring various kinds of death and destruction. In relationships. In creation. In ourselves. Knowing the real difference between tov (good) and ra (evil/bad) is nuanced and complicated, and I for one don't have enough information about the future to know which thing is which. That's why we are supposed to depend on the Creator of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to help us discern. 

August is irrational, this one full of death and wounding grief beyond words. Perhaps the irrational part is that it also holds the bloom of love, bright and wild. Even in my own grief, I also know a love I've never known before. It is bright, illuminating. It is wild. It is both stable and hard to predict. And I experience this love as a sweet gift. On the surface it appears tov...  I pray for the wisdom from the Creator to know tov from ra, to open my hand to what He will place there in His time. It is so hard not to reach out and pluck what looks good and right. YHWH, give me wisdom and patience to wait on You. Help me to choose life, not death. Help me to see rightly what is tov. 

Wandering in Wantonness, Yearning for Freedom

Why is it that the more I desire freedom, the less of it I have? 

Am I too irresponsible with the freedom I do have? Do I hold so tightly to my freedom that I crush it, like a child might crush a flower in their hand in their effort to protect it? I know that love can be bruised, and even extinguished, if held too tightly—I have been the constrictor and constricted at different points in my life. Love cannot flourish without freedom. 

So too, freedom cannot be true freedom without boundaries, else it becomes anarchy or licentiousness: "[Freedom] requires efforts, it presupposes mental and moral qualities of a high order to be generally diffused in the society where it exists" said John C Calhoun. Freedom must be tempered with morality, or the free-will of one may suffocate or imprison the will of another. Self-determination can easily become selfishness. When I rejoice in my deliverance rather than my Deliverer, I have made an idol out of a gift. 

My history tutor succeeded in teaching me at least one thing in my eight weeks of Oxford learning: Rights entail responsibilities. According to the Declaration of Independence, freedom is a God-given right. Life is a right. Private ownership of things [not people] is a right. With these rights then, come responsibilities. A right is a moral duty, a rule of conduct; it is a just claim and a privilege. When we want a right without assuming the responsibility it entails, it will crumble. Thus, when I want freedom on my terms, I find what I have called freedom is hollow, crumpled in my grasping hand. When I buck the parameters given because they feel confining, am I asserting freedom of will or willful selfishness? 

I want the bit in my teeth so I can have my head. I want to come and go as I please at work, but I need to be subject to the hours of operation, to be available to my co-workers. All the other hours of the week are my own. If I squander my mornings with sleep, having stayed up too late, is that the fault of my work for being too early, or my own, for being undisciplined? And if I feel stifled at work by having to remain indoors on a lovely day, haven't I chosen a job that is predominantly indoors? I have chosen to be subject to that parameter by choosing this job over another. Have I stifled my freedom to go hiking or to sit on my porch to read or write? By no means. There are certain hours of the day when I have chosen not to pursue those things, but they are still mine to pursue on off days and off hours. Further, I couldn't afford car insurance or gasoline, housing or food if I didn't have a job, so I would be less free to live in a mountainous state to hike in if I didn't have my job. 

Freedom has its framework, keeping it from becoming an amorphous, languid, insipid dissipation. I am only free to communicate in writing if I obey the rules of grammar. I am only free to hike if I have strengthened my muscles; taken care to feed my body the right proteins, fruits, and vegetables; looked up a route and driven to it. I can't hike in Buena Vista if I don't get in my car and drive two hours away in the right direction. Because I live in this place, I necessarily do not live in any other place. Is that somehow not free?

I now come back to love not being true love without freedom. When you feel like you have to love someone back because they care so much about you, is that really love or obligation? By very definition, the word obligation means binding. And while freedom involves duty and staying within morality—like a thought is only free to be expressed and understood when it is bound by proper punctuation—it is not binding, or non-freedom. A thing cannot be itself and its opposite. This is why God gave humans freedom of will. Yes, taken out of its parameters it is turned into anarchy, self-indulgence, and licence—these broken forms being the heartbreak and death of millions and millions throughout history. 

Yet what a difference it is to freely give love, without feeling we have to! If we were obligated to love God because He loves us, rather than being allowed to choose to love Him, that would not be love. It would be duty, it would be bindingly obligatory, it would be dull and colourless. I have tried to cause my heart to love warmly because I was loved and felt I must love in return. I have tried to be friends with people who were so needy for love that they grasped at friendship and affection. These relationships do not work. They frustrate and wound both people. When the Bible says we love because God first loved us, it does not mean that we feel we are expected to love God because He loved us. It means we are overwhelmed, awed by His love for us. We are humbled by His love and we want to return it, we want Him to be loved, too! This real love appears similar to loving out of duty, but the difference is in the heart. We gladly lay down our lives, give of our time and heart with no trace of resentment or drudgery.

Freedom is not unrestrained frolic and revelry, as our culture often thinks. That is the definition of wantonness. In fact, wantonness is said to be, "resistant to control, willful; a discordant sound." I shuddered at this definition, because it so accurately describes my heart. I resist control in my heart and in my words. I am willful and selfish. The older I get, the more I find how self-absorbed I am. That makes for a discordant strain in God's harmony. Like Melchor in The Silmarillion, or the little farandolae in A Wind in the Door, I sing my own song, thinking that it is better to be myself than to be part of the mighty chorus, the rooted, life-giving farandola. I want to do my own thing rather than being confined by doing what others want. And in some ways, that is good. I shouldn't go along with the crowd of our culture. But I am a member of the Body of Christ, not an individual. It is freedom to live with, to serve with, to give myself for Jesus—and He says I do that by being part of His body. I don't lose myself by being part of Him. I do not make music by singing my own song, I make discord. When I sing with the host of heaven and the saints, we shake the universe with the song of Illúvitar, the mighty chorus vibrating life and creativity and joy into every atom and galaxy.

All this time I have been grasping at wantonness, lack of restraint. I have not been yearning for freedom after all, I have been craving self indulgence: 

"Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom's instruction" (Prov 29:18 NIV).  

Or as the ESV says, "Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law."  

Prophetic vision and the instruction of wisdom are our parameters; they are the complete thought bound in a sentence, the melody of the symphony. The head of the Body is Christ—the Head has the eyes, and through the brain, the eyes communicate to the rest of the body what it should do. The wisdom and the vision come from Christ through His prophets, apostles, and teachers. I have rarely found these people leading a church, but I have shared many a meal with them around a table, exchanged letters and calls with them, read their books, and lived and worked alongside them. 

Freedom is not unrestraint—that is wantonness. Yet it is not a binding cord, either. Freedom is not a chain, it is a channel. A river that overflows its banks is out of control, damaging property, sometimes killing people. People who cast off restraint are said to run wild, often doing much more harm than a surging river or stampeding [uncontrolled] herd. "That which we restrain we keep within limits; that which we restrict we keep within certain definite limits; that which we repress we try to put out of existence" (Century Dictionary, 1902). When I try to cast off restraint, I am not pursuing freedom. When I seek God's wisdom, it represses sin in me, crucifying my flesh so that I might be fully alive to Christ in my spirit. When I seek God's vision, when I heed wisdom's instruction, then—and only then—am I free. 

Life is Deeper than Fiction

What shapes our ideals about what life ought to be like? Frighteningly, I think many persons are shaped by various forms of banal media more than by their families and mentors, or by historical figures and enriching arts. One's ideas of high school and college are formed by teen fiction a la Twilight and a host of other semi-pornographic novels marketed towards pre-teens and high schoolers.

One's ideas of dating and marriage are formed even earlier, through Disney films or grown ups asking toddlers if so-and-so is their girlfriend or boyfriend. A steady diet of 'young adult' fiction, films, and various genres of music are shaping the minds of children and teens, perhaps more than any other influence. No wonder girls struggle with self-image—not being willowy and graceful, or worse, sassy and sexy—like the ‘heroines’ they admire. No wonder boys and young men are apathetic or aggressive—they have no one in the public square to set an example of good character and hard work for them. They think they have to prove themselves by their wit, sarcasm, or skills. For many, it is much easier not to try and not to care.

Thankfully, for me, my parents made sure we had access to good books, along with other forms of media and art. They were generous during my youth, not policing my library stacks or telling me I could only read things by Christian authors. I read as many horse-centric books as I could find, hoping to avoid 'stupid romance novels.' Yet even horse stories had their share of 'boy drama' and vocabulary I knew wasn't acceptable in our family. Enter the availability of good books on the shelves at home. 

My mom would often get us new books when she attended conventions or workshops. Many of those books were missionary biographies that I read for pleasure or for school. My dad read books out loud to the family on an almost nightly basis; from To Kill a Mockingbird and The Prince and the Pauper, to The Chronicles of Narnia, Carry On Mr Bowditch, Hinds' Feet on High Places, and a failed attempt at 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. We also read our share of Tom Swift and Trixie Beldon books, as well as some Louis L'Amor westerns. So it wasn't all classic, well-written literature, but it wasn't anything we couldn't all read together. (Even though Dad read To Kill a Mockingbird to us before I was eight or nine, I think he edited a bit, and many of the words and references went over my head.)

Mysteriously, my family were unaware of Lord of the Rings and its precursor, The Hobbit, but I discovered them my senior year of high school and remedied the deficit. Some of the most influential books in my life I discovered well out of high school: A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, The Giver, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, and others. I found depth in these  so-called 'children's books'—depth I never would have discovered had I read the books as a child. My brain was set in motion by these books to engage life on historical, ethical, microscopic, and macrocosmic levels. I was challenged to ask myself what I believed about time and words or family and love—thus expanding my perception of God and man.

Children's books, I have discovered, deal with weighty philosophical questions in ways that help the reader wrap their mind and life around both the questions and the answers. Who am I? Who is God? What is a good death? How do we process loss? Why do we crave life? What is love? These books also show what perseverance, self-sacrifice, loyalty, and love look like in action.

Confessedly, I had a moderately skewed idea of high school and college life, of romance and marriage, and what it meant to be an adult—most of which stemmed from the small amount of television and films (and sadly, from many so-called 'Christian' fiction books) consumed in our household. The elusive 'grown up' world was one that was both scary and intriguing from these portrayals. I was afraid of various things before I attempted them—physics, college classes and papers, driving on the interstate, etc.—thinking that one had to feel grown up in order to accomplish those things.

Feeling grown up and being grown up are two different things. I still don't feel like a grown up, but I am somehow comforted by the fact that many adults share that feeling. I didn't procure a traditional education, get married in my early twenties, have children, or own a house before I turned thirty. In short, I have not lived the American Dream. For many—who think persons are entitled to romance, intelligence, and affluence—my life's path might appear bitterly disappointing. Yet I am not disappointed nor bitter. I have learned that I am not entitled to the American Dream, even if I work hard. I am not entitled to my next breath of oxygen or my next steady heartbeat. Provisions, relationships, and life are all gifts.

Simply living life—for the glory of God, one day at a time, enjoying what I have—is a great gift. I have learned this lesson through various family members, professors, and friends; through opportunities, experiences, and jobs; and, not surprisingly, through art and literature. I have learned that being faithful in the daily matters of life—from rising on time or doing housework, to interacting with people and listening to God—is what prepares one to be entrusted with larger responsibilities and adventures.

I have been given some unbelievable gifts and experiences that I have striven to use well, both to challenge myself and to encourage others. These experiences have been well beyond my ability to earn, leading me to humbly give thanks to God. They have shaped my character and mind—my very living and being.

Let us come back to the question I asked earlier, what shapes our ideals about what life ought to be like? For me, it has been a mixture of the solid truth and the chintzy glamour of the world’s lies. The more truth I learn to live, the more hollow and false the world’s story rings. Living well takes hard work, faithfulness in the mundane, integrity, and the maturity to know when to play and when to be serious. It takes being teachable, learning to forgive and be forgiven, to give love and to receive love, and to be thankful in all things—even when life does not go as planned or as shown in the movies.

Real life might be stranger than fiction—even though it is full of daily responsibilities—but it is also more wonder-filled and satisfying. Real life, the good life, is deeper and richer than fiction. It is ours to pursue—and ours to receive with humility and thanksgiving.

Time and Eternity Have Kissed

Christmas is not an event within history, but is rather the invasion of time by eternity.

~ Hans Urs von Balthasar (Light of the World)

There are things in the scientific and supernatural realm that overlap—or perhaps dove-tail—and pique my interest immensely. Two in particular are light and time. We are told that both move at a constant rate in the same direction—I have my doubts about this, however. Perhaps this is because I am seeing light and time from the other side, the ontological side. 

Scientists see time as Chronos—constant, linear, measurable; unable to grasp Kairos time—the time that stands still or races by without being noticed, the time of being, the time of eternity—immeasurable. I have noticed that my friends in the hard sciences like to measure things, to have precise definitions or parameters, to place things and persons into neat boxes. From kingdoms and classes, to preferences and personality types. Yet persons are dynamic, able to deviate from a habit or routine, to say or do the unexpected. 

When it comes to Kairos—and maybe even Chronos—I think time is dynamic rather than constant. I cannot break it down further, perhaps because I would be trying to dissect a mystery, to grapple with the immaterial. In the midst of our chaos, the mystery of Kairos steps quietly at first, then loudly announced, into Chronos. The Eternal God Himself entered time. No, as von Balthasar says, "invades" Chronos. He invades more personally still, letting us know that He has "put Eternity in" our very hearts, and it searches out Eternity Himself.

The very first Christmas was the collision of Chronos and Kairos—the invasion of time by Eternity. It is both a reality and a mystery, a sacred moment changing all of history. Let us be still, in awe of God Himself becoming man, of time being entered by Eternity.

Come Speak in Joy Untamed and Wild

Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come 
In Your fearful innocence. 
We fumble in the far-spent night 
Far from lovers, friends, and home: 
Come in Your naked, newborn might. 
Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come; 
My heart withers in Your absence.

Come, Lord Jesus, small, enfleshed 
Like any human, helpless child. 
Come once, come once again, come soon: 
The stars in heaven fall, unmeshed; 
The sun is dark, blood’s on the moon. 
Come, Word who came to us enfleshed, 
Come speak in joy untamed and wild.

Come, Thou wholly other, come, 
Spoken before words began, 
Come and judge Your uttered world 
Where You made our flesh your home. 
Come, with bolts of lightning hurled, 
Come, Thou wholly other, come, 
Who came to man by being man.

Come, Lord Jesus, at the end, 
Time’s end, my end, forever’s start. 
Come in Your flaming, burning power. 
Time, like the temple veil, now rend; 
Come, shatter every human hour. 
Come, Lord Jesus, at the end. 
Break, then mend the waiting heart.”

— Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season

This might be my favourite poem of Madeleine's L'Engle's. I like it so much that all I can say is that you should read it at least three times. Ready? Set... Go.

On the First Day of Christmas...

Sitting around your table
As we did, able
To laugh, argue, share

Bread and wine and companionship, care

About what someone else was saying, even

If we disagreed passionately: Heaven

We're told is not unlike this, the banquet celestial,

Eternal convivium. So this praegustum terrestrium*

Partakes – for me, at least – of sacrament.

(Whereas the devil, ever intent

on competition, created the cocktail party where

One becomes un-named, un-manned, de-personned.) Dare 

We come together, then, vulnerable, open, free?

Yes! Around your table we

Knew the Holy Spirit, come to bless

The food, the host, the hour, the willing guest. 

 *Foretatse of the land {The new earth, perhaps?)

~ The Irrational Season (pp 158-159)

Madeleine L'Engle wrote the above poem at a friend's home one evening... I wish she had written it at my home. Partly because I have learned so much from her over the years, but also because I want my home to be like that. 

I want meals over my table and tea with friends in the living room to be the soul-ish bread and wine that strengthen the inner man. I want my cottage to be a home, not merely a shelter from the rain or biting winds. I want my little 'Hobbit hole' to be cosy and cheery and uplifting as soon as someone steps inside... Because it is comfort, warmth (both literal and figurative), and personal attention that create a safe place to share one's soul, to be vulnerable, open, and free. It is a warm mug of tea and a listening heart that the Holy Spirit uses to bless both the speaker and listener. This is is feeding the hungry – both in body and in spirit. This is hospitality. This is friendship. 

This is the incarnation... Because when God came to us, He sat at table with sinners and tax collectors. He saw the multitudes and had compassion on them. He felt the touch of one desperate woman in a throng of persons. When God became man He spoke to women, had time for children, and built men up in their masculinity. The man who was God became rightly angry over apathy, avarice, and arrogance against God. He cared so much that He flipped over tables in defense of God's Holiness. And He still cares to the point of action. He cares enough to die for us. Enough to walk with us through our sorrows and longings. Enough to chasten those who are His children. Enough to keep reaching out His arms to a stiff-necked and disobedient people - again and again. Enough to let persons taste the consequences of their sins - because redemption's price is high.

We see what God in flesh is like when we turn the leaves of the New Testament, and we have the great gift of knowing the Messiah has come. We have the communion of saints round the table, walking through life together.  

Dare 

We come together, then, vulnerable, open, free?

Yes! Around your table we

Knew the Holy Spirit, come to bless

The food, the host, the hour, the willing guest.  

May this be said of me, and you, and every other Christian... That we are marked by the Love of God, for the world to see. May the Holy Spirit walk with us and amongst us always, making us more and more like the Son of Man, Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas!

~ Johanna

If God is with us, why are we lonely?

"Our two little granddaughters have a sense of community which many adults have lost; people have developed less a sense of community than a loneliness which they attempt to assuage by being with other people constantly, and on a superficial level only... The loneliness, the namelessness of cocktail-party relationships surround us. We meet, but even when we kiss we do not touch. We avoid the responsibility of community."   

       ~ Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season
(pg 182, emphasis mine)

There is a steady song of rain on the eaves, the dimpling of ever-widening puddles in the yard by so many hundreds of thousands of droplets. For me, the grey skies and the heavy rain are a comfort, a friend inviting me to listen to their story, a warm mug of tea in hand. For many, though, the slashing rain and slate-coloured sky are dull and dreary. The dark of night is not a quieting friend, a place to be still and ponder, but an unwelcome enemy: loneliness. 

Loneliness and Christmas go hand-in-hand in our confused culture. Stress, blow-ups, and annual arguments are many persons' only Christmas traditions. If you are honest, you probably find loneliness and stress normal rather than shocking. Our lives do not match up to "Christmas: Hollywood style." When 26 December rolls around, we still live in a draughty house, the scroll-work on the bannister still comes off in our hand, and we are still working at the Bailey Building and Loan Company rather than travelling to Tahiti or going to college. 

Perhaps It's A Wonderful Life, more than any other Christmas film, shows what does make 26 December different, in spite of life circumstances remaining the same: community. George Bailey is given a new perspective to see that the people in his life love him, are willing to give their money --and still more, their prayers-- for him because he is part of their community. George has given his time, his own money, his hopes, his dreams, his whole life to the people of Bedford Falls. At his hour of need his neighbours do not leave him high and dry, they give out of their meagre store. Not only is his community built of those neighbours, there is also a heavenly community that he is part of, too. 

Though 'community' is a buzzword, particularly in churches, our culture knows little of it. That is why loneliness is more familiar to us than community. That is why we can sit at a long table of friends and feel completely isolated. Community is not 'being with other people constantly' - it is being with other people. It is being silent with them or crying with them when loss comes. It is walking with them through the burned out rubble of their home, or the shattered pieces of their marriage. It is feeling awkward and useless when you do not know what to say about a friend's difficult situation, but hugging them anyway. It is making the most of the time you have with a friend who is moving away, seeking to sweeten the loss before it comes. It is giving the shirt off your back, the food out of your fridge, the money out of your bank account to serve another. It is opening your home for dinner, conversation, laughter, hugs, and tears. It is reading together. It is sitting on the floor, huddled by the heater in the arctic cold of winter, just talking. It is receiving help and encouragement whilst climbing a mountain, and turning around to give your hand to that same friend when the rocks at the top are too hard to climb alone. 

That is community, is it not? Not letting someone climb alone. It is instead walking alongside others, being encouraged by those ahead to come "Further up, and further in." It is repeating that cry to your companions, and to those on the path behind you. Community is being responsible for one another - even when it means paying someone else's debt, or bearing their sorrow, or sharing their sweaty, infected smell. And it means receiving love, healing, help, and grace, too. It goes back and forth, constantly.

At the time of year when we remember that Jesus Himself left the community of Heaven to wear our smudge and share our smell, how can we feel alone? Yet we often do. 'The-day-after-Christmas' of our whole life feels devoid of real community, we do not even know where to look for such a thing. All we see is a black gulf of loneliness that never seems to change, no matter how many parties we attend, or evenings a week that we are busy. I speak as one who cannot give easy answers to loneliness. I spent many years as a child and young adult without close friends. I found myself feeling alone at a crowded table recently. But those are moments I have also found that the LORD has not left me. He whispers, sometimes shouts, to me in those moments that I am loved with an everlasting love. And I feel spoiled... Because I often find myself laughing until I cry over games with my adopted 'roommates'. Or laughing with my work friends and neighbours at a gingerbread shack that will not stay together, in spite of much 'gluing' with icing. I find myself blinking back tears of humility at how much I am loved and included by so many others.

You are not alone.

God is with us, Himself...and as He is revealed in His saints. Blesséd, blesséd, blesséd be He!

~ Johanna

"Words, Words, Words." (To Quote Shakespeare)

[Advent: Week 3]

"When Hugh and I went on a trip to Russia I almost didn't get a visa because our travel agent put down my occupation as writer. Writers think. Writers ask questions. Writers are dangerous. She finally persuaded 'them' that I write only for small children and was not a threat. In any dictatorship writers are among the first to be imprisoned, and vocabulary is quickly diminished and language deteriorates.  Writers, if their vocabulary is not leashed, are quick to see injustice, and rouse the people to do something about it. We need words with which to think; kill words and we won't be able to think and we'll be easier to manipulate."

~ Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season (pg 164)

As I read this section of The Irrational Season today, a chill went through me. Madeleine L'Engle lived through WWII, Viet Nam, and the Cold War. She saw the devastating effects of tyranny, and what methods dictators used to cause them. We see that still, in China, North Korea, parts of the Middle East, and many other places where there is little or no free speech. In such places the oppressed do not know what is going on in the outside world, they are kept in the dark through force and propaganda.

Yet there is a different sort of tyranny running rampant in the 'free' West - the tyranny of disappearing words. We have heard the adage that talk is cheap, yet are still hurt and offended by various sleights, snubs, and insults. Sticks and stones might break our bones, but we all know that words spoken to us in vulnerable moments (childhood especially) may leave lasting scars. Our sneaking enemy bombards us with so many words each day that their meaning and weight is weakened. Advertisements and billboards, e-mails and printed leaflets and newspapers, words flashed on television screens, iPads, iPods, and other electronic devices. We can now communicate quickly with anyone in any part of the world, but our whole world aches with the loss of community. Our Western society is losing the ability to articulate as words like"selfie" are added to the dictionary, but even bright persons no longer know what 'widdershins' means; or they say words like 'impactful' in place of a real word like 'impacting' or 'meaningful.' 

Our insidious enemy, the State, is not removing words from dictionaries as much as they are removing them from circulation and common vernacular. Thus, the minds of the public are weakened. But words are strong. They can augment or crush. Words are the death of us in the throes of an argument. Or words can be life and hope breathed into us in a genuine compliment or observation. If we understand the power of words we can share ideas and ideals, vision and Truth. We can paint the canvas of the mind with vivid sunrises and sublime mountain ranges. Yet we can only do this well if we have the subtle colours provided us via a large vocabulary. Vocabulary is to the writer what the toolbox is the carpenter, or the palette is to the artist. Without the fine chisels or minute brushes, the artisan is unable to inlay the wood or paint delicate subtleties in his work. Without a vast wealth of words, the writer loses clarity and sharpness in his writing. Without a vast array of words, communication is fuzzy at best, muddled and hollow at worst. 

Even when the writer has the word bank needed to clearly communicate, his audience also needs a grasp of language. The reader must possess a desire to look up unfamiliar words in order to receive clarity and insight. He must, even before that, be willing to read. We live in a culture where we are too lazy to even read a blog post if it does not have photos with it; or where a magazine article, sermon, soundbite, or news clip has been made as brief as possible to retain the viewer's or listener's attention. We are sliding into the ground where we begin to lose context and perspective because we have shortened everything. The media overloading our eyes and ears and brains has shortened our attention spans. We can no longer listen to a speech three hours long, or spend the whole 4th of July listening to speeches, recitations, and singing. 

We want more action, more multi-tasking, and the rush of information, because we do not know what to do with silence. But the more information transmitted to us, the less meaningful it is. Sometimes an idea or a word is underlined best by minutes or hours of silence. Sometimes we have to stop reading so fast to look up an unfamiliar word in order to gain greater insight. The goal is not simply to finish a book, it is the be led out of ignorance and into Truth. 

We need words to be alive -- because at one tangible point in History, the Word Himself was made man and dwelt among us. He shrouded Himself in this fleshly body of death to bring us new Life. Words matter vastly in reality. It is by words that God spoke all that we see, smell, hear, sense, and know into existence. It is through the Word enfleshed that we are given the hope of stepping through the portal of death into the really real world of the High Countries. It is that Word that is making us less and less shadow-men, and more and more into solid creatures. Words are life - The Word is Life. The Word is the substance of Hope. That final Word of God is the Prince of Peace. Let us not rush past that Truth into vague and insipid thoughts and 'communication' (i.e. electronic exchanges in place of face-to-face meetings) this Advent. Let us listen to the Word when He says, "This is the way, walk in it." Let us ask questions. Let us live dangerously. Let us live.

~ Johanna

What Is Real?

Have you ever noticed that books for young readers tend to ask deep questions about meaning, being, purpose, life, and reality? Story is a wonder-full way to explore and answer life's greatest questions. This is yet another reason I recommend reading children's books often. 

  

"What is real?" This question is posed again and again throughout Madeleine L'Engle's book A Wind in the Door. It is a question we ask through all of life, as well. "What is real?" Is it what we see, touch, taste, hear, smell -- in short, our experiences? Or are the 'realest' things unseen, like love, hope, friendship, God, and truth?

You can't take a handful of friendship with you anywhere. You cannot cut open the heart of love and  vivisect it. And even if you travelled across all of time and space, you could not get to God's country. Though His country exists, it isn't somewhere you can reach like that. He has to bring you there Himself. I have a hunch that God's country is far more real than we can imagine while we are in our own country, like Lewis describes in The Great Divorce.

What is real, then? The seen? The unseen?

We live in a world where the seen, the tangible, are considered the substance of reality. But we know from Scripture that the 'realest' things are those that are not seen. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

I have been thinking about this in relation to the Lord's Supper recently. What transpires in the bread and the wine administered at the altar rail? I will not delve into the various views on communion here, I will simply state that I believe that the bread and the wine are icons of the truth that I am feeding on the spiritual Body and Blood of Jesus. 

So, an image is something that helps us catch a glimpse of reality.  A poet, a storyteller, could not work without images. Nevertheless, an image is only an image, a reflection not unlike the reflections of the shadows of reality in Plato's cave.

If an image is not easy to define, an icon is even more difficult. We usually think of icons as corrupt images which ought to be broken. But it is only an icon misused [...] which needs breaking. A true icon is not a reflection; it is like a metaphor, a different, unlike look at something, and carries within it something of that at which it looks.

 ...An icon, if it 'works,' is more than itself; it bears a fragment of reality.

~ Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet (pp 17-18)

 
My friend, Stephen, asked why many evangelicals act as if receiving the Lord's Supper as a spiritual reality is somehow less potent than the  bread and wine being the actual body and blood of Christ. He insisted, "Isn't it much more than that?" Well, what is real? Certainly actual flesh and blood are real. Yet if an icon bears a fragment of reality, and if our unseen 'spiritual man' is being fed by that reality, then receiving the spiritual body and blood of Jesus is indeed potent, weighty, and life changing. It is, in fact, more real than tangible flesh and blood.

We must understand that it is a serious thing to receive the Eucharist. We must examine ourselves to see that we are in the faith, not eating and drinking condemnation on ourselves in the blesséd bread and wine. We must allow the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, to reshape us into real men.

 

~ johanna

Music: Heart and Soul

Do you ever wish you could sit down at a piano and have your ideas flow out of your fingers? Perhaps you can do that. I cannot. I have a hard enough time letting my thoughts flow through my fingers to the pen or keyboard. But music... Music has a way of reaching to our souls more deeply than so many words on a page.


A lively tune can set our feet and hearts to dancing. Some songs pierce our hearts with their Beauty, their depth. Other pieces rend our hearts with their pain and loss. Music can make us feel courageous, patriotic, melancholy, vulnerable,  pensive, inspired, or cheerful. Music can both break our hearts and mend them.

Music is something to which we respond. It moves us, makes us, breaks us. Yet we make music, we break music (rap?), we try to make it fit to ourselves. One of my former tutors wrote a short bit about this here: Symphony As Landscape. The comments he made intrigued me: 

"For me, the music is not a soundtrack to something else; it is its own reality and it makes a first claim on me. Put very roughly, as I listen, I surrender my attention to it; I am less important than the music and my attention is on it and not on anything else. I am aware of its contours and features; my feelings about them are secondary, not primary."

(Rikky Rooksby)

There is something remarkable about music... It is both a thing to tame and create, as well as a thing that creates various feelings, moods, or resolutions within us. It is obviously a gift from God -- only God's gifts are set in tension like that.

Music is not simply 'background noise' - it is its own 'self' as it were. It has a personality imbued from its creator, yet it has themes and lines of its own, apart from how the composer may have planned things. Visual arts, writing, crafting things, music -- they all have a way of taking on a direction and 'self' of their own. If the creator is willing to let his work live, that is. I think it is these moments in our work, our play, our sub-creating where we most 'image' God. When our work takes on its own 'personality', it is often then that God speaks to us (and others) through us. We just have to step aside and let Him breathe the life into the work.

~ Johanna

For more thoughts on this, please do yourself a favour, read The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers, or Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle.

Post Script:  I write this from an writer's perspective, not a musician's. A musician would more deeply understand the soul and the way of music. I can only try to grasp a little of how music influences me, and how (like other mediums), music is its own being with its own 'personality'.

Our Work is Our Play

Drudgery is not what our work is meant to be.
Our work should be our play.

~ Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water (pg 199, Waterbrook Press)

Monday mornings seem to have a connotation of displeasure. The weekend is over and it is 'back to the grind'. Or is it? The etymology of the word grind is to 'destroy by crushing,' the very opposite of create which means to 'beget or bring forth, to grow.' What do you do at work each day? Do you destroy things, or birth new ideas and items? 

Now think, what do you do in your 'play' or down time? Often our time spent in recreation (literally re-creation) is very focused. Perhaps you like to trail run or rock climb, both take training, eating well, and dedication. Or maybe you, like me, enjoy cooking. I find it a delightful challenge taking various elements and combining them into something entirely different. There is ingenuity and creativity in bringing forth new recipes. And so it goes -- reading orders one's mind. Writing requires discipline and effort. Sports demand physical stamina, sweat, and work. Playing an instrument requires continual practice.

Not all play is re-creative, however. There are plenty of things one can do in their down time that is really a grind. Things like oversleeping, getting drunk, and 'vegging out' in front of the television or computer can wear down a person's mental acuity and physical initiative. If you feel drained and mentally numb after your day off has it really been profitable?

"Go on with your work as usual, for work is a blessed solace." 

~ Marmee in Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (page 184)

Indeed, work is a blesséd solace, it is our play, even. For our work and our play should both be a creative, birthing process. We may receive financial compensation for our daily work, perhaps even for our re-creation (writing, crafts, concerts, and so forth done outside of our daily work). Both work and play should leave us feeling tired -- not with an empty, dull ache -- but because something has been accomplished. 

God created (a work in itself!) work for Adam and Eve. He gave them responsibilities and work the very day they were brought into being. Work was not a retribution for the fall, it is not a curse. Vain toil, resistance to the order we are trying to bring are a part of the curse, but work itself is not.

Have you ever noticed that the weeks you have the most work are also your most productive at home? Work helps us to order our time, to make the most of our freedom. I find that the weeks I have the most hours in the mailroom are also the weeks I write the most blogs, letters, and e-mails; the weeks I spend time with my friends; the weeks I am more dedicated to cleaning my home, or cooking more exotic meals. Our free time becomes more valuable when we have less of it, so we are more apt to choose to employ it, rather than squander it in lacklustre choices. 

Tomorrow is Monday, a chance to see our work as our play. Tomorrow is a chance to revel in bringing forth new things, or helping others to birth ideas and products. Today we can choose to waste our time in vain pursuits. Or we can learn to re-create, that we might approach tomorrow with a refreshed body, mind, and heart. 

~ Johanna

The Irrational Season

This is the irrational season

When love blooms bright and wild.

Had Mary been filled with reason

There'd have been no room for the child.

~ Madeleine L'Engle

I live in a community of persons who have spent at least two weeks of their lives immersed in ideas, reason, knowledge, and facts. This is wonderful for helping others understand Christianity from a historical and reasoned perspective.  It can also put up barriers for persons who need to know that God is not just 'out there' ruling the universe, but that He cares about us right here.

Reason is a lot like the marriage covenant, even when you do not feel like loving the other person, you have promised to do so. In the same way, even when your emotions tell you conflicting ideas about who God is, your understanding of historical events,  textual criticism, logic, et cetera help to anchor your soul.

We all know people who try to reach God by reason, or by following a set of rules. They want to get at God from the outside in, rather than letting Him work from the inside out. God works from faith toward reason. Being a Christian is not following myriads of regulations. Being a Christian is not about feeling happy, nor about feeling good because we are doing good things. Christianity is not based on blind faith, there is an astounding amount of evidence for God's existence. Christianity is not naked reason, either, because we are not mere minds. We are persons with bodies, souls, and spirits.

Had Mary been filled with reason

There'd have been no room for the child.

The Child. Christianity is not simply faith, nor not solely reason, because it is not a religious system. The person Jesus Christ is the heart of Christianity. The God of the universe, Jesus Christ, is at the heart of Christianity. This Child is both God and man. Both infant and infinite. Christianity is both rational and personal.

This is the irrational season
When Love blooms bright and wild.

~ Johanna

To Love is to Name

To love anyone is to hope in him always. From the moment at which we begin to judge anyone, to limit our confidence in him, from the moment we identify [pigeon-hole] him, and so reduce him to that, we cease to love him, and he ceases to be able to become better. We must dare to love in a world that does not know how to love.

~ Madeleine L’Engle quoting a French priest in Walking on Water (pg 112)

This quotation is staggering. It has gnawed at my heart since I first read it several weeks ago. When we reduce someone to a label, we effectively terminate their ability to change or become better; both in our own minds, and often in actuality.  We assume someone cannot grow, cannot improve, cannot be anything other than that little title with which we have branded them. In this suspicion we begin to treat that person as if they really are that one thing, as if they can never aspire to be a multifaceted human being.

Goth. Punk. Prude. Gossip. Ringleader. Hyperactive. Emotional. Holier-than-thou. Type-A. Shy. Geek. Blue collar. Hoity toity. Snob. Redneck. Intellectual. You have a mental image for each one of these words, I daresay. Once you classify someone (as if they are a science experiment!), you reduce their humanity to one facet, rather than seeing them holistically.

“It seems that more than ever the compulsion today is to identify, to reduce someone to what is on the label. To identify is to control, to limit. To love is to call by name and so open the wide gates of creativity. But we forget names and turn to labels... If we are pigeon-holed and labelled we are un-named.”

 ~ Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water (pg 113)

I say 'you' above, but I am  not exempt from the classification game. There is a particular person whom I have, by my actions toward her, never allowed to be fully human (in my mind). I put her into a box with a label or two scrawled on it, and filed that box on the shelf. The problem is, by my actions, that person has been stunted. She behaves as if she believes she is what I (and others) have labelled her. In so doing, she imprisons herself to be only so many little labels. This is her choice,  of course, but she may chose better things if more persons believe her capable of them. She might be named if she were loved well and lived in light of that love.

Yet another difficulty arises when we attempt to (or succeed at) pigeon-holing someone: persons do not fit neatly into a box, even if pigeons do. Persons are messy, unpredictable at various junctures,  and unique from every other human being in certain points (from DNA to fingerprints and beyond).

What kind of Love names someone? What Love is this, that allows persons to become fully alive?

But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine. 

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, Nor shall the flame scorch you. 

For I am the Lord your God, The Holy One of Israel, your Saviour; I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in your place."

 (Isaiah 41:1-3)

God speaks thus to Israel in ancient times, yet He offers redemption to more than just this select group of persons. More than 600 years later He offers not nations for a ransom, but His only Son to be the Saviour of the world (I John 4.14). God Himself is Named --  not labelled, but Named. What is the difference? A label is something someone puts upon another, not allowing them to be more than that. To be Named is vastly different. Naming is an action, a calling one up and in to greater things. 

God is the only One with the authority to Name Himself, calling Himself "I AM that I AM" to Moses. Throughout Scripture He reveals His character through various names and actions: Wonderful Counsellor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, God with us, Saviour, Holy One of Israel, Redeemer, Healer, Judge, Creator, Keeper, Warrior, Strong Tower, Refuge, and myriads of other names. God also Names us, He calls us to be who He made us. He calls us image bearers, children, friends, servants, belovéd, holy, priests, and many more names. 

Through God's love we are able to Name others, to call out in them those things that mirror God. Through indifference, rejection, and labelling we un-name persons. Will you join me in seeking to Name others this year? It will require a lot of humility in asking others to forgive you for un-naming them. It will require vulnerability to love others, even when they do not love you. It will take copious amounts of patience and perseverance to show God's kindness to some people. And none of those things come naturally to us in our fallen state. Loving others, Naming others, will require asking God for the above qualities, and seeking His strength to be made perfect in our weakness.

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine.

(Isaiah 41.1b)

~ Johanna