Where is Time?

Where is time?
Does it live on the bottom of a well,

the bristly back of an elephant,

or under furry-soft moss along a fallen tree?

Does it crouch in the crevices of caves,

under the eaves of fairy cottages,

or over the smile of the man-in-the-moon?

Where is time?

Is it tucked deep in the heart,

with old memories of lost love,

and ambitions that have crumbled?

Is it hidden in the mind,

trapped in formulae and fancies,

buried under long-unused ideas?

Where is time?

Does it flit, forever beyond our fingers

outstretched, fleet as the wings 

of an owl or the feet of a fawn?

Is it running like swift spring streams,

chortling at us from just over the next rise,

or peering down from the treetops?

Where is time?

Does it hide in an hourglass 

or stuck between calendar pages,

awaiting freedom by the flick of a hand?

Is it waiting to pounce upon us,

springing on our vulnerable souls

to carry us away at the end of days?

Where is time?

Living in the hollows of longing 

and in the halls and homes of dear friends—

in children's laughter and delighted hearts.

It hangs on the tip of the crescent moon,

dripping over us in flickering shade

and sweet scents of summer hay fields.

Where is time?

Deep in the wells of our belovéd's eyes,

blue, yet flecked with one rusty speck

and over-full of sorrow and kindness.

It dwells in worlds pressed between 

the pages of books, and in the notes

of a bird's song, evensong, all song.

Where is time?

In the pockets of jackets worn on 

autumn hikes, full of leaves and pine cones—

and in brimming cups of fragrant tea.

It crowds in cookie crumbs shared

with family and friends, and spills

over our tongue, savouring memories.

Where is time?

Settled in the silence of a misty forest or

with a comfortable friend, and in the cries

of gulls and the sweep of crow's wings.

Under every dew-encrusted blade of grass,

crowning headstones, rippling in sandstone

and in the shore's ever-lapping waves. . .

Where, oh where, is time?

I Have Set before You Life and Death

Misty days and Spring rains have given way to Summer heat; screen doors are flung open for cooling breezes; there are pots of flowers thriving on the porch. . . One of those is quite new, a lovely ribbed green ceramic creation with pink vincas blooming over the edge. It was a surprise gift from Nick, when he unexpectedly popped by my office on his day off this week.

Sometimes we need delightful surprises of flowers and monster-sized cookies, soft dresses on sale, and precious days with family. We need sad songs and sweet ones, too. We need bright smiles and long kisses, an unlooked-for hug on a hard day, and honest tears as we work through discerning what is right and best. We need meandering walks to drink in late sunshine and colour-drenched flowers. We need crickets and quiet moments on the porch, talking with God...which I think mostly means listening hard in the silences between words.

It has been both a restful, beautiful Spring with silvery mists and clouds rolling in over the mountains, and simultaneously a difficult season of stress, solicitude, and stealthy sorrow snaking its way into my family. I loved going home in April to take Nick to meet my family and enjoy the glorious spring beauty of the Midwest. I loved driving to Kansas to meet up with my immediate family to celebrate my aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary... It was lovely to reconnect with many of my cousins, though the days were laced with a bittersweet undertone, as my uncle's health is deteriorating rapidly. 

Though it may not sound like it, the thread weaving the beauty, the bittersweet, the bite of sorrow is always the Lord of all. Not simply in the Bible Project podcasts or daily lectio divina of Pray as You Go, or even in Tim Keller sermons (how sorrowed I have been with his recent passing!)... Though also exactly in and through those things. Yet it is the Lord asking me questions from the mouth of the man I love, from my best friends, from unexpected sources. There is the question of God giving us choices, life and death—which will we choose? It sounds so easy: choose life! But am I seeing death as life? Will I choose wrongly because my eyes are mis-seeing? And what does that stem from? Is it because I am unused to looking at the goodness of the Lord?

What does loving someone well look like? Lately it has involved both saying what I need and setting boundaries. It involves sacrifice of time, and also listening fully engaged. It means being quieter than I have been lately. Do I remember that God is the Someone I love first? Am I loving Him well?

Questions, questions, questions. . . And Beauty. And sorrow. And joy. And hope. And boundaries. And learning to say hard things. And quiet. And open hands. It all weaves and flows; it all whirls in the delicate dance of this life we live, the air we've been gifted to breathe. All these come as gifts of some kind, even the gifts that feel like pain. As God gently, graciously unpeels our fingers from 'round the things we cling to, we stop strangling them and allow the breath of life to come in. . .

Come, Holy Spirit. . .

*Photo stills from The Cottage Fairy, no copyright infringement intended (I just want to share the beauty)...

How My Shirt Changed the Day

For the second time in a month, I had a conversation in the grocery checkout line that left me reeling. This time it began while unloading my produce and grinning at the two big-eyed, energetic young boys behind me. Their mom caught my eye and and she looked friendly as she inquired, "What is that?" The red cabbage in my hand? I thought. "I'm sorry, my produce?" She clarified, "I've seen those shirts on people around town, what is it?" 

"Oh, it's from an organisation that helps women get ultrasounds and see their babies...to help them stay healthy. They sort of hang out around planned parenthood facilities and help women want to keep their baby. You know, save a stork, since people say babies are delivered by storks." I smiled as I made air quotation marks around the word storks.

It wasn't the most eloquent or elegant thing I've ever said, but it was the grocery line, and it was moving pretty quickly. She looked engaged, so I was startled when she said, "Oh, so you're against abortion, I get it." I quickly replied that I was pro-life and she said,  "I thought it was going to be something cute." I said the first thing that popped into my head, "Well, your little guys are awfully cute." Her response stunned me, "Yeah, well, we planned each one of them. I donate to planned parenthood every year because I believe in science. I take them to the library so they can read more than one book." As it was my turn to check out, I responded that her comment made me sad and that I, too, read more than One Book. 

I wished them a good evening when I was finished, then walked to my car. Tears welled up in my eyes as a response whispered its way out of my mouth, "But planned parenthood cuts babies into pieces. How could anyone support that?" 

More tears made driving blurry as I thought of all the things I could have said to that kind-looking woman in just ten seconds: "I believe in science, too. A baby has DNA from the time the egg and sperm meet, and its heart begins to beat at fourteen days. When someone ends an innocent human heartbeat, we call it murder, don't we?"

The words of the song I was listening to pierced my heart:
"I try so hard..to turn away and not become
Another nail to pierce
The skin of One who loves
More deeply than the ocean
More abundant than the tears
Of a world embracing every heartache"*

A world embracing every heartache, I thought. Embracing pain under the name and guise of science, knowledge. And yet it is lack of Knowledge that blinds them, and they swallow the pill, not to kill the pain but to kill the child...to increase the heartache. 

Then came the angry tears—for the second time in recent weeks, I had failed to share truth with someone in an adequate way. I was so unprepared in the moment to give that ten second reply, because I simply hadn't thought to prepare any words to say if someone asked me. I hadn't planned to have to explain my shirt when I debated about what to wear in the morning. I had gone back and forth and finally landed on my Save the Storks shirt because it's one of my favourites. I briefly thought that it was a bummer so few people ever asked me about the shirt. So, I didn't prepare. I walked into a store minding my own business, and my shirt changed the tenor of the evening. One simple choice this morning opened up a conversation... A conversation that I wanted to have, but where I failed to say anything beyond, "That makes me sad," when I had much more I could say. Much more I wish I had said.

How can I give someone food for thought if I'm not prepared with my own questions to counter theirs? I want to be kind, but I also want to make people think. I want to ask something for their own mind to to close around, rather than simply making insipid replies to their questions. 

Last time I was in that same grocery, I was totally unprepared for the conversation that sprang up in the checkout line. There was no way I could have known a question as simple as, "Where do you go to church?" from the cashier would lead to them telling me that they were in the midst of a gender transition. This time I could have been prepared for the questions, but I wasn't. 

Slow as I am, I'm realising that I should pray for the Lord to direct my mind and conversations before I step into that grocery—or any other grocery. And not only the grocery, but also restaurants and the sidewalks of my town; before I drive my car and as I prepare for each day. Perhaps, like the scores of other times I've walked into the grocery or worn this shirt other places, nothing will happen. But what about the one time in the midst of those scores when someone asks the question, when someone blurts out their hurt or their heart? To be ready in that moment means to pray before all of the moments that might be. 

*— Worlds Apart by Jars of Clay

** If you would like to learn more about Save the Storks, this video shows what they do to help women, born and unborn, around the country.

Cleansing Fire

 What if prayer is a furnace? 
    When we confess, every sin and every evil thing 
       is burnt away into ashes. 

          But every prayer in line with Life and Love
            —stemming from God's Spirit—
                 is refined like gold and silver. 

                   What if that? 

                       And lest we forget, 
                         even ashes are used in making soap...






____

Dedicated to Sarah, Kasey, and Marit

Beauty in Things Not Seen

Would a flower of the field still be Beautiful even if no one saw it? This question has followed me to many swaths of alpine tundra this hiking season. I have gazed on lavender thistles, white marsh marigolds, and tiny forget-me-nots amongst a host of other hearty flowers. My hiking companions often set their sights on the cathedral arc of a mountain range, a sun-dappled emerald lake, or towering waterfalls. Whereas, I am enthralled by daubs of colour in every hue, painting slopes and stream beds as we wind upward, always upward. Tiny tufts of moss delight me; so do mushrooms of various shapes—brown, white, and poisonous red. While my friends want a wide angle view from the top of our climb, I am seeking to catch the golden mead of light in a buttercup.

But, no, the dichotomy is not so stark. My breath is drawn away by the soaring heights of snow powdered rock-rims. My eyes burn salty as I watch the footprints of the wind twinkling on the surface of a mountain lake. My friends bend down to frame their photos with tall clover and clusters of yellow-headed flowers, though they are soon lost in the grandeur again. I am being taught to see the bigger picture, to look up from the detail and see the vast whole—making me feel small and a bit frail. I hope I am helping others to see the details that piece together the whole, to see the points that paint the image we behold.

The mountains and lakes I have seen on my array of hikes have long been landmarks, have long looked as they now look. The minute white and purple flowers dotting the springy turf will only last a few days or weeks. They have bloomed on purpose for this season, this day. After they fade, those specific blossoms will never again be seen. Their children will rise up next summer, but this year's will be gone forever.

On one particular hike, I threaded my way through thickets and early summer snow to see a crop of white marsh marigolds. No other footprints marked the path I took, and I wondered if anyone else would see these lovely little flowers this season. Then I wondered what hordes of flowers existed that no one would see at all this summer. Various wildflowers would bloom in nodding hosts, remote and unseen by human eyes. They would still be beautiful, breathing their fragrance out as an incense of praise to their Creator. They would still dot the land with beauty, even if no eye beheld them. Their beauty would not be wasted, their plant-lives would not be in vain, because they would be blossoming. They would be doing what they were made to do, whether anyone noticed them or not.

Flowers have no cognisance of their purpose, no understanding of being or Beauty. Humans, do, however—we desperately want others to notice our existence, our efforts. Often, we feel like our work—our very selves, even—only have purpose when validated and praised by others. Yet, human beings are worth more than all the flowers covering the surface of the planet. We are valuable before we even start doing anything. Our intellect, looks, and work are not what give us worth or purpose or acceptance. Being fully human, what we were made to be, is our act of praise. Perhaps I should say it is our being of praise to the Creator.

We are given this span of life, ephemeral like the summer's flowers. We are given now—not the past or the future. We may never do something monumental and lasting for the eyes of future  generations to see. 'One day...' may never come when we planned to do this or that, or to be such and such. We have today. We have now. Let us give thanks in this moment. Let us love God now. Let us speak a true word of encouragement, of kindness, today. Not in neglect of the hope of tomorrow and a multitude of tomorrows to come—rather, as a point to live in the present, which builds a foundation for tomorrow and the days to come.

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

“Empty space tends to create fear. As long as our minds, hearts, and hands are occupied we can avoid confronting the painful questions, to which we never gave much attention and which we do not want to surface. 'Being busy' has become a status symbol, and most people keep encouraging each other to keep their body and mind in constant motion. From a distance, it appears that we try to keep each other filled with words and actions, without tolerance for a moment of silence.” 1

—Henri J. M. Nouwen

On a breezy, rainy evening a few weeks ago, I sat on my porch, thinking. It was too dark to read or write, too Beautiful to do anything but sit still in the ferocious gloaming. It was an evening empty of plans—a dangerous thing for one's thoughts. On such occasions, I tend to corner my thoughts and make them own up to what is lurking behind various façades. This particular evening, I had a sore head, having hit a soft spot on a metal beam at work that day. Without warning, my thoughts strayed to the fear of my own mortality.

I have vaguely considered that 'one day' I will die, and I am not afraid of what lies beyond this life. . .But this was different. I came nose-to-nose with the reality that I am mortal, terminal. Fear bristled in my head, blossomed in my heart. Why, I could easily fall on the uneven stairs leading to my cabin and hit my head. I could be incapacitated for life—or even die. All it takes is a moment—a wrong step, not looking twice in my car mirrors—suddenly all of my vitality is shown its frailty.

Fear spread its talons in my thoughts, surging on to think of my parents, now in their sixties. My parents are not immortal. Tears pricked my eyes. I will not borrow trouble! I told myself. I began to tell God my fears, not to give them a rigid reality, but to name the fears so they could be defeated. Yes, I am temporal, I could die on my stairs or in my bathtub or whilst driving—but the possibility of death is not going to stop me from living. You may breathe a sigh of relief, I still plan to shower. . . And to walk to work, drive my car, and hike as I please.

Rather than allowing fear to paralyse me, I choose to let it galvanise me—to dare to live life. In the face of fear I have fresh appreciation for hearing my parents' voices, in giving thanks for my beating heart. I will not live in fear's shadow, I will not allow it to dog my steps. I will enjoy this evening's sunset, this summer's wildflowers, this hour of thinking and writing. Daily I take it for granted that I will awake in the morning; that my heart will keep beating—even if I forget that it does so and don't remind it to keep on. In this instant I am thankful for this organ that circulates my blood, that allows oxygen to flow to my brain so I can think of the right words to pen.

The fears and questions I often push down with daily tasks, with reading copious amounts of Harry Potter, with unceasing strains of music—these questions and fears surface in empty moments. I am the one who chooses the still evening on the porch, to sit under a tree on my walk and marvel at the burnished clouds. But I am not the one who brings to mind the thoughts, the fears. Those come unbidden. The fears of being alone or not being enough. The questions about why I chase freedom or attention from various individuals. Questions I cannot answer—like why I still crave sin when I know it doesn't satisfy. I would rather avoid “confronting the painful questions”, the craven fears—but if silence is part of my life, I cannot stop them coming.

It is here, in the stillness, that I disagree with one word in Nouwen's quotation: create. Empty space does not create fear, it only gives it the time and place to bob up in the stream of our thoughts. I can distract myself at work, around others, with my reading and correspondence—but not in the silence. Our culture is one that fears silence first, because from it, deeper fears arise. Yet how can any of us meet our fears head on with truth, with life, with hope if we suppress those petrifying questions? We must allow silence in our lives in order to know the fears and questions that motivate or manipulate our actions. Only then can we confront fear with truth and life. I find, indeed, that the antidote to fear truly is the perfect love of God giving me courage to live, to do, and to make room for stillness.

____________________

1. Nouwen, Henri J. M., Reaching Out (New York, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group) 73

Cross posted at Conciliar Post and Humane Pursuits

Why?

Oh, the questions we ask You, Begetter of the universe. 

You, Who spun waves and particles into golden light, we question if Your hands are big enough to hold us. You, Who breathed life into our spirits and our dusty frames, we pause to ask if You care about us. You, Whose finger carved words into the dirt, we ask if You care enough to write our stories, to show us what You want from us and for us.

You, Who entered time, slipped into skin, felt rejection and loneliness—we presume You have left us when our blind eyes cannot see You, and Your presence is not palpable. You, Who are called the Light of the world, we ask where You have gone when we wander in darkness. You, Who carefully marked the trenches of the world, poured its foundation, and sent the Cornerstone, why do we think You are incapable of answering our question marks?

Why does our friend have to walk through that valley? Our family member suffer that pain? Why do our own hearts, crushed, drip red in the darkness and in the blaze of day?

We ask when You will show up, why You allowed tragic loss, why there is emptiness sucking at our hearts like a black hole. Why does the darkness feel overwhelming, when the Light has rendered darkness outmoded, dead, and chased away?

There was a time when You stepped into our world. When eternity became now. You bought us back from hopeless death. And still we question. Still we scream. Still we shake our fists and walk away. You, Who never promised life would be easy, we expect to right everything, now. You, Who never explained Yourself to Job, we expect to spell out every answer to our every why? We expect You to operate like we do, to think in our human boxes, in our narrow line of sight. You, Creator, Sustainer, Holy One, Alpha, Omega... You, immortal, immutable, invisible, we ask to explain Yourself to our finite minds, to contain Yourself in a kernel of knowing that will fit inside of us. But You cannot be contained in our minds, in our paltry understanding, or in our broken hearts.

You are bigger than that—vast, eternal. You fill us, overfull, and splash out onto those we touch. Your love only multiplies. The ringing of Your Truth reverberates throughout the galaxies, resounding through the entire universe. How can we think it is all contained in one book, in one heart, in one mind, in one planet? 

It is not that we do not need to know why—sometimes we cannot know an answer so immense. We are too close to see the whole, to see clearly. We cannot explain away pain, abandoned hearts, our death valleys, or all the other dark shadows that cross over our lives. Neither can we explain why the storm clouds come to us, or why the Light doesn't break through and scare all our monsters away. Maybe we aren't strong enough to endure the illuminating rays that would break those clouds, eliminate that darkness. Perhaps we are being made ready to bear the weight of light—something weightless in our world—that, coming from the heavenly realm, is so dense that it would crush us. 

In a moment of unknowing I whisper, But why, God? Then, I choose to hang my question on these spoken pegs of Hope, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. I do not always know what that Mercy looks like in this moment, in this day, in this shadow world. What form will Mercy take? Sometimes His Mercy is severe. Once, it took the form of flesh, nailed to a cross—suffering with us.

God is not "out there" but right here, with us—even when I cannot feel Him or see Him, and the clouds do not part. He is not against me—or you. He does not say why He does what He does, or why He allows various things. He withholds His mighty hand at times, and I don't know why. I only know He will not leave us all alone.

Lord have mercy.

Christ have mercy.

Lord have mercy.

Grant us Your peace.

Childlike. . .Wonder

Chill air makes me pull my covers closer just as my alarm buzzes. I roll over, swat my phone, and snuggle back under the blankets. Then I slit open one eye to see what the morning has brought. Suddenly I am all awake: the sky is grey, but the evergreens are shadowy jade, frosted with feather-flakes of snow. Snow! It is early this year, and cold, and...delightful. I can hear sleigh bells in my dreams, and though I am quick, I can never quite catch a glimpse of Jack Frost as he paints my windowpanes—which is a stunning feat, as I have a dozen panes before my desk.

My blood quickens at the thought of wandering out in those downy flakes, listening to the strange hush that snow always brings with it. My body is slower to answer the fairy calls—after all, covers are warm, the air in my house is decidedly not. After a good amount of standing by the heater, I am layered enough to sally forth into a world drenched in cold and quiet. There is wonder in the wintry wind. Magic laces the limbs of Old Man Cottonwood.

I stop on the bridge to watch the morning. Great puffs of snow shake off branches and glide into the stream. They are gone, liquid water once again, what moments before were airy snow-castles. The aching chill in my legs prods me to walk again. Still I watch the morning—the dancing snow, the plump little birds along my path—and I wonder about things. Do other people wonder about "things?" I wonder. I walk on, thinking of how the brown hedge next to me was teeming with living colour this Summer. How I clipped a lavender flower from it to wear in my hair. Do people my age wear flowers in their hair?

I question more and more whether I am an adult, or just a child inside an adult's body. Certainly I have learned some tact since childhood. Wait, is that tact, or have I learned to lie? Have I learned to gloss over something that I obviously see and am curious about? When does snow lose its magic and become merely an obstacle on the road? Do you become a grown-up when you step around a puddle rather than jumping in it? Does progress in years mean regress in seeing details like feathery finch bellies, pale peach against the snow? Does paying bills mean you stop chasing the rainbow's end? Does reality awaken us from our dreams?

The lenses of child-eyes have been mine for quite a long time. I think folks snicker at me sometimes after I walk by, wreathed in flowers or Autumn leaves. People often try to tell me that reality will burst my bubble; outlining various horrors, as if they are reality's servants, sent with sword in hand. One of my neighbours thinks I only appreciate happy endings, that I just pretend the Fall didn't happen, and that I need a dose of darkness to snap me out of fairy tales. Yet I realise that fairy stories have plenty of dark and morbid moments; many end unhappily-ever-after. I know the darkness of the Fall in my own heart and brain; in bitterness, betrayal, and broken bodies. I know Sorrow's shears, clipping off friendships that should have grown; snipping life out of loved ones, far too soon. It is always too soon, too young, too much...The Fall is too much with us.

The Fall is too much with us—should we shrink away in fear? Do we pretend it isn't real? No, that is a childish response, like hiding under the blankets from invisible night-fears. Thin quilts won't turn the blade of the Black Riders. What then is our defence? A heap of philosophy books to explain away the evil in the hearts of men? That is a cheap grown-up trick. Let us then be childlike—not childish—and revel in the fairy snows, walk so that we may see Beauty—rather than to burn calories. Let us know that the Fall happened, but not allow it to be the end of our stories. As Chesterton asserts, "Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey."1 Indeed, I need childlike faith that Smaug can be defeated—I already know that he exists. So for the Fall, I need to know it will one day finally and fully come untrue, because it daily threatens to undo me.

Yes, there is roadkill by the sidewalk, graffiti on the dumpster, and scraggly undergrowth along the river path where I walk. I do not deny these things. But there are majestic trees, glimpses of a snow-capped peak between branches, delightful bridges, and cheery little birds piercing the morning with sweet songs. It is Beauty that leads us to worship. Beauty, that restores sanity to our weathered souls. It is Beauty that turns our focus toward the One who made all things Beautiful in their time.2 That One is trustworthy and true, and He will make everything sad come undone one day...Interweaving myth into a Man and fairy stories into facts. 

---

1. Chesterton, G. K., “The Red Angel” in Tremendous Trifles (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920) 130
   
2. Ecclesiastes 3:11 (ESVUK)

Treading the Sea of Darkness

Noisy chatter clutters the lobby. The porch overflows with sound, seeping from every crevice of the hotel, like grapes, crushed. And I? I feel alone. Wearing the mask of a smile, while my soul wrestles with the Fall. I slip out into the rain-cooled air, the cloak of night hiding me from peering eyes and piercing laughter. 

How many times have I sat in a crowd of persons, even those I know, and felt the icy tentacles of loneliness? How often have I painted a smile on my lips, yet my eyes are belied by tears? Can I number the times I have listened to another's excitement while holding in my sorrows? How often have I concealed my joy in the face of someone else's pain? I do not begrudge those emotionally mixed moments. I do not regret that I have the privilege of of weeping and rejoicing with others. Nor am I deeply hurt that only a few look carefully into my honest eyes to see what is inside. Then I wonder, how many times have I not looked closely at bloodshot eyes? How often am I so lost in my own life that I neglect the trials and joys beneath the surface in others? 

This is the Fall–this neglect of others–written large and painted in bold black. The Fall, that locks us within ourselves, isolating us from God and man. The Fall, so murky and deep as to drown us in its depths. It is the Fall that prevents us from seeing life as a whole. We see only bits and pieces of our own lives—of others' lives—and we think those slivers are the whole story. We slosh in the muck of those black-sodden brushstrokes, seeing only a tary mess as far as our eye-scope can reach. 'This isn't how the story is supposed to go', we whisper fiercely to ourselves, kicking to stay afloat. 

But how is the story supposed to go? We think we have a decent plot. 'In the end this would bring God praise. Isn't that good? Isn't that the goal?' We do not see that the darkness of sin has been made the paint for the brush, the ink for the pen. The viscous stream in which we are drowning is the ink, undried. All the harrowing horrors of the Fall that dig their claws into our hearts, our homes, and our heroes have been ground into charcoal-hued pigment, brushing letters on parchment. Our grandiose plots for how our story should go are so small they are invisible upon the page. We swim in the depths of merely one letter, thinking it is our entire story. The Author and Finisher of our faith sees our script from the right perspective, much bigger–yet humbler–than we ever dared to dream or hope. 

Just because God allows us to be free agents in the writing does not mean that we are the author. Though He gives us the intolerable compliment of using our hands, our lips to accomplish His purposes, it does not follow that we know how immense the story, how deep the brokenness–and deeper still the redemption. We do not know how those letters, words, paragraphs, plots and subplots are being woven together to form a far-reaching tale. A true tale, meant for all the world, not only our corner of it, in this place and time.

What about the days when the narrative is dark, when we have tread the turbid waters of the Fall so long that we cannot muster another kick? Will the waves overflow us after all? God forbid! I say this fervently, yet, I am not the one abandoned by my husband. I am not left fatherless. I am not the one cast out by my family for doing the right thing. I do not have to face the long road of loneliness ahead if no reconciliation comes. No, but I can walk alongside my friends in those dark places. When they cannot tread thick waters any longer, I can hold them and swim for them. When I tire, it will be another's turn to support them. This is the body of Jesus, working together toward whole-ness, toward holiness. This one dark letter is not all that is on the page, it is not the whole story, though we or others may stick fast in one place far longer than we thought possible.

I still want to hide the holes in my soul, punctured by the Fall. I want to hide my own sin. I want to run away from the pain that the sins of others have caused me, my family, and my friends. I want life to be full of good things that are delightful and do not wound. But what I need it not to hide, is not isolation. What I need—what we all need—is for 'the light to shine in the darkness, and the darkness not [to] overcome it.' We all need times of solitude, not to forsake others, but times before God in honest conversation, times away to draw us back into the body of believers, toward holiness. Sin separates, it is said. Let us be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, then. Let us reconcile others to God by walking with them in their darkness—even when the journey is years long and the dawn is far, far off. May the light of Truth shine all over the darkness, making the Author's story—so much bigger than what we planned or imagined—visible to the watching world.

Lost, lost are all our losses;
Love set forever free;

The full life heaves and tosses

Like an eternal sea!

One endless story!

One poem spread abroad!

And the sun of all our glory

Is the countenance of God.*

~ Johanna

___________________

* George MacDonald, 5th Hymn to the Night

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

Solitude

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 

~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Evidenced by the fact that I began to listen to music  directly after typing that quotation. How quickly I forget that Beauty most often finds one in stillness. How readily I push aside God's messages delivered by silence and solitude. 

The whole world clamours and clangs with noise. Even our eyes are assaulted by 'visual noise' - billboards, skyscrapers and 1960s apartment buildings, badly hung Christmas lights, vulgar lawn ornaments, and the like. There is the disarray of 'stuff' all 'round us. Rather than making our lives better, 'stuff' can simply clutter our homes and gardens, as well as our thoughts. Many persons attest to being unable to think or study well in a messy area, myself included. 

Visual chaos and the din of television, films, iPods, et cetera almost constantly fill our minds or blunt our senses. "What of it?" one might ask. Think for a moment of what you do when you go for a walk or run. Do you put in earbuds? Talk on the phone? When you sit down at your desk or kitchen table, do you pull out your smart phone, computer, or a book? Can you fall asleep without music? Do you ever simply look out the window and think in silence?

Outside my window tiny white faeries flutter and float, flurry and fall. Trying to watch individual flakes makes me nearly dizzy, they are coming so quickly. There is something calming about snow, or a blanket of fog. Both give a covering of quiet to ponder, to let the thoughts we push away with noise come forth from their banishment: Do I have what it takes to be a man? Will anyone ever love me for who I am? What am I here for? Do I even make a difference? Is living any better than dying? What if so-and-so dies? How will I support myself when I am older? What will happen if other people find out how little I really know? Am I just faking it through life? Who is God? Is God really real, is He really there? Does God care about me? Why would He? Who am I, behind this skin and those eyes in the mirror - who is this I inside? 

In solitude and stillness I realise I have more questions than answers. Sure, I have a vague idea of how to answer some of the above questions. However, if I spent an hour thinking about Who God is, I might find how little I actually know Him. I know about Him, and in small degrees I know Him, as a person knows another person early on in a friendship. But do I truly know Him? 

When faced with thoughts about family or friends dying, I try to push them aside - usually successfully. It is too hard, too painful to think of them actually being gone from this life. Likewise, I am accomplished at ignoring thoughts about the future state of our government,  how long my bank account will be worth something, or where I will be in ten, twenty, or thirty years. I do not like depressing thoughts, yet sometimes I really do have to face them. Sometimes the pain from 'out there' comes 'in here'. The brokenness of the fall is not just for other people. I, too, experience the fall in my own circle of friends, in my own family, in my own life, in my own body.

Solitude brings these thoughts to the surface, rather rapidly, in fact. No wonder Pascal said that a man is unable to sit in a room quietly and alone. We want to be distracted from the questions  we cannot answer, the thoughts we do not like. We do not want to think about how far we fall short. We hide from rejection and loss. We block it all out with constant music (degrading the worth of music to mere background noise), non-stop communication, and busy-ness.

Have you been running away from your thoughts? Are you ignoring God's arms wide open to you by running the course of the noisy world? When was the last time you sat down to listen to God? Do you often (or ever) turn your phone, music, and computer off completely? Have you taken a walk in silence recently? When was the last time you faced your thoughts rather than fleeing them? How about practising solitude today... Right now.

~ Johanna

Restless Heart: Is There Something More?

Do you ever feel like you could run on the currents of the fresh night air? You would run boundlessly until your lungs and legs ached, if only you knew where to go. You know you should go to bed, but nervous energy keeps you wide awake, eyes refusing to close. 

Is there more to life? More than a nine to five, more than college, a spouse, kids, career, and a white picket fence with a dog inside? Do you find yourself on the outside of every 'inside' in which the rest of the world expects you to dwell?

Questions quiver like the new green leaves on Spring zephyrs. What is this aching inside? Why this restless feeling? Where am I to go? Am I supposed to learn something? Will I learn more if I stay here, or if I trek on a new adventure? The sky is the limit, and even that cannot hold me captive. There is outer space to explore, after all. 

Innocent, trusting eyes look up to the Maker of all things, querying what He would have me to do. Go or stay? Go where? And if I stay, what is the 'more' I am seeking? Is it something I ought to be doing? How can I better accomplish what is at my hand to do? How can I open my heart more to being shaped by the Spirit of the Holy One? What is obedience and how do I practice it? Where does one gain a heart of Wisdom? How does one hone the art of discipline?

In short, how do I go 'further up and further in'? 

How can I be living daily to know God MORE? 

I WANT MORE.

More of God. More Holiness. More direction. More diligence. More Wisdom. More faith in Him and His plans. More obedience. More discipline. More LIFE.

My heart is restless in me
My wings are all worn out
I'm walking in the wilderness
And I cannot get out
I need You, Oh, I need You
Blessed Savior come
I need You, Oh, I need You
Fill the every longing of my soul

~ Josh Bales, I Need You ~

~ Johanna

Love is Stronger Than Death

How does love construct a self that is stronger than death? It constructs my I, not my me; my subject self, not my object self, who I am, not what I am.

What I am is determined by my heredity and environment; my without is determined from without. This is not stronger than death. But who I am is determined by my free choices to love or not to love; my within is determined from within.

This inner self, or who, is not of a given size, like the body, but is elastic. I am as much as I find my identity in, or identify with, or care about, or love. I am not a little ego imprisoned in a bag of skin; I am as big as my love. By my love I construct the self that is stronger than death.

~ Peter Kreeft, Love is Stronger Than Death (pp 42-43)

Do you agree or disagree with Kreeft?

Surely there is a difference between who we are and what we are. Does love construct the 'who' we are? If so, is it our own love, as Kreeft says, or another's love? Is it human love or divine love that gives us our identity, our strength over death?

I will post my further thoughts in the upcoming days, but I am curious to know your thoughts, dear Reader.

~ Johanna

Stepping Stones

Have you ever tried to cross a creek by jumping from stone to stone? I often go about this task rather gingerly (and not just because I am red-headed). Stones in a creek can be slippy, moss-covered, treacherous, and wobbly. Sometimes it is no easy task picking your way across such hazards; especially when you do not know which (if any) you will meet on your trek.

Life is rather like crossing an immense stream by stepping from rock to rock. It is hard to tell if you will have sure footing, if the shallow water rushing over a stone is perilous, or if you will find a solid place to pause. Sometimes one puts their foot out onto a stone, trusting their weight to it, only to find that it is weak and wriggling. When this happens to me I usually make a mad dash to find the next rock in the chain of stones. If the next stone is solid it is a good halting place to recover balance and nerve; but when the next step is also shaky, it can be a disastrous course. Sometimes I get wet.

Reality is like that... I trust my heart to something inordinately more than God (people, intellect, work, and on it goes) and I find that thing too weak to support me. Not because the thing is bad of itself, but because I rely on it disproportionately to trusting God. If I do not change my course and seek the solid rock of obedience to Jesus I end up getting wet. Sometimes just my 'shoes' are sopping and soggy; other times I am completely submerged in the rushing river coursing between the stones.

"I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping stones
Of their dead selves to higher things."
~ Tennyson

My friend Andrew shared the above lines on his blog recently and it struck a chord inside of me. There are times when our course lies across a part of the stream where there are no stones we can reach. Unless the Creator Himself lays a path before us (which He does surprisingly often), He often gives us things to sacrifice to become the next step.

As the Israelites built altars of memorial stones when God did something great, we too, at times build memorials to God out of things offered or sacrificed to Him. We offer Him the root of bitterness, lust, lies, or some other brokenness needing to be consumed from our lives. We sacrifice the good things in our lives, seeking the best things. We offer praise and thanksgiving at all times, even in sorrow and suffering. These things are memorial stones to the testimony of the power, kindness, and goodness of God. It is with these stones that the Father paves our way before us. We step upon our dead selves, our dead past, to step closer to Him.

What stepping stones does the LORD desire to lay before you? What sacrifices can be made into altars of memorial? Will you let the Shepherd take your weakness, brokenness, and sin and turn them into a place of surrender and hope [confident expectation]? What part of you needs to be crucified and stepped upon to reach the next step in life?

Would you be so bold as to comment below with your answer to one (or all) of these questions? I will go first... Right now the LORD is working in me to be better disciplined with my time, especially in giving Him the first fruits/portion of the day... And He is reminding me not to fall into old habits where I waste mornings by sleeping in - which reminds me that I need to go to bed so I can rise to spend tomorrow with my dear friends from out of town. Goodnight all!

~ Johanna