I Don't Belong Here

"Here's the thing... Home or shelter I have not on this side of eternity..."

Ten years (and a few days) ago you wrote that line to me. It began a flurry of e-mails in which you planned a visit to Michigan and Indiana. And you came! And then on this day ten years ago, you drove away in the spring-like rain. How was I to know that the next time I saw you would be nearly five years later? You would be so changed. Ten years ago when you arrived, you gave me the biggest bear hug. Five years ago you wouldn't look me in the eye, wouldn't let me too near. A hug was out of the question. . .

What happened to the fellow who wrote, "I love you like my wood stove right now!"? The one you stood in front of at midnight, having awakened your dad for a conversation. . . Home and shelter you had, with a wood stove to boot. And yet, I don't think you ever really were at home in this world. I come back to this realisation again and again. No matter how much you studied the world, you weren't really comfortably at home here. No matter how much you loved your wood stove, or me, or your other friends and family, it wasn't enough to hold you in a place you didn't belong.

In a world full of bitter pain and bitter doubt
I was trying so hard to fit in, fit in
Until I found out

That I don't belong here
I don't belong here
I will carry a cross and a song where I don't belong. . .

. . . I'm gonna set sight and set sail for the Kingdom come
Kingdom come

So you did. Like Reepicheep, you set sail for the Kingdom: “While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world into some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.” I think Semester was like sailing East in the Dawn Treader, with like-minded friends. Then you flew east to the 'coracle' of your family. Then you swam hard in the Air Force. . . And I believe the last nearly six years were your desperate treading water, your nose above the surface, looking toward the Utter East. 

Do you remember telling me you would be safe as long as the person you loved was? Turns out that promises are harder to keep than to make. Do you remember writing that you would be the last leaf to fall? Turns out you were the first. . .

I'll be the last leaf to fall when
The season comes to leave
Myopia owns me
Loathe to fall
Loading up on the view
Knowing I'll lose my way
When my grip gives way

You shared these lines with me and I didn't see the poetry then. . .but I did later. I do now. I thought it needed to rhyme. I wanted it to end happy. I wanted you to be happy. But life in the intervening years has taught me to appreciate the sadness-laced lyrics, the poems that end with losing grip. Not out of despair, but because reality is bittersweet. Sometimes it is a better thing to be broken and then redeemed. I have learned that 'happy' as I think of it is a curse—emptiness, devoid of the weight of glory.

Blessed is the man who's lost it all
Happy is a yuppie word. . .
I'm looking for a bridge I can't burn down
I don't believe the emptiness
I'm looking for the Kingdom coming down

There it is again: the coming Kingdom. When you've lost it all—love, sanity, the desire for companionship, hope of healing, etc—you cling to the hope of the coming King and His Kingdom. And sometimes, holding on is too hard. You lose your way and your grip. You run ahead to the King's own country—Aslan's Utter East—before it's time to go. But the King is waiting. He knows how long we can hold out and hold on. You, who swore fealty to the King, you have been welcomed in to the Kingdom, to learn its language and its ways. I think your eyes had always seen it. . .or always almost seen something, like Orual almost seeing Psyche's palace; like Reepicheep and Aslan's country. There is something there...the Kingdom is coming. Until then, none of us really have any home or shelter this side of eternity.

Let us "set sight and set sail for the kingdom come" on earth as it is in heaven.
________


— "The Beautiful Letdown" by Jon Foreman
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
— "Birch Leaves" by Aaron Hennig
— "Happy is a Yuppie Word" by Jon Foreman

Intimate with Brokenness

show me who i am and who i could be.
initiate the heart within me
until it opens properly.

slow down, start again from the beginning.
i can’t keep my head from spinning out of control.
is this what being vulnerable feels like?
. . .
i’ll run the risk
of being intimate with brokenness.

—Ryan O'Neal
{Sleeping at Last—Son}

Is this what being vulnerable feels like?

Did I need to be broken in the same way—yet different than before—to initiate, to resuscitate, my heart? Does numbness have a deep wound at its root and as the cause for its flight? So often healing begins with kindness or conviction, never with condemnation. It is condemnation that inflicts some of the deepest scars, the broken places I can't heal myself. But conviction is the breath of the Spirit blowing on me, making my stone heart flesh again—like Aslan breathing a stone creature alive.

Conviction is a tearing apart from what I have conformed to, grown around like a vine about a tree, as flesh around shrapnel. It hurts like hell to unwrap from that lie, that action, that cover I've let become part of myself.

Conviction is a tearing-up over my brokenness, my sin, how I have wounded the Father who loves me. The kindness of conviction comes in humbly seeing anew my Lover, Who does not divorce me—put me away from Him—but Who calls me by His name. . . Who calls me Belovéd, though I have played the whore, chasing other gods.

If the broken things have to be healed at the root—have to be met in the brokenness—then I'll run the risk of being intimate with my brokenness. Growth germinates in the ground of healing, in the soil of holiness. Healing takes time. Holiness is a process. Just when I think I'm finally learning, I find that my brokenness is deeper than I ever knew or suspected. I find the healing just beginning in places where I think I should have healed long ago. I get frustrated at all the tiny shoots popping up where there should be at least slender birch trees—if not a steadily-growing oak or two.

Why have I made so little progress in the span of my thirty-some years? I should be so much farther along by now. But I'm not.

I could stomp and be angry that all I have are these little shoots. . .Certainly I am disappointed that my crop is so immature. But I will choose to be glad, to give thanks that growth is happening at all. I will give thanks and offer up these tender shoots to the LORD as a firstfruits offering. I will let Him do the pruning and the nurturing of these habits that He is reordering to help me image Him. I will take joy in the work He is doing, not dwell on the years the locusts have eaten.

I'll run the risk of being intimate with my brokenness. . .

Lent Week 3: Seeing Eyes

Oculi: Round Opening, Eyes

(Lent Week Three)

Sin's darkness blinds--

Pit of despair

That sucks down

The heart, mind,

My very self,

Until I become

A shadow self

Under sin's grind

Something pulls me

To look up

From this hole--

Blind eyes see!

Climbing the darkness

Toward grey light,

Clawing upward, longing

To be free

Gasping, I spill

From the mouth

Of the abyss

My spine athrill--

My wavering self

A flickering shadow,

In and out,

And almost nil

There, before me

A mighty Lion

Blazes burnished gold--

Blind eyes see!

In His face

Love is bold,

By His wounds

I am free

His amber eyes

Burn the fire

Of bright sadness--

Sorrow His prize,

Pain His reward,

His life blood

Given in gladness,

Wounds to cauterise 

Lion of light

Illumines my eyes,

Enfleshes my shadow-self,

Scatters sin's night--

The Lamb slain,

Rising to life,

Is the Lion

Showing His might

Eyes open wide

At this mystery

Proclaimed long ago

And now descried--

In the once

And future King--

Lion-Lamb, Who

Calls me bride.

Thirty

It is getting late, as I tuck in a full day, the wind wrestling its way 'round my cabin. Snuggled under the blankets, I think back on the day... I awoke in the golden arms of the sunrise, a day older. A year older. A decade older. It is not often that these round milestones are placed in our palms, slipped into the pockets of our lives. They are a gift, marking a still moment to pause and reflect on the many hours and days that have built the last ten-year span. 

I wonder if I have used my first day in my thirties well. I question if I invested the days of my twenties wisely. Things did not go according to my plans this day, but they rarely do. Still, there were sweet gifts, surprise phone calls, dinner and ice cream with friends... There were cards, full of life-giving words, penned by some of my dearest friends. Words of hope and kindness. Inspiration to live worthy of my calling to display the Beauty of the Lord and His holiness. One note, with bold, black ink-words proclaimed—approximately—"Don’t be impatient. Wait for the Lord, and he will come and save you! Be brave, stouthearted, and courageous. Yes, wait and he will help you."*

Brave. I taste this word on my palate as if it has never escaped my lips before. As one who comes knowing that God is my Light and Salvation, I need not fear, I have only to be brave in His strength. Stouthearted. This reminds me of wholehearted, a word I have been meditating upon in the last few weeks. Yet stouthearted is nuanced differently. It implies one who will not falter in battle, who will bear up under trials. Yes, this is something I desire.

The last triplet-word rises before me: Courageous. I think of the many persons I know who have the courage to get up every morning, to live a life they did not—would not—choose. They bear the marks, the cost, of another's choices. It must take whole oceans of courage in their veins to to stand firm each day, I think. My life is not shaped by such trials. Do I, too, need courage? New Covenant words flit into my mind: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.* Yes, I need courage! Though I live under this present darkness, I take courage in the words, The LORD is my light and my Salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the Stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?*

Who knows what the upcoming days of my thirties will hold? I do not know the mile-marking joys and sorrows to come, and I am glad. I would become impatient or burdened knowing that such things were ahead still. What I do know, as I listen to the wind howl and pull my quilt closer, is that every day will bring its 'dailyness'. There will be dishes to wash, laundry to fold, books to mail at work, food to be made and enjoyed, friends to hug, smiles to give and receive, and prayers shot like arrows toward Heaven throughout the day. There will be songs to sing, children to hold, hands to hold, sorrows to bear. There will be sharp words when I lose sight of Kindness. There will be life-giving words from the Spirit of God to breathe into souls. There will be the daily, walking hand-in-hand with the Eternal. In short, there will be the every day I already know, and the every day life that comes with ageing bones and bodies.

Daily dishes, rote words of liturgy, or our own stale thoughts can seem dull, mindless, and lifeless. But when Christ, Who is our life, breathes daily into us, we surge with liquid life. Much like Aslan in the Narnia stories breathes upon creatures turned to stone, restoring their life, Christ restores meaning and joy in our quotidian moments. Folding laundry becomes built-in prayer time. Liturgy becomes the rhythm of life, keeping us in step in the Great Dance. God infuses our listless, rutted thoughts with new perspective—gained from friends, new-to-us books, a song, or by simply opening our eyes to Scriptures we have seen a thousand times, but have not known until now.

Annie Dillard once penned, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."* If I am aware of God in the midst of soapsuds and repeatedly sliding discs into plastic sleeves, in the writing of words and the sharing a smile; if I breathe out "Lord have mercy" and inhale His mercy, then I am learning life-rich liturgy rooted in Christ. That seems a good way to live a day, a year, a decade...and a life.


_____________

* Psalm 27.14 (TLB)
* Ephesians 6:12 (ESVUK)
* Psalm 27:1 (NKJV)
* Dillard, Annie, The Writing Life (New York: Harper Collins, 2009)