A story is being written every day. A story of love and relationship and danger and adventure. A story about romantic relationship at a time of epoch war. This is a story about God, the spiritual war He wages, and the millions and billions of people He loves...not anomously, but intimately!
My daughter wrote this last night and said, 'I'm not sure where this came from, but isn't it depressing?' I told her that it seems to reveal a deep truth...what do you think?
What would happen if the things everyone fought for...the reason for every human to live...was ripped away, every dream or wish was obliterated, hopes were demolished. A place where even the sun couldn’t shine. Where would we be, who would we go to in those desperate times. It would bring a whole new meaning to the phrase, 'desperate times call for desperate measures.'
I head into the black hole ahead, and take one last look up to where the sun once beamed down on us. We grab our supplies and leave the dead, sick and wounded. you will no longer get sympathy from us. After what we have gone through its natural and no one wants to keep more people then we need, sick and wounded are just more mouths to feed and they slow us down. Its amazing how broken a person can get. As we march we hear the moans, screams and begging of the wounded and sick to not leave them. But they know its no use. Person after person we pass no one sheds a tear except a little girl who is crying over a woman with a leg stuck underneath a massive boulder. The women is begging the little girl to go, but she is staying. As people pass they don’t even seem to see them. I recognize the little girl from the class I taught, a flashback occurs to a brighter time...I somehow feel like I once was. I scoop her up onto my shoulder on my way by not stopping to see the mother. Knowing the consequences if we are slowed down. The mother with tears in her eyes whispers thank you. As i walk away I turn my head ever so slightly and look back and nod. The little girl kicks and yells, 'mommy,' with sobs in between, but finally goes quiet with a slight tearful sniffle or cry now and then. I look around and see I have been getting looks of disapproval from everyone, knowing the girl would have an easier death here and it would leave more food for them. But I keep moving on with the same march as everyone else thump thump thump. Into the darkness of the big tunnel hoping for the light at the end which I know will never come.
I told my sister on the phone the other day that perhaps these are desperate times and maybe I should focus on survival at all costs. Tonight I met with my friend for our weekly peer coaching. I told him that how I feel in this current season of continued financial risk is how I felt 8 years ago when we had two good incomes, two houses, and lots of money in the bank. Back then I was afraid that if I didn't give my entire focus to my job and career I would end up in financial risk...well, exactly like my current circumstances. And from my current vantage point looking back I can see that I wasn't seeing reality clearly. There were lots of protection all around me, but I couldn't feel it. I felt my safety was at risk and I didn't have rest.
I wondered aloud tonight if I'm seeing my current reality clearly. I wondered if at some future point looking back if I'll realize, that in fact, I was well protected in this season and just didn't see clearly. He said, isn't that faith?
And so my daughter's story paints a picture of bleak circumstances...one without light or hope. But that's the picture only when one looks outward into that post-apocalyptic world. There is no light in that dark world, but light can still be found in the story...within the protagonist. So looking inward, rather than outward, the protagonist might see light and hope as love revealed. That light pushes back the darkness, starting in a small circle of just two. And I in my present difficult circumstances can glimpse hope and find joy (Heb 12:2) not in some hard-to-see future glorious circumstance, but in my current relationships...including with a living God...and current work right in front of me.
Mumford and Sons, After the storm
And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears. And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears. Get over your hill and see what you find there, With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.
When my daughter was a little girl I had a vision of her that felt at the time was directly from God. In my vision, I saw my little girl as a high schooler standing on the grass next to the sign in front of the school. She was full of life, passionate, a leader to her friends...and I sensed that her passion for drama was a part of who she was and gave her joy and confidence. I told her the vision and I saw that she wondered if it could be true. you know, when you tell someone something and they look at you with both hope and disbelief, wanting so badly what you tell them, but afraid its too good to be true. Over the years she would express her passion for drama in different small ways...acting out at the grocery, with her family and friends...and when still a little girl in the community drama program in our town. She never really connected with the program and was unwilling to return after one or two productions as princess #4...or some such.
She's now in her last year of middle school. At the beginning of the school year I was reminded of my vision for my daughter and knowing her high school years were nearing I renewed more fervently my prayer that she find connection with a drama program. A few months ago a good friend of hers, a boy, asked her to audition for a part in an upcoming production of Cole Porter's Anything Goes. It was being produced by a drama group in the next town over, across the street from her regional charter middle school. She decided to audition for a bit part.
She was selected to play one of the leads...if you're familiar with the musical, the part she got was Moonface Martin, public enemy #13! The show debuted (and closed) last weekend. They did 4 shows in 3 days...it was totally amazing. The actors were all kids 7th - 10th grades. Here's my daughter singing Bluebird.
I (and I'm certain she too) experienced incredible joy. She talked much of the weekend of how she bonded with members of the group, how she loved exploring her gifting for drama (and comedy, which I was surprised by, but after a little thought, its totally her), and how she received incredibly positive feedback from so many people. I've an armload of really fond memories from this weekend watching my daughter so full of life and joy.
I've found human relationships more rich and full while in relationship with a living God. He surprises me...and reminds me that He is all for me and those around me to have an abundant life...full to the brim and overflowing. Its endearing to remember right now other instances of God revealing His love to my daughter and I in real and tangible ways.
I've been feeling a strong sense of discomfort recently. I described it to a friend on the phone tonight like I'm being balanced on the head of a ball point pen. Its seems easy to become unbalanced if I only slightly lean in any direction. And its confusing, I'm not sure why I'm feeling like this or what to do about it. I continue to sense its a change of season and that I'm feeling old feelings that I've run from perhaps my whole life.
I remember as a teen saying to my father, 'I want to be passionate about something.' He told me I was a nut, that passion would natural grew out of an interest. Perhaps. Here are the surprising (to me) definitions of some related words:
Passionate - easily aroused to anger [top definition]
Suffer - [transitive verb] submit to or be forced to endure; to feel keenly; experience
So I'm feeling the activities I've enjoyed in recent years are no longer satisfying. I think I'm feeling 'boredom' (the state of being weary or restless through a lack of interest). I've not felt that since my youth (I think), so its curious to me...and feels a part of this change of season. I also sense that God is revealing to me more of the burden and pain I carry that have led me to hold onto lies that I came to believe about myself and Him. Its not clear, but I'm willing to believe that based upon the process I've experienced in my journey to deeper intimacy with myself and God in the recent past.
So I 'feel keenly' these days and I so want to flee towards any activity that will relieve my passion. Of course, in this season the passion of Christ comes to mind. Everything I can think to say feels cliche, but the similarity, perhaps metaphor remains. If I consider Christ's passion as a model, He endured until His death. He prayed to God, whom He called Father, to take away His suffering...and yet it was not taken away. He endured it...and was resurrected and glorified.
I'm doing my best while working less than full time in a consulting job my friend hired me. It offers me freedom to consider other projects and I've started writing a book (about heterosocial relationships) with a friend of mine, a colleague in my long-time career field and I have been exploring how we can work together for mutual benefit and provision, and a friend involved in the social enterprise food business we shuttered 6 months ago and I plan to meet weekly to explore what might be next for us together based on our past investments. So there's disparate possibilities and I stand in hope that what's next for me become clear soon.
And all the while my provision feels at risk, but even that seems purposeful (courage growing as I take required risks). Consulting is my primary provision and its by nature more temporary than full time employment. For example, as I transitioned from a employee consultant to a 1099 vendor consultant at my friend's company I wasn't paid for 2 1/2 months, until just two weeks ago. That was difficult to navigate given my financial situation, but not once did I not have money when I absolutely needed it...even though it seemed not clear how I'd might get it at times.
So I'm willing to believe the journey to Holiness seems to require...not sure: persistence? suffering? passion? faith? innocence/naiveness? risk? confusion? madness? I'm strangely willing.
"He had worked through a great deal of his own struggles with the emotional demands of life with God, and he knew himself very concretely as a result." Quote said of Merton from "Merton: A Film Biography"
"Solitude is not found so much by looking outside the boundaries of your own dwelling as by staying within. Solitude is a deepening of the present and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it" Thomas Merton quote
"Occupied with the passover feast at their [the larger set of Jesus' disciples] own houses, they represent the many who live upon the letter, but are mere babes as to the spirit of the gospel. To twelve, nay, to eleven only was the privilege given to enter Gethsemane and see "this great sight." Out of the eleven, eight were left at a distance; they had fellowship, but not of that intimate sort to which men greatly beloved are admitted. Only three highly favoured ones could approach the veil of our Lord's mysterious sorrow: within that veil even these must not intrude; a stone's-cast distance must be left between. He must tread the wine-press alone, and of the people there must be none with Him." - CH Spurgeon quote (from a friend, Razehell's blog)
It seems building trust and intimacy in relationship with God, like any relationship, is emotionally demanding...I've found it so...and am encouraged to hear others equally challenged. I realize in me a deep desire for a close intimacy with God and yet having felt pain, I'm afraid and angry. And so like in any relationship where one is experiencing or has experienced pain there is a choice to be made: stay in relationship with uncertain outcome and potential pain, or withdraw. This experience with God touches old wounds from my marriage, which I endured for many years, but ended in divorce. I choose in this present moment to honestly share my love AND my fears with El Shaddai, my provider...and stand in hope of redemption and deeper intimacy.
“I've a respect for tradition, but I have a passion for the truth,” ~Robert Duvall as Johnny Crawford in the movie Seven Days in Utopia. Watching the movie this leapt out at me.
There's lots of spiritual tradition in human history. But if what the Bible says is true, God is perfecting His bride...and therefore she is not yet fully walking in truth (nor am I)!
