sacred encoding

my beloved Celtic journal

Towards the end of his second month at Genesee, after spending much time in solitude, Nouwen realizes that solitude leads him to think often about his past. He remembers some significant memories but he is greatly mystified by the long stretches of time that seem void of memorable events. Nouwen admits: "I do not want to live it all again, but I would like to remember more, so that my own little history could be a book to reflect on and learn from." 

Like Nouwen, I often wonder if I am really listening carefully enough to the God of history, the God of my history, the God who whispers my name. Have I really been living in the here and now?

The other day I decided to walk down to the river nearby to do some reading on the dock. By the time I got halfway there it started to drizzle a little despite the sun being out. As the rain began to slowly dampen my hair to my forehead, I wanted to turn back but no matter what direction I turned I was still going to get wet so I decided to see this as one of those occasional, inspirational "God moments" (I use quotations because I believe as soon as we identify God with any specific event or situation, we play God and distort the truth....our human minds are simply too finite for this kind of understanding). I felt like this moment was the perfect metaphor that reflected my life right now -I tend to stay so focused on my destination that I forget to enjoy the journey -no matter what the weather brings -I need to take one day at a time, to thoroughly enjoy each day instead of continuously looking ahead to when I am further along in this five year grad program. As hard as it is to not naturally look ahead to where I am not in such a transitional phase of life, I don't want to just fly through or waste these five precious years of my life. 

Nouwen later talks about his time in Ireland how he remembers Donegal better than Kerry and Killarney -he also wrote a lot while in Donegal. 

I think writing is a very powerful tool, an inexhaustible resource....and perhaps one of the greatest gifts God has given us to help preserve our memories, to learn from the past, to reflect upon it, to live more in the here and now. 

As I think about the four months when I lived in Ireland, I remember most vividly Derry, Belfast and Galway more than Sligo, Cork and Armagh....and I think this has a lot to do with how much more I wrote while in those places.

Most of us cannot retrieve events that happened to us before age three (infantile amnesia)....one theory to explain this is the inability to verbally encode information.

I am beginning to see writing as a more sacred spiritual discipline than ever before. 

you are the glory of God

I can't believe I haven't read Henri Nouwen's The Diary of Genesee: Report from a Trappist Monastery until now....I never thought I could love Nouwen anymore than I already do until I read these reflections on his temporary monastic life.

"How to live for the glory of God and not my own glory?" is the pivotal question Nouwen continuously asks himself during his time at Genesee.

Abbot John Eudes tells Nouwen that he must first realize that we are all the glory of God. That is such a strange-sounding yet incredibly refreshing statement. We are the glory of God.

We live because we share God's breath, God's life, God's glory. The question isn't so much, "How to live for the glory of God?"  but, "How to live who we are, how to make true our deepest self?"

"You are the place where God chose to dwell, you are the topos tou theou (God's place) and the spiritual life is nothing more or less than to allow that space to exist where God can dwell, to create the space where his glory can manifest itself."

a tainted imitation

my adopted children in heart (or any excuse to throw in a favorite Africa pic)

Because you aren’t fully aware of what you are thinking until you write it down….perhaps it is time for another blog post. From time to time, I feel this need to ask God for forgiveness for the thick cultural lens in which I view my faith.

As I look over some of my old blog posts and journal entries from the last few years, I have noticed an overarching theme of frustration –frustration over trying to effectively express and articulate myself in my writing, frustration over spiritual longings, frustration in deciphering God’s will, frustration over discerning my spiritual gifts, frustration over feeling like I am not serving God to the best of ability with what He has given me, frustration over feeling weighty amounts of frustration, and so on and so on as the cycle of frustration further perpetuates itself.

Last winter I found some solace in putting my frustration into words, I wrote:  Perhaps a major part of the frustration we experience as a result of failing to adequately or sufficiently express ourselves is because we may not be able to more loudly express ourselves than the thing that serves as the impetus for the expression. Frustration is a part of our nature.

I have never really asked God to forgive the culture that surrounds me because that is basically almost equivalent to complaining or expressing dissatisfaction for being born a twenty-first century American which I am thankful to be. I also realize the word I am looking for isn’t “culture” –I intend that word to encompass other things such as personality, social economic status, education, etc. (and ultimately I mean to say “sin” or rather “tainted by sin” not “culture” per se because every discontentment or frustration roots back to our sin nature but go with it for now). 

Admittedly, I sometimes wish I lived during the early church era.

Today's church looks radically different from the early church. We certainly don’t live in the age of reformation, revival, or progress anymore; we live more in the age of ideologies, orders, and denominations. Councils, creeds, and controversies will always be with us.

At times, convents have been appealing to me; living in Africa as a missionary seemed like a pretty noble calling; and practicing extreme asceticism while living with and working alongside the poorest of poor in the inner-city seemed almost too saintly but incredibly attractive at the same time. Throughout my life, I have always struggled with this idea that I was made for more….that I wasn’t doing enough to further God’s kingdom….that I can never fully serve the ones Jesus came to serve until I lived among them. I didn’t just want to share a birthday with Mother Theresa, I wanted to become her.

I desire simple Christianity but our culture or “we” rather have somehow made it complex.    

Sometimes I like transposing my own words over other words in quotes. Thomas a Kempis wrote “Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be” (Imitation of Christ). Instead of “others,” I think practically any word or idea or anything human that provokes frustration can be substituted here.

Special thanks to my beloved Mumford and Sons who are playing these resonating words right now as I type: “Cause I need freedom now, And I need to know how, To live my life as it’s meant to be.” 


And thank you, Tozer, for your simple view of Christianity: 

The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can. It is inherent in personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and loving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of both can be explored.

To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too easily satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.


Now to use the same sentence structure (but not the same structural meaning) in the words of Bethany: to have found frustration and to still pursue it is quite the paradox of the soul, scorned indeed by the too easily satisfied culture, but justified in the pursuit of knowing Christ.

I have no idea where I am going

I really love this poem by Thomas Merton read out loud by one of my professors in my Spiritual Formation class today:

“My Lord God I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that my desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”