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.”

transitory transitions

I have moved across the country. I have begun graduate school classes. I have been slowly making new friends. I have been trying to find a church that I feel I can engage in. I have been getting used to a new roommate, a new apartment, a new life.

I have never experienced so many new major life transitions all at once. Adjustment takes adjustment. It doesn't happen overnight. Falling quickly into a schedule or a routine after classes begin doesn't always happen. Losing drive, focus, motivation, and energy may happen. Feeling guilty over feeling legalistic over forcing yourself to get into God's Word is only further compounded by more feelings of guilt as you continue to force yourself to read Scripture daily because to you that's the most logical way of getting back into a regular Scripture reading routine. Spending time alone or in prayer isn't as rejuvenating as it once was.

I wasn't expecting this kind of an adjustment. The first couple of weeks were pleasant and enjoyable, but now that classes have begun I have been second-guessing myself like crazy about committing to a five year program. Going through this long program is no guarantee that I will be successful when I get through, or that I will even have a good job placement, or that I will even enjoy what I will do. Is my becoming a clinical psychologist really in God's will for my life? Why has "God's will" become more of an obsession than a feeling of trust?

In this mess of feelings, confusion over unknown, heavy frustration, lost focus and motivation, I have to come to appreciate close friendships that will hopefully continue to deepen despite the long distance and I have come to realize more the importance and need for fellowship with other believers. God sometimes uses other people to speak to you so let Him....sometimes that's easier than trying to hear Him speaking directly to you while you're alone I am finding. I am thankful for friends who will sit and pray with you no matter how little sense you seem to make to yourself as you are barely able to articulate even the least remote feeling of something you can't even put a name to. 

I am also thankful that transitions are transitory. Even the hardest transitions don't last forever. Our lives are really just transitions. Some transitions are good, some are hard, and some are a little of both at times. Our transitional lives are preparing us for something far greater than just a series of seemingly endless transitions. Transitions such as the one I am in is greatly helping me to focus more on the life where transitions cease and only permanence reigns. 

Lord, you are our home

While in Bolivia last week my new roommate made a really neat connection as she was reading Psalm 90 in her Spanish translation Bible. The Spanish Bible translates verse 1 as "nuestra casa" -literally "our house." God is our house, our home, our forever dwelling place. 

In just a couple of days I am moving to the other side of the country. Moving to a new place is always exciting but always hard. Making new friends but leaving behind old ones. Engaging in a new church while disengaging from the old one. Missing family. Missing home. But remembering that God is my home wherever my new home may be. 

In these words from her poem "Awakening," Gunilla Norris offers us a day- break prayer:

          First thought -- as in "first light" -- let me be aware that I waken in You.

          Before I even think that I am in my bed

          let me think that I am in You.

          Each hour wake me further to find You.

          Let me relish in You, exult in You, play in You, be faithful in You.

          Let me be wholly present to living the gift of time.

Oregon, my new home

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: 

Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, 

who is our home

-William Wordsworth

Kilby and coffee

Have you ever come across a super artsy blog where one single blog entry may be all about a wonderful cup of coffee the blogger had in the morning and they post several super up-close, artsy pictures of the brewed beverage where you can see the reflection of the camera's light on the little air bubbles that accumulate around the rim of the mug and the camera is angled just right to provide the perfect shadow striking a perfect contrast of light and darkness? 

Sometimes I think it is the more artistic, creative people who have an easier time of appreciating the small things in life -of course, there is a difference between appreciating the trivial, seemingly insignificant pleasures in life and appreciating art for the sake of what is considered art.

                      

Life is so full of wonder and excitement and pure joy yet we somehow easily forget this and we let -sometimes rightfully -this world's darkness drown out that joy. A former professor of English Literature at Wheaton College, Dr. Clyde Kilby, pleaded with his class at the end of one of his lectures that they might stop being unamazed by the strange glory of ordinary things and to start seeing things with the new eyes Christ has purchased for them. 

Here are some of Professor Kilby's resolutions that I hope I can adopt as my own someday:

I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence.

At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.                                                                    

I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder."

I shall follow Darwin's advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.

                 

I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, "fulfill the moment as the moment." I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.