Jean Vanier on growth and the capacity of the heart to be broken.

http://www.altervideomagazine.com/2011/10/28/enlarge-life/

Joy is in the acquiescing

I used to wonder why C.S. Lewis found himself so “surprised” by joy. There is so much joy in life –and hardship too, of course –but ultimately joy knowing God has already purchased our joy-everlasting.

But finding joy in this life is not a choice but a command and it must be fought for daily. We are called to partake in perpetual communion –daily eucharisteo –thanking God for everything all the time….this is where the deep joy we all want to experience is found. As I read her book, One Thousand Gifts, I was encouraged by Ann Voskamp to verbalize and journal all the little gifts/graces I notice God bestowing on me everyday. Obviously, all of life is grace but how does one become exceedingly grateful for the exceeding blessings in life if they aren’t each carefully spoken of, reflected on, treasured? Can the heart fully register what the mind doesn’t first fully process?

Is there any true way to discover joy but as surprise? We all must fight for joy daily…fight to be continuously surprised by joy that is experienced again and again day after day by the same objects and people and tasks we must encounter no matter how mundane or tiresome or lackluster they become or seem to us overtime.

For a while, I thought if only I could run though the open fields and dance all crazy and run in circles until I fall down dizzy then I can experience some of this child-like joy to the fullest…but how to find the same kind of joy when folding laundry, grocery shopping, or writing a paper? This is why being surprised by joy is such a terribly hard and serious fight….we don’t always see joy in every moment, yet God is in every moment.

We are called to complete the Communion service in service. I love this quote by Tagore: “I slept and dreamt life was joy, I awoke and saw life was service, I acted and behold, service was joy.”

Henri Nouwen once said: “The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift to be celebrated with joy.”

Gratitude is certainly a discipline –it definitely takes grace to acknowledge grace. Going through the daily grind doesn’t look so daily or so grinding when we really acknowledge that every moment is sacred and every hour is Holy Communion.  But will we accept the gifts He has given us? 

a million drops of gratitude

What does it really mean to more fully understand God's love? I grew up being told that the purpose in life is "to live for the glory of God." But if someone were to ask me today what the purpose is, I would probably add "to learn to realize more and more everyday just how much God loves us." As a young child (both literally as I refer back to the day when I still carried around an American Girl doll and metaphorically speaking as I still am a young child of faith as we are all this side of heaven), I understood I was made in God's glory by Him and for Him but the implications of this didn't easily translate into other ways of knowing and understanding of and reflecting on what it really means besides the obvious -obedience.

Learning to love other people more and more selflessly is how we become more fully aware of just how much God loves us. Learning to love while forgetting yourself in the process is the essence of sanctification. Thankfulness lies at the heart of it. The Garden legacy, that Eden bite of fruit, the catalyst for all our sins was really the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve would not have sinned if they were completely satisfied with everything God had already given them in the Garden of Eden. We constantly fail to see the material world for what it is meant to be: as the means to communion with God.

For forty years the Israelites ate the mysterious substance of manna -a name which literally means "What is it?" They ate mystery. Their daily nourishment came from that which they did not understand. I held a four week old baby dying of AIDS this summer. Cancer and mental illness have unapologetically made themselves a part of my family. Two days after my visit to the central garbage dump in Guatemala City several hundred people die as it collapses into a major sinkhole -this was their home, their livelihood, and now their grave. We eat mysteries everyday. But how do we eat these mysteries in closer communion with God...giving up guilt and resentment and allowing bereavement and righteous anger to pave a way for greater gratitude and exceeding joy?

I have both seen and experienced great pain and I now I am beginning to realize more and more how I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks. "Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering" (One Thousand Gifts, Voskamp, p. 58).

I like this quote by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin a lot -"Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see."

The next quote is a bit provocative but I believe its beauty and truth overpowers its provocativeness so I take the risk:  "The unit of wine is the cup. Of love, the unit is the kiss. That's here. In Hell, the units are the gallon and the fuck. In Paradise, the drop and the glance."

I can't wait to be filled completely with God's glory again but for now I must learn to more fully understand how all of life is grace. Every breath's a battle between grudgery and gratitude....and the more we embrace a heart of gratitude, the more we embrace God's love. 

a gracious gift

A dear friend from Uganda, whom I frequently keep in touch with, sent me a very disheartening, unfortunate message:

"today has been really sad for me, yesterday I spent a night at my friend's place and it really rained heavily at night, in the morning I went to check my room and I felt so sad that bags, clothes were really wet..."

I never had to worry about my tin roof, over my tiny, one-room house, leaking and getting my stuff all wet. Many of my worries, concerns, and problems look very different from the average Ugandan's worries. I have always struggled with romanticizing poverty. I must constantly remind myself that living in poverty doesn't equate to a more ready heart of thanksgiving. 

I have been thinking a lot lately about how to cultivate a more grateful heart...how to live in sync with soul and body and God....how to slow down and wake up and fully live. After all we are God's breath, God's life, God's glory. How paradoxical and offensive it is to think how ungrateful we can be at times when every single fiber of our being is made in His glory...we exude His glory.

I like being around people, there is so much in life, in my life, that I love, I have so many curiosities, interests, hobbies, hobbies I hope to pick up sometime, so many ambitions, dreams, hopes, plans, so many places I still want to travel to, several post-docs I dream about pursuing, countless lists of books I want to read........and all these things are great but they can be so distracting sometimes. We are relational beings who have many interests and we live in a world of many interesting things...some of which can help us draw closer to God but if we don't take the time to slow down then it is almost impossible to truly cultivate a heart of thanksgiving. Although God can be found in all these things, it can be terribly hard for us to find God in them when we are in a hurried rush. We are commanded to enter His courts with thanksgiving. When we are thankful we see God more clearly but thankfulness cannot be deeply planted in our hearts if we don't first slow down enough to reflect on what we are thankful for.

Help us, Lord, to learn to give thanks incessantly, to make every sigh and every breath one of thanksgiving, help us to give thanks for the breeze through the open window, help us to give thanks for the elderly man picking out flowers at the florist, help us to live in a posture of gratitude.

We have been offered grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon more grace....the amount of grace we give depends on how grateful we are for the grace we have been given. 

Though we grieve, though we wonder, we must slow down and wake up and perceive each moment for what it is: holy, ordinary, amazing grace...a gift. 

stillness

       In the busyness of this day

grant me a stillness of seeing, O God.

In the conflicting voices of my heart

grant me a calmness of hearing.

Let my seeing and hearing 

my words and my actions

be rooted in a silent certainty of your presence. 

Let my passions for life

and the longings of justice that stir within me

be grounded in the experience of your stillness.

Let my life be rooted in the ground of your peace, O God,

let me be rooted in the depths of your peace.

--from Celtic Benedictions, J Philip Newell

holy, holy, holy

Lately I have been reflecting on just how little I know of holiness.

R.C. Sproul makes an insightful observation from Isaiah 6:

“The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that He is merely holy, or even holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that God is love, love, love, or mercy, mercy, mercy, or wrath, wrath, wrath, or justice, justice, justice. It does say that He is holy, holy, holy, the whole earth is full of His glory.”

To be holy is to be set apart, distinct, in a class by oneself….meaning God is transcendentally separate. Sproul goes on to say that “He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us.” To be holy is to be “other.” 

A.W. Tozer beautifully writes:

 “We cannot  grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or  something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are  capable of.  God’s holiness is not simply  the best we know infinitely bettered.  We  know nothing like the divine holiness.   It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and  unattainable.  The natural man is blind  to it.  He may fear God’s power and admire God’s wisdom, but His holiness he cannot even  imagine.”

We can’t even use the word holy as an attribute to describe God. Purity is contained within the idea of holiness but even the purest form of purity is still not pure enough to even capture the smallest part of what it means to be holy.

Earlier this year when I was doing some heavy reading through the Old Testament, I was quite literally (and ironically) struck with awe when I read 2 Samuel 6:1-11. David and his chosen thirty thousand men were bringing the Ark of God to Jerusalem. As the Law specified, they set the Ark on a new cart –not just any cart –which was carried by men of Kohath –not just any men.  

As the oxen pulled the cart over the threshing floor, the Ark suddenly became unsteady. Then Uzzah stuck out his hand to help steady the Ark. Uzzah unintentionally violated the “do not touch any holy thing, lest you die” principle; therefore, God struck him for his tragic error.

I am pretty sure I shared in some of David’s anger over the Lord’s outbreak against Uzzah when I first read this. I mean I am pretty sure most of us would have done exactly as Uzzah did. If you saw that the Ark of God was about to come crashing to the floor wouldn’t you have unconsciously reached out your hand to help steady it to avoid a catastrophe? I know I would have.

The instant anger I initially shared with David upon first reading this passage just goes to show that we can’t even begin to comprehend God’s holiness. God’s ways are so much higher than our ways and His thoughts are so much higher than our thoughts.

I think this passage also reminds us to be constantly mindful of the holiness of God in our everyday lives. So often I find myself rushing to God in prayer or sometimes rushing through prayers….it is in these instances that I have to pause and remind myself that I am speaking to the Most Holy of Holies.

It is so hard for us to understand God’s holiness because where God is holy is where we are most unlike God….His very name means the “wholly other.” Where He is most holy, we are most unholy; yet, in all His incomprehensible holiness, He has somehow allowed us to share in His holiness by paying for our sins without tainting any part of His own holiness with our un-holiness. Reflecting on this helps me to feel like I understand less of God’s holiness which in turn helps me to genuflect in greater awe of just how infinitely holy He is and how infinitely un-holy I am.  

heavenly made for heaven

Just rediscovered some C.S. Lewis excerpts I read over the summer that are so comforting to read from time to time again and again. Thank you, Jesus, for C.S. Lewis' life: 

"There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words. …You have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life. …Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction… something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? …Some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which … night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. …[If you ever truly found it], beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’”

I love the gorgeous guardrail and incredibly attractive utility poles in this picture.  No matter how many photos I snapped of the Swiss Alps while in Interlaken, no picture ever did a justice to the beauty that was all around me (of course snapping photos while on a train doesn't usually yield very desirable results either). This picture reminds me of our desperate desire to be united with Beauty. The striking guardrail and poles serve as excellent, visible reminders of why we still feel lingering discontentment when viewing such breath-taking beauty -we aren't a part of it yet.

"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves — that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can't. They tell us that "beauty born of murmuring sound" will pass into human face; but it won't. Or not yet."

"For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in."