All Things New

“The journey of discovery has just begun. In many ways this moment is more dangerous than wartime.” – New Old Libya, National Geographic, Feb. 2013

“Reality is not human goodness, or holiness, or heaven, or hell – it is redemption.” – Oswald Chambers

Most of the characters in my stories begin as a reflection of one aspect of me or someone I know. Then I and the story turn them this way and that, build them up, break them apart, add and delete. There comes a point when their traits coalesce and I solve the Rubik's cube of who they are. That's when they come to life. They become real.

Current events remind me that life does something similar to each of us. I was particularly struck by that truth, recently, while reading about present-day Libya. There are many people who would argue that we have no control concerning the direction of our lives. Choice, they would say, is an illusion. Perhaps they are right. But there can be long stretches of time where the narratives of our lives feel plausible. Day follows night, follows day. Choices are made much as they were made before. Natural consequences ensue. Then –

BAM!

The incomprehensible confronts us, spins us around and drops us in a new universe. We find ourselves in a place so implausible we're tempted to think, this is a dream. Often the shift comes as a result of traumatic circumstances – the death of a loved one, loss of a job, divorce, disease, war – something particularly painful or shocking that shatters our world and demands that we reexamine our expectations and beliefs about who we thought we were.

After decades of a Qaddafi reign that was “one of orchestrated chaos,” most Libyans appear to understand that they must seek a different path. A police chief: We can’t do mass punishments the way Qaddafi did. We must act according to law. This is what we’re trying to achieve in a new Libya. A female surgeon: The Libyan women are very strong, very clever. We’re managing… But she goes on to confess a common sentiment, I’m worried about everything – which leads to a common thought – "How does a nation go about cleansing its soul?"

Or for that matter, how do any of us abide in the ever changing nature of existence without losing ourselves? Abide in Me, Jesus said, and also, anyone who makes it their object to keep their own life safe, will lose it; but whoever loses his life will preserve it. When confronted with the tectonic shifts of life, we have two choices: We can retreat into the madness of denial (like Qaddafi) ever attempting to remold this new world into a replica of the old. Or, pilgrim-like, we can determine to trust and to hope one more time and step forward.

Is this what God meant when He said, See, I make all things new? Somehow, we imagined something different, didn’t we? Which is how we know that this is His imagination at work and not ours.

Each time I embrace new circumstances in which God has placed me, I lose some of the narrative of my future self that seemed so inevitable when I was a child. Letting go of those previous drafts of me starts with grief and ends in freedom . Each time I take that step, I feel less tethered to this world and more deeply grounded in the reality of redemption. And isn’t that the point? This world, this body, this you, this me – is not our home.

There will come a day when He will bring us to our end and we will step into eternity. Finally! To feel the joy of every shattered and remade piece coalesce and settle into perfect place. We will see Him face-to-face, fall into His arms, and know who we are. We will become real.

Read the whole article, New Old Libya, Draper and Steinmetz, National Geographic, February 2013 - and pray for the Libyan people and so many others in Africa and the Middle East who are in a state of transition, a state in which God can do miraculous, transformational things. A note about the amazing photo of a Libyan woman that I shamelessly pirated off the internet. I could find no information about attribution or rights for this photo. If you own the rights to this picture, I will happily remove it at your request, or better yet, provide attribution.

Just Push This Button

       “His mother also told him how the chiming of that old bell had once filled her heart with joy and confidence, and that in the midst of the sweet tones her child had been given to her. And the boy gazed on the large, old bell with the deepest interest. He bowed his head over it and kissed it, old, thrown away, and cracked as it was, and standing there amidst the grass and nettles. The boy never forgot what his mother told him, and the tones of the old bell reverberated in his heart…” from The Old Church Bell, Hans Christian Andersen, 1861

Checking the Facebook page the other morning, I noticed my buddy was on. Like me, she’s a late comer to Facebook. In fact, she’s still learning the ropes. I pull up the chat page – “Hi!” I type. No response…. aaaand….no response.

My eye strays to the latest issue of The Economist sitting on my desk. The magazine is open to a small article about Christian churches in Jerusalem making the move from human-powered bells calling the faithful, to mechanical bells.

Rarely in this fractious holy city do clerics cede rights for which they used to wage holy wars. But from the Abbey of the Dormition to Jesus’s resting place in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the bell-ringers of Jerusalem are abandoning their ropes after a century and a half, and installing automated timers instead.

The computer emits a lilting, gurgle-ring. It’s my buddy. “Hey!” she’s typed. “I had to ask my son what to do because I’ve never chatted on FB before.”

We type back and forth about what they’ve been up to the last few days, how she just took her son to see the Hobbit at the IMAX theatre and what they thought. “It was amazing,” she says. “I’ve never read the book, but I really liked the movie.”

“Confession time,” I respond. “I've never made it through the book either.”

“No way!”

“Way.”

My eye strays back to the Economist article.

…times and technology change. The churches now compete for the latest mod cons, including manpower-saving bells that chime at the touch of a button. “The old way was kind of a hassle,” sighs Athanasius Macora, a Franciscan friar whose church was the city’s first to automate its bells. “You had to be there on time.”

After a few minutes, the computer gurgles again  (I’m sure she’s doing other things, too). “So, this is kind of fun.”

“Yeah,” I type. “I have friends...they spend a lot of time online, and they always stop by and say hi when I get on. It’s kind of the equivalent of chatting over the fence while you’re hanging out the laundry.”

…With their bells on autopilot, the churches can compete with the mosques [who record and broadcast their calls to prayer] and the air-siren that Israelis use to call in the Sabbath.

“I can see that,” she types. “I miss being there with you, though, face to face. It’s not really the same.”

Aesthetes say they can hear a difference between traditional bell-ringing and today’s phoney jingling bells.

“Me too, G,” I smile a smile she can’t see. “I miss you, too.”

Blue Like Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

“The Lord appeared to me from afar, saying, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.’”

From the motion picture Blue Like Jazz

This is the third time I have tried to write a blog about a very popular idea making the rounds in Christian circles. You can find it in books like Red Letter Revolution: What If Jesus Really Meant What He Said? and Blue Like Jazz, and hear it preached vociferously from lots of pulpits like it was, in fact, revolutionary. Actually, it’s not a new idea, but one that comes around every twenty or thirty years. The last time I remember it gaining this kind of traction was about thirty years ago, the last time Tony Campolo (co-author of Red Letter Revolution) was making the rounds with a previous generation and Ron Sider, the author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.

The idea is this: People find Christ and Christianity unattractive because Christians are so mean, and if we were more kind and less hypocritical, people would like us and they would like God.

I was all grumbly after my second aborted attempt at this subject. “Really,” my husband suggested gently, “it wouldn’t hurt if Christians were nicer.” Aaargh! “But it isn’t about niceness,” I insisted. He shrugged. “Just sayin’,” says he, “it wouldn’t hurt.” Really, that’s hard to argue with. Most of the Christians I know are extremely kind, generous, hospitable, open-minded, loving, and all those good things. But there are many people in the world, and throughout history, who have had an opposite experience to mine. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt for more of us to be nicer – of course it wouldn’t.

A day later came this verse from Jeremiah (31:3): “I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.” BAM! I don’t even know where I saw it – in a card, a devotional, Facebook? All I know is I said, “It isn’t about kindness.” Then there was God, saying kindness is exactly what it’s about.

So yes, Christians should be kind, because we are God’s children and being kind reflects His character. In fact, I would go so far as to say if we find ourselves being consistently unkind, we need to re-examine whether or not we really believe what we say we believe. But we cannot, for one moment, entertain the notion that our kindness will save people, or change the essential truths of their existence, or even draw them to Christ. Your kindness may draw people to you, it may make them think you are a different kind of Christian than they have met before. But this isn’t even close to giving people what they need, and even if it was, as we used to say on the playground, “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

No matter how kind, how generous, how open-minded, how cool or progressive or poverty-commune-living or hard-liquor-sipping or coffee-in-church-drinkin’ we may be; no matter how high that “non-hypocritical Christian” pedestal is that people may place us on – unlike God, we cannot maintain it. Inevitably, we will topple from the pedestal, and the fall will be great. At that point, it will have been better if they had never believed we were kind at all.

It isn’t our job to shore up Christianity’s reputation. Our job is to be children of God, to never forget what He has done for us, and sometimes, His grace will spill over from us to others. What has He done? How did He “draw us with his lovingkindess?” Jesus told us in John 12:32, “And I, if I am lifted up…will draw all peoples to Myself.” This is kindness: that God wrapped himself in fragile flesh and became the only person on the planet who, unlike the rest of us, didn’t have it comin’. Then, He willingly took on death to save us from every evil thing that we are. Through His birth, death, and resurrection, He did the only really kind thing anyone on this planet has ever done.

If we want to show people kindness, we will show them Christmas. We will show them Christ.

"Some Are Born..."

Three-year-old Jacob stomps into the bathroom like a toothbrush wielding sumo.

His sing-song opera…“I am the youngest. You are the oldest.

But I am the STRONGEST! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

The older brother, no Esau, but a Joseph, pats him on his flaxen head,

And calmly douses his outstretched weapon with toothpaste.

These days, I’m attempting to make the psychological shift from nurturer of children to parent of nearly grown men. I wouldn’t for a million dollars exchange today for yesterday – but I can’t help but reminisce. I wrote the poem above when my sons were toddlers and, obviously, I’m more a prose girl. But sometimes I get the urge to wax poetic, and this silly poem is one of my favorites. It’s a snap shot of a moment in time, but it speaks volumes about the personalities of my two sons and their brother relationship.

Watching my sons brings other brother pairs to mind – my father and his younger brother, Wilbur and Orville Wright, and of course, Jacob and Esau. Each of my sons has respected the other’s strengths, and put up with each other’s annoying qualities, in a mostly good-natured manner over the years– this has been a gift. The interaction of my sons has also led me to conclude that the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau is as much, and possibly more, about the older brother as it is about the younger.

I ruminate about being an eldest, not through experience, but through observation. I am neither the youngest nor the oldest – I’m not even the middle. I am third of four siblings. I am the watcher, the chronicler of the family I was born into.

I am also the mother of an eldest, and the close friend, sister, daughter, and wife of eldest children, and I know this: it is not easy to be an eldest. Your person, the idea of you, your very existence, is imbued and burdened with the hopes, dreams, and expectations of those around you from the day you are born. It would be impossible not to disappoint at some juncture, but you are never free of it – that sense of being responsible, the natural burdens of authority and leadership. There are perks, to be sure, but they come with strings. You will never be free (like a third) or pampered like a youngest or an only child (circumstances of birth that come with their own challenges). Being the eldest sibling is the original, “What have you done for us lately?” job.

I completely understand Esau wanting to be free of the responsibilities of the eldest, and that understanding has made me come to admire the eldests in my life that much more. These eldests that I love could have walked away, sold their birthrights. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t enter their minds.

As I think about it, I remember that each of them has had their older sibling prodigal moments (“Dad, why do you let them get way with that? When I think about the thrashing I would have received had I…”) but these indignant moments tend to be brief. I have watched them take the lead in helping aging parents, keep the family connected by both encouraging and speaking the truth in love, always ready to step in when there is a need or challenge that the rest of us feel inadequate to face, advise and project confidence that reassures us about continuing on. Far from selling their birthright, they often refuse even the slightest offer of help – assistance that some might say only pride keeps them from accepting. It as if they were also born with some innate sense that this role is theirs to fulfill and no one else’s, so they err on the side of sole responsibility. By the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. (I Cor. 15:10) This isn’t pride. It is obedience.

What of the rest of us? The younger, the middle…the third. Can we learn something about our own calling by watching them? Another of their responsibilities, that, teaching by example. God gives us the choice to be or not to be what He created us to be. We’re free to walk away. He doesn’t need us to help Him fulfill His purposes. But running away tends to end in a pigpen, or the belly of a whale, or grieving at a birthright cheaply sold. My eldests have taught me it is good, no matter how rough the path, to follow the one God has placed before us, refusing to be distracted by smoother seeming ways. We look to Him at each twist and turn and say, “Where next?” People are blessed by that action, both the person who acts, and those they travel with, as well.

And This We Know

Adam and Eve and their story have come to my mind often during this past election season. In the third chapter of Genesis, Adam and Eve rebelled against their Maker. The next thing they did was try to justify their positions. The fact that their actions were in direct contradiction to God’s words didn’t even come up. The point seemed to be, for Adam and Eve, that what they had done seemed the most reasonable course of action given the circumstances, and why couldn't God understand that?

Whether you believe Genesis is history or myth, it has survived because it points to the root of so many of humanity's struggles. This tendency to justify our position in an argument or controversy, rather than listen and truly examine our own assumptions, motives, and actions, is a bad habit we can't seem to shake. As far as I can tell (and this most recent election season was a good bellwether) this tendency toward self-justification is as rampant in the Church today as it is outside of it.

I know I am just as guilty of this error as the next believer, but God’s been working on my heart in this regard. As far as I know, nowhere in scripture do Christ or the apostles exhort us to defend our political or moral positions to the death. Why it took me so long to notice this, I really don’t know, but I am sure it has its root in our fallen human tendency toward self-justification. We are called to defend and guard the gospel – to encourage each other to remember and pass on the pure and unammended good news we were given.

“Now I make known to you the gospel that I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (I Cor. 15:3-5 NASB, emphasis mine)

"Guard what has been entrusted to you." (I Tim. 6:20 NASB)

However, guarding the gospel does not mean endlessly justifying our interpretation of how it should be lived out. It does not mean reacting in anger and condemning people who don’t buy it. Paul was clear that guarding the gospel simply meant passing on the same news that Christ gave to the apostles, and that they passed on to the early church. That’s it. I find nothing in scripture that suggests we are called to defend or justify our church’s doctrine, our political positions, or our lifestyle choices.

There is nothing wrong with having strong views and opinions, any thinking person does. I enjoy a good discussion as much as the next girl. But if our discussions become lines in the sand that separate  us from each other, that fracture relationships rather than exhort, encourage, heal, and draw people to Christ, something is wrong.

Think about some two sentence summaries of New Testament books of the Bible. Here are a few to get you started - Corinthians: God is the judge, you are called to love - love God and love each other. Some ways you can love each other are: sacrificially caring for those who are poorer and weaker than you, watching what you say, and passing on the same gospel message I gave you. James: Watch what you say, help each other remember the gospel, and take care of the poor and the weak among you. If you believe what you say, your life will show it. Romans: This isn't about what you're doing, it's about what God's doing in you. Oh, and watch what you say and take care of those poorer and weaker than you.

Picture what it would be like if the most important point we wanted to make in any discussion was the hope of the gospel message. It wouldn’t take long for us to explain what is important to us, and after that, what would we be doing? Listening, and I have found that to be important for two reasons:

First, the odds are, no matter how right or mature we think we are, some of our opinions and actions and yes, even some of our interpretations of scripture, are wrong. One of God’s best ways to show us where we are in error is through the encouragement, exhortation, and correction we receive from other people. They get the opportunity to speak truth to us in love. We have the opportunity to admit we are not perfect.  In turn, our brothers and sisters share the mercy of Christ with us as they forgive us for our error. Done right, this is a beautiful, miraculous, relationship enhancing cycle. It could be argued that, after sharing the gospel and helping the poor, learning this cycle is the primary role of church communities in the lives of believers.

Second, it is impossible to know someone that we do not listen to. It is very hard to understand how to love another person without knowing them. We are called to love our fellow believers and the world the way that Christ loved. We cannot love others if we spend the majority of our time talking rather than intentionally listening - listening in order to understand, not in order to defend our positions.

I have traced my own issues with self-justification to a lack of trust in the promise of Romans 8:28. “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” And we know… Do we really? Do we really trust that God is doing exactly the work that He has promised in our lives, the lives of our fellow believers, and in the world He created and loves? If we really believe this, we will not be afraid - and we won't be afraid to listen.

Keep Climbing

“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us: we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”

Photo by Gina Pearson

Quick! What does this C.S. Lewis quote have to do with Polish mountaineers? In my opinion, one of the best outdoor articles ever written appeared in National Geographic a few years ago, and I’ve never been able to shake it (Himalaya Winter Climb, Mark Jenkins, 2008). During this season when temperatures start to plunge, it comes back to me. I remembered why when a friend forwarded this Lewis quote a few days ago. Outdoor enthusiasts regularly quote this article, however, I guess I saw it in a little different light than most others.

There was a group of Cold War-era Polish mountaineers who believed they were made to summit tall mountains. Stuck behind the Iron Curtain and cut off from all the highest peaks, the Poles began climbing in the dead of winter, when their mountains were at their coldest and stormiest. Winter mountaineering became identified with Polish climbers. As one of their early heroes would say, “Tell me what you have done…in winter, and I’ll tell you what you are worth.” Other climbers labeled them “Ice Warriors.”

When the Iron Curtain started to “crack” in the 1970s, it opened up new opportunities for these, by now, famous climbers. They convinced the Nepalese government to issue them the first ever winter permit to climb Everest.  Everyone thought they were crazy, suicidal, but “by character, by desire, and by experience, Polish mountaineers were inured to cold, wind, darkness and danger.”

In February of 1980, the Poles summitted Everest, the first winter ascent of an 8,000-meter peak. By the time I read about them, about half the 8,000 plus meter peaks in Asia had been summitted in winter by the Poles. But the original climbers were all in their fifties and sixties – grandparents – and so they sent out a challenge to the younger Polish climber jocks who had all taken up the easier summer climbing. Conquer the remaining six peaks in a winter climb and “you may count on us,” the older climbers said. “You may count on our help, our experience, our active participation. The choice is yours.”

Some of the younger climbers took up the challenge.  The older, more experienced winter climbers would go ahead of the younger ones.  They would scale the ice cliffs, secure the pitons, run the ropes, create the base camps – and the younger ones would follow.  Asked why they would put their aging bodies through that kind of torture, the most experienced member of the old guard said he wanted to “infect” a new generation of Polish climbers with “the joy of positive suffering – because if something is easy, you will not enjoy it, really.”

Back to Lewis's quote - here we have the Master Climber ahead of us. He’s given us the challenge of summitting, we have taken it up. He goes before us, scales the dangers, drives in the footholds, secures the guidelines, and asks us to follow. The avalanches, the rocks that fall, and the crushed bodies happen because there is sin in the world, yes. But He brought us to this particular mountain...in the middle of winter. He knew what we would face here. He knew we would be pushed to the brink of endurance, and He knew it would hurt. What we really want to know is this: Why make summitting so difficult? Why not the easy climb?

I don’t know the answer to that, but maybe this is part of it – He intends to infect our natures with the joy of positive suffering. If our goal is to summit, we need to live the truth that nothing truly good is easily accomplished - and what God intends to complete in us is nothing less than true goodness.

We are winter climbers who have never summitted. But the Master Climber tells us it’s worth it, we won’t regret it, we were made for this, and he promises we’ll make it. He’s been there, so we trust Him. We dig in, grab on, fix our gaze on his dim shape ahead in the snowy twilight – and keep climbing.

Zukunftsangst

We can get bogged down in the what-ifs, yet here in the Intermountain West, Fall has come anyway. The stifling haze from fires that ringed our valley all summer long has given way to the alpine lake blue of a cloudless autumn sky. Cold nights and warm days have left us canopied and covered in stained-glass colors. The long shadows mean rest for the land, and invite us to stop and savor the moment as well. I don’t pretend to know what the future holds for us, but I do know that days like these are gifts. If we drink them in and fill ourselves to overflowing with their beauty and wonder, they can sustain us.

I was reminded of this recently in an unlikely place. From the sublime to the ridiculous? Perhaps. I am not one to claim that everything I know I learned from my dog, but inspiration can come in small and surprising packages, especially those that embody unwavering devotion, easy forgiveness, and the joy of the moment.

He has found the perfect spot. The floor is freshly cleaned and has been gently heated these two hours since sunrise. He began here by staring, quivering and intent, through glass doors at the tall grass just beyond the strip of lawn. There are rabbits there. After an hour or so of no rodent encroachment, he relaxed into a sphinxlike pose. After another thirty minutes, all safe, he rolled onto his side. The white fur on his belly is radiant while his sleek flank shimmers blue, absorbing the light. Even his back, which would normally rest in cold shadow, is heated by the reflected warmth from the chair behind him. Last, but most important, his boy is near. He can hear him breathe. This is complete relaxation, all his good things coming together, and is rare for a hound like him.

He is not aware yet of the one thing that could disturb his rest. The upholstered chair he is snuggled against is not firm. It swivels.

The boy reading in the chair softly closes his book, but a finger holds his place. He looks to the clock on the wall and sighs. The chair moves to the left ever so slightly. The dog raises his head, blinking drowsily in the morning light. The muscles in his tiny body tense. Is this the end? The boy moves his head from side to side, yawns, stretches his legs and crosses them. Resettling, he opens the book, but the dog remains alert.

Does the chance that the chair might swivel outweigh the comfort of warmth? Does the realization that it will end destroy the joy of a perfect moment? His ears twitch, as if someone is whispering the answer. Slowly, his muscles relax and appear to melt in the pool of sunlight. His small head flops to the floor with a soft thud. His eyes close. Bliss.