And after the storm,
I run and run as the rains come
And I look up, I look up,
on my knees and out of luck,
I look up.
Night has always pushed up day
You must know life to see decay
But I won't rot, I won't rot
Not this mind and not this heart,
I won't rot.
And I took you by the hand
And we stood tall,
And remembered our own land,
What we lived for.
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.
And now I cling to what I knew
I saw exactly what was true
But oh no more.
That's why I hold,
That's why I hold with all I have.
That's why I hold.
I will die alone and be left there.
Well I guess I'll just go home,
Oh God knows where.
Because death is just so full and mine so small.
Well I'm scared of what's behind and what's before.
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.
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
- "After the Storm," Mumford & Sons
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
"Now We Are Six"
When I was one,
I had just begun.
I had just begun.
When I was two,
I was nearly new.
When I was three,
I was hardly me.
When I was four,
I was not much more.
When I was five,
I was just alive.
But now I am six,
I'm as clever as clever.
So I think I'll be six
now and forever.
-- A. A. Milne
A poem from a book of my childhood. Especially pertinent these days.
Desire, cont.
Per the audience's request, I want to share with you what I offered our group during our sharing time this past weekend. It is a beautiful excerpt from an essay in The Spirit of Food; this particular essay, written by Denise Frame Harlan, has been extremely poignant in my reading of this book so far. The entire essay is gorgeous, like a refreshing summer rain in North Carolina, but I only read a couple of paragraphs. I want to share them with you.
Where I begin, the author is describing her experience of sitting in a lecture in college.
He pulled out a stained yellow copy of Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb, opened the book, settled his glasses on his nose, and began to read.
"For all its greatness," Capon says, "the created order cries out for further greatness still. The most splendid dinner, the most exquisite food, the most gratifying company, arouse more appetites than they satisfy. They do not slake man's thirst for being; they whet it beyond all bounds."
I listened, stunned. Are Christians supposed to have appetites and thirst? To whet is to sharpen - are we to sharpen our appetites for the things of earth? The professor's face flushed and flushed again, and tears streamed from his eyes as he read about "The Inconsolable Heartburn...by which the heart looks out astonished at the world and in its loving, wakes and breaks at once." This heartburn, Capon says, this sadness for what is not yet here is ultimately a longing for God's final feast, the supper of the Lamb, when the Host of Creation will set all things right and will do so more beautifully than we can imagine.
The created order cries out - I knew that from Romans. Creation groans for further greatness still. Greatness in the kitchen? Greatness as a supper?
I knew intellectually that God was not about souls but about all things, just as I'd memorized from the book of Colossians - above all things, working through all things. But literally all things? Less than ideal things? Gritty things? Risky things? Beautiful, sensual things?
As if it were a near-death experience, my life flashed before me while the balding professor read scenes of wild blueberries eaten on a sunny mountainside, of riding a bicycle with hands raised to the sky, of watermelon rind pickles eaten at Thanksgiving, and of fingers tipped with green olives. I remembered my first taste of Communion wine at midnight Mass in the Colorado Rockies, my favorite sugar cream pie, and my grandmother's homemade noodles with chicken.
I glanced to my side to see my classmates as astonished as me by the professor weeping for joy over onions and flour, sausages and cigars, over a God who lavishes the whole universe with his affection, a God who holds us all in a state of dearness. The pen fell from my hand without my notice. I was more openhearted in that moment than I had ever been.
I'd never known what to do with all the love in my heart for this beautiful mess of a world. All this time, I'd be trying to temper and tame my passion for mountains and tea and road trips and cheesecake and people. I'd known God my whole life, had known Christ for a decade, and had focused on Jesus' suffering and sacrifice. I'd been afraid to love anything too much for fear that I'd disappoint God and prove myself too worldly, too attached to the everyday stuff of creation that would hinder my race toward heaven and the life hereafter. I'd been afraid, and I'd held my heart back. Suddenly it occurred to me that this fear, this withholding, might be sin. Maybe I'd had everything all wrong.
A man read a cookbook, and I met God again, as if I'd never met God at all, as if all my worship had been an attempt to tame a gorgeous world that did not need taming, but adoration.
As he closed the reading, the professor apologized and pulled out a handkerchief, leaving me thinking of Moses and his need for a veil after his meeting with God on Mt. Sinai. I ran to a bookstore and bought the book.
Needless to say, this passage as provoked much in my heart. I think it provoked the friends I was able to read it to as well. What a gift - to hear a message that is so different than the stifling, restrictive, choking ideas I've had of what it means to be a Christian. To lose everything, to lose yourself, to lose your love and desire and idiosyncrasies to a faith that wants robots. While I hear that, and internalize it, compounded over years and years of my sponge-like phase of adolescence, doing my homework really helps. I've not been able to get into Scripture much yet; it's still hard for me to even pick up the book, to hold it and know what it used to mean for me. But these new voices in m life are beacons of hope; they're lighthouses in the distance while I'm still out on the dark, ominous ocean of skepticism, doubt, anger, and fear.
One woman approached me after our sharing time and told me my voice should be on audiobooks (i.e. books on tape). If nothing else, that statement alone made my sharing completely worth it - books on tape, my dream!!
Where I begin, the author is describing her experience of sitting in a lecture in college.
He pulled out a stained yellow copy of Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb, opened the book, settled his glasses on his nose, and began to read.
"For all its greatness," Capon says, "the created order cries out for further greatness still. The most splendid dinner, the most exquisite food, the most gratifying company, arouse more appetites than they satisfy. They do not slake man's thirst for being; they whet it beyond all bounds."
I listened, stunned. Are Christians supposed to have appetites and thirst? To whet is to sharpen - are we to sharpen our appetites for the things of earth? The professor's face flushed and flushed again, and tears streamed from his eyes as he read about "The Inconsolable Heartburn...by which the heart looks out astonished at the world and in its loving, wakes and breaks at once." This heartburn, Capon says, this sadness for what is not yet here is ultimately a longing for God's final feast, the supper of the Lamb, when the Host of Creation will set all things right and will do so more beautifully than we can imagine.
The created order cries out - I knew that from Romans. Creation groans for further greatness still. Greatness in the kitchen? Greatness as a supper?
I knew intellectually that God was not about souls but about all things, just as I'd memorized from the book of Colossians - above all things, working through all things. But literally all things? Less than ideal things? Gritty things? Risky things? Beautiful, sensual things?
As if it were a near-death experience, my life flashed before me while the balding professor read scenes of wild blueberries eaten on a sunny mountainside, of riding a bicycle with hands raised to the sky, of watermelon rind pickles eaten at Thanksgiving, and of fingers tipped with green olives. I remembered my first taste of Communion wine at midnight Mass in the Colorado Rockies, my favorite sugar cream pie, and my grandmother's homemade noodles with chicken.
I glanced to my side to see my classmates as astonished as me by the professor weeping for joy over onions and flour, sausages and cigars, over a God who lavishes the whole universe with his affection, a God who holds us all in a state of dearness. The pen fell from my hand without my notice. I was more openhearted in that moment than I had ever been.
I'd never known what to do with all the love in my heart for this beautiful mess of a world. All this time, I'd be trying to temper and tame my passion for mountains and tea and road trips and cheesecake and people. I'd known God my whole life, had known Christ for a decade, and had focused on Jesus' suffering and sacrifice. I'd been afraid to love anything too much for fear that I'd disappoint God and prove myself too worldly, too attached to the everyday stuff of creation that would hinder my race toward heaven and the life hereafter. I'd been afraid, and I'd held my heart back. Suddenly it occurred to me that this fear, this withholding, might be sin. Maybe I'd had everything all wrong.
A man read a cookbook, and I met God again, as if I'd never met God at all, as if all my worship had been an attempt to tame a gorgeous world that did not need taming, but adoration.
As he closed the reading, the professor apologized and pulled out a handkerchief, leaving me thinking of Moses and his need for a veil after his meeting with God on Mt. Sinai. I ran to a bookstore and bought the book.
Needless to say, this passage as provoked much in my heart. I think it provoked the friends I was able to read it to as well. What a gift - to hear a message that is so different than the stifling, restrictive, choking ideas I've had of what it means to be a Christian. To lose everything, to lose yourself, to lose your love and desire and idiosyncrasies to a faith that wants robots. While I hear that, and internalize it, compounded over years and years of my sponge-like phase of adolescence, doing my homework really helps. I've not been able to get into Scripture much yet; it's still hard for me to even pick up the book, to hold it and know what it used to mean for me. But these new voices in m life are beacons of hope; they're lighthouses in the distance while I'm still out on the dark, ominous ocean of skepticism, doubt, anger, and fear.
One woman approached me after our sharing time and told me my voice should be on audiobooks (i.e. books on tape). If nothing else, that statement alone made my sharing completely worth it - books on tape, my dream!!
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Community
This past weekend on a getaway to the snowy Washington mountains with a group of dear friends, we offered each other a beautiful time of personal sharing; Show and Tell, if you will. Saturday night was our sharing time and it was two and a half hours dedicated to knowing 15 other people in a deeper way through a story, song, poem, or video they shared. I love that. We didn't choose the order in which we shared, it was somewhat assigned; magically enough, the last one to go shared this wonderfully inviting song by Over the Rhine. It's been bouncing along in my brain ever since and unfortunately I can't provide the audio (firstly because blogspot doesn't give me that option and secondly because the album isn't out yet), but I wanted to at least let you taste the lyrics. They are simple, but profoundly warm, entirely true, and deliciously rich.All my favorite people are broken
Believe me, my heart should know
Some prayers are better left unspoken
I just want to hold you and let the rest go
All my friends are part saint and part sinner
We lean on each other, try to rise above
We are not afraid to admit we are all still beginners
We are all late bloomers when it comes to love
All my favorite people are broken
Believe me, my heart should know
Awful believers, skeptical dreamers, step forward
You can stay right here, you don't have to go
Is each wound you've received just a burdensome gift
It gets so hard to left yourself up off the ground
But the poet says we must praise a mutilated world
We're all working the graveyard shift
You might as well sing along
All my favorite people are broken
Believe me, my heart should know
As for your tender heart, this world's going to rip it wide open,
It ain't gonna be pretty, but you're not alone
All my favorite people are broken
Believe me, my heart should know
Awful believers, skeptical dreamers, step forward
You can stay right here, you don't have to go
Thursday, February 3, 2011
I was shone this photo in my class Essential Community yesterday, and was mortified. On the left, you see the latest cover of "US Weekly" with Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, and their new baby. On the right, you see the magazine with a "Family Shield" over the front in a convenience store in Arkansas. Usually, this shield is used for pornography covers or covers with expletives. Is this photo really worthy of an obscenity shield? What are the messages that those customers are getting from this? What about the kids in this small town who are struggling with their sexual identities? When they see something like this, the messages they internalize are ones of condemnation and contempt. They see this and think, "I am alone."
A brief interview from a news source wrote this:
I spoke with Harps Corporate Executive Assistant Marty Yarborough, who told me that every Harps store is equipped with these shields and that they get put up whenever customers complain about the content of a magazine cover. She said the word from the store about this particular cover was that “several” customers had complained, so the shield went up. She also confirmed that these shields are utilized on a store-by-store basis, so the magazine would not have been covered up at any of the other Harps locations, unless customers complained there as well. She also told me that the usage of the shield on this particular cover is “in no way our opinion on this issue.” She quickly added, “we do not have an opinion on this issue.”No matter where you or your family stands on homosexuality, it seems that we could stand to use a few reminder lessons in integrity. Democrat or republican, liberal or conservative, we are called to bring honor and dignity to ourselves and one another - and I believe we can do so, even when our opinions are different! That's the beauty of diversity.
Read more: http://bumpshack.com/2011/01/26/elton-johns-us-magazine-cover-banned-from-arkansas-store/#ixzz1CujA5YLc
I've loved this movie, "Finding Neverland," from the first time I saw it in high school. I cried and cried. There is something about this film that evokes both life and loss; childhood wonder and losing innocence. Not only is it visually stunning, but it is so beautifully moving. It makes me think about how life could be if we were to live more like children - more curious, more fascinated, less certain, less defensive.
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