dead or sleeping

I met I new friend at the common this weekend, as I walked up to the group.

His name was Pete, and he had beef stew all dripping down his white beard, and sunglasses covering his eyes. He was mysterious in his speech, immediately bringing me into a gospel story, and beginning to probe me with questions:

"Jesus said Lazarus was sleeping before he was brought back to life. Do you think he was dead or sleeping?"

Me: "well if he was truly dead, that would mean he was resurrected. If he wasn't, then he was only rescusitated."

-"says who?"

"well, medicine i guess."

-"How do you know there's a difference?"

"Well maybe in the way Jesus meant it, there isn't. But I do believe we'll all be resurrected one day. "

He pointed to thgraphic on my Tshirt. "What's that, one of those rubix cubes? Can you do one in 2 minutes?"

"Not quite that fast I don't think."

He pointed again. "It's just like that puzzle. And we're trying to figure out which side to start with, and how to get the yellows with the yellows and the blues with the blues and the reds with the reds."

Then, referring to the Bible, he remarked, "It's hard when you can't be sure of anything."

Me: "well we can be secure in some things."

"Like what?" He asked, with a marked curiousity that was difficult to distinguish as genuine or feigned.

"We know that Jesus is coming back to fix everything that's broken, including us," I answered.

"And how do you think he's going to do that?"

"By conquering Death."

"Ahhhhh," he said, smiling to himself. "The sleeping kind of death?...or spiritual death?

well, both I suppose, at the same time.

He smiled and said a few more words and then left, as abruptly as he came.


Soon I moved on to get my weekly sermon from Derek. Yet this time he was looking to me for counsel:

"How do I do it, I mean REEEEAALLY live for Him. with EVERYTHING I am? How do I do it?"

I was shocked to hear him asking me this. I consider him to be the authority on faithfulness. The spiritual side of him never seems to shut off. All day long, he asks and seeks and tells, and whispers: God is alive, God is alive.

"I don't know the answer Derek. I know that grace is a big part of it. Just as we can't love others without grace, we can't love Him without grace. We must ask Him to make us desire Him more. Praying for this is a good place to be."

He kept going on: "But how do I really live for Him? there's just so much temptation."

In the distance, behind Derek, a man, tall and lanky with short dark hair, and shadowy eyebrows was meandering accross the common with a stack of pamphlets in his hand. Slunkily drifting from person to person, not saying a word. But reaching out his hand to offer the words on paper: "I was blind but now I see", written in bold and tiny print at the top. People took them un-alarmedly, and kept walking.

What does it mean to love others? what does Grace look like? Grace that's not cheap, or shy, or made of paper? Grace that's alive, in you and me.

What does it mean to live in hope of the resurrection? As we move hesitantly and confused between life and death, do we know- and REALLY live as if we know- that the cycle will one day be transformed?

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. -Philippians 3:10-11

Home

Here are the lyrics to this song, as a few people have requested them:

Home, I see it in the faces of this place,
but in my heart I picture places far away
as I dream of breaking free and setting out
and suddenly I feel so small
I go to speak and no one hears my call
And I wonder if it made a sound at all
I'm a prisoner of silence-
will I ever break the silence?

When I leave here, will the moon
that follows me home
turn and follow me wherever I go?
And when I am gone, will I find
Home, away from home?

Home- these houses and these streets are all I've known,
but I seek a destination all my own
And if I ever make it there,
when I finally get there,
will I make it home?
the birds are flying south and I've been told
that when winter ends, I'll still be feeling cold
Is home where I am running to, or what I'm running from?

When I leave here, will the moon
that follows me home
turn and follow me wherever I go?
And when I am gone, will I find
Home, away from home?

Home, will I ever find another place like you?
And will there always be a home to come back to?
Or will I dwell among the many scattered souls that wander,
searching for a home?

When I leave here, will the moon
that follows me home
turn and follow me wherever I go?
And when I am gone, will I find
Home, away from home?

...

Now I know you sent the moon to follow me home
and you will follow me wherever I go
I'm not alone, cause you're my Home, away from home

It's You who told the moon to follow me home
and I will follow You wherever I go,
cause it's You alone who counts my steps
and calls me Home

From Restless to Restful

Excerpts from Henri Nouwen's Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

Reading about The First Movement: From Loneliness to Solitude

"No friend or lover, no husband or wife, no community or commune will be able to put to rest our deepest cravings for unity and wholeness. And by burdening others with these divine expectations, of which we ourselves are only partially aware, we might inhibit the expression of free friendship and love and evoke instead feelings of inadequacy and weakness. Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other. They ask for gentle fearless space in which we can move to and from each other. As long as our loneliness brings us together with the hope that together we will no longer be alone, we castigate each other with our unfulfilled and unrealistic desires for oneness, inner tranquility and the uninterrupted experience of community.

"It is sad to see how sometimes people suffering from loneliness, often deepened by the lack of affection in their intimate family circle, search for a final solution for their pains and look at a new friend, a new lover, or a new community with Messianic expectations." (30)

"It is easy to see how many marraiges are suffering from this illusion. Often they are started with the hope of a union that can dispel all painful feelings of 'not belonging'..." (33)

"When we do not protect with great care our own inner mystery, we will never be able to form community." (31)

"It is our vocation to prevent the harmful exposure of our inner sanctuary, not only for our own protection but also as a service to our fellow human beings with whom we want to enter into a creative communion." (32)

"The movement from loneliness to solitude... is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit." (34)

Shucks, this is good stuff. Nouwen's words offer so much clarity to my inarticulate attempts to voice what God has been teaching me.

I especially love the last line about restless senses. How I've been plagued my entire life with the ill of restlessness. How we all are- and how so much of what we yearn for is relief from that very feeling. How so much of what composes our day-to-day lives serves as a distraction from it. Even things as divinely purposed as community and play and study-we have twisted these into temporary escapes from our loneliness, and misplaced ends in our pursuit of wholeness.

Just as peace is what we seek in times of unrest, solitude is what heals our restlessness. May we all begin to seek rest-giving solitude with our Creator, the only One with whom we can joyfully share our inner mystery. And only when we do this, when we face our deepest loneliness and turn to the only One who can fix it, will we ever be free of our own miserable restlessness.

Lord help me find rest

bring me to a place of solitude

What will it take? confession- my brokenness, loneliness, emptiness... I am void and thirsty for You. removal of distractions- my business and fruitless activity, my idols and idleness... Come fill, come heal, come purpose. Teach me what it means to be always yet never alone.

A Dark and Stormy Night

"It was a dark and stormy night..." I heard a rhaspy voice say into my ear from behind, as I quickly whipped around. I was taken by surprise when I discovered the narrator to be a street person I did not initially recognize. When he realized he succeeded in getting my attention, he repeated his refrain once again: "It was a dark and stormy night... on SHUTTER ISLAND" It seemed as if he were whispering and yelling at the same time. What did this man want from me? Was he a former author, now wandering the streets with no home and no money, desperate to tell his story?

He was a short, stout, hooded figure with small, piercing blue eyes and a mouth that moved crookedly off the side of his leathery face. I could smell alcohol on his breath as he spoke just inches from my face, intent on making his stare as frightening as the story he wished to relay. His tilted smirk told me that he was more entertained by his telling it than I might have been.

So I bought into it, laughing softly and trying to look curious to hear the rest of the story. But he seemed to be caught on that phrase, repeating it over and over again, each time dragging it out in a different way, or interjecting with "did ya hear?...It was a dark and stormy night!"

Finally he stopped, and moved immediately into a new story, this one based in reality. He told me how as a young man he used to spend the night sleeping under the pews of Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Boston, and how each night he would hear the "crazy man with the keys running around locking all the doors." He told of being kicked out of that church years later when he marched into the sanctuary in mid day, defying the sign that posted the prices for entry: "self-guided tour: $5; guided tour: $7." Walking boldly down the aisle, he was stopped by the cashiers that ran after him.

This wasn't his only scarring experience. At another church accross from the common, there hung a banner over the front steps reading "All are welcome", and below there was a yellow cone in place with a sign that read "No Trespassing", an attempt by local law enforcement to keep the homeless from camping out on those steps at night.

Something should seem wrong about that...

And that's not even the worst. On one occasion he was at a Christmas service at another traditional church, listening to the sound of Christmas hymns rising from the great organ up front. He hollared from his seat, a few rows back "How about playing 'O Little Town of Bethlehem?'" When he didn't get a response, he walked up the aisle to find no one behind the organ. "it was a ghost organ" he claimed (I'm not sure if those actually exist but that's besides the point). And as he walked back to his seat, he was stopped by a woman who worked at the church. "We can't have you yelling in the sanctuary," she told him as she then moved to escort him out the door. "How dare you!" he exclaimed to her. "You wouldn't know Jesus if you tripped over him!" his voice echoed in the vast cathedral as he walked out.

"So why are the doors locked?" He asked me now, filled with a hint of rising anxt. And suddenly I recalled where I had seen him before. I knew why he looked familiar, and why I smelled alchohol on his breath. This was the same man who approached our group several months ago in a drunken rage about how the Church is full of a bunch of phoneys (see blog Jan 19). It was also the same man I met at the very beginning of the year, on a rainy day that forced us to gather on the shelter of the church steps mentioned above, where he once told me these same stories. His stories awakened my memory and reminded me of the gloomy predicament our church is still in the midst of. So why are the doors still locked? And how will we unlock them?

"They say He'll come like a thief in the night," he said, "knocking on all of the doors- knock...knock...knock. So that's what I'm gonna do, I'll go around like a thief in the night, just knocking. But no one will ever be there to open those doors, except of course the crazy man with the keys running around locking them all."

Slowly his story faded back into the haunting prose it began with. There he went again: "It was a dark and stormy night... on SHUTTER ISLAND." His eyebrows raised at the end of each reprise. "Have you ever been to Shutter Island?"

When I got back, I decided I should do some research on this "Shutter Island" he kept referring to. I found out it was a novel written by Dennis Lehane and published in 2003. The storyline focuses on a character named Teddy who is sent with a partner to Shutter Island to avenge the death of his wife and find to the murderess who supposedly escaped from a mental institution there. In the end however, he learns that he himself was the murderer and the island was a false reality under surveillance of a warden who was holding him there and planning to give him a lobotomy. (rough/incomplete summary).

I did some more research:
"The rocky isle from which Lehane takes his title is supposedly one of four located immediately outside the busy harbor of Boston, Massachusetts... In Shutter Island, what should be nourishing is not--and what appears to be reality is not, either. This is a book replete with deceptions... Like the mental patients being treated on Shutter Island, this story veers sharply from reality, offering truth without the opportunity for healing." [Anthony Rainone, Island of No Return]

Hmm...shutter island, eh? Well although it's a great deal spookier, and a bit far-fetched, I can see some sort of parallel with our Church- at least the bit about "offering truth without the opportunity for healing".

I asked Kennie (the man I've been talking about) if he still had faith in spite of the problems he's seen in the Church. His answer shocked me when he said "No, I'm done with all that. I tried it. The way I see it, I don't owe anybody anything- not the big guy above or the man below. Nope, I'm done."

Despite my feeble attempt to convince him that God is much different than how we portray Him, I don't know if Kennie left the common that day with a changed heart. All I could do was pray that the Christ he may have seen in me would look different than the one he'd seen in the stained-glass windows. The Church to him had been a place of propogated, stubborn, lifeless "truth", that slammed the doors at the sight of his homelessness and alcoholism. It had never been a place that welcomed him in to be healed.

At one point in the story of Shutter Island, Teddy reflects on the love he had for his late wife, before any of the mess ever happened:

Teddy had leaned into the cab and spoken to her in whispers and what they talked about, even now, he couldn't bear to recount even to himself. Because it was pure. It was the purest he'd ever felt.

He thought: so this is what it feels like to love. No logic to it--he barely knew her. But there it was just the same. He'd just met the woman he'd known, somehow since before he was born. The measure of every dream he'd never dared indulge.

When will we wake up from this false reality, and return from our own "Shutter Island"? When will let the truth of Christ break open our doors, and His love bring us back to life? We go to church claiming we want to meet with Him, but I wonder if we would we say the same if we found he was a smelly homeless man (which he was, actually). Would we even know Him if we tripped over Him, perhaps as we're walking up the steps of our own church?

...I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. 2Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. 3Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. 4Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. 5He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. 6He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches...

7These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. 8I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut...

20Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. [Revelation 3]

*Fun fact: Part of this passage was highlighted in a Bible that was placed by someone in the door handle of one of the doors to our chapel recently. At the time, the door was lying on the chapel steps, after being blown off by a violent wind storm that hit our campus several nights ago.

the God who cries

When's the last time you cried? I mean really just drenched someone's sleeve? Lost all sense of emotional restraint and let the brokenness of your life leak out of your eyes and nose as if there wasn't room for it in your body anymore? A time you unashamedly showed someone your snot-faced, puffy-eyed humanity?

For some of you the answer might be recently. For others is might be ages and ages ago. Or if you're like me, you would doubtfully own up to ever having a time like that. But we've all had moments- whether we're prideful non-cryers, closet blubberers or over-emotional geysers- when we've come face to face with the pain we carry.

Now imagine bearing the brokenness of every creature on this earth, all at once. Imagine experiencing, in the same capacity and intimacy, the fullness of all emotional turmoil.

Is that not the task the God of Compassion faces each day? Does not He, who sees all, knows all, and feels all, undertake to lament human suffering in it's entirety?

But how does He let it out? Why do we not see tears pouring out of heaven, like a flood from the skies?

Because so great is His compassion that tears cannot contain its full expression. So great is His heartbreak that His broken heart became flesh- the very flesh pinned to wood, with tears and blood trickling down.

..."Break my heart for what breaks yours...everything I am for your Kingdom's cause."

Do we mean these words when we sing them in church? Are we really prepared to lament with Him for a world that's been groaning in agony ever since the birth of sin? Are we willing to make those groanings our own, even if that may mean suffering, and perhaps crying?

After all, "Jesus wept."And it wasn't out of self pity either. It was for the death of the one he loved. And does not He- He who calls us each beloved- mourn over our own decaying world, that He longs to restore to life, if only we will beleive? (read John 11)

I think compassion cannot be truly expressed without some tears once in a while. But let me qualify this:

1. Compassion is not merely spiritual. Sympathy and pity are the progressive response.

2. Nor is compassion tear-deep. Tears may be the flowering of if, but not it's roots. Rather than beginning as an emotional response to the hurt of another, compassion begins with a deep spiritual concern for their predicament- rooted, of course in Love. (This is something we must ask God for, as only He enables us to love).

3. The emotions arising from true compassion are not be paralyzing, but mobilizing. Our lament is rooted in Hope. It prompts us to actively bring about the healing and restoration we trust will one day be complete. Therefore, cry if you must, but don't let a pouty face keep you from celebrating the good news!

We are the clumsy jugglers of deep pain, and even deeper Joy.

...

When we realize the Compassion of God, we can stop wondering why He lets "bad things happen" in our world. We can begin to see the God that's not standing passively off in the distance, but the God that entered into human suffering, and never left. The God who's suffering and grieving and lamenting with us as He waits for us to join in his Relief effort. For poverty and misery are our own inventions, and yet God subjected himself to them, in order that we might submit to His inventions: love, joy, and peace to name a few.

When will we admit "it's not God who doesn't care; it's us"?

May we grow to care the way He does, by offering not just our souls to Him, but our hearts as well.

Because if we refuse to let our hearts be broken, they'll never be redeemed.


Come trickle down and save the world
two hands that I can't see
come breathe, come breathe,
come breathe on me.
Split-rib water, blood and bone
come now, come Calvary
come breathe, come breathe on me.

Come freedom come.
Come freedom come.
Come Freedom, come. [Jennifer Knapp]

"The words of the Prophets are written on the subway walls..."

Today during my time in Boston one of my favorite homeless friends held me captive to his conversation for a long while once again. This man is a breed of his own.

Let me just describe him to you, so that in case you are to pass him on the street one day you'll know to watch out (and believe me you'll want to watch out, I'll tell you why in a minute)...

Derek is a large, tall man of Jamaican heritage. He has lightly pigmented skin, a plump belly, and a balding head with two tufts of wiry greyish curls on either side of it. If you're brave enough to make eye contact with him, you'll meet two big friendly brown eyes peering out from heavy eyelids. If you catch him with his mouth open you'll spot about three teeth, one of which protrudes from the very front of his upper gum, causing him to stumble over it as he speaks, thus spraying you with a few gratuitous specks of saliva while the rest dribbles down to his whiskered chin. You'll find him wearing a green coat (well, originally green), complete with greasy splotches of who-knows-what and giant stuffed pockets for who knows what else, and always unzipped to reveal several layers of old sweaters- some of them inside out and backwards- beneath. On his feet you'll notice oversized rubber boots- unlaced of course, only to make them appear bigger. If his hands are exposed you'll have a hard time ignoring the long, brittle finger and thumbnails that most likely haven't been purposefully clipped within the past decade. You'll see him dragging along an old backpack (although he never wears it as such), that remains open, with crinkled papers and used coffee cups and bagels-wrapped-in-napkins spilling out from inside of it. His most distinguishable accessory, however, is a pair of outdated headphones, plugged into some kind of bulky walkman device and perpetually adhered to his ancient ears (he'll usually remove one ear to talk to you, or occasionally let them hang around his neck, still emitting a quiet buzz).

Yet contrary to what you might think based on his quasi-grotesque appearance, he does not possess a grotesque attitude. Nor does he have a potential for violence or crime or intoxicated frenzy like some of his street mates. Believe it or not, this man is a preacher. He speaks the Word of God day in and day out to anyone who engages him in conversation. The headphones that are always on his ears are playing sermons and bible readings, and the notebook in his backpack is a journal of his thoughts on life in Christ.

If it turns out there are in fact modern day prophets, I would bet my comfy life that Derek is one of them. Every Saturday I get my dose of uninterrupted words of encouragement, scripture, prayer, challenge, exhortation, and reassurance.

But don't let me go without saying, these are not always easy to listen to. When I say uninterrupted, I should say ceaseless. I don't think Derek has the same perception of time that I do. When he engages one or a group of us at our normal gathering spot by the commons, rarely does one escape in under 20 minutes.

In order to pull a getaway, you literally have to interject during one of the brief pauses between discourses to tell him frankly that you have somewhere to go. I've tried pulling this move on more than one occasion, and it usually just leads to me pretending I'm attending to something else, such as the hot water dispenser- hoping that he'll move on to the next victim, but only to be approached again once he realizes I'm not really occupied.

And it's not that he doesn't leave room for you to talk. He'll frequently hand the mic to you after posing questions that are seemingly impossible to answer such as, "wud you tink it means to walk by faith?", or "you know what issays in da bible about heaven?", or more personal questions like "You been wakin' up in da mornin' excited about Jesus?" It's quite a challenge to take over the conversation with these. Inevitably your only option is to nod often and avoid looking disinterested in the anecdotes and biblical words of wisdom flowing continuously from his intensely expressive face, which alternates between grave concern and beaming joy.

So why is it that I try to avoid Derek?

...because he tells me things I don't think I need to hear. He tells me things we Christians claim we already know:

we must walk by faith, we must not worry, we must not conform to this world, we must read the bible, we must pray for our brothers and sisters, we must persist under suffering, we must not care how much or how little we have, and we must rejoice.

But for some reason, the more I allow myself to actually listen to him- the more I let go of the fact that he's not so easy to look at and that my feet are cold from standing in the same spot and that I want to go see what other people are doing- the more I realize how much I do need to hear it.

The more I look at Derek's face, ridden with age and dirt and wrinkles and spots, the more I begin to see the face of Christ, staring intently right at me from behind those friendly brown eyes. I see the Christ that pursues us even while we walk off and busy ourselves with other things that we pretend are important (like the water dispenser). The Christ that is calling his Church into account. Reminding us that we're not walking the talk.

Calling us to wake up. to abide, and to rejoice in the Kingdom that's already come.

Holy Anger?

This past weekend I took a spontaneous trip home. And when I say spontaneous, I mean it. My dad and I purchased the tickets the afternoon before my flight in the morning. (The trip was worth it- it was to surprise my little brother, who was in a musical, and who made me very proud to be his sister!)

And while I was home, I went to church.
The topic of the sermon: Anger
The main point: we are to control it. We are not to "let it out" or "keep it in" but to simply surrender it to God. No looking back. just give it up. Let it go, so to speak.



And although I'm sure this is the ideal option when dealing with things such as a stolen parking spot, or irreverent sarcasm, I can't help but wonder if there are some kinds of anger we shouldn't dismiss so easily... Can we really label anger as altogether bad? Isn't it those things that anger us which aslo prompt us to act in such a way that effects change?

After all, even Jesus, the only sinless human to walk this earth, showed a little righteous indignation:

13When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!" -John 2


Yet in this case, the same people who's tables he overturned, he also went to the cross and died for...

Well that's something to chew on. What are we to make of this kind of anger shrouded in such sacrificial forgiveness? Can the two actually go hand in hand? Is it possible to position our anger within the bounds of compassion, and Love?

Perhaps our anger is intended to prompt us to love all the more.

Wait a minute- so you're telling me the proper response to righteous frustration is acts of love?

That's right. When we are provoked, we are to lash out, but it's not with bitterness, intolerance, arrogance, or sword.

It's with love.

How's that for a challenge?

We have to realize that the laws of Christ's Kingdom are in opposition to the laws of this world, the laws of our very human nature, and that includes the laws of vengeance. We have to realize that victory comes not when we extinguish, execute, or smother evil (for by cutting a worm in half we only cause it to multiply). Rather, it comes when we transform evil, through love, into Good. We have underestimated our power. We've spent so much time in defense against those things which oppose the Kingdom, that we've forgetten to make use of our offense. It's about time we started to love offensively.

So go ahead, get angry about something. And bring out the most dangerous and effective weapon we possess.