What to do next?

As my time runs out, and I'm going to have to go to church, the question is "What to do next?"


How do I get out of this place?


I'll let you know when the answer comes....

Remind Me Who I Am

When I lose my way
And I forget my name
Remind me who I am
In the mirror all I see
Is who I don’t want to be
Remind me who I am
In the loneliest places
When I can’t remember what grace is
Tell me once again
Who I am to you, who I am to you
Tell me lest I forget
Who I am to you, that I belong to you
When my heart is like a stone
And I’m running far from home
Remind me who I am
When I can’t receive your love
Afraid I’ll never be enough
Remind me who I am
If I’m your beloved
Can you help me believe it?
I’m the one you love
I’m the one you love
And that will be enough
I’m the one you love


by Jason Gray and Jason Ingram

Pathologies

I am sitting here in my bed fully dressed for church, but I skipped Sunday School since I was a few minutes late to catch my usual ride with my in-laws and didn't really want to go anyway of course, and I'm tempted to skip church too.

I am (re)learning about myself that I have a tendency to simmer and brood. I have had that trait for quite a long time, but it seems to have periods where it gets less pervasive, and times like now where it seems I find myself in "one of my moods" nearly every day.

Like the Jason Gray lyric, I don't really like people. I only want to be close to a few people, and I keep mentally shrinking even my short list and drawing back from people, trying, it seems, to get the point where I only have to put up with myself. Like an angsty teenager, I find that no one understands... I am caught inside my own head, testing different ideas, questioning every facet of my life, despairing that I will never find the balance for my personality or my identity, that I will never figure out who I am and what I'm supposed to be doing. Even with the people in the small circle, I cannot quite articulate what's plaguing my mind; I can't even quite sort it out myself.

So the last thing I want to do is go to happy-slappy church and same-ol'-same-ol' Sunday School, where I do nothing more than sit and stew inside, simultaneously weighing a dozen ideas in response to what has been said, finding myself more and more lost and confused the more people try to tell me what the answers are, where I try to avoid conversations more often than I successfully put on my smiley good attitude of actually wanting to get to know people and put effort into being part of community (which is an attitude I really do want to have but usually just have to try to fake because, after all, I don't really like people at all, and I'd rather hide by the lobster tank...)

Here's the heart of what I'm feeling. (Again, thank you for the words, Jason Gray.)

Jesus is speaking But it’s so hard to hear When disciples with swords Are cutting off ears Broken and bleeding I’m waiting for healing to come.

That is my excuse for avoiding church and church people. The loudest voices there are of disciples with swords or of disciples, at the best, who are unarmed but also unintelligible to me, seeming to murmur what they think are the words of Jesus, but, to me, it's just confusing and muffling and getting in the way... I can't hear Jesus speaking, and I'm despairing, more and more sure all the time that I'm not going to be able to hear him where I am.

But then, the excuse melts away to reveal the deeper malfunctions of my heart and mind:

But wounded is a part I’ve learned to play well Though the wound may run deeper Than I know how to tell Where pain’s an addiction That keeps me buried alive But when it’s all that I know I’m afraid to leave it behind 

I'm getting too good at being wounded. I am addicted to my pain. A goofy story in a 6th grade workbook I was reading earlier this week centered around the expression "Dramatic things happen to dramatic people," and I just keep thinking how much that's my problem. It's more like "Wounds happen to wounded people" in this context or "Confusion plagues the person who looks for confusion." Jason Gray also says in this song

It’s not like I’m trying To be optimistic If the truth be told I’d rather dismiss it And be free of the burden Of the living that hoping requires.

It's truly like I want it all to be proven useless, a crutch for the weak, something people use to make them feel better about their meaningless lives, so I can "dismiss it and be free of the burden of the living that hoping requires." What a messed up addiction to pain. But it's true. Hope requires an attitude and a way of living more strenuous, more full of responsibility. It requires love and fearlessness, facing people, facing life for what it is, it requires me

To bring my heart To every day And to run the risk of fearlessly loving WITHOUT RUNNING AWAY.

I'm seeing more and more what my pathologies are...

Now to overcome them...

Why (besides running late, which isn't an excuse because I could have made it) I Am Not in Sunday School Right Now

There's something I need to confess
At the risk of exposing my faults
But I'm starting to find that most of the time
I just don't like people at all
When I saw you five minutes ago
I was afraid you might talk off my ear
I panicked inside and decided to hide
And that's how I ended up here
Crouching behind the live lobster tank
Hoping you'd just pass me by, oh...
That's how I ended up here
That's how I ended up here
Oh how I wish I could say
It's my first time to hide in this spot
But with all of the people I try to avoid
I find myself down here a lot
I mean, just look at these guys in the tank
With the red rubber bands 'round their arms
If they don't open up 
And just keep to themselves
They won't do anyone harm
So I screen my calls,
don't answer the door
Sometimes wish I could disappear,
oh...That's how I ended up here
That's how I ended up ..
Building a wall so no one could bother me
Living my life in isolation
Opening up to only those close to me
Nobody's close to me, what have I done?
See, I really want to be known
But I'm not quite as strong as the fear
That you won't understand the fool that I am
And that's how I ended up here
That's how I ended up here
That's how I ended up here


"How I Ended Up Here" by Jason  Gray and Andy Gullahorn

Without Running Away by Jason Gray

I’ve spent some days looking 

For a length of rope 

And a place to hang it 

From the end of my hope 

But where I thought hope had ended 

I always find a little bit more 

It’s not like I’m trying 

To be optimistic 

If the truth be told 

I’d rather dismiss it 

And be free of the burden 

Of the living that hoping requires 

To bring my heart 

To every day 

And to run the risk of fearlessly loving 

WITHOUT RUNNING AWAY

Jesus is speaking 

But it’s so hard to hear 

When disciples with swords 

Are cutting off ears 

Broken and bleeding I’m waiting for healing to come 

But wounded is a part 

I’ve learned to play well 

Though the wound may run deeper 

Than I know how to tell 

Where pain’s an addiction 

That keeps me buried alive 

But when it’s all that I know

 I’m afraid to leave it behind 

To bring my heart 

To every day 

And to run the risk of fearlessly loving 

WITHOUT RUNNING AWAY

My heart is not lifted up 

My eyes are not lifted up 

But calm and quiet is my soul 

Like a child with its mother is my soul 

After awhile in the dark

Your eyes will adjust 

In the shadows you’ll find 

The hand you can trust 

And the still small voice

 That calls like the rising sun 

Come 

Bring your heart 

To every day 

And to run the risk of fearlessly loving 

WITHOUT RUNNING AWAY 

You must run the risk of fearlessly loving 

WITHOUT RUNNING AWAY

Groping as in a Mirror... for Something that is not that Far Away

Go read Acts 17.


In my Bible, my cursive scrawl in the top margin over Acts 17 reads "I love this story for some reason..." And I do. There are so many things about it that strike me.


The basic gist, for those who haven't read the whole chapter, is that Paul is waiting around in Athens after some run-ins in Thessalonica, and his spirit "provokes" him because of all the idol worship he sees in Athens. So, he spends a  lot of time "reasoning in the synagogue" with all kinds of people-- Jews, "God-fearing Gentiles," and Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. Paul ends up speaking to the Areopagus, a religious and educational council, and what he presents to them is the gospel but said in a way I've never ever heard a Southern preacher tell it:

For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His children.'

Paul goes on for only a few verses to talk about repentance, judgment, and Jesus's resurrection. At this point, some people begin to, as the New American Standard translation reads, "sneer." Some of Paul's listeners are skeptical of the resurrection stuff, as many of my contemporaries would be, and I'll admit I too have a tendency to turn up my nose when the gospel story is told laid on thick with lots of references to righteous judgment and eternity and rewards and other unfortunate evangelical buzz words.


Not all of Paul's listeners are completely put off, though. Some people say instead, "We shall hear you again concerning this," and that's one of the things I love about this passage. Some people want to hear again. They're intrigued. Something in it, crazy though it may be, easy as it would be for the academic mind to dismiss, seems true.  Somehow there's something true... maybe... about these ideas.


And how did Paul get their attention? Anyone who knows me knows why I love this part. He quotes their poets! Not Scripture, not Jewish law, not what he thinks or what Jesus said to him on the road to Damascus-- their poets. He points to their religion, to their shrines, to their obvious, obsessive desire to honor whatever god that might be out there to worship and shows them what they're lacking, gives them a name for the God that is unknown to them, the one true God. I love that on so many levels. I love it so much it makes me not want to try to explain  myself but just keep saying  how much I love it. I love it. I love how Paul talks to them from their culture's perspective, I love that he quotes poetry, and I love how the whole thing points, as Romans 1:19-20 does, to the fact that something in humanity knows God even when He is unknown to them.


I love that verses 24-28 are all one sentence, like Paul has to connect all the ideas together in one tumbling string of related ideas to get them all together like they can't be separated, even by a breath. They're that closely connected, flowing from each other. They're that urgent to say.


Perhaps best of all, though, I love this part, so I'll type it yet again--

He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they might seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist.

Reasons abound for loving this... I identify with it so much, the feeling of seeking, groping reaching out to Him, stretching for Him as if He is so far away and so hard to grasp. It reminds me of one of the parts I love from Ecclesiastes--

He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11  

Both are comforting in some ways-- God is in control, God has determined all the appointed and appropriate times just as they should be, eternity is set in our hearts, and, according to Paul, finding Him is a possibility. He made us and appointed our times so that perhaps we might find  Him. Both are perhaps even more frustrating. Paul qualifies finding God with "if," "perhaps," and "might." These are big ifs here. Solomon throws in a "yet" and says that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. That kills me. Can I find what I'm looking for or not? What is the point? Then, though, even in that frustration, that despair at never knowing and finding fully, the end of Acts 17:27 envelopes and embraces in hope-- He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist.


This whole life is groping and grasping, struggling for the point and more often than not coming up one-sided or broken and then just digging in and sharpening some more. Yet the elusive point is out there. God is the point, and He is not that far away.


The best part of 1 Corinthians 13 to me is verse 12-- 

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

Amen. The reaching and the grasping-- or trying to-- are not in vain. He is not far from each of us, and one day we're actually, finally, fully going to be able to understand that. Until that day, I just have to keep reminding myself that God is not as far off as He seems, that life can never be completely in vain while that is true, and that life is in the seeking. Seeking, seeking, until one day we know, until one day we fully live and move and exist in Him and understand it as we do.

Genesis = the origin, the formation

The Sunday school class Jason and I are becoming a part of at Parkway is studying the book of Genesis; from the look of it we will be studying it for a while, and I'm finding myself almost surprisingly fascinated. What is the origin of the world? Of life? Love? Beauty? Art? Humanity? I reflected earlier this summer that I simply have to believe in God, that for me there can be no other option. I cannot believe that something as complex and driven by emotion and a sense of the possibility of perfect good and beauty can exist without a source of perfection, good, emotion. 


As expanses-of-the-sky wide open as I am about the specifics of the book of Genesis, its history, and how it is to be understood and interpreted, I do not doubt that the origin is God. In six days, six seconds, or the entire Darwinian process of centuries and centuries, everything came to be, I truly believe, at the word of God. At His breath. At His command.


A study I found online has directed me to several places in Scripture aside from Genesis that refer to the formation of the world and our Creator's foreknowledge and authority in the process. I don't know why. I want to be so logical, have such proof and rationale... yet all I have to say is this feels right. Something about the story of God as our Creator (and as our Redeemer I must equally emphasize) just fills all the gaps for me somehow... I will think about how I might express that more articulately and informatively.


All I really know to say is that I want the one in whom "all things hold together." How can I not yearn for that? I have to have hope in one who made this world, one who has the power to continue to form it, to transform it into what it should have been...

If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth; knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. 1 Peter 1:17-21

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Hebrews 11:3 

He [Christ] is before all things and in Him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17

[...] that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that the are without excuse. Romans 1:19-20