21 July 2011
I know I leave the world I’ve come to be comfortably familiar with in ten days. I know it’s the simple familiarities that I’ll miss the most… the man in the fedora hat @ Solo who knows me, asks personal questions because I’ve been coming here for 3 years, and calls everyone “kid”. It’s knowing what aisle the cereal is in and where to find the perfect cup of coffee.
I know change is upon me, which means reflection illuminates a different and curious aspect of each “mundane” thing. I’m doing what I’ve always done- savoring, enjoying, appreciating, being.
Change, did you pull yourself up off the shore after high tide and embed yourself in the wind and sun’s rays? Did you know reflection would become your sidekick? Did you make an agreement with my heart this time? To remain steady as long as you could have the fullness of your unknown flavor fulfilled?
Change, thank you for teaching me to dance and exposing all the areas I get to trust God with on a deeper level. I’m grateful for you, Change, for you come fast and love the dreamer. You fancy risk-takers and have an appetite for adventure… I like that about you :] Remember a couple years ago when I thought I was inviting you over for a friendly cup of tea… little did I know I’d be so infatuated by your whispers of destiny & potential that we’d whip up a complete home make-over, followed by a giant move, and unending WORLD shifts. Ha, Change, we really hit it off! Look at us now, I’m a bit more familiar with you, but you still know how to scare me… and I think I like it. You’re mysterious and often unpredictable. You appeal to my right brain, but my left brain is left reeling- screaming each time we entertain one another. But you’re clever, your domain has few restrictions, for you work in hair, homes, careers, politics, hearts, and stoplights. Is there an off limits area to you other than the constant and unexpected God… or are you the most experienced dimension of the Almighty?
I used to think you were cruel, Change. That you were mean and wanted to destroy and distrust things that I held so dear and worked so hard for. But now I see more clearly, that if you’re embraced you’re much softer on the soul, even kinda romantic (in an axe-murder type of way).
When I was younger, I felt threatened by you. I rarely saw you coming and never appreciated your finer attributes of being an opportunity maker and value displayer. But then you took my head coaches, grandma, & childhood dreams, and replaced them with blooming flowers, pathways to greatness, and simple pleasures.
Once you called my name so I might turn and prepare for your arrival, but I disregarded your voice and my ears plugged themselves from your call. Yet you followed after me, altering the moon and playing with the way water can be presented. Once, though, you marched up from behind, placed your hand around my face, and yanked me around! Forcing me to face you. Requiring and engulfing all my attention, spinning me into confusion with your aggressive, non-negotiable ways.
But nowadays, or maybe just today, I’m curious about you. Where you came from and where you’re going. Why you mark certain ages with your distinct brand of surprise, but during other you befriend planning. You’re so very illusive.
This week I will change my toenail polish, water to ice, hello friend to goodbye sister, thoughts to actions, and desires into realities. I will embrace the unknown and grow a 3rd arm named Flexibility. I will risk, long, run, love, miss, and savor.
This week I will suit up in a white skirt and pigtails to dance with my Lord, in an apron and laughter to bake with my King. This week I will breathe deeply and let the Arizona sun saturate my body. Soon Change will be grasped with both hands all the way to Redding, California. At which point I’ll probably need to wrap my legs around it and hold on for dear life… or maybe… just maybe… He’ll build a guard rail to let me throw my hands in the air and be exhilaratingly, refreshingly on the greatest adventure of my life!
28 Feb 2011
Dismissed
There is a sadness in my bones, today
thoughts come
I live between little ridges on quarters
The worn, marked places
That are neither heads nor tails,
It knows no perversion, yet.
I live in the reality of memory
The terrible, beauty of present history
That is neither reconcilable nor repeatable,
It knows only pauses.
I live with the tension
The binary, goodness of our pursuits
That are neither holy nor pure,
It knows not shalom or sheol.
I live around converters
The grimy, puzzled territory
That is neither satisfied nor unsettled,
It knows only adulterated intentions.
I live inside hearts
The tender, syncopated enigma
That is neither beating nor buried,
It knows nowhere to run.
There is a sadness in my bones, today
thoughts come and prick at my heart.
You act and speak out of the overflow of your heart. Your heart produces action.
Think about this… how is that a person in your biological family or a person you’re in an intimate relationship with can be the hardest to extend grace to… to love the way Christ loved us? Why are expectations for family higher, thus disappointments are too? Mothers, brothers, etc are also a part of God’s creation, thus we (Christians) ought to treat them with the love of Christ in grace and truth. After all, they are our most sensitive audience. I say “ought to” because 1 John 3:16, in reference to our responsibilities as a Christian. We are responsible for loving from the overflow because we’ll never be able to try hard enough or be disciplined enough to love well when it comes from ourselves. Which is why it is essential that we love God 1st. So, as repeatedly noted throughout the entire Bible, our first responsibility is to love Christ because without that there is no overflow, and if there is no overflow, then God’s love isn’t living in us, and if that’s not present, then it’s not truly love. It’s veiled manipulation and addiction (that can only disappoint and destroy).
If our actions come from the overflow of our heart and our heart is to be constantly engaged in discovering and loving God, then its all about grace in truth because that is what God is all about. Practically speaking, this means I take this perspective: I am completely undeserved but, because of grace, I have been freely given everything I have and everything I am, so I can freely give … especially by LOVING WITHOUT EXPECTATIONS OR EXCEPTIONS. Now that’s freedom and that’s fun!!
Sometimes I like repeating things (like grace and it’s application) because they are very good. Plus, practically speaking (especially with the chaos and tense dynamics that often present themselves during the holidays), the capitalized and bolded statement is worth repeating and pursuing as the Spirit reveals. God first loved us, so we love Him first… then His love abundantly meets our needs and we are freed to love from the overflow of His love. This is why we love God first. He is the only One who can bear the weight of our hopes, expectations, dreams, and fears. Once we cast those onto Him and trust that He is good, faithful, and infinitiely more creative and intelligent than we are, we are freed to live a sacrificial life motivated by pure love. Then, with God’s love abounding in us and us abiding in Him, we will naturally extend grace because that is the heart of the Father.
It is God’s will for our life to love Him first, with everything always, then we will see that He is faithful to meet our needs, which is when we’ll be able to love others and ourselves without expectations and exceptions. But it must happen in this order, or else we’ll be tempted to withhold love and grace because they don’t deserve it and we feel justified in only giving to the amount that some one has earned… but thinking like that discards the fact that the Lord of the universe stepped down from constant adoration and praise to step into our lives and rescue us through an unparalleled and unfathomable act of grace as motivated by the pure love of the Father. So seeing it all began with grace, we can see that it all ends with grace.
You can’t truly love another or yourself unless Christ’s love abides in you. Christ’s love can’t abide in you unless you’ve accepted grace. You can’t accept grace until you humble yourself and see that you haven’t earned anything and that you don’t deserve what you have, but rather, God has given you everything to steward until He returns because it is His, even you are His. So, it is with this perspective that I re-enter the holiday madness, the family hurt, and the spiteful comments, because we ought to love as Christ loved us, but we can’t do that until we are overcome with His grace and love.
As Luke says, it’s all about the condition of your heart. A man speaks and acts out of the overflow of his heart… so this holiday season, join me in taking a meticulous inventory of your actions and words to see what they reveal about the condition, desires, and longings of your heart.
In this holiday and for the duration of our lives, let’s commit ourselves to knowing and loving God, then from the overflow of our refreshed and purified hearts, let’s love without expectations or exceptions, let’s love like Christ by having pure motives and keeping a gospel-centered, grace saturated, Godly perspective.
Your hearts produce your actions.
What are your actions, speech, and thoughts revealing about your heart?
The following comes from a personal letter I wrote a couple winters ago.
To give you a little background--> 6 months prior to the evening described below I was serving on the hostile streets of South Central Los Angeles and experiencing the heart of Christ. I only spent a month in Los Angeles, but the precicous, challenging, and heart-wrenching moments I spent there radically impacted my thoughts, behaviors, and life. As you're about to see, even though 6 months had passed since my time in LA, I was still having trouble "adjusting" back into our culture. But as a I re-read this two years later, I realize that I'll never "adjust" back into society and revert back to my former assumptions about humanity and ways of viewing our world. Anyway, here's an excerpt from a letter I wrote to a dear friend while wrestling with the tensions caused by my own personal convictions.
This evening I went to a lavish and extravagant caroling party in a luxurious mansion. Platters of delectable food where arranged in each room, free bar with exclusive top-shelf liquors, hired servants, orate decorations. Painted ceilings with gold trim, murals in the bathrooms, the finest china and the most expensive crystal wear. Middle-aged elites floating from room to room with a loaded drink in hand just drifting through life.
How can this be?
How can this be happening while people are starving and freezing to death tonight, in giant cities and small towns all across America? How can they be stuffing their mouths and not see they are starving? How can a barbershop quartette go room to room singing classic hymns celebrating the birth of Jesus and not have their words pass the crest of their recipients' ears?
How can everyone gather in the grand entryway on the master stairwell for a pomp speech promptly followed by CHRISTmas carols... sin and error pining, the earth felt its weight, holy redeemer, righteous, mercy, grace, salvation, King... and not see it, what will it take for their drunken rosy cheeks to turn pale from the reality of the world (then to certainty in their calling by the great commission and commandment)?
That the blood from starving children and homeless people are on our hands? How can we sing about the redemptive power of Christ, about His majesty, our holy reconciliation... how we they sing about and "agree" with Jesus, but not live like Him? It doesn't work that way!!!
I'm disgruntled by "Christians". Christian has come to mean something far different than Christ intended, its not about "strict religious laws" that govern the new reality TV hit about an EXTREME CHRISTIAN family who has 18 kids, or my friend's "uber religious" extended family who beat their children when they misbehave, or the people at this party making petty jabs at one another from their comfortable and crass state of reality.
An EXTREME CHRISTIAN is John Perkins, is Shane Clairborne, is Mother Teresa, is St. Francis Assis, is Paul, is Mike Sylvester.
Even with all our education and access to information we still disregard humanity and withdraw from her cries. Instead of pouring your money into a crystal glass with a gold rim, how about pouring out our life to change another's- how about investing in eternity- how about opening the 66 book love letter and experiencing the most ravishing love ever known? How about taking down the mask and exposing the deeply rooted pain in an atmosphere of acceptance and support so that they can care for themselves, then others? How about being an Extremist for Grace, or even just banishing the false security of ignorance?
God, turn their hearts, put people IN LOVE with You in their lives, expose them to their needs, bless them with someone to radically love them, give them the courage to go deeper, wreck them with your love, overcome their hearts with your joy, draw near to them in the dark seasons, grasp and cleanse their thoughts, make them yours, let Your Will run wild in their lives.
::loaded sigh:: My hands just left the keyboard to meet my face, to hold it while my mind raced with dichotomous thoughts and a longing. After reading what I want God to do in their lives, I see that I want the exact same thing. I don't want to squander this life. I refuse to drink the lukewarm elixirs of this world that seduce me into believing lies until I been lulled to sleep, wholly ineffective and completely lost. When will I realize those things? How many more times will I look to someone/thing to verify my worth? When will I finally be able to live in freedom? Why is this such an arduous process?
These are people, just like me. But more importantly, these people are God's creation.
Initially I was uncertain if I wanted to attend this party bc ever since Urban Project it has been difficult for me to attend events where wealth oozes from every orifice, dangling most noticeably on the ends of attendees sentences, but I decided to go. I knew it would be extravegent and that I would feel uneasy about it, but that I would also try to enjoy the host's hospitality and graciousness in opening his home to his friends and partners.
I prayed -before I left, during conversations, in each room- that God would break forth with striking truth wrapped in the utmost grace and tenderness as He captured their attention. And for myself, that I would love myself in all my imperfections and love His creation well, engaging others with acceptance and gentleness.
Unfortunately for this letter, like most of the things I write to people, was never actually sent. Instead, this excerpt has spent the last few years roaming around my laptop's hard-drive, only to be inadvertently discovered after speaking with another friend about the difficulties of re-entering "society" after a life changing experience. It's a glimpse of my heart during one of its more combative, conflicted, confused times.
Tell us about a situation you've had a difficult time sorting through... What are some things you question about yourself or societal traditions or cultural norms? Can you come up with a good way to celebrate (the bounty we've been blessed with) while also being morally/socially/biblically conscience? Can rejoicing and grieving be fully experienced at the same time... should they be... what does that mean to you? Expose your thoughts
