Mysterium Fide

I have heard it said that when Peter first made his confession of faith, "You are the Christ," he didn't really understand what he was affirming. Jesus’ death was still in the distant future and certainly his resurrection was a surprise to the disciples.

Perhaps on the day of Pentecost, preaching his first sermon, Peter could see a bit more clearly what it meant to say that Jesus is the Christ but still he did not know the full demand that confession would make upon his life.

I have heard it said that when Peter was dying on a cross because of his confession, he still did not see the full picture. But certainly, by God’s grace, he saw it more clearly then than he did in the beginning.

The first time I made this confession was when I was baptized. I was 11; before much of life had confronted me, and I made it for a really bad reason. I am grateful that God honored that confession despite my ignorance.

The last time I made this confession was on Saturday when I participated in the Eucharist at my best friend’s wedding.

Like Peter, when I first made my confession, I did not understand what I confessed. By God’s grace, I see more clearly now than I did then, but anyone who knows the state of my heart will quickly see that my understanding is still incomplete.

My prayer is that I can continue to make this confession until I see fully.

This and That

We put our Christmas tree up yesterday. Well, in the interest of honesty, we decorated it yesterday. My parents put the tree itself up last weekend. They were saving the decorating until I came home, a decision I was very much in favor of. Christmas in the Reid family has always been a bit of a homemade affair—another word I might use is “ramshackle.”

When my brother and I were growing up, a yearly tradition was to make a new Christmas tree ornament every year. Looking at our tree tonight, I see sheep, angels, snowmen, gingerbread people, and stars all in various states of artistic genius and carefully marked: “Elizabeth, ’96,” etc. This, mixed in with the usual lights and tinsel and store-bought gifted ornaments, makes for, as I said, a bit of a ramshackle effect. Our tree looks best as I’m looking at it now—lights off, illuminated by the tree itself and a candle or two on the window sill.

It’s a strange way to celebrate, I’ll admit. What does the mystery and awe of the Incarnation have to do with this tree and these craft projects and this rush to buy and wrap and bake and give? Why do we celebrate that like this?

It ought to be a familiar thought for us as Christians: Why do we celebrate that like this? Why do we eat this bread and this wine and call it the body and blood of Jesus? Why do we let ourselves be pushed underwater and call it our death, burial, and resurrection? Why do we look at this infant and say, “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”? (Do we really mean it?)

This could change our lives if we let it. Take it out of the nativity scene. Lift it out of “Away in a Manger.” Forget about baby Jesus with a halo floating over his head. This is important—bigger than your nativity scenes, your Christmas carols, and your spiritualized understanding of what it means to celebrate Christmas. This is the culmination of a cosmic battle being waged for your soul since the dawn of time. I AM has waited long enough. The days are accomplished. The Ancient of Days is acting, moving into human history to undo every wrong which has been done since the dawn of time. God is about to turn the entire world upside down. Are you ready? Can you feel the anticipation? The whole world has been holding its breath for this.

It’s also so much smaller. The Ancient of Days moves into our world as a baby, only a few hours old. A baby, utterly dependent on its mother for everything it needs. Whose idea was this, anyway? How could I AM rest all hope and expectation on this tiny, hapless infant? How can this baby be that? He can’t even hold his head up yet.

Application lies in several directions. I could remind you that, as God acts, we also ought to act—the cosmic battle is fought and won in our own lives with our incarnational actions. I could urge you to make Christmas tree ornaments with your children in the hopes that one day they’ll think big thoughts while looking at their childhood hanging from a branch. I could ask you to consider: why do you celebrate this with that? And do you need to eliminate part of your celebrations in favor of a more genuine “that?”

But I won’t—can’t, really. The newly born Ancient of Days is beyond my attempts to speak. And for this I am glad.

These thoughts were fleshed out in a conversation I had with Andrew Cox tonight. I am deeply indebted to his influence.

Friends

The child was a mess. Belligerent, violent, adorable, but prickly like a cactus. Mischievous to the extreme. If you were watching him, you'd better make sure you never took your eyes off him. He had a grin as wide as his face and he flashed it right before you tried to reprimand him for running off or hitting someone. It was hard to stay angry when he was grinning at you. He had favorites, people he'd let in, and one of them was his teacher. His name was Jarred but we--the kids, the staff, his boss, everyone--called him Mr. Cat Daddy because he could do the Cat Daddy like no one's business. I'd seen him do it several times. Incidentally, Jarred was everyone's favorite, largely because of his ability to do the Cat Daddy.

At any rate, he and Cat Daddy were huge friends. I could not do the Cat Daddy, plus I am a girl, which is a giant liability in the eyes of a seven year old. On a good day, I was tolerated.

"Elizabeth." Mr. Cat Daddy obviously had his hands full. "Go make sure he's all right." Me? Are you sure? Okay. Cat Daddy sent me over to the pouting child. If he could've pushed himself INTO the wall, he might've.

"Hey, buddy. What's the matter?" Silence. Not that I'd expected a response. I sit down next to him and see that he's been crying. I'm no good with crying, but I try again. "What happened, buddy?" I can only assume that he was at his wit's end, just completely at the end of his seven year old rope (or maybe it was the grace of God) because he wails out this pitiful, barely understood story about hurt feelings and being angry. I make an effort at the problem solving techniques we've been taught, to little avail. He's still crying.

Then out of nowhere he says, "I miss my daddy!" He crawls into my lap and keeps crying. I rub his back and ponder. It's an appropriate reaction. Life is big and scary and sometimes you need your daddy. Heck, I missed MY dad and I had plans to see him soon. There was nothing I could do about it, though. I couldn't get his dad for him. I wasn't even sure if his father was in the picture. I couldn't heal his hurt feelings. I couldn't make it better. And so, I sat there with him on my lap and I cried. He was crying, I was crying. I don't know if he knew I was crying, but there we sat, crying together.

Afterwards, he and I were friends.

I am a Monad

I began this blog on Monday, May 17th, 2010, right around the end of my freshman year of college. Here's an excerpt from my first post:

"Female. 19. Follower of Christ. College student. Ridiculously interested in learning. Everything. Reading. Everything. Writing. Artistic ventures. Music: vocal and instrumental. I journal, I essay, I expound my personal life's philosophy for the world. "

Some of these things are still true. I am female. I am a Christ follower. I am still in school, although graduate seminary has replaced college, which would presuppose a love of learning, reading, and writing. I research, I journal, I write and write and rewrite. I think and begin the process over again.

In other ways, I am drastically removed from my 19 year old self. When I was 19, as you will see from some of the older posts on this blog, I was confused, lost, insecure, and mourning the lost safety of my sheltered childhood. At 19, I had a much firmer grasp on God and theology than I do now and than I ever expect to have again. At 19, I was still months away from my first real faith crisis, my first boyfriend, my first drink, my first solo vacation.

In many ways I still feel like a monad:

"Why monads? Our dear friend Gottfried Leibniz proposed monads as simple creatures which contain within them the course of the world and all the possible choices each individual could make. I am small and insignificant: no one knows me or cares about my writing. But maybe someday they will. Maybe someday I will take my potentials and turn them into actuals. After all, I'd hate for my monads to get bored and leave me, wouldn't you?

I am a monad, and I choose to participate in my own reality."

These things are still true: I want to say something that matters. I want to be an active participant in my life.

Except now I'd like you to participate with me.



As a disclaimer: I thought long and hard about either beginning a new blog entirely, or deleting all previous entries. I wanted my blog name--I feel very attached to these monads after all these years. Ultimately, I chose to leave most of them up, because I think it's interesting and important to remember where I started and to see the progress I've made. I would not currently defend many of the positions I wrote about. Of the positions I DO still hold, I would probably choose to express them much differently than I did. During the process of "tidying up" this blog, I made small changes to several entries to make them read more smoothly, but I did not change any ideas.

I suppose this disclaimer is asking you to give 19 (and 20 and 21) year old Elizabeth a bit of grace due her age and inexperience. I'm working on the same goal.

Beautiful

When I was working at City of Refuge, one of my daily tasks was to accompany another staff member on his route to pick up children from the community. Our fifteen passenger van careened around tight curves and narrow roads as our driver yelled, “Roller coaster!” which was his passengers’ cue to put their hands in the air and scream. In his van, I came to terms with my inevitable death many times. The children loved him. I, not so much.

That summer was one of paradox. I remember the shock I felt on our first morning (a shock that never really went away) when we turned a corner and there it was, filling our horizon. The Georgia Dome. As we traveled our bus route, I remember thinking, “What must it be like to grow up beneath the shadow (literally) of such wealth?” The children in the English Avenue community, Vine City and Joseph E. Boone are poor—food stamps, drugs, low education levels, out-of-wedlock children; every negative stereotype you associate with inner city Atlanta is true about this area. And they live within walking distance of a land of excess, where paying $180 for a ticket to a football game is a thing people do. Midtown—yuppie downtown Atlanta—is a short bus ride away. And these children and their families are struggling to live hand to mouth in the shadow of the Georgia Dome.

I’ve left Atlanta. I moved away and it broke my heart to leave the children and the city. I live under the shadow of the mountains now and it’s beautiful, just as beautiful as Simpson Street.

Hope Lives On

Every day on my way to school (whether I’m driving myself or taking the shuttle), I pass by the abandoned textile mills along Highway 29. Not too long ago, these buildings represented industry and productivity; prosperity for the community. They've been closed down for years, though, and are long since abandoned. Whatever they were, they still take up a huge stretch of the road. Empty buildings, once full of employees, life, and busyness, are now barely more than wasted space.

Since moving to the area, I’ve heard a lot about the mills and how, when they closed down, people essentially lost hope. The town is depressed, economically and emotionally (pardon me if I’m projecting [but then again, what is this blog beyond my personal projections?]). And there the mills sit: looming, haunting reminders of a time when things were different. Driving by them must be torture for some people, the ones who thought that it could never end, the ones who put all their hopes and dreams into the success of the mills.

They’re being torn down, you know. Someone told me that each of those buildings had about a million dollars’ worth of recyclable material in it. A million dollars sounds like a lot of money but in comparison to all the people who lost jobs and investments, a million dollars is a drop in the bucket. Soon the empty buildings will be gone forever—like the jobs and the hope are gone forever—and the only thing left will be an empty field. The reminder of lost hope will be gone, and maybe that’s for the best. When you’ve lost all possibility for what you hoped for, then is it better to just let the memories fade away? Is lost hope better than no hope at all?

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Greek myth of Pandora’s Box. An overly nosy girl is told, “Please don’t open this box; you’ll regret it” and what does she do? She opens the box. Out fly Death, War, Sickness, Fear, Poverty, Pain, and any number of terrible things that should’ve remained shut up forever. As Pandora sits crying on the floor (regretting it), one last thing comes flying out of the box—Hope. As a child, I was told that hope is the best thing in the box, the one thing that makes the others tolerable. But what if that’s wrong? What if Hope was locked in the box not as a sort of consolation prize for death and sickness and pain, but because it is so dangerous? What if Hope is the most dangerous thing in the box, locked away to protect us from a very unique sort of pain?

These are the thoughts circling through my mind as of late and if you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s depressing,” you’d be right. It’s only half the story, though. The people living in the greater Valley area are renewing their hope because of new industry and because of the university’s move. We are playing a part in renewing their hope and that is such a powerful image of God. It’s scary; we don’t know what will happen. Will this transition be successful? Will we hammer out a place in this town and with these people (it reminds me of two newly married people trying to blend individual families into one) or will our presence be a cause for dismay? There’s a lot of potential here—for them and for us—but there’s also a lot of risk. Hope IS dangerous, don’t forgot, and it was put in the box for a reason. However, and this is important, every tragedy has potential for a new triumph.

The mills are being torn down, but the university is building. And hope lives on.

The Covenant

             My father’s god was always asking him to do strange things in strange ways. Mother’s favorite story was how they’d been the first family to move from my grandfather Teran’s home in Ur in five generations. “I thought he was crazy,” she’d smile, “hearing voices like that…but then your father’s god told me I’d have a baby…I laughed and he got angry. What? No, not your father, dear. The messenger. Nine months later…” she smiled and held her hands out as if to say, “The rest is obvious—here you are!” All her stories end with me. I’m not blind—I can see how old they are. My friends’ parents are all much younger and of course I’d heard whispers about my brother Ishmael and his mother Hagar. I was wanted—plain and simple.

            They’re not all like that you know. Babies, I mean. Some aren’t wanted—too many mouths to feed already or too few months since the wedding. My father is wealthy enough—and mother is perceptive enough—to take care of most of that under the table. An extra servant at supper when no one else was needed, leftover food dropped by a tent because, “We’d hate for it to go to waste.” Some babies aren’t wanted, but I have never been one of them. In a camp as large as ours, we have births every few months. When the babies are born, she holds them and whispers to them and you can tell: she always wanted more.

             I had a lot of freedom growing up. Father and Mother both had lots to do to make sure the camp ran smoothly, and although I helped Father with the animals and listened as he talked to his servants when he asked me to (“Someday, Isaac, this will be your responsibility.”) my most vivid memories of childhood are carefree. After the Fight, things changed.

“What?! No! Abraham, you must be out of your mind! How can you even consider such a terrible thing!?” Mother was angry. Mother and Father didn’t argue frequently and when they did, they made sure to do it quietly, where no one else could hear them. This time, Mother was standing in plain sight, in front of their tent, eyes blazing.

“Sarah, He told me to.” Father sounded tired, resigned. A little pleading.

“NO. He’s my only son. We won’t get another chance, Abraham, we’re lucky we have Isaac!” Her voice went up another octave and they were beginning to gather a crowd.

“Sarah. He told me.”

“Why?! Why, Abraham? Why would He give us something only to take it away? You must have misheard him. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—ask you to do something like that. That’s disgusting! It’s...wrong, Abraham, simply wrong.”

“Sarah, darling. He asked me to.”

“No! I won’t let you. Anything else He can have. He took my home—I left my clothes, my furniture, everything!—behind because I trusted you when you said He had asked you to leave. But this?! It’s too much! He cannot have Isaac! He’s my only son, Abraham. He’s all I have.” 

At this point, Mother was sobbing, and I was scared, although I didn’t understand why they were arguing about me. Father’s god had never talked to me in the same way He talked to Father, but I tried to do what Father told me to keep Him happy. I couldn’t think of anything I’d done to make Him angry. Father tried to put his arm around her, and lead her into the tent, away from staring eyes but she got angry, and began pushing my father away from her.

“Sarah,” he tried again. “Isaac already belongs to him.” Mother stopped fighting. She just stood there, dumbfounded, as if he’d hit her.

“What?”

“Isaac already belongs to him.”

We left early the next morning. Father and I went with two of our men into the desert. When I asked him where we were going, he kept quiet, as if he were afraid of the answer. We had wood for a burnt offering on the back of the donkey. I’d participated in offering sacrifices to Father’s god before and although we’d never offered a donkey before, I saw no reason why we couldn’t. It was a long trip—two days into the wilderness. The mountain range got closer and eventually, on the third morning, Father told the men he and I would be traveling on alone. I carried the wood. Father carried the knife and a smoldering coal for the sacrifice. I thought it was peculiar—we weren’t taking the donkey with us on the next leg of our journey? I asked Father what we’d use for the sacrifice. He looked at me—I’ll never forget his face—and said, “The Lord, will provide the lamb, my son. Did I ever tell you about the first time the Lord our God spoke to me?”

“Tell me again.” If the story of my birth was Mother’s favorite, this was Father’s.

“I thought I was dreaming. ‘Abram,’ God said (they called me Abram then). ‘Abram, you will have a son, an heir. Your property will remain with your family. Abram, look up—count the stars if you can. Your descendants will number more than all the stars in the sky.’ When I told your mother, she thought I was crazy. We’d tried for many years to have a child and all the midwives thought she was barren. And I was old, too, you know. We made a covenant that night—El Shaddai, God Almighty, and I. He named me Abraham—the father of many children. As many children as there are stars in the sky! I laughed when He told me. But who wouldn’t! What a preposterous thing, to think that at so old we would have a son. You—you are the fulfillment of that promise. You’re everything we could ever have hoped for.” We reached the top of the mountain. Father looked around and began gathering rocks for the altar. This was a familiar chore and I started to help.

“No, Isaac, you sit and listen. I trust God. I don’t understand him. Your mother—she thinks I understand why God says what He says to me. But I don’t! It never made sense for me to leave Haran. We were comfortable there. I was respected. But God said to me, ‘Go’ and I left. When he showed me the stars and told me I would be a father to many, I didn’t understand that either. And the sign of the covenant! You should have heard the other men argue about that command. But I trusted that God knew where we were going and here we are. No matter how crazy the order seemed, He’s never let me down. He’s never abandoned me. It’s always made sense in the end. You are the child of the covenant, the first to be included in the promise God made to your mother and me. You’re just as much part of this as I am.” Abraham—my father—stood up, looking old; older than he’d ever seemed before. I looked around. The altar was finished, the wood ready. There was no lamb in sight. “Do you understand, Isaac?”

“What?” I said, turning towards him.

“Isaac, do you understand what I’m telling you?” There were tears in his eyes. I’d never seen my father cry before. I did understand, although I wished I didn’t. What choice did I have, really? As he bound me to the altar, Abraham kept talking, telling me of his trust in El Shaddai. “You are my child, given to me by the Lord in fulfillment of the covenant,” he repeated, raising the knife over my head. I closed my eyes in terror, irrationally glad I was tied too tightly to try to escape. “You’re just as much a part of this as I am.”

“Abraham!” My eyes flew open and I searched for the person speaking. I had never heard that voice before. But, oh, I have heard it since.

He sobbed. “Yes, Lord!”

“It is enough. Untie your son.”

We made a sacrifice to my God on the mountaintop that day, and returned home to Sarah, who cried, and held me so tightly I bruised.

Not The Way We Thought It Was

It’s not the way we thought it was. Nothing ever is, I suppose, although we think it will be while we’re thinking it. I also suppose I’m not saying anything too remarkable, just what’s “common to man” and I’m sure when I get older I’ll say it again. There are no villains and there are no heroes, no princesses to rescue and nothing dangerous is lurking in the woods. It’s not what you thought it was, or what you thought it would be. But it’s good nonetheless.

Right Here Now

"Where else would we go?" asks Peter, not because I don't have anywhere else to go, but because I'm exactly where I want to be.

Calling

I am a product of my parents' calling
and as such it is increasingly challenging to discover
a calling of my own.

At Least I Got a Car

"...don’t you want to just sit still?
Cause you can only run so fast and drive so far
And home might feel like a funny idea that you never understood
But you want it more than you want the car.


...Going home feels like the thing you ought to do
Because you can only drive so far..."


Don Chaffer

A Supper Conversation

It's incredible how comfort food is culturally specific. Faced with a night alone in the apartment by myself, and a trip to the grocery store later, I have a pot of stew bubbling on the stove and a bowl of sukuma wiki and chapatis* sitting next to me. When push comes to shove, I always head home. This is true in more facets of my life than my culinary choices.

When I'm confused about my life, one of my first impulses is to either call my mother and father or head home to see them. When my world shifts, I look for familiar, for comfortable, and for love. A cup of tea and a cuddle on the couch. A mug of hot stew and a biscuit in front of the fire while my parents and grandparents catch up. Grape Fanta, cheese puffs, and Reese's Cups. Whether you're a vegetarian, vegan, carnivore, or some variation, it's undeniable that food is an integral part of your life. My home is where my heart is. My home is where I get fed and feed my family and friends.

The professor who taught my Gospels class focused on how Jesus' actions fulfilled Old Testament expectations of the Messiah--like, in the Old Testament, God is described as the one who walks on the sea and when Jesus walked on water, the disciples would have made that connection. The Jews expected the Messiah to heal them, to cast out demons, and to provide the great banquet in heaven. A great part of heaven is food--we will sit down at the marriage feast of the Lamb and we will be fed everything we could possibly need. "Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Revelation 19.9).

Ya'll, this is really freaking cool. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus ate with his disciples and told them how much he'd been looking forward to celebrating Passover with them. But then he adds, "I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God" (Luke 22.15-16) And then, hours later, he dies on a cross to fulfill his promise and and to invite us to participate in his marriage supper. We're not just invited to the reception; we're part of the ceremony! And at that feast, no one will go hungry and no one will be lonely or left out and all food allergies will be ancient history.

So when you celebrate the Eucharist with your church family, or eat comfort food at home, or find yourself staring at leftovers again, remember two things. First, this meal is just practice for the marriage feast of the Lamb. Second, Jesus died so that you could eat it.

Praise the Lord.

________________
*Please ignore the fact that chapatis do NOT taste the same with self-rising flour.

What I Learned Today

People are complex: just because you relate to them in one way doesn't mean that's the only thing that's going on for them. The girl who stole your boyfriend is also dealing with a divorced mom who's getting remarried.

I might think I'm the center of the universe, but mine is not the only universe and God is still on his throne.

Life Happenings

This summer I've chosen to live on my college campus instead of moving home like I did last summer. The decision was made somewhat haphazardly, which is almost an improvement for me: normally I agonize decisions for ages and it was a refreshing change to have something happen quickly. It came on the heels of my visit to Jubilee Partners, an intentional community in northern Georgia whose purpose is to acclimate refugees to life in the United States. The visit was interesting; I'd actually applied for a summer internship and went for a tour.

While walking around the property, the man giving the tour, Robbie, and I discussed community, and fellowship, and what it means to be a part of the body of Christ. On my three hour drive home, I started thinking about MY community; I'd intended to move to Jubilee for the summer to learn about forming community but I have a community here at ACC.

Part of my community is pregnant and delivering her second child mere months away. Another part of my community recently asked me to be in his upcoming wedding. A third (the husband of the pregnant one) and I discuss God and life and the intersection of the two in practical application. Our community garden is growing and growing and leaving for Jubilee when the summer term starts (in a couple of days) would mean leaving the growth, which proved to be an unacceptable loss.

So instead of moving home, west, or to Jubilee, northeast, I moved from Head Hall to apartment building 4 the day before yesterday. My summer's goals look somewhat as follows:

Learn about my place in God's community, through a deepening of the relationships with the people around me, whom I love.

Figure out what it means to be a semi-independent woman living in a major city in the United States.

Watch my friend as she carries her baby to term.

Practice my Greek--my final grade in second semester Greek was less-than-desirable.

READ--lots and lots, anything and everything I can find. This includes the Bible-in-a-year program which took a backseat to finals but does not exclude young adult fiction or academic works.

Figure out exactly how to feed myself and how difficult a proposition that will be.

Learn a balance between working and playing, as opposed to studying and playing.

Blog about all the above.

And I'd love to go to the beach, but goodness knows if that will happen.

Holy Week

It’s the day after Easter. We’ve experienced the excitement of Holy Week: the triumphal entry and the crowds shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” We’ve sat through the Last Supper, and wondered with worry and confusion at Christ’s words, “This is my body and this is my blood, the cup of the new covenant.” We watched him arrested in the garden of Gethsemane and we’ve followed him to the cross in horror. Our hopes are crushed, and we wait in anguish, our leader, our direction, our light, dead, gone, taken, dead. He’s dead. What now? What do we do now? Then, beyond all expectation, Sunday comes. Sunday comes and with it we have hope. It’s the day after Easter. Christ is risen, indeed, but I’m left behind. On Friday morning, I ask, with Pontius Pilate. “What is truth?” And like Pilate, I have killed the anointed one with my answer.

I don't know what I think about this. It feels true. But I can't quantify it. All I know is that I want to try to polish my writing less, and this is the result of like, fifteen minutes.

How Do You Measure a Year?

In 2010 I...

...survived two semesters of college.

...attended the funeral of one of the best men I've ever known.

...made the best reference book purchase EVER.

...had more mind opening experiences than I asked for.

...watched the Olympics and made a snow family with friends.

...wrote three epically awesome songs with my best friend.

...watched my favorite cousin get married in Minnesota

...and got eaten by massive Minnesotan mosquitoes.

...celebrated my best friend's 18th birthday extravaganza.

...ruined half my clothes painting a house

...and wore paint covered clothes long after they should have been thrown away.

...successfully and finally forgave two friends who hurt me very much.

...read. And read and read and read some more.

...wrote. Journals, essays, blogs, poems, text messages, with varying levels of time consumption.

...watched two friends go from friends to dating to engaged to married!

...changed my major.

...fell out of love

...and into friendship.

...fell out of friendship and into lust

...but quickly backed back into friendship

...and then flirted with the oh-so-tempting possibility of lust.

...made new friends.

...kept some old friends.

...dropped some old friends

...and wasn't sad.

...but was sad about not being sad.

...started listening to lots of new music.

...went to my first seriously professional concert.

...preached one (1) really really awful sermon and two (2) decent sermons.

...overcommited myself (again) (by accident).

...met one of my favorite authors and made a complete idiot of myself, but got him to sign one of my...er... his books.

...became more comfortable being uncomfortable.

...realized that I'm a fairly normal human being.

...reveled in this fact.

...started volunteering at an afterschool program.

...cried an acceptable amount for a young woman of my level of emotional maturity.

...turned twenty

...and was promptly reminded how young I really am.

...disagreed in a discussion with an adult who wanted me to agree with him very badly.

...moved on and circled back around.

...laughed. Just a bit for good measure.

Life in the Middle

You are born, you live, and you die in the middle. Certainty is hard to come by and even harder to hold on to. You come from the deep south; morality is black and white: if you claim to be a Christian (and who doesn’t, down here?) then your life will look a certain way. You won’t drink—alcohol is verboten. Boys are only after one thing and as a girl, you can’t give in. If you do, you’re a slut and your partner gets a firm admonishment… and a wink and a smack on the butt in the locker room. And if you get pregnant? There’s a place for people like you: alternative school. Cursing is another no-no. Homosexuality is wrong, a sin of the worst order, and if you think you might be gay? Then prepare yourself for the life of an outsider. Only bad people do drugs—but if you made some mistakes in high school, then we’ll be prepared to forgive you as long as you don’t mind parading your dirty laundry in front of younger kids as a warning against following your path. Only bad people do drugs—and if you’re still doing them now then there will be no grace. You’re a Republican, of course. Those Democrats believe in killing babies and they might even be communists.

And theology is equally black and white. You’re a Christian, because you’re a Republican. You believe in the separation of church and state (as long as everyone acknowledges that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and that the founding fathers were Christians just like you). The biggest debate in your life is creationism versus evolution. You scoff at global warming. The Bible is a literal, historical document, the infallible word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit. You might play at being a liberal Christian. You might read books to annoy your parents like Is It Okay to Call God Mother? and Theology in a New Key: Responding to Liberation Themes and maybe you even incorporate some of what they say into your walk with God.

But then you go to college and make friends with a man who has a husband and a hobby of cross-dressing. You start befriending people who exercise their right to drink lots of alcohol. Your professors admit to believing in a non-literal creation story. You find yourself crushing on a man who confides to you his history with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. And who freely admits to his experimentation with the full gamut of illegal substances with little to no remorse. You room with a girl who is probablymostlikely sleeping with her boyfriend and who has no shame about it. Another girl on your hall says, “Yeah, I’m having sex with him but we’re married in God’s eyes so it’s all right, okay?” And you’re flirting with your personal favorite addiction again.

And you attend a Bible college.

You sit with him in Bible classes and listen to your professor read the Sermon on the Mount: “You are the light of the world.”

You laugh with her in the caf and in the coffeehouse.

You cry with her in private and share the hurts of your heart with her and you listen to hers.

You sit with him in chapel.

You worship next to him, you take communion with her, and you love them.

You are born, you live, and you die in the middle, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You live in a world of shades, a world where black and white fade into unnameable hues. You try to contain this awful gray within what you know about God. “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” You lose yourself in the middle ground. You lose yourself in between what you’ve always thought to be right and what your experiences teach you. You lose yourself in between your cut and dry morality and the murky gray you live in.

People are simple, says your friend, and you want to believe him, but you can’t see the simplicity for all these hellish contradictions.

Take the Training Wheels Off and Grow Up

In Sunday school this morning, Leslie Smith mentioned her experience at the Tyrone Founder’s Parade. “There was a band, and floats with people throwing candy, the general hubbub you see in parades and then, in the midst of all this laughter and loudness, I saw a man carrying a cross… with a wheel attached to the bottom.”

Immediately after Peter’s great confession, Matthew writes, “Jesus began telling his followers that he must go to Jerusalem where… he must be killed…” Peter, in a shocking foil to his prior confession, scolds Jesus for saying this nonsense. Jesus, after calling Peter, “Satan,” response thus: “If people want to follow me, they must give up the things they want. They must be willing even to give up their lives to follow me. Those who want to save their lives will give up true life. But those who give up their lives for me and for the good news will have true life. It is worth nothing for them to have the whole world if they lose their souls.”

Some other translations render this as “"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

The man Leslie saw in the parade was clearly referencing this story. But what wonderful irony! Putting a wheel on the bottom of the cross for easier maneuvering kind of misses the point. Jesus’ cross was not light and he never intended for it to be easy to follow him. Like Peter, we are eager to take death out of the equation. “Look,” he says to Jesus, “you’re not going to die. That’s silly.”

We do the same thing: “Look,” we say to the people we’re trying to convert, “you’re not going to die. Being a Christian is easy.” And it’s true: we’ve made Christianity the easiest thing in the world. But it’s a lie—it’s a cross with a wheel on it.

Take the wheel off your cross. Peter’s issue—and ours—was that he wanted to micromanage God’s plan. Take the wheel off your cross. If you’re in this for “easy,” then you need to get out. Jesus never promised you anything other than your death. Take the wheel off your cross and allow yourself to feel the weight of what God has for you.

Less Like Falling in Love

If I were a poet or a musician, I would write a beautiful poem or song about how my love affair with You, oh Lord, is not like falling in love, which I’ve done before. Several times before, really. My love affair with you is not an uncontrollable free fall but there is no doubt in my mind this will never be over. If I were a poet or musician, I would write a poem or song about how I’ve not lost my heart, my soul, or anything else, but nonetheless I am never going back to my life before. I’ve weighed the pros and cons, I’ve counted the cost. I thought about every possibility for the future. I have logically, calmly, and thoughtfully decided that, despite all the drawbacks, I want to follow Christ with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. It was not a free-fall or falling in love but I will never change my mind. I’m in it for life.

When God told Abraham he would be the father of a great nation, back in the beginning of Genesis, He made a covenant with him: “You, Abraham, obey Me. Circumcise your sons; worship Me; love Me. And I will make your family into a great nation and through you and your descendants the entire world will be blessed.” The covenant was sealed with blood and applied to generation upon generation.

When God sent Jesus to earth to die for our sins, He made a new covenant. This covenant had been anticipated for generations and generations, ever since God and Abraham had discussed the future under a night sky. The terms of the covenant were simple: “You obey Me; worship Me; love Me. And I will forgive your sins, and reconcile you with Me for all eternity.” It’s logical, sensible, and the only logical, sensible thing to do is to accept God’s terms as He laid them out.

Dangerous Mercy

I love the ocean. I love the way it looks, the way it smells, the way it feels, the way I feel in it. Everything. My favorite activity is "wave bashing," a bit of a misnomer, really, as I do not bash but am bashed. I stand knee deep in water, or out far enough so the waves are breaking and allow them to push, pull, and force me to bend to their will.

My friend at school has been trying to teach a couple of us to ballroom dance. He taught us the box--forward and backward--and we practiced a bit. It was going... very mediocre, and he looked at me knowingly. "Elizabeth," he said, "the one thing you need to learn is to let the man lead." If you know me well enough to know I love the ocean, you probably know about my control issues. So maybe he says this to all the girls he dances with, but maybe he just said it to control freak me. I, of course, laugh at him and say, "Yeah, sure. That's not going to be a problem." I then proceed to spend the next thirty minutes being pushed and pulled around an empty classroom until I forget I'm not in charge. I go left, partner goes right and we stop, fix our "frame" and start again.

One of the lessons God and I are working on is my need to be in control. I get really bent out of shape when I run late due to no fault of my own. When I don't have time to do X, Y, AND Z. When a person I was relying on falls through. When I fail to live up to this ridiculous standard of perfection I've somehow set for myself as attainable. But I'm not in control and I'm left to the mercies of others and I have experience being let down and failed and also with failing.

I am in the ocean. Outside forces act upon me every day. It feels like lately one wave after another has been pounding me--my friend changing schools, the latest whatever with Boy, my confusion about how to respond to a gay friend, my jealousy over two friends pairing up, my sadness about a friend ultimately not choosing me, my unorganized summer, my stress over the end of school, all the work I have to get done before finals, all the friendly obligations I have to fulfill. It's worse than wave bashing--my feet aren't on the sand. I'm floating and pushed and pulled and slapped by one wave after another. I've passed the point of fun (wave bashing is fun) and I'm into the scary zone where I am completely at the mercy of the water. I could very easily drown. The water has no mercy: it doesn't care about my survival. Its purpose is to subdue me. It's succeeding.

Rich Mullins sings,

"There's a wideness in God's mercy

I cannot find in my own.

It keeps me aching

With a yearning

Keeps me glad to have been caught

In the reckless, raging fury

They call the love of God."

I've never thought of God's love in these terms. It reminds me of Narnia, "Safe? Of course he's not safe. He's not a tame lion, you know." I am caught in the "reckless, raging, fury" of God's love for me. It's not peaceful, or placid. It's violent, uncontrollable, and when experienced right, it leaves the beloved completely and utterly helpless, at the mercy of the Father. The Father's mercy: boundless, unchanging, eternal, relentless.

Either way, I'm not in control. Other people make decisions that crash over me like waves and threaten to drown me, or God's terrifying love--"never safe but always good"--threatens a different sort of drowning. Either way, my feet have left the ground.

First written April 17th, 2010 at the beach