What is man that you are mindful of him?

There is something about being alone in the wilderness. All the Jack London stories read around a campfire cannot do it justice. There is security in the other. There is safety in company. But when the cell signals of civilization do not penetrate the deep woods of wilderness, one is left eerily alone with oneself. The ceiling of stars loses its romance and strikes with its vastness. A residual image of beauty before floating into dreams is engulfed with an immense feeling of insignificance and finitude. “If an entire star, a burning fury of grandeur and power, is so infinitesimal in the blackness of night, how much smaller am I?” The breeze is a wind, and the wind is a howl. Darkness swaying all around does not promote warmth. For all I felt with my -20 degree bag, I could have been lying naked and exposed on the ground. And I was, if perception was reality. There were no walls around me, no ceiling above me. The dark recesses of my primal psyche, the part that has been repressed by modern lights and noise, tested its newfound territory.

In the wilderness alone, in the dark, all your accolades are stripped of you. Your degrees, your job, who you are as defined in relationship to others, the brands you wear and the lies you maintain, there is no one to perceive them or give them value. There is no one to affirm you or console you, to stop or encourage you. There is no one to feed your addictions or to reciprocate your codependence. There is no one to save you. The amount of knowledge and illumination you have in your life at any given moment is directly proportional to the strength and radius of your headlamp’s beam. Who are you, in the darkness of your own thoughts? When naked vulnerability is the frigid air you breathe, what is it that keeps you warm? When there are no brick walls to separate you from an untamed and wild reality, what grants you security?

It is rare to be truly alone, if only for a night. I will not soon forget it.

“What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” –Psalm 8:4

Roads Are Made for Traveling

Today was spent in an embittered battle against a statistics program on my computer. I have a love-hate relationship with SPSS. There is something satisfying when you make a few selections, press a few buttons, and a printout tells you that your results are significant. Oh, how we love to feel significant. However, the lover can be cold when a wall of numbers stares unemotionally back at you, defiant and obstinately refusing to interpret themselves in a way a normal human being would understand... (Reminds me of women sometimes... zing! ;)

Thus, after a long battle in man vs machine, I am tired. But tired is a good place to be when honesty is something to be sought after. After all, gone is the strength to find another distraction.

A friend mentioned to me that she just returned from a retreat with the outgoing class of HNGR interns. Juniors, doe-eyed and hopeful, waiting to change the world in just 6 months. New eyes for the least of these... jumping in with both feet already wet, their dreams and anxiety, palpable. I remember tasting it in my mouth as we tried to remember that nothing would be as we expected. Junior year with so much on my heart and mind. It was where I needed to be. Trust in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I commented to my friend that I now feel less hopeful, not quite as young, and certainly less impressionable. "Oh for sure. Graduating changed everything," was her response. Did it? What changed between cramming for our last test and starting our first day in this entry-level job? What is it that left us, subjectively, when we left that square mile encompassing College Ave? What was it that we were so afraid of when our eyes were wider and our knees more calloused? The tyranny of 9 to 5. The wailing of a monday alarm and the anxious glances toward a friday clock. The passive withering of our 4 year $150,000 brain cells. The loss of our hearts in the slow exchange for the subtle American dream, slipped into as quietly but as surely as the sun bows out to the dark. It smelt of death in our nostrils, and we staked our passion as collateral, that "we" would never be like "them."

It's been a while since my knees have gotten dirty. When the rain stops, all sorts of unintentional things start drying up as well. I took a break from thinking. I've sought a reprieve from feeling. I'm growing a new hobby to scratch my aesthetic itch and to feed my money to. I'm putting on some snow treads and road tripping to the great state of Mormons and National Parks in hopes for something new. Something communal. Maybe I can find Someone in places with names like Eureka(!) and Freedom and Zion and Jericho. Yes, I'm sure of it, the Mormons were looking in the right place for God.

Remember

[In the act of writing, I hope to bring about that which I lack. In transcribing my thoughts from jumbled electrochemical activity to the English language, I want to give animation and memory to the realities which do not yet exist, and in some way, usher it in.]

Faith, hope, and love.

We are not patient, our eyes are dim, our minds are slow, and our imaginations dull. We can build only so many stairs to climb in our search for leverage over the landscape of our experiences. God knew that our statures are short, our memories vapid and adulterous, prone to wander and in league with the Accuser. We distort our realities and squeeze our pasts through the mold of our ever-vacillating emotions. When set under pressure and fire, our self-serving versions of faithfulness evaporate to leave the ugly stains of bitterness and blame.

"Remember. Remember. Remember my faithfulness, even if you do not feel it now. Remember my healing, my goodness, my presence and my love, even in the midst of darkness and loneliness. Remember, not your uncertainties and selective memories, interpretations or assumptions, but remember me, my Kingdom and my righteousness."

Hope. A biblical hope in the person of God and His character. When all our attempts to usher in the New lay futile and hollow under the spotlight of silence, there can be but one virtue that holds the weight of being. Hope becomes the quintessential anchor of our hearts, especially when our most sincere efforts at love and faithfulness are not enough.

Orthodoxy: Coming to a Church Near You!

As much as I love critique and deconstructionism, and have an inherent distrust of the powers that be, I have to remember love and hope in a world that desperately needs it. It might be true that there are lots of legitimate things to criticize about western mainstream Evangelical Christianity. We’re so busy pointing fingers at other people, at post modernism, at evolution, at those baby killers, liberals and homosexuals that I’ve felt the need to point the fingers back at ourselves for all the things we do wrong according to our own standards. I get excited when I hear someone thoughtfully articulate, attempt to explain, and critique our own actions and beliefs in a theological and historical context without abjuring the possibility that we could actually be wrong, as opposed to simply propping up platitudes to legitimize what exists. I shake my head and agree with the “enemies” when their observations about us are keener than our own. I hear stories of our churches, our sanctuaries and lighthouses, and am hardly surprised when people don’t want anything to do with us. It’s a much needed in-house sweep and challenge when an entire guard of thoughtful, prayerful and contemplative brothers and sisters are standing up to say that all is not right within the family.

And perhaps it is true; certain things must be torn down before they can be replaced or rebuilt. How do we preach a gospel we ourselves fail to grasp? How can we be transformed holistically when dualism, individualism, and anti-intellectualism are the lenses through which we view the world?

But the difficulty, for me at least, is how one does the critiquing not only in a way that is humble, but is done in faith, filled with love and gives hope. For me, there is an arrogance that I pray will be removed with intentionality and age. There is an inexperience that presents my convictions as untested and hollow, and a naivety that forgets the inevitable suffering of prophets. However, beneath it all is a desire to see God’s kingdom lived out as it should, in my own life, in the life of His saints, and in all of creation.

Orthodoxy (correct belief), I think, is a prerequisite for orthopraxy (correct practice). I wonder if it is possible to have all the faith, hope, and love in the world and be useless, even doing damage, without orthodoxy. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s possible, as I believe much has done as a fervent church with stray beliefs (it always amazes me at how God redeems things). But what I do know is that orthodoxy that does not manifest itself in faith, hope and love is no orthodoxy at all. As I strive to see the world as God sees it and desire to see the Gospel alive in today’s world and context, orthodoxy needs to be inseparably wed with faith, hope and love, as inseparable as our “souls” are to our bodies, even as inseparable as Christ is with His church.

"Let's come back as better people."

[For the full sensory experience, this is to be read while listening to “Homecoming,” by Kanye West :)]



I’m under the impression that transitional periods of life, artificial time markers and cultural rites of passages are wonderful excuses to reflect, refocus, and redirect. (Perhaps to reduce, reuse and recycle as well?)

A quote was given to us upon receiving our HNGR certificates:

"Remember your Creator during your youth when all possibilities lie open before you and you can offer all your strength intact for his service. The time to remember is not after you become senile and paralyzed! Then it is not too late for your salvation, but too late for you to serve as the presence of God in the midst of the world and creation. You must take sides earlier - when you can actually make choices, when you have many paths opening at your feet, before the weight of necessity overwhelms you." -Jacques Ellul, from "Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes"

As I crossed over the bridge to Jersey, it felt as gangster and skank as ever. My home felt countless hours of silence and thoughts away, scattered with the ones who shared the bread and wine of my brokenness with me. A flurry of hasty packing, subdued looks, and a few unvoiced grievances later, I drove across lines that were more than just state borders.

[Now, how can I pretend to be an adult?]

All I have figured out is this: Grow where you are planted.

I could ramble on about chasing dreams and being true, about being thankful and living with no regrets, but you have pop-psychologists and crappy Christian authors to parrot those truisms for you. Instead I will ask myself to fight the lies of individualism (in community) while resisting thoughtless acts of conformity (apart from the world). I will remind myself that life is a process and that we are omni-nothing. Faithfulness is valued above whatever shackles the world calls success, and that people, whom we are called to minister to, loved and breathed in God’s image, are found in every corner of life. We are placed where we are for a reason. There are no shortcuts here. We might as well learn to thrive.

Trust, amidst the uncertainties and paradox, because there are many.

“I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full.”

When I jumped out of an airplane with a piece of fabric to save my life, I realized that I wasn’t afraid of death. Death is easy. It’s quite passive. What I’m afraid of is a passive life that is more disheartening than death. Living life to the full is what’s hard. Remember the Beatitudes, the upside-down Kingdom, and the beauty of loving Jesus more than you love your husband or wife, your job, your children… “For your heavenly Father knows that you need them… Seek first His Kingdom…”

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them.’”

Maybe all of this is like a photo with the light flooding in, where the sun is brighter than it should be, and where the details and difficulties are bleached out in a glowing brilliance. Maybe. You can accuse me of forgetting about making ends meet, of glossing over moribund 9-5’s and of coming home without the strength to hope. I could be guilty of baseless idealism. But this is my point exactly… the Gospel was always counter-intuitively brilliant to me, absurd and unrealistic in this cold world, yet I believe it because of its inexplicable contrast against hopelessness and death.

If we are not light and salt, hands and feet, if we are not the hope we profess or the love that dies to give life, if cynics like me can’t look beyond our naval and hold onto something other than our stark existentialism, well… I would be lost.

Friend, don’t you dare wake up one morning and not know how you got there. And if you ever considered me a friend, don’t let me slide obliviously down that path either.

Faith, hope, and love. Always love.

["Now everybody got the game figured out all wrong. I guess you never know what you got til it's gone.... Do you think about me now and then?..."]

"On my knees, empty..."

Sometimes, no, oftentimes, I wish life was not the way that it was.

It's an acquired skill to appreciate and be thankful for the small beauties that keep our heads up, but it's sad that we need to resort to that. It implies that those beautiful things are the exceptions to the rule, and that most of our days are a struggle.

One day.

It's OK to be not OK.

A month and a half left until graduation. A month and a half left until the end of our college careers. Uncertainties refuse to remain relegated in the damp darkness of our unconscious for much longer. They snarl their threats in grad school rejection letters. They creep behind the masks of questions like, "What are you doing after you graduate?"

We are not our jobs.

We are not our grades.

But we are our community. I won't miss my assignments and papers, but I will miss people who I don't need to explain myself to. I will miss shared experiences that need no words. I will miss my brothers and my sisters who have seen the worst and the best of all I am, who know how I think and have seen me cry.

I remind myself of the ways in which God has worked in my life and how He has directed it, especially in the times He has given me very little choice in the matter. I try to tell myself that this is the case, that if given a choice, I would probably make the wrong one. But the uncertainties ask me if I'm just uttering a mantra to make myself feel better.

I want to actively embrace and prepare for the change that forges toward us like a runaway train. But I don't want it to hit me like one. If I knew how to anticipate the onslaught of frustrations and emotions, I would. But I don't.

My friends tell me that I think too much. (I think it's a control thing).

Henri Nouwen tells me to live in the present.

Where is my faith?

Jesus, I believe. Help my unbelief.

1/18/08

It’s always about relinquishing. It’s always about opened hands and broken hearts, and admitting that God knows better, because that’s our only option to accept. Such an admission comes from a place of desperation and dependence. It is forced by cold shoulders of realities that we wished were only bad dreams at best, night-terrors at worst. But just because my state is a product of being forced into concession doesn’t make it wrong.

It’s always about relinquishing. It’s about making plans and thinking ideas… it’s about wanting things our way only to have God ask us to give it up. Not because He’s a bully (or so I would like to hope in His defense), but because supposedly, He has something different and better in store. And hope…. Hope is the chain, sometimes the only chain, that ties my motivation and sanity to this earth. If one day I lose hope in what is promised to me, if I lose hope that no matter what happens, there is a God who has assured me of a resurrection and vindication, that will be the day I cease seeing purpose in suffering and pain.

Relinquishing. Relinquishing the dreams that we hold to, the form manifested by our desire for completion and wholeness… it is not the hope for completion that is relinquished, but our conceptualization of it… the idol we have fashioned out of what was deemed, “Very good.” It’s always about relinquishing.

I walked slowly today, in the face of the wind and snow and decided to feel every cold prick sweeping across my exposed skin. Our God is a strange God, one who allows things to break before they are reconstructed, calls us to relinquish every part of our lives, especially the deepest parts, if we are to keep it. What a difficult teaching indeed.

How long, O Lord, do we need to have faith in an ideal before we taste its actualization? And even when we are given it, ironic that I still have to remember, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be praised.”

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

Are we ever "where we need to be?" On one hand, isn't it possible to be in G-d's will, and isn't that then "where we need to be?" But on the other hand, isn't the nature of sanctification the reality that we aren't where we need to be, and thus we are getting to that place we're supposed to be? The former allows us to live in shalom with what G-d has given (or not given) us. It facilitates the process of living in the present. However, the reality of the latter is like a thorn in the mind, heart and spirit. The realization that our thoughts and motives count just as heavily as our actions (Sermon on the mount), yet we are to act in accordance with what is right even when our motives and thoughts are rebellious remains, to me, a difficult anomaly.

This is ever the tension of our lives... acknowledging the legitimacy of our feelings without necessarily living by them. Struggling to live right even when our motives are questionable. Through all of these paradoxes runs a thread of attempted faithfulness, often faltering... a faithfulness that I pray is honored even when I cannot straighten or sweep out the depths of my intentions.

The Spirit prays for us when we do not have the words... but I think He also prays for us when our motives are muddled.

You gotta know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em...

Nouwen likes to say that we each have our own crosses to bear, referring to the unique weaknesses and burdens we each possess. However, with deference, I believe that the analogy, when used in the context of our faith, should not be tossed around in its colloquial meaning. Chr-st is the bearer of our cross, and it is upon the cross that we have been crucified with Him, dead to ourselves.

Perhaps a more apt New Testament allusion would be to say we all have our thorns in the flesh. Like Paul, we have those demons in our lives that seem to haunt us no matter how much we pray for them to be taken away. Paul called his a “messenger of Satan.” Three times he prayed to be relieved of his curse, and three times the Lord replied, “My grace is sufficient. My strength is made perfect in your weakness.”

Ever since I realized that running away doesn’t do much to solve problems, I’ve attempted to take the challenge of facing them head on, no matter how difficult. In the few short years that I’ve attempted to hold that standard, there have been two things that I’ve realized.

First, no matter how honest we are with ourselves or with other people, some things just take time. A single conversation, albeit a bold and necessary one, does not automatically fix things. No matter how hard we try with something, we can only do so much. The rest is in the placating and neutralizing effects of time. Free will also dictates that a positive response cannot be forced… it is between the other person and G-d. Time, in the hands of G-d, becomes an important catalyst for healing and growth. It is also in this span of silence that we must strive to remain as faithful as we can, in spite of our sometimes quasi self-deluded attempts at justifying our actions. (How’s that for qualifiers?)

Second, after facing the reality of our weaknesses and sin, and after wrestling with them like Paul, I think it’s ok to come to the conclusion that they are our own unique thorns, our very own customized messengers of Satan who won’t leave us alone. We might have to bear our vices and our scars longer than we would prefer, so that we are humbled enough to know that it is G-d’s grace that sustains us, not our ever-improving, ever-victorious holy and righteous self discipline and willpower. And if we indeed live in a fallen world where our hearts are broken and our thoughts distorted, where our bodies and all of creation groan for the culmination of redemption, then it might be ok to embrace the idea that though sanctification is a process, some of these curses will indeed remain with us until all is made right. If the case is that a given thorn refuses to change, then for your own sake, know when to walk away and know when to run. It’s not faithfulness or bravery to fight a battle that cannot be won. Run. (Joseph ran from Potiphar’s wife. David ran from Saul). Run until your legs can no longer move, because if you believe in Chr-st’s return, then you’ll also know that your running is not cowardice or ignorance, but the proper response until Someone else ultimately takes care of business.

The message most people probably need to hear is to stop and fight. But for others, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to know when to run.

"Life can be a little sweet, life can be a little shitty."

(To get the full effect of the title, you have to think about Eric Hadland, Nathaniel Strenger, Ted Warsavage and I hiking through the snowy Northwoods singing Red Hot Chili Peppers. Just think, Eric and Nathaniel, doing their hobbly thing, singing. While we're lost. In the cold. Hopefully, it will make you smile and not offend you.)

Well friends, thank you very much for praying for me, but, today, miraculous divine intervention didn't show up and I bombed the math section of the GREs :). There's an option at the end whether or not to report the score.. I decided not to register the score, since umm... I pretty much just guessed on the last 3rd of the test.

It's honestly really very humbling and frustrating, especially since I will have to take it again... in China. And the math section won't go away either. For someone who only applied to Wheaton and didn't think much of the SATs, this grad school and GRE thing is an awful hassle. In our cocky Wheaton arrogance (or maybe just mine?), not being able to complete 28 middle school level questions in 45 minutes without a calculator puts me in my place.

Anticipating these damn GREs, I was thinking yesterday about what it means to trust in God, and even about the nature of your prayers for me. (Ooo... scary questions.) What does it mean when some things we pray for work out the way we want them to, and other things don't? What does it mean when some things look like divine appointments and other times, I can't figure out what God is trying to do, for the life of me?

In the end, I'm trying the best that I can to go the direction the Lord has called me. Personally, the grad program in Berkeley and UCLA look great, according to my standards. I don't necessarily have the numbers to get into them, and whether I get in is really God's prerogative. But if I don't get in, what then? Ah, trust in the Lord. He knows my life and what is ahead far better than I do. Trust in the Lord, and don't mistake God as a divine magician who glorifies an individual. In the end, it must be God who becomes greater as I become less.

Ohh listen to us Christians. If I didn't know better, I'd think we were just playing mental games with ourselves, trying to exonerate the actions of a deity we claim is loving and good. No wonder people think we're fools. (But everyone's a fool, it's just a matter of who we're fools for. I'm pretty ok being God's fool. He's been good and faithful to me.)

Faith is a strange thing. If God played by our rules, it doesn't make sense. But He doesn't play by our rules. (Honestly, it still doesn't make sense, but that has to be ok.)

So for the sweet part, I'm off to China (via Korea) tonight :). I'm gonna keep on going, and worry about the GREs when I need to take them again.

Friends, thanks for praying the will of the Lord in my life. Trust me... I will be needing your prayer.... especially when I come across the math section again.

Let me know how I can pray for you. Really. People think I'm saying that as a gesture of formality or something. I'm serious.