Morte Christe

During the Good Friday service today, we had a reading that incorporated the text from “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”. Those words aggressively threw me against the wall of nostalgia, since I had sung the song “Morte Christe” with that text in Men’s Glee Club. For the half an hour drive home from church, my car leaked at the seams with old Glee Club repertoire as I relived standing on those creaky risers and hitting those low D’s.

I talked with some friends these last few days, others like me who curse and spit at the mere thought of remembering second semester senior year for their own reasons, those who would have agreed with Eliot that “this is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper.” An ugly stain upon our hearts and minds, we still graduated and moved forward, strewn across the country, chasing our dreams to move on, and moving on to chase our dreams, all the while hoping to forget the unforgettable.

Where are we?

Perhaps my emotions were primed by the Stations of the Cross. I mean, thinking about Jesus dying is a bit of debby downer. I wanted desperately for Sunday to be right now. Right after the line in the bulletin that read, “The service ends in silence,” I wanted the lift, the resolution, the fix. I wanted to know that everything was ok and to bask in the glow of that empty tomb in a garden, with an angel shining like a Thomas Kinkade painting.

But that’s not how it goes. Today, we sit with the reality of death. We will go to bed with it tonight, and wake up with it heavy on our chests, even if the sun sneaks through our shutters. And we will walk with it, make it our own, let it weary our souls until God lifts us up, as he does Jesus on Sunday. But for now, we are Saturday. Neither here nor there, but moving forward like time inevitable.

We'll Shake the Nightmare Free

In a non-Gnostic, purely illustrative way, I think people function with three layers. Superficially, our skin is what we show to the world. It’s this outer garment we cake with makeup and drape with clothes. We carry it when we walk and present it as we wish to be viewed. It is the pride of our youth, and what the simplest forms of beauty call home. But beneath it is our flesh and bones… the blood and truth of our thoughts and emotions. Our skin heals, albeit with scars, but our sinews and tendons are not so easily mended, leaving us with Jacob’s limp that asserts itself every step of the way. It is our flesh and bones that move our feet down a path, and joints and ligaments that bend our fingers in creation or destruction. Being the substance of who we are, there is no ignoring its depth. It's cut with the jagged blade of the fall, and woven together with generational sin. It’s patched with all the wrongs done to us and laced with all the wrongs we have done to others. It is, for most people, the driving winds and currents propelling our lives, in light of or in spite of our awareness. Our flesh and blood is what we attempt to escape from at the edge of sleep, what haunts our dreams in the early hours of morning, and the invasive sharp that pries our eyes awake like light from slotted blinds.

But even further beneath the rolling tumult that animates our breath lays a dark core of stillness… the center of who we are and what we truly know. In those rare moments when our flesh and blood are at ease and our skin is translucent, our soul, what the ancient Jews would call “Nephesh,” can be heard whispering its steadiness and truth.

More eternal than the broken bones and pain of bruises, my nephesh simply says, “Yes, He is worth it. His Kingdom is worth it. Greater than your past and past your future, It is worth it.” Like strings on a sitar, my nephesh resonates when it hears the vibrations of grace. It quells my shaking bones long enough for the flesh to ponder an existence beyond itself, beyond the idolatry of its own hands and mind, beyond the myopic dreams turned sour… long enough to hope that deep in my marrow, I will one day know the truth my nephesh claims.

It will innervate my tissue, forcing out the angry red poison I have known all my life. Flowing through my veins, redeeming all it gives breath to, it will not heed the threat of pain. No longer will my passions be crooked or my heart be broke. No longer will the oscillating waves throb behind my eyes or pummel my mind… my flesh and bone will be moved by the depths of what my nephesh knows. My soul and flesh and skin will align and be an unruly mustang no longer, but with its head bowed low, carry the Lord like humility once did.

Innocuously Insidious

It seems innocuous enough, even laudably romantic, to say that despite others’ opinions, one sees glimpses of some greater beauty in another person. It would make (and probably has made) the skeleton plot of many movies… the person who is patient and suffers all sorts of abuse in the process of bringing out that greater character in the other. After all their hard work and persistence, their faith, hope, love, and an undying belief in never giving up, the other character’s true selves are able to flourish, and everything ends happily ever after.

Such stories make us sigh wistfully, echoing within us the hopes that perseverance pays off, that ugliness succumbs to beauty, that pain will be redeemed, and that love conquers all. Each of those things, in their purest forms, are true in their deepest sense and can be found at the core of our Christian story. Those things are true of our Father and displayed in his son. Even today, we catch reaffirmations of them through his spirit in our lives.

But I wonder what happens when each of those good truths are slightly distorted as we place ourselves at the center of those statements. We try to become the ones who redeem pain. We try to conquer all with our version of love. We want to be the ones to bring out the beauty in others, whether or not it is our rightful place to do so. All the while, we see the entire situation with our convoluted and cracked lenses. We tell ourselves that we are living the Gospel story, loving our neighbors as ourselves, when in fact it is our neediness, brokenness and emptiness that is trying to play God. We want to be the beneficiaries of our own “unconditional” love. We want to be the redeemers of our own pain that we created, and the one who plants, waters, grows and reaps seeds in the lives of others. It is not the Lord’s work in their lives that we are after, but *our* version of the Lord’s work according to *our* ideas of who we want them to be, which inevitably revolve around ourselves. It is our own corruption reading itself into a narrative that desires to be true.

So in the end, though it seems innocuous, we may be playing into the most insidious of sins by stringing together our distorted version of those truths. Namely, we cast ourselves as the role of God, even as we attempt to “love.” Sometime ago, in speaking of relationships, Bonhoeffer says that Christ must mediate our relationships. If Christ bids us to speak or act in love, we speak or act. If Christ bids us to stay silent and still, we rest and hold our tongues. If he calls us to greet and embrace, we do so in his name. But he may also call us to bid adieu and depart, and that too is in his name. Therefore, tenacity and persistence are only values so long as they are in Christ and his will. Love through actions is only God’s love so long as he calls for it. Since in him, there is a season for everything, and love in obedience, even if it is in silence, is far truer to his purposes than a seemingly innocuous romantic story.

Red Ink Black Ink

Don’t you sometimes wish that you could balance memories like a checkbook? Red ink and black ink, positives and negatives. For every crappy one you have, a positive one of equal strength would cancel it out, putting you at a net of 0. Having a bad day? No worries, go make some good memories with friends and cash them in. Plan on having a rough year? Stash the laughs up now, or dig yourself out later. But instead of being equal parts of sour vs. sweet, we weigh lead against helium and blow our hot air in hopes that we live more than a zero sum game. Instead, we are left with the full spectrum of our broken selves and our strange functioning 3lb glob of neural connections, keen to fire at the most innocuous of triggers, resigned to survive on a word that simply says, "This way that it is, it is good."

So it is, the difference between what we wish and what is real… trusting, praying, hoping that Grace is a reality redeeming the red, ceasing our striving, granting us reprieve, and putting us over the top.

Chitown

When I left on my four wheels
across interstates and
demarcations of time
you begged for rest like
a child denied
his dreams painted upon his mind
by green summer afternoons
on his back picking clouds
Now
facedown
upon a sponge of transference
materializations of hopes deferred
But rest,
as wakefulness was no friend
unkind to hope
inhospitable in youth
Sleep because you must
through this déjà vu
and ponder what might be made new
when
you rub the sand from your dry eyes.

Release

When it is a prayer we speak to
grant reprieve, we are instead
granted sleep to ease the pull,
a constant stress upon the cords holding
what is
and what is not yet.
Grant instead
a distaste for opiates, cheapness, and
the quiet waiting that walks what is
toward the glaring silence of
what is not yet.

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.

Realists Anonymous

Those who seek justice from the powers that be, those who do not have an off switch in their minds for questions and analysis, those who attempt to hear the voices silenced by oppression, those who are not satisfied in perpetuating the status quo and are not afraid to speak words to bring it down, those who feel the wounds of the abused as deeply as they feel their own… what will become of us if we cannot find a hope that’s more tangible than every problem we draw out, every sin we condemn, both in ourselves and in the world? The frailty and fragility of a person cannot possibly accumulate the burden of both personal scars and the wounds of others. With buckled knees and hunched backs, our eyes, which have already tended to gaze at the dirt, will be drilled closer to the ground, and soon we will lose the ability to stand straight again. Our heads will no longer fight gravity, and our eyes will see nothing but darkness, whether or not it is actually there. Whatever gifts we have used will become like trying to do surgery by swinging a machete by the blade; altogether useless and rather painful.

Cynicism is not and cannot be the end point under which we are crushed. For those of us who are self-described realists, when we fail to acknowledge and revel in the beauty and goodness that is found intertwined with the brokenness we spend so much time pointing out, we have failed to live up to our name, for beauty, love, and hope are more enduring and immediate realities than the brokenness we see. Not only do we become as blind as those who ignore suffering, but we forfeit a potent method by which we are encouraged, energized and blessed by the one who has already borne these burdens... the one who, by His resurrection, has inaugurated a new reality.

His Kingdom is His, not mine. And if I am part of His Kingdom, then I am entirely His as well, as are these scars, both the ones I have given myself and the ones I have taken on. If He has indeed risen, as I professed today during Eucharist, then my burdens and the cries of this world are not my own to shoulder, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

The Road that Leads to Hope

Walter Brueggemann, in a recent sermon, says that hope cannot come unless first there is mourning. Mourning, in this world of ours, is the prerequisite, the pockmarked and tear stained path that leads us to hope.

The Biblical definition of hope is grounded in the certainty of what is to come. The hope that we have, for ourselves and for the world, is rooted in the promised future just as much as it is rooted in the experienced and historical past.

When we think of who we are, we often frame ourselves in reference to our past experiences, perhaps naming key events or situations that have had a formative influence on our development. But how often do we let the promised future be a defining factor in our lives? In Philippians, when Paul speaks of “forgetting what is behind and pressing on towards what is ahead,” he models the practice of allowing his future reality (full redemption in Christ) to infuse his here and now. He is defined not by the kingdom and accolades he left behind, but by the full lordship of Christ that is yet to come.

In speaking about hurt and suffering, Nouwen says that we must let our own personal experience of pain transcend the individual and unique experiences that gave birth to it. Our pain is not to be relegated to the realm of particulars, lest we play mind games with “if only’s”, but eventually generalized and removed from specifics so that we are better able to empathize in the suffering of others. For as long as we bury our hearts in the specifics of a situation, our mourning is of limited fruitfulness to those we are called to minister to. But when we view our own cups as sharing in the greater suffering of those around us, that same hope we obtain from being sojourners on the road of mourning can then also reverberate with the mourning experienced by the world. The same staff that comforts us in our troubles will also then comfort others. And as we learn to hope in what is not yet here, so too will we be agents in bringing hope to a creation groaning in the pains of childbirth for its consummation.

This is the act of turning our eyes outwards to a hurting world even when we ourselves are licking our wounds. As the world lies broken, so we mourn as if for ourselves. As we look forward to the hope of transformation, restoration and renewal, so we take our hope and lavish it as freely to the world as love was lavished freely upon us.

And so we mourn, knowing that we mourn not only for ourselves, but for those who have much more reason to weep. And as we slowly traverse the steep paths of mourning, we somehow find ourselves walking next to others, with faith, afraid but undaunted, towards a hope that reveals itself just enough say that when all is said and done, these three remain: Faith, Hope, and Love.

Matthew 6

On my trip to Mongolia, one of the focuses for the students was “knowing what’s true, then acting on it.” On the high ropes course, we told them that the harness and safety rope were strong, and that they could trust them. I told a student that at the end of the day, sometimes we just have to make a decision to believe, because that’s what faith is.

In my narrow ways of thinking, I always try to figure out what percentage of an issue can be affected by a given factor. In this case, how much of our lives can simply be traced back to decisions we make? Can we, in fact, simply decide to move forward and count it as done?

I wish difficulties were simply speed bumps in the road; gather enough inertia to make a decision, then clench our teeth, close our eyes, yell at the top of our lungs and lunge forward before we change our minds, something like skydiving. But as if the willingness to make the decision itself isn’t difficult enough, one discovers that there is no free fall after the speed bump, but rather just the first in a series of obstacles on an uphill climb. When we lose the strength to move forward, the only direction to go is down, hitting every rock along the way.

“Simply” make a decision. Make a choice. Perform the action. The sentiments and feelings will follow the actions. Be like Joshua and Caleb; step into the river before it parts, and miracles of old will be performed. But what happens when the water simply turns our boots into sinking boats and the torrents continue as they always have? What happens when instead of parting, the waters sweep our feet from under us and mock us for thinking that a simple decision could stop the current that carved canyons from granite?

As an aspiring psychologist, I believe in self-fulfilling prophecies and the power of decisions and concepts like fictional finalism. As a Christian, perseverance trumps the culture of instant fixes. But in the end, I must recognize that the will of God trumps all, no matter what virtues I try to live. It’s not the first time I’ve tried to fashion my own deliverance with dismal results. When do our good ideas, insights and self-awareness turn into things that should be considered “shit” (that’s the Greek) compared to what the Lord intends to do?… a Lord that doesn’t always keep us on dry ground along our own trajectories but uses raging torrents to carry us places we could have never imagined.

I want to learn how to love the Lord and to seek the Kingdom, Matthew 6 style. I thought that other distractions needed to be weeded out before there was space to do so, as if I only had a certain amount of emotional and mental capacity, and that the sum expended energy was limited. That may or may not be true, but it seems that we are called to love and seek the Lord in spite of and in combination with everything else that demands our strength. There will forever be suffering, busy-ness, and needs. For as long as I have warmth in my veins, brokenness will masquerade as red blood cells. Perhaps it is in the midst of it or even through it, and not the removal thereof, that I must learn to love Him with all my heart, all my mind, and all my strength.

Ponderings on the Trail

I believe love, by definition, is an act of vulnerability. In essence, love is taking all the frailty, brokenness, goodness, and darkness out of our own hands and placing it in the hands of another, giving them access to the core of our very personhood. In giving them this access, you have also given them an extraordinary amount of power in your life, to discover places that others cannot reach and to speak into the depths of your being. However, with this vulnerability comes the potential of an equally deep damage that comes when those whom you have given yourself to swing their words a bit too carelessly or tread a bit too roughly. In the narrow and hidden corridors of flesh that wind about in the heart, the scars etched in the walls remain long after the damage is done.

When we say that we love God, we are allowing Him into the darkest catacombs that support the structures and facades we show the world. In faith and vulnerability, we allow Light to scatter the darkness in ourselves, and give Him the authority and power to tear down and rebuild as He sees fit, oftentimes causing the buildings on the surface to come crumbling down. The vulnerability of loving God is felt in every intentional cut of His refining blade, as well as the words He speaks of life and restoration.

In truly loving someone else, we are also giving them the same access into our depths. Oftentimes, the Spirit guides people into those corridors to act on His behalf, whether they know it or not. At times, they are the ones who do the breaking down in His name, are the voice to His words, and His arms that embrace.

Bonhoeffer says that true love for a person is always first and foremost mediated by and through Christ. He says that it is easy for us to believe our love for a person is genuine when in fact it is really a distorted version that is tainted with our own brokenness and neediness. Because of the oftentimes more tangible and immediate results of our limited human love, what we give is often laced with subtle forms of manipulation, and reflects our insecurities more than the love given by God.

Nouwen reminds us that we are unable to truly love others freely until we allow ourselves to be loved by God. Until we internalize the unchanging truth of our status as beloved children of God, we will continue to look for the approval and affirmation of others when they cannot ultimately provide it. Our actions will not come from a desire to bless or to love, but will arise from the deep insecurities that come from the unhealed dark places in our being.

We cannot give to others that which we have not received. We cannot learn to love properly unless we accept the love from God. It is hard for us to be healers if we have not known hurt and healing. Until we embrace ourselves in the name and by the grace of the Lord, it will be difficult for us to embrace a friend, let alone a stranger or an enemy. “Those who fall upon the Rock will be shattered, but those whom the Rock falls upon will be crushed (Matt 21:44).” As we are shattered, may He become both the new bedrock and the new architect, and may our attempts to love others be empowered by and submitted to Him.

The Mongols Are A-comin'!

Let's see what happens when you stuff your heart into a backpack and drag it across the rolling expanses of Mongolian fields, while attempting to make sure 12 inexperienced teenagers make it back to their parents alive (and with some sort of growth to show).

Ta-ta for now.

All It Takes

In the attempt to forcibly move
(Because the world will not move for me)
Relativity becomes a testable theory.

Every arbitrary threshold,
Every zone of time and mile staked therein,
My resolve is harnessed and clipped
Lest I falter, stumble back,
And find myself crumbled like pillars of salt.

City streets will be redeemed
As I peer beyond the silhouette of my own nose.
O Death, where is thy victory?
O Damien Rice, where is thy sting?

Redemption of Place

In my town, there is a small dirt road that leads into creeks coming in from the bay. In an open expanse and solitude rare for suburbia, one can look across the bay and see the glowing lights of Atlantic City reminding me, “all that glitters is not gold.” Here, throughout high school, I’ve written countless stanzas of angsty teen poetry and learned the freedom of cursing at God. When I come back “home” to New Jersey, this is still my haven of solitude, a place that simultaneously accepts my mourning and reminds me of God’s faithfulness and promises.

For an overly sentimental bastard like me, there is a lot of power in a place. Psychologists who’ve done research on environmental cues say that our surroundings have enormous strength in helping us recall habits, thoughts and events, sometimes against our conscious will.

So, today is my last day in America for the next few short months. I’m returning to a place I spent most of last year in. With the place come all the people, activities, smells and thoughts that made the experience what it was. The thoughts that accompanied me alone on crowded buses will show their face again. The wanderings of a heart when I saunter the humid night streets, looking for 羊肉串, will return. But speaking of a place he revisited, a friend recently said, “I felt like I left a part of myself back at Wheaton when I left. But I picked it up and ran with it when I visited again.”

This is my hope as I return to that dusty dirty city, that I will participate in a redemption of place. Perhaps something has changed between December of last year and tomorrow, when I sit cramped by a window seat watching an ocean of clouds wash by. Perhaps the change will allow me to face those memories that spit in my face, and take back from them the pieces of me they should’ve never been given. Perhaps, when I leave again this time, I will fly back more healed, more whole for facing this place.

Eventually, like my friend, I’ll go back to Wheaton and run away with the pieces that I left there as well.

All in a Day's Work

Today,

I rubbed the scars on my knuckles and remembered you.

I bought 5 ripe avocados and smiled.

I saw a bumblebee on my dashboard and thought of you.

I turned the radio off, drove with the windows down and felt your silence blow through my hair.

Here's to Giving Up

Giving up well is like trying to gracefully eat spaghetti while wearing a white shirt; …one wonders if it’s ever been done successfully.

When the sour sting of bitterness starts lingering in the mouth after the teeth are brushed at night… when anger is found systematically speckling your blurred consciousness in the mornings, all is not right. Moving forward should not be independent of Agape, and true healing cannot take root in hatred.

Mending, at the cost of love, is not mending at all.

Dear Chicago:

Tonight was my last night with you, wrapped in blankets on the roof of my house, staring at your moon with my friends. It's the second half of May, but you're still so damn cold. I guess some things just won't change.

I sometimes catch myself wishing you were different. That I was different. I sometimes wish humility could have come without the humbling, that friends didn't come with the drama. Sometimes, I wish that your streets were gentler to my thoughts and your songs kinder to my heart. I wish you would have taught me to love rightly and to forget myself more often.

Maybe tomorrow, when I spend my night driving through Ohio listening to Over the Rhine, or next month back under the lights of Tianjin 羊肉 vendors, I won't be so bitter over your painful winters. Maybe, as I look up and see stars under Mongolian skies or neon towers across Victoria Harbour, a smile will greet the thought of my brothers and sisters who all have '08 after their names. After all, however imperfect and odd we were, however fleeting our joy was, you made us beautiful, if only for a moment.

Tomorrow, I'll squeeze the last of Wheaton in my back seat, packed in paper boxes. I'm sure I'll find pieces of you with every familiar face.

I'm leaving you with a broken heart, and I'm not coming back until He fixes it. I'm not coming back until I'm a better person, and your winds no longer cut so deep.

Until then, ciao, buddy. My friends here will hold you down.

Yea, here's to the nights we felt alive.

Love,
Chuck

Remember?

If I slide your picture underneath a frame,
I can grasp within my two hands
the moment we chose to leave our regrets
like muddy shoes at the door,
and let the whites of our teeth,
the creases at the corner of our eyes
select the memories I choose to recall.

Forget
In that moment, anything
but the lilacs lingering on a breeze
that never seems to leave this windy city
Unlike us, who,
with our patchwork hearts,
begin to drive, fly, walk,
RUN.
away from all that we chose not to frame.

If I slide your picture underneath a frame,
We will fossilize our smiles,
reignite our conversations with,
“Remember that time in Chicago...
That night... on spring break...
... Remember?”
We will dance around the demons slain by the Holy Ghost,
and will toast to the amnesia outside the frame.