New Years Grinch

Tomorrow is a new year. Another artificial marker in time... another rollover of some arbitrary counter. Another opportunity to make some sort of resolution on exercise, habits, goals, etc.

I don't feel any different today than I did yesterday. And tomorrow, I won't feel any different than I did today. Today, the sun rose and it set, and so it shall tomorrow. Any "resolution" that we want to start tomorrow might as well be started today. I don't believe "tomorrow" is a special "tomorrow." We have opportunities every day to start new.

"Behold, I makes all things new."

And yet, as I go through the journals, writings, and poems from this last year, I cannot deny that a string of days has wrought change. Or rather, retrospectively, I can say that God has remained faithful. Reading my journal from 12/31/08, I can humbly say that I didn't accomplish all my goals or resolutions. I have fallen short on multiple levels... community, holiness, academic goals, spirituality... and yet I am still here, enveloped and surrounded by an acceptance and love that is not rooted in the successful accomplishment of my goals, no matter how noble they might be.

I spent the year quite selfishly, and have found it rather vacuous. I frequently cheated myself with the cheap and easy when depth and substance required work and sacrifice. Despite all that, He has been faithful, and I will not make the mistake Israel made, which was to forget God's faithfulness.

So tomorrow is like any other day, albeit one in which I will probably miswrite the date as '09. Today I give thanks, and tomorrow is a day in which mercies are made new.

Coal Trains and the Red Line

I have a theory. At my job, I work 8 days on, and then get 6 days off. With this kind of schedule, months fly by in the blink of an eye. My theory is that instead of 30 some individual days, I live my month in 4 segments. With the beginning of each shift or off week, the end is in sight, and so that segment passes not as a collection of days, but as one block of time, similar to how everyone else would view one day. Thus, the four segments disappear much like 4 days would disappear.

Whether or not this theory is correct, I don’t know. But talking to a friend about future plans, he pointed out that according to my timeline of desired events, I would finish grad school by the age of 30. Thirty!! Despite the fact that grad school may take 5 or 6 years, it is but another segment in my life. When one begins it, one lives with the anticipation and vision of finishing it. If we are not careful and intentional, these segments in life will pass quickly, leaving us at a place wondering where all our time, youth, and energy has gone.

I don’t presume to know what it means to be intentional, but I presume that it’s one of the few ways of living life without waking up one mid-life morning and wondering how one arrived there or what the hell one is doing. I fear that our scrambling and striving, without a certain intentionality, will dull our ability to be alive. With every self-interested step we make towards our unexamined goals, we fall further into a void of eventual uncertainty that sooner or later, will overtake us.

It was surprising last night, with the Chicago sounds coming through the window, what the rumbling of tracks and the pitch of a train whistle would do to my memory. It caught me off guard and brought be back to the frigid winters in the boys HNGR house, looking through a frosted window across the yard to see the long cargo trains plow through the evening, much like the grayness that rumbled through my being. Most of that hurt, by the grace of God, has been sifted through time, but I can’t get that haunting cry out of my ears. And now, most of these people who have walked with me during those years are one by one leaving the place that helped form us. One by one, we treat this time as a steppingstone and keep moving on. There is something I want to hold onto, people I want to hold onto because by losing them, I fear losing all that I once knew and all who knew me as I once was, all the while not knowing fully who I am or who I should be.

I Don't Know Why You Say Hello, I Say Goodbye

Everything has an end. At times, it catches you blind, like an alarm that broadsides your dream like a drunk in a truck, running a light. Others set, ever so slowly, almost imperceptible, were it not for a lengthening of shadows under the eyes and the color of fire lit above the horizon. Passed, before it was lived. But everything has an end. Some are orchestrated, choreographed in step with Pomp and Circumstance, notarized with chops and officiated by priests. Pictures. Speeches. Flowers, delicately arranged, cut and sacrificed for this very occasion. Others will squat upon your mind as you get a haircut or eat yet another meal… a sitting vision, a premonition wondering if it will all still be the same the next time you come back. Everything has an end. It will all come to pass. Though, most of us would appreciate a little heads up.

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.

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.

Visceral Grace

We live by bold statements. We try to take lessons from the mouth of Jesus and the pens of prophets, and graft them onto ourselves. Our grafts try to bring peace, they try to move in love, they try to speak words of truth. We make grand gestures with our arms and try to embrace those who have been cut by misplaced touch. But every once in a while, if we are keen to those tumultuous unspoken currents that pulse within us, they sometimes spill out and reveal that no matter how many branches and leaves we tape to our bodies, a slab of cold granite is incapable of accepting grafts. The fear that wells up from prejudices we deny, the anger that blinds from wrongs we have forgiven, the bitterness that should have gone with the times…we are no tree of life.

I believe visceral reactions often reveal truths we bury under layers of ideals we deceive ourselves into believing. Before those well-rehearsed truths are able to do damage control, our beating hearts and short breath betray another reality, one that says anger is lurking outside our door, that our fear merely wears masks, and that bitterness is no lover of God or men.

Years ago in high school, I listened to a speaker talk about “bitter root syndrome,” as he spoke out of Hebrews 12:14-15. The verses say, “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” He warned strongly about the potential for bitterness to dig its tendrils deep into our being, tainting our thoughts and actions, and warring against our call to be the new creations that we are. Living at peace is intrinsically connected to holiness, and holiness to seeing the Lord. This bitter root, this growing poison chokes not only our own love and holiness, but according to Hebrews, it threatens to cast its curse upon others as well.

I’m not certain what it means to possibly “fall short of the grace of God.” But I assume that it means somehow granting grace by living up to that same grace given to us, in line with, “Forgive us our trespasses AS WE forgive those who trespass against us.” The granting of grace or forgiveness does not require bilateral reciprocation, since we were redeemed unilaterally, while we were still sinners. Plastering ourselves with Christian truisms does not necessitate transformation. Somewhere deep inside, where tangled roots of bitterness innervate our visceral reactions, this is where grace weeds out anger and fear. What controls us is our idol. What dictates our steps, thoughts, words, who or what we avoid and embrace… this is what we worship.

I do not serve a god that succumbs to fear or bitterness. Anger has no permanent address here. I serve a Lord who prayed with grace, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

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.

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.

We All Struggle With Forward Motion

It's frightening to wake up one day, instead of being in your bed, to be lying naked on the dirt upon which your house once stood. The walls that you spent so much time propping up, the furniture you spent time amassing... it never was a very beautiful house, with crooked door frames and uneven floorboards. The paint never really matched and the roof had torrential leaks on bad days. But this is where you lived, spent all your time trying to install support beams to keep it standing, nailing patches to the holes in the ceiling... this is what you had tried so hard to build for so long.

You gave them permission to take it down because day after day, they reminded you that it didn't pass the inspection codes. It was unsafe and unsightly. On the good days, the beams of sun that escaped through the cracks and holes brought life to the damp rooms, a romantic picture worthy of being mounted with a silver frame. But when it rained, it was so damn cold, and no memory could comfort the bones of such a dense reality.

You gave them permission to bulldoze it. You gave it up willingly, because your hands had forgotten what anything other than the heaviness of a hammer felt like, and your skin had grown pale with the dark.

You gave it up, but you never expected the wind to howl so eerily or the ground to be so empty. The weeds that grew at the feet of the foundation now brush against a damp line in the dirt. When all that's ever surrounded you were your falling walls and broken windows, not having them as the very last musings of night and the very first stirrings of morning can make you wonder how one can fill this unnerving vacancy...