This I am learning:

I can be whoever I want to be.
As long as I don't do it around you.

Hope

It came upon the midnight clear
That glorious song of old
From angles bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men
From heaven's all gracious King!"
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing

Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled.
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing
And over its Babel sounds
The blessed Angels sing

O ye beneath life's crushing load
Whose forms are bending low
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing
Oh rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing

For lo! the days are hastening on
By prophets seen of old
When with the ever-circling years
shall come the time foretold
When the new heavens and earth shall own
The Prince of Peace, their King
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.

--Edmund Hamilton Sears, 1849

The Jerk Factor

Truth is:
I lack the maturity
the strength
or presence of mind
to come up with the immeasurable
grace
needed
to ignore the hurt

How shall I learn
where is my example
how long will it be my fault?
how shall I stand under this burden
long enough to
forgive you
for its placement

truth is
I'm no superwoman
I am just a child
like you
and all I need
is a little grace
of my own

some new and exciting

I know I don't usually post a lot of art things here, but there a few exciting things I can't keep to myself and the other blog... well... not my favorite place right now. So, I'm just going to post it here.

First of all-- after thinking about it for months and months, I finally got a white board to put up in my studio space so I can actually write my thoughts down as well as put up some images that keep me thinking in fresh ways. It is exciting to see my little home becoming more and more mine as I figure out what I want and how to make it work. So here is a little snap-aroo of the space with the new little inspiration board:















THEN-- you have probably noticed this fabulous painting there. this is something I am especially excited about. I don't think it is quite finished, but I think it is so beautiful that I need to share it anyway. For the last three years or so, I've been extremely fascinated and awe-struck b the beautiful colors and stillness of winter, but haven't quite gotten to the place in my work where I feel I can do it justice.... until now! I hope this will be the first of a series of winter celebrations. Stay tuned for that. Here is a little image close up so for a little more of a drool-fest for you.














I have also been working on a few other new-ish things that have come out of a lot of my journey down into the depths. I've been thinking about the relationship between the inner and the outer landscape and think I might try to do a bit more "inner landscapes" in conjunction with the more "outer" ones. We'll see how I end up feeling....











Last but surely not least, I have been thinking of starting something of a new project. Today, as I went through some old things while setting up the new addition to my studio, I came across an old pile of self-portraits. Back in the Spring of 2008 when I took figure painting, we were required to complete one self-portrait every day for the entire semester. Needless to say, I dropped off with that sometime around spring break, but I often think about that assignment and want to take it up again. After looking through all fourty-some that I do have, I could definitely see the growth that was taking place over the course of the semester and was wishing that I had stuck with it. So I've decided to try it again, in part out of curiosity to see how much I've grown as an artist since then. Something else that I found remarkable was the realization that this was the semester that I started wearing glasses, and it seems a bit telling that in only one or two of the paintings and drawings I am actually wearing them. This might also be why I quit doing it... haha... ANYWAY-- here is the first installment of this project. I don't think I am going to try to do it everyday, but maybe once a week or something. We will also see how I feel about that...

I often find myself, at the end of marked seasons or at certain recurring landmarks in my life, involuntarily (or sometimes more voluntarily, depending on the particular instance) looking back on the time marked out, wondering inwardly, how I might have changed and grown over the length. I often find myself asking, "where was I, who was I, when all of this started? What did I look like when this season last came to close?"

This year, as the holiday season is again arrived and we prepare to change our calendars and reform old habits of numbering on checks and letters and legal documents, I find this seasonal reflection to be particularly pressing-- it seems essential, if not inevitable, to take about 12 steps backwards and look over the landscape through which I've traveled. The valley below is vast and stretching and there is much to be seen.

I am now nearly 24-- this is the time of year that I often begin counting days between me and a landmark that I seem to cherish as a sign of my growing up, a commemoration of what I hope to be an increase towards maturity. It is a year today, I believe, since I officially finished my degree at Colorado State University, although in many ways, I was already far distanced from my life as an undergraduate at this point. I remember last December 19th, simply hoping that the Holidays would pass swiftly so that I could find some quiet to sort through all that the previous four months, if not the previous four years, had been and meant. I was longing for the wilderness of January.

And so it began, it seems. I have been in Boulder now for nearly a year-and-a-half and I often find myself reflecting upon the hand that brought me here. Still, looking back on the process of this decision and the events surrounding my arrival, it seems to have been so swift, so inevitable, so outside my own doing or control. I asked the Lord, "Where shall we go together now?" and he answered with a silent sort of transplant. There wasn't a lot of struggle, I don't remember a great deal of wrestling over the details-- only the recurring question, "are you sure?" Apparently, he was quite certain.

As I've thought over the events of the last twelve months, a few things keep coming back: 1) I am certainly not the woman I was. 2) Nothing has gone according to my plan. 3) Oh how deeply he loves me.

As I look myself in the face, I am acutely aware of a fresh sense of freedom-- a freedom that I never imagined possible. I have all too often had these moments in which I've looked back with a strange sense of longing on particularly beautiful phases of my life in which I felt the Lord had broken through to the heart of me in particularly poignant ways-- I think it is often in the moments when I feel the most foggy, the greatest degree of lostness, these moments when I've come face to face with all the brokenness that still remains, that I foolishly wish to be back to a younger, less complex place because I felt better about myself then. I think "I used to be such a lovely soul... what happened?"

But here is a true thing-- the lenses through which I see this former self is more than likely distorted and the truth is that every time I am brought to a new place of growth, there has to be a great deal of demolition and mess to be made before the flower is able to bloom again. And the thing is this: as I walk down the street and catch pieces of myself in the peripheral reflection of shop windows, I sense a lightness, a freedom from many old things that used to bind. I try to find words to describe the difference between yesterday and today, but the yesterday things are so far gone that all I can do is say that they are, indeed far gone. He has removed our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. What a lovely mystery.

I have been asking a great deal of questions about forgiveness these days. The fall and into the winter has brought with it a great deal of stripping-- many of these months have been wrought with the blazing fires of refinement as I walk deeper into the forest of things that simply need to be released. On a recent visit back to Fort Collins, I sat in the passenger seat as my mentor explained a process of forgiveness in which suddenly, everything that we used to hold so tightly against one another gives way in a sort of vaporous way. "One day," she said, "you just decide and then you just let go." This is not to say that forgiveness is something that simply happens to us without any pursuit on our part, but rather that in the midst of our straining towards it, in the process of our repeated choosing, it somehow comes upon us in the night and we are free.

It is in this way that I often thankful for all of the wordless mysteries of life. There are no words, no means of expression that seem to do justice to this sense of release that I find when I look over my life these days. When I consider this particular season in my life, there is no doubt a deep sense of the specific and important purpose my good and loving Father has for me in it. Nothing seems accidental here.

I mentioned previously, as I think I have in a few previous writings, that a great reality of this year has been the release of my own plans. Or perhaps I ought to say a release from my own plans. It has been a long and painful process of peeling my fingers away from the plans, the goals, the ambitions that I have, for so long, used as a means of avoiding my heart and maintaining a risk-free, solitary independence. Apart from the Father, I can do nothing, Jesus illuminated. And now, here I am, tasting one small lick of this truth.

It took me a few hundred days of frustration before realizing that my hurt is borne of a stubborn insistence upon my own way, my own plans. I want to trust in my own goals. Yet-- thankfully, in his infinite love and mercy, the Lord does not leave me to my own devices and asks me to dare to dream of the things that are in his heart rather than the small scraps that I can hold in my frail hands. He has something far better for me, but I have to let go. The only way that we learn to trust him is by letting go of everything else. Maybe this is what Jesus said when he admonished the rich man, "No one can serve two masters. Either he will love one or hate the other."

What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Nothing this year has gone according to my plan-- plans that I think that I've held in my hardened heart since I was about 16. Maybe younger. I have been working so hard to maintain my own security in the things I could accomplish on my own; there have even been new things that have come about far beyond any plan I could have made and I even tried to fashion those into new, safe plans. Apparently, that doesn't work well either. Of course, I thought God would probably lend a hand here and there when my ambitions became too big for me, but I am not sure I really stopped to consider that I ought to yield to the will of the Father rather than asking him to support mine-- even if I'd found a very convincing argument that these were His ideas. hrumph.

I think, in my immaturity, I've gotten a little mixed up. I've managed to turn a few things around. I got into this mode of thinking that I could use the Lord's gifts, those passions and abilities that he has made integral to my person, for the purpose of my own gain and security. I have believed that although, yes, these gifts will be a blessing to those around me, they are primarily for the use of my own security, my own sense of self-assurance-- I put my trust in the gifts rather than the giver. Apparently, that isn't exactly what He had in mind. And it has been a long hard road of burning and stripping for me to even begin to understand how far off I've been. And I am fairly sure that this turning around will be a long in coming process. I need to learn how to give back the things he's built into me so that they can be used in the right ways, rather than the shallow attempts of my own.

A few months ago, I made the mistake of asking the Father, "Show me what it means to be fully given over." I must have asked this question out of a complete ignorance of what I was asking. Yet, oh how faithful the Lord is. I am learning that the room in his Love for true life and goodness is infinite-- when we actually begin to give everything over, he comes into us and blows us apart with blessing and goodness.

Nothing this year has gone according to my plan and there is no better gift that I could have received. I am so thankful that this season has been marked by such a letting go because, perhaps for the first time in my life, I am starting to understand the security and the abundance that is given in the heart of our Great Father. I have been given a thousand beautiful gifts over the past year that I, never in my wildest dreams, could have known to ask for. In so many ways, I've been both saved from myself and been given the gift of my true self. I have no doubt that the road ahead is still long and full of struggle, but there is nothing else that I would ask for or seek because I know that these are the fires through which he refines us; less and less am I seeking for a day when the trouble ends and the difficulties cease because I am coming to learn that the greater the struggle, the deeper the hurt, the greater the love of a God who dares not leave us alone.

I want to finish this post with some passages from a few books that have named incredibly well much of the wordless realities of what the Lord has been at work in me. I realize that these are quite lengthy, but well worth the read and seem to express much of what I am attempting to say to you here.

"Nowhere is it more important to be in a conversational relationship with God than in our prayer life. Often God does not give us what we ask for, but I believe that he will always answer, always respond to us in some way. It is interesting that we commonly speak of answered prayer only when we are given our requests. When a request is denied, does this then mean that there has been no response?

Some people say that God's silence is an answer in these cases. But I think that if we know how to listen, God will normally tell us something when he does not give us his requests. We will hear it and grow through it if we have learned to recognize and acknowledge his voice.

This was certainly true in the case of Paul's famous 'thorn in the flesh,' which he begged the Lord to remove from him three time (2 Cor 12:7-8). God was not silent, even though he turned down Paul's request: 'But his answer was: 'My grace is all you need; power is most fully seen in weakness.' "(2 Cor 12:9 REB)

God is not impassive toward us like an unresponsive pagan idol; he calls us to grow into a life of personal interchange with him that does justice to the idea of our being his children...

... It is important to understand that God in his mercy often speaks to us in obscure ways in order to allow us the room and time we need to respond. He lets us know that we are indeed being addressed but also that we need to stretch out in growth in order to receive the message. Perhaps we often think, Well, God, why don't you just come out and say it? Tell me in detail how to life. But we are usually full of mistaken ideas about what that would actually mean.

Our minds and values have to be restructured before God's glory, but at the same time our own interests are truly appreciated and understood. We may be tempted to cry out, like Isaiah, for God to rend the heavens, come out of hiding and stand before us telling us what to do (Is 64:1), but we do not really understand what it is we are asking for when we ask that. Probably it would literally kill us or at least unbalance us if it actually happened. So God in his mercy continues to approach us obliquely, in one way or another, but increasingly less so as we mature-- even until we can safely know him as he knows us (1 Cor 13:12).

It is therefore natural and right that God's word comes to us in forms that we must struggle to understand. This is even true of the Bible, which is very explicit in many respects but still requires persistent and energetic work to understand it. In the process of struggling we grow to the point where we can appropriate and assimilate the content of truth as it becomes clear. It is one of the oldest and most common stories of human life that in its most important moments we have little more than the foggiest idea of what is we are doing and saying. And our ignorance is partly for our own good.

Did you really know what was happening when you entered the university or military training, got married or brought a child into the world? In some vague sense you did, perhaps, but you also had very little idea of what it meant in the long run. Had you appreciated all that it meant at the time, you probably would not have had the courage to proceed. Then you would have missed out on much good that has come to you through those events."

-- Dallas Willard, "Hearing God,"105-113

"I still find myself surprised by the trouble God goes to in order to spring the lock on our souls. In weaker moments, I have wanted God to be more like a cruise director or a carnival ship headed for the Bahamas, rather than the one who spoke the worlds into being and who pledged himself in Christ to shape holiness in my heart. I would wish to be less disturbed. Or as the Philosopher Soren Keirkegaard once said, "If you desire, humanly speaking, pleasant and happy days, then never get seriously involved with Christ.

Perhaps it's harder for us to recognize the fingerprints of God in difficult places of our journey because God's parenting has a deeper goal than our own...

So it is understandable that along our journey we have to be reminded that God is a different sort of Father. He wounds-- in order to heal. he dismantles and exposes, so that we might know his cleansing love in the deepest reaches of our being. The Old Testament uses the metaphor of an eagle to describe the kind of parent God is:

'Like and eagle that stirs up its nest,
That hovers over its young,
He spread his wings and caught them,
He carried them on His pinions' (Deut 32)

An eagle knows the moment when the time is right to nudge its baby bird over the side of the nest-- into a panicky free fall through thin air. Then he swoops beneath this fluttering mess of feathers. He catches his young and carries her on his pinions to safety, until, little by little, this bird learns she has eagle's wings too. She can fly.

Do you know what it's like to have your nest stirred-- or to feel like some new challenge has through you way out of your comfort zone? Our faith journey will never make much sense until we can trace the hand of God behind it all.

In his book, The Problem with Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote that God whispers to us in our pleasures, but he shouts to us in our pain. Over the rumblings of your anxiety or your fear or your disappointment, can you make out some part of what he's saying to you?

... God has designed the universe so as to push us out of our comfort zones. We have to step off the side of the nest and fly, even if it feels like a free fall for a while. The naked place of risky newness is the only place we learn to trust him.

.. Our journey with the Lord is often a series of experiences in which we are startled into some deeper awareness that only God will see us through. Only God.

"... When bondage ... becomes apparent, I feel the strangest sort of hope. I know that God is after something good. God begins to dismantle our old ways of coping and when he pries our sticky fingers off the things we trust instead of him, when he exposes a lie that has ruled our lives, we are standing square in the center of his love. God is both beautiful and severe, as singer Derek Webb writes. When God takes the lid off our lives in this way, it's a mercy. A great good, and severe mercy.

Oh for the words to communicate a love willing to come after us in this way! C.S. Lewis called God's willingness to bruise in order to heal 'an intolerable complement.' He means that God's care for us is expressed in all the trouble he goes to in shaping our souls. He is like an artist who is passionate about a painting he is laboring over. Lewis writes,

'In the same way, it is natural to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love, but less.'

"... There are times when we cling to God in the fog... what I realize, though, as I look back in this journey with God is that nearly every thing that's valuable and real to me has come from just this sort of clinging. Other people can tell us a lot of helpful things about God. Reading a book has its place. In the long run though, the real stuff comes from crawling your way back to the watering hold of his grace , over and over again.

What's yours- what you own-- is what you reach for of God in those moments, where the bottom of life has dropped out. Your experience of God in those seasons becomes the real source of wonder.

"...It's a bit of a mystery what God chooses to remove from your life-- and what he allows to remain... But when it insists on coming along for the trip-- the great question inside us swings in a new direction. Might this thing I long to be different be the actual crucible on which God chooses to shape my soul into something of beauty that perhaps only he sees? Could this disturbing interruption of my plans be the actual way God is molding my heart in some new manner?

I often wish there was an easier path. But honestly, I doubt we can experience Christ in any way that matter, by lesser means.

This process of encountering God in ways we do not expect-- of being loved by him according to his definition of love-- is a rite of passage for each of us.

When at least a few of your dreams don't work out, you are at a new place with him. When disillusionment strips you of your illusions, you may be in a position to receive what he has wanted to give all along. When you start to feel as though you are not sure who God is anymore, often you are on the verge of discovering the God you never knew, but who always was-- and has only been somehow shrouded by your preconceptions."

-- Paule Rinehart, "Better than My Dreams"

How To Be Alone

"Blessed is she who has believe when the Lord has said to her will be accomplished."
-- Luke 1:45

"But what is seen
is temporary;
What is unseen
is eternal"
2 Corinthians 8

"What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near to us whenever we pray to him?
-- Deuteronomy 4:7

"The Lord is my shepherd
I lack for nothing
He makes me lie down
in green pastures
He leads me
beside still waters."
-- Psalm 23

Since sometime near Halloween, there is little that I do after getting out of bed before going to my front window to see if any snow has fallen. For some reason, this year, I've been longing for snow more than ever. And it seems, this year, it has taken longer than ever for it to come.

But today--- TODAY!-- to the window I went with sleep still quite present in my eyes, to be greeted by white steps and falling flakes. I supervised the playground while jumping up and down shouting about my excitement. Today, the flakes landing on hair and gloves and coats and hats remained visible in a frigid beauty-- we studied each nearly quarter-inch flake in wonder, examining the design and beauty of this minuscule work of art. My gift has come, even if only for a few fleeting moments.

Last time I really sat down to write, I was full of discontent and unrest. Frustrated and lost. What am I doing? Is this right? But over the weeks, something has changed. I've been given eyes to see and ears to hear.

I've been thinking about the importance of faithfulness. I am remembering my own choices, the power that comes in simply choosing-- choosing to endure, choosing to surrender, choosing to wait, choosing to be patient. Choosing to stop demanding control.

Something in me over the last two or three weeks has shifted. My heart is more filled with peace, I am more patient and am growing in happiness towards where I am for this moment. I am walking through the process of choosing to surrender as the Lord does his quiet work in me. I am laying down my demands for a position that gains recognition and I am surrending the assumption that I must be doing this one thing in order to be happy and content and fulfilled.

I am learning how to be faithful when so much feels insignificant, mundane, and less-than. When I was leaving Idaho back in 2007, someone very important to me spoke these words over me-- words that cross my mind on a nearly daily basis: "Heidi," he said,"You are a like a river that flows through a canyon, forming deep things, little by little, wherever you go. You do this in such a way that embeds you in the lives of those you touch." I often find these words encouraging in the midst of the hundreds of things I do that make me wonder if they are going anywhere-- these things that make me wonder if I am going anywhere, if anything I do really matters. These words remind me to remain faithful, to simply ask the Lord to make me as he chooses to make me each day, trusting that he is creating this river in me, even as I cannot see it.

It is the last day of school before the children go home for a few weeks for the Holidays. I sat at my desk in the copy room today, writing a few cards to people who have mattered a great deal to me over the last few months. It has been a beautiful reflection of all the people who have loved me so well, so many gifts sitting on my desk that remind me how well I am loved by the children i am honored to serve each day. It is days like these that I am reminded of the cumulative good borne of a daily faithfulnesses.

A few weeks ago, in the midst of my grumbling, I was reminded of a choice, a commitment, and agreement that I made with the Father quite some time ago; a choice I forgot about. I remembered that I chose to release my career, my job to the caring hand of the Father, pursuing a lesser position in order to create space for his voice. And, in my anxiety, in my self-sufficiency, that choice, that active placement of my life in his care suddenly faded into the background and I began to cry out again.

But I think this process was an important reminder of a lesson that I find I must continually revisit in my life-- the importance of choosing to cling to one true thing in the midst of the emotional roller-coaster. Anyone who knows me is aware that I have been gifted with a greater saturation of emotional effect that the average person-- my emotional life is soaking. And it is easy for me to find myself hijacked-- how did I get so far off course? And so, I must often come back to these choosings. What will I choose to cling to, what word of truth will I return to when my heart spins me around? I have often found that this is the greatest source of peace, these grounded choices.

And so I am remembering the choice of faithfulness. I am choosing to do the hardwork of photocopying, cutting and pasting, hole-punching, and stapling because it is the call of faithfulness for this season. I am choosing this because I know that these seemingly lowly positions have a great deal to teach. I am remembering that the Lord has promised to be faithful, that he is our great Father, who promises, "Everything I have is yours."

And so I am learning to wait, to patiently endure. And as I continue to choose, I find that I am learning more and more to love. I am learning that the true things of value may not be in that which I expect-- they aren't in the things that I thought I was destined to do. The things of value are often found in the overlooked, the insignificant in the small. The things of greatest value are not neccessarily in the classroom-- they are found on the playground and the lunchroom. It isn't the highest achievers and the oldest, but in the youngest, the five-year-olds, who write in wobbly handwriting and pared-down drawings.

I am learning that a great deal of my love and fulfillment is not found in making things that get applauded or appreciated. I started out this semester longing to be in the art classroom, but I am learning to recieve the gift of simple relationship. I am learning what love and value really is. And why would I choose anything but this?

"We do not know what Matter is when we look at Matter alone; only when the Spirit dwells in Matter and uses it as a tool do we learn the capacities of Matter. The sensitiveness of eye and ear, the delicacy of the artist's touch, are achievements which we could never anticipate from the study of the lifeless. So, too we do not know what Humanity really is, or of what achievements it is capable, until Divinity dwells in it... We must not form a conception of Humanity and either ask if Christ is Human or insist on reducing Him to the limits of our conception; we must ask, "What is Humanity," and look at Christ to find the answer. We only know what Matter is when Spirit dwells in it; we only know what Man is when God dwells in him."

-- Archbishop William Temple, "The Divinity of Christ"
(From Dallas Willard, "Hearing God")

Here are a few true things:

I am watching a documentary about design and I am thinking to myself, "I am not doing what I really want to be doing."

People ask me, "How are you?" and I am not sure if any fitting words have yet been developed. Language seems inadequate. They say, "What is going on," and I can only seem to say "A lot." These are the only words that seem right. Lots. and Lots. Lots of secret, wordless processes, pins and needles pricking at my heart, swirling around my head.

And so, these two men speak in French about their working relationship in design-- one a porcupine and one a fox-- and I think to myself, I am unhappy because this isn't really what I want.

My brain feels numb and my hands are idle. I am busy all day and what I do matters, but something in me is unfulfilled. Although I am sure I am giving something invaluable in what I do all day long, there is something in me that longs for a deeper meaning. Something in me seems to say, "you've studied too long for this." Part of me feels wasted. Or at least dormant.

So here is a true thing: I am not doing what I want to be doing.
And, so, I am led down the path of these other things: I have to look them in the face.

What is it that I want?
What do I want to do?
Why aren't I doing it?
Is the something keeping me from it out there or in here?
How do I get there?
Is it a matter of steps or some supernatural flight?
Is it a matter of unreadiness, changed values, process, or fear?
Or is it all of these things recombined into the unrecognizeable mess that some refer to as my life?

What is it that I really want?
And why don't I have it?
Am I moving towards it, or am I spinning round, circle after mysterious crop circle?

Some days, I know for sure. Other days I wonder if this is just the fruit of many years on one path, in one rut. I wonder if there is something totally other that I have not yet tried or considered?

Am I moving or am I stuck?
Is this a transition or an excuse?

But the true thing, the words that I need to speak in honesty is that I am unhappy with this life. Discontent. I know there is something so much more for me-- I long for something bigger, so much deeper. I am tired of construction paper circles and watercolor paint boxes. I am tired of filling in other people's bubbles, but the road out feels long and impossible. And I am not sure where it leads nor do I seem to know the name of the city to which I want to travel.

And yet I've resigned to keep walking, surrendering the map and only listening for a word or two about ways and walkings.

Words

words mean more at night
like a song
and did you ever notice
the way light means more than it did all day long?

words mean more at night
light means more
like your hair and your face and your smile
and our bed and the dress that you wore

so i’ll send you my words
from the corners of my room
and though i write them by the light of day
please read them by the light of the moon

and i wish i could leave my bones and my skin
and float over the tired tired sea
so that i could see you again

maybe you would leave too
and we’d blindly pass each other
floating over the ocean blue
just to find the warm bed of our lover

and i’ll send you my words
from the corners of my room
and though i write them by the light of day
please read them by the light of the moon

(gregory alan isakov & ilan isakov)

"What we must learn in his yoke, beyond acting with him, is to abandon outcomes to God, accepting what we do not have in ourselves-- in our own 'heart, soul, and mind, and strength'-- the wherewithal to make this come out right, whatever 'this' is. Even if we 'suffer according to the will of God', we simply 'entrust our souls to a faithful creator in doing what is right' (1 Peter 4:19). Now this is a major part of that meekness and lowliness of heart that we also learn his yoke. And what rest comes with it!

Humility is the framework within which all virtue lies. Angela of Folingno observed, 'Our Lord did not say: Learn of me to despise the world and live in poverty... but only this: Learn of me for I am gentle and lowly of heart.' And 'one of the signs by which a man may know he is in a state of grace is this-- that he is never puffed up.' Accordingly, we are to 'clothe [ourselves] with humility,' Peter said (peter 5:5), which certainly means loss of self sufficiency.

'God gives grace to the humble,' he continues. 'Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all of your anxiety upon Him, because he cares for you (v 5-7). Humility is a great secret of rest of soul because it does not presume or secure outcomes.

Here is a simply fact: We live in a world where, by God's appointment, 'the race is not to the swift, and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise, nor wealth to the discerning, nor favor to men of ability, for time and chance overtake them all' (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

The Lord 'does not delight in the strength of the horse; He does not take pleasure in the legs of man' (Ps 147:10). He has a plan for your life that goes far beyond anything we can work out and secure by means of strong horses and good legs.

We simply have to rest in his life as he gives it to us. Knowledge, from Christ, that He is good and great enables us to cast outcomes on him. We find this knowledge in the yoke of Christ.

Resting in God, we can be free from all anxiety, which means deep soul rest. Whatever our circumstance, taught by Christ we are enabled to 'rest [be still] and wait patiently [or longingly] for him' (ps 37:7). We don't fret or get angry because others seem to be doing better than we are, even though they are less deserving than we."

-- Dallas Willard, "Renovation of the Heart," pp 209-210

Throw Down Your Heart

I am fairly sure you need to stop reading this and watch this documentary. I am struck by the beauty, the honesty, the honor in the way Bela Fleck reminds us how essential music is to our souls-- I think it is probably as necessary to our spirits as air is to our lungs, if not more so. I wrote in my last post about the importance of honoring one another and I think this is the most beautiful illustration of what such an honor looks like-- what can be more beautiful than seeking to draw out the musical heritage of an entire continent, returning an instrument to its rightful owners in order to truly learn how to make music.

It seems, sadly, that in our western culture, we loose sight of these really important, wordless true things. I wish music was a part of our lives as it seems to weave together the deep communal existence of these people. Oh, how much we have to learn.

This documentary struck me in many places, reminded me of many loves and dreams that I hold in my own heart. Music, in so many ways, has been the soil from which I have grown-- the melodies, the lyrics, the voices and sounds take me away from this life, move me into a different, deeper reality. I am learning this more and more, recognizing something in myself that is affected by music in unique and beautiful way. Music ties me to my heritage, reminds me of the reasons I love my family, leads me into deeper truth and beauty.

I love the way Fleck releases music from our civilized way of reducing it to consumable culture-- he returns us to its real reason: life. Where would we be without music? Very sad, I am fairly sure.

I have been finding myself dreaming a lot recently about spending some time outside of the United States. Specific thoughts on this account are still illusive, but, I am holding this desire upon a flat palm, looking around for the place from which it has come, seeking to be led forward wherever it might take me. There is something in me that gets pricked by watching how this musician enters a world wholly other than his own simply in order to fully understand the artform that clearly has taken up residence in the deep pools of his existence. His motivation seems only to be honor and growth and there is a bit of jealousy that gets piqued in me there.

I am jealous of these peoples who have such a strong sense of tradition, culture, and ritual that we have done so well to pave over here in the west. I am hungry for the rhythms and voices around the fires, between buckets of water. I love the way the music is never separated from the most basic existences of the people creating it. They don't compartmentalize-- they honor life as a whole thing. And for that I am jealous.

But you should watch this documentary for yourself and develop your own jealousies.

to celebrate

This morning I woke up apprehensive and restless. I've been having more of these days recently. Days where my head seems to be tied up in knots, my heart racing for reasons I can't quite name. Settle down and be quiet for a minute. Maybe I'm tired. Stressed. Overworked. Sometimes I wonder if life gets any easier, or if the whole thing is like this. Maybe I secretly like it this way, I am afraid of my life without the anxiety, the rush, the not-enough-ness-- it has become my comfort. I don't know what it would be like to be prepared and on time, can't imagine such a life... hrrmmph.

It seems like the holidays came quickly this year. People keep asking me if I get any extra time off from work-- something about this seems like an irrelevant question; they seem to ask from a place of observation outside of my vision. Or maybe it just catches me off guard because I am on this treadmill sort of life and the part of the belt with the words about what that next part of life holds (and by "next part of life," I mean next week) hasn't come around yet. I'll think about it when it comes and goes. Which will occur soon enough.

Tonight I was talking to my sister in law about a time to meet for dinner or a day, or whatever. Dates seemed to be flying at me a thousand miles an hour and I tried to get my bearings, suddenly overcome. And she said perhaps the most graceful thing I think I've heard in a while, rescuing me beautifully: "I can see that trying to think about this just raised your blood pressure by about fifty points-- don't worry about it right now." Whew. Off the hook.

How did my life get like this again? Is this part of the season of transition, where everything is difficult and messy-- am I still working towards something better, more freeing, less exhausting, more balanced, more.... and perhaps what I am really longing for is more of a less.

I am in a season in which it seems that the entirety of my broken heart is being layed open, I am dancing with The Flayed One, my heart cut out, skins removed, everything exposed. I am being squeezed through the press, scattered on the threshing floor. And, as all the leaves are falling off to ready my world for winter, I see the painful truth of all the dead branches that have been hidden underneath. There seem to be a thousand ways that I just want to get turned around. I want a new heart. Some new life. I dream of a day that I can get just a little closer to who I really am-- free from all of this fear, eyes open to what is true, walking around, liberated.

There is this book I always seem to stumble across on the bargain table at The Boulder Bookstore called "Love Begins in Winter." I often pick up the collection of stories and want to buy it simply for the title. I find myself whispering, "God, I hope so," under my breath as I finger the pages.

It's another set of holidays now. I woke up this morning, made some coffee and enjoyed it sitting down for a change. I poured it into a cup without a lid and found no reason for running out the door with my breakfast in a cup or on a paper towel. I took my time in the shower and put on a favorite violet dress, gray stockings, and the black shoes with a certain mysterious click that always makes me feel beautiful walking around. I put on an extra coat of mascara and spent ample time lovingly taking strands of hair in hand, inducing curl that so often illudes my fine locks. How lovely and beautiful I felt today.

I few years ago, I began to think about what it would be like to live a life of celebration. I mean, I want to be known as one to really celebrate.

I think often about what it means to honor things. As I've worked more and more with children, I've come to see that the best way to spend time with them, to help them grow, to learn from them, is to devote myself to honoring who they are. I think about my relationships with my friends, with my family, and I want to know how I can honor who these people are. I want to give honor to those who have come before me, to those who have provided the content of history. And the thing about honor is that it is quite a lofty undertaking-- it requires a great deal of listening, a complete putting aside of myself, a sacrifice of all of the ways I want to assume or impose myself and my power on things. The only way I have learned to truly honor is to stop, to observe, and to provide space.

And I think about these days that often become so harried, so rushed, so stressful-- these things that we call "holidays", the "set apart" days-- and I want them to be days that I really stop to honor whatever they were intended to honor. I want there to be space to hear whatever these days have to say to us.

It seems so easy to let all of these things get buried under all of our obligations, all of the "shoulds" and "musts" and "have-to's" of the traditions that started out as those very acts of honor.

And so here is what I think-- we so badly need these days and we so badly need to stop and listen to them, to remain open to what they have to say to us rather than becoming entrenched in what we are told they should be. We need them to remember. We need to take out a few moments to curl our hair and put on dresses so we can remember that life is worth celebrating. We need to take those days and remember that there are people and sacrifices and successes worth getting dressed up for. And sometimes I need those days in order to remember that I am worth getting dressed up for.

I was thinking today that perhaps one reason that sometimes the holidays can be so difficult because they are the moments in life that we are forced to stop-- they are the white spaces in our over-packed lives-- and take a long hard look at what our lives really consist of. We are faced with the reality of our relationships, the truth of our finances, the condition of our hearts. No wonder we try so hard to cover them up with so much extraneous obligation and expectation.

And so today, I woke up and put on a dress that helped me to remember what I've been forgetting for so many busy, busy weeks. I remembered that I am a woman of beauty. I remembered that there are so many people who love me so deeply-- regardless of what I wear. I remembered that there are days that I need not be in a rush. I decided not to make a pie nor did I condemn myself (too much) for leaving the house late again.

And I remembered again today that the Lord has given us these days to celebrate because these are the spaces that we are able to stop and remember what is true-- these are the days that we call a truce on the battleground so we can catch our breath-- which is ultimately the source of our life.

I am in the midst of a season in which the daily cry seems to be "give me a new heart!" Oh how I beg. And I think, even as the Lord is so deeply at work in me in ways I cannot see and do not understand as I walk and work out the activity he has called me to, it is on these days of contrast, the time-outs, that he does some important redirecting of our hearts, if we will allow him. If we, for a few minutes, put aside all the business of this season and begin to honor them as days to simply listen, holy days to observe, it seems only right to expect to be transformed by them. And this is the desire of my heart.

"The natural condition of life for human beings is one of reciprocal rootedness in others. As firmness of footing is a condition of walking and secure movement, so assurance of others being for us is the condition of stable, healthy living. There are many ways this can be present in individual cases, but it must be there. If it is not, we are but walking wounded, our life more or less a shambles until we die.

When the required type of "for-ness" is adequately present, human "circles of sufficiency" emerge. The most fundamental form is that of a mother and child. Then perhaps mother and child and father. ... then there are young lovers, reciprocally absorbed, as well as mature mates. Of course numerous forms of human association can take on some degree of this "sufficiency" and always with a distinctive character arising out of the precise nature of the relationships involved.

... Ultimately, every human circle is doomed to dissolution if it is not caught up in the life of the only genuinely self-sufficient circle of sufficiency, that of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For that circle is the only one that is truly and totally self-sufficient. And all the broken circles must ultimately find their healing there, if anywhere.

Only when rooted in that divine Trinitarian circle can the broken individuals from the broken circles recover from the wounds received in their circles of origin and find wholeness on their long journey from the womb to the eternal city of God. Of course it was never God's intention that the natural human circles of sufficiency, of reciprocal rootedness, would be illusory, fragile, and eventually broken; and if they were lived within his kingdom, they would not be.

... A small child not adequately received can actually die from it; if it survives, it is very likely to be incapable of giving and receiving love in decent human relationships for the rest of its life. It will be perpetually 'left out,' if only in its imagination. And in this matter, imagination can have the force of reality. Thus the final words of the Old Testament speak of one who must come and 'restore the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers' to avoid a curse coming to rest upon the land (Malachi 4:6).

... [Severe wounds in our rootedness] may leave us unconnected to others at levels of our soul where lack of nourishment from deep connections with others means spiritual starvation and loss of wholeness in every dimension..."

--Dallas Willard, "Renovation of the Heart," p 179-180

It has been one of those weekends. What is the adequate word? Maybe I am fearful to write it out-- to say it aloud. Where have I been? Depressed? Confused? Tired? Hopeless? Lost? Overly Emotional? Hormonally or neurologically unbalanced? Neurotic.

Sometimes, these days come when I find myself alone in my apartment, and suddenly, all of my fears, all of my holes, those impossible, gaping voids are pressed upon me. I fall down into the pit. I am all too-aware of my broken heart, the things that are "in my imagination," but nevertheless wreak havoc on my reality.

I try not to write too much on these days, I try not to indulge in my own neurosis as it often seems to do more harm than good; it might be better to get on with things, wash dishes and clean the bathroom rather than sit in a hopeless stupor of irrational despair. But I think that sometimes these neurotic states are also line-leaders toward the discovery of some hidden doors in this messy heart of mine. Sometimes I have to follow it down the rabbit-hole rather than brush it aside, rather than pack down the already-hardened dirt of this heart.

I find that although I am typically unusually aware of my own inner-life, it is more difficult for me to make accurate judgments about my outer life. I have a difficult time understanding the messages of my body, I don't know how to recognize when I've overdone it, when I am too tired. I don't know when enough is enough. I don't know what my needs are nor how to meet them.

But it seems, these days, that very message of "enoughness" has gotten loud enough for me to hear, too loud to ignore. I am exhausted. I am frustrated and I am empty. I get to the end of the week (and sometimes just the day) and am all too aware that I have nothing else to give and I am starving to be filled in ways I don't know how to seek. I don't even have the energy to say "help" and I don't have any more emotional or relational stamina to simply say, "please, someone come sit next to me." I doesn't even seem worth the energy to ask. I am starving for adults, parched for those who can listen-- but there seems to be a shortage. I need someone to teach me how to simply ask to be refilled. I hardly even know what that means, what it looks like. I don't quite know where to look and I am yet unfinished in my ability to trust and receive. All I know is that I can't do it alone. How do you ask for help in asking for help?

It is a strange thing in our society, how it seems that just being with people requires appointments and agendas. To simply say, "I need to breathe your same air" is something of an imposition. Or perhaps this is a function of my broken circles-- a product of my backwards world, my crossed eyes. My old, mangled heart. And maybe it is difficult because I am afraid of that common air being toxic, I find I am better off alone than the hurt that comes of my inability to properly enter relationship. Being alone sometimes seems better than the disappointment.

I hate writing these things, hate thinking that someone might read it and think I am begging for love. But maybe that is what I am doing. I don't like writing these things because I hate to think that I can't solve these things on my own. It seems wrong to air my weaknesses. But maybe it's just a feeble attempt at calling for help. Maybe it is just some strange prayer for me, some way of confession. yes-- that must be it. Confession. Coming clean, even if it is simply the act of speaking aloud that I need.

But the truth is that I am very weary. I have a thousand needs that I can't seem to meet. I am angry and frustrated about work-- that I put in so much time, so much energy, so much passion and commitment, not out of some sort of sense of duty or need for recognition, but because that is what is required, that is what is best and good, and yet I can't seem to find the care I need for my own body, my own soul. I am burned out. I am not receiving the support I need. I feel I am living in a world where one must be autonomously able.

I am frustrated by the lack of respect I receive simply in the form of financial compensation. I feel guilty for getting sick-- illness that is clearly a direct result of the stress and difficulty I am under. I don't have time or energy to care for myself.

And I am tired of it. And yet I am searching in the dark. All that there seems to do is take another leap of faith. Keep Walking seems to be the word on the tongue of the Father. Perhaps these neurotic weekends are necessary to keep me on the journey. Perhaps it is these hopeless, sleepless, tearful nights that will teach my legs to move forward. These are the environments for growth, as difficult and humbling as they are.

And so it seems, perhaps, that the next step on this journey is to begin to actively search out the life of teaching. I need to come out of hiding. I have a courage that I didn't have before, I think. Although I know this process is far from finished, the word now seems to be "teach" as terrifying as that is. The battle ground has arrived and I am ready to face it. The only way is through.

And perhaps this must also be true in my relational life. I am coming face to face with voices I've allowed to color my heart, beliefs about my sense of belonging that have kept me in the lie of aloneness for far too long and it is simply time to walk out. This too, is an area that I simply need to begin to walk forward in, somehow. And if you are reading this, please hear me ask for help. I need guidance in what it means to be in relationship. I need someone to sit next to me, I need safe places to breathe air with people who demand nothing from me but presence. I don't have many words and I have even fewer answers or explanations. But this I know-- I need you. I need relationship and I need it more than i am able to admit. I need it more than I am able to recognize.

unfinished, simultaneous void. Insatiable.

How Deep The Father's Love For Us - Owl City

Here are a few more words from Dallas Willard's "Renovation of the Heart" that I am sinking my teeth into:

"My hope is that this rather lengthy discussion... will make very clear why spiritual formation requires the transformation of the body. The proper retraining and nurturing of the body is absolutely essential to Christlikeness. The body is not just a physical thing. As it matures, it increasingly takes on the quality of 'inner' life. (The body of a small child, by contrast, has almost not inner quality to it, which is why the child can really hide nothing.) That is, the body increasingly becomes a major part of the hidden source from which our life immediately flows.

The outcome of spiritual formation is, indeed, the transformation of the inner reality of the self in such a way that the deeds and words of Jesus become a natural expression of who we are. But it is the nature of the human being that the "inner reality of the self" settles into our body, from which that inner reality then operates in practice. Formed in sin, our character and its body is set against God and God's ways, and as we look about us, we find it running pretty much on its own-- at least for a while.

When our heart (will, spirit) comes to a new life in God, the old "programs" are still running contrary to our new heart, and for the most part they are running in our body and its parts or members. "sin dwells within me... that is, in my flesh" (Romans 7:12-18), even though they are still, "at work in our bodily parts" (Romans 7:5, PAR), even though they no longer can in the long run, "bring forth death." That is because my identity before God has been shifted over to another life that is also now in me as God's gift. While the Spirit is willing by the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41), I may find myself doing the thing I hate (Romans 7:15). but it really is no longer I who is doing it, but the sin still functioning as a living force in the members of my body (verse 23).

However, this is only a transitional state for those who can say with David, "My soul follows hard after you" (Psalm 63:8). The law or force of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus is now also a real presence in my body and it opens the way to liberation from the force of sin in my bodily parts (Romans 7:23). By not walking in terms of the flesh but in terms of the Spirit, we are increasingly able to do the things that Jesus did and taught (Romans 8:4). We move toward the place where both the spirit is willing and the flesh is strong for God because the Spirit is now occupied by it. We have presented the members of our body "as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification" (Romans 6:19)."

-- Dallas Willard, "Renovation of the Heart," p 165-66

"To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is-- solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate--?); it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake; it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for a long, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.

But Young people err so often and so grievously in this: that they (in whose nature it lies to have no patience) fling themselves at each other, when love takes possession of them, scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their untidiness, disorder, confusion. . . and then what? What is life to do to this heap of half-battered existence which they call their communion and which they would gladly call their happiness, if it were possible, and their future? Thus each loses himself for the sake of the other and loses the other and many others that wanted still to come. And loses the expanses and the possibilities, exchanges the approach and flight of gentle, divining things for an unfruitful perplexity out of which nothing can come any more, nothing save a little disgust, disillusionment and poverty, and rescue in one of the many conventions that have been put up in great number like public refuges along this most dangerous road. No realm of human experience is so well provided with conventions as this: life-preservers of most varied invention, boats and swimming-bladders are here; the social conception has managed to supply shelters of every sort, for, as it was disposed to take love-life as a pleasure, it had also to give it an easy form, cheap, safe and sure, as public pleasures are.

It is true that many young people who wrongly, that is, simply with abandon and unsolitarily (the average will of course always go on doing so), feel the oppressiveness of a failure and want to make the situation in which they have landed viable and fruitful in their own personal way--; for their nature tells them that, less even than all else that is important, can questions of love be solved publicly and according to this or that agreement; that they are questions, intimate questions from one human being to another, which in any case demand a new, special, only personal answer--; but how should they, who have already flung themselves together and no longer mark off and distinguish themselves from each other, who therefore no longer possess anything of their own selves, be able to find a way out of themselves, out of the depth of their already shattered solitude?

They act out of a common helplessness, and then, if, with the best intentions, they try to avoid the convention that occurs to them (say, marriage), they land in the tentacles of some less loud, but equally deadly conventional solution; for then everything far around them is-- convention; where people act out of a prematurely fused, turbid communion, every move is convention; every relation to which such entanglement leads has its convention, be it ever so unusual (that is, in the ordinary sense immoral); why, even separation would here be a conventional step, an impersonal chance decision without strength and without fault.

Whoever looks seriously at it finds that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any explanation, any solution, any hint or way yet been discerned; and for these two problems that we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, it will not be possible to discover any general rule resting in agreement. But in the same measure in which we being as individuals to put life to the test, we shall, being individuals, meet these great things at closer range. The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them. But if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play, behind which people have hidden from the most earnest earnestness of their existence-- then a little progress and all alleviation will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us; that would be much."

-- Rilke, "Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties" (Translated, Edited, and Selected by John J.L. Mood)

This morning I woke up with a poignant awareness of how incomplete I am in the process of being reformed in love. I have a long way to go.

But-- also on my mind these past weeks has been a searching out of the nature of the very process of God in us. I spent some time this afternoon looking back over some of the thoughts I've written down over the last few months and was surprised to find words and phrases and sentences that could not have come from me-- now, months and seasons later, the words are still the same, but the awareness, the vision, the understanding are much deeper. I wonder at my own writing, thinking to myself, "you had no idea what you were talking about." I'm fairly sure that I still have no idea what I am talking about, but it is strange how slowly, subtly, while we are looking the other way, Abba is forming in our hearts the reality and the character behind the words we barely grasp, yet squeak out on paper.

And really, that is the thing that I've been trying to take in-- this reality that, hard as I try, intellectual calisthenics and sheer willpower will do little in the transformation of my heart and the reality from which I live. This is not to say that my thought life and intentions play no significant role in my becoming more like Christ, but simply that true re-creation is only a gift of grace and it is a slow, gentle, and patient process that I can only receive with open hands.

More and more, I am learning to enter the mystery of God's work in me without attempting to control or rush or manipulate. I simply listen and accept, placing myself in a posture where his work can be done and his voice can be heard.

Even though I am often confronted with the temptation to hope that all will be changed in an instant, I am reminded with each interaction, every doubt and challenge that comes around again is one more string to be cut, one more tree in the forest to be cut through.

And so today, I woke up with an awareness of the vast road that still stretches ahead as I continue to ask the Father to expose the reality of my heart, to remove from me the roadblocks that leave me living a false life of desolation and judgment. Sometimes it feels like an endless and insurmountable task to even begin to imagine the true life. But thankfully, we are not left to our own devices in this task and he is ever at work as long as we remain surrendered to his call.

I often find there are little questions that resurface time and again over longer periods of time, each instance the truth becoming a little more clear, the answer chipped into the stone one stroke more each time. The little thought that has been returning to me over the past few months has been that of pursuit. Many years ago, my mentor spoke to me about the idea that God continues to pursue us. For the many years since she spoke this phrase, I've wondered how to conceptualize such a statement and only just recently am I beginning to experience what this pursuit feels like. It is the persistence of a Father who wants me back. It is a God who doesn't give up on me in my weaknesses and immaturity. It is knowing a Lover who continually approaches me with his acceptance and forgiveness, his desire to be with me in attempt to break through the walls. He isn't put off by my rejection and independence. He will do anything to make me know his love-- and He isn't giving up until it is done. He continues to stand at the door and knock, even as I try to pull myself together before opening the latch.

And this really is at the heart of so of the road we've been walking. I think often of words I spoke in prayer when this long year began, now realizing the weight of what I was asking. It felt like many weeks and months went by without answer to these prayers; I was sure they were a passing mist without any destination or future realization. I wrote words that hardly scratched the surface (even as the words I write today barely scratch the surface of what they will most likely yield farther along this journey)-- words that have, over the months, gained new meaning, inherited illustration and daily become further embedded in my heart.

One of the most comforting images of the Father for me is that of the teacher. He promises, "I will teach you the things you do not know and cannot find out." As a teacher and as one endlessly addicted to learning, I have come to see much of what we learn to be a product of bombardment, immersion, exposure. When I set out to integrate into my person an idea, a concept, or a skill, I have learned not to worry all that much about mastering every experience at first exposure. I think it often takes the patience to continue to read the words we cannot define, listen to ideas still quite foreign, to view images that hold no recognition until, over time, we are able to re-order and piece it all together. It is a sort of quiet, gentle process of observation that simply gives our minds and heart the material it needs to put it all in order while we sleep.

After seventeen years of playing the piano, I have now just recently begun the arduous task of learning the discipline of practicing scales-- a practice essential to adequate piano mastery that I have managed in all my years of lessons to avoid. This undertaking has yielded an interesting image of what it means to seek growth in my personal life. I begin with a difficult scale, totally unfamiliar and wonder how I will ever learn to play all the notes in order, not to mention, with speed or accuracy. Yet, as I begin, one hand at a time, slowly, the concentration upon individual notes, almost like magic, is transformed into a fluid movement up and down the keys. And then, as if walking hand in hand, I begin to play songs I've played for years with a new, deeper mastery. I suddenly have the ability to look at the notes on the page in a new light, connected to a deeper system of music that I never saw before. The practice begins to permeate everything. I think the work of the Spirit is much like this.

One of my favorite quotes comes from the great poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who writes in his Letters to a Young poet thus:
"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answer, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Resolve to be always beginning-- to be a beginner."
-- Rilke on Love and other Difficulties

And I love the image of God as teacher, because he knows intimately what our learning style is. He is aware of pedagogical theory-- the multiple intelligences were his idea before Gardner stumbled upon them. And, I think, more than anything, God as Teacher knows that we can only take in so much new information at once and that it takes at least seven different repetitions for the student to truly learn the concept being taught.

And it is also in this that I learn all over again the grace of this intimately loving father-- that he has no expectation of my flawless performance. He expects me to have far more questions and doubts about his love and my appropriate actions than I think I ought-- or do. It is he who searches the heart and yet, there is no bound, limit, or condition to his love.

And, so my point is, actually, that I stumbled upon a passage from Dallas Willard in "Renovation of the Heart" that I am sure came directly from the heart of the Father to mine because it seems to reiterate so many things I've been groping in the dark for these last few weeks. I often find it important and helpful to write down passages that strike me in order to help solidify and understand the concepts found therein and am finding myself wondering if I ought to simply hand-copy entire chapters of this book-- it is quickly becoming a piece of writing that I can only ask the Father to penetrate my heart with because the truths spoken here are much needed and are arrow-swift into the heart of many things. Anyhow, this is all simply to say, immerse yourself with this passage from Willard as I let it sink deeply into my heart as I pray that it will work itself like yeast in the dough of my life:

"Thus faith in Christ and the initial hope it inspires lead us to stand in the grace (the action) of God, and standing there leads, in turn, to a life full of love.. And first, what exactly is love? It is will to good or "bene-volence" We love something or someone when we promote its good for its own sake. Love's contrary is malice, and its simple absence is indifference. Its normal accompaniment is delight...


Love is not the same thing as desire, for I may desire something without even wishing it well, much less willing its good...This is the difference between lust (mere desire) and love, as between a man and a woman. Desire and love are, of course, compatible when desire is ruled by love; but most people today would, unfortunately, not even know the difference between them. Hence, in our world, love constantly falls prey to lust...


By contrast, what characterizes the deepest essence of God is love-- that is, will to good. His very creation of the world is an expression of will to good, and it is then to be expected that his world would be found by him to be "very good" (Genesis 1:31). His love and goodwill toward humans is, therefore, not an "add-on" to a nature that is fundamentally careless or even hostile. It is another expression-- one of the more important ones, of course-- of what he always and in every respect is. It is not hard for God to love, but it is impossible, given his nature, for him not to love...


... In such a world, God intrudes, gently and in many ways, but especially in the person of Jesus Christ. It is he who stands for love, as no one else has ever done, and pays the price for it. His crucifixion is the all-time high-water mark of love on earth. "While we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6). No other source, whether inside or outside of religions, even comes close to what God in Christ shows of love. This is the first 'move' of love in the process of redemption. "He first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Therefore, "love is from God" (John 4:7). And "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us" (1 John 3:16). All other loves are to be measured by this standard (Acts 17:31).


When we receive what is thus clearly given, the revelation of God's love in Christ, that in turn makes it possible for us to love. Love is awakened in us by him. We feel its call-- and first to love Jesus himself, and then God. The first great commandment, to love God with all our being, can be fulfilled because of the beauty of God given in Christ. This is the second movement in the return to love: "We Love because he first loved us."


But the second movement is inseparable from the third movement: our love of others who love God. "If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us" (1 John 4:12). The first great commandment makes it possible to fulfill the second: love of neighbor as oneself. And loving others under God will ensure that we are loved by others. For to the other in our community of love, we are the "other" whom they love because they love and are loved by God. The fellowship of Christ's apprentices in kingdom living is a community of love (john 13:34- 35).


Here, then, is the full account of the movements of love in our lives: We are loved by God who is love, and in turn we love him, and others through him, who in turn love us through him. Thus is love made perfect or complete. And "perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18). That is, those who live in the fulfillment of God's redemptive love in human life will no longer experience fear. "Fear involves torment," John notes, and torment is incompatible with living in the full cycle of love (1 John 4:18). We live in the community of goodwill from a competent God.


Now, as St. Augustine saw long ago, the opposite of love is pride. Love eliminates pride because its will for the good of the other nullifies our arrogant presumption that we should get our way. We are concerned for the good of others and assured that our good is taken care of without self-will. Thus pride and fear and their dreadful offspring no longer rule our life as love becomes completed in us."
-- pp 130-132


"Peace with God comes on ly from acceptance of his gift of life in his son (Romans 5:12). We are then assured of the outcome of our life and are no longer trying to justify ourselves before God or others. We have accpeted that we are not righteous or even totally competent and that we cannot be so on our own. We have laid down the burden of justifying ourselves before God and are learning not to justify ourselves before men. This is the peace that grows within us.


From those around me I must simply assume grace and mercy, not that I will get what I deserve. I am a beggar on my way through the world. Justice is not enough for my needs, and I couldn't stand it if I got it. When others do not extend the grace and mercy I need, I have to draw on the abundance of it in God. 'Who is it that is condemning me?' I remind myself, 'Jesus even died for me, was raised from the dead, and is not standing up for me before God' (Romans 8:34). Assurance of this allows me to 'seek peace and pursue it' (Peter 3:11), no matter who is involved, and to 'pursue peace with all men' (Hebrews 12:14). That includes all our family members and coworkers!


Even in cases where, through no fault of my own, there must be a struggle between me and others, there does not have to be a struggle within me. I may have to resist others, for some good reason, but even so I do not have to make things come out right. I am not the one in control of outcomes. I do not have to hate those whose course of action I resist, or even get mad at them, and so I can always be at peace within myself as well as toward them."
--p 134

But you, O Israel, my servant Jacob
whom I have chosen
You descendants of Abraham
my friend
I took you from the ends
of the earth
from its farthest corners
I called you
I said, "You are my servant,
I have chosen you
and have not rejected you
So do not fear
for I am with you
Do not be dismayed
for I am your God
I will strengthen you
and help you...

You are mine
and I will not leave you alone
For I am the Lord
your God
Who takes hold of your
right hand
and says to you,
'Do not fear;
I will help you
Do not be afraid,
O worm Jacob
O little Israel
For I myself with help you'
declares the Lord
your redeemer,
The Holy One of Israel.

The poor and needy
search for water
but there is none
Their tongues are
parched with thirst
But I the Lord will answer them
I will make rivers flow
on barren heights
and springs within the valleys
I will turn the desert into pools of water,
And the parched ground into springs,
I will put in the desert
the cedar and the acacia
the myrtle and the olive

I will set pines in the wasteland
the fir and cypress together
So that people may
see and know,
May consider and understand
That the hand of
the Lord has done this
That the Holy One of Israel
has created it."

-- Isaiah 41

"I will lead the Blind
by ways they have not known
Along unfamiliar paths
I will guide them;
I will turn darkness into light before them
And make the rough places smooth
These are the things I will do
I will not foresake them."

-- Isaiah 42

"But now, this is what the Lord says--
he who created you,
O Jacob,
He who formed you,
O Israel.

'Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name;
You are mine.

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you

When you walk through the fire,
You will not be burned

For I am the Lord, your God,
The Holy One of Israel, Your Savior."

-- Isaiah 43

"It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners."
-- Mark 2:17

I have been thinking about dependence. Over the last year, it seems, I've been walking through the fire that has been burning away my illusions about strength, assumptions and agreements about the debts I owe, expectations that have kept me bound, matters of self-acceptance and belonging based on false criteria.

There is a stop sign on the street just over from my apartment that has been given an addendum: a sticker has been affixed, turning the traffic signal into a message that reads "Stop Listening to Awful Music." I first noticed this addition last weekend as I rode my bike downtown for a cup of coffee, my mind swirling with an inordinate amount of anxiety about all the things I do not understand and cannot control, can't seem to ever master. I started thinking about that message-- how often we drive around in our cars listening to terrible music simply because it is "what's on," or because it was a free download or something. We don't always think about that-- how many awful things we simply take in until they become the gray matter of our lives. But the thing that really spoke sentences to me was the thought of how much awful music is continually playing in the background of my heart and mind. How many terribly destructive songs am I singing along to as I pedal through, thinking that is is worthy music? Or maybe I am not even able to recognize the lyrics repeating over and over among the notes.

What is this awful music I've been listening to? It seems the enemy's most common tactic is getting us to believe that we don't need a doctor, that we are just fine, thank you very much. Is it possible that the assumptions that we make about our own righteousness are the very things that keep us from the heart of the father? I get to thinking that He will love me more, that the things that I long for most will be given if I can just pull myself together, figure out the right answers and follow the rules. I fall into the hole of believing that there is something I can do to get the life that Jesus offers.

In reading over the second chapter of Mark again this week, I began to see this statement from Jesus in a slightly different light. It seems that we often interpret what Jesus says about the sick and the healthy as some kind of statement about the "saved," and the "lost." It gets turned into some evangelistic slogan about pity and those who are more needy than us religious folks. I think, however, that Jesus was making a deeper statement about our hearts. For who truly is "healthy" in honest consideration of the Holy Father and His Perfect Son?

"I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners." Although this statement is in context of a comparison between pharisees and tax collectors, I'm not sure Jesus is really talking about Jews and Gentiles. He is speaking about our hearts, addressing a sort of spiritual honesty. Who will respond to His call but those who realize their need for him? How can we be healed of that which we will not aknowledge?

I think much of my life has been geared towards independence. There is something in me that has bought into the belief that I will be loved and accepted if I can do things on my own, if I can cease to be a burden upon others, if I can prove my own intelligence, if I never make a mistake and if I never lack wisdom. The unforgivable sin is to do something stupid. Someone has been whispering in my ear some terrible music about the the value and accompanying inevitability of doing things alone.

However, contrary to popular belief, God isn't a Father who walks around patting us on the back for our independence from him. Why in the world would a God, who sent his very son to suffer a brutal and bloody death just to get us back, be happy when we come up with enough easy answers to make it through a mediocre life without his involvement? Why would a God who compares himself to the most lavish Father imaginable be content to leave us with only what we can attain for ourselves when he offers a life beyond our wildest dreams and most exorbitant imaginations?

I wonder if Jesus got so frustrated with the Phrisees and the teachers of the law because of how much life he knew they were missing out on. Notice how Jesus praises those who give everything, become as humble as possible to seek him out-- he knows that the kingdom of God belongs to the hungry, the thristy, the poor in spirit. And why is that? Because in thier humility, in thier emptiness, in thier nothingness, they are able to recieve his everything-ness. I often think that this is really all he wants-- to give us absolutely everything.

But we are so stubborn. We settle for these half sort of lives because we want to have control. We want our own way so badly that we don't realize that the only thing we really get out of it is our pride, which, in the end is only imprisonment. It is so limited, so empty, so fleeting.

Through my position with the Kindergarten Enrichment program, I've been studying some educational models that address the needs that lurk beneath difficult behaviors in children. A particular issue addressed in the study deals with children who see adults as advisaries and opponents rather than allies. As teachers, we often have to teach the children under our care that we are on thier side. As I've thought about this, I've begun to reconsider the view I hold of the Father-- do I see him as an opponent or as an ally? I find that I have walked through life trying to please a God whose love never changes. I find myself seeking to be made whole so that some of my hurts will go away, so I can feel less alone, so that i can accomplish that goal or attain this certain level of success. It has rarely occured to me that perhaps God has a vested interest in my wholeness so that his Beauty can be displayed in me. I place myself in the inappropriate position of self-repair so that I might present a better case for myself rather than placing myself in the gentle and loving hands of one whose very nature is to re-create and heal-- not to mention the one who deserves all glory and praise.

So here is the thing: there are gigantic peices of my heart that are absolutely and totally wrecked. I am a shredded, bleeding mess inside. There are rock-hard masses of gray heart that no amount of effort on my part can replace, repair, or soften. I am only the created. There are stretches of time-- days and weeks-- that I find I can do little more than simply peer into the gaping holes, wondering how long they've been there.

Yet, I think this is the sort of thing that Jesus was getting at with his rebuke of the "righteous." We've gotten so good at hiding, ignoring, managing our broken hearts because we think that which we cannot master, explain, or deal with on our own is of no value. We might as well lock it away and get on with our lives as best we can. At least there is a chance of being accepted and loved for a little while by those who are fooled by our pretense.

But the problem is that there is still death lurking about inside. We are only whitewashed tombs. Jesus says he came for the sick. And luckily that's me. But the healer can do nothing until we dig through the roof, break through the crowd, shamelessly touch the edge of his robe. We have to take our hands off of our wounds-- allow them to become vulnerable to the open air, raw and exposed, before he can come close.

I am a mess inside. There are deep hurts that continue to reverberate off the hands and faces of every new person I meet. I walk through life, reminded of the disconnect, the separation from the very thing I was made for. I cannot think myself into believing that I am loved. As many times as I remind myself I am not alone, I cannot change the ache in my heart. As many times as I sign up for memberships and subscribe to groups and enroll in classes, it does not change the sense that I may never belong. And no matter how many lusts I chase, no matter how many addictions I indulge in, no matter how many people I seek to prove me wrong, no healing, no relief can be found until I honestly and passionately present the whole mess to the Creator. Make me new.

And I think this is what he really wants. I am learning, very slowly, that the Father's value system has nothing to do with the cleanliness and "perfection" we hold so dearly here on earth. What he is interested in is our hearts and being close to us. It is strange to think of Him as a lover who simply wants to be with us. He is not pleased when we locate fig leaves and olive branches to cover our nakedness-- do you ever think about the fact that he probably liked us better before? He isn't interested in hurrying through the process and he doesn't care a bit about the inconvenience and mess that gets laid out all over the floor. He isn't worried about all of the mistakes we make along the way-- in fact, these are usually the very media through which the real work is done.

He has no desire to leave us alone. The Father finds no joy in our independence from Him, no pleasure in our self-made intelligence and well-maitained pretense. I think that perhaps, more than anything, he wants us to know how far beyond us he is and how the entirety of that infinite space is occupied by his love for us. How great the father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure. Yes, I am faced with my own darkness, I am perched on the edge of what seems like the infinite abyss of my own heart. Yet, this is the place the Lover has led me because he knows that this edge is where I begin to understand his infinite grace and mercy-- and this is where his life begins. I do not sit here alone, nor do I walk a solitary journey-- he takes hold of my right hand, he guides and leads me. He does not ask me to offer up all that I hold so tightly out of spite, wrath, or punishment, but rather out of his great love that seeks to fill my emptiness with his great and unfathomable goodness.