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
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