So I think I’m switching back to blogger… I just like to switch things up ha. There’s actually more freedom in the layout and widgets with blogger I think. So here’s the new addy….

http://thepromiseandtheprocess.blogspot.com/

I moved most of my entries from this one over to it (and then noticed the “import blog” button on the blogger site. Oh well…)

I was driving down to Phoenix today thinking about some stuff I’ve been learning, or rather, trying to unlearn, in my self. When you live in a house with several other people space and time become glaringly obvious due to their sudden deficiency. I’ve been learning how possessive I am: over my time, space and possessions. So I started thinking about the reasons people become possessive, and what they like to have control over. Emotions came up, is it possible to be possessive of emotions? I think it’s possible. To desire to have a certain emotion, and then to guard it jealously, happens all the time and can happen with any emotion. 

I think we can guard our happiness as well as our sadness, anger, jealousy, and depression. 

So, what is the difference between guarding your heart and being possessive of emotion? The verse about guarding your heart occurs in Philippians 4:7, and talks about focusing on peace. So I think that’s the difference. Possessiveness is a focus on self and comes from fear. Guarding the heart is refocusing the mind which influences the heart. Or is it refocusing the heart which influences the mind? A heart-focus sewn with honor and compassion will reap peace as it pours out from a firm foundation of love. Soaking in God’s presence is what makes it sustainable.

Foundations are so important.

I just love architecture. I think it’s fascinating. And music, and art, and graffiti (artistically done), and poetry and books and short stories…. good foods… Humans are so expressive. I love that. 

When I picture a garden, I think of trees lining a long stretch of soft green grass, running on and on up to a mountain. When I see a Kandinsky I think Rhapsody in Blue. I hear Rachmaninov and think of Tolstoy. The mouse in Ratatouille saw fireworks and Beethoven in a piece of cheese and a strawberry. There’s expression in perception. In imagination. 

You know what’s so sweet about expression: it’s like a part of God mirrored in a person or what they’ve created. The modernists built stark, straight and imposing buildings–your typical capitalistic skyscraper. What does that say about the way they saw the world and their reaction to it? The Baroque period was all about the senses. Their cathedrals and churches were overwhelmingly colorful and detailed, full of images and ornaments and textures. The Catholics were especially into connecting to God through the senses, while the Protestants continued to follow the neoclassical Renaissance traditions of simplicity, connecting to God primarily through intellect. 

Chopin and Debussy helped to pave the way for impressionism in music as Manet and van Gogh did in painting. It was a new aesthetic in their time period. Now we have sculptures of giant purple balloon dogs in the Louvre. Where do we draw the line between artistic expression and the ridiculous? 

Some things have common symbolism. Mountains are generally aesthetically pleasing and majestic. Jazz music is relaxing and uplifting… So on. Other things are more subjective. The word Blue, the poem ‘Renascence’, lightening, may evoke quite different responses based on personal experience and personality. 

There’s just a lot to say about art.

So school starts tomorrow. The students are here, everywhere in town. The other day I was sitting here in Barnes and Noble, enjoying the AC and wifi, and found myself surrounded by other Bethel students. The pastor recieved a phone call last sunday saying the highway was backed up with people coming to church, so this sunday we students received an email asking us to please attend the earlier service. But it’s great to have that problem.

I’m excited to begin this, whatever it is, because you never really know just what God is going to do or say, and isn’t that half the fun? It can also be half the battle I suppose, but I think the line between excitement and battle is trust. It is absolutely necessary to trust in a spiritual world of divine tensions. When we can’t handle the tension we tend to choose a side, a side which may be good, but is only one piece, and the tension is gone. Then the need to trust, to rely, goes with it. It may be our version of stability, but it easily turns into a stagnant position. It’s so easy to forget the tensions, to settle into what we believe to be safe formulas and time tested methods. God is more dynamic than the people and places around us, but He is also very personal. It’s one of the tensions. We may learn a lot from people who know God, but we can’t live their lives. There is always a call to listen. When you listen you find that God wants to work with you, not against you. That is, you were made as an individual on purpose.

Living someone else’s calling is like walking up an escalator that’s moving down.

So America has something right, pursue what you were made to do. Just make sure you aren’t doing it alone.

If you were to ask a snowflake what it was like to be a snowflake, I don’t know exactly what it might say, but I would imagine that it would start off by saying something about the beginning. That is generally how these questions are answered; the process of relating experience generally begins with the telling of ones’ foundational knowledge of the world. And so, it might relate its memories of being a part of that cold and airy mist. At first there would be light, and below there would be shapes, mostly squares and circles. For a while the rigid lines of mountains. After a while the shapes take on details and movement: lines filled with moving dots, tops of buildings and so on. The wind is forceful, cold. 

It grows quite dark, the wind dies down and everything is quiet. This is when, the snowflake might tell you, it grew up (or, more appropriately, grew out). In the darkness it feels a slight breeze and begins to imagine it has shaken off a misty shroud, and now is alone. The darkness continues for so long, and the loneliness is peacefully overwhelming. 

Then, it wasn’t quite sure when, but it realized that the darkness had begun to glow an orange-y and warm sort of glow. When it became aware of the glow it also became aware of the presence of other snowflakes floating round it. The loneliness eased and the glow increased, and lights danced below it. The quietness here was different from the quiet it had experienced in the cloud and in the dark. It was softer, enveloping instead of isolating. 

And then, I think if the snowflake were able to describe the moment it stopped, when it reached the blanket of millions of snowflakes, I think there is a chance it might try to describe to you that moment, but probably not. Snowflakes, I think, are wise enough to know that that moment is indescribable, it is something that may only be experienced. If it were to try, it might use metaphors, as we all do when we so foolishly imagine we are able to capture these sorts of moments.

And so, it might try to tell you about a note of music in a symphony: how the note exists in a large number of notes, so that it is indistinguishable from them, yet to be part of so grand and awesome a thing, to enjoy existence for such a purpose, was to be a snowflake when it falls. Or it might, considering you are human, ask you to reflect upon the times that you have stood at the side of a great mountain and loved it because it was so much bigger than you. Or the way you feel when you read about an ordinary person who happened to get caught doing something good for another human. And you feel that way because, like the note, you just know that

insignificance has nothing to do with it. It’s just not about that. 

I think anyone having a hard time coping with their own significance should really talk with a snowflake. A beautiful thing is not diminished by the existence of a million other beautiful things.

The problem is always how to begin. It’s easy to drift into it, like drifting into sleep while sitting outdoors–thoughts then returning to the surface in sharp jolts when a mosquito zooms in a little too near to an ear, sounds of a 3 year old laugh getting closer. Then drift back down to dreamy, subconscious world, drowsiness rolling me back like waves, calm and steady. 

It’s in between those two states, almost awake and almost asleep, that the world of sounds and every playing bit of breeze are all I know. Then the words begin to float around, stringing along and forming phrases that I wrack my brain trying to remember later. 

Kathleen Norris, in her book The Cloister Walk, describes that moment when the poet has to relent to the world of senses and the soul because words don’t go far enough. They can only do so much. They’re aids, pushing the buttons that lead the mind to experience. experience… and in that way they have power. Place two words together, more, create different combinations, and lead the mind to new experiences or old. 

I have always loved Dickens. David Copperfield is my favorite book. Dickens was the satirist of his day, he used the art of words to bring the experience of the ill treated poor to the surface of society. The phrases he used then spoke of brutality, the ugliness of humanity when it denies its own. Now, his books are almost light-hearted compared to what is written in the works of his modern day contemporaries–how far authors must go to cause a reaction. Often too far. How much is too much to experience in your mind? Brutality on page after page.. 

That was a tangent, we can all answer that question on our own. 

The Benedictine monasteries live on to experience God, through the word and through living in koinonia community. This experience that springs up and out from spoken, written words becoming an experience in the soul, as close to you as you can get. Experience springing forth then from within and into living with others. The poetry of the soul gains permanence when it is acted out.

According to the dictionary… To be tranquil, the opposite of weary, to cease to work in order to refresh oneself and recover strength, allow land to lie fallow (uncultivated for a period, this allows the land to regain fertility), to be grounded or to depend on something (place hope/confidence/etc.), and so on. 

 

According to the word…

Jeremiah 31:2-3 talks about Israel escaping the sword and finding grace in the wilderness then the Lord appears with love. 

Hebrews 4 is all about rest. The author is referring to Psalms 95 which tells of how Israel hardened their hearts while walking in the wilderness and were not allowed to enter into rest. 

Jeremiah 6:16 says to find the good way, to walk in it and then you’ll find rest. 

Matthew 11:28-30 is probably the most popular one, it’s the “Come to me all you heavy laden… and I will give you rest” if we take his “yoke” and learn from Him. Basically, be yoked with him, allow him to take on the weight. 

Hosea 10:12 This one I included because it speaks of the fallow ground, saying to break it up, and plant it with righteousness and reap love. 

Hosea 14:8 God says “from me comes your fruit.”

The images these verses create are not particularly restful to me. The wilderness and farming both require a lot of work for survival. This summer, for me, is a wilderness period, but I felt going into it that it was to be a peaceful time as well. The “wilderness with no night”, physically and spiritually (it is never fully dark in AK during the summer). Jesus was brought to the wilderness before beginning his ministry, as were Moses and Joseph. A friend of mine had this quote on their facebook (yeah, yeah, I know. but you all know you have one.) for a day:

“Often, your wilderness is the doorway to your promise. At the initiation of Jesus’ public ministry He was led into the wilderness first before He ever preached a sermon. If you are in a wilderness right now, remember what you learned while there because it will be necessary to sustain you in your Promised Land. Don’t faint or lose heart. You may be at the door of your promise and purpose.”

We talk a lot about “peace like a river”, and if you think about it, rivers aren’t very peaceful. At least, not the “hammock swinging, church silence” ideas that are typically associated with peace. Some areas are fast, others slow. The slow, lazy stretches of water are deepest and contain the most life. These areas are best for growth. 

The wilderness is a place of solitude and survival. In it there is grace to be found, for grace is necessary there. It is a basic need in the spiritual desert, as food and water are in a physical one. 

After the wilderness comes the promise, the rest, Love. 

Picture two is farming. We all have our fallow ground, it’s been resting while other ground has been used. It is to be broken up and righteousness is to be planted there, and Love, again, is the result. We can’t do any of it, really, though. Jesus plants the seed, takes the yoke, and God brings the fruit. 

So when I first asked myself what is rest, I thought security: believing others (including God) care about me. Then, also, not trying to be God. That means a lot: giving over control, letting go of guilt, making room for things I don’t/can’t understand, and on and on. 

Then I began to think about freedom, and I think the more freedom we experience, the more true rest can be had. 

I know this is somewhat a myriad of thoughts that I didn’t take enough time to put together, but it’s something to think about. I believe this to be a year of rest, I’ve heard it several times. There are appointed times of rest, and like the river, there can be a lot of growth in those times. So celebrate it, explore it, let go. 

I’m staying in a dry cabin next to a family with two little girls. One night the three year old was praying with her dad as she was going to bed; they finish praying and she says “My heart is happy now.” 

I went for a run this afternoon (ok, it’s more of a walk with intermittent running). There was a nice breeze (rare in Fairbanks), the sun was out, and the sides of the roads are now covered with stalks of beautiful little purple flowers. They smell so delicious, and the air feels so sweet. I love flowers, pansies and daisies and lilacs. I like flowers like lilies and  roses too, but they seem slightly less comfortable. There’s such a knowableness about pansies and begonias, but lilies in particular have their guard up. 

Anyhow, running along and thinking about flowers, the way the scraggly black spruce contrast with the slender, shimmying little birches, and about the Father God who only makes beautiful things: I believed at that minute that He made me in a way that’s beautiful to Him, and thought, “Now my heart is happy.”

About a month ago I heard a man speak at church, a missionary from some place that may have been the Philippines.. anyhow, he told about how this one night a few years back while he was driving with his wife, praying and listening (funny how those are two different words hmm), and God asked him what he wanted. He answered back with some sort of spiritual/unselfish (what does that word “unselfish” mean anyways?) response. God asked again, what did HE want? 

The speaker had always been fascinated by old Ford models, and had, when he first began to know God, sold a truck he owned because it was sinful to love material things. He’d never lost his love of old cars, so he answered God honestly, he wanted this specific model truck, and proceeded to wait for the lightening bolt (ok, I added that part, but isn’t it a nice touch?) A minute later he saw, on the side of the road, that specific truck broken down and overtaken by weeds. he kept driving, convinced this was a temptation. He told his wife what had happened and she convinced him to turn around. In the end, the lot the truck was on belonged to a man he knew, and he bought the truck for some ridiculously low amount. 

Moral: God made us. He made us. He put that switch inside of you that clicks on when you encounter that thing that the switch corresponds to. I like the smell of flowers, and the feel of the sun. I also like reading old books by dead guys who tried to recreate the world in order to understand it. I also like coffee and ice cream, but I think that might be stretching it….

Hmm this isn’t very good, but here it is anyways (that sounds awfully like a compliment-seeking comment. But it’s not…. it’s just what it is.) I think reading Fitzgerald makes me prose-y, which is kind of fun… he’s so introspective. Or is it self-absorption? I don’t know. Hm. Anyhow. 

 

Visions of running up to the edge of some gaping

rift in the world’s surface, dusty and darkly deep.

I don’t like the view, but

I take a few steps back and examine my surroundings.

Examine? no, study. Intently even.

It, the sharply falling cliff

right there,

came out of nowhere.

It’s unsettling.

 

New scene.

Vision from somewhere outside my self, some special effect that feels like the zoom of a telescope lens

and the crevice begins to look like a crack in the bark of a tree

spreading as the tree’s growth rips it open.

 

It’s growing. 

Bright green leaves will shoot forth from the outer shell of

brittle wood: exposed to rain as to sun.

The sun spurs growth, growth is good.

It pulls me apart.

 

The tree is the tree (is the tree is the tree…)

Repeat.

Every day of my life either sunshine or rain

Just the same

Is the tree. 

 

Infinite wonder at the infinite

just to comprehend

I Am. 

Is the tree.

For the last year I worked for a private company that provides family services for parents whose children have been placed in the system, and who may or may not be getting them back. I left about a month ago, and just recently realized for the last month I haven’t thought about that job or anyone that I worked with. I quite literally, unconsciously, removed it from my mind for a while. I’ve been preoccupied with other changes that have been occurring until this last week when I’ve begun to catch up with myself. 

I just read the book by the now President Obama, written during his years in Illinois about coming of age and his work as a community organizer in Chicago. I have to say I enjoyed it, and for the first time in what has probably been close to a year, I’ve been excited about what could be done to change the direction of this country, and not because of him but because it appears there may be people who are able to hold out for their convictions. The endurance of his hope for change, and the type of work he was doing, were inspiring.

Community organizing could also be called community advocacy. The “organizer” gets to know the community, spends time talking to people and figuring out what the key needs are, then begins to get the neighborhood to unify in seeking those changes, and connecting them with the politicians, police, churches and school administration who control the factors that need to change. Ultimately, if it works, the community begins to change as people realize they have power to change things, change themselves, where they’ve never believed they could.

Over the last year my idealism has given way to cycnicism as I’ve worked with a system that needs to be revamped and with people who gave up a long time ago, who find that it’s safer to help things fail than to make goals. I lost the ability to feel compassion for a while (they call it compassion fatigue), and then it began to come back in sharp pangs during meetings where I heard about things that sent me reeling or when I saw someone who I knew was giving up walking over to the Circle K to get some more of their old memory numbing drink.

The twitching, the stench of sweat and urine, missing teeth, betrayal, black and blue little bodies, and pictures of unspeakable acts drawn with crayons: well that’s the world we live in, it’s not changing. I can dream of a world where my dreams could come true, but I’d only be disappointed. That’s a bit of cynical realism that broke into my heart, but I don’t want to have that perspective. I want to hope, to believe, but I’m afraid when I turn 70 I’ll turn around and look at my life and see a world worse off than when I was 25, and lives that didn’t change.

I know that lives which make up the world will only change when they meet and accept Jesus’ love. I know that it’s a few lives that change at a time, but I can’t be satisfied with a few. The hippi movement proposed a radically different way of living, and it actually changed the country.

Jesus offers the way of compassion, another paradigm-shifter. And what is compassion? What is it not? The dictionary defines it as some feeling akin to concern and pity. It has to be something else too. God wouldn’t have stressed the importance of compassion if it was just a feeling caused by something our hearts know to be wrong. What good would that do anyone? Compassion should be good for the person you feel it for. So if compassion must be good for someone, it possibly requires an action. And who ought we to feel compassion for? Every moment of every day is full of voices crying out, and as Millay points out in her poem ‘Renascence‘, and we cannot bear the weight of the world like God can. 

We’re all called to be who God made us to be, yes? So compassion, for you, will be unique. You will be drawn to those who need what you have to offer, and then you’ll be good at offering it. God said that his compassion is more enduring than the mountains. When compassion works in conjunction with the way God has designed me, I shouldn’t have to wonder where it’s going to come from, how it will be sustained. 

So what happened over this last year? Fatigue, then balance, but no change. I can’t control the decisions that others make: not CPS, judges, parents or children. I will not make excuses for people, but I can have compassion. I can understand where they’ve been, the cycle of abuse, the need to escape reality, and hope that their hearts are open to a better way. It’s a hard decision, and doesn’t get easy for a long time. But it happens. 

So basically, seek God, please, so that he can change our world.