Wearing my Adventure Hat

an effort to put heart to paper---- May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock & my Redeemer. [Ps 19]

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From The Imperfect Pastor: Discovering Joy in Our Limitations through a Daily Apprenticeship with Jesus by Zach Eswine

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Play

“A critically important component of Wholehearted living is play! ... In today’s culture—where our self-worth is tied to our net worth, and we base our worthiness on our level of productivity—spending time doing purposeless activities is rare. In fact, for many of us it sounds like an anxiety attack waiting to happen.” -Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Autumn is here. I want to fall into the rhythms of the seasons, with fall being a chance to slow down and gather the harvest in preparation for the cold bitter winter. But Summer was my Winter this year, so as the seasons change, could Autumn be my new Spring? So let’s pretend the daffodils have blossomed and anticipate all the new things to come. (These can end up being the worst or best decisions ever. Only time can decide that.) 

I’m moving. Specifically back to Maryland (but within the beltway) and back with a former housemate and back to having a room in the back of the house overlooking a tree and back to reading/writing/playing on a porch and back to records spinning and back to cooking for two. Friends, I hear you. But this time, I want it to be different. Though many of the players are the same, I promise we aren’t going back there in so many ways. I long for the rhythm and rest and grass and quiet. I long for play.

I’m a month into getting to know someone. Whatever that’s called? We’re in those early inbetween undefined days and i’m not anxious. Wherever this leads, I know I won’t regret the time spent going on some of the sweetest adventures throughout the city. How could I say no to coffee at my favorite shop? a book festival? a state fair? church? breakfast for dinner? watching the lunar eclipse? the symphony? I’m not sure what defines purpose in this situation, but nothing productive is happening during all this time. I’m having a blast and it’s been weeks since my last anxiety attack.

I’ve picked up a few pet sitting gigs spaced through October to December. It reminds me of the summer I was a nomad from house to house and how much God provided for me then. And he will again.

I’m going to Puerto Rico in November. I finally planned a vacation (or rather my mom did) which is perfect since that was also a task for work. My supervisor noticed that I didn’t take any time over the summer. I spent two days, or rather four hours altogether, at the beach this year so far.  

I will play more and work less. The soul needs rest. My heart needs play to live whole. 

3/31.

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Laws, indeed only one

“You delight in laying down laws, Yet you delight more in breaking them.” - Kahil Gibran, The Prophet

Last night, I met a ethical theology and psychology doctoral student. (What a mouthful.) We talked briefly about his research, which he described as a combination of Thomas Aqunias’ Summa, neuroscience and psychology. Effectively, what do we do what we want not to do and don’t do what we ought? And how may our habits be changed?

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! [Romans 7]

And he spoke of an ethical dilemma, which at this point I’m not sure where I’ve heard first. Here’s the situation: Under Nazi rule, you are secretly housing a family of Jewish people. A Nazi officer comes to the door and asks if there are any Jews in the house. How do you reply? Is to lie to participate in evil? Do you lie, even as forbidden as the 9th commandment in Exodus 20?

And apparently there was a debate about this between other members of the party, of what is a lie, and so on. But I was bored by that and not paying close attention because I was busy thinking that those were the ‘wrong’ questions. How do I love my neighbor?

Indeed, if to love God and to love others are the commandments that sum up the Law, it’s safe it to say that contained within the Commandments against neighbor as given on Mt Sinai to Moses contains within it an interpretation of lies and truth. If we knew how to love my neighbor instinctively, we would have no use for the law.

This situation shouldn’t be a dilemma at all. In the hypothetical, when I say yes to opening my home to those escaping persecution, I’ve already said yes to protecting them. Anything less than that is betrayal. By doing so, I’ve already betrayed my government and its statutes, believing first in the value of human lives regardless of ethnicity as crafted by God himself to be divine image-bearers.   

Love protects.  I have choices. But I will not forget your law. 

Though I constantly take my life in my hands,    I will not forget your law. [Psalm 119:109]

I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrestled with this too, but ultimately decided to plot the assassination of Hitler. That’s commandment 6. And I’d join you, Mr. B.

2/31.

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;

a pause

a place to take a breath

incomplete - it brings no meaning without words

On the right side of the semicolon, there’s a contrast or an elaboration of what has come before. It’s a relationship between one clause and another. One cause and another. 

And there’s one on my left wrist, where I’m conditioned to check the time throughout the day. It’s difficult for me to pause, rest, stop, and sometimes even breathe. I’m carpe-ing the effe out of this diem thankyouverymuch. There are still more books to read. This time, I’m going to start owning my story.

I remember when I grasped that time as I experience it can only moves forward, and that I could never go back to where I was before and do something differently. Some may call this regret, and perhaps that would be partially true. But I wanted more time to choose my own adventure and make different decisions to see where they would lead.

I started attempting to take ‘next time’ out of my speech. Next time - may I presume to know that I would be back here again? I can’t change anything about the beginning of my sentence, but each breath is a semicolon. And with every breath, I have the opportunity to change what comes after.

To live in a world without minutes and hours and to ignore the passing of seconds. To pretend as if I have years, decades even, on this earth. How do people do this?! Each breath is a breath it is impossible to take again. I don’t know how many I have left, but I breathe because God has first given me breath. I am but dust and God’s breath being formed and ever forming. Everything else is but a variation of this. 

Better is one day in your courts

   than a thousand elsewhere;

…

Next time I’m back the at beach I’l bring my hourglass and release the sand back into the beach, back home where it belongs so that it is free. Fridays and Saturdays I don’t wear a watch. That’s as free as I can get.

Happy Friday.

p.s. Maybe next time isn’t so bad after all - that’s where the hope is.

1/ 31.

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Who do *you* say I am?

My most important question is ‘who do you say I am?’ and it goes both ways, a question asked from me to God and from God to me. Who do you say I am? If god exists, it matters deeply what he thinks of me. It’s not a question I first asked god, because it doesn’t matter much what someone who doesn’t exist thinks of you. If there is a god, though, I should probably seek to know who he is.

For most of my life, I reasoned that god doesn’t exist, so my story starts with who I am. Sometimes based on our experience of the world, “the only reasonable spiritual response is atheism”, as both my pastor Aaron and Rob Bell reminded me this week.

So My first name is Jennifer, but when I was born everyone added a prefix, changing my name to “leave-me-alone Jennifer.” I cried constantly. I was born too early and had to fight to breathe and survive.  Where some children like to be held close, I just wanted to be left alone. On some level, I still want to be left on my own. Fighting. Surviving. “leave me alone jennifer” This was a name first given to me, later one I chose, even still one I’ve tried to shake.

Independence is a value seen all over DC, and it’s especially valued in my family.

Shauna Niequist writes, “It’s fundamental to my understanding of myself for me to be the strong one, the capable one, the busy one, the one who can bail you out, not make a fuss, bring a meal, add a few more things to the list.”

It would be much easier for me to say no if I trusted that others would follow through on their yes - their promises to me. In turn, I learned to be the steady one.

At 21, I was handed a dream job at the highest level of a company, five months before I was set to graduate engineering college. Vice-president of my sorority. Boyfriend of four years. Solid group of friends. Parents who love me. No student loans, $10k and retirement savings.

Yet. Yet, even still, once the last piece of the puzzle was put into place, I remember feeling like I was falling in on myself, like the pressure created a gravitational collapse of a dying star. It just wasn’t enough. I was fed up with suffering, enduring, being strong, doing what I was ‘supposed’ to and feeling lied to. What was promised from this world was not what was delivered. And the weight of not being able to do more to get there was crushing.

So I was told before who God ‘was’. It was overtly simple really, what Christians were selling was all over bumper stickers and billboards.

John 3:16 -  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

So let me break this down how I heard it...

For God so loved? --  if they say God is love, why is there so much evil?

He gave his Son? -- I didn’t ask him to do that. what do I need his son for?

shall not perish? -- if they say God is strong, why doesn’t he protect people in this life? Why are people perishing anyway?

eternal life? -- that sounds AWFUL, why would I want more of this?

I didn’t see God as strong and certainly not loving.

I believed that even the idea of god was utterly ridiculous, and so that was how I lived. I thought, If a god existed, god is unable or unwilling to carry through with who and what Christians said he was supposed to do. I’d rather save myself the trouble of believing in an inconsistent, unsafe person and just survive alone.

Later, as my life from the outside would look near perfect, I couldn’t logically make sure of why the world was what I saw and why at my core I was so miserable. I had religion and philosophy books lying around from a comparative religion elective, so I started to read the bible, with Job because some scholars think it was the first written. A good place to start.

Job’s story is one full of suffering, where in the midst of this all this his wife and friends are neither comforting nor wise. Job despises the day he was born and his friends blame Job for his distress, because *certainly* he must have done *something* to deserve such terrible misfortune. When God finally speaks, Job isn’t blamed. Instead God asks Job where he was, in a sarcastic tone suggesting that Job surely knows how everything works more than God does. God challenges Job saying, “I will question you and you will answer me”

From Job 38...

“The the Lord answered Job out of the storm.

…

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? Tell me, if you understand.

...

“Have you ever given orders to the morning,

   or shown the dawn its place,

...

“Would you discredit my justice?

   Would you condemn me to justify yourself?

[if you can do these things]

Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?

Tell me, if you know all this.

“What is the way to the abode of light?

And where does darkness reside?

Can you take them to their places?

Do you know the paths to their dwellings?

Surely you know, for you were already born!

You have lived so many years!

...

Then I myself will admit to you

   that your own right hand can save you.

Job was in a storm, and in this place, God spoke and revealed to Job that only God is creator, only God is just and only God can save.

Theologian Jonathan Martin writes, “What is so disturbing about the book of Job is that it blows the lid off the theology of retribution.  That is that theology that says, If you do good then good things will happen to you; if you do bad then bad things will happen to you.  That is the kind of world we can understand, order, and best of all, control.”  … “The same waves that took Job down to the depths of the suffering also took him, unwittingly or not, to the brink of the greatest revelation in the history of the world—the revelation of grace”

I wanted the good things I did to bring enough good things to erase all the bad things that had happened. I love order and structure, and I still do. I thought this was the world that I wanted - where we reap what we sow. Where if I do the right things, I’ll be secure. But this isn’t what grace is.

So about a month ago, I was walking in the Shaw neighborhood. There’s a newer outside art installation I noticed called Symphony in DC major. From my first view, I liked what I saw and was “jazzed” about it - check this out, it’s shiny, there’s a piano player I thought was pretty cool.

But from a step ahead, where my friend Vivi stood, she saw this.

A simple shift in angle. and what I liked is fine, sure, but not as good as this. The artist had greater intention that I had realized, where everything reflects and refracts just so the whole person comes into view. Here’s Duke Ellington, friends, DC jazz legend. It’s probably too small to notice, but in the first picture, I can see my own reflection as I took the photo. In the 2nd, there’s only Duke.

And this is what I see the work of God as like: a complete shift in perspective that brings fullness of life. And that fullness is meant to put on display who God is so much that my own shortcomings have no room in the picture.

I am not god. I don’t understand. Like Job, In the storm, everything is meaningless and there’s nothing left to be certain of but darkness. But still in this place, God speaks. And God reveals who he is.

Like Job’s friends, I can understand what it’s like to get what we deserve. Grace and true love are still much harder for me to grasp. I realized that just because I don’t understand it fully, it doesn’t make it less true. The misconceptions I had about god started to slowly unravel. I started to see myself as Jesus sees me and the things that had been true all along.

Asking my most important question led me to realize that the primary person I want to be and become is near to Jesus. So when I ask him “who do you say I am”, Jesus may reply with “like me”

And now, through the perspective of who Jesus is, I now can see and hold both joy and despair together. I have learned I can only know God in part, and how much I need brothers and sisters to share their lives with me, so I may see God more fully. I believe that As we begin to acknowledge who God really is, He tells us who we truly are.  

My question is also found in Matthew 16:15-16, between Jesus and his disciples. Jesus asks, “who do you say that I am?” and Simon Peter answers, “you are the Messiah, the son of the living God”

Jesus then calls him a rock, a new name, a new identity.

Much of this restorative work takes place in community. And I have no trouble betting my life that nothing matters more.

Where I was manipulative; I am more genuine

I was numb; I have more empathy now.

I was abused; I am cared for.

I was powerless; I am… still powerless.

Because You O God are loving and you O God are strong

I am loved, I am your daughter, I am forgiven, I am - free

God doesn’t promise that everything will be happy, but does promise to be with us and to transform us. I am a very different person six years later than I was before. I can't not think of Jesus on the cross... where ultimate suffering meets the greatest presence of love we ever could imagine. His grace is our transformation.

It’s as if the Holy Spirit were to draw me over to his side and tell me to ask my question again…

“who do you say that I am?” and my life is made up of finding just the right spot, in the right environment and position to God so that all of myself comes into view from God’s reflection. Here in the midst of a storm, I pray that the knowledge that God is with us, loving, and strong is enough and that our joy comes from this place.

Because, “you are Christ, the son of the living God” I can place my comfort is here:

“For we shall be like him when we see Him as he is” in 1 John 3:2

& in the end,

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”

“To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it” in revelation

Worship to me looks like stumbling to answer Jesus’ question: Who do you say I am? and asking right back Who do you say I am? until the day that I get a new name. Leave me alone Jennifer, becomes something else between me and God that I don’t even know yet. And knowing what I now know of God… the Father who longs for return, Jesus who says hey! come follow me, & the Holy Spirit indwelling all believers … “alone” won’t be a part of my name.

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Sara Maitland, A Book of Silence

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Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.

Alice Walker: Living by the Word (via creatingaquietmind)

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I’ve never been good at small talk. I always want to know how someone is really doing. Not just the highlight reel. Perfect people are impossible to plug into. I spent far too many years being obsessed with the idea of perfection. But that means you don’t need anyone, which wasn’t true about me. After going through the past two years, I’m far more intrigued by the broken places and how people move through it. I think that level of honesty is where you find genuine connection.

Joy Wlliams, 

https://medium.com/cuepoint/joy-williams-on-the-civil-wars-and-her-new-album-venus-c73116a48b1f

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Beautiful scene and sounds

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Love

Attempt to think like a child about God's love:

love stands guard at the closet door so that the monsters do not come... love crawls through the dirtiest, darkest, place to find you... love waits outside if you decide you don't want love to come in, so that love is near when you change your mind... love dances and sings over you... love cries with you when you are sad or the world hurts you... love is summer days, but love does not hibernate all winter either... love wants the best for you, and love knows that's love himself.

protector. savior. faithful. joy. empathy. patience. goodness. 

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What would it mean if all of these radical claims were true, and the truth about God was not universally accessible? It would mean that our teacher would need to bring us the truth about God from outside of ourselves. It would mean that God himself would need to be our Teacher, since nothing within human beings gives them an inherent capacity to see or recognize the truth about God. This would mean that we would need eyes to see, ears to hear, and ways to apprehend this truth about God, and that God would need to provide the apparatus to receive the truth

J. Todd Billings, The Word of God for the People of God

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Our theology of revelation... must be inseparable from our theology of salvation. For the truth about God -which God alone enables us to receive - does not just enlighten us, but makes us into a new creation, leads us to repentance, and makes us disciples of the teacher. These developments in the Christian life are moments in coming to know the truth, a truth that is not accessible simply by the work of the mind, but whose knowing is a miracle itself, an act of God that changes human lives

J. Todd Billings, The Word of God for the People of God, pg. 79

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Amen. From "feminist theory and Christian theology" by Serene Jones

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“To draw nearer unto god; to become like Him; to become free from whatever would separate between us and Him; to become such in character and spirit that we shall be in sympathy with Him; shall have the same likes and dislikes with Him, hating only what He hates, and loving all that He loves; to “walk with God,” as two can only walk together who “are agreed” --this is salvation”

(166, Henry Nelson, Sin and Salvation)

[awkwardsituationist]

there are three ways that individuals who are oppressed can deal with their oppression. one of them is to rise up against their oppressors with physical violence and corroding hatred. but oh this isn’t the way. violence creates many more social problems than it solves. another way is to acquiesce and to give in, to resign yourself to the oppression. but that too isn’t the way, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

but there is another way. and that is to organize mass non violent resistance based on the principle of love. where there is something about hate that tears down and is destructive, there is something about love that builds up and is creative. love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power in the universe.

when you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system. you just keep loving people, even though they’re mistreating you. just keep being friendly to that person. i’m foolish enough to believe that through the power of this love, somewhere men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed.

edited from a november 17, 1957 sermon by dr. martin luther king, jr. photos by: 1. marc riboud of jan rose kasmir at the pentagon, october 21, 1967; 2. lefteris pitarakis in cairo, january 28, 2011; 3. guillermo legaria in bogota, october 26, 2011; 4. sergei chuzavkov in kiev, december 30, 2013; 5. william fernando martinez in bogotá, november 11, 2011; 6. reuters, kiev, november, 2004; 7. stefan stefanov in sofia, bulgaria, november, 2013; 8. john vizcaino in bogotá, november 11, 2011; and 9. hadi mizban in baghdad, january 6, 2008

[sallyscissor]

This is beautiful.

[selenemooneffe]

Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don’t know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress.

(via elige)

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Acatalepsy