Ring out 2009

As 2009 comes to a close, I pause and write here realizing this marks exactly one year of weekly posting. I am a bit sad that my last post has ended up being so tardy (I was away for Christmas), but perhaps it is most fitting that I write today.

As I write I feel inadequate to the task of writing something on this day which is given significance only by a small change in the numbers by which we mark our days. I look over the posts and back over the year that has passed. In some ways these posts seem distant from the 'facts' of my life - a year full of change and uncertainty, of trials and joys. The interludes of rest seemed nearly as intense as the times of business. Yet I like to think that there is not so great a disparity between my life and my musings here as first might appear. For my thoughts cannot be separated from the life I am living. I note also that except when shear exhaustion prevented me from thinking clearly, the times of greatest stress often force the deepest or most relevant thoughts.

I have learned much, but I have also forgotten much, and am glad for the record of thought that this blog leaves. I hope you have found some encouragement or food for thought here.

I will close with a poem by Tennyson which is probably familiar to you, but which I only discovered relatively recently. I am struck today as I read it how futile, now naive even, the hopeful tone of the poem seems - until the last line. I give thanks for this year. I give thanks for our hope.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife,
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweet manners, purer laws.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Winter Sun

Hoorah! I have just finished my first semester of grad school! Here is a poem I wrote this week, which I'm afraid is very much in the rough. I didn't have time to improve it. Perhaps I will someday soon.


Winter Sun

A pale white gleaming circle
glowing through a crisscross of branches
the presence of that burning orb
made known to this world of cold grays.

Watery light penetrates
cold dry air
a last dead leaf trembles on a branch
which ever leans upwards to that light

Snow is in the air
the white disc fades to a glow
and then vanishes
yet still through the gray sky that unseen light filters down

Hope: Willard refutes the disconnect between life and faith

I've been reading The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard, and thought I'd share a few enlightening things I've read so far. These are things that I tend to think, "of course that's part of our faith and church!", but find that even in my own thinking I am not always where I expect to be. That may sound confusing, but perhaps as you read on you'll see what I mean.


What exactly is the central message of the gospel?
Many Christians would begin with John 3:16, and by saying that God, in his infinite love and mercy saved us from the punishment our sins deserve through the death of Jesus Christ, defeating death allowing us to have eternal life. This is true, yet Willard suggests that our focus on eternal life after death really misunderstands Jesus' main message and leads to a kind of hopelessness about how we are to live now.

"When we examine the broad spectrum of Christian proclamation and practice, we see that the only thing made essential on the right wing of theology is forgiveness of the individual's sins. On the left is removal of social or structural evils. ... Transformation of life and character is no part of the redemptive message. Moment-to-moment human reality in its depths is not the arena of faith and eternal living" (41)

Willard translates John 3:16 as follows:

God's care for humanity was so great that he sent his unique Son among us, so that those who count on him might not lead a futile and failing existence, but have the undying life of God himself (1)

Eternal, or "the undying life of God himself", life begins now. Christ healing and touching us, working in our everyday lives.

The Kingdom of Heaven
Sometimes when I'm reading I get really excited. I sense that I am finally going to have an important question I've been wondering about answered. This was the case when I read this:

The phrase kingdom of the heavens occurs thirty-two times in Matthew's Gospel and never again in the New Testament. By contrast, the phrase kingdom of God occurs only five times in that Gospel but is the usual term used in the remainder of the New Testament. What is the significance this variation in terminology? (73)

Willard devotes many pages to this, but the gist of what he is saying is this: the world translated "heavens" meant, in the context of both the old and new testaments, the space where God is. Importantly, this was considered to be the "air or atmosphere which surrounds your body" (67). "The heavens" are not far away, neither in time nor space. They are here and now. (This is really hard for me to explain in a few words; you should either read the book or talk more with me later!) When Jesus said "the kingdom of heaven is at hand", he did not mean that it was arriving soon or in the future. God is in this very real world he has created, and offers to us the possibility of living in this heavenly reality.

To more clearly answer the above quotation:

Matthew, the quintessentially Judaic Gospel, as a matter of course utilizes the phrase he kingdom of the heavens to describe God's rule, or "kingdom". It captures that rich heritage of the Jewish experience of the nearness of God that is so largely lost to the contemporary mind. (73)

The Brilliance of Jesus
I will close by leaving you to meditate on the brilliance of Jesus. Willard cautions that "The world has succeeded in opposing intelligence to goodness" (135) This discourages our faith, and doesn't really make sense. As Willard writes,

Can we seriously imagine that Jesus could be Lord if he were not smart? If he were divine, would he be dumb? Or uninformed? Once you stop to think about it, how could he be what we take him to be in all other respects and not be the best-informed and most intelligent person of all, the smartest person who ever lived? (94)

I've been reflecting on this, because as Willard also says, "It is not possible to trust Jesus, or anyone else, in matters where we do not believe him to be competent" (94)

Waiting

I just finished waiting for my soup to heat up (and am eating it as I write this). While I stood there in front of the stove, I tried to think of what I could be doing with those few minutes (besides just standing there). Surely there was something more useful! I realized that I find it incredibly difficult to just wait. I get restless, and if my body is constrained, my mind darts around, trying to find something useful to think about! This semester, as I have waited to hear back from graduate schools, had been a bit draining. Why is it that I find waiting so difficult? Perhaps it is that waiting makes me feel useless. Perhaps I measure my worth too much by what I accomplish.

I don't think I am alone in feeling this way. Much of technological marketing seems to rely on the assumption that faster is better: the less time one has to spend waiting for a process to run on a computer, the better. If I can do my email on my iphone while waiting for the bus, my life will be enhanced. You can probably think of more examples. Or simply consider how annoyed or frustrated we tend to get when we have to wait in a long line for anything.

I do not want to suggest that we should all become lazy and spend our days waiting around for something to happen. I do want to suggest that we need to learn how to wait well. I know I do.

Consider how much of our spiritual life depends on waiting on the Lord. Isn't that what prayer is all about? The liturgical calendar also emphasizes this: over half of the year is "Ordinary Time", a time between the major celebrations. Other major seasons are also focused on preparation and waiting, such as Advent and Lent. Of course all these point to the ongoing waiting of the church. James speaks of the patience of the farmer as he waits for the land to yield its harvest (James 5:7). I'm sure there are things in my own life that I can seize as opportunities to learn how to wait, as a sort of training.

As Paul writes:

we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:23-25)

Looking at the world around me, and at my own life, I know that there is a long ways to the true fulfillment of our hope. I pray that I might learn grace in my waiting, and that we all might live patiently and expectantly "while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13)

Human

Lately I've been feeling, somehow more poignantly than usual, so human. The mental, physical, emotional, and even spiritual exhaustion brought about by daily life reminds me just how limited I am. And yet - the shape of branches against sky, the colour of the hills, the smell of damp earth - these little things fill me with such delight that their superposition against the ordinary greys of life in February only serves to increase my wonder at their beauty. As I try to make decisions, The decision-making required of me makes the unknown future loom large while simultaneously I feel deeply how insignificant each choice, even my life, really is.

More than all these things, however, it is people that make me feel human. The heartfelt conversation, the shared experiences, those flashes of time when self becomes less important than that person you are with. It is people, who live and who die around me, who show me the complexity of life and who shape who I am. It is also people that allow me to see how self-absorbed I really am; I see both how I don't love them as I am loved and as I expect them to love me. Or, even more, my low expectations for others and myself, standing in relief against longings of what should be, reveal that we humans are not living in the best way. And I am just as human as everyone else.

Last night I was guided once again by the wisdom of the writer of the Litany of Penitence, which includes the prayer: "My anger at my own frustration ... I confess to you, Lord" It is so easy to become frustrated with our humanity. I think this frustration is one of the painful parts of growing, but let us not stop there. Another prayer from the daily liturgy I use resonated with me this week:

O Almighty God, who pours out on all who desire it the spirit of grace and supplication: Deliver me, when I draw near to you, from coldness of heart and wanderings of mind, that with steadfast thoughts and kindled affections we may worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This prayer acknowledges that very human ability to be distracted and distant without being overcome by it. This is tremendously encouraging. It brings me back once again to the fact that our Savior was incarnate, and he too experienced the intense joys and frustrations of being human. I will press to know this Lord deeper, for in Him, I believe, lies the ability to live joyfully in our humanity.

Mystery and Hope

Deep in conversation with a dear friend, pondering unanswered theological questions, this statement of Jesus' came to mind:

"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Mat 24:36)

Although the exact theological understanding of this verse is, I suspect, quite complex (anything to do with the theology of the trinity seems to beg some degree of complexity), it did get me thinking. Perhaps not knowing some things is a good thing, even a gift. As Paul writes,

"But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?" (Romans 8:24)

If God had revealed all to us, would we really be able to hope? All creation, even the angels, longs and hopes. I think this also applies to other mysteries of our faith. As rational beings, we tend to want all the answers, and I do believe that some day the rational part of us will be satisfied. However, isn't there also something delightful about mystery? Doesn't it often make God more glorious, while at the same time serving as a check to our pride? Perhaps, after all, the mysteries, which allow us to wonder and hope, are something of which we can be glad. They give us freedom to question; They allow us to hope.