Thoughts...

Equalizer.

We were a little late to the Enneagram Party.  If you don't know, Enneagram is a personality test that is really popular in Christian Communities.  Over the years I have done many personality tests: Myers-Briggs, Birkman, DISC, other random work related tests.  I enjoy it.  I'm pretty curious and pretty good at figuring out patterns and seeing how people operate.  If I find something to be useful, I'll usually dig in and try to get everyone I know to do the test so I can make wild assumptions based on a little bit of information.  Some folks are eager to participate and some cannot see the value in these types of things...even if they are accurate.  Maybe especially if they are accurate.  What I have realized about myself, is that I am always in search of the one thing that will help me figure everything else out.  I'm looking for my emotional Rosetta Stone.  The piece of information that will unlock understanding between individuals and help us all to relate and finally "get" why we do the things we do.  I'm looking for a light switch, one connection to rule them all.  None of these tests or any piece of wisdom gathered can give us that full picture.  At best, each of these switches is like a gliding lever on a Hi-Fi Stereo system.  The Enneagram gives insight and may help me figure out one or two levers, but it will never give me the whole picture.  Folks are never as simple as one switch, although it may only take one switch to set someone off.  Our motivators, inspirations, dreams, work identities, sexual identities, family dynamics are but a few levers in our operating systems.  I tend to know believe I know how the whole sound board works just because I've figured out a few levers.


Botanical.

One really glorious illustration of the covenant between God and Man can be found in a Botanical Garden.  We happen to live right next to a good one here in St. Louis.  One of the ways in which we bare the image of God is in our desire and ability to create.  We take the enormity, the power and beauty of the ultimate creation, the wildness and subdue it and give it new beauty.  It is such a delicate partnership because of course God's creation needs no assistance in being beautiful.  But we do anyway.  We arrange and prune and nurture to give new purpose and new meaning to what God freely gives.  It is the very essence of worship, to take what God has given and give it back to him and to all to enjoy.  I hope that it pleases him. 


Praise.

Inauthentic praise is one of my biggest pet peeves.  If you were to give me a generic meaningless compliment, I would hate it worse than being insulted.  An insult I can believe!  An insult I can trust.  I have issues.  As a result, I am reluctant to give out praise.  I'm getting better, but with my children, I don't want them to question whether I mean it or not.  I want my words of praise to have weight and meaning.  But what I am being taught is that my issues are not their issues.  While I worry about the authenticity of the words I speak, some people are appreciative that you thought to speak the words at all.  My youngest especially lights up when someone chooses to say kind words.  She trusts.  It is less about the actual words that have been given to her, but the action of speaking kindness is what moves her.  I have a lot to learn.


Promise.

I heard a story on NPR recently about Weddings.  As a part of the story they were playing clips of people's wedding vows.  "I promise to Love you forever."  Wow!  What a promise.  I have been trying to wrap my head around what that actually means.  How do you promise to Love someone forever?  It's common enough.  It might have even been a part of my own vows.  But what does it mean?  Is it the feeling of Love?  Is it the act of Love?  What is Love and how can you promise or will yourself to do it?  You can't can you?  The real meat of wedding vows are in the For Better For Worse, segment.  There should be more time spent fleshing that out.  That is where a marriage is made.  Love will happen, Love will persists because of your choices and commitment and sacrifice...not because you will it to be so.  You don't have that kind of will...at least not for the length of time a marriage is suppose to laugh.

I want to take a shot at a new kind of vow: 
"Dear Wife:  There will be times when you slight me and I don't even know it, but I'll resent you none-the-less.  I promise to be diligent about looking at why that is happening and communicate it to you.  I promise to communicate it to you even when I know it may make things worse.  I'm in this and I'm willing to wade through the mess that will inevitable happen when we really commit ourselves to each other.  Our past, the errors of our parents and loved ones, our own messed up chemicals and wiring will reek havoc on us.  But I forgive you in advance.  I pray that you can forgive me for the unseen pain I will cause.  My hope is in the Lord.  That in this and through this he will make something beautiful.  As we get closer to him, we will be bound closer to one another.  As time goes on, I trust that all the ugliness will become a part of our story and as Two Become One a great light will shine out of that and give hope and stability not only to our family, but to everyone around us.  The reasons I Love you now may or may not be the reasons that our Marriage survives and thrives, but I am so excited to become someone new with you, and with your help, to become a better version of myself.  Today, the feelings and the romance and the genuine hope of our Love can carry us until we become strong enough to carry the weight of a meaningful union as partners in Love."

Confusion of Grace.

I woke up this morning, bleary eyed and wandered down the stairs.  Church at 10:30 means that we can all sleep in, well all except Abigail who wouldn't consider it sleeping in until she hit Noon.   I was well rested, but still tired.  As I wandered into the kitchen to get coffee, my lovely wife was there, dressed and ready for the day.  She is a morning person.  I am not.  The look she gave me woke me up.  With a big, radiant smile, she said, "Good Morning...I love you."  She was beaming.  I did indeed believe that she loved me.  It's hard to explain, because 20 + years in, I know that she loves me.  But this morning in particular, it was like she really loved me.  My response...mild panic.

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.” 
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

I like this quote.  I identify with this quote.  I don't know that it particularly fits in this scenario, but it does hint at what happened inside of me when I realized that my wife loves me.  What was I to do with this unsolicited, unearned, unfounded expression of love?  My first response was to gather more information.  It's so absurd that my first response isn't just to accept it, good Lord what is wrong with me?  

So after I gave a responsive, but questioning "I love you, too."  I came back with a "What's up?"  

She raised her eyebrows, knowing that she confused me and enjoying the knowing, but still very much in love with me, "Nothing...how'd you sleep?"  Her face was still beaming.

"Good...real good.  What's going on with you?" I said, still trying to figure out what was going on.

"What do you mean?" she said coyly.

"You seem like you're in a good mood."  This was a stupid, year 1-5 sort of comment.  It suggests that I'm saying that she's not normally in a good mood.  Which is not true.  It's a subtle mistake in those early years, but something we should be well beyond now.  She is beyond it and doesn't dig in on it.  She does give a knowing smirk and then releases me of my miss-play and says, "Scott, I just love you."

Wow.  I can't process it, why can't I process it?  My mind vacillates between wanting to know if there is some other cause for this love and wanting to know if I had somehow done something in my sleep to earn this love.  If I had done something to earn it, I need to know so I can do it again!  As I think back to the previous day I remember that I was particularly annoying, which can happen on the weekend when I don't know what to do with myself.   Nothing had happened in particular to put her in a good mood.  I certainly had not done anything to earn this extra expression of love.  But by the time I came over to kiss her cheek I realized what was going on:  She was conscious of her love for me.  

In marriage, a working marriage, the love is always there.  Love is the framework and scaffolding from which all the productive life of a marriage is made.  It's always there, but it isn't always generating an emotion or the romantic feeling of love.  But there are moments, when you see the whole thing, the whole marriage, all the moving parts, all the work and all the joy and then you look at your partner and think, "Wow...this is Love."  I think that is what was happening for my wife this morning.  

As humans, we only have moments, small glimpses of the Truth.  We must use these moments to sustain our Faith.  Faith is the belief in something unseen, but not without evidence.  These moments of extra Love like my wife had this morning are glimpses into the unseen world, a quick look at what is really going on.  But we live out this Faith, this belief in a fallen world, a world waiting to be redeemed.  We only get moments of consciousness: but God is Love.  That means he is eternally conscious of His promised Love for us.  There are things I can do and have done that put a strain on my wife's Love for me.  But there is nothing I can do to make God lose sight of his Love for me.  No sin that is heinous enough to make him question it.  God Is Love.  And that is the driving force of all existence.

Peace and Hope

5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we[a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we[b]boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we[c] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Teacher.

"When the Student is ready, the Teacher will appear."  This quote is attributed to many people, including Tao Te Ching and the Buddha himself.  It's probably safe to say that is comes from the East.  Like all great Proverbs, it seems vague until you really explore yourself and find that it is very specific and very personal.

The quote has to do with the readiness of the Student.  It can be a commentary on those who fail to see their need for a Teacher, those who toil and fail to ask for help or those who just can't see beyond their own immediate struggles.  It is also a comfort to those who are in search of understanding that when you have gained a certain posture and perspective, that there will be someone to help you along the next path.  But in either case, what remains true is that you can't see it until you can see it.  

What is unspoken in the quote is how the Teacher appears.  The reality is that someone is always passing through your life, waiting to teach you.  The Teacher doesn't just appear, some variation of a Teacher is always present.  I think of the joke of the Preacher waiting to be rescued from a flood.  As the flood waters start to rise, folks from the congregation come to get him from the church, "No, No need...the Lord will save me!"  The waters get higher and into the church and a boat comes to get the preacher.  He replies, "No! No need...the Lord will save me!"  As the flood gets higher, desperately high, the preacher is clinging to the steeple of the church.  A helicopter comes and attempts to rescue him.  He screams, "THE LORD WILL SAVE ME!"  The preacher drowns of course and in heaven he questions God, "Lord I was faithful, why didn't you save me?"  God replies, "What do you want?  I sent a truck, a boat AND a helicopter!"  

Certainly, I am more blessed than most.  I have had loads of help and teachers in my life.  I can look back at times and see certain faces and certain interactions where someone was there ready to help me, waiting to see if I was going to wake up from my self-absorption and accept teaching.  Most of the time I did not.  This student was seldom ready.  However, at the moments when I did surrender out of desperation or curiosity, the Teacher did appear.  For most of us, if we are able to lift our heads up, someone is there to teach us something.  The Teacher doesn't just appear, the Teacher is ever present in one form or another.  As we experienced a lovely Easter service with my brother yesterday,  I was reminded that this is how it is with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  If we are raised in the church, we will have heard that, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son and whosoever believes in him will have everlasting life..." hundreds of times before we hit double digits.  John 3:16 is the simplest expression of the Gospel and it's the first thing we memorize.  It is ever present, given in a 1000 different ways, but until we are ready, it won't take hold of us.  Beyond the explicit Gospel, the story of God's love for us and the salvation available to us is present in nature and in beauty and in the telling of each others stories.  There is enough to make us curious.  There is enough to make us ask...to seek a teacher.  

Romans 1 says "20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

This particular Easter, I was not in my home church, but the simple expression of the Good News of Jesus rang in my heart and filled me with joy, just like it did the first time I really heard it.  Not as a young boy in Sunday School, but as a 33 year old father and husband.  Although I had been presented the Gospel in so many times and so many ways, I could not and would not receive it.  But when I was ready, it was there.  The truth crushed me and raised me up all at the same time.  More than a teacher appeared, the Master and my Savior revealed himself.  It took time and study and it took mentors and the work is not finished.  But I am ready and that is all that is needed.

Annihilation.

I recently watched the movie Annihilation with Natalie Portman.  To be clear, Natalie is in the movie, we did not watch it together.  The movie checks a lot of boxes for me: sci-fi, end of the world, tense thriller, philosophical implications...Natalie Portman.  I thought it was great.  The movie has several layers.  It's really an allegory about cancer.  That's pretty straight forward, I didn't solve a mystery to think of that.  Cancer is mentioned in the first scene, I think, but it's not too obvious so as to be the only thing you think about. But the event that starts things in motion is the landing of a sort of meteorite.  From it comes a pulsing, translucent, iridescent film.  This thing, the shimmer, begins mutating the life within its membrane.  It's alien, but it uses the life, the dna already within it's membrane to alter the landscape and life forms, and to destroy.  The protagonists, scientists and military, send teams into "the shimmer" to figure things out, to stop the spreading of this alien force.  Natalie Portman is on one of those teams.  Her husband was on one of the previous teams that did not return.

The movie is about cancer, but it is also about self-destruction, among other things.  It parallels the cancerous behavior with our own propensity for destructive behavior within relationships, and even just the subtle ways we destroy a good healthy thing.  In one of the scenes, Natalie (Lena) is trying to figure out why her husband would go into something that meant he would not return.  Her own betrayal by affair, damaging her relationship that was otherwise healthy, my be the root for his decision.  

In this scene, Portman is discussing this with Jennifer Jason Leigh's character, the leader of the group, Dr. Ventress.

Lena: Why did my husband volunteer for a suicide mission?

Dr Ventress: Is that what you think we're doing? Committing suicide?

Lena: You must have profiled him. You must have assessed him. He must have said something.

Dr Ventress: So you're asking me as a psychologist?

Lena: Yeah.

Dr Ventress: Then, as a psychologist, I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide, and almost all of us self-destruct. In some way, in some part of our lives. We drink, or we smoke, we destabilize the good job... and a happy marriage. But these aren't decisions, they're... they're impulses. In fact, you're probably better equipped to explain this than I am.

Lena: What does that mean?

Dr Ventress: You're a biologist. Isn't the self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?

This scene, this perspective and the correlation between unthinking biology and presumably intelligent human behavior stuck with me.  I've had my own streaks of massive and subtle self-destruction.  Most of the time I had no idea why.  Why would I take something relatively healthy and stable and put strain on it?  I certainly had justifications, real and imagined, but logically I had no reasons for the things I would do.  I suppose I'm not out of the woods yet, I still create tension where it need not exist, it's just not the big ugly gestures I used to make.

"Isn't the self-destruction coded into us?"  She's talking about the cancer and our own actions.  I think she's right.  Given my worldview, it's easy to make this parallel with "The Fall".  And the term The Fall contains a lot as well.  It is the actual event in which God's apex of creation, man and woman, chose their own sovereignty over God's.  What resulted was the corruption of perfection, the infection and decay of that which was meant to be good.  What came was Death.  This event echos in every living thing and in the very fiber of our being.  Things that were meant to be good, cannot be.  Things that are beautiful, have a cost.  Birth is pain, Life is death.There is something unavoidably destructive about the present state of creation.  Furthermore, it speaks to the condition of our own heart, our own state of being.  A quick google search on depravity yields these scriptures that speak of this truth:  Depravity

The reality in the movie and in our lives is this:  We are bent towards destruction.  And while we are a part of the problem, yet we still feel that it ought not to be this way.  In the movie and for many people, the answer is that it is up to us to save creation, to save our bodies and to save our relationships.  Human Kind, in it's wisdom and power can save the environment, can cure cancer and can save their marriages.  In reality, this seems an impossible task.  Personally, if it's going to be you and I to save the world, well that leads me to Despair (which I plan on talking about in another movie post).  The conclusion I have come to is that we cannot do it ourselves.  We absolutely need someone to rescue us.  We are not absolved of action and responsibility.  We SHOULD be taking care of our earth, our bodies and our relationships.  However, it is this tension between aching for perfection and yet sabotaging our own efforts that declares that we need a savior.  But because we are so infected with Death and destruction, despite our best intentions and efforts, we are not enough to overcome.  We require a supernatural force.  We require an external, yet familiar force to enter our "shimmer" and undo the destruction we have caused.  We need someone/something pure and perfect to make us whole, to restore us to how we were intended.  Again and again in so many ways, this is the story of Christ.  Christ has entered our world, from beyond our world, out of perfection and into the mess.  He is restoring now and in the life to come.  But he requires and invitation and then submission to enter into our mess and to go to work.  Surrender to Christ is not easy, it is often painful, but for me it has led to the most glorious revelations: I am loved, I have worth, I am more, there is more, we can be more, I am forgiven, I can forgive, I can love, I am a part of God's will to make things new.  

It is hard to be a human.  It is hard to see so much pain and still hope.  But there is also so much beauty and tenderness.  And though I cannot see what God is doing, I can still feel that I am a part of it and in a very real way, he is with me and within me.  Though at times hopeless, what is giving me comfort is the realization that God's Imagination is bigger and better than mine.  This should be obvious, but it isn't.  I simply lack the imagination to imagine another's imagination.  But whatever fear I can concoct is no match for the solution he has already offered.  And even though I participate in my own destruction, he has already rescued me from the greatest possible disaster.

Dr Ventress: [from trailer] It's destroying everything.

Lena: It's not destroying. It's making something new.

Lazarus.

So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord the one you love is sick."  John 11:3

This is a prayer for me, many had prayed it over me.  My spirit was sick and death would be the result if Christ did not intervene.  It is a powerful prayer when it is a desperate prayer.  The sisters of Lazarus knew Jesus and they knew Jesus loved Lazarus and they depended on that to save their brother.
"The one you love is sick."  Aren't we all in that category?
"This sickness will not end in Death!" He replies. This is the Good News.

Believers wait, the sisters wait, believing in healing, but unable to overcome the reality of Lazarus' very evident death.  We do not understand Salvation.  We do not understand Glorification.  Like Thomas in desperation, "Let us also, go, that we may die."  We die in the waiting, and our loved ones feel that death with us.

Did Jesus cry for me, did he weep for my death...or for my sin?  The stench of death was on me, who would come near?  Who could roll away the stone?

Unlike Lazarus, I knew of Jesus' Resurrection, it preceded my own.  He lives, that I might live.  From my own tomb I pick up Martha's words, "Yes Lord I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God who has come into the world!"  Yet this very personal salvation is not merely for my own sake, it is to display the Glory of God. 
"Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"

Jesus called to me from the tomb, and I came out.  Behold the Glory of God, present in my Salvation, and I am present in him.
"Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

"I am the resurrection and the life.  he who believes in me will live, even though he dies: and whoever lives and believes in me will never die...Do you believe this?"

The Atheist that lives in my head.

"The existence of God may be unprovable, but it is not unobservable." - A thing that was said.

There is a perpetual argument I have with an imaginary Atheist that lives in my head.  To me, his arguments seem so self-absorbed, short sighted and inconsistent.  He has no foundation, so he can only pull from whatever is out there and accessible to him.  And then he has to cobble things together into a coherent world view.  But I also know that he has valid points.  I also know that he thinks me a fool, that I have forsaken my own intellect for belief.  He thinks me the fool and sometimes I agree with him.  The current argument is about proof.  He will not consider believing in something unless it can be proven.  I believe that he chooses this extreme criteria to avoid the influence of God or the unseen on his life.  This takes quite a bit of energy to omit all he experiences in his day to day life: Love, Justice, Beauty, Existence itself.  These are not things that are readily provable, but they are certainly observable.  Indeed, how would I go about proving my own existence.  Descartes gives us "I think, therefore I am.", but this is hardly proof and doesn't even intend to be.  My friend would say that philosophy is good exercise, but it cannot replace the rigor of science.  We both adhere to Descartes in this, "It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well."  The real problem with my imaginary friend is that he is committed to the scientific method ONLY in the area of faith or belief.  All his other decisions, big and small are influenced by fear, love, emotion as well as reason.  But he puts a heavy burden on God.  And well, I guess he should, especially since he considers himself an Atheist.  (It can't be easy for an Atheist to live comfortably in the mind of a believer...especially a believer as emotional as myself.)  Belief in God, I admit can feel like an impossible and ridiculous endeavor.  However, considering all that we experience as a human, just by living: the complexity of the eye or the vastness of the universe or the intensity of  bonding with a newborn or the power of fear or the intricacies of human networks or the capacity to reason, all of these and more leave us without answers.  Our evolutionary explanations are compelling, but still require a great deal of faith, considering how little we actually know.  The deeper layers presented by questions like: "Why is a sunset or music objectively beautiful?"  or "Why a particular event feel so unfair/unjust?"  or "Why do I care for my loved one more than myself?"  Being a good and intelligent Atheist, these types of questions are easily dismissed as irrelevant or evolutionary chemical constructs.  But what I hope lingers in his heart (which I guess is my heart) are the questions: "What if I'm wrong?  What if i get all the answers and explanations and there is still something missing?  Why does my heart ache so?"  In these questions, evolution isn't any more of a comfort than Karma (Karma may satisfy a Justice requirement in the Cosmic, but doesn't do much for present and personal comfort).  

The concept of morality is problematic for my inner friend.  Without God, without some conscious force exerting it's will upon existence, there is no absolute truth.  If existence is just Time+Matter+Chance then Good Morals are merely opinions based on consensus.  Good and Evil, right and wrong fade away over time as ANY thing can become justifiable over time.  Truth is subject to survival and fear and evolutionary impulses.  There can be no absolutes without God.  (Of course, even suggesting that an absolute cannot exist is problematic because this is an absolute statement...but that is another argument.)  Without God, without Morals tethered to something eternal and unmovable, then all individual desires can be made justifiable and with enough consensus and normalization...with enough votes.  Something that was formerly wrong can be made right and vice versa.  If we can call something or someone Evil or less than, then we can justify their extermination or enslavement.  Without God, this remains merely a matter of opinion as to whether it is right or wrong.  Standing on the right side of history becomes a punchline with no context or sustainable foundations.  Nationalism and protectionism make more sense in an evolutionary context than working for the greater good.  

So I argue with my friend that it is God's truth that lives within us, working God's will through us, that perpetually moves existence forward, battling with fleshy passions to keep humankind a from destroying itself  either by violence or desire.  This of course is an argument that is irrelevant to him.  It's not provable, so for him it's a non starter.  He is as frustrated with me as I am with him.  My only hope, the best hope is that God would intervene.  The Creator of all, who lives outside of space and time, that sent himself into our reality in the form of a human, Jesus, who upon his very earthly death and subsequent extra-natural resurrection provided his presence to reside in the person of those who believe in him in order to achieve his will in these carriers and through these believers, all for the purpose of restoring a creation that was intended to be perfect, yet is undeniably broken.  Me and my imaginary atheist friend and all my fellow humans are right in the middle of this fray, this struggle to reveal the true nature of reality in the hopes that ALL might be saved and restored right along with the rest of Creation.  I can't prove it, but I can experience the reality of it, supernatural though it may be.  It is my hope, it is THE hope. 

Sibling Treasure.

We are not our own.  Our genetics come from elsewhere: our mother and father and of course from beyond them as well.  But it's more than genes, we are made up of what those around us contribute, what they input and what they teach and give.  They feed and strengthen.  For 44 years I have been given an unceasing stream of support from my 5 siblings.  Of course the love and the sacrifice of my parents makes up the foundation and support, but it has been the extraordinary generosity and hospitality of the Fab five that has sustained me.  

I am so thankful that I have moved beyond trying to calculate how much of it I deserve. That can weigh a person down.  Or trying to plan a way to somehow pay them back for the financial, emotional, and spiritual support they have given to me so freely.  It almost insults the Grace they have shown, because I don't deserve it and I can't repay it.  That's not a self deprecating statement, that is a fact.  Those who love us and raise us, they give us more than we can ever account for or at times more than we can even see.  I am not my own, I am the product of those who had always been there.  It has  been the love and acceptance of Jesus that has allowed me to just enjoy that which is given.  And I pray I can give freely to others that which has been given to me.  Both receiving the blessing and having the awareness to enjoy the blessing is The Double Blessing of Christ. He gives and he gave all, but equally important is that he has given us a way to enjoy that blessing and indeed to see blessing when it seems like there is none.  We are able to enjoy each other in all circumstances, with no expectation, just persistent Joy.  The joy of my siblings, of my family is multiplied a 1000 fold because of the joy I have in Christ.  Christ is my Treasure and they are my Treasure in him.

"For where your Treasure is, your Heart will be also."  Matthew 6.21