Monday, November 30, 2015

That Doll is an Albatross

[The following article was published in the Nov/Dec 2015 issue of Live Magazine under the title, "Gratitude is a Position". Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com]

One year when I was little, in the weeks before Christmas, I saw a commercial advertising a doll that came with special pens that changed the colour of her clothing. I wanted that doll so badly.  It was like a gnawing hunger that I couldn’t satisfy. I had no money, but Christmas was coming and so I wrote to Santa with my request naming the doll by name. But, hedging my bets on the kindly old elf’s existence, I was shrewdly certain to show my mother the letter before asking her to mail it. I showed her the doll in the store when we were there buying presents for others. I prompted her with all the subtlety and ingenuity my seven year old self possessed. But when Christmas morning came and the abundance was revealed, I hadn’t received The Doll. 

I had been given a different one. It was sweet--a true baby doll--but I wasn’t satisfied. I remember moping because want was still gnawing at me. I was disappointed because what I had received wasn’t what I had requested. It seemed second rate. My mother noticed my deflated expression and asked what the problem was. I am ashamed to say that somehow I communicated my discontent. My mom was hurt and disappointed in my reaction to her gift. In an uncharacteristic move, she returned the sweet baby doll and purchased its garish replacement. I learned the deceptive nature of advertising that day.  The Doll was a clunky and an inadequate imitation of what my desire had built it up to be. The pens barely functioned and trying to use them was an exercise in frustration. I didn’t like it. I had hurt my mom for nothing and I wanted the baby doll back. 

For years I kept that gaudy doll--the object of my desire--in its original box in my closet; an albatross of my discontent hung disconsolately around my neck. Whenever I caught a glimpse of it, I felt sick. I had been disappointed before I received it, and I felt disappointed afterwards. It was a powerful lesson. Gratitude is more than just thankfulness. It is about position. It is about who we are in relation to the Most High. My mother could discern a better gift for her child than I could for myself. She knew about deceptive advertising and poor construction. She knew what was a good gift and what was just junk.

In the last few years I haven’t been content with where God has planted me. I wanted something different and it gnawed at me and killed my creativity and made me unhappy and hopeless as I lay awake at night. I have been like Eve in the Garden and spent too much time staring at the one tree He hasn’t given me for food; obsessing about how amazing that fruit must taste, that I have ignored, or disdained all the trees He has given.  I’ve been ungrateful, but I never would have called it that. The source of my discontent seemed justified and so I deceived myself into thinking I knew better than God. If I truly recognized my privileged position as His child, I wouldn’t have spent the last few years making sure He saw how disappointed and discontented I was.

I’m a slow learner when it comes to lessons that apply to my own fears and pain. I hide them tightly, preferring only to whine at God rather than letting Him reveal what He wants to give me. And, if I’m being horribly honest, a lot of the time I don’t even want Him to reveal what He wants because I’m afraid I’ll think it is second rate. I’m afraid I’ll feel disappointed like I did that Christmas morning. But the lasting sting of the whole doll debacle was not in the disillusionment that it brought. The pain that still clutches at me is that my ingratitude hurt my mother. I don’t know if I had ever realized that I had that power over her before, but once discovered, it was a horrible burden.  The horror of that burden magnifies exponentially when I realize that I’ve been doing the same thing to my Heavenly Father and I’m not seven anymore.  (Mercifully, there is nothing to stash in my closet to emotionally cut myself with for years to come.)

God is good and as I reject the pride of thinking I know best, that gnawing feeling of want begins to weaken.  As I submit to His plans, He reveals that what He wants is for me not to be afraid of disappointment; not to hoard pain.  He wants to reveal more of Himself so that I can gladly proclaim that a greater share of God isn’t second best, but the best in every case. He wants me to get the message that contentment and gladness are never about what I have, but about to whom I belong.


Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Bread from a Stone



“All I know is I’m losing my mind,” Franny said. “I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting --it is, it is.  I don’t care what anybody says.” […] “Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn’t make it right.  I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it.  I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of splash.”  (J.D Salinger, Franny and Zooey)


I have, at times, ungratefully wondered if maybe God has a pacing problem.  One of us was doing something wrong.  Since that seems irreverent; I figured that the problem was on my end.  Like those elementary school soccer games I used to take part in, I was off picking dandelions and trying to turn blades of grass into music makers while the ball (and those who were ‘on it’ ) were-- well, wherever the ball was taking them.  I was a daydreamy kid with little interest in chasing round objects when I could have been pretending anything else.  So, I figured that the pacing problem in my life was on my end.  I was doing something wrong.  I needed to stop with the dandelions and the daydreams and start figuring out how to play the game.

Since my first story, my fiction writing has unintentionally surrounded the question of personal versus divine agency; which is really just a fancy way of asking, “God, are you going to bring this about, or do I have to?”  This is a question that I’ve been struggling with for years and it bleeds through my thinking in a staining flood.  Am I responsible, or is He?  The abundance of opinion seems to be saying that if you want to achieve anything in life, you have to be willing to do the hard slogging to get it done.   “God might get you the job but you have to apply for it in the first place…”  I’ve been pulled back and forth on this subject for years.  

That first story I wrote was about a character, let’s call her, ‘Jane’,  who was dissatisfied with her life and set about changing it. She was bored. She was educated. Her career was unfulfilling and she had no real purpose. She had no relationships that were made to progress into something greater and she didn’t know why other people seemed content when she just felt the gnawing question of, ‘Is this it?’

I related perhaps a bit too heavily, and it seemed to me that if I wanted things to change, like my character, I had to set about changing them.  I had to pursue relationships.  I had to pursue writing.  I had run after the things that I wanted out of life.  So, I began writing that kind of a story. And, it felt powerful at first.  Jane’s realization that she couldn’t just wait for life to happen to her because the cold sweat of fear made her worry that waiting might yield nothing at all.  She was haunted by that unsettling line by Michel Houellebecq, “Anything can happen in life, especially nothing.” She dreaded the nothing and so, she made drastic changes.  She tried to be different than her personality would dictate.  She threw herself into situations that usually she would have avoided.  

And, like me, she hated it.  

But I didn’t want her to.  I wanted her to be better than me.  I wanted her to achieve something. I wanted her to go from the weakness of dissatisfaction to strength and purpose.  So I kept trying to write it, but it just didn’t work.

Besides Jane’s total lack of emotional cooperation, there was a fundamental flaw that I couldn’t get past.  No matter what, I couldn’t make the things that happened to Jane entirely the result of her own actions.  There was always the invisible hand of author intervention trying to make the story more interesting.  If everything that happened to her was a result of her own doing, then the sum of her story was going to be very small indeed. She couldn’t even meet anyone new without having arranged it herself. 
Even more to my own dismay, I kept discovering that I was sabotaging my own intentions through the inclusion of deus ex machinas I had written in order to advance the plot.  I was like Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, “Here’s our own hand against our hearts…”    

The details kept preaching the opposite message to the one that I intended.  I wanted my Jane to succeed in changing her circumstances.  I needed her to succeed because I wanted to change mine.  But even poor Jane didn’t exist in a vacuum.  There is really no such thing as making it happen all by yourself.  Jane couldn’t meet someone in an elevator without my arranging for it to happen.  She couldn’t have a conversation with a shop clerk unless I created that clerk and put her on shift.   If she was the arranger of her own fate, then there was nothing of meaning that could happen to her without her orchestrating it. There wouldn’t be any surprises.  It was a narrative dead end.  I had to abandon Jane because it was too depressing to me. 

Lack of contentment feels like hunger rumbling away down deep.  Sometimes you are the only one aware of it, but occasionally it roars so loud that others can take note.  The desire to change circumstances in order to feed that hunger doesn’t seem wrong.  After all, what good is being hungry? And we feel as though we should be able to feed ourselves and meet our own needs.  I didn’t realize I had fallen into one of the first temptations that Satan tried with Jesus.

“The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”  (Luke 4:3)

“You’re starving.  You have the power.  Turn these stones into bread. Feed yourself.”  It’s a taunt and a solution rolled into one.  Show the world who you are.  Perform a miracle.  Change your circumstances.  Don’t be hungry anymore.  God isn’t coming through.  Maybe He wants you to do it?  You’re starving now. Turn these stones into bread.  That is, if you are who you say you are...

In all my wrestling with the question of God’s role versus my responsibility, I never thought of this temptation of Jesus.  I wasn’t suffering physically from hunger, but I was hungering for something that I thought I might be able to achieve if I worked hard enough.  I thought I could turn some stones into bread and feed myself.  I even thought maybe that was what God was asking me to do.  So I worked really hard at it.  But, quelle surprise, I couldn’t do it because a supernatural act requires Someone super natural to accomplish it.  

And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’”(Luke 4:4)

I was more like Jane than I realized. There was nothing that I had that I didn’t receive.  There are no circumstances that I have orchestrated.  The ‘turn these stones into bread’ taunt wasn’t about Jesus’ ability, it was about his obedience to the Father.  It was about being led by the Spirit of God rather than His own appetites; be they physical, or a desire for vindication, or a demonstration of power and agency. Jesus spells it out for us constantly, and yet when I focus on my hunger I miss the point.

So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing.  Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” (John 5:19 NLT)

I yielded to the taunt. Turn these stones into bread.  But no matter how much mental energy I spend on figurative spoon bending, the stone won’t be turning to bread any time soon.  It is a exercise in frustration. I wish I had understood the lesson from Jane years ago.  There was nothing she did that I--as the author--didn’t do for her.  She could only respond.  She was reactionary.  But her inability didn’t make me despise her.  I created her; I was rooting for her. I wanted her to grow. I wanted her to overcome.  I wanted to write good things into her life.  Sometimes I think we get this wrong idea about God that He despises us because of our weakness and inability to change.  But it is just that: a wrong idea about God. 

“For He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:14 NIV) 

Like Jane, there is nothing I have that I didn’t receive.  There is no such thing as a self-made man. There is no such thing as pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.  There is nothing that I have that I wasn’t given.  The irony of our self-made claims of dreams achieved is that we forget that the dream itself stole into our minds in the night while we were unconscious.  If we can’t even claim to know the provenance of our dreams, we are foolish to think we know how best to bring them to life.

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5 NASB)



Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Anything Can Be On Fire

[The following article was published in the Sept/Oct 2015 issue of Live Magazine. Check them out at  www.baptistwomen.com ]

“My father says that almost the whole world is asleep.  Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to.  He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.” (Joe Versus the Volcano)

I think the Holy Spirit is talking to me through Frank Sinatra.  It isn’t even my favourite Sinatra song. I had turned him off mid crescendo in irritation on the road trip back from my summer holidays, only to flip the stereo on again a few days later while waiting at a red light. Same song, but suddenly God was talking; and, when the Holy Spirit starts talking, I listen. That is my official position, anyway.  

It’s a bit weird to think of God sounding like Frank Sinatra and I wonder if I am the only person to hear the Holy Spirit speak through the somewhat overwrought lyrics of, “Call Me”.  It isn’t the medium that we expect. I was raised on the preeminence of Scripture and any ‘Thus sayeth the Lord’, talk without a reference got looked at sideways. I certainly never expected secular song lyrics to fill me with awe at the presence of God while waiting to make a left turn. But then, the burning bush never expected to burn with His presence, either. It was, after all, on the back side of the mountain.  

I was taught about personal devotions at summer camp, seated cross legged in the tall grasses of southern Alberta with my Bible heavy on my lap and the sun burning the part in my hair. The camp is nestled against the storm blue water of Travers Reservoir in rolling prairie gold where an unlikely tornado has been known to wander nearby and charismatic thunderstorms born of summer heat light the sky from east to west in a hair-raising display of grandeur. The stars shine with all their might and send their streamers across the black. Truth feels more true in a place like that; in a place of such unrestrained beauty. I loved my counsellors, who loved God so much and I wanted to be like them. But personal devotions are hard and more often than not, time spent reading the Bible demonstrated that I was more like the man in James who looked in the mirror and then forgot his own face, rather than someone who was being transported from glory to glory.  

If the number of devotionals and books advising how to get alone with God are any indication, I’m not the only one who finds it hard. We need routines to keep us accountable. The morning is the best time to spend with God. You should read the Bible, pray, worship. You should love it, because you love God, right? But you feel guilty when it feels like just another thing on your list of things to do. Or, maybe you do love it, but you just can’t seem to get your act together. Like exercise, if we could just get a habit going, then we could have the transformation. Stubbornly, routine isn’t always our friend. Any personal trainer can tell you that if you always perform the same circuit over and over, it gradually ceases to bring results since your muscles have learned to complete their tasks so efficiently that it no longer challenges you. It no longer improves you.  

One of the most beautiful features of a relationship is the way that the other person can still surprise you after years of friendship. A joke, or a thought--that upon reflection is perfectly in line with their character, but you never could have anticipated it--lightens our hearts with delight.  Relationships are better than efficient routines. And when we really want to see someone, we will fit them in as soon as time and circumstances allow. Better yet, we bring them along and experience whatever may come together.

And so, I think again of Moses tending sheep on the backside of nowhere and turning aside in wonder at a physical marvel that turned into a spiritual conversation. When God saw Moses had stopped what he was doing, He called out him by name and a relationship was ignited with holy fire. Wonder breeds worship and worship ushers us into the very presence of God. Alternately, Balaam the prophet heard God’s voice, saw an angel of the Lord and even had a donkey speak to him, yet he manifested less wonder than Moses did at what might have been disregarded as the makings of a wildfire. After all, Moses had a job to do and arguably, it would have been more prudent to move the sheep away from the danger of fire than go in for a closer look. But his willingness to wonder is the reason we know his name.

Neither Frank Sinatra nor the writers of ‘Call Me’ will ever know that God spoke to me through that song. I could have disregarded it as well.  But, miraculously, I didn’t and so instead I heard:

 Now don't forget me, `cause if you let me, I will always stay by you.
You got to trust me, that's how it must be, there's so much I can do.
If you call, I'll be right with you. You and I should be together.
Take this love I long to give you. I'll be at your side forever, call me, call me.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Jesus isn't your Wingman

"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."
-Leonardo da Vinci


It is mid August, but already it smells like autumn; like dying leaves and bruised apples beginning to rot.  Even for Calgary, this is premature.  Premature because the air isn’t crisp and the nights are not yet cold, but still there is the scent of what is to come. The aromas of autumn are present because of what we’ve suffered, not because the time has come to change seasons. For two days last week violent thunderstorms moved over the city and what the first hailstorm didn’t kill, the second finished off.  The raspberry canes, once flushed with crimson orbs and leafy with green now typify their name with barren stalks.  The climbing scarlet runner beans were beaten into a sad, battered tangle. Even the apples that managed to stay on the trees are bruised and beginning to attract the wasps.  It isn’t just the fruit--the harvest--that is destroyed.  All the flowers not sheltered under the eaves of the house are nothing but naked stems, shorn of leaves and blooms by the violence of the storms.  Even the things that are meant for beauty are broken.

It’s depressing.

I remember looking at my life a couple of years ago and feeling just like this.  Every dream planted, every hope sown was mown down, battered and broken.  There would be no harvest.  All that remained was a wasteland and a monumental clean up job that I couldn’t bear to contemplate.  Hail was the analogy I identified with the most.  A pelting from the heavens that I couldn’t avoid.  I related heavily and bitterly to Joel 1:4. 

“What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left, other locusts have eaten.”

There is nothing to be done about a crop that is destroyed.  Within minutes the time and work of a whole season is devastated.   Anything with life in it takes time to grow, but destruction is the work of an instant. Time is the one resource we always feel impoverished by.  Once passed, it is gone forever.  But when everything is devastated and the hail storm or the locust swarm passes by, there is nothing to be done but clean up the dead pieces and wait for the next planting season.   You have to wait to try again.

And, you almost can’t bear to try again because it seems that having no hope of harvest is preferable to the crushing disappointment of a harvest stolen.  And I felt so mad at God about the whole thing because if anyone could have stopped my allegorical hail, it was Him.  He is the last line of defense and He let the side down--or, so I begrudgingly thought.

“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten--the great locusts and the young locusts, the other locusts and the locust swarm-- my great army that I sent among you.” Joel 2:25

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Joel.  Hold up a second, here.  God sent the locust swarm?  It was His great army? So, it wasn’t just a case of Him letting the side down because He was busy saving trapped miners or something catastrophic; He actually intentionally destroyed everything I was working toward?  What kind of ally is that?  Why would He do that? Weren’t the things I was working toward in line with what He wants?  I certainly thought they were, but what becomes more and more abundantly clear all the time is that I don’t really understand God at all.  

When experiencing an existential crisis it is easy to miss the wider point that God might be inviting us to understand.  Jesus isn’t our wingman.  He’s our master who calls us to trust Him even--and, probably especially--when everything has been pounded into the ground.  This is weird terminology in our context.  We are people who hold democracy as high ideal.  Everyone being equal before the law.  But that isn’t the relationship we have with God.  He isn’t our prime minister or president. We don’t vote for His agenda.  We are invited to live fully within His presence.  We are invited to partake of His goodness.  We don’t set our agenda and then send it to the Most High for His seal of approval.  But for me that begged the question, if I thought I was doing what He asked, why would He send the hail?

“There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.” 
(Proverbs 14:12 NLT)

“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the ends it leads to death.” 
(Proverbs 16:25 NIV)

Seems.  Appears.  These are the words of deception; of slight of hand. It was so true that Solomon wrote this same statement twice two chapters apart.  It wasn’t like he’d forgotten he’d already written this proverb down; repetition in the Bible usually means the author intended to add emphasis.   The thing is, usually when I read that kind of verse, I think of it as applying to other people; not me, because I really am trying to do what God puts in front of me to do. Aren’t those kind of verses about people who don’t care at all about what God wants? The people who aren’t--you know--reading the Bible?  Maybe.  But it would be a little odd for God to fill the Scriptures that His people are to follow with instructions and cautions for the people who will never read it.  I guess that means it applies to me.  There was a way that seemed right, but wasn’t. 

But sometimes I think we get so far into the planting season that we don’t want to know if there is a problem. We want to justify ourselves and all our time and effort because it is expensive and heartbreaking to have been so wrong.

It is God’s mercy and love that reveals the deception; even if He uses a hail storm or locusts because it might just be that He knows that if we could salvage any shred of the deception we would rather do that than turn the rudder of our lives against the current.  We would rather not believe that we’ve been deceived for so long.

“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten--the great locusts and the young locusts, the other locusts and the locust swarm-- my great army that I sent among you.” 

There is promise in the face of disaster.  God is faithful and even though He destroyed the harvest, He promises abundance.  He promises the restoration of lost time. Lost effort.  Even though I was the one that was deceived, He--in His goodness and mercy-- more than makes up for the loss.  It is the kindness of God who sends a pelting from heaven to save your life.




Tuesday, June 30, 2015

'Painting outside the Lines', or as I call it, 'Ruining the Table'.

"An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." 
-G.K Chesterton


I’ve taken up poetry lately and it has quickly become a favourite writing medium.  This is a surprising turn since the poetry unit in English class was always a bit of a snooze for me.  But here I am writing poetry and not feeling a bit self-conscious about it.  I don’t have to worry about character development or plotting. I can splash wild emotion across stoicism. I can remain merely observational. I can be coy. I can be mercurial. I can change my mind. 

Sometimes a poem tells the truth, or it only seems to. Often it lies out of the side of its mouth, as though it wonders just how much you’ll buy of what it is selling. Writing a poem can be a way of hiding in plain sight, or running naked and wild across a page. Some poetry is so dense it is written in a code only the author can understand. This variety makes it one of the most liberating forms of writing.   I've found I love writing poetry that rhymes (I'm not ashamed of it.) and I enjoy reading it aloud; feeling the cadence of a juggernaut rhythm that builds and builds until it stops in a sudden thunderclap.  

It is also freedom from the grind of querying in pursuit of publication.  If you are a writer, you know that omnipresent pressure to publish can kill the creative impulse and make writing a nemesis to be bested instead of a companion in your solitude and a vocation worth pursuing.  Poetry is writing for pure enjoyment and catharsis. No one imagines that poetry will pay the bills (unless, perhaps, you are Leonard Cohen, but even he has to set it to music). It allows you to write without pressure to be anything or do anything. Rediscovering it has been a consolation. You can just marry interesting words and ideas together as though they were born that way; making unique creations out of peculiar words and unorthodox grammar and not be bothered about anyone’s response to it.
For example
you can’t 
watch time thickening 
anymore 
than you can
predict 
your own body language
on a date
or
the events of
a hypnogogic dream
that seems
to 
mean 
something

More than any other form of writing, poetry is more like life and yet, nothing like it at all.  A novel--though sporting crackling dialogue, vivid character development, shrewd plotting and thorough world-building-- is a tight highlight reel that (ideally) shows nothing of the winnowing process that is redrafting and editing.   Actual conversation when transcribed is full of "um's", "you know's" and a lot of dangling thoughts.  Life is filled with sentences that run ahead to nowhere, impossible interruptions; talking over your companion and zoning out because periodically your thoughts are more interesting than they are.  Our brains--magisterial creations that they are--filter out the filler and deliver solid understanding and a coherent memory of what would have been one hell of a mess on the page.  All of these competing signals and intentions can make for interesting lives, but you cannot write that way and expect any kind of coherence.

A character always needs a purpose for what they are doing or saying.  This is true of acting as well, randomly strolling around the stage for no apparent reason is amateurish.  People always have a reason for the moves they make.  Maybe it is expelling nervous energy, maybe it is to lean against a more comfortable area of the kitchen counter.  Writing scenes in which the characters have no apparent purpose is a dead giveaway of a greenhorn.   Even using narration to advance the plot or reveal important details can quickly prove irritating.  Because the reader is an active participant--a witness to the action--the narrator should only interrupt the flow if what they have to add is of total surprise to the reader.  If the reader can surmise the character is sad, it is nothing short of tiresome to be told that he was.  (One shouldn't assume sociopathy on the part of their readership…) So, writing in a realistic and comprehensible way takes a lot of work on the writer's part.  First you have to invent something out of nothing.  Then you can't just transcribe conversations as they really are.  You have to filter and edit and be the brain and the memory without feeling smart enough for the task that your own brain performs subconsciously every day.   You have to build stories layers at a time.  Develop character.  Create tension.

You have to write hard so that it reads easy.

But poetry isn't like that at all.  A poem is the art of implication.  She hints at the elements of a story, but keeps her secrets to herself.  It is freedom and the ability to express the raw edges of emotion and thought without having to make every line comprehensible.  It isn't an instruction manual that demonstrates how to move from one point to the next.  It's a beauty thing that is free to soar or plummet.

That being said, what I have discovered about poems through writing them, is that they are more interesting when they have limitations.  When there is a rhyming scheme or a structural confine, it makes for a more compelling poem.  Stream of consciousness writing is only briefly of interest to the person who wrote it.  A poem requires some rule or structure to create the truly delightful surprise of a brilliant turn of phrase.  A rhyming scheme means that not any word will do--and herein lies the magic.  The search for a word that fits the rule can take the poem somewhere the writer hasn't anticipated; because there are limitations, new avenues for creativity are opened wide.  The very existence of the limitation provides greater freedom for creativity, even though on the surface it looks like less.  Maybe that is why I never really appreciated the Poetry Unit in English class.  The rules for sonnets, odes or whatever just seemed arbitrary and hard.  I didn't know that they were the key to beauty.

How odd.

How contrary to our way of thinking to realize that it is the constraints placed on the medium that facilitate the production of an intricate and unique beauty.  Human nature rebels at rules and yet we recognize the need for them in some cases.  We want to drive on roads where everyone knows and obeys the law.  Our very lives may depend on it.  But what about other aspects of our lives? Our morality, our ethical code, the substance of our character?  If our lives are poems and stories that God wants to write, it follows that the constraints He has created are the parameters of beauty, not the shackles of oppression.   "Painting outside the lines" is a cliched anthem for freedom of expression, but if you don't know what you're doing, all you've done is stain the surface you're working on.  What if we looked at the moral law God has given for us to write our lives with and saw the variables of creative impulse and the unique challenge presented to each one of us with every choice to find the right action that explodes the poem of our life with unequalled splendour.  What if we looked at the constraints as that which facilitates our ability to be unique.  It is the rule that causes the our creative minds to push past easy and ordinary and find the truly exceptional and astounding.  Anyone can ignore the limitations.  It takes artistry to follow them.  Give ten artists the same constraints and equipment and you will find that they have none of them produced identical work.   The limitation is only the framework on which each one-of-a-kind creation will hang.

But it is a lie as old as the Garden that God wants to take things from us, rather than knowing that He is the one who has given everything to us--Including the parameters of beauty.


Tuesday, June 23, 2015

The Lionheart


In a time of universal deceit -- telling the truth is a revolutionary act. 
-George Orwell

Recently, while wasting my precious time browsing through a clothing store catering to those who wish to hide their clavicles under bed sheet sized ponchos with tags reading XXXS; (you pay a lot for that sizing schematic) I saw a shapeless t-shirt which proclaimed,

"Good things come to those who hustle."

I wanted to buy it because, man, I have hustled.  And gee, I want good things to come to me.  It sounds good on the surface; it sounds right.  If you want something you've got to work for it and all that.  You can't sit around waiting for life to happen to you; you gotta go grab it by the horns and wrestle it to the ground…   This is the wisdom of the day, and I can't even tell you how many times I have encountered it on blogs and in books about creativity and selling your art.  If you want to get anywhere, you have to hustle. If you want to be a success, you better get out there and sell your stuff.  You have to hustle for the world's respect and approbation.   You have to strive. You have to prove yourself.

Lately, though, has become abundantly evident to me just how often what is proclaimed is the exact opposite of the truth.  The definition of 'hustle' is wholly negative whether it is used as a noun or a verb.

Hustle: Force (someone) to move hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction; push roughly; jostle; hurry; obtain by forceful action or persuasion; coerce or pressure someone into doing something or choosing something; sell aggressively; obtain by illicit action; swindle; cheat; engage in prostitution; busy movement.

-- So -- basically, good things come to big jerks, high pressure salesmen, con men and prostitutes.  … At the risk of dragging Hitler into the conversation too early on, one could argue that he was an artist who hustled.

Ironically, hypocritically, impossibly--then--, we're advised to strive and hustle and then told that the path to peace and well-being is to achieve balance.  Promised that you can have it all, do it all, be it all, tolerate all--if you just balance precariously enough--as though every choice isn't made to the exclusion of others.  Stack the teacups ever higher, and then cut yourself with the shattered shards of the mess you made when it all comes crashing down.  Balance, for the sake of balance is just a yoga move.  Sure, you can manage it for a little while if you are devoting all your thought and energy to maintaining that position.  But people like to practice yoga on the beach or a mountain top, not in the middle of a hurricane.  And some seasons are plagued with hurricanes.

The world strives for balance because it has no ballast.

A ballast, according to the dictionary, is: a heavy substance placed in such a way as to improve stability or control such as in the draft of a ship; to give steadiness, to keep steady. 

Actual balance in a seaworthy ship is created by having something heavy--a ballast--deep within, below the waterline.  A ship is balanced or isn't depending on what has been placed inside it.  Interestingly, a ballast is often a tank of water that can be filled or emptied depending on the size of the cargo load. So, balance is bestowed by what you carry within you--what you are filled with--not by the careful stacking of burdens so that your life resembles an inukshuk that isn't meant to go anywhere or do anything.

The question begs to be asked: What are you filled with?  What keeps you upright when the waves would capsize you?  A quick google image search of "capsized ships" presents a eerie array of true stories.  All manner of vessels from cruise ships to cargo haulers to sailboats to ferries are subject to the danger. Every intention of a ship's designer founders when the ballast tank isn't filled sufficiently for the circumstances and the load that the ship will carry.

"If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small." (Proverbs 24:10)  

This verse isn't meant as a condemnation for our lack of strength, but rather a reminder that if you are feeling faint, you need to grow stronger.  We need the continual filling of the Holy Spirt and the Word to be able to withstand what comes at us.  The very next verse gives an idea of just the kind of loads we are meant to carry in the storms of adversity.

"Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter."  (Proverbs 24:11)    

A half filled ballast tank might have been sufficient when you bore less weight, but it simply won't cut it now.  A half filled tank won't be able to withstand the adversity of rescuing those taken away to death, or to shore up the weak knees of those who are stumbling to their slaughter.

I see the family members of those Christians murdered within their church in Charleston extending forgiveness to one who only showed hatred and violence, and tremble at the transformation that God brings when His people seek to see the fulfillment of the promise that He works all things together for the good of those who love Him.  What is impossible for man is possible with God.

We were made for so much more than to hustle for temporal success in a ridiculous and meaningless balancing act.  We were made to run the race set before us with endurance.  We were made to bring light into the darkness. We were designed for nothing less than the heroic rescue of those being led away to death; to hold back those stumbling toward their destruction. Our purpose is valiant and great. Our design magnificent.  We are the Church and we have the heart of the Lion of Judah.

I see the pictures of those 21 martyrs on the beach whose faces weren't hidden like those who wielded the knife, but who, like the first martyr looked to heaven to see the face of the One who conquered death, and know truly who fears whom.

"The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion." (Proverbs 28:1)

 We are the Church.  I know of no greater courage.




Wednesday, June 10, 2015

The Cheshire Cat Grin


In the beginning, God spoke and everything that exists in the universe sprang into being.  He said, “Let there be light,” and light burst forth at 186,000 miles per second, both a wave and a particle.  He formed molecules to become water and flung the cosmos into space.  He set everything in place and set everything in motion.  He filled the earth with life; plants and animals.  From the smallest microorganism to the largest beast on the surface of the earth.  He filled the depths to the heights with the wonders of His creative power.

Then He made us.  

He breathed His own breath into our nostrils and made us more than the elements--the dust of the earth--from which He formed us.  He made us more because He made us in His image--to our infinite perplexity.  And, He makes us individually.  No assembly line construction.  No mass production.  An Artisan creating each individual piece with purpose in mind.  

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13)

Almost as if we could remember back far enough, we might recall hearing the Spirit of God whispering over us in the womb and the very strands of our DNA knitting together in joyful response to His creative Word. Our very first cells dividing and multiplying at the divine voice singing into existence an identity which had previously only existed in the very mind of God.  An identity that was written in heaven in the annals of the works of God--if we would only be willing to be what He intended us to be.

“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:15-16)

It is an astonishing discovery to realize that there is a biography written about each one of us taking its place in the great library of Heaven.  They are stories about God’s intentions.  It is about the me that I could be; not the me that my rebellion might choose.  Because I always get a choice.  I can choose my own will. I can choose the ‘freedom’ of something else than what God intends.  I can choose to write an autobiography and turn away from what the Author of Life wrote for me before the stars were born.


“What sorrow awaits my rebellious children,” says the LORD.
“You make plans that are contrary to mine. 
You make alliances not directed by my Spirit,
thus piling up your sins.
Isaiah 30:1(NLT)

I have done this.  I have looked for my own solutions and tacked on a ‘thank-you-God’ at the end to add a spiritual garnish to the meal of my making.  I have groped around in the dark to find the limits of my personal sovereignty.  I could continue to choose my own way; to write my own poky story.  But even with the greatest of intentions, even if I work really hard to be good--it is just so small.  Trivial to the point of inconsequential.  My view is too limited, my resources too meager, my story too insignificant.  To say nothing of sin and the death that it brings--my way is just too small.  Too broken and foolish.  Too frail and given to selfishness and fear.  My way is a small, stunted story that doesn’t need telling. A story that feels like a humiliation in its meaninglessness.  It is the despair of MacBeth in his most famous speech:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is here no more: it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. 
(MacBeth, Act 5. Scene 5)


The story that the madman tells is not worth hearing.  The idiot’s tale is much ado about nothing.   All sound and fury. Chaotic and meaningless.  But somewhere else--somewhere much more else--there is a different account.  There is a story about me worth telling.  And more than that, there is a story worth living. I can resist God’s call to be more, and diminish to the pygmy stature that I choose for myself and harvest the consequences.  

The World offers fortune telling soothsayers to read signs in the entrails of slaughtered animals or in the swill that follows a cup of tea because deep in the heart of Mankind, we want to find meaning in the story.  We want direction to know that we are going the right way.  That is why fiction offers its protagonists the convention of a spirit guide.  We need the wise old fellow in the pointed hat, or the cheshire cat grin to point us in the direction that advances the plot.  In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Alice has the following exchange with her enigmatic guide.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“Oh, I don’t much care where--” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

As an author myself, I can tell you how difficult it is to make characters and circumstances intersect in a strategic way that advances the story.  It involves holding a hundred different strands in your mind and keeping track of each one, weaving them in and out of the narrative with just the right amount of tension; just the right amount of exposure, and at just the right time. It requires identifying which strands are dead ends and need to be discarded before you spend months trying to make them work. It is complicated and nit picky work that involves a wide view for the big picture and precision attention for the smallest of details. In the best stories, there isn’t any bloat.  Everything that happens, everything that is said or done, happens for a reason--it contributes to the overall picture.  Nothing is pointless.  Everything has meaning. It always strikes me, then, that Scripture describes God as the Author of Life; and here is the natural world thriving in a balance of synchronization, woven together in a mighty design of epic proportions.  Each life a strand with a story in heaven--a story of what could be--but so often isn’t.

For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”  
(Matthew 7:14)

Life rarely feels like stories do--the intersections are much further apart and we can’t see how people have been strategically placed or the role that they play.  Suffering always feels pointless.  We want meaning but we balk that Someone else might have expectations that we follow His design.  So, we--like children--figure we’ll go anywhere but there.  Alice’s Cheshire Cat--exasperating as he is-- reveals the flaw in Alice’s thinking. Getting anywhere is easy.  Getting somewhere requires direction and a purpose.

“Only a few find the way, some don’t recognize it when they do --some--don’t ever want to.” 
- The Cheshire Cat

But if God is the Author and there is a story written for me to live (if I’m willing) then it follows that it is possible to live a life of strategic intersections; so that the you see plot, instead of a random aggregation of matter + time + chance.  If there is a story written in heaven about you, then it is possible to have everything that happens go somewhere-- mean something--build toward the purpose of the grand design, rather than the feverish tangential trail of someone who doesn’t care where they end up. 
These are all lovely thoughts, but if we don’t know how to do it, it is still just the the aimless striving of a rodent on a wheel.  I’m not really interested in behaviour modification.  I’m interested in transformation. I’m interested in being a dynamic character who is not the same at the end as she was at the beginning.  I’m interested in discarding the bloat of an aimless autobiography in order that I might live God’s biography of me.  I’m interested--desperate, really--to hear what He has to say; to have the Holy Spirit actually speak to me.    

 “Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands.”
Psalm 119:73

In John 16:7 Jesus told His disciples, “But the fact of the matter is that it is best for you that I go away, for if I don’t, the Comforter won’t come.  If I do, he will--for I will send him to you.” (The Living Bible)  It boggles the mind to consider that Jesus says there is something better for us than to have Him physically present with us on the earth.  What is better--He says--is to have the Holy Spirit.  But the Holy Spirit gets held at arms length because we’re worried he might show up and be weird. But God didn’t call us to weirdness. He calls us to holiness.  He called us to be like Him.  

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, 
“This is the way; walk in it”. Isaiah 30:21 (NIV)


And He promised that He would show us how.

I Wouldn’t Answer Me Either

“He does me double wrong that wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue.”   -William Shakespeare, Richard II,  (Act III, Scene II) I ...