Lighten Enlighten

Coverings

Jeff asked me this weekend what morsel I was gleaning from Easter this year, and I told him "coverings."

Something our pastor said in church on Palm Sunday reminded me of the quietly growing obsession I have with skin, shame, and coverings in scripture. (And yes, that's "skin" not "sin.") He referenced the people of Jerusalem welcoming Jesus into the city during Passover as a tradition from the Orient that was used at the time to honor the entrance of a king. Commoners would take off their own robes and lay them out in the road to be soiled and trampled in deference to the higher honor of the one riding over them. And that's what these people were doing. They were welcoming the one they thought would come in and make all wrongs right, overthrow the millstone of the Roman government from around their necks, and bring the shining glory of the kingdom of God into fullness then and there (in exactly the manner they wanted him to). Don't we all want that sometimes?

But, of course, God often behaves contrary to what we expect. Despite the fact that Jesus never took over in the manner they were inviting him to, their actions of laying down their cloaks nonetheless symbolically foretold the truth of what he was actually coming to do, whether they recognized it or not. The idea of laying down one's coverings made me start thinking about the reasons we take up our coverings to put them on in the first place, which reminded me of the original reason we were covered at all from day one - shame. Adam and Eve were ashamed they were naked in the garden, once their eyes were opened after they  had sinned, and the immediate urge was to cover their own nakedness. [Enter the iconic fig leaf, extremely insufficient though it may be.] Then came next, of course, the more suitable, yet still insufficient, animal skin that God provided after the very first death on this earth - the animals that died, sacrificing skin for skin to cover human shame. Over time, of course, coverings and clothing then adapted and evolved alongside human culture, necessity, and personal taste, which then, brings me full circle centuries later back to the exuberant crowd at Jerusalem's gate, willingly de-robing and laying down cloaks in the stone roads in honor of the coming Christ.

I think what amazes me this year about this story and this seemingly simple act of the people is how visually prophetic it is. When we welcome the Christ into our "kingdom" to do his work, we take off our cloaks and lay them in the road, rendering ourselves in some sense naked before him, exposing our shame and depravity in child-like trust. He then takes those very skins up and rides with them up the hill to Golgotha where he, with them, is nailed to a cross that was not meant for him, but for us. Once Justice is satisfied and Love has reached as far as it can possibly reach to save, Christ dies, rises from the grave, and we are once again given back coverings to wear - this time of his own skin and his own righteousness. Robes that were once named Sin, Desolation, and Shame are replaced and named anew, given back to us as Righteous,  Holy, Cherished, and Redeemed.

Denial

IF ONLY I could explain to people truly, exactly, precisely how I feel every time I reach out for comfort, I would never have to feel the pain of being missed or misunderstood by them. I can make people love me in exactly the manner I want them to.

IF ONLY I could change the people in my life who hurt me the most by behaving in exactly the right way or saying the right things, they would never hurt me again, and we would have healthy, happy relationship. I have the power to manipulate others inside their own minds and skins.

IF ONLY I could control all external factors and avoid being stressed ever at all, I'd never have to experience the anxiety that rises in me or the anger and suspicion I then feel toward others as a result. Or the shame that comes when I lash out at them. I can re-create the Garden all on my own.

IF ONLY I could keep in perfect balance with perfect emotion and response, never too much, never too little, I would not have to experience the humiliation that comes from my mistakes or the disappointment that comes from others'. I can be sinless, and I expect others to do the same.

IF ONLY I could give myself full-time to fulfilling all my personal cravings and satisfactions, to music, to art, to intellect and creative thought in relationship, I could sustain a state of being perpetually sated and full, never feeling the emptiness of hunger or want. I hold in myself the potential to satisfy all desire.

IF ONLY I could do so many things, my world would be set right and my interactions with others made blameless. And I would have no need for... well, no need at all really. So much that I do, say, or unwittingly feel says so much more about what I actually believe deep beneath the surface. And of course, what I don't believe, too. My "if onlys" speak volumes about how I would frame my world if I could. But truth says I can't. Can't do much to frame my own world at all. You don't even need to read the Bible to see that. I have no physical capability for doing so many of the things my "if onlys" say I can, and yet I thrash around in them anyway like some kind of lame-legged commoner touting a tattered cape, trying to be a superhero. A frame is already set, and I believe in its Maker. I know I believe because sometimes I choose to rise above my "if onlys" and trust in his reality. When I, at other times, surrender my heart or my actions to them, I deny the reality of His frame and that it is good for my life. I wonder sometimes about other people's "if onlys" and what that might tell me about their internal worlds and beliefs. We fly through life ignorant we are captured by our denials. If you listen closely, sometimes you can hear them whispering between the lines of what people so auspiciously say and do. The challenge is to listen. And to be willing to be heard.

Art, Chaos, and Redemption

Was reading this week from one of my favorites I go back to from time to time and thought I'd post this excerpt. The book is "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art" by Madeline L'Engle, and the excerpt is regarding the artist, chaos, and redemption. It made me think of all the many conversations I've had the past few years with so many different people about pain and struggle (chaos), so many different stories of suffering - whether told or untold, and the longing you can hear in each voice that their suffering would be truly seen by those who walk with them and then redeemed by their Maker. One of the things I read from her here is that artists, maybe more than anyone else, are willing to recognize both chaos and redemption in the Gospel (and artistic) process and that they are constantly striving to "see," or overturn, the hidden chaos in life for the sake of exposing it to redemption. So I guess this post goes out to all those in this life, artists or no, who are willing to admit to the chaos both in their own lives and around them, those who know that church is not a clean and pretty place for clean and pretty people, those for whom growing up and family were not places of safety or haven but mazes of confusion or abuse. It is brave to be willing to see and name. Depravity must be named before redemption can occur.

I was outraged a number of years ago to read a book by an eminent Freudian analyst whose theory was that all artists are neurotic, psychotic, sado/masocists, Pepping Toms; that not one is normal.

At this moment I do not know why it bothered me so. He means one thing by his labels; I would call it something quite different; but there is no denying that the artist is someone who is full of questions, who cries them out in great angst, who discovers rainbow answers in the darkness, and then rushes to canvas or paper. An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in this world. Along with Plato's divine madness there is also divine discontent, a longing to find the melody in the discords of chaos, the rhyme in the cacophany, the surprised smile in time or stress or strain.

It is not that what is is not  enough, for it is; it is that what is had been disarranged, and is crying out to be put in place. Perhaps the artist longs to sleep well every night, to eat anything without indigestion; to feel no moral qualms; to turn off the television news and make a bologna sandwich after seeing the devastation and death caused by famine and drought and earthquake and flood. But the artist cannot manage this normalcy. Vision keeps breaking through, and must find means of expression. (p. 143)

For those who "cannot rest" until all things are set right and for whom "vision keeps breaking through." One day Redemption will win out in fullness, but for now, we continue to ask the questions.

Peekaboo God

Peekaboo God.... I don't know how many times this phrase comes to mind for me. God is a Peekaboo God. And what I mean by that is he plays with us sometimes, not in a cat and mouse way, but in the playful and loving way a parent interacts with a child. That's what it feels like to me anyway. He shows his face, then quickly hides it, a moment of glory, then he's gone... A sunbreak on a rainy day, the unexpected four-leaf clover found just in the moment you're needing encouragement, a rabbit trail of answered prayers that are sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden. Like Hansel's bread crumbs, he says, "Follow me... Here. Now here. Now just over that log. Now down this path." He plays. And we follow step by step looking for delight and his face to lead us. Are you tracking me? Let me explain further.

We recently fell in love with a house out in Issaquah that got us so excited it kicked us into gear to get our own house fixed up, cleaned up, and on the market to sell, something we've been saying for many years we were going to do. We had a lot of projects sitting overdue, so it took us a couple of months to get it ready to list, and I spent way too much time along the way checking the MLS listing for the house in Issaquah we wanted. Eventually, I felt God gently leaning on me to stop checking it (and rest). At first, I wondered if it was just me or really him, then I felt it more strongly as time went on. I told Jeff, too, so we kept preparing our place and let the Issaquah listing go to the back burner. "Oh, great!" I thought. "This surely means that the house we love is sold and off the market, and God just knows that if we knew it, we'd lose steam and quickly abandon all our preparations to sell. But maybe he wants us to sell anyway, and this is how he entices us to do it." Who knows what it was? But one of the biggest things we were praying along the way was for clear direction (still are), so we decided to be obedient to what he'd led us to so far, obedient to prepare our home to be sold.

It was a Thursday that we got our own house (finally) on the market, so Jeff came home that night, and we sat down to the computer, hand in hand, much like children, waiting excited and a little anxious to check the listing on the Issaquah place. Peering through half-squinted eyes, we pulled up the MLS listing for the house we'd fallen in love with. Gone. Off the market. But not sold, we found out. The listing had expired and had been taken off the market one day (one day!) before we put our house on the market. Crazy! God is leading... "Follow me." (peekaboo) Well, long story short, Jeff stops by the house the following Tuesday to see what the scoop is. "Yep. Delisted," their teenage son tells him, "Contract was up with the realtor." ("Great!" Jeff thinks.) But catch this... the house had already been sold on Sunday, three days after we listed. (And God's face disappears.) It had nothing to do with them de-listing the Wednesday before, but someone came in and scooped it in the very same weekend we listed our house. While we were a little heartbroken at losing what we were hoping was our next home, it was hard not to smile on some level because our prayers were answered: God was leading clearly, and crumb by crumb leading us only as far as the next crumb can be seen. (peekaboo) I mean, what are the odds that Wednesday they would de-list, Thursday we would list, and Sunday they would sell? Crazy, right?

So as a result of falling in love with that place, we stumbled upon another great little house near there that still might be an option for us. Maybe that's why God took us to the first one, who knows? If we bought it, we'd virtually be staring across the yard right at the first house we found (for less money). It also started us looking at a whole different kind of home we would have probably never looked at if we hadn't fallen in love with that place in Issaquah. Since then, we've also found and lost a really great place in Woodinville, too, even more perfect than that one. (This one caused me a few tears.) But again, it felt divinely led that we would find it, fall in love with it, and lose it. "Keep following," it seems like he says. That second home, the one in Woodinville was scooped up the same week we found it, and they hadn't had an official offer in 3 years on and off the market. Again, I look at it and think it's God's clear leading. What are the odds?

Playing Peekaboo with God through this whole moving season has been interesting,  no doubt, and sometimes challenging. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out. The weak side of me wants an answer, and I want it now. Are we moving? Are we selling? Is the next house I fall in love with the one we're destined to move into? Just tell me clearly and tell me everything. But the real me would rather do it this way, delightedly playing games with God as he entices us and teaches us along the way. Then one day I suddenly remembered the educational purpose of playing Peekaboo with an infant: object permanence. All children's play teaches them something of the world around them, and Peekaboo is a game meant to teach object permanence - the concept that when mommy or daddy leaves the room, they still exist out of sight. They don't just vanish into nothingness. Wow. Truly... wow. So each time God's face appears then vanishes and appears again, I learn just a little more about faith, the spiritual version of object permanence, and my faith grows. Each time I become more and more sure that Daddy still exists in the other room well after our fun-loving game of Peekaboo is long over and he's gone.

Grace: Such a Long Road

Time and again... Grace. May be my favorite Bible word. Probably also my biggest personal challenge, I'm reminded. Reading through Ephesians (last post) because I'm starting a study on Ephesians kind of vicariously through a friend of mine who's actually attending the study herself. (And I'm tracking from home in the workbook.)

The workbook is called By His Wounds You Are Healed by Wendy Horger Alsup, and I'm enjoying her writing so far. Take, for example, the word "grace." I would guess most people have some half-decent notion of what grace means, whether that's a biblical definition or cultural or otherwise. But in reading this week, I was challenged by what she drew out of her own study of the word grace or charis - also meaning "gift" in the original Greek. "The common thread," she says, "In each use of the term is that it is not about giving what is due." This is something I think we'd probably all agree on as a pretty decent intellectual understanding of what grace is: It's not an earned notion but a gift of some sort. She continues:

"When you give back what is earned or deserved, it is not charis. It is not favor or benefit, and it is not credited toward you as anything other than exactly what you are expected to do. Instead, grace does what is unexpected, undeserved, and out of line with reasonable responses. Grace is an unreasonable response - unreasonably good, but unreasonable nonetheless. When we give grace, this undeserved favor that does good to enemies and lends expecting nothing in return, then we give evidence of our relationship with our Father in heaven, because this is his calling card. He is kind to the ungrateful and evil. He is full of grace." (p. 18) - Bolds added

Man... I'm so bad at this. What a challenging word! To do the unexpected when what a person may "deserve" or "expect" is something violent in return. The guy who cuts me off in traffic, the rude solicitor on the phone, the person who throws a disgusted look my way when my son has just dropped and shattered a bottle of olive oil in line at the grocery store... I often don't want to be unreasonably good to any of these people. (And admittedly, too often AM not good either.) But what about deeper levels? What about the person who has truly offended you or me? It's difficult to offer "good" to even the first set of people. What about those who deeply, truly have wounded us? The one who abused me as a child? The friend who betrayed me? The person who lied to me or stole from me? It made me think of the times in my life I've received the "unexpected" from someone. And I don't always mean unexpectedly saccharine sweet either. (Saccharine sweet is much easier to give than sober and purposeful kindness.) Sometimes unexpected can simply be telling someone the truth with an intentional, sober kindness that recognizes our faults and at the same time says, "I see you and love you anyway." I want to extend this kind of grace that Alsop calls God's "calling card" - Grace, the unreasonable response! But it's such a long road. Maybe that's the point. It takes a lifetime, and it grows the giver as much as it does the receiver. I don't know. I just know I've got a long way to go.

Can I get a Wit-NESSSSSSSS-AAHHH??!?

Reading (and re-reading) Ephesians 1 lately, and in particular, verses 18-21 popped out like I've never read them before. They're the kind you hear banged around all the time by believe-it-to-receive-it TV sermonizers, but the idea is fundamentally amazing at the root, whether they abuse it or not.

"I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come." (Bold added.) - Eph. 1:18-21

Put differently, his power set to work in you (and me) is the same crazy display of might that shook the earth and darkened the sun at his crucifixion, bounced bodies from graves when he died, and exploded the very God-man himself back from death and into the heavenlies where it landed him smack next to the Eternal and Everlasting One on the throne. (Amen and Hallelujah.) The very same power! That same power he puts to work in us, and we need to see it for what it is. That's the start of the prayer here in v. 18 anyway, that we would be able to see it and truly know it. (Isn't that at least half our problem? We're hard of hearing and hazy-eyed, weary pilgrims, dumb as sheep, who can't even see straight sometimes. And that's on a good day.) Seems to me that's power crazy enough to conquer just about any fear, make crooked limbs straight, cure the worst broken heart, rectify tanked relationships, and at very least make our day-to-day struggles much more than just a pointless exercise. I don't know about you, but there are days when I need that kind of power. Amen to his continuing good work in us! What do you need crazy God-strength for?

I Go to the Rock

Funny now, looking back on that last post, and thinking about my morning today. I found myself driving I-5 with this old gospel chorus looping heartily through my mind:

I go the Rock of my salvation

I go to the Stone that the builders rejected

I run to the Mountain, and the Mountain stands by me

When the earth all around me is sinking sand

On Christ the solid Rock I stand

When I need a shelter, when I need a friend, I go to the Rock

I started singing it first, I think, because Jeff and I had been talking just this morning about literally going to The Rock for lunch - the pizza place, that is. Ha. Then I got a call that the wife of one of our employees had been rushed to the ER for serious internal bleeding that couldn't be explained; he was harried and afraid, it sounded like, and I found myself again singing that song, but this time as a prayer over him and his cherished wife - that they would both go to the Source of strength and all peace during trouble. Not so funny this time. But what really got me thinking later was when I found myself driving home from the counseling appointment I had today where my therapist had been pushing me to go into what was uncomfortable territory for me, places of pain and hurt and still raw wounds, places I'm not keen on going voluntarily. I kept singing and singing that chorus in the car afterward, out loud even, until I realized I sounded like a broken record. You know, that point when what was once a soothing repetition becomes almost a drone or meaningless mantra? That's where I was. "Just sing a little louder, and you can drown it all out." And I kind of smiled remembering my post on Buechner - about how important it is that we look the depravity part of the Gospel in the face and not run away from things that are frightening in our lives and in others'. Funny. Sometimes I wonder if half the reason I write all this stuff down is so I'll better listen to myself later. So here I am, looking those guys in the face again. And going to the Rock.