I'm spamming the blogosphere today.
So I had to google the spiritual gifts section of the NT because I got really sick of it in high school and proceeded to forget where it was. Then this spiritual gifts test came up (http://www.kodachrome.org/spiritgift/) and I figured I'd been ignoring one of these for a while, so I'd take this one. It's like a Facebook quiz for Jesus and my original intent was to take it about that seriously. Results below.
Score Graph of Score Spiritual Gift
19 ==================== Music
19 ==================== Writing
15 ================ Leadership
15 ================ Faith
15 ================ Encouragement
15 ================ Knowledge
15 ================ Giving
13 ============== Prophecy
13 ============== Discernment
13 ============== Poverty
11 ============ Wisdom
11 ============ Administration
11 ============ Pastoring
11 ============ Teaching
11 ============ Helps
10 =========== Exhortation
9 ========== Missionary
8 ========= Apostle
8 ========= Mercy
5 ====== Intercession
5 ====== Craftsmanship
5 ====== Celibacy
4 ===== Hospitality
2 === Miracles
2 === Evangelism
1 == Tongues Speaking
0 = Tongues Interpreting
0 = Healing
1) Prophecy FTW!
2) Celibacy? Gee, I didn't know loneliness was a spiritual gift.
3) Poverty? Wait, so giving is higher than poverty (which, btw, is higher than pastoring, so I totes should just go live in a box somewhere. And write encouraging and faith-filled things) which makes total sense because you can give out of your poverty... oh wait.
4) Mercy fail :(
5) HAHAHAHA speaking in tongues. Yup, those suckers got a NEVER so I'm surprised it got a point.
6) Healing fail :(
7) Helps?
8) Prayer fail. Not so sad face.
Clearly, I'm going to define my life plans off of this (or not psht), but I also feel like it's unfair to have me judge myself. I also feel like it'd be unfair to have someone else do it for me because goodness knows I won't let anyone in close enough to figure the most accurate answer for me. Anyways, I just thought I'd alert you, dear, unique reader, to this quiz's existence (all 140 questions) so that you too can learn things that other people have seen in you a long time.
Also, please judge me on my derisive nature, especially when it comes to the more fantastic of the spiritual gifts. I need someone to tell me that the Spirit really does move in weird ways so I can understand why people are suffering and dying unjustly all over the place but we can spend our time agonizing over a God we only remember because we've built many big (too small) houses for Him that clog up our memory and tear apart His Body.
Gah, why can't I be funny for once? Spiritual gift number 21: seriousness.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
A Tale of Two Tuesdays
Can I tell you something?
I'm not going to be a physics teacher.
There. I said it. It's out. I thought about giving up lying for Lent and then realized that I'd have to drop this teaching physics class that I'm in and figure out some other way to fill up the last of my physics electives and that would just be a pain. In addition to the other things that I'd have to tell the truth about all the time. Shudder.
I mean, I'm not closing the door on this option. By the time I'll graduate, I'll have a teaching license to spiffy up my pathetic physics BA with possible religion minor. I'm an honors program dropout (and happy about it, too- they didn't give me my Shakespeare this year and they don't offer classes I can feasibly take any more and you need a 3.5 [Oh. My. Lanta.] to write a thesis in physics anyway- 3.5 Math and Physics GPA), I'm a BS dropout (delighted about that one, tell me you), I've done anything but excel academically. I'm John Lennon after the Beatles broke up- I'm depending on my laurels and occasionally using this gift I've been given. My point is, I have a depressing (to me) collegiate record, the kind that needs dressing up in anyway possible if I'm going to (gasp!) apply to grad schools next year.
And I've got extracurriculars, like band and band and band and band. And SAI (one of these days I will write an epic post about the wonderfulness that is the sisterhood of Sigma Alpha Iota at the Iota Tau Chapter at UNC and you, my friends, will be jealous). And I work at the planetarium (and I've done some training on the new digital system- get excited, it's going to be legendary). And I participate in various religious organizations as much as time allows- University United Methodist's college Sunday School, small group (Caribou, Friday mornings, 10 o'clock, be there or be square) and bell choir, the Wesley foundation (as soon as band quits) and CCF (Campus Christian fellowship, though they meet when bells rehearses and the bible study got moved to Tuesdays). But it's not high school, when I was convinced that I had every application in the bag (though, in retrospect, Princeton was really just an opportunity for embarrassment). I don't have letters of recommendation lined up and my GPA only reflects the fact that I'm a science BA- I've taken enough science and math classes to substantially lower it and enough humanities (I'm not judging, I'm just saying) to keep it afloat.
So I stepped into this teaching physics world with the idea that being in front of a classroom would be a good thing, that maybe I could be out in the 'real world' for a little while before going on to... whatever it was that I thought I was going on to and that this was going to provide me with a solid backup plan because, as I still maintain, being ordained is a big thing to be wrong about. And, of course, it would make my BA look better. In general, all pluses.
So I went to observe a physics class on Tuesday and had that sinking realization that I could not do this. No, not that I couldn't do that, because I could teach physics, and I'm learning a lot now about good ways to help students really get the concepts and ways of making it less scary (because it isn't scary at the levels most of you live on... though sometimes I want to go hide my head under my pillows- let's be honest, my mattress- because of my homework) and I could stand up in front of a class, 8-3 Monday-Friday and I could grade papers and I could help students and I could do all of this, but I shouldn't do that. Along with the fact that I will attempt at all costs to dissuade you from a physics major (unless you're good at it or you have some odd admiration for the topic and are willing to devote hours, nay, days to the end of understanding its possessive and elusive nature) and so, by such reckonings, should not be a high school physics teacher and dissuade potential future physicists, I sat in the back of that classroom and realized that it was not the place for me. I know this whole picking what you want to do with your life is new (especially for those of us without male reproductive organs) because for the most part of history you just did what your dad did or you got sold off as an apprentice or something like that, but I'm glad I have the chance to look around and see where my talents are best used in the world. And that place is not necessarily a physics classroom.
I used to think that when people talked about things being wrong in life, they were just joking. I honestly thought that there really wasn't a place that someone wouldn't be perfectly happy being if they put their minds to it. Misery, drama, stuff like that was clearly reserved for the fictional world of sitcoms and books. You can't end up in a job you wouldn't like, that just didn't happen. I'm not entirely sure why I thought that, but I did. But I've realized that the idea that your heart can be somewhere else entirely doesn't have to apply to that time when your romantic love is far from your sight. My heart is not in teaching physics. My heart (gasp! again!) is not even in astronomy, though that comes closer to the mark. Two dollars if you guess where I'm headed.
Listen, it doesn't make me any better than anyone else if I'm headed for a lifetime of Sunday mornings. I've talked with a couple of friends about why we'd pick ordination instead of the billions of other professions available, all of which can be glorifying to God if the person is willing to live for Him. And we've come up with things like, "I'm too pissed off to leave the church now" or "This way, I'm saying to everyone that I'm God's" or "This is the right way for me to care for people." But what I want to submit to you, my friends, is not some fancy or even plain yet heartfelt reason why I want to set my life aside for the Church but two anecdotes, if you will, two stories.
It's Tuesday. I'm sitting in my Modern Islamic Civilizations class, which I'm quickly falling in love with, despite massive amounts of reading and a real witchb of a TA, and my professor is talking about Muhammad. It's near the beginning of the semester, so he's allowed to use all his stored phrases and prepared speeches because we won't have heard them already. He's talking about Muhammad and the Qur'an and how there's nothing new in the Qur'an. A prophet is always called to speak to his people a message of remembrance, of bringing back to their minds the things God has already told them but that they forgot- care for those in need, fight injustice, love one another. He's talking about this and about prophets and prophetic figures and my heart is burning. "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32)
It's Tuesday again. I'm sitting in the back of a physics classroom at East Chapel Hill High and I'm amazed at how this guy knows his stuff. He's eyeballing equations and calling out numbers without a calculator, picking out students which he knows will either give out the answer or bring up a problem that will benefit the entire class, making jokes, helping them focus, teaching, leading the class. They're learning circuits and Kirchhoff's laws, stuff I've gotten down pat at this point in my mind, and they've got it covered. The class is going well, the teacher's got this well in hand and I'm sitting back there thinking, I can't do this. There's this dead weight in my chest. What am I thinking? What could ever have possessed me to say that this is what I would do with my life? The teacher's helping them understand something, preparing kids for being things like doctors (they all have to pass a college physics class), engineers, chemists, biologists, physicists, really annoyingly scientifically literate writers, or whatever else they want to be in life, because they're thinking, they're working through something, they're learning. The kids clearly respect him. I'm sure that he's been there for many a student with a problem. He's positively impacting his world. But I couldn't be him.
But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. (Ephesians 4:7)
I'm not going to be a physics teacher.
There. I said it. It's out. I thought about giving up lying for Lent and then realized that I'd have to drop this teaching physics class that I'm in and figure out some other way to fill up the last of my physics electives and that would just be a pain. In addition to the other things that I'd have to tell the truth about all the time. Shudder.
I mean, I'm not closing the door on this option. By the time I'll graduate, I'll have a teaching license to spiffy up my pathetic physics BA with possible religion minor. I'm an honors program dropout (and happy about it, too- they didn't give me my Shakespeare this year and they don't offer classes I can feasibly take any more and you need a 3.5 [Oh. My. Lanta.] to write a thesis in physics anyway- 3.5 Math and Physics GPA), I'm a BS dropout (delighted about that one, tell me you), I've done anything but excel academically. I'm John Lennon after the Beatles broke up- I'm depending on my laurels and occasionally using this gift I've been given. My point is, I have a depressing (to me) collegiate record, the kind that needs dressing up in anyway possible if I'm going to (gasp!) apply to grad schools next year.
And I've got extracurriculars, like band and band and band and band. And SAI (one of these days I will write an epic post about the wonderfulness that is the sisterhood of Sigma Alpha Iota at the Iota Tau Chapter at UNC and you, my friends, will be jealous). And I work at the planetarium (and I've done some training on the new digital system- get excited, it's going to be legendary). And I participate in various religious organizations as much as time allows- University United Methodist's college Sunday School, small group (Caribou, Friday mornings, 10 o'clock, be there or be square) and bell choir, the Wesley foundation (as soon as band quits) and CCF (Campus Christian fellowship, though they meet when bells rehearses and the bible study got moved to Tuesdays). But it's not high school, when I was convinced that I had every application in the bag (though, in retrospect, Princeton was really just an opportunity for embarrassment). I don't have letters of recommendation lined up and my GPA only reflects the fact that I'm a science BA- I've taken enough science and math classes to substantially lower it and enough humanities (I'm not judging, I'm just saying) to keep it afloat.
So I stepped into this teaching physics world with the idea that being in front of a classroom would be a good thing, that maybe I could be out in the 'real world' for a little while before going on to... whatever it was that I thought I was going on to and that this was going to provide me with a solid backup plan because, as I still maintain, being ordained is a big thing to be wrong about. And, of course, it would make my BA look better. In general, all pluses.
So I went to observe a physics class on Tuesday and had that sinking realization that I could not do this. No, not that I couldn't do that, because I could teach physics, and I'm learning a lot now about good ways to help students really get the concepts and ways of making it less scary (because it isn't scary at the levels most of you live on... though sometimes I want to go hide my head under my pillows- let's be honest, my mattress- because of my homework) and I could stand up in front of a class, 8-3 Monday-Friday and I could grade papers and I could help students and I could do all of this, but I shouldn't do that. Along with the fact that I will attempt at all costs to dissuade you from a physics major (unless you're good at it or you have some odd admiration for the topic and are willing to devote hours, nay, days to the end of understanding its possessive and elusive nature) and so, by such reckonings, should not be a high school physics teacher and dissuade potential future physicists, I sat in the back of that classroom and realized that it was not the place for me. I know this whole picking what you want to do with your life is new (especially for those of us without male reproductive organs) because for the most part of history you just did what your dad did or you got sold off as an apprentice or something like that, but I'm glad I have the chance to look around and see where my talents are best used in the world. And that place is not necessarily a physics classroom.
I used to think that when people talked about things being wrong in life, they were just joking. I honestly thought that there really wasn't a place that someone wouldn't be perfectly happy being if they put their minds to it. Misery, drama, stuff like that was clearly reserved for the fictional world of sitcoms and books. You can't end up in a job you wouldn't like, that just didn't happen. I'm not entirely sure why I thought that, but I did. But I've realized that the idea that your heart can be somewhere else entirely doesn't have to apply to that time when your romantic love is far from your sight. My heart is not in teaching physics. My heart (gasp! again!) is not even in astronomy, though that comes closer to the mark. Two dollars if you guess where I'm headed.
Listen, it doesn't make me any better than anyone else if I'm headed for a lifetime of Sunday mornings. I've talked with a couple of friends about why we'd pick ordination instead of the billions of other professions available, all of which can be glorifying to God if the person is willing to live for Him. And we've come up with things like, "I'm too pissed off to leave the church now" or "This way, I'm saying to everyone that I'm God's" or "This is the right way for me to care for people." But what I want to submit to you, my friends, is not some fancy or even plain yet heartfelt reason why I want to set my life aside for the Church but two anecdotes, if you will, two stories.
It's Tuesday. I'm sitting in my Modern Islamic Civilizations class, which I'm quickly falling in love with, despite massive amounts of reading and a real witchb of a TA, and my professor is talking about Muhammad. It's near the beginning of the semester, so he's allowed to use all his stored phrases and prepared speeches because we won't have heard them already. He's talking about Muhammad and the Qur'an and how there's nothing new in the Qur'an. A prophet is always called to speak to his people a message of remembrance, of bringing back to their minds the things God has already told them but that they forgot- care for those in need, fight injustice, love one another. He's talking about this and about prophets and prophetic figures and my heart is burning. "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32)
It's Tuesday again. I'm sitting in the back of a physics classroom at East Chapel Hill High and I'm amazed at how this guy knows his stuff. He's eyeballing equations and calling out numbers without a calculator, picking out students which he knows will either give out the answer or bring up a problem that will benefit the entire class, making jokes, helping them focus, teaching, leading the class. They're learning circuits and Kirchhoff's laws, stuff I've gotten down pat at this point in my mind, and they've got it covered. The class is going well, the teacher's got this well in hand and I'm sitting back there thinking, I can't do this. There's this dead weight in my chest. What am I thinking? What could ever have possessed me to say that this is what I would do with my life? The teacher's helping them understand something, preparing kids for being things like doctors (they all have to pass a college physics class), engineers, chemists, biologists, physicists, really annoyingly scientifically literate writers, or whatever else they want to be in life, because they're thinking, they're working through something, they're learning. The kids clearly respect him. I'm sure that he's been there for many a student with a problem. He's positively impacting his world. But I couldn't be him.
But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. (Ephesians 4:7)
Friday, January 29, 2010
Snow
I'm watching it snow.
I'm watching the small white flakes fall in flurries around the lampposts that make the quad look more and more like Narnia (which, from what I hear, is the place to be these days) under the White Witch before the Spring.
I'm watching it coat the ground with its new frozen blanket, something that three exams and a service had prevented me from seeing more than a month ago. The ground's been waiting on this all day, as a hush has fallen over the thickening sky, waiting for the time when it could spread delight in the form of soft crystals drifting from the sky.
I'm watching it slightly jealously as I think about how white it is. It's not fair, how the clean snow naturally falls from the sky to bless the earth in small portions. I watch it stay pure in places, covering up mulch and tree branches, and wonder why in so many little things I'm no longer white and why in so many big things I stand more silent than the snow, a greater sin than mixing with mud or being erased by frigid rain.
I'm watching it to avoid diving into reading and typing and working. Ah, snow, if you had come but one day sooner, I would have completed my assignments fully and not have had to face the sad yet guiltily encouraging fact that I can do a minimum amount of work and remain mediocre. Now you leave me to remember that mediocre is a large plain and that no one was created to remain mediocre forever.
I'm watching the rare flakes as the pseudo-storm lightens up and people stop running in happiness in the snow and begin running in agitation from the cold. I'm watching the friends bustled together outside the dorm across the quad and the lonely soul sitting by the lamppost, waiting. I'm watching the tracks they make in the snow, purposefully leaving their fleeting mark on this rarest of weather phenomena and suddenly I don't feel so bad. Sometimes a snowflake is just a snowflake.
And now I'm far away from it, looking at the fake snowflakes on my window and thinking about the things I should be doing. You know, one time, maybe it was Wednesday night, I was working on something and I looked at my prayer notebook and I wanted God. Not just to write something because I can do that any time. I wanted to talk, to tell Him about my world and to listen as He rebuilt it in the way that only He can. Is your heart supposed to hurt? What am I missing? I'm so tired, I want to sleep and I'm so broken, I want to live.
And it's not that I'm not happy and it's not that I don't have a wonderful, ridiculously blessed life. It's not that I can't see the snow falling anymore, it's just that I have to look to the light to see it illuminated and my eyes are tired. I forget that life is not a vast snow covered tundra where we are punished for making a dent in the whiteness. The best thing about snow is that you can play in it. How else are you going to make angels?
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Sometimes People
"Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough, sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded."-The Dark Knight, Jim Gordon
I've been chewing on this for a little while, after I had my faith in a few people shaken. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded. Sometimes you need to see that people are worth saving. "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough." Maybe. Sometimes the truth isn't what's needed, I think. The truth, at a particularly bad time (like when you've just had your strength taken away by the god of the underworld in order to save the woman you loved only to find out that she had been working for him the whole time- that's a bad time to hear the truth) can be the defeat of someone.
But then there's always the redeeming truth. You know, it gets better, life gets better. And if it doesn't, one day it's going to be fair. And after it's fair, there's grace. So I don't really know what to do with this quote, which I love to listen to but not to hear. I figured I'd throw it out there, just in cases.
I've been chewing on this for a little while, after I had my faith in a few people shaken. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded. Sometimes you need to see that people are worth saving. "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough." Maybe. Sometimes the truth isn't what's needed, I think. The truth, at a particularly bad time (like when you've just had your strength taken away by the god of the underworld in order to save the woman you loved only to find out that she had been working for him the whole time- that's a bad time to hear the truth) can be the defeat of someone.
But then there's always the redeeming truth. You know, it gets better, life gets better. And if it doesn't, one day it's going to be fair. And after it's fair, there's grace. So I don't really know what to do with this quote, which I love to listen to but not to hear. I figured I'd throw it out there, just in cases.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Promise
A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?'
'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'
(Luke 13:6-9)
'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'
(Luke 13:6-9)
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Please Tell Me I'm Not Destined for Apologetics
To avoid getting emotionally involved in the slaughter that is occurring right now on my television (gotta hate those orange teams), I'm going to write. You know, trade one passion for the other. Because I got something on my mind and I don't think it's going to go away.
So I'm in this religious studies learning community, right? It's supposed to be supporting a pluralistic way of life. I didn't know what pluralistic was at the beginning of the year and I had to look it up. Religiously, it's the view that all religions are equally valid, without anyone holding the market on truth and rightness, and it pushes coexistence. Now, currently, I'm all for coexistence because, as Voldemort said in a Very Potter Musical, "You think that killing people would make them like you, but it doesn't. It just makes them dead." And then it makes their descendants bitter and then any chance at reconciliation and understanding is put off for millenniums, and that only if neither one of you does anything to make the other mad.
But, you know, I'm realizing more and more that I don't think that all religions or lack thereof are equally valid. Now, before you go hating on me, I'm not going to judge anyone on their religion. I'm reading God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens and he said something like religious people can't leave other people alone. Maybe this is one of my failings as a Christian, but I can leave people alone. If there is not something about my life that sets me apart, that makes me different, something that I have that you don't that you want, if you are completely content in your religious choice, then I'm not going to offer any advice or leave you with any statements. Now, I might pray for you, but that's between me and my God, who is working in you and has been working in you since the day you were born, whether you want Him to or not.
I'm not going to sit back and bash all other religions. I'm not. I think there is value in different religion. I don't think that they're all basically the same, but I do think that things like doing good and searching for truth and being moral are all of merit. I like the Muslim's devotion and I think the practice of praying five times daily is a beautiful thing. I like the Buddhist meditation idea. I love the bittersweet faith of Judaism, the Psalm that comes out of exile, the way of living with a life that's not going to treat you right. And honestly, I love seeing beauty and wisdom in every day life and thank God you don't need a knowledge of Him to see that there is good in this universe.
I said something tonight that I couldn't believe once it left my mouth. We were going around saying our favorite spiritual quote of the moment and the guy next to me quoted LBJ: "Sometimes you have to hunker down and take it like a jackass in a hailstorm." Solid. True. When we were explaining to the larger group the most talked about quote in our smaller group, we had to explain what the group liked about it. Our group used the LBJ quote because it was funny and I happened to justify it by saying, "You know, it's good to hear things like God created the heavens and still cares about man, but sometimes you just need something practical for your everyday life, you know, step down into the real world." Callous. Dismissive. The guy next to me said, "My thoughts exactly."
We went onto the next group and one of the guys I know is Christian said, "Well, I don't know if I can agree with that last statement." They went on and talked about their quote ("Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart, don't know how to laugh either." -Golda Meir, former Israeli prime minister) and the meeting carried on. I shook my head. I don't know if I can agree with my last statement either.
You know, I was just saying it to be rational. I was just saying it to make a Christian seem like a reasonable human being instead of someone who's got too much heaven on their minds. I'm a practical person. You can't feed your children on God and the heavens, try as I might later in life. And John Wesley was a proponent of meeting people where they are. That's totally what I was going for, right?
Incorrect. I was saying something that I knew would be popular. It was accepting. It was understanding. It was me being a pansy and denying what I should have said. The take home message from Passion is that it's all about God's glory. God is glorified in many wonderful things. In every beautiful things that a human being can do, God is glorified. In every preserved bit of this great creation, God is glorified. In the pristine, thankfully untouchable stars, God is glorified. It's all about the Creator who loves us with an unfathomable love and we only get our significance through that.
And that's not accepting of all other religions. I need that glory in my life. I don't think I realized how much my religion needs a heart, how much I have longed to long after God until I went on Passion. It's good for that. It's also good for falling into the emotional high trap and thinking that loud music and good speakers is what modern Christianity is all about. But the people who spoke I truly believe really meant what they were saying and really believed in God. Really believed in God and His great ability to redeem and restore, to prepare and repair. And it's hard to sit back and say that there is meaning in atheism. I love the idea in The Shack, that all roads don't lead to Jesus, but He will walk down any road to find you. He's searching for you more than you could ever search for Him. God wants us more than we could ever want Him.
Sorry that this has just been a rant, but, goodness, I am frustrated by people who believe that they are their only god because I think the bigger picture of humanity forever escapes them. I am frustrated by my willingness to concede to everything when I know that one day I am going to have to stand up and say what I really mean and that means that the lies will come forward. Listening is good. Understanding is good. You can't take Christ to people without knowing where they are. But it's God we're talking about here. I'm not going to let Him be lowered in my speech for the benefit of someone else's confusion.
Call me crazy.
Call me a Christian.
So I'm in this religious studies learning community, right? It's supposed to be supporting a pluralistic way of life. I didn't know what pluralistic was at the beginning of the year and I had to look it up. Religiously, it's the view that all religions are equally valid, without anyone holding the market on truth and rightness, and it pushes coexistence. Now, currently, I'm all for coexistence because, as Voldemort said in a Very Potter Musical, "You think that killing people would make them like you, but it doesn't. It just makes them dead." And then it makes their descendants bitter and then any chance at reconciliation and understanding is put off for millenniums, and that only if neither one of you does anything to make the other mad.
But, you know, I'm realizing more and more that I don't think that all religions or lack thereof are equally valid. Now, before you go hating on me, I'm not going to judge anyone on their religion. I'm reading God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens and he said something like religious people can't leave other people alone. Maybe this is one of my failings as a Christian, but I can leave people alone. If there is not something about my life that sets me apart, that makes me different, something that I have that you don't that you want, if you are completely content in your religious choice, then I'm not going to offer any advice or leave you with any statements. Now, I might pray for you, but that's between me and my God, who is working in you and has been working in you since the day you were born, whether you want Him to or not.
I'm not going to sit back and bash all other religions. I'm not. I think there is value in different religion. I don't think that they're all basically the same, but I do think that things like doing good and searching for truth and being moral are all of merit. I like the Muslim's devotion and I think the practice of praying five times daily is a beautiful thing. I like the Buddhist meditation idea. I love the bittersweet faith of Judaism, the Psalm that comes out of exile, the way of living with a life that's not going to treat you right. And honestly, I love seeing beauty and wisdom in every day life and thank God you don't need a knowledge of Him to see that there is good in this universe.
I said something tonight that I couldn't believe once it left my mouth. We were going around saying our favorite spiritual quote of the moment and the guy next to me quoted LBJ: "Sometimes you have to hunker down and take it like a jackass in a hailstorm." Solid. True. When we were explaining to the larger group the most talked about quote in our smaller group, we had to explain what the group liked about it. Our group used the LBJ quote because it was funny and I happened to justify it by saying, "You know, it's good to hear things like God created the heavens and still cares about man, but sometimes you just need something practical for your everyday life, you know, step down into the real world." Callous. Dismissive. The guy next to me said, "My thoughts exactly."
We went onto the next group and one of the guys I know is Christian said, "Well, I don't know if I can agree with that last statement." They went on and talked about their quote ("Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart, don't know how to laugh either." -Golda Meir, former Israeli prime minister) and the meeting carried on. I shook my head. I don't know if I can agree with my last statement either.
You know, I was just saying it to be rational. I was just saying it to make a Christian seem like a reasonable human being instead of someone who's got too much heaven on their minds. I'm a practical person. You can't feed your children on God and the heavens, try as I might later in life. And John Wesley was a proponent of meeting people where they are. That's totally what I was going for, right?
Incorrect. I was saying something that I knew would be popular. It was accepting. It was understanding. It was me being a pansy and denying what I should have said. The take home message from Passion is that it's all about God's glory. God is glorified in many wonderful things. In every beautiful things that a human being can do, God is glorified. In every preserved bit of this great creation, God is glorified. In the pristine, thankfully untouchable stars, God is glorified. It's all about the Creator who loves us with an unfathomable love and we only get our significance through that.
And that's not accepting of all other religions. I need that glory in my life. I don't think I realized how much my religion needs a heart, how much I have longed to long after God until I went on Passion. It's good for that. It's also good for falling into the emotional high trap and thinking that loud music and good speakers is what modern Christianity is all about. But the people who spoke I truly believe really meant what they were saying and really believed in God. Really believed in God and His great ability to redeem and restore, to prepare and repair. And it's hard to sit back and say that there is meaning in atheism. I love the idea in The Shack, that all roads don't lead to Jesus, but He will walk down any road to find you. He's searching for you more than you could ever search for Him. God wants us more than we could ever want Him.
Sorry that this has just been a rant, but, goodness, I am frustrated by people who believe that they are their only god because I think the bigger picture of humanity forever escapes them. I am frustrated by my willingness to concede to everything when I know that one day I am going to have to stand up and say what I really mean and that means that the lies will come forward. Listening is good. Understanding is good. You can't take Christ to people without knowing where they are. But it's God we're talking about here. I'm not going to let Him be lowered in my speech for the benefit of someone else's confusion.
Call me crazy.
Call me a Christian.
Monday, January 11, 2010
But I Don't Want to Be Quiet
Saturday, I vacuumed up the needles and shards of colored reflective sharpness from the tree, dumping the last insignificant bits of Christmas out of the house in a pine smelling hurricane of dust and ornament debris. Happy end of Christmas break.
I had a 4 o’clock exam on the last day of exams. I walked into Phillips for my 12 o’clock around 11 and walked out afterword to miss the snow and eat pizza and walked back in around 3:30. The world got dark, my weekend plans at home were ruined by a lack of desire to drive up the mountain in the snow and I followed friends around until the Love Feast came Sunday evening and then we drove home. Me and my little brother bought the tree on Tuesday. Between decorating it and taking it down, I spent less hours with this tree than any before it.
Christmas doesn’t really start until I get home. I force my little brother to help me get the boxes down from the attic (that was a party this year with my back), I ask incessantly about the tree and I decorate it and the living room by myself after my older brother puts the lights on the tree. I got home really close to Christmas this year and I left the day after. I missed my tree time. At least one night a year, I turn on the best oldies station I can find and sit and watch the lights of the tree in the window, thinking about the reflection of my life in the music. It’s sappy and wonderful and my soul feels more (or less) human after my time with the tree.
But I just feel tired now, I think. Package me off, shove me in a freezing stadium to watch another great Carolina loss, drive me up to Chapel Hill to play basketball game after basketball game, drive me back and pack me up to head off to Atlanta, bring me back and watch me sleep. I learned a good little bit about driving in Charlotte and about the stadium there. I learned that it is not the best idea in the world to leave me by myself for the vast majority of a couple of days and so shall be seeking company for most of the rest of my life. I learned that I missed my best friend, that I’m insanely jealous of her life in Chile and that it’s not just my father that has a pile of physics questions to ask me. I learned that three nights with 5 hours of sleep pushes a person to the exhaustion point but not to the habitual life of the living dead that a week does. I learned that I listen to sermons and I respond better to worship music when I can worship through a sermon. I learned that January 2nd 2010 was a palindrome. And I learned that even though my heart breaks, I can walk by the pile of packaging that I know is a person frozen more deeply to their bones than I am by the piercing cold snap wind. That tires me.
I loved going on Passion. It was 21,000 Christian peeps descending on Atlanta for a Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning of worship and concerts and workshops. Wonderful. We had this thing set up downstairs where you could package bibles, pay for translations, fund small business loans for women in South America, help pay for a well, package meals, do so much more. We did great stuff there. But we clapped for it like we had cured cancer or solved global poverty. And I’m not saying that we should expect to do something like that, just a bunch of college kids in town for one weekend, but then again, shouldn’t we? Should we really limit God like that?
And I’m guilty too. I’m jealous of the time I didn’t have for my weakness, pretending that time spent in front of the bright bulbs of a Christmas tree is more important than the host of other things that I could be doing. I was recently told that I needed to be more positive about myself and I’ve thought about that. You know, humility is easy when you don’t think much of yourself, but they normally call it self depreciation at that point. I feel like it’s time for an inspirational turn-around statement. Too bad I don’t have one.
Like, I feel like I should be eternally proving myself to God, but that’s not what I’m doing when I feel like doing good in the world. It’s like I’m driven to it. I hardly ever plan on it and it’s generally given out of my ridiculous overabundance. And I don’t talk to Him because I feel like I have to (and my stomach twists around a little at the remembrance of days when I have), I talk to Him because I need to. Sometimes I need to get out anger and frustration and sometimes I need to work something out in a prayerful state because it’s a little easier to see the lies then. Oil and water. And thank goodness I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t give Him lip service. If I can’t mean the words of a hymn or a song, I won’t sing it. I don’t think the little bundle of resentment and questioning is much better but I won’t pretend around the One who knows it all anyway. I want to be honest. It’s a new feeling.
One of my favorite little things about being home is that my windows in my room face west and in the afternoons light streams in, glorious and gracefull, and the frigid white and navy of my room warms up and admits a heart again. It’s not the cold morning light that demands faithfulness and exacts guilty penance on the tired soul, it’s light that’s grown up, having lived a full day, to send love back out on the world just when it needs the confidence and strength to face the light’s absence. And there may come a day when I understand morning light, but I’d rather be afternoon light. My brain might say that the added redness is just the scattering of the longer wavelengths of light in the additional atmosphere that the light must travel through to reach my eyes later in the day and it may explain the weakness of the sunlight on a winter’s morning due to its changed angle and intensity on the ground and it may object to even presenting the idea that afternoon light is older, as if the photon that finally got released from its long journey from the sun’s fusing core is any different in the evening than in the morning, but my heart tells it to shut up just about now. One of these days, our understanding of nature is going to stop being just science and the afternoon light will help us see the worth of everything, everyone.
Ever see the brown of a normal North Carolina winter as the earth sleeps and the sun bathes a river with its last light of the day? Quietly glorious.
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