Lessons from a Fountain

I'm sitting by the fountain in Bynum circle, watching the leaves float by and catching them before they get stuck in another loop in the fountain's current. It's late and it's kinda cold. The stars don't reflect this far down. I'm surrounded by the earth bound arcs of the stone benches that surround the fountain. The trees lean over the benches, protecting them but blocking the light from me.

I sit and watch my hand's shadow in the dim lamplight as I dip it into the water. It's funny, it looks like a hand before it hits the water and then after it's been in the water a little while, but if you let your fingers skim the surface, you only get the shadows of the distortions your hands cause in the water. I sit here, watching the water make a bracelet around my wrist's shadow, for a little while.

I think what we do in life is like that, sometimes. Right when you jump into something, all you can see are the ripples. It's like you've lost yourself for a second in what you're doing. But after a little bit, life settles down and you can see your imprint again, unless you just sit on the edge, forever disturbing but never jumping in.

Then again, sometimes I think the world that's in the relationship between us and God is like that. We think we're something else, we can even see a distinct shadow out of the water, out of God. And then we think that everything's coming to an end, we're not who we were, we can never get ourselves back, when we start getting into the water. But then the water settles and we come back. And it's not the same, it's different. But it's not wrong either.


Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.
--Soren Kierkegaard

A Melody

I met a guy.

Well, maybe 'met' implies too recent of an acquaintance. He's older than me and he's known my family since before I was born, so I guess I've known him my whole life. I didn't think about it like that though. I grew up with him but we never talked all that much until middle school when I found out how awesome he is. He's just... he's so observant of the world around him and so concerned for other people. It's inspiring, really. I love to hear him talk about what he's done. The places he's been! I mean, he's a world traveler and it seems like he's always gotten to know the people where he's been to an absurd degree. He can tell you about an orphanage in South Africa like he grew up there or a church in Scotland like he watched it being built. He's got all these stories and he knows so much about life. Life and death and everything, it seems like. I love talking to him. You should meet his father, too. They're so similar and it's just great to see how well they get along and how much they really love each other. There's so much to learn, but you don't get caught up in that so much. When he talks, you can tell that he really, really cares about people.

So we started talking in middle school, nothing too intense. Middle schoolers, they're an odd bunch of kids. They're like mini-adults seeing the world with a pretty messed up pair of glasses and they're always convinced they're right. I'm sure that everyone who saw me and this guy together sat back and said that it was something that was going to last, but nobody said it to me. It's like Simba and Nala: you know they're going to end up together for the rest of their lives but you kinda cringe when Zazu says so. You'd rather they just found out for themselves. I think the adults in my life just let me find out for myself that this guy was the one.

It came on so gradually. I'd known him as long as I can remember and I'd always loved being around him, but I don't think I can pinpoint the day when I decided that I loved him. I think I acknowledged it once in middle school, maybe more to myself than anyone else, though people saw it. I don't think that was it, though. I don't think that I really loved him then. We had an on-again, off-again relationship in high school. High school is so distracting. There are so many other guys, so many other things to do. The world is your metaphorical oyster in high school, or at least you think it is. So I was concerned with everything that happened in high school during the year and it's hard to say that I knew that I loved him then.

We did work at the same camp for a lot of summers though. That was amazing. It was like everyone else there knew him too, he was our common thread. He's always been around in my life. I could always call him or meet up with him somewhere, but it was wonderful having him around all the time over those summers. And even though there were distractions there, too, one of which I still carry around in my heart, I really felt like that's when I fell in love with this guy. He cared so deeply for all the campers and he was willing to do anything to make their lives better. He was in all the music that I heard. It's amazing how, when you're in love, it seems like every love song is written for you. I remember moments like that, when I'm singing along to a song that seems like it was written for me and him. I miss that so much.

But even then, I didn't say too much about us. I wasn't sure. I mean, I'd said that I loved him to a lot of people, but I don't know if I had realized that I wanted to spend my life with him then. Then college came and I didn't make the time to let him come visit as much as I should have and all that mess. I met some people who straight up hated him and that amazed me. I met some people who said that they'd met him, but they didn't talk about him like I did and that confused me. I still called him pretty often, though, and we talked. And talked. And talked. And I thought a lot about how much he meant to me. Last year, I decided that I wanted a ring- I wanted the world to know that we were together and I wanted to be reminded every second of every day that I was his. I've had twenty million seconds of cold feet in between now and then. What if someone better comes along and I'm devoted to this guy? I don't think that can happen but you never know. What if I'm at the altar, what if I'm already married and I meet my soul mate? These are questions you shouldn't have. You should be so in love that there's no question- you've already met the only one for you.

Some people get love at first sight or they look across a room and that's all they needed to know. Their stories are so much better. Some people figure out through the course of a crisis that the person they hated is really the person they loved more than anything else. I don't have that. I don't have that great love story. I know I love him but I don't know why and I couldn't tell you when it started. Lately, we've been taking a break, it seems like. I didn't see him keeping his promises to me and I've forgotten what is was that made me think that he and his father were so good. And he says that he's saved the world, but it has a Hiro-esque ring to it. Save the cheerleader, save the world. The world is still not saved. I mean, I know he's still working, but I never see him at it anymore. The love songs still ring true, but it's not like it was back then. I feel like I'm reliving some kind of former glory. Son, can you play me a memory? I'm not really sure how it goes. But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.

People have been asking questions about us. Some one straight up asked me last night, if I had to pick, would I say I was in love. And I said no. But I want to be, so badly. I wanna go back to what I had. But I've grown up. I don't think I can have the same kind of relationship I had in middle school or high school or even my first year here. I want something more, but I'm not willing to commit to it. I'm scared. I'm scared of what he and I can do together. I'm scared of where he'll take me- I won't let him travel alone. There's just so much to think about and it means so much more now, when I know what love means.

We had a good talk last night, though, after I got back from going out. I'm sick of hearing about him from someone else, because you know everyone colors the story their own way when they retell it. I'm going to reread his letters to me. They were so sweet when I first got them. He made me promise to keep them around, probably just for this very time, so I'd remember him even while he's busy in other places. I don't need anyone to tell me to love him. I don't need convincing to do that- goodness, it was so weird when people tried. I'm figuring out how to love him better and then maybe one day I'll be able to shout love from the rooftops instead of whispering confusion in the chapel.

Oh, by the way, his name's Jesus. Just in case you couldn't tell.

A Stance

I need to know what I believe and I need to write that down, for my own benefit more than for others. So even though this is super public and open to the world, it's a much more selfish post (like the other ones haven't been...). Maybe someone will see it and hold me to it.

First off, I am obviously a Christian. I believe everything in the Apostle's Creed and that is the rock basis of my faith. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. Without a real, present God, none of this can happen.
I believe in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord. I do believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, the Christ, I believe He was the Son of God and I recognize Him as the guiding force in my life. Now, whether I listen to that force all the time or not is irrelevant to this conversation. I'm just trying like everyone else. But I believe that He is something much more than a dead leader.
Now things that aren't totally necessary to my faith, but I still believe: that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. If one day that turns out to be something we've misunderstood, it won't rock my core.
This next bit, however, is quite important. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day, He rose again. He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father, from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I remember reading Mere Christianity and CS Lewis saying something like the early Christians were convinced by one fact: the Resurrection. My faith hangs on that too. If Jesus of Nazareth died by crucifixion and stayed dead, then I might as well leave him on my cross because the world was not changed. But if He arose and defeated death and changed the order of the universe and freed me from captivity to sin and death, then I need to live out some thanks for that. The distant God the Father didn't save me until Jesus did.
And finally, I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Put a parenthetical note around the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. I'm not sure it means what I always thought it meant and I'm not sure how much the gospels preach it but I'll build up that house over time. I believe in the church universal with all my being and I want to see her on this earth as she was meant to be. The Holy Spirit is the practical result of what happened when Christ came.

So that's the basics. From that, I build a little hesitantly. I am a huge fan of prevenient grace, God through the Holy Spirit working in you even before you know it. I also believe that what Christ did enables us to be delivered from sin and death by justifying grace and I believe that through the Holy Spirit again, He gives us sanctifying grace to make us more holy, to make us better. I mean, what can I say? I'm a Wesleyan sucker. But I will admit that this is all dogma that I like. I like the 'Wesley quadrilateral' too, where you make decisions based on scripture, tradition, reason and experience. Let me unpack that a little for you, as my professors are fond of saying.

Here's where I get a little annoying to other Christians, I think. I'm probably a good bit too liberal but, you know, I was this way even before I went away to college. I think I kinda hid this while I worked at camp because there's no reason to confuse kids and there's no reason to kill a good message. But this is what I think. This is how I read my bible and what other people have to say about it and this is why I get a little annoyed at people sometimes. I believe that the Bible was written by men and men with a purpose in mind. I love what my Hebrew Bible professor said about the Old Testament: It's the story of a people trying their best to worship a holy God. It was complied and edited by men who legitimately thought they were doing good by combining multiple sources and traditions together to help preserve their culture and the worship of their national God who I think is the God who created the universe. But that doesn't mean that it was written with me in mind, this far away. Even Paul's letters weren't written with me in mind. I think it's wonderful how the Holy Spirit can take things that weren't intended for me and show me something that I need to see in order to worship God with my words and my life. But that doesn't mean that I agree with the story of Joshua, which is neither historically accurate nor faithfully comforting. Maybe I'm too much of a pacifist, but I think that do not murder means don't kill, regardless of who the person you're killing is. I'm guilty right now of using the commandments in Exodus without a complete understanding of their placement in the Bible due to the historical and cultural influences at the time, so I'm as bad as the next person, but I see that I'm that bad and I see that, even from a faith perspective, you can't just sit down and say, 'What does this mean for me?' Read the Bible allegorically all you want and maybe that's the meaning that you're supposed to get out of it, but don't dream for a second that it's all about you.

I'm big on tradition, too, because it's comforting, but I'm also big on reasoning. There's an agnostic in my learning community who said that he reads Job as the powers that be, whatever they are, sending a message to man, saying, 'How dare you presume to know what I think, what I mean and what I want? Stop with your pathetic little religions. You can't even comprehend who I am.' He takes that a step farther to express his disbelief that any race can claim to have any kind of special relationship with that power that is. This makes reasonable sense to me. If I didn't have proof in the form of Christ that God cares, I might be inclined to believe what he says. I'm big on thinking for yourself, for not taking any doctrine that's shoved at you without comparing it to what makes sense and what's in the Bible, taking into account everything the Bible's got in it. I'm not saying there's layers and layers of interpretive meaning in the Bible, though I do know that you can read something new in it every time you read a passage, something that didn't make sense to you before that's revealed by the Holy Spirit. You just gotta think. God gave you a brain and free will for a reason. Now that reason might be different from what I think it is, but there's always a decent reason with my God.



And then, just to roundly make people mad, I hate altar calls. I'll come up and pray, but I am not going to tell you that every person who ever walked up in front of a congregation understands what they're getting into. There's an ocean to Christianity, to the following of the Christ, that cannot be summed up in 20 seconds praying at an altar. I hate the idea that it's all just about our 'personal relationship with Jesus Christ.' I think it's important, don't get me wrong, but there's so much more to be done for the Christian community and the community at large that gets left out when we're just good out of our personal relationship. We were made for community (arbitrary statement with proof following sometime). So I hate it when religious leaders pray out loud and give someone a single prayer to pray that's going to make everything better because that's not all that it's about. No, I realize that there's a moment, that there was a moment, when I realized that I needed help from God and that God had already made plans for this and carried them out almost 2,000 years ago. But that doesn't coincide with the time that I answered an altar call and I don't think it has to. So I hate the word 'saved.' I'm not as much of a fan of the emphasis on a personal relationship as I used to be. And I am so against forgetting how big God is and how much we don't know about Him yet and how much we presume that we understand, because at the end of the day we're all trying to control things too big for us.

So that's it. Explanation over. I mean, there are logical consequences and there are things that the jury's still out on, but it's a springboard to launch off of, you know. It doesn't mean that I hate Baptists and it doesn't mean that I doubt the validity of your faith if you recognize that your journey started at an altar. We're all different and we've all got different ways of relating to the Creator. I'm not saying that there's not a universal truth, I'm saying that it's not that easy. It's not all mind and it's not all heart. And I'm not judging (as much as you think I am) and I'm not saying I've got it all figured out. But you can't say to me that 'Well, I can't give you a reason why, it's just what my faith tells me.' That is a sidestepping of the real point. Your faith is not your answer without thought. I agree, sometimes there are things that just don't make sense, that are wonderfully nonsensical, like the God of the universe that loves even me. But not every cold, hard fact and implication of your faith can be explained away with warm fuzzies. And that's where I stand.