NaNoWriMo

It is nine whole days into National Novel Writing Month, and I haven't started my novel  yet.  I'm missing out on these thirty days of literary abandon!!

I got distracted.

Shoot.

Let that moment come soon...

It seems as if I am standing on one side of a huge canyon and see how I should grow toward you, live in your presence and serve you, but cannot reach the other side of the canyon where you are. I can speak and write...about the beauty and goodness of the life I see on the other side, but how, O Lord, can I get there?

-  Henri Nouwen, A Cry for Mercy

My life is filled with very good things right now.

I have a steady job.  Affordable rent.  A great housemate.  Beautiful mountains and coastline within reach.  Family nearby. Plentiful food.  Easy transportation.  Good health.  Educational opportunities.  Fall colors right outside my window.

Why, then, am I unhappy?  Why do I still feel like I’m lost in the dark?

It seems so foolish: God has spent the last several years showing me more deeply—more beautifully—that He is what matters.  Not people’s expectations, not my own expectations, not the ways I think I should be serving Him, not how spectacular my life looks.  And yet here I am again, so quickly plagued with doubt and insecurity, so afraid that my life means nothing right now.  So afraid that I have missed what God wanted me to do, that I will always feel adrift and vaguely purposeless. 

And when I see the world around me, around those close to me—the deaths of children, cancer, miscarriages, chronic illness, suicide attempts, friends estranged—I am horrified that I, with my lavish blessings, dare to be unhappy, that I dare to be less than bursting with gratefulness at all times.   But it’s a horror that only makes the sadness soak in deeper, and gives fertile ground to hopelessness.  

The worst part is knowing that I have “the answer”.  Many people are healthy and wealthy, and still sense an emptiness.  I mean, that’s what we tell them when we evangelize, right?  “Still trying to fill that void with [money, sex, success, beauty, drugs, other]?  That’s the God-shaped vacuum in you, that He’s just waiting to fill.  Nothing else can fill it.”

So, what, then, when you have health and wealth and Jesus, and still have a void?  What, when you re-read the things you’ve written—those beautiful lessons, those assurances of grace and significance in Christ, those times when God has been here—and doubt they can ever have been your words?

I know—know for certain—that God has not abandoned me.  I believe His promises never to forsake me.  I know that He is my hope, and my hiding place; my glory and the lifter of my head.  He is faithful, and glorious, and worthy of all praise.  I can see it with my eyes, and even recount it with my lips.  But somehow I can’t get that knowledge to matter, in my gut.  I know that we are not promised warm fuzzy “God is present” feelings all the time.  I know that feelings are not everything.  But somehow  “knowing” that that He’s close, that He loves me, that I’m safe in Him—when I feel so exposed and sin-soaked and alone—makes the separation seem that much more profound.

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thanks, indeed.

I can only keep trying to be faithful, even though I feel faithless most of the time. What else can I do but keep praying to you, even when I feel dark; to keep writing about you, even when I feel numb, to keep speaking in your name, even when I feel alone.

…

I read about "knowing you," about the ways one comes to a knowledge of you, and I pray that what I understand with my mind will descend one day into my heart and give me inner light.

I call to you, O Lord, from my quiet darkness. Show me your mercy and love. Let me see your face, hear your voice, touch the hem of your cloak. I want to love you, be with you, speak to you and simply stand in your presence. But I cannot make it happen. Pressing my eyes against my hands is not praying, and reading about your presence is not living in it.

But there is that moment in which you will come to me, as you did to your fearful disciples, and say "Do not be afraid, it is I". Let that moment come soon, O Lord. And if you want to delay it, then make me patient.  Amen.  - Nouwen

Amen. 

The Merton Prayer

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, from Thoughts in Solitude

Contentment vs. Complacency

Sometimes there is a hard line to walk between contentment and complacency, I think.

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, I was recently offered a job with that organization I applied to last fall, and I declined it.  I'm confident I made the right decision.  The timing just wasn't quite right.

It was an odd decision to make, though, because--once again--I found my life being directed towards, well, nothing that looks like anything "exciting".  It's basically more of the same of what I do now.  So I found myself wondering whether I was choosing to pass up the new job because keeping my current one is just simpler.  And it made me start second-guessing whether all those past things I had interpreted as "closed doors" were actually just my own lack of initiative, my own unwillingness to face the challenges of something new.

As I wrestled with these questions, it became clear to me that the two options--the new job vs. moving back to Oregon--were becoming a secondary dichotomy in my mind: the "responsible" choice (consistency, benefits, room for career growth) vs. the "fun" choice (flexibility, people I already know and love, travel plans).

For, weird as it may seem to some people, including myself some days, I'm really liking my life--job included--right now.  Which is where the fine line between contentment and complacency becomes relevant.  Surely being happy in a job I'm overqualified for, outside my obvious "gifting", with no real opportunity to advance, is a sign I'm settling, right?  I often find I don't give myself full permission to relax and enjoy right now for what it is, because relaxing is too much like giving up.

But recently, I have been considering the difference between "giving up on" and "letting go of", and find the distinction to be monumental.  Releasing my own expectations of how God should use me--complete with its rather over-inflated sense of personal destiny--does not require me to give up my loves or gifts or desires.  It just means I give them back to God, to do with as He will.  And with that release comes an immense freedom to be where I am and love where I am.  I can eagerly expect God to do great things and to bring me to a "better fit" for myself and my gifts while also recognizing that God's idea of "great things" and a "good fit" may be radically different than my own in this moment.  And I can know that that's okay, too, because He's God.  And I'm not.

It's interesting: I had always thought I was making myself available to God because I was willing to travel far and live in difficult conditions and sacrifice many luxuries.  But I’m coming to see that I was still making myself as unavailable as the rich man who says “I’ll follow you if you don’t make me sell my stuff,” or the comfortable guy who says “I’ll follow you if you don’t make me do something dangerous.”  My ultimatum was just nobler in my own eyes: “I’ll follow you if you don’t make me do something boring, or unimportant.

I tell God, “Here I am, send me anywhere!” but squirm as I hear Him say, “Anywhere?  Even where you already are?”  I tell Him, “Here I am, I’ll do anything!” and hear Him say, “Anything?  Even this job that seems so insignificant?  Even these things that look like ‘nothing’ to the world, and to yourself?"

And those questions are hard for me to answer.

Obviously, stretching situations are important, and to be sought.  But, in many ways, this "not doing anything exciting" is stretching for me.  I am having firmly to declare the object of my worship: my own adventurous plans to serve God, or God Himself.  And I think my faith--in Him, in His plans, in His goodness, in His all-sufficiency--is in some ways being tested and grown more through this period of stillness than it would be if the heavens opened and He told me to sell all my possessions and move to Bangladesh tomorrow.

And there is such rest when we release our plans to Him.  Whatever inconsistencies and false motivations and sins clog our decision-making, God in His crazy grace remembers that we are dust and honors our efforts to serve and obey Him.  And we don’t have to have perfect motives for God to use us (or else He never could).  And even if we make the “wrong” choice, God will not abandon us in our foolishness, but will still work it into something beautiful, to His glory.

That's pretty darn fantastic.

Indeed, perhaps the prize of contentment and the risk of complacency are not related in the way I first proposed.  Perhaps the only place to fear complacency is in our pursuit of God, because--when we seek Him first, and live within His will--we are free to be deeply contented regardless of whether the world recognizes our efforts as valid or not.

So, here's to the adventure of life in Christ.  ...Even when it looks like it's leading us to where we already are.

The Cube (or more accurately, The Rectangular Prism)

All packed!

Hopefully, it's now in storage somewhere in Bel Air, Maryland, until I tell them where to send it...

Changes

So, a lot has happened since my last post: the house I'm living in has sold, I received (and declined) a job opportunity with the same organization I applied to last fall, and I am now packed and ready to head back to the West Coast for a bit.

It all happened quite fast.  But it's good.  I'm excited.  Crazy fun things await me on my home coast.

I'll miss this quirky, eclectic city, though.  The distinctive neighborhoods, the wicked thunderstorms, the rowhouses, the fireflies, the way everything is so crammed together out here.

Mostly the people, though.  I found me good people here.

So, it's good, but it's a little sad, too.

I guess moving is like that.

Swallow Falls

My first camping trip of the year!  My friends and I headed out to Swallow Falls State Park in western Maryland.  There we are, at the top of Maryland's tallest waterfall:

Okay, yes, all of us on the trip are from the west coast, so it wasn't all that spectacular as a "tallest" waterfall.  To us, it was more of a waterstep.  But that didn't prevent its being quite beautiful.  And you could clamber around on rocks and even go behind the falls a bit, which was obviously fun.

We also encountered an army of tiny frogs at our campsite.  I mean, tiny:

They were everywhere.  Some were as small as my pinky nail.  It was impressive.

Add campfires, star-watching, a resounding thunderstorm, tarp forts, canoeing, more hiking, good conversation, freakishly large (beautiful) moths, and an almost continuous bout of hysterical laughter (it happens when Stephanie and I get together...what can I say?), and you have good times.

Skywatching

Every clear Friday, Johns Hopkins opens it's observatory to normal folk like myself.  Last night, I got to see Saturn and two of its moons, various stars, and a few globular clusters through their crazy-big telescope (although it's not as crazy-big as these are).  It was gorgeous.  And it didn't hurt that there was this little kid up there with his parents, who gasped with delighted excitement every time he saw something through the eyepiece.

There are so many things to be excited about seeing in this world of ours.  I hope I don't ever outgrow delighted gasping.

Floccinaucinihilipilification

flɒksəˌnɔsəˌnaɪhɪləˌpɪləfɪˈkeɪʃən/
-noun

Definition: The estimation of something as valueless or trivial.

My friend Lauren taught me this word this week.  It makes me very happy just knowing it exists.

Relativity

It is amazing how gloriously cool and refreshing 75˚ feels after a 99˚ day...

The Present

For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity… [I]n it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. [God] would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present - either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.

- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Waiting. 

I know that has been a recurring theme in this blog these last couple years. 

Right now, as I struggle with envy and wounded pride and frustration as people around me have these crazy life adventures—graduations, weddings, babies, world travel, new jobs—while I seem to be left behind, the concept of waiting seems, well…relevant.  Important to grapple with, and figure out, and accept.

So often, when I voice my confusion to people, they respond with encouragement along these lines: “It is good to be waiting on the Lord.  He is preparing you for something.  He has plans for you, a place for you, and He’ll show them to you in His timing.  Take heart, and be patient.”

Those words show up again and again: “waiting”, “preparing”, “timing”, “patience”.

But lately I find myself wondering at so much focus (my own as well as others') being placed on the unrealized aspect of God’s work in my life.  Like this is a stretch of time “to endure” until He shows me what He actually has planned.   Like I’m in limbo, sitting around in some metaphysical waiting room, idly flipping through magazines in a mostly-meaningless state until I am called up to fulfill the appointment that will give my existence significance.

...Does that not fail to recognize that God is at work even now? 

I am told to be patient; that this period is not wasted.  But I find myself thinking, “Of course it isn’t wasted.  Why do we have to assume that it is?”

I am told that this season of my life will be shown to matter in the future.  But I find myself asking, “Why can’t it matter in the present?”

To say that I am only “waiting on God’s time and place for me” is to cheapen—or even miss altogether—the glorious reality that, in this moment—the only moment I can experience—God's time for me is now, and his place for me is here.

This is the day that the Lord has made. 

We are free to "bear the present cross, receive the present grace, and give thanks for the present pleasure."

The smell of the thunderstorm outside.  Seeing my little garden patch grow.  Conversations with neighbors.  Tears of frustration and confusion and comfort as I seek the will of God.  Reading books and writing birthday cards and sharing meals with my friends.  Whether I am actively engaged in a spiritual battle or merely going cross-eyed proofreading documents at work, God is present, and there is glory to be given Him.

Now.  Right this second.

The people God has placed around me have been a tremendous means of encouragement, and solace, and truth-bearing in this sometimes discouraging season: God’s timing is best.  He does have plans.  He doesn’t waste our experiences.  His plans don’t always (usually) make sense in our limited vision. 

We can indeed look forward to the future with anticipation of great things to come and great works to be done. 

But we live here.  We live now. 

Even as we eagerly wait for God’s plans to unfold, let us never forget that we are already in the midst of them.

Assurances

Okay, so I don't have any more pictures from Chicago.  At least not at the moment.  They all require more color-correction and the like than I've bothered with so far.  (Hopefully your appetites didn't get too whetted.)

But I wanted to post, at least, to confirm that I'm still alive and haven't completely forgotten that I have a blog.  In fact, I even have blog-worthy things to say.  And hopefully, I'll say them soon.  For now, though (because it's late), I'll just say that God is good.  That's something that bears lots of repeating.

God is good.  All the time.

May you have new eyes to see that goodness this week.

The Bean

Here's a picture from Chicago!  Just one for now, to whet your appetite...

Cherry Blossoms

Yesterday some friends and I headed down to DC for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival.  We had fine(ish) weather, good conversation, plenty of blossoms, dinner out, and a spectacular 180˚ cloud-to-cloud lightning storm on the way home.  What more could you ask for on a Sunday afternoon, really?

Patterns

I thought I'd share my latest doodle:

I'm not sure if it's done yet, but I like it so far...

Done with taxes!

Woo hoo!

We are seeing crazy things all over the world right now: uprisings and earthquakes and droughts and unrest.  All of these things bring chaos while they are happening, but let us remember the after-effects as well.


I just finished reading an update from the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) describing the desperate refugee situation as thousands of Libyans are flooding into Tunisia, overwhelming the aid infrastructure.  As we pray for peace in our world, please include the many people in Libya, in Côte d'Ivoire, in New Zealand, all over the world--currently more than 43 million worldwide--who have been left without anywhere to go. 

Books (sort of)

I was at a big chain bookstore yesterday, and there was an entire shelving unit devoted to "New Paranormal Romantic Teen Fiction" ... I didn't  know whether to laugh or cry.

I Lie in Pieces Before Thee

O God, may Thy Spirit speak in me that I may speak to Thee. I have no merit, let the merit of Jesus stand for me. I am undeserving, but I look to Thy tender mercy. I am full of infirmities, wants, sin; Thou art full of grace.

I confess my sin, my frequent sin, my wilful sin; all my powers of body and soul are defiled: a fountain of pollution is deep within my nature. There are chambers of foul images within my being; I have gone from one odious room to another, walked in a no-man's-land of dangerous imaginations, pried into the secrets of my fallen nature.

I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself; I have no green shoot in me nor fruit, but thorns and thistles; I am a fading leaf that the wind drives away; I live bare and barren as a winter tree, unprofitable, fit to be hewn down and burnt. Lord, dost Thou have mercy on me?

Thou hast struck a heavy blow at my pride, at the false god of self, and I lie in pieces before Thee. But Thou hast given me another master and lord, Thy Son, Jesus, and now my heart is turned towards holiness, my life speeds as an arrow from a bow towards complete obedience to Thee. Help me in all my doings to put down sin and to humble pride. Save me from the love of the world and the pride of life, from everything that is natural to fallen man, and let Christ's nature be seen in me day by day. 

Grant me grace to bear Thy will without repining, and delight to be not only chiselled, squared, or fashioned, but separated from the old rock where I have been embedded so long, and lifted from the quarry to the upper air, where I may be built in Christ for ever.

- "Heart Corruptions," a Puritan Prayer from The Valley of Vision

Weather!

I wish I could better describe it.

Everything that was white--that is, almost everything, from the snow-covered ground to the snow-smothered trees to our snow-coated coats to the snow-filled air--surreally suspended in purple lightning-light, just before a chest-hollowing thunderclap sounded overhead.

Thunderstorms and snowstorms.  A beautiful combination I had not before experienced.

We currently have several inches of snow and more falling...

Bread

Thanks to my Oregon-siblings gifting me with a bread-making book for Christmas, I have been baking bread like a crazy person.  I actually don't eat sandwhich-type bread too much, so in bread books I go straight for the fun and unusual ones.  Braided breads are a particular favorite, just because they're so darn pretty.

My favorite of the moment, though?  Chopped apple bread.  You make this lovely yeast dough, roll it out, fold apples and raisins and walnuts and brown sugar into it, then hack the whole thing into random little pieces and scoop the fragments into a bread pan.  The resulting bread is fluffy and apple-y and delicious.  And the hacking-to-bits part is wickedly satisfying.

I have been making it far too often.  Good thing I'm finding people to foist my baking upon.

Learning to Pray

"To learn to pray" sounds contradictory to us. Either the heart is so overflowing that it begins to pray by itself, we say, or it will never learn to pray.  But this is a dangerous error, which is certainly very widespread among Christians today, to imagine that it is natural for the heart to pray.  We then confuse wishing, hoping, sighing, lamenting, rejoicing--all of which the the heart can certainly do on its own--with praying.  But in doing so we confuse earth and heaven, human beings and God.  Praying certainly does not mean simply pouring out one's heart.  It means, rather, finding the way to and speaking with God, whether the heart is full or empty.  No one can do that on one's own.  For that one needs Jesus Christ.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prayerbook of the Bible

"Whether the heart is full or empty."  Sometimes I think we forget that prayer--being a privilege, a mystery, and an altogether crazy concept--is also a discipline.  It's something we have to practice, and to learn.  And that those times we sit down to pray and feel devoid of words or prayers to offer, we should pray anyway.  And can pray anyway, because, really, prayer isn't about us.  And it certainly doesn't originate in us.  It's a picture of grace that we get to pray at all.

I'm glad we get to pour out our hearts, too, though, when they're sighing and rejoicing and all that.  ...And that we have a really patient teacher.

Monk by the Sea

I found this painting, Monk by the Sea (Caspar David Friedrich, 1809), this week:

It's now my computer's wallpaper.

If any of you are into randomly looking at beautiful works of art, I highly recommend The Web Gallery of Art, which has high resolution images of thousands of pre-20th century pieces (with background/explanations).

When I find myself wanting to flee technology and find refuge in the unspoiled (well, relatively unspoiled) natural world of the pre-industrial age, I console myself with such things: the access we have to the world's artistic contributions--visual, literary, and musical; across time and geography--is astounding.  I suppose there are in fact privileges that come with 21st century life.  (Okay, hygienic, medical, and educational practices are a bit better, too...  And maybe a few other things.  But think of the night skies you would have been able to see.)

One year later...

One year ago today, I arrived in Baltimore.


No fixed plans.  No set timeframe.  Open to whatever God wanted. 

Ready for anything.

Now, I knew that this “anything” might be difficult.  Part of me was even eager for the challenge; anxious to be tested, to be grown, to be taught.

I thought maybe the hard part would be a new job, just outside my comfort zone.  Or rewarding but emotionally draining humanitarian work.  Or adjustment to the academic rigors of grad school.  Or moving again, near or far, to a new, challenging calling.  Culture shock.  Compassion fatigue.  Language barriers.  Even plain old fear.

I prepared myself, as best I could.

When the difficulty came, though, it caught me off my guard.  It wasn’t on the list.

It was, in fact, the absence of the list.

Stillness.

…Stillness, I have learned, is difficult.

Stillness is even more difficult when surrounded by ridiculously brilliant and talented people who are launching careers and moving overseas and getting married and being promoted and having babies and graduating with fancy-sounding degrees; when the lives of people everywhere seem not just to be moving, but hurtling, forward.  Past you.

In fact, in some ways, it was—is—more difficult than everything on my list put together.

And I think that is the point.

In this stillness, I can't keep feeling important because of how good my school marks are or how intrinsically rewarding my career is or how clever I feel or how necessary I am to some cause.

All those things are being stripped away, and all my weaknesses and inadequacies laid bare.

And—like when Eustace had his dragon skin torn off of him*—it is terrible, and painful, and beautiful, and good.

Perhaps (I'm beginning to see) this stripping down—this frustrating inability to be important in the world—is the only way I'll be able to see my actual significance, and how unrelated it is to what I'm able to do.

Perhaps, for now, it is only by not going and facing great trials and doing great deeds that I am brought to the end of my strength and forced to rely on God for my every breath—my very self—in ways I couldn't have imagined.

Perhaps it is only in this still and small-seeming life that I can learn that “identity in Christ” is not a fluffy phrase to throw around, but a stunning, vital, from-your-soul-to-your-guts-to-your-fingertips reality that makes the questions of job-title and education-level and humanitarian-ness as fleeting and irrelevant as dust specks.

Stillness is not empty.  It is not insignificant.  

This year was not wasted, nor merely a time of waiting for the “real” things to begin.  It was a time of actively, energetically—albeit sometimes grudgingly—being still.  And God tested me, and grew me, and taught me.  He did stuff.  Good stuff.

It was a very good year.  Difficult, as I expected.  Just not difficult how I expected.  And I 
think that made it even better.

So, now.


One year later.


I find myself still here.  Still in Baltimore.


Still no fixed plans.  Still no set timeframe.  Still (some days more than others) open to whatever God wants.

Ready for anything.

Even for more stillness, I think.

...I wonder, then, which unexpected thing I should prepare not to be prepared for this year...
------------------------------------------
* In C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader