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

Patience, hard thing!

Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
To do without, take tosses, and obey.
Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,
Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks
Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks
Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.
 
We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills
To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills
Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.
And where is he who more and more distils
Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills
His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), Untitled, pub. 1918

Not Destination 'A'

Well, it appears that--once again--I am not headed towards the expected Destination A.  I'll know more certainly about the job this coming week, but the latest is that it's going to someone else.

Now it just remains to be seen where I'm headed instead...

Love, Remembered

I recently found this email which I wrote to a friend back in 2007, during a difficult and beautiful time while I was at university and God was using pain to teach me about love. Finding it was encouraging to me, as it reminded me again how manifestly kind God was to me during that time, and to remember anew how amazing His love really is (...if only I didn't forget that so often). It's nothing "original": The things expressed here are things which I have been taught my whole life. And yet I remember, when I wrote the letter, how excited I was to be knowing them—"realer and deeper"—through experiences, for the first time. And anyway, truth always bears repeating, hey? So, as we approach Christmas—our celebration of God's craziest act of love—may you, too, be encouraged by who He is.

Hey ———,

When I ran into you on campus today and was saying how God was doing crazy things and it was good and hard and all that jazz, it made me start thinking about some of the things I've been learning. And then I wanted to share some of them with someone, because they're the kind of thoughts that well up within me and want to be shared, because God is so good and so immense and so Himself.

...I felt like I was in sort of a strange place internally that day we had our walk, and that I couldn't or wouldn't fully articulate what God was doing. My eyes weren't so much on Him at that time, even though looking back now I can see how He was holding onto me and showing grace to me even when I wasn't really seeking it. Since I missed my chance on our walk, here's some of what I would have said if I had known it at the time...

God is good. Something I've "known" since Sunday school, right? But He's not just good to me or good to His people. He is good. Completely.

God is everywhere. That should be terrifying in some ways, hey, since that means He knows everything about us, when we sit and when we rise and when we sleep and what we do and what we think. But that also means that when I'm facing something that seems insurmountable to me, I can't be anywhere where He is not. Ever. There really is no temptation that can seize us or anything that can mess with us outside of the context of Him being there.

But the thing I think I've been thinking and learning about the most is the whole idea of the love of God. And how mysterious and great and freakin' amazing it is. He is love, and He has shown that love to us. Lavishly. He loves us not for any of our individual qualities or even all of our qualities together, but because we're His. He loves us when we aren't lovable by any standard we can muster. He loves us in and through our weakness, more fiercely and protectively and jealously than we can imagine. I think it was the fearsomeness of His love which struck me last night: how overpowering and crushing the force of His love would be if it was anything but His love. He—the infinite, omnipotent, eternal God—is love, and that love is poured so completely on us and around us—finite, broken columns of dust—that it really is rather a wonder that we survive it. A glorious, beautiful, awesome wonder.

In that context, I guess I was thinking about the self-condemnation I often seem to fall into. I see my sin and how it sucks and how I wish it wasn't there and how I must be doing something wrong or praying wrong or "having faith" wrong if the same struggles come back again and again. And I realized I was having this thought that when I sinned, I couldn't turn to His grace immediately, because I thought that somehow cheapened it: I felt like I was "taking advantage" of the fact that He has forgiven my sins and so I needed to wait awhile (or something) before turning back and flinging myself on His mercy. But really, I'm beginning to see that "taking advantage" is the point...that's what makes it grace, hey? And that is so incomprehensible to me. In the best way imaginable.

But with that self-condemnation is a tendency to get myself all confused about what in my head is from God and what is not, and how He could ever possibly like me, and whether I'm actually selfish and petty and mean and arrogant and whatever else is thrown at me. Depraved and crazy. Seeking God "incorrectly". A sorry example of Him for the world. Full of fear and doubt and insecurity. I'm sure I could list more without much effort. And when I get caught up trying to figure whether each accusation is true or not, I think I only confuse the issue. Especially since it is true, really. All of it. I am selfish and petty and mean and arrogant and all those other things.

But I think that by claiming that—by taking those accusations and saying, "yeah, I do that" rather than trying to convince myself that maybe I'm not so bad—when I then point to God and His love and the measure of His sacrifice for me—when I point to the complete and sufficient work of Christ on the cross—His glory can be reflected all the greater. Because it is in those sins that I can see some glimpse of how amazing and all-encompassing and desperately, desperately needed is His grace towards me. Am I seeking Him "incorrectly"? Probably. Like CS Lewis calls our prayers badly-aimed arrows that God has to redirect, it is only His compassion on us that lets us address Him at all, much less to have any of that communication be effective. 

Am I insecure and prone to fear? Yes, I am. But even when I'm afraid, He is holding tightly to me and providing for me in ways that I cannot begin to see. Do I screw up His image when I present it to the world through my life? Yes, I do. And even so, He does His work (I think I make myself more important than I am in how much influence I think I have at messing up God's plans...I mean, really, it's not like they all hinge around me), and regardless, I can rest secure in His love for me. His grace is sufficient for me, and His power made perfect in weakness. So I can boast all the more in my weaknesses, because then others (and I) can see Him better. I screw things up all the time. And I don't have anything really figured out or nailed down. And it is that very fact which makes His love so astounding, and makes the fact that there is no condemnation now in Him because of Christ— none—such a glorious truth to hold onto.

Again, I really wonder how that love doesn't just evaporate us with it's immensity. But He lets us taste it, and sustains us in it, and holds us so tightly that even when we're too tired or stubborn or bewildered or weary even to cling to Him any longer, we are safe and protected and loved.

...This sounds perhaps too much as if I think I understand what's going on. I've noticed that God teaches me the same things over and over and over again, and each time it's realer and deeper and seems to provide such a fundamental part of the whole picture that I wonder how I could ever have thought I knew anything without that piece. And then in His grace He gives another one. And another one. And I see more and more how little I know or see or understand. But the tiny bit I can see is so beautiful, and God is so...God-like, that I wanted to share with someone.

I hope that with school and work and the people God has put around you that you can see that you are loved so utterly and all-encompassingly that there's no escaping it, and that the most mind-blowing part of that love is that it is completely non-dependent on what you do or accomplish or think or say. You are loved because you are ———, and you belong to God.

May you and He delight in each other this week.

Shalom,
Marybeth