little women and why i love old men.

In the nebulous and random details of what I want my life to look like, I have nailed down a concrete trait. Something tangible.

There is a common theme to the movies I love, the books I love, the stories of peoples’ lives that inspire me and make me love them. There is a common idea to  the things I have done and the things I wish I hadn’t done and the other things I only dream about doing. There is an idea I have idealized and don’t understand. I could never quite grasp what it was.

The other day I watched a movie and I cried as I watched it. I was on the couch and I was crying and when it got over I was wondering why I was crying. Is it because she finally got the guy? Is it because I wanted her to be with the other guy? Is it because I just watched a character overcome poverty and hardship and sisters dying and lovers spurning and I got caught up in the fake life in front of me for 90 minutes and then it ended so abruptly?

I found out I was crying for real. because I was hurt, I felt pain. I felt the ache of something that those 90 minutes  had, and now that the movie was over I was missing it in my life and it was like I just found out. I found the common theme, part of what drives me and I never knew it, at least not by this name.

This movie re-introduced this ache, this thing I chase and doubt is possible to live out and that’s why I was crying. It was introduced to me by the name noble. a noble life. Now that I know its name and we have been introduced I can look it in the face and ask it a few questions.

Nobility. I idealize it. It’s the reason I love old men smoking pipes and being grumpy or flirty as they share their childhood or war or depression stories. They have lived life and they have overcome things. I love them being grumpy because they have ideas about how life used to be and they dislike the way it is now and how no one has respect anymore and for the most part they are right.  I love them being flirty because they kiss women on the hand when they meet them and call them princess and open doors and tell girls not to settle for the shmucks. And I think that’s noble.

It’s the reason I love listening to refugees and people from other nations who left what they knew to provide for their family, to start over with near to nothing.Its the reason I hear certain things and talk with certain people  and in return feel inferior and feel the wholeness of my selfishness and the weight of my tunnel vision called self-preoccupation.

I idealize this word and I don’t understand what it means. because it is sparked by the woman sitting behind me in the coffee shop who worked as a teacher for 29 years and raised  her children and they grew up and now she hangs out in coffee shops  every week to be friend, confidant and counselor to a new mom, this 17 year old girl who a baby boy and no one else. The same thing is sparked by the business man who worked for IBM then quit his job to bring fresh water to a village in Africa. It is sparked by  16 year olds who have passion and drive and see that the world is wrong and believe that they can change it and so they do things like give up lattes and save that money and give it to people who need it more than they need caffeine.

And  it makes me want  to be about more noble things.

I ache for what I assume that person feels after they sacrificed their life they knew and followed an idea they had to give running water to villages in Africa, or adopt that child who’s mom abandoned them, or work at Starbucks and two other jobs on the side and go to school at night and know the value and sweat and worth that is in every dollar.

I idealize it. I know it is one of those concepts like, well anything, that isn’t anything special, its just people living and living up to the things placed in front of them and I see it in others and I want it. Like vision,  passion, like staring reality in the face  instead of running and working with it and making circumstances beautiful. I wonder if it can only be found in these movies I watch or in Chicken Soup for the Soul books or in Reader’s Digest.

But its something I think I run from. I run from the noble life to the easy one. To the one that lets me coast and be a free agent;  not bothered by things in my soul because then that means I have to do something about  them. I will have to act. I am scared of what the noble life means to my comfortable life because it takes more work. it takes responsibility and intention.

So back to me crying on the couch watching a movie. There is a scene that explains this all very well. The main character is a writer. She is  pursuing a career and she gives her latest published work to a good friend to tell her what he thinks. He tells her its good, but that she is better than writing about ghosts and vampires and pirates and star-crossed lovers and such nonsense. He tells her that there is more in her to write about, things that mean more. There is a better story inside of her that should be told. She gets mad and leaves and doesn’t talk to him for a while.                                                                    because she writes about what she is comfortable with, what is easy and doesn’t require much emotional disclosure or much of herself .

And I think that’s most of  us.   We are fine living the way we are, telling the stories we are. The ones that the public want, the ones they praise and give rave reviews and admire. Most of us are scared to live out the more noble story. the one that takes giving of ourselves, that takes work.

It takes looking things in the face and asking some questions and making some things happen. It takes developing those things that just won’t leave you alone, that maybe are bothering you for a reason and maybe that reason is your God-given purpose on this earth. It takes hard work and some hurt. It means taking all these great concepts I have and write about and idealize, and and it means living them.

and i think that’s why I cried. for something noble.

“ …the one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth , and speaks as one from the earth..”

We don’t get it, us humans. God is another language. He is something that does not come natural to us. We are able, capable of learning this language, but it takes practice. It takes help. It takes a Master of the practice, the practice himself. Even still, even as we learn and grow and walk forward with him as our guide, we function at a different level; a much, much lower plane of understanding.

Growing up around church, I sometimes think I’ve heard it all, I have it pretty well figured out. Even if I’m not cognitively thinking this, I operate on a level that clearly shows my heart. I tune out of services, I find it hard to read my bible at times because I’ve “read it before”, I say “I’ll pray for you” as the natural response to someone’s problem then promptly forget . I consistently show my low, oh so very low understanding of this process, this practice, this relationship. I’m speaking a completely different language.

With this point of view, I look again to the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. This story has so much going on, so many levels that Jesus is showing the completely different way he is working in, living in, speaking in. He goes out of his way to get a drink of water from a woman in the town of his enemies. Talk about breaking social norms; he is shredding them. No one gets it. The woman, his disciples, the towns people, us.

As she speaks with Jesus, the woman gets a sense, a glimmer that the man is different  but immediately puts up defenses. Jesus offers her living water and she, oh so practically, oh so tragically, points out that he has no bucket(4:11). She is speaking another language. The Living Word, her maker, is offering her eternal life and she can only look at earthly limitations. She has come prepared, she has her bucket.

He again probes and gently tries to break down her defenses, tries to get closer by letting her know how very well he knows her , knows her sin(4:18). She counters by asking him a theological question of where the proper place to worship is. He is getting too close, she is perhaps now understanding, but terrified by this language he is using. She continues to speak another language, to misunderstand. The Savior and Redeemer of her heart is revealing that he knows her sin yet loves her anyway;  revealing that perhaps there is a better way to live and He is it. The woman chooses to miss it, chooses to deflect with a question of who is right, a question of theological debate.  Jesus persists, showing her this water,  this life he offers is possible, is better, is the only life. And finally, she gets it. She allows him to open her eyes and her ears to this new way of speaking, of living, and does the only thing one can after coming face to face with Jesus; she leaves everything she brought with her and goes to tell her entire town about this man who gives living water. She leaves her bucket.

The bible, especially the gospels are full of us missing it, deliberately or simply because we are not speaking the right language. Praise God that Jesus patiently, gently, persistently continues teach us  to speak a different way, work a different way, live a different way. What area in your life are you putting up defenses? In what area does God want you to speak his language, to look at in a different, more eternal light? As you are learning to speak his language and hear his voice a different way, what is he asking of you? Are you willing to listen? Are you willing to leave your bucket?

in the crowd. {mark5}

“Who touched me?” Jesus asks.

In a crowd of people, Jesus asks who touched him.

Surrounded by hundreds of passersby, in a mass of followers clamoring for his attentions, being elbowed and jostled, hands outreached in desperation, he asks the question.

Hearing this, a man scoffs as he passes by. What kind of person asks such athing in a crowd such as this? Not a true man. Certainly not a man who’s worked his way to the top, who commands hundreds of employees, who’s earned all he has with his own hands, now calloused from years of hard labor. A successful businessman, he is simply going about his normal routine, annoyed at the unusual amount of foot traffic through his usual route to work. Hands in his pockets, he muscles his way to his workplace, to start the day the way he’s started every other.

A woman is on her way to the temple. She clutches the purse containing her sacrifice to her chest as she pushes through the mass of people; tightly clasps this offering with hands that have been cleansed and have put her head covering on in the proper and holy custom. She is confused by the throng of followers that surround this man, inconvenienced by the unexpected detour. Hands clutching to her chest that which will take away her sin, one cautious step in front of the other, away from this chaos, she draws nearer to the temple.

His disciples follow closely behind him. They look at each other with that look now so common between them. How is it that this man they have learned from, followed, broke bread with; how is it that they still do not understand him? How can one feel so close to someone, give up everything they have for someone, leave everything they own for him, yet still have no idea why he does or says the things he does and says?

Who is this man who speaks in riddles, in stories, who teaches against all they have heard since birth? What kind of person hears the cries of that lunatic in the graveyard, and leaves the crowd to set him free from the legion that holds him captive? Who consorts with lepers, disabled, who befriends the outcasts over the religious? Who hunts down with abandon the individual who reached a feeble hand out to him in a crowd?

Who does that?

…………………..

Her hand still outstretched, she stumbles so as not to fall over completely. She has heard of this man, watched his talks from a distance, heard what the people are saying about him, how he does these things, says these things, makes these things live, makes these things whole.

Not sure what to believe, she follows him now with no other choice or options. If she can only tell him her story, tell him how she has been sick; no, dying, for over a decade, surely he will take pity, surely he will heal her the way he healed the others. But there are too many people, too many demands on his attention, too many others. She is lost in the crowd. She grabs blindly, reaching for something, anything, knowing that any contact at all with this man is what she needs. Not even sure why she is so sure of this, not sure what it is about him that compels everything within her to reach out, she reaches.

As she grasps, through the crowd, through the many hands and faces and hearts and hurts around her, she feels fabric. And in an instant, She feels known. She feels health, restoration. She feels whole.

Jesus seeks her out. He has felt her faith, felt her hands.

In the midst of the crowd, the hands going about their own business, the hands working to save themselves, the hands that are clasped too tight to be opened even if they wanted, he seeks out the hands that reached out in brokenness. Who have reached out with absolute faith and knowledge that there is no other place to turn.

In the crowd, in the chaos, she has come into contact with him who makes all new, who heals the broken, who chases after the one in the midst of many, who seeks out the faith of an outstretched hand.

gods.

Somewhere along the way of correct biblical upbringing and twelve years of Christian education, I became a poly theist.

No violent conversion, no dramatic walking away from the faith, just a gradual shift from the One and towards the many.

The shift was so gradual in fact, that I myself was unaware it had taken place, yet it has become evident in my practices, my faith, my worship. I serve many gods.

There is the god who feels like listening to my prayers; there is the god who doesn’t.

There is the god who loves me more than anyone else on this earth and is preoccupied completely with my concerns, more than all the rest.

There is the god who holds grudges when I don’t read my bible for a week.

There is the god of old testament proportions, who is ominous and far off, cold and uncaring to the plight of humanity, let alone the individual.

There is the god who smiles indulgently at my impulsive and selfish whims, like a father at his spoiled daughter.

There is the god who demands of me perfection, who punishes when I slip, who turns his back when I miss it the first time.

There is the god who has a marvelous plan for my life that will allow me to serve him without sacrificing anything.

Odd isn’t it. Some have a quality of the One, a trait that can perhaps be traced back to Him, just isolated and magnified, making it horribly distorted. Forgiveness, love, jealousy, righteous anger stand alone in the characters of these gods, making them either push-overs or task-masters.

Were there a Being with all these facets, containing these qualities in an incomprehensible existence that is before all and makes all new.

And yet I know him, the One I was intending to serve, somehow ending up here trying to please these entities of wrath and vending-machine-convenience providers.

I want the God I talk to in the morning, the God I sing to in church,the God who joined the three in the fire, the God who cannot tolerate sin, the God who wants my faith to be authentic, the God who laughs and delights in His creation, the God who sees our pain, who can make this life have beauty and meaning,the God that commands me to share His redemption story to others,

To be the One I serve.

one-sided door

i seek and i knock and i ask and i find not;

what were to happen if i truly believed

someone was on the other end of this one sided door?

would mountains crumble?

would lame walk?

would the nations be saved?

would my heart change?

if what i pray for, what i say i believe were to happen,            would i be ready?

because what i seek and knock and ask for on my side of the door,

means change

means leaving home

means permeable comfort zone

means living as if the red letters were more than just a fancy font in a beloved family-friendly tale.

and as i wearily seek,

as i lift my hand with effort to knock one more time,

as i clear my voice to ask yet again,

i know that change must come.

change i cannot bring myself to want, and yet longer i cannot go on without.

standing up..

its funny the things we let make us

go sit back on the steps

letting go of ideas that were once non-negotiable,

once all we aimed for

all that gave life.

And what are those things, really?

a lost key,

a missed note,

a missed call…  and we begin

to let

go….

Its funny the things that make us fight back

things we remember after a lapse of hurt and pride

things that make this make sense,

make this less important, make others more,

a sunrise,

a whisper,

a prayer,

a voice…..  and we begin

to get

back

up….