Tag: faith

Belief

{this side of the stars}

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dear god:
this may not come as a surprise to you,
but
i don’t really know
what i’m doing.
~
i see so many
claiming to understand you perfectly,
to know just exactly what pleases you
and what disgusts you –
they all seem to get it,
to not struggle a bit
with the idea
that they claim to understand
every last detail about
the Creator of a billion galaxies.
~
but i do –
struggle, that is,
to understand
why and how and that
you love
me.
~
little old me.
~
i’m not even a star,
or a planet or moon.
i’m just blip,
one speck of the human race
that in all carnal understanding
is quite dispensable, disposable.
~
i certainly don’t begin to match
the glory of a galaxy or a fire of a planet
(especially not after i’ve just woken up).
i don’t always obey my Creator
or orbit just as i should
or shine with the magnitude of the sun.
~
sometimes i just stop,
too afraid or too lazy or too overwhelmed
to continue on.
half the time i don’t even know
which direction i should be going.
~
i, for one, don’t understand you.
i doubt i ever will this side of the stars.
but then i pause and consider
how you’ve hung the stars in place,
how you’ve drawn the orbits of the planets,
and i find a glimmer of hope
that you might possibly
know what you’re doing,
even if
none of the rest of us do.
Belief

Jesus doesn’t ride a magic carpet and other myths of American faith

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A piece of my story that I don’t speak about much here is my days of agnosticism and the time when doubt spoke so much louder than faith.  These days unfolded slowly in the shadows of my mother’s cancer, the loss of several close friendships, and the dawning of the clash of cultures I had never encountered in my mono-cultural world.

Even though I had been loved well by so many, there were still days I felt I’d been lied to.

Even though I had learned many answers, there were still so many unrelenting questions.

Even though my childhood world had been safe and beautiful and rich and good, there was still sorrow to face that it, too, was a broken place.

As the questions of these days quieted, I grew into a new kind of faith, one that was less flashy and more rooted, less emotional and more perseverant, less starry-eyed and more observant, less notch-on-my-belt and more depth-of-my-soul, less-shine-Jesus-shine, more-candle-flickering-in-the-dark. To my great surprise, the questions didn’t just go away.  They hung in the air, following my faith around like a shadow. The betrayal of a broken world sunk deep into my soul, leaving me with a thirst for justice and a hunger for righteousness.

Like Donald Miller expresses in his essay on why he doesn’t attend church much, I still find that I don’t meet God very frequently in ways the modern day church facilitates, especially the never-ending ‘pop-corn’ prayers and endlessly repetitive singing.  My personality isn’t much built for these – I’m an ENTJ (aka ‘the executive’) on Meijers-Briggs and other such tests label me “Independent Thinker”, a learner, intellect, seeker of input and connection, always strategizing for the future.

So when I hear folks speak of how much they love Jesus, I grow a little sheepish.  Given my personal wiring, I don’t ‘feel’ all that much, at least not in the ways traditionally advertised by feelers. When I speak of Jesus, it’s hard to sincerely say that I ‘love’ him with the same kind of fiery passion to which I frequently hear others refer for my faith feels far more often like a candle flickering faintly in the dark.

Perhaps one dynamic influencing my hesitation in this business of ‘loving’ Jesus is American culture’s Disney-movie interpretation of love.  From the movies, I learned that love was a magic carpet ride full of wonder and adventure, a prince arriving to save me at just the right moment, or swirling around a ball-room in a place I didn’t really deserve to be.  I learned that ‘being in love’ meant swooning emotions, pretty dresses and palpitating hearts.  There were no Disney movies, however, about crying angrily on the way home from church or getting up with screaming babies six times in the middle of the night or being overly snippy with your spouse.  The Disney view of love wasn’t particularly sustaining through these moments.

When I cut to the core, though, I’m also hard-pressed to say that I don’t ‘love’ Jesus just because I don’t express my commitment like the enthusiastic-feeler-personalities. I just find myself using different words:

I walk with Jesus in caring for the stranger, in welcoming them to a new land.

I listen to Jesus as I create quiet spaces for myself and my family, refusing to run at the break-neck speed of the rest of the world.

I trust Jesus as I put one foot in front of another blindly, having given up one story and wait patiently as the next one unfolds.

I hope for the continual restoration of brokenness and healing of wrongs, even though some days feel completely hopeless.

I long for the days that will bring all those I love into one place together, no longer separated by airplanes or oceans or passports.

I dream of making the world right, of creating reflections of God’s kingdom here on earth, of making all things new.

I speak honestly and forthrightly, pushing through hard conversations toward wholeness, restoration and healing.

I walk toward the broken things, refusing to turn my head away just because they are ugly to look at or too complex to resolve by tomorrow.

While I no longer use the same words as the ‘Jesus Freaks’, I suppose I ultimately mean the same thing.  Since we’ve lived in many parts of the country, I’ve had the curse fortune to participate in a wide variety of traditions in the church.  We’ve visited a gamut of staunchly conservative, wildly charismatic, stiffly liturgical, and laid-back artistic churches.  When we’re in the evangelical churches, we hear a lot about loving Jesus.  In the charismatic churches, its all about the Holy Spirit’s moves. The liturgical churches wax quiet and reverent about the Father.

I actually find all these different perspectives quite refreshing because their diversity allowed my faith breathing-room just when I needed it most. Though I met Christ first among the Jesus-lovers, I returned to Him quietly among the Father-devotees. In the shadow of their liturgy, I bent on my humbled and aching knees, tasted the sweet potency of communion wine, and whispered time-tested words alongside the other voices. Their quiet way soothes my soul and allows me a pause-of-calm in the midst of a chaotic world.

It’s almost like God knew that some of us would need a completely different spin on faith for one reason or another, so He* allowed us to create spaces which differ wildly from each other.  Humans tend to see this as problematic and try to force everyone else to function exactly like themselves; but I think God grins at our bumbling efforts. Like we smile proudly at our toddlers when they stumble over themselves in their attempts to copy us, maybe He is simply grateful when we find paths that connect us to others and help us follow Him more faithfully instead of hurling our faith over cliffs instead.

Seeing this distinction changed everything for me – it meant I didn’t have to leave completely; I just needed to move around a bit.  And as I did, I returned to faith slowly with an awakening realization that I was just as helpless and broken as all the bumbling folks around me I didn’t understand. I returned because traveling the road alone was even bleaker than the doubts I had within faith.

Once I dug past the shallowness of our Disney-love culture, I found a sustaining faith rooted deep and strong in spite of its imperfect followers. It definitely lacked some of the enthusiasm of my youth, but easily made up for this in its substance and depth. When I hear all the raging debates these days about who’s-right-and-who’s-wrong, who’s-more-relevant and who’s-more-biblical, I wink at the sky, fall to my knees, and whisper a prayer of gratefulness that under God’s love, there’s a space of grace for all of our bumbling ways.

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 * I’m not a huge fan of assigning gender roles to God, and find the English language disappointingly limiting in this regard.  If the use of God as He is hard to swallow, feel free to ignore these imperfect terms.  Personally, I don’t find she or it to work any better, and thus remain at a complete pronoun stand-off.

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Spiritual Formation

Survival tactics for truth-tellers, hole-pokers, and skeptics

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survival tactics

Tired and grumpy, I got a bit harsh with my slightly lazy eight-year-old son about his messy-room-that-never-seems-to-actually-get-cleaned the other night.  As the words came out, I knew instinctively that I’d crossed the mean-mama line, so I returned awhile later to apologize for my tone, “I’m sorry I snipped at you about your room, buddy.”

His grinning response didn’t miss a beat, “Snipped?!?  You didn’t snip at me – you lashed me – with whips and chains!”

He’s a truth-teller, that kid . . . and there’s nothing like being reminded that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.  Some days, I’m a bit of a truth-teller myself, and I’ve learned it’s not always the most popular trait in a person.  Truth-tellers are wired to poke holes, ask questions, point out inconsistencies, question accepted norms – often for the value of the greater-good, but usually at the cost of keeping-the-peace.

I have an on-going internal conversation about the value of being a truth-teller, of saying the things that everyone thinks but no one says out loud.  On one hand, there’s an internal sigh of relief when somebody finally comments that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes but on the other hand, people don’t always take kindly to the reality that they’ve been playing along with a lie.  It’s a tricky line to walk, one I haven’t always known how to balance along well. While it’s easy to communicate dissent in angry, frustrated and polarizing ways, it’s not always the most effective manner of helping the truth actually be listened to and considered.

Thankfully, the years are slowly teaching me how to straddle the tensions of being a truth-teller, and through the gifts of the spiritual disciplines and faithful friends, I’ve developed a few guidelines for better managing this innate part of myself.

Be gentle.  Sometimes provocative statements are useful to highlight a hard truth, but only when used sparingly.  Even though I personally enjoy people who tell it like it is, even I begin to dismiss a person who makes frequent inciting statements because it seems like all they care about is stirring the pot instead of letting the flavors simmer together so they actually taste good.  When I write about divisive issues, I often sit on potentially controversial phrases for a while to evaluate whether they’re helpful or harmful for the larger conversation at hand.  My go-to question is often, “How can I tell the truth boldly and gently?”

Check ulterior motives.  It’s easy to subconsciously enjoy the attention that comes with telling the truth.  Sometimes such boldness brings a silent pause, focusing the attention for a moment on the giver.  Being a teacher and a writer means that I’m accustomed to a good measure of attention focused on me, so it’s always wise for me to consider if my motives are self-seeking or truly a voice for greater good. If I can’t determine my motives, it’s likely a sign I need to remain quiet.

Speak slowly.  James’ words say it well: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.”  While this is much easier said than done, there are no exemptions given.  Sadly, some use this passage to stifle truth-tellers completely, but it’s still important to remember that some who see themselves as truth-tellers speak and grow angry far too quickly.  Quite frankly, this is counter-productive and harmful to the conversations in which we participate.  If we can’t speak the truth slowly and patiently (sometimes over years), we need to spend time pondering if we should even be speaking at all.

Remember the human.  In sharp disagreement, it’s easy to turn people into ideas. When a person ceases to exist, we tend to hear only their words and not their hearts.  My mom used to say that occasionally when they struggled to love someone in their world, they’d invite them for dinner to hear their stories.  She found that it’s a whole lot harder to see someone solely as an ideology when you know their personal story. In all of our worlds – work, church, family, friends, online – we must first remember the people we speak of and with are humans worthy of respect simply because they are created in the image of Christ.

Learn from those with opposite strengths.  Being a former skeptic, faith is not one of my stronger spiritual gifts.  However, I once heard a friend share her story of struggle, and it was laced with a fierce type of faith I had never known myself.  While the skeptic in me wanted to dismiss what I didn’t understand, I instead allowed myself to admire something in her that I didn’t see in myself and to be grateful for it.  It was astonishingly freeing to allow myself the luxury to learn from someone different than me, instead of mentally critiquing them.

Step away.  Because I write about the controversial topic of race, every so often I’ll get a cutting tweet or comment.  While I can rationally tell myself that these comments come from just a few people who may-or-may-not-be-sane, I still find myself distracted by them on occasion.  When their words grow too loud in my head, I know I need to step away for a bit, sit with the Lord, and give myself some space to remember why I speak and who I speak for.  Angry conversations rarely prove to be productive, and if my purpose is to foster productive conversations about difficult topics, I’m not helping matters if I can’t stay calm and focused on bringing light, not heat, to the issues at hand.

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Society desperately needs truth-tellers who have the boldness, wisdom and maturity to use their gifts responsibly for the greater good – not to wield power for their own gain.  While the faith-gifted folks may get a better wrap, without the truth-tellers there would be no Dietrich Bonhoffers or Mother Teresas or Cornel Wests to guide us toward a better way of living together.  Whatever your gifts, may you lean into them with courage, faithfulness and humility so that together we might all learn to walk alongside one another in a better way.

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Belief

The wild and sweet conflict of Advent

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Christmas songs are supposed to be happy. Jingle bells ringing, happy people singing, red noses shining, and bringing good tidings – that’s the epitome of the Christmas spirit – right?

In many moments, I share this joyful sentiment. I love the wonder and anticipation of the season and how Advent invites us to pause and reflect. But sometimes, simple acts like reading news of war or chatting honestly with a broken friend leave me relieved that sentiments like Henry Longfellow’s make it into the season too:

And in despair, I bowed my head:

“There is no peace on earth,” I said,

“For hate is strong and mocks the song,

of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Written near the end of the civil war after the tragic death of his wife and serious injury of his son, I can only imagine the grief that shook Longfellow’s heart. “How inexpressibly sad are all holidays,” he wrote the Christmas after his wife’s death. “I can make no record of these days. Better leave them wrapped in silence. Perhaps someday God will give me peace.” Three years later, he penned the words to the beloved carol, I heard the bells on Christmas Day.

Silent.

Expectant.

We might all be better for it if we walked through advent like this. Certainly all of our hearts carry unmet longing and unresolved burdens, even through a seemingly joy-filled season. I fluctuate somewhere being parading my longings and burdens boldly before God and scrambling to cover them up so no one else can see my lack…

Perhaps Longfellow felt the same way that Christmas morning when he heard the bells ringing the old and familiar carols.

…and wild and sweet, the words repeat of peace on earth, good will to men.

For even if the song of peace is sweet, it can still be wild, elusive, unpredictable and uncontrollable. And even if good will to men runs wild, it can still hold an underlying sweetness, immeasurable pain interwoven with threads of hope and goodness. The sweetness of the season rings through warm moments, celebratory spirits, joy-filled children. But the wildness is just as present, highlighting the very present conflict of unresolved tensions, global injustices, misplaced priorities, feelings of grief, and pressures of holiday obligations.

These incongruous realities of advent prompt us to quiet our spirits and listen rather than to numb them with busyness, to seek hope through meaningful actions rather than chase happiness through meaningless objects. They beckon us to live quietly yet expectantly in a world of crashing noise. In the quietness, we can pray simple words like this:

May we return to the breath and the silence.

To the breath that gives us life,

To the silence where we hear God’s whispers.

May we weep for the brokenness of our souls,

And cry out against our distractedness.

May we return to the eternal God,

Whose love fills every fibre of our being.

(Christine Sine)

.

Come, Lord Jesus. We eagerly await your arrival, wild and sweet.

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This advent reflection was originally posted on my friend Amy’s blog, Making all things new.

Culture & Race, Restoration & Reconciliation

When even Jesus is white

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“Mama,” she ran toward me through the sand, “something really funny just happened.”

We were relaxing at the local murky-pond-called-a-lake on a quiet summer day.  “Really?” I grinned at her, eager for the humor of a five-year-old. “What was so funny?”

“Some kid just asked me if I was from China!!!” she sounded shocked.  “Why would anyone think I was from China!?  Isn’t that funny?!?”

“Yeah, honey,” I smiled, covering the ache inside. “That’s just crazy.”

She shrugged her shoulders and skipped back to the beach, oblivious to her mama’s sinking shoulders.  We’d lived as one of the only biracial families in our small-town cornfield for several years at that point, and I was wearing thin on the lack of awareness we ran into around every corner.  My margins to tolerate the monocultural masses were shrinking, and their ignorance had worn me thin.

I know, I know.  But they’re just kids.  They don’t mean any harm, right?

But what about the friend who whispered to me that no one would play with her black son at recess?  What about the teachers who wouldn’t do a damn thing about his isolation, claiming he was just ‘quiet’? Or the time another friend’s daughter was called a ‘burnt hot dog’?  What about the teenagers who had run my brown husband and white self off the road, sticking their heads out of the truck with angry shouts?  Or the time my husband confronted another group of teenagers who were harassing an African American just walking down the street?  What about the threatening phone call that woke us up in the dead of the night?

Maybe they didn’t mean harm, but maybe they did.  All I knew for certain was that I had no ability to tell the difference, and I didn’t much like having to choose.

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My sweet daughter climbed into the van after preschool later that year and dissolved into tears, “Why am I the only brown kid, mama?”

Unwisely, I attempted a rational explanation and she shut me down cold. “No, mama!  Everyone is America is white! Everyone except me.”

It was clear she just needed to vent so I listened for awhile and then reattempted my explanation, “Not everyone is white, sweetie.  Think of your uncle and your cousin and all of Thaatha’s family and-”

Furious, she interrupted me, “NO, mama!  Everyone is white except me.  I’m the only brown kid.  Even Jesus is white!”

She might as well have stuck a knife through my heart.  Those blasted colonialist publishers who had to go and make Jesus look just like them – they were fully responsible for my child feeling on the outs.  I collected myself and told her that actually, Jesus wasn’t white, and that the people who painted the pictures of Him got a little too focused on themselves and didn’t think about how Jesus really looked.  “He probably looked much more like you,” I told her in an attempt to soothe her angst.

Even at five, my intuitive daughter knew what it felt like to live at the margins.  Sometimes she chuckled at it and called it silly; but other times it made her crumble to pieces.

Since we left the cornfields, I’ve had my own moments of chuckling and crumbling before God, asking why we had to endure cultural isolation for so long, why my daughter had to live those hard questions at such a young age, and why we felt so isolated in a place that so many (white) people loved to call home.

For now, there are no clear answers, other than knowing that Jesus lived in the margins, too. And when He asked my husband and I to walk this path of living between worlds, he promised to walk with us through it, threatening phone calls and all.  That doesn’t mean we’ll always know how, or do it flawlessly, or be responsible to fix it; but it does mean that when the bitterness creeps in, we exhale, “Father, forgive them…” and await the slow restoration of our hearts from the breaking days of the cornfields.

What I’m learning from those marginal years is that if we don’t know healing in our own crumbled moments, we won’t ever see the beautiful sights of the healed ones.  For racial healing to run deep in our stubbornly shallow world, it must be led by the wounded healers who love one another fiercely and forgivingly, willing to wade through the murky waters of the margins.

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Restoration & Reconciliation, Spiritual Formation

When the shell cracks

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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Sometimes, there are stories without answers, stories that, try as we might, leave us perplexed, longing for resolution but seeing no possible path toward it.  In their shadow, we feel vulnerable, forced to acknowledge the frailty we live with as humans.

Some of us prefer to think we’re strong, so we coat ourselves with shields like perfectionism, control, achievements and agendas.  Others of us are paralyzed with fear, so we drag our feet, hoping that if we don’t move too far no one will notice our sloth (or the hours we waste on Facebook).  Regardless of the disguise, when the answerless stories show themselves, we grasp at straws, shaken out of our own worlds and into another’s.

Some college friends’ children are dying of a incurable genetic disease.  They were born seemingly healthy children, but developmental delays in their toddler years led to the discovery that they had an incurable and fatal genetic order called Sanfilippo syndrome. I catch glimpses on a screen from afar as they share of simple joys of the moment, appreciation of the days they share with their children now, and tears roll down my cheeks when the grief over their devastating life circumstances slips out.  Their situation has rendered them far more vulnerable than most of us will ever be, and one beauty in how they walk through their life is that they share it with others, one small step at a time.

A sister-friend recently battled a relapse of an eating disorder.  I had walked with her through it once before, and let me tell you, it was no spring picnic to stumble through it again, for me or for her.  She’s a fighter, for sure, but there were moments when the disease got the best of her and ripped the days out from beneath her feet.  On those days, I would glance at the sky with my lifelong whisper of ‘why’?  But other days, the desperation of her honesty stopped me in my tracks, reminding me of the power of vulnerability to clean out even the deepest crevices within.

I, too, have known my own moments of devastation, of coming to grips with a different kind of story than those of my friends above, but filled with the same humpty-dumpty crash of breaking and falling to pieces.  In fact, I know many who carry their own such stories, perhaps less tragic than my friends above, but still very real.  Rarely do we share such stories aloud with each other.  Instead, we tuck them away in a little corner deep down inside, leaving them quietly hidden.

In brokenness, there can be great loneliness, for who understands the unique terrain of the rocky paths we each walk?  For this, I listen carefully when my friends risk the vulnerability to share from their broken places.  I don’t understand what it means for children to live in wheelchairs, or to starve myself so that I can feel safe.  My friends’ willingness to share more than just the happy parts of their stories gives me a sensitivity to the parts of others’ paths that I have never navigated myself.

I don’t know if I always respond to such paths ‘right’ or well, but because of their vulnerability, I am compelled to give it a try when I might have otherwise avoided it. We walk only in our own shoes; and we know only the depths of our own stories. Sometimes we are like the king’s men, fumbling because we don’t know how to pick up the fragile who have fallen down and cracked. So we distance ourselves, fearing that we’ll somehow break them into even more pieces when we don’t know how to ‘put them back together’. The question staring everyone in the face is what if they can’t be put together again, or at least, right now?

But what if we’re asking the wrong question?  Instead of putting back each other back together, what if we just walk alongside, listen to, embrace-as-we-are?

Here, there is no easy answer, no triumphant victory, no miraculous intervention.  This brokenness is the daily grind. We wait, longing for healing, not knowing when, or even if, it will ever come. As we wait, walking alongside others or, perhaps even sharing our own broken selves, something more emerges.

It is a beautiful story of hope written by a father for his children.

It is a marker on a white board.

It is a slowly but steadily healing heart, drowned in tears and awakened by the hunger within.

It is the surfacing of the quiet, deep down moments that we share for our own healing, and for others’ to remember they are not alone.

“All his life long, wherever Jesus looked, he saw the world not in terms simply of its brokenness,” wrote Frederick Buechner, “but in terms of the ultimate mystery of God’s presence buried in it like a treasure buried in a field.”

A friend of mine who lost his firstborn son at age one calls them God Fingerprints, the little moments that steal our breath and remind us that we do not walk alone.  Mysterious and buried in the midst of the days of pain, we must keep our eyes peeled lest we miss them, but they are nonetheless there, touching so many little moments around us.

For even if all we feel is broken, we are far more than our brokenness.  Right there smack dab in the middle of our foreheads is a screaming loud fingerprint that shouts, “YOU ARE MINE!  The brokenness is not yet healed, but it is already redeemed.”

It began first with the day of the ashes, and then reached out a hand toward us from an empty tomb.

“Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength,” mused Freud.

The God Fingerprint said it something like this, “For when you are weak, then I am strong.”

Immanuel, they called this strong One. God with us.  We wear His ashes on our foreheads proclaiming our hope in the power of Life even when our shoulders sag under its heavy weight.  And when a great fall leaves us feeling cracked beyond repair, Immanuel walks alongside, giving us a strength we never knew we had.

Meet the McNeils

If you’d like to learn more about the friends I mentioned above, you can read more on their blog, Exploring Holland.  Matt, their father has also written an excellent children’s book called The Strange Tale of Ben Beesley to process his grief over his children’s diagnosis.  All proceeds from the book go the MPS Society to search for a cure to Sanfilippo Syndrome.

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Spiritual Formation

Seasons of a cornfield

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The sunbeam warmed my face, and I slowly opened my eyes to greet the morning. There it was – a big ball of yellow stretching its rays over every inch of my backyard cornfield.

As a little girl, I loved the sunrise so much that I moved my bed next to the window so that I could wake up every morning to the brilliance of the morning sun rising over my cornfield. When the sun faded for the day, the deep shadows swallowed the field into their darkness.

Season after season the field and its sunrise lay as a stable backdrop for my comings and goings. Overflowing with life in spring and summer, the fields reflected rich seasons of growth I have known in my life. The contrasting harvest of the autumn crops and fallowness of the winter fields mirrored the seasons of my life in which dormancy, emptiness, and loneliness pervade in my soul. With remarkable distinction, each season offers unique contributions to the process of growth.

In spring, the freshly plowed field was clean, velvety, rich. I remember abandoning my shoes to squish my toes in the soft, dark soil. At times, my life feels the same way – clean and rich after periods of intense personal “plowing.” These times hold deep fellowship from intentional time with friends, intense growth from purposeful devotions, and inner peace from patiently waiting on the Lord. Such plowing removes the weeds and their roots, and my soul lies quiet and clean. I approach my heavenly Father with quiet confidence and humility, basking in the warmth of a summer day.

Summer in my cornfields brought tiny corn sprouts that grew noisily (yes, you can hear a cornfield grow!), yet steadily. Inevitably, their immense growth always caught me off guard as the stalks suddenly rose well above my head. A unique noisiness characterizes these times, as clamoring spurts of growth occasionally interrupt the steady humming. They are the times when I consistently read my Bible, sacrifice for my family, and participate regularly in the family of God. Every so often, I catch glimpses of the closeness of my heart to God’s, and true joy runs deep. Filled with both busyness and calm, fun and tedium, hard work and relaxation, my summer growth happens sometimes a bit at a time and other times in huge leaps.

The autumn cornstalks withered in preparation for the harvest, accompanied by a brisk wind that reminded us that all signs of life would soon disappear. The farmers diligently gathering their crops held a subtle sense of both urgency and fulfillment. At times, my faith has felt as though it is withering. After long periods of struggle, I find myself tired, skeptical, depleted. While my faith has not faltered completely, I feel on the verge, asking questions of God I have not asked before. Where are you in this withering season? Will all my growth make a difference once the crop is harvested? I share the farmers’ urgency to find answers, resolution, eager to feel fulfilled again. Yet neither come quickly.

Instead, winter arrives. The fields lie dormant and dead-looking, frozen under a cold layer of snow. The hope of the green is long gone, a lifeless brown has taken its place. After a long and withering autumn, I too feel dead, dormant, and frozen. Sometimes I am simply too worn-out to seek God; other times I no longer even know where to look. Yet I do not see what is happening deep below my surface. Being renewed by its fallowness, the field is resting, preparing, rebuilding, and restoring itself for yet another intense season of spring. It is these bitterly cold seasons that prepare me for the coming warmth, for in their barrenness, they expose the emptiness of my soul apart from God, its plower, planter, harvester, and sustainer. This time of rest then restores the fertility of my soul, removing deep, old roots that choke life from the freshly planted seeds.

Season after season, the sun rises over my fields of growth with gentle persistence.  Like my backyard cornfields, the growth happens in seasons. Sometimes it’s as rich as the silky soil I loved to run through barefoot as a kid and sometimes it feels like frozen tundra – bitter and biting. Sometimes it’s a warm sunbeam on my face and sometimes it’s a chilly wind. Sometimes it’s noisily growing and sometimes it’s quietly withering.

My bed no longer sits right next to my window, and the cornfields and sunrises of my childhood seem long ago. But I will forever carry their secrets within, thankful that the process of my own growth requires both the mystery of a barren and bitter winter field and the richness of the fresh spring soil.  

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Belief, Social & Political Issues, Spiritual Formation

Where my treasure is

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Materialism is not a welcome subject to my ears. Ask my opinion on the matter, and I silently wish the word itself did not exist. It is a loaded subject for me – full of implications with which I would rather not deal. I am a product of the American dream. I work hard and “deserve” special treats on occasion.

I.really.like.shoes.

So I attempt cover-ups, convincing myself that I am not materialistic, I am simply taking care of my well being (and my feet).  In spite of my best efforts to ignore my materialism, it is slowly (and by that, I mean s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-w-l-y) become something I protest within.  

On a global scale, modern protestors decry materialism because it reflects an imbalance of power existing in the world. While I don’t disagree with their arguments, my protests against this vice are more personal: the strangling grip it has on my soul.  

In spite of my best attempts to avoid acknowledging my own materialism, I battle it on a regular basis.

  • The homeless man on the corner holds a tattered sign that reads, “Hungry.  Will take anything,” and I clutch a little tighter to the granola bar in my purse before rolling down my window to give it to him.
  • Asylees who have fled their countries, leaving everything behind to relocate in a new country tell me their stories of separation and adjustment to a new life as  I battle the impact of how listening to their stories messes up my tightly arranged schedule.
  • I see photos of refugees posing with their most important thing and then head on over to Zappos to check out some new shoes.

I have no excuses for my actions.  I am a paradox.  I care, but I don’t.  My heart aches at poverty, but my actions value my own comfort more. The world’s need undoes me, but if it makes my life inconvenient, I blissfully ignore it.  

Sometimes, I white-knuckle my way past the lure of materialism by denying myself every slight pleasure. Other times, I throw my hands up in the air and go on a really great shopping spree. 

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The shock sunk slowly in as I heard my husband’s voice on the cell, “The airport has been attacked.”

I was running errands, navigating the busy streets of our metropolitan home, and for the life of me couldn’t figure out what airport he was talking about.

Then it hit me.  We had returned three days before from my husband’s home of the war torn island of Sri Lanka.

While there, we didn’t think of it as “war torn”, but “home”. Suddenly, though, “home” for me had become a war.

A short three days after our departure, terrorists had invaded the country’s only international airport and had incurred over $300 million damage. The attack commemorated the 1983 riots that had launched the beginning of a 25 year civil war.

The media reports such atrocities so often that it is easy to become calloused. Yet for me, this was different – it was up close and personal, a place I knew with my own heart and hands and feet. It held beloved family members, cherished memories, deep attachment. Having grown up in the relative stability of Midwestern America, facing the devastation of war was way outside of my frame of reference. While I have traveled in many developing countries, wrestled intellectually with issues of poverty and injustice; the ever-repeating story of violence, corruption, and fear had never crept so close to my own heart. 

Although many disturbing images surrounding the terrorist attack crept into my mind, the most personally convicting was that of my own struggle against materialism. A strange (and perhaps egocentric) connection, I know, but I’m no longer speaking solely of the materialism associated with houses, cars, clothes, and the like, but of those unseen things in the material world that I routinely place in the box of “fundamental rights” – conditions I deserve by very nature of being human. 

Personal safety, physical comfort, financial opportunity, and convenience rose quickly to the top of the pile as I examined what I feared losing had I been in the airport three days prior. Though physically intangible, these very material commodities are a large part of the world to which I am inextricably bound. I just happen to live in a place where I have the option to numb out such realities by buying a pair of shoes.

Certainly God does not ask everyone to live in a war torn country. Yet he does allow difficult circumstances in the lives of all his children at one point or another, whether they be facing the death of a loved one, coping with chronic illness, losing a job, moving to a different city, or dealing with a difficult family member. Perhaps one step toward surrendering materialism lies in our response when these difficulties arise. In my life, this surrender plays out by letting go of the notions of my “expected rights.”

I must ask, “Who am I, really? Who am I that I should not have to face the ravages of war (or illness or financial collapse or the loss of a home I love or a sick child)? God may not ask that of other people, but if God asks it of me, am I willing to face it and not run away?”

[Gulp.]

The ramifications of these questions run so deep that I shudder to imagine what the future might hold if God really asked such things of me. And yet, God asks these questions of each and every one of us – not always about such extremities as war, but about our own unique tragedies of life.

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At times, much of the Western church reacts to materialism just like I do.

Run. Hide. Rationalize. Ignore. Spend money on myself.

Sadly, as we continue to order our world with more things and self-centered expectations, I fear these actions will only lead us toward more confusion, distraction and disillusionment. In sitting with the scriptures, I am confronted with three attitudes that often hinder my ability to confront materialism: greed, fear, and pride.  

Greed

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Jesus spoke emphatically against the greed of our hearts in this world, pushing us to examine what use it would be to gain a whole world of material possessions, and yet still lose our souls (Mark 8:36). He cautioned us to keep free from the love of money, and to be content with what we have (Hebrews 13:5).

Living in a wealthy society, it is easy for me to rationalize my materialistic habits. To many American eyes, I am not the poster child for materialism. I’ve stayed at home with our kids, sacrificing salary by working flexible, part-time jobs. My husband is a professor, and we live on a modest income. We rent a small house and drive practical cars far longer than we’d like to. We budget carefully, pay off credit cards, tithe regularly, and prioritize spending. 

Yet when I examine my life in light of global reality, I see how tightly I hold onto the material aspects of my life, meager that they are. I hang my head, ashamed of what resides within. Jesus’ words pierce my heart, and I am forced to reevaluate the conditions of the faith I offer Him.

Fear

Fear takes on many forms, some quite subtle. It drives me to surround myself with things and live in environments that protect my insecurities. By focusing excessively on the management of both my possessions and the comfort level of my life, I build a fortress around myself rooted in earthly things, not godly ones. 

This is why Paul challenges us to pursue godliness with contentment (1 Timothy 6). By reminding us that we brought nothing into the world, and can take nothing out of it, he challenges us to pursue fulfillment in our Creator and not to use possessions to mask the fear that God alone cannot truly satisfy.

Another way I distinguish my fear of being unfulfilled is by examining my level of contentment. Whether I worry about how to pay the bills (and there has been plenty of that), if I look fashionista enough (or if the cellulite is taking over for good), or what kind of car I drive, each concern reflects a lack of contentment. And each lack of contentment reflects fear that God cannot, or will not, care for my needs. 

In reality, I do not deserve the safety or convenience or comfort of this country one ounce more than a Sri Lankan child caught in the middle of crossfire. While my intellect may agree with this statement, my materialistic mindset subtly convinces me that living in a physically safe environment will preserve not only my body, but also my soul.

Pride

Just as the Pharisees’ pride blinded them to the Messiah, so this same pride blinds me to the grip materialism has on my soul. When Paul writes that he has learned to be content in whatever circumstances he is, he speaks to being content both with humble means and in prosperity, both in being filled and going hungry, in having abundance and suffering need (Philippians 4:11-12).

In the frustration of combatting materialism, some may find it oddly tempting follow Jesus’ challenge to the rich man of selling everything we have and giving it to the poor (Luke 18:22-23). In such a vague issue, it can often feel easier to go to one extreme or the other rather than balance precariously in the middle.

While God legitimately asks such aestheticism of some people, for most of us the more difficult task lies in Paul’s lesson to the Philippians. He acknowledges his powerlessness to determine both the good and bad of life, and places himself in a position to trust God by seeking contentment regardless of his external circumstances. In a similar way, pride threatens contentment by creating either 1) a sense of entitlement to what we have or 2) a sense of superiority because of what we have given up.

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“Every era has a currency that buys souls,” writes sociologist Eric Hoffer. “In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are, of course, times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.”

Upon close examination, what buys my soul and what buys the soul of a Sri Lankan suicide bomber may not differ as I much as I would like to imagine. In fact, my soul is probably bought with much less sacrifice.

“Where does my treasure lie?”, I sheepishly ask myself, feet shuffling, eyes to the ground. If I am unwilling to face the answer to this question, I am equally unwilling to acknowledge where my heart and my soul lie as well.

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Further Reading

Belief, Spiritual Formation

Why I still believe

between worlds

cross

Sick of endless choruses of ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine’ echoing through my Christian college chapel, I snuck away to a quiet corner of campus with a blanket and my tears. It was my sophomore year and not only had the exciting newness of college worn off, I wasn’t sure where I fit, and my lifelong faith was crumbling beneath me.

I don’t see you shine, God.  Heck, I don’t even know if you’re there at all.  This Bible business makes no freaking sense to me.

A thought bubbled up that I was terrified to admit, but I didn’t have the energy to suppress it any longer.

I don’t want to be a Christian anymore.  I’m tired of this.

I looked around, wondering if I might be instantly struck by lightning, but the only thing that happened was that I felt instant relief.  My sentiment had been a long time coming after years of fighting quiet disappointments, fears, questions, and doubts.  Residing in the midst of Christian college student singing praises to a far away God didn’t help either.  I couldn’t sing with them.  If I joined them at all, I stood silently, hands in my pockets, heart cold.  I’d resolved that I wouldn’t fake it any more, that words were too important to say if I didn’t really mean them.

My only prayer for nearly a year, the only words I could actually sing were these lines from an old hymn:

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;

I tried on atheism, but found it hollow and meaningless.  I looked into other religions, but found no satisfactory answers to the questions that were nagging at my soul: Where is God when the world hurts?  Why is life so disappointing sometimes?

Growing up in the church, I hadn’t noticed anyone ever highlighting these questions as a critical part of the spiritual journey.  Doubt meant weakness. Faith meant strength.  Left without faith, I curled up in my blanket and cried, feeling lost and alone.

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A chat with a friend asking many of the same questions I asked all those years ago got me thinking.  She’d found a book on the stages of faith development and was intrigued by the premise that many churches only nurture the first three stages of faith which focus on belief, learning, and belonging.  After progressing through these stages, it is common to hit a wall of confusion and unanswered questions.  Many often walk away from faith completely because the church isn’t a welcoming environment to this stage of faith.  Together, my friend and I wondered why Christians are encouraged to live in the shallow stages of faith – ones without questions, doubts, grappling.

“You’ve asked these same questions, but you didn’t walk away,” she observed.  “Why?”

Tears sprung to my eyes as internally, the words from another part of that old hymn echoed quietly within,

Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

To be honest, I told her, some of my questions and doubts haven’t ever gone away.  They linger quietly, jumping out suddenly at me from behind tragic situations, social injustices, philosophical dilemmas and unhealed wounds.   But as the years have passed, I’ve discovered ways of walking with God that offer more sustenance than my questions.  These paths are why I’ve stayed, and why I continue to seek life in Jesus even when I don’t fully know all the answers.

Embracing Mystery

“It is unfortunate that evangelicals have quit building sanctuaries and began building auditoriums,” writes Calvin Miller.  “It seems to make a statement about our trading mystery for lectureships.  We were never good at mystery, smoking incense, towering glass rituals, or veiled entreaties…  So we have become the plain, pragmatic people…  We must quit making God a practical deity who exists to help us succeed.”

Or, as my brother wittily observes, we need to stop treating the Bible like a Harry Potter spell book.

As an intellectual type who has spent much of my life immersed in analytic and critical thought, one of the hardest truths for me to accept was that I was not God.  I realize this makes me sound a little dense, but it was a life-changing revelation to me.  While much of my previous understanding of faith was rooted in attempts to control outcomes by measuring up spiritually, accepting my powerlessness in a fallen world has humbled me like nothing else.

Acknowledging that God knows, sees, and understands more than I do allows the mystery to intrigue my mind.  It leaves me with curiosity, wondering how I can understand more about who this good and mysterious God is.  Instead of rejecting faith for the lack of answers I find, I am compelled to search more diligently, embracing new questions as opportunities to learn and grow.  The answers rarely come easily or quickly, but when they do, they are both rich and satisfying.

Being Quiet

Much of my previous faith experience was based on noise: prayers, songs, sermons.  While I don’t decry any of these things, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find deep peace through seeking out quiet places. Sometimes, I just need to sit with a scripture, walk out a question, or cry for an unmet longing.  Sitting in quietness allows my soul to settle and root itself in what is firm and unchanging.  I don’t empty my mind as some traditions promote; I just let it be. I don’t force it to think ‘right’ thoughts, push away ‘wrong’ thoughts or even focus on what its ‘supposed’ to. I simply listen for the direction that might come and let my spirit rest.

Walking Humbly

Intellectuals aren’t well known for our humility.  We know a lot, and even if we don’t say it directly, we take great pride in displaying that knowledge.  The danger in this, of course, is that all minds have their limits.

God’s questions to a suffering Job (chapter 39) spoke directly to my pride, for I knew I could not so much as begin to answer any questions like this:

  • Where were you when I created the earth?  
  • Who decided on its size? 
  • Do you know the first thing about death?  

But it was the tender display of love in God’s questions to Job that followed that broke me:

  • Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?
  • Do you know where Light comes from and where Darkness lives so you can take them by the hand and lead them home when they get lost?
  • Do you know the month when mountain goats give birth?

Beginning to understand this kind of humility helped me see evidences of God in places I’d never seen before: the indescribable connection between lovers, the haunting beauty of classical music, the fascinating complexity of the created order, the fierce devotion of motherly love.  There are no scientific proofs for these sorts of things, but their power over us is undeniable.

Loving Mercy

Sadly, I have known many situations where judgment flowed much more freely than mercy.  These days, I try not to be too hard on such actions for I’ve since learned for myself that judgment is much easier to offer than mercy.  Just watch the news – criticism of others sells. The worse the twerk, the more attention it gets – of course it does, for it lets us feel like we’ve got it waaay more together than the next guy.

Judging others is human.  Mercy, however, is nothing of the sort.

Mercy – when we don’t get what we deserve. It’s not nearly as newsworthy as Jerry Falwell soundbites, but it’s much more deeply Christian.  Learning about unmerited acts of forgiveness within tragic moments of history like apartheid, the civil rights movement and the holocaust disrupted my anger with ‘hypocritical’ Christians. Tales of authentic faith chased me as I tried my best to walk away.  Observing quiet lives, healed and well lived, painted a very different picture of faith than the headlines and the church buildings.

After encountering these stories, I began to see the mark Jesus in every one of them, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he prayed as they crucified him. Mercy.

The soundbite faith was easier to find, but the merciful faith was far more convincing.  

Living Justly

Raw from both my first exposure to extreme global poverty and my mother surviving cancer, one of my primary intellectual and emotional struggles through my college years became “Where is God in the pain?”  While my faith development had focused rightly on the value of a personal relationship with God, it had not helped me understand a Christian’s role in the kingdom of God past evangelization.  I didn’t understand how someone could grasp a need to know Jesus when they didn’t even have food.  “Bread for myself is a material problem,” Norman Bowie’s observation voiced my internal conflict. “Bread for other people is a spiritual problem.”

The hyper-emphasis on an eternal future in heaven or hell overshadowed the need to live as God’s hands and feet in the story that God is telling here on earth.  In short, a gospel of ‘Jesus-for-sinners’ only didn’t tell the whole story.  It was also a message of ‘Jesus-for-the-hungry’, ‘Jesus-for-the-oppressed’, ‘Jesus-for-the-broken-systems’, and ‘Jesus-for-president‘ (thanks, Shane Claibourne 🙂 )  While my childhood tradition had emphasized that Jesus was for our hearts alone, I was captivated to learn that the Bible speaks to a much broader redemption of our bodies, systems and communities as well.  

As I encountered people living lives of Biblical justice by caring for the poor and the abandoned, advocating for just laws and business practices, and fighting to free the oppressed, their actions spoke loudly of another world, a higher ethic that I could not easily dismiss.  While I questioned the cultural imperialism of the historical missionary movement, I could not deny the goodness that these same Christians created worldwide through networks of hospitals, schools, and relief agencies.

One of our family goals is to live in light of global – not American – reality.  Living in suburban Los Angeles, it is a win-again-lose-again battle.  But the gospel calls us to pursue the path of justice for the least of these, and I’ve grown to understand this path as a vital component of a faith that sustains.

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So yes, I still believe in Jesus – a belief that stems in large part from a shift of an either-or to a both-and faith.

I believe both in spite of the questions that linger and because of the mystery that beckons, “Come and see.”

I believe both in spite of the painful silence that numbs and because of the silent goodness that heals.

I believe both in spite of the pride that lingers in my heart and because of the humility that breaks it.

I believe both in spite of the bleakness of the headlines and because of the mercy that reverberates in the moments that follow them.

I believe both in spite of the brokenness that so often overwhelms and because of the justice that always hopes.

Some may call me crazy, perhaps rightfully so, but the paradox within the Christian faith is no longer a show stopper for me.  It is, in fact, a deeply orthodox part of the Christian faith, one that G.K. Chesterton explains so well in the classic Orthodoxy, “Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal:  it breaks out.  For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature;  but it is fixed forever in size;  it can never be larger or smaller.  But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape.  Because it has a paradox in its center, it can grow without changing.  The circle returns upon itself and is bound.  The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.”

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