Thing One/Thing Two

currently hearing: frou frou/details

First, a little explaining.  If I’m not a good pray-er, as I admitted a few posts ago, I’m a worse Bible-reader.  It was always a to-do; always an empty check-off box.  All my life, since I was young, I felt supremely ashamed of myself every time the subject was broached at church, keenly aware that I was failing in this all-important measure of spirituality, and forever vowing to do better. 

I never did better. 

Guilt was such a big part of my experience when I was younger.  It’s really not surprising that I wasn’t exactly falling all over myself to read in even more detail the many ways that I was completely blowing it.

For many reasons, things have changed, and I find myself reading because I want to.  When it comes right down to it, I’m pretty curious about what this book actually says.  So much was misrepresented by the well-intentioned during the formative years of my faith… now that I’m reading scripture for myself, it’s literally as if I’m approaching this for the first time… and I’m quite frankly having to tear down as much as I build.

First thought: the gospel really is revolutionary.  I never realized how revolutionary, til now.  I was so familiar and comfortable with things which, when I look at them now, absolutely blow me away.  God becoming flesh is hard enough to reconcile in my head — but God coming humbly as the baby of a peasant girl?  God, vulnerable?  God, unimpressed by religious rule-keeping but drawn to simple faith and honest hearts?  God, reaching out for the outsiders, the rejected, the poor, the sick, the addicted, the lonely? 

Second thought: I’m not sure the Jesus I was taught about as a kid and the Jesus I now read about in the gospels would know each other.  They have vastly different preferences and concerns.  Jesus Number One really really is impressed by looking good on the outside, by the pious and powerful, those who have their shit together and show it.  (Although he would never use such a term — that’s just me).  He only hears long prayers with big pretentious religious words.  Jesus One gets nervous if you ever hang out with people who don’t know him.  They probably sin regularly, and then you’ll end up sinning.  And if there’s anything Jesus One hates, it’s having to forgive even more sin.  (Jesus One also hates Democrats, outspoken women and alcohol of any kind).

I spent many nights growing up apologizing profusely to Jesus One, because I had the distinct impression that he was pissed off at me, or at the very least, hugely (and yet, justifiably) disappointed in me.

The only reason that I figure I stayed, rather than turning my back completely on faith, is that just enough of the real Jesus got through to me that it was worth continuing to search for him.  Or, more honestly, for some reason he held on to me when I was just too heart-sick to even search anymore.

These next few entries are going to be focused on what I’m learning about the real Jesus based on simple, bare-bones reading of the scriptures.  To the spiritually educated and astute, this will undoubtedly be elementary, and it probably borders on downright embarrassing that I’m just now starting to wrap my head around this.  I don’t care.  I said not too long ago that I wanted the real true guts of the gospel or nothing at all… well, now I’m digging in.  If Jesus One is all there is, then I might as well move on and find something more fulfilling to devote my life to than a bunch of I’m sorry’s.  If the Bible reveals something more, someOne more, then it changes everything.  Everything.

Thanks to my small group who, in taking the Word and making it everyday conversation, made me hungry to meet God all over again.         

Real. Simple.

So here I am, finally settled in the little blue house.  (If I were talking with you rather than typing, you’d hear an unmistakeable depth of affection and tenderness in my voice when I say it: little blue house.  I’m not sure it’s right to have this degree of emotional attachment to 525 square feet… but regardless — I am in love).

This is no palace: the ten-second tour of my house (er, cottage) takes literally ten seconds.  It has what I like to call “quirks,” such as slightly rusty water for the first two seconds I run water in the tub, and floors that slope a bit in places.  I’ve become quite adept at killing spiders, who lamentably love the house as much as I do (although, if I ever have a man around, my paralyzing fear will make an inexplicable reappearance and I’ll never have to squash one of the little devils ever again).  My brother has to duck in doorways; if I stand on my tip-toes all 5′6″ of me can touch the ceiling with ease.  There is a good 35-40 degree temperature range in my place at all times — somewhere around 50 when the heat’s off, somewhere around 90 when the baseboard heat is on.  (I appreciate my sheepskin slippers more than ever, especially first thing in the morning).

The little blue house’s beauty far outweighs its many “quirks,” however, and such trivialities are soon forgotten.  A collective seventy years of charm makes itself known in dark hardwood floors in the bedroom, a huge porcelain tub special-made for bubble baths, a desk nook, prismed glass doorknobs, and old-fashioned light fixtures — the kind made to look like candles on the wall.  My tiny lawn takes about fifteen minutes to mow, but to mow it makes me feel handy and self-sufficient nonetheless, and the rosebush I freed from weeds my first weekend here is now heavy with hot-pink blooms in gratitude.

There are no screaming neighbors downstairs; no thump-thump-I-have-something-to-prove car stereos out in the parking lot causing my too-thin walls to shudder.  Best of all, there is no longer a motorcycle directly outside my window coughing and sputtering in ten vain attempts to start at 5 a.m., when I typically am trying to squeeze the last few precious moments of sleep out of my night, already interrupted by the aforementioned car stereo around 2 am…  Here, the only sounds that reach my ears are the whoosh of cars driving by, the light hum of my refrigerator, and the second hand on the clock above my stove, the combination of which lull me to sleep more than anything.

The peace I feel simply in existing here extends far beyond an absence of noise, however.  The moment I walk through the front door at the end of a long day, I’m surrounded by my favorite things.  (One could argue that I’m surrounded by the things I love merely as a result of how teeny my place is, but I’ll leave them to it).  My dearly treasured, full-to-overflowing bookshelf is the first thing I see when I open the door.  Bebhinn, my guitar, sits over in the corner.  Pictures of those I love smile at me from the walls, in case it’s been five minutes since I’ve seen them (my family lives the next street over).  There are way more candles around than my landlord would probably want to know about.  Add to this my well-worn, comfortable couch and The Reading Chair, and I have to be honest, I really wouldn’t ask for more.  (Not even cable).

This morning I realized, with a start, that I actually have the life I wanted.  There’s more to be lived, for sure, but for right now, seriously — does it get any better than this?  The simplicity of friends I love, a job I like and a home I enjoy?  Perhaps I wasn’t always aware that I wanted it.  Perhaps it was obscured by feeling like I needed a ring on a certain finger of my left hand to have the life I wanted, or that it wouldn’t really begin until that point… perhaps it was hidden by thinking that my life needed to be bigger and more important somehow; that I didn’t really exist unless I existed on some grandiose scale.

All I know is, I used to keep my life so full-to-the-brim with frenetic busyness and activity and always running from here to there that I lost myself — there was no room for what makes a life (or, at least my life) satisfyingly full: time to think.  Time to breathe.  Time to create.  Time to read the beautiful story of the good news, alone and with people who seem as amazed by it as I am.  Time to have the girls over for pizza and a glass of wine after work.  Time to play piano for as long as my heart wants to sing (today).  Time to sit on the beach and try to catch that split-second glimpse of a fish jumping as the sun goes down (last night).

My life is finally simple enough to do those things I kept telling my heart would be better off pursued some other day, because I couldn’t find the time to schedule it in.  It may not always be this simple, this focused, but for now it is, and I love this near-silence, this peace.  It’s easier to hear God in it.  To search for him in it.  To see him in it. 

This is no Plan B, but rather one of the sweetest gifts I’ve ever received.

A smile plays on my lips as I think to myself that I might be setting myself up for lifelong spinsterhood in this little blue house.  Would I trade the little blue house and my ability to sleep undisturbed, sprawled out diagonally across my queen-size bed, for all the complications and hassles of a man?

Nope. 

At least not now, anyway.  Me and the little blue house are contractually bound to at least a year together. 

…And don’t be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else.  Where you are right now is God’s place for you.  Live and obey and love and believe right there. 

–from the Message, 1 Corinthians 7                     

this, then, is how you should pray

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us today our daily bread.  Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

-Matthew 6.9-13

You don’t pray so you can change things in the world.  It’s not magic.  You might ask, and you might hope for change, but ultimately changing things cannot be your motivation.

-Real Live Preacher

***

I may as well get straight to the point: I’m not much of a pray-er.  Words pour forth from every crevice of my life — I’m a reader; a singer; a writer; a thinker; — but ask me to form words aimed at God, Man Upstairs, Creator of the Universe, and the words don’t come easy.

I could go into several reasons for this — prayer being constantly positioned as a check-off item on the All-Star List of “How-to-Be-a-Good-Christian” Spiritual Disciplines, for one — but that’s not really my point, or even what I want to spend time talking about.  At least not tonight, anyway.

The thing is, I’ve never really understood it.  Much of what I was taught regarding prayer seemed to point me toward some sort of cosmic arm-wrestling match with the Almighty, as if God needed me to twist his arm into action.  I was also told that “Prayer moves the hand of God,” as if he was a Peter-Pan deity needing a few more people to believe a little harder in order to fly.  My favorite is the spin on “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective,” — if your prayer didn’t work, well, you know who to blame.

***

When I was sixteen years old, a traveling preacher visited the church I grew up in.  He was reputed to have “the gift of healing,” so I walked up to the front at the end and asked him to pray for my back.  He prayed.  I went about the next day, and came back the next night.  He asked me if I was feeling better.  I truthfully said no.  We prayed again.  I came back the next night and he asked me again.  I answered the truth a second time.  He didn’t like my answer much, because he looked down at me and said, “Well, I’ve done my part, and God’s done his part — are you sure you’ve done your part?”  As we stood there in the lobby, I simply blinked up at him.  I had no idea what to say.  I must not have believed hard enough or something.  Years passed before I bothered God about that sort of thing again.

***

Last night as I lay in bed exhausted, I couldn’t sleep.  I visited Melissa in the hospital on Saturday with my mom.  Put simply, things are not good.  And while I’ve found that I can be practical and keep my composure while talking about the specifics with concerned and caring people in the light of day — last night there was nothing to stem back the tide of all that I’ve been trying to keep hidden.  Fear of what lies ahead.  Frustration with how unfair it is.  The pain of watching true suffering — pain that you almost feel guilty for feeling because it doesn’t remotely compare to hers, and his, and theirs.  I think of her three beautiful kids, and I can scarely breathe with the ache of it.  It’s sad.  I’m sad.

It’s times like these I wish I knew the right kinds of things to say to God.  I wish I understood what he means by things like this.  I wish that I knew how to pray better, and I wish that his answers would be the kind I hope for.  The simple kinds of answers, where you get to keep your friends, where no one ever gets sick or dies, where everyone you love is close and safe and warm and happy and blessed. 

Sometimes I wish that it really was a matter of saying the right words, or saying enough of them, or saying them with enough faith or enough belief or enough heart.  I wish sometimes that it could be about trying hard enough.  That if we could just get enough people praying, she’d get better.  You know?  How many times do we think about it that way? 

As with most things in God’s way, it’s not a matter of trying hard enough — of God’s hot-line getting inundated with enough calls.  God’s way, as usual, centers in on the heart.  When I read the quote from RLP today, it was exactly what I needed.  When it comes down to it, why am I praying in the first place?

No simple answers are given me.  I want God to make my friend better.  I want her to watch her kids grow up.  I want so much for her.  But as I pray your kingdom come, your will be done, here as in heaven, I realize that trying to change God’s set course of action isn’t really the point.  As I pray, God is changing me.  He is not changing; I am.  As I pray, God is causing me to care for Melissa more like he does, for me to see what she’s going through more like he does.  In prayer I trade my human eyes for his.  This puts no smiley face on the whole deal; it hurts still — deeply — but in a different way altogether.

If God is good, if God’s will is always for good, then, even right now in this circumstance, I can trust God with Melissa.  I can trust her husband and her sweet kids with him.  And quite frankly, if I believe what I say I believe, what feels like the worst possible circumstance is actually the best for her.  As scary as it is, I know I can trust God with the end of the story.  He did okay with that whole Good Friday thing… and even though it’s quite beyond my ability to see it in any real practical sense at this point, I believe he’s capable of it here too. 

It’s the now that is so, so hard.

Which is why much of what I ask for now is daily bread… that he would give us today what we need to get through.  This is a prayer I know he answers exactly in the way we ask him to.

If it’s one you could voice to him today on our behalf, my heart says thank you.      

always

Long time no blog.

I will have the new place equipped with an actual phone line on Tuesday, so from then on, I hope to resume my online ramblings soon.  Without cable TV or internet, I have been forced to sustain myself with… READING.  Like a madman.  I have become a fiction glutton over these past few months (no one person should read the entire Harry Potter series in three weeks), and it’s been good eatin’.  To those who have missed me, thank you for missing me.  I’ll be back soon.

For now, let me say this: God and life have been so very good to me.  I am deeply grateful for a cute little light blue house, complete with a cute little yard that allows me to get some dirt beneath my fingernails as I weed out my flowerbeds and mow my stretch of lawn on lazy weekends (much to the marvelling & bewildered amusement of my parents, who thought yardwork quite beyond me).  I’m sure you’ll hear me sing its praises more, but I am utterly in love with the little piece of the world I am priveleged to call home.  Also, as if that wasn’t enough, I’m thankful for a job that challenges me, that affirms me in my gifts, for coworkers that make me gut laugh at intervals from the cozy confines of what has been dubbed “The Zen Cubicle” (I think it was the bamboo & obsessive organization).  There are many – many – things to add to the list, but spending my days doing something that matters, not only to me, but to the world as well, and going home at night to a place which cradles me in a comfortable, homey sort of peace… for the first time I can remember, that “settled” feeling I was so longing for is starting to settle in.

When I speak of God being good to me, my temptation is always to say lately or these past few months… but an article Darcie forwarded me had a profound impact on the way I see God’s goodness.  I’ll post it at some point when I have more time, but the gist was this:  God is never any better to me than he is right now.  God is never any more good to me than he was the moment Christ took my place at the cross.  God’s character does not change, and so his goodness to me always — at every moment — is also unchanging.  I cannot always see or understand what he is doing — the “no’s” are always painful — but I can trust that he is working it out for my good.  Period.  The rougher things I face will, at some point, be utterly unimportant in light of the good that God will bring into — and, I pray, out of — my life. 

When I see doors slammed shut in my face, God is good.  When I feel my faith fail me, God is good.  When I am watching my dear friend face the fear of the unknown, fear of illness, fear of death – God is good.  When my life seems full to the brim with blessing, God is good.  When the solitude that cute little house affords turns to loneliness, God is good.  When I am learning how to forgive, God is good.  When God holds me close, He is good.

Always.