For the last four hours I have been researching for a group project on Jean Vanier (think French when you say that). It really shouldn’t have taken me four hours, but I was pulled into the beauty of his writings and, more importantly, his heart that was woven throughout every syllable.
Jean Vanier is the founder of l’Arche communities. These communities are simple houses in which people with mental handicaps and people without them live together as a family. The focus is not on “normal” people caring for the “abnormal,” but on creating a home, a community, a family in which people who are handicapped and people who aren’t live together. A part of it is that those who are more physically or intellectually abled are able to serve those who are handicapped in those areas, but a part of it is also that those who are physically or intellectually handicapped are able to reveal to those who aren’t the simplicity of loving someone and being loved in return, of wearing your heart on your sleeve and revealing your darkest and most broken parts, and especially of not judging a person by their abilities but rather looking at their heart.
While reading several books and articles tonight written by or about Jean Vanier I have been brought to tears again and again. This man has truly seen people in their most broken state and has understood the need for healing in the context of long-lasting relationships built on mutual trust and surrendering of oneself. My tears have come in parts when he touched on wounds in me that have yet to be healed, as well as desires in me that have yet to be filled, or even known very well. After four hours of being immersed in Vanier and l’Arche I am a messy mixture of exhaustion, joy, and a much deeper hunger for loving and being loved than I was aware of today.
Vanier talks about the deep hurts felt by people who are handicapped. The abandonment and rejection they have each experienced is immense and profound. Their brokenness is not in their bodies or minds but in their hearts. They have been left by parents, siblings, caretakers, friends etc. They have felt the weight of their own neediness and live in fear that it is too much for anyone to handle, that they are too much for anyone to truly love. They are unable, however, to hide this because they do not have the social awareness or ability to compartmentalize their emotional experiences from their bodies. Some call this a disability, tonight I long for that disability, however. Too much is hidden beneath set faces, social graces and the wall put up between what I feel and what I do or say. I wonder if I were able to say all that I wanted to say if I would find life more livable, or relationships truer, deeper and easier to work out? Are the social graces I have been taught more of a disability than the way people with handicaps often operate?
I hunger for a people I can share meals with. Where the intimacy of being around a table sharing food together is a daily occurrence. I hunger for a people who can know my daily life and I theirs, where we share our daily lives with one another. I yearn for a people to be known in, known for me with all my beauty and gifting and flaws and brokenness, where I will be loved for all these parts of myself. I long for a people where I don’t have to be parts of a self, where I can be whole and wholly loved and accepted. I yearn to know I am accepted. I even yearn for the mess of a community where people mess up and annoy each other, where you do have to work through the hardest things in life together and you can rest knowing you won’t be abandoned in the midst of the mess, that love and acceptance and care will continue in the midst of the mess. Is there such a place? Are there such people? That is the more correct question. If there are than how on earth do I find them?
I could probably write another 20 pages tonight on all I have reflected on in the last four hours. Alas, I am bound by time and an exhausted body tonight.
For your information, here are the books I read or skimmed about/by Jean Vanier.
By Jean Vanier: “From Brokenness to Community” “The Church and Disabled Persons” “Befriending the Stanger” and “Wilderness: Essays in Honour of Frances Young.”
About Jean Vanier: “Messy Love” By Micheal W. Higgins, and “The Miracle, The Message, the Story: Jean Vanier and l’Arche” by Kathryn Spink.
Also, l’Arches website: l'Arche USA
May Shalom visit your house tonight.
~Joy
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Remembering my former life
Taking three theology classes is one of the best, and one of the worst, ideas I had about this quarter. The reasons for both are the same: my mind gets blown with new ways of thinking every class period. That means I have a mind-blowing experience 9 times a week: awesome and exhausting all at the same time.
Yesterday was an exceptionally exciting day as I learned a whole new vision of freedom and also a very different way to interpret the book of Hosea. I may write another blog to explain each of those, but what is more important than these radical new ideas, is the way I reacted to them.
I was excited and fully engaged. I could have spent hours just discussing these theories and ideas and just attempting to grasp their multi-faceted implications. I wanted, and needed, to digest them in the company of other students and professors because they were huge ideas that require long and thorough digestion. I was really excited to spend at least a class period on each of these, but was hoping we could spend a whole week of class on them. Can you see how excited I was? I was literally bouncing in my chair and furiously writing down almost everything the professor was saying. It was awesome.
The problem: as far as I could tell, no one else was half as interested as I was. I realized how apathetic students are towards learning. They are in the class to get the grade to get the degree to get out of school and into the world of fighting to make money. Maybe that is simplifying the life of an American college student a little too much, but then I wonder if it isn’t. Feel free to give me feedback, fellow students.
In my Hosea class the problem was also that no one, not even me, was willing to speak up and ask to go more in depth with this new, radical way to interpret Hosea. I am not sure anyone else thought it was possible, but I wanted to give them all the benefit of the doubt. Maybe others were just as excited as I was, they just felt outnumbered by the people who weren’t, or by our professor who did not give it much credence. Whatever the case, I was downright angry when he glossed over it, dismissing it as impossible, way too radical. Maybe he is right, but maybe he isn’t.
Most of my college life I have been an apathetic student, even in my last year of high school I was only doing the work to get the grade to get the degree to get out of school. Senior year we call it senioritis, but when I got to freshman year at college my senioritis was still with me, and it didn’t ever leave. Until I left and came back for my senior year, that is.
I love learning. I love discussing new ideas and challenging old thoughts with new, maybe impossible, thoughts. This quarter I love my classes not because they are easy or I can bullshit them, but because they challenge me to work harder, think deeper and go beyond the box of my former education. In Uganda this was encouraged and given lots of room to grow. Grades slowly faded in their importance and learning became the important thing; at least with some classes. Now, however, it is a fight for the grade, for the degree, for the job. It is all a fight. I don’t want to fight, I want to learn deeply and share that experience with other people. This is a problem when others do not share that desire. It’s hard to learn in a community when I am the only one in the community.
Though overall I felt discouraged by the end of the day, I am encouraged to catch a glimpse of the learner within me. To see this yearning for understanding, for learning beyond what gets me a decent grade, is beautiful, a side of myself I have not known within school since I was much younger. Now that I see it, however, I can see it was there all along. These past years of hating school I was still yearning to grow and learn and understand. That part of me was overwhelmed with having to grow and understand what the hell just happened in my family and in my life. Now that I have space and have experienced much healing I find learning within school is not only fun, but also it feeds my spirit and my brain!
How funny God is, that he took me far away from school, into a whole different mindset, in order to teach me how much I love school.
Shalom to you all!
Yesterday was an exceptionally exciting day as I learned a whole new vision of freedom and also a very different way to interpret the book of Hosea. I may write another blog to explain each of those, but what is more important than these radical new ideas, is the way I reacted to them.
I was excited and fully engaged. I could have spent hours just discussing these theories and ideas and just attempting to grasp their multi-faceted implications. I wanted, and needed, to digest them in the company of other students and professors because they were huge ideas that require long and thorough digestion. I was really excited to spend at least a class period on each of these, but was hoping we could spend a whole week of class on them. Can you see how excited I was? I was literally bouncing in my chair and furiously writing down almost everything the professor was saying. It was awesome.
The problem: as far as I could tell, no one else was half as interested as I was. I realized how apathetic students are towards learning. They are in the class to get the grade to get the degree to get out of school and into the world of fighting to make money. Maybe that is simplifying the life of an American college student a little too much, but then I wonder if it isn’t. Feel free to give me feedback, fellow students.
In my Hosea class the problem was also that no one, not even me, was willing to speak up and ask to go more in depth with this new, radical way to interpret Hosea. I am not sure anyone else thought it was possible, but I wanted to give them all the benefit of the doubt. Maybe others were just as excited as I was, they just felt outnumbered by the people who weren’t, or by our professor who did not give it much credence. Whatever the case, I was downright angry when he glossed over it, dismissing it as impossible, way too radical. Maybe he is right, but maybe he isn’t.
Most of my college life I have been an apathetic student, even in my last year of high school I was only doing the work to get the grade to get the degree to get out of school. Senior year we call it senioritis, but when I got to freshman year at college my senioritis was still with me, and it didn’t ever leave. Until I left and came back for my senior year, that is.
I love learning. I love discussing new ideas and challenging old thoughts with new, maybe impossible, thoughts. This quarter I love my classes not because they are easy or I can bullshit them, but because they challenge me to work harder, think deeper and go beyond the box of my former education. In Uganda this was encouraged and given lots of room to grow. Grades slowly faded in their importance and learning became the important thing; at least with some classes. Now, however, it is a fight for the grade, for the degree, for the job. It is all a fight. I don’t want to fight, I want to learn deeply and share that experience with other people. This is a problem when others do not share that desire. It’s hard to learn in a community when I am the only one in the community.
Though overall I felt discouraged by the end of the day, I am encouraged to catch a glimpse of the learner within me. To see this yearning for understanding, for learning beyond what gets me a decent grade, is beautiful, a side of myself I have not known within school since I was much younger. Now that I see it, however, I can see it was there all along. These past years of hating school I was still yearning to grow and learn and understand. That part of me was overwhelmed with having to grow and understand what the hell just happened in my family and in my life. Now that I have space and have experienced much healing I find learning within school is not only fun, but also it feeds my spirit and my brain!
How funny God is, that he took me far away from school, into a whole different mindset, in order to teach me how much I love school.
Shalom to you all!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Father, Can You Hear Me?
Sometimes my heart feels like it is full of all the pain my family feels. My one little heart seems to feel what everyone feels. Being blessed with the gift of empathy sometimes feels like a curse.
My family have gotten a backseat in this blog over the past several months. My life was overwhelmed with camp and California and going back to school
Yesterday, my littlest sister called me in tears. It took a few minutes of texting (cause first I got her tearful message) before I realized how much of an emergency was happening. She and the other two young siblings were going to work for my dad, helping him to move into a house he bought with the same woman he had an affair with. They are, obviously, still in an intimate relationship with each other. Well, this woman was also helping him to move on that day. No one my family wants to hang out with her. Most of us don’t even want to hang out with our dad. Kate was in tears because she was trapped, she had no warning of this. Protective older sister instincts took over and I had the urge to jump and in car and drive the 2.5 hours to pick her up. Instead I texted my mom that my dad was being a cuss word and her kids needed help. This worked better, cause my mom was closer.
I didn’t get much chance to process my feelings for myself about it all yesterday. I was fuming for the sake of my sisters; furious that my dad would decide such an idea was a good one. Those were feelings for them, for their situation. They were helpful because they propelled me into action, into helping my sister see she was worth rescuing, that her feelings are deeply important and she is worth protecting. I was so glad to be able to demonstrate that worth to her and to tell her in my actions how precious she is and that she should not be treated any other way.
This morning my feelings were for me. I was driving for church and found myself listening to my favorite cussing song, “Rootless Tree” by Damien Rice. The chorus is a satisfying string of F-words I can scream from the car. I was pissed and sad and outraged and would have liked to scream the F-word at him.
My dad is moving in with this woman and is either blind or choosing to ignore his children’s feelings. I guess he never asked us. Did he even think to? I guess I won’t speculate and project feelings or perceptions of mine onto him. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Whatever the case, I feel like he is pushing himself away from us. My heart aches for my siblings, for my mom, and for me. It hurts like hell. It really does feel like I am losing him all over again because it feels like he is creating a new family for himself. I feel such sorrow for my younger siblings because they will have to navigate something so painful and difficult as they work to keep their dad in their life, but cannot handle having his lover in their life. That should not be asked of them. Do the sorrows of divorce ever end?
I keep listening to a song called Sorrow. It’s originally a Bad Religion song, but Jon Foreman did a cover of it that sits much deeper in my heart. The chorus says:
“There will be sorrow,
there will be sorrow,
There will be sorrow no more.”
I yearn for the day when there will be sorrow no more. When the horrors and pains of divorce will at last fade away. Today in church, however, the pastor suggested reconciliation might yet continue into heaven. Whatever we don’t reconcile here we may be asked to reconcile there. Before I went to the table with all my brothers and sisters in that church to receive communion I had to breath deeply and ask myself if I could receive communion with my dad next to me, or even with his lover serving it to me. If there was no willingness for that to happen I wasn’t sure I should take communion. Somewhere in me there was willingness, even hope, that one day we could move beyond the pain and sorrow into a communion with each other. I just hope that day isn’t today.
Maybe there will be no more sorrow because we will at least be able to reconcile with all the peoples of the earth. Maybe we will be able to wipe our souls clean of all the wrongs done to it, and all the shame for the wrongs we have done to others. I hope this is so.
Shalom to you all.
(also, here is the link to "Sorrow" sung by Jon Foreman. It's worth a listen.)
My family have gotten a backseat in this blog over the past several months. My life was overwhelmed with camp and California and going back to school
Yesterday, my littlest sister called me in tears. It took a few minutes of texting (cause first I got her tearful message) before I realized how much of an emergency was happening. She and the other two young siblings were going to work for my dad, helping him to move into a house he bought with the same woman he had an affair with. They are, obviously, still in an intimate relationship with each other. Well, this woman was also helping him to move on that day. No one my family wants to hang out with her. Most of us don’t even want to hang out with our dad. Kate was in tears because she was trapped, she had no warning of this. Protective older sister instincts took over and I had the urge to jump and in car and drive the 2.5 hours to pick her up. Instead I texted my mom that my dad was being a cuss word and her kids needed help. This worked better, cause my mom was closer.
I didn’t get much chance to process my feelings for myself about it all yesterday. I was fuming for the sake of my sisters; furious that my dad would decide such an idea was a good one. Those were feelings for them, for their situation. They were helpful because they propelled me into action, into helping my sister see she was worth rescuing, that her feelings are deeply important and she is worth protecting. I was so glad to be able to demonstrate that worth to her and to tell her in my actions how precious she is and that she should not be treated any other way.
This morning my feelings were for me. I was driving for church and found myself listening to my favorite cussing song, “Rootless Tree” by Damien Rice. The chorus is a satisfying string of F-words I can scream from the car. I was pissed and sad and outraged and would have liked to scream the F-word at him.
My dad is moving in with this woman and is either blind or choosing to ignore his children’s feelings. I guess he never asked us. Did he even think to? I guess I won’t speculate and project feelings or perceptions of mine onto him. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Whatever the case, I feel like he is pushing himself away from us. My heart aches for my siblings, for my mom, and for me. It hurts like hell. It really does feel like I am losing him all over again because it feels like he is creating a new family for himself. I feel such sorrow for my younger siblings because they will have to navigate something so painful and difficult as they work to keep their dad in their life, but cannot handle having his lover in their life. That should not be asked of them. Do the sorrows of divorce ever end?
I keep listening to a song called Sorrow. It’s originally a Bad Religion song, but Jon Foreman did a cover of it that sits much deeper in my heart. The chorus says:
“There will be sorrow,
there will be sorrow,
There will be sorrow no more.”
I yearn for the day when there will be sorrow no more. When the horrors and pains of divorce will at last fade away. Today in church, however, the pastor suggested reconciliation might yet continue into heaven. Whatever we don’t reconcile here we may be asked to reconcile there. Before I went to the table with all my brothers and sisters in that church to receive communion I had to breath deeply and ask myself if I could receive communion with my dad next to me, or even with his lover serving it to me. If there was no willingness for that to happen I wasn’t sure I should take communion. Somewhere in me there was willingness, even hope, that one day we could move beyond the pain and sorrow into a communion with each other. I just hope that day isn’t today.
Maybe there will be no more sorrow because we will at least be able to reconcile with all the peoples of the earth. Maybe we will be able to wipe our souls clean of all the wrongs done to it, and all the shame for the wrongs we have done to others. I hope this is so.
Shalom to you all.
(also, here is the link to "Sorrow" sung by Jon Foreman. It's worth a listen.)
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Week One
Friends,
A whole week of school has happened and I didn’t die! I didn’t really think I would, but at the same time I wondered if I might explode or something.
What has this week been? Like nothing I expected. When my plane landed in Seattle last Tuesday I had tears running down my face. Not from fear or dread or sorrow, no, these were tears of excitement and joy. After writing my last blog on that same airplane I was overwhelmed with the realization that I get a second chance at being a student, a second chance to love learning at an institution. The grace and mercy of this second chance brought me to tears and a new excitement about it rushed through my veins as my heart beat a little faster.
The excitement in many ways has lasted throughout the week. I love studying. I don’t know how that happened, but I get excited for the hours of studying I get to do every day. I also get excited to go to classes. For those who have followed my life you know this is beyond me. Last year ended with classes being a place of panic and fear. How did I get to this point? I guess I don’t really know. God has way bigger plans than I could have imagined, and also smaller. I had no idea my adventure to California was actually meant to lead me back to school. I had no idea God wanted to redeem school and my love of learning. I wonder what else I have no idea about.
I have also been living with men. Sometimes this is quite terrifying to me, but I also trust there is purpose in this so I am able to be patient within the tension of it. I don’t know yet how to be fully myself, fully comfortable at my home and I don’t know how to be bold in saying what needs to be different, but I know when one sit’s in tension growth inevitably happens.
In the midst if all this growth and excitement and joy I am also apprehensive and hesitant to really relax into it because for so long school has been hard and disaster has struck almost every quarter in some way or another. I find I don’t really know how to do school without impending doom. In some ways I miss it, which is really odd. The danger and excitement of having to just survive is thrilling even as it sucks the life out of me. Doing school when I can take the time to study, when I can sit through classes and just enjoy learning, when my life is actually stable feels abnormal. It’s not that I want disaster to strike, but I am confused by the lack of it and not sure how to just be in the stability right now.
That’s all for now, my friends. I am going to try and post weekly now so if I haven’t posted in a while feel free to get on my case about it.
Peace be in your weeks!
A whole week of school has happened and I didn’t die! I didn’t really think I would, but at the same time I wondered if I might explode or something.
What has this week been? Like nothing I expected. When my plane landed in Seattle last Tuesday I had tears running down my face. Not from fear or dread or sorrow, no, these were tears of excitement and joy. After writing my last blog on that same airplane I was overwhelmed with the realization that I get a second chance at being a student, a second chance to love learning at an institution. The grace and mercy of this second chance brought me to tears and a new excitement about it rushed through my veins as my heart beat a little faster.
The excitement in many ways has lasted throughout the week. I love studying. I don’t know how that happened, but I get excited for the hours of studying I get to do every day. I also get excited to go to classes. For those who have followed my life you know this is beyond me. Last year ended with classes being a place of panic and fear. How did I get to this point? I guess I don’t really know. God has way bigger plans than I could have imagined, and also smaller. I had no idea my adventure to California was actually meant to lead me back to school. I had no idea God wanted to redeem school and my love of learning. I wonder what else I have no idea about.
I have also been living with men. Sometimes this is quite terrifying to me, but I also trust there is purpose in this so I am able to be patient within the tension of it. I don’t know yet how to be fully myself, fully comfortable at my home and I don’t know how to be bold in saying what needs to be different, but I know when one sit’s in tension growth inevitably happens.
In the midst if all this growth and excitement and joy I am also apprehensive and hesitant to really relax into it because for so long school has been hard and disaster has struck almost every quarter in some way or another. I find I don’t really know how to do school without impending doom. In some ways I miss it, which is really odd. The danger and excitement of having to just survive is thrilling even as it sucks the life out of me. Doing school when I can take the time to study, when I can sit through classes and just enjoy learning, when my life is actually stable feels abnormal. It’s not that I want disaster to strike, but I am confused by the lack of it and not sure how to just be in the stability right now.
That’s all for now, my friends. I am going to try and post weekly now so if I haven’t posted in a while feel free to get on my case about it.
Peace be in your weeks!
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Hindsight is Awesome
I wrote this post on Tuesday on a flight between Dallas, TX and Seattle WA.
I’m on my way back to Seattle. School started today, but I was in Kansas with my Uganda friends. One week full of laughter and outrageous stories, deep conversations and deep people. It was a week of challenge, but also one so full of love and care. The love and care of these friends is like nothing I have ever experienced, except for the love of God. It definitely was not what I expected it to be. Then again, I am not sure what I expected it to be.
Having people digging into some of the hardest stories of the past year and having those same people share their own struggles and heartaches was beautiful, but not easy; it was good. I do not even have the words to reflect on the week yet, I think the experiences are too close.
What I do want to reflect on is going back to school. Today I was given some glorious insight into it all. The conclusion: God had a purpose in everything that happened the last 6 months.
I saw that last spring, when I was contemplating dropping out, I had grown apathetic towards learning and that apathy was quickly becoming bitterness. I could have pushed through school and finished by the end of this year, but it would have been with a hard and angry heart. I think God saw this and knew I needed rescue. He rescued me; he gave me the freedom to walk away and then invited me on an adventure. I am an adventure junkie, so of course I accepted the invitation. In the last 6 months I have gotten to live in different places near the ocean, to experience different communities and families, to be welcomed into a different family and loved so completely by them. I also studied. I ate up books by well known theologians like Henri Nouwen, Richard Foster, Tolkien and Eugene Peterson. I got to study at my own pace and decide what it was I wanted to get out of these books. Friends, I loved it. Today my friend reminded me of just how much I love to learn and study. I even wrote papers about what I read! God must have seen my heart turning hard and bitter and also known how much I love to learn and study, and he knew he had to do an intervention. He loves me too much to allow my heart to be hardened towards something I love. It took six months, but I got a glimpse of the journey today and received a new perspective of renewal and a second chance to really enjoy learning in the community of SPU.
I don’t think I could have received this joyous gift unless I had spent a week debriefing the hard stuff and allowing my IMME friends to love me. Without the background of love and a supportive community I think I would have hated admitting that I love learning so much and that I might be getting excited about school tomorrow.
This week I didn’t feel pressured to sound ok with what happened in San Diego. It was ok to be upset, to question God and his intentions, to wonder if hope was real and if happiness was possible. It was ok to sit in those hard questions and have no answers, because none of us had any. We were all wondering the same things; the last year has been hard for all of us. Knowing it wasn’t just me who asked these questions and doubts was healing and freeing. It gave me the freedom to look closer and listen to what they all had to say with an open heart. It allowed me to really hear and understand my friend today.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Sitting in classes again, reading over syllabi, knowing I will somehow accomplish every assignment listed; will I be panicked again? Will I remain excited to learn? Will my heart be flooded with apathy and bitterness? Somehow, I have hope within me. Maybe I will panic, maybe I will feel overwhelmed and terrified of all I have to do. My hope isn’t in me. My hope is in God. Today I got a hindsight view of the deep love he has for me and the creative ways he cares for my heart and heals my soul. I guess I am raising an Ebenezer tonight and proclaiming hope and love I cannot understand and choosing to trust God because till now he has cared for me, even when it didn’t look like he was.
I’m on my way back to Seattle. School started today, but I was in Kansas with my Uganda friends. One week full of laughter and outrageous stories, deep conversations and deep people. It was a week of challenge, but also one so full of love and care. The love and care of these friends is like nothing I have ever experienced, except for the love of God. It definitely was not what I expected it to be. Then again, I am not sure what I expected it to be.
Having people digging into some of the hardest stories of the past year and having those same people share their own struggles and heartaches was beautiful, but not easy; it was good. I do not even have the words to reflect on the week yet, I think the experiences are too close.
What I do want to reflect on is going back to school. Today I was given some glorious insight into it all. The conclusion: God had a purpose in everything that happened the last 6 months.
I saw that last spring, when I was contemplating dropping out, I had grown apathetic towards learning and that apathy was quickly becoming bitterness. I could have pushed through school and finished by the end of this year, but it would have been with a hard and angry heart. I think God saw this and knew I needed rescue. He rescued me; he gave me the freedom to walk away and then invited me on an adventure. I am an adventure junkie, so of course I accepted the invitation. In the last 6 months I have gotten to live in different places near the ocean, to experience different communities and families, to be welcomed into a different family and loved so completely by them. I also studied. I ate up books by well known theologians like Henri Nouwen, Richard Foster, Tolkien and Eugene Peterson. I got to study at my own pace and decide what it was I wanted to get out of these books. Friends, I loved it. Today my friend reminded me of just how much I love to learn and study. I even wrote papers about what I read! God must have seen my heart turning hard and bitter and also known how much I love to learn and study, and he knew he had to do an intervention. He loves me too much to allow my heart to be hardened towards something I love. It took six months, but I got a glimpse of the journey today and received a new perspective of renewal and a second chance to really enjoy learning in the community of SPU.
I don’t think I could have received this joyous gift unless I had spent a week debriefing the hard stuff and allowing my IMME friends to love me. Without the background of love and a supportive community I think I would have hated admitting that I love learning so much and that I might be getting excited about school tomorrow.
This week I didn’t feel pressured to sound ok with what happened in San Diego. It was ok to be upset, to question God and his intentions, to wonder if hope was real and if happiness was possible. It was ok to sit in those hard questions and have no answers, because none of us had any. We were all wondering the same things; the last year has been hard for all of us. Knowing it wasn’t just me who asked these questions and doubts was healing and freeing. It gave me the freedom to look closer and listen to what they all had to say with an open heart. It allowed me to really hear and understand my friend today.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Sitting in classes again, reading over syllabi, knowing I will somehow accomplish every assignment listed; will I be panicked again? Will I remain excited to learn? Will my heart be flooded with apathy and bitterness? Somehow, I have hope within me. Maybe I will panic, maybe I will feel overwhelmed and terrified of all I have to do. My hope isn’t in me. My hope is in God. Today I got a hindsight view of the deep love he has for me and the creative ways he cares for my heart and heals my soul. I guess I am raising an Ebenezer tonight and proclaiming hope and love I cannot understand and choosing to trust God because till now he has cared for me, even when it didn’t look like he was.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Hope is Hard
Today I read a short passage from Henri Nouwen’s book, “Finding My Way Home.” I cannot do it justice in summary, so I will just write it out.
“I have found it very important to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. When I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God, something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me.
“To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God mold us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear.
I also read John 16. This is a section of the gospel where Jesus is speaking frankly with his disciples regarding what is about to happen to him and to them. He says, “You will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” (John 16:20) He also says, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Hope is not something I grasp easily. Though I am often optimistic, cheerful and confident I easily turn to hopelessness. When I realized I had to leave San Diego all the hope I had came crashing down. It wasn’t hope in San Diego; it was hope that God has good plans for me. It seems like I would have learned by now good doesn’t mean easy and it certainly doesn’t mean I will get what I expect. Early on in the summer I wrote a blog talking about good not meaning easy. I didn’t expect San Diego to be easy, but I did expect it to work out and I expected God to have a plan for a job and a place to live and a people to love. When none of those expectations turned out to be true I felt like God had abandoned me and I felt like he never had a good plan for me in the first place. I also felt like Samwise Gamgee at the end of the Two Towers movie, “How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?” All the bad that has happened, all the hard stuff I have been through over the past several years was piled up in front of me and I could not see how anything could ever be good in the face of all the hard and bad I have suffered. I could not see hope at all.
This is still true, my friends. I still do not see hope. I would like to lie on the floor and kick and scream like a two year old having a tantrum because I am so frustrated at how life is going right now. When I read John 16:20 I felt like most people are rejoicing that I am going back to school. I often get responses of hope that I am choosing wisely and that finally I will stop wandering and drifting around the world. My soul, however, is in mourning. As hard as drifting and wandering is I find staying in the same place much harder. Surrendering myself back to school feels very much like death. I wish people would stop rejoicing over the choice I made and stop trying to convince me it was a good choice.
The Henri Nouwen passage reminded me that my future is not really mine, but it is God’s. It reminded me of the calling to surrender my whole life to him. Though I know I was following God to San Diego I see now that I filled it with my expectations and dreams and plans. God had asked me not to plan anything and to just go but I still planned, I couldn’t seem to help it. This might have been easier if I could have resisted the need to plan.
Giving up control, surrendering myself to wherever God leads me and choosing to hope that he does have good plans for me even when it appears that he doesn’t is one of the most frustrating things I have attempted. Right now I am doing it with my heart full of frustration and anger and confusion, yet I am still doing it, I think. God commands my future no matter what I do, it seems. I know it would be better to follow him with a cheerful and thankful heart and to rejoice in his provision, I just don’t the will in me to do that today. So I grumpily move towards his leading. Today I realize God didn’t ever say life would get easier or smoother or safer, instead he said our pain would become joy and though we suffer trials and tribulations in the world he had already overcome the world. Life won’t be easy, but it will be painful. I know God is able to turn that pain into joy but right now I am pissed that I cannot expect anything easy to come my way. Seems like a shitty deal to me.
“I have found it very important to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. When I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God, something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me.
“To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God mold us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear.
I also read John 16. This is a section of the gospel where Jesus is speaking frankly with his disciples regarding what is about to happen to him and to them. He says, “You will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” (John 16:20) He also says, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Hope is not something I grasp easily. Though I am often optimistic, cheerful and confident I easily turn to hopelessness. When I realized I had to leave San Diego all the hope I had came crashing down. It wasn’t hope in San Diego; it was hope that God has good plans for me. It seems like I would have learned by now good doesn’t mean easy and it certainly doesn’t mean I will get what I expect. Early on in the summer I wrote a blog talking about good not meaning easy. I didn’t expect San Diego to be easy, but I did expect it to work out and I expected God to have a plan for a job and a place to live and a people to love. When none of those expectations turned out to be true I felt like God had abandoned me and I felt like he never had a good plan for me in the first place. I also felt like Samwise Gamgee at the end of the Two Towers movie, “How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?” All the bad that has happened, all the hard stuff I have been through over the past several years was piled up in front of me and I could not see how anything could ever be good in the face of all the hard and bad I have suffered. I could not see hope at all.
This is still true, my friends. I still do not see hope. I would like to lie on the floor and kick and scream like a two year old having a tantrum because I am so frustrated at how life is going right now. When I read John 16:20 I felt like most people are rejoicing that I am going back to school. I often get responses of hope that I am choosing wisely and that finally I will stop wandering and drifting around the world. My soul, however, is in mourning. As hard as drifting and wandering is I find staying in the same place much harder. Surrendering myself back to school feels very much like death. I wish people would stop rejoicing over the choice I made and stop trying to convince me it was a good choice.
The Henri Nouwen passage reminded me that my future is not really mine, but it is God’s. It reminded me of the calling to surrender my whole life to him. Though I know I was following God to San Diego I see now that I filled it with my expectations and dreams and plans. God had asked me not to plan anything and to just go but I still planned, I couldn’t seem to help it. This might have been easier if I could have resisted the need to plan.
Giving up control, surrendering myself to wherever God leads me and choosing to hope that he does have good plans for me even when it appears that he doesn’t is one of the most frustrating things I have attempted. Right now I am doing it with my heart full of frustration and anger and confusion, yet I am still doing it, I think. God commands my future no matter what I do, it seems. I know it would be better to follow him with a cheerful and thankful heart and to rejoice in his provision, I just don’t the will in me to do that today. So I grumpily move towards his leading. Today I realize God didn’t ever say life would get easier or smoother or safer, instead he said our pain would become joy and though we suffer trials and tribulations in the world he had already overcome the world. Life won’t be easy, but it will be painful. I know God is able to turn that pain into joy but right now I am pissed that I cannot expect anything easy to come my way. Seems like a shitty deal to me.
Monday, December 13, 2010
One Year Ago
I was going through some writing I have done over the past year and I found this excerpt from my journal from one year ago. I wrote it during a day of fasting and silence on our debrief retreat.
12/13/09
Debrief, from your journal.
“Out of here! Out of here! Leave this place!
Don’t look back. Don’t contaminate yourselves with plunder.
Just leave, but leave clean. Purify yourselves
In the process of worship, carrying the holy vessels of God.
But you don’t have to be in a hurry.
You’re not running from anybody!
God is leading you out of here,
And the God of Israel is also your rear guard.”
Isaiah 52:11-12 (Message)
It is time to leave. It is time. I cannot stay here because it is time to leave. There is a time for everything. And now it is time to go. There is no use trying to hold on so tight to what is over. This semester is over. And with that the community I have been living in. and with that the friendships I have. Not over in the sense that I will never see or talk to them again. But now they must change. My friendship with BJ must change. We live in different states and cities and have very different lives. What it was, was good. So much healing of my heart happened as his brotherly care was lavished on me. I love his friendship and it has done for much in me.
But now that chapter is closing. But this is a good story, so the end of one good chapter means the beginning of another. And, as God and I are writing this book together, no chapter will be a waste. Each is full of beauty and brokenness and life and death, giving, taking, remaining, learning and loving.
This retreat, debrief weekend, is a process of worship. In that process I am being purified. I have taken on a slightly different appearance as my Maker is continually creating me. But the dust and the residue from the creation process, the particles of dirt that harden and blemish the sculpture, must be wiped off, blown away, washed off in a bath.
Worship is the holy bath and wind that remove what is not needed. As I worship my Maker I am purified for the journey home.
But there is no need to rush. I am not fleeing from danger. This is a beautiful process to be savored; chewed slowly and enjoyed fully. God, my Pappa, is leading me out and he has a slow pace. I can stop and rest here a while as I am purified. For my Pappa also comes behind, dusting off the picture to make the images clearer, and holding forces at bay that would seek to clutter the memories and harm the beauty that has been created. Pappa is watching out for me so I can rest here and take it slow, relishing this time even as it slips from me. Every passing moment brings me close to an inevitable departure. And I cannot control it, I have no mastery over the fourth dimension. But there is a time to let go, and this is it. This is the time. It is a horribly beautiful gift we have. We can let it go and move to the next phase of life.
“‘Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t, because they were holding onto something.’ ‘What are we holding onto, Sam?’ ‘That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.’”
I can hold onto my Pappa. He does let me hold his hand through life. I cannot hold into time, or these people, or anything except my Pappa. There is good in this world and it’s worth fighting for. But it cannot be fought for if I have both hands desperately clinging to a time they cannot hold. It can only be fought for by releasing what I cannot hold and grasping the hand that slowly leads me forward.~
A year later I am not sure I have let it go. How can four months have such a huge impact on a person? The impact is so huge that a year later I am still trying to figure out what happened and what I should do now. Everything has changed and then it changed again. It seems so simple in the words I wrote back then; just let go and follow God to the next chapter. I thought I did, but maybe it was a continuation of that chapter. I found myself thinking, a couple days ago, that maybe if I could go back to Uganda I would understand the past year a whole lot better and maybe I would even know what to do next. It feels like Uganda started it all, but I don't know what it is. Maybe in Uganda I can find it and understand it enough to know where I am going now. As I write that, however, I know I probably won't find it in Uganda. My task was to move forward. Have I done that? It doesn't really feel like it, especially as I prepare to go back to school in a couple weeks. It feels like I went in a circle. But hey, that's African time so maybe it was progress in a backwards sort of way?
I know you all were probably wanting more of an update on my life since I left San Diego. I tried to write one a couple of times today and I couldn't really begin to say how my life is right now. Instead I wrote about Uganda and what happened a year ago. Obviously I made it safely back to Yakima, WA. I will be returning to school the first week of January. Until then I am at my mom's house - home is what I call it, actually. I am grieving and it isn't pretty, therefore I didn't feel like I could post anything readable cause there were way to many F-words. Maybe in a year I will be able to look back at this time and tell people about it, but I still can't do that very well with Uganda so don't hold your breath.
Blessings, my friends.
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