There is more often than not a feeling that I am not myself. That there is another me. Moreover, that there is a me that I was supposed to be and that there is some sort of fraud that I am trapped being and left wondering who that other person is. This stems from a myriad of personality disorders: I care too much about what other people think, I am obsessed with the aesthetic, I lack confidence. Those of you who know me pretty well probably understand a lot of what I am saying. For those of you who only kind of know me, this might come as a bit of a shock. You see, these characteristics of mine necessarily lead me to present to you the best me I can conjure up...well, when I'm not too freaked out that you might not like the me I present. I struggle with balancing relationships. I always feel like I am abandoning or letting others down when I move from one place to another, in and out of lives and communities. I can't seem to figure out how show love to my girlfriend, my family, my friends, YoungLife kids, random people...anyone really. And, rereading that sentence I notice that the problem is intrinsic in the question itself. I wrote, I can't figure out how to show love. Was love really what I was desiring, I would have simply asked how I could love. However, all to often I find myself being way more caught up in showing love than actually loving. The difference, however subtle it may seem, is enormous. It is the difference between happiness and joy and between deception and honesty--it was the difference between Judas and John. You see, I understand love to be an amazing and important thing. I certainly give it a lot of lip service and really, I do desire it and to serve others through love. I understand God to be love and I am sure that His ways are worth seeking. Still, somehow I've gotten caught up in the presentation, in the motion and the patterns. As the expressions of my love continue to change and mature I can't seem to kick this hindering veil of image. Surely there is not perfect love outside of that of the Father and I can't expect to ever possess such a thing but I desire deeply to throw off what hinders and I have for a while now known that my quest for the appearance of love is problematic. Because of the freedom I experience by grace, I will work to know what authentic love is. I will take steps to feel, understand and accept perfect love. And I have hope that these steps, repeated endlessly, will give this life and love a passion and purpose.
I share all this to expose myself; to expose this imposter I see too often and rediscover who I was meant to be, and to make some of my old patterns more difficult and to continue to work towards letting these things go moving towards the freedom of grace. I have no misconception--such a lofty goal as authentic love isn't born out of a single blog post or confession. Rather, the things of God are beautifully elusive and it is my hope that this is just a part of the journey or a page of the conversation.
Showing posts with label Grace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grace. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Proofs, Poetry, Precepts and Proverbs
I grew up thinking myself a logical and critical thinker, someone who is more thrilled in facts, proofs and science than literature, music or art. When I thought about great thinkers names like Newton, Hawking or Galileo came to mind. I could easily navigate my way through a calculus test and was always a bit less excited to try and ‘express myself’ artistically. My talents molded my interests (naturally) and as my academics became consumed with algorithms, equations and lemmas the way I worshiped God became limited to this same style of thought.
I wanted an algorithm or equation which would define my relationship with him. I wanted Paul to tell me how I could make worshipping God as easy as arithmetic. I wanted Jesus to tell me the kingdom of heaven is like integration—once you’ve got it you got it. Instead what I am told is the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, a mustard seed, a merchant looking for fine pearls or yeast—just to note a few of Jesus’ parables. The more I read the bible the more I realize that when trying to describe the Kingdom of Heaven, heavenly truths or God himself, writers tended to employ parable, poetry and proverb, and I found myself frustrated never finding a concrete answer to my questions.
The more that I tried to place God inside of the parameters of some sort of equation the more I found that he slipped outside of them. The more I tried to understand and control God the more he showed himself to be vastly beyond my understanding. ‘Ok,’ I thought to myself, ‘I need to be as good as I possibly can be.’ But then I really read the gospels and found that Jesus was more likely to be in the company of hookers, robbers and frauds. I was confused. ‘Well then,’ my powers of intellect were really carrying me at this point, ‘I just need to be a hooker or a robber.’ But somehow that didn’t make much sense either.
The creative influences of countless people who have understood much better than I have helped me to see that it—following Jesus—isn’t about knowing. It isn’t about having the right answers, and that actually God tends to fall out of our pocket when we just keep him there to pull out and employ when we want the rain to stop or we want a promotion or we want to appear godly. I am learning that it is about worship: that worship is the only thing that I feel I can return to a God so unfathomable, a God without boundaries, a God who turns water into wine, a God who seems to skirt definitions, a God greater than logic.
I have read that there are many ways to worship and experience God, and one of these ways is through mysticism. When I heard that word—mysticism—I thought of crystal balls or Ms. Cleo exclaiming, ‘Call me now!’ in a boisterous Jamaican accent or that book Indian in the Cupboard (not sure why). Instead I am learning that mysticism is not just a thing for gypsies or miniature people, but that I have much to learn from mystical thinkers.
The theologian G.K. Chesterton illustrates the poets (or mystics) approach saying that, “The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician that seeks to get the heavens into his head.” Mysticism is the acknowledgement that many things about God are a mystery to us, a divine mystery, and we can only hope to receive glimpses of heavenly things. Never can we expect to surmise the same power as God, knowing all he knows. We can learn about God, read stories about what he has done and even hear testimonies of his character from those around us but never can we fully understand something so vastly beyond us. Many writers of the bible speak of God not in prose but in poetry because they know that heavenly truths are so great, so immense in size and perfection that they cannot be captured by our minds; we can only hope to align our understanding more with God’s.
The more I quit trying to pin God down, place him in my ‘Things I understand about this world’ category, quit trying to make him a function or equation, the more I understand just how vast and perfect and beautiful and awesome and deserving of my worship he is.
I have always understood that God was unfathomable to us, but it acted as just another piece of the equation instead of actual worship. I know now that when I see the vastness of a mountain range in Fiordland National park, when I see the awesomeness of the glaciers adorning Mt Sefton, when I read the poetry of George MacDonald, when I feel a certain song, when I hear of Davy, Swede, and Rube’s adventures in Peace Like a River, when a meal is shared with those I love, that all these things can all be making me aware of the divine mystery, the wholly, holy incomprehensibly perfect; that at times God comes nearer, that he allows me to experience him and turn in worship for it. I am learning that experiencing and worshipping God is usually more like gazing through a heavenly window than placing him into our logical box.
Reason, logic and knowledge are great and they are something that I still pursue. Understanding how amazingly complex a photon is surely makes me turn and appreciate a Being creative and powerful enough to brings something like this about. Learning how mathematics as a discipline can model almost all that we know about our physical universe certainly excites my heart to know a Creator immense and perfect enough to accomplish this. Yet, still, nothing can define God, nothing can capture him. And often poetry, art, music and landscape can provide us with a momentary glimpse into the heavens.
The one whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou
-Clive Staples Lewis
I wanted an algorithm or equation which would define my relationship with him. I wanted Paul to tell me how I could make worshipping God as easy as arithmetic. I wanted Jesus to tell me the kingdom of heaven is like integration—once you’ve got it you got it. Instead what I am told is the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, a mustard seed, a merchant looking for fine pearls or yeast—just to note a few of Jesus’ parables. The more I read the bible the more I realize that when trying to describe the Kingdom of Heaven, heavenly truths or God himself, writers tended to employ parable, poetry and proverb, and I found myself frustrated never finding a concrete answer to my questions.
The more that I tried to place God inside of the parameters of some sort of equation the more I found that he slipped outside of them. The more I tried to understand and control God the more he showed himself to be vastly beyond my understanding. ‘Ok,’ I thought to myself, ‘I need to be as good as I possibly can be.’ But then I really read the gospels and found that Jesus was more likely to be in the company of hookers, robbers and frauds. I was confused. ‘Well then,’ my powers of intellect were really carrying me at this point, ‘I just need to be a hooker or a robber.’ But somehow that didn’t make much sense either.
The creative influences of countless people who have understood much better than I have helped me to see that it—following Jesus—isn’t about knowing. It isn’t about having the right answers, and that actually God tends to fall out of our pocket when we just keep him there to pull out and employ when we want the rain to stop or we want a promotion or we want to appear godly. I am learning that it is about worship: that worship is the only thing that I feel I can return to a God so unfathomable, a God without boundaries, a God who turns water into wine, a God who seems to skirt definitions, a God greater than logic.
I have read that there are many ways to worship and experience God, and one of these ways is through mysticism. When I heard that word—mysticism—I thought of crystal balls or Ms. Cleo exclaiming, ‘Call me now!’ in a boisterous Jamaican accent or that book Indian in the Cupboard (not sure why). Instead I am learning that mysticism is not just a thing for gypsies or miniature people, but that I have much to learn from mystical thinkers.
The theologian G.K. Chesterton illustrates the poets (or mystics) approach saying that, “The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician that seeks to get the heavens into his head.” Mysticism is the acknowledgement that many things about God are a mystery to us, a divine mystery, and we can only hope to receive glimpses of heavenly things. Never can we expect to surmise the same power as God, knowing all he knows. We can learn about God, read stories about what he has done and even hear testimonies of his character from those around us but never can we fully understand something so vastly beyond us. Many writers of the bible speak of God not in prose but in poetry because they know that heavenly truths are so great, so immense in size and perfection that they cannot be captured by our minds; we can only hope to align our understanding more with God’s.
The more I quit trying to pin God down, place him in my ‘Things I understand about this world’ category, quit trying to make him a function or equation, the more I understand just how vast and perfect and beautiful and awesome and deserving of my worship he is.
I have always understood that God was unfathomable to us, but it acted as just another piece of the equation instead of actual worship. I know now that when I see the vastness of a mountain range in Fiordland National park, when I see the awesomeness of the glaciers adorning Mt Sefton, when I read the poetry of George MacDonald, when I feel a certain song, when I hear of Davy, Swede, and Rube’s adventures in Peace Like a River, when a meal is shared with those I love, that all these things can all be making me aware of the divine mystery, the wholly, holy incomprehensibly perfect; that at times God comes nearer, that he allows me to experience him and turn in worship for it. I am learning that experiencing and worshipping God is usually more like gazing through a heavenly window than placing him into our logical box.
Reason, logic and knowledge are great and they are something that I still pursue. Understanding how amazingly complex a photon is surely makes me turn and appreciate a Being creative and powerful enough to brings something like this about. Learning how mathematics as a discipline can model almost all that we know about our physical universe certainly excites my heart to know a Creator immense and perfect enough to accomplish this. Yet, still, nothing can define God, nothing can capture him. And often poetry, art, music and landscape can provide us with a momentary glimpse into the heavens.
The one whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou
-Clive Staples Lewis
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