Coming Clean

Brother Lawrence wrote the book Practicing the Presence of God, and he was a dishwasher in a monastery. I thought of that when I was washing dishes this morning. I was washing a measuring cup that we had used for cat food, but now don't need it for that purpose. In thinking that I will now have people things in it, I thought I might need to wash it a couple more times first.


And just then I heard a voice say "When it's clean, it's clean. It doesn't matter how dirty it was for so long."


That's like our lives. Many feel that we have to do a certain length of suffering and regret before we can be priviledged to enjoy the blessings of God. We have been dirty for so long. It doesn't matter...


When it's clean, it's clean.

Africa's Heart

Praying and contemplating through this today in the prayer room.

Lord what is your heart for Africa? What is on the people's heart and mind? What are their needs? How do they need care? How do I pray? How do I help? What do I do?

A chorus was sung for a long time as I was thinking all of this: "for your words alone, they restore my soul"

This has become my simple prayer today: "God let your word go out into the land of Africa, that she may be restored."

Dancing

A couple of years ago,  I started tap dancing. I know, I know it sounds girlie but, it's always something I've wanted to do. And... I really enjoy it! I thought when I began a course that I would shuffle around the floor a little, do some little kicks (that's an Elaine move for you Seinfeld lovers, like me) and learn a bit. I had no idea that we would be choreographing whole pieces for an upcoming show! We begin each class by warming up our ankles and our feet. We do these repetitive taps where you focus primarily on just lifting your foot, at the ankle and brushing the ball of your foot across the floor to create the tap sound. After that we move on to other, more intricate steps until, by class end, we are actually dancing. There are some folks in this class who are just so good. I mean they just shuffle their way across the studio floor like they were born to do this. I, on the other hand, was not born to do this. "How will I keep up?" I think to myself? So I signed up for an additional, more basic level of tap to learn more. And this class just so happens to only be offered right after my first class. Great... 3 hours of tap. I leave class, my feet aching from the tight tap shoes and my knees arthritic from the constant weight shift from one leg to the other. But somehow through the aches of my out of shape body, it seems worth it.

As I was reading this passage below this morning, I was reminded of my struggle in this tap class. My struggle to keep up. My struggle to find the other side of aches and pains. This exerpt comes from Donald Miller's Through Painted Deserts:

"I was raised to believe the quality of a man's life would greatly increase, not with the gain of status or success, not by his heart's knowing romance or by prosperity in industry or acedemia, but by his nearness to God. It confuses me that Christian living is not simpler. The gospel, the very good news, is simple, but this is the gate, the trailhead. Ironing out faithless creases is toilsome labor. God bestowes three blessings on man: to feed him like birds, dress him like flowers, and befriend him as a confidant. Too many take the first two and neglect the last. Sooner or later you will figure out that life is constructed specifically and brilliantly to squeeze a man into association with the Owner of heaven. It is a struggle, with labor pains and thorny landscape, bloody hands and a sweaty brow, head in hands, moments of severe lonliness and questioning, moments of ache and desire. All this leads to God, I think. Perhaps this is what is on the other side of commercials, on the other side of the curtain behind which the Wizard of Oz is pulling his levers. Matter and thought are a canvas on which God paints, a painting with tragedy and delivery, with sin and redemption. Life is a dance toward God, I begin to think. And the dance is not so graceful as we might want. While we glide and swing our practiced sway, God crowds our feet, bumps our toes and scuffs our shoes. So we learn to dance with the One who made us. And it is a difficult dance to learn, because its steps are foreign."

Pondering this, I think of myself and this dance class and this dance of life the author speaks of. I think of how I wish I had taken a beginner tap course sooner so that I may be more up to par with the others in my class. I think of how dumb I feel in my remedial class, with me, a near 30 year old man and five 9 year old girls. And I think is this worth it?

I relate my tap class story to life. I am stumbling around, sometimes in darkness, and tripping and falling and getting back up. Am I missing something? Should I have prayed harder? Should I strive more to be like Johnny or Susie so that my story of life may turn out a certain way? I read further and Donald Miller writes: "There is nothing I am missing. I have everything I was supposed to have to experience the magnitude of this story, to dance with God." And so, I extend my hand to the father, asking him to lead me in this dance that He choreogrphed, this story He wrote for me, knowing that scuffed shoes, tired kness and all, I am here to dance in him.

Sons and Daughters

I listened to a song this morning called "Sons and Daughters" by The Decemberists, (link to song at bottom) and the lyrics speak of this legion of children who are departing their war torn land and setting sail for something new, something safe. Something free.

When we arrive, Sons & daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon now

These currents pull us 'cross the border
Steady your boats, Arms to shoulder
'till tides are pulled, Hold our grounds
Making this cold harbor now home

Take up your arm, Sons and daughters
We will arise from the bunkers
By land, by sea, by dirigible
We'll leave our tracks untraceable now

When we arrive, Sons and daughters
We'll make our lives on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon now

Here all the bombs fade away

This song really spoke to me as the content seems fitting for where I am in life. This need to leave or move on (physically and spiritually). As I thought more about leaving and moving on, I began to wonder where it is that I am going? The last line of the song says "Here, all the bombs fade away". "Here", it says. that means they arrived somewhere. They escaped the war, the war that was possibly waging for their lives, and settled somewhere; somewhere they felt safe and unanxious.  When they got there, they started to rebuild their lives, making houses and eating sweets. What does this mean for me?

For me, the problem is not to get something out of my system but to take something in that deepens and strengthens my sense of goodness and allows my anguish to be embraced by love. It's the personification of the goodness of God in me while dwelling in the land of the living-- rather than suffering in the war torn country of darkness that my heart has been in for such a long time.

I say all of this knowing that I will discover that the more love I can take in and hold on to, the less fearful I will become; of staying in that place of unknowing. I can speak more simply, more directly, and more freely about what is important to me, without fear of other people's reactions. 

And so, Sons and Daughters... The more you come to know yourself-- spirit, mind, and body-- as truly loved, the freer you will be not only to live in goodness, but to proclaim it. That is the freedom of the children of God. Will you join me? A brigade we will start, Sons and Daughters we are; called to goodness.

Link to the song:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5H8DwJI0uA

Brandon the Rabbit

From the children's story,  The Velveteen Rabbit :

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like...

I read this part of the story today and it really spoke to me. Oh, how I long to be real. I think God is making me more and more real as I come out of the shell of darkness and into the marvelous light of the community of Christ. I think we have to go through the shabbiness (like psalm 139 talks about -- God, see if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting) and we become more and more real as we know that the rubbing, and wearing and tearing is because we are loved. At the end of the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, the little stuffed toy bunny, who is all worn and tattered is tossed aside by his owner for a newer, cleaner rabbit (as the boy was sick and couldnt use the germy old rabbit) and the rabbit went on a walk into the garden and came across a fairy who reminded him of what becoming real is all about.

"I am the nursery magic Fairy," she said. "I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don't need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real."

"Wasn't I Real before?" asked the little Rabbit.

"You were Real to the Boy," the Fairy said, "because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to every one."

And she held the little Rabbit close in her arms and flew with him into the wood.

It was light now, for the moon had risen. All the forest was beautiful, and the fronds of the bracken shone like frosted silver. In the open glade between the tree-trunks the wild rabbits danced with their shadows on the velvet grass, but when they saw the Fairy they all stopped dancing and stood round in a ring to stare at her.

"I've brought you a new playfellow," the Fairy said. "You must be very kind to him and teach him all he needs to know in Rabbit-land, for he is going to live with you for ever and ever!"

And she kissed the little Rabbit again and put him down on the grass.

"Run and play, little Rabbit!" she said.

But the little Rabbit sat quite still for a moment and never moved. For when he saw all the wild rabbits dancing around him he suddenly remembered about his hind legs, and he didn't want them to see that he was made all in one piece. He did not know that when the Fairy kissed him that last time she had changed him altogether. And he might have sat there a long time, too shy to move, if just then something hadn't tickled his nose, and before he thought what he was doing he lifted his hind toe to scratch it.

And he found that he actually had hind legs! Instead of dingy velveteen he had brown fur, soft and shiny, his ears twitched by themselves, and his whiskers were so long that they brushed the grass. He gave one leap and the joy of using those hind legs was so great that he went springing about the turf on them, jumping sideways and whirling round as the others did, and he grew so excited that when at last he did stop to look for the Fairy she had gone.

He was a Real Rabbit at last, at home with the other rabbits.

Exchange

...In contemplation from my recent weekend away with some close friends at my favorite place on earth, Brighton...

From Henri Nouwen's fantastic book, The Inner Voice of Love :

Your community needs you, but maybe not as a constant presence. Your community might need you as a presence that offers courage and spiritual food for the journey, a presence that creates the safe ground in which others can grow and develop, a presence that belongs to the matrix of the community. But your community also needs your creative absence. You might need certain things that the community cannot provide. For these you may have to go elsewhere from time to time. This does not mean that you are selfish, abnormal, or unfit for community life. It means that your way of being present to your people necessitates personal nurturing of a special kind.

This is encouraging, as I am in such a different place spiritually and emotionally now than I have been in a long time. I am shifting and my needs are changing and I am finding that my usual sources that help to meet my needs are not able to provide that as securely now. I have this need for touch- to be held and to hold. For affection. I have this deep desire to receive and offer love. Others around me are not with me in that. They are finding peace in their own rhythms of life. My unsettled needs are screaming to be met. Working through this I realize that I can't expect those around me to take up my journey and to walk around in my shoes all the time. I have to step out and change for myself. I have to walk down the path of truth and peace and light to meet God on my own. No one else can do that for me. As I am taking responsibility for myself, I see how very alone I am. When I stop depending entirely on others to meet my needs and stand alone in the midst of brokenness- that is unmet needs trying to be filled in oh so many illegitimate ways- I can only turn one way... To God.

God reassured me that none of the needs I have should be despised, denied, or repressed. I must move beyond my body's superficial desire for love and look toward the genuine need for love. God will come in and replace anxiety with peace. He will send the right people my way to appropriately fill me with affection and He will affirm me in the right ways, I wont need to search for it in others. I can accept the invitiation to his beckoning me to hiddenness in him.

Nouwen writes, "In Jesus, God took on human flesh. The spirit of God overshadowed Mary, and in her all enmity between spirit and body was overcome. Thus God's spirit was united with the human spirit, and the human body became the temple destined to be lifted up into the intimacy of God through the Resurrection. Every human body has been given a new hope, of belonging eternally to the God who created it. Thanks to the Incarnation, you can bring your body home."                                                                               

This is my desire now. To have unification with my desires as Brandon, and the desires God has for me (that have already been placed inside me). This is a unique exchange that happens only between the Creator and myself.