the stranger

This film is coming out next month - check out the trailer: http://www.thestrangerfilm.org/

I haven't seen it yet and can't recommend it or not, but the issues it raises are huge and close to my heart - immigration reform is needed terribly, and the church needs to lead in welcoming the stranger as we have been so radically welcomed by God.

You can read what God says about how we should treat the stranger here: http://evangelicalimmigrationtable.com/iwasastranger/

And check out this book for strong, wise, perceptive, and Biblical insights about immigration reform: http://www.amazon.com/Welcoming-Stranger-Justice-Compassion-Immigration/dp/0830833595

And then let's talk! Tell me what you think!

the rowing endeth

Anne Sexton lived what seems like the archetypal life of an poet: a complex intertwining of great joy and great pain, creative genius, awards and accolades, depression, broken relationships, and mental illness. Her story, like that of so many artists, ended in suicide, maybe because she felt everything that happened to her intensely. She was described as being "like person with no skin, no protective layer, just a mass of exposed nerve cells, she felt every pain and could write it." Her poetry is all provocative, some because it's scandalous, and some because it incisively expresses universal human questions, fears, and hopes about what God is like.

Her last book before her death was entitled The Awful Rowing Toward God, and this is the last poem from that book. It's a raw account of a woman trying to make sense of her experience, and I'm struck by her unexpected hope in the goodness of God despite hurting so badly that she chose to die rather than endure it any longer. Of the few poems I've read, and the even fewer that I've understood, this is my favorite. Many thanks to Drs. Horne & Walters for first giving it to me.


The Rowing Endeth

I’m mooring my rowboat
at the dock of the island called God.
This dock is made in the shape of a fish
and there are many boats moored
at many different docks.
“It’s okay,” I say to myself,
with blisters that broke and healed
and broke and healed–
saving themselves over and over.
And salt sticking to my face and arms like
a glue-skin pocked with grains of tapioca.
I empty myself from my wooden boat
and onto the flesh of The Island.

“On with it!” he says and thus
we squat on the rocks by the sea
and play–can it be true–
a game of poker.
He calls me.
I win because I hold a royal straight flush.
He wins because He holds five aces.
A wild card had been announced
but I had not heard it
being in such a state of awe
when He took out the cards and dealt.
As he plunks down His five aces
and I sit grinning at my royal flush,
He starts to laugh,
the laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth
and into mine,
and such laughter that He doubles right over me
laughing a Rejoice-Chorus at our two triumphs.
Then I laugh, the fishy dock laughs
the sea laughs. The Island laughs.
The Absurd laughs.

Dearest dealer,
I with my royal straight flush,
love you so for your wild card,
that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha
and lucky love.

indian institute

I'm sitting in the Indian Institute Library. This place is epic. The rare, string-bound books are strangely organized onto metal shelves in a dim, silent room with handwritten notes explaining "58 B continues in the small bookshelf on the carrel to your right." It's the type of place that a killer would wait for his victim, in the dark cranny behind the PAK 12 overflow shelf where the faint hum from the maintenance room can cover his stalker breathing. When you walk down the rows, it smells of dust and cloth bindings and your head brushes against the swinging light cords, though few of them are turned on. I didn't bring a pen, so I can't leave slips where I've taken books; they'll never know. Most of the people in the small adjacent reading area are serious, probably grad students, though there is a couple at the back table flirting with smiles and whispers. I sat down across from a precious old man in a Gandhi cap for inspiration.

Anyway, back to work. Books can't be checked out, so I'll probably be spending a lot of time here over the weekend. If you don't hear from me in the next few weeks, you might check behind the PAK 12 overflow shelf...

refining

Why do we like quotes so much? Or why do we sing along to songs, or play them to complement our emotions? Because we recognize that somebody said something that echoes within us, but they said it better than we could say it. Sometimes they say things that we don't even know have an echo inside of us until they say it.

Anyways... I read an excerpt from Don Miller this week that really explains a lot of what I'm feeling about this time of my life, about life in general, about growing, changing, refining. Maybe quotes or song lyrics are cop-out blog posts, but it's what I'm thinking about and dwelling on, so I want to share it with you. Yep, you.

"I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently. Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning."

I want to change. I want to come back from this year different than I was. Simply because that's what's good and right. To refine.

"And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men." Luke 2:52

the whole earth reverberates the story

Lucy and I lived life together yesterday. Good times.

Flowers are starting to bloom already in University Parks, which I can't believe! It's the middle of February! Spring always used to be my least favorite season, but I now love it like a normal human being. There is so much spiritual symbolism in spring. I was overwhelmingly reminded yesterday of the significance of spring in the Chronicles: when spring finally begins to shatter winter in Narnia, it's because Aslan has returned. It's a reminder that though he had gone away, and some people had given up hope that he would ever return, he comes back, and joy and life for the whole world comes with him. As always, Aslan is only a dim reflection of Jesus, who is no longer here walking on earth with us as a human. But when I see the snowdrops pushing up through the wet dirt, I remember him. And it makes me ache for him. I miss him, I miss his physical presence, in a weird and unexplainable way; how do you miss something you never had? But I can't wait until he comes to live with us again.







"Let us acknowledge the LORD;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth." Hosea 6:3

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.'" Revelation 21:1-4

wisdom

I thank God for those who walk with Christ in front of me down the path so I can watch their steps. I learn more from them than I think I could ever learn through my own understanding. These two mean a lot to me right now.

"And it always seems that just when daily life seems most unbearable, stretching out before me like a prison sentence, when I seem most dead inside, reduced to mindlessness, bitter tears or both, that what is inmost breaks forth, and I realize that what had seemed 'dead time' was actually a period of gestation." Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and "Women's Work"

"Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will only do harm to himself and to the community. Alone you stood before God when he called you; alone you had to answer that call; alone you had to struggle and pray; and alone you will die and give an account to God. You cannot escape from yourself; for God has singled you out. If you refuse to be alone you are rejecting Christ's call to you and you can have no part in the community of those who are called... But the reverse is also true: Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ... We recognize then, that only as we are within the fellowship can we be alone, and only he that is alone can live in the fellowship. Only in the fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in the fellowship." Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Matthew 11:28-29

dag

William Wilberforce is one of my greatest role models. Why? He saw injustice that broke the heart of God and it broke his heart too. And then he did something about it. He used the gifts God had given him and the position of government entrusted to him to declare the truth of the gospel, giving his life in a painful, prolonged sacrifice to bring freedom for captives and justice for the oppressed. And he served the Lord faithfully to the end of his life.

This week I discovered another incredible person who I want to emulate: Dag Hammarskjöld. He was the Secretary General of the U.N. from 1953 to 1961, when he was killed in a plane crash while on an emergency mission to try to negotiate a cease-fire in the Congo. He did a lot of crazy incredible things in his life (like winning the Nobel Peace Prize), worked tirelessly for peace and justice, and was greatly respected by his peers. But throughout his life, this diplomat also kept a small journal he called a "book concerning my negotiations with myself- and with God." I read part of that book this week, and in it he never once mentions the famous and powerful people he interacted with daily, or the great successes he had. Instead it reflects an astoundingly quiet, humble, thoughtful, simple, sometimes agonized man who intensely longed to do God's will. It is obvious that his incredible public and political life was shaped by the humility and intensity of his love for God and his love for people. I want to be like that.

This sentence from his heart reflects mine as well: "If only I may grow: firmer, simpler, quieter, warmer."

"Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard." Isaiah 58:5-8

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on my, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor..." Isaiah 61:1-2a

cracked in a hundred places

Hey all.
What better way to explain how I feel than to echo the words of my heroine: Anne of Green Gables?

"Anne," said Marilla abruptly, "Miss Stacy was here this afternoon when you were out with Diana."
Anne came back from her other world with a start and a sigh.
"Was she? Oh, I'm so sorry I wasn't in. Why didn't you call me, Marilla? Diana and I were only over in the Haunted Wood. It's lovely in the woods now. All the little wood things- the ferns and the satin leaves and the crackerberries- have gone to sleep, just as if somebody had tucked them away until spring under a blanket of leaves. I think it was a little gray fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the last moonlight night and did it. Diana wouldn't say much about that, though. Diana has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about imagining ghosts into the Haunted Wood. It had a very bad effect on Diana's imagination. It blighted it. Mrs. Lynde says Myrtle Bell is a blighted being. I asked Ruby Gillis why Myrtle was blighted, and Ruby said she guessed it was because her young man had gone back on her. Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn't do to drag them into everything, does it? Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever. Diana hasn't quite made up her mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him. Diana and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we are so much older than we used to be that it isn't becoming to talk of childish matters. It's such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and talked to us about it. She said we couldn't be too careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worth while on it. Diana and I talked the matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn, Marilla. And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be properly developed. It's perfectly appalling to think of being twenty, Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up."

"To think that this is my twentieth birthday, and that I've left my teens behind me forever," said Anne, who was curled up on the hearth-rug with Rusty in her lap, to Aunt Jamesina who was reading in her pet chair. They were alone in the living room. Stella and Priscilla had gone to a committee meeting and Phil was upstairs adorning herself for a party.
"I suppose you feel kind of sorry" said Aunt Jamesina. "The teens are such a nice part of life. I'm glad I've never gone out of them myself."
Anne laughed. "You never will, Aunty. You'll be eighteen when you should be a hundred. Yes, I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws."
"So's everybody's," said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. "Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line. Don't worry over it, Anne. Do your duty by God and your neighbor and yourself, and have a good time. That's my philosophy and it's always worked pretty well."

Sigh. Yep. It is what it is.
I have to admit, I haven't really been excited about a birthday since I turned fifteen. But it's okay. I am at peace (for the moment). It's time to do some more growing up, some more changing and learning and marveling. I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be in another world.
But by the grace of God, I am not what I was.

"From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother's womb you have been my God." Psalm 22:10

"Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life." Deuteronomy 30:19-20a

"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it." I Thessalonians 5:23-24