REREADING SENIOR SEMINAR

Something I created this evening via Wordle in order to relive some thoughts in a new way (click on photo for larger/original image):

MANNA

I wonder if God sent manna

each day

to be collected once

each morning

so that the desert-wanderers could give thanks

each morning,

would remember to be grateful

each day.

Maybe manna was given

this way

to create a way of life

in which

small miracles are attended to, observed -

the daily giving of the bread,

the small round allotment,

the preservation seed -

between the parting of seas and the watering of rocks -

the big miraculous movements.

I wonder about

that bread of the wilderness

doled in small increments,

made enough for each day -

a grace-dew to cover all and only what was needed.

I am wondering around and over this today as I am learning what it means to be grateful and to have plenty, in small increments, daily doses, minuscule moments worth seeking. I am finding that life itself is grace - and who of us can forget to be grateful each day? I am ashamed at my too-often grumbled discontents...and am learning to turn those grumblings into awestruck, murmured thanks-moments -- manna moments.

THE MISUSE OF WORDS (PART II)

In one of my last posts, I suggested that the most foulsome way we may spend words is telling the truth very badly. I stick to this.

My whole life, I've been surrounded by a "church community" – one where everyone is either nominally Christian, goes to Church regularly, or is assumed to be Christian by the community at large. At the same time, I am often friends, students, or employees with people who have been bored to death by the dos and don'ts of the church and entirely uninspired by its real story. The most frustrating part is the most recent trend: friends who are too cool or peace-loving to adhere to anything with a title and a church too cowardly to offer more than a watered down gospel – an "all you need is love" ballad with "Jesus" slipped into the bridge.

You know what I think? I think we don't believe God is compelling enough for people on his own. Like we somehow have to explain away those Old Testament-type rules and actions, like we have to apologize for his glory because we don't get it. We are blinded by the words we use to box in and conceptualize a God we can never fathom. So when we try evangelism, we try the buddy-buddy approach: make a connection, show 'em that you are basically want the same things (peace and love), mention grace, don't speak of the cardinal scare words–Sin, Jesus, Death–until you are BFFs–and back off if they push back too hard. We end up failing people worse than ever trying to explain away the pain of the world or of their lives. Cowards that we are, we talk about Christianity as just another positive world movement, something that deservers a few Facebook pages. Why this one? If it sounds like all the others, why put my trust or allegiance there? Who needs another murky place to put their faith these days?

This doesn't sound like faith at all. God has proved himself faithful again and again to mysteriously fill voids in ways we could never expect. He is a pillar of fire, a light for the journey, a prince of peace, the lion of Judah, a mother, a father, a sustainer, a thirst-quencher, an affirmer, a whisper, a rumbling mountain, a strong right arm. Why can't we just trust God to be all that anyone ever needs him to be if we only speak his name?

The world is murky enough as it is. People don't need us to cloud the waters with our mud-caked words.

God has given us all the Word we will ever need to tell people about himself/herself. We have also been given a facility of language and imagination that we are often too afraid to employ. I wonder if we are so like the servant with one talent, hoarding and keeping safe until the Master returns, only to discover that he wanted us to take big steps and risk so much more than we dared.

We spill the same quips and overused phrases from pulpits and pamphlets and in the fellowship hall and we say so little. We talk so much and our words remain few and small. Where is Life in that?

Maybe all we need is an injection of imagination, a release of well spent words, into everyone we've ever turned away by quashing the life of the gospel while trying to tell it right. Maybe, what we really need to do, is tell the Word with all the life and passion we have and trust God to figure out the reception and receptors.

POINT A to POINT B

Some people are so good at getting from point A to point B.

They see clearly and directly from one to the other and, without hesitation, plant one foot in front of the other along that line. A direct route on the map, one red pin to the next, a taut string of thread between them. Easy.

I can do it if I have to.

But every now and again, I don't see the point in walking with my head down, collar up against the wind, hurtling at a brisk pace from point A to point B. Sometimes, after point A, I start thinking about point F and wondering what it would be like to get there. Do I really need point B? Everyone walks to point B. And C, D, and E, for that matter.

What about point F?

This is what gets me in trouble. Getting to point F is much less precise than walking from A to B. It's not a direct shot; it takes some finagling, much more frowning and strategizing over the map, the calculation of terrain, a bit more reflection time on exactly where it is I've just come from and exactly why I am going where I am going next.

It seems silly to get stuck in one place (which is really no place at all) for such an extended period of time when the path from A to B is so clear. I am not at Somewhere and I am not at Nowhere, but can I really tell anyone where I am?

For all the words we have, this is nearly impossible.

THE MISUSE OF WORDS (PART I)

I was an English major in college and a lover of words long before that. I suppose it began somewhere between my first words – dad, bye, wallpaper – and my first books – Dr. Seuss' Foot Book and the Little House on the Prairie series.

Since coming home from Lithuania, I've been noticing how brazen Americans are with their words – not just the sound and volume of them, but how often we speak and how carelessly. We share with anyone and everyone who will listen, even strangers in line at airport customs or at dirty bus stations. Lithuanians are very reserved, and most Americans, on first meeting a Lithuanian, would be very put off by them, call them rude. But Lithuanians are not more proportionally rude or mean than Americans; in fact, they weigh words well, much more graciously than we often do, and they don't waste them on anyone. If they have something to say, it's probably important. I have a hunch that it may come from living in a more frugal place where people use every inch of space in their flats, where money is tight, where food goes farther and is never wasted, where one word could be the life or death of you only twenty years ago.

Words. I have a feeling we rarely use them the way we were made to use them....and there are a thousand different posts one could write on our misuse of words. I am trying to use them better all the time. Somehow I feel that, when I care more about the way words are said and how much and which ones, I am more caring and careful toward the things to which they refer – family, cat, sky, community, truth, road, bean.

Many posts on words shall follow this one, but, for now, I'll just say this: We say words very incautiously, very inattentively, very badly very often. And the most hurtful thing is, we sometimes tell truth in this way as well. I am beginning to think that telling the truth badly is one of the most foulsome ways we spend words.

To be expounded on at a more decent hour.

Thanks for reading.

PERSPECTIVE

perspective is an art.

sketching perspective shows us the spaces between things or their overlap. it can make objects seem closer or more distant. it may give us a sense of proportion, whether true or skewed. measuring perspective gives us a better sense of two or more objects on the same plane, how they relate.

i had a perspectival coffee date this evening with a good friend. her questions and her musings, her general depth, helped me redraw some spaces and figure out how some objects - life at calvin, family, a year in Lithuania, the Church, a partially sketched future - fit together on the same plane. her questions birthed new questions i hadn't yet asked myself. she, along with others, are helping me to measure some things.

this measuring will take awhile, especially after this past year - a good, hard, full one - in Lithuania. but this is also a life process, a life practice, and i am thankful for so many perspectival artists in my life. i am quite blessed to have these people who ask necessary questions with such care, who turn my vision upside-down, give me a drink from a different well, who help me redraw and rethink spaces. we can get so cramped rolling over our own musings and worries all the time. feels too small to live that way.

PLUMS

i've taken a long siesta from blogging due to teaching, writing newsletters, failing to write letters, scribbling thank yous, making lists, and all that jazz.

a few notes:

God is good.

i am still in lithuania.

i will be back in the states soon.

i plan to write all summer long.

this blog shall be resurrected and revamped

during that summer of writing.

for now, all i really wanted to say is that plums were on sale today in Iki, my friendly lithuanian grocery/market, and it made me think of this william carlos williams poem titled "this is just to say":

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

have a sweet, plums-on-sale sort of friday.