Like Leaves

I've never been responsible for a yard in the fall before. I've raked leaves before and understand the concept that all your trees lose all their leaves and the leaves have to end up somewhere but I've always lived where it was up to someone else. My dad growing up, landlords, and hired crews at apartments. Now I live in a house with trees. I used to like the trees before they started this nasty habit of losing their leaves, not all at once, but progressively for weeks. I thought about just waiting for all the leaves to fall and then taking care of all of it at once but I feel cluttered on the inside when I look out and see stepping stones, and chairs, and front steps covered in leaves. At first it's charming, a tangible sign that things change and seasons pass but then the leaves get old. They're not bright anymore, but brown, an ever growing pile to remind me that I'm behind. And if that's not enough the sound of my neighbor's blower haunts me, seeming to whisper in my ear, "You're behind. You're behind. Someone else is ahead. Show you can take care of it on your own." This is the real reason why noise pollution is such a problem...the lawn tools taunt all those in ear shot not doing yard work. I don't know why the leaves feel so significant to me. Perhaps they symbolize a greater question than they ask on their own. On their own they simply ask, "Will you get me up?" But I watch them drift to the ground and on the edge of the lovely spinning and twirling I hear the question that won't let me go, "Is it worth the work?" It gathers weight just like the leaves as they cover everything in ever greater numbers. I believe in soul work because I never really lived until I came to grips with the fact that I have a soul that is not bound by order, control, or accomplishment. Soul work is giving space to yourself, allowing your feelings, your grief, your joy, your dreams, your pain to grow to whatever height they will and living through the decline and inevitably the next coming incline. Grief and joy and everything in between come in waves which rise and fall with a rhythmic unpredictability. Soul work is letting the truths of our lives be what they are, to come when the come, to stay as long as they stay. Instead of cutting off our emotions, numbing our reality, or denying that we have a soul by our simple but profound refusal to feel. When I do soul work I invite, I gather, I listen, I sit. I allow my past, present, and future to inform each other reciprocally and I don't reduce my life to survival and circumstantial living without risk or mystery.

Here's the catch: I don't always do it, and often when I do I wonder, "Is it worth the work?" Here's where the leaves come in. Collecting leaves is daunting. There's a whole yard and one rake. In places there are lots of leaves and here it's easy to pile. You hear the rustle of leaves being piled together and you smell autumn in the quick accumulation. It's where the leaves are fewer that it is harder to gather them. You have to rake over clear ground for the one or two strays. You must cover a lot of ground for a small pile, but if you left those leaves you wouldn't be done. They are enough to need collecting but not so many to easily gather them. Even as you work more leaves fall around you. Sometimes you go back and get them as yet another one falls in your hair, some stem that just couldn't hold it's branch anymore. But eventually you come to grips with the fact that you can't go back for them all right now so you focus on the places you haven't been to yet. There's the neighbor who walks by saying, "You'll be doing this again next week." And though you know it was meant to be neighborly part of you wants to throw the rake down and stomp inside, nursing the wounds of futility. But there's also the next neighbor who says, "You're doing a good job with the yard." Seeing but not patronizing. God bless that neighbor. I don't want to forget him, especially as I carry the thousandth bin of leaves to the curb. You finally finish and look back over the yard. There are some leaves but it's clear that you've raked the yard. What remains is a lovely smattering, making your yard look like it could be the cover to a children's book about fall. You take a deep breath and lean against the rake and into the catch in your back. Good work. Well done. This is a good moment. In this moment it was worth the work. But then it begins to rain. All your work seems to be undone. In a number of hours the same amount of leaves or more are back on the ground as before you raked. First you feel surprised, then incredulous, then ashamed. "I should have known. I did know. Why did I think this work would matter? I knew, I knew there were still leaves on the trees and I raked anyway." But here's the thing we forget: every leaf we got to the curb needed to get there. Even if there are more. Even if the first neighbor thinks we are made the fool by the leaves that keep coming. Still the ones we gathered needed to be gathered and that work is not undone but the new gathering to be done. A yard doesn't look like it's being taken care of in the fall even hours after it's raked, but that doesn't mean it's not. That does mean it's hard to tell the difference between a yard that's being worked in and cared for and one that's not, especially if you're not willing to look closely. Not willing to look for the pile on the curb belying the work done. Especially if you don't know the yard. If you can't see what it would look like if it had never been raked.

This is exactly what soul work is like. It is so often dismissed as unnecessary because we are so afraid of being made the fool and aside from love nothing makes a fool like working without completion, working in the midst of work to be done. But this is what each of us is called to, to know there are still leaves on the trees destined to fall at a time somewhere past now and rake anyway. Rake even though the first neighbor thinks you're wasting time. Take a break sometimes. Go inside for lunch and bless your cursing of the leaves that will fall while you rest. Remember the second neighbor. Let his words wend and wind through you just like the leaves through the air. We have believed the lie that more work to be done discounts the work done, and makes present work worthless. It's not true. Every "leaf" gathered is an honoring of the soul God has made, no matter how many remain to be gathered or will fall from heights in the future. And yes, you could wait and do it all at once, but what a task. There is honor in the work amidst work, and a gnawing dread in waiting to begin the work until you know you can finish the work. So rake anyway, know blessing when you quit, know blessing when you keep going, know the frustrating glory of a God who calls us to work without completion...yet.

Surrender: The Art of War

"Surrender. Surrender to God."
Isn't that what we're told so often? I always tried but was never very successful when it came to surrendering to God. I think I know why: I didn't understand what it means to surrender. Some words implicate others. Meaning there are concepts that are inextricably linked. There is no one without the other. Sky. 'Sky' can stand alone. And so can 'car', 'table', and 'toy'. All these words mean different things to all of us and they illicit different feelings, smells, and stories from each life, but their definitions are not dependent on other words in the way some words are. 'Quit' must go with 'participating', you can't quit without having participated. 'Leave' must go with 'come', you can't leave without having come. 'Fly' must go with 'perch', you can't fly without having been perched somewhere. I suppose I'm just talking about the difference between nouns and verbs differently than we usually talk about that difference. Nouns are static, they can stand alone. Verbs are action, they cannot. Surrender is an action and it does not stand alone. Oh! but if it could. If surrender could stand alone I would be saved mess, injury, exposure, and these marks as telling as a sign on my forehead. Surrender implies, necessitates, calls for, and cannot even exist without...a war. Do you hear the militaristic theme surrounding 'surrender' in scripture? It's there. You almost can't miss it, and if you're looking you really can't. We serve a God who says, "Deal with me." Not religion, not your boss, not your sin, not your dad, not your spouse or your ideals but Me. God calls us to one on one engagement with him. To a battle where we do not know if we'll survive. Just as God fought Jacob he awaits the fight with each of us. Not that God is a warmonger, instead that God knows the complaint we have against him is worthy of a war. He calls us to truth, not denial, and he cannot call us to truth without calling us to conflict. Our truth is full of tragedy, shame, abuse, and trials of every kind- this is our grievance against God. He doesn't ask us to minimize the grief of living here, instead he invites us to deal with Him, and Him alone, as we grapple with this side of Eden. God wrestled Jacob and Jacob was changed, he left with a limp and a new name. Surrender is a limp and a new name. Anything less than a real fight and you haven't surrendered. God's justice asks for you to bring the injustices of your life before him and wrestle with your reality as measured against God's love. God's answer is not, "Because I said so" His answer is, "Bring all your grievances to me and demand from me answers. Deal with me. See what you find." Surrender without a war only leads to occupation, puppet governments, and a sham retainment of identity. Yet, as I said I often wish there could be surrender without war because the war requires much from me and the limp gives me away to an ever-peering world. When I go to war with God I must bring myself, I must know my grief, my rage, and my chaos. These are the weapons I bring and I never win. Never. But God does not break me. He brings me to a draw. He touches my hip so that even in healing there is injury, and yet now somehow the injury is glorious. I ask for a blessing and He calls me a fighter, His fighter.

My heart doesn't race, my stomach doesn't clench, my hands don't tremble, nor my head go empty when the phone rings anymore. We warred about that because the last phone call brought me two parents broken and bleeding and I had a grievance against God. The limp is this tender spot I can't hide for all who walk among cars, and all who've known brokenness from metal against flesh. It's a weak spot, a mark, a limp. But I have the blessing I asked for when I was too exhausted to fight anymore, and I fought against him so that I could fight with Him and for Him now. If I hadn't gone to war with God over this, if I'm not willing to do battle over it again and again as I grow and change then my 'surrender' would be a denial of the damage done, and it would turn toxic invading every native thing about me making me a stranger in my own land. Surrender without a fight brings bitterness, but surrender with a fight brings a costly, limping, glorious freedom.

*As in so many of my blogs many ideas here are thanks to the work and teachings of Dr. Dan Allender. Here particularly I have taken ideas from The Wounded Heart seminar available for purchase at danallender.com Thank you Dan for teaching me how to fight the good fight.