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.

Sometimes

Sometimes people call you in the middle of the night because they want to talk about faith, hope, and love. And you do and then you go back to sleep and dream in three words. Those kinds of conversations don't end. What you talk about in the night stays with you in a way other things don't. I feel faith, hope, and love swirling all around me this morning and I hear the voices on the other end of the phone mirroring back to me what I said as I tried to put words to these concepts. I keep thinking of wine. Like someone came and woke me up to go to a banquet. And there was fine wine. I don't want to forget that sometimes communion is dialogue. And it's rich, and messy, and stumbling, and careful, and free, and heretical, and gracious. I wrote a poem about faith because my prose doesn't always understand me as well as my poetry. They aren't words, faith, hope, and love. They are, each of them, an invitation. Dangerous. Bold. Enlivening. You who've been betrayed. You orphans with no name. Trust. You are invited to trust. Trust that there will be provision and you will have a name. You who've been made powerless. You strangers with no land. Hope. You are invited to hope. Hope that the future will be worth bearing for and you will have a home. You who've been torn in two. You widows with no companion. Love. You are invited to love. Love desire and know the companionship of giving and receiving.

Faith

Faith.
Faith is remembering.
'Here I raise mine ebenezer.'
Remembering happens in memory.
Memory is made of story.
Story is narrative.
Faith has many names:
 lore
 legend
 kings of old
 history
 in the beginning
 and...
 ...yesterday.
Faith is an understanding of what yesterday and all the days before mean for today and all the days after.
Faith accepts an unseen order in randomness.
Faith is the audacity to trust in the face of betrayal.
Why?
Why?
Because there's something you can't kill, something in me you can't kill.
It's some kind of light.
It's a beauty.
It has a quality of infinite.
It's creating.
Even with your treason and wickedness you can't kill this thing.
And I will leverage my life against this belief: that thing, that thing you can't kill, has a Maker.
Faith is living in this truth: that thing has always been. It will always be. It exists in the face of Evil.
It has a Name. And a Story.
Faith is knowing the glory of God, manifest in His narrative of One Death. One Resurrection. One Ascension. For all.
Faith is remembering this story as the epicenter of all stories.

A Perfect Human

Sometimes I secretly think Jesus doesn't seem all that perfect. This is an insane thought. Especially to have often and not consider. Weeding my rose garden recently I started to actually consider the heretical thought. Originally I was thinking about a quote from The Healing Path by Dan Allender, "Jesus was...so human most would not recognize he was sinless." Hello! There it is. It hit me and then stuck in and pulled at my flesh just like all the thorns around me- I've been wrong about perfection this whole time. I thought I knew what it was. I mean doesn't everybody know what perfection is? I didn't. I still don't. But I can tell you this it's not what I thought. Jesus never seemed that perfect to me because he was so human. Far more than I. Or at least more than I present. I'm not hungry. Jesus was. I'm not tired. Jesus was. It's not that big of a deal. It was to Jesus. I'm not sweating. Jesus did. I'm not lonely. Jesus was. I'm not tempted. Jesus was.

Our humanity is not our imperfection. So what am I doing? I am spending an inordinate amount of energy masking my humanity because I think that is what is required of me. Where in the world did I get the idea that Jesus didn't have needs? That needs make me weak and ungrateful? Perfection must not be having it all together all the time. Jesus sweated blood in the Garden of Gethsemane and pleaded for his fate to be changed. Jesus embraced his humanity more than anyone ever has or ever will. And he was perfect. Flawless. Without sin. Pure. Righteous.

I find myself committed to a path that is impossible and breaking my heart, but I think it is the way of God. I think it's the way of God because I think sanctification means needing less and less. But I find myself needing more and more. I become less and less self-sufficient every day and I think I'm slipping off the narrow way. I feel crazy. The more I know God the more dependent and needy I become and yet I believe the way to follow God is to shed need, as if heartache and lack is an old skin that can be left behind as I travel forward.

I forfeit my humanity and call it good. I defame his temple and claim it pleases him. My humanity is the closest thing I have to Jesus. He came and tabernacled among us. Is it any wonder he makes me bleed? Backs me into corners? Sends me to the edge? He will do anything to bring me face to face with the reality of redemption: I only need Jesus when I'm human.


To receive redemption I have to repent. That is I have to turn around and go towards the party. A good party involves no pretenses, but instead is a communal celebration in the midst of what is, and what will one day be. To go to the party I have to take off my masks, or else I stand on the edges of the room resenting the celebration instead of participating in it. To go to the party I have to engage with realities I don't much like. One set of realities are particularly on my mind: To do everything I want to in my yard I need a man. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I shouldn't use a chain saw, but my yard desperately needs a man who can handle a chain saw. I need a man's engaged ear and steady eye when my problems grow to towering heights and become completely intertwined with one another so that I can't even see where one starts and another begins. I need companionship. Someone to talk to at the end of the day.

Do I really need those things? Is that confession really a step towards repentance? What does it mean to need? At core I know I need Jesus and I know I am called to the likeness of One who lacked, who desired what he did not have, who hoped for things not seen, step into places that were not as they ought be.

Be Yourself

Sometimes conversations just happen. Like an unexpected stream coming up out of the ground. The water flows freely. No one is telling the water where to go and no one made it start, it simply flows. I would like to recount to you a conversation that "just happened" and has encouraged me over and over each time I remember it.

I was sitting on the beach with my friend Bill and he started talking mid thought process as my friend Bill often does. I don't know what had made him think of it but he started recounting some time he had spent in a small group at a marriage conference with his wife. He described getting so frustrated when the moderator asked him to "be yourself." Bill responded, "I am so tired of that! It's something we just say. 'Be yourself, be yourself, be yourself.' What does it even mean?! Do we even know?"

The moderator responded, "What does it mean to you?"

Bill reluctantly answered, "It means doing what you love. Using your talents. Being in community with people who care about you. Doing what you're good at."

"So you think being yourself means being comfortable?"

Bill hung his ahead. Ashamed, feeling like he'd fallen for a trap. But the moderator quickly said, "No, that's a good thing. It is good to be comfortable. To care for yourself, be kind to yourself and put your self in situations where you can succeed. But where do you hide? What secrets do you keep? What are you afraid of? Where do you hurt? Where are you uncomfortable? Being in those places is being yourself.

I felt like I was in the room. Like I was Bill and as Bill spoke he became the moderator speaking to me as Bill, or Bill as me. My response would have been the same as Bill's but when I heard what the moderator said it means to be yourself I felt like I was catching my breath after being under water for a long time. It resonated. It was a relief. At some point this description of what it means to be yourself would have terrified me and I would have met it with self-protecting, defiant anger, but the more I sink into the depths of God's grace the less invested I have to be in covering myself. This uncovering. This idea of being vulnerable and uncomfortable it somehow feels right and I wonder why.

Bill goes on and begins to answer my why, "You know, I know some people would say this is heresy and totally disagree, but I think the dark places, the hidden places I think those are the places in us Jesus loves the most. There is something there." Again this resonates. I don't know if it's theologically sound, I don't have a verse to back it up but I know I have felt that. I have felt Jesus' tenderness and care and grace most acutely in the deepest, most hidden parts of my depravity. Bill says, "And I don't know why that is."

My mom sitting in a beach chair next to me says, "Because that's where we are. And he wants to be with us." Bill looks up, locking is blue eyes onto my mom's and nods in agreement. We are where we hide, and so Jesus loves that place. Not that he desires for us to stay hidden, quite the opposite. His love for our darkness, our trauma, our shame is the very thing that allows us to go to those places and not die. To be ourselves in the truest sense and not be condemned but instead received with love.  

Why?

I once heard that you shouldn't ask God, "Why?". That instead you should ask, "What?" The purveyor of this advice explained even if God told you why you wouldn't be satisfied so you should focus on what God wants you to do with your situation not why you're in your situation...Really? For some reason these words stuck with me. How many pieces of advice like this have I head through my years in Christian culture? Hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands. Why did these stick? I remember being disappointed that God didn't want me to ask, "Why?" but figuring that was just part of learning to measure up to His standard. It turns out, though, that it was terrible advice and the standard is a smokescreen.

First of all, who decided we ought to put parameters on the way we talk to God? Ought I edit myself before I go to God? Making sure everything, down to my diction, is acceptable before I utter a syllable? I don't think that's what the author of this quote meant but it plays into a lie I have believed for far too long: there is a right way to talk to God. There isn't. There is simply talking to God and not talking to God. Jesus wants me to be the most free when I talk to Him. With my enemies I may measure my words, but with my Jesus? Trying to pray right makes me "tarry 'til I'm better and then never come at all." But talking to Jesus brings me relief and freedom.

Secondly, Jesus asked, "Why?" I heard a sermon once about mourning and lamentation. The pastor talked about how openly people in the Bible mourn and lament. Then he said what I've heard echoing in my mind for the two years since I heard it, "Jesus asked, 'Why?' ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") and he knew why. I think you have room to ask, 'Why?'" I hope those words, that idea, that truth begins to weave it's way through your fear, your contempt, your anxiety, and all your "Whys?"