I know very little; my wife knows much more (that's no joke!), but one thing i do know is that Jesus is indefatigable. He never gets exhausted. How is that? I think it has something to do with joy. This One who labours harder than all of us combined, somehow--staring at that joy set before Him, never just poops out and quits.
What of this joy set before Him? If joy-and particularly the one set before Jesus-is eternal, it is also unlosable (if that is a word). We cannot actually have joy stolen from us, as it seems we do in experience. Joy, God's joy is eternal and inviolable. This joy somehow gives Jesus hope to never give up, and be overcome by the exhaustion of His endless labours. Something He sees and knows, some Joy.
I don't hear much of joy. Such a short word even in french--joie; but so much punch and energy it offers. The great phycholigist Victor Frankel held out joy as the primary motivation which kept those who endured the holocaust going. They held to some image of joy--something that they cherished, and in this clinging, hope stayed chiming deep within them. Joy ushers in hope--holding onto this hope that we will see His face...
But joy does something else as well-it causes us to feel accepted fully in the depths of our being. When we feel God's joy over us, we suddenly feel entirely accepted--engulfed in His full validation of ourselves--completely welcomed. From that place of self acceptance, we are able to work on our own shortcomings, or areas we need to allow Him to transform us in. But I believe that this acceptance which follows joy, needs to be there, before we are able to break into transformation.
To feel accepted is humourous when we realize how messed up we trully are! The humour comes from the contrast of our state, and God's love for us, as we are. Humour works by putting things normally in different categories in the same one for an instant--a banana peel and a soldier; humour works by contrast: the contrast here is our state and God's acceptance. I think this is why we laugh (and cry sometimes), when we feel His full acceptance of ourselves. Grace in this way is a funny thing.
Laughter is good medicine, the old adage goes.
Why would laughter be medicine--because when that joy comes, and that self acceptance engulfs us, there is room for His spirit to bring healing. Joy also comes in the morning, because it brings the light of day into our tired souls. It is the morning that the bright and morning star shines--the one already rising in our hearts, each time we are tingled by His Joy!
To blog or not to blog. To join the now most popular medium of my generation, or to go on writing on subway walls, and little receipts and scraps of newpaper--trusting the celtic currents to take these little lit poems out onto the proper channels and into the correct hearts and spirits..well, maybey both.
Encouraged that there is a standing tradition since Sinai among the Jews, of an oral tradition, which trust that the stories will keep getting passed breath to breath, and somehow retain the resiliency of the truths contained within them, I am ok with not having written too much recently. And yet, there is something about writing--something sacred--the marks on Moses' tablets--God likes to make marks on earth--to incarnate in syllables and sounds--to reside in the cadences of human language, to commune in the caesuras of our utterances--so we also write.
I hope that language never gets so cheap that we forget that it can also contain being-not just be used to do, but also as a dwelling (and the word became flesh and dwelt!). I like Martin Buber's take on language as calling forth and carrying the essential things. So that he was able to break language down into that I-it or I thou encounter he so wisely downloaded from above. Anyhow, having said that. I was thinking again of Bono this week--and the usefulness of being ourselves.
I was thinking about how the kingdom actually comes through these uniquely shaped vessels--not just clay, but the vases for glory, we are. CS Lewis once wrote, that if we actually could see one another in the full splendor God created us to be, we would be tempted to fall down and worship one another. Now, that sounds odd at first, until you read Psalm 139 again, and see David staring out at the radiant creation, and then gazing at himself and just being amazed at the meditation on God possible through his own unique identity. If we are truly to love a city, a place, a person, we must also love ourselves with the same wonder and amazement as david did that day! You are lovely, unique, never again to be repeated creation of God.
Few christians i know know how to celebrate themselves. The wonder we are! But I tell you when you meet someone who celebrates the creation that they are--not from an egotistical stance, but in wonderment of God's amazing creation, and as a way of getting to know HIM. That person is indeed radiant, and the kingdom does come somehow around them. The radiance of selfhood, of personhood--is that not what we pray for when we pray for a city or person--that the unique creation that God made them to be, would shine out so brightly that angels would have to put on sun glasses?
As Christ rises in our hearts, we will see some very shiney people on earth. I think stephen before he was stoned, was absolutely radiant. That Christ life was so shimmering within him, that stephen was absolutely himself.
I think, that christians, in wanting to die to self, have mistakenly entered a poverty of personhood. This must reverse, if we are to trully be the offspring of God which Jesus bought on the cross. Radiant sons and daughters shining so brightly before men, that even our shadows raise people from the dead.
This poverty of personhood starts with the idea that to be ourselves is somehow not spiritual enough. But while the sinful nature must be died to daily, the unique identity which God made us to be must actually be progressively inhabited. This is His inheritance. We are His temple to dwell in. Who are we to renovate! Let His very Life in us be the interior designer of our souls! In truth, we are afraid to be our true selves, for if we do, we risk rejection by others, or alienation from friends, or have to face our actual self hatred. Or are simply embarrassed by the radiance of our own identities in Christ. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain, does not mean that I become blank, it means that as Christ enters me more fully, He shines even more brightly through the unique contours on my being.
God likes us to be ourselves.
God likes to express Himself in multifarious ways-unity with diverse expressions. Each prophet in scriptures has their own way of carrying the word! He obviously likes diversity. One spirit but many members. Germany is not Africa; and I am not you.
Instead of making one blob to house His Being; God made a myriad of expressions which will one day knit together perfectly to reflect The Father Creator fully. "When i look at the world, I see an expression." Bono sings. Me too! When Christians are trully being themselves on the earth, you will see His Kingdom coming, and it will have a shockingly beautiful expression!
I am in love with certain nations and cities, because I see God in them, and get glimpses of that unique part of His Being. To me to travel is to get to encounter different parts of God. That is when the world becomes a way of knowing and loving God. I must also have this orientation with each person I meet, and with myself. This one instant, this one creation of God, this one poem, fearfully and wonderfully made to house His Glory! This is the wonder of selfhood--to be able to say, this is one poem of what God is like, I will love it, and know Him. And to look at oneself and say, come and pronounce this poem Lord, for your own pleasure oh Great Creator--search me and know me, come enjoy me!
A few summers ago a bunch of our tribe went on "pilgrimage". Which basically started out like a lot of our traveling trips: We're all sitting around the table having tea or coffee, someone mentions a place they've never been, then someone throws in another place, and pretty soon we have a map sprawled out on the floor and we're figuring out how to get from point A to point B... and in the middle of this Andrew will be talking about going to Istanbul just to try out the outdoor spa baths, and Derek is figuring out how to get to a remote cafe for the best coffee in the whole world, and Debbie is already packing her blankets.
The summer of our Spain pilgrimage, Derek was telling us about the beauty of Santiago de Compostela, a small Catholic coastal town rumored to house the bones of St. James, a town which he visited in his early 20s. I think he was living in Israel at the time but I can't say--even as his wife I can't keep up with all the places he's lived.
And someone was saying about how this town was the final destination of an actual medieval Catholic pilgrimage trail that thousands of people walk every year. And pretty soon we were researching the pilgrimage route online, and figuring out all the places we would stop along the way. As anyone can tell you that summer was a bit crazy. Some of us ended up in Paris, others in Milan--Derek and I even squeezed in a trip to Krakow somewhere in there. But we all ended up on the Spanish pilgrimage trail, miraculously, at the same time, for about 8 days. It felt like a month, it was so hot. Only Jessica walked the entire pilgrimage trail.
We all had something we took home with us; for some of us it was the friends and the adventure of it all. For me, I keep going back to this one memory. After those 8 exhausting, heat-filled days, a few of us pulled off the road and went to Bilbao, where we knew the fantastical Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim museum was. And we weren't disappointed. It is really an amazing museum. And Bilbao is one of those gems of a town... like Krakow... or Antwerp... or, um, Tulsa (where I haven't been yet but would like to)... something like that. Not obvious, not a place you read about, but a hidden gem.
And specifically, what I remember about the museum was this entire room of Alexander Calder mobiles. I don't think I would ever want to see them anywhere else, because that experience is perfectly etched in my mind as one of the most magical displays.
It was a big, tall white room, and so quiet--and not a museum quiet but the kind of quiet you hear in a playlot before children arrive. Where the sound of what-will-happen is already in the air. And these mobiles are the most delicately machinated things, each hinge and color so intricate and light. To watch them was like hearing music without sound. I had never "heard" music before by looking at sculpture or painting, but these sculptures were so happy, so musical--in my mind, I could hear fingernails tapping, harpsichords, chimes, laughter. And I wanted to stand there forever, because they had so much joy in them.
And yet they weren't silly; they were designed by a mathematical genius, anyone can see that. They were mysterious in how they balanced because as you stepped close to them you felt as if they would topple over under the weight of the metals and seeming imbalance of their limbs.
Even as I write this, I feel like I'm standing in that big room. It was a moment alone, just me and these silent things that wanted to chime but only in my mind.
