κοινωνία

Christmas break was a different kind of animal this year. I alternated between being so busy that I forgot to eat (if you know me, you know how weird that is) and reading Harry Potter for hours on end in odd corners of my house (because, obviously, books are just more enjoyable when read upside-down on the staircase landing).

I also learned a lot. I learned about the Church and the Mayans and Hogwarts, thanks to God’s creativity in making different kinds of people and people’s creativity in writing different kinds of books. But mostly, I learned about myself. At the end of break, I wrote down 7 “life facts” I had either forgotten or never realized before. Here’s #3:

“The closer I get to someone, the messier the relationship becomes. But it also gets better.”

I think this homely but heartfelt sentence can be expanded on a grand scale. Getting close to anything means giving it permission to hurt you. I feel the ache of loss every time I volunteer at the refugee shelter downtown. For a few hours, I talk with, eat with, play with, and sometimes nearly cry with a bundle of precious souls. Then, they climb into a van which takes them to a bus which, eventually, takes them a thousand miles away. Here is what I wrote one afternoon after coming back from the shelter:

“I can still see Erica and Andrés’ faces pressed against the thickly-screened window. They are smiling and waving. Tomorrow, they will be in another state, and they will forget the girl who made beds, swept, watched ‘Finding Nemo’, and danced in front of the security cameras with them. Now I have their names with their faces and personalities still fresh and attached. But the more tender, living memories, the emotions and mannerisms, will slowly be taken from me. Only names will stay behind, like fossils imprinted on rock: concepts defined by empty space, feeding on absence. It does not feel beautiful to me right now, the way we touch each other’s lives. So much of me is lost with each person I encounter.”

If I could go back to time and talk to the Aubrey who wrote that paragraph, I would tell her that it’s good she felt something when Erica and Andrés left because it meant she cared about them. I would also tell her that the presence of pain does not mean the absence of beauty. Closeness means opening your heart, which means hurt, but also means fulfillment.

Maybe I should put it this way…

One item tops my virtual lists of character flaws, discouragements, joy-killers, lifelong struggles, etc. This slithering sin has tyrannized me and poisoned life’s sweetest moments. Its name is selfishness.

I have long agreed with G. K. Chesterton – “how much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it” – but I am also very bad at making myself small. Thus, I can spoil a lovely day by snapping at a family member who interrupts my study time. I can suck all the healing out of words spoken to a struggling friend by contemplating how gentle and sympathetic I must look. I can and do repent of these failures, but I also repeat them. Again and again and again.

Today, it dawned on me. I finally realized the full impact of a truth my parents have taught me since I was little: put off and put on. It’s not enough to put off selfishness; more selfishness will rush in to fill the void. I need to also put on love.

And what is love? Most would agree that love has to be more than a feeling if it is to last for any length of time. But love must also be more than an action – I know because I have “served” my brothers on many occasions (such as by picking up their LEGO bricks which, only moments before, impaled my bare foot) without expending so much as one-sixteenth of a milliliter of goodwill.

I do not dare to pretend that I fully grasp what love is. I’m sure there are as many sides to it as there are thoughts in Dumbledore’s pensieve. But as I mull over passages like 1^st Corinthians 13 and 1^st John 1-5, I become more and more convinced that at least in part, love is identifying with someone else to the extent that their good becomes my good. That’s why love is patient: if controlling my tongue is the difference between blessing and wounding my friend, then I am happy to do it. Love isn’t jealous: if spending time with someone else helps her to grow, I’ll gladly relinquish my claim on her schedule.

I believe that communion – κοινωνία, sharing, fellowship – is central to love. Jesus didn’t just write us a certification for cancellation of sins; He took on our decaying flesh, shared in our sufferings, experienced our temptations, and became sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus’ method of redemption was a sharing of identity - His righteousness for ours, ours for His. And His prayer for the believers He left behind was a plea for unity: “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us” (John 17:21). This communion is something Jesus’ first followers preserved: the church devoted itself to fellowship (Acts 2:42), and Paul shared his own soul with his beloved Thessalonians (1 Thess. 2:8).

Now I press a few buttons in my mental elevator and descend from the abstract to the personal level.

It’s comfortable to hold people at arm’s length, because they can’t hurt me if I don’t need them. It’s nicer to share articles about refugees on Facebook than to spend three hours cleaning up a play room that fifty-something children have passed through. I feel safer when I spill my thoughts in a private journal than when I let my acquaintances see that I am weak and flawed. So I do not commune, I do not share my soul.

And then what?

“The modern man does not immerse himself in anything he does,” wrote Octavio Paz. “Always, a part of him remains intact and alert…The solitude that this engenders…is a total condemnation, a mirror of a world without escape.”

What we might call being reserved or independent is often a hyper-individualism that shuts us up inside of ourselves. When I protect myself instead of giving myself away, I am locked into a room of mirrors. I cannot see what is true, beautiful, good, and eternal; I only see my own reflection staring angrily from every nook and cranny of this world without escape, reminding me of all that I fail to be. I am condemned to confinement within my own mind.

Life is meant to be shared. Specifically, it is meant to be shared through Christ. When we come to people through the One who became like us to save us, we don’t have to fight for self-preservation or pleasure. Christ has already given Himself unreservedly to us. And in His presence we find fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11).

This is why beauty and pain coexist when souls collide. This is why relationships can get better and messier at the same time. Communion requires a surrender of self to others, a death of desire. And death, of course, causes pain. But dying to self is a way of imitating what Jesus did for us, of sharing in His sufferings.

Communion with others flings ten thousand doors open, letting us explore the new and unimagined wonders God has placed inside of each person. It splits our little worlds apart so that we are aware not just of ourselves, but also of the star-like souls that fill this madly spinning planet and of the One who spoke them all into being.

My ambition for 2016 is to love well, to make the good of other people my own good, to live not in fear of loss but in anticipation of grace. And thus item #5 on my life-fact list:

“I am part of God’s story and my life isn’t just made for me; it’s made to fit in other peoples’ lives. Sometimes I glimpse the big picture, sort of like when Harry and Hermione time-travel in Book 3 and finally understand why everything happened the way it did. That makes me happy.”

Oh, and lest you think I spent my entire break drawing analogies between spiritual truths and Harry Potter, let me give you #1 on the list:

“I love bugs.”

Do with it as you will ;)

Love as always,

Aubrey

Sweet Adelaide is...

...a beautiful soul...

...who knows how to delight in the world.

forward regression

Thus far this week I have managed to:

 

-Talk when I should have listened

-Spend half a sermon thinking about how badly I need to go shopping and how much I hate shopping (it's a vicious cycle)

-Fail someone I love not once, but twice in the same day

-Make and break a new schedule within 24 consecutive hours

-Freak out about college applications I should have taken care of sooner

-Get irritated with the people I love most in the whole world

-Feel really lame for having these problems

 

(Hi, welcome to my life!)

 ~

As I slowly sunk into this quagmire of failure, Piper's words hit me like a lifeline:
 

"Shame is a painful emotion caused by a consciousness of guilt or shortcoming or impropriety. The pain is caused not merely by our own failures but by the awareness that others see them."

          [John Piper]

At first, the quote might seem more condemning than redemptive: **sarcasm alert** "So, not only am I guilty, but I only feel the guilt because I'm worried about what other people think? Guilty and egotistical. Great! I feel so much better about myself now!!"

 

(Actually, I felt a lot worse.)

 

 Truth has a razor-sharp edge; it pierces and burns before it heals.

 ~

 Of course, I don't enjoy messing up. But it's easy to dismiss my shortcomings as mere mistakes and to flippantly say that I'll "do better next time" - unless I am aware that others saw what I did wrong. Then, my failures afflict me. I am burdened, I feel ashamed; I might even weep. But I weep because I see myself through the eyes of other people and find I am not all I wish to be.

~

I like to play with reality. When I take walks, I spin and re-spin the story of my life (present, past, future) in beautiful words. I draw on real events, embellishing them to make myself sometimes tragic, sometimes amusing, but always picturesque. Always the heroine.

And the funny thing is, I keep telling myself those stories even though they make me miserable. They make me miserable because they never come true. I know they never will.

~

Here we come to a very quiet place.

Imagine somewhere like spring. Small white flowers are dusted over the grass, a sort of starry powder. The flowers turn their little faces to the sun and open slowly, so slowly that you would never see their petals uncurl and stretch to meet the morning. They have so recently sprung from the soil.

 

the leap,

the purge, the quick humility

of witnessing a birth

 

That’s what Kay Ryan said. When I tried to explain the feeling back in March, I said this:

There is a richness underground, a sort of historical wisdom –

         A humility in these springtime stars.

 

I like Kay Ryan’s words better, but that’s beside the point. Here’s what struck me: I’m not the only one who associates birth and humility. It’s me, Kay Ryan the poet of sunshine, and someone else…

~

…that would be Jesus.
 

“And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, ‘Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.” –Matthew 18:2-4.

I spend so much time trying to be a parent-figure, a mentor-figure, a hero-figure. Constantly, I seek to mold myself into someone of worth and significance. I suppose that is not all bad.

But I spend so little time being comforted because someone who loves me and who is stronger than me says everything is going to be OK. These days, I don’t often squeal with delight because “GUYSthere’saLIZARDonthewindow” (always pronounced without spacing). When was the last time I sobbed because a baby bird fell out of his nest? And what happened to the times I hugged crying people instead of listing off ways for them to fix their problems?

Peace, wonder, tenderness, compassion - childlike traits. And they come because children are small, know they are small, and are content to be small. A child is happily subordinate. A child trusts without understanding.

There is such freedom, such rest, in not being at the center of all my stories. It’s lovely to know someone much more competent than I am will save the day.

~

Here is where we find the gentle side of truth.

I have plenty of failures. Layers upon layers of them, and we’re still peeling! (I say we, because it’s a collaborative effort between God, the world, and myself). But when I can acknowledge those failures and lay them at Jesus’ feet with a spirit of genuine repentance and childlike trust, there is rest. When faith lets me see the world through God’s eyes (not others’ eyes, least of all my own), I am freed from this shackling shame.

By the grace of God, I will be a child.

 

artsy picture

artsy picture

 

realistic picture

PC to Renee, who is wonderful

 

 

“O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty;

Nor do I involve myself in great matters,

Or in things too difficult for me.

Surely I have composed and quieted my soul;

Like a weaned child rests against his mother,

My soul is like a weaned child within me.”

[Psalm 131:1-2]

 

The Hand and the Heart

I just took a Spiritual gifts test. It was useless from the standpoint that I am no clearer on what God wants me to do than before. My heart, however, was rubbed raw and exposed.

For the test, I had to rank myself on a scale of 1-5 for each statement:

[paraphrased]

"I have a strong desire to help others in time of struggle." YEAH!! 5!! I can't think of anything more beautiful than being the tool God uses to comfort and heal.

"I carve time out of my schedule to be involved with people." Umm...maybe 3. (No, Aubrey, be honest.) 2.

--

"I love the Church and long to see her growing and fulfilling the Great Commission." 5 again-gotta love the bride of Christ, right? My brothers and sisters!

"When I see a need in the Church, I step in and fill it." [Scrolling through a mental list of needs...financially challenged family with lots of kids and no nights out, prayer request sheets, conversations with the "awkward" people, conversations with the "perfect" people...]. Another 2.

--

"I believe that I don't have to worry because God is in control of every situation." 5 of course; I couldn't agree more. Isn't that part of Him being God?

"I proclaim the Gospel every time I feel God is calling me to witness." *cough cough* 2.

--

My head is almost perfectly Spiritual. I love the broken, know the power of the Church, believe in God's sovereignty. So why, in reality, do I chose my agenda over touching souls? My desires over serving the Church? My image over communicating the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ?

There is a disconnect between my head and my hand, a disparity between what I say I believe and what I live like I believe. The dividing chasm is my heart.

My hand is what I do. My mind is my intellect, how I reason and what I think. My heart is my desires, the place where my intellect and actions are joined. Proverbs 4:23 says the heart is the wellspring of life. The choices that constitute life flow from this furnace of longing, passion, hope, love. Longing, passion, hope, and love fixated either on God or on an idol. My heart is the core of my being.

And the strangest thing is, I have no power over it.

I can't control my desires, just like I can't force myself into liking the way salmon tastes. I can force my mouth to chew and my digestive system to operate, use brute and brawn to align my head and hand (it's healthy, it's brain food, lift that fork, release those digestive juices!). But as soon as I loosen the chain, head and hand are propelled as far apart from each other as possible, born away on the relentless current of my heart's desires. Desires stronger than I am. Desires that are fixated on self: self image, self satisfaction, self worth. Self tyrannizing self.

The only way for my heart to be changed is for a Higher Power to reshape it. That's why when Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that we are new creations in Christ, he goes on to clarify that "all this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself". We are new not because we processed ourselves in the Spiritual recycle plant or even threw ourselves into the Spiritual recycle bin. We are new because He gave His Son and Spirit to make us new.

I'm praying that God will fill my heart with His desires so that head-knowledge and hand-action flow naturally together. So that even in the subconscious moments where my will has been worn away by exhaustion or emotion, my words and deeds are still steeped in His truth.

A New Light

After reading my last blog post, a friend messaged me on Facebook.

"I was wondering: I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about Old Testament Messianic prophecies. In the section of Isaiah 42 you quote, God is speaking to the Servant, whom we now know to be Christ. How does that fit in with applying the passage to us and saying that we should open blind eyes, bring out prisoners, etc.? Is it because Christ perfectly did all of those things, and we are called to be like Him?

It doesn't seem to me that the passage can be applied directly to us because of the part that says, "I will give you as a covenant for the people." I don't believe that can apply to us at all. However, I do believe that the passage as a whole puts forth a lifestyle that we should strive for. Currently, with the limited thought I've put into the matter, it seems like the link between the passage and us is Christ--He fulfilled this passage, and we strive to follow in His example as well as fallen humans can.

What are your thoughts?"

This is what I said back:

Thank you so much for your though provoking question. I've been reading through Isaiah and finding a lot of encouraging passages, but not paying as much attention to the context as I should. I didn't realize this until I read your message. I re-read through Isaiah 42 (as well as John MacArthur's commentary on it) and the passage is talking about the Messiah. Before, I had thoughtlessly assumed it was speaking of the nation of Israel, since most of the book of Isaiah is. I believe the promises to Israel apply to Christians because we are grafted into the promise through Christ (Romans 9 & 11) and are now God's nation (1 Peter 2:9-10). Isaiah 42 isn't talking about Israel, though, it's talking about Jesus. I misapplied Scripture in my post without realizing it.

I do believe that being saved means confessing Christ as Lord (Romans 10:9-10), and it also means that we are called to imitate Him. God has called us to conform us to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29). So our purpose still applies, but not directly through the Scripture passage I used.

I'm going to go correct that on my blog. I am so thankful for you pointing out my misinterpretation. Scripture is the Word of God, and the last thing I want to do is distort it in any way!! You've also challenged me to start reading the Old Testament with more thought, care, and research.

     In a way, I'm thankful I misused the Isaiah 42 passage. That sounds terrible, doesn't it? But I am thankful, because I hate making mistakes. I hate being wrong. It's humbling for me to be confronted on an error, and I desperately need humility. Day in and day out, I find pride keeping me from serving God as I should because I'm more focused on my image, my agenda. Even the smallest chance to learn humility is such a blessing. I'm thankful for a friend (who I honestly don't know well at all) who is brave enough and loves Scripture enough to point me towards truth. I'm thankful for the example to me, because that's the sort of friend I want to be. I'm thankful for the challenge to study Scripture more carefully. 

     Oh, and above all, I'm thankful that Isaiah 42 is talking about the Messiah. Because the Messiah is Jesus Christ, my Savior, my Lord. I'm one of the prisoners He rescued from the dungeon. I'm the darkness His pure light shone to. As I study through Isaiah more carefully, there are treasure troves of verse I never noticed before, pointing towards Him. My purpose still stands: to shine, to speak the Good News. But the light I shine needs to be all His because His light is the brightest, and the words I speak need to be all His because only His name brings salvation.