of plants and possibilities

Poetic language, idiosyncratic art, vivid history, sinking cathedrals, ruined temples...Mexico City has a lot to offer. But if you really want to glimpse the city's heart, I would recommend to you the window plants.

 

 
Plants have their own urban culture in Mexico City. Like people in the city, they are diverse, colorful, and crowded together.
 
"Cities are diverse, dense places where different types of people interact with one another. Cities are populated with people of various cultures, different worldviews, and different vocations. Cities force individuals to refine their cultural assumptions, religious beliefs, and sense of calling as they rub up against the sharp edges of the assumptions, beliefs, and expertise of other city dwellers."

-"Why Cities Matter", Stephen T. Ulm and Justin Buzzard

 
Vines spill over the ledges of apartment buildings and ivy clings to cement walls. Flowers cluster in clay pots, looking up at succulents hung from the overhead balcony. Branches from two different trees twine together as though they were holding hands. In Mexico City, the proximity of the plants forces them to interact. The city requires the same of its people. On one typical Tuesday morning, I watched Naomi converse with leaders from ReachGlobal, a restaurant owner, a shoe shiner, parents of her kids' classmates, and their favorite vendor of tacos de canasta.
 

 
Mexico City is powered by the energy created when its people collide with each other, giving off ideas, emotions, and collective action like so many sparks. The mechanism of this process is the change wrought in people as they "rub up against the sharp edges" of people different from themselves. When humans, the components of the city, are brought into relationship with each other, they change, and the city changes along with them. Mexico City's plants are a parable of this closeness, this collision, this conversion.

~~

Another curious thing about city plants is the way they sprout unexpectedly, in an accidental hole in the sidewalk or on the dirty ledge of a city-center apartment.
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
















In her book "Mexican Lives", Judith Adler Hellman interviewed 15 different people from a range of social classes, caught between political corruption and policy changes in which they had no say. She writes,

“What emerges in these personal stories is the remarkable flexibility, clear-headed thinking, ingenuity, and courage of people who take great risks to meet challenges they might wish had never come their way.”

The average Mexican faces a formidable line of giants: racism, sexism, classism, corruption, economic inefficiency, broken religious systems, a legacy of colonialism and exploitation. But they find a way for themselves. Ingenious, entrepreneurially-minded people set up shop outsides of schools, selling fruit and candy. (Not to mention outside of basketball games, pawning off tickets to those who left their own behind – that, my friends, is called capitalizing on human nature.) They repair taxis on the side of the road, appeal to amateur tourists, and form networks of influential connections. In harsh and rocky places, the people of Mexico City find ways to grow.

It is saddening to see the waste of human resources in Mexico. There is a plethora of street vendors, street sweepers, and door watchers, masses of people seeking refuge in the informal economy, who work for hours with hardly an income to show for it. But seen in a different light, the “waste” is latent opportunity. The ingenuity of these people, if combined, could be a mighty force.

And there is a personal lesson to be learned from Mexico’s perseverant plants and people: growth is always possible, if I am willing to till the soil I am given - even when that soil is asphalt and concrete.

 

"Trust in the Lord and do good;

Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness."



-Psalm 37:3

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.

To Be

Lately I've been meditating on Isaiah 42:6-7:

"I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness;

I will take you by the hand and keep you;

I will give you as a covenant for the people,

A light for the nations,

To open the eyes that are blind,

To bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,

From the prison those who sit in darkness,

I am the Lord, that is my name;

My glory I give to no other,

nor my praise to carved idols."

     I love this passage for a lot of reasons. For one thing, the poetry: "I will take you by the hand"..."a light for the nations"...."prisoners from the dungeon"...Reading passages like this humbles me, because my God is a writer, a writer who hears the flow of words, who threads them beautifully. A better writer than I will ever be. But really, language is just a shell for the vitalizing truth of these verses. Here God lays out our purpose: we are called to shine, bright white against our soiled world. Radiant. Pure. We are called to descend in the dungeon, to take the hand of those who are mired in the dark stench of sin and lead them into His light. But this purpose is bundled between two blindingly powerful proclamations-"I am the Lord!" "I am the Lord, that is my name!"

We shine, rescue, proclaim, and love because God is Master of the Universe. It would be shameful to subjugate our lives and wills to anything less. But since our God is the very source of existence, existence naturally flows back to Him. The world exists for His glory. Each person exists for His glory. The love God shows us pre-existed within Him; He only chose to manifest it through Christ because of the depths of His grace (Ephesians 2:7). I have a grand purpose, and every trace of it is bound up in His Lordship.

Full

      I've been to a lot of places since I last wrote, places like stress and exhaustion, and stillness and warmth. And in a more literal sense, I went to Oral Roberts University for the NCFCA national championship. I arrived at nationals feeling wind-swept and desolate. A sense of finality hung around the car door slamming and the hotel doors opening and the elevator trip up to our room. I arrived empty, but I left full.

Mollie<3

Hannah's hotel ballet

    What I love about my speech and debate friends is the warmth, the acceptance. If I say something that comes out wrong, there's no uncomfortable stares or awkward silence-it's painted over with a laugh and becomes an inside joke. Everybody hugs everybody. There's no pressure to conform-poets and baseball players and classical musicians and rappers and computer geeks genuinely appreciate each other's different interests and abilities. 

     Conversations are interesting, about personality types or the truth about Abraham Lincoln or the effects of music on behavior. It's really refreshing after being daily deluged with dozens of canned exchanges about weather, sports, celebrities. And conversations are deep, probing the flaws in humanism and the truth of creationism and personal struggles. Questions like "What has God been teaching you?" and "Why do you not watch TV?" are refreshing after the halfhearted "How are you?", asked by someone who doesn't really seem to care how you're doing. NCFCA people care.

     Of course, there's plenty of hilarity, too. Like Larry the Cucumber becoming a vigilante in Switzerland, and Ben's unforgettable Christian pickup lines. Oh, and this:

         Nationals brought competition up a level, but it also brought the relationships up. Maybe it was the "common enemy" factor-Region IV was finally competing against other regions instead of itself. But more than that, we got to spend time together outside of our suits. Monday night after checking into the hotel, we went out to dinner at this burger restaurant called Mooyah's (according to Ethan, that's the sound the cows make when they die, 'cause that's not demented at all). A group of us decided to walk back to the hotel, but ended up playing in a ditch instead. It was a ditch running in front of a private school called Victory, so there was a regal stone bridge with shimmering golden letters crying "VICTORY" arched over this pathetic trickle of mud. We laughed for a long time about that one. Anyways, after the clumsier half of us got our pants soaked, we decided it would be better to swim in a real pool. We ran to Wal-Mart to buy swimsuits, reflecting our excellent, well-cultured sense of homeschool fashion. Really, it was just because Wal-Mart was on the other side of the ditch.

   The next day, intense outdoor games of ultimate Frisbee and capture the flag turned us white kids into giant tomatoes. Swimming and theological discussions were our respite. During the tournament, there was much coffee consumed and much cafeteria pizza eaten, because almost everything else in the cafeteria was quite cardboard-esque. The tension of competition offered lots of opportunities to trust God, and lots of chances to encourage and be encouraged. At the end, some sported radiant trophies and other a flimsy certificate or two. I learned from both kinds. At the after-party, trophies and the lack thereof were drowned out by the stomping and the clapping of the Virginia reel. A handful of us stayed until past four in the morning, discussing suicide, Biblical counseling, and the balance of grace and truth. And making goat noises. And building introvert caves under tables. And watching Doctor Who, or rather, watching Greg and Grace watch and recite each word of a Doctor Who season premier.

    Some of my best memories have been forged at Oral Roberts University, but they are carried in the hearts of dozens of dear people I wish I could see more often. It's times like these that I am indelibly thankful for texting and for social networking. I know I won't be able to keep up every friendship, but I hope that someday we'll bump into each other on a university campus or city sidewalk, and then it will all be the same. I'll never forget you.

My Region IV family<3


"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view or you participation in the Gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. FOr it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart...since you are all partakers of grace with me. For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."~Philippians 1:3-11~

The Art of Holding On

            Except for a smoldering orange patch crowning the hill which had hidden the sun, the whole sky was a grey twilight-blue. And I was in the middle of it, standing on the peak of a sloped gravel road. My shoes were in my hand; I felt the roughness of each sharp pebble beneath my feet. The ground all around me sloped downwards and sideways until the it vanished altogether, popping up again as trees and hills in the distance. My private gravel road was an island in that sea of trees and hills. The wind pushed my hair back from my face. Lifting my hands, I could feel it rush through my fingers. It laced in between each one of them, blowing through like silk ribbons. No matter how tightly I clenched my fists, I couldn’t catch hold of the wind-ribbons.

They made me think of Dicey’s Song, a beautiful book Mrs. Brock gave me to read a week or two ago. I have a nasty habit of reading quickly, devouring the plotline and the characters in one late, lamp-lit night. Dicey’s Song is the sort of book I’ll have to go back to, stretching it through afternoons and rainy days. Dicey felt the wind-ribbons, too.

“She thought to herself, she had to let go of what had gone before too, didn’t she? The people of last summer. And who she had been. Dicey felt as if she was standing in the wind and holding up her hands. She felt as if colored ribbons blew out of her hands and danced away on the wind. She felt as if, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t close her fingers around those ribbons. Dicey knew that she was sitting very still on a train, moving across the night. She knew her hands were wrapped around the wooden box that held the ashes of her momma. But she felt as if a wind blew through her hands and took even Momma away. What did that leave her with? The wind and her empty hands. The wind and Dicey.”

            Lisa and I were stretched out on my bedroom floor, reading through the names on the back of my Regionals t-shirt from 2010. Some people I thought I would hold onto for a while have slipped through my fingers. Other names, names that were only strings of letters to me then, have blown back around in the wind and become woven into my life without me hardly realizing it. I feel helpless.

            Lately my life has been tossed by the wind, fragmented. I leap between the world of speech and debate and my regular, San Antonio world. Sometimes the leap leaves me with a bit of jet-lag, and I don’t know how to connect to people in one group when I first leave the other. Ribbons are slipping through my fingers, out of my reach.

Words make more sense on paper. Writing doesn’t puff away as easily as thoughts. I wish I could write everyone I know a letter, telling them exactly what they mean to me. (Because even the people I talk to only once or twice have a place in my heart, especially if they are one of the many who took the time to draw me out when I felt most alone. That’s a lot more often than anybody would realize.) But the wind keeps blowing, and time and friends and words and emotions are snatched away and jumbled and sometimes blown back. Other times they are tossed from my island forever. I’m left with two ribbons that manage to stay wrapped securely around my heart.

            Dear friend, please don’t let me go. Even if I seem absent when I talk to you, even if I joke or forget to text or act like I don’t care. Even if I’ve just met you, or if we don’t know each other well yet. Please try to hold onto me. I need you, I want to know you, all of you.

            And even if the wind blew away everything I thought to cling to, this would stay constant: 

“As high as the heavens are over the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to His children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him. For he knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.” (Psalm 103:10-17)

Sometimes I wonder what Dicey wondered-

“You tell me to let go. But you told me to reach out, you told me to hold on. How can I do all those things together?”

            I can’t hold onto all the ribbons on my own. But if I cling to Him, everything will eventually be woven together with His love, for His glory. My God is faithful, from everlasting to everlasting.

{beginning to breathe again}

I can't honestly claim to have any connected trains of thoughts right now, but here are a few scraps:

    Regionals is over. It's nice to breathe again. We got home Saturday, and I spent the afternoon wandering in the greenbelt with the camera which belongs to my mother but has been kidnapped by me.
 



(this one is edited a bit)

 

 

Normally I don't care for taking pictures of flowers and trees. I like taking pictures of people, because they have faces and faces mean stories. I love trying to capture personalities. But flowers are nice and still if you want to relax. And the squirrel definately acted like he had personality.



 

Here are a few thinks I've jotted down in my notebook, things I've been thinking about:

    "Could I die? Could I bear the pain of flames crawling up, burning slowly limb by limb, a worm with searing, gnawing teeth? Would I throw myself before the bullet or let fall the guillotine blade without a quiver? I think I would. But would I love enough to surrender mundane everyday? To deny myself the comforts of my flesh? Perhaps not. And maybe that is where the martyr truly lies: a grave of minutes and appearances and preferences relinquished for love of One who needs them not but deserves them all."

       Isaiah 51:12-13: "I, I am He who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker, who stretched out the Heavens and laid the foundations of the earth?"

"I will boast in You because I embrace what You hate

And You love me anyway.

Because I every day doubt your faithfulness,

But You are still faithful.

Because I look to physical idols for satisfaction,

Yet You still offer me joy.

Because I am hopelessly weak and broken,

But You are willing to repair me and use me.

Because I run away but You,

 In Your infinite wisdom and grace,

Insist on pulling me home to Your heart."