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]

 

in a minute there is time...

I am sitting here with my mug of tea, prepared to work on that priority list I talked about in my last post...
except for that I realized I have things I want to write about first.

That statement probably says something about my priorities in and of itself.

Having always been a project-oriented person, it's strange to find myself suddenly caring more about the process. You know,

project (n): the sum of experiences which, when combined, achieve a desired end

process (n): the sum of moments which, when combined, create an experience

Not Merriam-Webster definitions by any stretch, but that's how I think about it: the act of painting vs. the finished picture, the practice vs. the game, the conversation vs. the application. Last year, I would have never chosen to write a blog post that maybe 10 people who already know me reasonably well will actually finish over mapping out my future. Last year, I took the PSAT, did debate research, and caught up on math homework (in my bedroom, by myself) for my birthday. This year, I went out for breakfast, hiked, and went ice skating with my little brothers for my birthday. It's like I actually prefer having fun to getting work done! I can feel you laughing at me but that, my friends, is the strange (sad?) truth. Each day, I find myself more inclined to choose the process of life over its various and sundry projects.

There are probably a lot of reasons for this, one being that I caught a glimpse of a different way of life, a grace-filled way of life, when I visited the Smiths in Mexico City. ("I know this hurts your American heart to hear, Aubrey," Naomi said to me, "But you don't have to always be cleaning the kitchen.")

God made good things to go in His good world: colors, emotions, scents, music, laughter, tastes, relationships, words, light, rest...the list goes on and on. Enjoying them is a way of enjoying God - God the Creator, God the father of light from whom every good thing proceeds (James 1:17)

Taking tea at Casa Tassel

Enjoying quesadillas in the apartment after a team meeting

Strangers socializing at a taco stand. Two things I miss about Mexico: spontaneous conversations and taco stands.

When it comes to enjoying goodness, a lot can happen in a moment. To quote that brilliant man, T.S. Eliot*:

There will be time to murder and create
And time for all the works of days and of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
~
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

*Each time I read Eliot, he feels more and more like an old friend and his poems feel more and more like letters. I love it when that happens between myself and a favored author.

Choosing to have a dance party with Sean instead of getting annoyed at him for playing the Pirates of the Carribean theme for the umpteenth time while I was trying to get homework done is the decision of a moment, but it amounts to an experience that then colors the entire dynamic of my relationship with this 11-year-old boy. Making a card for the girl I hardly know might cost me the chance to get back into classical violin, but it also might win me a friend. So much hangs in the balance of split-second decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

And to jump from the wisdom of T.S. Eliot into a deeper and more mysterious wisdom, there is Jesus.

God could have accomplished atonement with a fire-blazing, sky-splitting, earth-shattering projection of omnipotence. But He didn't. Instead, he designated an embryo to be born as a helpless little baby, go through all the awkward stages of growing up, travel first-century Palestine as an itinerant Rabbi, and die a shameful death.

God didn't just save us with a snap of His almighty fingers. He saved us through a story, through the life of a Man with flesh like our own flesh. He saved us in such a way that we would know were being saved. By dying to save us, He gave us the gift of glimpsing the height and length and breadth and depth of His love. That is a weighty grace

I've been mulling over this paragraph from N.T. Wright (I guess I have a thing for writers who go by their initials?):

"The Cross can be seen as Jesus' final great act of love. It draws to a climax all those actions throughout His ministry - His touching of a leper, His tenderness toward the chronically sick or bereaved, His tears at Lazarus' grave - in which we see the deeply human, characteristically God-filled Jesus truly at work."

God is a God who understands the power of a moment in human existence. He is a God who cares not only about the outcome of a life, but about the life itself. I imagine that's part of why He tells us to have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control but never gives us a quota of souls to save or prayers to pray.

I am still wrestling with the tension between my goals-oriented self and my new, oddly flexible and contented self. Undoubtedly, I still have a lot to discover about what this clever God is doing in me. But I'm writing this down to share with you all some of the thoughts that are changing me, in hopes that I am not the only person confused by myself.

It's in seasons like these that I am especially grateful God is greater than my heart, and knows all things (John 3:20).

Much love,
Aubrey

P.S.

Here are some birthday pictures, if you care to see them!

Breakfast at Panera

Hiking at Comanche

Sean decorated my room and HE SPELLED MY NAME IN STREAMERS, PEOPLE!

My boys <3

 

suspension

This picture is kind of how I feel right now...suspended above something vast and complex and unknown.

 



 
The comparison between my life and the picture breaks down when you look at Josu's facial expression: he is smiling at Mexico City. When I look down at the sprawling city of possibilities beneath me, I am not always smiling!
 
I've been excited about college for what feels like forever. Meeting new people, immersing myself in a new environment, having my thinking challenged, studying the things I am passionate about - how could I not be excited? Except for lately I've been second guessing everything I thought I knew about my future plans. Since I'm graduating this year, I feel like now would be a great time for some decision-making confidence...but I have very little. This uncertainty is giving me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
 
All this begs the question: what am I supposed to do? Application deadlines are approaching; I can't afford to ignore the future until my feelings come around. Mr. Ayala, my Spanish tutor, gave me some sound advice yesterday: I need to list out my priorities and evaluate what matters most to me. Those top priorities are what I should pursue with passion and self-discipline. I'm going to make that list, pray over that list, pray some more, and hopefully get a lot of wise counsel. But even once I take those steps, I have no guarantee that I will receive a clear answer about what I'm supposed to do with my life, a sort of unmistakable directive from God. I'm yearning for certainty.
 
Psalm 95:6-7 comforted me this morning:
 

"Come, let us worship and bow down,

Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

For He is our God,

And we are the people of HIs pasture and the sheep of His hand."

Right now, I am not at all sure of my place in the world. But I can rest securely in the place I have in the fold of God. He is my Shepherd, and He loves me. He is going to lead me to the greenest pastures, the purest waters, the place where I will flourish. What does this truth mean for me  practically?

I need to take the next step, and the next step, and the next. I will do what wisdom suggests and trust God to direct my steps. And I need to delight in the place God has me in now.

My last night in Mexico City was perfect for reminding me of that. We disembarked from the metro and walked home after the Mexico vs. Puerto Rico basketball game, which I attended not for basketball but for the people. I love the people I met in Mexico. And the people I walked home from the game with – Joshua, Naomi, Josu, Selma, Bruno, Renee – were some of the dearest to my heart. But I did not connect with any of them on the way back to the apartment. Naomi, carrying Selma, chatted with Bruno. Renee was engaged in a conversation with Joshua, who held Josu by the hand. They weren’t excluding me, not at all. If I had joined either conversation, I would have been welcomed. Still, something held me back. I truly believe that “something” was God reminding me of this: as much as I love the community I encountered in Mexico City, it is not my community. Those people not my people. They belong to each other and I, at least for now, belong somewhere else. I belong in San Antonio. I belong at Believers Fellowship. My family, my neighbors, the people in my church – this is my community. These are my people.

As I am sure many of you are, I am at a turning point in my life. I am going to change and the people around me are going to change. I don’t know how many of those I hold dear will still be a part of my life five years from now. Each day brings me closer to a bend in the road, and I haven’t the slightest idea what lies around the bend. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am called to rejoice every step of the way. Even in the uncertainty, God has given me a place in His heart, among His people. I want to delight in every moment He gives me on this lovely, winding path.

 

Park in La Roma

 

El Centro

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

[Robert Frost]

celestial spray paint

One of my favorite things about La Roma is the street art. It's used
 

to raise awareness for Central American refugees,

to encourage the community to care for the local park,

to accrue followers on instagram,

 

to advertise for concerts,

 



 

and, obviously, to portray humpback whales for the benefit of the general population.

 





 

 

Joshua, Naomi, and I had a couple of interesting talks about art - specifically, what makes art "good" and what makes it worthwhile. As I try to keep Mexico City alive in my spirit (read: sorting through photos, painting said photos, and sharing sketches of Mexico on this ancient blog of mine), I've been thinking back over those conversations.

 

 



 

A few things stand out to me:

 

 

1. The purpose of art matters. When a movie is supposed to be tragic but ends up making you laugh, it isn't good art.

 

2. God is an artist. Why all the different shapes, sizes, flavors, colors, sounds? Why music? Why laughter? There are a million things in the world that aren't necessary to sustain life, but certainly make life sweeter. Ecclesiastes 3:11 is a good verse to mull over: "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end." Reading those words, I can imagine art as an endless process of rediscovery - unraveling the beauty God long ago embedded in human hearts.

 

3. Art is a way to see the world through another person's eyes.

 

"We're made so that we love

First when we see them painted, things we have passed

 Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;

And so they are better painted; better to us,

Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;

God uses us to help each other so,

Lending our minds out."

 -Fra Lippo Lippi, by Robert Browning

 

Maybe these three thoughts are true. Maybe they are not. For me, they add a depth to the street art in Mexico City, humpback whales and all. Tracing the lines God has already drawn - that’s what we are doing with our pencils and cameras and cans of spray paint.

 

Suppose with me these ideas are true. Then God, the Artist, has wrought His masterpiece (titled “The Heavens and the Earth”) with purpose, to evince His perspective. That is a thought that makes me want to spend more time looking up at the dusky sky and down at the slender blades of grass and around at the people at my kitchen table. Strange to think that these familiar fixtures in my world may be radiating the mind of God. And here I am, wishing I were back in the city where there is more stimulation... who knows what words Jesus might be whispering in the skies and yards and humans of suburban America!