words

i've always thought of life a story. those of you who converse with me often are i'm sure sick of this analogy. but thats what it is, a beautiful epic novel written by our creator. there are times when we can dance along the words that are being written with a certain ease, and flexibility. These are those green pasture times when life seems to be totally right. I feel there are other times when we sit on the words that never pause and the words push us a long. There are still other times when we fight with the words, we try to tear our attachment to them and tell the words they are wrong. We fight and pull to no avail and simply belay the process of a certain sentence being written.

trusting in the words that compose the layout of our life is a difficult task. I want to have a plan of action, a sure fire way to achieve stability, I kick and fight and scream until I feel like I have control over a situation. And yet amidst this kicking, screaming, wining and the fireworks that announce the pity party I am throwing, the story teller laughs at my plan. I can hear his cosmic giggles now, they are sucking the life right out of my party and stifling the fireworks.

Throughout our spiritual journey we are constantly being asked to submit. submit to God, submit to others, submit to our friends and neighbors. This simple act of surrender is such a beautiful thing. The act of submission forces us to take the lesser seat, put our own agenda last, and trust in the words that God is writing. it's so easy and yet I feel as if i fight this very act tooth and nail. Sometimes I think God gets fed up with me and straps me down so I stop trying to jump off the page. At this point I scream and flex every muscle I have trying to break free of the straps that control my destiny. I imagine God probably gathers the angels around and they all get a good laugh out of this scene, the site of tiny little nothing me protesting an almighty God has got to be comical.

It is all so simple. The essence of our relationship is God looking down at me and swooning "I love you, I love you, I LOVE you." This statement can be concluded only If I can stop snarling and fighting long enough to look back at him and respond, "no no no, I love you, I love you, I love you." As McGrath puts it in "The Divine Embrace", "Christians Spirituality...simply put is God's passionate embrace of us; our passionate embrace of God. These two aspects of Christian spirituality are like the two sides of a coin - inextricably linked together, unable to exist apart. On one side we find the divine initiative, referring to what God does to make us spiritual. On the other side we find our response, referring to our reception of the union." It is an incredibly beautiful embrace, its how things were meant to be. If only I would submit to the idea.

We were meant to dance hand in hand with the author of our story as he writes, not watch from a distance or walk grudgingly as I tend to. These words are beautiful, at times more non-coherent and confusing then the first brush stroke of a Monet or a Degas, but they are always beautiful. In the end a gorgeous symphony of stories is composed as our story interacts with other stories if we let it. I need to trust the beauty, even though I feel as though my story is more jazz improve then classical right now, I need to trust it and fall into the dance that the author has for me. i need to stop fighting his lead.

my absurd and cyclical pnderings...

processing is a word that i have heard thrown around this summer with entirely to much liberty, and understandably so. It makes sense that it takes some intentional processing time for a high schooler to form concrete ideas about what he has experienced on a week long mission trip. Let alone one of my staff members who have been at work since late may. We set aside an intentional time day to process, we provide journaling materials and pose questions to assist in processing. The act of processing seems to be done by reflecting on experiences in the near past and determining what these experiences mean in the broader scheme of things and how they effect our immediate spiritual development.

I recently have been contemplating this act, and my involvement in the ritual... one may say i have been processing the act of processing and my involvement in processing which over all is absurd and incredibly cyclical. However, I am partaking in the absurdity all the same.

I brought this up in conversation with my area director and wondered how I could process all that has happened this summer. She responded with something that stuck with me. I cannot quote the exact phrasing she used but the general feeling I got from her response was the idea that maybe there will never be a set time or place that I will finish processing... it made sense. As I thought more about this I realized how true and correct this view is. The act of processing what is happening, what has happened and what may happen is something that should be an on-going act. consistently evaluating how things effect us, consistently striving to make sense of our own spiritual development, consistently dusting for the fingerprints of an all mighty God on our life journey and figuring out where those finger prints may be headed. Never ever becoming comfortable enough to say, i have fully processed everything that has happened in my life and can now sit back and bask in the knowledge that I am complete.

lately I have been encouraging people more and more and striving in my personal life to ask tough questions... why do we do the things that we do... really? The day we quit asking questions and stop processing what is going on is the day we become a comfortable Christian. Although comfort is somewhere that seems to be a good place and seems to be a goal of sorts, I cannot help but wonder if it is comfortable Christians who breed sterile and dead churches. I wonder if it is the Christians who stop processing after the designated time they are given and accept their Christianity for what it is and sit back and relax on that thought are at fault for the deathly sleep that the American church is engulfed in.

When Jesus Christ came to earth, his ministry was a far cry from a comfortable one.

He spoke in parables, the very nature of a parable causes a person to think, to roll the words of the parable around in their mind until each phrase is like a piece of toffee that bounces from cheek to cheek. The individuals who got something out of the parables were those who dared to let them enter their minds and stay there. Once they were in their heads they could tear them apart, question them, analyze his teachings. process them. These are the people Jesus spoke to. Those who were comfortable found no need to think about these parables beyond a surface level.

embracing processing as a life style is a commitment to being uncomfortable, a commitment to living a dynamic life, constantly changing, constantly bending and flexing, constantly morphing, movement is necessary. or else we cease to exist.