Swimming in the Shallow Waters

Do you have a few minutes? I'd like to sit down, share a cup of coffee, chat with you. I'd like to look at your face, see you eye to eye, know the way you shift in your chair and the way you brush your hair back from your face. I want to know the sound of your laugh and the things that make you feel insecure about yourself.

I want to know you.

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When I set out to write in this space it was 2001. My life as I had known it had fallen apart or was being ripped apart. I didn't know the first thing about blogging. Certainly never thought a stranger would read what I wrote and never had any illusions of grandeur. As the poet Adrienne Rich said, "I came to explore the wreck, the words are purpose, the words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done, and the treasures that prevail." That was the first tagline on my blog and it remains an important one to me.

Diving into the wreck, using words to find purpose, to find my way, to see the damage and the treasure—this is why I write. This is why I have always written.

But the past two years more and more people read here. Strangers. People from all over the world are reading these maps, these purposes. And the deeper the numbers go, the more I want to swim in the shallow waters. It feels safer to not come out and say how I really feel about some things. To keep quiet on matters about which I feel strongly. To omit needless words, as E.B. White said, but sometimes to omit needed words. Because I am afraid of the wreckage—not the one that has already been made, but the one I might make with my words.

I have never wanted to be a confrontational writer and I still don't want to be. But I had a conversation recently with someone and his words sit heavy on me: your faithfulness to the craft of writing, the poetry you spin with your words, must never come before your faithfulness to the truth of what you write.

In other words, pick a seat or get off the ride.

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So I'm going to do something a bit scary: I'm going to come clean about some things in the coming weeks. I'm going to tackle some subjects that never make me squirm to talk about in real life, but make me all sorts of uncomfortable talking about online.

Because the truth is that I have picked seats on these rides, but I just didn't want anyone to know where those seats were.

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But here's what I want you to know: I want you to know that I wish I could sit down across from you, so I could know you and you could know me and we could be real people with real thoughts and real stories and real lives. It's really easy to write things on the internet and cast people in pale shallow lights. It's easy to create a monster from a man and to polarize politics. It's easy to assume we're right because these days it seems less and less about authorial intent and more about how that piece made the reader feel.

So here's what I want you to know, and I'll restate this many times in the coming weeks: this is not about making you or me or anybody else feel anything, it is about the intentions of my heart—and so too the intentions of your hearts.

You can't know mine and I can't know yours, so come play, but play nicely, because we're all walking out of a wreck and we're all walking into one—let's find the purpose, the map, and the treasures in them all.

Yeah?

THE BIGGEST CATCH

She's a little like Jesus in that she always teaches me in allegories. Gardens and graveyards and apple picking—there's always some lesson lurking beneath her well timed speeches, and there's certain to be a prayer at the end of it all: go and do likewise. Tonight she's talking to me about fish.

She can stand at her kitchen sink and overlook the Grasse River. The thing about this particular juncture in the Grasse River is that it is the last dam from that river flowing down the Adirondacks and into the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The house used to be an old mill and that dam was once crucial to the life of the home and, in some ways, it still is.

It is at that dam that the salmon who make their way against the current from the Saint Lawrence end their journey. They jump and twist and spin and no matter how hard they try, they cannot make it over the dam.

It is a lazy fisherman's sweet spot. A bastion of swirling thirty inch salmon meeting their demise through hook or weariness.

But this is not the allegory she spins for me tonight.

We are talking about prayer and she is talking to me about asking big prayers, specific ones, naming things, not so that I can claim the things themselves, but so that I can hold a quivering hand to God full of childish requests and I can praise Him when He answers so specifically back to me.

I am not a big asker.

I stopped asking God for anything three years ago when I determined that He was not good and did not intend good for me. I let the anger build and boil inside of me until two years ago when I stopped asking God for anything for a different reason: I finally understood the gospel was the fullness of God for me, and what more could I possibly want? This girl was done asking because her cup runneth over.

But at a table the other night a friend talks about specific things she asked for and challenges my personal "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. And I had answers for her, I always do, but I can't get that conversation out of my head. I'm not the girl who asks.

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Tonight my Jesus-friend is talking about how badly she wanted one of those fisherman to haul thirty inches of pink salmon up to her back-porch, how the taste of fresh fish would be so delightful and generous. So she asked. Well, she sent one of the many adoptees who frequent our house (of whom I am one) down to the riverside to ask. He brought back as fine a specimen of salmon as can be expected from one who's made the twenty mile journey down the seaway to the dam.

But here's the thing, she said, it was awful tasting, tough and old. She tossed it in the garbage and I can't be sure, but knowing her, she whipped up a finer feast from leftovers than you've ever tasted in your life and called it dinner.

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The allegory here is that big asks do not always result in exactly what we thought we were getting, regardless of how fine it looks on the outside.

Who of you, I thought and she said, if your son asks for fish, will you give him a stone?

But sometimes He gives me stones, I said.

Yup, that's right, sometimes he gives you stones, she said. But does that means you shouldn't have asked for what you thought was best in the first place?

I don't know the answers to these questions. Even after she ends our phone call with a prayer and deep assurances of her love for me (she's a little over the top sometimes), I still don't have the answers. Flannery O'Connor said she wrote because she didn't know what she thought about something until she wrote about it, and I feel the same way. It's why I've written this.

Once I stood in the bed of that river, feet from the open dam, water spilling over it. I stood there in my bare feet and the fish swirled and swam around me. I don't think you can be that close to nature, that close to nature doing what it was meant to do—swim against the current, dive and jump and try and try again to get past that obstruction—and not feel the hopelessness that comes in life sometimes. Those fish are asking big asks and in the end the answer is no.

But I wonder what kind of life that thirty inch salmon lived before it was caught and brought to the table in the old mill house on the river. I wonder if he swam through nooks and crannies and over rocks and through storms to his end.

And if it was a good end indeed.

These photos are what I talk about when I talk about home. 

WHAT did HE MEAN?

These days it seems authorial intent is an aside, an afterthought. What really matters is how the piece of music or poetry or prose made us feel and feelings are something we westerners are never short on. And so praise God for twitter and facebook, and someone thank Him for LinkedIn too, because without these outlets of immediacy, how would we ever know how anyone felt about anything? This morning a short twitter exchange:

Him: Sometimes I need to be reminded of what I sometimes believe. Me: Almost all the time I need to be reminded of what I almost never believe.

So this has me thinking about doubt this morning.

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In my Old Testament class we began our study of Deuteronomy today. It is, in short, the paraphrase of the previous four books of the Bible and, in long, an instructive to remember and rejoice, remember and rejoice.

Forget authorial intent and even my innermost feelings, remembering and rejoicing slip my mind more than anything else.

Remember: what God intends, who He intends it for, and why. Rejoice: that God has not forgotten me or His promises, or most of all, His faithfulness to His character and word.

The other night a friend challenged me deeply. I sat on my bed Indian style, while her words came across the phone, and eloquence aside, she finished with, "So get up off your ass and do something about this situation..." Lest you think she's of the coarse, unfeeling sort, she sent me an epistle of love the next day filled with all sorts of right thinking and gospel truth.

Why?

Because I forget. I forget what God has done. I forget what He has promised. I forget what He does intend and not just how it all makes me feel.

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This morning reading through the first few chapters of Deuteronomy with the rest of my class I'm reminded that there is cancer in that room and death, loneliness and confusion, joblessness and despair. In that room of 38 people who love Jesus deeply, who serve Him radically, who have been tapped on the shoulder by leadership at my church to come out and lead well, in that room of 38 people things do not always go well.

There are some of us asking: will we ever get to see the promised land? Has our sin been too great? Has His anger been too deep? Has our doubt been too strong?

And it's not because we don't know the gospel or the grand intent of God's hand: it is because we do not remember the gospel and sometimes forget the grand intent of God's hand.

So Deuteronomy is a sweet comfort to me today. Because it is a book about remembering and rejoicing—even if we never see what we think is promised to us. It is a book of history, of Ebenezers set at which to point and say, "Look what God has done thus far." It is a book about God's intentions, even when our feelings run rampant over truth.

Remember.

And Rejoice.

I Want to Give You My Money!

Full disclosure: I work for the media department of non-profit so I am properly subjective, absolutely biased, and in no way can my appeal to your emotions be trusted. I need you to understand that this is not about my particular non-profit gaining ground or having great financial success. God has immensely blessed the work of the hands that work here and He has sustained the work on the field for 20+ years. I am not jealous of those who have better media, better websites, better social media platforms, etc. My job is to tend my plot well, and one of the plots He's given me to tend is this blog and the message that goes out from it. This is something I'm personally passionate about—what I'm writing here is not necessarily endorsed by my employers.

Celebrity

I read an article a few weeks ago that is still ruminating around in my innards. I found myself nodding so much while reading my co-worker probably thought I'd forsaken Bon Iver and was headbanging to Metallica in my headphones. He wrote:

We cross into a culture of celebrity when we assume that merit in one field or one discipline necessarily carries that merit to other fields or disciplines. More particularly, it comes when we transfer theauthority of one field into another, so that we assume the guy with the popular blog must be a great expositor of the Bible (thus transferring the authority of his success in social media into authority the pulpit). Christian celebrity comes when we assume that the songwriter must be a noteworthy teacher, that the YouTube phenom is worthy of our pulpit, and that the guy who sells so many books must be able to craft a sermon on any topic or any text. Merit in one isolated field convinces us that this person has earned the right to every other platform. When we do this we have elevated not on the basis of merit, but of celebrity.

Read that again if you need to.

Golden Opportunity

America is the land of opportunity and one of the opportunities we have is free speech. Free speech means we can say pretty much anything we want and evolution means that the ones who say what they want the best win. This has resulted in many voices saying powerful, enlightening, and inspiring things. This is why we had Martin Luther King, Jr. and Langston Hughes and Flannery O'Connor and even Joel Osteen. Men and women who say winning things in winning ways—everybody wins, right?

Not right though.

Message aside (I'm in no way endorsing Osteen, for example.), the one who says it best still wins. Presidents are elected on this merit and pastors are procured on it, men are married and professors are picked on it. Merit on the basis of winsome words wins peoples affections, allegiances, and votes.

There's no way around that. It's beautiful if you think about it. Really beautiful how words and images resonated within us. I love that. It's why I've committed my life to using words and images to tell the stories of people everywhere.

In the non-profit world, or more specifically the charity world, however, this beautiful gift of telling a story can be very deceptive.

A Name by Any Other Name

I told you at the beginning of this that I was going to use the logical fallacy of appeal to emotions which is interesting because that is what the non-profit sector in many ways spends their energy doing best. I do it too. I want to tell our story in compelling and interesting ways, I want you to cry, I want you to feel deeply what the people we're helping feel. Then I want you to give. I do. I want you to give me two pennies or two thousand pennies. I want to show you that there's a need across the globe and you can meet that need. But I use the fact that you're a human with a predictable emotional response to get to that place. And I don't think that's wrong. The bible says that there's a relationship between our emotions and our finances and that's a good thing, I think it is.

Where it begins to go poorly, and where I am actually going with this post, is when you have someone with celebrity status or someone who rises to celebrity status on the platform of a social issue—but they are standing on nothing but the shoulders of financial backers. What I mean is that they have no numbers, no people, no proof that their passionate plea is actually resulting in lives being affected and changed—at least results equal to the amount of financial backing they get.

Because they have made a name for themselves, they become the authority on activity that might not actually be producing the results you think you're supporting.

And I know, I'm know I'm biased, but I also know that I have an insider's view on some of these non-profits and I'm not going to tell you who they are.

Because that's your job.

It's Your Job

It is your job to ask about financial decisions charities make—what percentage goes to the field?

It is your job to ask for numbers of lives changed? Sometimes it's hard to nail down exact numbers, but we can at least give you an estimate.

It is your job to ask whether the cost of paying for a pair of shoes, glasses, a tshirt, a bracelet, a watch, etc. is creating a sustainable and substantial difference in the places you're being told it is.

It is your job to look at the crowd a charismatic speaker draws and ask whether there is celebrity happening here or charity.

Cold Water

It is not impossible to have charity with celebrity at the helm, and some great, great work is happening when the headliner is a great marketer.

But do not be deceived by masterful campaigns and flashy marketing:

Sometimes it is the least of these giving cups of cold water to the least of these.

CROSS CARRYING

I've been thinking a lot about how the world lauds balance, but Christ built his earthly kingdom on tension, not balance. Sometimes it means being in the crowd, sometimes in the closet, sometimes doing miracles, sometimes keeping quiet, sometimes fasting, sometimes feasting. The world wants us to be even, chill, predictable, to embrace zen, practice slowing our reaction times and composing an eloquent response. But Christ says, no, pick up your cross and follow me.

Carrying crosses knocks us off balance.

what shines brightest

I haven't always been a peacemaker. I used to be a peacekeeper. I hoarded peace like a child with his Christmas stocking full of Andes Mints and Pez candy dispensers. I kept peace to myself, sure that if I could pet it, and feed it, and care for it, it would stick around. I kept it like a kept girl, made it work for me, paid its wages at the altar of hiding in groups and keeping relationships at arms length. I kept peace by repeating after myself that I was not at fault for the grenades flying over my head or the words flung across wooden tables or down long hallways.

Romans 12:18 says to live peaceably with all and, well, I have tried to do that. No one can accuse me of bringing wrecking balls into life's infrastructures in the past decade. No sir.

Tonight I think about the rest of that verse, though, or rather, the beginning of it: If possible. So long as it depends on you. Then live peaceably with all.

If possible. Meaning: when all other outlets have been explored, when I have sorted through the cans and wills and dos and don'ts of possibility. When I have exhausted improbability and taken no thought for the bullets colliding through my unchinkable armor. When I have braced myself for the fall that will inevitably come when I am most certainly misunderstood and when I am blacklisted from here til kingdom come. When it is possible, do it.

Stop writing the rebuttal. Don't blog the discourse. Don't preach to the choir or to the vagrant in the back row on whom you have your [plank-filled] eye.

Why? Because it's possible. It's possible for you to shut up, pursue peace.

So long as it depends on you. Meaning, and don't miss this: the world will spin madly on.

Eliza Doolittle sung a bit of theology for us all when she sang to Prof Higgins, "And without much ado we can all muddle through without you." So as long as we hold the beautiful ability to pursue peace with all men, we ought to. So long as it depends on us, we should trust that our meddling in affairs that bring an end to peace, well, people die on hills like that and we wade through the carnage for centuries.

Tonight I sat in a room with some beautiful people and we shared some broken things, some carnage, places where we didn't pursue peace or where someone didn't pursue peace and we were the wreckage left behind.

But here is the beautiful part of that: wreckage will be left while we wander this earth, but what's ultimately left, when the All Consuming Fire has come and burned away everything but what shines brightest, what shines brightest will be the Prince of Peace and we add nothing to that beauty with our earthly bickering.

[PURE?] ENJOYMENT

"I enjoy your company." Because life is too short to mess around, I admit, I've asked a guy frankly on more than one occasion, "What's your intention?" The conversations are never fun, never comfortable, and never feel very fruitful. But it scratches the itch, gives them the opportunity to 'fess up, and lets me let my heart move on. In about 98% of these conversations I hear this one line: I enjoy your company, but...

This past weekend JR Vassar spoke at a conference for the home-group leaders at my church. He spoke on the Trinity and it was, let me tell you, enjoyable. It was heady and theological, it was convicting and reassuring, and it was life-giving and healing, but more than anything else, it was enjoyable.

He spoke about enjoying the gospel and never have I wanted to simply enjoy someone enjoying the gospel before as I did him. He's a brilliant guy with a deep love for Jesus and the Word, he obviously loves my church family and my pastors deeply, he's the pastor of a church plant in my native north—what is not to enjoy about this guy? But see, he wasn't talking about enjoying him, he was talking about enjoying the gospel—a different thing altogether.

This week, this month, I'll tell you, it's been hard to enjoy the gospel. There are some things weighing on me, family, time management, book details, the heaviness of my job, homesickness, tight finances, roommates, sleep, these things push in and crowd out my joy quickly.

I've started to enjoy things and people who enjoy the gospel, but it's not the same is it? It's not the same as enjoying the gospel. Enjoying the depth and richness that exists in being rescued from the clutches of death, covered with the righteousness of Christ, and called a son or daughter of a King. There's joy there, right there, sitting in that.

Yet I'm too busy enjoying the substitute instead of The Substitute, the creation instead of the Creator, the friend instead of the Groom.

But He's truly is the better choice. He is.

So here's my question to you today: what or who are you enjoying today?

Are you enjoying the company of a girl or guy because you haven't found "the one?" Are you enjoying religious things instead of God Himself? Are you enjoying the attention of your children, your readers, or even your spouse instead of dwelling deepest on the enjoyment that God has in you and you can have in Him?

SPEAK

Verb, Adjective, Noun. This is the order in which we speak of walking the fast dog, or eating the good meal, or painting the blue wall. This is our syntax, familiar, but not poetic and it is poetry that stills me this morning and coasts me by all day.

Noun, Adjective, Verb—this is the way David sing-songs his worship in Psalm 19:

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;

His precepts and laws are not millstones around my neck or burdens to slog through, but they revive my soul. They bring life to the ruminations of my mind, the emptiness of my own thoughts, and the deadness of earthly glory.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;

He has done it before and He will do it again. He has brought us thus far and He will bring us all the way in. He has begun and He will finish. This is the testimony He bears and this makes everything else pale in comparison. It is simple, easy, and profoundly wise, what He has done.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;

He gives us a blueprint, a "this is the way, walk in it," and a narrow path, and yet none of this steals my joy but brings me further into it. This map shows me how to lift up my head and rejoice in my heart.

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;

His commandments, though I do not always understand them, why they feel constraining and at times unfair, why they do not fit my western perceptions of righteous, just, and at times emotional desires, they are pure. They are absolutely pure, undefiled, a gift, and this opens my eyes to see His glory.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;

Like Isaiah, I see Him and I tremble because He is so great and I am so, so small. But my fear is clean, without the earth encrusted baggage I attach to my fear of the dark, of being alone, or not getting what I want. This fear is palmed up and free. His awe endures forever.

The rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.

He can be trusted. He is righteous. Altogether righteous. Altogether true.

The kingdom is backwards sometimes and I have to remember that. The world says to love this way or earn this way or be this way or learn this way, and the Kingdom flips our syntax on its head: look this way, it says, look at your King this way and find the fullness of Joy there.

SILENT FIGHT

It is hard to win the battle when you don't feel like fighting.

Depression is no stranger to me, even if he has been the crazy uncle who was ousted from the family a few years back. He was kicked to the curb in 2010—I stood in my doorway and told him to never come back.

But he's been peeping in my windows and knocking on my doors recently. The other day I saw him in the swirls of paint on my bedroom ceiling. I lay there quietly, willing him away, asking him kindly, ignoring him, and finally looking him full in the face and telling him in no uncertain terms he was unwelcome.

He moved to the bathroom, staring back at me from the mirror, in the sad eyes, the straight mouth.

"Where is my joy?" I asked him. He shrugged. He is indifferent, this Uncle Depression.

I've been listening to a sermon from 2006 a friend posted. I've listened three times. It's my own pastor and he's not saying much different than he says in 2012, except a short rant on how ipods are here to stay (seriously?). He's talking about how sometimes we just have to move our feet in the direction of water and trust that wilderness can be where we find hope. 

There's something different about this visit with Depression—different than his previous occupancy in my heart. Before he felt like he was there to stay, unbidden, but there to stay. This time he's just teasing me but he's also leaving room for me to still see the water. This time I know where the water is and I want it, I'm thirsty for it, and I know where to find it.

I just don't feel like it.

It's hard to win the battle when you don't feel like fighting and I guess that's where I am today. Everywhere I look, Uncle Depression is lining up his battalion, setting up a formation of fighters who will accost my soul and threaten my joy. And I feel alone. I know I'm not alone. But I feel alone. And no amount of people on my side will change that, I know. I've been down this path before.

What's different is formerly I'd fill my army up with doing, doing, doing. And this time I feel I just need to be still, trust. He will fight for me. I know it. I don't feel it. But I know it.

"The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent."

Exodus 14.14

the WHOLE STORY

The unfolding of your words gives light;

it imparts understanding to the simple.

Psalm 119:130

I’m not ready to tell you the whole story yet, but that’s because the whole story hasn’t been written yet, quite literally. But I will tell you this: 

My whole life has never been handed to me. It has been tug of war since I first spoke, at nine or ten months old and less than 16 pounds soaking wet. I have yanked and wrenched and it has yanked and wrenched right back. If I asked for something, it was certain to be withheld and if I didn’t ask, it was even more certain to be never mine. 

I learned to stop asking, stop expecting, and grow accustomed to disappointment. I learned to eat crumbs, while still looking longingly at feasts and I learned that the gnawing in my belly would never be satisfied while others grew fat on their spoils. I learned that some would have fairy tales and family reunions and I would not. 

That is the first part of the story. That part has already been written and I would not change a single thing in it if I could. 

I sat on my living room floor the other night and shared a bit of my story with some new friends who felt like home, and I know the part of my story that causes people’s hearts to fall and their shoulders to drop and so I am quick, so quick to say: Wait! No! That seems like a horrible thing to have happened, but let me tell you what God has done.

Here is what God has done:

He has taken the weak things of the world, 

The shameful things, 

The broken things, 

The death-filled things, 

The pain, 

The fears, 

The frustrations, 

The crumbs, 

And He has said, Hey, kid, I’ve done that to show how deep and how wide and how far I will go to show you my love. 

I’ve done that so that you will know that nothing can satisfy like Me. 

This week, friends, these past few weeks, I have seen unvoiced dreams begin to unfurl themselves. I have seen unasked-for desires begin to curl close to me. I have seen the marked hand of God pulling me in, and pushing me on a pathway that I learned long ago to never dream of walking. 

And today, in my car, running an errand for work, in a week that is so busy and so pressing that I am afraid of being undone, I am overcome by how good He is. How faithful He is to His word. How He always finishes what He starts. How He is bigger and better than all the feasts I once envied. How He is the main character in the story, and not me, with all my yanking and wrenching. 

So, one day, maybe soon, maybe not, you’ll hear the whole story. But for now? For today? 

He is the whole story. 

KISSING FEAR

People are worried about me, it seems. One post about sleeping alone and suddenly the world cares about who you're sleeping with.

Or not with, as the case may be. 

Intimacy with a man isn't the only thing missing in my life, if you want the real junk on me, you should know this: I'm feeling less than intimate with God these days too. 

The 'worship movement' send kisses to Jesus thing has always made me uncomfortable because I can count the sum total of my kisses on two hands and probably less than that. And also because I'm probably one of the few people in the world who thinks that when Solomon was songing about the kisses of his lips he really meant literal kisses and literal lips and not this pseudo expressive  moment we imagine we're having with Jesus. 

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I've never been one to wake up in the wee hours to have Jesus, journal and Jamba Juice, and so my version of 'time with God' has always been more of 'meditate on the same verse for three weeks until I have it so deeply in me I couldn't forget it if I tried.' This system has worked well for me in some seasons and not so well for me in other seasons. We are in a good season for now. 

The verse of the season is Psalm 130:3-4, "If you oh Lord should mark iniquities, Who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared."

I've been camped here precisely because of that last word there: feared.

I stay far from intimacy because I fear it. 

This is the same reason I hesitate to ask forgiveness from God (or anyone else), because I fear. 

So how is it that David is saying here, "there's forgiveness with God, so you can fear Him."

You see why I need to camp out here for a few days?

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I'm a fairly gentle sort of person, amiable, easygoing, I try not to cross people and when I do, I try to make amends quickly. But it is not because I want their forgiveness, it is because I fear that they will not give it to me unasked. 

But God? God grants me forgiveness so that I may fear Him? It doesn't seem to add up at first. But:

How grand is it that the God of the universe, the Creator of everything created, the Provider of everything given, and the Good of all that is good would grant forgiveness and how much more grand is it of Him to guarantee it to His children?

I find it is the guarantee that is more difficult for me to believe than the actual forgiveness.

I am the child who doesn't believe her parent heard her the first six times she asked for another quarter for the gumball machine. I keep asking because in my heart there is no guarantee. 

David is saying to us, "Hey, listen, there's a guarantee of forgiveness for you children of God, which means that He can be trusted, which means that He is more grand, more holy, more spectacular than you can imagine. Worship. Fear. Be in awe. Draw near. 

He's not marking your iniquities, so stand close, stand near, be intimate, He can be trusted." 

TENEBRAE

It takes a holy thing to hush a crowd. We are pressed in tightly on hard wooden pews, amplified voices from the choir sound above our heads, the lights are dim, the readings stark, our responses starker still. How do you find holy in the darkness? How do you find hope in the death? "My God. My God. Why have you forsaken me?"

His voice sounds behind us, rich, deep, timbre, wrought with emotion.

It is dark.

We are a thousand people in a cathedral and time slows, no one coughs, no one whispers, no one cries, no one breathes. It is a holy thing to hush a crowd.

And then, "It is finished."

No one speaks. We gather our things, our bags, our books, and our sins back from the foot of the cross and we leave the site of holiness.

He left the sight of holiness. Forsaken, not forgotten. Cast low and far from a broken hearted father.

He gathered our sins from the foot of the cross, from the mouths of angry wives, from the apathies of their husbands, from computer screens and back alleys, from brothels and gun chambers, from my living room and your bedroom, from the deepest and sickest parts of our hearts.

And he left.

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Tenebrae, Latin for "shadows" or "darkness," is a service celebrated during the last three days of Holy Week. More here.

TEMPLES

Gayle Curry

We are four, sitting on the floor of a multi-purpose room at my church. There are others, pockets, groups, couples—heads bowed, shoulders bent, the posture of repentance and so we do this too. The air-conditioning vent is above us so we are close, shoulder touching shoulder, hand on leg, needing one another for warmth and because repentance is personal but corporate too.

Weed out the restlessness, I pray, because adventure is my drug and discontent my great sin. Bring the cross near, I pray, because I forget that life with Christ is an adventure. Tether me to the Holy Spirit, because that is my help, my hold. 

Before His death, He entered a temple and overturned the tables and this is the picture I have of God in flesh when I sin. This temple, this tent in which I abide is a haven for sin. It is sneaky and overt, setting up tables, selling sacrifices that keep me returning to the law again and again. Oh, wretched man of death that I am. Dying inside. On purpose. With intent. 

But it is the Jesus that follows that I still struggle so much to know. He, God in flesh, sitting in the disastrous temple, but now he is gentle, teaching, righting what was wrong, setting straight that which was dismantled. 

Making new. 

My sin robs me raw and I know my sin. Oh, how I know it. I know it more than I know anything else in this life. 

But God. 

But. God. 

This week is the most potent of our weeks, we who are walking, living, breathing temples. The cross is so deep and so near to us this week. God incarnate, brought low. Our sin, disposed to the evil one. Christ, raised after three days. Disciples, those who believe and who still struggle so much to believe. 

But God.

SHAKE and BURN

One of the things that frustrated me about Christianity, and Christians in particular, was the notion that heaven was a place where we were supposed to want to stand around a throne singing three chord praise songs to a god who was the epitome of narcissistic.

And the truth is all I could think about was: God, don't you dare come back and destroy this world and make me float up on harps singing praises to you, because I haven't even had sex yet and that seems a pretty lame trade.

You can appreciate, I'm sure, why 'falling away from faith' was as easy as the child who 'forgets' his parent has asked repeatedly for him to leave his shoes at the door. Where there's no conviction, there's no joy in the obedience.

In 2010 faith finally became something tangible and intangible at the same time and I was okay with that, but I was surprised by the theology that wooed me into deep faith and a love I'd never known or felt before.

It was the understanding of eternity this theology embraced that was so enticing and beautiful to a girl who'd experienced nothing but the seeming harsh backhand of God in a life of pseudo-faith. These people pointed out the eschatological inconsistencies in the vast majority of evangelical milieus and I was hooked. Part of the reason I had felt so gypped in my faith is because it seemed a lopsided trade where God always got the bigger and better portion: I had to endure this, so He could get glory for eternity (albeit glory brought by white robed minions on three chords and a djembe)?

Now, it seems laughable to think that way, but back then it felt sickening and disgustingly true. My heart sneered at that sort of God, even when my actions betrayed me.

But this new theology (even if it was very old theology) talked about how the purpose of everything is to glorify God whose greatest act of love toward us was coming down, dwelling among us, and then stretching out, bruised and broken, and dying for us. And so it meant too, in the face of such love, such holiness, that in eternity everything that did not glorify Him would be consumed by the All Consuming Fire.

And this captured me.

All I knew was all around me, all inside of me and all overflowing from me was brokenness—a sick, cyclical, deep, brokenness—but I still liked who I was. I still liked parts of me that seemed real and authentic and individualistic. An eternity of robotic, white-robed, harmonic minions covering acres of white clouds seemed the absolute antithesis of enjoyable to me.

The Bible, on every page, from Genesis to Revelation, suddenly came alive now with God's ultimate plan of redemption. And it was not the burning of everything and creating new, but the refining of everything and restoring it to original intent. This captured me. This retained me. This fueled me. Why?

Because it means what I'm doing here on earth isn't a waste. The truthful, honest, real, authentically obedient things I am doing will be refined, but not disposed of. Not burned up. If they're bringing glory to God (even in their fractional sliver of goodness), He's delighted in them. He's like a kid who brings home pockets of strings, pebbles, a frog, a rubber-band: worthless to the naked eye, but treasures to him. 

That's a God I can serve. That's a God who I can feel loved by because I know I'm worthless to the naked eye, but I want to be a treasure, more than anything. I can't live under the fear of being burned alive a la Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins theology. And I can't live under the tyranny of being good enough to escape refining a la holiness theology.

But to know that every part of me that is disgusting and revolting is somehow, in a strange and ultimate way, in accordance with God's plan because He knows it's not there for eternity and He's not worried about me walking through eternity with a limp—oh, I can live there. I can abide there. I can find faith there. I can rest there.

“Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." Hebrews 12:26-29