Nov 10, 2011 | Guest Posts
It doesn’t always look like this.
And these days, when it doesn’t look like this, the Bear often has some ‘splaining to do. Then he probably has an apology to make.
We’re cultivating the habit of look-me-in-the-eyes-good-and-serious apologies round these parts, and it has me thinking about how often I make apologies, and how often I perhaps should.
Are you one to say you’re sorry? Do you mumble an excuse and move on?
I’m chatting about that over at Signposts today, and I’d love for you to click over and join the conversation!
xCC
Nov 9, 2011 | The Good Word
Yesterday I spoke briefly about a book I’d just finished that was full of such brilliance I could’ve turned back to page one and started it again. {A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis} And one of the thoughts that struck an especially resounding chord on my metaphorical guitar was about God being a God who shatters our images of Him — Who breaks the boxes we try to put Him in, per se.
In prayer that morning, I’d admitted to the Lord that I felt like I was going through the motions again — plopping down on the couch to quickly offload a few things in the direction of a brick wall so that I could be on my merry way. I was praying for deeper…something more. He gently pointed me in the direction of a specific habit I’ve had for some time, that I write down a significant amount of what I pray.
At one stage, writing down my prayers was a useful tool for my spiritual life. It helped me to focus and provided immediate accountability — I could easily look at my prayer journal and see how my heart was doing. It slowed me down to a quiet and thoughtful pace, and also blessed me to look back and see how I’d asked and He’d answered, how He’d led me to pray and to act, and I’d followed.
It was a healthy spiritual discipline for a season.
In this season, it is a source of separation. In my mind there is always ‘the other’ — the person who might read these written down prayers later on. And that influences how I choose to pray. While it worked well, and was a useful tool for connecting with God for quite some time, in this season, it is a hindrance to genuine intimacy.
And though I’d felt this lingering discomfort for some time, I didn’t really want to admit it, or bring the unsettledness to the Lord because 1) I’m human and I like it when I think I’ve got something figured out, and 2) heythereI’vegotenoughchangegoingondon’tthrowanythingelsemywaythanks.
I want to interject here to be clear that prayer itself is a spiritual discipline that is important and useful in every season. There are no two ways of interpreting scriptures like Ephesians 6:18 “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” {NIV} I am not going to stop praying.
I’m just referring to my practice of writing so much of what I prayed down. Writing letters to God instead of carrying on a conversation. That was a habit that started out drawing me near, but became a source of separation.
Imagine a couple who always eat at the same restaurant every Friday. It’s the restaurant where they met, where he proposed and she said maybe, where they hosted their daughter’s rehearsal dinner…you get the idea. They do it because they’ve always done it. The menu hasn’t changed in twenty years, but the management has, and things are getting a little bland. A little boring. It no longer draws them together, no longer fosters connection.
Neither of them wants to be the first to suggest, “Why don’t we try this place this week?” or “What if we stay in, order takeout and rent a movie?” Instead, they smile through their teeth sipping from the same glasses and eating the same. old. thing.
But God says:
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland. {Isaiah 43:19, NIV}
God is consistently moving in ways we haven’t seen Him move before.
So where to from here? I’m planning to begin simply conversing with the Lord again (though I’ll still make notes of things in a prayer journal here and there — whichever side-dominant my brain is, it just works for me.) I’m also planning to begin studying prayer, and I’m planning to invite you along for the journey.
So where to for you? Does some aspect of your walk of faith feel stale and dry? By all means press on, but look for a new road. Does your New Year’s Resolution to read through the Bible keep ending with a bust and you feeling guilty before the end of March? Maybe it’s time to look for a new way to read and study Scripture.
Let God do a new thing, with you.
The Sermon in a Nutshell: If your spiritual life feels like a meal you’ve been eating every Friday since the late 80s, know that the Lord has probably been graciously trying to help you, the one with the free will, choose a new restaurant.
Xcc
Nov 8, 2011 | Reviews
Last night I finished the brief writings C.S. Lewis penned after the loss of his wife, Joy. How I ended up checking this particular book out at the local library is a story for another day. Packed inside the brief 76 pages there is more wisdom than I have probably successfully communicated in the 633 posts that make up this little website to date.
If I this had been my own copy of the book, I might’ve underlined the entire manuscript from start to finish. And there would’ve been no less than thirty-seven stars in the margins.
Originally published under the pseudonym of N.W. Klerk, within the four brief chapters Lewis very honestly writes his heart onto the pages as he works through the grief of the loss of his wife, and considers how the new life he must live on the other side of hers affects his understanding of God.
Although I expect many of the profound lessons in these brief pages will come up in conversations here at a later date, I wanted to share one specific thought that meant a great deal to me.
Lewis discusses how he initially was very angry that he couldn’t find any photographs of his wife that properly captured her likeness. It was a great trouble to his mind that he might remember her the way his mind wanted to remember her, rather than the way she really was.
Later he says, “It doesn’t matter that all the photographs of H. are bad. It doesn’t matter–not much–if my memory of her is imperfect. Images, whether on paper or in the mind, are not important for themselves. Merely links. Take a parallel from an infinitely higher sphere. Tomorrow morning a priest will give me a little round, thin, cold, tasteless wafer. Is it a disadvantage–is it not in some ways an advantage–that it can’t pretend the least resemblance to that with which it unites me?
I need Christ, not something that resembles Him. I want H., not something that is like her. A really good photograph might become in the end a snare, a horror, and an obstacle.” (p. 65)
He draws from this new understanding a lesson that I had to read and re-read:
“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast.”
{Note to reader, just in case: Iconoclasm is the deliberate rejection or destruction of religious symbols as heretical. An iconoclast is a person who destroys those symbols (often statues or images).}
The text continues:
“Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.” (p. 66)
Isn’t it such an impressive and confuzzling paradox that the very God that we worship is the one who shatters our previous images of Him? Our finite minds simply cannot contain the significant other-ness of God. Whenever we think we’ve got Him pinned, there He goes, telling the one who is without sin to cast the first stone, asking Zacchaeus to come down from the tree, telling me to go drink a beer with an old friend.
Has God shattered an image you had of Him lately? If He wanted to would you let Him?
Thank you, C.S. Lewis, for choosing to write your way through grief. What a gift to me, and to many.
xCC
Afterthoughts:
- I’m planning to share an example of a shattering tomorrow, if you’d like a little practical evidence of what I’m talking about.
- You can probably pick up a copy of A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis at your local library. It is also available at Amazon: A Grief Observed
. {So ya know: Clicking that link should take you to the book at Amazon. Buying the Book should send me a tiny kickback.}
Nov 5, 2011 | The Good Word
I like to sing. Not necessarily because I’m exceptionally skillful in that department, but just because it lifts my spirits. I feel a little happier, the load feels a little lighter, when I’m singing.
For a while though, you wouldn’t hear me belting out the lyrics of “When I Fall in Love” {as performed in High School Show Choir} around our house. Because somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I’d become convinced that it probably got on the Hubs’ nerves to hear me squawking out a song, whether the lyrics were from my latest favorite Christian song or a century-old anthem.
Not wanting to annoy him, I decided to hush.
But when I came home from the hospital with our second precious baby boy, I was singing to the rafters again. My justification was that it’s good for babies. It’s good for them to hear music, it’s good for you to talk to them, and in the Tank’s case, it kept him peaceful through a lengthy diaper change and helped him fall asleep.
So, at the risk of spraying the Hubs in the face with a bottle of annoying, I decided to wholeheartedly sing. A lot.
And then a funny thing happened. He wrote me a card — I think for Mother’s Day — and one of the things he said was, “I love how you fill our house with music. I love it when you sing.”
I could not have been more surprised. I was so surprised I had to ask him about it.
Doesn’t it annoy you when I sing? You mean I don’t get on your nerves?
The answer was no — and I realized a little lie had crept in, and I’d been letting that little lie tell me what to do, and what not to do. Meanwhile, something was missing from our home — a source of joy was nearly stolen, because un-truth had become truth for me.
I don’t know whether you have an awesome singing voice or the ability to make music with an instrument, but I want you to know that your life can sing.
You have your own lyrics. You have your own gifts. And sometimes fear of how other people will receive your gifts can hinder you from giving them. Fear of what other people will say or think about your art can incorrectly define you — whether your art includes baking or dancing or teaching people how to manage their finances or serving a cup of coffee with a smile.
Un-truth will draw lines, put boundaries around places in your mind and in your life. Un-truth will tell you where you can or cannot go, what you can or cannot do.
But there’s no one like you. And no one can achieve the things you were created for.
You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
And that is the truth.
We are God’s workmanship — created in Jesus for good works, which God planned out before we were even born — a plan for what He gifted us to do with our lives. {Eph. 2:10, my paraphrase}
So what’s stopping you from making your music? Are you letting your life sing?
xCC
Nov 3, 2011 | A Repat, An Expat
I didn’t learn to cook until I left the country. If I’m being honest. I could do a mean twice-stuffed potato, I could fry up some bacon (of course), and I could open a can of green beans, cook the heck out of em and hope for the best. But the majority of my skill was limited to adding rice, water, chicken breasts, and the contents of a seasoning packet to a bag and popping it in the oven for however long it said on the box. And when it came to baking, I probably wouldn’t do it if more than three or four ingredients had to be added to the contents of a package.
It worked for me, and it was convenient.
One of my favorite courses in all my years at university was Economics. I know that sounds weird, but lemme e’splain. The professor who taught my economics class was very good at explaining things in a way that I understood them.
{Does this photo relate to this post or do I just like it? You decide.}
You know that lovely feeling when something’s complicated, but you get it? I love that feeling. He used a class exercise in making paper airplanes to explain the intricacies of the supply chain in a lesson on supply and demand. He was quality.
But the discussion of opportunity cost — which I also remembered from a ninth grade Civics class video where a girl decided to buy a new blouse instead of fixing her brakes and then got into a car accident and ruined the blouse — just really made a lot of sense in my brain.
When you make a choice, there’s another choice you haven’t made. Every choice has a consequence. And the opportunity cost measures the value of the choice you made in light of the best alternative that you didn’t choose.
There is always an opportunity cost.
— My University Economics Professor, Whose Name I Can’t Remember. But he had a mustache. And not just in Movember.
So the writer who makes about 50 bucks for an hour’s work can pay someone else 20 bucks to mow his yard. He’ll come out ahead. Unless, of course, he finds mowing his lawn therapeutic, in which case perhaps it’s cheaper to mow his grass than to go for therapy.
The reason I learned to cook when I left the States was because the opportunity cost for not learning — paying for expensive convenience food — was too high. I couldn’t keep turning packaged muffin mixes into beautiful creations without breaking the bank.
Fortunately, there was a gentle learning curve. During my four years in Scotland I gradually eased into learning to come up with new ideas, still convenient in terms of the amount of time it took to make them, but not expensive because I wasn’t paying for the convenience of a pre-boxed meal.
When I arrived in South Africa and began to long for more of the comforts of home (while finding less of them) I really worked at learning how to do things myself. Want some good southern buttery biscuits with Sunday lunch (not cookies, mind you)? Make em from scratch. Need some taco seasoning or salsa for Mexican night? Find out what’s in taco seasoning and mix it yourself, find a good recipe for salsa, and make it yourself.
Now back in North Carolina, I’m in the land where convenience seems really cheap. Plastic carrier bags had a cost at grocery stores in South Africa, so, like we did in Scotland, we brought our own bags. They’re free here, so I could fall back into the habit of just using the ones they have at the grocery store instead of bringing my own bags.
Especially when the cashiers sometimes seem annoyed that they have to help you pack your random bags.
On the surface it seems like there’s not too much opportunity cost — we’re not paying for the bags, so what’s the problem? But like my professor said, There’s always an opportunity cost. And part of the cost associated with using the grocery bags that might be recycled or might end up in the trash is a cost that we might not have to pay.
But will our kids?
If we continue to use up our resources at the rate that we’re going, and if we continue to create waste at the rate that we’re going — won’t it be a problem for the Bear and the Tank’s generation? Or maybe for their children?
Will they be paying a price for our dependency on convenience?
Many people say they have reusable bags (I saw some on sale for $1.99 at Food Lion today) but they don’t remember to bring them in from the car. It would be inconvenient to have to go out to the car and get them before checking out. I promise if you make yourself go to the car to get your bags once or twice, you’ll stop forgetting. If you make yourself drive home to fetch them before heading to the store, you might never forget again.
In the land of convenience to which I’ve returned, Fast Food is incredibly convenient, and the price is very convenient, too. It would often be cheaper for me to feed my family from the Dollar Menu at Wendy’s than to make some of the meals I make.
But — there’s always an opportunity cost.
What exactly am I feeding us if we’re eating at Wendy’s instead of eating a good home-cooked meal? How processed are the fries and hamburger buns? How has the meat been handled and what’s in it? And does a wilted portion of iceberg lettuce and a slice of tomato count as “vegetables” for the evening meal?
And further down the rabbit hole, how will regularly eating this type of food negatively or positively benefit our health? Will we save enough money to cover the medical bills if it gives us a heart attack or high cholesterol? {Last week a friend of mine talked about the expensive program she’d joined, trying to lose weight, and simultaneously mentioned eating out at least three or four times a week.} And, once again, how much trash will we create, at the expense of convenient fast food?
I won’t for a moment say I’ve got this thing figured out. Example 1, my family drinks a ton of juice, and I’m concerned about the tons of plastic involved in getting that juice from its source to our door. Even recyclable waste is still waste. And it takes resources to recycle.
What’s the lesson I’m trying to apply as I navigate life in a new place? The price of convenience — though it would seem cheap in this neck of the woods — is still very high.
I left the grocery store with a small handful of goodies this morning. I stuck to the list except for orange juice. At the checkout someone commented on it being a good idea that I’d stuck all of my random reusable shopping bags inside one bag. {The bags are from South Africa and Scotland so they make me happy.} I smiled as I stuffed my wallet back into my purse and all I could think of to say was,
“I’m worried about what this world is going to look like when my little boys grow up.”
What do you think?
xCC
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