I wrote this as a paper for my theology and the christian life class on my christology. But I wrote it as my story and this blog is a place for my story.

Beyond Parchment Skies

I was first encountered by God when I was four, wearing fuzzy purple pajamas, and counting stars while on a park path to a pond. It’s one of my very first memories: standing in the middle of a forest trail at night with adults chatting behind me and looking up at the stars. I had from my youngest days a great and incomparable love for the night sky. I believed in the stars perhaps more than I believed in the world I could touch and play with. So there I was, four years old in purple pajamas looking straight up at the dark stretching sky and wondering how the stars found their place in the vast sea of dark nothing. My young mind, wild with imagination and freedom to believe, thought that maybe they were halos that angels had misplaced, or perhaps someone decided to make an extravagant connect-the-dot puzzle in the sky for everyone to enjoy, and that if I could only draw the lines correctly, maybe I’d find out the reasons why.

At four, I had no idea who that Someone might have been, but I knew that there was something more, something even bigger than my beloved universe itself, something that placed me here and the stars there. Throughout my childhood, I pined for the universe. When other children were firefighters and doctors and actresses in play-time dress-up, I was always already in space, always the astronaut. I lost myself in dreams about spacecrafts and exploration of the edges of the universe. When I was ten I was told by my impatient 5th grade teacher that I would never be an astronaut because of my severe hearing loss. In between one recess and another, I had lost my entire identity. I only began to find myself again, a year later, within the stanzas of poems about philosophy and space and time and beauty of the inexplicable.

I had always loved reading as a child, to dive into books and live within their walls. I looked and still look to books to provide a door into a world that I can belong in, a world where I can lose my reality and perhaps even my life . I have always felt that authors had a sense of knowing beyond the regular person and quite honestly I believed many fictional tales were only called stories or myths because the writer thought no one else would understand. I longed to understand, and I believed these authors and poets might know of the something, the someone, I had been seeking since I was four and looking beyond the stars.

I don’t believe I ever actually opened a Bible before the age of thirteen. I had been to Mass with family friends and with my very Catholic, very Polish grandma a few times, but those were hours of boredom punctuated by lots of standing and monotone mumbling words I had not learned . One Sunday morning in Fresno, California, my grandma took me to her church, the church my father had been raised in. Being eight-years old, I spent a great deal of time observing and playing with what I later found out to be the kneelers, wondering why the benches weren’t padded but these miniature benches were. It was only when the Eucharist was being served that I both learned what these shrunken benches were used for and saw the crucifix for the first time. My grandma made me kneel on the slat of wood in front of us, that, for all their padding, were terribly painful and I looked up at stage for the first time.

Above a draped table where someone’s father was standing looking sad and muttering to himself over a wine glass, there was a huge terrifying man made of bronze whose body was somehow attached to two crossed pieces of metal that were supposed to look like wood. One of my friends had broken his arm earlier that year, and I saw it when they carried him off the playground. When Quinn returned to school in a cool colored cast, I decided that I wanted to break my arm someday. But this terrifying man before me looked like every bone in his body had been twisted and bent, and all I could think of was not how cool Quinn had looked with his cast, but how he had screamed when he first fell off the monkey bars. I was terrified of this man and the pain that it meant. I decided that I never wanted to break my arm, or be put on any kind of cross whether it was metal or wood. A few months later I did break my arm, the day before Christmas, and while waiting in the ER with my father I remembered this terrible man and decided in this moment of pain and frustration that I hated him.

It was in the same year that I had been told I’d never be an astronaut that I decided, one Sunday morning, to go to church. By age ten, I had been to Mass a number of times, but the incense made me choke and I always avoided the gaze of the horrible man that I hated who hung from the ceiling. My parents worshipped a god of work, mowing the lawn and washing the car and doing dishes on the one day my father had off every few weeks and had no time for things like church or social functions . So I got up and decided to walk to Messiah Lutheran church, just down the street, where I had gone to preschool many years before. I wandered through these big heavy doors that as a two-year-old I was forbidden to touch. The first Sunday I went to church there I was thankful to find them open, more so I didn’t have to touch the doors and break the rules than because I wanted to go inside.
The Lutheran church was dark with tired looking colored glass windows. It smelled like the library and was full of old people who didn’t shush me but smiled. And the pews didn’t have kneelers at all. The third Sunday I was there, an older man came and sat down next to me. As I was an outsider , I felt I was only to sit on the farthest side of the pews, so I squirmed, in my typical ten-year-old way, farther towards the edge, thinking I had accidentally taken his seat. He smiled and asked me my name. But I knew he was breaking the rules because church was a place to be very quiet. I looked up surprised and then realized that the whole of the church was staring at this man and me. I told him my name quietly and when he asked how old I was I just stuck out all my fingers. I didn’t understand why he was making a fool out of me. He then asked if I’d like to go up front to the stage, and I shook my head furiously while looking down at my scuffed up brown sandals. He asked quietly, “Why not, child?”

Later it was revealed that this old man was the pastor of the church, which was the same thing as a priest (who, I had discovered, were actually not anyone’s father). I stayed at Messiah Lutheran for a little less than a year, more for the goldfish and juice on Sunday school and beautiful music that no one expected I already knew than for any other more honorable reason, and I left because the church, my mother said, was “dying.” I remember nothing of the lessons, and only of a pastor who wanted to know my name. And I wouldn’t again return to a church until I was thirteen and desperate for a meaning and a purpose and the Someone who put the stars in the sky and hungry for more than just juice and crackers. In the meantime, I was a writer and a reader, and my praise songs were my poems and my prayers were found in pages of Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Dickenson and Frost . I grew to know a God that Frost wrote of in his poem God’s Garden: “Look upward to the glitter/ Of stars in God’s clear skies/ Their ways are pure and harmless/
And will not lead astray/ Bid aid your erring footsteps/
To keep the narrow way.” Where Moltmann uses Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan Karamazov to illustrate the impact of theology with a removed or denied God, I instead was gleaning my theology and my knowledge of God from the characters I read .

My god of literature was a beloved but tattered thing, a magical god who could not at times get out of his own way. When I heard god was to be described as a father, my frail and clumsy god became an aloof genius, a volatile god who had many faces and never came home until after dark and who loved good wine and martinis. I didn’t understand how this god was the one who made my universe, but I still believed that these writers had to have the answer to my questions.

I had stumbled into church again in the middle of my junior high years through an invitation to a youth group in a church just across the street from Messiah Lutheran. After going to the group, called Edge, I began to go to Sunday school. I’d like to say it was for my desire to be taught about the ways of this God that they prayed to, or because my heart was a parched and tired desert ready for the Word of God to come down and flood it with His love. While all those things were true, I came, solely and unwaveringly, for the chocolate glazed donuts. At my new church, High Street Community, there weren’t any signs of death; in fact there was no crucifix at all. High above the stage was a simple cross, empty and unthreatening, which I simply vowed to ignore. At High Street there were two services, one with traditional music and hymns that had always seemed to sing of the One I was looking for, and one service with music that blared and warbled and sang repetitively with a small vocabulary of adjectives. I, having only a background in Catholic processional and Lutheran melodies, chose the first service. I happened to also be the only one there under the age of fifty. My heart clamored to the hymns, one in particular that went, “the love of God is greater far, than tongue or pen can ever tell; it goes beyond the highest star, and reaches to the lowest hell.”

I knew these hymns were singing of the Somebody I had been looking for! But how was I to know this God, this Him they sang of, this Lover? I was both self-reliant and timid and I knew it was wrong to ask questions in church because you are always ‘shushed’. But I hoped I would get to know more about this God who was becoming my single passion. In church I heard stories of this amazing man Jesus and what he taught about this God. I believed Jesus was my one way to know about this God, but I rejected everything that talked about Jesus as the same man on the cross in my father’s childhood church. How could it be that a man like this be killed? I was angry, although I did not know who I was angry at, because if Jesus had been able to stay alive, he could have taught us so much more. I thought it senseless, brutal, and shameful. When I learned that this man was not just a man, but God incarnate, I grew angrier . How could we have killed God? But I still could not ask these questions aloud. When they taught us that He had to die in order to cleanse the world of the sin, my heart cried out, “Why couldn’t you have just killed one of us, killed me, instead?!” When my youth pastor spoke of how they spit on Him, ripped His back with a whip, and nailed Him to the cross and left Him to die, I remembered my childhood hatred and disgust, and I felt like somehow I had killed Him, that His blood was on my hands .

But I believed He is the Son of God, and that He died on the cross, and rose again three days later so I was baptized on Easter Sunday, my freshman year of high school, all the while believing my name should be in place of Pontius Pilate in the Nicene Creed . I had finally found the God of the universe, but He had come with so much more than an explanation of the stars . He came with love and forgiveness and grace. He had come to save us, and my mind, so apt to explore the universe, could not understand. My question had shifted from “what is this Someone who created all this?”, to “What is man, that thou art mindful of Him?” . I could not understand, and thus could not accept that “he wants in face to be man’s partner, his almighty and compassionate Saviour” or why “he determines to love him, to be his God, his Lord, his compassionate Preserver and Saviour to eternal life” . All I could accept that I was utterly unworthy and had no place approaching Jesus Christ, and my childhood absolute fear of this man, this God, still dominated my thoughts about Him.

In order to continue as a Christian, I regarded Jesus as somewhat of a side note. Like the simple empty cross hanging above the stage of my church, I could ignore him if I didn’t think about His death. I hated Good Friday, not because of my younger zealous belief at some great injustice being done in the death of God, but rather because I had to be reminded of the crucified Christ, and had to be reminded of His Love and His grace, both of which I knew I did not deserve. I thrived in the Old Testament, with the stories of a just God punishing and promising, creating and recreating, in the poetry of the Psalms that cried out to their Maker and declared their sinfulness and guilt and sorrow. I heard the Scripture that the only way to the Father was through the Son, so I was an acquaintance to the Son of God, keeping Him at a safe distance. I continued to read literature that showed me understandable Christs; characters such as Jim Casey in Grapes of Wrath and Sofya Marmeladov in Crime and Punishment began to work in my heart. But my hands were still bloodied, and I begged God to know how to wash them. For three years, I heard in some deep secret place in my being, “Approach the cross and look Me in the eyes and know that you are loved and you are forgiven.” I refused. I was still the young girl looking down at her scuffed brown sandals, sitting alone in church, and I was still being asked, “Why not, child?”

I was sitting in the darkened room of Upper Turner Campus Center in the quiet after Liturgical Chapel, a soft hymn playing around me. The words, “the guilty pair, bowed down with care, God gave His Son to win; His erring child He reconciled, and pardoned from her sin” would not leave me alone. On the stage, a massive rough cross stood, and my soul trembled as my eyes were assaulted with my first memories of the crucifix: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Man , was hanging there, as real as the stars that hang in my beloved night sky and I knew He loved me and my hands were no longer the only thing drenched by His blood, but that “nothing good have I/ where-by Thy grace to claim/ I’ll wash my garments white/ in the blood of Calvary’s Lamb.” And for the first time I knew that it was true, I was loved and I was forgiven and that “could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade;
 To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.”

imitate the Divine
in gasps
pain where the sword pierced His
is where it pierces mine

it is the ground
in quaking
rolling mounds of cities
and structures
all falling down

a siren, a scream, a silence
all kinds of terrors
one kind of beautiful

this is a sermon of laughter.

am I the fool who serves the King
who does not care about my soul
but only that I dance and sing?

is my call to be the disregarded sport
who entertains Your Holy court?
no greater honor is To be, to be,
to serve You in some facility,
but please Your honor if you please
find else one You can mock and tease!

for colors and bells and whistles and rhymes
fit not my life, fit not this hell.
for who is left to make the joker laugh?

the adventure that I have much anticipated has been revealed.
i will not board a plane, drive a car, or walk a mile.
the adventure god has called me to
is the very one i’ve been, for so long
avoiding.

the adventure to the center of my own heart.

i am a walking story.
but within my soul is a riverbed long run dry
i am inviting You, oh Lord.
to heal me and lead me to Your dwelling place
within my marrow, within my lungs,
within my very veins: You are here.

but You have not called me to discover You persay,
You beckon me forth, so much like Dante that his words are mine
and i fear the hell that awaits no more than i fear the heaven
i fear the discovery of the true and the True
i make haste to view not the pit of questions
that stirs to the left, once muddying all waters
now swallowing up the trickles

“If the present world go astray,
the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought”

lead me through the perils of seeking myself within my beating bloody heart, oh Lord.

I write because it is the pulse in my veins. It is the sacred ground when my feet along with my heart are bare. It is my time when I can walk forth into Galatians 1:10 without doubt that I am, at that moment, a servant of Christ. Tonight my cheeks are tear-streaked, whether out of anger or frustration or resignation in saying that I have no idea what God is doing in my life, or because I’ve spent too many hours looking into my heart. Because I fell in love and it hurt like hell. Because I don’t know where I’m going and that scares the crap out of me. I don’t even know what I like anymore. What I love. What I care about. What I know to be true. At 1 am in the morning on the first day of september 2009, I have recognized a deep and excruciating absence within me that has no name but is the culmination of too many fears, too many lies, and too many long nights.

so tonight, if only a temporary bandage for this gaping wound, I feebly will try to express what I feel and what I want:

1. I want to write a book.
2. I want to tell a true story.
3. I want to change a life, for the better.
4. I want to shoot a gun.
5. I want to not be bored with scripture.
6. I want to serve my country.
7. I want to be married in an apple orchard.
8. I want to live in a city and deal with it.
9. I want another tattoo.
10. I want to make someone cry because of beauty.
11. I want to sob after looking at a piece of art.
12. I want to hold your hand.
13. I want to forgive you, but I’m still angry.
14. I want to work forever as a team.
15. I want to belong to a greater cause.
16. I want to love so hard my bones ache.
17. I want to run a marathon.
18. I want to teach the next generation.
19. I want to be okay with not knowing what’s ahead.
20. I want to be okay with being alone.
21. I want to have real community.
22. I want to be mature.
23. I want to be a kid again.
24. I want to know what He wants from me.
25. I want to be patient.
26. I want to travel in Europe with no agenda except to eat, see, and be.
27. I want to have a life-altering experience.
28. I want to be disciplined.
29. I want to be recognized as a valuable person.
30. I want to not care whether I’m recognized or not.
31. I want to believe in myself.
32. I want to surrender these wants and these tears and these minutes of the middle of the night.

If you know the true meaning of amen, and how truly truly what is written above is to me, you will understand why I now write:

amen.

on my desk is a little white vase
which holds frozen in place
a yawning flower, that stretched out
its nominal beauty for the last time
some sunsets ago, dappling my mess
with its vibrant and colorful death.

the shelves filled with the elderly;
oh how they tell their stories well!
their crooked spines, faded paper skin
hold so many secrets folded within,
one must wonder if these tired books
somehow are more alive than I

and now we reach the heart,
tattered edges and ink stains
and cramped scrawling letters
trying to escape off the page
words like chain-gangs all in a row
the melody of their hammers
match the tune of my soul.

all the while, the black blood bleeds
these pages covered in the wounds of war
mistakes crossed out like soldiers slain
their graves where they fell face first.
the formation misses none, marches on
to cover the bleak barren expanse
to assail these heavy barricades,

peaceful dew lingers after daybreak’s kiss
gracefully dawn dances upon the horizon
and the grey fog cradles the crimson ground
the sweetly knotted hands of time
gently rocks this new born hope.
the day blooms to tell this tale–
ink is always thicker than blood.

Tonight is my last night in this apartment in Covina. It’s one of those summer nights that you live for in Los Angeles, when the streets hum with light traffic and the air easy and light to breath. What a process this summer has been.

Not sure how to even sum it up. I’ve learned so much about myself, about who I am, what is important to me, where I’m going, who loves me and who I love and why. I learned a lot about teamwork and perfectionism and anger and endurance and follow-through and junior high youth ministry. I learned a lot of being on my own, and what it will take to pay the bills and live with roommates I don’t know and don’t necessarily like. I worked through extremes of loneliness and extremes of uncertainty. I processed through doubting and vilifying God and me and everything else in my life. I walked through heart break and a lost of a very close friendship and struggled through calling and discernment. I shouldn’t that in past tense. I continue to progress through calling and discernment. Thoughts about honesty, and hope, and hanging onto to God because He’s the only thing left to hold on to.

I was called. I followed. I learned a lot. It was not easy. I think that’s a general theme I’ve learned. This following thing is not suppose to be easy. But that the statement that the will of God will never take you where the grace of God will not protect you is true. I think I needed to be taken away from the temptation of complacency that is always present at home.

The choices between surrender and self-sufficiency, between freedom and free-will (a difficult distinction), between perfectionism and processing, between convenience and change have defined this summer. I have no idea what lies ahead, in the next 3 weeks at home, in the next 3 months, and especially not in the next 3 years. But what I do know is that God is good all the time and all the time God is good. That He has plans to prosper me and not to harm me, to give me hope and a future. And that in all things He works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose.

So as this summertime closes in on its final chapters, I must say it was an awfully good book. The story goes on as He writes His promises and His peace upon the tablets of my heart and soul. We are the broken, and we are the hopeful.

must the sky reflect
the murmurs in the chest:
the blurred lines making up
the endless misty deep?

dark

spin, spin, spin on axis
always imperfect
by a inherent degree
and travel by stumbles
and farther falls.

light

what kind of world
is this, allowing life
to be lived asleep?
no greater mystery
is that of a grey sky
and a greyer heart.

What is an adventure?

Is it our iconic heroes of late, swinging through dangers with a highly accurate whip, or scampering through dense and rugged terrain in search of treasure? Is it possible for a modern day young American to have an adventure in this day and age?

Adventure is defined as an exciting or extraordinary event or series of events, or the participation or willingness to participate in things that involve uncertainty and risk.

Adventure doesn’t have a ‘purpose’, it doesn’t go well on resumes, it isn’t the fast track to a career. Adventure is saying that life is worth risking living for. Adventure cannot be strategize, cannot be programmed, or made to fit into a five, ten, or twenty year plan. It is the act of saying that nothing is certain except today. It means putting living in higher regard for the “life I always wanted”.

I cannot say this is something I dreamed of doing since I was a little girl. In fact, I cannot say it was something I’ve wanted to do for very much time at all. Taking a year off of school screws up my five-year plan. Doing something entirely not academic is totally outside of my comfort zone. Becoming a ‘mom’ to two delightful children sounds good… but when I’m 19? Living in Europe, dealing with culture shock everywhere I turn, experiencing four true seasons (which as a California girl, I’ve never really dealt with). Learning a new language (or three). Leaving the new home I’ve made for myself. Leaving all my friends, all my family, my entire support system, all my mentors, my church, my junior highers. Supporting myself, living on my own, letting go of my childhood.

Yet. There is a yet. In the middle of all my fears, there is still a yet. And that yet breeds an amazing amount of excitement. I’m still very much praying through this, wondering where God is whispering. I know that I can make a lot of noise, a lot of colors, and big flamboyant flourishes. But when the wind dies, and the earth stops shaking, and the fire burns itself out, God is the only one with the gentle whisper left. So I’m trying to still my heart and stop making my world the way I want it to be, but listen to the truth, the direction, and the peace that He speaks. I cannot will Him to do anything. I must stop striving to be perfect so He will follow my will. Rather, I must accept and be open to His will and in that process of being open, He will continue to enter my heart and change me.

The song Hanging Around by Counting Crows plays in the background and says this to me: “Well you know I gotta get out, but I’m stuck so tight, weighed by the chains that keep me… hanging around. I’ve been hanging around this town on a corner, I’ve been bummin’ around this old town for way too long”. But honestly, I don’t feel it is my time to leave, not yet. I think I need to go to school for the fall semester. I need to continue to be still before I go. I need to ground myself in the Lord, and not be running away. I’ve run away so many times in my life. I’ve invested, and then not had the follow-through. This is something that needs to change. I’m becoming an adult, and that means that there are going to be a lot of things I don’t want to do, and there are things that are going to be hard and not instant gratification. I think the wisest thing my mom has said to me in the last few days is that “grown up things progress. Childhood is all about now, but not anymore, not for you anymore. Now is the time to wait”.

So I am waiting for a whisper. I’m waiting for an adventure to disrupt my life and turn me on my head. I am waiting, wishing, and wondering what He has in store for me.

I see a rainbow. Science can explain how the rainbow was made, science can explain how I can see it, science can explain its colors, science might even be able to explain why humans in general like color. Science cannot explain why when I see a rainbow, I feel the inexplicable pang of witnessing a miracle, why I think it is beautiful, or why I love, truly love a particular color in the spectrum.

I hear a song. Science can explain how the strings on the violin or guitar or cello vibrate in certain ways to produce certain frequencies, and science can explain how my ears can process and translate the sound waves into electrical impulses that travel into my brain and are further translated there. Science cannot explain why that certain song brings tears to my eyes or rhythm to my feet. Science cannot explain why it makes me remember a certain someone or evokes some kind of sense that everything will work out.

When it comes to scientifically explaining emotions, aesthetics, ethics, or the ever-enigmatic experience of love, science is a dumb dog that can barely be blamed for wetting itself in the face of these ominous foes. Science can yap about pheromones or brain centers or memory association or endorphin release, but in all reality, it cannot understand, cannot measure, quantify, evidentially support or disagree with these concepts anymore than a dog can understand its master interaction with its master’s wife.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28

This statement has never been more real, more true, and more frightening than it is tonight. Truly truly I ask you: What is our purpose? To take up space, to breath dirty air, to sing empty songs, to write inconsequential nothings that blather and blithe?

Is any pain worth the trouble that it causes? Do we have a single reason to stay alive? Or, as another Shakespearean masterpiece demonstrates, poor pitiful fools left in the rain to realize their humanity and desire death? Is all tragedy true? Do we so seek to find joy and fulfillment that we create some paltry fire to battle off the crushing solitude of the empty night?

Sigh. What more can I ask from an empty sheet of paper but this? What am I?

i wish that our hands could combine
that my heart would no longer be mine
that word could go and come again
that you would always be my best friend

my heart pounds against my chest
my throat closes with the rest
of my self just wanting to hear
wishing, wanting, waiting to be near

i cannot wish forever more
i cannot wish what you wish for
i cannot be who you want me as
i cannot be who I wish I was

a wish wrapped quietly in a bright
balloon
drifts off into the engulfing night
sky
hands holding many taut strings tight
balloons
to let go into your endless night
skies

i wish i was a paradox
or a timid creature of the sea
but most of all, right now,
i wish i wasn’t me.

i wish i wish i wish to be
anything, something other
than me.

for you are the you
that I’m in love with
i wish it wasn’t so.
for you are the you
i’m saying goodbye to
i wish it wasn’t so.

sigh.

today you spoke the truest true
that I was to be neither them or you
that I was becoming no more than I
created for created, one heart, one soul, one pair of eyes

my screen flickers pictures of forget-me-nots
wild bunches of memories in vivid clots;
that tie up my hands, & silence my tumbling speech
but no more! I am free: to write, to love, to sing, to teach

you spoke to me in candor with cadence in your eyes.
you spoke to me in brilliance with boldness in your eyes.
you spoke to me the truest true with triumph in your eyes.
you spoke to me, you spoke to me, you spoke to me no lies.

It’s 2:02 A.M. I should have been asleep hours ago. I spent six very long hours in the car today, driving down the seemingly endless road of Highway 5. I felt like I was chasing the line that astronomers draw on their mock-up globes. That fuzzy line that separates the sun-flooded day from the pitch-black night, gliding along the surface of our world without notice of any kind of obstacle as if the planet were polished smooth; in a way, we are all being chased by it or chasing it away, depending on the perspective and the hour of day.

That was not really supposed to be deep or anything, just stating the observed. However, I think that when we say “I made the observation that…” or “Observe this…” or “Observing the …”, unless it is said in the context of some dreary science laboratory, our observations are more towards the side of perspectives, opinions, biases, and embellishments. How can one truly observe anything, even within a scientific and sterile settling, objectively? And what does that word even mean? Objectively? We can all agree on syntax, until we can’t. We can all agree on an adjective, until we can’t. The object is a red cup. The observation is that it is round, or holds water, or is the color red (whatever that means, especially if you know anything about light waves and visible spectrum). Our observations are all true (or let us presuppose for the sake of demonstrating a dilemma that they are true), but what is the objective Truth (or is there such a thing)? Is it the compilation of these sorts of observations, mixed as they are? Or is there something more, something else that sums up the object-ness of the object in question, something that captures it so wholly, lacking no aspect, that if able to be stated in understandable language would be classified as not only a truth, but the Truth about the red cup (significant specimen, I know).

If a red cup is this question provoking, I dare say my head may split if to actually, for even only a moment, consider man. The gravity of these questions about a drink-holding object is enough to, at least, make the thinker consider their balance. But these questions when applied, about the objectivity of man, the reality of man, the wholeness of man, the man-ness of man, and the humanity of man (two very different things I assure you), makes (or should make) the thinker fall over less than gracefully on his/her buttocks.

I do not suggest considering these possibilities for too long. After little thought, the night sky alone becomes a crushing and unwelcome burden, the thought of the vastness like a quick, yet excruciating blow to the head. Buechner writes about the experience of Today (which from his other writings you can deduce is also our experience with the Really Real), saying, “If you were aware of how precious it is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all.” You must be aware.

But to be aware, to recognize the deeply painful gift of each moment, means doing more than just observing. One might ask, can’t you observe the world and live in it too? The one who asks that question most likely would be my friend. I, too, seemingly can’t help but want to both participate and capture the moment. I want both the picture and the memory. But it is very rare that when trying to get both that you get much of anything at all, which is one of those sad true ironies of living: one simply cannot have their cake and eat it too.

In the end, I very much enjoy the taste of cake. It is lovely to look at, for sure, but what use is it? What life does it give if it sits there and looks pretty? What use does a picture have if it captures the moment that the photographer cannot never truly grasp because he/she was behind the lens? What is the purpose of knowing the whole lot, and never casting a ballot?

Being aware means making the choice to partake and not peruse. Being aware of the weight of today is living away from the line, which blurs the battle. The war is that very cliché (except it cannot be cliché in this case, as this is the beginnings of such literary thematic as good vs. evil, light vs. dark), in which night usurps day, but after a good few hours of conquest is forced once again to surrender under the white flag of dawn. To be aware is not observe, and perhaps to not even just exist, but to pick a side. To avoid the gray. Being aware means making the choice to be aware even when it hurts like hell (or really is).

But I must admit: I am often paralyzed by being a spectator and speculator to top it off. I crave time to sit and watch and think, in short observe, rather than be. And while I do not believe that there should be no time made for this wonderful (albeit addictive for some) activity, I just think I do it, or at least desire to do it far too much for my own good. You see, part of me wishes nothing more than to just be able to survive off of reading and thinking alone; to be able to supply myself with the basic necessities for life by absorbing literature and thinking about by some sort of odd power. But I do not have the power to do this anymore than I have to turn my favorite stories into realities (but that is another discussion).

And when I think about it, I do not truly want it. It would mean making the choice to remove myself even from the role of onlooker. Yet I am greedy for knowledge, to know the whys and hows and of whats. But I am not disciplined enough, so I attempt to satiate that greed with either scraps and pieces or the whole pie (old family saying… it means basically that hunger (for food, or any other thing) isn’t an all or nothing endeavor, but a process in which discipline must play a large role in the continuous portioning of food in a consistent manner).

Sigh. It’s all this talk about the future that is driving me mad, I’m sure of it. I am obsessed with the nature of future (being it in my nature to not only (or especially not) observe the present). I am so oriented around this observing disease that I cannot help but never ever be satisfied with what I see my future to hold. I am already disappointed for what comes next (what gay (the old old old meaning) and frolicsome disposition I have!). I am already disappointed because I expect that what I observe is what is True, that there could be nothing more real than the real I perceive.

I am already disappointed because the ‘real’ that I see is quite frankly quite ‘blah’: a beige and off-white pathway, lined only with milestones that mark not miles but the moments I became more practical or more efficient or more stoic, or some such nonsense as that. I see normalcy, when all I want to observe is adventure (and furthermore, I want to partake in adventure). I believe I fear mediocrity more than the unknown. I think I fear mediocrity more than death. In fact, I know I do. I fear beige. I fear white noise, more than explosions or silence. I fear this line that is fuzzy and sweeps over the world without courtship kisses or bitter goodbyes. It is no man’s land, yet everybody is here. And that is a fearsome thought indeed.

letting go.

this has been the past 4 songs that hit me:

“I’m not gonna fight you anymore
Not gonna try to lock the door
You took your life and gave me yours
There’s no reason why
I shouldn’t trust you with mine

It’s never easy changing my direction
It’s so unnatural to loosen up my grip
Are you growing weary of all my good intentions
Cause I know that You don’t work that way”
Trust You – Brandon Heath

“I’m letting go
Of the life I planned for me
And my dreams
Losing control
Of my destiny
Feels like I’m falling and that’s what it’s like to believe
So I’m letting go

This is a giant leap of faith
Trusting and trying to embrace
The fear of the unknown
Beyond my comfort zone”
-I’m Letting Go – Francesca Battistelli

“I’ve been holding on
To things like dreams that never seem to die
And I’m not so strong to lay them down
And say my goodbyes
How do you say goodbye?

If there’s a remedy
A break from all my vanity
Then I’m gonna need Your help
If there is hope for me
Pull me down to my knees
Where I’m begging for Your help
To let go

I’m walking right up to the edge
I’m bringing everything that’s left of me
I throw my self into Your love
You’ll be the one to lift me up again
As I let go”
-Let Go – Glorious Revolution

I don’t what to make of this. Where are you leading, oh Lord!? I said I would follow, but can’t we take a path that was already made?

“Give me your eyes for just one second,
Give me your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity,
Give me your arms for the broken hearted,
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten,
Give me your eyes so I can see.” -Brandon Heath

After truly surrendering a personal battle that I was caught up in last night, I woke up this morning feeling alive, feeling broken, but feeling alive. I woke up and called my mom, who I believe I’m most directly called to minister to right now, and just spent time with her on the phone, doing my best to maintain a relationship that has grown into something beautiful over the course of the years. It was a good time being a daughter. While I live a life that contains not many connections to my family anymore, I still love them, miss them, care about them, and most of all, want them to know the terrible beauty of a life lived with faith in Jesus Christ.

As I walked out the door this morning, I felt a sudden peace about my whole struggle with how my desire to serve in the military conflicts with what I feel my life direction is heading. The question of how to be a Marine and minister and mother, although not answered, has, at least for now, been resolved. My heart desires to support my country, and I deeply deeply care about our troops. About their well-being, about their emotional and mental health, and about their safety. I care about a war because it is my brothers and my sisters fighting in it, not because of the politics it entails. My heart breaks for the scared (and scarred), for the hurting, for the confused, for the proud, for the brave, for the families of the fallen. My heart’s deepest deepest longing, desire, wish is that those would come to know the hope of a life lived alongside a Savior who paid the price of their freedom from slavery with His own blood.

As I left my house, I felt like scales had fallen off my eyes, I saw the place I live in a new way. I live in a broken town, where cultures crash and collide and combine. I see poverty and violence and fear and the question that is tagged on the brick walls, and scribed in the faces of a hurried mother who never knows what her children will become, and a homeless man with a broken arm and a broken heart is: Where is God in this? And if He is here, does He care about me? I see police with hardened eyes asking this. I see children on a tagged school bus asking this. What do words like hope and healing and truth and promise even mean to a place like this? Does it mean going to church hungry, and hearing a big long sermon that finishes with a flourish, and leaving church still hungry? If hope comes more in the form of a gang initiation than from teachers, or mentors, or pastors that care, then there must be a problem. There must be a question of why. And while I don’t have an answer, persay. All I can say is I see you, and I think your story matters. And I think God sees you too. And I think God thinks your story matters too. I think He sees your pain and your sadness and your broken arms and hearts, and I think His heart might break just like mine does.

As I was driving to school I drove past a mosque that is right by my school. I saw a muslim worshipper leaving the building, which is surrounded by high fences. And my heart broke for them. Not because I pitied them, or think lesser of their religion. My heart broke because they are people too. Because their place of worship is shielded with high fences. Because a block away there is this huge concrete building with a cross upon it integrated into the icon of Azusa Pacific University. My heart breaks because Muslim is just as terrible an adjective as Christian is. As a noun, it is beautiful, just like Christian.

My heart can break for Marines and Muslims. My heart can break for the loveless and Latinos and laymen and the lonely. My heart breaks for your story. My heart can break, because His heart broke. My heart can break because He hold it in His hands. But I cannot physically, emotionally, spiritually minister to all. I cannot because I am not called to. My heart can break for all, but my hands cannot not hold all hands. And that’s okay. I can’t do it all, or even much, but I know a God who can. And I know a Church that is called to.

1 Corinthians in general has been a great encouragement to me over these past few months, but 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 is very centered on my heart right now:

The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?

All I can do now is be okay, be thankful that God is breaking my heart for the things that break His, and do my best to love on students, teenagers who have questions and who have stories and who have deep worth and value. And do my best to forgive, to love, to move forward with my friends and enemies and neighbors and those in between these categories alike. To be admit fault and failings and fear, to allow myself to be weak, to be broken, to be fully dependent on Him. All I can do is not to take time for being with Him, but be with Him always, in the middle of traffic and the middle of class and in the middle of this messy, chaotic, beautiful existence called living. All I can do is hold on to hope and forgo false optimism. Be real, be honest, be willing to be called and to follow. That is all anyone really can do.

Revelation
Robert Frost

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated hear
Till someone really find us out.

‘Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hid-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

I don’t have many reasons why I should go into youth ministry. I don’t have many, but I have one. He believes in me. And He is calling me into it.

I am terrified. Simply terrified.

But this is what I desire: a place where teenagers can make their own footprints. Where they can tread their own path and create their own place. Speak the voice that was given to them, with words they thought of themselves.

I desire to create a place where things can break, whether it be a chair, or a picture frame, a window, or a heart, a place where things can things can be broken like lives and families and door hinges, a place where things can be spilt like secrets and sorrows and soda on old grungy carpets. A place for teenagers to let their wishes be known, a place for students to be loved and known and valued, a safe and challenging place where the spiritual discipline of play can be reignited, and where laughter is a certain kind of prayer.

I’ve learning that the greatest apologetic is noticing the littlest moments, paying attention to His fingerprints and the greatest theodicy is laughter, great and boisterous laughter. My heart pines to tell teenagers about the terrible beauty of the Cross, and the beautiful terror of His resurrection. But more than that, I want see our lives transformed by His death, and, and by His life, His promise to live within us as an active force of being.

I could talk all day about ideals and use pretty words and dream big. But I can’t say more than a few words about how. Not yet. I have much to learn. I think the how begins with having a heart being filled with the Love from Him. I think the how begins with seeing potential in these students, in seeing their humanity, in sharing in their hopes and their dreams and their silly stories. Ministry isn’t a profession, it’s a life, it’s about living with and walking alongside fellow leaders and alongside students. It’s about gleaning all I can now from both my failures and my friends in ministry and perhaps maybe the few successes I have along the way.

hang me like peter
not because i want to be
remembered
but because i want to
forget.
because i want my life
to end and begin the same way
to the mighty unknown
to the sighing confusion
to the raging against no foe

spare me not because i am
beautiful or lovely
but because i can laugh
i can laugh and cry and
sing off-key
because i can reveal in you
your humanity
spare me, so i might
not spare you.

a wailing from tiamut
from my twisted entrails
beneath the shadow of the seas
a deep and deafening quiet
that will not quit.
a voice that speaks in
no language i have heard
or seen or studied or tasted,
yet it calls me and i know it well.

pay attention and listen
to the sound of sweetness
to the breathes between
tears and laughters.
notice they are all alike.

I promise you won’t be perfect.
I promise that this life won’t be easy.
I promise that this world is full of wonderful and dangerous and beautiful and terrible things.
I promise you will hurt.
I promise you will laugh.
I promise you will know that I love you.
I promise you will doubt my love.
I promise to show you the creation.
I promise you were not, and are not, and will never be an accident.
I promise I have plans for you.
I promise that you cannot do anything on your own.
I promise that you will not know what tomorrow holds.
I promise you that I will.
I promise that you will never know the number of stars.
I promise you that I do.

What He promises is what makes the birds stay aloft and the sun dance on the sea. What He promises is that He knows me better than I know myself, and that He created me, and creates in me my worth and value and passion and calling. He desires after my heart because it was His first.

To Him, all I can promise is this:
I promise to be human.
I promise to love imperfectly.
I promise to forget You sometimes.
I promise to reject Your gift of grace sometimes.
I promise to live for You.
I promise to die for You.
I promise to not know the difference sometimes.

I struggle with my humanity. I struggle with being less than perfect. I struggle serving a God that is. I struggle not being God. I struggle, and I wrestle, and He wins. Again and again and again. He is a beautiful and terrible God. He is the Great I Am. And I am a small breath floating in between the leaves. Yet He loves me. He redeems me. He breaks me. He restores me. He is my everything.

I think this was the most important of the many lessons I learned in this past week up at Forest Home Ojai Valley. It happened while I was sitting at a picnic table, talking to a man who is years and years beyond his age, in the misty morning fog.

Watching him work with our students and listening to his words of truth spoken to me, is honestly I feel, a bit like it would be to hang out and watch Jesus do ministry. I don’t want to inflate Chris, as he is also one of those humble guys who isn’t posturing in humility, but truly loves serving… but His impact in my life just in the past few months, mostly from me watching him work and from the few awesome conversations we have had, has lead me in a direction of considering what God has gifted me for.

That my heart can listen to the promises of His name is a promise, I think, within itself. But a promise is still at two way street, a promise still leaves room for doubt and faith and trust and pain and healing and truth and for free falling head first into His hands.

He promises to surprise, just as much as He promises to edify my heart for His purposes. I suppose in a way, He promises the greatest adventure is in-store and lies ahead just around the bend.