Listening For the Voice of Love

“And here is nearly the bitterest of blunt issues for us: What can love offer that cannot be rejected?  What gesture cannot be maligned as witless by those who strive for every form of isolation?…In our nation, it is acceptable to resent love as an interference with personal liberty, as a ruse the emotions employ before the battlements of reason, it is the abused in our country who now most weirdly profess love.  For the ordinary person, love is increasingly elusive, imagined as a strategy” (Lopez 11).

After a fairly intense three years of personal growth and the challenge of making ourselves available to serve in our local church, my wife and I found ourselves tired, spent, and ready for a break.  As a couple, we felt that our marriage was entering into its next phase of deeper connection and openness after ten years together.  Our pastors felt that a break was in order so we decided to set aside one month to rest and we were excited to kick off our sabbatical by a spending a weekend away at a Benedictine retreat center.  It was with a fair amount of anticipation that we packed a weekend’s worth of clothes and toiletries along with a month’s worth of books for each of us and headed off for parts unknown.

The first night we arrived it was hot.  Sweltering.  But arriving after dusk, we spent some time together walking the grounds.  I smoked my pipe and my wife enjoyed some clove cigarettes.  We were generally happy to be there.  The retreat center was on the outskirts of a farm and mill community and was quiet, even a little isolated.  However, it felt like a place where one could be at peace so we resolved to be so. 

That night however, as I tried to sleep, I struggled as I often do sleep in the strange environment.  Waking several times throughout the night, I reached that point by five or six A.M. where it seems to make more sense to merely stop fighting and wake up.  Bleary-eyed and breakfasting in the cafeteria with my wife, we met a family that was at the center to lead a mother-daughter retreat weekend.  Three generations of women along with granddad were represented in the family including a six month old little girl away from home for the first time.

Like me, this poor little girl was also having trouble sleeping in a strange new place.  To make it worse for her, her mother was needed in the meetings with the moms-daughter retreaters and couldn’t cuddle and soothe her as I am sure she wanted to be.  Instead, someone else had to step in.  Granddad.   Now for many children this may be have been a great comfort, but as we learned, this was this little girl’s first introduction to her mother’s parents and things weren’t going well.

Throughout the weekend my wife and I watched this man walk the halls of the retreat center as well as the paths outside trying to soothe a scared, tired, hot, stubborn little girl to sleep.  A little girl who didn’t show a lot of affection for her grandsire.  A little girl crying for the familiar.  At first, I saw myself in her sleeplessness, but as I watched him walk and sweat through that retreat center with that little girl, I saw myself being carried.  Being loved.

And all this lead me to ask myself; how often in my life has my Father carried me as his Son sweats and suffers under the weight of my unwillingness to rest?  How often have I mistrusted the One who loves me so much that His body gave out even as this grandfather’s legs and arms seemed ready to quit after two and a half days of pacing in the heat?  Making seemingly endless trips around a silent and, probably for him, lonely building.  From Friday night until Sunday morning he carried her.  How could I fail to see myself in them?

Barry Lopez in his short story “Apocalypse” has his narrator ask: what can love give that can’t be refused or confused?  The question stands before me even now.  What about the Father’s love for me do I imagine as a strategy, and not a loving hope?  Must I always see his love as an interference? 

Lord, make me see that while I need always remain your child, your precious babe, you need not be a stranger; that I can rest in your embrace.

John Fawcett 10-21-61 to 5-27-08

 

Today, we lost someone special.  A man who, along with his wife, was a blessing to my wife.  Who helped her grow and find healing and confidence.  A man who blessed me every time he lead worship at our church in Chicago.  A friend whose mere presence in a Tolkien class i was co-leading forced me to think more deeply about a book i loved then i had previously thought possible or necessary.  A man who i respect more and more all the time as i reflect on his life.  I feel as if i should say more.  I cannot.  John Fawcett sailed past the Grey Havens today, he resides in that Golden Land where pain and death do not come.  Precious in the Eyes of the Lord is the Death of His Saints.

Seal it for your courts above…

“When I sat down on the bed next to you
You started to cry
I said, maybe if I leave, you’ll want me
To come back home
Or maybe all you mean, is leave me alone
At least that’s what you said

You’re irresistible when you get mad
Isn’t it sad, I’m immune
I thought it was cute
For you to kiss
My purple black eye
Even though I caught it from you
I still think we’re serious
At least that’s what you said”

At Least That’s What You Said  Wilco

The song lyrics above are from a Wilco song that i  have been thinking about lately.  Jeff Tweedy, the principal song writer for Wilco, somehow manages to capture a lot of how i feel about marital strife.  There have been plenty of times where i have felt that it would be better for me to leave for a while so K would want to make up or where i was “immune” to the tears i had caused.  And that is shaming and sad and dysfunctional.

I also spent some time today googling links looking for information about a former favorite musician of mine.  I had come across information about his newest album and tour so i decided to go look him up on wikipedia.  While reading his bio, i came across a mention of his second wife.  Second Wife, i thought, what happened to his first?  So much of this man’s music is about his first wife, hell a lot of what drew me to like him in the first place is how he wrote about being married.  How can he have a second wife?  Well he does and as Billy Pilgrim would say “And so it goes”.

I have had divorce come up a few times in my peripheral lately.  Aside looking through google links for gossip, i have had a couple of conversations about the film “The Royal Tenenbaums” and by extension Wes Anderson’s films lately.  At a party for my birthday a friend of mine mentioned that the film saddened her because of the rampant dysfunction in the family in the movie.  I agree, the film is full of sadness and melancholy, disappointment and isolation.  Indeed that may well be the point.

I shared with her, and the others who were discussing the movie, an observation that i have had when talking to other friends about the film.  What i have found to be true is that by and large “The Royal Tenebaums” is perceived differently by people whose parents divorced in childhood then those whose parents remained hitched or separated later in their kids life.  I know it to be true for me and K.  I identify very strongly with the grown children in the movie and Rushmore remains her favorite Wes Anderson film.  Coming from a home where my parent’s marriage crumbled, i find myself sensitive to, almost prone to fear of my own relationship with K failing.  And talking about the movie got me thinking about what makes marriages and families work, or not. 

Thinking about this post and what inspired me to write it reminds me off a dream i had when i was a teenager.  In the dream my mother cheated on my stepfather, a man that i greatly looked up to and respected, and in the dream i was forced to chose between siding with her or him.  Waking from the dream i was simultaneously really angry with my mother and confused about the depths of my identification with my stepfather in the dream.  Now years later, i understand that what i was truly identifying with was opposition to the potential for infidelity in myself.  I was afraid of my own heart being unfaithful or inconstant.  I vowed were i to ever get married that i would never be untrue to her.

But, here is the difficult part.  I had no idea then and am still learning now just what faithfulness means.  It is not just not having sex with people other than my wife or avoiding other outlets of sexual release, it is so much more complicated then that.  I cannot be faithful as i should be merely by not doing things, by avoiding things that are bad.  That is just the first step, the “easy” part.  The harder part is to start adding faithfulness to my life.  To seek out ways to do and to serve for my marriage.  I need to fight to keep her, i can never take anything for granted or hope to coast through avoiding bad things.  She does not deserve that. And neither do I.

And of course, if this true of my relationship with K, then it must also be true of my relationship with the Father.  It is not enough that i flee from sin, this just the ”easy” part but i need to put myself forward to work on our relationship.  I need to have holiness added to my character not just see sin stripped from my heart.  Sanctification requires me to engage myself to allow the Blood of Christ to penetrate my being, to be transformed into his likeness.  To take up his work, to add to my load, to want to grow in the things that He was about, that is the direction of faithfulness that i must move in. 

And i know i will fail to do this perfectly.  God is not surprised though.  He is aware that i am prone to wander.  God wants me to come home, and stay there, now in all that i do and does not need time alone to be ready to receive me and he is certainly not immune to my tears.  So as much as i love that song by Wilco, thank goodness that God is a better partner than me or Jeff Tweedy.

speaking to/participating in/earning a hearing

One of the reasons i decided to start keeping this blog is that i have been reading a lot of other people’s blogs.  It started with K. reading and then writing her own blog.  I would read her posts and then slowly start to read selected blogs that she had linked.  As i read more and more of these i was struck by how much i would think about the points being made and emotions expressed in the posts.  And i felt the need to get involved with the conversations.

So, let me do just that.  In a recent post on a blog for a local church i came across a post that i found troubling.  I also took some exception to the tone of some of the responses to original post.  The post itself can be found here: http://www.cdomaha.com/blog/2008/04/pew-forum-on-religion-public-life.html  I link it not to bash it or make the poster look bad, rather i want to engage with it in a dialogue that is respectful but pointed. 

The central point of the post, as i understand it, is that while Christians are told that they should modernize the beliefs and embrace a more tolerant expression of religion, the numbers that follow the trend of Church growth show that denominations that have followed this advice are actually dropping.  And churches that resist this movement are actually growing in number.  I have a few problems with this line of reasoning. 

First, i have an admittedly knee jerk reaction against using numbers as the litmus to determine the health of the Lord’s church.  While i am convinced that numbers are helpful for some things, i am suspicious of trying to quantify something that my very well need to be understood be qualifying it.  What do i mean by this?  Well, it may be true that numbers in mainline churches are reducing, but what about the individuals who remain?  Is it not possible that as the size of their communities diminishes that the corporate experience of faith is growing.  Or in other words, that the drop in membership is coupled by a refinement of the faith of those that remain as well as a seeking out of a smaller group of newly converted, committed and serious believers who’s numbers do not offset the larger drop of those who are leaving.  While admittedly this theory does not get to why people are leaving it, the drop in numbers tells us nothing about the faith of those that don’t leave mainline churches so using it as a measurement as the health of a body is limited at best.

Second, the so called growth in non-mainline churches is not examined in the post.  What percentage of new growth is merely attrition from mainline churches?  In the the parlance of business world, this is would not be seen as net new growth.  Any growth in the attendance of an individual denomination that was come from a movement from a mainline congregation would not be seen as net new growth as we are all still one body, one faith, one baptism and therefore one Church.  I would accept the point that those who left mainline churches are rejecting the ”liberalization” of the mainline churches but numbers alone don’t tell us that.  The numbers themselves can just as easily be used to argue that the exodus from mainline churches is caused by parishoners who decide they want to go non-mainline churches that tend to have more modern presentation and music, looser dress codes, and a larger emphasis on multimedia presentations.  Or not.  My point is that it is nebulous to try to establish a clear link between mainline vs non-mainline growth/decline and an acceptance of a more ”liberalized” theology by mainline using the numbers alone.

And third, i hinted at this point above but i think it needs to be looked at seperatly, is the growth in ”conservative’ non mainline churches driven by an influx of “new” Christians?  Or more to the point, are those outside the Church experiencing her in such a way that they are coming to her and joining her ranks.  As i have stated, if non-mainline “conservative” congregations are growing primarily through attrition from mainline churches then the American church is not growing, she is just shuffling her deck.  And i am fairly certain that the poster of the orginal blog would agree with me.  I imagine that we would both agree that the Church fails at keeping the Great Commission if she is not working at making new converts and at welcoming new faces and hearts into the family of of Christ.  This then is the real question that the numbers provided don’t speak to.  How is the Church be it mainline or non, liberal or conservative speaking to and embracing our culture for the Kingdom? 

Perhaps, i would respond better to the poster’s thesis if it was posted this way:  If we are called to call those outside the loving embrace of Christ into it, are we sure that we are calling them into a healthy, balance and right relationship or are we creating hinderances that add to an already difficult but vital decision?  Are we watering down the Gospel with a turn away from the revealed truth of God; truth that is affirmed by the Spirit through Scripture, creed and the testimony of the saints?   Or are we presenting the Good News of God with such self righteousness and vitriol that we are losing sympathetic ears not due to the stumbling block that Scripture itself can be but through our own sin?  If we are doing either we are setting ourselves, and those we wish to reach, up for a much harder time in coming to understand the Church and her Christ.  Whether non Christians fail to come to Christ by way of false teaching or because they are so repulsed by Christians is academic.  They remain outside of the healing embrace of the Son.

It is this final note, the question if whether we as Christian are by our own behavior making Christ unpalatable that i want to close with.   Sometimes i get the feeling that my fellow Christians (and honestly myself included) speak of the culture as if it owed us something.  Our language becomes combatative, our metaphors martial, and we speak of warfare cultural, spiritual or other.  May i posit that when we speak like this, we are heard by those outside of the Church as aggressors and not as bringers of peace.  I mentioned a tone in the replies to the original post and it was here primarily that i sensed this aggression, this entitlement coming forward.  I am beginning to believe that we may be better servants of the Gospel if we begin acting as if we deserve nothing, no hearing, no say in the culture unless the culture can be convinced to give us a hearing.  I firmly believe that we must earn the right to speak to our friends and families about the Lord if for no other reason than that they are likely not to even listen unless they first feel loved by us.  If our lives are so caustic, so hostile to the culture of our friends and neighbors, how can they ever open up to us or be expected to share their lives with ours.  St Francis of Assisi would say “Preach the Gospel always.  And when necessary use words.” and Micah 6:8 says “He has showed you, O man, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  Perhaps, as we learn to love mercy, the mercy extended to us and the mercy we can, no must show others, we will find our way through to really be a voice of hope for our culture to the glory of God the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Thinking About Being Childless

So without getting into too much detail regarding the reproductive difficulties of myself and my spouse, i have been thinking a lot lately about what it would mean to live and die childless. Part of the questioning came from trying to get pregnant and not having much success in the midst of a dearth of friends and family having kids left and right. For a while in the first few years of our marriage it seemed that K and i were going to weddings every other weekend. And now she is telling me about needing to go buy gifts for this shower or another for this mother to be or that. And don’t get me wrong, i am genuinely happy for them and can honestly say that i feel little if any envy for those who have been blessed with little ones. But we haven’t been able to conceive yet and are starting to think that maybe we won’t be able to.

As i was beginning to become aware of this, my biggest fears were two-fold. First, how would this difficulty effect K. How badly did she want a child and to what lengths would she be willing to go to get pregnant? I was rapidly becoming aware that i found many of the fertility options currently available to be personally, how shall i say, aesthetically distasteful. The thought of being tested and poked and prodded and having the most intimate things in my life come under medical scrutiny was beginning to become oppressive to even think about. But, what if K. had to have a baby? I mentioned a second fear and if the first fear could and was resolved by talking to K, this second fear was one that could only be resolved by listening to stillness.

For the better part of a decade, longer than i have known K. for sure, i have (had) been reading a series of novels by Michael O’Brien. I read the first few while i was going through a period of real development and growth. I was discovering that i had a conflict in me, a desire for one kind of life tempered by the kinds of choices that i commonly made and the kinds that i rather thought i ought to be making. I know now that it was time of maturation and nearly everyone goes through it, but at that time i felt rather unique. And O’Brien’s books at that time were among a few different things that stoked a hunger in me to live and breathe differently then i currently did.

O’Brien’s books tend to deal with individuals and their encounters with others, Holy or not so holy. Characters are crafted to be in tremendous soul wrenching doubt or fear mired in self pity and self absorption. They agonize over themselves until they either broke or are broken. Often however, they surrender to what C.S. Lewis would likely call the Weight of Glory and still not feel a whole lot better. They “get right with God” but still have brokeness in their lives, dreams deferred or completely subplanted and uprooted. And without a fault, the salvation the God would send would always come in the form of an oppurtunity to sacrifice for another. To be little and weak within while performing mightily for another without.

This lesson was never one that i got tired of learning. Even as i type this my heart cries out for it to be taught to me again.

Still, returning to my narrative, i was reading the final books in the series. This last sentence in itself is a misnomer as the final books published is really the 2nd or 3rd in the chronolgy of the larger story. But, i had been reading them in order, buying them fairly close to release and then shelving them for sometimes years until i would pick up and read them rapidly and with hunger. This last one, Sophia House was, as i am sure the astute reader can tell, particularly meaningful for me. And here is why.

The main character in the novel is man who is struggling deeply under the weight of the evil done to him and a temptation to respond with a bentness of his own. He is finally brought to a place in his life where his ambitions are dead and he sees himself as the broken, weak wreck that he is. Living in Poland during WWII he runs a bookshop that is always one step from closure. Little money, food, or fuel for heat. God is meeting him regularly through Word and Sacrament but he is still broken. Pawel, the character’s name, is writing letters to Love and Wisdom, letters that are unanswered as they are unsent. And he is despairing that he will ever be able to love and be loved. So the Lord brings David. A Jewish youth on the run from the S.S., he enters Pawel’s store and finds refuge. The arrangement is both bitter and sweet for Pawel and through it the Lord begins to finish his work in Pawel. The relationship culminates in a conversation between the two where this exchange occurs.

“To be a father in the realm of the soul”. Pawel said.  “I would like to be this for you.  may I be this for you?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

“Yes Pawel”, David said in a tone of calm deliberation.  “This would be good.” 

 As if standing on a threshold of radical departure, they faced each other without speaking, gazing now into a dimension that seemed for both to be wholly undiscovered.  This sense of embarkation into a a fathomless mystery was in no way daunting; neither was it fraught with emotion.  it was a moment of perfect stillness. 

At last the boys said, “It is a blessed gift to be a son in the realm of the soul.  May I be this for you?”

“Yes”, Pawel nodded.  ( Sophia House Michael O’Brien)

 

Rereading that passage and relflecting on it for this post, i am even more convinced about what i hear God saying to me about being a father. Like Pawel, i am broken and in need of healing more and more everyday. Like Pawel, i long for connection with others and despair in my ability to ever see my hopes for my life come to fruition. Like Pawel, i long for a legacy something that will survive me, sons and daughters of some kind. And what O’Brien’s novel teaches me is that if i am to be given the same kind of son that Pawel is given than i am really okay with that. I may well be delighted by such a gift. To be entrusted with one of God’s little ones who relies on me for safety and support. Someone that needs me not to be strong but to be weak for them, humbled for the Lord’s sake.

It is in realizing this that my second fear is transformed into hope. No more need i fear that i may never become a father. Instead i am beginning to understand that every one of God’s sons and daughters are made into parents whether their children share the same genetic ties or not. In the end it is Christ’s body that lasts anyway.

home or an approximation there of…

When i think of all the things that i connect to without any apparent reason. When i listen to music that kills me. When i am reading and i start inhabiting the book. When i daydream and imagine. When i look out into the distance of my future. When i hear a friend speak of the magic that they are living. What else am i feeling but the ache for homecoming, for a return, a place where i can live from.

I tend to make quick decisions regarding likes and dislikes, this unfortunately includes people. But mostly i am referring to art, literature, film or another intangible that lingers and dangles and latches on to me. And i am beginning to understand that these things find their root so fast and so deep because of a quality in me that yearns for what i think that they represent and embody. I am looking to connect with something outside me that will become part of me, make me like this thing.

I listen to Tom Waits and i want to be the kind of soul that wears an old suit and sings about pirates and hobos with the same intensity as lost love. I read Paul Auster and i imagine my life stripped of trappings, restarted and forced to find out what part of me is really me. Brian Wood’s DMZ makes me crazy for New York and a life infinitely harder and easier than mine own. Never let me tell you about my morbid love of the underlying romance of zombie movie tropes, all that beautiful life in the face of absolute horror.

So what is it that i am after? What is it me that all of this resonates with? It will sound lame i promise. All of these things, i am coming to understand that these are all examples of what i want from home. Mystery, danger, challenge, intensity, love, and purpose. I want my home to have all these things. And by home i don’t mean merely a house or a hearth. A place for kith and kin. When i say home i mean the place were i make the most sense. The place were i am able, enabled even to be safe in the midst of everything even pirates, hobos, urban civil warfare, loss of my loved ones and zombie infestation.

At the end of it all i don’t want a peace that is peace and quiet. I want a peace that comes from knowing where i am coming from and where i am going. A self that is weathered but is open still. Ready to accept what is coming. With blessing and mercy for all. Even myself.