T.S. Tuesday: A grace of sense and a conversation with Love
[To be shouted in Oxiclean infomercial fashion:]
"Praying to Love offers all the benefits of a life-giving relationship with the Creator of the universe, without any of the pesky “religious” baggage of traditional Christian language. Try it today, no money down. What have you got to lose but your pride?"
I've thought a lot about how to write this blog post. I wanted it to be witty and pithy, angry and abrupt.
I wanted to compare my new age, religious wordplay to the golden-tongued trickery of used car salesmen, excuse me, I mean certified pre-owned vehicles sales associates.
I wanted to reference linguistic terms and demonstrate the sheer magnitude of this revelation in my life through my impressive diction and impeccable metaphors.
But it’s been four years since my last linguistics class, and as much as I’d like to think I was smart enough to market God to myself, the truth is that it happened not by my own intelligence or trickery or marketing skills, but in yet another Fit of Unwarranted Compassion that I can neither explain or claim as my own.
In my memoir, this story will appear in the section after I tell my well meaning Christian friends that, no, I would not like them to pray for me thank you very much and before I, to my own astonishment, began praying myself.
In fact, this was the revelation that first loosed the chains of my dogged dependence on doubt and anger.
On May 31, 2009, I had a revelation, which I wrote in my journal as thus:
May 31, 2009
I have had a revelation: I can now say that I am not completely opposed to maybe someday admitting that I could possibly believe that ...dun, da, da,da...God is Love.
At the time I wrote this entry, I couldn't pray or open the Bible. I could barely go to church without fuming inside.
After a whirlwind semester abroad on what I like to call the “Poverty Tour of Central America,” my faith was ravaged. I had visited multiple city dumps and met with displaced farmers crammed into barrio after barrio filled with burning trash, bloated bellies, and pleading eyes. I stayed with families without electricity or running water in Nicaragua. I daily heard rants and cries from blind and crippled beggars calling out to me on the narrow streets of San Jose, Costa Rica. I listened to mothers and sisters and sons talk about their husbands and fathers and friends that went missing during the Guatemalan civil war. I heard horror stories of violence and desperation. I saw the devastating effects of globalization on small farmers.
I met a lot of people and heard a lot of stories that collided with my squeaky clean and comfortable view of God and the world.
Three years later, I still couldn't reconcile how to pray to a God that allowed children to starve and ignorant consumers to participate in modern day slavery, oppression, and environmental degradation.
I had come to a mental place where I couldn't under any circumstances pray without it meaning in my mind that I didn't care. If I prayed to this God, it would mean the people I met and the stories I heard while abroad were meaningless. It would mean I was a liar and a hypocrite.
But one day in church—don’t ask me why I was still going to church because even now I can’t explain it—I began to think about a God not associated with white, wealthy Americans or prosperity or politics, but a God of Love.
Well, more accurately, out of the jumble of thoughts and ideas and emotions swirling in my mind while I scowled in my seat as an act of willful unparticipation in worship, this revelation popped into my head:
GOD IS LOVE.
A couple weeks earlier I had explained to a friend that I had been experiencing these “fits of unwarranted compassion” that I couldn’t explain. And I told him that “those fits of unwarranted compassion are what I now call God—if I had to put a name to it.”
At church I discovered an even better name for this compassion: love. And isn’t there a verse in the Bible (that I wasn’t reading) that talks about God being love?
I realized I had experienced this compassion, this love, in my life; I just couldn’t call it God.
So what if I changed the name?
What if I prayed not to the God who allows suffering, but to the God who allows joy, who offers hope, and who redeems the pain of his children?
What if I prayed to the God of Love? The God who IS love? What if I prayed to Love?
This momentary revelation literally changed my life; it’s the closest thing I have to a conversion experience.
This revelation meant not only that I could begin to have a conversation with Love (code for ‘begin to pray again’), but also that I could choose Love at any time. And, thinking back, I realized that I had always had the choice to Love. Which meant that Love had always been with me. Even in the dark night of my love story. Even in my questioning of poverty and injustice. Even in my rebellion. Even in my fear that I would never, ever find God again. Love was with me.
And somehow that brought me the freedom and comfort I desperately needed but didn’t think I deserved as an affluent American.
One of my favorite T.S. Eliot phrases (don’t think I forgot the T.S. tie in!) is the term “a grace of sense” from the poem “Burnt Norton.” Not a sense of grace, but a grace of sense. I believe that this revelation was one of those moments.
That day at Coast Vineyard, I was graced with the sense to stop quibbling with semantics and start living and following this Love I’d experienced, that I could no longer deny.
Because, seriously, what did I have to lose but my pride?
T.S. Tuesday: How Far is Too Far?
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” T.S. Eliot
This past week (and especially weekend) has been particularly rife with nuggets of words, wisdom, and fits of unwarranted compassion. Every meager attempt I've made to write down these tidbits and stirrings in any coherent, accessible way have ended in writers block. Which, by the way, is a condition I don't even believe exists. More accurately, they've ended in writers procrastination with a hefty dose of divided attention disorder. But more than that, for one of the few times in my life, I am awed speechless, or wordless.
I've been reminded of the immense gift it is to even say the words "God speaks to me." I've been sobered by the weight of that statement. Don't get me wrong, I love being loved (who doesn't?), but I've been reminded of the great responsibility that comes with being loved. The responsibility to receive and respond to that love, to reciprocate.
While I'm usually thrilled to share what I've learned or am learning on this blog, this past week I've been hesitant to commit to writing the many exhortations God has spoken to me. I'm scared to share what God has spoken in fear that I will not hold up my end of the bargain.
The past four years have been a time of basking in God's love (more on this later), and learning to love myself and receive inordinate amounts of grace.
Of course God has still been speaking that love to me, but I also have a greater sense that he's asking me to participate, to give back. Not that I haven't reciprocated or worshiped or served these past few years--I have--but the thing is, I had never felt asked to do it. Everything I have given or expressed has been completely voluntary, an organic response to these fits of unwarranted compassion.
Like the beginning of a dating relationship, I had no expectations for God and he had no expectations for me (at least that's what I told myself). I think we both surprised each other. But what happens when you get to the point where you have to make a commitment? When words like 'compromise' and 'sacrifice' begin to enter the equation?
What if God is asking me to die to this self he has just taught me to love?
Right now it feels like I'm going a little too far. A little too uncomfortable. I have an unease with language like "a first time decision for Christ." Shouldn't we be making decisions for Christ daily, hourly, minutely? My story is more of a weaving of thoughts and ideas and experiences than an Old and New Testament divide.
I have to remind myself that this command is from the same God who wants me to bask in His love. Who in the same breath of the command to die to myself also whispered, "I have good things for you."
I'm scared that as soon as I put expectations on God, he's going to let me down.
But that's not the God I know. That's not the God of Love who taught me to love myself. Who gave me friends and a church community that helped me see his face and his presence in my life and the world around me. That's not the God who loves me whether or not I serve the poor or work at non-profit, shop fair trade organic or don't whine to my mom on the phone.
He's not a God of letdowns, but a God of surprises. Is it really that hard for me to see that he has good things for me?
It's scary, but it's also a privilege. I have dreams of starting a support group for people who struggle with eating disorders. I can think of nothing more meaningful or humbling than to see people set free from the bondage of believing their worth is intrinsically linked to their body fat percentage or sex appeal.
I need to remember that the reason he is calling me to serve is that I now have something to give: Him.
So, here's my confession: I'm scared to lead. Scared to fail. Scared to go farther.
But if I'm not willing to risk going too far, how can I possibly find out how far One can go?
Flagging an Important Day
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| Flag Day 2011 |
Most people don’t know anything about the glory of Flag Day—why we have it, what day it is, or when it started. Now I still don't really know what the intended purposes were, but for me and my younger brother, it’s one of the best days in June. It’s June 14th, actually, and we almost miss it every year because there’s no insane advertising inundation leading up to the fateful day like there is for Christmas or the Fourth of July.
Still, it’s my favorite day in June.
We first began celebrating Flag Day seven(-ish?) years ago. My brother and I had just come home from an afternoon at the river. The skin on our cheeks and shoulders was taut and freckled with sun. My calves and hamstrings burned from the perilous hike up the steep rock cliffs that led to our own private oasis on the sun-baked river bank. We drove home in my shaky 1988 Honda Prelude, windows down blasting DC Talk and dancing carelessly, free. (Even now I'm not ashamed of my love for DC Talk)
At home we ravaged the kitchen for ice cold sodas—Cherry Pepsi for him, Diet Pepsi for me—still in our bathing suits.
“Aly, let’s make a cake,” Cameron declared as he flashed me his dimpled smile that gets him out of chores and punishment, even when he’s as guilty as a child caught sneaking cookies before dinner.
“Okay,” I conceded, not that it took much convincing.
“We don’t have cake mix,” he looked at me with the eyes of a wounded animal, but I already knew how to save the day.
“We could go to Mike’s,” I suggested. Mike’s was the convenience store right down the hill from us. We used to ride our bikes down to purchase candy bars for ourselves and milk for our mom. It hadn’t been called Mike’s for a couple of years since an Arab couple took over the store, but it would always be Mike’s to us.
“We should bake the cake for Mom. When does she get home?” Cameron asked me. I was surprised at his spontaneous selflessness and felt a little guilty that I hadn’t thought of it first.
“That way she’ll give us money for it.” No need for guilt, there’s the Cameron I knew.
“We could say it’s a birthday cake, or maybe her half-birthday!” His excitement was growing as he schemed. Meanwhile I made my way over to the calendar, checking if there was some kind of holiday that was close enough to justify baking a cake.
I rushed to my room to throw on some clothes, yelling to Cameron to do the same.
“We’re going to Mike’s, Cameron! It’s Flag Day! Everyone needs a Flag Day cake!”
Five minutes later clad in cut off shorts and old gymnastics t-shirts, my brother and I stood in front of the cake mixes preparing to make the most difficult decision of the summer thus far: what kind of cake is appropriate for a Flag Day celebration?
Our eyes greedily studied the sumptuous labels of rich, moist, luscious cakes, and then stopped scanning at exactly the same time. I turned to Cameron and met his brilliant blue eyes as we both broke into a smile.
“Yellow cake, chocolate frosting,” we said in unison.
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| Flag Day 2010 |
Cameron, today I want to say thank you for being my brother.
For being you.
For your unwavering confidence in me.
For your outrage at my pain.
For the songs you've written me.
For the times we've laughed so hard we've snorted and cried.
For the times when you had every right to be angry at me, to look down on me, to judge me, and instead you scooted into the seat next to me, wiped my tears, and told me you loved me. I have never experienced such grace.
For the love of words and poetry and creativity that we share.
For trusting me with your scribbled journal entries and half-formed songs.
For guarding the scribbled bits of my heart that I've shared with you.
For the joy you bring me when I see you perform, your eyes alive and your heart on fire.
For the Flag Day cakes.
You play a leading role in my love story with God and my journey to love myself. You are an unwarranted fit of compassion in my life.
Happy Birthday, you butthead. Enjoy your yellow cake and chocolate frosting.
P.S. I have an older brother who has greatly shaped and blessed my life as well. He will get a tribute on November 1st, his birthday.