T.S. Tuesday: On Wanting Things
“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.”
― T.S. Eliot
I'm reminded of a story, a parable of a persistent friend who does not give up on what he wants.
"Jesus said to them, 'Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." Luke 11:5-10
Wait a minute? Ask anything? Want anything? Even if it's my fault I'm ill-prepared to take in a friend at midnight, I can still ask for bread repeatedly, obnoxiously? And Jesus goes so far as to make this the example for prayer.
I have a problem with wanting things. Well, not a problem with wanting things, but a problem with feeling guilty for wanting things. I don't believe I'm allowed to want something unless it's world peace or the end of poverty or the well being of someone else. I'm not allowed to want something just for me.
I also get wrapped up in thinking that it's somehow my fault that I don't have it in the first place--like the man who wasn't ready to care for his traveling friend without a neighbor's assistance. I can't ask for it because I should have handled it on my own. I believe I'm left to handle it on my own.
And when good things happen--things I wanted--I question how much was God and how much was my "bad enough?"
The fulfillment of a selfish desire. I still feel guilty.
How is that freedom? How is that basking? Wasn't it God who made my heart and its desires? Isn't it God who wants to see me thriving and fulfilled? Who wants to give me joy?
Why do I have such a hard time believing He wants good things for me? Why do I have such a hard time accepting the good things? Or an even worse time asking for good things?
God, I know you know the desires of my heart. You placed them there. You knit them into the fabric of my being. I ask for wisdom in distinguishing your prompting from my selfishness. And I ask for grace when I confuse them.
I ask for humility to use the gifts you've given--the things I've wanted--to serve and bless others, to bring your Kingdom.
I ask for the courage to want something bad enough that it just might become possible. And I ask for the humility to give thanks both for the desiring and the fulfilling.
Amen.
T.S. Tuesday: Shall
In my writing this week about the God of movement and transformation and transfiguration, one of my favorite T.S. Eliot lines has been illuminated.
Believe me.
This. is. ground. breaking.
These words are a part of me. They flow involuntarily from my lips, like curse words and Help-me-Jesuses from the mouths of the shocked and endangered.
My favorite phrase from all of Eliot’s poetry (and that's saying something) has been transformed.
“And so the darkness shall be the light
And the stillness the dancing.”
I noticed a new word the other day.
The darkness SHALL be the light.
Shall—like, not yet.
Not yet.
That's not how I pictured it. With Eliot’s poetic prowess, his omission of the second “shall be” in the phrase “The stillness the dancing,” stillness and dancing became one in my mind. The words interchangeable in the syntax; the images interchangeable in my mind.
The phrase evokes a sense of darkness = light. Stillness = dancing.
But that’s not what Eliot says.
Darkness BECOMES light.
Stillness BECOMES dancing.
As Ann Voskamps puts it in One Thousand Gifts, they are transfigured.
“Darkness transfigures into light, bad transfigures into good, grief transfigures into grace, empty transfigures into full.”
Darkness transfigures into light. Stillness transfigures into dancing.
Darkness ---> Light
Bad ---> Good
Grief ---> Grace
Empty ---> Full
Stillness ---> Dancing
Eliot’s not calling us to pretend that we see things we don’t or to imagine that our motionless bodies are boogie-ing. But to anticipate. To be patient.
Because “the darkness SHALL be the light and the stillness the dancing.”
And this, this is comforting.
T.S. Tuesday: More Than Enough
I’m back to reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. So today is my Voskamp/Eliot mashup, if such a thing is possible.
I huddle in my sheets, drinking my coffee as I read,
“I awake to I AM here. When I’m present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In His embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still…and holy.
Here is the only place I can love Him.”
When I say,
I don’t want this day
I don’t want this moment
I don’t want these tasks or this conversation or this job
I am saying, I don’t want this God.
This I AM that is present in the moment. That is Himself the present tense.
I start. I flinch. My coffee jolts.
Is that what I’m saying?
When I reject the present, I reject the I AM.
The I AM in the moment.
He is present in every one. In every moment.
My very breath proof of His presence.
I flash to Eliot, a phrase from Burnt Norton that caught my heart many years ago: “Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs.”
I am the unwholesome and He is the wind. In and out. In and out. In the rhythm of I AM.
All day I try to embrace the moment. I really try. I write notecard reminders. I consecrate my desk and my space and my tasks.
Dissatisfaction oozes in.
They can’t occupy the same space: gratitude and discontent.
I can only see the NOT ENOUGH.
Ann has a cure for this too.
She recounts the story of Jesus feeding the masses with the not enough of loaves and fishes. A phrase jumps out to her, this woman “sleuthing for glory.” She sees right there in the text that before the miracle, before the full bellies, before the multiplication of the not enough, HE GAVE THANKS.
She writes,
“Gave thanks…I’d missed it and all of my life?
I’d never considered those two words, the bridge words there in the middle, the crossing over that took the not enough and made it enough.”
Gave thanks.
Counted gifts.
But, I protest, I can’t give thanks until I know what the future holds. Thankfulness is bondage to complacency. Saying things are okay right now ensures certain paralysis, right?
I am born to move and grow and learn and leave. Where does thanks fit in?
I don’t give thanks because I feel this moment, this circumstance, is not enough.
But wait. Isn’t that what Ann just said? The moment of not enough is precisely when Jesus gives thanks.
“Jesus embraces his not enough…He gives thanks…And there is more than enough.”
Later that day I am at the beach. Saved by daylight savings and one more hour of sun and surf and life. I run, I splash, sand wedges its stubborn way into my shoes. Children erupt in squeals of cold and glee, emerging from the emerald waves with strands of shimmering seaweed.
I reach a doggy beach painted with doggy paw prints with doggy yips and doggy paddles under a piercing blue sky of endless doggy summer. I stop my body, but my breath pants on, the wind in and out of unwholesome lungs.
And at last I gasp, give thanks, “It is more than enough.”
I am born to move and grow and learn and leave. This gratitude in motion is second nature. It's the sedentary thankfulness that will require more discipline.
Today I write more notecards. I consecrate my desk and space and time once again. Calm in my-not-so-ergonomically-designed desk chair, I force myself to notice my quiet breaths: wind in and out of unwholesome lungs.
And give thanks, waiting for the more than enough.