Both Scattered and Sacred

You know that feeling when you get the flu and you can’t remember what life was like before sickness took hold and you certainly can’t imagine a life after your symptoms finally leave? These past few days have been flu-like — emotionally, spiritually. 

    Just a few days ago, a distinguished Doctor walked into a waiting room and told my wife, “you’re not going to like this…”

    Just a few days ago, Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas faced tragedies — unimaginable. Life is eternally precious. When life is gone there is cause to mourn, regardless of our stance on the issues or political agendas. 

    Life is eternally precious and I want to be more aware of the lives lost in Bagdad and Bangladesh and Turkey and Baton Rouge and Dallas. I wish I could tell you, honestly, that I’ve properly mourned and prayed for each of those lives, but I haven’t. 

    The truth is I’ve only had the energy to cry with my wife, for my wife. I’ve only had the energy to keep my own head above water. That's the truth however unfortunate it may seem.

    I think I’m a writer. I only say “I think” because, in all honesty, I’m too nervous to actually commit to it. I’m nervous that my story is split in too many different pieces. I have too many loose ends that need to be tied up. I’m worried that my thoughts are too scattered to be coherent. I want to complete something, but I feel incomplete — unfinished. So today, I decided to write, honestly. To write as honestly as I can in the midst of life’s half-seen, barely intelligible scatteredness. And yet, even as I type out the word “scatteredness,” my word processor is desperately attempting to change that word to “sacredness.”

Which is true and I think I needed to remember it.

    As a society, we feast on facts. Political Commentator Ben Shapiro pinned a February 5th tweet saying, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” And the truth is, facts don’t care about your feelings. We fling facts at each other to accomplish our own agendas. In the aftermath of the Dallas shooting spree we asked (even if it was just in our own minds) for the facts. If we are being honest, we asked, “What was the shooter’s race? Was he or she white, black, hispanic, asian or arab?” We asked, “was there religious motivation? Terrorist ties? Criminal past?” We asked these questions because these facts would help us shape our own narrative. We could fling those facts.

    There is a difference between reciting the facts and telling the truth. If we are only concerned about the facts, we can never tell the truth.

    The truth is, I don’t know why my wife has carried the burden of a brain tumor throughout her life. I don’t know if we will need another surgery or not. I don’t know if she will ever be free from pain. But, if I wait for all the facts to come in, I can never tell the truth and if I can’t tell the truth I can’t allow anyone else to join me as a part of the story. If I don’t tell the truth, I am a lone character and an even lonelier man. 

    We’re still waiting for the facts. We’re still waiting to see how much her tumor has grown. We’re still waiting to hear whether of not she will need to get surgery.  We are still holding out hope that she will be made well — physically, emotionally, spiritually.

    We’re still waiting for all the facts to come in from Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas. The truth is we don’t know why these tragedies occurred and we may never know fully. 

    The truth is we don’t know. The truth is we all use facts and figures to advance our own agendas. The truth is we are all blind and broken to varying degrees. The truth is we are both scattered and sacred, simultaneously. We are sinful and redeemed, simultaneously. 

    Sure, we can continue waiting for the facts. We can continue flinging those facts at each other, each fact will land on it’s intended target and it will hurt, because facts don’t care about our feelings. 

    The truth allows us to acknowledge both the scatteredness and sacredness of our feelings. If we tell the truth instead of recite the facts, we can acknowledge that our response to tragedy, whether personal or national, is messy and beautiful. The story is always better when you tell the truth even when the truth is painful. I am eternally grateful Steinbeck favored prose over the Salinas Valley’s spreadsheets. 

    I want to tell the truth. I want people to know that I’m scared and anxious and hopeful and alive all at the same time. I want people to know that I’m mourning tragedy and embracing Grace (both God’s Grace and my wife) with joy — at the same time. G.K. Chesterton said, “Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.” I think, what he meant was that it is possible to tell the truth without all the facts because the truth isn’t a targeted attack to destroy our neighbor. The truth holds the reality of life’s joy and pain together even when they seem furiously opposed. The truth is both scattered and sacred. Both/and not either/or.

    The truth is, I don’t know much. George MacDonald described a character in his book Weighed and Wanting —  "He was a good man, who saw some truths clearly, and used them blunderingly.” And, I think, that is true for most of us. We see some things clearly. We don’t see other things. The facts we know are almost always used blunderingly. Part of telling the truth is admitting that we don’t see some things and that we use the things we do see for our own gain in order to write our own narrative. I am guilty. 

    We are scattered and sacred, simultaneously. We are sinful and redeemed, simultaneously. My deepest hope is to see my wife healed. My deepest hope is to see my country healed. The truth is I don’t know much. The truth is also that I hope amidst the unknown — though we are scattered, we are sacred. 

I don’t know.

early morning light.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭126:5‬ ‭NKJV‬ (via pureblyss)

Friday, Snowstorm.

I love everything about this. (at Valley of the Gods)

I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is-- Christ-- for Christ plays in ten thousand places Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features in men's faces.

Gerard Manley Hopkins || "As Kingfishers Catch Fire"

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION For over twenty years I lived among the mountains. Their rugged summits saluted me every morning. Mountains are usually employed in literature as emblems of immutability. My own experience is quite otherwise. To me they were positively kaleidoscopic. I never saw a mountain look just the same two days running; whilst the fantastic changes that overtook them as I viewed them from different points of the compass were a perennial source of wonder and admiration. It was always worth while seeing the peak from the other side, even if that side were windswept, bleak, and bare. We might prefer the shelter of our own side; but, when we returned, the view of the mountain from the dining-room window was always more satisfying because of our ability to supplement the scene from our newly acquired knowledge of the land beyond the ranges. In this book I have tried to see The Other Side of the Hill " and the other side of other things. We shall probably be glad to get home again and to resume our usual outlook; but we shall at least return to the old home with a new content, and, let us hope, with a few fresh landscapes in the picture-gallery of memory.

Frank W. Boreham  “The Other Side of the Hill”

Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes contented with the thoughts he is thinking and the deeds he is doing - where there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger; which he knows he was meant and made to do.

Phillips Brooks

Don't Neglect The And

Larry Sanders is 6 ft 11 in. He recently walked away from a 44-million dollar contract.

Why do we confuse competency and calling? Why do people walk away from money, power and fame? Why do people, at times, need to "pursue their passion"?

I believe there's a clear and compelling reason that people walk away. It's because you can't walk away from something without walking toward something else. Purpose is something only you can understand. Only you know when it's time to walk away from something. Only you know when it's time to walk toward something else. Maybe your father found purpose in his profession, but that doesn't mean you'll find purpose there. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. You are probably a person of high capability and if you put your mind to something you'll probably get the job done. But, have you ever considered the difference between putting your mind to something and putting your heart to something? In my experience, I've generally put my mind to the things that I don't really want to do. And, it's true, sometimes life calls us to put our head down and push through difficult things, but when I put my heart to something I feel the freedom associated with passion. I find joy even in the most mundane things when my heart is in it.

In this culture of post-modern self-martyrdom many of us have forgotten that it's okay to be happy. We make ourselves miserable because we associate misery with hard work. Believe it or not, when you put your heart to something, your work can be enjoyable. 

Jack London said it best:

"The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. " -{Credo}

Sometimes in order to live we must walk away some things and walk toward other things. Don't waste your days in the self-induced misery of putting your mind to something. Find something worth investing your heart. You won't regret it. 

Maybe it's time to be happy.

“I’m Larry Sanders. I’m a person. I’m a father. I’m an artist. I’m a writer. I’m a painter. I’m a musician. And sometimes I play basketball … Don’t neglect the and, you know? Don’t neglect the and.”

Don't let hate win.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am...

His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive.

|| G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

Letters to Wise Men, Regarding Story

DC:

We all have a story to tell. As the joys and pains of life begin to mingle, I wonder how to most faithfully tell my story. With boldness and caution. With passion and discernment. I am not the Son of Man, I am not the Son of God. I am universal only in so much as I am a product of Grace. But, admittedly, my story is not for everyone. My story was given to me because providence places kindreds in my path who need to hear. Perhaps trusting my story with a quiet whisper is necessary before I stand on stage. Who needs to hear my story? Who should have access to the joy, pain and rest? Who do I invite into my life and who do I keep at a distance? Henri Nouwen offers his best advice below.

The years that lie behind you, with all their struggles and pains, will in time be remembered only as the way that led to your new life. But as long as the new life is not fully yours, your memories will continue to cause you pain. When you keep reliving painful events of the past, you can feel victimized by them. But there is a way of telling your story that does not create pain. Then, also the need to tell your story will become less pressing. You will see that you are no longer there: the past is gone, the pain has left you, you no longer have to go back and relive it, you no longer depend on your past to identify yourself. 

There are two ways of telling your story. One is to tell it compulsively and urgently, to keep returning to it because you see your present suffering as the result of your past experiences. But there is another way. You can tell your story from the place where it no longer dominates you. You can speak about it with a certain distance and see it as the way to your present freedom. The compulsion to tell your story is gone. From the perspective of the life you now live and the distance you now have, your past does not loom over you. It has lost its weight and can be remembered as God's way of making you more compassionate and understanding toward others. 

-Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love

I was intrigued by this passage from Henri Nouwen titled "Tell Your Story In Freedom." I was wondering if you had some thoughts on it. I was comparing it to a quote by George MacDonald from Phantastes, "Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of painful thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill.​"

I'm trying to figure out the place a story has in pain. I think back to the Baal Shem Tov​ (maybe it was him) who said "All I can do is tell the story and that must be enough." And it was enough. It seems that story telling is essential, but is there a way to tell the story that makes it most meaningful both personally and communally?

KP:

"Nouwen is, as always, very discerning and I think here he shows both the prospect of a kind of therapeutic progress that can be made through storytelling and, yet, at the same time, offers a caution about turning it into a panacea for pain. Simply repeating the story can be a form of trauma's lasting effect, but also a refusal by the self to open to new life. His observations ring true as I read them; that is, I recognize them. How far to push them is another question. As therapy itself wagers and gives evidence, we can exhaust traumatic memories and the act of narrating them helps to put them at distance and, at the same time, open us to the new. But to say that this can happen need not imply that it does or can in every instance. Certain traumatic memories become so entangled in the fabric of who we are that they remain inevitably in Nouwen's first example--forever in perfect tense. That may not just be traumatic memory, but what Emil Fackenheim called the memory of root events (and these might be positive as well). When Ellie Wiesel uses the language of a "sufficient" story, I think it is of this kind."

___________________________________________________________

Resolved: To tell my story in such a way that brings new life. To live in the holy present with an awareness of painful past. To faithfully seek a future of restoration.

Resolved: To keep writing new stories.