Bringing Faith to Life
Archive for July, 2014
“I am what I do”
0Perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say “I am what I do.” ~ C.S. Lewis
It’s not what you do, it’s…
0“It’s not what you do; it’s who you become. That’s what you take into eternity. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.” ~ Dallas Willard, as quoted by John Ortberg in Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You
This is problematic for the run-of-the-mill human being who, on a good day, can control what he does but has a great deal of difficulty, over any number of days, controlling what he becomes.
So how does one live like that? How can we decide what to do that will “become” us? make more of us? forge us ahead in the God-intended direction?
I’m not sure. And I know completely that I can’t know that for you. But deciding ahead of time that I can’t know is completely defeating. That prevents me from imagining or wondering or asking. What a shame it would be if that, reluctance to ask, defined my relationship with the one who has my eternal destiny in mind.
Perhaps we don’t ask because we don’t want to know. If we knew we would have to do something about the answer. Much safer to stay in the dark and stay quiet.
What if I believed that asking was my entry into becoming? Asking. Not answering. Not knowing. Not doing or not doing. Of course, there would be the responsibility of complying with the word I heard when I asked.
Do I have that kind of courage?
I can always ask to be brave, or at least braver.
Parched and weary, but well-worn
0O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water.
~ Psalm 63:1
Somehow I find it comforting that this cracked trench has been made so by the many who have trod this path before me.
Kids are amazing
0Kylie is 11 and likes “My Little Ponies.” She tells me their names and describes who they are and what they like to do. She’s trying to decide which one to buy when they go to the mall today, so she rattles off their names: Twilight, Fluttershy, Applejack, Rainbow, Rarity and Pinkie. She has narrowed it down to two contenders. Oh, and she also plays a mean game of soccer.
“My friend told me ‘if I’m an athlete, I have to be tough. I shouldn’t like girly ponies,'” Kylie said. “They’re my soft side.”
“You’re like a matryoshka doll,” I said. “Got a tough outside, but the doll underneath is softer.”
Kylie didn’t know what matryoshka dolls were but she had seen nesting dolls that, when 
you lift the largest outer one, you discover others underneath of gradually decreasing size.
“I like to think we are made like this,” I said, thinking myself very wise. “We probably spend our whole lives discovering what is at our center.”
“Oh, I already know what’s there,” she said. “Kindness and gentleness.”
Gulp. Been schooled by an 11 year old. Fruit of the spirit, of course. Reminds me why God keeps giving me these kids. I got a lot to learn.
Thanks, Kylie.
PS She picked Applejack because she loves apples.
Guardrails for the Christian Life
110 years
Early on, the life of faith looks beautiful in the distance, but very confining up close. So many rules. So many prohibitions. So many boundaries. But the guardrails prevent us from experiencing the consequences of the natural laws during our early learning.
But our persistence pays off. Maturity is unconcerned with guardrails, only the beauty in the distance. We have one who guards before and behind, to the right and to the left.
“I have come, not to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them.” ~ Matthew 5:17
Burqa Baby
010 years
The woman sitting near me is a mother. I know because she is carrying a child with beautiful dark eyes. The eyes are all I can see.
Tiny hands wrap around mother’s waist. Tiny toes spread as far as they can, brushing against each other in their suspension.
This gaze somehow haunts me. Burqa baby’s eyes don’t return my smile and her hands do not return my wave. I am the other. This mother is engrossed in her doings: screen, journal, computer. She doesn’t see me staring – or even snapping a photo. I hesitate and then, secretly, I reach over to touch these tiny pink toes. Just to offer a moment of touch.
Are we so engaged in our media, entranced by it’s siren song, that we carry our children like packages on our backs? Do we know we are denying them interaction with their world while we enjoy artificial interaction in our own?
A Reflection so perfect, it fools us
0Is it an optical illusion?
I look at the branch as it curls upward, or does it curl downward? Wait, that is its reflection. The bent and twisted branch arches and bends, its sprouts excursioning just a bit and one just like it follows suit, its mirror image. Still water does this. It makes a fool of you. Were I not so clever, I might reach for the wrong branch.
Were I not so clever.
But that branch below, so very near the surface, must see its fellow above. Unless there are ripples or wind or waves, unless the bright sun blinds it or silt buries it, that lake-locked branch must think it’s the real branch. In the stillness it might wonder at that impostor who dares to look down and mock him. Surely, he, there under the water is the real branch. Weighty, yes, damp, yes, sometimes dark and lonely and tumultuous. Real must fend for his life while that sunny, dim and oddly dimensional branch goes missing every time.
On this still day, in these still waters, when the sun is low on the horizon, does that watery branch wonder at his fickle image above? If I came up out of the water, arose and shook off the weight that presses me down, what might I be? Is life as I know it not all of life? Is there more above the surface? Is that other branch real? Could it be even more real than I am?
Perhaps heaven is like that. We think the murk and mud and tumult we are under is real but we get a glimpse – in the stillest moments – of something that mirrors our existence. Maybe, if we were just pulled from under the water, lifted above the abyss, we would see that it is real. Brighter, broader, fuller in dimension and grander in color, it would be the glorious real we thought we were all along.
We are but a dim reflection, indistinguishable by the naked eye. It is such a human mistake to be taken in by such an optical illusion. Only in perfect stillness, at rising and setting of sun, do we glimpse real. Fully real.
Funny things happen when you sit in stillness and look from the lake shore. Which branch am I?
The Lake and I played today
010 years
The Lake and I played today.
We played peek-a-boo.
We played hide and seek.
We played with crayons, mostly orange.
We played red light, green light.
We played follow the leader.
Which started me singing. Step by step, you lead me. I will follow you all of my days. So touched, was I by this Mom who peeked out from the bushes and, seeing only me, thought it safe to cross. She shuttled the brood – mostly grown – out ahead of her, and then sidled past to lead them down the grassy hill to the stream below.
I am that mother.
Across the planks of that wooden walkway I jogged and sang in her honor until entering the path through the wrought-iron gate marked, “Asbury Trail.” I slowed, and stepped, and looked to the Lake.
There it was, playing. 
Reflecting the arch of a blackened branch. How lovely, but really not remarkable, but for its moment. It became the still waters of psalmists, long gone and modern day. This moment.
A graying man walking toward me, his little furry friend on a leash, smiled in my direction. I, feeling sheepish because he had first looked to where I was aimed and snapping a photo. Nothing remarkable about that spot or that shot his eyes said. I know, I wanted to say. Just illustrating a psalm here. Having a private conversation in this amphitheater filled with years and tears spent in weathered times, hope and peace, gathered in all times.
I’ve written a book, can you illustrate it for me? the Lake had begged. I obliged. But it was not the Lake who asked. It was the lake’s Keeper.
I’ve written a book, can you illustrate it for me? whispered the Keeper. Not with camera or crayons, simpler still. I want you to illustrate my book. You be the artist for my clay.
I rounded the bend and traversed the goose-poop-laden asphalt of the parking lot. I hurdled and jumped, hopped and cut right and left, till I stood face to face with the Lake. That psalm still churning.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Cup overflows…cup overflows… I’m stuck on cup overflows.
The Lake and I played today.
If peace were a verb…
010 years
Wage Peace
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.~ by Mary Oliver
“Before you know…
0Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing… Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread… ~ Naomi Nye