Thursday, March 30, 2006

A Bad Analogy

From this year's VBS curriculum:
  • "Signs of a covenant [...] are like a flannelgraph—a concrete, real picture to us of a spiritual truth."
  • "The Lord's Day is another 'flannelgraph' from God" [italics in the original].

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

On Trust

"You can't go through life thinking that everyone you meet will one day let you down," Danny Glover's character says in Angels in the Outfield.

Yet our experiences constantly prove that people are not to be trusted. They will lie to your face and defend themselves for it vigorously afterwards—it wasn't really a lie because everyone says such-and-such in this-or-that situation. It wasn't a lie because everyone knew it wasn’t true. It was a lie, but it wasn't a big deal.

Every lie is a big deal. Every exaggeration, every omission, every error of speech, every careless word is a huge deal. ("But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." – Matthew 12:36-37)

Seen in this light, "everyone does it" is not only an invalid excuse, it is a greater condemnation. There is no hope that anyone will ever be worthy of trust.

"Do not trust in princes,
In mortal man, in whom there is no salvation."
~~ Psalm 146:3

"As it is written, 'THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.'"
~~Romans 9:10-12

Have you ever felt the weight of that statement? Not even one is anything but useless. Not him, not her, not you, and certainly not I.

I cry out, with the disciples, "Then who can be saved?" And I receive the words they heard, the words that put them in their proper place and at the same time showed them the perspective they had been missing: "With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:25-26).

"How blessed is the man who has made the LORD his trust,
And has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood."
~~ Psalm 40:4

We are all proud. We all lapse into falsehood. People are not to be trusted—nor are they meant to be. In the end, there is only one worthy of trust, and only when we are trusting Him as we should can we see the deceit and failures of others and of ourselves in their proper perspective.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

I don't want to be such a trouble....

As usual, I have a nasty cough hanging on after the cold. Actually, I never know if it's just a cough hanging on or if it's turning into something worse.

Yesterday, I was thinking that it would have been much easier in the 19th century, when I could just label it "consumption." So that's what I'm calling it. I'm consumptive. I need people to come over and tuck the piano cover around my legs and perhaps start crying as they contemplate how much I mean to them.

I've always been more of a Jo March than a Beth. But the Brontes were all strange and moody, and they got to have consumption, right? Clearly an angelic temperment is not a prerequisite. So it could be consumption after all.

Now, where did that piano cover go?

Thursday, March 23, 2006

On Real Life Subtext

I love subtext. It adds a richness to all art forms. I am adept at ferreting out subtext in novels, plays, and movies of all kinds. I can tell from a glance what a character on a TV show is thinking of another. I can write a scene or a poem that means more than what it says, so that other lovers of the art form can have the fun of detecting the hidden meanings. As far as fictional worlds go, I am a master of the art of subtext.

Then there is the real world.

Subtext in the real world is a fish of an entirely different feather. I had an epiphanic moment while watching Peter Jackson's King Kong. There is a scene in which the (human) hero of the movie gives the heroine a play he has written for her. She asks why he would write a play for her. He says, "It's in the subtext." It was a very clever and witty thing to say from a literary standpoint, but I found myself thinking, "She has no idea what you're talking about." It finally hit me, after all the years I've known that I try to read people like books, that I have virtually NO sense of subtext in the real world.

I have often been guilty of reading subtexts into others--assigning motivations and anticipating future actions based on the slightest "evidences." I have often been guilty of expecting people to read my subtext--seeing myself as nice and easy to understand.

The truth is, I have very little notion of what most people are thinking, and most people tell me that I am incredibly complex and confusing to them. Problem? Yes, but not the problem I used to think it was. The problem is not that nobody understands me. The problem is not that I don't understand anybody else. The problem lies in the unconscious paradigm I had set up that human beings are meant to understand each other and that it is devastating if they do not.

We can never know each other as intimately as we ourselves want to be known. We can never even fully grasp our own thoughts or motivations. Full understanding of anything is solely the provence of God, and feeling frustrated when our attempts to discern motivations fail is to have lost sight again of our place in the order of things. We tried to understand. We failed. God knows all things. Glory be to God.

Giving up the notion that we can expect to be understood by others is freeing in another way. We can stop dancing around subjects, hoping that somehow someone will catch up with what we mean. We can be direct, speaking the truth in love (always that crucial prepositional phrase!).

Giving up the relentless pursuit of subtext in real life is giving up part of the defensive armor we cling to. If we have been crucified with Christ, and if therefore it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us, we do not need to protect ourselves. In fact, protecting ourselves is often contradictory to our purpose.

God has provided all the armor we will ever need. And all the understanding, too.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Drama Queen

Sunday night a friend and I were discussing how you can't always fully take us seriously when we're whining about stuff because we're both overdramatic. I'm thinking about that conversation today as I'm dying (e.g. I have a cold). I am sighing deeply and making little pitiful moany noises and snuffling and sighing again.

Then there is a part of me that goes into Impartial Observer mode and shakes her head and rolls her eyes and sort of laughs at me just a little bit (in a friendly way), and the other part of me catches her doing this and says, rather sheepishly, "Oh. I'm doing it again, aren't I?"

"You think?" says Impartial Observer.

"Is it bothering you?"

"Not really--it's sort of funny. Just remember while you're hamming it up that it's sort of funny, because..."

"...I have a tendency to take myself too seriously. I know."

In summary: I'm sort of miserable today, and it's sort of amusing me.

Sometimes I feel like my entire life is a performance, for myself if not for others. (You can take the girl out of the theatre, but you can't take the Drama Queen out of the girl.) I'd like feedback on how many other people do this or know people (besides me) who do this...you know, the whole "performing and then realizing you're performing" in real life thing.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Soft Touch

I confess, Lord,
while I’ve asked you
to tear this away
to rip me open
to shred my failings
to attack my weak places
to batter my heart
three-personed God
what I haven’t asked
is for gentle grace
for compassion
for pity
for a kind embrace
for sacrificial love
because those
are the hard things
and I was just trying to make this all
easier for you.

I wait, Father,
for you to do
the impossible.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Happiness is....

  • Finishing your list of things to do
  • Having newly clean pajamas and sheets at the same time
  • Spending time with friends, even if they are friends on a TV show (I think Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is my favorite show of my whole life)
  • Downloading "The Picard Song" and having it on your computer for whenever you want to watch it: http://www.sims99.com/movie_details.php?dir=47_Sims&id=2407 (aside: Geekiness is watching this song and thinking, "Cool! I wish I could do that!")
  • Looking forward to 10 hours of sleep and waking up without an alarm clock

Hm. I can check off most of those things. So on a scale from 1-10, with 10 being "euphoric" and 1 being "immediate intervention needed," I think I'm in the 7-8 range. Somewhere around "pleasantly and comfily content."

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Everyone Falls In Love

I wonder—if everyone wrote out a list of people they had been romantically drawn to throughout their lifetimes, would most of the names on the list belong to fictional subjects?

First of all, you have straight-up fictional characters. Mr. Darcy, Clark Kent, Julian Bashir, etc. (Are women more likely than men to fall for a character from a novel? Are women more likely to fall for fictional characters in general?) In some cases, you have fictional characters who may have been written by people imagining their perfect match. Interesting concept.

Secondly, you have celebrities, people viewed from a great distance. These people are often very good-looking, or very talented, and as such are quite probably good people who, if they only knew, had a soulmate sitting alone at a computer screen surfing for pictures to put on their screensavers.

Finally, of course, you have the fictionalized "real" person, someone you construct elaborate fantasies around and who generally turns out to be someone very different. I wonder if people who majored in things like science or math have as much trouble with fictionalizing people as those of us who majored in English and theatre do.

Do lots of people have really long lists? If you actually wrote down all the names you could remember, would you see patterns? And would the patterns be a sign of what you need, or what you need to avoid?

I don't know about the first two, but I strongly suspect that for that last one, the answer...is no.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

"You are the storm that calmed my soul"

I am taking my life into my own hands by posting during a thunderstorm. At least, as much as I can take my life into my own hands. Which is, mercifully, not at all.

Throughout history, the sound of thunder has reminded people of the voice of the Lord. Now, I know that thunder is the sound made when air is super-heated and expands rapidly, blah, blah, blah, long involved explanation that doesn't inspire me at all (although I'm sure meteorologists can see the glory of God in ways I can't, because I know my brother gets excited about the glory of God when he is studying molecular pathways). But all of that scientific explanation--it's not what thunder is, but only what it is made of, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis. And heavy rain and loud thunder remind me of the power of God. Even when the thunder is loud and scares me. Maybe more then, because it reminds me that this isn't a cuddly God, but one with deadly serious power. And this is the God who calls me His child. So sometimes thunderstorms can be scary, but somehow they are a comforting scary.

God is so good. This weekend I had a really great conversation with a friend, and I had opportunities to speak up in the youth group meeting, and at both times I was able to speak from the wisdom God has given me through some of the trials He has sent into my life. In the first case, as the conversation ended my friend said, "It's good to know I'm not the only one who feels like this." And I hung up and this bit from Esther was running through my head: "Perhaps it was for this very hour...." God knows why everything happens to me, and it's discipline. Unlike running, which is a discipline I've imposed on myself with a clear goal (to be able to go running with my dad someday and not make him stop every 30 seconds), God's purposes in times of rigorous discipline are not always clear to me. Maybe not often clear. But there are purposes, and He will send ways for me to use the "spiritual muscles" that this training is developing.

But as Susan Felch reminded us today in Sunday School, the Christian life isn't about making progress down a road ("today I am more spiritual than I was yesterday!"). It is about waking up every morning and starting from the same place (nowhere, in and of ourselves), and putting on the same clothes (the armor belonging to God and given to us), and proceeding in complete dependence on God every day. We don't gain self-sufficiency through growth in our faith, we gain God. A far greater gain!

I don't know if this post is coherent. It's late, and I'm tired, and I'm happy because I got more than my daily quota of hugs, which hardly ever happens because I live alone and one of the mega-downsides of living alone is that you pretty much have no physical contact. (This is rough on a touchy-feely theatre type who grew up in a family where on most days going more than an hour without a hug would have been a long time.) And the things that were bothering me so much this afternoon don't really seem important now, which reminds me that the same thing is true on a broader scale, for bigger problems than the laundry machine not working. And I need reminders, because I'm a forgetful person.

I'm still talking.

But God is good! It is always hard to stop talking about it when you really get going!

Monday, March 06, 2006

"Be brilliant. You're brilliant."

Receiving reviews on my fanfiction is one of my favorite things, especially when they are well-written reviews and not just "I loved this! Keep going!" (Although I like those, too.) There is something so satisfying about receiving feedback on something you've written and put out there for everyone to read. Even if what you've put out there for everyone to read is about characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Monk or something. (For the record, in case anyone is confused about this point, Sharona is awesome.) I can't come up with good characters of my own, but I write other people's characters very well. It's a blessing and a curse.

But the reason I'm writing this post is that I have recently received two reviews complimenting me on my "grammer skills." Which makes me pleased and makes me cringe at the same time.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

On what "discernment" really means


At college, we heard a lot about "discernment." Generally, many of my peers used it to justify seeing raunchy movies or listening to profanity-filled music. "Ah, but we're discerning!" they would say. "So we know that behavior/language is wrong." Which always seemed to be bad logic.

Recently, I've been thinking about living in the present, and what that means. How not to hold past sins for which you have repented against yourself, how not to imagine future events and plan your life to meet or avoid them. That sort of thing.

Part of my attempt to live in the present has been trying not to assign motives for anyone ("Oh, so-and-so did this because..."), but just to deal with their direct actions and words. And then at the same time, not to accept anyone else's justification or condemnation of the words and actions of others, because that could be just them reading motives, too. Knowing when to write someone off as well-intentioned but wrong. Knowing that just because someone questions your judgment/motive/actions doesn't mean you're wrong. Being willing to accept correction, but distinguishing that from unfounded/misguided criticism. This is where true discernment comes into play.

In one of my favorite books, Winnie-the-Pooh (or, more properly, The House at Pooh Corner), there is a chapter in which Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet and Rabbit are lost in the forest, and they've been going around and around in circles, and finally Pooh brings this up and Rabbit goes off on his own to prove he could find his way right back to where they are, and of course he gets lost. But then a little later Pooh says to Piglet, "Let's go home," and when Piglet asks how he can know the way, Pooh says his stomach can hear his honeypots calling to it. The line I'm especially thinking of as applicable is: "I couldn't hear them properly before, because Rabbit would talk, but if nobody says anything except those twelve pots, I think, Piglet, I shall know where they're calling from."

If God speaks in a still, small voice, hearing it will not always be easy. We hear the words of others, or the words from our minds, and we are so quick to assume that God is in them. But sometimes discernment lies in stopping our ears to all of the outer and inner voices, for regarding them as the fallible human sounds they are, and for sitting in silence to wait. To wait and to listen, until the day He appears.

Maranatha.

"My soul waits in silence for God only;
From Him is my salvation."
~~~
Psalm 62:1

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

God of Pets

A friend on the CTC "blog-ring" whose name is Beth just had a post about how excited her puppy is when Beth gets home: "She almost breaks through the front door when she sees me. It is just about the most amazing feeling in the world. It makes me wonder if God goes through the same thing when we enter his house."

Of course, we would be the dogs in that metaphor. So as the (local) reigning Queen of Analogies, let's think about pets in general. Can we learn about God from our pets? Well, I have gained a few insights about Him by thinking about pets, so here they are.

  • To start off with Beth's example, we see how excited our pets are when we return, as if they can't stand to be away from us for five minutes. Wouldn't it be great to be that purely excited about the mere presence of God? Wouldn't it be great to want to follow Him around all day, expecting that He will give good things because we trust that He is the kind of person who enjoys giving us good things?
  • God is so marvelously extravagant! He didn't have to create a world that would come to include birds in so many colors or dogs in so many sizes. He didn't have to give "personalities" to animals. He didn't need to make anything cute. He could have made everything monochrome and bland if He wanted to. But He didn't want to. He enjoys His own creativity, and seeing the results of it. So we, too, can enjoy our God-given creativity, and can thank Him for giving us that awesome way to image Him.
  • Sometimes my bird's nails get so long he has trouble walking, and he starts getting caught in the carpet. So I have to trim his nails sometimes, which involves holding him in one hand and trimming the nails with the other hand. Every single time I do it, he squirms around as if I'm going to kill him, or as if I may cut his foot off, even though there is strong evidence that he still has his life and both feet. The squirming always makes the process longer, and quite possibly more painful. Last time we went through this I started thinking about how when things are going "wrong" in my life (i.e. when some situation is causing me pain), I squirm all around and assume that something terrible is happening, when really maybe I need to take a deep breath, look down, and remind myself that (literally and metaphorically) I still have both my feet, and that that says something about the one who is holding me.