Tag: paradox

The pixels in the big picture

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Helping families pick out second-hand cutlery and put together almost-matching sets of used living room furniture. Moving heavy boxes of someone else’s stuff until I’m left with sweat-stained armpits and regrets about my business casual decision that morning. Sitting in living rooms drinking tea, or sitting in high-rise law offices downtown—sometimes just observing the legal appointment, other times interpreting for the clients.

My job is an eclectic mixture of activities, many of them strange: I rummage through a cabinet of donated toys, looking for anything that isn’t gendered with an angry facial expression or the color pink, and wrap it for the birthday party we’ll hold that night. Or I sit with a grown woman and make up simple math problems with coins to help her learn to identify Canadian currency so she won’t get fired from her new job as a cashier. I once got lost inside a huge mall after going with a client to pay for another month of cell phone service so we could communicate about her appointments.

There are emails and letters to advocate for bank accounts to be opened, for exceptions to be made, for families to be reunited.  There are endless, tedious forms to be filled out for housing and status and permission to work. Sometimes when I make appointments to fill out this paperwork, I end up wondering how much more mindless admin I can stand, but other times the paperwork gets shoved aside for impromptu marriage counseling, or the sacred gift of a deeply-held story.

Sometimes, the absurdity of my work is in the wild swings between the momentous and the mundane. There is the day when we receive news that one of the refugee claimants whose deportation we had fought so hard to prevent had died halfway around the world. Tears. Staring at the floor. Feeling that powerless sadness and rage all over again. Ten minutes later, I am in my supervisor’s office discussing registration papers for a contraband kitten—the family it belongs to has already lost so much, and I am not about to let them lose the one cuddly thing that is going right in their lives because of technicality.

In this job, the big picture is the very exciting aim of extending radical welcome by journeying with people through the refugee claims process and through their first few months or years of creating a new life in a strange country. Close-up, this picture is made up of a billion tiny pixels of day-to-day, not-very-significant-feeling details. It’s made up of repetition. Of boredom, even. But I believe in the big picture, and there are times when I get to see the whole image reflected in the microcosm of a single moment or conversation. Those are the flashes of light that remind me where all of this is headed, and drum into my soul the long-resisted truth that small things with great love is the only greatness possible.

 

photo credit: brianfagan <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/52231465@N06/28615442915″>Week 30: Patterns</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

A death in the neighborhood

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There’s so much more I want to write about the things that go on in the lives of my neighbors and in my own life, but sharing it in short bursts online seems an inappropriate avenue. It would take a book to convey the complexities of all our lives, tangled up as we are in each other’s stories, and to explore all the things I am learning and unlearning in this wild, beautiful, and terrifying place. I intend to write that book someday, after more of the dust has settled and I am able to understand my experiences more clearly than I can today. But for now I’ll have to settle for sharing the soul of what’s on my mind, without sharing the details of the stories that have brought it about.It’s sad and confusing to see a life end with no apparent redemption in the arc of its story.

The bulk of my time and energy since has gone into being with those who are still alive and must carry on, but the suddenness of death in our neighborhood—again—turns my thoughts toward the reality that whether we die unexpectedly or old and boney, there is no surprise in the eventual end of life for each one of us. We are finite creatures, and death is unavoidable. I so often approach life as a project: I plan out the arc of my life, what I will accomplish, where I will go, who I will become. I try to assume control by planning, scheduling, keeping busy. But then I am reminded how quickly grief and loss could change my life completely, stealing away the people I love most, taking away the relationships and routines that make up the day-to-day fabric of my existence. I am sobered by the reality that all of this is beyond my control, and in the end life is not so much what I create for myself as it is what comes to me, and how I choose to respond.

All this meditation on death isn’t intended to be morbid. It’s actually a reflection on life: in light of the impending obliteration of all my worldly ambitions and activity, what is really worth my attention and energy in the meantime? What will remain after that final deconstruction of everything I have sought to accomplish and become? No status, recognition, or accumulation of possessions or material comforts will matter. Only the actions which I join to God’s larger action in the world will last, because God will continue to act in the world after I am gone, just as He was doing before my birth. Joining God in loving, serving, working for justice, and promoting truth is what will continue to matter beyond my lifetime. This is also what grows my own soul, and what prepares me for my continuing journey toward God, beyond the expiration date of this temporary body.

This doesn not mean that our bodies and spirits are entirely separate from one another, or that “spiritual” things are more important than “material” ones—God’s love is the cornerstone of the whole universe, and it’s the basis of everything else that is. In fact, the resurrection that Jesus talks about includes our bodies–scripture talks about God’s plan for healing and restoring the earth and raising us to live again within it, not taking us away to live somewhere else as disembodied spirits. So the warmth of the morning sun on my neck, the chirping of birds in the trees, the steaming cup of coffee in my mug, the laughter that I share with friends, and the gratifying soreness I feel in my muscles after exercise are all good and important things. They are gifts from this loving God who is the author of Life itself, and in whom everything lives, moves, and has its being. Life was God’s idea—sex and good food and sand between our toes.

But the trick to really enjoying all of these material gifts is being able to let them go. Detachment from each of these pleasures as an end in itself is the only way to embrace the Giver himself. It is also the only way that we will be able to experience the full breadth of existence, instead of constantly struggling to avoid suffering, grief, and loss (which are also gifts to us, if we have eyes to see). Spiritual teachers from the time of the Buddha, or probably earlier, have taught that life is suffering, and they have sought to free themselves from that suffering. But Jesus takes things a step further by turning suffering itself into a means of liberation: his suffering and death have transformed those things into sacred tools which can serve our good. Death has no power to destroy us, if the growing weakness and eventual defeat of our bodies gives us the chance to learn at an accelerated pace important that have eluded us throughout our lives. At the moment of death, we are no longer able to maintain our beauty, health, strength, usefulness, or whatever else we used throughout our lives to try to earn love, or to perpetuate the illusion that we were independent and in control. Freed from all these things, we have the chance to learn for the first time that we are loved apart from any of it—loved for ourselves alone.

Paradoxically, the path to authentic life takes us smack-dab through the middle of death. This is the mystery of resurrection: not simply life or death, but crucifixion and rebirth. Life has the final word, God has the final victory… but He has won by way of passing through defeat. This reflection on the transience of my life makes me long to move at last from compulsion to contemplation; from building a life and creating myself to accepting life and surrendering to the process of uncovering the self which God has already created: the one that so often gets lost or obscured behind the images I project to the world, the coping strategies I employ, and the things I strive to do or become.

 

Only One Thing is Necessary

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Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.
Luke 10:38-42

          I’ve usually identified with Martha in that famous story—despite her unflattering portrayal as a complaining, somewhat self-righteous woman whose concern for superficial domestic details distracts her from Jesus.  More recently, I even started to question the moral of the story. Fine and well for Mary to soak up Jesus’ wisdom while her responsible, hardworking sister takes care of the rest, but really—what would the three of them have eaten for lunch if both sisters had been passively basking in their guest’s company? To broaden the sweep of my question, exactly who is supposed to take care of starving children and trafficking victims and do something about all of the injustice in the world if we’re all just contemplative hermits or church people who spend more time singing praise choruses and studying the Bible than we do engaging with the world outside our religious enclave? Maybe now a few others can identify with my defense of Martha.

But in response to these questions has come the gentle whisper that perhaps this story is not the simple dichotomy of practical action vs. pious devotion that is often taught, on Sunday school felt boards as well as in sermons intended for adults. I’m beginning to recognize the Mary in myself, too—the part of me that does want to just sit with Jesus and be still and be loved. And it occurs to me that the Mary in the story might have felt the same ambivalence and tinge of guilt while she sat there as I do. Maybe when Martha appealed to Jesus for some help with her “lazy” sister, her accusation tapped into that inner guilt and caused Mary to expect a rebuke from Jesus rather than the reassurance he gave her that she was justified in her stillness.  Perhaps Jesus’ response was a surprise to both sisters, rather than being a rebuke to either of them.

The more I reflect on it, the more I become convinced that the condition of distraction or of presence with Jesus is much more a matter of the heart’s posture than it does with external activity. It’s clear from Jesus’ life and teachings that there is a lot of important action that needs to be engaged in—he spent himself on behalf of the poor, healing the sick and shepherding the harassed crowds of the oppressed. But the equanimity with which he was able to meet both acceptance and rejection; the infinite patience and compassion he demonstrated for the mobs of needy people that followed him wherever he went—all of this leads me to believe that even between his times of obvious solitude, Jesus never really left his Father’s caring embrace. He was somehow fully immersed in the suffering of the world while managing to sit at the feet of God the whole time. He offered love, acceptance, and peace to the people around him out of the vast supply of what God was breathing into him on continual basis.

I feel attracted to this possibility growing in my own life. I hear Jesus’ invitation to sit contentedly with him in the hours of waiting in crowded hospitals and the scenes of violence in my neighborhood as well as in the quiet moments of prayer in the morning with my door closed. Paradoxical as it sounds, I believe Jesus when he says that he has called me to live in this crazy place and to do nothing but sit at his feet. It may take more time of focused sitting before we’re able to multitask with all the buzz of the realm of action and external events, but that inner stillness is the only thing that will sustain our action over time and give it significance. No point in running ourselves into the ground if we’re forgetting the one thing that is necessary.

Why Do I Keep Referring to God as “She”?

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          Recently many of you have noticed that my language around God has changed. A couple of people took the initiative to ask me about it and were brave enough to voice their concern—thank you! I’m glad to hear what’s on your minds so that I can respond to those questions here.

Right there at the beginning of the Biblical narrative in Genesis 1:27, we are told that both male and female were created in God’s image. This leads me to believe that as Creator of both femininity and masculinity, God both includes and transcends the categories of gender entirely and to describe God as either male or female would be inaccurate and incomplete. So, my purpose in referring to God with feminine language is to draw attention to the feminine attributes of God that are often left out of our discussions about God in order to correct a lopsidedly male image of God and encourage a fuller, more accurate picture. I have no problem referring to God as He—males are most certainly made in His image! Likewise I have come to feel equally comfortable referring to God as She—because females are most certainly made in Her image.

The most common metaphor for God throughout scripture is that of a Father, but there are also metaphors which convey God’s tender love through the image of a Mother. When Jesus is weeping over Jerusalem, he says that if they had been willing, he would have gathered the people under his wings like a mother hen does with her chicks. Psalm 17:8, Psalm 57:1, Isaiah 42:14, Isaiah 66:13, and Isaiah 49:15 all invoke feminine descriptions of God as a mother bird, a woman in childbirth, a nursing mother, or a woman comforting her child. Both fatherhood and motherhood, however, are earthly concepts: they’re too small to contain the fullness of God’s being, but they can be useful symbols to teach us about God’s character in the same way that Jesus’ parables use symbols and stories from daily life to convey deeper truths. Other metaphors used to describe God throughout scripture include a jealous lover, a vine with branches, a mother hen, a king, and a sacrificial lamb, just to name a few. All of them are helpful and descriptive in some way, but none of them could stand alone to fully describe who God is.

So, I am not claiming that God is female, but merely suggesting that changing up our language may save us from falling into the habit of thinking that God is male. God is both/and, not either/or.

Pursuing the Kingdom of God: The battle without and the battle within

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          Andy and I are in Colorado Springs for a few days after a twelve-hour drive from northern Arkansas, where we spent three weeks with his family.  We haven’t been doing much, besides sitting around talking with people and trying to keep warm around wood-burning stoves, heating vents, and fireplaces.  But these weeks have left a lot of space for reflection, and He seems to be raising new questions and insights in our minds all the time.  At this point, we have far more questions than answers, but here is a bit of what’s been on our minds.
What a paradox it is that we as humans dread and crave God’s judgment at the same time.  We dread His judgment when we call to mind our own guilt and shame over wrongful actions, evil thoughts, and selfish desires.  We crave His judgment against those who have wronged us or who have wreaked havoc on our society by perpetrating horrible crimes like rape, murder, or other kinds of heartless oppression against innocent, vulnerable people like women, children, and the elderly.  I have been recognizing these two impulses within myself recently: burning indignation against injustice, and yet thankfulness for God’s mercy when I soberly realize the roots of those outward expressions of evil within myself– pride, anger, jealousy.  In Vancouver, it was easy to feel outrage towards a man picking up a desperate woman who was prostituting herself on a street corner, or towards busy shoppers who avoided eye contact with the panhandlers on the sidewalk.  But if I am honest, then I must admit how easily the impulse to pursue what I want ahead of the best interests of others rises within my own spirit, or the way that apathy often finds fertile soil in my mind.  In pursuing the Kingdom of God, we must be willing both to fight for justice in the world, and to courageously face the evil within ourselves and invite God’s purifying flame to test our hearts, separating out the wheat from the chaff.  After all, it is only the pure in heart who will see God.