T.S. Tuesday: A grace of sense and a conversation with Love
[To be shouted in Oxiclean infomercial fashion:]
"Praying to Love offers all the benefits of a life-giving relationship with the Creator of the universe, without any of the pesky “religious” baggage of traditional Christian language. Try it today, no money down. What have you got to lose but your pride?"
I've thought a lot about how to write this blog post. I wanted it to be witty and pithy, angry and abrupt.
I wanted to compare my new age, religious wordplay to the golden-tongued trickery of used car salesmen, excuse me, I mean certified pre-owned vehicles sales associates.
I wanted to reference linguistic terms and demonstrate the sheer magnitude of this revelation in my life through my impressive diction and impeccable metaphors.
But it’s been four years since my last linguistics class, and as much as I’d like to think I was smart enough to market God to myself, the truth is that it happened not by my own intelligence or trickery or marketing skills, but in yet another Fit of Unwarranted Compassion that I can neither explain or claim as my own.
In my memoir, this story will appear in the section after I tell my well meaning Christian friends that, no, I would not like them to pray for me thank you very much and before I, to my own astonishment, began praying myself.
In fact, this was the revelation that first loosed the chains of my dogged dependence on doubt and anger.
On May 31, 2009, I had a revelation, which I wrote in my journal as thus:
May 31, 2009
I have had a revelation: I can now say that I am not completely opposed to maybe someday admitting that I could possibly believe that ...dun, da, da,da...God is Love.
At the time I wrote this entry, I couldn't pray or open the Bible. I could barely go to church without fuming inside.
After a whirlwind semester abroad on what I like to call the “Poverty Tour of Central America,” my faith was ravaged. I had visited multiple city dumps and met with displaced farmers crammed into barrio after barrio filled with burning trash, bloated bellies, and pleading eyes. I stayed with families without electricity or running water in Nicaragua. I daily heard rants and cries from blind and crippled beggars calling out to me on the narrow streets of San Jose, Costa Rica. I listened to mothers and sisters and sons talk about their husbands and fathers and friends that went missing during the Guatemalan civil war. I heard horror stories of violence and desperation. I saw the devastating effects of globalization on small farmers.
I met a lot of people and heard a lot of stories that collided with my squeaky clean and comfortable view of God and the world.
Three years later, I still couldn't reconcile how to pray to a God that allowed children to starve and ignorant consumers to participate in modern day slavery, oppression, and environmental degradation.
I had come to a mental place where I couldn't under any circumstances pray without it meaning in my mind that I didn't care. If I prayed to this God, it would mean the people I met and the stories I heard while abroad were meaningless. It would mean I was a liar and a hypocrite.
But one day in church—don’t ask me why I was still going to church because even now I can’t explain it—I began to think about a God not associated with white, wealthy Americans or prosperity or politics, but a God of Love.
Well, more accurately, out of the jumble of thoughts and ideas and emotions swirling in my mind while I scowled in my seat as an act of willful unparticipation in worship, this revelation popped into my head:
GOD IS LOVE.
A couple weeks earlier I had explained to a friend that I had been experiencing these “fits of unwarranted compassion” that I couldn’t explain. And I told him that “those fits of unwarranted compassion are what I now call God—if I had to put a name to it.”
At church I discovered an even better name for this compassion: love. And isn’t there a verse in the Bible (that I wasn’t reading) that talks about God being love?
I realized I had experienced this compassion, this love, in my life; I just couldn’t call it God.
So what if I changed the name?
What if I prayed not to the God who allows suffering, but to the God who allows joy, who offers hope, and who redeems the pain of his children?
What if I prayed to the God of Love? The God who IS love? What if I prayed to Love?
This momentary revelation literally changed my life; it’s the closest thing I have to a conversion experience.
This revelation meant not only that I could begin to have a conversation with Love (code for ‘begin to pray again’), but also that I could choose Love at any time. And, thinking back, I realized that I had always had the choice to Love. Which meant that Love had always been with me. Even in the dark night of my love story. Even in my questioning of poverty and injustice. Even in my rebellion. Even in my fear that I would never, ever find God again. Love was with me.
And somehow that brought me the freedom and comfort I desperately needed but didn’t think I deserved as an affluent American.
One of my favorite T.S. Eliot phrases (don’t think I forgot the T.S. tie in!) is the term “a grace of sense” from the poem “Burnt Norton.” Not a sense of grace, but a grace of sense. I believe that this revelation was one of those moments.
That day at Coast Vineyard, I was graced with the sense to stop quibbling with semantics and start living and following this Love I’d experienced, that I could no longer deny.
Because, seriously, what did I have to lose but my pride?
Dark Night of the Love Story
Here's my next confession: God hasn't always made me swoon.
My love story with God resembles Pride and Prejudice a little too much for my Elizabethan ego, with me being the sole bearer of the prideful and prejudicial attributes. Here's a little taste of the events leading up to our Trial Separation.
The last night of my semester abroad, I sat alone at the kitchen table. After one of the program facilitators read my class journal—which was littered with f-bombs, doubt, and confusion—he suggested that I take some time to have a DTR with God: “Define the Relationship.” It sounded like a good idea at the time, and the date was set for my last night in Costa Rica. I had actually been nervous as I tiptoed down the narrow hall of the quiet house, journal in hand, half-expecting a miracle as I screeched back the dark wooden chair to sit. I stared into the space across the table from me, as if God was actually sitting there ready to discuss our future and “what went wrong.” We’d talk things over, I’d put Him back in his place, and I would go on with my life, I had hoped.
But I wasn’t talking to God. I didn’t even know if I believed in God. I found it pretty difficult to define the relationship when there wasn’t a relationship in the first place. Instead of a DTR that night, I only found that I couldn’t put God back in a box no matter how hard I tried. I had outgrown my childlike faith and it hurt. In my journal I wrote to the God I was not speaking to, that was not, in fact, seated in the chair across the table from me as much as I wanted him to be:
How can I relate to a God I can’t define? I want to make a list of goals and rules so I don’t feel so aimless, but I don’t even know why I want to be a better person. I can’t just move on from this painful place of uncertainty and anger just because I want to feel better.
I was paralyzed, trapped. I wanted God, but only to appease my guilt and questions, which only spawned more guilt and questions.
My worst fears had come true—I had lost my faith.
That night I drifted off to sleep scared that I would never find or feel God again.
Spoiler Alert: This is not the end. This post is meant to serve as the "get to know the main character" and "introduce the conflict" part of the plot. I am thankful to report that this night no longer falls at the climax of my story.
*Sneaking in some T.S. Eliot when it's not even a Tuesday. Yep, I like him that much.
T.S. Tuesday: How Far is Too Far?
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” T.S. Eliot
This past week (and especially weekend) has been particularly rife with nuggets of words, wisdom, and fits of unwarranted compassion. Every meager attempt I've made to write down these tidbits and stirrings in any coherent, accessible way have ended in writers block. Which, by the way, is a condition I don't even believe exists. More accurately, they've ended in writers procrastination with a hefty dose of divided attention disorder. But more than that, for one of the few times in my life, I am awed speechless, or wordless.
I've been reminded of the immense gift it is to even say the words "God speaks to me." I've been sobered by the weight of that statement. Don't get me wrong, I love being loved (who doesn't?), but I've been reminded of the great responsibility that comes with being loved. The responsibility to receive and respond to that love, to reciprocate.
While I'm usually thrilled to share what I've learned or am learning on this blog, this past week I've been hesitant to commit to writing the many exhortations God has spoken to me. I'm scared to share what God has spoken in fear that I will not hold up my end of the bargain.
The past four years have been a time of basking in God's love (more on this later), and learning to love myself and receive inordinate amounts of grace.
Of course God has still been speaking that love to me, but I also have a greater sense that he's asking me to participate, to give back. Not that I haven't reciprocated or worshiped or served these past few years--I have--but the thing is, I had never felt asked to do it. Everything I have given or expressed has been completely voluntary, an organic response to these fits of unwarranted compassion.
Like the beginning of a dating relationship, I had no expectations for God and he had no expectations for me (at least that's what I told myself). I think we both surprised each other. But what happens when you get to the point where you have to make a commitment? When words like 'compromise' and 'sacrifice' begin to enter the equation?
What if God is asking me to die to this self he has just taught me to love?
Right now it feels like I'm going a little too far. A little too uncomfortable. I have an unease with language like "a first time decision for Christ." Shouldn't we be making decisions for Christ daily, hourly, minutely? My story is more of a weaving of thoughts and ideas and experiences than an Old and New Testament divide.
I have to remind myself that this command is from the same God who wants me to bask in His love. Who in the same breath of the command to die to myself also whispered, "I have good things for you."
I'm scared that as soon as I put expectations on God, he's going to let me down.
But that's not the God I know. That's not the God of Love who taught me to love myself. Who gave me friends and a church community that helped me see his face and his presence in my life and the world around me. That's not the God who loves me whether or not I serve the poor or work at non-profit, shop fair trade organic or don't whine to my mom on the phone.
He's not a God of letdowns, but a God of surprises. Is it really that hard for me to see that he has good things for me?
It's scary, but it's also a privilege. I have dreams of starting a support group for people who struggle with eating disorders. I can think of nothing more meaningful or humbling than to see people set free from the bondage of believing their worth is intrinsically linked to their body fat percentage or sex appeal.
I need to remember that the reason he is calling me to serve is that I now have something to give: Him.
So, here's my confession: I'm scared to lead. Scared to fail. Scared to go farther.
But if I'm not willing to risk going too far, how can I possibly find out how far One can go?