Why am I here?

I’ve started taking a spiritual writing class. It must be good because it’s already spurred a million blog ideas and an existential crisis with just one assignment: why am I here?

Not why-do-people-exist or what-is-the-meaning-of-life, but why am I HERE at this juncture in my life. At this computer in this house with these roommates waiting to drive this freeway into this job to do these tasks.

One answer is this:

February 2006, San Jose, Costa Rica

In class I usually sat in the back, jammed against my neighbor in the filled-to-capacity classroom. There were strange wooden pillars inconveniently placed throughout the room, forcing us to cram together in clumps. Our professor, Don Mike, would pace back and forth like a lion waiting to go in for the kill. His sporadic mumblings sounded like growls and soon he would be roaring. My jaw would clench as my heart pounded. He would reduce my beliefs and upbringing to egocentric self-validation. A means of exclusion. Judgment. My faith was offensive, a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty God. A darkened city on a hill. The tasteless salt of the earth. The hypocritical light of the world. The hair on my arms would stand up and it would feel like I’d swallowed a car battery. If anyone, he’d be the one to know when the church was being ineffective; he used to be a Catholic priest.

He would be panting by now; his gruff voice would crack as he condemned American Christianity and everything it stands for. I felt personally attacked as he recounted the horrors of conquest-driven, smallpox-bearing missionaries and money scamming “Gospel of Wealth” televangelists. The blood of every person killed or exploited in the name of God since the dawn of time would stick in the crevices of my guilty hands.

By this point, the pulsating vein in the middle of his scrunched forehead looked ready to burst. I would forget that he coined himself a “recovering Catholic.” I would forget that he did not hold a monopoly on truth. And while I hated him and everything he was saying, I still began to believe that maybe I was the enemy.

***

That’s part of it. That’s part of why I’m here. Writing this blog. Working at this nonprofit that serves the rural poor. Thinking these thoughts.

It’s the why of a life built around overcoming a stigma that my faith is self-serving, self-fulfilling, self-consuming. It’s a why of a life working to not be the world's enemy, the poor's enemy, my own enemy.

It’s not the whole why and it’s not the whole story. But it’s a part. It’s not the best part or the most redeeming part or healthy part.

I’m reminded of a quote by Henri Nouwen (honestly, when am I not?) in Compassion:

"Action as the way of the compassionate life is a difficult discipline precisely because we are so in need of recognition and acceptance… But even setting up a relief program, feeding the hungry, and assisting the sick could be more an expression of our own need than of God's call.

But let us not be too moralistic about it: We can never claim pure motives, and it is better to act with and for those who suffer than to wait until we have our own needs completely under control."

Today, HERE, I am grateful to drive into a job that acts with and for those who suffer and for a God that is using my needs, my why’s, my unclean motives, to accomplish His call.

T.S. Tuesday: The Lost and Found Pile of My Faith

“There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again.” T.S. Eliot, East Coker*

God answers prayer. Sometimes I forget this. Sometimes I lose this. Sometimes I find this. Then I lose it again. Daily I fight to recover what has been lost.

Today, this post, is a fight to recover and reaffirm my childlike faith.

As Ann Voskamp said in the chapter in One Thousand Gifts that I just read, “I confess, even after all that I’ve seen and tasted and touched, I do scoff.”

After I, Aly Lewis, have seen and tasted and touched and felt that the Lord is good, I still scoff. I scoff at my cheesiness in writing “childlike faith,” I scoff at this blog and my prayers seeking answers, I scoff at my lists of gifts and my love letters to myself.

But I have seen and tasted and touched and felt that the Lord is good. And I will not let my scoffing get the best of me. Instead I will keep writing, keep praying, and keep saying, 'Thank you, Love, for being good.'

***

*I promise I will one day venture out of the Four Quartets, but as long as I keep rediscovering nuggets of wisdom within these four pieces, Four Quartets it is. Please show your discontent by sending me wonderfully aged, used copies of additional T.S. Eliot compilations. Otherwise, I will take your silence as consent.

You Sneaky God

"The first step to atheism is bad theology." Dallas Willard

My latest in bad theology: I believe in a sneaky God.

I'm sure you've all seen it. And if you haven't, it is a must. This Halloween, Jimmy Kimmel issued a challenge to parents to trick their kids into thinking they ate all of their Halloween candy. The resulting video was epic.

There's kicking, there's screaming, there's crying and snot, there's name calling.

All because of these sneaky moms and dads.

I want to call these kids bratty. I want to mount my high horse of "dang, these kids are entitled," but the truth is, I identify with them. When you really expect something (whether you're entitled to it or not, whether it's a realistic expectation or not) the disappointment of not getting it is harsh.

There are times I want to kick and scream and cry out, "You sneaky God," when my prayers aren't answered, when my plans are thwarted, when my Halloween candy is taken away.

It's more than just a knee jerk reaction to disappointment, though. I've discovered I've started to base my life and my beliefs and my prayers on the premise that God is trying to trick me.

My faulty beliefs started out innocent enough.

God wooed me from a place of anger and cynicism and doubt.

He showed up when I didn't ask for it or expect it or even want it. And my response, an awe-filled: "You sneaky God."

I was wooed by a God who cut through my anger, hopelessness, and numbness to show his surprising, redemptive, and mischievous face.

And now all I can see is the mischief. Now that I believe in and follow this God, I fear he will abandon me in the same mischievous way that he first showed up. That I will ask and beg and cry out desperate for his presence and his answers, and he will go into hiding, a smirk on his face, as I respond with a bitter-tinged: "You sneaky God."

Somewhere along the road, I started to counter his tricks with tricks. I've found myself striving to concoct the perfect blend of anger, cynicism, and doubt to trick him into showing up. I've made it all about me again. I have to act a certain way, jump through hoops, manipulate him into answering me.

I forget that he showed up not to spite me, but to love me.

I forget that I came to love him because he loves me, not because he tricks me. I mean, sure, I appreciate a whimsical amount of mischief and surprise, but that's not what made me fall in love. It was his love. His exceeding of my expectations. His grace and mercy and compassion. That never fails. That doesn't go into hiding just because I look for it.

As much as I fear he won't show up when I ask him to, this is the part that makes my relationship with God based on faith. It's true he doesn't always show up in ways that I think he should. It's true he isn't always readily tangible to me. It's true I don't always get what I want. It's true that sometimes it feels like he took away my Halloween candy just to spite me.

But that doesn't make his presence and his goodness any less real.

In a very apropos message at church yesterday, my pastor talked about trusting God in the dark. In the times when he seems silent and sneaky, a perpetual trickster.

Two pieces of advice he had: 1. Be totally honest with God and 2. When it comes to faith, perseverance pays off.

So, 1. God, I am scared that because you showed up when I didn't ask you to, that you won't show up now that I'm asking.

2. God, I will trust you. I will wrestle with you. I will press into these lies I tell myself about you. I will (try) to stop manipulating you. I will practice resting in your love. I will replace, "You sneaky God" with "You stubborn God" and "You lavish God." Stubborn in your love for me, and lavish in your gifts for me.