The Rupture Behind the Reason
“The rupture of our religious surfaces can be extremely valuable.” Frederick Ruf, Bewildered Travel: The Sacred Quest for Confusion.
In my spiritual writing class we’ve been discussing the religious value of rupture, fracture, misfortune, suffering. Of forced disorientation to stimulate growth, learning, and an awareness of a new more real reality. Of breaking through the surface to something deeper, something dangerous, something delicious. In Mary Oliver’s poem, “Acid” wonderfully recounted in Bewildered Travel, she comes across an image “that she simply cannot assimilate—something, in fact, that burns instead of dazzles.” She describes this something, this rupture, as a “bead of acid” that she carries with her for all of her days, forever changed. Below is my bead of acid, my religious rupture, my reason for being who I am today. *** February 2006, Managua, Nicaragua Plastic smoldered and filled the air in a hazy smokescreen that seared my eyes and bit at my nostrils in the city dump of Managua, Nicaragua. Skeletal cows munched on the aluminum cans that children searched all day for in the city dump. This was their home, their school, their playground. Our yellow school bus heaved and rattled into the dump. We pressed our faces against the hot window panes, peering out into the ocean of refuse. When we realized where we were, our faces dropped, eyes averted and laughing silenced. One man lifted his dark, gnarled hand to brush the sweat from his furrowed brow. Our bus grinded to a halt and the door creaked open. Trevor, one of our program facilitators poked his head out and yelled something to the man in broken Spanish. Did he mind speaking to us for a minute? Did he mind sharing his story with us? The man carefully stepped over the debris, clambering his way to the open bus door. He moved through the sea of trash like an experienced sailor. Like he’d long since lost his land legs. We wore fresh skirts and smoothed slacks. The old man glanced down at his modest t-shirt, sweat stained and torn. We wanted to know what his life was like. How was he surviving? What did he think about God? Parched and at a loss for words, the man swallowed a few times, his tongue wetting his chapped lips, gums, and the few teeth he had. Then he told us the only thing he knew. “Dios ha bendecido a mi familia.” “God has blessed my family,” he said. “God is good. Before this garbage dump we were on the streets, and that was worse. God has provided, and God is good.” Trevor thanked him for sharing and handed him a cold, dripping water bottle. He greedily grabbed the fresh water, and the condensation formed tiny rivulets in the deep, cracked creases of his craggy palms—living water in a thirsty, barren land, fresh water in a sulfuric sea. God is good. Blessed? The last time I checked, my definition of blessed did not include the privilege of sorting through trash and watching your children inhale toxic fumes on a daily basis. I thought being blessed meant you were an American, lived a life of privilege, and received a college education. *** This is why I have spent the last four years working for a non-profit organization (seriously check them out) that empowers rural families to restore their land, raise their incomes, and learn to thrive BEFORE they end up desperate, at a city dump. Why I still struggle with the word blessed. Why I’m still working through what it means to see God at work in this unjust world. *** The next day we visited a Catholic church that was beautifully decorated with colorful murals portraying the Stations of the Cross. The images were vibrant and tantalizing, unlike any religious paintings I’d ever seen. But the biggest difference was Jesus. Their Jesus wasn’t white. Their Jesus didn’t look just like me—he looked just like they did, with dark skin, calloused hands, and the numbness of poverty in his eyes. I got the feeling that their Jesus wasn’t too concerned with whether or not I had a “ring by spring” or six pack abs. I got the feeling that their Jesus didn’t try to spiritualize their poverty or look the other way. Their Jesus was oppressed, an outcast forgotten and scorned by society, just like them.
I could no longer live like God was the God of the rich, the white, the educated, and the fashionable. I could no longer live like God sympathized with my struggle to feel successful, beautiful, and well-liked more than he sympathized with the struggles, hopes, and dreams of the poor. *** “The rupture of our religious surfaces can be extremely valuable.” Yes, but it hurts like hell. 
T.S. Tuesday: To Care or not to Care?
"Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still." ~T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
I am a recovering perfectionist, or so I’d like to think. More often than not, I’m recovering from the ramifications of perfectionism instead of overcoming perfectionism itself. Most of the time, I’m recovering from a bruised ego and a worn out soul.
At the risk of sounding like one those ridiculous job interview farces where the candidate arrogantly clucks out weaknesses that no one in their right mind would call weaknesses, “I try too hard. I care too much,” (eye roll please) the truth is, I try too hard and I care too much. About the wrong things.
I try too hard in the wrong things. I care too much about the wrong things.
How I look in a bathing suit. How many hits I get on my blog. If the guy I met at the party is going to friend me on Facebook.
But it’s deeper routed than that. It’s more than being distracted by the trivial. It’s being driven by the tyrannical. The tyrannical need to perform, to do, to complete, to accomplish.
I have trouble caring and not caring. I have trouble sitting still.
I want meaningful rest and meaningful work. I want to care about the right things and not care about the wrong things.
How do I get there?
I can force myself to sit still, physically. But how do I get my mind to rest?
How do I silence the biting guilt that courses through me, gnawing at me to be more loving, more engaged, more connected?
How do I engage in alone time when I don’t really feel the freedom to be alone? When I’m haunted with the need to be productive?
I’m so reluctant to sit, still and defenseless, with my longing and desire, to not try to fix myself, to let the Holy Spirit do its mysterious recreating in my soul.
A burden lifts when I realize I don’t have to do it, and, in fact, I cannot do it all. I can live in ways that promote health and peace in my life, but it is not up to me to heal or fill my heart. Only God can do that. He’s done it before and I can trust him to do it again. God is love.
And so today I ask you, God, for purpose, meaning, and connection. I want to stop drifting in and out of my days disconnected and unexamined. I want to really feel for and connect with people. I want empathy that moves me to compassion. I want to care about things, people, issues. I want my heart to break for the things that break your heart. I want to be living an intentional, purposeful, love-filled life. I want to share myself with others. I want to receive what others have to share with me. I want to feel joy. I want to be fulfilled. I want to know that I’m not wasting my time. I want to choose love. When the choice comes to zone out or just “get through,” when the choice comes to get irritated by the little things, I want to choose love and connection.
I can’t do this on my own—I’ve tried.
Please grant me rest from striving and doing. Please touch the places in my heart that drive me to achieve, to initiate, to do do do.
Please teach me to care and not to care. Teach me to sit still.
The Prosperity Gospel We Should Be Living
I didn’t buy it.
And then one morning. In the dark night of my love story. After doughnuts and bulletin passing and a stream of breathless “Good-morning-welcome-to-Coast-s,” the words transformed, the world shifted. That all-familiar, oft repeated phrase,
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever and ever and ever Amen.”
Slowly at first. A question. A nuance. An emphasis. Where before I had only seen goodness and mercy and good outcomes and answered prayers and false hope, I now saw a new word. A new focus. Bold and brazen.
Follow.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. Follow me.
Follow me?
The dictionary definition of follow is, as follows:
1. Go or come after (a person or thing proceeding ahead); move or travel behind: "she went back into the house, and Ben followed her."
2. Go after (someone) in order to observe or monitor.
Surely goodness and mercy will COME AFTER me. Not be given to me. Not be indebted to me. But come after me. In my wake.
Who then is the bringer?
I am.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me.
I am called to be this peddler of good things, this exemplar of righteousness.
Come again?
Could it be that following Jesus is less about the goodness of life’s outcomes and more about the goodness that we bring, that we carry, that follows us for all to see?
That sounds like a lot of pressure. That sounds like things could get real legalistic real quick.
But it’s not just up to me.
Perhaps as followers of Jesus we are heirs to a journey of growth and refinement that cultivates holy, loving qualities within us. Perhaps the promise is not for happiness and success and a house and a car and 2.5 children, but for fruitfulness.
This can be prosperity, too.
Not the kind of prosperity that aces tests and rains down riches, but the prosperity of a life well valued, a life well lived. A life that where goodness and mercy spring up in its wake.
A prosperity of caring for our brothers and sisters. A prosperity in seeing the gifts this world has to offer. A prosperity in bringing joy and defending the weak.
A prosperity of being followed by goodness and mercy because of a life-giving relationship with the One we follow.
Now that’s a prosperity gospel I can get behind.
*The image at the top of this post is the handiwork of my wonderfully creative brother, Cameron Lewis. Thank you!