awakening

listening: the elizabthtown soundtrack
reading: the historian, walking on water

(for some reason i've been thinking about my grandmother a lot this week. even though i've lived a decade without her, i still hear her voice in my head, and the lessons i learned through her death are still those i am most thankful for in life. )

death, while hard and awful, can be a beautiful gift. it forces you out of whatever box you’ve been sitting in, and moves you to look at life, your life, the life of the dead one, and life in the grander sense of humanity and eternity, from a completely different angle.

death is the ultimate catalyst. the biggest event obviously is the passing from life through death to the next phase of eternity. but there is also the smaller, yet no less important, briefly open curtain in the lives around the one who has moved on. for before these lies the ultimate challenge: go on with life as you’ve always known it, or use the momentary clarity illuminating what is truly important as a roadmap for where God is calling you next.

the unfortunate reality is that we need great, terrible things like death and tragedy to remind us that we are still alive, move us beyond the comfortable armchair where we are so content to live the majority of our lives.

in his book everyday apocalypse david dark writes,

"given our tendancy to see and hear what we want to see and hear while disregarding the rest, we need whatever we can get in the way of an awakening."

no one enjoys being awakened from perfect, beautiful sleep. but if the alarm never sounded, how many of us would never wake up?

legacy

my mom just called and told me that there's trouble.

it seems that my three year old, more than slightly angelic nephew has picked up on one of my more notable phrases ("suck it up, princess") . it also seems that nicky, when annoyed with his sister, has taken to using this phrase in dealing with her. the bad news comes in with the fact that nicky's mom, my sister-in-law, is--shall we say--LESS than impressed with nicky's newly expanded vocabulary.

hence the trouble.

honestly, i'm having trouble feeling repentant. i love these kids, and (don't tell the rest of the family) when i visit calgary, it's really them i'm going to see. and if some of my twisted sense of humor and outlook on life can get passed down to their little lives, then no one would be happier than me. this is, after all, the nephew who played with a little 'Finding Nemo' toy that laughed to the distraction of everyone in the family, because the toy's laugh reminded him of mine.

he remembers me because of the laughter we share. what an amazing life i have. doghouse or not.

motives

(it's funny how sometimes things in life collide with beautiful and random unpredictability.)

i talked with a friend today about the devotions we're doing ultimately as a church, but more immediately as a small group. my friend made the comment that we'll need to make sure we do them, so that we're not looked at as slackers by the others in the group.

while i laughed, it made me wonder how often in life we do the right things with the wrong motives...or more accurately how often i have done this. i will admit, more often than not, even to myself, i am a paradox.

then i remembered something i had read in richard foster's book entitled 'prayer'. while this is primarily about prayer, it encompasses most, if not all of life.

"The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives--altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. But what i have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. That is what grace means, and not only are we saved by grace, we live by it as well."

the perfectionist streak in me makes me want to get it all together before i set about to accomplish. 'it would make it all better,' i spend too much time rationalizing, 'if i did it in my own power'. but all these years have proven that this will never happen on its own.

obviously.

so, God, in his great mercy, as richard so eloquently points out, has made a way even in the midst of my motive/perfectionist quandry. my only responsibility is to let go of how it "should" be, and surrender myself to those unconstrained rhythms of grace.

amazing.

contrast

last night brennan manning's 'the ragamuffin gospel' brought out an interesting question at our reading group. "can grace be taken too lightly, too flippantly?" i know it can, because i have sat there, in the cheap seats more times than i'd like to admit.

the discussion that came from this question was a good one...the reason i wanted to start a reading group in the first place.

it really is easy to take grace too lightly in the north american suburban church community. we have everything we need, and if we don't have it today, all we need to do is jump online, order it, and it can be here tomorrow. we have access to more than we'll ever need. our government works to ensure our rights are protected [ :-) ], our homes work hard to shelter us from the elements, we work hard to earn the paycheques that keep us from needing anyone else's help and to keep all the balls we have in the air from falling for lack of resources. aside from the aching feeling of emptiness inside, which could be filled temporarily with the right new toy, what real need to we have for God?

even in ministry. the point was brought up that we have everything we need to make a successful youth event or church service go without 'resorting' to prayer. we have the games, the knowledge, the talented people, the planning ability...if we don't have time to call on God, we can still have a pretty decent event.

contrast this with churches in poland and ukraine who have such an incredible passion for seeking God in prayer...a passion lacking here. they seek God because he is all they have. they know that without him, there is nothing else. because it's true.

a lot of the time it seems like we seek God because it is the polite thing to do. we are in his house after all, we should at least acknowledge his existence. when in reality, all that we have in the way of resources, possessions, whatever, truly is nothing, but we're so busy convincing ourselves that it's something and patting ourselves on the back that we don't need anyone else, that we forget how much we need God and God alone.

who is better off?

delinquent

listening: elizabethtown soundtrack, david gray, james blunt
reading: ragamuffin gospel, the historian

wow, it's been over a month since i sat at my parent's computer & wrote the last entry. i'd use some overworn cliche like 'time flies when you're having fun', but the reality is that time flies no matter what you're doing. the past month hasn't been all fun.

leaving calgary was hard for some reason this time. then i got sick for two weeks. and there's the ongoing stress that sometimes seems relentless.

but in the midst of the bad, come moments of brilliance. spending time with the fam & getting to michigan to see angie. after months of reading & deliberating FINALLY booking my trip to paris (yes, to all who thought it would never happen...i leave on may 7!). actually getting a car (still having a hard time wrapping my mind around my newfound mobility). getting to see a concept i worked on for months hanging in the worship centre & getting carried around by hundreds of people.

i feel as though i have wasted so much of my life waiting for ... something. like chantal kreviazuk's song 'time', "i should have known better/i shouldn't have wasted those days/and afternoons and mornings i threw them all away." no more. i'm done waiting.

i'm going to paris. i'm going to write the book. i'm going to take a chance.

here i come.

all is calm...

it's 5am on christmas morning, and like a reflection of the child i once was, i am wide awake. while the cause of today's awakeness is jetlag, my childhood insomnia was caused by nothing other than pure excitement; excitement at having gramma & grampa over, about seeing meme & pepe & visiting with cousins i hadn't seen in months...but mostly excitement about what lay under the tree, especially those with my name on it!

on some level, i think i've always believe that in many, or even most instances, the gift that someone takes the time to give to you reflects how they see you, what they see of you from an outsider's point of view. and, at least for me, i think it's always good to know how you are being viewed.

sometimes it's quite obvious, as is evidenced by the many Paris & Starbucks gifts that i have received over the past few years. [not to mention the many 'princess' notepads and, most recently added to the collection, mug that have come my way! :-)] sometimes i'ts not so obvious, and only those closest to you could ever possibly have seen it. this is one of the reasons why i am reticent to give christmas lists. somehow it almost seems like telling someone how to see me.

anyone who lives in north america knows that the real meaning of christmas easily gets muddied down to a gift exchange, and like even the best of relationships, we as individuals need to work at keeping the focus where it remains to be. how many times have we heard 'he's the reason for the season' or 'keep the Christ in Christmas.' as annoying as it is, if it weren't true, there would be no need for maddening cliches!

but this morning, i am riding this train of thought to a different stop. if i am bold enough to think that the gifts given to me by those who love me are reflections of how they see me, then does it not follow that both the gifts i give to Jesus, and how i spend his birthday reflect how i see him?

sobering thought. today may my life reflect the love, sacrifice and willingness to leave a place of honor and comfort to serve others that i see in him. and may it continue tomorrow...

happy birthday, Jesus

needy

our book group is reading 'blue like jazz' by donald miller. in the chapter 'alone' he talks about loneliness and says:

'loneliness is something that happens to us, but i think it is something that we can move ourselves out of. i think a person who is lonely should dig into a community, give himself to a community, humble himself before his friends, initiate community, teach people to care for each other, love each other."

i could come up with dozens of reasons why i shouldn't do each of these things when i am in the midst of my loneliness, but none of these reasons would alter the basic fact that we are all flawed, broken and haunted by our own special kind of pride. we all need each other to reach out, in hope that while we ourselves are extending our hand into the darkness, that there is someone else out there also doing the same.

suddenly, it's not about who the needy one is, because at our very core, we are all the needy one.