Sunday, October 26, 2008

wrinkled old man

yesterday in conversation, a friend told me that she just had a really quick image of me in her mind as an old man, with gray in my beard and hair and wrinkles on my face from all my smiling and laughing. that observation made me really happy. it felt like a nice compliment. that passing thought made me think about my blessed life. wrinkles from smiles and laughter are welcomed by me, gray hair too for that matter.

life is hard. there is so much with which to struggle, to doubt and to dislike. a lot lately, i've found myself unsatisfied with theology and doctrine (even though i enjoy studying them both) and pithy church sayings. more questions come in theology, each answer begging another less satisfying question. it never ends. doctrine is so diverse, i wonder how we could ever really hold to something. the speech that flows so cavalierly from believers lips can have no meaning or weight because they are simply words.

i struggle.
God loves me.

i doubt.
God loves me.

i question.
God loves me.

i yell at Him.
He loves me.

if i may... what the crap? every time, He is there. every time, i feel God loving me. every time. sometimes that love confounds me. sometimes that love comforts me. sometimes it just angers me. i cannot turn away from it, i cannot help but feel it and i cannot begin to explain it. God loves me and it doesn't make sense.

so much doesn't make sense. the christian faith is reasonable, logical and well-defended. if apologetics are what you're after, you're in luck. there is proof everywhere. truthfully, i don't know if i care about that proof. i understand it but that isn't what convinces me. God still doesn't really make sense no matter how much i try to prove that He does.

because at the end of the day, at the start for that matter, i have to wrap my mind around God loving me. most days, that seems pretty unbelievable, a skeptic's unbelief. it's glorious, but crazy. the whole gospel is that: a stumbling block, foolishness. that's where its power is, for those who do believe. that's why it works, because it shouldn't. it isn't natural: it's divine. it doesn't really make sense, but it does give life.

i'm like thomas. i doubt and question and don't believe. i want to put my hand in Jesus' side, just to know he's real. but if the chance ever came, i think that i, like him, wouldn't go through with it. i'd rather just believe. and Jesus' words to him, to me, to us - "do not disbelieve, but believe...blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" - are why i'll have wrinkles, why i'm happy to have them. i have joy in that belief, joy which allows me to smile and laugh in the midst of complete and utter confusion.

beyond all doubt i believe deeply, in my core. i know God is there and, to steal a line from francis schaeffer, He's not silent. i know He loves me, because i've seen and felt it, not because i figured out how to manufacture it. i know He loves me because i love Him. i can never manufacture His love in me, oh how i've tried. God displays His love for me in ways i cannot explain, usually while i'm being completely petulant. His grace is sufficient, i'm actually believing that. and a subdued smile has washed over me just thinking about it. God, wrinkle me up.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

scenes from escaping

i find it necessary to explore portland. the reasons are simple: i do not know it & i don't like that. my sanity alone is enough of a motivating factor to leave. books on/of God, theological conversations, worship & church can all help to convey how big this created world is, how full of grace and beauty it is & how wonderfully artistic God's speaking of creation out of nothing actually is. nothing quite helps like seeing how ridiculous God really is. i've been blessed enough to see a decent sampling of the world, some very pretty places. i'll say this for portland: it measures up fairly easily.

once you find your way outside of the city, there are places that can swallow you. they'll sneak up on you & you'll be grateful they did because you wouldn't find them otherwise. a week or so ago, a friend & i went on a drive down the columbia river valley. we went to check out a couple scenic overlooks. one of them was the vista house.

that same trip, an intentional wrong turn & 14 miles between amazing old trees took us up to larch mountain. this day was blustery and terribly wet. the cold wind blew significantly cold precipitation into our faces as we laughed and hiked to what was to be a panoramic view of no less than 5 mountains on a clear day. obviously, it was not a clear day. when we summited, if you will, shepard's peak we found ourselves delightfully miserable & content with our surroundings. we were floating on a mountain in the clouds and fog. the view was like looking at grey-painted walls. it is a good memory of being so happy to be in miserable weather.

but we decided to come back when it cleared up someday. yesterday after class, we made the trip again & reality filled in the imaginary vistas we had created. i'm not sure which trip was better. there was something nice about being the only fools to accidentally stumble upon a mountain in the bitterness of a cold & rainy day when there was nothing to see but clouds- we did get to float as we shivered. here are some pictures i took with my phone, when we could see from a couple different escapes:

vista house
point of view
some place near the vista house, of
which i cannot remember the name
a random pond by trout creek camp
shepard's peak at larch mountain
what i think is mount hood
another view from shepard's peak at larch mnt

one of the things i love most about being here is the availability to escape. it doesn't take long to find your way to some place outrageously beautiful.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

laurelhurst ducks

if you would, i'd like you to imagine me spending a restful sunday afternoon seated upon a bench, overlooking laurelhurst pond (pictured above), letting the cool autumn air and the still warm sun compete for my affections as i looked out over the serene pond, a habitat for many a beautiful duck, spending their own sunday travelling back and forth, to and fro each side of the pond towards the many park-goers turned bread-tossers as the ducks filled their bellies with organic loaves of bread, organic because portlanders demand non-synthetic foods, even for their ducks- nay, especially for their ducks.


sundays are made for this. in fact, God, after 6 days of creation, no doubt sat on a cosmic bench much like mine. yet God's bench surely was much more infinite in essence, looking over the vastness of creation and ducks the likes man has never seen. what i am trying to say here, possibly & unintentionally sacrilegiously (yet hopefully not), is that the sabbath is good.

how nice it has been to simply be today.

for a few hours, i just sat calmly. i caught up with a few friends and family members also. but mainly i just sat, becoming one with the bench. while there, the two of us noticed a few things.

A) these ducks eat a lot of bread. again, these ducks eat a lot of bread. this carbo-loading led me to believe the ducks were going to be running a marathon. how adorable would that be, really: little ducks waddling and quacking for twenty-some-odd miles? adorable yes, yet it didn't seem right.

certainly, i thought to myself, ducks do not live on bread alone (wink-wink). two absurdly old women fed the ducks some type of grain, but that seemed like too much work for the ducks. they had to attempt to get these little things of grain off of the ground, which consisted mostly of small gravel. no doubt many of them ate a great deal of gravel with their grain. but outside of those two crotchety old women, they only ate bread.

B) when the bread came, no matter where it was coming from, the ducks flocked like children to an ice cream truck, children with a dollar that is. bread has a magnetic pull only affective on ducks and immigrants. there was no 'flying v' these ducks formed some type of rabid mob, intent on swiping every last crumb from their brethren. they went after those pieces of bread like kids after candy fallen from a piñata. however, i witnessed only one duck fight. they chased and quacked and flapped their wings angrily until two other ducks got in between them, breaking up the fight.

C) i enjoy watching ducks not chew. watching them choke down big hunks of bread made me feel much better about the way that i eat. yes, watching ducks eat did wonders for my self-esteem.

sadly, i could not leave my wondrous time alone. i had to reflect. i had to let the ducks eating all that bread bother me, on a metaphorical level.

as i strolled out of the park, i read a sign by the pond. basically, the sign was attempting to prevent folks from feeding bread to the ducks. apparently ducks, like people, don't live on bread alone. i don't remember exactly what the sign said, but i do remember this: bread is like cupcakes for ducks. now, initially i thought they really had it made. cupcakes, few would argue, are delicious.

i thought about it. realizing cupcakes are not a well-balanced diet in and of themselves and possibly/sadly not really a part of a well-balanced diet, i saw that we were doing the ducks a disservice. they know they can get as much bread from us as they want. ducks eat when they can, not when they are hungry. yet here we are, throwing cupcakes at them.

this bothered me, because church is like that too much. ministers throw cupcakes at people, who swallow them without every really chewing. once that minister doesn't have the right cupcakes, they swim to another one. neither of them gets what they need. they both get bloated and are of little use when it comes to fulfilling their purpose.

the church needs to go deeper than cupcakes. ministers can make them so readily available that the body forgets there is meat, vegetables and fruits- all those food pyramid things. it falls on the ministers to challenge their congregates to search and seek after God. it falls on the congregates to follow through on that challenge and to extend it back on the ministers. if the church is a body, all of its members need to follow hard after Christ.

writing this, i find myself grateful. i feel i have found a church not satisfied with the cupcakes available to us. for a while, i've wanted to be a part of a church like this, not that my church back home is content to eat cupcakes as a whole. it is a very different type of church than the one i go to in tennessee. i am sure God will shape and grow me as a part of it, however long that is.

something we need to ask ourselves and each other is whether or not we have settled ourselves into a body that is pushing each other to fuller worship, to fuller love and to fuller devotion. if we are in one that isn't, we don't necessarily have to leave. but we need to do everything we can to turn our church and ourselves back to the depth God calls us to.

man doesn't live on cupcakes alone, but on every word of God. we need substance back in our churches, speaking to us, feeding us.