Implications for Community

As I was driving home from work this morning, I heard a news article on NPR about a small town in Louisiana that is having a fish fry today to celebrate the arrival of phone service in their town. January. 2005. Phone service for the first time.

That made me wonder. What will happen to this town? They obviously have a strong sense of community -- or why the fish fry? What will getting phone service do? Will they fragment, ignoring one another to talk with distant relatives formerly rarely heard from? Have they stepped up on to the ladder that leads to exurbia?

I remember when I was young, my maternal grandmother still had a party line. Five houses in their neighborhood shared one phone number. I don't remember how it worked for sure, but that was a community.

I wonder what it would be like to live in a town with no phones. To have to step outside and walk to Tom's place to ask him about my car or have someone just walk up and grab a seat on the porch for a chat. What would I suddenly notice that I've been missing? Would I be any more present to my friends and my life than I am now? Would my handwriting improve from wrtiting all the letters to people out of town? My budget for stamps would sure go up.

A huge chunk of me longs for that kind of simplicity. Unfortunately, that chunk is wrapped in a titanic "what-if" struggle with the other piece of me that already feels too disconnected and lonely. Maybe that will never be resolved until I can acheive some sense of community in myself.

Creative Idleness

This concept came up in my reading "If You Want to Write". Unfortunately, my idleness today was anything but creative. Motivation can be hard to come by. So can intimacy. Ah, well.

Learning to say "Yes"

I watched the movie "Waking Life" again tonight and was struck by this idea: What if our lives -- what if the manifest universe -- is God's mechanism for teaching us to say "Yes" to him?

It's late, so I'll leave that out there and sum up with this:

God is GOOD. People are gifts. Say "yes" with all your might.

Deep Thoughts Du Jour

Everybody is brilliant and original.

The Quest for Transcendence

I was reading an article the other day, and the author mentioned (totally in passing, not on topic AT ALL) the possibility that our culture is sex-obsessed because sex is one of the only transcendent experiences that remain open to us.

This got me thinking. How much of what we Christians rail against can be ascribed to the search for transcendent experience? Sexual Immorality (see: abortion, homosexuality, etc.), the drug culture, New Age spirituality, gambling (the rush of the cards turning), and the list goes on. The common statement "Is this all there is? There must be something more to life." is the expression of the soul's longing for transcendence.

How can we not have compassion for these? We were CREATED for the ultimate transcendent experience -- a continuous, loving relationship with our creator. But it seems that, somehow, the church reacted to the culture by downplaying or eliminating transcendent experience out of fear or need for control or whatever else we use to justify these things. Here's the thing: transcendent experience is transformational. If we, as individuals and as a body run from transcendence, we cannot be changed. If we are not changed -- if our faith doesn't make us DIFFERENT-- how can we possibly think we can be attractive? If the church doesn't break ground for the culture in seeking and living out rightly-ordered transcendence, how can things not get worse?

I am so grateful to be a part of a community that embraces and calls out transcendent experiences -- even when they're painful, even when they call us beyond where we can go.

It wasn't me, but it coulda been

Hey, all -- this is NOT my blog for the day, but I read this on a friend's blog and HAD to share. This is so quintessentially my experience that I wish I'd written it myself.

You knew I needed to get up for Hebrew class this morning, and you woke me gently and quietly, the same way you always do. But instead of the usual dream-filled smile and loving pat, as the remnant of sleep drifted away, I fixed you with a vicious glare. I didn't expect myself to do that. I don't know why I did. Maybe because I was short on sleep, I acted that way. I know it was wrong, and it isn't the way I really feel, I promise. I'm so sorry. Your face was chilled in the air from the window--the air that reached you because you were close to my bed--because you cared for me. And when my palm hit that loving face of yours, something broke inside me. I can't live like this, knowing that I hurt you. How can I explain this to you--you who saw the hatred in my eyes, my animalistic passion, and my primitive blow. No apology can erase such a memory, but I beg you, forget what you can and have mercy on my unfortunate heart. Let me convince you I meant none of it. "I didn't mean it"--such a hackneyed phrase, but how true it is! How readily I return to you once the contemptible passion of the moment subsides. Forgive me, I pray, dear alarm clock. I will henceforth be true.

~sam v

Blogging epidemic

I write this post with great excitement, but also some mixed feelings. I now have eight friends (that I know of) who have started blogs here. That is AMAZING, since most of them are people I would spend far more time with if the vagaries of life permitted, and I get to interact with them here far more frequently.

I am also committing henceforth to blog a little something every day. For a class, I'm reading "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Ueland. Every writing book EVER talks about the need to write every day -- even if it's just a little, even if it makes no sense and is anything but brilliant or profound -- something. Every day. So I am going to start to use this venue as a way to do precisely that. Every day. (Sorry, but I have to keep telling myself that).

Those of you who stop by here may get bored or even (God forbid) baffled by my ineloquence, but I hope you'll keep coming anyway. Because my aspiration, my desire for this, is that it can in some way become sacred space -- liminal space -- a place where we can together be transformed in ways that none of us can separately. A place where I can set aside or chase down the thoughts of the day and have you come alongside me and leave me stunned with your brilliance and insight.

I want this to be a place where Jesus would feel at home. Every day.

Worshipful Wounds

The past few days I’ve been out of it – Depressed, the mean reds, totally under the howl. But I told all my friends I’d be at church tonight. So I bundle up my paper-thin, monochrome, crinkled soul and get in the car.

“I will sing to and worship...”

Sometimes people talk of feeling or seeing the hand of God. More often, I have the sense of being under His thumb – pressing down on my forehead and my tear ducts – pushing into and through me, driving me into the world like a thumbtack. The world hurts.

“Everybody singing Glory, Glory, Hallelujah…”

This crazy little blue ball, hanging in space. Mostly, when I picture it in my mind’s eye, I see black clouds swirling; clouds of willfulness, greed, despair; clouds of anxiety and hopelessness and all the things that seem invincible. I see our dark marble of a world again tonight, with different eyes.

“All God’s children singing...”

As we sing, I see beneath those clouds a little column of brilliant light, streaming to God over a distance that is both infinite and nonexistent. I realize this point of light is kindled every time any of us come together anywhere, every time we worship, and it beats back the clouds. Spiritually, the earth burns brighter than the sun.

“Better is one day in Your courts...”

I open my eyes, expecting to actually see the liquid gold I feel flowing down the aisle, coming on me from behind. As molten love and power pour over me, I feel the dry husk that is me catch fire and burn. The fire hurts like healing; it consumes me utterly while leaving me intact. As if I weren’t already overwhelmed.

“You are the only one I need”

I identify with the dry bones. It’s tempting to be a dry bone – dry bones can’t bleed. The fire burns, but it doesn’t make things hurt any less. It is a comfort, though. The fire is hope. Hope that the fire can burn brighter. Hope that it will burn away the darkness within and without. Hope that I will endure, abide, and, eventually… thrive.