Satisfied?

Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 17:1-7, 15; Matthew 14:13-21

Recently, I have become preoccupied by a particular kind of music: the Disney song.

Months ago, my daughter Abby learned a few songs from the Disney film Moana as part of a “Music Together” program. She loved the songs, even though she hadn’t seen the movie. So, about a week ago, we watched Moana together and I found myself quietly tearing up.

I was so moved that I spent some time reading about the making of the movie. Eventually, I read an interview with the man who wrote the lyrics to most of the songs. His name is Lin-Manuel Miranda, and he is most famously known for writing the Broadway musical Hamilton, which adapts the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founders of the United States, through a mixture of hip-hop and traditional Broadway music.

In the interview with Lin-Manuel Miranda, he talks a little bit about one of the most well-known songs from Moana, “How Far I’ll Go.” The interviewer brings up the fact that serious fans of Disney films have a specific name for the kind of song that “How Far I’ll Go” represents. They call them “I want” songs.

Confidence and Completion

"I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ." - Philippians 1:6

Last weekend, Sarah and I went back up to our Alma Mater, Alma College (somehow it seems redundant), to participate in the wedding of two wonderful friends. We laughed, some people cried, we played music, we danced, we talked with old friends. The weather was beautiful, the sky a bright blue, the temperature warm enough for sleeveless dresses and cool enough to forestall sweat. After the happy couple left for their honeymoon cruise, we helped the wedding party clean the reception hall. Then we went to chapel.

Alma's chapel service, if you haven't been, starts at 9:00 at night on Sundays. It's a rather odd affair: drums and guitars and piano blaring out the good news to old teens and young twenty-somethings dressed in everything from pajamas pants and slippers to khakis and nice shirts. Sometimes the soon-to-retire sixty-something-year-old president of the college attends with her husband, a professor at a seminary in Detroit. She smiles and shakes hands during the boisterous passing of the peace, where some people hug, others give high-fives and folk run around to greet each other with such energy that the worship leader always has to call them back with a shout. Chapel worship is robust and energetic, with clapping and singing at the top of lungs. The music ranges from spirituals, folk songs and old hymns to straight up rock. The preaching is done by students and professors and local ministers. It can also be reflective, with prayer and silence, and sometimes weeping. It is not an experience for the faint of heart. Or perhaps it is, because through it your heart might be strengthened. It certainly expands hearts and opens arms in fellowship.

It was not always this way. Ten years ago, long before I attended Alma, the Chapel program was dying. I heard, from Alums, that Chapel attendance once consisted of the chaplain and five students listening to hymns recorded on tape and played on a stereo. Two years before I landed a few students decided to change that. They formed a small band and started playing more upbeat music - live. To advertise the change, they played at the college's annual song competition. A few people took notice and attendance rose to fifteen or twenty people. The chaplain, who was supportive of this, was also nearing retirement. So, the year before I came to Alma, he retired.

I came to Alma at the same time as a new chaplain. Having lead worship at my church for a few years, I knew that I wanted to participate in any way I could. The band leader at that point, one of the founders of the chapel band, was in his senior year. The band needed a keyboardist, and he felt like he could train someone to replace him leading the band on guitar and vocals. I took up the charge and played every week. He bolstered my guitar skills, playing for hours after every service with me. Soon I became confident enough to sing and strum at the same time, if not often in rhythm. Sometimes I slowed down. Other times I sped up. The rest of the band at that time (all extremely competent musicians who either had separate bands of their own or who were part of our college's award winning percussion ensemble), dealt with the transition as well as could be expected and taught me a lot about how to lead a band and how to work with people. They also taught me rhythm (mostly). Other part-time folk were brought into the band as well, and we developed a rotating roster of singers and keyboardists and guitar players. We added occasional flute and violin and harmonica and tin whistle too.

The then out-going worship leader was also the chapel intern. He worked ten to twenty hours a week at the chapel, helping the chaplain with whatever she needed and developing the worship life. He knew that not every Alma student would want to take over the position of chapel intern, but the program was growing. They started an Alternative Break program that year, in conjunction with the college's Discovering Vocation office. Worship attendance had grown to an average of thirty people per week. And more and more students seemed interested in Christian leadership. So the chapel intern and the chaplain devised a plan. They divided the work of the intern into six areas with twelve positions: music and worship, technology, clerical, liturgical, worship and the arts, and hospitality. Then they hired twelve students, including myself, as test pilots for a new group: the Student Ministry Coordinators. Half of us were considering some type of graduate work in religion, the other half were very dedicated chapel goers, or people who had worked sound and other things with the chapel program.

Over the next three years the roster of SMCs changed, with a core of five or six of us. The chaplain broke her leg and was out for half a year, then moved on to a position at a Seminary. We went through a year with an interim chaplain, then found a new one for my senior year. Ever year seemed in flux. Sometimes we were barely keeping ourselves upright. We fought each other. Divisions flared up. Some people who came into the program were just looking for a campus job. Others had problems at home. We were all over-busy, over-stressed and sometimes over-worked. Sometimes all twelve of us (thirteen including the chaplain) came to meetings, sometimes less than half. We changed the order and style of worship over and over and over again. The only constant was the worship. Sunday after sunday. Rain or shine. Sometimes there were only ten people in the pews. Sometimes there were almost sixty. Somehow, in all of this turmoil, by the grace of God, the program grew. Three chaplains in three years. Twenty-or-so over-stressed students. Varying quality of music (often my fault, sometimes because no one came to practice). Yet, by my senior year, our average attendance had grown to over sixty people per week.

That senior year we realized that most of us SMCs were...well...seniors. We had grown up together, shared our lives together, cried and laughed and struggled together. But we were moving on. What would the future hold? Should we disband the SMCs? Should we pare it down to only six? How do you pass the torch? We put out a search for first and second year students to join us, to apprentice us. We left as much information as we could in their hands (I sent six CDs full of music back so the new band leaders could listen to most of the songs in our catalogue). Still, two of those we were training were going to be in semester over seas programs, and our chaplain was going to go on sabbatical for a year. It seemed that the program was going to be in flux even more than before. And the elusive stability that we had sought, the stability that we thought we could provide by being there, was going to be lost.

Would the chapel program survive us? (I admit this is a prideful and obviously stupid thought. I wish I could say I'm a better person than one who would think that, but I can't.) The six or seven students in whose hands we were leaving the SMCs had a huge mountain to overcome. Not only were they small in number and newly trained with another interim chaplain with whom they must deal, but the expectation of those who had come to chapel regularly and who would still be attending the next year was like a thick fog in the air. It's always hard not to compare. I could understand if the students buckled under the weight of it all. I could understand if many of them gave up. I almost had several times. Life is much easier without stress.

I paint a dire picture of course. But, in talking with several of the SMCs the year after I left, I discovered that they were having a difficult time. Attendance had dropped. The interim chaplain was sometimes hard to deal with. Some of them did end up quitting.

And yet.

And yet. It is a testimony to God's strength and grace that the Chapel program survived. And not just survived. Thrived. After the initial drop in attendance, a quiet revolution began. The SMCs knew what all good torch-bearers know, what all those running a relay know. When the torch is passed, you can only run as you can run. You can only breath as you can breath. If you think too much about imitating the previous runner, you're sunk. If you think too much about how desperate the situation is, you're sunk. If you dwell on the past instead of running into the future, the race is already over. You must run the race you've been given and set your eyes on the finish line. The SMCs made the program their own. They found their voice.

By the second year after I graduated, average chapel attendance was edging close to one hundred. I came back to preach in January, the first Sunday of the second semester. During my tenure as an SMC, first Sundays of second semester were notoriously low. Something about the winter cold and coming back from break and the rigors of the first semester that always depleted our attendance usually brought down the numbers to just between fifteen and twenty. Certainly not sixty. Certainly not eighty. Certainly not one hundred. But that January night I preached to one hundred people. On a low Sunday.

And now back to last weekend. Sarah and I walked into chapel early. She went downstairs and I stayed up in one of the pews to listen to the new chapel band. Only one of the members had even been a student at Alma when I had been an SMC. But they sounded good. Different. They had their own style. And yet there was something familiar about it. I even heard one of the worship leaders ask after a song: "Any questions, concerns, or problems?" which is a slight variation on something I used to say: "Questions, concerns, comments, queries?" I guess I'm more into alliteration. Slowly the chapel started to fill. Sarah and I were expecting low numbers. This was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, after all. Although many first year students were already on campus, upperclassfolks didn't have to start until Tuesday. Monday was a holiday. Labor Day Sundays were notoriously low. But the chapel filled. And filled. Eighty-nine people, not including the six or seven SMCs who were there (some of them hadn't come back to campus yet).

Worship was exhilarating. The music was uplifting and just as flawed as it had been when I was leading the band. I discovered during my four worship-leading years that the time when the band was the least prepared and when the music often sounded the worst was the time when I reached out to God the most and found that I was truly worshipping. So I rejoiced that some songs were too fast and that you couldn't always hear the singers. Worship is never about the band anyway. It's about God. Passing of the Peace was even more boisterous than I remembered; the fellowship more deep. The college president even gave me an informal hug and asked how I was doing with a bright, cheery smile. The SMCs had added a ministry to worship. Some of them stayed in the back afterward to offer anyone who needed it a shoulder to cry on and a hand to hold in prayer.

And the message. The message was prayerful and heartfelt and chocked-full of scriptures and genuine. The student who preached gave a message about Growth. And she used the scripture passage at the head of this blogpost. She talked about how growth was hard, but how God was with us. And how God had a plan, even if we could not see it. And as I sat in that pew, some of the doubts about what I'd done in college faded away. Some of the tension and emptiness slipped back to the darkened corner of my mind from where, someday, they might creep back again. But for now, they were silenced and gone. And I got a glimpse of that elusive plan of God, that stretches all throughout history and is more like a woven blanket with an intricate pattern of warp and woof than a simple straight line. I saw that God had used me despite me, and that God was growing the chapel despite me too. I saw that it was true that the good work that God began at the Chapel among my generation, and even before us, was being carried on to completion. I saw that sometimes this means that God will complete something started in us, even when we are no longer there. The verse is ambiguous about this, of course. It doesn't say that we will complete the work, or that the work will be completed in us, but that God will complete the work that was begun in us. Nevertheless, this confidence that God was completing a work that I helped to inaugurate gave me confidence for my own life. If God could complete this, surely God can complete me.

Adventure

Three weeks ago I gave the message at the church where I worked for the past year. I returned as "pulpit supply" while the pastor was on vacation. The message circled around the concept of asking God for more. No, I have not stepped into the prosperity gospel camp. I do not believe that if you sow your seed (money) and give it to the church God will bless you with three cars and a million dollar house. God wants even more than that for all of us. God wants us to have a real, deep relationship with the one who threw the stars out into the heavens and set the earth spinning. God wants us to have more than just the drudgery of this day to day life, more than the discontentment that can so easily set in, more than rehearsing our old wounds and lashing ourselves on the back for our sins. God wants forgiveness for us, grace for us, love for us, hope for us. I preached that and I believed it, and I believe it still. But I didn't trust it.

Three close friends from the seminary come to the church to listen to me preach. While we sat in the church basement, eating delectable treats (no wonder I gained a few pounds this year), it started to pour outside. Monsoon-level. The streets were rivers, with water at least a foot deep in some places. Driving home, two of our friends, husband and wife, stalled their car in one of the impromptu rivers. Sarah and I were able to pick them up and take them home, but their car needed hundreds of dollars of repairs. We felt a little guilty, since they came to hear me preach, and we had given them alternate directions home, directions that led them through the water. But, they were gracious and soon forgave us.

Fast forward three weeks, and the third friend who came to listen desired my companionship on a road-trip to bring some of his things to storage in a town two hours away. He's moving to Ireland for the next year, and I wanted to spend time with him, so I readily agreed. We ended up taking the second vehicle of our erstwhile water-logged friends, an SUV. The drive up was wonderful, blue skies and the wind rushing past us, green trees and the smell of pine. We arrived and he unloaded his things (packed in heavy rubbermaid bins that he told me were too heavy for me--which was true--and that he proceeded to lug up two flights of stairs himself.) We spent a few minutes chatting with the woman at whose house he was leaving his stuff, then headed back home. He was craving hot dogs, so we stopped along the way at a roadside restaurant and he ordered two dogs with all the fixings and two birch-beer floats, one for each of us. (Birch beer tastes like a smoother, slightly more bitter root beer and is the color of black cherry soda.) So far, the day had been perfect. We took to the road again, relishing the fresh air and the good conversation.

While we drove I asked him what drove him. What was the passion underlying his time in seminary? What kept him going through the long nights of studying and all the frustration? Even as I asked him, I knew that I asked because I was having trouble answering the question myself. Back in high school I was surrounded by energetic friends in the prime of life. We prayed for each other, sang with each other, took trips to the mountains with each other. I was ready to do anything God wanted, ready to go anywhere. I read my bible daily, prayed every night and wrote in my journal at least once a week. I wrote songs and poems and novels. I was full of joy and passion. I was eager for God.

College hit. I moved miles away from my friends and the home I'd known for eighteen years. The new relationships I tried to build in college didn't last long. During an AOL chat with them, a girl mentioned something that was troubling her. I typed that I would pray for her, and instantly the backlash began. It was offensive to offer prayer in college. Offensive and pushy. Those friends soon turned their backs on me, especially after I met Sarah and started spending more time with her instead of them. Soon I met new friends, good folk who worked with me at the college chapel. But my life wasn't the same. I grew distant from God in college, angry. I did things that drew me away from God, things that I continue to regret. I took on too much in my first year, sleeping only four hours a night most nights. Then I vowed to never take on too much again. Living on the edge of sleep was exhilarating for me, but I didn't think it was healthy. So I curtailed my passions. Even though I wrote for all of my writing classes, everything I wrote was dark, writing became an assignment, working for a deadline. During some of the best times of my life, I often withdrew to my room and shut my door. I still regret having a closed door for some of the residents for whom I was an RA.

My friends from Utah faded to the background. I hardly knew them anymore. I was so busy in my first two years that I didn't stay in contact. Even the new friends I gained were kept at a safe distance. I didn't let them into my heart, into my life.

I learned that I had a fear of failure and, instead of facing it head on like I knew I should, I built a cocoon of safety. I did, and still do only things at which I can succeed. I don't let other people see my flaws. I let as much of myself out as is needed to retain friendship, but not enough to make it real. My relationship with God has fared the same fate.

After college, I followed the call planted in my heart in middle school and went to seminary, Sarah following me with love and trust and sacrifice. We arrived and the first year changed me again. It was hard to gain friends, hard again to get my footing. The call to be a church pastor disappeared quickly, pushed away by justified fears and by good reasons and good sense. God was still calling me, but now the voice seemed farther off, and in a different direction. God was calling me, but we were separated by fog and a sturdily-built cocoon. I was directionless, and far away again from God. I've spent my time like a pocketful of pennies, selling it for cheap. I troll the internet for interesting articles, and watch TV like I used to read books. I find myself grasping for the passion and eagerness I once had, grasping and holding nothing. My life is circular and stagnant. After my friend told me about his passion, I told him that I felt lost and that my relationship with God wasn't that good, that I wanted it to be better. I told him that the only thing driving me is the search for my old drive. He said that these dry times are why we need faith.

An hour away from Princeton, we ran into a wall of water. Monsoon-level, yet again. The rain was hitting the windshield so fast and so hard we could barely see, and we rumbled through the quickly-rising torrent, spraying muddy water everywhere. People were pulled over on the side of the road, hazard lights flashing like lighthouses in the darkness of the storm. Some cars were stuck in the flood, their owners knee-deep in water, trying to push them out. I was worried.

My friend is a wild, devil-may-care man, with a big laugh and an even bigger heart. The storm gave him energy. Soon he had me smiling with his effusive praise for how exciting it all was. Still, I held our map with white-knuckled intensity.

"It's odd," I said to him, "I'm smiling, but somewhere deep in my head I'm really worried. Not about us, but about the car. I don't want to be the cause of stalling two of their cars."

"I am too," he said. "But that's what makes it an adventure!"

Just last night, another friend and I were talking about joy. We talked about how fleeting happiness is, and how unattainable joy is. Happiness comes up like a weed, sudden and often. But it dies just as quickly. Joy is like a great oak, it needs roots and a firm ground. But how often is our true joy carried away by the carrion of life, how often does the seed of joy land on the hard ground, how often is it choked out by the very weeds of our happiness, choked before it can ever take root? Sometimes in our search for momentary happiness, we strangle our joy.

This blog is named after one of my favorite verses. "There is no fear in love." (I John 4:18) I have taken this verse to mean that I should not fear, and in doing so have avoided those things that scare me. Avoided deep relationships, avoided the pain of confronting myself, avoided the incomprehensible and wild God. Avoided where that wild God is calling me. But the verse goes on. "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love."

Maybe this is an indictment from the writer of I John. Those who fear have not reached perfection in love. Our maybe it's a statement of reality. We all fear, we are all imperfect in love. Right before this, the author says that we love because God first loved us. God is love.

In reading this I realize that the fear has to be there for the love to cast it out. And in that split second between fearing punishment and failure and embracing, or being embraced by love, in that small moment is joy. After all, the contraction in the throat that comes with fear and the widening motion of the smile that comes with love are what make life an adventure. And perhaps by avoiding the fear, I've been avoiding the love and the joy too. Perhaps by trying to find a shortcut past my fear I've gone right around love and joy and into this wasteland where I find myself now.

And perhaps this is a turning point. And maybe it's not. The Israelites encountered a God who moved in cloud and fiery pillar, a God who split the sea in half; yet they still complained and worried about how they were going to be fed. Peter saw Jesus talking with Elijah and Moses on a mountain, witnessed him raise people from the dead and bring sight to the blind, and still denied his lord, his savior, his friend, three times when the fear of death came in a slave girl's accusation.

But that same God who took the complaints brought the Israelites to a good land just the same, though they had to struggle through the wilderness to get there. And that same God has preserved those people for thousands of years. That same God spoke to them lovingly again and again, trying to get them to turn around when they strayed, never giving up on them. That same God came down as a person, came down to take the brunt of our complaints and inattention, came down to be spat upon and ridiculed. That same God came down to befriend Peter, and when Peter betrayed him, that same God came back and restored Peter with love, affirmed his love three times, once for every betrayal. That same God loves me with a perfect love that can drive away my fear, because I can't do it on my own. That same God brought me the joy of my life--my wife--out of the midst of the wilderness of college. That same God brought me one of my best friends out of the driest time in my life. That same God brought me to this place, brought me this far, brought me through two floods and through this season of doubt to the place I am now.

The passion will come again. The voice will become clearer. The skies will turn from grey to blue and though I see now in a mirror, dimly, then I shall see God face to face. And even if all of this does not happen, God is still with me. Even when I turn my back on God, God is still facing me. And because God is facing me, and because God is pushing me from behind, and because God is walking right by my side, I can face my fears too. And that God of perfect love, that God who is love, will cast out those fears, and in doing so, bring me joy again. That's what makes it an adventure.

Thanks for sticking with me, faithful reader.

It's About Time

Dear Faithful Reader,

I'm sure this is what you're saying, if you're still following: "It's about time!"  It's about time that Marc blogged again.  It's about time he got back into the swing of things.

I agree with you. It's about time.  So, here's the first post of the new year.  Hopefully I'll blog more regularly this year.  Hopefully a little bit more recklessly as well.

One of the hurdles I still have yet to pass in my life as a person and as a writer is my own penchant for perfection.  I have a difficult time starting something if I can't do it correctly, can't do it fully and can't do it justice.  I've started several blog posts before now, and haven't finished them.  Then I go back to them and the moment is gone, the writing is gone, the idea and the passion are gone.

The same thing has happened to several stories that I've started and since abandoned.

I need to learn to write and to live a bit more recklessly, to throw caution and editing to the wind and to try to simply produce.

I know that I can edit what I write.  I actually enjoy editing, making the words tighter, the meanings more dense.  So, I need to produce.  Produce, produce, produce.  Write, write, write.  Then edit.  I need to finish something, then perfect it later.  

In blogging, I need to just finish something.  I need to just put something out there.  So, here's a start to a new year, a new season of blogging.  Hey wind! Here's my caution.  Take it and run with it.

Thanks for sticking with me, faithful reader.

A Change in Tactics (or Is That Strategies?)

During my Writing as Faith Practice course this morning I had a revelation, of sorts.  Really, it was an ongoing realization that began last week with a meeting with my Field Education Mentor (a pastor who is guiding me through the experience of working a 9 month internship at a church).  I realized that I really, truly am afraid of being misinterpreted.  I utterly despise being unclear, or being seen as unclear, or having my words twisted.  This is something, I think, that many people fear.  It is tied, I believe, to my fear of failure, and, even further back, to a desire for acceptance.  I want to be accepted, and feel that I will be shunned if I fail (even though I know this is not true, it is still a fugue roiling round in the back of my mind).  A part of failing is failing to communicate.  Another is being perceived to be something else, something that I don't want to be, and being perceived as a failure through that.

Let's be concrete.  Say that I write on this blog an analysis of a particular work of literature, perhaps THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV.  In doing so, I write something that misrepresents my view of Dostoyevsky and his writings.  People then comment on the blog about my misrepresentation.  I realize that what I wrote was not true to what I desired to evoke.  I feel failure.

Now, this is a small failure, certainly, but one of the things that I fear.  I, perhaps too readily, depend upon public opinion for validation of the things I do.  I know this about myself, and have known it for some time.  Oddly enough, one of the things I have been battling is this feeling that I am less passionate about things because I have not let myself take risks, and have tried to block out other's opinions of myself.  By not being as emotionally available as I could be, I feel that I have, to some extent, blocked off my passions.  This has worried me.  I am caught between acknowledging what people say about me, hearing their true concerns and then viewing my life from an objective, healthy point of view, and putting up defense walls and trying to be everything to everybody.

Let me put it this way: I want to try to hear what others say and to look at my life through their eyes, yet I want what they say about me to be good (or at least neutral).  So, while I am more open to others (in some respects, as in listening to them), I am actually also less open to them ( as in not revealing my true, full self to them).  And I feel that this has also affected the way I view and interact with God.  I am open to God, to new words, to new directives, to a new hope, but I am not open with God.  Perhaps that difference in preposition is truly what I am talking about, being open to, but not open with.  This leaves me with a numbed sense of passion, and, in some respects, has led to the difficult discernment problem in which I find myself.

Now, in my class this morning we discussed the necessity of good writers to be vulnerable, to dive in, both to reading other great writers, and to dialoguing with those writers, and to being misinterpreted by their readers.  A good writer must both be open to and open with.  I am a self-conscious over-editor.  Every sentence I write I immediately analyze for accuracy (I just did it then, I added a word to make the sentence make more sense).  This means that when I finish writing (if I get into writing at all) I often end with something less personal, less emotional, more filtered.  I am constantly worried about what others will think of my writing, whether or not it is good enough for others to read.

This blog is an attempt to force me to simply put writing out there and to allow it to be responded to (AH!  dangling preposition.  I tried to think of a way to fix this sentence, but couldn't since I'm headed to class in 10 minutes.  Wait...."to simply put writing out there and to allow others to respond to it."   Still not the most concise or most-well-written sentence.  Sigh.  I included this as a snippet of what goes on in my mind as I write).  Meanwhile, I initiated early on in this blogging a policy (or tactic, or strategy...first presidential debate anyone?) of comment moderation.  This ties to my fear of being misunderstood or misrepresented.  So, I have taken the small, but for me, bold step of removing comment moderation.  I can still delete comments (I believe) but now your comments should appear right away, without any screening from me.

One small step for Marc...

Thanks for reading, O Faithful Reader!

A Quick Life Update

Hello for the final time tonight, faithful reader.  Please read the two posts below, which complete my review of Jenny Jump State Forest and pose a few interesting (at least interesting to me) questions about fear.

As for my life, I am busier than a beaver or an ant before winter.  Over the last few weeks I have been preparing for the fall academic semester, hanging out with my wife and trying to relax as much as possible (to no avail).  Now I am in the thick of academia, about to plunge even further in its murky depths.  I am taking several fantastic classes this semester: Systematic Theology, Preaching, Writing as Faith Practice and Greek Translation.  I am also starting a unit of Field Education, working at a local Church in Trenton, NJ.  Needless to say, I am both eager and cautious about what lies ahead of me.  I hope, and fear, that I will be stretched this semester, in ways that I have never been.  I also hope that this will be a time of discernment for me, a time of questioning and finding answers, even if those answers lead to more questions.  

More than anything, I want to find joy and passion.  I want to know that I am at least getting out of the woods, even if I am not yet on the right path.  I want to know whether the light I see ahead is the daylight I so desire, or a train I should avoid.  I want to know if I am running away, or running toward, if I am escaping from or finally heading home.  Many of you know that I am caught in my thoughts between believing that I am called to parish ministry (being an ordained pastor) or academia (being a professor, or teach of some kind), or perhaps a third option (God only knows... literally).  Since I was in seventh grade, I have believed that I was called by God to do something.  For almost nine years I thought that that something was being a minister of the word and sacrament.  In fact, I never gave a second thought that this was my path.  

One day, during a class that aimed to view the pastor as a person, a class that focused on knowing oneself, the thought hit my like a train: what if I am not called to be a pastor?  I had been told this many times before, of course, that there were many callings, many vocations, many ways to live for God.  But I had never asked this question of myself.  I had been having a growing discomfort and apathy over the pastoral role, specifically the pastor as counselor and the pastor as administrator.  Slowly, I had begun to resent the fact that pastors nowadays, at least in the Presbyterian Church, are looked upon as administrators, counselors, healers, preachers, teachers, parents, prophets and a myriad of other things.  This seemed to me to contradict directly 1 Corinthians 12: 

"27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues^[d]? Do all interpret?"

If not all are apostles and teachers and prophets and healers and interpreters and administrators, why are pastors supposed to be?  Why are we not calling more and more on our congregations to take up the gifts God has given them?  Why are we not, more and more, de-emphasizing the position of pastor, instead of lifting it higher and expecting pastors to be gods?  Pastors are simply members of the church, chosen, for a time, to lead, or to exhort, to comfort.  But this is the job of all.  And pastors are simply congregants who feel that God has given them something to say, a vision for the church.  They are no greater than and are not more gifted than the people in their congregations.

Compounding all of this was the fact that I had become more and more attracted to the idea of teaching.  I have always thought of myself as a teacher, and all through my life I have held in tension three future occupations: writer, professor, pastor.  I have focused much of my life on pastor, thinking that it was the "God-ordained" ministry, the only one that could be viewed as a true "calling," (and isn't this what many of us think?).  Yet I remember thinking often how wonderful it would be to teach, to see the light of understanding glow in students eyes, to impart knowledge, to learn from my students, to question with them.

As soon as I was struck by this thought, the thought that I did not have to be a pastor, I felt both great fear and a great release.  I was afraid for what I would tell my family and my wife's family, who had known me for years, and had heard me say many times that I was confident that I was going to be a pastor.  I was afraid to tell my friends, some of whom were depending on me, who were going to be pastors with me, who had asked me (sometimes jokingly, sometimes not) to officiate their weddings when I was finally ordained.  I was afraid of the fact that it might mean seven more years of schooling, seven more years of being poor.  I was afraid and ashamed that I had for so long talked to my wife about only being here for three years, and she had put some of her dreams on hold to come here to support me.  I was afraid that I was straying from the path.  And yet, simultaneously, a great burden that I hadn't known was there lifted off of my shoulders.  I carried it still, supported high and pulling slightly on my armpits, until I finally broke the news to my wife.  She sat in silence for a while, questioning, and then said what she has always said to me: "I will support you and love you wherever you go."  The straps on my burden broke.  I felt free, and yet still fearful.  Hard times and hard questions have followed, but God's love and the love of my wife have continued to sustain me.

I still do not know if I have simply shrugged off the cross I was meant to bear ("take up your cross and follow me," said Jesus) or if I escaped from my own preconceived notions of ministry and the call God has for me.  I don't know if I have left the path, or ventured toward it.  So this year is a time of discernment.  I'm still taking all of the necessary classes to be ordained (although I am no longer engaged in the long, tedious, expensive Presbyterian process of ordination).  I am still working in a church for a field education experience, about to do all the things that I have no passion for, to see if my passion is actually just tempered by fear and needs to be overcome by love.  

I apologize for that not-so-brief update.  It just poured out of me.  Thank you for reading, if you have read this far.  I am sure I'm not the only one searching for a meaning and a purpose.  Grace and Peace to you, faithful reader.

The End of the Beginning of the End of the Beginning

Life is strange.  Every moment is both an ending and a beginning, a completion and a new unfolding, a death and a rebirth.  Yet, physically and perhaps mentally, I will never again be able to begin my life.  That's an odd and uncomfortable thought.  Unless amnesia suddenly strikes me or I regress to a fetus somehow, I will never be able to begin my life over.  Remnants of deeds and feelings and experiences will always be with me, as will the ramifications of my choices.  

I think that the Bible is notable for its crazy, realistic characters, if for nothing else.  The Gospel According to John especially has struck me over the past year for the boldness and curiousness of its inhabitants.  One of them, an anonymous disciple of Jesus, seems to speak for me right now.  Jesus has just said that people who eat his flesh and blood will live forever and that people have no life in them if they do not eat his flesh and drink his blood.  John records that "On hearing it, many of his disciples said: 'This is a hard teaching.  Who can accept it?'" (John 6:60, New International Version).  I concur.  These are hard teachings.  Who can accept them? How can I accept the sadness of never beginning again?  Can hope be something that reaches into the past as well as the future?  Can I hope for my past?  I've made so many mistakes in my life that sometimes I am daunted by them and afraid to try new things.  

Elsewhere in John, a Pharisee named Nicodemus approaches Jesus seeking truth.   He compliments Jesus on his teaching and assures him that he believes that Jesus has God.  And Jesus, of course, says "Thank you, you are dressed quite nicely today.  That robe is nicely tailored with plenty of tassels."  Wait.  No.  Jesus answers as cryptically as he possibly can:

"I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (or "born from above," or "born again from above"  -- the Greek is ambiguous)."  (3:3)

Nicodemus is, naturally, confused.  "How can a man be born when he is old?  Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born?" (3:4)

Amen to that, brother Nic!  That's scientifically impossible (at least at present).  Jesus answers: "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit....The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (3:5-8)

This passage comforts me.  My body can never be reborn and the damage from years of sprained ankles, drinking pop (or soda) and eating carbs can never be erased.  My mind cannot just be wiped clean of my memories.  But my spirit is another matter all together.  My spirit, my soul, is the deepest part of me.  And it is the part of me that has the truest second chance.  It is the part of me that can be truly transformed.  I may not be able to change my bad back or my acid reflux, I may not be able to erase the memories of my failures and defeats, but the spirit within me that reacts to these failures and weaknesses can be changed.  There is a mystery inside my very bones, something that no one can understand.  No one knows where it comes from or to where it goes.  It has no beginning or end.  Or, in another way, it has an infinite number of beginnings and endings.  Within it is the end of the beginning of the end of the beginning.  In my spirit I do not have to worry that all of my beginnings are gone.  

Lamentations (yes, that weepy book of the Bible about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile of the Israelites) contains within its great sadness a great hope, upon which is based one of the most famous hymns of all time (and one of my mom's favorites).  Chapter 3 begins with a catalogue of the ways that the writer has been afflicted, including having his heart pierced with arrows and his teeth broken with gravel.  He laments his loss of peace and wails:

"I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.  I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.  Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." (3:19-23)

God's compassion is new every morning.  We are not consumed.  There is something that is new, newly born, brand-spankin'-right-out-of-the-box-still-in-its-protective-hermetically-sealed-cover-in-mint-condition new.  And we are not consumed.  Hallelu - jah!

First Post on a New Blog

Well, here's the first post on a new blog, a symptom of caffeine-induced insomnia.  I will try to blog as much as I can and to make this a place to both share my thoughts and listen to the thoughts of others.  Most of all, I will try to express my inmost self and to write for the simple pleasure of writing.

I think I'll begin this first post with a poem I once wrote about journal keeping.  Hopefully these thoughts will guide this blog.

Failure

Thirteen blank pages at the end of an old journal

Glare and turn their backs on me as I leaf through them.

The dates scrawled in the corners of entries 

Read more like history than chronology:

Moments scattered between the years of my life, 

Plucked from obscurity by a poor historian

Trying to get published so he can eat.

I wonder if they reflect an empty soul.

Who cares if I leave my life for posterity,

Record my every waking moment so that one day,

-- When I am dead and not famous --

Someone, somewhere can read my life

And pretend that I was the norm.

They will pore over every word,

Carefully plucking meaning from each sentence.

"Wow!  Look!" they will exclaim.  "This day he peed.

"How much he is like us.

"I feel a deep spiritual connection with him.

"Let us meditate on his surreal bathroom experience."

I am not defined by words on a page,

Or their absence.

If I am to write anything, it must mean something;

It must mean something to me.

Someone else might read it and be inspired,

But if I write for someone else alone, I silence a part of me.

So I will keep these pages blank,

Move on to the next journal.

And I will keep it just as infrequently as this one,

Not because I do not care,

But because I need to know I'm flawed.

It's humbling.