Busy-ness

Life has been great, busy, but great. This past weekend, Sarah and I went down to Cape May, New Jersey (or, THE SHORE, as they say in the Garden State) for a belated Second-Anniversary relaxation weekend. Thanks to a gift card donated by Sarah's parents, we were able to stay in a beautiful bed and breakfast for four days. The trip was like a warm shower after a long day's work. We truly felt rejuvenated, both relationally and physically. It was such a gift to just spend time together, without having to worry about deadlines or work, or anything else.

Other than that, we've both been busy at work, Sarah at Staples and the Seminary Chapel and I at the Seminary Bookstore (where, when answering the phone, we have to spit out the mouthful: "Thank you for calling Cokesbury, the TBA at Princeton. This is Marcus speaking. How can I help you?") I've also been working like a bee, trying to construct the hive that is my new website, Puddleglum Theology. I've been putting up a quote a day, and adding other articles and features. If you want to see what I think about daily (ie, what I'm reading), you should definitely check out the site. I'm hoping to start a theological commentary series on the book of Genesis there soon, based on the premises of the website: grounded hope and such.

So, that's the update for now.

Thanks for sticking with me, faithful reader!

Puddleglum Theology Launched

Today I spent over seven hours doing something I've wanted to do for a while. With the help of google sites, I've created a central website for what I'm lovingly calling Puddleglum Theology.

What is Puddleglum Theology? If you've ever read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and especially the fourth book in the series The Silver Chair, you might have a clue. If you're completely in the dark about all of this, here's an excerpt from The Silver Chair and the introduction to the Puddleglum Theology website to shed some light:

"I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."

- Puddleglum, from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

Welcome to Puddleglum Theology! The underlying ethos behind this website is contained in the above quote. I enjoy mystery and myth, beauty and brightness. I would rather take a stand for the world of story than suffer under the burden of mere fact. Not that facts are not useful, or reason an integral part of living and knowing. But, as Madeleine L'Engle expresses, "if we limit ourselves to the possible and provable...we render ourselves incapable of change and growth, and that is something that should never end." (The Rock That Is Higher, 100) She continues: "perhaps it is the child within us who is able to recognize the truth of story--the mysterious, the numinous, the unexplainable--and the grown-up within us who accepts these qualities with joy but understands that we also have responsibilities, that a promise is to be kept, homework is to be done, that we ow other people courtesy and consideration, and that we need help to care for our planet because it's the only one we've got." (TRTIH, 100) Perhaps my outlook on life can be more accurately portrayed by another quote from C.S. Lewis, this time from an essay on "Three Ways of Writing for Children," "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." (On Stories, 34)

I sincerely believe that there is more to life than we can accurately portray with mere facts, more to truth than statistics and analytical thinking can produce. I do not always live like a child, but I deeply desire that way of life. I want to wonder again, to be in awe more often, to wrestle with the unknown under a dark moon and somehow end up with both a blessing and a new name. I want to celebrate mystery, all the while seeking to understand. I want to be joyful, knowing full well how grim things truly are. I want to love indiscriminately, and fight injustice passionately. I hope that you'll join me.

On this website you'll find a page that reproduces my blog: There Is No Fear In Love, a growing compendium of quotes from my favorite authors and a discussion page where I'll post questions/thoughts for discussion. And, hopefully, more things in the future. So, again, welcome to Puddleglum Theology!

So, there you have it! Puddleglum Theology has been launched. If you are interested in Puddleglum Theology and would like to submit quotes relevant to the themes presented, e-mail them to me at marchon2884@google.com and I'll try to add them to our growing list of Wiggle Wisdom in the Wigwam Word Archive. Or, if you've written an article or blogpost relating to Puddleglum Theology, I can add that to Respectobiggle Research. Make sure to check out other quotes and articles on the Puddleglum Theology website. Here's the address:

http://sites.google.com/site/puddleglumtheology/

Or you can just click on any of the times I've listed Puddleglum Theology in this post.

Thanks for sticking with me, faithful reader!

Loving A Place

I have lived in and called home three places: Salt Lake City, UT; Alma, MI; and now Princeton, NJ. Until this afternoon, at 1:00PM, I had been reticent to call Princeton my home. For, you see, I need to fall in love with a place and hear it speak to me before I can call it home. I have fallen in love with the people in a particular place and, in so doing, have been able to be comfortable living there (Charlotte, NC, for instance, where my mother, father, sister and nephews live), but I have not yet been able to call a location HOME, unless I have fallen in love with it.

Falling in love with something on a map is not exactly like falling in love with people. I knew I loved my eldest nephew from the first minute I saw him, mere moments after he had been born, his small, rumpled form held in my sister’s tired arms. I cannot remember the transformative moment when wide-eyed dependency upon my parents for sustenance became affection for the lovingly imperfect humans that they are, but I can recall the moments in my young adulthood when I made a conscious decision to love them, disregarding the monstrous angst that threatened to overwhelm me. I can pinpoint each step in loving my wife so far, from acquaintance to interest to romantic possibility all the way to a still blossoming love. In each of these relationships are the seeds of loving a place, but with one great difference. In my experience, places don’t begin to speak to you until you love them.

Similar to my experience with my parents, my love of Salt Lake City, the home of my birth and my upbringing, is dim and hazy at the beginning, but full of decisions to love despite its flaws. Likewise, my love for Alma, my second home, parallels my love for my wife, a step-by-step process. But in the human relationships, while I was still learning about my love for them, the people spoke to me, gave me reasons, inspiration. I interacted with them, pondered them, held them. I do not do this with places until I already love them; they do not speak to me until I do.

Today, at 1:00PM, with no forewarning, I understood that I loved Princeton, NJ. I realized that I could love this place, this geographical oddity, this garden stop on the road between Philadelphia and New York City, and Princeton began to speak to me. It was as if scales dropped from my eyes, my ears popped and I shed my winter coat. Until this afternoon, I might have been watching a silent movie, but no longer. Princeton began to speak to me. As I walked out of our campus dining center, I was overcome by warm sun-glow on the flowers, birds softly weaving their melodies, and people walking by in conversation. Held back by the winds of a gentle affection, I stood on the cafeteria porch, unable to move, or perhaps unwilling, filling my senses with a new home. Princeton began to speak to me. Or perhaps I finally listened. And now I can call it home.

Testing, Testing

Testing, Testing. *taps the microphone* Is anyone out there?

Despite all appearances to the contrary, I have not abandoned this blog, though I could be charged with severe neglect. Unfortunately, time (and life) have gotten away from me in the past few months. Consider this post, however, my triumphal return (or my slow walk of shame, tail between my legs).

I hope only this, that I can improve my blogging to at least once a week (a feasible goal, and a definite improvement over once every three months!).

So, here's to blogging!

Thanks for sticking with me (if you have, and even if you haven't) faithful readers!

Good Byes and Bumper Stickers

This morning I dropped off Sarah at the airport so that she could attend a friends wedding.  It will be the first time in more than a year and a half that we've been separated for more than a day.

We seem to have an uncanny knack for staying up until midnight the night before traveling, especially when we have to wake up at 4:30AM.  Last night was no exception.  Most of it, I'm sure, is apprehension.  I know that, under my calm demeanor, I was bottling up worry for her safety.  So we stayed up last night talking and eating ice cream, joking and fiddling with all the details of her itinerary and the contents of her suitcase, making sure everything was in its place.

We woke at 4:30 this morning (well, 4:30ish) and brewed a pot of coffee.  Neither of us are big coffee drinkers.  I can't stand more than a cup, two if I'm lucky, before my bowels begin to feel unsteady and I get a slight headache.  Sarah's the same.  Nevertheless, since we had a 50 minute drive to the airport and I had a 50 minute drive back, and because we'd stayed up so late, we brewed just enough for a travel mug for each of us.  Then we took one last look around the apartment, stepped into our shoes and headed out the door.

The drive to the airport went too quickly.  We talked the entire way and the 50 minutes sped by like a bullet train.  All too soon we were at the exit for the Philadelphia airport.  Both of our stomachs were queasy and we joked that we weren't sure if it was the coffee or our nerves.  Then we arrived at the departure terminal, hugged and kissed and promised to be safe.  She clutched her bags and walked into the terminal.  I got back into the car.

Now, if you don't know me that well, you perhaps don't know that I am a worrier.  I actually have an award statue for it.  Seriously.  It's sitting on my mantel next to my perfectionist certificate.  When I was young I had was plagued nightly by the fear that I would wake up to find my parents dead.  Oftentimes I snuck to their bed at night to make sure they were safe; most nights I ended up crawling into bed with them.  I knew the route from my bedroom through the kitchen to their bedroom so well that I was like Indiana Jones stepping from tile to tile in the Last Crusade, marking the name of Jehovah with my steps and trying not to make the floorboards creak.  I've overcome those fears--mostly--but every now and then, especially when someone in my family is traveling, the fears seize up on me again.

So, my stomach in knots, I sat back down in the car, turned on my turn signal, and prepared to move back into the already cramped airport traffic.  As I waited for an entrance, a car moved past and slowed down to let someone off just long enough for me to see its bumper sticker.  "Relax, God is in Charge."

Now, this can be a problematic phrase.  What does it really mean that God's in charge?  Does it mean that God causes everything?  Even the bad things?  Or less stiffly, does God at least ordain or allow bad things to happen?  This phrase can be troublesome for many people.  And it can be hard to believe, too.  Is God really in charge?  What about Hurricane Katrina?  What about 9/11?  What about the babies who die and the women and men and children in Africa with AIDS?  What about murder and hunger and genocide?  How can God be in charge if all of these things happen?

These are questions I wrestle with.  I know many people do.  Yet, my wrestling is often overbalanced by the good I see in the world.  People escape from death just as much as they succumb to it.  People of faith have been the ones who stayed down in the Gulf, long after everyone else had left and stopped helping.  Even now the Church where I'm working is planning a trip to Louisiana to continue the good work of cleaning up and rebuilding.  It is often people inspired by the love of God in their lives who are doing things about AIDS in Africa.  It is a stark reminder to me that (fortunately or unfortunately) God is certainly in charge, but God is big and loving enough to also put things in our hands.  Certainly people of faith have done horrible things as well (let's not even get into that list), but I truly believe that even then, those who loved God and who were loved by God were working to make things right.

Derek Webb has two beautiful songs, one called "This Too Shall Be Made Right" and the other "A Love That's Stronger Than Our Fear."  They express that duality of our need to do good in the world and the promise of God that, eventually, all our tears will be dried and sorrow and crying and fear will be no more.  That perfect love drives out fear.  Here are the lyrics.

This Too Shall Be Made Right

people love you the most for the things you hate

and hate you for loving the things that you cannot keep straight
people judge you on a curve
and tell you you’re getting what you deserve
this too shall be made right

children cannot learn when children cannot eat
stack them like lumber when children cannot sleep
children dream of wishing wells
whose waters quench all the fires of Hell
this too shall be made right

the earth and the sky and the sea are all holding their breath
wars and abuses have nature groaning with death
we say we’re just trying to stay alive
but it looks so much more like a way to die
this too shall be made right

there’s a time for peace and there is a time for war
a time to forgive and a time to settle the score
a time for babies to lose their lives
a time for hunger and genocide
this too shall be made right

I don’t know the suffering of people outside my front door
I join the oppressors of those who i choose to ignore
I’m trading comfort for human life
and that’s not just murder it’s suicide
this too shall be made right

A Love That's Stronger Than Our Fear

what would you do
if someone put a gun to your head
and ask you to tell them a lie
what would you say
if you were pushed that way
to betray yourself to keep yourself alive
is life worth so much

[Chorus]
there’s got to be a love that’s stronger than our fear
of everything being out of control
everything being out of control

what would you do
if someone would tell you the truth
but only if you torture them half to death
tell me since when do the means justify the ends
and you build the kingdom using the devil’s tools
can time be so short

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
there is a day that’s been inaugurated but has not yet come
that we can proclaim by showing that there’s a better way

Though there are arguments on both sides for what it means that God is in Charge, I do find comfort in the phrase.  Some do not.  But I do.  I find peace knowing that God is working in ways I cannot imagine, and at the same time God is working through me.  God trusts me enough to do good in the world.  Can I trust God enough to do the same?

Thanks for sticking with me, faithful reader.