more on religion

We like to think of ourselves as running with the band of merry men who wake up one day and find themselves freed of Religion. The attempt to explain leaves me more often tongue-tied and my hearers confused and perhaps concerned for my sanity. Thus, I leap at the opportunity to share C.S. Lewis' explanation, as I discovered it today, in The World's Last Night and Other Essays.

"The word religion is extremely rare in the New Testament or the writings of mystics. The reason is simple. Those attitudes and practises to which we give the collective name of religionare themselves concerned with religion hardly at all. To be religious is to have one's attention fixed on God and on one's neighbour in relation to God. Therefore, almost by definition, a religious man, or a man when he is being religious, is not thinking about religion; he hasn't the time. Religion is what we (or he himself at a later moment) call his activity from outside."

~From Lilies that Fester

Under the Shadow

My Mother loves to tell the story of a me as a little boy who, when going around the house with a black cloud over my head, would send me to my room until I could gain a better perspective on life. In other words, I was banished until I could cheer up. My response was to cry, yes, literally cry, "I AM happy now....I'm HAPPY now!" That little story is a cute anecdote, but perhaps the scary thing is that I am still that little boy. It is an interesting perspective on the redemptive work going on in our lives.

This summer has been full of new challenges for us: continuing to deal with raw emotions involved in loss, sorting through the emotions of potential gain, a profession that is demanding more than is human to give, and yet attempting to love not only each other through it all, but also learning to love our neighbor. Now, I am not trying to say that I have had a tougher time than anyone else. In fact, mine in many cases is most likely better. I have no doubt been blessed. But, that is not the point. The point is that as I look to the future, I cringe.

There is a very real part of me that wants to run, run back to where there is peace and life. Or at least where I think there is peace and life. We were designed to long for home, it was built in us as a reflection of God's desire to draw us near to Him. Yet, even our desires are fallen, and what we long for is nothing more than a shadow, a haunting apparition that lingers in our mind. If we really went back, it would not be the place we have in our minds. I want to run back to a hospital where I knew my son. I want to run back to Kansas where I met a life that I pray affects my own. I want to run home.

But here is the promise; a grand but terrible promise. Home is not behind us, it is ahead of us. It is waiting for us in the Shadows of the here, but not yet. We get glimpses of it sometimes around the corner, but always it alludes us. I wish that I could do as Jeremy Huggins has phrased, "sleep for home." But I can't. None of us really can. We have to run, walk, and sometimes slog our way through the Valley of the Shadow. Which, by the way, is not a one time thing you go through, it is the whole of life.

And so, I have no choice but to keep going, to keep running. But in my running, I pray that the run is not in vain, for I have been called to dwell in the shadow of the Almighty. And in my run I may still cry out, "I am happy now", but I will do so with the understanding that there is more than just my dear Mother listening to my cries and being a shelter to run to when I cheer up. But a Father whose Shadow I never leave, who guides our feet as we run, who accepts even our cries of desperate happiness, and will call us Home within the comforting confines of His Divine love.

look at the garden!

These pictures are in upside-down order: 2/Early planting.  1/Today, the cucumbers are overtaking the second bed and the cabbage never balled up... The tiny white asters bloom before the daisies, before the pink blossoms come out on the bush.  

mud in the face

Who was it, I wonder, who discovered the cleansing effects of coating one's body with mud and letting it sit right there and dry and harden and wash it all off again?  In most normal daily activities we would consider mud on the face as dirty, to be avoided in the first place and washed asap.  Nevertheless, I indulge myself a mudding, faithfully, each week.  

The dirt got in my eyes this week.  In the form of a letter to the Philippians in which Paul speaks of his doing vs God's doings in him, as an example of what each of us ought to be, "Not that I...am already perfect, but I press on...because Christ Jesus has made me his own" (3:12).  Whether it's in my personality or my upbringing or merely a part of being human, I find myself tormented and yet passionate about my own perfection.  Be it a good reputation, being known for simple punctuality or blameless in murdering others--those whom I discount as beneath my company--I strive daily for confidence in the flesh.  To what end?  My confidence is dashed on the rocks of Paul's boast, "whatever gain I had, I counted as loss" (3:7).   The pride-happy satisfaction I achieve in works of cultural right-ness will not attain for me the resurrection from the dead.   And if I die like Rover, dead all over, I have failed, I lost the fight, I have nothing, not a thing to show for all my self-made veneer of goodness.  

What help is there, what mud will cleanse me free me of the blemish that is my self-mutilation of good works by pride?  Somehow, "it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure;" I must "be poured out as a drink offering;" I must lose everything to "gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law"--and to think how many laws I make for myself and judge others by--"but that which comes through faith in Christ" (2:13,17, 3:8-10).   It's the power of his resurrection that I want, not my own flesh-zeal, his sufferings I must find in common with him, as he works by faith and patience in the spirit of a man, to revive him from among the dead, and into his glorious body.

It Came Today

Beau's headstone.  

Mom had stopped by the cemetary a few weeks ago for a quick visit and mentioned that the headstone was not there yet.  So after a quick call to Sally, who by the way is the most wonderful funeral director/manager in the world, phone calls were made and answers were quickly at hand.  Sally sent the photos for us look over and we are pleased at how the design turned out.

Admittedly, there is something odd at looking at your son's headstone.  I can't really say that I ever imagined ever doing that. . . but then again, we often do many things we never would have imagined doing.  

I placed the picture on the frig, as if it were something Beau had made in school and brought home.  I am not sure if that is weird or not, but the picture offers something that is tangible.  Something that offers proof as to the reality of his being in our lives. . . Something I really need.

(Note: The pic is not of his new headstone, this pic was taken back in January)

Hope

A shred of it pierces you, fills you, encourages you to go on.  Maybe I call it hope, but I wonder if it something more, more like a promise.  And that promise of hope to me is that if we repent, and be baptized, then: "the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord God calls to Himself."  (Acts 2:39)  

Sure, maybe the face value gives comfort in the fact that the Promise so freely given is also extended to our children, and what a hope by the way.  But tonight the Hope goes further than that.  The Hope is in the Promise of knowing that all I have to do is repent.  That is it.  There is nothing more, and indeed, nothing less.

Wendell Berry Picks Jail Over NAIS

This is a very interesting development from the Department of Agriculture.  Thanks Bonnie, for sharing this as I had not yet seen this snake rear its ugly head.

Wendell Berry Picks Jail Over NAIS

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the dark planet

Re-reading A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle is a remembering of all the truth ideas I learned from her back at the intense ages of 12 and 13.  One of the main characters, Proginoskes, is a cherubim whom the little boy Charles Wallace took for a host of dragons, and Meg his sister describes: "She had the feeling that she never saw all of it at once, and which of all the eyes could she meet? merry eyes, wise eyes, ferocious eyes, kitten eyes, dragon eyes, opening and closing, looking at her....And wings, wings in constant motion, covering and uncovering the eyes.  When the wings were spread out they had a span of at least ten feet, and when they were all folded in, the creature resembled a misty, feathery sphere.  Little spurts of flame and smoke spouted up between the wings; it would certainly start a grass fire if it weren't careful" (54).  

It is of Proginoskes that I think when I read of the Four Living Creatures assembled around the throne of God:  "And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind....And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,

who was and is and is to come!'" (Revelations 4:6-8)

And then we sing the song "Holy, Holy, Holy" and I remember Progo and think of the Four Creatures with all their eyes blinking and wise and if you read further, you find that it's a not a few creatures alone, but "the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands," are all shouting or singing or just speaking as if one thunderous voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" (Rev. 5:11-12).  He's worthy, because he died, and he died because he alone was worthy to redeem us all out of this dark, comparatively silent planet.   And we with our weak and wobbly voices and kid voices off key are not alone when we solemnly sing "Holy, Holy, Holy."  We have Proginoskes, dissolved in a shimmer of air next to us, joining with his much more heavenly voice and spurts of flame burning our hands as if mimicking the sparks of the Spirit blistering our heart.  

The truth of each of us

From Wendell Berry's book about a mouse:

"She lived at the center of the world.  This is one of the things every mouse knows.  Wherever she was, she was at the center of the world.  That one lives at the center of the world is the world's most profoundest thought.  So firmly was this thought set in Whitefoot's mind that she did not need to think it.  Like humans, she lived in the little world of what she knew, for there was no other world for her to live in.  But she lived at the center of her world always, and of this she had no doubt."

~p. 11, Whitefoot

Yet it takes me so long to know that about myself, even a mouse knows more than me!

And this at the end I see as one of Berry's repeated messages in his novels:

"Her sleep was an act of faith and a giving of thanks."  ~p. 21

Always, he throws in the refrain, and give thanks.  As if that were the whole point of it all.  All the humans, with the mouse, are summed up in one reason for being, the sacrifice of thanks for the joy set before Him, enduring.

the curtains left open

And again, I see a big house sitting on the hill as I jog by on the asphalt road near the river.  The house is one of the big mansion sort, the kind I never get invited to, but love to look in curiosity.  In fact, the house is so big, I think it might be a city, a multi-level complex of something like an Italian villa surrounding a garden in the middle.  In the middle of the garden I think is a tree, as I'm peering through the night at the branches overarching this house from its center, the fiercely green leaves lit up as if by a spotlight hidden in the nest of branches.  Reminds me of the tree of Life, that old legend.  

In a slow trot as I run by, I gaze over at one of the windows, off across a wide yard on this hill, and notice that there seem to be shadows in the house, shadows of people and I can hear the laughter of voices and the bark of a dog or two.  Light beams out of each of the many windows in the wide wall of this mansion, as if seeing stars sparkle on the wall of the sky on a moonless night.  I peer into the closest window and see that the curtains have been casually pulled aside, revealing merrymakers dancing, and they are singing as they keep rhythm to something further inside the house, a pulse I can almost hear as far as the street upon which I run, and vibrating back from somewhere beyond my road in the deep darkness of the forest on my other side.  

I glance away, checking my path ahead, dimly lit by the light from the big house.  "Only sixty-nine more miles," I say to myself, and with impatience, "sixty and nine too many."  I look back over at the window, but the curtain has been drawn and I can see only dimly--fuzzy shadows wobbling.  

what color is your curtain?

Kermit put up curtain rods this weekend. I put up the white curtains in our bedroom. I woke up to see the half-transparent eyelet-like sheets blowing gently in the breeze through the window, which struck me as surprisingly beautiful, winsome, like a girl's dress blowing in the Easter wind, like something out of a Jessie Wilcox Smith illustration of Little Women, full of the emotive sentiment of young girls and breezy spring days. Otherwise, the curtains are like walking into your own familiar room of no surprises and finding a mannequin staring at you from the corner. Nothing to make one startle.

We say there's a curtain between us and the Other world. Our eyes cannot behold the Lord because our window to the soul is dim, curtained off, thus we think it an evil that we cannot access the spirit world as we might like. But we dress our windows for comfort, for visual delight, for practical protection from extreme temperatures and snooping night eyes. Perhaps the drapes between us and the Other protect us, shield our mortal eyes from something, the things we cannot bear to see, not for their horror but for extreme goodness, the holiness of Him who is brighter than the sun.

Encouragement

"Take no heavier lift of your children, than your Lord alloweth; give them room beside your heart, but not in the yolk of your heart, where Christ should be; for then they are your idols, not your bairns. If your Lord take any of them home to his house before the storm come on, take it well, the owner of the orchard may take down two or three apples off his own trees, before the midsummer, and ere they get the harvest sun; and it would not be seemly that his servant, the gardener, should chide him for it. Let our Lord pluck his own fruit at any season he pleaseth; they are not lost to you, they are laid up so well, as that they are coffered in Heaven, where our Lord's best jewels lie." ~Samuel Rutherford