hey guys. i'm off at the lodge until sunday, so this could be a really chill and productive week. (what? the word 'productive' used in a positive sense? who is this mysterious blog writer and what have you done with will weir?!?) i just got off of a very short but encouraging phone call with kristen; she's still rocking. i'm gonna see if the peace corps has any other openings because it really kind of sounds fun. sort of. yea.
well, we got back to journals this week, and here's what's been kind of consuming my mind for the last week or so. hope it finds you well and that you find it encouraging, interesting, or at least pleasantly dull. just kidding. if you, the person reading this, and i aren't caught up with each other, let's talk, yea? yall take care now.
ps - ryan adams with jen tomorrow. boo-yah. (obstructed view. snap.)
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It Started as a Prayer
(So I’ll keep it that way; this is all what I wrote in my brand new legal pad Monday.) Right now, what seems to be a source of some stress (maybe more perceived than real) in my relationships with the community is this issue that you do all things to your glory, that your glory is the utmost cause and quality of your existence. I also believe that, because of your nature – that you are love, and that you’re kind, beautiful, good, and strong – your glory is congruent with “the good of those who love [you], who are called according to [your] purpose.”
I readily confess my propensity to get behind a cause, an argument, and to leave that somehow removed from the fact that you are Person (!); you are not proposition. So take me off of my soapboxes that would merely defend me, my past, and my mind, and help me come to know the truth directly from you and from your Scripture. Because I do believe it’s true. I believe in your love and goodness enough that your hunger, your ownership of your glory doesn’t scare me. But sensitize me even greater to this love and goodness. Help me understand your heart for the nations, your heart for the Church, your heart for individuals, and your heart for me.
Please protect me from serving myself by having a lens on the text from Piper or Edwards.
Isaiah 43:6-7 – “…bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory…”
Isaiah 48:9,11 – For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I
restrain it for you that I may not cut you off…For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.
2 Cor 3:7-9 – Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.
Throughout all of human history, God works to his own glory by redeeming/loving his people to himself. In the Old Testament, the means is the Law’s revelation, condemnation, and conviction of sin with the hope of a Messiah. Paul calls this “the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone,” which still “came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory.” But this glory was “being brought to an end (v. 11),” making way for the new, beautiful glory of the “ministry of the Spirit.” And all of this is accomplished through the surest definition of love we have: Romans 5:8 – “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us;” 1 John 4:7 – “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins;” 1 John 3:16 – “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us…”. So how else are we to know love other than by God’s seeking and displaying his glory in our salvation? As John tells us earlier in this epistle, “your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake (v 12)”. And how great this God is, who is more glorified in the strength of his love than in the strength of his hand.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
woohoo!
nope, no good reason for the celebratory title, none particular anyway. today's the first straight up cold, gray day we've had. it's kind of strangely cheerful; maybe it just feels like it's getting ready to inaugurate the Christmas season or something. i'm at this independent, locally owned, small coffee shop (that was for pat) in st. michael's, about fifteen minutes from our place. this is the first time in my life, i think, that i've gone to a place consistently enough to finish off one of those cards where they punch a hole every time you get something, so you get a free drink or whatever. i gotta tell ya, it's a really good feeling.
well, there weren't any journals for class this week because we had kind of a crazy weekend, and we're in the middle of life stories. i gave mine in class yesterday. the problem with life stories is that they're an hour and a half long, so the whole time you feel like you've got tons of time left, until the last minute. and what happened last in my life? you. i got to the family, well, senior year, with like 12 minutes left, and that's just not justice, not at all. so i hoped to repair it a little here, and just say some things ya know?
the overarching narrative of my life up to this point takes an incredible turn in you. here's what i mean: life since i can remember has been some sort of self-preserving, self-serving caution that flees the danger of real relationship for the familiarity of friendship that requires no real interdependence. that's a simplistic statement, kind of, and one that doesn't do complete justice to some really significant and close relationships from high school and early college, and the best of these friendships have continued to grow into more complete ones, so they're part of this, too. but it's true overall, and in my former safe isolation my heart was ice, i mean rock-hard ice.
and then God introduced us all to each other, or rather re-introduced us, as brothers and sisters, and i wanted to tell them yesterday all of the warmth you brought me (i wanted to use the phrase 'the bunsen burner of love,' but that's just weird right?). in you, in the substance of our community that welcomed, loved, encouraged and appreciated (though with its share of deficiencies, i admit), i was melted of (a lot of) my hardness. all of the biblical imagery of hearts of stone being turned into hearts of flesh became reality in my tears (which were rare till then anyway), tears that i could finally cry for the pain (and joy!) of others, not just for my own. after striving so hard for my own gain, my own satisfaction, after treating people as means and not as family, God gives us that joy in striving for the joy of those around us, of the Church, particularly. "for i felt sure of you all, that my joy would be the joy of you all." - 2 cor 2:3.
i love you guys; hope to see you soon.
well, there weren't any journals for class this week because we had kind of a crazy weekend, and we're in the middle of life stories. i gave mine in class yesterday. the problem with life stories is that they're an hour and a half long, so the whole time you feel like you've got tons of time left, until the last minute. and what happened last in my life? you. i got to the family, well, senior year, with like 12 minutes left, and that's just not justice, not at all. so i hoped to repair it a little here, and just say some things ya know?
the overarching narrative of my life up to this point takes an incredible turn in you. here's what i mean: life since i can remember has been some sort of self-preserving, self-serving caution that flees the danger of real relationship for the familiarity of friendship that requires no real interdependence. that's a simplistic statement, kind of, and one that doesn't do complete justice to some really significant and close relationships from high school and early college, and the best of these friendships have continued to grow into more complete ones, so they're part of this, too. but it's true overall, and in my former safe isolation my heart was ice, i mean rock-hard ice.
and then God introduced us all to each other, or rather re-introduced us, as brothers and sisters, and i wanted to tell them yesterday all of the warmth you brought me (i wanted to use the phrase 'the bunsen burner of love,' but that's just weird right?). in you, in the substance of our community that welcomed, loved, encouraged and appreciated (though with its share of deficiencies, i admit), i was melted of (a lot of) my hardness. all of the biblical imagery of hearts of stone being turned into hearts of flesh became reality in my tears (which were rare till then anyway), tears that i could finally cry for the pain (and joy!) of others, not just for my own. after striving so hard for my own gain, my own satisfaction, after treating people as means and not as family, God gives us that joy in striving for the joy of those around us, of the Church, particularly. "for i felt sure of you all, that my joy would be the joy of you all." - 2 cor 2:3.
i love you guys; hope to see you soon.
Monday, October 15, 2007
how yall durrin?
it's sunday night here at the OP. all is well, and quieted down since the guests have all been gone for a little bit. dawn, our super intense chef at the lodge gave me two A's for my shifts on Friday, so i'm pretty much on cloud nine. i was convinced she hated me, at least professionally. but now things are looking up.
i'm feeling now more and more like i'm doing a poor job at keeping up with everyone, and i feel bad about it. but i don't feel bad about it in a way that assumes that people need to hear from me in order to be ok or something like that; i know that's not true. i feel bad about in a way that feels like ingratitude and cutting myself out of a community that i need. because it's true, i do need you and i am thankful for you, and to you.
anyway, here's my journal for the week if anybody still stops by here. i love ya
. . . . . . . . .
The Answer to Everything in the Universe (or something)
After class the other day (as most days), I was thinking about how ridiculous it might seem for someone who was just sitting in. It might look like we just talk and talk for an hour and a half and end with bigger questions than when we began, because I don’t know if I’ve ever left class with an “answer” to the day’s topic, a new sentence or phrase to use as a response in the “real world.” But that’s ok: Gilead to the rescue again. At the end of a discussion similar to those in class (though this one on a topic perhaps even more convoluted: predestination (aaahh!!)), the wise (Presbyterian) minister Boughton, crooked with arthritis and bent with the weight of old pain is asked for his conclusions on the issue: “[No conclusions] that I can remember,” he says. “To conclude is not in the nature of the enterprise.”
I think he’s right. We can’t come to the table in class, or anywhere really, and expect to leave with a tidy position on things. In fact, after having my presuppositions unsettled in discussion, I often leave class feeling frustrated and exhausted from trying to wrap my arms around nothing more than a dense fog. But it’s not just fog; there’s something irresistibly More there. I think it’s Spirit, which is even more elusive than the fog and a thousand times more real.
The reality and singularity of this Spirit doesn’t make him any easier to pin down. I’m reminded of Augustine’s string of God-exalting paradoxes: “most merciful and most just, deeply hidden yet most intimately present…immutable and yet changing all things, never new, never old…always active, always in repose, gathering to yourself but not in need…you cancel debts and incur no loss” (5). God really is all of these things, but he is not only any one. As soon as I’ve labeled him “just,” I’m reminded of the mercy of sunshine and friendship and, above all, the canceling of my debt, none of which I deserve. As soon as I try to enclose him in “mercy,” he’s tearing my ears open to the whole creation, “subjected to futility…groaning together in the pains of childbirth” as he floods my city or my friend’s biopsy comes back with terrible news.
So you can’t cage a Spirit, but you can’t ignore him either. All of this round-table grappling, this searching for that Person in the middle of the paradoxes, might never get us closer to an “answer,” but that’s “not in the nature of the enterprise.” We aren’t merely resigning ourselves to some vain pursuit of articulating the inexplicable; we’re being enthralled by the one great Question into a life of losing ourselves in that Mystery. We’re not trying to catch a butterfly in a net; we’re moths trying to break into the light bulb.
i'm feeling now more and more like i'm doing a poor job at keeping up with everyone, and i feel bad about it. but i don't feel bad about it in a way that assumes that people need to hear from me in order to be ok or something like that; i know that's not true. i feel bad about in a way that feels like ingratitude and cutting myself out of a community that i need. because it's true, i do need you and i am thankful for you, and to you.
anyway, here's my journal for the week if anybody still stops by here. i love ya
. . . . . . . . .
The Answer to Everything in the Universe (or something)
After class the other day (as most days), I was thinking about how ridiculous it might seem for someone who was just sitting in. It might look like we just talk and talk for an hour and a half and end with bigger questions than when we began, because I don’t know if I’ve ever left class with an “answer” to the day’s topic, a new sentence or phrase to use as a response in the “real world.” But that’s ok: Gilead to the rescue again. At the end of a discussion similar to those in class (though this one on a topic perhaps even more convoluted: predestination (aaahh!!)), the wise (Presbyterian) minister Boughton, crooked with arthritis and bent with the weight of old pain is asked for his conclusions on the issue: “[No conclusions] that I can remember,” he says. “To conclude is not in the nature of the enterprise.”
I think he’s right. We can’t come to the table in class, or anywhere really, and expect to leave with a tidy position on things. In fact, after having my presuppositions unsettled in discussion, I often leave class feeling frustrated and exhausted from trying to wrap my arms around nothing more than a dense fog. But it’s not just fog; there’s something irresistibly More there. I think it’s Spirit, which is even more elusive than the fog and a thousand times more real.
The reality and singularity of this Spirit doesn’t make him any easier to pin down. I’m reminded of Augustine’s string of God-exalting paradoxes: “most merciful and most just, deeply hidden yet most intimately present…immutable and yet changing all things, never new, never old…always active, always in repose, gathering to yourself but not in need…you cancel debts and incur no loss” (5). God really is all of these things, but he is not only any one. As soon as I’ve labeled him “just,” I’m reminded of the mercy of sunshine and friendship and, above all, the canceling of my debt, none of which I deserve. As soon as I try to enclose him in “mercy,” he’s tearing my ears open to the whole creation, “subjected to futility…groaning together in the pains of childbirth” as he floods my city or my friend’s biopsy comes back with terrible news.
So you can’t cage a Spirit, but you can’t ignore him either. All of this round-table grappling, this searching for that Person in the middle of the paradoxes, might never get us closer to an “answer,” but that’s “not in the nature of the enterprise.” We aren’t merely resigning ourselves to some vain pursuit of articulating the inexplicable; we’re being enthralled by the one great Question into a life of losing ourselves in that Mystery. We’re not trying to catch a butterfly in a net; we’re moths trying to break into the light bulb.
Monday, October 8, 2007
i don't even know what to say
man, last week was exhausting in as many ways as i can even think of. as always, class and conversation here have been heavy, in a good way usually, just heavy. i've had a lot of fun, more than i deserve, and i've been in and out of the city more times than i really ever want to be in such a short time. honestly, events all kind of blur.
what really sits kind of above everything else is the kristen going to ethiopia fiasco. yup, it's an official fiasco. kind of like jen junior, a mini version of their goodbye; that's probably a good way to put it, maybe. anyway a tough farewell, but remarkably good.
ok so i really just wrote everything before now to have something to put above my journal for this week which is really about the same thing anyway (saying goodbye again, on saturday) because i'm just so tired of thinking that only one thing can be on my mind at any particular time.
but man i miss you guys, so bad.
Romans 2:4
It’s amazing the kinds of things in life that can lead you to repentance. Usually it’s a tragedy or some other sort of pain that awakens you to your contribution to the plague that sin is in the world. The pastor in Gilead says that even the word “transgression” is legalism in itself; “Transgression is an open wound on the heart of humanity” (very roughly quoted, Ali’s got my copy). That may be a bit strong, but his point is made. A single sin is only the symptom of the disease, the cough of a lung cancer patient. But it’s not always trauma or mourning that can lead you there, to where you feel conviction. Sometimes it’s something incredibly good; sometimes blessing works to open our eyes to sin.
In case you hadn’t noticed, I had a friend move to Ethiopia on Saturday (she’s the one who was over here because she was on the way to Ethiopia; I might have mentioned her). And so this week, kind of the whole week, included the ordeal of saying goodbye to her, which was made particularly difficult because there’s just no frame of reference for two years. I mean, you can’t just let “I’ll see you in two years” be the last thing you say to somebody, right?
But goodbye makes you face some things, too. Sometimes you try to think of people in terms of the sum of what they’ve meant to you for the whole time you’ve known them, but that never works. Then maybe you try working through some sort of highlight reel in your head, memories and such, but eventually that falls kind of short too. So maybe you’re left with this kind of beaming sense of gratitude and love and some sadness and really nothing to do with it. You kind of become overwhelmed with the significance of the moment and the person and try (fruitlessly) to find some fitting way to explain and mirror the immense blessing that the person’s been to you.
And if that weren’t enough, when she comes to visit you in your new life, your new place, the thirteen friends you’ve only just made embrace her like a sister. They show interest and sensitivity and kindness. They include and offer and invite. They bear the weight of the distance between close friends. And then they surround her at sunset, after feeding her like an honored guest, and pray for her, the closest thing to a sending church. Every single hand on her shoulder I felt on mine; every single hug after going together to the Father, I received too.
If for even the tiniest measurement of time I accidentally thought I’d done something to deserve this, the cross flashed in my mind bearing my due penalty. To receive community in life instead of loneliness, family instead of isolation, and love instead of banishment – this is gift, not reward. And it applies a soothing balm to that wound we keep ripping open.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
every now and then...
...i'm convinced that maybe i am the luckiest guy in the world ('luck,' right).
so yesterday (sunday) jen and kristen came out to the OP to check out the scenery and hang out a little bit if we found the time. heh. we did. on sunday, they got here just in time to catch a ride on our founder's (ish) freakin 50-foot james bond speedboat. it was wicked. he took us around the bay and up to his house where we had kind of an introduction to him and to the academy's history, and jen and kristen seemed to enjoy hearing what we're up to. when we got home, we cooked chicken and veggies for us 3 and 2 of the fellows. it was really similar to being back at school. i mean, it really was the perfect way for us to eat. after dinner we walked out on the pier and looked at the stars and talked for a while. the night was really cool and there was a solid breeze, so we got our fill and headed back to the house. we had all missed calls from john in ni at some point during the night, so we checked skype to see if he was on. 2 hours later we finished talking to him. it was so good to catch up kind of and to just let it feel for a minute like we were all hanging out together. then we went to play music in the chapel. could it have been anything short of incredible? it only lacked the rest of the family crowded around.
jen left early in the morning to get to work, and kristen and i took the day to hang out. we ran, ate lunch in st. michael's, sat next to a lot of water a lot of times, and had a lot of conversations. i think we kind of needed it. i just got back from dropping her at jen's and kind of saying the real goodbye, and those are always difficult and always leave something to be desired. but time with these two this weekend has been invaluable.
today was journal day after a heavy week last week that was mostly dealing with the problem of evil. God's allowing us to be vulnerable with each other, and honest, and he's providing the love between us that can catch that kind of letting oneself go. it's been great and hard. but from here, i'll let the journal do the talking. i love you all, and i still can't believe that God gives the kind of friends (and family) that would read someone's internet ramblings.
Journal:
This is not a Doctrinal Statement
I can’t remember the last time in my life a class felt as heavy as Wednesday’s on the problem of evil did. And it is a problem. It made me think that this was maybe the one class where David asked us a question he didn’t already know the answer to (just kidding, I think). But after the arguments and impassioned defenses (sorry) I still felt mostly frustrated, and still unsure. I want you to know I only had one foot on the soapbox; the other was knee-deep in uncertainty.
Am I more-or-less intellectually satisfied with all of the theological explanations I’ve heard, believed, and given for the problem of evil/pain? I think so; I wish you could’ve heard all the sermons and book quotes swirling chaotically in my head. Have I ever taken the time to let those conclusions bleed into encounters with real people and their real pain? Yea, when it’s convenient, or necessary. But have I ever loved hard enough to bring a case before God that says, “Please, please remove the hammer and cool the iron! We can’t take it. We’ll all perish! My brothers and sisters die all day long! WHY WON’T YOU END IT NOW?!”
No, I’ve never loved quite like that. The problem of pain for me: only ever feeling my own.
So maybe I’ll never be able to defend God’s allowing/willing/ordaining (call it what you will) evil and pain to enter the world; but I don’t think I need to. Because our pain is just a shadow, a weak glimpse, a reflection in dark sunglasses, of the pain that God feels in driving the nails through our record of debt and into his son’s hands and feet. I’m not holy enough to know pain on that level. I do not hate sin enough to know what kind of offense God would see in me were it not for Christ. “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him,” Isaiah says. So that angry sense of futility at the existence of pain gets pushed out by the glory, the beauty, the awesomeness of a creator willing to subject himself to it on our behalf. For “surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” and it was all our fault.
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