Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Grand Adventure?


My natural inclination is to see life as a grand adventure. This doesn't mean I don't have responsibilities. Of course I do. If I had kids, I'd have even more responsibilities, but as it is, I still think I have a responsibility to seek God's will for me, to love my neighbor, and to care for God's creation. So it's not an adventure in the sense that it doesn't matter what I do. It's an adventure in that life is filled with uncertainty and that's okay.

When I was a kid, I thought that soon after adulthood I'd have it all figured out, that I'd get a job and stay in the same career forever, that I'd settle down somewhere and have the same group of friends and acquaintances forever more, and that I would know how to handle everything that came my way. My imaginings were fairly devoid of emotion, and in fact I wondered how adulthood would manage to avoid being boring. Since then, I've changed careers twice and have yet to really get established in one (though I'm hoping third career is the charm!) and my life has been full of fascinating people drifting in and out depending on where their own paths take them. I certainly don't know how to handle everything, and I've found myself in situations I never imagined as a child – but I'm starting to feel that with God's help, I can handle things.

I sometimes find myself wondering if there's a fine line between faith and fatalism and which side of that line I might be on. I've been on anti-anxiety meds for a while, and I'm a really different (and dysfunctional) person when I'm off of them, but in the seven or so years I've been on them, and especially in the past three or so, and most strongly in the past year, I've developed an odd sense of detachment. It doesn't necessarily kick in when I'm in the thick of a situation, but when I'm thinking about my future, I feel what might seem like an alarming lack of anxiety. I'm still job-hunting, I don't know what my prospects are like, and I don't know what I'll wind up doing. I don't know which people will stay in my life over the years, I don't know if I'll remain healthy, I don't know what climate change is going to do to the planet.

I'm not indifferent to those things. I hope that we won't see the worst global warming scenarios come true. I certainly would rather be healthy than not, and I hope to keep my close friends. I would prefer to end up in work that's interesting and contributes to society and allows for a comfortable work-life balance. But there are two factors that keep me from worrying a lot: one is that I can't control most of these things. I can do my part, but life is going to do what it's going to do. For any situation, I think it's a personal choice how much to seek to control and mitigate and how much to just let things happen and hope for the best. Somewhat oddly, the second factor is that there's a lot I can control. I can't control exactly what happens to me, but if I'm not happy, I can change something. I don't have to stay in a job I hate; I can look for another job or move into a smaller place and scale back financially. If I experience a major setback, I can still stay connected to my friends and the church and find much that's fulfilling in life.

It's at this point where I start to worry about being callous or unsympathetic or insensitive. One reason is that I'm very fortunate. I have enough material and psychological and social resources to cushion the blows of anything really hard that happens to me. Not everyone has that, and it's a heck of a lot easier to say you're confident that things will turn out okay when you're not living on the edge. As a society, I think we need to be working on pulling people back from that edge. It's not right that there are people stuck in jobs that make them miserable because they're desperate to feed their kids or keep their health insurance. And I think it's a fallacy to say that someone just has to do the miserable jobs. We can develop technology to improve them, we can adjust working conditions and benefits so that they're not miserable but are actually decent jobs, we can insist that all workers be treated as human beings and not just as economic resources. God didn't intend for anyone to be exploited for the benefit of those with more power.

I can also come across as generally out of touch here because it still might sound like I don't care what happens in my life. I care very much. I have a lot of emotions. And it's more likely than not that I'll face some very painful things over the course of my life just because that seems to be the nature of life. I've been lucky so far. But I do maintain that being joyful and confident now isn't going to make bad things happen. There's a part of my mind that seems to think I owe it to the seriousness of life's problems to not be too relaxed, to be waiting for the other shoe to drop, and that not doing so means being in denial or being insensitive or tempting fate. But I don't think God actually looks around and says “Oh, that person doesn't have enough anxiety; better do something to them!” And I do kind of feel that whatever happens in my life, God will be present and that His presence will make enough difference, not to keep painful things from happening, but to keep them from destroying me.

But then what to do with the fact that people are destroyed? Hunger and war and sickness and loss and abuse do in fact grind people into despair. I can only hold on to the hope that God carries them through those terrible things to the other side, to a state of peace and joy. And in my own case as well, by not being destroyed, I don't mean avoiding death – of course I'm going to die someday. And I don't mean avoiding loss of home or health or loved ones or freedom or sanity. Rather I mean a belief that God will see me through, either to His good will for me in this life, or to healing and love in the next.

Monday, August 29, 2011

God and Nature


The major idea in the sermon yesterday was that of finding God in the beauty of the world – that beauty is of God and that we should take time to notice it. I find this idea both very appealing and kind of dangerous.

The dangerous comes in mostly in how we then perceive other people. And it was mentioned that we're not talking here about what I think of as the cosmetic industry's idea of beauty. But we still have to be careful with that beauty-is-of-God idea when it comes to our fellow human beings. Just by chance, some people will be born with more symmetrical features than others. Some will be healthier or go through life with fewer scarring injuries. Some will more closely match the prevailing standards of beauty for body shape and size. And we all know it's ridiculous to say that if someone is more beautiful, that means they're closer to God. There have been some very homely saints, and there are people who are gorgeous but also self-centered or cruel. With humans, I think all we can say is that beauty is one kind of gift from God. Like musical talent or health or intelligence, it's good as part of God's creation, and it's nice to have or to appreciate in others, but it can be used for good or evil purposes and its presence or absence is not evidence of one's degree of righteousness.

That said, I still do think there's something in this idea that beauty is of God. I definitely see God in the beauty of the natural world. In flowers and trees, of course, and in mountains and seas and butterflies and songbirds. But also in bracket fungi and slime molds, in mice and snakes, in spiderwebs and weeds. I find nature to be incredibly beautiful both in its visual patterns of color and shape and in its complexity and interconnectedness, and I'm filled with wonder at the fullness of God's world.

Even so, I struggle with what that means when the natural world is also often so violent. The webs that shimmer so beautifully with tiny droplets after a storm are death traps for insects, built so that the spider can paralyze its prey and later liquefy it from the inside out. The smooth curves of a hawk's beak and talons have that shape in order to grab and tear apart unsuspecting rodents. And again, I feel wonder at how well these creatures are adapted for their environments and for their roles as predators, but I also question where God is in the harshness of nature, in the way so many life-forms have to get their energy and structural materials by taking them from other living things, in the way even those that aren't predators or parasites are still competitors both with other species and with members of their own. In general, you're not going to learn compassion for the weak or love for your enemy by looking at nature.

I don't know what this means. At least one of the stories in Genesis seems to indicate a fully harmonious world before the fall, in which even the tigers were vegetarians. It's not stated outright that predation was a result of the fall, but I've seen interpretations in that direction – that the fall was when death entered the world for all living things, not just for humans. If you accept evolution, however, that's impossible to take literally – dinosaurs were killing and dying long before humans showed up.

One way to deal with this is to take almost a science fiction parallel universe idea of the fall. It's an idea that sounds kind of nuts, but one way that helps me make sense of both the truth I feel in the stories and the reality I see around me. So maybe sometime in a two-dimensional, sort of loop-like sense of time, there was something like a garden of Eden, and there was something much more like the fall as a single choice with echoing consequences. And maybe those echoes rippled backwards in time in addition to forwards, so that that harmonious creation was disrupted to the point of never having existed, and so we get evolution instead, and all the trouble of having brains in beta as our mark of original sin. The advantage of this interpretation is that it speaks to that idea of the whole creation as being redeemed in Christ, and that it gives some explanation to the harshness of the natural world. The disadvantage is that it really does sound like something out of a sci-fi story, and that I completely made it up.

Another possibility is that for most things, death isn't as bad as it is for humans because of the lack of self-awareness. I'm pretty confident that my life has more value to me than the life of a deer has to it. I probably care more about the survival of longleaf pine as a species than the longleaf pine does. And so the fact that there are wasps that lay their eggs in living caterpillars so the wasp larvae can eat the caterpillar from the inside out isn't as horrible as it sounds. (Though the fact that there are parasites that do awful things to humans who do suffer and who do mind dying is still an issue).

But even then, some animals do seem to have some capacity for suffering – certainly enough that most of us find it morally wrong to inflict that suffering on them unnecessarily. And I'm not sure how far chimps are from us in terms of self-awareness, though I don't think they have the nearly lifelong awareness of their mortality that we have to deal with. So it seems like self-awareness exists on some sort of a continuum rather than being a black-and-white issue. And maybe that continues past humans. After all, for us humans, much of our mind is unconscious and inaccessible. It's part of us, but we can't fully know it. I have trouble imagining that God doesn't fully know God's self. How else could He be entirely trustworthy, as Scripture and Tradition tell us over and over that He is?

I'm afraid I've ended with more questions than answers again. I find wonder and beauty in nature that speak of me of God, but I also find that much of life has to destroy or outcompete other life in order to survive, and I don't know why a God that's full of love for everything He's made would create a world that way. Maybe someday we'll know.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Being the church?


I wasn't at church last week – I was in mountains and bogs instead. While I don't think it's a sin for me to miss church occasionally to do something else that has value, I definitely do notice the difference when I come back. Worshiping in community definitely helps me to feel more on track in my connection with God. I guess that's why Christians have been doing it for 2000 year (following in the tradition of the Jews, who also had communal worship).

Today was especially wonderful because it was my first day meeting some of the kids and parents I'll be working with as a youth leader. I won't be able to say very much about that ministry because I think it's important to respect the kids' privacy. Not just to keep them anonymous for safety's sake, but also to honor the sacredness of their individual and very personal self-expressions and explorations. So I won't be telling stories here about what this or that kid did, even without names. What I will say right now is that it's a really good-natured group of kids and that I feel privileged to get to work with them. I hope to be worthy of helping nurture the unique wonder that God has created in each of them.

It was after the youth group orientation as I entered the sanctuary for worship that I got a strong sense of how blessed I am to have such a wonderful community in the the church. That was part of what I had missed by being away the previous Sunday. I've been told that it's impossible to be a Christian in isolation. I don't know that that's completely true – I think if you get stranded on a desert island, you do what you have to do, and it's probably better not to abandon your faith in such a situation if you have the option. And besides that, people are different, and I don't think it's my place to determine how someone else should practice their faith. Maybe some people are called to be mostly alone.

For myself, though, I definitely think that Christianity is a communal activity. I do pray and read the Bible alone sometimes, but I find it more meaningful with others. I guess I buy into the idea that the church really and truly is the mystical body of Christ, and my connection to Jesus is primarily through the church. This doesn't necessarily mean just in formal or “official” settings, or just within my own congregation. The church is one, and so interacting with any other Christians could be being the church. I say could be because I think there might also be some intentionality involved. If I got together with some friends, even just from my own church, and we went out for lunch or something, we wouldn't necessarily be being the church. If our faith isn't informing our conversation or actions or attitudes, then we're just another group of friends out for lunch – which is not a bad thing and can be a very good thing.

And yet, that claim doesn't quite ring true either; I don't feel like you have to be very self-consciously churchy in order to be practicing your faith. And even if a group of friends goes out with no goal except to have a good time, the Holy Spirit can act there however she wants. You could find up being the church even if that's not at all what you planned to do with the evening. And I don't mean just that you could come across someone in need and help them out, though that would certainly be a good thing to do. I mean also that you could have an evening in which the love of God shone through your conversations with one another and your attitudes toward the world. Or you could not – and if not, I don't think that means we're bad people or even necessarily doing something wrong at that time. I think it just means that we haven't yet fully lived into the kingdom of God to the point where it's constantly manifested in and around us. I think a lot of what we do at church is practice making space for the kingdom of God to be manifested, and that making space is a big part of what I think of as being the church. I think it's often easier to do our part when we're intentional about it, but I also think we're human and not necessarily up for being intentional all the time – sometimes we just need to relax. And that's fine because God can still break in wherever God wants to.

So I find myself at a point of confusion. I think that intentionality matters and that it's good to be consciously willing to bring about God's kingdom. But I also agree with C.S. Lewis that there's a kind of importance in self-forgetfulness, of being with God in the present so strongly that that's what fills your awareness and that for a while you're separated from the constant questioning of “Am I doing okay? What am I about here? Is this who I really want to be?”, and that focusing on God is better than focusing on ourselves. I'm not sure how to reconcile those viewpoints; I'll have to think about that for a while.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Life Is Big

Life is big. In fact, life is so big that I'm having trouble putting all the pieces together. This is a blessing in most ways – there's very little reason for me ever to be bored. The difficulty is in prioritizing, and in discerning where God's will is in that. So, being a compulsive list maker, I'm trying to break down the pieces of my life.

First there are the family responsibilities: school now, a job once I graduate. I hope for the job to tie in directly with doing God's work in the world somehow. Not in the sense of church ministry, but hopefully in some way of caring for creation and doing conservation work. But direct conservation work might also be a ways off, so I'm searching for discernment on what to do with the skills that I have and the job market I'm in. And also with how much of myself I have to adapt as far as dress codes and communication style – to what degree should I be myself and trust that there's a place out there for me, and to what degree should I try to play the game? Then there are household chores that need done. And visits with family, all of whom are out of state. Of course that ties in to relationships too, since my family and Steve's are made of wonderful people who are important to me.

Then there are the parts of my life that are about relationships. These are a source of joy to me also, but I think of them as separate because there's a sense that, even if a lot of what we do is have fun together, there's a connection being strengthened, a sense of fellowship and living in community. This has become a big chunk of my life, but that seems to make sense as I've gotten to know more people and found more kindred spirits. There's the time I spend with my husband, of course. And the time I spend with other people who are close to me. There's the D&D group, the game nights, the parties, meals and stuff with friends, church book club, and phone calls/emails/Facebook to help keep in touch with people I see less often. And a lot of the content looks frivolous, and perhaps is – board games aren't very important to the world (though I think they are good practice with thinking and learning and problem-solving), a nice meal is much more about pleasure than it is about keeping me alive – but in some ways the content is simply a background for forming and maintaining those bonds that make life meaningful in and of themselves.

Then there's the stuff I think of directly as doing God's work. There's conservation work – some of this I can do on a volunteer basis, like helping with prescribed burns and pulling invasive plants. But I still hope to do it in my career as well. And then there's the political engagement, trying to convince elected officials to make decisions that encompass the common good – my involvement has been emails and phone calls, but maybe there's more to do. On another note, I've agree to be a leader for part of my church's youth group, and I definitely see that as serving God. And then there are other, sort of one-time things that come up, often in church, that are worth helping out with. And all this church stuff ties in to relationships too, since the church is also a community. But then there's the question of making responsible consumer choices – trying to choose things that are made without harming the environment or exploiting workers, and trying to reuse and recycle and consider what I really need and not overconsume. But also not go crazy in the process, and have time left for the other parts of life. And then there are projects I could do to further that process – get rain barrels, get better at reclaiming graywater in the house in general, figure out how to make old shirts into grocery bags and find someone who can let me use their sewing machine to do it, plant a native garden, etc. I haven't done any of these things because getting enough time in one chunk is a challenge.

And I also need to keep myself alive and healthy if I'm going to be any good to anyone, so that means cooking (which gets into a lot of those attempts at responsible consumer choices), exercise – which can have a social aspect with racquetball or can be solitary, or can give me time to read on the elliptical, rest and sleep, and cleanliness and hygiene. And even then there are questions – yes, exercise is valuable, but is it more important to me to get the recommended amount of exercise or to do more to help others directly or spend time with people I care about? Sometimes I can do both at once, but not always. And sleep is clear enough, but rest sometimes means “wasting time” on the internet or whatever, which I think has some restorative value but can also turn into a distraction. Sometimes I feel able to focus and be really active and save the world, and sometimes it's a struggle just to be civil to the people I happen to encounter – there seems to be mental and social fatigue as well as physical, and how to handle those appropriately isn't as clear – is it self-indulgent to back off and take a break or is it wise stewardship of your own limited abilities? Undoubtedly it's sometimes one and sometimes the other, but how do you know?

And then there's spirituality – the worship and connection part of life with God, as opposed to the service part. (Not that they're truly in opposition, but there's a difference of focus). For me, Sunday worship is the most important part. But then I often struggle to stay connected during the week because of the ease of getting caught up in the week's activities, because I feel like I don't deserve closeness to God, because I'm confused about all the different ways I'm feeling pulled and don't know what God wants of me, because I get caught up in my own desires and cut myself off from God. I try to hang on, sometimes using the Daily Office, sometimes saying my prayers at bedtime, and sometimes exploring my questions with this blog (which then gets a relational aspect as people comment and share their ideas). I feel a powerful sense of wanting closeness with God and wanting the joy of God's presence, but I also know there can be a temptation to become what one of the previous clergy called a “sacristy rat,” involved in the trappings and beauty of worship but not going out into the world to do the work of serving God. So it's really important to have both, and again, the trick (which I don't have) is to find the right balance.

Finally, there are things in my life that are purely for my own joy. Is it okay that these are part of my life? Is taking time for them a reverent enjoyment of the good gifts of God, or is it a selfish distraction from the needs of a suffering world? I'm talking about things like reading (also ties into the relational with book club), my recent discovery of music, spending time outdoors (which can connect to exercise, and to conservation work, and to relationships with friends who also love the woods), baking (which again has a relational aspect since I like to share the products), movies and travel (relational because often shared with my husband), and knitting, which I haven't taken up in a long time, but which also has a relational aspect because I prefer to knit for other people. How do I balance these individual joys with all the work that needs to be done? How do I balance these often solitary pleasures with the time needed for maintaining relationships?

There's so much to do, and such limits on time, and also on physical, mental, and social energy, that I don't think it's possible to do everything I value. I truly believe that the best path is whatever God wills for me, but I don't know how to figure that out. How do I tell God's voice from the voice of my own desire? How can I trust myself to hear if the direction God is calling me might not be what I would choose?

“Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings with your most gracious favor, and further us with your continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name, and finally, by your mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Adoration, Sin, and the Presence of God

When I was a kid, I was taught to pray using the acronym “ACTS,” and I still use that when I pray by myself before bed, though as I've mentioned before, I switch up the order of the letters, so some nights it's TSAC or CSTA instead. Anyway, the letters stand for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Confession, thanksgiving, and supplication were always straightforward enough for me, but for years, even into adulthood, I struggled with adoration. I sort of got the idea that it was about praising God, but I had trouble distinguishing that from thanksgiving in any meaningful way. I just couldn't see the point of sitting around trying to tell God “You're so great” thirty different ways.

I was finally able to get my mind somewhat around it when I read somewhere that adoration was less about complimenting God and more about just being with God. Something about “asking only to enjoy God's presence.” Which is both wonderful and problematic. The problematic part is that it seems so forward to ask to hang out with God. It's one thing approaching God about issues that God is far better equipped to deal with than I am: I screwed up here, this is beyond my capability to deal with, etc. And thanksgiving feels like an appropriate recognition of my dependence on God's goodness. But asking God to share God's self and God's time (and yes, I know time isn't an issue for God in the same way, but still) is claiming a very different sort of relationship. Not the boss whose office you enter only when you have a good reason, state your business, and leave before you're told to get back to work already. More like a grandmother who has all the time in the world for the little kid who thinks she's just the greatest thing in the world.

The wonderful part is that, based on my own experience, this does actually seem to be the case. I find that if I'm really looking for God, He's right there. The times when I've been unable to sense the presence of God have been times when I didn't really want to, because I didn't want to let go of my anger or self-pity yet, or because I knew that doing so would mean I'd have to change my immediate behavior. And it's not that I felt that God wouldn't let me approach until I put those emotions aside; it's that the narrow, bitterly self-centered worldview simply couldn't coexist with the glory of God. It's an old metaphor, but it really is just like a bright floodlight chases all the shadows away. And there have been times when I wanted those shadows more than I wanted God, which yes, means that there have been times when I wanted misery more than I wanted joy, or more precisely that I wanted my misery rather than God's joy. And there probably will be again.

Technically, this is a pretty classic definition of sin. Maybe not quite as classic as the child's definition of doing things you're not supposed to do, but pretty squarely within the definition of separation from God, and even chosen separation from God. Of course, I've always come out of it eventually, and undoubtedly that's because God was working at me on an unconscious level (and my anti-anxiety mess helped too, but that's a whole bother topic. Short version is that no, I don't think mental illness is sin on the part of the sufferer, but yes, I think it can affect one's spiritual life, and the more so since I think there is a physiological component to our experience of the divine.) But the thing is, even though it may have been sin in the sense of being separated from God and being very unhappy and having to repent and turn back to God for things to be made right, there was never a sense of reprimand. And much more of a sense of being healed than being forgiven, though of course both were necessary in some sense.

Anyway, that's not where I thought I was going when I started to write, so back to my original train of thought...if I look for God, I find Him, and if I ask to enjoy the presence of God (and then actually pay attention and don't run off to do something else) that's usually there too. And I have to nod to C.S. Lewis and say yes, I know that depending on emotions is a bad idea, and that God is there regardless of what I feel about Him at any particular time, but at the same time, my sense of the presence of God is more or less a feeling, and it's pretty consistent. And frustratingly hard to describe. I've been halfway thinking about it this whole time I've been writing, and the closest I can get is that it feels something like being about to laugh, though without any sense of ridicule – joyous laughter rather than flippant laughter (again, thanks to C.S. Lewis for that distinction). And there's kind of a non-visual sense of brightness. And sometimes a feeling of lightness and space. (And now some of you might think it sounds like I'm talking about getting high. Maybe it does, I wouldn't know. It's definitely not at all like getting tipsy.) And so on one hand, there's this amazing sense that God is always near. On the other hand, there's a sense that it's important not to take that for granted. Which is odd phrasing, because it almost sounds like we shouldn't assume God will always be there, but it seems like trusting in God means assuming just that. What I think it means, and maybe what C.S. Lewis was getting at too, is that it's important to recognize that my individual feeling of the presence of God is not God itself, and that if my intentions veer towards wanting to feel those things instead of actually wanting to be with God, that's a problem. To approach God as a means to an end rather than as an end in Himself is surely blasphemy.