Saturday, May 30, 2009

Bleeding Words

I could bleed words that mean nothing in my
Silent corner of a home
(but not mine)
I could spurt them over a page
Like an arterial wound—
Black blood on LCD paper.

It's not like I haven't done it before,
But the feeling after is like
The emptiness after vomiting or
The cold after a hug from
Someone I know does not love me.

It would be so much better to
Simply know what is inside me.
I know that some things, though true, take no form,
(in letters.)
But without an outlet I grow stagnant,
And something in me wants to grow.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Dysfunctional Families, and Why I Can't Stand Abraham

Since I was old enough to know what the term 'dysfunctional' meant, I have described my family as such. Living at home has always felt like living in a war zone, and every conversation is like wandering through a minefield. Recently, as a result of the book Boundaries and a seminar called "Marriage Matters" my home is somewhat at peace. Even though all is quiet on the home front at present, when I go home I feel like a World War I era farmer going home after the war and finding only trenches and craters.

Sometimes it's good to see my parents having a whole conversation without yelling or to have my mom come home and not be afraid that she's going to blow up. At the same time, this armistice has in many ways been harder than the war. While I was lying in the trenches, I didn't really know how much damage was occurring to my family and my soul. Climbing out and walking through no man's land, the devastation crushes me. I had hoped so much more would survive the war, but everything is gone, at least on this battlefield. Trust, affection, safety, hope, strength... all casualties of a twenty something year war. Everything that I have is built outside of this home, outside of this family.

This is not as bad as it sounds. I have a good Family. I have the Church. I have brothers who love me, whom I love. I have father figures here at Moody, and I have a Father. This makes everything okay, really. I want to have a warm, peaceful, safe, loving home. But I'm 20 now and however many hopes I have for what my family will be in the future, I am done growing up in my parent's home. The home I grew up in now lives in the past, and I will always have grown up in that war-torn home.

I have been reading through Genesis, and it has been both shocking and comforting. I have read it before a couple times, but I think I must have been asleep, because I have never been so emotionally engaged. I give most of the human credit for this change in how I read the Bible to Dr. Penley, who has really helped me understand how to read and apply the Bible.

Often as I read, I felt shocked that the characters in the story were such bad examples. I taught Sunday School for a long time, and our children's pastor (and the curriculum we buy) holds up people like Jacob, Abraham, and Sarah as good Christian role models. I was not raised in the church, and so I didn't know a lot about the Bible, and assumed that presenting heroes from Bible stories was a good way to teach kids to be more like Jesus.

I felt angry because these people I was reading about were not the warm, fuzzy, sanitized rolemodels that are in my Sunday school curriculum. I felt angry because from what I read, we should not be asking young boys to be like Abraham or Jacob nor young girls to be like Sarah or Rebekah. I was intrigued. I felt like I was reading Genesis for the first time. I am realizing things that seem so obvious now, but that I had never noticed when I read before.

And I was comforted. I was comforted because all the people I read about were really messed up, and God used them greatly despite how totally screwed up they were. And honestly, I think that might be the point of the narrative. I think whoever wrote Genesis (Moses, perhaps) is trying to say, "Look at how hopeless all these people were, and look how much God used them in spite of it, and know that God can us you." And it was comforting, because if God can use Jacob and his messed up family, maybe there's hope for me and my family.

The story starts with a married couple, Adam and Eve. Adam is a passive, cowardly man who lets Satan come and spiritually assault his wife, and he just stands there watching it happen instead of manning up and taking a stand. Then, when she tries to get him to join in her sin, instead of standing up to his wife like he should have, he bends to her will and joins her in sin. When God comes and asks Adam to give an explanation, he ducks responsibility and blames his wife, and then he blames God for not giving him a better wife. Eve isn't much better. She is manipulative, controlling, unsupportive, and irresponsible.

I was talking to my friend Chelsea about this, and she pointed out that Joseph is the only good role model in all fifty chapters of Genesis. All of the other men follow Adam's example. They are cowards and fools who will not stand up for what is right. All of the women (except perhaps Hagar) follow Eve's example. They are manipulative, deceptive, and catty.

Together, they make up a tragedy depressing enough that it would be a comedy if we forgot that these were real people. The Children of Adam are the most dysfunctional family I've ever seen.

Abel cares more about God than his brother, Cain, does, so God is pleased with Abel. Cain decides to fix this by this by killing his brother. Noah gets drunk and winds up lying around naked, his son checks him out, Noah curses him and makes him a servant to his brothers. Which brings us to Abram in Chapter 12.

Abram, who becomes Abraham, seemed like a nice guy when I first started reading. He doesn't commit a lot of really noticeable sins like his sons do. At a second glance, he bugged me more than anyone else in the story.

Apparently, his wife was really attractive, because Abraham was worried that if the kings of the lands he visited saw her they would kill him and forcibly take her to be their 'wife.'

So he comes up with a really clever plan. He decided that whenever he meets new people, he's going to tell everyone that his wife, Sarah, is his sister, so that instead of killing him, kings will pay him if they are going to steal his wife and rape her. It's not a clever plan to protect her, it's a clever plan to sacrifice her for the sake of his safety and prosperity.

Abraham has every reason to stand up for his bride. He is wealthy man, having many servants and goods and apparently a private army. On one occasion Abraham's brother, Lot, is captured in battle by, "Kedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of Goiim, Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar. [They] carried off Abram's nephew Lot and his possessions, since he was living in Sodom. [...] One who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew. Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre the Amorite, a brother of Eshcol and Aner, all of whom were allied with Abram. When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan. During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people."

If Abraham had wanted to take a stand for his wife he certainly could have. When he took a stand for his brother he took out the armies of four kings, but apparently he's too scared to take a stand. I suppose he also could have just kept his wife in the tent or had her cover up, if he was that worried about her. But apparently he would rather risk her for his benefit. That gets me pretty riled up, but I'll move on for your sake.

Abraham seems to have some issues within his marriage as well:

"Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, 'The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.' Abram agreed to what Sarai said."

This really ticked me off. Firstly, what kind of wife asks her husband to sleep with another woman? I understand that this is culturally acceptable, but it's still a terrible idea. I think Abraham already knows it's a bad idea, because God has already told Abraham that he's going to have lots of kids, but Sarah is getting impatient, so she tries to make the process happen a little faster. She twists her husband's arm into distrusting God, which apparently wasn't very hard, because not only can Abraham not stand up for his wife, he can't stand up to her either.

So Abraham marries Hagar and has a kid with her, and Sarah freaks out. She gets all bitter and jealous about it. She abuses Hagar (who is still her slave) and Hagar's son. She berates her husband to get him to get rid of her. Eventually she does break up the relationship. Abraham can't seem to stand up for Hagar any better than he can stand up for Sarah, and he sends her away to pacify his jealous and manipulative wife, which is the first mention of divorce in the Bible.

Sarah is also too cynical to believe God when He tells Abraham to that she will have the child she longs for, and then she does some lying to Abraham about it. Together, Abraham and Sarah are quite a team. They disregard the promises of God, they mistreat their servants, they keep getting people cursed...

Now, Lot is Abraham's brother, and apparently just as much of a coward. Note that he is a good man, he's too passive to stand up for what he believes in. He offers his daughters to be raped by the men of Sodom so that they don't rape his dinner guests, which is only avoided because angels save his family and destroy Sodom.

Then, his daughters are really worried that they will never have kids, because it is apparently really hard to find a good husband in 2000BC. (Some things don't change.) Even though their father offered them to the Sodomite to be raped, they seem to think he's good enough, and they conspire together to get their father drunk and sleep with him. Lot, who is even more easily manipulated than Abraham, consents and gets drunk with his daughters and then gets them both pregnant (on two different occasions.)

Abraham's kid, Isaac, gets married to Rebekah. He also pretends that she is his sister, and she also gets taken by a king, who gives her back when he finds out the truth. They have two kids, but Rebekah doesn't like the older one because he has an interracial marriage. (Two of them, actually.) The younger son, Jacob, is a momma's boy, and she teaches him a lot about deception and trickery, apparently, because he tricks his older brother out of his birthright (inheritance) while his mom engineers a way to manipulate his elderly father into blessing Jacob instead of his older brother.

Together, Rebekah and Jacob manage to trick Isaac because he's old and can't see, and he blesses the wrong son. Then Rebekah gets Jacob to run away from home so his brother won't kill him for doing what she put him up to do.

Jacob falls head over heels in love with Rachel the first time he sees her. Apparently he's never read Joshua Harris, because he kisses her the first time they meet. Then, he works for her father seven years to earn the right to marry her. So far, he seems like a decent sort of man, loving, hard-working, etc., if not the best with words: "Jacob said to Laban, [Rachel's father] 'Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her.'"

However, Laban and tricks Jacob into marrying his older daughter, Leah, even though Jacob and Rachel were in love. Jacob is apparently so head over heels in love that he lacks sound judgment to stay sober on his wedding day, and he accidentally marries the wrong girl. "When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, 'What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn't I? Why have you deceived me?'"

So, Jacob stays with Leah for a week, and then he marries her little sister and sleeps with her. I can't imagine that went over very well with Leah, but then I can't imagine Rachel being very happy that Leah tried to steal the love of her life. So Jacob's lovely household is him, his two wives, who are sisters, and their two servants. Not content to live and let live, Jacob's wives start a child bearing feud. My favorite part is when Rachel trades a night with Jacob in exchange for some mandrakes from her sister... I mean, geez...

Leah, being pretty upset that she is sharing a husband with her little sister, and that her little sister is better liked, takes comfort in the fact that she is the more fertile of the two. She gives Jacob a whole bunch of kids, but Rachel doesn't seem to be able to have kids, so Rachel feels like a really bad wife. She decides to pull a Sarah, and get Jacob to sleep with her servant girl so she can have kids through her servant. Not to be outdone, Leah pulls the same trick.

Finally, Rachel has some kids, Joseph and Benjamin, and they are Jacob's favorites. Jacob favors Joseph so much that his brothers conspire to kill him but end up selling him into slavery to an Egyptian family instead. While working there, the mother of the family tries to seduce Joseph, but he refuses her, making him the first man in the Bible to successfully say no to a woman. (And really the first man to stand up to temptation in general). In return, she manipulates her husband into throwing him in prison.

In the mean time, Joseph's half-brother Judah has kids, one of who gets married to a woman named Tamar. Now, apparently Judah's kid was really bad, but we don't really know how, all it says is, "Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death." Then Onan, Er's brother marries Tamar, and refuses to father a child with her. "What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so He put him to death also." Tamar wants to marry Judah's third son, but Judah resists giving him to her and, at the end of a very convoluted story, ends up sleeping with her instead. It's worth noting that Jesus is descended from this Judah.

Now, the story ends well with Joseph becoming the chief administrator in Egypt and being reconciled to his brothers, but it's pretty messy along the way. It's been encouraging to see how God can use even themost screwed up people, but it's also made me rethink a lot of how we teach the Bible, especially to kids. I don't like that my church's children's ministry is sanitizing the Bible. Chelsea and I had a long conversation about it, but didn't come to much of a conclusion. Thoughts?

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Integrity and My Thought Life

I wish my thoughts worked like sentences. I wish they were linear and complete with subjects and verbs. I wish they organized themselves with three points and an introduction and conclusion. They do not.

Books process in sequence. You read one thought and the next thought. If it is not well written, the next thought may not connect well, but it is always one thought after the other. One at a time. This is peaceful and comforting and usually boring.

I process in parallel, and I hate it. I am always thinking about multiple things at the same time. Not that I jump back and forth from one to another, but actually occurring at the same. Maybe this is how most people think, and you are thinking that this comment is obvious and stupid. Maybe you think this is really weird, and you're thinking I should get some professional help.

For me, trying to understand what I am thinking is like sitting on the edge of a highway. My thoughts move so fast they are blurry and I have hardly understood what I am thinking before it is gone, out of sight and a dozen other thoughts whizzing past. I try to focus on one and understand it but while I do several others move fly by unscrutinized. I try to zoom out and understand the who and I come up with a blurry picture of myself with all these different ideas and thoughts melted together, indistinct and unhelpful like trying to figure out which flavors were in melted rainbow sherbet.

There is always a part of me that is planning the next five minutes a part of me that is thinking about the next year and a part of me that is examining memories of the past and a part of me that analyzing my surroundings. A part of me is wondering how that dent got in the wall while another part of me is thinking about something I read this morning and another part of me is thinking about constructing this sentence correctly.

Another part of me is analyzing it to see if it actually expresses what I wanted and another part of me is wondering is I finished cleaning up in the kitchen. Another part of me is often replaying a song or a movie in the back of my head and sometimes pauses to analyze some lyrics or a scene. Another part of me is talking to myself and explaining to myself whatever I am focused on, while another part is thinking of a metaphor to understand what I am focused on, which, by the way, changes every 2-3 seconds.

I am always trying to bring one strand of thought to the forefront of my mind so I can focus on it and do something meaningful, but it is a constant struggle because lyrics from the song or an imagined video (yes, I see video in my head) from the extended metaphor I am creating pops into my head. This triggers more links and tangents and very quickly I have completely lost my train of thought, although is is really more like an 8 lane superhighway than a train. Trains have one care after the other, highways move in parallel.

I like writing because it forces me to be sane. It forces me to take things one step, one sentence at a time, and put my thoughts in a sequence. Then, I can read over it and understand in a more ordered way what the whole of me is thinking or feeling. Most of the things I write are not written in the order you read them in. I select and drag sentences to make paragraphs of sentences that work together.

It annoys me that I lack the discipline to isolate a train of thought and focus on it very well. It annoys me that I constantly have to refocus and bring myself back to what I was trying to do or just think about. This is, I think, a part of the way God made me. And as frustrating as it is and as much as I hate feeling weird, I think it is okay.

However, it seriously bother me that I often process different things from different parts of my character, with different viewpoints, different values, and different beliefs. For example, until last year, I believed that I was saved by grace through faith, and that salvation was not from myself, that is was the free gift of God, that was given to me because God is loving and kind and gracious, but I also believed that having been saved by faith I was supposed to become more like God by working hard at it myself out of duty because God more or less left it all up to me to sink or swim as I would. (I mostly sunk.) My perspective on personal holiness was compartmentalized from my perspective on God, which left me with more or less two completely different gods, and I ascribed to one in certain areas and another in other areas.

Originally, integrity meant "the quality or state of being complete or undivided." The idea of moral uprightness is a relatively recent understanding of the term. It comes from the Latin word 'integer,' which means 'whole.' This is something I have been struggling with a lot.

I have been doing much better at seeing the world with an integrated worldview, that is, having a consistent view of God and His world and he creatures and sons and daughters. I don't think that I presently have two gods in any areas, with one ruling one area and one ruling another. I think the God is God over my whole life, and this is an important part of integrity. I do this when I don't bring all of reality to myself. I would handle the religious part of reality when I felt pious and the harsh parts of reality when I felt like problem solving and the warm and fuzzy parts of reality when I felt sad, instead of engaging the comprehensive picture of reality at all times. I would pick and choose what pieces of reality I wanted to deal with.

Recently, I've been doing better about dealing with all of reality at a time, with not compartmentalizing my worldview. However, I'm starting to realize that I don't bring all of me to reality. I play to my strengths too much. There are parts of my character that are (relatively) highly developed and there are parts that are underdeveloped.

It may be that I am always stronger in some areas that in others, but that shouldn't be an excuse to abandon the other parts of me. I try to develop that parts of me that I am already strong in and I ignore the other parts almost entirely. It's like only lifting weights with your right arm just because you're right handed.

Recently, I've been reading Integrity by Henry Cloud. He says that most people only use parts of their character to interact with reality, and if we would develop and use all of character, that we would be much more effective in whatever it is we have chosen to do. I think this may be what I need. I am really curious about how Dr. Cloud advises we do this, because he's been pretty vague so far. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Awhile ago, I prayed about all this. The prayer was, like most of my thoughts, very nonlinear and nonverbal, but that I was okay with, because I knew God understood me better than I did. Later I tried to express to other people what had happened that night when I prayed, what I had said and what I felt God had said and done. It was very difficult for me to articulate, so I wrote it into a dialogue and something like a poem. I will leave you with this.

Me: God, the God of the whole universe, the biggest God there could be, where are you, and how should I address you?

God: I'm here.

Me: To the God in the seat in front of me...

Me: Hmm, perhaps that's not good. It makes the seat something like a Jesus Christ, or an idol don't you think? Why don't we try again?

Me: You're right. Okay. To the God who is somewhere between the lenses of my glasses and the seat in front of me And also lives in me: There is a problem.

God: Yes?

Me: See, I don't know really how to fix the problem or what it is at all and I would like to fix it but I don't think I could. Even supposing I knew what it was, and how it could be fixed.

God: Where is the problem?

Me: Well, I suppose the problem is in the way I interact with everyone I know, and I could be wrong, but, I think it's in how they interact with each other to. And I'm really not sure, but the problem might be
with almost everyone. And I don't know if it's only interaction with people. Maybe it's how I interact with almost everything.

Me: Everything? Really? What about the Bible? What about God?

Me: Okay, God, we don't think it's strictly everything. We think it's most things, but not the way I pray, and not really how we study the Bible.

God: Okay.

Me: So, I want you to fix it. I mean, I can't hardly fix it I don't even know what's wrong. But if you could just fix it in me, it would be really great. Could you show me how to pray?

God: Okay.

---------------------------------------------------

The following prayer was mostly so nonlinear and wordless that I have not tried to put it to words. Rather I have picked out phrases I remember from that prayer and structured a poem around them and attempted, in the poem, to express the same main idea as in my prayer.

To the God of the whole universe,
God over every moment,
God here in front of me,
God here inside me:

I want to worship you,
in spirit and in truth,
but how is that done?

I want to be thankful,
always and in everything,
but something is missing.

I want to pray at all times,
but I'm not sure that would help
with this issue.

I want all of life
to be a devotional.

I want to worship you
through everything I do.

Not in spite of it.

I want you to be God, and my God:

God of video games.
God of friendships.
God of lunch and dinner.
God of showers.
God of homework.
God of playing sports.
God of reading books.
God of making jokes.
God of laughing.
God of waking up in the morning.
God of working out.
God of sleeping.
God of dreaming.
God of cleaning my room.
God of walking to class.
God of wondering at nature.
God of wondering at people.
God of being angry.
God of being lonely.
God of being hurt and sad.
God of being happy.
God of being bored.
God of being numb.
God of laundry.
God of taking notes.
God of taking tests.
God of acing tests.
God of failing tests.
God of awkward thirty-second conversations.
God of waking up in the middle of the night.
God of all-nighters.

God, I want you to be big enough to me to dominate and cover every aspect of my life.

God, I want to think about you always.
Or perhaps, I want to think about everything through you.

God, I want to worship you always.
Not in spite of what else I'm doing.
But through it.

God, I want my friendships
to be spiritual disciplines.
I want to know you more,
and glorify you through them.

I want to date,
as an act of worship.
I want to feel you,
if I hug a girlfriend.

I want to write term papers,
like lovesongs to you.
I want to read books,
and take in your Spirit.

I want to eat,
and chew with you.
I want to feel you
moving my jaw.

I want to drink,
to taste your bubbles on my tongue.
I want to experience you,
in everything.

I want to exercise
and build your muscles.
I want to love to
build your temple.

I want to write,
words from you and words for you,
In a text message
and on facebook.

I want to dream
to fulfill your passions.
I want to plan,
to charge towards your calling.

When I talk to someone,
I want to be praying.
I'm tired of talking,
Like you're not in the room.

I want to rest,
within your softness.
I want to feel you
coming on with sleep.

I want to live this moment,
with this heart beat,
and this half breath,
worshiping you.

Over and over again,
worshiping you,
through the living
of every moment.

One moment, maybe this one,
I want to die, to and for
and toward you,
worshiping.

Back to Life: The Year in Review

So, I've decided to resuscitate this blog. I'll give you a brief update about what's been going on.

A lot has happened in my personal life in the past year, and eventually it hit critical mass. When that happened, a lot went down for maintenance, so to speak, and this blog was one of the first to go. I've been writing on facebook a little bit, but I'm not really satisfied with the publisher there, and I so I decided to pick up again here.

This year has been traumatic, but very good for me. I went through a break-up in a three year relationship, some serious health problems, a death in the family, and the worst year I've ever had academically. Through all of this, God has taught me a lot about who I am and who I am becoming, and I feel that in many ways I'm a much different person. I know you probably don't want to read about this kind of depressing thing, so that's all I'll say about my personal issues.

Now that my life beginning to come back together, I think I am whole enough to begin writing in earnest again. I want to be intentional about writing higher quality material. This means more fiction, and more nonfiction commentary on specific events, books, etc. and less me spouting off about whatever I feel like talking about. I don't really care how many people read this, but I am hoping to get some more comments and discussions going on in response to my posts.

As you can see, I've changed the color scheme, and I'm not very sure if I like it. Please let me know what you think. I'm worried that it might display too darkly on some people's screens.

It's good to be back. Let me know what you think.