Reflections on a blustery day

Blustery, rainy days like today always put me in the mood to read but since Winter break began I haven’t been able to settle into a good piece of fiction. Every novel I pick up quickly agitates me. Since it is a Sunday, and I didn’t go to church because my parents’ church service was canceled due to a power outage (their church is 45 minutes away, so we still have power), I decided to attempt The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God by John Piper. One of my friends gave me the book for Christmas because she knew that this summer I had listened to some of Piper’s sermons and appreciated them.

So far, I have only read the Preface and the Introduction but I believe I’ve finally begun a book that will be able to sooth my agitation. It struck me as I read how serendipitous my friend’s choice was in selecting this particular book for me. Though I feel that I finally made my peace with God this summer, after a two year wrestling match, my relationship with him since then has lacked consistency and depth. Recently, it struck me that I had lost my delight in God and, subsequently, my hunger for Him. This struck me most as I was reading an entry from 'Am-ha'aretz Press, which is a blog that was recommended to me the weekend before Thanksgiving break. The author Isaiah Kallman wrote:

A good friend of mine told me that he wanted to become more disciplined in spending time with God. Then just a few weeks later, he confessed to how little time he had spent in prayer or reading his Bible. He said, “It’s not that I don’t have the time, but when the opportunity comes to spend time with Him, I make up excuses to do something else. I think the reason is that I don’t desire God enough.”

I told him, “Dude, please, I know you. You desire God. You’re hungry. You just don’t know how hungry you really are. I’m not going to pray that you become more disciplined. I’m going to ask God to show you just how desperately you already want Him. If you want something bad enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get it.”

I feel very much like Isaiah’s friend, I desire God but I just can’t feel how hungry I am for Him. When I have time to read my Bible I usually call a friend or put in a movie.

In that same entry, Isaiah articulate something else that I have been thinking about a lot for the last four years, but especially throughout this last semester.

This is at the heart of the gospel [that] we must want His presence so badly that we’ll do anything to get there and stay there. We have to love the gospel so much that we can’t help but tell other people about it. We have to need God’s presence like the deer needed water in Psalm 42. We must feel our need to drink the living water Jesus offered before our thirst is quenched.

I’ve said a lot this year that the distinguishing feature of a Christian should be our love and delight in God. Not our love for Jesus as a famous humanitarian, or our love of our own knowledge about theology but a deep love for who God is. Quite a few people have asked me what I mean by that and how to do that. Answering their question has been difficult if not impossible for me this year since I have not been seeking God out or delighting in Him. I have known that to love God I need to be acquainted with Him. I should be seeking to get to know Him like a seek to get to know my friends. To me, that means reading His word and looking for His heart in every page. That means actively participating in His Church, which is Christ’s body, and looking for His face in their presence. Also, it means not being ashamed or reluctant to talk about Him. Occasionally, it even means reading a book that will draw out His character.

What I appreciated about listening to John Piper’s sermons this summer is that he focuses on delighting in God. His book that my friend bought for me, The Pleasures of God, is supposed to be a study of God’s character. In the Preface he summarizes the book by writing that it is based off of the “foundational truth” that “We will be most satisfied in God when we know why God himself is most satisfied in God.” More precisely, the book was birthed out of Piper’s reflections on a quote by Henry Scougal, “The Worth and Excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.” Reflecting on that Piper sought out to know more of the excellency and worth of God’s soul by studying where God’s “delights and pleasures and joys” are mentioned in the Bible. He states, “I saw that the pleasures of God were in fact a portrait of God.” In The Pleasures of God, Piper seeks to illustrate that portrait. Hopefully this will be an encouraging read that compels me to delight more in God and to seek Him out more.

Reflections on Junior Year: Going too far

Back in middle school, when I first watched Jurassic Park I was most fascinated by the raptors. Particularly how one of the characters explained that they were always jumping into the electrical fences that caged them in, always looking for weak spots until they broke free.

I’ve always been like the raptors, constantly jumping into the fences surrounding me, testing my boundaries. From childhood through to the beginning of college the fences around me were made up of my duties and obligations to my family, friends, church and God also by their expectations for me. Though there were times that I was so winded and sore after jumping against the fence that I’d wished the fences didn’t exist, overall I found it comforting to be thrown back onto my rear.

Then I came to college. I kept jumping at the fences here but the voltage wasn’t as strong anymore. Eventually I built-up a tolerance for the weak jolts that I received and I began to rip through the fence. Instead of finding freedom and release, I got caught in the twisted metal. I went too far. Now I long for that old comfort that I’d found each time I was thrown back onto the ground.

When first I began tearing through the fence it was more out of protest more than revolt. But my act of protest has become an act of self-destruction.

***

Christian university has been a disillusioning and disheartening experience for me. I came here hoping for so much both from my education and from the Christians here. Instead I feel like I found Christ’s bride in bed with another lover. She’d given up on the Good News and abandoned her call to be a witness and live a life worthy of her calling. And after three years, I found that I’d given up myself. Eventually, when I decried others apathy and hypocrisy I was only indite myself.

For a while I was able to successfully fool myself into believing that I had not gone too far. That I had only given up on God’s people and not God himself. I justified my sin (arrogance, disobedience, irreverence) by others. Then, I began working on my creative project for Postmodernism.

Dr. Bonzo assigned a creative project as the final for Postmodernism. I decided to do a series of drawings titled Post-secularism and to redo my painting of Past Redemption: My Red Crucifixion. My thought was that the artwork would be postmodern in structure but also a critique upon certain aspects of postmodernity that I find appalling – mainly universalism and pluralism. While I worked on the art I began to feel that I was going too far, but I persisted.

The evening after I presented my art I had a talk with someone from the class about it. The first thing he asked me was if I loved Jesus. I’ll admit, it was a surreal moment and a shocking question to be asked. The conversation that followed was just as unsettling (convicting). There were moments when I felt as if I were listening to Jonathan Edwards’ charitably telling me that I was dangling by a thread over the fires of hell. Yet, he was right. My art was an emblem of my hypocrisy and faithlessness. As I worked on it I joined the list of desecrators that I was critique, what they did with words I did with pictures.

Any gaps left in that conversation were filled the next day as I listened to a sermon by Pastor Rick McKinley, from Imago Dei Community Church out in Portland. The sermon is titled Playing God. His church is going through a series on King David’s life and they had come to the affair with Bathsheba. As Pastor Rick explained that King David’s act was deeper than the physical acts he committed, that all of it was rooted in a desire to be like God, I was convicted. He had named my sin. I known that more than my irreverence and foul mouth stood between God and I but I could not see that I was repeating the first sin.

Finally, I received the voltage that I needed to knock me out of the fence. As I’ve been healing I’ve been singing David’s psalm:

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities…
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.(Psalm 51 excerpt)

Since that night, I’ve been coming back to God and to myself in him. I’ve found hope again, even enough for his people.

A two year struggle has come to end. Of course, all of this has been more complicated than just disillusionment with the Church and Cornerstone. I’d been heading toward this moment since September of my sophomore year when I took Hemingway’s advice and wrote the truest sentence I knew:

Last night I almost renounced my faith.

I almost walked out on the God of Abraham and Isaac. I almost turned my back on the Great I Am. Not for lack of belief. Not as a sort of “Fuck you” for all of the pain and cruelty in the world. God just felt so far off and I so impure.

This cloistered community and its low standards allowed me what I’d always wanted, an environment where I could rebel without remorse. My rebellion was more than an act of protest against them. I didn’t want to forgive God for taking away, for calling me to bear His yoke. So I cast it off. I didn’t rebel in the typical manner (drug-abuse, alcoholism, sexual immortality) but gave myself over to arrogance and absurdity. I stopped speaking into others lives so that I wouldn’t feel that burden of being an example. But being my own god was not as rewarding as I had hoped. ‘I felt like Hesse’s Siddhartha. The world seemed like a horrible delusion and I was sunk in despair. I knew he’d give me hope again. He’d make me see beauty again. He’d remind me to love again. To forgive the world for being imperfect. But I couldn’t even forgive myself for being imperfect, and the world tasted bitter and life felt like torture.’ My shame kept me further away from God.

When I finally asked God for forgiveness I realized how much I had to forgive Him. It seems absurd to forgive the God of the Universe for wronging you, but then I’ve always been bad about holding grudges against authority even when I know they have my best interest at heart. In the process, I often conveniently forget that they do know best. Tonight, I realized how much God has transformed my heart over these last weeks as I was journaling in my personal journal. I found myself trusting in God’s providence, trusting that he wants to give me chocolate cake instead of tofu. I haven’t really believed that for a long time. So, I think we’re really back together again (God and I) but I know I’ll have to be more intentional about our relationship. As St. Augustine realized, ‘you have to start your relationship with God all over from the beginning, every day.’

Reading Through More Caputo

I have just finished reading the first chapter (and the proceeding Series Preface, Foreword, and Introduction) of John D. Caputo’s What would Jesus Deconstruct? Thus far it is disappointing. I hardly sense the same rigorous passion and playfulness in this book than in another work By Caputo that I read earlier this semester, On Religion. The first chapter of that book both angered me, with its universalistic implications, and enraptured me. From start to finish I swayed back and forth between ferocity and love. This book does not feel like it will have the same playfulness, the same vigorous sense of life. “There is not an ounce of excitement, not a whisper of a thrill. This relationship has all the passion of a pair of titmice. I want to be swept away.” Instead I’m met with Caputo’s self-consciousness. He seems afraid to let loose or seem too heretical from the start so that he won’t scare of his readers. This hesitancy makes the chapter dull and repetitious. Hopefully in the latter chapters I will rediscover the man whose thoughts both excite and enrage me and whose heretical, radical edge keeps me laughing.

A Quick Review of Ann Patchett's "Taft"

Tonight I finished Taft by Ann Patchett. I read it for my Literary Criticism class and I am not impressed.

Taft is the story of John Nickel a former jazz-drummer managing a bar in Memphis. Feeling estranged from his son who’s been moved down to Miami with the mother, Nickel is finding his life rather empty. Then Fay and her brother, Carl, enter his life. They are both only kids, seventeen, he feels compelled to help them. The more he gets involved with their lives the more he finds himself dreaming of their father who recently passed away.

Nickel is the narrator of the story very much to its detriment since he doesn’t have an especially interesting perspective. He’s neither especially insightful, witty, or any number of interesting attributes that would make his narration more compelling. Possibly this is due to Patchett’s hesitancy in taking on a narrator so outside of herself (since she is neither male nor black).

The link between Nickel and Taft seems forced especially since Nickel’s feelings for Fay (who is half his age) are more than paternal. While I understand what Patchett is attempting to evoke with the flashbacks to Taft, she failed miserably. From start to finish Taft was empty, it was as hollow and lonely as a quickie Nickel has with one of his clients at the beginning of the novel.

The Death of Prospero

My mother has always had a rather black thumb when it comes to indoor plants. When I realized that I had not brought my plants back with me after Christmas break I had the feeling that I might possibly return to find them in dire condition. I had not imagined that either would be dead.

Tonight, my first night home for Spring Break, while my mom was showing me her favorite American Idol contestants I looked over and noticed my plants. The African violet is still quite healthy but Prospero, my ivy, is dead. I never realized anyone could be so attached to a plant. When I touched his crispy, dried green leaves I wanted to cry.

Prospero was my first plant. I got him at a ladies luncheon the summer after my freshman year of college. He was my experiment to see if I had inherited my mother’s knack for killing plants. Instead of dying, he thrived (other than that time some of his leaves turned purple for some reason – I guessed that it was the result of being to near a cold window and supposing it must be autumn). He inspired my attempt at growing garlic in my window sill (note: garlic should not be grown indoors unless you have a deep enough pot or poor olfactory senses).

For the last two years he has been my travel companion on the multiple trips back and forth between home and campus. Through these years I’ve coaxed him out of autumn and pruned him. I’ll admit, I’ve talked to him. I’ll miss him.

Where are we headed?

There is a quote from D.H. Lawrence that Dorothy Sayers quotes in her work Are Women Human? which often comes to my mind. “Visited with a shattering glimpse of the obvious,” as she puts it, he observed that “Man is willing to accept woman as …an angel, a devil, a babyface, a machine, an instrument, a bosom, a womb, a pair of legs, a servant, an encyclopedia, an ideal or an obscenity; the one thing he won’t accept her as is a human being, a real human being of the feminine sex.” While the world has changed since those words were written I wonder if they still apply today.

Last week as I read the assignment for Literary Criticism, Lawrence’s observation was evident in the work of a man from an earlier generation through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” The story is centered on a young Italian, Giovanni, who falls in love (or infatuation) with Beatrice, the daughter of Dr. Rappaccini who is a brilliant but cold doctor with a fascination for poisonous plants. She is both extraordinarily beautiful and extraordinarily poisonous. Overlooking the more obvious feminine critiques of the story, I noticed how un-human Beatrice is.

From her introduction into the story, Hawthorne denies Beatrice’s character full humanity. She is continually portrayed in extremes; though she has a dual nature (morally and personally completely virtuous while physically a deadly temptress) her attributes are too pure in their elements to reflect human nature which is more diluted and ambiguous. She is portrayed as an angel, a poison, a siren, a flower, but not a human. She is more of an ideal than a personality. Do men still do this to women? Or are we beginning to do this to men as our society becomes more feministic and in turn demasculizing? Or in other words, as women claim the privileged discourse will we reduce a man to a monster, a knight in shining armor, a teddy bear, a doormat, a gamer, a penis, a houseguest, a dictionary, an idea or a curse word?

Never the Tame Course, Never Wholly Respectable

There is so much I have yet to do for tomorrow but too much has been going on in my mind to be able to focus.

At one point in the movie “Ever After” the prince asks the woman he falls in love with, “Isn’t it exhausting living with so much passion?” Today, one of my acquaintances from class made a similar statement as she listened to the conversation between Luci, Julie, and I. It is definitely is exhausting being so passionate.

There are days, like today, when I find myself wishing that I could be more “normal”, less passionate. Being a passionate person means having people constantly mistake your frustration, excitement or zeal with anger. It means getting carried away by your emotions in conversations about topics you have strong beliefs about. Ultimately it means believing in things strongly, which is not the fad right now. In the intellectual circle I find myself in, I feel like my passion is viewed as violent or close-minded. Possibly, this explains my love for the last chapter I read in G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy “The Paradoxes of Christianity.”

As always, there were some aspects of that chapter that I do not whole heartedly accept (mainly how he basically condones the Crusades and monasticism both of which I think had/have admirable elements but were/are misled) but I am madly in love with what he describes as the “irregular equilibrium” of Christian orthodoxy. I believe so strongly that this religion (Christianity) is about paradox. That it is about getting “over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furiously.” Also, along with him I believe that “The Church [can] not afford to swerve a hair’s breathe on some things if she is to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. [Because] let one idea become less powerful and some other idea becomes too powerful.” For example, if we let the depravity of man become too powerful than we lose sight of the dignity of man or vice versa.

Chesterton understands deep emotion and strong beliefs. He sees this synergy at the core of the Christian faith, as do I. So often, I feel like I am viewed as splitting the world into black and white, secular or sacred, legitimate or illegitimate. But, I have always viewed life through more of a Chestertonian lens. The reason I resist universalism, pluralism and all such similar tendencies is because these systems cannot understand paradox. They do violence by denying difference instead of by allowing fierce oppositions to hold each other in balance. I want not “an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning.”

When I am in a conversation with someone about my thoughts or beliefs (especially in reference to faith matters) it is so hard to do justice to this way of thinking, seeing, understanding. At least, I have a hard time articulating it to people outside my group of close friends. And it is completely impossible if my passion has been ignited, then I unintentionally radicalize my thoughts/beliefs, and express myself in extremes. At times like that I hate being so passionate, conversations would be so much easier (even if less interesting) if I were otherwise.

I will admit, this is my way of blowing of steam after two conversations where I was unable to accurately articulate myself because of my passion and my functional unease among other Christians when discussing my beliefs/thoughts.

Now to finish memorizing verses and other random bits of homework.

Critic is my being

Critic is my Being

It is nice to be back in the blogging verse. There is something enjoyable about reading others thoughts and imagining that others read yours. I must admit though that this journal might not be incredibly enjoyable to read right now. I am going through a period of extreme neurosis. I am suffering from an insatiable hunger for I know not. Each day I feel increasingly discontent. The season is a contributing factor. Each winter as the snowy months drag on I become anxious, irritable, dissatisfied. I feel like a tiger pacing in a cage, a force too strong and too wild to be contained, with no greater desire than to break free of all constraints. During periods like this I become more critical, if this is possible.

My Tuesday and Thursday classes are only aggravating my dissatisfaction. Both Epistemology and Postmodernism have become torturous. I cannot make myself care about Epistemology. I have no interest in the “branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.” I am sure there is value in this discipline I just do not care about it. Possibly there is too much of the Existentialist in me, “It does not matter how we know that the table is a table, what matters is that there is a table. Let us go from there.” I realize that is very reductionist but I hope you catch my meaning. In a way this is like studying Grammar for me, I know it is valuable but there are some things which one does so instinctively that attempting to be more conscious and precise about it is irritating. Engaging with the texts or the class about this subject is impossible for me. The text only compounds in problem for me.

Postmodernism is also devastating in its own way. Thankfully, texts are much more interested - though one is rather elementary - but the dialogue in class is horrible. Chaos often rules and as one of my peers, Beky Noogle, pointed out no one seems to listen to each other or the professor. Seth Horton’s comment that too many people are competing to teach is at times also accurate. Overall, the dialogue is disjointed, ridiculously tangential, entirely aimless or irritatingly Biblical.

In class, I keep thinking about how much I’d rather be studying the world religions. Since my freshman year in college, when I was taking both Introduction to Philosophy and World Religions, I have felt that religion is superior to the disciple of philosophy because it is more holistic. It seeks to answer all of the questions that humans ask themselves instead of just a few. Within its stories it contain both philosophy and theology.

Having friends in World Religions only aggravates this. Though their class sounds positively dreadful it has made me nostalgic about when I took it. Thankfully it was taught by an adjunct professor instead of the sleepy Prof. Railsback and overall it did not have an incredibly missional bent, though it was taught by a missionary home on sabbatical.

The professor brought in some meaningful speakers such as a Zen Buddhist Monk and Islamic Imam. Two missionaries also came to speak with us about their experience with other religions. One man told us about his encounter with Taoism in Taiwan and the other presented about the “appealing and appalling” side of Hinduism. While I enjoyed hearing more from the Monk and Imam, the missionaries’ presentations were valuable in their own way as they offered an outsiders view of the religions.

Even the assignments from the class were worthwhile. We read Huston Smith’s The World Religions (which I absolutely enjoyed) and at least 50 pages from four religious texts. I read from the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Tao Te Ching and the Buddhist Scriptures. Since I had horrible scholastic discipline, I did not read beyond the 50 pages limited though I wanted to.

That year I was torn between being a Religion Major and a Philosophy Major. I decided on Philosophy because the Religion department at this university has too much of a missional bent. Though I cannot say that I regret my decision, since the Religion department would have been miserable, I am incredibly discontent. These classes bore and irritate me. I wish…

“if wishes were horses…”

An Introduction: The Life of a Virtual Packrat

Though I’ve grown up during a technological era, I’ll admit that I am slightly wary of technology. Though I’m the daughter of a computer geek, I still privilege the face-to-face over the virtual, the tangible over the intangible and nature over machinery (which is how I explain my bias toward fantasy over sci-fi). Yet, despite this, I’m becoming a virtual packrat.

If I’m honest, I have to admit that I’ve joined at least a dozen virtual communities. With the exception of a few, I can’t manage to be loyal to them and yet I can’t bring myself to erase my accounts either. So, my virtual identities collect virtual dust out in cyberspace. I’m sure there are some I can’t ever remember anymore (or at least I can’t remember the username and password). The primary communities I have been the most faithful to have been blog sites.

During my senior year in high school, I created a livejournal account so that I could join a friend’s online book club. I never ended up reading the book but I began to use the account regularly. During my freshman year of college, I switched over to xanga since it was more popular on my campus. The following year, last [school] year, I tried to wean myself off of my computer because I felt like it had become too much of a distraction. During that time, my xanga was sorely neglected and soon lost its readers.

Lately, I’ve been missing my blog. There is something about sharing one’s thoughts and experiences in a public place that is enjoyable. Since xanga is rather passé now, and I’m looking for a way to motivate myself to maintain the English Society blog more regularly, I decided to create my own blogger blog. Maybe I’ll be able to remain faithful to this community.

***

“I had the idea that it might be wonderful if we could find a world where we could hold on forever to the good feelings we get from a story or a song, keep those feelings insider ourselves forever instead of having them only for fleeting moments. We hear a song or we read a story, and the good feelings we get don’t remain inside us. We are either anticipating them, or we’ve had them and they’re all gone. We never experience them as now. Do you know what I mean? I’m writing a story about a little girl who discovers a cave where there is lasting now.”

“What are you calling it?”

“The Cave of Now.”

“That’s clever. The Cave of Now…Very clever. Now or never. Now and forever. If not now, when?”

~ The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok