modern iconography

Beautiful things don’t try. They just are. I just ran 150 stair steps up a dune to get a workout. Running playlist: “Bad”, U2.   A proper cathedral of sound for any nighttime run.  “I’m wide awake.”  It’s strange to be back on the shores of Lake Michigan, a few miles from Hope, listening to my old college friends with their songs of youthful longing, idealism and that drive to urgency. I remember…

Not my version of God, but God. But also, not someone else’s version of God. Jesus brought the kingdom of God, but know I’ve settled for a thing called “-ianity”. An “-ism”. He said we could do greater things than these, but I get my fix with sips and addictions to psychobabble tricks, cultural ruse, and melodic hooks. Helpers each.  But helpers can be hookers too. A friend said that sometimes we…

When I was a kid, I couldn’t look up at the stars without my eyes tearing and my nose watering. If there were no stars, I think we would be certain that there is a God out there.  We would peer into space and see the sun and the planets and nothing else “That’s it.  That is all there is and we are the center of it all.” The center.  No stars.  No distant unknown.  No peering into the beyond and…

Today, like most, I find myself reflecting on the year and things I am thankful for. One thing I am thankful for, of course, is Owen’s health.  Over the past few months, I have found myself reflecting on that time we spent in the hospital– especially when he gets a cold.  I strive to be a person that can objectively reason with the stress I find myself in, but Owen’s health has the capacity to unhinge me.  It  can plunge me into worry and anxiety.  

As a person of faith, I find myself turning to God and who I found God to be while we were in the hospital.  Jesus says, do not worry about tomorrow because it has enough worries of its own.  But when Owen is sick and I am lying in bed and listening to his shallow and rapid breathing, I am wondering if his next breath will be the one that plunges us back into the black hole of medical intervention.  "Hey Jesus, I’m not worrying about tomorrow.  I’m worrying about right now.“  Specifically, I am worrying about it at 3am when Amy is going to be really annoyed to be awakened by my possibly paranoid diligence.

There are times when life cuts to my core and has me moving down an imaginary highway away from the land of “appropriate concern”, waving as I pass a state of good “composure” and barreling right into the emotional territory known as “unhinged”.  I have a special prayer life when I get to “unhinged”.  Having a life that is mostly void of true struggle, I do not commonly get to “unhinged”.  Most commonly, I experience it when I am doing something like driving in a whiteout or on my first night backpacking in grizzly country- when I am lying in a tent trying to fall asleep- that’s when my prayer life takes on the following tone:

10:09   Dear God, please keep me safe. 10:10   Dear God, I know you are a good shepherd.  You take care of your sheep.  You love your sheep.  I trust you will keep me safe. 10:15   Dear God, I know you are a good shepherd and love your sheep, but sometimes your sheep die horrible, painful deaths at the hands of arbitrarily vicious and bloodthirsty bears.  Even though you love your sheep and they love you. 10:18   Dear God, I know you love your sheep and I love you too, and I know, as St. Paul the Apostle says, “To live is Christ, but to die is gain”, and I think “gaining” sounds great and being in heaven sounds just wonderful too, but I really really don’t want to die tonight at the hands of an arbitrarily vicious and bloodthirsty bear.

10:21    Dear God, good things happen to those that love you and bad things happen to those that love you.  What difference do these prayers really make?  Tonight, I could fall into a pleasant sleep trusting you and wake up in the morning or fall asleep trusting you and wake up terror filled at the hands of an arbitrarily vicious and bloodthirsty bear.  

10:23    Dear God, what is the point of prayer.

And repeat until 3:00 am.

2:59am    Dear God, is the true purpose of prayer to learn that… snore… Usually, I wake up and laugh at myself.  The rest of my trip I am so exhausted that I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

But this was also the basic tone of my prayers in the hospital– watching his little body fighting for each short burst of limited breath- belly in and out, neck straining, heart racing.  Crying out for his mama and wanting to be so close to her that he lays on top of her neck- as if his neck against hers would release things.  

Sliding into the black hole of medical intervention from that first call to the nurse to the doctor’s office to a ride in an ambulance to the children’s ER to the Pediatric ICU.  

To the doctor’s voice, steady and professional, but her eyes so worried- as wide as the gaping fear in my chest.   He was nearly listless.  And fighting so hard.  Three liters of oxygen.  Nine liters. Fourteen liters.  The ventilator isn’t cutting it.  The doctor said, “We have to intubate”.  We said “okay”.  A team, standing by, rushed into the room and immediately prepared to sedate our boy.  They connect him to machines that will breath for him, and keep him alive for two weeks while his body fights an invisible little virus.  Forty years ago, such interventions did not exist.   Children didn’t survive.

We stepped out of the fury of activity and into a quiet waiting room where we… wait.

Waiting is the same as powerlessness.  But much busier.  You breath a lot, you swallow a lot, your hands alternately sit still and fumble aimlessly and your mind races.  Your heart is wrung.  Your mind is displaced.  The problem is that your body exists in the space of the waiting room, but your life is in the other room altogether.  The rending of the two is fierce and intolerable.  But you are absolutely powerless.  So you do the only thing you are actively able to do.  You wait.  

This was so much more real than lying in a tent imagining bears outside.  This time, the bear was there in the room with me, pacing.  When the bear is in the room, you can’t do much but stare into it- claws, teeth and all.  And pray.  And my prayers took on the form they normally do when there are bears: “Dear God, good things happen to those that love you and bad things happen to those that love you.  What difference do these prayers really make?  I want to trust you, but I’m not sure that trusting and praying will give me the outcome I want.  I know that you love me if our boy lives.  I know you love me if our boy dies.  I know I will do my best to love you too.  But right now, it feels like the bottom is falling out and there is a vicious bear staring into my eyes and showing me a world that I don’t want.  And there is only one person that has the power to fix it.  And that is you. And you might not fix it. And I can’t imagine that reality becoming my world and I don’t want to.  I really don’t want to… So please, I don’t know what else there is to…” How can a God that I love, who I believe also loves me, allow this unimaginable thing to happen when he has all of the power to prevent it? Here’s where thanksgiving comes into play.  I got a response.  It’s not an answer to my question, but something that my feeble mind and little faith have chewed on for the past eight months.

Why do I only ask that question when bad things happen?  Why do I only hold God responsible when the stakes are immensely high and tragedy frighteningly near.  I am a fickle, fickle being.  I am nearly blind. How many days do I drive safely from point A to B?  But I don’t notice unless I get delayed or into an accident.

Every day that I wake up, I get to wake up.  Every day I breath, both intentionally and unintentionally, at least a bazillion-hundred times.   My heart beats.  My eyes blink.  My synapses fire.  I move successfully through gravity.

I eat and chew and ingest and a trillion processes rage energy through my body.

There is a cell, in my arm, in my ulna, in the marrow that chugs away twenty-four hours a day doing work, doing it’s processes, doing it’s job, giving me life.  There are a trillion-trillion of these working twenty four hours a day in my body.  They don’t sleep.  Sometimes they die, but my body takes care of that too.

Those cells in my body are severely dependent on a godzillion (a number I just made up to describe somewhere between unimaginably large and infinity)- a godzillion cells in green trees, plants, weeds and algae that practice the art of photosynthesis everyday so that I can breath.  Photosynthesis is the ancient practice of taking carbon dioxide and invisible radiation particles that travel millions of miles from the sun (in something like 14 seconds) and turning them into oxygen.  Everyday, I live because of this.

I walk, run and type.  Sometimes I text.

I see the sun.

I see the horizon.  There is a strata of geologic time compacted below me and hidden all the way to China that has accumulated over time and I stand on it.

I speak to my loved ones tens and hundreds of words.  Some say it is like the rudder of a ship able to influence and steer.

I receive a language of love spoken and unspoken from loved ones every day.

Co-workers do their jobs and keep my place of employment running.

Truckers drive fruit and vegetables from Argentina, Chile and California when they are out of season in the place where I live.  And the worms make the soil predisposed for growth.

That car and that car and that car and that car stay in their lane and stop at that red light.  I get to stay alive, but I don’t think about it. These blessings. All of these and more in the mind of God, though I can barely care to notice.  But one bad thing happens and I am filing my case in the courts of deity.  I ask God why God allows a bad thing to happen to people.  In response, I am nudged to remember that for every one “bad thing” I might notice, there are ten thousand blessings that I don’t care to identify and many more innumerable that I am unable to notice.  A thousand-thousand blessings.  A million-million “life”.  And life is good.  It is rain, the blessings, and they are raining upon us every day.  And I rarely talk to God about those things.  

When I asked God how God could be loving and still allow a bad thing to happen, the answer wasn’t “Count your blessings”.  The answer was ”Try to count your blessings”.  See if you can.  

So I tried and was found wanting.  I am unable.  I swim in them.  They literally blast through time, through exploding stars, space and sky and breath.  They flow through our veins and our hearts and our hands and the soil worked by our hands and the clouds that sit heavy above us and the rain that falls on our backs and the backs of our children.  

So, this is my thanksgiving.  As a machine breathed for our boy for two weeks, and God and I played tug-of-war with a rope of prayer, I learned that If I am going to take an account and carry a complaint before God, I have to take a full accounting.  Terrible things happen.  But wonderful things happen too.  God spent two weeks with us in the PICU as we stared into the dark.  God gave us so many people’s prayers, support and an inexplicable peace.  Though not the case for many of the parents we shared the hallway with, God gave us our boy back into our hands.  

I see now that we are so deeply and extensively blessed by God- both in plenty and in want- that we are unable to see it all, yet we are always invited to.  Like the noonday sun that is so bright it renders itself nearly invisible to our our sight, we are so immensely blessed by God that we are blinded in the brilliance.  

And we are dared to try and count it all.  

This is my thanksgiving.

Over the past few months, individuals in my church have been interviewed and their responses have been posted in the bulletin. During Advent, I was asked to creatively imagine and write interviews with biblical figures that that are known for prophesies, prayers or songs related to the Advent account. I have been challenged to reimagine these sometimes cliche biblical figures in new ways as well as being inspired by their faith this Advent season. I have decided to publish and share them in hopes that these creative imaginings will challenge and inspire you also as you step into Christmas celebrations.In a small coffeehouse near downtown I met Anna.  She was well into her nineties.  Her eyesight was weak but she carried her small frame with confidence.

You met Jesus as an infant in the temple.  Can you tell me what that was like? (She laughed to herself.)

That was the day Simeon was in the temple.  He was a gentleman and a ragamuffin.  He was a righteous man.  I knew him for many, many years.  He always knew how to make a scene and when he was done making a scene, I was there to clean up the mess.  The people had questions.

What did you tell them?

I reminded them about redemption.  I reminded them about our Lord who trades a crown of beauty for ashes and a garment of praise for a spirit of despair.  I told them that this baby has come to bind the brokenhearted and provide release from darkness for the prisoners- to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

How did you know this about this baby Jesus in the temple?

My husband is dead.  He has been dead since the year of our seventh anniversary.  The Lord dwells in Heaven.  But he has also dwelled in a tabernacle and a temple.  Since my husband died, the temple is also where I dwell- to be near The Lord.  Every day, I rise.  I fast.  I pray.  I worship.  The other day I saw a young girl enter the temple gate.  She begged for money and food.  She was no older than ten years old.  I asked her where her parents were.  She said they were dead.  I asked her why she came to the temple to ask for money and food.  She said because The Lord is here.  Every day I see the same.  I see widows and orphans and foreigners come to the temple with the smallest hope that nearness to God would cause God's people to be as merciful and gracious as they say their God is.  Isaiah said that his servant would preach good news to the poor.

Well, this is the good news I know:  I am a spiritual orphan, but I hope to be adopted by my Father in Heaven.   I am a widow by my husband's death, but he binds my broken heart.  I stand as a foreigner to a holy God, yet by his mercy I might one day be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.  My friend, our God is a people person.  In the beginning, he walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day.  It only makes sense that he would long to walk with us, breathe our air, eat our food, cry our tears and join our laughter just, if not only, to be near us.  Would it not also make sense that he would want to defend the fatherless, rescue the widow and shelter the foreigner?

So why this baby in the temple?  Why would a rescuer make himself so vulnerable when he could, by the power of his hand, make it all right?

My husband was such a good and loving man.  It took him nearly three years to woo me.  He could have asked my father for my hand at any time, but he waited for me to come around.  He waited so patiently and did the hard work of winning my affection.

We are desolate and treacherous beings and we live in a desolate and treacherous world.  When I saw the baby, the Spirit of The Lord visited me and I knew it was him though the sight surprised me.  His parents were very poor.  He was not the prettiest baby I had seen.  He was skinny and he was crying the whole time.  He was a mess.  How perfectly sneaky!  

Over the past few months, individuals in my church have been interviewed and their responses have been posted in the bulletin. During Advent, I was asked to creatively imagine and write interviews with biblical figures that that are known for prophesies, prayers or songs related to the Advent account. I have been challenged to reimagine these sometimes cliche biblical figures in new ways as well as being inspired by their faith this Advent season. I have decided to publish and share them in hopes that these creative imaginings will challenge and inspire you also as you step into Christmas celebrations.

Simeon had long since passed away.  I was unable to find any relatives to find out more about him, but uncovered an old temple custodian who had known him in younger days.

  Simeon was a righteous man.  He usually arrived at the temple around sunrise.  He had a limp and I remember on so many mornings watching him walk through the empty courtyards before the crowds arrived.  He was very devoted.  

Do you think life was hard for Simeon?

Oh no.  Simeon was a clown.  He was a natural extrovert.  After he had spent his mornings worshipping in the temple, you could count on him standing in the Gentile Courtyard talking to as many folks as were willing.  He had these really big eyes, a really big nose and gigantic ears- and he was very tall.  He would spend the day leaning on his cane at one of the pillars underneath the portico. When he crossed the courtyard to tell a story to some unsuspecting family, he would put his prayer shawl on.  His one lame foot would drag behind him and he looked like some kind of strange bird trying to take flight.

Did this scare people?

Some.  I began to call it the wheat and the chaff effect.  It showed you a little bit about a person.  Some rose to the occasion.  Others would seize up.  Sure, he seemed crazy, but some didn’t give him a chance.  His unqualified and uninhibited joy was an offense to them.  They would pretend to ignore him and walk by or they would scorn him- accused him of being a beggar, a loiterer, or worse.

How did the others respond?

Others would be absorbed into his electrified reality.  The children loved him.  He would make funny faces and juggle.  He would sweep them up in his long arms and throw them in the air as high as he could only to catch them a half-moment before they went splat.  They would gather about with their parents as his arms waved and his eyes bulged and he told them stories with such conviction and passion that they were too true to question and too outrageous to believe.  There was always a circle of laughter around Simeon.

What is your most vivid memory of Simeon?

That last day, when the baby arrived, I hadn't seen Simeon in years.  To be honest, I thought he had died long before that day.  It was obvious that his limp had nearly debilitated him.  He arrived as the sun was rising, slowly making his way to the inner courts.  He worshipped and then came back out to the Courtyard of the Gentiles, he leaned against the pillar for hours.  His big eyes darted here and there at all the people as they passed.  Some recognized him.  He nodded and smiled a tired old smile at them.  Then out of nowhere, the electricity was back.  I saw him hobble out across the courtyard like he was some sort of spring chicken.  His joy rang throughout the temple courts. Everybody stopped to watch.  I was on a high portico where I got a view of the whole thing. His gigantic eyes were blazing with laughter.  As he approached this young family with a baby, he stretched his long arms and like so many before, they melted in his effervescing friendliness.  He took the baby and looked in into its eyes for the longest time before his tired frame shook with the deepest belly laugh.  Then he began to speak.

Do you remember his words?

I didn’t hear it all until later when others wrote it down.  But I did hear this:  “Lord, as you promised me, you may let your servant die in peace.  My eyes have seen your salvation.”  Everyone was shocked.  Some people laughed, some people gasped and some shook their heads and drifted away.  Others drew near to have a look at the baby.

... Is.60 ...

See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

  “Lift up your eyes and look about you:    All assemble and come to you; your sons come from afar,    and your daughters are carried on the hip.

Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy; the wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come.