And More!

Jimmy's artsy B&W shots.

More

I'm starting to get that weird-somewhat-desperate-spend-every-minute-and-make-sure-to-record-it-by-taking-lots-of-pictures mode. Three days, people.

(Leah, I'm saving up until I have a lot of time because I'm having some really intense emotions about leaving you... I don't want to have just a casual conversation... but I do care... so I'll call.)

(And CW seriously call me, dude. I'm LEAVING.)

Happy Christmas! 06

PJ's, playing guitar, hiking with ridiculously enormous backpacks, practicing with all of our weapons (except Joy-the-pacificist, of course), playing basketball, grillz, dancing around like maniacs, eating copious amounts of food, stockings = McCarty Christmas.

Happy happy happy.

(Grumpy, sleepy, dopey, doc...)

A change

Well I'm kind of annoyed.

It is going to be virtually impossible to blog on two different things all year! I have this blog and my WR blog. But this blog I like because it's archived back so far. Hm. Conundrum. (ha, that rhymes).

Well, for this one at least I'm just going to copy and paste. So this same blog is on both sites. And before I put it on here let me just say I am LEAVING for a year in like 8 days... so if we haven't talked in a while PLEASE call me to say goodbye! And if I don't answer... well... you know how it goes. Leave a message. I'm going to be really really responsible this week.

Home Stretch

One by one I'm closing out the details of my life... saying goodbye to precious people, once again preparing to spend great lengths of time on anti-malarial medication... my heart is both under attack and in desperate anticipation... I'm dreaming of Africa - of hot wind and the grit of sand in my teeth... I'm thinking of the unparalleled feeling of novelty and excitement when I step off a plane into a new place...

It sounds like I'm getting ready to go on a mission trip.

As I've visited and reflected one thought has struck me. There are two very distinct versions of Christianity and I witness both in people I know. There is one version of Christianity that is very good - good church attendance, good deeds, good prayer life, good theology, good fellowship. There is nothing overtly amiss in this practice of Christianity. But there is something intentionally escapist. There is a neglect of radical sacrifice; of violence, of death to self. Sometimes I say to myself, "I wish I could be a good Christian." Those who know me know that I don't fit the stereotype well. I wish I could go through life and think God is good and do enough and be satisfied.

But I can't.

And this is why: I'm a haunted woman.

I'm haunted by the faces I can put on poverty; of the names I can put on suffering and martyrdom; of the sallow cheeks, the dry and cracked skin, the embrace, the hot breath, the flowing blood, the hate-filled eyes... these are not abstractions to me. I am haunted by the reality of the lost and dying and I cannot ignore the responsibility that this knowledge gives me.
And this is why I will go and I will live and I will die for this cause. This is why I will forego other dreams, alternative life-plans, ambitions, goals... I surrender them. Because those concepts are people and those people mean too much.

That's why I can't just be good.

"...the kingdom heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force." (Matt. 11:12, KJV)

Eyes

I read this book called "Lullabies for Little Criminals" by Heather O'Neill.
It was an amazingly non-judgmental, first-person narrative of a 13-year old girl living with a junkie dad, on and off the streets, practicing juvenile prostitution, run-ins with social services, etc. It's set in Montreal. It's really powerful.
I don't give children enough credit. Their perspective is so paradoxical: wise and yet naive. They see a lot and understand a lot... but their labels are so different than our own.

Here's the quote that encapsulates O'Neill's goal to me -

"He said that if you were able to look at the crows really closely, you would see that their eyes were stolen baubles, like buttons or marbles. To get real eyes, they had to steal them from children. Older people's eyes were too set in their ways of looking and would be no good for a crow. That's why people wouldn't let their children out after dark. The crow who stole the eyes of a real child was king. With a piece of plastic they could just see what was in front of them, but with a child's eyes, they could see the whole world."

I wonder what Mitchell's eyes are seeing right now -- he's coming over to me for a hug every thirty seconds. He's grouchy.

(I realize that this blog has become a book review. It's just that my own thoughts are too muddled with the stress.)

It is never fun to die.

Last night as I did devotions I picked up Tozer's book "The Pursuit of God."

This quote needs no introduction or qualification -

(from the chapter, "Removing the Veil")

"One should suppose that proper instruction in the doctrines of man's depravity and the necessity for justification through the righteousness of Christ alone would deliver us from the power of the self-sins, but it does not work that way. Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding Victim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees. It can fight for the faith of the reformers and preach eloquently the creed of salvation by grace and gain strength by its efforts. To tell the truth, it seems actually to feed upon orthodoxy and is more at home in a Bible conference than in a tavern. Our very state of longing after God may afford it an excellent condition under which to thrive and grow.

"Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. We may as well try to instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us. We must bring our self-sins to the cross for judgment. We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Savior passed when He suffered under Pontius Pilate.

"Let us remember that when we talk of the rending of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant, but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free."

A Melancholy Glamour

Isaiah 42:6b & 7 - "I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness."

This makes me think of Plato's Cave allegory - all are hidden, chained in this darkness... it is familiar and it is comfortable... the shadows seem real and satisfactory - it is enough of a life. Then, this nagging voice, this freed comrade beckons them into the unknown beyond. But it is frightening; the light outside hurts the eyes; alarms the senses.

It is so easy to sit in the dungeon - in the impenetrable fortress of my own version of truth and refuse fresh light.

I glamorize this darkness. I sit here and enjoy my agony, crying, "Why don't you take away my pain, God?" I scream, "It hurts so much!" The not knowing, the blindness, the darkness... "Why do you hide your face from me?" He's silent. So silent.

I glamorize the darkness I tend toward but even as I do it my spirit craves life.

"Ladies and gentlemen/People of the darkness/You've been running for a very long time..."
(Jason Upton - "Psalm 2:12")

Living in peace with the mysteries and shadows of life and hiding behind them are two very different things. When I choose the latter I forfeit the joy of discover and the exposure of my own soul to trasnforming truth.

"Search me and know me, O God."

It is so 'natural' to slide into easy, comforting thoughts; repetitious, logical living; perfunctory but peaceful religion.

It is completely terrifying to contemplate the reality of God.

"Some say 'I'm a man of the evening.'/Others say, 'I'm a lady of the night.'/But God says, 'I'm your Creator,'/And nobody's faster than the speed of light/I'm calling." (ibid)

I can settle down in darkness - grasping small joys - or I can brave the blinding light and receive joy that is unspeakable and full of glory.

"...he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen."
(I Timothy 6:15b-16)

Lingering questions

This is something I need to spew and see what response it gets.
I'm wrestling though this big-time.

(I suppose this ultimately stems from questions about the origin of evil - for background).

My thought: pre-fall creation wasn't static but dynamic, with potential to grow & reproduce. In other words, God didn't create a final product; he created the "first batch."

My question, then: did creation (animals, plants, the ecosystem, as it were) ever exist without death? Because that cycle and decomposition - fertilization - new life - is an integral part of the system as we know it empirically and scientifically (and experientially, for that matter).

(The concept of death -> life and that cycle is rife through creation... it's the very essence that allows the ecosystem to perpetuate itself and thrive.)

Unfortunately, it seems that most people's definition of pre-fall creation excludes any allowance for dynamism (especially anti-evolution thinking). Man couldn't die yet... but if man's decomposition is part of the "circle of life" - how is that possible? Can creation exist independently of human death?
If creation never existed without this death then spiritism, animism & the eternality of anything other than human beings is philosophically & logically impossible. (T or F?)

Implications: 1. spiritism ("mother nature" etc) and eternal spirits existing in plant and animal life is discredited. 2. we, as caretakers over our dominion of the earth, are responsible first and foremost (on a social level probably) to preserve and defend the *systems* and maybe not the *specifics* of nature. So, it's not so much this species or that region... it's the entire motion of creation, of which we and all living things are a part, and in which death plays an integral part.

We live in a society that is hell-bent (haha) on preventing death... but death is natural and necessary.

So where did death come from?
How did death work in the garden?
And is physical death really part of the curse?

I know this was all over the place. I'm crazy.