like grape vines

I had this thought of grape vines the other day. I'd been in conversation with an old friend and I was amazed at how twisted our thinking had become. I thought of the design, and then of where we are in our thinking and how do you speak with someone who's framework is so off design that the words you speak have no frame of reference in their world?

There is a plan. There is a design. We were made to cleave, to grasp, to hold tight, but if we do that with the wrong things, we are hopeless and to be pitied.

I thought of my life, even from it's tender youth. What things did I hold to tightly? Independence, self-sufficiency, responsibility, "wisdom", and work ethic. Now I think all of these are good in their own right, but as a frame for growth? They turned me in on myself. I think there is a balance between assuming that you are someone else's responsibility to fix or satisfy, and assuming that you are self-sufficient. I have been slowly, tire-fully learning that balance.

Every once in a while I inherit a student from another studio or from another art form. These are (usually) a joy to work with but there is always oh-so-much unlearning to do. Gymnasts have to learn to move in fluid "verbs" not positional "nouns". Ice skaters have to learn to stand erect since there is no need to poise for movement on solid ground. The harder are ballet students trained at other studios. There are often habits or even underlying wrong assumptions about technique that have to be addressed and then untrained from the muscle memory. I feel like so much of our life as humans and specifically all of our life being sanctified is about this exact unlearning process. Sometimes it's gentle re-directing of the self, other times it feels more like a hatchet to the core of who you are. It's so easy to doubt the intention of the vine-dresser. "Is this for my good or am I being cut out?" It's easy to feel like the quick has been exposed and there is no way this part of you could ever heal...

Thank God that there is a design! Thank the Father that all the pain, and tearing, and plans and goals torn from grasping hands are all to a more beautiful end. To make us to grow up into Him who is our Head, even Christ Jesus our Lord. And I am fearful. I know that I have grown interwoven with so many wrong things. Things I take for granted as right. I like the plans I make. I know this is going to hurt. Still, I'd rather learn to grow into beauty than to grown further in on myself twisted into contorted forms. And, seeing as I have no other choice, here I am, exposed to the Vine-dresser's hands. Come shape me Aba.

gifts reflecting the giver.

There is this theme that has rumbled in my soul for years. And I encounter it and I consider it and it aggravates me until He tells me to put it away and be still knowing that He is God. Sometimes that is the only answer for the moment but I always hold out hope that I will understand. I want to know Him well enough that it all makes sense.

The idea was prepped by recent reading and then brought into the light by my dear friend Annette. If God is good, then how all this ugly. And there really are a million trite ways to answer this rumble of thunder but can any stand up to the fire when lightning strikes?

I know it has to do with His Justice and Mercy. I understand that the potter has the right to make whatever he wants for whatever purpose or end, but that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I heard a couple days ago about a baby boy. Sovereignly planted in a messed up mom's womb. Carefully tended and sustained. Born to be sexually molested from infancy... And I understand that all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God and deserve eternal damnation, but

"7b you hid your face;
I was dismayed.

8 To you, O LORD, I cry,
and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
9 “What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
10 Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me!
O LORD, be my helper!”

And who will teach that baby boy to plead with a merciful God?

I always had a hard time watching nature shows. I never wanted the poor baby gazelle to become the lion's food. My brothers would answer me half in mockery over my sensitivity, "would you rather the lion die?". I always voted for the sick, the weak, the underdog. They almost never made it...And God tells us in Job 38:39-41 that he is the one who picks out the week ones; he's on the other team!

I'm reading through a book with my mom about God's gracious gifts. All gifts. All things! And there was the story of an amish mother who's son was killed in a farm accident and their peaceful surrender to God's will. I pushed back with "to them it is grace because they can see God's hand in it and it chases them to Him but what of the family it chases away from God, how is that a good gift?"
To which my mother replied, "does the gift change because of the view of the recipient? Can a good gift, given out of goodness be evil simply because the one to whom it is given is evil?"

And I wonder with Annette if all of those people who find their way into her emergency room broken and bleeding have been given a good gift if only they would receive... but that is a hard word. Mercy. Grace. We don't often equate them with pain and sorrow and memories we wish we could forget.

So I pray for the baby boy who from my standpoint today has no hope, that God would hear and be merciful to him. That even this mire into which he was born would be the stuff of life that chases him to his only rescuer. Oh that all our emptiness and pain and the things we wish we could forget that had been done to us and that we have done would all become grace to us and chase us to the One true lover and renewer of our souls.

Unearthly Sounds

I think now looking back that it was "ok" that came out of her mouth. But then it just sounded like all the guts and emotions of a lifetime spent, slipping from her diaphragm through her mouth. She was reading a text. From my Daddy. She tells me he's sick.

I remember about 4 years ago now she called me and told me he was dying. And I think now, what a funny thing to say because really we all are. There is 100% mortality rate among us son's of Adam and daughter's of Eve. But back then it crushed me to think that this man, this angel from God with whom I had wrestled for years was possibly giving up the fight and leaving... how could this be? And again today I wonder. I wonder if he'll be ok? What will the doctor say. Will we be ok? How could she, my mom, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, ever be ok without him?

It was over a decade ago now that the slow death began. He was unemployed and furiously demolishing the rotting remains of our termite ravaged back deck (so much like the view of his goals and dreams) when the pounds began to melt off of him with no muscle to replace it. Diabetes was the word. This man who loved chocolate milk and doughnut holes, and captain crunch, and pop-tarts would now live on sugar free snacks and well balanced meals with fake carbs beefed up with fiber. And life became tasteless.

God has been gracious. We have all been buoyed up by His hand and have come to know flavor in surprising places. Maybe sugar is still what we think we want, but we've learned that pepper and salt and onion tastes pretty good too. And so we wait. To know, to hear. What is today's word?

It's ironic because just yesterday Mommy read to me about the practice of eucharisteo. And the hard gift that caused all of that to waiver in one woman's life for a moment. And I wonder today if this is our hard gift? And if not this then what and when. And as I wait for my car's oil to be changed I pour out my fears and wonders and thoughts at the feet of my gracious Father. I wonder some times at the size and weight of it all. I feel overwhelmed today by the concerns I carry to Him and I am just one worried about my few. And He cares for us all! And in Him all things hold together. So I will praise Him!

I remember my senior year in high school, Doxology became my favorite song. Pastor John's church caused me to notice it, then I heard it everywhere. Every time I sought an answer that year brimmed full of uncertainty I would sing before and after...

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him all creatures here below, Praise Him above ye heavenly host! Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost!" And as simple as that is it sums it up well.

growing up

"put that in the trash and close the door behind you love" I said from behind the shower curtain. And I listen. And she does. That girl who put her undies on facing the right way all by herself, who almost got her pants on by herself, and who found the armholes in her shirt all by herself. She is a self confirmed "big girl" and I am humbled.

It takes me back to two years ago when I worried about taking a shower. Will she stay asleep? What if she wakes up? What if she rolls over while I'm in the shower and can't role back, will she suffocate? And as I washed away the spilled milk, and spilled sweat, and spilled tears of the last 24 hours God watched her as He always has and always will and that time He chose to sustained her life and breath...

I think of Genevieve and baby Simon cocooned in those sweet first months of stillness and crying and slow days that fly by. Even phone calls seem to overwhelming to achieve and somehow, in two years time, Simon will have miraculously grown and he will be closing doors and throwing things away...

I'm so thankful that memories are preserved without our act of willing it. Sometimes I try to fly so fast that I don't even notice where I am. I'm glad I get to look back and savor anew what perhaps I rushed through for fear of speedy showers and crying babies.

Plagiarism

I wanted to share, or more of catalogue, some of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books. It's a list of things that gave me pause. I wanted to remember that pause and remember how each one made me feel. So here they are.

" 'an hour hence and you will not care. A day hence and you will laugh at it. Don't you remember on earth-there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right? Shame is like that. If you will accept it-if you will drink the cup to the bottom-you will find it very nourishing; but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.' "

" 'Son,' he said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand eternity; when Anodos looked through the door of the Timeless he brought no message back. But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "no future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven; the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven," and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.' "

" 'The sensualist, I'll allow ye, begins by pursuing a real pleasure, though a small one. His sin is the less. But the time comes on when, though the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come that way, yet her prefers to joy the mere fondling of unappeasable lust and would not have it taken from him. H'd fight to the death to keep it. He'd like well to be able to scratch; but even when he can scratch no more he'd rather itch than not.' "

"Everyone who wishes it does. Never fear. There are only two kinds of people in the end; those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened."

"The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye'll have had experiences...it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it; perhaps criticizing it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine."

"But the most part seemed to think that the mere fact of having contrived for themselves so much misery gave them a kid of superiority. 'You have led a sheltered life!' they bawled. 'You don't know the seamy side. We'll tell you. We'll give you some hard facts'-as if to tinge Heaven with infernal images and colors had been the only purpose for which they came."

And finally the interaction between Frank, his Tragedian, and the Gracious Woman. Such beautiful pictures reminding me of my sin and the beauty of full repentance to allow transformation of all that has been flooding into all that will be.