Jesus
will you come to me? into
murky silences,
masquerades, the calamities.
will you comfort this unfinished sentence
we don't need words to
fill in our blanks --
but dreadfully sweet
silences.
not prayer to pray
but prayer to be
Jesus
will you come to me? within
the cloud of unknowing
to trust in falling.
and so you've come
though I'd known the door
closed behind you.
in the secret of your silence
I will be.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Humility? (And, Happy Birthday to my brother Andy!)
You can't get closer to God if you are always trying to figure out who it is that you yourself are supposed to be -- at least in any conventional sense -- if it means 'what must I do differently?,' or 'how should I speak?' or anything half-hearted and ultimately self-effacing in the insincere false humility that plagues us all. Or at least it plagues me...
Must I fix my mind on high and lofty theological things so that I can grasp one tiny grain of sand? When I do this, I begin to engage with others as if I've got something figured out.
Must I be kind and gentle? When I do this, soon enough I become a contrived version of my "self," a Mr. Rogers wanna-be. (Never thought that would go in style...)
Must I be firm and solid in my convictions? Alas, I lack the backbone of ultimate certainty, and even someone as secretly proud as me cannot stomach the self-righteousness in boasting outside of Christ. Still, Christian men are to have fortitude, says John MacArthur...
Must I add all things in order that my integrity be unsurpassed? Ridiculous! Heresy!
I must dive into the endless spiral of true self-denial, that is, I must fall in love with God. In this deep and penetrating relationship there can be no written end (except in the Mind of God) but in losing ourselves we can indeed find who we really are in Christ. I long for this.
Perhaps the secret has something to do with a paradoxical integrity. When we have stripped away every impostor, Christ adds all things to us in our recognition of our own poverty. When we have no ultimate reliance on our own faculties, but a supreme confidence in Him to use them, then we can at last be free.
The major hindrance is figuring out that balance. It is my inclination to surgically remove my ego. The dilemma is that the only tool I have in operating is my ego -- and the "doctor" here is paying lip-service to the "treatment" he is offering himself, the "patient." This is what it seems Merton says in another incisive observation:
"False humility and the illusory ideal of self-annihilation. I distinguish this quite clearly from the real annihilation of the mystics, which is another matter. But a contrived "annihilation" simply sets up one figment against another and has them cancel each other out. The "self" sits by, smugly watching the operation and indeed directing it, and is not annihilated at all. On the contrary, this is a sure way of avoiding annihilation. Such "humility" becomes a last refuge in which the self remains impregnable."
--Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p.281 (The Madman Runs to the East)
Some people seem to be less obsessed with themselves than others, and unfortunately I feel as though I may be on the of the most self-obsessed people out there. Still, it is ours to let God conquer the false self within, the vomit out the demon in the desert, to become humble servants to the Lord.
I pray that you and I can lay our hearts down as a sacrifice to the God of love, that He might give us new hearts and minds, souls bursting at the opportunity to serve and adore, to worship, and to give wholly of themselves.
"Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body?
(St. Paul to the Romans, Ch.7 v.24)
Must I fix my mind on high and lofty theological things so that I can grasp one tiny grain of sand? When I do this, I begin to engage with others as if I've got something figured out.
Must I be kind and gentle? When I do this, soon enough I become a contrived version of my "self," a Mr. Rogers wanna-be. (Never thought that would go in style...)
Must I be firm and solid in my convictions? Alas, I lack the backbone of ultimate certainty, and even someone as secretly proud as me cannot stomach the self-righteousness in boasting outside of Christ. Still, Christian men are to have fortitude, says John MacArthur...
Must I add all things in order that my integrity be unsurpassed? Ridiculous! Heresy!
I must dive into the endless spiral of true self-denial, that is, I must fall in love with God. In this deep and penetrating relationship there can be no written end (except in the Mind of God) but in losing ourselves we can indeed find who we really are in Christ. I long for this.
Perhaps the secret has something to do with a paradoxical integrity. When we have stripped away every impostor, Christ adds all things to us in our recognition of our own poverty. When we have no ultimate reliance on our own faculties, but a supreme confidence in Him to use them, then we can at last be free.
The major hindrance is figuring out that balance. It is my inclination to surgically remove my ego. The dilemma is that the only tool I have in operating is my ego -- and the "doctor" here is paying lip-service to the "treatment" he is offering himself, the "patient." This is what it seems Merton says in another incisive observation:
"False humility and the illusory ideal of self-annihilation. I distinguish this quite clearly from the real annihilation of the mystics, which is another matter. But a contrived "annihilation" simply sets up one figment against another and has them cancel each other out. The "self" sits by, smugly watching the operation and indeed directing it, and is not annihilated at all. On the contrary, this is a sure way of avoiding annihilation. Such "humility" becomes a last refuge in which the self remains impregnable."
--Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p.281 (The Madman Runs to the East)
Some people seem to be less obsessed with themselves than others, and unfortunately I feel as though I may be on the of the most self-obsessed people out there. Still, it is ours to let God conquer the false self within, the vomit out the demon in the desert, to become humble servants to the Lord.
I pray that you and I can lay our hearts down as a sacrifice to the God of love, that He might give us new hearts and minds, souls bursting at the opportunity to serve and adore, to worship, and to give wholly of themselves.
"Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body?
(St. Paul to the Romans, Ch.7 v.24)
Thursday, June 5, 2008
The Irresistible Goodness and Compellingness of God
What else is it? in words, conversation and dialogue, community, peace -- deeper still, communion and integration, souls immersed in one another, a reclamation after all the calamities.
What else is it? the suchness of freedom, in freedom to take joy in life, to take flight, to breathe deep and feel your chest rise with each pulse.
What else is it? we have several necessary conjectures about what it is to be human in relation to one another. It is within this arena that I have searched for the Divine and found some clues. But alas, it is within this arena that I have starved for lack, need, and ultimate desperation for God.
To the One Who knows not sin, I know too little of to come in fear and trembling. I come in awe from the secrets, the whispers and comfort of mercy upon mercy still within mercy - to the Father Who wears a knowing smile while our night-terrors shake us.
In the solitude that is our greatest need, there is the abundance of God.
To gather and soak in the pardon of God, the mercy and forgiveness we long to experience at our inner core, is to be set free of burdens unnumbered...
the burden and opinion and guesswork about who it is that you must be to fulfill the expectations of your fellow woman and man. [the lie about the one that for all intense and purposes you had believed was yourself]
the burden of being hindered...until tragically separated from the love and commune of your fellow woman and man anchored in the paper fictions of society and culture.
to curse of being enslaved to sin and guilt, to the suffocation of self-loathing.
the burden of being preoccupied with the material world and all its machinations.
the fascination with lust, and all the illusions that will keep promising to satisfy...let them crumble into the brittle dust that composes them.
the brittle self-reliance of any national pride in exchange for a deeper and more meaningful satisfaction with the self - that which is unified with God.
all of the other deceptions...
to be set free unto the vast expanse of a sky - to stories yet untold of a merciful love that inundates your waiting heart.
And what else is it - what else could it be - to be found waiting in the wings? the surprising love of a God Who knows us, even as we begin to suspect how little we really know of Him.
May we come in humility before the God Who awakens deep within us what it means to be truly alive and dead to sin, to sing out in full audio with the rest of creation in proclaiming the irresistible goodness of our God.
What else is it? the suchness of freedom, in freedom to take joy in life, to take flight, to breathe deep and feel your chest rise with each pulse.
What else is it? we have several necessary conjectures about what it is to be human in relation to one another. It is within this arena that I have searched for the Divine and found some clues. But alas, it is within this arena that I have starved for lack, need, and ultimate desperation for God.
To the One Who knows not sin, I know too little of to come in fear and trembling. I come in awe from the secrets, the whispers and comfort of mercy upon mercy still within mercy - to the Father Who wears a knowing smile while our night-terrors shake us.
In the solitude that is our greatest need, there is the abundance of God.
To gather and soak in the pardon of God, the mercy and forgiveness we long to experience at our inner core, is to be set free of burdens unnumbered...
the burden and opinion and guesswork about who it is that you must be to fulfill the expectations of your fellow woman and man. [the lie about the one that for all intense and purposes you had believed was yourself]
the burden of being hindered...until tragically separated from the love and commune of your fellow woman and man anchored in the paper fictions of society and culture.
to curse of being enslaved to sin and guilt, to the suffocation of self-loathing.
the burden of being preoccupied with the material world and all its machinations.
the fascination with lust, and all the illusions that will keep promising to satisfy...let them crumble into the brittle dust that composes them.
the brittle self-reliance of any national pride in exchange for a deeper and more meaningful satisfaction with the self - that which is unified with God.
all of the other deceptions...
to be set free unto the vast expanse of a sky - to stories yet untold of a merciful love that inundates your waiting heart.
And what else is it - what else could it be - to be found waiting in the wings? the surprising love of a God Who knows us, even as we begin to suspect how little we really know of Him.
May we come in humility before the God Who awakens deep within us what it means to be truly alive and dead to sin, to sing out in full audio with the rest of creation in proclaiming the irresistible goodness of our God.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
The Beginning of a Journey
"We are called upon to live Christ's life. We are called into the desert to meet the demon within. We are called to face God alone in the night of our own solitude. We are called to die with Jesus, in order to live with him. We are asked to lose all, to be emptied out, in order to be filled with the very fullness of God."
from James Finley's book on Thomas Merton,
Merton's Palace of Nowhere, p.17
I begin this journal with much tension in my mind and heart. The past several months have been haunted by spiritual sickness, delusion, and bouts of prayerlessness. It is a season of longing even as it is a season of distance and loneliness from God. I need confess these things to you so that you know as well as I do how destitute we are --- pointing fingers at the moon and marveling...but it is this simple task that I must constantly return to, I must repent toward, a place of awe and honesty, integrity and relationship to the One Who hides his face. I hope that you could take these feeble steps with me.
Someone recently said that the whole of "spiritual life" is re-discovering Jesus for the first time over and again. It brought me great comfort because I often feel this way as a result of my waywardness and apathy, my deeper cynicisms and overbearing ego. I have been trying to keep my mind on God because I seem to remember what it was like to rest in the goodness of love, of being embraced by more than the idea of being alive, by meeting each breath with the sense of its gift, its secret, its promise. God sweeps me back to Him, gathering the fractures of me like a pile of wretched leaves...He breathes life and scatters me about in the great dance, to love and cherish the smiling faces of trees with proud and deep voices. He brings me back to the source of this.
In a flash we can remember these things. For me, it is imperative that I curse competition with other men, that I forget theology and the masquerades of my ego that play out a slide-show of grim thoughts of self-importance, self-righteousness and intelligence. The false self is the one who hides beneath this slide-show and pretends to be active within it. The truth is, the bastard is terrified to touch anything of this life, for the Reality and power of honest love and sexuality would consume him, expose him, speak of his deceit.
My great wish is to desire a true indigence, a poverty of the self that is fixated entirely upon the beauty and truth in Jesus. I ask God to teach me contemplation and how to stay with Him.
There is nothing more to write this evening, so I leave you with a poem by the Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, from which this website gets its address.
"Faith is a Blush"
God
is unwilling to be alone
and man
cannot forever remain impervious
to what He longs to show.
Those of us who cannot keep their striving back
find themselves at times
within the sight of the unseen
and become aglow with its rays
Some of us blush,
others wear a mask.
Faith is a blush
from James Finley's book on Thomas Merton,
Merton's Palace of Nowhere, p.17
I begin this journal with much tension in my mind and heart. The past several months have been haunted by spiritual sickness, delusion, and bouts of prayerlessness. It is a season of longing even as it is a season of distance and loneliness from God. I need confess these things to you so that you know as well as I do how destitute we are --- pointing fingers at the moon and marveling...but it is this simple task that I must constantly return to, I must repent toward, a place of awe and honesty, integrity and relationship to the One Who hides his face. I hope that you could take these feeble steps with me.
Someone recently said that the whole of "spiritual life" is re-discovering Jesus for the first time over and again. It brought me great comfort because I often feel this way as a result of my waywardness and apathy, my deeper cynicisms and overbearing ego. I have been trying to keep my mind on God because I seem to remember what it was like to rest in the goodness of love, of being embraced by more than the idea of being alive, by meeting each breath with the sense of its gift, its secret, its promise. God sweeps me back to Him, gathering the fractures of me like a pile of wretched leaves...He breathes life and scatters me about in the great dance, to love and cherish the smiling faces of trees with proud and deep voices. He brings me back to the source of this.
In a flash we can remember these things. For me, it is imperative that I curse competition with other men, that I forget theology and the masquerades of my ego that play out a slide-show of grim thoughts of self-importance, self-righteousness and intelligence. The false self is the one who hides beneath this slide-show and pretends to be active within it. The truth is, the bastard is terrified to touch anything of this life, for the Reality and power of honest love and sexuality would consume him, expose him, speak of his deceit.
My great wish is to desire a true indigence, a poverty of the self that is fixated entirely upon the beauty and truth in Jesus. I ask God to teach me contemplation and how to stay with Him.
There is nothing more to write this evening, so I leave you with a poem by the Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, from which this website gets its address.
"Faith is a Blush"
God
is unwilling to be alone
and man
cannot forever remain impervious
to what He longs to show.
Those of us who cannot keep their striving back
find themselves at times
within the sight of the unseen
and become aglow with its rays
Some of us blush,
others wear a mask.
Faith is a blush
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