Time has taught you


     how much inspiration


your vices brought you,


     what imagination


can owe temptation


     yielded to,


that many a fine
           

     expressive line


would not have existed,


     had you resisted:


as a poet, you


     know this is true,


and though in Kirk


     you sometimes pray


to feel contrite,


     it doesn’t work.


Felix Culpa, you say:


     perhaps you’re right.

You hope, yes,


     your books will excuse you,


save you from hell;


     nevertheless,


without looking sad,


     without in any way


seeming to blame


                     (He doesn’t need to,


knowing well


     what a lover of art


like yourself pays heed to),


     God may reduce you


on Judgment Day


                  to tears of shame,


reciting by heart


     the poems you would


have written, had


                  your life been good.

W. H. Auden, from the epilogue to his elegy to Louis MacNeice in his book of poetry, About the House(1965), 23.

I’ve been dating Rebekah for about four months now, and I’m surprised at how good it is. Sure, a relationship can be hard work—or, more accurately, a lot of work. It’s not onerous like moving a piano up three flights of stairs would be; it’s just hard to continue to be thoughtful and kind and loving, to continue to build the relationship even as it starts to feel old hat. The difficulty is in doing the little things.

But if done correctly, you never even get close to ‘old hat.’ Instead, you end up being overwhelmed by Romance, which is awfully distracting, but only because it’s so much fun.

My point isn’t the work, though—it’s how good it is. For whatever reason—be it evolutionary wiring, fallen nature, the influence of literature and Hollywood—guys tend to get this fantasy of having many girls over the course of their lifetime. If one is good, then many are better. If it’s fun having a wife, then adding a few ladies on the side only makes things better.

We know, of course, that this isn’t really true, because it destroys relationships, families, and soils everyone involved. But there’s still a fantasy that says, “But if we could somehow remove the consequences, it would certainly be a thing worth doing.” It’s like the magical hangover pills. At last, we can really enjoy ourselves.

I’m realizing, though, that this James Bond, ladies’ man fantasy is even more of a lie than I initially realized. Besides being way more sordid and slimy than it appears in the movies, it also can’t possibly be so carelessly suave. Bond is very smooth; good for him. But most of us aren’t. In fact, no real person can pull off that brand of smooth. Even the the most charming can be embarrassingly awkward when doing something for the first time.

The first time I kissed Rebekah was great, but a little awkward. In the meantime, we’ve gotten much better at it—so much so that looking back at our first few tries, I have a strange mix of emotions—I feel a little embarrassed, because we certainly were awkward, but I also feel like that those were some of our most precious moments. The excitement of a first, the thrill of the new, and the promise of more to come. My head was spinning at the time, I can assure you; even thinking about it now makes my heart glow.

But so much of the thrill of a first kiss is the looking forward, being able to look forward to building something with that person. A first kiss is an initiation– “This thing is for real, this is romance, and there is much more to come.” I loved those first kisses, but I am still glad that our technique has dramatically improved. 

Which brings me (finally) to my point—there’s a thing that happens in building a relationship with someone that just gets better and better as time goes by. It’s just like we’re learning to dance, and at first we’ve never danced at all—or even if we have, it was with another partner, and in this sort of dance every step is freestyle. If you don’t know where your partner is going next, you’ll be tripping all night. But the only way to learn the dance well is to spend time dancing with your partner.

How sad, that someone who can never commit gets barely even a glimpse of the dance that the happily married enjoy. I use kissing as an example because I think it (along with the whole love-making genre) is the easiest place to see what I’m talking about. But it’s less about the physical than it is about learning to go shopping together, or to clean the hosue together, or to visit family together. That’s where the dance really becomes technical, and where it really becomes romance. The dance happens most where real life is lived. How awful to be constantly confused, perpetually lost, trying in vain to pick up your partners cues.

But on the other hand, how beautiful to be the sort of team where one knows how to respond before the other has even begun to move.

Being good at things take time.

One of my biggest struggles with following Jesus is that to do it well, it takes a great deal of time.

Somehow, it’s easy to think that Christianity is simply something you are, not ever something you do. True, it’s not about just going to church or tithing or talking about Jesus. But a writer who never writes is hardly going to be much of a writer. In fact, I think it would be perfectly reasonable, and even necessary, to question whether such a man is a writer at all. Why would you claim to be a writer and not write? Because you want the benefit, the feel of being a writer, whatever that is, without putting in the work required to actually write.

I try and trick myself into thinking that just being a Christian is enough, but if I’m not doing, then I’m not being.

And trying to slip through with a minimum of commitment and effort is nothing more than an excellent way of ensuring that you will always struggle in your faith.

Lifting a great load requires exercise, and consistent training. Following Jesus requires a different sort of training, but training nonetheless. Spending hours with a Bible, or listening for the still, small, whisper, or reading the notes of those who have come before—this is required, if we are to show any improvement in the way we follow Jesus. It’s even likely that if we want to make it at all, we have to be doing these things at least to some degree. Meeting with the church, serving the local body, loving your neighbors, both friends and enemies. Without the doing of these things, there will be no being.

It takes time to get with Jesus every morning, or to read something like Augustine’s Confessions in the evening. And it takes time to go out and serve others, and to take care of them, and to do your job as an ear, or an eye, or a foot.

But what we need to get straight is that these are minimum requirements for following Jesus. It takes time. There are no shortcuts, no power-nap or speed-reading versions of spirituality. There is only a long road ahead, and daily we take a step or two in the direction of Jesus. Let us simply accept that, put our shoulder to the plow, and make whatever commitments and sacrifices necessary for us to make it, to be faithful till the end. 

1

we tell lots of stories
 
we tell them over fire
over drinks
in groups, out loud
shouted up and out
launched freely,
loudly,
an open invitation
 
or whispered in the dark
gifts passed
between friends
and lovers
wrapped up packaged
pieces of us
 
we deal in stories
like currency
traded in life’s marketplace 
 
 
2
these stories
are our lives
shared, traded, cherished
 
and maybe
we find
a story that grabs us
compels us
that we want to hear it
forever
 
  

In his Pensées, Pascal wrote that everyone aims toward happiness, but no one reaches it–  except he who has faith.

Except this isn’t actually completely true. At best, the man of faith has moments of true contentment. God grants us this to waken us to the Reality that there is contentment somewhere, even if it’s never here for too long.

It’s what Kierkegaard calls the wish; we desire that we would be satisfied. But we aren’t. So we choose to either kill that desire, or live in a way that we seek that which will fill this gaping hole. To kill it is a horrible loss, because then we have killed our Knower, that function of the heart that comes alive when we run into Truth.

It’s this knower that ultimately leads us to God. Pascal comments that all of these contradictions of philosophy don’t lead him to skepticism, as it has for so many; rather these contradictions are the very things that lead him to the conclusion that somehow, somewhere, there must be more than this. As Lewis put it, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

And we need this desire, this wish. And we need it to come and go. We are fickle, broken creatures, and if we don’t continually run into that pang of longing that keeps us awake, a pang that sometimes becomes a full-on ache, we’ll forget. Or as Annie Dillard puts it in Holy the Firm, we’ll “fall asleep at the wheel.” Were we to be able to stay awake on our own evil and pain would be an unmitigated travesty. But pain can also be a severe mercy. It’s this pain that allows us to both stay Awake and to realize that our longing for something more may actually point us to something more.

I don’t want to argue that evil is the best thing for us, because that simply isn’t true. Evil is wrong. Even redemption doesn’t change that. Forgiveness may wash it away, but only by acknowledging that it is, in fact, wrong.

However, given our parameters of corrupted beings who have chosen to rebel, and the fact that we are ultimately created to be united with a God who has “hidden himself from the wise” (Luke 10:21), it is a form of grace that we are allowed to suffer in this lifetime, for through this suffering our opportunity to turn and be saved is miraculously preserved. We shouldn’t be amazed that a good God doesn’t protect us from all evil; rather, we should be amazed that He is able to redeem evil in a way that such an obvious wrong can actually be turned into a form of the good.

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough… It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again,” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again,” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

A mind might ponder its thoughts for ages and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Essays

For most of my life I’ve assumed that the only person I could depend on was myself, and that while being a Christian means being a part of a church, at the end of the day sole responsibility for me getting through lies at my own feet. There’s some truth in this; ultimately, we all answer to God not for our friends, but for ourselves. But in my life it’s become an excuse to set myself up as a lone ranger. And unfortunately for me, a loner is an easy target.

Basically, I’m finally realizing that I can’t make it on my own. And everyone says that; I’ve said it many, many times before. The thing that’s been troubling me lately is that I’m actually starting to believe it. To be frank, I suck at being a Christian when I try to do it on my own. And I vastly underestimate the effect of my church and my believing friends. But I think I’m becoming convinced that doing well as a Christian only happens as a person commits fully to a community of believers.

I think it’s tempting to want to believe that this neediness invalidates the belief. Like if you can’t do it on your own, then it’s somehow not as good. But that’s silly- the fact that we have to depend on people actually shows, more than anything, how seriously and strongly we believe.

If Christianity came naturally, it would be a pretty unimpressive thing to see someone do it well. Lots of people are good at falling; it’s not an impressive quality. If someone’s good at landing, that’s a completely different thing. Because falling is natural; landing well takes skill. The impressive thing about Christian belief is that you find something that is true and worth doing, but at the same time you find that you’re naturally really bad at it. So what do you do? You make the sorts of choices that will put you in a spot where you can actually succeed at it. Which means that you’re working harder, but it’s worth it because to do this thing, to be a Christian, is the most worthwhile thing the human creature ever undertakes.

When you run a race, it always comes down to the bottom line. No one cares who tried the hardest; the point is to win, and the one with the fastest time is the one who wins. So if running with a pack makes me push myself a little harder, and to run a little faster, shouldn’t I do everything and anything to find a pack to run with? I’m not going to run by myself just to make sure I am running for the right reasons, or because my time is less real if I don’ t do it entirely on my own. Truth is, the only thing that matters is the time. The only thing that matters is following Jesus and making it to the finish line as a good and faithful servant. And if it takes me being in community for me to be able to do that, then I’m going to throw myself into my community with all I’ve got. Because I don’t like being bad at things. And I definitely don’t like the idea of being bad at the most important thing. If I get to choose, I would like to be really good at it. But if that’s not an option, then I would at least like to be less bad at it.

Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Kierkegaard, C. S. Lewis. All guys who defended the faith, but also all guys who would readily admit that the basis for their faith wouldn’t be found in apologetics or any deductive argument.

Augustine believed because he experienced God; he was brought to tears in the garden as he read from the book of Romans. Aquinas famously asserted near the end of this life that all of his philosophy and theology were apparently nothing more than straw when seen by the light of the reality of Heaven. Pascal experienced God in a way that he basically summarized as “Fire!” Kierkegaard made the leap of faith; it wasn’t logical, but it was real. And Lewis was, in his own words, “surprised by joy.”

There’s a basis for faith that doesn’t fit into the world of derivations and modus ponens. It’s the most logical thing in the world for those who experience it; but it can appear awfully foolish to outside observers.

We know God in the sense that we know that we fall in love with a man or a women, or we know that we love our children. I don’t need a rational construct; I know it to my very bones. And that’s the basis for the leap; that’s the part a nonbeliever will never really understand. All of our explanations and arguments for why Christianity is the truth actually take a backseat in our actual lives. Christianity is something believed or disbelieved on an experiential basis.

This really isn’t all that surprising. Jesus said to believe in him on his testimony, but if not that then believe on the basis of the miracles. The Old Testament seems like a constant refrain of, “Look, I’m the real God. Look what I just did for you! Now get your act together and serve me- and remember, I’m the God who saves. The God who actually does things!”

I am sure that Christianity is true. But I know it on the basis of my experience of God- experience that ranges from me seeing God in direct, Pascalian moments, or just seeing God in nature or in my personal history, or in the lives of the people around me. So I am sure Christianity is true because it works. I have accepted it, and what’s happened to me since then lines right up with what the Bible says should happen. It works too well to not be true.

The water shifts and shimmers
….. a glinting promise
of treasure that flirts
….. where water meets sky.
The steady breeze goes straight for the soul—
….. Stand straighter, think higher.
….. Dream what is real and find what is true.
The stars brush my head and cheek and heart
….. and surround me and smile
….. with a twinkle of the eye.
The moon, he dances, round gossamer clouds,
….. first in and then out
….. round the frail debutantes
Here is my family—brother moon, sister sky,
….. and tonight we are festive
………. —please, come, take a seat!
….. as we sing and we sing,
………. for we’re learning to fly.
…………………… 3/2/07