Conversation with Dana

It is the loveliest dorm on campus, in my mind, and I was tired of studying poli sci, so I went there to see a friend and take a break.  She was on duty for the weekend so I figured that she'd be there.  Being friends with RAs can be like being friends with someone who's under house arrest; it is a real nuisance if you want to go somewhere with them, but it does tend to make them easier to find.


Anyway.  Fiona was there, but she was just about to go off to dinner, so I sat down on her floor and chatted with her until she was ready to leave and then I stood up, intending to head back to the library.  Her roommate, Dana, was still in the room and we kept half talking with each other -- the awkward kind of conversation that happens when one person is half trying to leave but not really in any hurry.


I ended up pulling out a chair and we sat and talked for a good while.  And it was good, and so unexpected.  We've vaguely known each other since sometime my junior year, and she has spent a lot of time with my group of girls, and we had talked some before, but it is always a lovely surprise to me when I end up having an excellent, thoughtful conversation with someone new.  It is like discovering a new author.  *smile*


That conversation though was a sort of picture of what these last two weeks feel like.   Good, but bittersweet because I am reminded that I am moving on from this place.  I won't be able to simply wander down from the library into McKee.  And I know that there will be other places and other people to have conversations with, I know that God provides, but -- and Dana was saying this when we talked -- I like the way things are.  I don't want God to have to provide something new.  It is hard.


It is hard to trust that what is, is enough.


And the conversation, which meandered down paths of friendships and stories from our lives, of Lord of the Rings and of perspective gained on past hard times and God's goodness, turned to our gladness in having been baptized as infants.  Of having been bound since we were born to the sure hope of the promise that God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.

Me and Inigo Montoya Should Be Best Friends

This has been an odd semester.  One that keeps reminding me that my plans are not the ultimate answer.

I like making plans; they make me feel secure and balanced and knowledgeable.  I do not really enjoy when people ask me, "So, what will you be doing __________?" and I say, "Uh....I don't know yet."  Generally I mumble for a moment about potential ideas that I have.  And that's not bad, but I'm not a huge fan.

So there I was in China last semester, realizing that I would be graduating in May if all went according to schedule, and that meant I would need something to do after May.  Since presumably I could not just go into hibernation and vanish into thin air for a year until I was ready to think about grad school.

So I made a plan and I thought that it was a rather good plan; I'd apply to CCO.  Then I could work with college students and do ministry, and I already had connections with the ministry program, and I like spending time with those people.  Perfect, right?

I interviewed with them and they said, "Sorry, we don't want to hire you on as full-time staff, but we'd like you to consider an internship."  I said okay.  That wasn't what I wanted exactly, but that way I had a plan, right?

I got back to campus that afternoon and had mail from ELIC in my mailbox.  I had been missing China and so going back and teaching English sounded like a really good idea.  So I applied, waiting to hear back more about the CCO internship.  Doors kept opening to go back to China and I thought this was pretty cool, this is perfect.  I didn't hear anything else about the internship until things with ELIC were pretty close to all worked out, so when ELIC offered me a job, I said yes, of course.

China is not the easiest place in the world to get access into, and one of the pieces of paperwork needed is a blood lab report saying that you don't have HIV.  I have learned that this test can take what feels like an exceedingly long time to come back.

There are also these things called deadlines, which, trust me, sometimes seem to be half of what you are learning about in college.

Deadlines and things that are due sometimes collide in rather unseemly ways.

So right now I'm waiting to see if the HIV test results come back soon enough to mail to ELIC so that they can in turn send documents to China.

I am guessing that I could probably give Inigo Montoya a run for his money in a competition to see which of us hates waiting more.  It is just not fun.  My friend Tyler is in a similar boat right now, waiting to hear back from an interview.  We commiserate over the miseries of not knowing.  We're okay with the results one way or another, we say, but what kills us is the not knowing.

As a sidenote, it has been astonishing me how very okay I am with the results either way.  I do love China deeply, and, as I was talking to someone about yesterday when he asked to hear the story of how I ended up with ELIC, it really did seem perfect.  Like I had been perfectly set up by my life to do this, like all the doors just opened.  Until the HIV test, one of us said.

Yep, until that.  And I am content to think that if God is closing the door on what seemed perfect, that it's because he has something better in mind.  More on that sometime, perhaps, seeing where this goes.

I've had to think about a lot of the verses that I prefer to gloss over.  It really is incredible what the Holy Spirit brings to mind at crazy times.  Exodus 14 is my current favorite.  That's when Pharaoh is chasing the Israelites with the whole Egyptian army and they get stuck right up against the sea.  Understandably, they all start freaking out.  I think that anyone with a modicum of sense would, with certain death on either side.  Being a slave suddenly starts to sound, well, appealing.

Here's what the Israelites, stuck in this position, had to say:

Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.
(Exodus 14:11-12 ESV)

And here was Moses' response.  Which I love.

Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.
(Exodus 14:13-14 ESV)

I'd guess that you know the rest of the story; God tells the Israelites to go forward and he makes a path through the sea, opening it right before them and then closing it over their enemies.

When everything seems closed in, God makes a way to places that we couldn't even see.

Periodicals

We were up on the top floor of the library, reading our periodicals for poli sci when I interrupted Fiona.  "This is a bad statistic," I said, and then realized that had been a poor way to word it.  I wasn't questioning its validity, just stating that it is a problem.  It's bad.

"The average price of a human being today," says researcher Kevin Bales, "is about $90."  That's the price averaged across the global market.  In North America, slaves go for between $3,000 to $8,000.  In India or Nepal, you can buy a human being for $5 to $10."

So says the February edition of Sojourners magazine.

And so we talked about -- because we wonder about -- what on earth are we doing sitting on the third floor of the library, reading the news from all over the world and then writing reports on it when other people are being sold?  What's the purpose?

And we didn't come to any firm answers, although we talked for a while longer and I will probably be blogging through some of the conversations/questions that Fiona and I keep running into.  We know there is a purpose for which God has put us where He has -- that we have been given the chance to be in college now, that we are who we are.

But still...

I think it is good to be reminded sometimes of what else life could so easily look like.  To be thankful to God for all that He has spared us, and to wrestle with what faithfulness looks like, and to stay brokenhearted for the broken.

Making Peace With Proximate Justice: A Speech and Questions with Steve Garber

I'm sitting upstairs in Skye Lounge, listening to Steve Garber speak.

Did you hear that? Steve Garber. My parents gave me his book The Fabric of Faithfulness and I thought I was too young for it, not even going to college yet, and it was dense, pulling together pieces of pop culture and the Bible and classics and questions. But I waded through it -- probably more because I am stubborn than anything else -- and it was like Till We Have Faces, pieces of it nagging at the back of my mind. I don't think I could have been more than fifteen or sixteen. That gave me time to reread it, to let things percolate through the filter of my life.

And it has been good.

So it is a huge blessing to get to hear him speak.

He began talking about Jon Stewart and Rush Limbaugh. Here's his summary.

Jon Stewart: If you knew what I knew, you'd be cynical too.

Rush Limbaugh: If you knew what I knew, you'd be angry too.

And Garber asks, Can you know the world and still love the world? Or do you simply become more detached and disinterested the more you come to know.

About how John le Carre's novels, and how people read them and say That's just the way it is, Garber asks -- really? If that is just the way it is, what are we doing here? What is the point?

About his time in Washington DC, he says, I've lived there to push back the cynicism of the city.

Is justice just crap? If it isn't, what is it? How do we live that out in the context of American pluralism?

He talks about how people come to Washington full of visions, sure that they can change everything because they deeply care about what is right and God does too. And about how making politics is no clean business and you have to find a way to stick with it. To make peace with proximate justice and accept what is something, even if it is not everything, and to continue on rather than dropping out. That you cannot say it must be everything that I am envisioning or it will be nothing because it hurts too much. That you have to have enough confidence in God to accept something.

About Israel and a friend of his who has come to deeply care for it, how if you are serious about it, you have to take seriously the hopes of the people who live there. On both sides. The solution may not be perfect, but it will be something.

About Blood:Water Mission, and the difficulty of continuing a charitable project when people rip you off and take advantage of you. How do you make peace with proximate justice?

About Mars and M&Ms and the search for a vision that cares for economics and people and earth. How all these things should weave together in a fulfillment of the shalom promised in jubilee.

So we make peace with proximate justice, accept that the world is not yet as it one day will be, live in the tension of redemption before the consummation.

He talks about how the culture is upstream from politics. What we want shapes the policies that we have, and it is not easy or cheap to change politics. But what needs to be changed will not be addressed until we care about it, until it matters to us.

And he wraps up with a question and a challenge to this roomful of college students: Does Christianity provide the answer to the complexity of these questions? You need to be able to answer this.

And I am glad to have heard him.

The Story Woven

The ground was white with snow.

We were spending the weekend in a "cabin" -- sort of a hunting retreat -- in the middle of nowhere, four hours' drive, slow behind the plow/salt truck. It was a long weekend for most of us, with no classes on Monday for MLK day, and we were taking some time to sleep and read, do homework and cook and catch up with each other's lives. With no internet access. With no phone service, except the landline, kept for emergencies.

And so -- Saturday -- we went for a walk in the woods. (A suibien kind of walk, my Chinese friends would say. It took me a while to explain that to my roommate once. I said I was going for a walk. "Where?" she asked. "Around campus," I said. "Where?" she asked. "I don't know," I said. "Nowhere." She stared at me. "Why?" "No reason, I just want to." She smiled. "Oh, a a suibien walk," she said, with understanding. It took me longer to get a general feel for what suibien meant. Random. Whatever you want.)

We slipped around on the ice and put our feet through where it was thin, endangering our shoes with the hidden pockets of freezing, muddy water. We posed on the hillside and took pictures.

And on our way back to the cabin, I took a deep breath. Thinking again about Proverbs 3:27, about a conversation that I had known I wanted to have from the time I decided to go to the cabin for that weekend.

Proverbs 3:17 says: Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it. I tend to think of that especially in terms of encouraging people, when you have a sense of perspective on their life that they are likely to not be able to see on their own.

If you've read older posts, maybe you've seen this one, the one called It's a Wonderful Life. If you haven't, the story makes more sense if you read it.

So I walked a little faster and caught up to him. We talked about jobs and school and such. And then I took another breath and said Thank you. I don't really remember exactly how I explained it. But I know that he is continuing to be in positions of authority; he has a wife, he has men under him. And he has much to offer in terms of growing them.

It unlocked parts of the weekend that wouldn't have been there, otherwise. Some laughter, because we got to know each other better than we would have. Some discussion, washing dishes -- So what has God been teaching you? What have you been learning? -- that came far more naturally when we knew that there was a context for it to fall into, that we'd already been part of the same conversation, if not really introduced to each other before.

It is beautiful how God weaves life together.

The Goodness of God

This point keeps coming up recently:

We sin because we don't really believe that God is good.

Last weekend I was at a staff training seminar for CCO where Tim Geiger, who works for Harvest USA, was speaking. His focus was sexual sin (and holiness), and he was talking about how sin -- any sin -- is based in a desire for something that's good. The problem is that we move this from being a good desire into being an ultimate end, something we're determined to get at any cost.

Tim Keller made this same point very well in Counterfeit Gods.

And I was discussing this last night with ZhongguoTim [okay, I realize that I have now talked about three Tims in a row. Not sure why that's how it happened, but there it is]. I know that this is where sin comes from -- that

each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:14-15) --

but I need to keep hearing it. It's easy to justify my behaviors and find acceptable behaviors that are still motivated by sin. We talked about grades, about building relationships with people. Are these motivated by desires to glorify God? Or to feel in control?

James gives us the antidote for this poisonous inclination in the next few verses.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:16-17)

If we believe that everything good comes from God, then we will trust Him.

We talked about this again today in my Environmental Ethics class, when we were discussing how God had decreed that Israel give the land a rest every seven years. How hard would that have been to obey? I would have thought, Are You crazy? I'll starve! My teacher summed it up well. "We think that if we obey God, bad things will happen."

Yep. There's the heart of the lie we believe.

So instead... we have to let go of trusting in ourselves and cling to the risky belief that God is trustworthy, that He is good. That He is omniscient and does know all of our circumstances. That He's omnipotent and has the power to work all things for good. That He's omnipresent and is with us in everything, is working in everything.

And mostly that He is all good, and that He desires good for His children.

Habits

[As a slight disclaimer... I've been meaning to post this for about a month, and just haven't gotten around to it. Not that it makes much difference, but here it is.]

I was reading The Divine Conspiracy (still; it didn't make my packing list for China so it kind of got put on hold) and hit a section on how much sin comes from habits.

I've thought more about habits in the past three months than I probably ever had before, because as soon as we got to China we started realizing that we had all kind of habits that were so deeply engrained we didn't even realize that they were habits, we just thought they were how life was. And we longed to rebuild a similar set of routine habits, so that we could do things like eat and buy groceries and shower on autopilot. It takes a lot of energy to consciously think about everything that we do in the course of a day.

Anyway, I think there is a lot to be said for what was being said in Divine Conspiracy: our habits are so unthought about that it's hard to remember that they exist, and it's hard to put effort into making whole something so ingrained that we've forgotten it's broken.

There are plenty of examples of this. I mean, why does George Bailey never fix the knob on the railing in It's a Wonderful Life? Does he even remember that it shouldn't pop off all the time by the end of the movie? Or last year, I went to a party at a friend's house and fell through one of his porch steps on the way up. Someone mentioned it and his response was along the lines of, “Oh yeah, that's been broken, you just have to skip it.” Or... fix it?

Maybe that was part of what was so radical and vital about the Reformation, the requickening of the idea that God says “Mine” about all of creation. That it's not just about Sundays and holidays and the clergy, but equally about Monday morning and Friday nigh, about the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker.

That God is just as interested in the money that we don't give in tithes and offerings as He is in the money that we throw into the offering plate.

So the motto of CCO that I grew up around – All of life redeemed – is a precious and beautiful one to have woven into your being.

And I think about Ann Voskamp (www.aholyexperience.com) and yes, how seeking to give thanks for all things at all times – this will protect us from much sin. It forces intentionality about many of the hidden desires of our hearts. It begins making whole what we forgot was there, let alone broken.