You are the Silence

You are the Silence
when there is only noise,
the Stillness after the quake.
You are the Fire in the night,
hotter than a hundred stars.
You are my Song,
my feet where I cannot stand,
the Rock I cannot break.
In the avalanche of night,
dark and suffocating cold,
You are still my Breath and Blood and Bread

 

Six Months Later

Joplin just commemorated the six-month anniversary of the tornado that wiped out a third of our city on May 22nd.

We all have moments in our lives that we will remember forever, that are etched into our brains with the searing heat of the pain and fear of tragedy.  My parents know where they were the day Kennedy was assassinated.  I can remember, as we all can, the details of the morning of September 11, 2001 with crystal-clear clarity, as if it happened yesterday, as I watched with horror as people jumped from the top floors, trying to wrap my mind around the reality of these buildings caving in on thousands of people.

May 22nd is that kind of day for this community.  I’ve heard a hundred stories by now, many in first-person as a therapist trying to help make sense and work through the twist and wreckage of a day that was supposed to be a normal, average Sunday.  I remember my wife and I driving alongside the tornado, only missing driving through the heart of it by a simple prayer and God telling us to go a different way.  I remember seeing the transformers popping and watching as debris swirled within and around the enormous black monster, thinking at the time they must be small pieces of wood and whatnot, and only later learning that they were full-sized buildings, cars, people.

I’ve not been a citizen of this community all my life, but at various times I have called this place home.  My wife and I have been here this time around for six years.  We developed and opened our own counseling practice, which has deepened our roots, as our lives have become intertwined with the lives of others.  We’ve worked in this community and for it, being a part of small church groups and large business ones, staying when we have had offers to move elsewhere.  These were our homes, our churches, our businesses that were destroyed.  These were our families, our lives, our friends that were taken and whose lives were irrevocably shaken.

What has struck me again and again, beyond the grief that wells up at times unexpectedly when I drive past my old practice, now only a slab of concrete in an open field of concrete slabs lined up like gravemarkers, is the insistence that we come back, that our community thrive again.  The overwhelming response of volunteers and people across the country was more than we could take in in those first weeks.  We were, I think, only partially able to appreciate the kindness and selflessness.  The search and rescue crews, the work crews, the cleaning crews, the city managers and politicians who fought for this place, the folks who, bleeding and bruised and confused, stepped beyond themselves to cover a cold woman in a wheelchair or look for a man lost in a crumbled house, and the business owners who decided to rebuild.  I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but then there are times in life when you simply have to recognize the drama for what it is.  There are days when heroism trumps tragedy, when an epic story overwhelms a mundane account of despair.  I think to do less with this day and the days following would be dishonoring to those of us who witnessed these things, and denial of the weight of these past six months.

Six months.  In some ways it does feel like six days or six hours.  Pieces and piles of debris still remain.  Trees are still uprooted, twisted, gnarled.  Some buildings that stood remain standing still, ghosts over the landscape, large and looming memorials who seem to grieve in their darkness, their windows like our hearts still shattered and no longer guarding what is now an empty and broken space inside.  Other structures still lay, flattened and sprawled, where they were knocked and beaten.  The landscape is still at times unrecognizable.  Scarred.  The path cut by the storm undeniable, and still hits you between the eyes when you drive through the city.

So there are these times it seems like days ago, and and other times, it seems like years have gone by.  So much water has now passed under the bridge.  To see new buildings and businesses, some built right on top of the old, like Jerusalem after it would be sacked and destroyed.  Grasses replanted.  Sidewalks reconstructed.  New traffic lights and a few replanted trees.  Houses have begun to be rebuild, some standing in stark contrast to the ruined ones just a block away that haven’t yet been dealt with, standing as proud and defiant reminders of reconstruction.  The hard-won smiles and laughter coming from a man who lost his wife, a wife who lost her child, a family that lost their grandfather, a child that lost her legs, a nurse who still sees all too clearly when she closes her eyes at night the blood and cries and shock of a hospital overwhelmed, a couple that lost their confidence and security in a quiet midwestern city and who lost their American dreams.  New ones, better ones, slowly seep to the surface to take the place of the lesser ones that were blown about in the swirling debris of that fateful afternoon.

I’ve said before that there were 50,000 tornadoes that day.  What I hadn’t thought of is that there are 50,000 stories of change since.  Fifty thousand sets of eyes that see slow and steady growth as well as the sadness still and the brokenness that remains clinging like tentacles through the city and around the hearts of those of us affected.  Fifty thousand kinds of hope, fifty thousand opportunities to come under the shelter of a God who didn’t abandon us and who loves us into wholeness and healing.

Here’s to these last six months of hope, of a kind of demonstrable, tangible hope that I couldn’t have expected or planned for.  Here’s to six more, and may we in these next six months take hold of the kind of life that goes beyond and deeper than death, that brings life and freedom from the debris.

“And here, in dust and dirt, O here do the lilies of His love appear.”
-W.H. Auden

 

Experience and Reflection

There exists this model of therapy called Accelerated Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy.  It’s a complicated title to a fairly simple approach, but one that is profound for a community that prides itself more on professional distance than on entering into the muck and mire of a person’s story to help them find the redemption and way of life in it.

So this approach, AEDP, has in it the basic concept that we learn best by two complimentary steps.  The first is experience.  Another word would be “encounter.”  By this we mean not mere intellectual understanding or learning some rote fact or absorbing some information.  We mean the real and raw process of something, the journey into a new territory somehow.  Therapeutically, we often mean the experience of some emotion and memory as an encounter with another person present who can help navigate and offer life into the usually painful and, because of that, often blocked part of themselves.  A place that is ungrieved.  A memory too painful to recall.  Insight into themselves or the world or a particular relationship that hasn’t been acknowledged consciously.  A thought too threatening to deal with alone.  That gets expressed and experienced in the presence of a salient figure, a person tuned into their experience.  The dragon in the cave that’s threatened them for so long, that they’ve run from and feared, finally gets dealt with.  It’s encountered and slain.

The second step is reflection.  Apparently, and research seems to support this, we cannot learn or grow by mere experience.  We need to take time to reflect on it, to put words and meaning to what it is we’ve been through.  Wisdom, it might be said, is comprised of these two crucial elements — to first enter in and deal with whatever is at hand, and the second is to find the meaning in it, to ask the tough questions regarding it, to see it for what it is.  This is the “dynamic” part of the model’s name, AEDP. And we might add one more piece to the therapeutic approach that is included as a fundamental aspect — community.  That’s a given.  That’s what therapy is all about, the journey through difficult stretches of the trail with someone who can offer a hand-hold and a familiar and hopeful voice when the light grows dim.

I think the developers of this model, building on more than a hundred years of clinical practice and deep thinking about what it takes to help people change and grow, have landed on something profound.  Of course, I always want to equate these things back to Scripture and ask, “Does the Word of God support that?”  Is there evidence that this is truly a way we are made as people that we need to think deeply about and incorporate somehow into our daily living and our spiritual disciplines.  The first person that comes to mind is Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, after Jesus.  He did quite a lot of reflection, and fairly deep if you consider the Proverbs he wrote and potentially even Ecclesiastes.  A philosopher, really — and one that, incidentally, was instrumental in leading me to the Lord to begin with.  And then you have David, who experienced quite a lot in his life, suffering as well as glory.  Maybe more than anyone else in the Old Testament.  And he reflected on everything.  Then you have Paul, whose missionary exploits are the stuff of legend.  And then he reflected on them.  Just take a look at Acts or his letters to Timothy.  Teaching for him was a way of reflecting.  Oh, and Jesus.  This seemed to be one of the ways he instructed his disciples in the art of living in the Kingdom of God.  He would teach them something, then demonstrate it through action.  Reflection and experience.  Sometimes he reversed this and would help them experience something totally different than what they’d ever thought, and then reflect on it, tell them more about it.  He did this occasionally with his parables.

I’m a reflector — I like to reflect on things.  It started way back for me when I would crawl onto the roof of my house as a kid and stare as deeply as I could into the stars.  That for me was when experience and reflection kissed, and wonder burst through.  I’m not sure we can do both at the same time, but I would feel myself to be so small against such an immense backdrop, and then reflect on the expanse of the stars and be filled with awe.  And then I would do it again, always trying to feel myself get smaller and smaller.  It was a wonderful feeling to experience, especially when at other times it seemed as if I was the center of my little world and all orbited me.  Finally, I wasn’t.  And I have carried that practice on in my spiritual life, even now considering it something so crucial that withholding it is like holding my breath.  Last night my wife and I watched a Discovery channel documentary on the ocean and ocean life.  Narrated poorly, it still showed some of the extremes of creativity that God employs in creation.  I’m flooded again with wonder and awe, and now internally reflect on how immense is this Heart behind all hearts.

I think the first time I ever really heard something related to my calling was when I heard Amy Grant talk about Rich Mullins, posthumously.  She said that he would go to the edge, look over and see what was there, and come back and write a song about it.  That’s exactly what I’m talking about.  Experience and express.  And by doing so, extend our concepts and understanding of this Lover God and the life He’s invited us into.

I don’t know if many read this blog.  I’m okay with that either way.  I’m not sure I would read it myself if I didn’t write it.  It’s a chronicle of my journey, and it’s as much for me as anyone else.  I’ve written professionally before, and it was something I did for others to read, not necessarily something I wrote for myself.   If I ever write a book, I think my MO will be to write something that is meaningful to me, meaningful to write, something I need to read, something I need to hear and experience.  And, hopefully as a byproduct, something others will as well.  I want it to be a reflection of my experience with God so that others will be compelled toward experiential interaction with Him.

 

The Most Intimate Part

“His Holy Spirit, breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life…” -Ephesians 4:30, The Message

Oh yeah.  Oh yeah!  I forgot, somehow.  Through the busyness and mire and muck of life I’ve forgotten that this Spirit of His in me is this active and alive in me, for me, through me.  That sounds ridiculous to write it out like that, but it is true.  I’ve lived my life lately in a very unbelieving way, forgetting that my soul can feast on this most intimate of all experiences, given freely, mine for the taking, daily, moment-by-moment.

There’s so much that could be said here.  And more that will be.  But for now, I want to settle back into this most awesome and earth-shattering of all truths: He dwells in me, home in me, abiding in me, mine to know, making me “fit for Himself,” as Paul continues in the same verse.  “Don’t take such a gift for granted.”

Okay, then!

 

What Will You Do?

from Waking The Dead

So, let me ask again: How would you live differently, if you believed your heart was the treasure of the kingdom?

What does your heart need? In some sense it’s a personal question, unique to our make-up, and what brings us life. For some its music, for others its reading, for others they must garden. Our friend Lori loves the city; I can’t wait to get out of one. Bart reads articles on flying; Cherie loves a good novel. Bethann loves horses and Gary needs time working in the woodshop. You know what makes your heart refreshed, the things that make you come alive. I don’t get the thing with women and baths, but I know that Stasi loves them and finds a little retreat in a fifteen minute tub. “He leads me to soak in still, bubbly waters.” For me and the boys its the dirtier, the happier.

Yet there are some things all hearts need in common. We need beauty; that’s clear enough from the fact that God has filled the world with it, as he has given us sun and rain,

Wine that gladdens the heart of man,
Oil to make his face shine,
And bread that sustains his heart. (Psalm 104:15)

We need to drink in beauty wherever we can get it – in music, in nature, in art, in a great meal shared. These are all gifts to us from God’s generous heart. Friends, those things are not decorations to a life; they are what brings us life.

The skies of blue
The fields of green
Are all for you

The silver moon
The shining sea
All for you

For you, the wind blows
For you, the river flows

And everything you dream about
Even the love you dream of, too,
Is all for you. (John Smith & Lisa Aschman, “All for You”)

I don’t think I could have finished this book if it weren’t for the walks I take each day in the woods. My soul is tired, bone tired. The battle has been long and hard. Last night it began to snow. It is still snowing now. It, too, is a gift to my heart.

(from Waking The Dead, 214, 215 )

 

Nouns and Verbs

Of the Christian life, Brennan Manning once said that we are not travel agents handing out brochures to places we’ve never been. We should not be about pushing people toward a kind of life that we are not yet living.  We are living a life that should be — or at least should become — compelling in and of itself, enough that someone taking notice might ask what it is we are holding to (see 1 Peter 3:15).  Not that it should be in itself the reason we are living it, that others would take notice.  Nope, the Christian life is meant to become the most un-self-conscious kind of life available, natural, easy, organic and fluid.  Life as it was meant to be (as much as possible in the part of the story we are in, this side of the return of Christ) and our character being formed as it was meant to be.

Early on in my life with God I would become really distressed, even frantic, over the bits and pieces of myself I didn’t like and all that I wanted to become. I was intrigued and taken by the possibilities that lay before me, and was scared that I would be left behind.  I wanted to become passionate.  I wanted to become a healer and one who lived the truth out before others.  I wanted to be done with some stupid habits and immaturity.  I wanted to offer life.

Pretty soon, my wife started telling me, “Stop trying so hard to become, and just be.”  Somehow, that spoke pretty deeply to me, giving me permission to rest a bit and not try so hard.  To start enjoying living the kind of life I bumped into rather than trying so hard to offer it.  I could enjoy being enjoyed, right where I was, by a God so passionate for me.  I could enjoy having the resources of the Kingdom at hand — community and friendship, truth about life that finally made sense that brought fragmented pieces of my own story together, taking in sights that I never could see before but always felt like must be there somehow.  A heart that was beginning to beat again.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand life with God to be about both being and becoming. We really do get the best of both worlds: intimacy with a God who is fascinated and fascinating and the chance to grow into a kind of man or woman that we only dare imagine possible.  For me, that is a man of deep heart and faith, bold, full of a consistent joy toward life and love toward Jesus, competent and strong and life-giving.  The first counts us as worthy because of Jesus’ worth; the second grows us up into that worth, like a kid fitting into his daddy’s cowboy boots.  The first is the adventure of knowing and walking with God, of being His companion — a state, an identity, a noun; the second, the risky business of letting the Spirit temper and heal and develop us into the thing that is most alive, to form the image of God in us — an active, moving, following thing — a verb.  The first is the chance of an intimate adventure beyond our imaging and one we’ve been looking for all our days; the second is chance to grow into a character that can handle that kind of life and that depth of living.  The first is to experience the Kingdom; the second, to extend it through an allied partnership with the God we’ve come to befriend and trust intuitively.

It’s not always pretty, this kind of life.  Good grief, I think much of what I see in friends around me and in myself is a kind of cleaning out and exposing of the wounds and brokenness that prevent us from taking on that life.  But the result, and the journey along the way, is worthy it.  It’s worth it.  I am more today like the heart of God, with a greater capacity to both experience and express it.  My joy is in being that man, and my hope is in becoming even more so.

 

Stout-Hearted

“Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord.” -Psalm 27:14, Amplified

I’ve been in the waiting for quite awhile in this past season of my life, and even now.  My wife and I are eager, hopeful, yet live with much longing as of yet unfulfilled.  We are living well in it, but that is not an easy thing to do.  Waiting patiently but also passionately, intensely but also intimately.  Ultimately, the “stuff” we’re waiting for — the growth of our family a significant element of that — is really a longing for Jesus, for the Father, for the Spirit to abide and for the Kingdom to come and advance in us and through us.  That is what is behind the curtain, beneath our longing.  And that is the promise and guarantee whispered by God within…

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.” -Revelation 22:17

I want to be among the stout-hearted, waiting eagerly and expectantly (Romans 8:19), hoping, anticipating, actively, passionately waiting.  And in the meantime?  Fan into flames the inner fire of God’s life in me.  Stout-hearted, fiery hot, courageous, slaking my thirst in the waters of life.  I’ve not had the best balance of this.  My posts here have diminished, and with that, I’m sad to say, some of the flames.  I’m a chronicler; I write what God shows me, and by doing so I take it in, embrace it, let it do its work in me.  Paul tells Timothy to fan into flames himself the gift of God in him (2 Timothy 1:6).  That’s his job, his responsibility, not God’s.  I’ve been asking God to make me stout-hearted, and so He’s giving me longing unfulfilled.  I’ve been asking Him to set me aflame with His life within, and so He gives me the poker of writing and points me to the smoldering embers.  He Himself will be the bellows (John 3).

This is vague and general, I realize, but I’m only trying to recapture what the Spirit is breathing in me; refinement comes later.  Polish isn’t the point; it’s passion He’s after.  The passion is in waiting expectantly, hopefully, stoking all the while, courageously becoming large- and strong-of-heart.