To Be Honest …

August 15, 2009

My last post has been bothering me. It is a segment of an essay I wrote several months ago, and I posted it last week because I felt it fit with the themes of this blog. It sounded neat, confident, and resolved … and that is not how I would describe my relationship with God these days.

I don’t think faith is easy, and sometimes – like right now – it is especially difficult. Some mornings, doubt hits me hard and my heart aches all day. It hurts, because if Christianity is not true, my hope vanishes. The world is sucked dry of meaning, and I am lost, alone, and desperate.

I have long thought that belief is a choice. You examine the evidence, you use your reason, but ultimately you choose. That is the scary part. When I can’t feel God, it is so easy for me to wonder if I ever have felt him. Or if all my experiences with God have been illusions or delusions. How do I know I have chosen truth?

I don’t have answers. I am full of doubts.

In college I led a women’s Bible study where I asked, “Do you think that a person can really believe without any doubt?”

“Yes!” one girl replied so emphatically that no one dared to answer differently.questions

Maybe I should have asked a more open-ended question. Maybe some people are capable of believing with no doubts. Maybe I should believe without any doubts. I know that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. But I do not feel sure or certain, and I can’t be dishonest with God. I shouldn’t be dishonest with anyone else either.

I am so grateful for the people in my life who listen to my doubts without trying to find easy answers to my questions. When we explain the inexplicable, we sell it short. Thomas Merton wrote,

            I have blamed God


            Thinking to blame only men


            And defend Him Who does not need to be defended.

Yes, I have done that too, but I don’t want to do it anymore.

A student once asked Madeleine L’Engle (Okay, I mention her a lot … she is high on my list of heroes) if she really and truly believed in God with no doubts at all. Madeleine replied, “I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts.”

And that’s where I am, honestly.

 ******************************

References/Further Reading:

“Elias: Variations on a Theme” by Thomas Merton

A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle

A blog post I read this week

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Posted by Elise

A Brief Autobiography – Faith, Stories, and Imagination

August 8, 2009

278153_stack_of_books

I have always loved stories. I was three years old when I decided I wanted to be a writer. It was about the same time that I decided to follow Jesus. Alt hough I have defined myself as both “writer” and “Christian” for nearly as long as I can remember, I saw little relation between the two during my early years. As I read and wrote stories, I found space for my imagination to roam. I soaked up poems and fairy tales; I poured out ideas in words and pictures. At the same time, I felt the weight of the command to seek God first, but Christianity felt constraining, like a list of rules I had to follow.  Little did I know that God was drawing me to him, telling me his story in ways I least expected.

As a five-year-old, I was enchanted by stories of Narnia. As a nine-year-old, I found a depth of meaning in Madeleine L’Engle’s stories that rang true, even though I could not fully comprehend it. As a teenager, I was drawn back to the fairy tales, myths, and archetypal imagery that had shaped my favorite stories. During college I fell in love with character-driven realism, metaphysical poetry, and the deftly crafted essays of nature writers. As the years went by, I grew increasingly aware that God was using stories to show himself to me.  He revealed himself in the beautiful wildness of Aslan. Through Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quartet, he showed me a love strong enough to defeat darkness. He led me to revisit fairy tales, where I found worlds flooded with significance, where the consequences of selfishness were severe, but where love had transformative powers. They were worlds where people’s choices determined what they would become. In novels, poetry, and essays, I caught glimpses of God’s grandeur.

As time went by, I began to see that Christianity was more like a story than a list of rules and constraints. I found the same sharp flavor of adventure in Bible stories that I found in my favorite novels. I am not sure where I got the idea that faith is a set of rules, but I know it is a lie that many fall into as they pursue a life of faith. We find it hard to understand righteousness apart from a list of dos and don’ts. We know God demands holiness of us. God asks us to be righteous and just. We feel the need to create a manageable list of behaviors, so we can measure our level of righteousness. I used to worry that creativity might take me outside the boundaries of God’s truth, into the realm of the unacceptable, even the blasphemous. As my faith has grown, I have come to realize that God is huge. In him, there is vast space for creativity. I want to keep myself grounded in his truth, not twisting it or denying it in any way, but I see now that there is freedom in truth. God will always be bigger than my imagination; I don’t have to downsize my imagination to keep it that way.

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Posted by Elise

Viva!

July 13, 2009

 IMG_2361

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Viva la vida. Live life. Or, Long live Life! Join the life revolution, the rebellion against death and the cycle of death.

Last night as thousands of paper butterflies soared across a starlit sky, Chris Martin sang:

          Tonight maybe we’re gonna run

          Dreaming of the Osaka sun

          Oh oh

          Dreaming of when the morning comes

For me it was a radiant moment. I reached up to catch the butterflies that swarmed overhead, under the stars, against the backdrop of the Columbia River Gorge. When “Lovers in Japan” faded into “Death and All His Friends,” a few butterflies still fluttered above, and my heart settled into the shimmering afterglow of hope that follows exuberant joy.

Hope is the souvenir I take from the moment of joy, because in joy I find assurance that the things I believe are true. To quote U2, the other competitor for world’s most epic band, “Laughter is eternity if joy is real.”* It seemed to me (whether Coldplay intended it or not) that last night’s concert was all about eternity – and about embracing the present moment, which is so closely related to eternity. All evening, John Donne’s famous sonnet echoed in my head: Death, be not proud.

When the last song was over and the band left the stage, I gathered butterflies from the grass around me. They are just pieces of paper; they cannot conjure up the same joy I experienced last night. But they are souvenirs that remind me to hope – to keep dreaming of when the morning comes.

   One short sleep past, we wake eternally,IMG_2378

   And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

              - John Donne, Holy Sonnet 10

 

* “Get On Your Boots,” No Line on the Horizon

P.S. If for some reason you haven’t downloaded your free, live Coldplay album … do it now. It is so very good!

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Posted by Elise

Adventure and the Eatable Hero

June 19, 2009

To a Christian, existence is a story, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he might be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero.

1036672_danger

- G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy

It’s been a few years since I read Orthodoxy, but the phrase “eatable hero” sticks with me, because it so clearly and humorously captures the essence of adventure. Adventure always involves risk, and a “sense of adventure” is simply the willingness to brave the risk in order to gain the reward.

As a first-grade kid, I read adventure stories longingly. I so desired to be a part of a story where the stakes were high – a story that involved a quest, a battle, a transformation. I wanted Narnia; I wanted dragons; I wanted hidden treasure or a secret mission. I was also very shy and tended to worry about life. (I was especially concerned that the earth might get hit by a meteor, or I might go blind from looking at the sun too long during an eclipse … stuff like that.) At twenty-six, I’m pretty much the same girl I was at six – longing for adventure, but a little shy and anxious for safety. Except now I worry about finances and international politics instead of cataclysmic cosmic events. My worries have become a bit more prosaic.

Stories are a good antidote to worry, not because they make me feel safe from danger, but because they remind me that without danger, there is no story. If the hero isn’t “eatable,” the story isn’t exciting. Stories put the joy back into the risk-taking, restoring my sense of adventure. You’ve probably heard this quote by Helen Keller:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.

Agreed. But I find I do need some security – something to keep me from melting in the uncertainty of it all. There is really only one guarantee, but I think it is enough. Here it is: Nothing – nothing life brings, no power in the universe, not even death – can pull us out of Jesus’ love.

In Matthew 10, Jesus instructs his disciples before sending them out on a risky mission. This is my summary/paraphrase:

I am sending you out into adventure – dangerous but rewarding. I believe you can be like me. Don’t value your life so much that you miss this adventure. My Father and I are the ones who determine your value, and you are so valuable to us.

I think I will have more to write about this soon; for the time being, I’m signing off. But I’ll leave you with a reading list to further inspire you to adventure. Happy reading, and happy adventures!

 

Further Reading:

Matthew 10

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

“Leap Before You Look” by W.H. Auden (It’s not a long poem; you can read it all by following this link. Read it here! Read it now!)

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (Bilbo Baggins is a delightful character who gives me such hope for myself.)

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Posted by Elise

Why It Matters

June 1, 2009

Wild RoseRecently I’ve had a lot of conversations with family about the future – goals, plans, dreams. It’s got me thinking, and I find that I’m unclear as to what’s next.

This morning I listened to Add to the Beauty by Sara Groves. I can’t think of an album that more clearly resonates with what I believe about love, beauty, and the Kingdom of God. As I sing along to the title song, I mean every word: “I want to add to the beauty, to tell a better story, shine with the light that’s burning up inside. And this is grace – an invitation to be beautiful.” That might be the best definition of grace I’ve ever heard.

The song that has been on my mind over the past couple of days, though, is this one. Because as Jeremy and I plan for the future, I can’t help but consider my life-long dream of being a writer. Creative writing rarely makes money; I don’t know if it will ever be a career, and that can be discouraging. So why do it? This song reminds me why it matters.

 

Why It Matters

By Sara Groves

 

Sit with me and tell me once again

Of the story that’s been told us

Of the power that will hold us

Of the beauty, of the beauty

Why it matters

Speak to me until I understand

Why our thinking and creating

And why our efforts of narrating

About the beauty, of the beauty

Why it matters

Like a statue in the park

Of this war torn town

And its protest of the darkness

And this chaos all around

With its beauty, how it matters

How it matters

Show me a love that never fails

Some compassion and attention

Midst confusion and dissention

Like small ramparts for the soul

How it matters

Like a single cup of water

How it matters

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Posted by Elise

Spend it all now

May 27, 2009

“Spend it all now,” Annie Dillard wrote in The Writing Life. Don’t hoard your best ideas and words, saving them for a more opportune time. Some ideas take time to germinate, of course, but a seed must be planted in order to grow.

Sometimes I spend my writing time describing little scenes that come into my head and end up going nowhere. Sometimes I lay out lines of poetry that sound good at first … and not so good later. Sometimes I avoid writing altogether. Sometimes I write clipped little phrases that I can’t seem to shape into poetry, so instead I end up copying out lines of songs or poems that I love. Why bother writing something new when Paul Simon or T.S. Eliot or Bono has already said it better than I could?Seedling

I spent a long time crafting my last short story. I wrote and rewrote and threw out a lot of what I wrote. I fell in love with the characters. I was amazed to see scenes coming into focus and detail as I worked, developing like Polaroid photos. When the story ended, I thought, “That was it. That was all I had. I’m out of ideas.” And I spent a lot of time looking for a new story, writing little blurbs that led nowhere. But last week, one short anecdote planted a seed in my mind, and that seed has rapidly sprouted into a seedling story. I am at the roughest rough draft stage, typing as much as I can about every character and every scene I see. And so the story grows.

Maybe those other hours that felt fruitless were actually useful for composting and tilling the soil so the story seed could take root and grow. I know that I am working on a real story right now, not just an exercise. Whether it will be a good story remains to be seen. But it is a story that I can finish. When I am done, I may think, “That was it. I’ve spent everything; I have no other stories in me.”

This is the writing life, and this is the life of faith. Using all you have, giving it all away, trusting that even if you have nothing left at the end of the day, you will be given what you need to do all that you are required to do.

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Posted by Elise

The Good Work

May 17, 2009

Last night Jeremy and I went to a barbeque. It was Friday night, and we were all engaged in drinking our root beers and beers and grape sodas and slowly decompressing at the end of the work week. In the midst of this, Rory, who is the lead singer and songwriter of Jeremy’s band, commented, “Well, it’s back to work tomorrow.”

“What? No.” It was an emphatic statement. Ryan, chief burger griller for the night, was ready for the week to be over.

“No, no,” Rory said, “The good work. We’re back in the studio tomorrow.”

The band, Valhalla Hill, is working on recording their first EP. They put in a long day’s work a couple weeks ago, and they’ll be in the studio about twenty hours this weekend. That’s a lot of work on top of the fulltime jobs they do all week. But it is, as Rory said, good work.

Since Jeremy is in the studio all day today, I’ve been working on writing – writing in an old-fashioned composition notebook on my couch at home, walking down to the beach to write some more, walking to a coffee shop to type on my computer. Mostly it is just practice writing. I’d like to accomplish something, like a poem, or a good chunk of a story, but practice writing is okay too. Practice is part of the good work.

One of my great frustrations with life is that I can only do one thing at a time. On beautiful, wide-open Saturdays like today, I am often overwhelmed by the myriad of things I could be doing. That is one of the reasons why I struggle with the practice of writing. So much of it is scratch work that will never see publication. I want so badly to spend my time doing something significant. Hours of practice seem insignificant, but lately I have been learning that these hours are necessary in creating the good work. Madeleine L’Engle likens this kind of work to the finger exercises a pianist does to train and strengthen her hands to play a Bach fugue. Every form of art requires practice.

For many of us, the good work of creating is what makes our weekday jobs worthwhile. And exercise and training are what make grade-A creative work possible. So, for the time being, I’ll keep practicing my scales in hopes that when the time comes to play the concerto or fugue, I’ll be ready.

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Posted by Elise

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