"Ode to silky water" - a poem.

I've been attending a weekly writer's group this summer and it's been great. Yesterday I typed up all the writings I've done so far for the prompts and assignments. Then from a few paragraphs of prose, I crafted a poem. It's an ode to warm lakes (which I miss here in Colorado!) and is getting me excited for the upcoming family reunion/vacation in August in Wisconsin-- by a lake, of course. Sigh... and read on:

I remember—

silky water, languid,

temperature of a bathtub

so poignant in my mind.

impossibly warm--

when large bodies of water

and the water from the hose

are so icy cool.

impossibly smooth--

in summer evenings

of the mosquito-filled Midwest

no wind to disturb

so calming, so quiet.

a consistency so distinct--

sit on the cabin dock, dip your feet in

watch the water-skating bugs

bend the surface

just heavy enough to dent it.

so satiny-- it must be

full of skin-moisturizing algae bits

soaked up from years of

sitting still in a lake.

so unlike clear-as-air water--

purified by mountain descent

and sunlight-sifting

as it tumbles down

the Arkansas River…

yes, the water here in Colorado

is so foreign

to lake water in Wisconsin--

that it’s nearly wholly

A Different Substance.

©Ellen H. 2015 

[*Reminder: please do not copy or use any of my writing without my permission.]

July on a cold January night.

-->

One bleak, black night, we sped along the highway through the dull plains of eastern Colorado when I heard a song I will never forget. I was sitting in the backseat of my parents’ station wagon, Mom and Dad up front. We were headed to Iowa to return me to college after winter break in my Colorado hometown. In typical parental fashion, NPR was the radio station of choice. The current program was introducing musicians and their new albums. Tonight, the host described the folk singer/songwriter Laura Veirs and her album titled “July Flame”. To really get a taste of her style, he played the title track. With our eyes bored from darkness and flat plains, our ears were captive to the sounds. It’s a beautiful song, but what made it unforgettable was how the mood and the meaning behind it were so perfectly in tune with my life at the moment.

The mystical sound fit the scenery surprisingly well. It was ironic, no doubt, introducing a song called “July Flame” in January. But somehow the steady, beating toms and haunting electric guitar evoked the barren cold of the landscape around us. Then the wistful, echoing female voice sang in lyrics, poetic yet concise: “July Flame, I’m seeing fireworks, they’re so beautiful, tell me why it hurts?” Aching loneliness—that’s what made the song like the scenery. “Can I call you mine? Can I call you mine?” the chorus pleaded softly.

The sound mirrored the feelings inside me too. I had just seen B over Winter Break and told him I liked him again. He hadn’t replied… which hurt, but I understood. I had turned the tables, since I’d been the one to break it off with him a few years prior. He might not trust me enough to try again. I just had to tell him how I felt, in person, before I left. Still, it was rather new experience for me, this uncertain love making my heart sore as I left for another semester of college, states away. “Can I call you mine?” the artist sang over the radio again. The song’s feeling wasn’t just loneliness, but recalled any kind of emptiness that longed to be filled.

The July theme of the song resonated too. It fit in many ways: We spent much of our time together during summers off from school. His birthday is in July. More than that, we’d started dating in July the first time around, so he’d already been my July flame once. And, perhaps most importantly, July represented warmth in contrast to this cold winter and my empty arms.

Amazingly, July would continue to be significant to us: a few months later, Ben became interested in me again and I accepted his offer to date steadily again on July 4^th of that year. Fireworks indeed… but year-round now that he’s my husband. But in a way, that flame first warmed me on a January night amidst the desolate plains.

You see? You were my July Flame. Only you.

It was too perfect a song not to ascribe it to you.

You were, and still are,

the July flame to my cold January.

For my love,

Ellen H.

P.S. To listen to this wonderful song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLilpPtY2JU

Lyrics:

July flame
Fiery kite
Will-o-the-Wisp
Lead me through the night

July flame
Sweet summer peach
High up in the branch
Just out of my reach

Can I call you mine?...

July flame
I'm seeing fireworks
They're so beautiful
Tell me why it hurts

July flame
Ashes of a secret heart
Falling in my lemonade
Unslakable thirsting in the backyard

Can I call you mine?...

On lies and the truths that oppose them.

“Be free from all the lies the world will tell you about not being smart enough or pretty enough, good enough or clean enough. No sin or even a lifetime of sin excludes us from the freedom the Cross of Jesus affords. Yes, we are undeserving of God’s rich mercy, but Jesus makes us deserving. His goodness alone makes us good enough.” 

–from a devotional about Eve’s shame after The Fall and the cure from God. (http://shereadstruth.com/2015/06/02/eve)

            I watched the movie Good Will Hunting for the first time last night. It made me think about people’s gifts and their hindrances to using them. For the main character, Will Hunting, it was his childhood that held him back: he was abused, abandoned, and therefore became apathetic. He finally builds rapport with a therapist, Sean, and near the end of the movie, he’s opening up to him. But Will is still stuck on what he wants to do with his life and his incredible mind, not believing he’s worthy or that he’ll succeed.

His therapist realizes he’s stuck because of the lies he’s believed. Will could not control the circumstances of his upbringing but somehow has told himself he should have lived differently anyway. The therapist says gently, “It’s not your fault, son. It’s not your fault.” Of course, Will realizes this on a rational level, and says so. But the therapist continues to say it, pounding the Truth of it past his mind into his heart. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.” Will resists, turning to violent defense mechanisms that have served him for years. The therapist persists, whispering. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.” Eventually, Will breaks down and accepts this truth, hugging Sean, who is more a father-figure than a therapist in this moment. It’s an excellent scene and it made me thoughtful about what made it so poignant.

            Then today I read a devotional about shame and its beginnings with Eve in Genesis. Shame tells us all sorts of lies and they hold us back. My prevailing personal lie (though there have been many) has been “You’ll never be good enough.” And while there’s nothing wrong with having a therapist, it's been helpful for me to simply listen to God Himself telling me the counteractive Truth. It’s a good meditative practice. Sit quietly and imagine God telling you the opposite of whatever lie you’ve been hearing in your head (or audibly by people in your life?). Don’t just hear it once. Hear it many, many times. Enough times to start fighting the predominant narrative in your head.

            You are good enough.

            You are good enough.

Right now. And yesterday. And tomorrow. You are good enough.

            Not that I deserve God’s mercy, or all the riches in the world, or anything for that matter. But I am good enough because Jesus made me so. Because He deemed me worthy. I’ve always liked the quote by C.S. Lewis, “Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.” Amen.

            …You know that’s why I say Amen? (Church preachers can affirm this, I'm that person in the back saying it during the sermon!) Because it’s my soul affirming the truth of something. Like, “God is love.”  “Amen!” Or “I could never do anything to make God love me more.”  “Amen!”
I'm teaching my soul to recognize truth—and what’s not. Then my soul resonates with its sweetness. Affirms the firmness of it. Validates its wholeness. Listening to the world, our crazy culture, and the shame from my wounds can make me forget what truth sounds like. That’s why, when I’m feeling beat down, reading Scripture and singing worship songs and meditating on truth phrases are so powerful. Because it centers my soul again, and wakes up the goodness of truth. It might be a bit uncomfortable at first, like stretching can be, or sinking into a steaming hot tub. But then it feels good. And it’s good for me.

            So, what lies are you believing? How are they beating you down? How are they holding you back? Did you even realize they’re holding you back? And, what truths do you desperately need to hear? Be free, my friend. You were created to be free. Let it launch you to fulfill your truest self.

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” –Jesus  (John 8:32)

Pine-scented walks, an early memory: a writing exercise

To encourage my brain to continue to play with words and to encourage me to keep handwriting things, I attend writer's workshops whenever possible. Today I want to share a special exercise I wrote from the workshop I went to today. The prompt was: Where and when would you go back in your past to visit a memory and why? 
(*Note: This is dedicated to all mothers, and especially my mother. She is also a writer and lives in the same city I do, so we attended the session together. Of course, I read it to her.)
-----

Perhaps I would go back to an early memory of walking to preschool at St. Pat’s Catholic Church, three blocks from our house, hand-in-hand with my mother. My, my, I must have been young. Four years old, I think? It’s a very simple memory, almost like a dream…

At the dead-end of the street at the edge of our neighborhood in Wisconsin, a stand of carefully planted pine trees stood tall, already old, forming a wall of protection between that quaint, safe neighborhood and the business part of town. Just on the other side was the Catholic church, joining that protective force, standing on its own, apart from the cluster of churches on the opposite side of town. Just the church and the pine trees. We weren’t Catholic, but it was a happy place to attend preschool, which I remember fairly well.

But the walks… Mornings of pine-scented quiet, so close to home we just walked each day, but me still too young to go by myself… and we didn’t have to hold hands, but we did. (Is it one memory or a composite of several ones?) I liked that there wasn’t a sidewalk at the dead-end. We just stepped over the curb and onto the dirt deer path the last twenty feet to the parking lot. The empty lot led to the back door of the church where my classroom was.

I’ve always liked trees… and maybe those trees started it all. They probably seemed even taller to my young eyes. They were majestic and special, like Heidi’s, the Swiss girl of literature, the swishing of the needle-laden branches in the breeze a very nostalgic sound. Those who grew up near the coast may fondly remember the pleasant white noise of the ocean, but I, a Midwest girl through-and-through, remember the pines.

Maybe I would go back to this memory just to squeeze my mother’s hand again, look up and say, “Thank you for this walk. Thank you for your part in my love of trees, morning walks and quiet neighborhoods.” Perhaps I’m choosing this moment in my life because it was an end of an era of me living at home, leaving my special last-kid-at-home relationship with Mom. It was just before my entrance into a much longer era of fulltime school attendance. But, perhaps surprisingly, given the era’s classic sentimentality, my memory is not ever of her crying, not of holding me back tightly from more hours away from home and from growing up, but rather of quietly holding my hand… taking me there.

Selah.

Doing something that matters with what you've got.

I came across a thought-provoking blogger today and I am so intrigued and confused, I've got to write some of it down to organize my thoughts and figure out if I agree or not.

I think I used to be a fundamentalist. It's explained well in his blog here: http://davidmschell.com/god-prejudiced-my-behalf and other posts on his site. Basically, he takes fundamentalism to mean God --> Bible --> Mind as Truth. The blogger's point is to remind people that there is a lot of context and process between those things: the author's culture and worldview, then translation of text from language to language, to name a few... then to be understood in our mind through the lens of our worldviews, church traditions (ex. Protestant vs Catholic), etc. That is such a good point. Considering all factors is important.

I don't think I'm a fundamentalist anymore, for this reason and others. My point is, amazingly, the Holy Spirit still works through the Bible. Even with all those things in between, my beliefs mean that God still uses what little we understand of the Bible and makes it useful, often. Yes, former Christians justified slavery with the Bible, which was sad. But a lot of Christians are agreeing that Jesus taught Love, Forgiveness, and that the gospel means Grace over Legalism. I think that means the Holy Spirit is getting through to many of us, at least in part! We can still agree on that, I hope, whether or not you believe that the Bible is inerrant (perfectly true and contains no mistakes).  Jesus memorized, quoted and affirmed many Old Testament passages as being relevant and true, so I do.

I'm saying all this because you eventually have to do something that matters with what you've got. I think that's where I'm confused with this blogger. He is defining his views on who Christians can be (gays) and don't have to be (political conservatives). And that's helpful for him. I am already planning on learning to love everyone I meet and create space for where they're at with Jesus and spirituality, because God loves us all where we begin. But for me, I need to know what to do with the Bible that is or is not inerrant. Because it's still important to my spiritual life. I need to know what to do with evangelism (which this blogger had a beef with), because if God is continually drawing people to Himself (see 2 Corinthians 5:18), what is my role in that? I don't want to just tip-toe around People I Might Offend and only say what we shouldn't do with it. I have to distill what little I believe I understand from Jesus' life and the Bible and then do something useful in this world with it.

David-the-blogger says he's bothered by Christians making it their purpose to evangelize to others. He even says that evangelicals are motivated to believe that Gallup polls on percentages of Christians in America are inflated, so that they'll have a higher portion of people to convert and because "it just couldn't be true" so many people live so differently than they, the conservative evangelical/fundamentalist Americans.

And he has a point: we as Christians shouldn't just go around looking to convert every suspicious person. Then we'd all just be awkward, house-calling Mormons, and I as a devout Christian dislike that. People can sniff out an agenda a mile away! Jesus was about hearing people's stories where they were at and healing them, inside and out. David-the-blogger says just love, I guess, and don't evangelize because we don't even know who is a "true" Christian or not. And yes, the wheat and chaff will be separated at the end, by God (Matthew 3:12), not by judgmental Christians... But, personally, I don't believe that one in four people living in America are Christians (Gallup poll data) either because I personally know people who consider themselves Christians who know very little about Christ, and admit they're not living out what he did and said. We can argue all day about what exactly makes someone a "Real Christian", but knowing and emulating something about the "Christ-" part of that word is probably high on the list!

Response #1: "That's offensive. We're all children of God already." Okay, so you're a universalist. Jesus said there are sheep and goats, humble and Pharisees. He said that some people would be punished for their life, after death. Based on that, I'd say Christ was not a universalist. (See John 1:12)
Response #2: "I believe in God. I pray. That's what matters." Okay, so you're a theist. That's not the same as Christian. That does not sum up the gospel. (James 2:9)

I attend a Vineyard church these days and I have heard some helpful pictures explained for this situation. Fundamentalism and even evangelicalism can burn a lot of people because it's always the "in crowd" vs the "out crowd". (The Pharisees were like that too! And Jesus sure didn't like them!) But I like the picture called the "Centered Set": Jesus is a dot in the center and all people are dots somewhere around Him. 

There's no line or circle drawn for dots closest, just directions of those dots. Is a far-away dot moving towards Jesus? Then that's what counts right now, as Jesus draws that person to Himself. Is there a close dot that's moving away from Jesus? If there were a circle drawn, Close Dot would be "In" but God desires that person's motion to be ever toward, not away. So I'm less concerned with defining who's in and who's out, and more concerned with loving people well, and hearing their stories when they're ready to share them, and encouraging them to move toward Jesus.  As one commenter on David's site said, that's telling them about the transformative, inclusive "life to the full" that Jesus preached (John 10:10). I think a lot of people could be open to hearing about that!

But David has a gap there: if evangelism is not a major purpose in the lives of Christians, what is? "Just love"? Then why was Paul of the early Church so adamant about going to lots of places to preach? What are we to do with Jesus' last recorded command in Scripture? "Therefore go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:19) I know a lot of people have been hurt by unloving faith-sharing, but --gasp!-- I do think it's possible to share what's transformed my life in a loving way! "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect." (1 Peter 3:15)

Another point this blogger brings up, and is a big part of current debate, is whether biblical passages should be taken literally. For this I am grateful for whoever pointed out a certain story in the book of Acts of the New Testament. The background is that the early Church began as Jewish guys who personally knew Jesus, coming from the Old Testament and Jewish tradition (there were extra-biblical texts that listed a lot of Jewish teaching and customs beyond the OT). But since these guys started figuring out that Jesus meant His salvation was for everyone, not just Jews, these new Christians had to decide how much was vital to pass on, and how much was just culturally significant tradition for them to hold on to. (Note: all verses are NIV translation and emphases are mine.)

Acts 15, v1: 'Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them.'
[So Paul says.. v 7:]"God made a choice among you that the Gentiles [non-Jews] might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us." [Paul continues in v19]: “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood."

So in the letter to new believers, they say it so humbly and gently [v28]: 

 "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements:..." 

and listed what Paul said. At the end of the letter, they justify what they chose simply [v29],

 "You will do well to avoid these things."

Isn't that sweet? They wanted to be the most helpful towards faith and the least obstructing. Considering all the laws and rules in the Old Testament, they boiled it down so much! This is more on a practical side of how to be a Christian-in-the-early-church, but maybe it could have applied theologically too. Like, they're probably going to disagree on things, now that the gospel is spreading beyond the Jews. It would get to get more and more complicated in how people interpreted things. Also, Jesus preached following the Lord with your heart ("God, who knows your heart" quoted above), more than by legalistic religious acts, so Jewish customs everywhere would have been seriously burdensome and very difficult to include in evangelism. That is, to borrow a phrase from my parents, "Major on the majors, and minor on the minors." Put more effort into what's more agreed upon and more central to the faith, and less (not none) into the rest.
  
So that's great for David-the-blogger's case: taking the entire Bible literally is going to weigh people down more than it's going to show them the Big Picture, which is redemption available to everyone through Jesus. But I do think that what they do include is telling: sexual immorality is a big category, one which requires discussion today to decide what all was meant there. But I won't go into that here.

So that's all I'll say today. Just needed some writing space to work through my reactions to current Christianity issues that are being debated.

Ever thoughtful, trying to be practical, I remain
Ellen H.