WHY: Social Media

I used to manage social media for people. A friend and I started up a company that worked with authors, businesses, and musicians to manage their social media and marketing via networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It was a fun summer spent outside on the back patio at the home of a friend who was remodeling while being on tour with his band. But school started and I needed more income more quickly, so my part in the journey of entrepreneurship ended. My friend still plugs away at that company, building it slowly, arduously, from the ground up.

Because of that short term position, I understand the power of social media, for good and for bad. I spend too much time on Facebook, to be honest, it sometimes destroys my contentment. Twitter wastes much of my time as I invariably click away at posts by favourite authors and networks like the Resurgence and Desiring God. I’ve thus far refused to join Pintrest but I watch girls in class who are always adding to their boards and I know that would ruin my time management and contentment as much as the first two.

But these networks aren’t all bad. I have not quite released my grip on Facebook because it is useful in a number of ways. I am also decently committed to my Twitter account as it allows me access to articles and stories that are encouraging and convicting.

Stories like this one about Ian and Larissa. They were married even after Ian had a brain injury in 2006 and lost a number of physical and mental capabilities. I almost cried while watching it in the student center and I don’t think that’s simply stress from the end of the school year. I was struck by the beauty of their relationship and love–their commitment to each other and to God. In so many ways I look at their situation and it makes me almost envious to know that kind of love and devotion. Not envious because I want to experience that (though I do) but because I want to be like that.

Suffering is painful, no one desires it for a reason. In the west, especially in white suburban America, we have a pretty weak view of suffering. We don’t understand it, we avoid it, we ignore it. But in the midst of suffering there is such growth and beauty. I see it in the story of Larissa and Ian, I see it in my friends at school and church who are struggling through a variety of things. In all these different situations, my friends are becoming new people, greater and stronger in the faith–even when that means admitting their weaknesses. Even when life seems to come apart, God is always reconstructing it and making all things new. He suffered as one of us and he knows our pain. Not only does he know it, but he is always working in it to make something good come of it, for our sanctification and for his glory.

I’m on social media sites and I read blogs because they remind me, even in the midst of finals week in grad school and great exhaustion both mentally, physically and emotionally that God is here, in all things, and he is working.

soli Deo gloria.

WHY: The Time Wasters

It’s finals next week here at Seminary. That means I have a paper due tomorrow, another due Tuesday and four exams before next Friday. I also have a conference at church this weekend, a garden to plant and work to keep up with. But really, it’s no big deal.

In fact, it’s such an easy, carefree time that I’m blogging right now, rather than editing the paper due tomorrow. I don’t need to revise that piece of artwork, I thoroughly thrashed the book I was reviewing and backed up every argument to the point of a walled in fortress that could never be successfully assaulted. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen. It may have gone over the page limit, but it was necessary. I’m sure the grader will agree.

This morning I arrived on campus at 8am and met with a friend. This afternoon I’m going on a run. Tonight I work and have a study session. See?! Study session tonight for an exam more than a week away! I’m clearly prepared for anything the professor might throw in my general direction. So what else do I have to do today besides checking my Facebook and enjoying a variety of videos on Youtube?

Time wasting? Procrastinating? No.

These social media sites are far from addictive time wasters. They are:

Educational. For example, as a young woman with many friends of the male persuasion I was shown this video only an hour ago. It’s not for the squeamish or those disturbed by dark humour. It’s the story of an eagle attacking a goat twice its size. But please, enjoy. If you need a biologically educational study break–which I had earned after an hour of socializing and complaining about my paper–here’s the video for you!

Communicative. Please enjoy the recent status update on my Facebook:

Informative. The Denver Channel informed me via Facebook that the Charger’s Linebacker Junior Seau has died after being shot in his San Diego home. Police are starting an investigation. Also, let’s be honest. You’re getting an update on my life from this post. Clearly this other use of social media (blogging) is informative. Who doesn’t want to know what’s happening in the life of Sara B— at 1.58PM Wednesday the 2nd of May 2012 AD? That’s right. No one. Because everyone wants to know.

Formational. One name: S. M. Lockridge. I got chills listening to this man in my Church History class yesterday. I kid you not. I had goosebumps from a cassette tape that warbled the great man’s voice. Watch it: That’s My King. Be transformed.

Deceptive. Finally, I’ll admit. Youtube and Facebook are deceptive because they steal away my time before I even realize it’s gone missing. Dangit. I just practiced emotional cutting in surfing through pictures of friends who are engaged, married, pregnant; I’m still single. That’s terrible. Facebook just told me my life was incomplete and that with the right social life it would be vastly  better. It said that I was lacking something other than just Jesus. Youtube promised distraction, but I was reminded, once I hit the pause button, this is real life and it isn’t going away. Crap. Shoot son.

I’ve got finals next week. I’ve got work tonight. I have bills to pay and people to love.

I need to get crackin’.

WHY: The Marriage Metaphor

I enjoy a slightly hipster-esque–Indie–Folksy–Blue Grass band by the name of The Civil Wars. One of the first songs I fell in love with is called Poison and Wine. I love the words, I love the timbre of their voices, I love the way they haunt and redeem my heart with every chord.

Last week was a bit of a rough one emotionally. Not only for me, but also for others that I know and love. Sometimes, there is this illusion that seminary students, counseling students, future pastors and teachers have their “stuff” figured out. But the truth is, we’re actually very messy people.

A few brief examples:

My friend who is “engaged” but is on break.
One that I look up to who is struggling with depression.
There’s another who is struggling with burn out from ministry (already!) and depression.
A new friend who is coming out of depression but has mixed direction on life.
Another who is dealing with childhood abuse.
Everyone who can’t afford their lives.
The one who is so desperate for love they keep going back to the same broken relationship.
My friend who longs to know that God does love him.
The one, surrounded by friends, who still feels alone.

These are the people I do life with, each and every day. It’s exhausting, it’s beautiful, it’s truth. Over the weekend I went out with a couple friends after one of them had moved into a new apartment. I had heard some basic things about his off kilter relationship, but that night I asked a few more questions. I wanted to get to know this man better, and as a friend, part of that required knowing his story, his relationships, his hopes, the things his world revolves around. The story given was not long but it was full of sorrow amidst lingering hopes. When we returned to their house from the restaurant, I stood outside with the roommate I am very close to suddenly found myself overwhelmed by sadness. I burst into tears. My friend wrapped his arms around me while I cried and repeatedly mumbled the same questions.

Why does He let this go on?
When is He coming back?
When will He put things to rights? Bind up our sores, heal our broken bones?

My friend, of course, couldn’t say. These are questions that have plagued human history and Christianity is no exception. The failure of God to come when we expect has always been a mystery in human suffering.

I managed to pull myself together enough to get in my car and make it onto the highway. I pulled the pieces together and placed trembling hands on the steering wheel as I guided the little sedan through late night traffic and construction. It didn’t take long, however, before my lack of control resurfaced. Two exits after my entrance to the highway the same sadness overwhelmed me. I cried the entire way home, a twenty minute drive of blurred lights and stifled sobs.

In the midst of this, as I pounded my steering wheel and demanded to know when He will return, the sounds of The Civil Wars whispered through my stereo. Poison and Wine seems, at first listening, to be a song of dried up hopes and long forgotten love. It is a relationship kept alive only by the power of will, by sheer stubbornness. Or so it seems.

There is a part in the song that suddenly hit home that night on the highway. The music crescendoes and the man sings in a terrifyingly raw tone, “I don’t have a choice, but I still choose you.” They surge into the chorus where their voices mingle together, singing desperately, “Oh, I don’t love you, but I always will!”

It seems so open, so broken, so lost and hopeless.

But I suddenly understood why the Prophets, Israel, the New Testament writers–why even Jesus himself–calls us His wife. The Scriptures have long said we are the promiscuous wife who runs to others, who forgets her first love, who stands on the street corners outside a house of sexual indecency, who lies and scorns the things of her husband. We have always gone running to other things, and God has always stood waiting.

That is only one side of it though.

It’s true, I’m a child of indecency, and I often go after things that lead only to my destruction. It’s true that I pursue other lovers, that I forget the One who redeemed me, who cleaned me, gave me new clothes and took me into his home with nothing to offer him.

But there is another side, the one we face day in and day out. It is the side of sinful reality. The world is broken. Jesus hasn’t yet come back. We speak of progress and the improvement of man, but we have only improved ways of killing each other, ways of keeping the poor underfoot. I railed at God in my car on Sunday night, beating the steering wheel with a tightly closed fist. It isn’t the first time my car or my body has been abused for the frustration of His postponed return. Sunday night won’t be the last time I get angry and tell God He’s wrong for waiting, it won’t be the last time I ask Him to come back right now and save us from all this mess.

But, I realized the marriage metaphor is not only about a wife who has abandoned her master.

It’s about a wife who waits patiently for her husband, trusting that he’ll be true to his word as he always has been.

“I don’t have a choice, but I still choose you,” they sang as I raced down the highway through a construction zone where even the cops themselves drive over the limit. I stood in the city, burning its way to the ground in selfish debt and hopeless sin. I drove on the edge of town to a place where the sin and violence are the stories in the lives of my neighbours.

And I thought, I’ve tried to run from the faith so many times, Abba, but you always hold on to me. I don’t have a choice. I don’t have a way of getting out of what I know to be true. I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to.

But I don’t want to leave.

I don’t have “freedom” to leave. But even if I did, I wouldn’t want to. Even when I don’t love God, I always will. I will always choose Him, even when I think He is dawdling in His return. It’s like a marriage. A covenant. I agreed to stay, and so I will. Just as He has waited and stayed for me, so I will wait on Him.

Poe: our favourite morbid American poet and a doctrinal summaries paper

”The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” [E. A. Poe]

It’s a bit morbid, granted, but I’ve been thinking about this statement a good deal over the week. I have an app on my macbook that gives me quotes from Edgar Allen Poe every time I scroll over the particular desktop where it is located. Some are more amusing than the one above. For instance, I just glanced back and read this one: ”If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.” It is so true! Annoyingly true!

But as I said, I’d been thinking about the death of a beautiful woman, and considering why that would be a rather poetic thing to consider. Let’s be honest, Poe was a bizarre individual. He wrote beautiful, imaginative poetry and narratives. Some of them are haunting simply because they are so well described and the reader can easily envision the words he tells. I remember having nightmares in high school about The House of Usher. (There is a reason I don’t watch horror movies.)

But there is more to the quote than Poe’s obsession with analyzing, describing and memorializing death. Think of the classics we read in high school: The Killer Angels, Anthem, Animal Farm, Asher Lev, etc. Granted, not all of those listed have death at the focal point, but there is a sense of darkness in all of them, something that pervades the stories and something that we desperately read over and over and over.

I just finished a paper from my Doctrine I class. It’s a doctrinal summaries paper. [Thrilling title, I know.] In essence, I had to choose six doctrines and give three different perspectives on each. If you know me at all, the three theologians won’t be difficult to guess: Wayne Grudem, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Integrative. I wrote on the Trinity, immanence vs transcendence, general revelation, scriptural authority, the imago dei and the transmission of the sin nature. If you don’t know what all those are, or you simply don’t care, bear with me. I won’t give you the 22 pages I’m handing in on Monday. Promise.

The imago dei (image of God) and the transmission of the sin nature were the two most difficult doctrines for me to work with.  I think it’s because the compassion in me wants to hope for the best, to pray we aren’t as warped and distorted by sin as Paul claims. But I’m a fairly strict Calvinist most days and last night I whispered to my new nephew that he was beautiful, handsome and perfect–except for being totally depraved. He giggled as I nuzzled his cheek and clucked my tongue and my father roared in laughter. Some of us, I muttered, are obsessed with being theologically correct, even with a nephew who can’t hold his head up.

But it’s true, you know. Did you see that man run the red light on your way home from work last night? Did you hear about the dictator killing his own people? They are broken, ruined by the fall. Yet, there isn’t only that. Did you hear about the people who ave money to Blood Water to build wells for people they’ll never even meet? Did you see the way that teenager held the door open for you as you walked out the door with too many things in your hands?

There is this awkward tension between the goodness of humanity, the reasoning, the grace, the mental abilities, the beauty we can create, the impulse to create and hope and dream–coupled with the tendency to fight, to destroy and use our abilities for creating new, more efficient ways of killing each other, for gaining power and ruining the earth. It is not as though every human being is as bad as they possibly could be. Total depravity simply says every aspect of human nature has been compromised.

Coming back to Poe, we must remember that there is, despite the complications, still beauty in the world. Today the earth is bright and flushed with colours because of the thunderstorm last night. The girls I nanny giggled today, making faces, playing peekaboo and when one cried the other hugged her and found a toy to comfort her. “You’re okay, Lil’” she said, “mommy will be home soon. Don’t cry.” There is tenderness among humans that can not be explained except for our high position, bearing the image of an intrinsically good and relational God.

Poe says the death of a beautiful woman is poetic.

I think he could have said the death of anyone with beauty is poetic. There’s something in human nature that recognizes the problem of death. We see that this is not how things were meant to be and it is most clearly reflected by the death of beauty. In a strange way, we see our depravity, our hopeless state when darkness swallows up fleeting glory and beauty. This isn’t how it was meant to be, our soul whispers, and then we put words around the phenomenon to try and understand it.

In the end, Christians have a sense of hope. We look forward to a time when the image will no longer be distorted and we will not give birth to another crooked generation. Instead, the imago dei and humanity will be renewed at the end of days to our former glory. At that point, in our ontological reformation, we will only produce that which is good, holy and pure as we were originally intended to do.

In that day, we will not need death to remind us that something is missing. Because in that day, it will be missing no longer.

Good Friday

I would love to post something brilliant, deep and full of wisdom for the somber day that we woke to.

Unfortunately, there are no brilliant words of wisdom that come to mind….

The wind howled last night, during my OT Prophets class and she pushed my little Hyundai to and fro on the highway as I made my way across town. It was a long day, an exhausting day. I returned home to children in my apartment learning the story of God who died 2000 years ago. I snuggled under a blanket next to one of them on the couch and stared blankly ahead at the walls of our hallway. I finally made my way to bed, with flannel sheets to keep out the draft of my window beyond which the skies still blew in stormy rage.

It’s like the world knows. Like creation knows. She’s groaning. Waiting, hoping.

And I, with a hot electric pad clutched to my abdomen, I fell asleep to the sound of the wind beating against our home of brick and mortar, the sound of the earth screaming against the injustice of it all.

Today, the wind still blows, warm and dry. What was it like, to stand in the courtyard and listen to the trial? What was it like to watch the procession, the bloodied path to the city’s outskirts where the scapegoat had always been sent to die, bearing the burden of the people’s sins as he wandered into the desert beyond the camp. What was it like?

Tonight, we go to service, and we’ll remember the day that Jesus died. It’s black and dark and somber.

It is, in many ways, the darkest and most beautiful time of the year.

O sacred Head, no wounded
with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded
with thorns, Thine only crown
How pale thou art with anguish,
with sore abuse and scorn!
How doth Thy visage languish
which once was bright as morn!

What Thou, my Lord, has suffered,
T’was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Saviour!
‘Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor,
Vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

What language shall I borrow
To thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever,
And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love for Thee. 

Palm Sunday

It’s Holy Week.

Doesn’t look like it in Colorado. After hot days all weekend long and an obscenely dry March, today is cloudy and the grey. The mountains looked like ghosts when I arrived in Littleton, they are barley visible, even from this distance. In Aurora, when I entered the highway rush hour, you couldn’t see the mountains at all. It’s dark and windy, the chill is back and my there is a weight in the air that you can feel, even within the confines of the library that shouldn’t be using electric lights so late in the morning.

Yesterday was brilliant, hot with blazing life across the front range. I wore shorts yesterday, shaved my legs and pulled on a pink tshirt that once belonged to my parents’ ill-wed neighbour. It was warm enough to take children outside to play in the waning light at the evening sunday school I run. We laughed and screamed on slides and monkey bars with toddlers still learning to speak.

Yesterday fell like a proper Palm Sunday though I did not attend a church service.

It was warm and the sun was throwing life towards the earth with careless joy. Trees have started to glow with buds of every colour and the grass has turned green almost overnight. It’s springtime. In Israel, in ancient Palestine, this is the time for lambs, for calves and new life all around. It’s the time when shepherds keep watch over their flocks at night and once heard angels sing of a king born in stubby little Bethlehem.

But we didn’t celebrate Bethlehem yesterday.

Yesterday, my Saviour rode triumphant into the glorious city that had once been Israel’s jewel. Yesterday, the crowds clapped and sang for him, they threw down cloaks and palm branches because a horse bearing such majesty ought to walk on cleaner ground than dusty old Jerusalem’s stones. They whooped and hollered, beads of sweat on wearied faces that yesterday held only smiles as they forgot, momentarily, the travails of life under Roman occupation. And he came in, on that donkey, and the disciples walked alongside him…were they proud to be at his side? Did they think fame and glory would soon follow such an entrance to the city where David and Solomon once ruled?

I’ve been thinking about what it was like, that day in Palestine. What were the Romans thinking? Another grungy zealot, leading people to their deaths in hopeless rebellion against the greatest empire the world had yet seen. Did they think him a madman and laugh? Perhaps, but it was a laughter tinged with anxiety: what might this madmen do? The Zealots were always attacking, ever since Judas Maccabeaus, attacking like ghosts, then melting into the countryside without a trace until the next assault. Would the troublesome Jews rebel? The country was full of madmen, claiming only one God and refusing to light incense of Caesar. Lunatics.

But even lunatics are dangerous.

Did the disciples yet understand what awaited them at the Passover feast? Or did they think like the Romans that this could end with war? I don’t think they expected him to die. He was Messiah, after all! Anointed one! Didn’t the Prophets of old anoint the ones who led them in to battle agains their enemies? What of Saul! Or David! David, of course, to whom God gave peace on all sides. And what of them, the twelve? They would be given places of honour when government was wrenched away from the puppet kings who were not born of the Davidic line. As they walked at the side of the donkey, how odd, a donkey! Not a triumphal creature, but lowly and foolish. As they walked beside the beast that carried their teacher, their master, did they expect a more triumphal entry than this one today? With the palm branches and the cloaks flung down for them to walk on; could there be greater things coming next?

But glory is not always what we expect.

But what, I wonder, did the common folk think? Here was a man front he outlying prospects of Nazareth, a Jew who lived in Gentile Galilee. A carpenter turned Rabbi. His face wasn’t handsome but the hands that held the reigns were strong and firm. His gaze looked sorrowful, despite the fervor around him and the cheering onslaught of the crowd come out to greet him. Do you think they wondered why? To look at the soldiers in their burnished armor, swords at their sides in easy reach, with helmets reflecting the bright springtime sun, to see those marks of domination, oppression and suffering and despite their fear, to cheer boldly for the man on his donkey. This morning, this afternoon, this was a day to mark down in history they must have thought. This was the rescue, so long awaited. See the gates opening to him, see the crowds press in with anxious hope. Feel the temperatures soar with the heat of bodies crushing against each other, hoping for a glance, just one, to see the Messiah who would break all fear and renew all hopes. Look at him! They cried to each other. This ride into Jerusalem it is the marked entrance of a king! This is the way they rode in when they conquered us! The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Seleucids, the Greeks, the Romans! But now comes one of our own, and he will call them to account as Moses did in Egypt. He will establish peace and justice as David did, as Solomon kept. But he will do it better than even they! We will have food to way and clothes to wear. We will have dreams to hope for and no longer regret the world into which we bear our children. This man is hope, this man is justice, he will establish Torah and we will live under the Shadow of Glory as when we made the covenant at Sinai. We are being rescued, they thought, they hoped. And so they shouted, hosanna because no other words could describe the burning in their hearts.

But rescue comes in many ways.

Yesterday was Palm Sunday. Bright and warm, with hope for springtime and new beginnings.

Today is grey and cold.

When did the hope die? When did the people run in fear? When did they turn and betray him? How could their hearts so quickly falter? How could they have stopped believing so soon, so easily? Today, with hidden mountains, I can feel the anxiety, and the weighty sorrow of ended dreams. Lent is coming to an end, I thought of this today when I longed so desperately for a warm soy chai after a morning of traffic and errands before work, before school. Last week was Spring Break and for a few fleeting days I felt free, excited for summer, energized and thrilled by creation, beauty and all that is life. But then today came, and the triumph is gone.

Jesus has entered Jerusalem. Passover comes now.

With unsteady hands and tensed shoulders, with furrowed brows and wearied feet, we wait. Will it be the Passover of Moses in a new place, freeing from new oppression? Or will this be another failed Messiah, another judgement against us, another refusal to rescue as we’ve long been waiting for?

Yesterday was triumph.
Today is suspense.

shafts of light

There’s a section of the library, over the research and librarians’ desk where the ceiling is lower, sloped beneath the main window that sports a cross enmeshed in the panes of brilliant glass. The light is coming in that way, this time of the day, and it casts a shadow over the sloped ceiling and down onto the floor, where the light is cut into clean rectangles  by the bars of the cross.

The sun outside is clean and warm and the mountains have begun to give up their winter blanket. The foothills are brown, with only patches of white amid their trees. Campus, sadly, is still barren and the ground remains that tan shade of green from rotted death–but she will soon give way to rich life and brilliant shades of green and yellow and flowers whose beauty can hardly be named. Trees will flourish again and shade the grass where students will lie out and momentarily forget the studies that the came here for.

It’s beautiful this time of year, you can smell it in the scents that waft in my window in the early morning hours. You can feel it in the look of people as they pass you on the street. There is new life coming! There is hope and joy awaiting us!

But where do they wait?

Lent hasn’t ended. My body longs for it to end–literally in my physicality and spiritually in my soul. I want Lent to end because I want a latte, with soy foamed to tufts of silky white edged in carmel brown as it seeps into the espresso. But more than that, I want Lent to end because I’m tired of waiting.

The earth, this time of year, she throws off her dusty coat and declares that she too is finished with the longing, the craving, the groaning for newness. She knows that things will end again, and in only a few months she will return to deep inside herself to rest and sleep and wait. But now, in these months she bursts with hopeful expectation. Come quick! she cries to the waiting life. Come quick! she cries to the coming hope. Come quick! she whispers in resignation. Come quick. she sighs and dreams of the day when spring will not be only spring.

But spring will be new life.

{when Aslan shakes his mane
we shall have spring again}

WHY: The Diet Change

Recently I decided to go yeast free again. I know you’re thinking that this is a terrible subject for a Why Wednesday but I actually think it’s rather important. In a day of obesity and increasing health problems, it’s important to think about what we put into our bodies and how that affects them. Especially given the increase of antibiotics that can lead to “super bugs” or diseases that are more powerful and resistant to our antibiotics, looking at natural remedies and healthy lifestyles as preventative care is incredibly important.

I struggle with headaches. It’s a given in my family. My mum gets migraines, my brother has had a few in recent years and I had my first two this past year. My grandfather had a stroke not too long ago, and I had a conversation after that with my mum about the possibility that my great-grandmother didn’t have alzheimer’s but actually several small strokes that had the same debilitating effect. Either way: as far as cerebral health goes, I’m pretty unlucky.

Mine started in junior high. I would get them from stress or emotions–I had a friend accuse me of “making up” headaches to get out of things I didn’t want to participate in. I think both sides were true: I didn’t want to participate, I was insecure and stressed, so I had a headache; which then enabled me to not participate. I really began to deal with headaches in high school. My sophomore year, fifth period, I would get a headache each day. I’d excuse myself for the restroom and actually go to the drinking fountain to pop two advil which was technically against the rules at my high school. Unfortunately, my body, like my personality, can be quite addictive. It wasn’t long before I had to have advil (even though I didn’t realize that’s what was happening). Upon finally going to a doctor when the semester was almost over, we discovered I was causing my brain to have rebound headaches. It expected the drugs and without them, I would have a sort of withdrawal–manifested by a headache. Of course, thinking it was just the normal problem, I took more pain killers, thus increasing the dependency!

I wa alright in college the first semester, but the second semester every thing started up again. By the summer time, when I was nannying, I had headaches each week and nothing (running, hydration, protein) seemed to help. After a few weeks my mum suggested that I go yeast free.

We’re not talking gluten free here, kids. Yeast free is another animal.

My friends who can’t have gluten still eat natural sugar: fruit, honey, etc and they can have fermented things as well: cheese, wine, vinegar. Yeast free means none of those things. Do you know how much I love cheese and fruit? “A lot” would be the biggest understatement of the week.

But my mum agreed to do it with me and for a summer I went without bread, fruit, cheese, tortilla chips, Coldstone Ice Cream, salsa and all that is good in life. I ate weird foods like quinoa and brown rice. (rice, in my opinion, should be white.)

But it worked.

I didn’t have a single headache.

Fast forward to this summer when my awesomest friend Kelsie is visiting. Her last day I wasn’t hydrated enough and it was brilliantly hot on the Platte River where we sat for hours. We went and had pedicures after vacating the cool brown green water of the “river.” For a good portion of that experience I had to keep my eyes closed and recite things like the Nicene Creed just to keep the world from spinning. After I dropped her at the airport, I went home, took an icy cold shower and crawled in to bed. It was a miracle that I didn’t vomit, a miracle that we made it to the airport alive and that I didn’t drive off the road on the way home from sheer desire of ending the misery. Heck, when your head hurts this badly in a non-pain-kind-of-way, it only makes sense to drive off the road…

Instead, I came home and the next day I went yeast free. I can’t do this in grad school. I can’t afford to miss classes and exams for a migraine. I kept true for awhile. But it required a lot of planning. I have to bring lunch with me each day, I can’t plan on Chic-fil-A for meals. I struggle to eat out with friends, I have to say no to things like Dairy Queen on the first sunny day of springtime. And I’m hungry all the freaking time. I mean, let’s face it. Snap peas and almonds for lunch is not the same as a hearty sandwich stuffed with meat, lettuce, cheese and mustard. My mouth waters just thinking about it and I’ve been munching on said snap peas since I started typing this post.

Around November I gave up.

Then, last week I had several headaches and my digestive system was straight up ticked off for no apparent reason that I could decipher. I looked at what I had eaten and realized: bread.

I’m not gluten intolerant. I do however, occasionally come to a moment when my body dislikes so much sugar and starch. So I decided, after three days of feeling ill that I was done with it. I’m going yeast free again (mostly). My camelbak water bottle goes with me every where, as do a bag of peas and almonds. And you know what? I feel awesome. A little hungry, but mostly just great. Snap peas are sweet and yummy. Cherry tomatoes burst to life between my teeth with that tart edge to their sweet flavor. Almonds are like sugar candy, pecans too.

The funny thing about being yeast free is that food tastes better. Seriously, I can taste more flavor when it’s not blocked by all the fuss and production of normal food. I appreciate natural foods again and I don’t feel gross, oily and 300 pounds after each meal.

The best part is: I haven’t had a headache in three days; my body feels happy.

I think that yeast free is a tough diet and it’s not as though I’m going to be this way permanently (it’s more of a cleanse). I’m also doing it with exceptions (yogurt, for instance). My point is this: too often Americans want a quick fix and there are better solutions awaiting us. We want a pill that’s going to take away the pain, we want easy results and easy effort. The truth is, it’s important for us to take responsibility for our own lives and our own health. It may require effort and some amount of lifestyle change but it’s worth it. Not only is the reward worth the effort, it’s almost our duty to take care of ourselves. Especially as Christians, we’re called to steward these bodies, take care of them, love on them. Jesus, after all, inhabited one of these things; he didn’t just redeem sin, he redeemed creation. That includes the body which is now the new temple. Treat it well.

WHY: Lent

If you read the post in December regarding Advent, you may be getting the idea that I like the idea of a Church Calendar, or Liturgical Seasons. It’s not a bad assumption when you put that post alongside this one. But then, it is a rather odd thing for someone like myself to be so engaged with, after all, I wasn’t raised in any liturgical contexts. I thought I ought to give a brief background, then, on how I came to this appreciation of the church calendar before telling you why I love Lent as much as Advent.

My first exposure to anything like a church season was in high school when students discussed what they were “giving up” for Lent. I had only the faintest idea what that could mean based on a few years in Illinios in a predominantly Catholic farming town. But I had no concept of Lent and being governed by a calendar within the church. I think I thought the entire thing was a rather ridiculous Catholic doctrine, probably similar to Indulgences and trying to buy or earn your salvation. I was a pretty strict Protestant who thought you could only make Catholics into Christians if you converted them out from under Papal authority. The students at school didn’t help much either. They were giving up rather arbitrary things for this bizarre season of 40 days. Everything from chocolate to masturbation was going to be put on hold for just over a month. Try explaining to a fifteen year old how refraining from those somehow pleases God! The only student I knew who was serious about this whole thing was a weird Catholic in the back of my Spanish class who was a humble know it all (not like the sarcastic group I was in) with brown frizzy hair and shirts that didn’t fit properly. When she showed up the day after Mardi Gras with grey soot smeared on her forehead, I knew for sure I didn’t want anything to do with this Lenten thingy.

But in college I went to my first Ash Wednesday service. It was a rather beautiful service, we read through some of Joel that bespoke the longing for someone to come and save the people of Israel. The reader sat down and a professor gave a brief homily on the passage and he said that we too are waiting. We know that Christ has come. In fact, we know how the Lenten season ends–with the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. Yet, we still experience longing, dissatisfaction and a deeply holy discontent. The professor reread Joel and whispered from the pulpit. We’re waiting.

Always waiting.

College was an interesting season of life for me. I loved my foray into Academia, I loved Seattle and I loved the rain. But there were other things in college that made the three years long and hard. In many ways it was a dark season, only punctuated by brief bursts of light. People speak of college as thought it was the greatest time in life, as though they wish to return. I had the opposite feeling. I wanted out of college, and it couldn’t end soon enough. I knew prolonged dissatisfaction in those days, I knew it more deeply than I do now. Something inside of me resonated with the speaker that day in the chapel across from the Loop on campus. I was waiting, just as much as the Israelites were, for someone, someone to come and rescue us.

Lent, then, is about waiting. Most of the church seasons are about waiting, Lent, Epiphany, Advent they are all looking forward to something that is yet to come. They all hope for the future. Each one has a specific event in mind which the believer is meant to be prepared for through the season.

But Lent is more than just preparation and excitement.

In Lent we enter the desert.

This is why we “give up” something that we hold close and dear. Last year my roommate and I drank only water for forty days. I discovered how much I really love coffee. We enter the desert by sacrifice, and that sacrifice should be something tangible. Some of my fellow young adults will give up Facebook. I understand that they see it as ann addiction and that this is the reason for relinquishing it for forty days. But at the same time, you can survive easily and comfortably without Facebook. It’s different to give up something that almost defines who we are. For me, that is coffee (and other drinks). My social life revolves around “coffee dates” or “grabbing a drink.” To give that up means I will have to indulge in more solitude, or standing out while in a crowd of friends at the Old Mill.

But that is, at the very least, rather simplistic way of entering into the Desert with Christ.

Jesus, I think, dwelt in many deserts during his time on earth. He gave up the expanses of heaven, for one, to be settled in a tiny scrap of land off the coast of the Mediterranean in an era without plumbing, air conditioning or convenient transportation. He gave up freedom, in a way, because he came knowing the end of his life would be horrific and nearly unavoidable. He endured the worst kind of hypocrisy among his fellow human beings, they were rejecting him at the same time that they claimed to worship him!* He was patient with foolish and slow learners. He was angered by injustice and he lived a menial existence. He was a lower middle class carpenter for crying out loud.

Of course, Lent does not necessarily recognize each of those as the desert into which we enter but rather that of Jesus when he endured his temptations. It also centers on the path leading to the cross–the interminable wait, the agonizing steps to Jerusalem when he set his face toward the holy city and knew there was no turning back. It is the descent to the cross. The song of the coming suffering.

This is what we engage when we too attempt to give up a part of ourselves and dwell in the gap before the cross. We reflect on what sent him to the cross, and looking hopefully to the resurrection. Self denial forces us to be emptied, so that we may then be filled. But self denial is hard–which is what makes it good.

It makes us aware of our distinct and unfortunate human nature that is so easily entangled by the world. It reminds us that Jesus has given up everything to secure our final place with him. It foments in our minds the joyous burden of suffering and perseverance that we too may be counted worthy if indeed greater trials should ever arise. And it reminds us that this life is not what it was meant to be, not what life was supposed to look like. It forces us to look at each day and remember that there will come a time when things will be put to rights.

Jesus is coming, you see. He already has come. We’re walking with him now, to the cross of our salvation. But we hold that in tension with the fact that those we now celebrate a historical fact, there is something else coming, something greater, something fuller.

But we’re waiting.

All we ever do is wait.

Waiting for the glorious resurrection and hoping for the consummation of the ages when Messhia comes back and leads captives in his train and gives gifts to men who have long awaited his triumphant rescue.

 

_________________________

*without realizing it was him. instead they claimed they knew the real him and told him to stop blaspheming (against himself, technically). wrap your head around that kind of betrayal.

Via Negativa

I wrote a paper recently for my four day excursion into Eastern Orthodoxy.

It was a rather academic experience, this paper.

The last paper I wrote on Orthodoxy was more like art. I spoke of the scent in the room, the spice of incense and the watering of my eyes in the smoke as the Father blessed the image of God in all the parishioners. I wrote of the chanting, the calls back and forth and the sweet sound of confessions being whispered nearby. I spun stories of the children that kissed icons as they mimicked venerable grandparents, the toddler who had her hand kissed by a grandmother and pressed against the face of a saint that wavered in flickering candlelight. I sang praises for the liturgy, the long hours that we stood, the moments that flew past while we thought we stood in company with all the saints who have gone before. It was ancient to stand in that church. It was holy.

The paper this time, was not so beautiful.

But in its own way it was beautiful. I wrote about theology and I wrote what could  be one of my best academic papers thus far. For the Orthodox, there is a huge emphasis on the diversity within God. While most Protestants and Catholics focus on the unity, the single-ness of the Godhead, the Orthodox take a different approach as they find incredibly deep meaning in the community of the Trinity.

To me, this is beautiful. The idea of God as the pure essence of community is a great invitation to be joined to that community. The mystics were drawn to this. Their lives were caught up in the pursuit of being one with this God who is Love and Truth and Beauty. Protestants always say that as we grow to know more about God, we realize how much we don’t know about God. It’s true. But the mystics had a different way of explaining this.

Most begin believing that we can know of God through everything. All the world speaks of God’s glory, his majesty, his love, his creativity, his entire being is expressed in the world around us. The mystics knew God in this way. Everything spoke to them and revealed God to them.

Yet, as they progressed in their visions, their experiences, their dark nights within the depths of their souls and the brilliant glory of illumination, as they moved through the spiral of mysticism towards greater experiences with God, almost every single mystic would end with the belief that nothing could speak to them of God. He was too great, too immense to be known and described by such a thing as the finite created world which will soon be passing away. So they came to what we call apophatic knowledge or the via negativa. God could only be known by what he was not. He is only infinite because he is not finite. He is just because he cannot be unjust, etc.

This intrigues me, this idea that we can know and experience God primarily by knowing what he isn’t. How does that play into the concept that we can experience the divine nature and participate in the divine community? How can you participate and know something or someone that you can’t really know?

The mystery of the Eastern Orthodox confuses me but it enthralls me. I love the way the church so earnestly desires to be one with God, to know him and participate in the divine nature. Everything speaks to us of God, even the architecture in the church is designed to point us heavenward to contemplation of the divine. And yet, the Orthodox give God space to be infinite, transcendent and beyond our total comprehension. This is what I wrote of in the 12 and 1/2 pages that came together slowly but surely last week. The chance to know God as an immanent lover, while keeping him respectfully at arms length to enjoy his otherness. The scent of the incense, the encircling of the Triadic community, the sound of the chants, they were all there; simply buried deep in lines full of multisyllabic words and a cumbersome thesis. It was beautiful, even if the words themselves did not evoke the image of the liturgy but rather described the beautiful thoughts behind it.

somedays, I think I was born for Academia.