Thinking About Love

Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
all the wealth of his house,
he would be utterly despised.

-Song of Solomon 8:7

I'm increasingly persuaded that I don't understand love for what it really is. It's much too wild and holy for us to pin down, explain, or even draw perimeters for.

Love doesn't fit into any of the clichés made for it. Love isn't "blind" - it's more that it can't believe it's eyes. I don't know where "cloud 9" is and I don't really care. "Head over heels" perhaps comes the closest, but it still sounds a bit too haphazard.

Maybe the inadequacy of these euphemisms should tell us something. Love is not something you understand. Love is something you do. It's a verb, not a noun. It takes you over, like a spontaneous, can't-help-it smile, shredding your selfishness into bits and drawing you into the nature of God.

God is love. Selah

Love is not self-seeking. It's not even self-conscious. Real love isn't thinking about loving, it just loves. It does what it is. Snow falls. Birds fly. Love loves.

Once you've experienced it, you want it for everyone; it's much too beautiful and sacred to keep to yourself. To have the opportunity to open yourself up and pour yourself out so completely for someone else is wonderful; for them to reciprocate that openness and affection is very heaven.

Love is not a commodity. You can't buy it or sell it. You can't even earn it. There are many sorry substitutes that are about as real as a plastic rose, but don't give up. The real thing is out there. You'll know it when you smell it. As my Grandfather says, wait for the zing.

I've been captured. I don't know all of what's in store , but I know I'll never be the same.

I love you Jessica!

I thought it was full but it was halfway to the top / Love is an ocean, and I am a tiny cup...

-Sandra McCracken, Red Balloon, "Halfway"

Image courtesy of somervillemanning.com

Something Beautiful

Last Thursday, I took Jessica to the beach for the afternoon. We had a nice drive across the valley, talking, eating french fries, and reading A Bear Called Paddington. In Templeton, we picked up some feed for Leah's goats and enjoyed a wonderful lunch with the Welch's.

Our destination was the W. R. Hearst State Beach in San Simeon. It was a beautiful day on the coast - warm with high clouds and a light breeze. Once Jessica had a chance to put her toes in the water, we walked down the beach and picked up a trail along the bluff through the Eucalyptus trees.

After stopping to climb some trees, we found a path back down to the water and explored some of the tide pools, looking at the crabs and starfish, watching the pelicans and gulls gliding above the water, and just enjoying being together.

It was 4:30 in the afternoon. I suggested we start heading back to the beach, and we turned around. We walked in silence, listening to the rustling wind and the rhythm of the surf. Beauty. Youth. Peace.

Love.

We got back to the main beach and explored some more tide pools. Anemones, barnacles, and more starfish. The sun was just beginning to set on the horizon, and a full moon was rising over the hills behind us, glowing soft in the evening mist.

"It's all enchanted and wild / Just like my heart said it was gonna be..."

-Nickel Creek, Nickel Creek, "Out Of The Woods"

There was a long pier extending over the water, and I asked her if we could walk out on it before we left. We stood at the end, looking out over the water, listening to the bells on the buoys and watching the pelicans diving in search of food.

After a few minutes we went over to a bench and sat on the backrest with our feet on the seat so we could see over the rail of the pier better.

I told her some poetry that I'd written and memorized as a preface to my proposal. Then I got down on my knee on the bench seat, took her hands in mine, and told her that I loved her - desperately, with everything I am. I told her I was ready to commit the rest of my life to loving her, caring for her, protecting her, sheltering her. And then I asked her if she would be my wife.

She said yes.

Four times.

Giddy, I unzipped my coat pocket and retrieved the ring. I slipped it on her finger, and we embraced hard - still having trouble believing we weren't dreaming. I was choking back sobs, but mostly we were too amazed to cry.

The sky was crisscrossed with brilliant color. We sat on the bench with our arms around each other, both in awe of what had just taken place. I said "It's us now, in everything," and she said "Yes..." and sighed happily. We prayed together about the future, fully conscious of the holiness of the moment.

"We don't know / And we won't know / What we're in for / But it's something beautiful..."

-Alex Mejias, Alex Mejias, "Something Beautiful"

I never dreamed.

We walked back down the pier, hand in hand for the first time. On the way to the restaurant, we called our families and told them the news. The celebration spread like electricity.

Looking at each other across the table at the restaurant, we still couldn't believe it. We ordered and tried to eat, and after the meal I gave her a Bible. Then it was time to drive home.

A piece of advice for the guys: get an automatic transmission. It makes holding hands a lot easier.

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him.

-1 Corinthians 2:9

For the Love of Books

My 17 latest acquisitions, from a few used bookstores and a library book sale:

Lord Of The Flies - William Golding
Black Dog Of Fate - Peter Balakian
The Writing Life - Annie Dillard
No Man Is an Island - Thomas Merton
The Singer - Calvin Miller
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
The Penal Colony - Franz Kafka
The Face Of God - Bill Myers
The Gates Of The Forest - Elie Wiesel
The Living - Annie Dillard
The Seven Storey Mountain - Thomas Merton
The Shaping Of A Christian Family - Elisabeth Elliot
The Borrowers - Mary Norton
Night - Elie Wiesel
Redeeming The Time - Leland Ryken
The Odyssey - Homer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

Image courtesy of tempe.gov

Eating Jesus

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.

This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever."

-John 6:54-58

Jesus preaches a new definition of life. (John 10:10) A life that is full and fulfilled. A life that is peaceful. A life that is eternal. A life that is real.

This new life requires new provisions. Just as to live you need to eat, to stay alive spiritually you need spiritual sustenance. We find this sustenance in the person and presence of Christ. I don't know all of what this means, but I believe it.

When Jesus says that his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink, he is not saying that his flesh is as real as real food, or that his blood is as real as real drink. Rather he is saying that his flesh is more real than real food, and that his blood is more real than real drink.

Jesus is offering something that transcends the dust-to-dust cycle of mortality. He is offering himself. For us he was broken, for us he was made sin (2 Cor. 5:21 - was made it!), "by his stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53:4-6)

I have come with one purpose / To capture for myself a bride / By my life she is lovely / And by my death she's justified... I have long pursued her / As a harlot and a whore / And she will feast upon me / She will drink and thirst no more / So when you taste / My flesh and my blood / You will know / You're not alone...

-Derek Webb, She Must And Shall Go Free, "The Church"

We need a more robust practice of communion in the Church today. No, I don't know what this looks like - I just sense we need it. We need to be partaking directly of the person of Christ and identifying directly with his life. "Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me." I'm not a proponent of transubstantiation, but I have to give some credit to our Lutheran and Roman Catholic friends for taking the sacrament as seriously as they do.

We need to be eating Jesus.

Image courtesy of lcms.org

Thankful...

...for life,
for my family,
for Jessica,
for the wisdom of friends,
for the mercy of God,
for challenge and change,
for seasons,
for mountains and deserts,
for forests and beaches,
for poetry and prayer,
for potatoes and wine and cranberry pie,
for starry nights,
for grace for the past,
hope for the future,
and peace for the present.

When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them.
The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.
Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south.
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

-Psalm 126, KJV

Image courtesy of vagabondish.com

I Can't Write

Tomorrow morning I drive to San Francisco to pick up Jessica. It's been 47 days since I've seen her, and I feel like one of those little wind-up cars feels when you pull it all the way back and hold it there. I'm exhausted, excited, twitterpated, and several other things. But I can't write. At all. I tried.

After tomorrow I should be myself again.

"When love has got you in its throes / even the summer's heat just freezes your soul / and the sweetest song - it just clanks along / and the morning dew just says goodnight and leaves your heart undone..."

Image courtesy of robinsdocksideshop.com

Thinking Christianly About Art

(Image from banksy.co.uk)

To interest is the first duty of art; no other excellences will even begin to compensate for failure in this, and very serious faults will be covered by this, as by charity. -C. S. Lewis

True Christian imaging meets violence head-on, mine and the world's, but also God's... We must learn early to seek God within the wounds that reality inflicts. -Janine Langan

Art and prayer have never been conceived by the Church as enemies, and where the Church has been austere it has only been because she meant to insist on the essential difference between art and entertainment. -Thomas Merton

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. -James 1:17

The tragedy is that so many Christians, in their revulsion at the perverse aspects of [empty postmodern] art, shun all art, even that which may spring from a God-honoring imagination or a Christocentric consciousness. The other "Christian" alternative is a conservatism that responds only to kitsch, a sentimental art of the Hallmark greeting card variety that cheapens true sentiment, turning it into sweetness and light and mere moralistic propaganda - no teeth, no guts, no muscle, no reality. No real Christianity either, if we consider the Creator's work as our powerful, radical model.
But kitsch is easy. It is accessible as a Thomas Kinkade painting, and as stereotypical. It is manipulative and narcotic, and by contrast it makes true art seem difficult or complicated. For true art is not all sweet reasonableness. -Luci Shaw

We know in part. We see through a glass darkly. But it is worth our looking. -Elisabeth Elliot

The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. -C. S. Lewis

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. -Romans 12:2

Prisons, let it be said, have fostered far more art and mystical insight than any Arts Council, Ministry of Culture or other such effort in the way of governmental encouragement. -Malcolm Muggeridge

Art is the signature of man. -G. K. Chesterton

Protestantism - the adroit castrator
Of art; the bitter negation
Of song and dance and the heart’s innocent joy -
You have botched our flesh and left us only the soul’s
Terrible impotence in a warm world. -R. S. Thomas