Donne Undone

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, overthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.

I, like a usurpt town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,

Reason, your viceroy in me, I should defend,

But is captive, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy:

Divorce me, untie or break that know again;

Take me to you, imprison me, for I 

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chast, except you ravish me.

- John Donne, Holy Sonnet 74. "Batter my heart" (update language mine)


Donne was a master of the extended metaphor (although English teachers would tell you they're called metaphysical conceits) and wove together seemingly unrelated topics to construct a vibrant image.

Did you catch that he compared his heart to a city under the devil's rule ("I, like a usurpt town, to another due"), and that Donne is begging God to come into his heart ("I...Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end"). Maybe you noticed that Donne sees himself as married to the devil ("...betrothed unto your enemy:") and is begging God is sever that relationship ("Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again:"). Does it surprise you that Donne begs for God to pull him into himself, to ravish, enthrall, imprison him? Are you shocked at Donne's brutal, warlike tone? Are you offended?

Why?

Some people are offended by a poem of such passion for God, such angst and rawness of heart, or misunderstand the rawness of emotion as sacrilegious towards a pure God. I envy Donne's ability to craft an image out such incongruent pieces, and I envy his openness of heart that allowed him to release that passion. I don't think God minds it at all when we burst open with love and passion for him. In the last lines, Donne is overwhelmed with his brokenness and filth and begs God to clean him up and bring him back to himself. It's a praise, a lament and a salvation story all in one.

Wouldn't it be worse if Christians were always socially appropriate and dutiful, always proper and politically correct? When did it become such an outrage to be fiery, outspoken people of such love and passion that offends rather than sits back in silence? Do you think the Apostle Paul was a wallflower, or that Peter was known as the one who always said the right thing?

Every time I think I'm doing alright, some other deficiency gapes back at me, or some rough spot rasps out to be filed down. Some days I ride too high, and once I've fallen off and see how far I've wandered, I ache for God to take back my heart, to be divorced from the power that rules the self. But it's not just God that makes this happen - I have to move, too. It's the both of us working out salvation, it's God who readies my hands for action and my heart for love.

I'm still a work in progress (but aren't we all?). I wish I could write as fluidly as Donne, with his vivid images and gripping style, but I'm just not there yet. I wish I could be as outspoken about my faith and convictions as Donne, but then again, God is still working all that out in me, and that part's not finished yet.

I'm not Donne yet, because I'm not done yet.

Chopsticks

I'm pretty sure God eats with chopsticks, which is to say...

one bite at a time.

No more than needed for a mouthful, enough to satisfy, no less than what is required. Spoons overflow, forks shovel , knives disintegrate, but chopsticks hold just the right size piece, filling our mouth without making us gasp for air around an over-large bite. He knows that anyone can choke on too much of a good thing.

~~~~~~

I'm pretty sure God gives us grace with chopsticks, which is to say...

one day at a time.

No more than we need for the day, enough to strengthen, sustain and grow, never less than what we require. God knows we could hoard his grace, choking on too much of a good thing, so he gives us enough for one day at a time, always reminding us he's got plenty more for tomorrow.

~~~~~~

Thank God for chopsticks.

Harry and the Potters

1.) There is a band playing in Kansas City called Harry and the Potters. It is two brothers who dress up in wizard's robes and sing their own songs, like "Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock", "Save Ginny Weasley from Dean Thomas" and "Felix Felicis (Eighth Clockwise Stir Mix)". I actually went to their concert, dying a little on the inside with every song. Thankfully, your jealously needn't go unfulfilled. They are currently on tour all over the nation this summer, stopping in Philadelphia and Boston.

You're welcome.

4.) For those of you who remember that I had NO clue what my job would entail, let me tell you now:

I edit. All the time. I rewrite awkward sentences and check scriptural references for accuracy and punctuation, and sometimes I give the axe - brutally, bloodily, with great satisfaction - to wordy, repetitive, diction-challenged sentences that just repeat themselves in a circular fashion. (You see what I just did there? Exactly.)

I have my own office/cubicle section with a huge window facing out towards the city skyline and a fantastic view of the NPH parking lot. On good days, I will tell you that I like the quiet nature of my work, sitting in a secluded corner with some fresh coffee (Starbucks in a Dunkin's mug, oh the humanity!), reading through the work of dozens of respected authors who set the spiritual tone for that publication and having the authority to edit such work as I see fit. My most recent project is editing a book by a famous author whose works are on the shelf of nearly every pastor and religion major - talk doing something worthwhile! I enjoy discussing the proper placing of an m-dash or how to reference a sermon both written and preached. On those days, I am wholly an introvert and it feels empowering to be around people who understand the importance of sentence structure and correct punctuation.

But on bad days, I dread the isolation of my cubicle, when the only other people around are other editors with their office doors shut, concentrate on their own work.   On those days, the silence is oppressive and I can't help but envy the Barefoot Ministries office down the hallway that plays round-robin pingpong off their desks. My computer screen is very old, so the screen flickers  just enough that you feel as if your eyes will shrivel up and rot. Because I mostly edit curriculum (Sunday school lessons, Bible studies, quarterly devotions and magazines - and most recently, books!), the writing tends to be somewhat repetitive.

The managers of all the departments usually talk up their interns with other departments and recommend them for jobs and projects so they will get useful experience and feedback.  I overheard someone say once that they don't envy interns in my department, because that manager keeps to himself so that no one else knows who his intern is or how they are doing. In other words, the interns in my department leave the publishing house with few connections and little feedback to bolster their experience.

Well, that's depressing. So, I had two choices: be crushed and disappointed that no one will ever see my work, or make myself known on my own terms without relying on someone else to do it for me.

If you are reading this right now, you have some sort of relationship with me, be it casual acquaintance or life partner. You already know I picked Option Two.

The good thing about my personality type is extreme optimism, sheer nerve, ability to multi-task, a can-do spirit. That, combined with the conviction that God led me here--against all odds, against my inclinations and against every argument for financial responsibility--made me feel, well....unassailable.

I can do this. Living out here, driving around the prairie, getting lost every ten minutes, working proactively, texting in the office and not getting caught....yes, they are all in my grasp!

A little gumption, a little initiative, some guts and ample prayer. I can do this!

Baby Gurl'z Nails of Glory

The city of Independence (pop. 116,830) was established in 1827 and is famous for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and for being the starting point of famous westward trails (Oregon Trail, Sante Fe Trail, and the California Trail, as is evidenced by the annual Santa-Cali-Gon Festival). Harry Truman lived here, as did Albert Pujols, Ginger Roger and Paul Henning, who created such sublime American classics as Green Acres, Pettycoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies. It is also recognized as being part of the videogame "Oregon Trail", thereby known to millions of Facebookers as well as history buffs.

Independence is not, however, particularly famous for its high level of culture and class. My 30 minute commute to work at the publishing house in Kansas City guides me through miles and miles of pot-holed roads lined with "Tobacco Paradise", "Bud and Nan's Beer Hole", "Sal's Sexy Western Wear" and "Baby Gurl'z Nails of Glory". I want to meet this Baby Gurl and shake her gloried, manicured hand.

There are remnants of past glory and of lost hope all over the place. I drive past a strip mall with a church in a converted storefront...but the church is shuttered closed with metal doors and bars are over the windows. A green, rusted out, mid-80's Buick roared through a red light last night, and the passenger threw two beer bottles out the window, smashing them on the battered tarmac below.

I compulsively check the locks on my door. It feels like a twitch - left hand flying to the lock lever on the door, right hand flung out to check the passenger door. I realized today, while driving past a padlocked park (the ghost of a tennis court peering from behind a skeleton fence), that I'm afraid of it all. I'm afraid of the gang of boys standing on the street corner, yelling at cars whizzing by. I grip the steering wheel a little harder than usual whenever people walk close to my car.

They are so close, after all. Close enough for me to see that the man walking across the four-lane highway is barefoot, with faded tattoos creeping up his neck. The jeering boys on the street corner can't be more than 16 or 17, but their faces are lined and baggy clothes can't hide that they are malnourished, starving, skinny ankles sprouting from too-big shoes like flamingo legs.

There's a song (by Brandon Heath) that goes something like this:
Give me your eyes for just one second,
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken-hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach
Give me your heart for the one forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see.


It came on the car radio right as I drove by the abandoned park, the one closed off with a rusted gate and empty tennis courts. And the same song came on again as I drove by the street corner with the boys. And again, as the drunk man crossed the street, barefoot, half-dressed, swaying with beer bottle in hand. Why did it take so much for me to remember that these people were not "poor", "homeless", "delinquent", but  heartbroken, dreamless, hopeless? Once you see the look of absolute hopelessness in someone's face, you can never forget the emptiness in their eyes, and that's the expression I see every time I drive to and from work.

If I were God, my heart would be utterly crushed to see what humans have done to each other. I'd be nauseous with heartsickness and longing for my loved ones to come back. The loneliness and homesickness that I feel now is incomparable to someone who has completely lost any sense of home and any hope that such an environment still exists for them. I'm not writing to tell you my Five Evangelistic Points that I will share with such lost ones, only that I wanted it out on paper (per se) that I'm beginning to see what people must really look like to God.

I usually pray for strength, clarity of thought, wisdom....but really, they are merely my own heightened senses that I've masqueraded as God working in me. Truthfully, those are all things I could achieve on my own.

But without love, all those virtue are ash and mud. Without love, strength is brutal, clarity of thought is a critical spirit, and wisdom is superior enlightenment. All those I have exhibited, all those I have achieved on my own. But I can't do love on my own. I can't do mercy, I can't do graciousness, I can't forgive on my own, and I certainly cannot see people with God's eyes on my own, either.

Allowing God to show your the world through his eyes is terrifying. The vision burns like fire, searing the conscience and scalding a toughened heart, burning off the layers of judgment and presumption like so much dross. The result is a heart raw with God's pain and throbbing with his love, pulsing harder at every injustice, beating with pride for those who are faithful.

This week has already left my heart raw, so I suppose we're off to a good start if seeing people through God's eyes includes a tender spirit. Pray with me - and please, for me - as this summer at the publishing house is officially underway as of last Thursday and as I learn how to do this whole life-ministry thing.

Oh, and if you ever find Baby Gurl'z, go ahead in and get your nails did.

Go West, Young Man...Um, Woman.

Five days until I leave for Kansas City.

Only five days to pack up my room, to plan a driving route, to budget money for gas, food, hotels, to say goodbye to newly-made friends, to spend time with my family, to snatch just one more hour with Trevor, just a little more time at the only house that's ever felt like home.

Forgive me for my nostalgia, but the preparations of leaving for my internship at the publishing house are cementing the existence of my new reality, the one where I'm responsible for things like, you know, real life.

For so many years, I've planned for and saved for college, thought about and talked about nothing but college, so much so that I never visualized life without a syllabus outlining the exact requirements.
And now I'm done, and it's a good thing, but it feels a little like falling out of love, like you moved on and didn't realize until later that your beloved never came with you. You walk away, but leave more than a little of yourself behind, trusting in the One who's promised to give you a new direction and a new love.

So, in five days, trekking out into the unknown, with naught but a tank of gas and a heart full of God's promise to never leave me, I begin anew.

Only this time, the syllabus is mine to write.

Salt

I have no patience with ambiguity and indecision.

Wavering between what clothes to wear? Just pick a shirt and get on with it already. If you really hate it, then pack the other choice and change in the bathroom at work. Problem solved.

Can't decide what time you want to leave for dinner? X minutes for travel + Y minutes for traffic + Z minutes for emergencies - time of dinner reservation = departure time. Boom. Roasted.

You say you're a Christian, yet you go everywhere but Christ's words for answers to your questioning? You don't like what you read in the Bible, so you rationalize away your stubbornness in following your own will, then claim it's the Bible's fault for being vague? I'm sickened - and saddened - by that double-mindedness. If it is a fault, then I am guilty but I feel no shame in this.

Life is complex for sure, but I think we pretend it's complexities are inevitable, so we sink into philosophizing about social norms, religion and morality....and then do nothing.

Money is useless if you do nothing with it. If it sits under your mattress for years and years, rotting to dust until it crumbles away, then it has been wasted. It doesn't matter how big your pile of money dust is, or how loudly you brag about how much it was worth, it's still worthless because you did nothing with it.

Such is also true about philosophizing, which is, I'm coming to think, just an educated way of saying that you straddle the fence and can't decide on which side you will fall. It doesn't matter how much you talk about morality if it doesn't affect the way you live. It doesn't matter that - seriously now, listen to this, think about it, chew on it - it doesn't matter that you talk about God if you do not live a godly life and if His holy fire is not burning out your heart with uncontrollable, intemperate love.

I'm sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear.

Actually....

No, I'm not sorry at all.

Because there ARE answers to your questions, and there are very concrete principles in the Christian life, whether or not they are easily digestible. The harder you chew on them, the more they will sustain your faith in a God more powerful and loving than you can ever realize. The deeper you chase God into the Bible, the more you will find that His searing, healing love burns off our pride, purifying us like newly forged steel so that we, far from merely mirroring Him, have become Him.

Don't confuse the message with the messenger. I haven't got this whole thing down pat yet, either, but passion to know my Savior has burned away my fear of being misunderstood and, frankly, of being disliked for speaking the truth. The truth means more to me than anyone who cannot bear to hear it spoken. This is neither intolerance nor arrogance. It's love.

The truth of the Gospel is called "salt" and "light" (Matthew 5:13-16, btw), because the truth burns and illuminates that which strives to be hidden, not because it tastes nice and makes things look good.

"Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey!"

The week before Easter, the Nazarene Publishing House called me back concerning my application for an internship...

...and I got it! I've been accepted as an intern to WordAction Press in Kansas City, Missouri! 

Now keep in mind that, for a word nerd like me who wanted to work in a Christian industry, this is Mecca. For so long, I've felt torn between jobs that I want and jobs that I can get, but this is the bridge between what I love and what pays. This is the job I've wanted for so long but I was at a loss, because I was too shy (or lacking faith?) to just go for it. I've tried so many other venues - teaching, journalism, writing - but nothing fit, and I couldn't explain why I felt so uncomfortable in my own skin in these jobs. There was no motivation to apply to anything, no direction for any job. 

But this one was different. As I flipped through a flyer from NPH advertising for interns, my heart began to race - "I could do this... I could actually do this!" As surely as the sun rises each morning, I felt God's certainty descend on me that this was the Yellow Brick Road of directions. There have been a handful of these God-given certainties before now, and they have always been followed by huge blessings and deeply challenging times. And when I've doubted the certainty and chosen not to take the risk, I've felt a sense of God's sadness, as if I've chosen not to explore his blessing on my life and that I've missed out.

Moving cross-country for a two-month-long internship is a very expensive risk. No job is guaranteed after the internship, and the intern must supply food, transportation, housing, etc, while working for minimum wage - or for free - in an unfamiliar area. I have no money, since I've funneled my paycheck into paying school loans for the past four years, which means that I have no savings, no car, no resources to do anything other than live with my parents and pay off my school loans.

I've used all of this as an excuse to stay in my happy little Pennsylvania comfort zone, ignoring my own obvious hypocrisy while I encourage others to break out of their narrow experiences. And what better way for God to convert this hypocrite than to draw me to a mirror and show that the comfort-zone-loving person is none other than myself? Yikes. A little embarrassment there, not to mention a lesson in humility. How dare I doubt the certainty that God had placed on my heart about the NPH internship? How could I possibly feel justified in not applying if I knew that God would take care of my needs if I got accepted?

 

The day NPH called me and I accepted the position, I was flat broke. After I hung up the phone (and hollered in sheer triumph for a minute or two...or five...), I sat at my desk and dropped my head between my knees, fervently thanking God for giving me this opportunity, and for a way out of cleaning houses and dogsitting for another summer. And then the panic set in - how in the world was I supposed to come up with hundreds of dollars for gas money, tolls, a hotel, meals and my first month's rent? Though I had a full time job all throughout college, I only took home $15 each week. It would be at least two weeks after I started at the Publishing House before my first paycheck there, and there was no way I could come up with that money between now and then. I didn't even have anywhere to live.

Everything before now has been all well and good, but here is the part you'll want to read:

Two days after NPH called, someone dropped off an envelope for me at my office. Inside was $200 cash, and an anonymous letter reading, "God's money is for his people to do his work." Two hundred dollars is the exact amount of gas money I needed, and I hadn't told anyone that yet.

But I still needed somewhere to stay, somewhere cheap, with a non-psychotic family, and that family would want me to pay rent - which I couldn't afford. Again, the panic, again the prayer. What I really needed was to live somewhere for free, but I understood that just wouldn't happen - except by a miracle.

Fast forward two weeks - the day before I graduated, a woman from NPH called me. She and her husband (a youth pastor) were also ENC grads and were willing to open their house to me if I was willing. They knew my boyfriend and we had several friends in common, and in talking to her, I felt another sense of certainty and peace. And then she said it, the words which made my heart drop and nearly brought me to tears - "My husband and I consider it a ministry to open our house to people who need it. We've never charged anyone to live here, and we certainly would not start charging with you." 

There you have it, ladies and gents. In plain black and white, you have the concrete, very real story of faith given, faith rewarded, of grace given and grace received. I may not be eloquent, I stutter and ramble, and sometimes get lost in over-thinking and worrying, but I will never again doubt. Here, in plain black and white (technically the computer pixels are a rainbow of colors but we won't get into that now), you have the story of Philippians 4:19 come to life.

"And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus."

Amen.

(And shame on you if you didn't recognize the title of this blog as a Beatles' song!)