Here at the End of the World

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It feels like everything worth writing has been written: books, poems, sermons, songs.

It feels like everything worth saying has been said. Every good conversation has been had.

Novelty is simply inexperience asleep. There is nothing new under the sun. Nothing left to create. Nothing in God's mind left to explore of that which can be known.

I won't feel this way tomorrow.

Love Poetry

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In the fallow field that is my mind, occasionally a weed will pop up, that, while not of any nutritive value, is at least interesting to look at for a few seconds. OK, enough faux humility. Here’s an account of some random, late night musings, because, let’s face it, this is a blog; neither of us are paying nor getting paid to be here.

Love poetry. How did I arrive at the topic? (Do any of us truly understand the motions of our own minds?) I was thinking about favorite authors and trying to round out the posse with a poet or three: John Milton, George Herbert and John Donne. Donne was a fiercely good love-poet. So, that’s how I got to love poetry.

From the subject of love poetry, I began thinking about the motivations of this particular brand of poetry. Do you remember Robin Williams’s quip in “Dead Poets Society?” “The purpose of poetry is to woo women.” My mind was focused on more descriptive motivations. I discovered two.

A man may write a poem about his beloved that is, at its core, much more about the effects that his beloved has upon him, rather than the beloved herself. Such a poem is not unworthy of being committed to paper. Such sentiments are not bad at all. I suspect that they are just easier to write. Consider the preponderance of “love songs” being written to Jesus these days. They are much more about the effects of God’s actions upon us than they are about God and his mighty works in time.

If I were to write a love poem, I realized that I would want to have a subject worthy of such a poem (bear with me, ladies. don’t pick up the stones just yet). In other words, is this a woman who merits her character being memorialized in verse? I was thinking about Proverbs 31. That woman was worth writing about. There is no shallow sentimentalizing present in those reflections. The writer had a worthy subject and wrote well.

Don’t get me wrong. There are too many places in the Scriptures that describe God’s expectations of men and Christians where I fall short. And that brings me to the roots of these weedy thoughts.

“Deep calls unto deep.” I want to be a person of substance that will be in a position, at least in a measure, to perceive and value the virtues and excellencies of another, whether romantically or otherwise. The more faithful to the high calling of God in Christ Jesus that I have been, the more readily I will recognize such faithfulness in others.

Hack away.

The Light Shines

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My friend Matt Johnson just sent me the following reflection. I wanted to pass it along because I am thinking about those of you I know today.

So what difference does a story about a man called the Light overcoming the darkness two thousand years ago make for you and me in the 21st Century? It makes no difference at all: unless you are scared of the dark, unless you live under the penumbra of fear, unless you have known the darkness of death and long for the Light. The Light is for those “who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.” And it is an ineluctable fact that we all do.

Even those of us who have received the down-payment find ourselves from time to time living in the valley of the shadow where there is little light or reassurance, where we live and move only by the lamp for our feet and the light to our path. We can’t see any further than the next step. And so is the test of our faith. God gives us every moment what is best for us, and in so doing teaches us the hard-won virtue of learning to trust, even when we are in the dark. And so He who confronted the darkness and overcame it gives us, through participation in Him, to win our own victory over darkness by degrees, which is to say, by a living faith.

Of all the stages on life’s way, this waiting room of eternity may be the most disquieting. This holy darkness, where even tomorrow seems to be obscured, works at a level that even the most acute sensibilities of the mind and the spirit cannot apprehend. I have been comforted by the words of a song that seems to capture the state of my soul. “Holy darkness, blessed night, Heaven’s answer hidden from our sight, as we await you, oh God of silence, we embrace your holy night.” As one sits in the darkness one cannot hope to know: only to trust, to embrace the holiness of the night that God allows. That is where I find myself after all these years: still bankrupt, still awaiting the light, still waiting for God. As time rolls onward through another season and another year, I find myself at the precipice of the Divine Abyss, still afraid to leap out on the unknown Will but still yearning for the Infinite.

To a world unaware, almost without notice, Advent steals on the darkness. And we stand with all who have longed and watched and waited for the Light. We too grope with lame hands at the promise, “the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings.” We too see a shimmer of light as we hear the prophetic words thundering forth, “Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plane.” We too feel our pulse quicken as our eyes fall upon the Divine utterance, “and the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to His temple.” We stand in the congregation of the righteous and confess: “I believe ... that He shall come to judge both the living and the dead; Whose Kingdom shall have no end.”

The voices die away and the darkness envelopes us again. Was it really real? Against the backdrop of white noise and commerce we are tempted to acquiesce. Ours is an age of reason and science. But our hearts and imaginations have reasons and justifications that stiffen against the onslaught of “reasonable science.” The information age has failed to inform us that humanity doesn’t compute, much less Divinity.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has perhaps touched upon the truest index of our predicament in comparing our observation of Advent to the situation of the prisoner whose only hope of freedom lies on the other side of a door that can only be opened from the outside. So we sit and wait through the long dark night for the Promise. And we remember the “tidings of comfort and joy.”

“Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end ... the zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.”

And our hearts are warmed and inspired again by the herald that has come “to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; Whereby the Dayspring from on high has visited us. To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

The Apostle Paul has said, “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” Though we sit in the darkness “the Lord is a light for us,” and our darkness is no longer the despair of them that sorrow without hope. It is but a cloud of unknowing. For this cause, “we faint not ... for our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Advent reveals to us, perhaps in the most poignant way, the “inconsolable secret” of our existence: the groaning within ourselves that is shared by the whole creation, the “desire that all of heaven and earth cannot contain.” We are captives awaiting “the glorious redemption of the sons of God.” And so with all the faithful in the great communion of the saints who from time immemorial have been “watching long in hope and fear,” we join in the welcome chorus: “O come, O come Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.”

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise.” Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” “Good Christian men rejoice” ... for your Redemption is drawing near!

Dear Lord Baby Jesus

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Does the birth of our Lord need to be de-emphasized or overshadowed or in any way qualified in order for his life and ministry to be preached?

No.

Follow the lectionary.

Take twice daily and thrice on Sundays.

Inquire inside for details, if needed.

DIY Church

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The DIY* trend is not meant for the Church and theology. Our doctrine of revelation (among other things) makes such enterprises impossible.

Don’t advertise your church as “casual” and expect people to take it seriously. You tell people you are casual, and they will treat your church casually.

The same goes with calling it “contemporary.” The language is not helpful. Of course it’s contemporary; it’s happening right now. But taken as intended, defining your church as contemporary keeps people from taking it very seriously. Contemporary ends up equaling trendy.

People require a faith rooted in history with a present expression. One, holy, catholic and apostolic - those are the marks of the Church. “What has been believed everywhere, at all times, by everyone.” That is the description of Her irrevocable beliefs and worship. Stray from that and we are off in the weeds somewhere, likely to get snake-bit, lost or starved.


*Do-It-Yourself

Talk

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Conversations are great. Especially when we try and think about what we’re saying to each other. Especially when we avoid regurgitating stupid platitudes about life that we don’t believe and/or don’t understand.

Two Takes on Identity

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"This form of despair is: in despair not to will to be oneself. Or even lower: in despair not to will to be a self. Or lowest of all: in despair to will to be someone else, to wish for a new self."

- Soren Kierkegaard "The Sickness Unto Death"

stolen from Quin Finnegan

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I ask a sensual man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “I am I,” and he thinks of his body.

I ask a thinking man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “I see two sides in myself and I make my way between them, associating first with one and then the other,” and he is thinking of his instinctive and conscious soul.

I ask a spiritual man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “There is someone in the depths of my soul. I stretch out my hand to grasp him but see that to do that I would need arms longer than the universe. Ask him who I am.”

St. Nicholai of Zicha (Velimirovich)

stolen from Fr. Stephen Freeman

Thank you, gentlemen.