Faith and conviction

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

I've been in Hebrews for at least a year now. Lately I've been dwelling on chapter eleven, verse one. I had kind of a neat experience with it this morning as I prayerfully dissected it. Here's a little musing with it:

Now faith equates to guarantees/the "it will get dones"/the natural ends of things desired/longed for/important/expected/deeply appreciated/wanted, the inner dialog of God with me on the things in my life that need action regarding things that are not perceptible/perhaps yet to be created or imagined.

The word "conviction" is the one that caught my attention. I suppose I struggle with the definition of faith because I see it as a means of making a wish come true, and for many the dreams never come true. It offers possibilities and life robs us. We scratch our heads. How does one live a truthful life when the experience counters the Word? We are often told to pretend. If you pretend or work hard enough, the experience will catch up. In reality, we are told it's not the experience that offends, it is the emotion. The line of reasoning is that because you feel a disconnect between the Word and your life, it is the feeling that is wrong. Sometimes this is accurate, but it doesn't move us anywhere. Sometimes resigning ourselves to the disconnect and pretending is as much idolatry as anything else we falsely attribute as God.

I guess what seemed freeing to me this morning was the cosmic sense of conviction. Faith does have a component of wish and desire, but there is also this dialog, conversation, sometimes lecture between you and God that is negotiating life, behavior, attitude. It speaks of lust in terms of imagination and love in the language of a stranger's touch. It flows through the context and culture and provides ground to stand on. Faith is in the midst of this dialog. For me, faith was a billy club to get what I want from God. I would distance myself and strike away. Funny thing is, He wouldn't budge. I could point to this verse until I was blue in the face and it didn't matter. I had neglected the love and dialog which is really what faith is all about...

Planes and doors

I was talking with a guy recently who makes parts for most of the single prop planes in the world. We were talking about stress. Some time ago his company seemed to have cut corners on parts that had the potential of killing people. He had gone through a very dark season and came out on the other side. As we talked about it, one of the lessons he had learned was not to assert too much meaning in an event. "At the end of the day, what was, was. You go home and have to get beyond it."

The last three weeks we have been celebrating Advent at church. Each week associates loosely with some of the fruit of the Spirit. Joy and peace went well. They were pleasant, attractive, something we all wanted more of and were willing to help others achieve more of in their lives. I suspect pondering love this week will lack controversy as well. It's foundational and nourishes like water. But, hope... Now hope is controversial. Hope is dangerous. It builds on expectations and we are often unable to control them. Hope connects biologically when a women turns 41 and articulates that fear that started at 29. To hope in a baby at this age risks the deepest disappointment imaginable. The circumstance and experience testify against her. Hope connects to us emotionally through the millions and millions of thoughts we have accumulated on something. We have existentially birthed a life in our mind and reality never had a chance of keeping up. If you add years or decades, it can be unbearable; it can cripple and embitter. When you get to an age when experience contradicts hope, it's a desert of parchedness. Each step testifies to the risk hope posed and someone has to be the example of a hope never attained. Some speak of contentment in that situation. When unpacked, they are pretending. Rather than transformation, they have conformed to the circumstance as best they can. They try to cast the dream away, but it's like swimming against the current. You will never have enough strength to beat the river.

I was reading in Parker Palmer last night the idea that we should not resist closed doors. He personifies way in our lives and sees closed doors as beneficial and open ones. The way is made of our strengths and limitations. We must learn from each. He draws a picture of a person desperately knocking on a closed door. The world is small. The scenery never changes. The limitations and circumstances continue to chisel and shape the reality. But if I turn around, the world is actually a limitless number of open doors and the one behind me is the only closed. I picture that closed door as having blood and bone chips in it, tears mixed with saliva, slivers missing, but the integrity of the door is relentless.

Two perspectives. Interestingly, we are very good at asserting meaning to all of this. Usually translated as "I'm a f-up!" or "God's a f-up!" As I read in Proverbs about hope deferred, God doesn't talk about His responsibility. It just sounds like, "what is, is..."

Wealth gained hastily will dwindle,
but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
Whoever despises the word brings destruction on himself,
but he who reveres the commandment will be rewarded.

Hope is risky partially because it will reveal depths of our identity. Depths of our theology. God...

Saturday

Saturday was my mom's birthday. It is also my best friend from college's oldest son's birthday. I've always thought that connection was special. Saturday, coincidentally, I was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I found myself being refreshed and very open to how art can touch us. I've never much cared for Jackson Pollack or even Picasso for that matter. But on Saturday I could understand how they will live as classics. They stirred me. I'm not sure how or what it means, but I could sense it in my spirit. Lord move...

Forgiveness as journey

This morning I was praying the Lord's Prayer and made a connection with forgiveness that was new. I had always read the part about forgiveness as a formula, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us." It went like this, "I will forgive others, because that is how You have acted toward me." With the louder subtext being, "If you want forgiveness you had better forgive!"

As I was praying about it, the Lord was saying, "You can't participate in something you are unfamiliar with. If you understand forgiveness as it manifests from you to others, you will be awed as it is erupting between me and you." It was as if words like forgiveness, repentance, grace, love, were not capable of being contained in a single instance or mapped out with perfection. They were relational elements from God to us, us to others, and as our capacities and appreciation grows, the paths and understandings do as well.

The message this morning was that it was impossible to live the forgiveness of God in my life if my life was not one of forgiveness. Even a small attitude change or intentional release of forgiveness in my heart opened realities that couldn't have been explored just moments before. Clarity and understanding of past forgiveness from the Lord was better. It was not a carrot/stick approach, it was an existential reality. The possibilities of forgiveness only come by actively participating in it.

Woke up startled

I woke up startled from my afternoon nap today. I hate to wake up from a nap when twilight has succumbed to darkness. It's disorienting. I hate it so much that even when darkness is hours and hours away I wake up every ten to fifteen minutes to check. Or maybe that's the crazy Dutch guilt in not taking the opportunity to scrub the bathroom floor and instead sleeping? So while I love naps, generally they aren't worth the effort. Today I decided to take one anyway.

I dreamed that my grandma had called. I was amazed to hear her wonderful voice (she never calls - of the depression age where writing is more economical) and just then the phone dialed a family I knew from college. Just as I connected spiritual or emotionally, the phone dialed again. On and on and on and on the same pattern of disorientation, connection, and then another connection. Until there was this concert of voices on a single conference call. All of them talking over one another (I don't think they realized the others were on the line). They were not pulling or guilting or doing anything other than being who they were. There was no manipulation or coercion it was a huge sampling of the important relationships of my life occupying the same segment of time. Some seemed to have concerns they wanted to tell me. Others were as shocked to be on the line with me as I was. It was reach-out-america gone wild.

As I was processing all of this the cell phone rang in my dream again (after my grandma's voice, it had done all the calling) and as the phone moved from my ear to hand, the alarm buzzed, I stirred, and it was past twilight on a Sunday evening. Today. Do you ever have a moment after a dream, when you recognize there was substantive profundity, but just aren't sure what to do with it? That's where I've been since.

I think this dream was a gift. There seems to be so much that is unresolved in my life. Really, that is how life works. If it resolved, this would be one of the biggest curses I could imagine. We live as if there are at least a few more days ahead, we develop routines, some even cultivate deep lives in God and with others. Part of the psychology is "a little more time." From desire unfulfilled to have having three grandparents still alive in my 30's, but living 3,000 miles away, there is much unresolved in my life. A niece and nephew far away, and sisters and parents at a distance. When no one is around on a Sunday afternoon my thoughts don't center on career path, car, or vacation, thankfully they are person-oriented. Mostly it's calls I know I should make, elements of gratitude I should take, people I should touch. Instead of a mental experience of possibilities, trajectories, and dots that never connect. For some reason I think the dots should connect and I tend to hold life hostage until I can find a way to make it happen. Some times it is quite a tenacious stance (affording me moments of thought and contemplation that are so precious) and many times it's cowardice (just pick up the phone). If I just connected a dot here or there without the ultimate figured out, I would probably have a pretty amazing life...