Why Fight?

I think that life comes with many ups and downs and that part of growing up is seeing those once high expectations come crashing down; the youthful dreams of what life should be - regardless of what influences were wrought into shaping those expectations.

I was asked at work today if I believed to be true the maxim, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

"I think what doesn't kill you can make you harder..."

Dashed expectations have a habit of making one colder. More lethal. And I think that if one is not careful, you can miss out on what exactly it is that makes fighting - well - worth fighting for.

There's the great quote from the Lord of the Rings movies - The Two Towers to be exact, and Frodo, in the middle of his journey to destroy the evil Ring of Power and despairing at his plight, turns to his ever faithful friend, Samwise Gamchee....

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam. 

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.

If you forget the goodness - it makes fighting for it somewhat moot, doesn't it? Not the goodness, but the fighting. It means it's easier to blow off relationships with significant others because you've already forgotten why you even wanted to be with them to begin with. Maybe it's your wife, your family, your God... It's easy to forget. And it's easy to just arbitrarily fall into a direction and let the ship sail to wherever for however long... At least, it's easy for me to do it this way, and see it this way.

One of the senior high youth guys just asked me, as I'm writing this, via text: "What's the point in investing time outside of school with friends that I'll pretty soon leave and never talk to again? Why bother?"

I'll end with my answer to him.

The sum total of your life isn't what's practical or rational, it's how you choose to deal with what you've been dealt.With that logic why do anything in this cursory life? Why kiss the girl you love? Why climb the highest peak? Why anything...

I think I'm beginning to understand why Wilcox would say that we always have what we give to love --- why it is that the sum of the law and prophets can be found in, as my friend Erin would put it, passionately loving God and passionately loving other people.

Well, just some thoughts from watching another episode of Chuck.

I heart Chuck (well, actually) Agent Sarah Walker.

Bon Iver

So Peggy gave me a CD with Bon Iver a long time ago - and for some reason when I first played it I just wasn't feeling the sound. When I found out that Bon Iver had songs on two episodes of NBC's Chuck. When I found that out - I decided I needed to try and give Bon Iver a second chance...

So, Bon Iver is not the name of the lead singer. The lead singer is Justin Vernon. Bon Iver is a play on the French bon hiver, which means: good winter. Apparently Justin wrote all this songs while in the woods of Wisconsin at his father's cabin while afflicted with mononucleosis and recovering from some emotional setbacks. I guess he hit near the bottom of the proverbial emotional barrel. And since Chuck has this way of exposing emotions - thanks to the interesting depth between the Chuck and Sarah's relationship, or lack thereof - Bon Iver's music makes sense to be used.

I found this video on Bon Iver sining A Capella the song For Emma, Forever Ago.



And that's what sold me on Bon Iver. I can't stop listening to them. Maybe you'll like them too...

Almost Universalist

So I attend a Presbyterian Church. Which is a pretty conservative denomination, very heavy-leaning in theology and in covenant families and the proper training thereof. But I don't tell my fellow attendees that once, a few years back, I was on the door step of becoming a universalist.

To my knowledge there are two basic distinctions of universalists - at least of the ones I've met. You have the God/Being universalists, and the Jesus universalists.

1. God/Being universalists essentially believe that God is good and will save all people, everywhere, and at every time, because God is love, and if you are love, that's what you do.
2. Jesus universalists believe that God will save all people because God is good, is love, and is saving all people through Jesus who died on a cross, with Jesus' death being the pinnacle expression of how much God loves people. (This delineates from traditional Christianity which says only believers will be saved, and unbelievers not.)

I don't tell Presbyterians about this experience, or the majority of them anyway, because one time my friend, Lucas, whom I am very fond of, replied immediately upon my confession: "What were you thinking?" (He grew up a Presbyterian. I did not.) I could have said that it was quite, in fact, the very reason that I almost became one;  because I was, really, thinking. I don't think he would have understood. I don't think he'll understand now.

I almost became a universalist because they, wittingly or not (for even a broken clock is correct twice a day), focused on an aspect of God that really spoke to me. And that is that God really is Love. That He really is beautiful, and worthy, and mesmerizing, and wonderful. Of course, you would have had to have seen glimpses, shadows, of this in your own life experience to be able to relate. If nothing has ever been beautiful, nothing ever worthy, nothing ever mesmerizing, nothing ever wonderful - then all of this is but a glib vapor of romanticism; of no substance or rationale, I suppose.

I think I just needed to see that again, at least at that point in my life, I needed be able to know the nearness of God. I needed to be able to see the lines of His face and hear the laughter of His voice, and in these things I needed to be able to rejoice again.

I wished Lucas would have instead asked: "What did you learn?" I think that we are, more often than not, consumed with the safe path than we are with the good path; the authentic path. By authentic I mean genuine. I mean you being you and not you trying to imitate Billy who is running around trying to imitate Greg who is imitating Susy, and she doesn't even like Greg, but she's also trying to imitate Calvin - and Calvin, well, he just really wants to be like Billy.

I respect, and I guess I understand, why a universalist would choose to be so. I don't think they're right, or at least as correct as they think they are, but I understand why they're on that boat. It's a mooring for those who both know they have no hope unless God saves them because they aren't good and those who think that if God isn't good, then He's not really much worthy of being called God.

The reason I don't believe God saves everybody, aside from where I believe He says He doesn't, is because when someone writes a story, some characters are written in as protagonists and some as antagonists. And when the story is over, when the hero wins (if there is one, depending on your story, let's just say there is) - we are glad he triumphed. I've never heard anyone say, "Gosh, why did the douche bag character have to be a douche bag, couldn't he have been better?" It's just the nature of the story - some things are antipodal for the very reason of juxtaposition, of comparison, of highlighting, I suppose.

Now maybe someone might say, "Well, if you're in heaven with god and you aren't sad everyone isn't there with you, then you don't deserve to be there and that heaven sucks and that god sucks." And we understand why he might say that because it seems to spit in the face of love. And that's what we really want, right? Love, that is? But love is an interesting thing and I think, for the finite mind, that it can only be taken in in certain parts, or at least, not all at once. In one part, delight, and delighting in. If I am with a girl, in a dating relationship, and I delight in her, in her presence and ability to create an aura of clarity and appreciation, I don't sit back and think about every ex-girlfriend and then no longer delight in my current situation. I remember them perhaps, and I know I'm grateful for the experiences that led me here, the things that grew me up and matured me even if they didn't always feel kind. Yet I am still in the moment of delighting, and it is because it really is delight and not some fabrication or manipulation I've conjured that I really do feel - well - delight. The sensation she creates, the emotional, the biological, the spiritual, they are here. Does that mean she'll be around tomorrow. No. It just means that it exists, that it is happening, that it - is. Perhaps this is a shadow of what it means to be before the face of God; to know just as we are fully known. No longer will we see as in a mirror or glass blurred or dim, but we will see, clearly. And I think to be before the face of God is to feel that delight, fully, and not merely the shadow.

Another thing I think gets mixed up is what parts people play in the story. There's this story called the Song of Solomon. It's a bit of a love story with some really weird imagery.

1 Behold, you are beautiful, my love,
behold, you are beautiful!
Your eyes are doves
behind your veil.
Your hair is like a flock of goats
leaping down the slopes of Gilead.
2 Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes
that have come up from the washing,
all of which bear twins,
and not one among them has lost its young.
3 Your lips are like a scarlet thread,
and your mouth is lovely.
Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate
behind your veil.
4 Your neck is like the tower of David,
built in rows of stone;
on it hang a thousand shields,
all of them shields of warriors.
5 Your two breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle,
that graze among the lilies.
6 Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
I will go away to the mountain of myrrh
and the hill of frankincense.
7 You are altogether beautiful, my love;
there is no flaw in you.

There are essentially three characters in this story: HE, SHE, and OTHERS (or the chorus, and sometimes that chorus is broken up into the chorus for HE and the chorus for SHE). If I could just posit before you this - what if the HE and the SHE are both God, and we, the people, are OTHERS. What if the main character is God, and we're just minor characters in a sweeping drama, meant both as participants and as witnesses, in the greatest love story ever - God's love for Himself. Sounds egomaniacal, perhaps? What if there is one thing in the universe that is the most lovely, most beautiful, most worthy thing to be loved? What if that one thing really is God? What then should God love the most?

The implications of such a thing, I leave to you. Until the next time - here's to beauty, and being grateful for it.

Cheers.