8/26/2011

six months to insanity

Not for nothing did I change my blog's subtitle several months ago. What a new road my life's been on since February.

When this year started, I considered myself a Radical Biblicist. Now things are different. Not entirely; the journey has been leading this direction, as I now see it, all along.

Here's how I view things today: during my lifetime I have dealt with belief in God, via different denominations and non-denominations, plus studies regarding cults and Christianity, and also (perhaps most profoundly from years ago) experiences of my own choosing that showed up plainly my rebellion and God's mercy. These have led me to the "pre-denomination."

I think I have come home.

If that sounds dramatic, I'm sorry. I know reality is a place where everybody lives their story, each one equally significant. Because of that One who created, there's a reason we're all here. There is much to see, from multiple angles. Such wonder and beauty. Fragile steps along solid paths to true understanding. If it's insane to believe such things, well, I'm guilty.

I must admit I have been nervous. You don't just wake up one morning, "hear" God telling you something, and expect your very rational (though loving) friends to consider you still right in the head. This overthinking, undereducated woman fears being considered an idiot. Some days, though, that fear comes to matter much less.

Six months ago I got the message I needed to seriously consider Orthodoxy. It had to do with Tim, but the thought came to me in the context of my problem with pride. With feeling superior. I had gone to sleep, you could say, in the room within myself that has a sign on the door proclaiming, "God is the one in charge." I didn't think it mattered if I nodded off in there.

Gently, yet firmly, I got shaken awake. Have you noticed this happens to biblical characters? In one story, ten virgins await a bridegroom. They all doze off, because the waiting is long, but then, suddenly, the bridegroom appears and those who are still willing (well-oiled) hurry with him into the wedding feast. In another scene, three apostles watch, at their master's request, while he goes farther forward to pray in deep suffering. The master understands the men, even when their weakness lets him down. He doesn't point a condemning finger.

The message I received nudged me strongly, in part, because its delivery was familiar. This sort of thing has happened to me before. Only maybe four other times has something like this happened that spoke to every instinct, capturing my full attention.

I've taken seriously each of these message moments, in part, because there were two other aspects to each of them that seemed significant. Every one has come as a shock to me. Totally not where I thought things were headed. Yet, like the cool surprise at the climax of a great story, I have seen looking back where the unexpected element came from. There was foreshadowing.

The other aspect was my mistrust of myself each time. While feeling a sense of comfort amid the off-kilterness, I didn't expect that I was sensing aright. Only time would tell, each time. I waited in wonder to see the future's development. In other words, while I came to a conclusion based on a message I firmly thought God had given, I tried not to presume upon reality or close the door on the possibility I heard wrong.

Each of the previous times, the message I was given has remained valid to this day; in fact, each one only appears more plausible and right, many years later.

This sort of thing, however, never happened before regarding which church I should go to. And, yes, you remembered right, I was merely told to seriously consider Orthodoxy.

Only fleetingly, though, did I muse that perhaps this meant I was to infiltrate -- you know, the ultra-Protestant in disguise, seeking to free those poor slaves to religious ritual. Well, no. The way our introduction to Orthodoxy came about, I could see from the first there was a Gospel reality central to the foreign things these people were doing. I went and watched them. At first I assumed they said things and made motions with an attitude of needing to top other Christian expressions, to make themselves feel good as uber-churchgoers. I thought perhaps I would straighten them out on a few points. But mainly I knew I've never been sophisticated. I couldn't worm my way into something with ulterior motives, and it would be a sorry show if I tried. Besides, I don't think that's the sort of reason God would give me such a message if he had.

I was there to engage, as honestly as I could. Scariest sort of situation for me, when I am reluctant. Yet, it was the only way I would ever have pushed against those Orthodox words and actions I considered showy to find they are founded on something of rational meaning. Mysterious, rational meaning, true, at least for a Western mind to grapple with. But my little brain isn't the first and won't be the last to do so.

This past week I read the blog of a friend from the Radical Biblicist community. Satellite Saint contains attempts he's making to seriously consider Orthodoxy. As far as I know, if he's received divine nudges to do this, they were gradual or subtle, and he has mostly studied the concepts (though he did visit our church one day and posted about it here). He makes no claim to be committing to Orthodoxy, and I take him seriously there. This may be a passing study for him, but whatever the case, I appreciate greatly his articulation of very sane issues. I wish him the best, as I do all my friends, on the journeys ahead, in the messages to be engaged with.

8/23/2011

engineer's shadow in a dress

With my husband on a Sunday afternoon, still in church clothes, I ride up to Solar Heights, where there's a television translator.

I say, "Wish I had my camera."

He says, "You can use my phone."

I get directions on how to use it. Then I capture him unloading odds and ends of foliage he has removed from someone's yard (not a particularly electronic engineer thing to do, but he helps people and gets firewood sometimes in return).

I wait for him to finish. It's warm out, up here. There is a hunk of butte (Spencer's) near enough to almost touch, and I realize I haven't climbed it yet this year. Did I last summer? Months run together.

I play around a little, capturing an image of myself, but not.
The me that trails the husband and the months and these ripening times.

8/13/2011

pointers

Did you know some spiders love lavender bushes? They learn to hide deep within the slender stems. Their eight crafty eyes scan for a fuzzy abdomen, a whzzz of wings. They creep nearer, and then...

I didn't have a clue about such scenarios, until I was standing in the sun a couple weeks ago, on one of those first warm days that finally appeared in Western Oregon. The honey bees seemed as happy as I, and we were all drawn to the color and scent bushing over the white brick walkway (last summer Tim bought larger bricks for a good deal somewhere and improved the walk). The afternoon purred along, until I was shaken from my reverie by a change of movement in the lavender.

Three bees had morphed their cadence from the usual land here, stick face in, zip over here, check next flower. Now they were at arrowy attention, in close proximity, pulsing a message with their bodies. From three angles they strove toward something, as if pointing.

The thing was a bee, but not. It was stuck on a stalk where all had gone wrong. I jumped back as the well-known alarm in my middle went off. Spiderish movements! Black and hairy! Eww! I was quieter than the bees, since they kept buzzing, but my anxiety matched theirs. The bee was captive; the spider (likely a jumping variety) jittered and jagged, securing his grip.

The free bees must have smelled the captive's pheromones. Their language contains "Help me!" better and more eerie in silence than any Vincent Price creepshow. But the scent-call must have ended quickly. Sure as the spider knew his business, the struggling bee quieted, and its hivemates returned to more fluid toil at the lavender blossoms.

Since then, in my mind, I keep returning to this gruesome vignette. Of course the truth of its morality is a matter of perspective. For the spider it was all in a day's hunt. And spiders, though my phobia screams differently, have the right to dine, even to prefer honey.

The workings of nature and my nature buzz around me. I am human. To me, that fact shouts responsibility. I'd have saved the poor bee if I could've. That's me, today in my backyard, where life has plunked me.

Also, though, sad as it is, if I had been someone educated toward inventing things to help make the world run more efficiently (or whatever scenarios have driven the people who've changed our food), I could have invented some of the biochemical stuff Monsanto employs -- the stuff that extinguishes millions of bees because the hybrid blossoms it produces don't look right to the critters and they miss their chance to dine. I would have acted in terms of my perspective.

Yet there's always the hopeful chance I'd have happened upon the afternoon when, sunshine-starved, I'd have wandered out to my lavender bush. There, perhaps wrestling with deeper morality, I'd have noticed three bees when they pointed.

8/09/2011

from the third story

A young man named Eutychus, sitting at the window, sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead.
~Acts 20:9~


People come together around stories about redemption. There’s something at our core that responds to one well-told, and thus we remain eager for more of them. Very soon my friend Tim Elhajj’s memoir, Dopefiend: A Father’s Journey from Addiction to Redemption, begins its (hopefully very successful) journey in the publishing marketplace. I’m so happy for him. It’s a good one.

I’m glad the world still has plenty of room for second chances given and accepted. People worry, and I don’t blame them, that Christianity is no longer a place (or maybe has never been) where an individual can start over on the trail toward being a real person. There is a sense in 21st Century America that folks who believe the Bible and who believe in God also believe strictly in the condemnation of those who don’t. Or who don’t see things their way. Though I think burning at the stake’s by far not the whole story of the faithful in Christ, it has sadly been one of their associated features.

As someone who desperately needed redemption a time or two, I have lived in communities of Christian faithful who’ve been remarkably accommodating of my questions and directional swerviges. In fact, until recently I had never experienced the sensation of a believer I respect warning me that I might be rejecting the Messiah by my change of practice. Having sensed this warning recently, I now live in a new space.

I need to emphasize that I didn’t go to the believer(s) to whom I’m referring asking for their blessing regarding the new venture of faith I am undertaking. It wasn't that they responded with a curse to someone asking for help. I went to them in a context of sharing where I’m at and of requesting their opinion(s), which I highly respect and will take into serious consideration. I didn’t ask for our meeting(s) feeling especially needy or vulnerable. In fact, mostly for about six months I’ve been in shock at my shift from a Protestant to an Eastern Orthodox view. And I recognize the possibility that I am to some degree rebelling against real and true truth. Whether or not my rebellion is plausibly true in this case is, I guess, the deeper question.

I hope I am paying attention. I must trust that God will forgive the wrong step, the mistake, if it’s there and will continue to guide, teach, and redeem me, as I have believed he has been doing all my life. The story of my days looks somewhat amazing at this stage of existence half a century long. Not that it’s anything in comparison to others’ stories. But it gives me a picture of the perseverance of God in love, in kindness. My part is to keep being interested in whatever God is teaching me, by whatever means he is using. I hope I am doing this deed, this work of the heart that I long to do.

I pray I am staying wide awake. Yet if I’m not, if I go to sleep and fall out the window, at least my error will be accomplished in the room of my heart that wants like nothing else to listen to, taste, see, smell, and experience the greatest news, the best story.

8/06/2011

anniversary band

The uphill dirt road narrowed to a trail as I puffed alongside Tim. His purposeful strides have never been easy to match.

"I was thinking about," puff, puff, "something regarding what so-and-so said," puff, "and how it relates to this-and-that area of our lives." Whoosh, arm-swings, batting away of spider web.

Our hike through forest and shrubbery was idyllic. Conversation abounded, on my side at least. To Tim's credit, he responded thoughtfully in the right spots (having learned well during our 32 years). Best of all, he slowed down when I began to lag.

Or when I stopped for a picture.

"It's a firetruck!" Tim said as we passed this rig.


We were guests. As we always are, I suppose, wandering into natural creation, the domain of creatures who construct homes there and attempt to protect them from occasional acts of God. I'm so glad certain people who live the life of forested spaces enjoy inviting folks like us from town into the phenomenon of a luxury bed and breakfast.

Such certain people are Harry and Kathe. They live in and lovingly administer Cottage Grove's Apple Inn.

Our anniversary stay there was Tim's surprise gift to me. He even thought to tell Kathe I'm gluten intolerant. This resulted in amazing waffles adorned with homemade strawberry syrup at this lovely table.

Before breakfast, I immersed myself in a hot bath courtesy of a claw-foot tub. While indulging there, I listened, eyes closed. Tim's voice carried from the dining room, where he and Harry were getting acquainted. The familiar tones of my husband's stories met new notes in Harry's interspersed tales about times of his and Kathe's family, raised here, built while the house progressed. Work and machines and adventures are the memories two men past fifty sing. They're a gift in the hearing.


Also ringing was my joy in wearing the new band around my finger. An anniversary addition to my wedding set. Another surprise by Tim. A making of a shiny memory that joins the old, it sudsed up with the rest of me as I relaxed before the waffles and and the hike to a viewpoint with my man.

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