In a Nutshell

Thoughts at the end of a full, long, emotionally exhausting, disrupting and beautiful semester:

Being a part of a community of people for any extended period of time is an arduous journey and at the same time everything I desire.

God will use those who 'dont know' to teach those who 'know.’

Truth is relational (but not relative).

Modernism is not the enemy, and neither is postmodernism. They are simply the ways things are (or were), and each are both healthy and unhealthy lenses used to draw meaning.

I don’t bring my full presence when I meet you –I don’t know if you or I can handle that – or can we?

How do I live out the gospel in the midst of preaching it so passionately to you?

Transformation does not happen through information, but by encounter. People will not change by nice sayings and theory, but through experience, through engagement.

People come into therapy for a solution to their problem. We are to be involved in a process of translating the human heart into the language of the Gospel. This is not for me to simply say ‘God is good’ but to create a living experience of this truth with them.

A rough run in relationships for the past 5 years has made me want to give up hope - just in time came faith, hope, and love, and I guess I’m supposed to keep at it…hooray for hope.

“Father sing me into feeling.”

My heart frightens me in its deceitfulness and amazes me in its desire.

Spiegel im spiegel

Language. Writing. Being able to hold all that could and had to happen.

Snow on the ground = four hour gridlock.

My cash-flow is not ideal at the moment.

Life is not ideal. Changing a tire in the pouring rain in the middle of rush hour traffic on the last day of class…not ideal.

I have been blessed by the entrance of some people into my life. The unpredictability of a God that surprises us with something that is sweet, where for a moment, the true fullness of ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’ is felt. That is a blessing, and I am thankful.

I am continually drawn into repentance, my knees to the floor, by one thing: beauty.

Upside Down Kingdom

Taking a break from my faith hope and love studying earlier today, I had some lunch and in doing so came across a scene from Philadelphia that seemed to sum up a part of what this semester has done in me.

Andrew (played by Tom Hanks) is a gay man in the movie, talking to his lawyer, Joe (Denzel Washington) when in the background, an opera comes on. Andrew walks over to the stereo, turns up the volume, then leads Joe into the meaning, expressing the heart of the beautifully spoken words of the female opera singer as the song plays. He enters into her heart, eyes closed, ready to catch every nuance her voice projects. He describes her initial longing, and the suffering and loss that follows in the song, and then the increased desire that the woman says will be now open to experience with another, and then at the end, when the female opera singer is at the climax, he begins to weep, completely absorbed in face of love.

It was fitting. I sat there amazed, even startled. Right after reading so much on faith, hope, and love, I was led into the experience of the heart of the concepts by a gay man. The similarity between the scene and what I just read was almost eerie.

Someone so easily written off as a 'sinner' led me passionately into the love of God. Such seems to be the way God works, what the Kingdom looks like.

I thank this school and the people here who have shown me the humanity and the divine in what so often in the past has been seen as 'secular'. I have been humbled this semester by those who do not seem to 'know Christ' yet seem to reveal Him in such a profound way. Watch this scene and tell me this man does not reveal the glory of God.

The Face of the Other

I was just reading the interesting dialogue we have going on here in Seattle between Mark Driscoll and a pastor in the area(among others), Rose Madrid-Swetman.

It was great to read her comments about what went on in the face to face meeting. What most struck me was her comment:

"Words on a blog or on a paper are one thing—people in a room who those words touch are quite another."

With so much rhetoric on both sides of this dialogue, it is good to remember how easy it is to call out the 'other' when you are not sitting face to face, looking into the eyes of another human being.

How are we living out the gospel in the midst of our passion and ensuing differences about this same gospel? It was great to see both sides here appearing to act in the same love they so passionately preach.