Coldplay, Dan, Passion, Therapy

Had another week with Dan Allender's faith, hope, and love…and it was just as intense as the first.

But some thoughts…my favorite song right now is from Coldplay, called Fix You. The song caught me by surprise, as I was driving back from Oregon with a sluggish posture, my body tired, my eyes heavy from the busy week and weekend. I was enjoying the mellowy Coldplay sound. The song Fix You came on and it started out slow as most of their songs do. I was half-listening to the lyrics, due to my half-numb state of mind. I was in a bumbed mood for several reasons, one part of the loneliness that wants to latch onto me once in awhile, and in the same way the questions like what in the world am I doing out here.

Yet suddenly the guitar started to jam out (like the U2 of old), and the tone and pace of the song sparked something in me, grabbed my attention. I turned the volume turned up, with the drums adding to the crescendo, and he then sang out several times ‘tears stream down your face, when you lose something you cannot replace.’ At this point, my mood had suddenly been lifted from indifference to intense emotion. I was immersed in this song. I listened to it several more times, each time absorbing, soaking up all the song had to offer me. I don’t know exactly what the song was initially meant to convey, but by the time it was done, it meant passion. It sang me into passion. It reminded me of the love for all the things that really matter. It could mean something completely different to you, but to me in my story, the song meant passion.

I say this because that is what Dan also leads me into. I cannot sit in his class and space-out with a temper of indifference. And this is one of the main things I have taken from my time with him; a calling to not live in indifference. Not to side with a numb, unconcerned, apathetic, uninterested heart. This is significant for me as I have read some more about the heart, how it wants to go into repression when it experiences pain, a form of safety to never experience the pain it once felt again. Instead of opening itself up again it opts for no feeling at all.

Like the song, Dan leads the class into passion. I don’t think anyone could sit in the class and not feel anything. You would have to either love him or hate him. No neutrality. This has confronted my own tendency to lie in the realm of neutrality. I am a mellow person. Not that I think that is inherently bad. But I think I can often use that to hide from what is really going on. I don’t like confrontation. Like anyone, I don’t like my heart to hurt. And like anyone, it has been, really bad, and I have often opted for the choice to sit in or around numbness.

Like the song, I have been led by Dan into an arena that wars with our emotions, our pasts that lie in the present by memory. I have been led to enter into the pain, not in a way that accompanies pity, but an action that desires to mourn and suffer well, which will ultimately bring out a passion and joy not only now but in anticipation of what is to Come in the future. Most of the songs in the Bible were expressed this way, in acknowledgement that to be living is to be in a sense of pain, but at the same time in passionate joy. This is paradoxical, yet this is life. And Dan has asked us how well we rest in that tension, that of death and life. Will you choose more of one than the other, or neither one, or will you embrace both? Will you choose to acknowledge reality when it seems like madness? We are often not fond of the reality that God has given us. Where do we then turn? What addiction takes us out of reality, turns down the knob for a moment? What is this thing which becomes your idol? Can you take the visible failure in idolatry and let it know what its heart really wants? G.K. Chesterton writes ‘every man who walks into a brothel is looking for God.” Do you acknowledge the desire that God has implanted in you which finds its home in your own brothels? Will you acknowledge that you are looking for God!!! Will you stop trying to numb life through addiction and enter into feeling where you can truly experience what life has to give, and to embrace that well in the suffering and pain that you know will bring you even more capacity for joy.

How have the times when you have been betrayed spurred you to construct gods that are better and more pleasing to you? How have you escaped being an orphan? How have you avoided being a stranger in a foreign land? Do you use wit or just simply talk so much that you keep everyone at an amazing distance, or euphemism your way to escape reality? Our idolatry is an effort to find joy outside of God. What do you kneel toward (good looks, intellect…) to keep yourself from being an orphan, to invert reality? Will we trust that we will not be left as orphans, or will we cling to other saviors? It is not about life working for us, but a preparation for what is to Come. Will we be made ready in our waiting and our trust of what is to Come. Will we live well today in that anticipation. Will we have good wine in a real community that is not perfect, in fact may be very broken, but in that way know how we are all the more waiting well for what will Come.

Where are you desiring His Coming? A brothel? Are you able to see through this? To what your heart desires? Will you wait well? Will you, along with the Scripture, hold both joy and suffering together? This is true passion, true living. Not a passion that wants to escape the world and go to heaven but wishes to embrace all that is right now.

This is what we are to offer in therapy. Not an escape and simple solving of the single problem our client has come to us for. It is always part of a deeper problem. We cannot be plastic surgeons. We engage them into the story of life. Only then can true heart transformation occur. It will not happen if we throw a Bible verse at them. That is using the truth as a weapon, not as a transformative language. We must enter into the language of their story. Only then will the love of the Gospel make sense. Then we can offer them the reality of what faith, hope, and love is. The Gospel is to be embodied, to be spoken with action, and occasionally with words. This is true therapy, giving flesh and blood to the ultimate reality of the Gospel. This is also an engagement with passion.

Wow didn’t expect to go off on that tangent, but just got into my notes from the past weeks and felt compelled to right. Hope you made it through.