“People tell me it’s a sin, to hold so much pain and hurt within.”
[Bob Dylan]
“He’s the master I need when I’m really struggling, because I can curse him and show him all my failures and flaws and all he does is laugh. Laugh, and love me.”
[Elizabeth Gilbert]
“You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.”
[Josh 23:14]
And a million other things.
The monitor glare lights the space around me. An American worship band are providing the soundtrack via their mySpace. A physically distant yet emotionally close friend, provides me with a sounding board, via iChat.
I’m typing as I go, trying to make some sense of the emotions and the thoughts running through my head today. I weep as I realise what I have just typed. I weep for something I have never known.
How can you miss something you have never had?
I fear making the same mistakes. I fear becoming the same person.
And I struggle to hold those ideas in tension, to reconcile them. I struggle to let Jesus work. I struggle to let him take the pain. I struggle to let him do new things in our relationship. And at my most honest, I struggle to believe he will.
Some days it’s harder to cling to hope than others. Thank goodness we don’t walk this alone.
“You’ll need more than us. You’ll need more and better. You’ll need other people. You’ll need people to help you process, people to help you let go, people to help you remember what’s true and people to help you forget what’s lies. You’ll need the stories and advice of people with gray hair or white hair or no hair at all. Don’t buy the lie that suggests they have nothing to offer or nothing to say – they were young once too. They are stories still going and they’ve seen the places you will go. They’ve been stuck at times as well, just like you and me and everyone.
You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things.”
[TWLOHA]
What do I need to forget/ remember/ let go?
Can we be that people for each other?
Many of you know that I unexpectedly ended up back in Northern Ireland last weekend. One of my closest friends, Jill, lost her dad to pancreatic cancer. I can’t even imagine how painful it’s been for her. I’m glad I was able to go back and be there for the funeral, to sit shiva with her. It was heartbreaking, yet I know her dad would have been so proud of her. I’m blown away by her strength & her humility.
Jill & I have an odd history; we took a long time to meet each other! We lived in the same area, we went to the same school, we both lead our school CU, we have a large overlapping friendship group… but God chose to wait, and took us to Latvia to meet each other. A few years ago I co-lead an Exodus team to Latvia from Glasgow, and Jill co-lead one from Ballymena. We met for the first time in Belfast, getting on a bus to Dublin airport. Those first few days in Latvia we wrestled with knowing how best to lead our teams and support our leaders. We almost didn’t really hang out that much at the start, as we focused on our respective tasks.
Each evening in Zosna, we’d sit around a camp fire with the kids and talk about life, talk about Jesus. One evening, we didn’t stay. I can’t say why for sure, but as the dusk gave way to night we went for a stroll. As we meandered along the lakeshore, we poured our hearts out to each other. It was as if someone had pulled the stopper out, and there was no putting it back in. We barely knew each other, and yet there was a safety in the others presence that I have rarely felt, before or since. We began to share our stories, warts and all.
As the sun set, we wept in each others arms.
We wept for the pain.
We wept for the things we have lost.
We wept for the difficult choices we would have to make in coming days.
We wept for the kids in Zosna.
We wept for the kids who grew up never knowing they were loved.
We wept for ourselves.
And in that moment, there was a healing.
Or rather, there were the beginnings of a healing.
These scars, they don’t heal fast. Life hasn’t been perfect for either of us. Yet I cannot help but think of the example that I have been shown in Jill.
Our wounds matter.
Jill has helped to teach me that.
That our lives have meaning, and purpose.
And that the weeping is important.
While driving back from Nairn last week, Matt & I got into discussions on things like church, tradition, change, and musical worship, among many other things! I made a comment that I’ve been thinking about ever since, and wanted to hear your take on it too. I want to preface it with a small caveat, in the interests of honesty: I’m pretty sure I’ve stolen the idea from someone else, but for the life of me I cannot figure out who!
I shared that I wondered how much of our preferences or distastes for a particular style of corporate worship music are influenced by cultural memory (the term I fear I’ve stolen) more than by the music itself. By cultural memory, I am referring to the almost hard-wired associations we have between things. In part this thought was sparked by the realisation that I enjoy some of the old hymns a lot more when they are set to a different style of music, such as when I first heard the Hymns Ancient & Modern album by the Passion band.
As part of the younger generation, certainly my own cultural memory of organ music is that of stuffy church services I couldn’t wait to escape. For an older generation, their collective cultural memory of guitars and drums is one of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. I wonder how my granny would react if we arranged some Chris Tomlin for the organ? Would it be a doorway to open up some wonderful modern hymns for an older generation, in the same way that arranging hymns such as Come Thou Fount for guitars has been for me?
So, what d’ya think? Crazy idea? Anyone tried anything like this?
I took off a few days last week and headed on retreat, unplugging from the wider world for a couple days. I feel so much better for it! I disciplined myself to no email, no twitter, no internet… and honestly, it was harder than anticipated. It doesn’t seem to bother me so much when I’m abroad, but when I know it’s there & I could use it if I wanted to… it’s a lot harder not to. I think that time was an eye opener for me, that as much as I love the technology, to never let my worth come from my use of it. Nouwen wrote that as we embrace silence, we quickly discover how dependent we are…
“When we enter into solitude to be with God alone, we quickly discover how dependent we are. Without the many distractions of our daily lives, we feel anxious and tense. When nobody speaks to us, calls on us, or needs our help, we start feeling like nobodies. Then we begin wondering whether we are useful, valuable, and significant. Our tendency is to leave this fearful solitude quickly and get busy again to reassure ourselves that we are ‘somebodies’. But this is a temptation, because what makes us somebodies is not other people’s responses to us but God’s eternal love for us.”
[Henri Nouwen]
These words always hit me hard between the eyes, as I try to live them out and know how miserably I fail. I guess that’s why there is a constant refrain ‘to remember’ in the Bible; God calling us back to the root, to being somebody in his eyes alone. In that knowledge, I long to re-enter daily life with a slower pace; a more relaxed attitude. The world does not fall apart if I check out for a few days. God’s still in control.
I feel like I worked some holy margin back into my life over the last few days; like I gave myself a little space to dream, to play, to be again. I need that little bit of margin in my week to give me space to breathe and dream and create; that somewhat paradoxically actually increases productivity by taking time off. I know that’s been missing lately, and I desperately want to cling onto it this time round.
So tell me, what works for you guys? What rhythms, if any, do you have for your days & weeks? For those of you who often work weekends, when do you take time off?
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