Face to face

In the moment of coming face to face with another human soul, there inevitably springs up a sudden and profound understanding. It is a sudden recognition of our shared humanity: of a certain inviolable aspect encompassing both dignity and brokenness, and humbly penetrating our many layers of disillusionment, withdrawal, and disguise.

The gesture is a simple one: a boy and a girl accidentally "catch" each other looking from opposite sides of a classroom. There is a bashful aversion of glances, but an invisible string now draws their gazes back upward. Something has been created in their midst, and life has sprung forth in the void.

In the simple meeting of gazes lies the mystery of Creation, simpler, perhaps, than we ever supposed. All the Created world is collaborative: "Let us make man in our image," our God says, and later we learn that, without Jesus, "nothing was made that has been made." And even as we are daily created anew, this is not absent of other people, but rather by the influence and well-mulled-over contributions of the people who occupy our surroundings.

Creation, too, is an issue of its creator: a representational, visceral, through-the-looking-glass interpretation of the designer, which bears, in some way his actual essence. Consider, for example, the architects of dreams in the movie Inception. By that which we create, we are, in some ways, made plain to those who see it, for seeing is a means of participating. When we truly, mutually see each other, we implicitly participate. Offshoots as we are of the Creator, there is a deep human longing to re-engage each other. Humanity has a need to be exposed, to be seen in its formlessness and void, with the Spirit of the Lord hovering over the waters. For that which we truly see we become complicit in, and the words of Psalm 38 become precious, overturning the soul: "All my longings lie open before You, Lord."

What intimacy there is in a husband and wife gazing into each other's faces. What intensity there is when even enemies collide and two unrelenting gazes lock. The expanse drawn out between two pairs of eyes is the world's most fertile ground. Every distraction and blight falls helplessly away. You cannot share a gaze where there is shame. You cannot share a gaze where there is indifference. Neither party can remain withdrawn; no context of time can be applied but the absolutely immediate present. There is a distillation of human purpose in the act of looking upon each other: we were meant to live life face-to-face.

We are a society of shoegazers. Much of the stuff of our daily lives could be carried out and accomplished without ever engaging another person, and true friendship has become a labor and a chore rather than the organic outflow of our nearness and our common need. We need so little, and what deficit remains we fill with counterfeits: the insular clutter of our iPods, our Netflix queues, and the faceless and disembodied chattering of social networks. No wonder that we are driven toward superficial and performative notions of love, success, and companionship. We make ourselves scarce and our failures invisible. We fear exposure because we are all imposters, violently overselling our few and feeble merits for fear that we will be discovered to be of as little value as we each secretly believe.

How unlike the life of faith.

In Christ we are the body: cells reproducing and dying, ever-attentive to the needs of this flesh, bearing in our souls the precious words of life: that ribosomal impartation of God that "shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper the thing whereunto I sent it." Here we have a responsibility to each other.

Angst...angst....angst........

Ignore the fact that it's Valentine's Day. For the first time, that reality is honestly not registering.

I've accumulated a whole cluster of messy feelings lately...perhaps part of being an intuitive creature, my soul feels like a high-scoring game of Katamari, collecting all of the many random things it passes through on its way from here to there. I'm a prisoner to the everyday grind: I need a jolt. The excess will fall off and I will climb gingerly over it and out, surprisingly nimble and small.

Or perhaps, like barnacles and boats, I must name the stowaways, sit down in the midst of them, and pry them loose with a knife and the assiduous application of effort.

*Last week, I went to the Alpha House, part of the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Washtenaw county. Objectives: cook dinner, serve dinner, clean up dinner, occupy chidren after dinner. I became frustrated and a little aggressive when my fellow workers (fellow ministers of the Gospel of Christ, to my thinking) sat down to eat dinner as a unit unto themselves, completely segregated from the Alpha House residents we had come to serve. I and another leader intentionally broke this trend. It was deeply uncomfortable, but, I believe, correct. After cleaning up the remains of dinner, I went downstairs where the rest of the group were playing with the children. As I walked through the door, exhausted and a little disgruntled, a 13-month-old girl toddled up to me immediately, and raised her arms, asking to be picked up. Stunned, I obliged.

I was instantly filled with incoherent, emotionally unfocused thoughts. All of the children there were utterly needy for love and attention, but also utterly unashamed to ask. I always find the experience of serving others to be deeply polarizing to my own soul. On one hand, there is something so right about the humility and faith of children who know and freely acknowledge their need. On the other, it is desperately sad that, although children are often shy with strangers, these children want to be loved and held so much that they are willing to run to any empty-handed stranger. I'm not saying that this is indicative of any specific kind of future: just that their type of receptiveness arises out of deep, tragically unfulfilled need.

*I also attended my first ever therapy session this past week. I was intent upon speaking only about my performance anxiety (as related only to my Jazz Theory class), but was pressed to speak also about wider issues fueling insecurity and sadness. My emotional response was (and is) disproportionate and irrational. To the same extent that I became vulnerable I became defensively angry. This, of course, speaks volumes. I just don't want to hear it.

Even as I write so impassively about it, I am fighting the desperate urge to turn on the TV and return to comfortable oblivion. The defects rooted deeply inside me are especially troublesome this week.

*The weather has been spectacular for February, and the thaw has been timely. I must connect with God through nature more than I realized: seeing the moon and the stars clearly in the night sky in the midst of an insistent, but warm, breeze helped me experience and understand God's nearness and existence in a way that has been sorely lacking since the snow began to fall.

*Every aspect of my life, interior and exterior, is about producing, synthesizing and creating. Is this how I am made or simply what I am being made to do? My spiritual life is indivisible from my job and my extracurriculars. Attempting to do full-time vocational ministry while also a full-time student means that everything I do is double-dipping. I cannot (despite untold attempts) sit down to read scripture without instinctively trying to fashion it into a brick that I can use to build liturgies or messages or songs. I am a collector by nature. Strengths Finder called this trait "Input." And yet I live in a constant state of output. This is deeply destabilizing to my soul. And I mean deeply.

*PrayUM's 40 Days of Prayer are ending in about a week. I'm tired. In forty days or fewer I've moved into a greater dependence on God, but also a greater deficit of personal ability to engage with these ministries authentically from an emotional standpoint. I feel like a spiritual mother: aggressively charged with protecting and sustaining this child, but to an extent that sometimes the emotions take a backseat, and my job is just to exist with a constant degree of insistence, imperturbably weathering the frustrations until the breakthrough comes on its own. I am very tired. Not the "I want to stop doing this" kind, but the "I wish it were easier" kind. I know that my sacrifice of passion now paves the way for many passionate people in the future. But my compulsive, Nehemiah-esque, gap-filling tendencies are sources of such exhaustion.

*Today, I started Monvee. Not because I necessarily chose to (in the interest of full disclosure, I was, and still am, rather wary of it), but because I am on the church staff, and we are about to do a full-scale implementation of Monvee curriculum over the next several months. I suppose it was alright to take their assessment and see what they had to say about me, both positive and negative. But, I'll admit, I sort of flipped out when it came time for the recommendations. I realized how thoroughly uncomfortable I am addressing my wounds and flaws (though I have no problem casually admitting, and therefore minimizing, them). I have no desire whatsoever to churn the waters of my soul. I know full well what will arise. It is horrendously ugly, soaked through with bile, disfigured, perverse, macabre. And then, beneath that, it is pitiful, self-indulgent, shameful, wounded, and tiny.

The last time I indulged my feelings I spent 4 months lying on the couch watching Grey's Anatomy for up to six hours at a time, and gained more weight than I care to admit. I suppress my feelings because that is how I survive. As regards my flaws, we live and let live. To my new therapist and to Monvee, this stuff only JUST settled. I really can't stir it all up again.

*I dropped my voice lesson this week. Indeterminately icky feelings about that. Voice lessons are good for me, and I grew a lot as a vocalist over the last year. But I dread going each week. So I dropped. It's February. If I can stay in college, and also avoid turning into a spiraling black hole of despair, I've done quite well.

Anyway....Katamari.

As Julian of Norwich said, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

And as Nathan Clair added, "Yes. But they shall pass through a major cluster on their way to wellness."

Blessed are the Peacemakers

Earlier today I attended an exhibit called Step Into Compassion at my church.

The Step exhibit was meant to shine a light on the church's involvement in social justice and missions work in Tijuana, Rwanda, and inner-city Detroit. As you walk through the exhibit, you read the stories of individuals affected by members of our church, and our partners at WorldVision. There is a priority on child sponsorship in the Tijuana and Rwanda sections of the exhibit, but because Detroit is so close (and because we partner with Peacemakers in this location rather than WorldVision) the response is much more practical and hands on; they need a lawnmower, extra toothbrushes, a coffee pot, or another pair of hands to help with work.

I visited Peacemakers in July with a troupe of about 40 high school students in tow (Please see the trip blog). I remember it as an exhausting, stressful, emotional time. My personal life was all over the place, and I was burnt out from a strenuous school and work schedule; I was the "Mama Bear" (that is, not the "fun parent")-- a little redhead trying to keep 40 kids safe in one of the most dangerous parts of the city.

I remember a feeling of hopelessness settling over me in the days leading up to the trip.

It is far easier to live in Ann Arbor, attend the University, work and read and make art-- anything to keep our eyes averted from our neighbor in her disarray. We are embarrassed by her. We don't know where to start. Nobody knows. Detroit is a disaster.

I like to call my mom and complain about schoolwork, career aspirations, how I'm too busy to clean my room; "I'm a wreck," I say to her, "An unmitigated catastrophe."

The thing about Peacemakers is that most of the people I met and fell in love with in July were gone when I returned a month later. There were hugs and kisses all around, and such happiness. But the inevitable moment arrived when we all began to sense the lack-- eyes floated around the room but couldn't latch on. Strangers milled about in the vacuum.

I didn't understand the work we did at Peacemakers at first. In the face of severe human need, we chipped mortar off of bricks and tried to reunite estranged pairs of shoes. It was inglorious. It was inconsequential. It lacked the glittering umbra of some manifest Presence; all presumptions of doing spiritual war seemed to dissipate as our "weapons" materialized in our hands-- chisels, rakes, paint brushes. Humiliated by the severity of the need and the precious little we could do, I found myself stepping, unknowing, into the deepest sense of solidarity with the people of Peacemakers.

I always leave Chene St. and Peacemakers with a vivid impression of the Gospel. The Gospel is far more relevant than I ever realize as I live in the city and attend the university and work and read and make art-- as I do anything to keep my eyes averted from my self in its disarray. There is something ringing true in the phrase, "the last shall be first and the first shall be last." It is the humiliation of a Sisyphean endeavor that gives the Gospel any meaning whatsoever. It is the gravity of the need and our utter powerlessness in the face of it that makes Jesus meaningful in the least.

I felt knots tightening themselves in my stomach as I stepped into the "sanctuary" portion of the exhibit this evening. It was nothing but a small atrium swathed in burlap and laid out to imitate the inside of the Peacemakers building, but the memories from Chene St. pushed up against me from all sides, forcing my breath up into my throat. I wanted to weep for bittersweet joy at every photograph. I wanted to walk into Shirlene's kitchen and get yelled at. I wanted to go back and spend an entire day swinging hammers at chisels and bricks. In the consistent doing of one very simple thing, I found such a purifying sense of focus, such a penitential diligence, such meditative, pervasive, redemptive penetration of the Gospel.

When Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers," He may not have been talking about the dear souls in Chene St. but I can see abundant blessing in that place as the small and simple labors are carried out in faith by addicts, prostitutes, abusers, drunkards, thieves, and violent criminals.

In the Christian faith we labor so hard after this idea of "sanctification." It is the progressive work of Christ in us that purifies us, sets us apart, causes us to align all the more closely with the God in whose image we were made. I learned on Chene St. that when unutterable grief and the smallest faith fuel the most menial task, it is a prayer and a meditation; it is the footwork of our sanctification. I long to live a life marked by such simplicity and purity of focus. College degrees, high-powered careers, and well-known ministries do not make us better. Sometimes we need to just sit in the dirt with a drug addict and chip mortar off of some bricks.

So many thoughts.....

Amen and Amen

When all around is crashing down, I'll find myself alive in You.

Holy One, renew!

When all around is crashing down, I'll find my spirit crying out,

"Holy One, consume!"

Intercessory Blessings

One of the most awesome gifts that God gives me is intercessory ministry. When God leads me to pray for or with someone, I know it is because the person or issue is on His heart, and He desires to change and redeem and save. What a mystery--! When I speak, God listens, and answers. When I come to God in agreeing prayer, or Spirit-led intercession, and go out onto limbs to speak what He puts on my heart, I am in a winning battle.

That was something that Bill Johnson said once-- that God doesn't send His children into battles that He hasn't prepared them to win. He hasn't set His children up for failure, but for victory through Christ. And, of course, Beni Johnson's book, "The Happy Intercessor" (a true life-changer) was all about praying from a place of victory, and praying with confidence into the things that God gives us from His heart. A particularly sticking passage:

"God's yes together with our yes is what brings about breakthrough in prayer. I'm continually amazed that God would choose to partner with us. [...] He wants us to help build His Kingdom here on earth. Some of the prophetic acts that we do come from the Lord, but I think that some of the things that we do are good ideas that the Father says, 'Yeah, that's good.'

I am convinced that God likes my ideas. So, when I pray, I pray from a place of security."

Also, in my backlog of thoughts about prayer is a sermon that Seth Kniep gave once, the theme of which was "What would you pray for if you knew that God would answer 'yes'?" This sermon turned my idea of prayer on its head. The idea was that in anything that God wants to do, when we say "Yes?", God says, "YES." When we pray for that which originates in the heart of the Father (a deliberate, expanded, and specific version of "Your will be done"), we give permission for God to move in our midst and do what He has desired to do all along. Because so much of God's movement in our midst is predicated upon His invitation to do so-- as a friend of mine so aptly put it, "God doesn't steer a parked car". Asking God to do what God desires to do is a guaranteed "yes". As it says in II Corinthians 1:20, "

"For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'yes' in Christ. And so, through Him, the 'Amen' is spoken by us to the glory of God."

In other words:

1) God promises

2) Jesus offers to fulfill promises

3) Through the Spirit of God, we know well enough to speak the "Amen, DO IT, God!"

4) God is glorified by the accomplishment of His will on the earth.

Anyway. All that to say that I love the opportunity to pray. I just LOVE prayer. I find it completely unbelievable that God gives us that kind of opportunity to affect change, and that the same God that decides where the lightning should go, and who holds the seas in jars in His cabinet wants to have a relationship with ME, which is defined on His favor for me, and His regard for the concerns of my heart, and His honoring the requests I make of Him. It's bizarre.

I have long struggled with ideas of authority in prayer....with prophesy, and with proclamations of various kinds....the name it/claim it brand of Charismatic Christianity / prosperity gospel that I don't necessarily jive with....

but today I got a really amazing opportunity to partner with God's heart in the lives of one of my friends, and it was just awesome. I met with this friend earlier in the day because he had wandered away from Christ, had been living in sin, and was experiencing some serious discouragement, doubt, and fear about losing his salvation. We had a really amazing conversation guided by John 1:35-43, and Jesus's responses to his new disciples. I asked Jesus what I should say before this friend arrived, and He led me to this passage, where Jesus says,

"What do you want?"

John's two disciples basically say, "We want to know where You're staying. We want to be close to you."

Jesus says, "Well, then, come along and see. Stay with me for a while."

One of these two disciples is Andrew, the brother of Peter. Andrew gets Peter, brings him to Jesus, and Jesus makes a prophetic declaration over him: "You will be called Cephas".

The next step is Jesus beginning His journey, and issuing the invitation "Follow me."

So, long story made short, I patterned my conversation after this pattern of Jesus's --

1) Inquire and understand what this person REALLY wants

2) Love. Invite them into close relationship and to share the life that God has given you.

3) Make a prophetic declaration.

4) Invite them to make a decision to follow Jesus.

The conversation was great and went really well.

I hurried from there to pick up my friend Megan so that we could go to Epic at Northridge Church. When I arrived at church, this same friend was already there. I was so pleased! God really seemed to be working in his heart during the service. It was a great message with great worship, and there were MANY, many tears. I was able to stand in the gap and battle for him as I watched God intervene in his heart, and it was awesome. Midway through the service, though, I got this very strong feeling that God wanted to give him new life through the Holy Spirit -- that God was present and so ready to just HAVE him once and for all. I knew that I wanted to pray with him after the service, prophesy over him, really just release God's joy and the fire of the Holy Spirit because God wanted to show up and make change!

Mitch, Rob, and Jakob came along too, which was amazing. I don't know exactly what God did, but He was there in the laying on of hands, through so many tears, manifest in laughter and feelings of electricity....we were able to just bathe him in prayer so thoroughly and prophesy over him and proclaim an end to his addictions, his hindrances, the scars on his life, and the distractions of worldly pleasures. He is a child of God, and this is his inheritance in Christ Jesus-- this is what God wants to give him through Christ, and Satan has no lingering power over this situation. We were permitted through Christ to DECLARE freedom over him, and DECLARE courage and power over him because Jesus has defeated sin and holds the keys to death and hades. End of story. It was amazing to be able to know that God was present in that moment, that God was listening attentively to what I was going to ask Him for, and that God was poised and waiting to answer, deliver, and manifest.

This is why I see intercessory ministry as such a gift. The Holy Spirit just ALWAYS goes with me. I never have to try to convince God that what I am asking for is important because it comes from HIS heart rather than mine. It is already important enough in His heart to share with me. And, like Beni said, I can pray from a place of confidence. I do not understand why God does what I ask of Him. All I know is that yesterday I asked Him to speak with me out of the storm, and I was immediately answered by the most beautiful lightning I've seen in my entire life. So I lingered outside in the storm to talk with Him a while. And when I asked Him for one last beautiful bolt for the road, He waited for me to step out into the full clearing and trust Him....and then, the brightest, loudest, most violent lightning bolt split the sky above me, and suddenly I knew the fear of the LORD. He is not safe AT ALL, but His love is as as great is His fury, and that storm was a mere TASTE of His fury. How great is His love!

So anyway. I've veered off-topic.

I love to pray.

That is all.

Old post, May 9, 2010

Time for a new post. So much has gone on in the last few months that I'm not even going to try to recap it. Better to focus on the last few days.

The last couple days have been ridiculous. I've been watching the IHOP Student Awakening with Mitch, Isaac, Ciara, Sam, and also Rob and others. We've been gathered in community for hours every night. It's been intense, trying, heavy....but joyful, liberating, and, frankly, amazing. It started with Wednesday, watching the Awakening service. There was such joy! Took us a while to get into it, but after 4 hours or so of watching the service (yeah, 4 hours...), it just broke open, and we were in really intense worship (when Matt Gilman started singing "Holy"...I LOVE that song of his...). Then the next song, I think was either that song that Jaye Thomas sings...like..."If you know the Lord's been good to you...then dance, dance, dance...." and after that, "You Are Good"....yup, we pretty much danced around crazy, jumping everywhere, singing at the tops of our lungs....all in Mitchell's barn. Crazy crazy crazy. It was a really good refreshing, bonding time for us.

Then the next night, we got together and did it again, but went deeper. We went to a Community Group Bible Study first (which was awesome....so many friends there....I want to go again!), and afterwards went back to Mitch's to watch the Awakening. My friend Ciara felt God's Presence like a heavy weight pushing her body to the floor until she just laid there facedown, unable to lift any part of her body for over an hour. Isaac and I were sitting on the couch with Mitchell between us, each of us praising and interceding whilst convulsing and groaning and laughing....lol It was so weird. And really great. There was an amazing song at the verrrry end of the service (such that the end of it got unceremoniously cut off as the webcast ended.....even though the song was about to explode, and I was shouting over it.....until it suddenly stopped and I was singing/shouting into a silent room full of people....;D) that is super contemplative and begins with "We wait for you. We wait for you. We wait for you. Walk in the room....." and riffs on that for quite a while. That was a really amazing prayer from my heart because I realized that there were definitely things that God wanted me to wait for Him for. Relationships, for one thing. What a cleansing time of prayer and praise. Alan Hood, one of the honchos at IHOP, gave a huge exhortation to get into Scripture, and fortify ourselves with pure spiritual milk and then with meat, instead of just being led into shallow worship experiences, and then be let down by having no foundation. He used the example of driving out the demon (worship) and cleaning up the house, but not filling it up with anything so that the demon can return and bring 7 more stronger demons with it. He could have just as well used the example of the fast-growing flower with the shallow roots, I suppose. But the point stands. Important to make room in our hearts through worship, and then to fill up that space with the knowledge of God that comes from the Word so that we're not deceived or left vulnerable to the attacks that follow worship times. It was a really amazing time, though, complete with going through that decision process.

Friday was not ......yeah. We got together again, and some good things happened: got to minister to a kid that my friends had actually led to Christ a week or so earlier...and then ran into him randomly again that Friday....God.

Anyway, after that, we got together to watch the Awakening again. It was really difficult, actually. Most of us just sat in silence and vegged in front of the screen. It was just really hard to muster up any energy....we were feeling exhausted in every way, wanted to collapse or cry....were force-feeding ourselves Scripture for our healing......but we were all in a weird funk.....except Isaac, who was half-passed-out on the couch, singing/shouting to Jesus with the most ecstatic smile on his face I've ever seen. lol

It was like he was seeing God....:) his body was totally limp and his face was upturned with this huge smile, and he was singing, "Jesus! Jesus! I love you so much Jesus! You're so beautiful! Make a fool of me! I want to look foolish for Your Love! Jesus! You're so good! You're so amazing! I love you! You're the King of my heart!!"....and such and such. :) His joy was so contagious. Cause he CAN'T sing. He was more just like....groaning loudly over the sounds of the service....which were pretty mellow. :) Hilarious. That made it all worth it because it filled us with such joy, and it's stuck with me all day today.

On a sidenote, I am currently listening to Laura Hackett's "I Put on Christ"....and it's re-rocking my world. I've probably heard it every day this week....and yet.

I'm hoping I can start learning what it is to step out in purity and consecration now that this seems even slightly doable. I know it's not easy by any means, but the more time I spend in the Word, getting to know God again, and experiencing Him through worship and learning to recognize Him whenHe comes......well, the more in-love I'll fall, and the easier it will seem to move forward in holiness and separation. I am ok with being alone in the name of holiness....but the problem is that I'm still at a point where I am deciding the circumstances and telling God what I am and am not ok with about His plan for me. This is wrong.

I would like to quit life now and lead worship conferences. Mmk? Mmk.

Everything Comes Alive

In my life, as we lift You higher. Let Your freedom arise in my life as we lift You up. Sing it out! Freedom is here!