Voices in My Head

I wonder what the conversation would be like if Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, John of the Cross, Jonathan Edwards, Augustine, John Piper, Tim Keller, Bruce Waltke, and Eugene Petersen sat down to have a meal together?

That's what they're doing in my head, and they dine often.

It's not always pleasant, sometimes I feel awkward, lost, afraid of where the conversation might lead. I often feel the compulsion to protect and defend each one at different times, at other times I am angry that one of them could say such a thing - especially given all the other wonderful things they have said. At times there is an anxious clamour as each one speaks louder to be heard - or perhaps resists speaking while preferring an angry and protesting silence.

It's not easy to have this kind of company over... but for some reason I love the sounds, I love the voices, I am entranced often by the rhythm and melody, the crescendos and the diminuendos, its pure delight when I really give myself to the conversation. Each voice has its place, has its tonal quality, its depth, its time-tested timbre. A lot of the conversation sounds more like an orchestra warming up than a symphony.

But then something happens...

Kairos, God-time, invades the chaotic clamor awkwardly progressing through chronos. The voices begin to become one, the melody begins to emerge, a great and mighty theme echoes in the chambers of my mind. I begin to forget that there was ever dischord, I begin to listen not to the many but to the one... the One. It took all the textures of each of the voices to sound together for me to hear, but I do hear. Sometimes it is His voice speaking to me, sometimes it is my voice speaking to Him, and I discover that in those moments the company I keep were really at the banqueting table of Another. I joined them because I perceived they heard Him, but now I hear Him, and I hear myself. Their words, sounds, colors, textures mediated His presence for me and now He is present, or perhaps more accurately - I am present to Him.

One Step in a Journey from Fear to Love

I was praying today. Praying for me is always a strange adventure, I never know quite where it will take me - sometimes I intend to talk to God about one thing and invariably my heart leads me to talk to him about something quite different. I am discovering God is primarily interested in the truth (the existential sense, not the over-rationalized Enlightenment sense). I went to talk to God about one thing and discovered I needed to talk to him about a rather different issue. The moment I entered into conversation with God I found myself awash in anxiety. This was particularly disturbing given that I had spent a substantial amount of time recently trying to unearth this deadly growth in my soul. Why had all the anxiety come back? And even more frustrating is the nature of anxiety, it is emotional numbness, and thus an ignorance about what actually is wrong. I knew something was wrong, but what it was I couldn't say, and when I don't have words for my heart I feel so lost, desperately clammoring for a sense of self.

So I waited. I listened. I watched. Where will my anxiety take me?

It took me to the truth. The truth is I have immersed myself, yet again, in a functional self-salvation. The motivations of my heart erupted into actions, actions that betrayed my true new self. My self-salvation looked like this: I needed others to validate me, I needed others to tell me that I was ok (that my thoughts, beliefs, inner experiences, were real, true, good), I needed others to be pleased with me, I needed others to not be disappointed with me or upset with me, I couldn't handle others supposed judgments of me. I was using all kinds of various actions to fill these deep needs, actions such as writing, speaking, planning ministry, even who and how I looked at others. I was trying to be a good little boy and keep the world around happy with me, yet always afraid that it wasn't, always constructing a whole life around the fear that I'm not ok... a whole life around the fear that I'm not ok. My whole constructed life could have been strong, but my heart was weak - what good do strong walls do for a city with a cowardly ruler?

The walls protect me.

The walls isolate me.

Better to be a city with no walls and a strong ruler... in fact if the ruler is strong enough he doesn't even need walls because he has nothing to fear.

But I am afraid.

How does a coward find strength?

I found myself asking this question, feeling particularly exposed before my God. In my exposure I asked, "do you love me?" A word from God would restore my soul. Only one thing can break me from my fears. Only one thing can make me strong. If God loved me then I wouldn't have to get others to tell me I'm ok, I wouldn't need others to validate me, I wouldn't doggedly pursue others affections, approval, and attention. I would have all those things in God. But why, why should God love me? I could offer all the same things to him that I do to others: you know the usual achievements, accomplishments, humor, wit, kindness, all-around likeability - all those things I use to get others to love me. But those things feel small before God, and even before myself - its as if my soul says "I don't want to be loved for those things!" I want love, you know the intrinsic kind, where I'm loved deeply, at my center, loved for my distinct "Sam-ness."
But how can I know that God loves me, you know me, that deep, secret, hidden me that is wonderfully precious but also tragically lost.

So I asked the question again, "God, do you love me?"

I waited. I listened. I watched. And then this...

"But God demonstrates His own love for us in this - that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us."

That's beautiful, but not the whole story. It's not just a diffuse experience of love, its the kind of love that has been demonstrated. Other translations say "showed" as if God's saying, "Hey look, if you want to know, I mean really know, that I love you then I'll show you - look at my Son, he's my factual, demonstrable, historical, real proof that I love you and that nothing can separate you from me, not even the love of my Son." Bizzare but Beautiful.

Still I was a little puzzled, I mean how do I know that was for me. So I asked God.

I waited. I listened. I watched.

"In love he predestined us..."

This completed my experience. It was like God saying, "Sam, you believe Jesus is for you because you were meant to." It is my destiny to believe that this demonstration of the love of God was for me. It's for me because I believe it's for me, I believe it because I was meant to believe it by God, from eternity past. The ground of my belief in the love of God is God's eternal love of me. "We love because he first loved us."

Obama's Audacity (but not for Hope)

I cannot vote for Obama for the following reason - I love life. These articles have convinced me that Sen. Barack Obama's bid for presidency is an assault on life itself, and if he were to be elected, his time in office would be devastating to the great Americal value of the "inalienable right to life."

Article One is penned by a senior at Princeton who is a 2008 Rhodes Scholar

Article Two describes Obama's voting stance on late-term fetus' which survived the abortion only to be terminated or left for dead after surviving.

It seems to me the golden tongue of Sen. Obama is nothing other that the flickering one of the Serpent.

Piper on the Prosperity Gospel

I'm letting these words sink in.

Silent Water's Deep

I feel. Good start. I feel it underneath, subterranean if you will; flowing, churning, briskly moving within. It's the stream, no the river within, and it tells me that I am alive, living, life. Yet it is underneath still, like the rivers in the great Sahara I hear, and I'm like the desert above - shifting sands and all (very Peter-esque). It was a gift I didn't ask for, couldn't have - wasn't looking for it. But it's there, it, no no, Him, He's there living in me, not me living.

Again though, He's subterranean, all this earth between me and Him, oops, Him and me, but I am mean. That's always the problem though isn't it? The world get's in the way. Layer after layer, sedimentary, leftover from the erosion of my soul given to television. Those layers harden over time - not just sand, but sandstone. I feel it now, I didn't before, but I do now. It's Him, He's the reason to live - the reason to die. Sadly Sahara desert sands shift and I'm not with Him, He's with me, but I'm not with Him.

What would happen to the desert sand if the silent water's deep were to well up, well we'll find out won't we?

A Word On Particular Love

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." ~ Ephesians 5:25

I am writing today, not so much a theological treatise or a spiritual musing, but a glowing praise. I love my wife. I do. I love her more than my own life. You may ask, "why Sam do you love your wife?" I will say to you, "because she is lovely." I have the distinct pleasure, and secret honor of knowing more about her soul than any other creature on this planet. It was once told me that good therapists do their jobs because of the sheer joy in encountering another in their distinct essence. I think this is even more true of my marriage to Anjuli - I derive untold pleasure from simply being in her presence. She is home to me, or perhaps she is penultimate home, pointing me to the bosom of my God. You don't get to experience her when she is giddy with delight at the most simple and delightful of things - like the names of our children. You don't get to experience her when big, beautiful tears cascade from her eyes and reach for the earth as the words of her heart unfold before me like a flower in the morning sun. You don't get to experience the depth and breadth of her sheer otherness, her "Anjuli-ness." Even I don't get to experience all this - a joy that God has reserved for himself.
She is beautiful.
I love the sound of her voice - it is at once gentle and strong. I love the sound of her silence - which mysteriously opens my heart. I love her smile - it is truly infectious, even when I'm pissed off it makes me laugh. I love her laugh - when Anjuli laughs she laughs with her whole body, laughter that reminds me of the laughter of God - a kind that makes the earth tremble in joy. I love her ears - men and women, young and old, hard or soft, unfold before her listening ears like presents on Christmas morning. I lover her - here it goes - submission... She loves and respects me and I feel it every day - she would follow me to the end of the world. In her submission there is no loss of herself, but she brings the fullness of who she is to bear on the fullness of who I am - as iron sharpens iron. I love her friendship - she is without question my best friend, my twin soul, I have laughed more, cried more, shared more, lost more, spent more, given more, recieved more with her than with an soul under the sun. She is my beloved wife, mother of my son, and sister in Christ.
I write these things for others to read, I am going public with my love for Anjuli, because Christ's love for his church went public. I am to stand under his directives as the true Husband, and so I proclaim my love for Anjuli, and in doing so proclaim my love for my Lord Jesus.

Step into the Waters

"He used to often say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ Frodo Baggins

I love to write... But I only love to write when I'm inspired to write. When I'm inspired words flow from spirit to mind to fingertips with almost boundless energy. When I'm uninspired, the page looks at me with mocking silence... taunting me. As a lesson from three weeks submerged in the silence of God, I must resist the taunts, I must lay hold of life, Life, within me. It is a temptation of mine to surrender to the fear of the empty page, as it is a temptation to surrender to any fear. Yet surrender to fear is surrender to death, and if the Life within me has overcome death, then there is nothing to fear. The empty page is a mere symbol of my empty life, it points me to the reality that I have surrendered my soul to fear, and when the soul is lost so are words. All that is left is emptiness, an empty page, an empty life. A page I don't know how to fill with my words because my words were lost with my soul; a life I don't know how to live because I don't know who I am.

No longer! I demand that space be filled, that emptiness be articulated. No longer will I withhold myself from life, no longer will I withhold my words from the page. No longer will I wait for inspiration to come for me to live; I am alive, because life... the Life... lives. As He wells up to eternal life I enter in to His waters, to His stream of living waters, and I am quickened. Words and life are connected, "In the beginning was the Word... in Him was life and that life was the light of men." Words connect me to Life. God spoke and I lived... "I said live and you lived."

This space I have created in the otherworldly cyberspace, is a space for me to live, not the only space, but a space none-the-less. It is a place where my words connect me to my Life. It is public because I need the Life in others to flow into mine, as tributaries join the River that flows in "those who have recieved Him." It is my way of asking for help, my way of saying my words need your words, lest my words be lost. So I ask you to step into the River with me, to step onto the Road.

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with weary feet,

Until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.