Tomorrow is kind of the official beginning of a summer of some kind of adventure. It is an adventure. I know that, I feel that. But it also feels like the step into a summer I know I won't emerge from the same person. I don't know how much will change, in me, for me, but I know I don't stay too similar to myself for very long (usually in a good way, but I suppose that's not a guarantee and depends how you measure it) these days, and there are a lot of things happening so I don't imagine this summer will be anything like a getting back to or attaining any sort of status quo. I stopped believing in status quo long ago anyway, so I don't mind that.
But let's lay down a littany of what's going on and deduce some things if we can.
I leave tomorrow for Wooster, which will probably always be a surreal feeling as long as I live. Wooster is always going to feel like home in some way, and my personal sentimentality probably means that feeling will only increase as memories of anything less than pleasant fade daily and good memories become the focus of my recollections.
But I'm not going back to Wooster to wander around campus. There is purpose and it is exciting. I can't completely disagree with Parks and Recreation tonight though...."whenever a marriage takes place, two single people die" and with another summer of marriages and engagements already afoot, my social landscape will, once more, be rocked a bit. It happens and it's good, but it's always a bit altering.
Speaking of single people dying, a sort of non-event will probably be taking place this summer (and if it doesn't, then that's an event in and of itself). On June 16th, I'll have been single for the longest period of time since I started dating the summer before my junior year of high school. That's not a huge deal, but if we put our amateur statistician hats on for a minute, you could say my time of singleness could very much be on the other side of the bell curve. I could very much be wrong, but just based on the numbers, I can't be single much longer right? That's never happened before, and while I could complexify my analysis and get specific about why I became unsingle in all my past seasons of singleness, and that would probably destroy my numerical analysis, science simply says I shouldn't be single for much longer. So, this summer is a showdown between scientific meta-narrative and literal, post-modern facticity. You know where I fall, and if I could write worth anything, you'd realize that I'm siding with the indeterminate length of single-living side of the argument. That's probably right. But it's been a long long long time. I don't know what God has out there for me though, and it could very well be the case that I'll be single for much longer than the 20 months and 13 days that will have passed on June 16th. But hey, even post-modern me is kind of rooting for science on this one.
Chapter Focus Week is soon and I'm legitimately staffing a track. I feel unprepared because the more I prepare the more unprepared I feel. Likewise, the more I don't prepare, the more arrogant I get and the worse things actually turn out. So, in my feeling of unpreparedness, I'm probably going to be fine. But pray for me over the next week, please. Then, the second week, I'll be in the Hillsdale Leadership track. Pray for that..mostly so no one draws any weapons and nothing turns to fisticuffs as leadership tracks can be wont to do from time to time. That's mostly a joke, but pray for the cohesion of our group and the vision God will grant us.
June will be busy too....I'll be out of Ohio for 14 days en total and that's pretty busy by June standards
July isn't so busy after the first weekend. and August just means school is about to start again and I take the NSO plunge. Ah. Okay, life is joyous because I am excited just writing all of this. But it also means I'll be on the other side of the beginning of classes this fall much quicker than it seems right now. Maybe that's not true, maybe July will prove a long, relaxing month. But I haven't even said anything about fund development yet, and that's going to be coursing through all of this and I'll have to do all I can *not* to neglect it between things. God is faithful though, and I've never felt more called to this life, so I know he'll provide. He always has, he always will, and when he stops that just means it's on to the next adventure...I don't see that happening any time soon though. I know I had a post a few weeks ago about how I didn't know if I would stay on staff past next year, when I'll most likely be leaving Hillsdale. That's still true, but I can't imagine stopping just after next year. I'll be somewhere and I'll still be doing this, this thing I love which I have given up much to do but have gained so much more of such greater worth in doing.
I'm glad I can write that deeply, that joyfully, just about my professional life. I don't know that many can do that.
But my life will change imperceptibly at the moment but majorly in the long run Saturday too, when my mom moves out and effectively ends what I guess was a facade of her life as a Christian mother and wife. I probably shouldn't go into much detail here, and I don't have many details anyway, but I've got a brother and a father I've got to be there for this summer too, and right now, I'm just trying to do my best....pray for them and me too.
"If God did not will it, it wouldn't be so"
So let's not focus on that apparently unchangeable and unpleasant fact about the life of my family. There are much worthier topics in the world, like how some people drift into your life by what looks like accident then 5 months later you realize that it wasn't a drifting at all but a divine appointment and there is no such thing as accident, much less coincidence. And for that reason I hope. And I hope because of love. And I love because I have faith. Because at the end of the day, at the end of all days "these three remain, faith, hope and love".
Just love.
-Zack
"The rhythm is so in sync and that isn't their only strength
They were humming a tune the sun and the moon, they didn't know what to think"
-Flobots
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
And can it be...
Christ lives, and so too shall I.
That's the opening line of one of my favorite hymns, but I like it best when I break my own rules about Christian writing and deconstruct the lines. That line is at its best when it's not followed by the rest of the song, which is mostly about heaven and resurrection. There is nothing wrong with heaven or resurrection, but right now, I'm not terribly close to either occurrence. Christ's life most immediately allows me to live fully, to embrace all that life has to offer deeply and love completely. Christ lives and so too shall I; right here, right now.
-Zack
"Gently lifting hands to heaven,
softened by the sweetest hush,
a Father sings over his children,
loving them so very much."
That's the opening line of one of my favorite hymns, but I like it best when I break my own rules about Christian writing and deconstruct the lines. That line is at its best when it's not followed by the rest of the song, which is mostly about heaven and resurrection. There is nothing wrong with heaven or resurrection, but right now, I'm not terribly close to either occurrence. Christ's life most immediately allows me to live fully, to embrace all that life has to offer deeply and love completely. Christ lives and so too shall I; right here, right now.
-Zack
"Gently lifting hands to heaven,
softened by the sweetest hush,
a Father sings over his children,
loving them so very much."
-Five Iron Frenzy
Monday, April 19, 2010
Stumbling
I want to write something right now, but I don't know what, and I don't know how. I'm plunging through new depths of liminality these days, incapable of holding fast to more and more things I had relied upon, taken for granted. We can build things of a sort, and maybe they're pretty stable, but as long as we can build them, they're not necessarily permanent, because we're far from perfect and the fallen world is tending toward fragmentation.
I wish I wasn't so right about all of this, I wish there were exceptions. But there aren't.
God's it. All of it. The only one, the only thing, the only foundation we can stand on, the only thing we can cling to when life's winds pick up and threaten to blow all apart all we've built.
Inside his will though, upon the rock of his word on which we can stand, he gives peace, joy, hope, love. It's not just a clinging in hard times. It's a standing firm and high, higher than we ever could on our own.
This fallen world wants to fragment, and our fallen selves want to do that to, to follow our own lead, to fragment with it. It's natural, but it isn't right. He wants to give us so much more, but far too often we seek to build elsewhere, to stray from the foundation He is and create on our own.
I never thought these abstract forms would become so real in my own family. But here we are, and until we get back on the rock, decenter all else and recenter on Christ, truly, there is no hope, because there was never supposed to be hope apart from Christ.
That sounds like bad news, until you reverse it; in Christ there is great, more than supernatural hope. Hope placed elsewhere is little more than fanciful wishing, but hope placed in Christ is a promise that he will never let go.
-Zack
"Tell me why you lie, and what it is you do to keep your eyes so shiny"
-The Decembrists
I wish I wasn't so right about all of this, I wish there were exceptions. But there aren't.
God's it. All of it. The only one, the only thing, the only foundation we can stand on, the only thing we can cling to when life's winds pick up and threaten to blow all apart all we've built.
Inside his will though, upon the rock of his word on which we can stand, he gives peace, joy, hope, love. It's not just a clinging in hard times. It's a standing firm and high, higher than we ever could on our own.
This fallen world wants to fragment, and our fallen selves want to do that to, to follow our own lead, to fragment with it. It's natural, but it isn't right. He wants to give us so much more, but far too often we seek to build elsewhere, to stray from the foundation He is and create on our own.
I never thought these abstract forms would become so real in my own family. But here we are, and until we get back on the rock, decenter all else and recenter on Christ, truly, there is no hope, because there was never supposed to be hope apart from Christ.
That sounds like bad news, until you reverse it; in Christ there is great, more than supernatural hope. Hope placed elsewhere is little more than fanciful wishing, but hope placed in Christ is a promise that he will never let go.
-Zack
"Tell me why you lie, and what it is you do to keep your eyes so shiny"
-The Decembrists
Friday, April 16, 2010
Inward and Onward
As far as I'm concerned, next year is now.
That's not true, but this year isn't really hanging on by much anymore...just a dissipation into nothing as I turn my attention to what's on the way.
I used to write end of the year blogs in college, and I don't think I'll have it in me to do that as a staff. Part of that is because I have prayer letters for that, and the other part is that years don't really end as much as new years arrive. That sounds dramatic, harrowing perhaps, or at least confusing, but there's simply little to no time to transition between the two. Prior to Chapter Focus Week, where the focus is on the chapter as it will be next year, we've got to make submit plans for the next year. So right now, with an entire week left on campus (I say entire when I should say but one), I'm just thinking about next year and planning for CFW. There's enough meditative space in my life (and enough is required to sufficiently plan for next year) that I don't feel too rushed, I don't feel like there's no due time to move from one to the next. But there's a big difference between the months of summer that accompany even the most ambitious InterVarsity student as he or she moves between school years and the months of constantly-forward-looking work that accompany staff work.
I like it though, because I can't really function looking backward too much. If anything, it's because I'm too sentimental and can get locked into thinking about what was (and won't be) and neglect to think about what will be. That's why graduation weekend was so hard last year...I was completely diametrically split between the celebration and the saying of goodbyes. There was no inbetween, ever. After graduation, the last thought I had was how I had completed college... the only thought I had was how I was leaving. They couldn't stay together for me, although they were both altogether true enough at that present moment.
And it's even harder right now. Not the looking back thing, but the looking forward, because a big part of next year is figuring out next-next year. Actually, that's often more on my mind than the coming year. Indeed, it's a bit hard to believe in the 370 or so days that sit between me and then at the moment, and that is a problem. It's often not that I don't want to be here (indeed, it's very much that I very much do), but there is a strong temptation to think that the next year here is an important bit of putting my life on hold. I shouldn't but I do feel like whatever comes next will be a step toward forever, but until then, I have a mandatory year at Hillsdale with no legitimate bearing on what comes next...and the irony of that is that I don't even know that I won't be at Hillsdale for a third year (but if I am, I'll have to figure out something of a social life between now and then, because every weekend spent here feels like a hostage situation with little to no stockholm syndrome). In the end, it doesn't really matter. Well, it's hard to ever say that and really mean it or for it to be completely true (but then again, what is ever completely true?). I mean to say though, that all the thinking, all the debating in my mind over what is happening, all the uneasiness or at least un-surety will fade, (and ought to out of faith already) and what is right will be apparent.
I have my dreams, I have my desires, I have my own ideas about what I would like to see happen. I don't know that those are all completely invalid because I don't know that they're all completely born of my own desires without God's input. More than anything though, I've just got to have faith, I've just got to pray, I've just got, often, to wait and see. Because it's not hard for me to get impassioned about something and run toward it just to find out that my passion wasn't invalid but my running was. Indeed, I've had and lost girlfriends and almost girlfriends that way.... I do trust though, that I'll know, when the moment hits and the time is right, that the passion is correct and I won't even be able to run fast enough to take in all God has for me, so He'll have to carry me there.
That's one large glob of a prayer request for next year, and I can't wait to take the steps and plumb the depths of the adventure God's got ahead of me to find out. There is no waiting in this holding pattern here at Hillsdale. There is no waiting at all in the shadow of the almighty. No matter where we are, no matter what we are doing, this is an adventure and waiting is nothing more than his way of letting us experience where we are and what we're doing deeper. We miss that. We miss that a lot.
-Zack
"You can't memorize words you've always known"
-Flobots
That's not true, but this year isn't really hanging on by much anymore...just a dissipation into nothing as I turn my attention to what's on the way.
I used to write end of the year blogs in college, and I don't think I'll have it in me to do that as a staff. Part of that is because I have prayer letters for that, and the other part is that years don't really end as much as new years arrive. That sounds dramatic, harrowing perhaps, or at least confusing, but there's simply little to no time to transition between the two. Prior to Chapter Focus Week, where the focus is on the chapter as it will be next year, we've got to make submit plans for the next year. So right now, with an entire week left on campus (I say entire when I should say but one), I'm just thinking about next year and planning for CFW. There's enough meditative space in my life (and enough is required to sufficiently plan for next year) that I don't feel too rushed, I don't feel like there's no due time to move from one to the next. But there's a big difference between the months of summer that accompany even the most ambitious InterVarsity student as he or she moves between school years and the months of constantly-forward-looking work that accompany staff work.
I like it though, because I can't really function looking backward too much. If anything, it's because I'm too sentimental and can get locked into thinking about what was (and won't be) and neglect to think about what will be. That's why graduation weekend was so hard last year...I was completely diametrically split between the celebration and the saying of goodbyes. There was no inbetween, ever. After graduation, the last thought I had was how I had completed college... the only thought I had was how I was leaving. They couldn't stay together for me, although they were both altogether true enough at that present moment.
And it's even harder right now. Not the looking back thing, but the looking forward, because a big part of next year is figuring out next-next year. Actually, that's often more on my mind than the coming year. Indeed, it's a bit hard to believe in the 370 or so days that sit between me and then at the moment, and that is a problem. It's often not that I don't want to be here (indeed, it's very much that I very much do), but there is a strong temptation to think that the next year here is an important bit of putting my life on hold. I shouldn't but I do feel like whatever comes next will be a step toward forever, but until then, I have a mandatory year at Hillsdale with no legitimate bearing on what comes next...and the irony of that is that I don't even know that I won't be at Hillsdale for a third year (but if I am, I'll have to figure out something of a social life between now and then, because every weekend spent here feels like a hostage situation with little to no stockholm syndrome). In the end, it doesn't really matter. Well, it's hard to ever say that and really mean it or for it to be completely true (but then again, what is ever completely true?). I mean to say though, that all the thinking, all the debating in my mind over what is happening, all the uneasiness or at least un-surety will fade, (and ought to out of faith already) and what is right will be apparent.
I have my dreams, I have my desires, I have my own ideas about what I would like to see happen. I don't know that those are all completely invalid because I don't know that they're all completely born of my own desires without God's input. More than anything though, I've just got to have faith, I've just got to pray, I've just got, often, to wait and see. Because it's not hard for me to get impassioned about something and run toward it just to find out that my passion wasn't invalid but my running was. Indeed, I've had and lost girlfriends and almost girlfriends that way.... I do trust though, that I'll know, when the moment hits and the time is right, that the passion is correct and I won't even be able to run fast enough to take in all God has for me, so He'll have to carry me there.
That's one large glob of a prayer request for next year, and I can't wait to take the steps and plumb the depths of the adventure God's got ahead of me to find out. There is no waiting in this holding pattern here at Hillsdale. There is no waiting at all in the shadow of the almighty. No matter where we are, no matter what we are doing, this is an adventure and waiting is nothing more than his way of letting us experience where we are and what we're doing deeper. We miss that. We miss that a lot.
-Zack
"You can't memorize words you've always known"
-Flobots
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Thursday Again
It's been awhile since I posted weekly, since I had been posting daily. But, to be certain, my lent posts were very different from my standard Thursday-or-so posts.
I had a great spring break. I felt like I spent it everywhere I could in Ohio, and I don't think I could have made it any better without adding a day in Cleveland. It's been far too long since I've been in Cleveland. I think I'll organize a day in Cleveland sometime this summer. West Side Market, maybe an Indians game, wander around downtown for awhile. Could be fun, very fun.
I also kind of broke my keyboard en route from my parents house back to Hillsdale... the spacebar only works about 60 percent of the time now. I'll probably have to get a new keyboard, but I definitely prefer this one thanks to it's special controls.
I don't exactly know why I shared all of that, because my life simply isn't that dull.
In two days I'm going to Michigan State to engage in a day of evangelism training and evangelism on campus in the afternoon. I'm looking forward to that for everything it is, but, one step back, I'm looking forward to seeing students seriously share their faith and engage in learning how to live a life of evangelism amongst their peers.
God is doing great things on campuses all around us. Next week is the largest evangelistic project InterVarsity has ever undertaken, at Ohio State. Already though, the chapters there have seen 100 people give their lives to Christ this school year. We had around 30 people come to Christ when we did the same thing at Wooster. Mathematically, that could mean 650 people come to Christ next week at Ohio State. That sounds insane. But God is huge and wants to see life transformation, he wants to see healing, he wants to love and for his children to know love. Pray for even more, perhaps.
Spring Break was great, but it went a long way to accentuating the blankness of my life in Hillsdale. There are many things I don't have here; non-work-related friends, a church that actually feels like home, true community. But in the words of Paul, even having those, as I do at home, I count them all loss for the sake of the Gospel. And that's why I'm here. It's true, life, on its own, might be "objectively better" in Ohio. Why wouldn't it be? It's where I'm from, it's where "my people" are, so to speak. But it's not where God has called me right now, and I know that...that was accentuated over break as well. There are many holes to my life in Hillsdale, but there's a bigger, more important hole in my life everywhere else. The ministry I'm doing here, the ministry to which I am completely committed is important, is huge, is well worth all sacrifice to the point that it's not sacrifice at all, but light and temporary inconvenience. Because God loves Hillsdale, and he wants me here to learn and demonstrate that.
I don't know though, that I'll be at Hillsdale past next year. I don't know that I'll even be on staff. All I really know though, is that God wants me here now, and he wants me here one year from now. Beyond that, I don't know anything, but I don't know that I have to.
"Give me one more year. I will dig around it and cultivate the tree. If then there is no fruit, you may cut it down and use it for firewood" That's a quote from a parable somewhere in Luke as well as I remember it, and it's how I feel about Hillsdale right now, kind of. It's not that I'm not seeing any fruit. It's not that, even, I require any amount of fruit to stay here for longer than next year. But I do require God letting me know it's right for me to be here past next year. That's the sort of fruit I'll be looking for next year. Right now, I feel like I'll be moving on, using my experiences here as the firewood to drive me wherever I'm headed next, after one more year. I don't know how right it is to pull apart scripture like that, but scripture or not, it's a story I can apply like that in my life right now...even if not, as such, as the word of God.
I'm also feeling a push, from somewhere deep inside and all around, to stop neglecting the intellectual and artistic gifts God has given me. I don't know what that means. I don't know that they're completely wasted by being on staff (indeed, I don't think they are). But I do know I'm going to spend a lot more time writing this summer. Over the next year, while I'm praying, thinking, journaling, pursuing the next step for me, grad school won't be completely out of play, and that's kind of scary to say, because I've always said seminary is my next academic step if there is one. But I don't think that's true anymore. Actually, I don't think it's ever been true. You could say I've been coming to terms with the potential intermingling of faith and art a lot lately. I've never not believed it, but I never thought it true for me; I always separated out my academic life from my faith to a degree...it was just necessary when I had to make honest decisions about time in college and ministry found itself opposed to academics. But when I think about the story of that, the changing of my major and the all-nighters during "It Could Be U" because I literally had no time to do homework before midnight that week, I realize that God has always blessed me with a special relationship to literature, which let me get through college with more an InterVarsity major than an English when you count the time I actually spent. But that blessing, I don't believe, stopped then, and I don't believe it was just so I could get through college as such. I know this because I read 7-10 books at a time because I deeply miss the intellectual stimulation I had during college. I know this because I cannot express myself but through writing. I know this because even still, little gets me more excited than talking about post-modernity. It's just a part of who I am, and I confess that I thought I would grow out of it, I thought it would fade as I got farther from college. But it hasn't. And it won't. Despite all I am, I am "a person of letters" so to speak, perhaps even more than anything else save for a child of God, saved by grace and called to love.
So I don't know what all of that means right now. But it could someday mean my life looks much different from how I imagine it now, how I have imagined it for so long.
As of yesterday, I haven't seen Meg for an entire year. I don't know that that matters to any of you, but I remember days when I would count the days since I've seen her and if that number was bigger than 0, it made me sorrowful. I would count the days til I saw her again, and no matter how many there were, I would say "only" and be hopeful. But yesterday passed with no pomp, no reflection. It's just been a year, and it probably should have been a year a lot longer ago, save for good friends made at the Urban Plunge inviting us to an event at Marietta, with me accepting despite knowing Meg would be there. Actually, since breaking up, Meg has performed a dance every time I've seen her...at Fall Conference and then at the hunger meal in Marietta. I couldn't watch either time.
It doesn't really matter how right it was that a once strong couple ends their romantic relationship....there are just some things it's hard to see someone you once loved do, times when they're at their most beautiful, times you remember why your relationship ever began in the first place...times when they seem closer to God than you could ever hope to be. Audrey sings, Meg dances.
It has been a long year. Sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrible, but in the end, marked by love.
If you read this before tonight, pray for an important leadership meeting taking place at 6:30.
Pray for the price of life at Ohio State too.
-Zack
"There's a whistle in your will"
-Jason Morant
I had a great spring break. I felt like I spent it everywhere I could in Ohio, and I don't think I could have made it any better without adding a day in Cleveland. It's been far too long since I've been in Cleveland. I think I'll organize a day in Cleveland sometime this summer. West Side Market, maybe an Indians game, wander around downtown for awhile. Could be fun, very fun.
I also kind of broke my keyboard en route from my parents house back to Hillsdale... the spacebar only works about 60 percent of the time now. I'll probably have to get a new keyboard, but I definitely prefer this one thanks to it's special controls.
I don't exactly know why I shared all of that, because my life simply isn't that dull.
In two days I'm going to Michigan State to engage in a day of evangelism training and evangelism on campus in the afternoon. I'm looking forward to that for everything it is, but, one step back, I'm looking forward to seeing students seriously share their faith and engage in learning how to live a life of evangelism amongst their peers.
God is doing great things on campuses all around us. Next week is the largest evangelistic project InterVarsity has ever undertaken, at Ohio State. Already though, the chapters there have seen 100 people give their lives to Christ this school year. We had around 30 people come to Christ when we did the same thing at Wooster. Mathematically, that could mean 650 people come to Christ next week at Ohio State. That sounds insane. But God is huge and wants to see life transformation, he wants to see healing, he wants to love and for his children to know love. Pray for even more, perhaps.
Spring Break was great, but it went a long way to accentuating the blankness of my life in Hillsdale. There are many things I don't have here; non-work-related friends, a church that actually feels like home, true community. But in the words of Paul, even having those, as I do at home, I count them all loss for the sake of the Gospel. And that's why I'm here. It's true, life, on its own, might be "objectively better" in Ohio. Why wouldn't it be? It's where I'm from, it's where "my people" are, so to speak. But it's not where God has called me right now, and I know that...that was accentuated over break as well. There are many holes to my life in Hillsdale, but there's a bigger, more important hole in my life everywhere else. The ministry I'm doing here, the ministry to which I am completely committed is important, is huge, is well worth all sacrifice to the point that it's not sacrifice at all, but light and temporary inconvenience. Because God loves Hillsdale, and he wants me here to learn and demonstrate that.
I don't know though, that I'll be at Hillsdale past next year. I don't know that I'll even be on staff. All I really know though, is that God wants me here now, and he wants me here one year from now. Beyond that, I don't know anything, but I don't know that I have to.
"Give me one more year. I will dig around it and cultivate the tree. If then there is no fruit, you may cut it down and use it for firewood" That's a quote from a parable somewhere in Luke as well as I remember it, and it's how I feel about Hillsdale right now, kind of. It's not that I'm not seeing any fruit. It's not that, even, I require any amount of fruit to stay here for longer than next year. But I do require God letting me know it's right for me to be here past next year. That's the sort of fruit I'll be looking for next year. Right now, I feel like I'll be moving on, using my experiences here as the firewood to drive me wherever I'm headed next, after one more year. I don't know how right it is to pull apart scripture like that, but scripture or not, it's a story I can apply like that in my life right now...even if not, as such, as the word of God.
I'm also feeling a push, from somewhere deep inside and all around, to stop neglecting the intellectual and artistic gifts God has given me. I don't know what that means. I don't know that they're completely wasted by being on staff (indeed, I don't think they are). But I do know I'm going to spend a lot more time writing this summer. Over the next year, while I'm praying, thinking, journaling, pursuing the next step for me, grad school won't be completely out of play, and that's kind of scary to say, because I've always said seminary is my next academic step if there is one. But I don't think that's true anymore. Actually, I don't think it's ever been true. You could say I've been coming to terms with the potential intermingling of faith and art a lot lately. I've never not believed it, but I never thought it true for me; I always separated out my academic life from my faith to a degree...it was just necessary when I had to make honest decisions about time in college and ministry found itself opposed to academics. But when I think about the story of that, the changing of my major and the all-nighters during "It Could Be U" because I literally had no time to do homework before midnight that week, I realize that God has always blessed me with a special relationship to literature, which let me get through college with more an InterVarsity major than an English when you count the time I actually spent. But that blessing, I don't believe, stopped then, and I don't believe it was just so I could get through college as such. I know this because I read 7-10 books at a time because I deeply miss the intellectual stimulation I had during college. I know this because I cannot express myself but through writing. I know this because even still, little gets me more excited than talking about post-modernity. It's just a part of who I am, and I confess that I thought I would grow out of it, I thought it would fade as I got farther from college. But it hasn't. And it won't. Despite all I am, I am "a person of letters" so to speak, perhaps even more than anything else save for a child of God, saved by grace and called to love.
So I don't know what all of that means right now. But it could someday mean my life looks much different from how I imagine it now, how I have imagined it for so long.
As of yesterday, I haven't seen Meg for an entire year. I don't know that that matters to any of you, but I remember days when I would count the days since I've seen her and if that number was bigger than 0, it made me sorrowful. I would count the days til I saw her again, and no matter how many there were, I would say "only" and be hopeful. But yesterday passed with no pomp, no reflection. It's just been a year, and it probably should have been a year a lot longer ago, save for good friends made at the Urban Plunge inviting us to an event at Marietta, with me accepting despite knowing Meg would be there. Actually, since breaking up, Meg has performed a dance every time I've seen her...at Fall Conference and then at the hunger meal in Marietta. I couldn't watch either time.
It doesn't really matter how right it was that a once strong couple ends their romantic relationship....there are just some things it's hard to see someone you once loved do, times when they're at their most beautiful, times you remember why your relationship ever began in the first place...times when they seem closer to God than you could ever hope to be. Audrey sings, Meg dances.
It has been a long year. Sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrible, but in the end, marked by love.
If you read this before tonight, pray for an important leadership meeting taking place at 6:30.
Pray for the price of life at Ohio State too.
-Zack
"There's a whistle in your will"
-Jason Morant
Saturday, April 3, 2010
L40: Wait
Why the middle day? If he had the power to resurrect, why stay dead one whole day? There's retroactive poetry in the rising on a Sunday, or something like that depending on calendars and day calculation...but I only know how to work on that level, so I've always already flouted technicality.
I won't begin to know or try to figure out why there's a day between Good Friday and Easter, but I know it serves us well to observe today as something constant in our lives, in both the spiritual and practical sense.
It's the blankest day on the church calendar, and yet one of the most important. Waiting, after all, is one of the keys to the Christian life. The Kingdom of God is here but not yet, just as redemption is here but not yet when Christ has died but not yet resurrected. Maybe today, as a remembrance of the day he actually did spend in the grave, is an analog for the space between ascension and return.
It doesn't matter, or at least matters very little, because metaphor is what you make it and it always has been.
I do know though, that of all I've felt called to by God, waiting, specifically and simply in general, has been the bulk of it. We wait. We wait in expectancy of what he will do, and he's promised us it will be glorious. But yet, we must wait. God places true value on the act of waiting, on the cultivation of patience. "whys" don't apply, or at least I'm not the one to address them. I just know it's the way things are, and I'll walk in it til he calls me to action, when he has called me to wait.
-Zack
"All I had was just a vision, all I had was my ambition. Your love without condition kept me swinging when I'm missing"
-Mat Kearney
I won't begin to know or try to figure out why there's a day between Good Friday and Easter, but I know it serves us well to observe today as something constant in our lives, in both the spiritual and practical sense.
It's the blankest day on the church calendar, and yet one of the most important. Waiting, after all, is one of the keys to the Christian life. The Kingdom of God is here but not yet, just as redemption is here but not yet when Christ has died but not yet resurrected. Maybe today, as a remembrance of the day he actually did spend in the grave, is an analog for the space between ascension and return.
It doesn't matter, or at least matters very little, because metaphor is what you make it and it always has been.
I do know though, that of all I've felt called to by God, waiting, specifically and simply in general, has been the bulk of it. We wait. We wait in expectancy of what he will do, and he's promised us it will be glorious. But yet, we must wait. God places true value on the act of waiting, on the cultivation of patience. "whys" don't apply, or at least I'm not the one to address them. I just know it's the way things are, and I'll walk in it til he calls me to action, when he has called me to wait.
-Zack
"All I had was just a vision, all I had was my ambition. Your love without condition kept me swinging when I'm missing"
-Mat Kearney
Friday, April 2, 2010
L39: Redemption
We live in a world that loves to break itself. I feel it in me, from time to time, the urge to do something somehow self destructive without a second thought. And the great lie, the greatest lie of all, is that it always starts as something good, at least for me. I always think it's best for me, even at someone else's expense, but at least best for me. But that's never true. Acting on my own accord, to try, on my own, to find happiness, perhaps ironically, always ends in my own depravity.
But there is a hope, and today we celebrate it. Heaven came down at Christmas but love is shown perfect and sacrifice supreme in Christ's death on the cross. His ultimate selflessness lets us set right our constantly self-destructive selfishness. It's counter intuitive, perhaps, but that itself is a mirage; his Kingdom his perfect and it's our broken world that's counter intuitive. For now, it seems backwards, but I know it's right, that what's best for me is what's best for you, what's best for us, for me to give myself up, for me to become second. Because that's what Christ did, that's what love is. And in love, there is redemption. In redemption, there is love.
We live in a world that loves the break itself, but God loves this world and loves to make it whole again.
-Zack
"No cars go where we know, between the click of the light and the start of the dream"
-The Arcade Fire
But there is a hope, and today we celebrate it. Heaven came down at Christmas but love is shown perfect and sacrifice supreme in Christ's death on the cross. His ultimate selflessness lets us set right our constantly self-destructive selfishness. It's counter intuitive, perhaps, but that itself is a mirage; his Kingdom his perfect and it's our broken world that's counter intuitive. For now, it seems backwards, but I know it's right, that what's best for me is what's best for you, what's best for us, for me to give myself up, for me to become second. Because that's what Christ did, that's what love is. And in love, there is redemption. In redemption, there is love.
We live in a world that loves the break itself, but God loves this world and loves to make it whole again.
-Zack
"No cars go where we know, between the click of the light and the start of the dream"
-The Arcade Fire
Thursday, April 1, 2010
L38: Together
"No one claimed any of their possessions as their own"
"They had all things in common"
"What you do to the least of these, you do to me"
Thanks to a Wooster education and a set of key experiences, I'm more opposed to most forms of individualism than most these days. That definitely isn't where I was when I got to college, but to say those are 4 formative years is an understatement. Even, I think, if you come through college thinking most of the same things you come to college thinking, there's growth that happens by being around others and engaging thoughts, new or not, on a deeper level.
But I'm not trying to write about college right here.
There is real value in community and most especially community that is knit together in understanding and love, able to be transformative and transform the members of the community. But it starts in love and it grows people together.
I don't understand exactly how all of Jesus works into the atonement framework of most theologians. I know we're saved by grace through his sacrifice and it's the greatest form of love. But if that were 100% of the story, Jesus wouldn't have been here for so long. He wouldn't have come and walked among us. The rough and ready gospel just says he lived a perfect life, died, and rose from the dead. I don't see any stipulation on that life except that it was sinless. Maybe though, it was more than sinless, or, that is to say, that sinlessness is but part, and maybe but a small part of perfection. Jesus came and calls people, me, you, us, to a life in which we give up things that are our own in response to God's love for us. But he doesn't just say to hand them over and let them be abandoned. Giving up self, in Jesus' terms, involves doing so for the good of others...other people. Something about his perfect life knits people together on a truer, deeper, more sincere level. That's the life I want. I do not want to sin, but given the choice, I would rather struggle in a loving community than purify myself of all sin and be utterly alone. If Jesus' life is any indicator, perhaps that would be a sin itself.
-Zack
"It's a sad situation when we have to resort to keyboards as a means of making relations"
-Gym Class Heroes
"They had all things in common"
"What you do to the least of these, you do to me"
Thanks to a Wooster education and a set of key experiences, I'm more opposed to most forms of individualism than most these days. That definitely isn't where I was when I got to college, but to say those are 4 formative years is an understatement. Even, I think, if you come through college thinking most of the same things you come to college thinking, there's growth that happens by being around others and engaging thoughts, new or not, on a deeper level.
But I'm not trying to write about college right here.
There is real value in community and most especially community that is knit together in understanding and love, able to be transformative and transform the members of the community. But it starts in love and it grows people together.
I don't understand exactly how all of Jesus works into the atonement framework of most theologians. I know we're saved by grace through his sacrifice and it's the greatest form of love. But if that were 100% of the story, Jesus wouldn't have been here for so long. He wouldn't have come and walked among us. The rough and ready gospel just says he lived a perfect life, died, and rose from the dead. I don't see any stipulation on that life except that it was sinless. Maybe though, it was more than sinless, or, that is to say, that sinlessness is but part, and maybe but a small part of perfection. Jesus came and calls people, me, you, us, to a life in which we give up things that are our own in response to God's love for us. But he doesn't just say to hand them over and let them be abandoned. Giving up self, in Jesus' terms, involves doing so for the good of others...other people. Something about his perfect life knits people together on a truer, deeper, more sincere level. That's the life I want. I do not want to sin, but given the choice, I would rather struggle in a loving community than purify myself of all sin and be utterly alone. If Jesus' life is any indicator, perhaps that would be a sin itself.
-Zack
"It's a sad situation when we have to resort to keyboards as a means of making relations"
-Gym Class Heroes
Counting with scarecrow fingers
I just realized that the "post count" from the place I post counts stored drafts. I never bother deleting things I don't choose to finish or publish, but that means my few "landmark" posts, where I acknowledge that I've reached a certain number has been a bit inflated. You can add up the counters on the side by month or year and see that this is but my 157th post, not my 191st, as it will say in the blogger dashboard. That means I don't post around 5 percent of everything I start writing.
95% is still passing right?
-Zack
"We'll claim the stars as ours"
-Mae
95% is still passing right?
-Zack
"We'll claim the stars as ours"
-Mae
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