It's going to hit like a storm. I don't feel ready. I don't feel prepared. But maybe, just maybe, that's exactly how I'm supposed to feel right now.
This Saturday, I'll be moving back to Michigan. I'll be moving back to where God's called me, even if just for the coming year (but ultimately, I just don't know...). It's crazy, to say the least, how fast this summer has gone. And I don't feel ready for the coming school year. Perhaps what's worse than that, is that I don't know how to feel ready.
I'm excited for what's coming. I'm excited for the coming school year because I know great things will happen. They always do. But I just don't feel ready to embrace life on my own again. I don't feel ready to embrace a regular schedule and the challenges that will surely arise....soon.
But I must be ready. Because here we are and I can't think of anything more I could do. I can't think of anything more I could prepare. Really, right now, I can't even think of any more fund development work I could do.
It's just a matter of packing and a matter of moving....and I'm not packing all that much, I'm not moving many things. Just my self...and my frame of mind. Starting Saturday, I'm back in the saddle, so to speak. The semester will probably be over before I know it, but right now, it feels like it will be here much sooner than I ever thought it would.
I enjoy working on a college campus and not being a college student...but it would be a lie to say I don't miss college....often.
It's hard to believe that as much has changed as has changed in the past year. But it has. And here we are, here I am. Last August, I was hoping to make it on campus by October 1st. This year, I'm definitely getting into the swing from the outset and that's the best feeling ever.
This time last year, I still had some $30,000 to raise (maybe more)....now, I have less than $9,000 for the rest of the year, and that's not keeping me off of campus.
Things are falling into place, so to speak, in my life, in my world. But it's a constant journey and things falling into place is far from a reason to be at all sedentary. Things will constantly be falling into place, and it's our job, in this world, to constantly be taking all of those falling pieces and seeing what we can do to improve, seeing what we can do to move forward.
I've called "Meet the Robinsons" one of the most overlooked movies of the past decade, and part of that comes from how great it is, all the way around. But perhaps the most important part of my love for the movie comes from a simple phrase that sticks with me still: "keep moving forward." It doesn't matter, so much, how we do it, it doesn't matter, so much what happens...but what matters is that it happens..that we always keep moving forward. It is the sedentary life that kills much faster than the dangerous....or something like that.
The next year will be full of risks, of course, and full of challenges and opportunities. But even in the face of failure, as long as I "keep moving forward" I'm sure I'll be okay.
But I can't neglect, despite all of that, that there's a lot more to it than simple forward motion. I'm called to a divine purpose in this world, and above all else, I've got to keep that in mind, to seek daily what I'm to do from the word of God and by his will. I know it's his well, because so much of my life wouldn't be what it is if I did it by my own. But even so, somehow, someway, where I am is what is right..and I'll keep moving forward from there, by his good grace.
So this Saturday I'm moving, moving back to Michigan, and moving back to the place from where I can move forward in this grand adventure God's placed me on, even if just one semester at a time.
But between now and then, I've got to pack and I'll be packing away an amazing summer. Who knows what will be next summer? But I know from experience, and faith in that it's always been the case, it will be another glorious summer. Between now and then even though, I've got another glorious year in the service of the Lord to get underway.
To God be Glory Forever,
-Zack
"We could do more than dream; we could start it off with this"
-Anberlin
Monday, August 23, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
To Span the Sea of Time
For most of my time on InterVarsity staff so far, I've often felt like I'm drowning; drowning in a sea of seemingly endless and dead-ended fund raising, drowning in having no idea how to meaningfully do anything on campus at Hillsdale, drowning in a sea of incapabilities to connect with students on some level, and drowning, perhaps overall, in a sea of personal failings and inadequacies.
I've told myself, all along, and not incorrectly, that I can cling to God, cling to his promises, cling to the knowledge that he wouldn't call me to something he wouldn't equip me to accomplish. Cling is, most certainly, the most useful verb. It comes and goes in waves, the thoughts that I can't even dream to have what it takes to be a "good" staffworker. Largely though, I've probably been more in line with thinking I'm desperately skill-less than like I'm on the divinely appointed mission I, come to find out, actually am on and have been on from the beginning.
I realized today that we, I, probably pray the wrong way a lot. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking and saying this, but it seems to me that we shouldn't pray for God's will in our lives as much as we should pray for his will in the world and pray that we would be used by him to accomplish it. Maybe that's splitting hairs, but "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done; on Earth as it is in Heaven" doesn't even mention one's own life and work. It's probably the least we can do, to pray in the same direction as Jesus.
So somehow, and I probably know less now than I did this time two years ago, going into my senior year at Wooster, God's got me on InterVarsity staff as part of his divine mission to redeem creation. It's so heavy. It's so true. It's so much the only thing I can be doing with my life. It's also so small, so meticulous, that my small striving in a small school is somehow interwoven with the eternity of all of everything. But it is. I believe it is. Human's can't create their own grand-narrative theory because we're by nature full of holes. But God fills them. I don't know how, I just know he does, and I'd rather have faith in that than try to figure things out on my own, try to create a box by which to understand God and whatever it is he's doing. I probably can't comprehend it and I'm ready to give up trying. I'll simply be, and I will participate in this wondrous rush toward eternity. Because he is Love, and deep down, love never fails.
-Zack
"But suddenly now I know where I belong
It's many hundred miles and it won't be long"
-Ben Gibbard and Feist
I've told myself, all along, and not incorrectly, that I can cling to God, cling to his promises, cling to the knowledge that he wouldn't call me to something he wouldn't equip me to accomplish. Cling is, most certainly, the most useful verb. It comes and goes in waves, the thoughts that I can't even dream to have what it takes to be a "good" staffworker. Largely though, I've probably been more in line with thinking I'm desperately skill-less than like I'm on the divinely appointed mission I, come to find out, actually am on and have been on from the beginning.
I realized today that we, I, probably pray the wrong way a lot. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking and saying this, but it seems to me that we shouldn't pray for God's will in our lives as much as we should pray for his will in the world and pray that we would be used by him to accomplish it. Maybe that's splitting hairs, but "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done; on Earth as it is in Heaven" doesn't even mention one's own life and work. It's probably the least we can do, to pray in the same direction as Jesus.
So somehow, and I probably know less now than I did this time two years ago, going into my senior year at Wooster, God's got me on InterVarsity staff as part of his divine mission to redeem creation. It's so heavy. It's so true. It's so much the only thing I can be doing with my life. It's also so small, so meticulous, that my small striving in a small school is somehow interwoven with the eternity of all of everything. But it is. I believe it is. Human's can't create their own grand-narrative theory because we're by nature full of holes. But God fills them. I don't know how, I just know he does, and I'd rather have faith in that than try to figure things out on my own, try to create a box by which to understand God and whatever it is he's doing. I probably can't comprehend it and I'm ready to give up trying. I'll simply be, and I will participate in this wondrous rush toward eternity. Because he is Love, and deep down, love never fails.
-Zack
"But suddenly now I know where I belong
It's many hundred miles and it won't be long"
-Ben Gibbard and Feist
Friday, August 6, 2010
Perchance to Dream
Summers come and go, and they mark the rhythms of our lives. Turning the corner you could say, or the page, toward the rest of the year, to the rest of our lives; summer its own kind of space. Where we go, who we are, who we will become; they trot out in parade fashion as the world rotates around an axis of summer as eternal transitional space. Here, at least, in what we call the west thanks to how we chose, long ago, to be oriented.
It has been a full summer. It has been a short summer. And too, it has been a long summer.
August is a summer month if there is a summer month, but somehow, it is always the beginning of the end of summer. I had a conversation with my supervisor today about how he is beginning to mentally turn the corner back toward campus ministry, and that's exactly what I've felt like I've needed to do because my mind and heart just aren't where I know they need to be for me to get back into the swing of Hillsdale life and work. But, perhaps a little, I'm starting to turn the corner too. But part of me never wants summer to end. Even with more normal jobs, there's a sort of mystique about summer and I'm not sure I ever want to lose it. (That's not to say I have an, in any way, normal job).
But there is so much to look forward to with the fall as well.
It will cool down.
Football will return (and eventually basketball too).
Order will come back as school picks up.
Ministry will begin again (and we'll see more tangible ways of God working in students that I've been missing all summer long)
Life will once more feel like it's moving.
I love fall because I love beginnings and endings. Summer is a three month space of liminality and transition. While I love it, I am looking forward to what comes next. For whatever reason, it never quite feels like "what comes next" ever comes in the summer.
I often hear talk about "summer reading" but I'm so organized in my reading that I've been pretty horrible at doing it regularly without my more regular schedule.
What I've finished this summer:
How to Give Away your Faith
Undiscovered Country
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The Hobbit
Snow Crash
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The Small Group Leaders Handbook
The Art of Loving
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
A Little Princess
That might seem like a lot...but it's only 1/3rd of my total reading for the year so far (and much less if you count pages)...that's about right as schedules go, but it doesn't quite fit the "more time to read in the summer" mantra.
Anyway, I recommend basically all of those books, especially Undiscovered Country, which is by Lin Enger.
I never really ask for comments, but I would love to hear what you've been reading this summer, if you feel like contributing.
My favorite movie from the summer is Toy Story 3...it's actually more a coincidence than intentional that it actually came out this summer. I haven't seen much in theaters lately and would pick a DVD I've seen if any of them outshined Toy Story 3.
But none have, not quite. It's pretty great.
Like life, I hope this gets more regular come fall. But summer 2010, you will be missed.
-Zack
"When you run make sure you run to something, not away from"
-The Avetts
It has been a full summer. It has been a short summer. And too, it has been a long summer.
August is a summer month if there is a summer month, but somehow, it is always the beginning of the end of summer. I had a conversation with my supervisor today about how he is beginning to mentally turn the corner back toward campus ministry, and that's exactly what I've felt like I've needed to do because my mind and heart just aren't where I know they need to be for me to get back into the swing of Hillsdale life and work. But, perhaps a little, I'm starting to turn the corner too. But part of me never wants summer to end. Even with more normal jobs, there's a sort of mystique about summer and I'm not sure I ever want to lose it. (That's not to say I have an, in any way, normal job).
But there is so much to look forward to with the fall as well.
It will cool down.
Football will return (and eventually basketball too).
Order will come back as school picks up.
Ministry will begin again (and we'll see more tangible ways of God working in students that I've been missing all summer long)
Life will once more feel like it's moving.
I love fall because I love beginnings and endings. Summer is a three month space of liminality and transition. While I love it, I am looking forward to what comes next. For whatever reason, it never quite feels like "what comes next" ever comes in the summer.
I often hear talk about "summer reading" but I'm so organized in my reading that I've been pretty horrible at doing it regularly without my more regular schedule.
What I've finished this summer:
That might seem like a lot...but it's only 1/3rd of my total reading for the year so far (and much less if you count pages)...that's about right as schedules go, but it doesn't quite fit the "more time to read in the summer" mantra.
Anyway, I recommend basically all of those books, especially Undiscovered Country, which is by Lin Enger.
I never really ask for comments, but I would love to hear what you've been reading this summer, if you feel like contributing.
My favorite movie from the summer is Toy Story 3...it's actually more a coincidence than intentional that it actually came out this summer. I haven't seen much in theaters lately and would pick a DVD I've seen if any of them outshined Toy Story 3.
But none have, not quite. It's pretty great.
Like life, I hope this gets more regular come fall. But summer 2010, you will be missed.
-Zack
"When you run make sure you run to something, not away from"
-The Avetts
Monday, July 5, 2010
My mind is full of treasures, I can't unlock my own vault
I guess it's been nearly a month since I last posted. The blog I most officially endorse didn't even exist the last time I posted. It's this by the way. There are two posts now.
But I have some reason. Well, thirteen of those days have no reason...at least ten of them I probably didn't do anything but waste time not fund raising amid the fund raising I was doing. But since June 21st, I've been very much all over the place. 10 days in Wisconsin, 2 days in Wooster, 2 days in Findlay...about 13 hours at home somewhere in there.
All of it was great.
All of it was full.
Some of it was magical.
In Madison, I participated in InterVarsity's Orientation for new staff. It was ten full, full, full days...but I've never been so energized to raise support, I've never been so in love with the mission. I've never been so ready for what God's going to do on campus this year. I'm not always enamored with being at Hillsdale, but after ONS, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter where I am: it is a privilege to be involved in God's mission in the world no matter what town or campus I'm serving.
Every single time a friend gets married, my life feels new. It's nowhere near as new as it is for the married friend. But life is attached to community more than we might realize (and some of us wish we would both realize and act in that direction more often). I actually thought I'd be a lot more emotionally unstable last Friday than I was...that's good, but it will always take awhile to think about people as a unit that isn't just a unit but is, by definition, a unit exclusive to itself.
It really makes quarrels about women taking men from their friends seem ridiculous. (vice versa as well).
I'm not quite feeling up to writing tonight...I just felt like I should and didn't really have anything else to do right now. I should probably try to get some sleep, but I slept too much today already and that's going to be hard.
I should probably say something about LeBron, but all I can say is that I hope he comes back. A lot more than a simple basketball player choosing a team is underneath...He's not just Cleveland's best chance for a championship since the mid-nineties Indians, he is probably Cleveland's best chance for a championship for the next 10-15 years. I would hate to see that squandered....I can't blame him as a person for leaving..he can do as he pleases...but Cleveland needs hope for something. Sure, it's just sports, but Cleveland is a city full of people that could use a lift, if even for a sports season...thankfully true hope isn't found in sports. Even so, civic pride and reputation can go a long way and bringing the Kingdom to a place.
That's what I hope, pray, and act for at least. Is it okay to pray that LeBron makes one decision or another? I don't know. But when I pray he returns to Cleveland, it has a lot less to do with sports and a whole lot to do with a city and region of the world in desperate need of all forms of justice.
-Zack
"I guess every super hero need his own theme music"
-Kanye West
But I have some reason. Well, thirteen of those days have no reason...at least ten of them I probably didn't do anything but waste time not fund raising amid the fund raising I was doing. But since June 21st, I've been very much all over the place. 10 days in Wisconsin, 2 days in Wooster, 2 days in Findlay...about 13 hours at home somewhere in there.
All of it was great.
All of it was full.
Some of it was magical.
In Madison, I participated in InterVarsity's Orientation for new staff. It was ten full, full, full days...but I've never been so energized to raise support, I've never been so in love with the mission. I've never been so ready for what God's going to do on campus this year. I'm not always enamored with being at Hillsdale, but after ONS, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter where I am: it is a privilege to be involved in God's mission in the world no matter what town or campus I'm serving.
Every single time a friend gets married, my life feels new. It's nowhere near as new as it is for the married friend. But life is attached to community more than we might realize (and some of us wish we would both realize and act in that direction more often). I actually thought I'd be a lot more emotionally unstable last Friday than I was...that's good, but it will always take awhile to think about people as a unit that isn't just a unit but is, by definition, a unit exclusive to itself.
It really makes quarrels about women taking men from their friends seem ridiculous. (vice versa as well).
I'm not quite feeling up to writing tonight...I just felt like I should and didn't really have anything else to do right now. I should probably try to get some sleep, but I slept too much today already and that's going to be hard.
I should probably say something about LeBron, but all I can say is that I hope he comes back. A lot more than a simple basketball player choosing a team is underneath...He's not just Cleveland's best chance for a championship since the mid-nineties Indians, he is probably Cleveland's best chance for a championship for the next 10-15 years. I would hate to see that squandered....I can't blame him as a person for leaving..he can do as he pleases...but Cleveland needs hope for something. Sure, it's just sports, but Cleveland is a city full of people that could use a lift, if even for a sports season...thankfully true hope isn't found in sports. Even so, civic pride and reputation can go a long way and bringing the Kingdom to a place.
That's what I hope, pray, and act for at least. Is it okay to pray that LeBron makes one decision or another? I don't know. But when I pray he returns to Cleveland, it has a lot less to do with sports and a whole lot to do with a city and region of the world in desperate need of all forms of justice.
-Zack
"I guess every super hero need his own theme music"
-Kanye West
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Bits that shine.
It's not as big of a deal when a friend gets engaged if you're not single.
I've probably mostly lied about being happy for friends that get engaged since I became single. Not totally lied, because I have always been happy for them. But to say that happiness wasn't undercut by at least a little jealousy would have been a total fallacy.
But I experienced what it's like to have a close friend get engaged and have it go FBO on this side of singleness, the less jealous side. I'm not so jealous. I'm about as happy. And it's more of a non-issue.
I'm sorry for all the jealousy, engaged and married friends. It was wrong and I was blinded to it by it.
It's really quite uncanny (although I don't know enough about the past to be certain) how obsessed our culture is with relationships. Even the most affirmed, well-liked single people will feel the sting of singleness in our culture because we look, so often, upon relationships as the ultimate form of interpersonal validation. It doesn't even seem to matter where we stand with God as it goes. Even the most devout Christians seem to look at the world through the lens of romantic relationships, and it just increases more and more as the years go by.
I'm not sure what sort of comment to make on that because I'm right in there in the mix of it all. "It is better not to marry" says Paul, but you wouldn't think that by looking around. And like I said...I'm right there in the middle of it all. Even though, by the time I finally ended my season of singleness, I had decided that desiring a girlfriend was getting me nowhere and to simply live life and let it come as it comes, it would be a lie to say that I don't think life is better on this side of that season. We just want to connect with others as deeply as we can, and that means romantic relationships and I'm not sure, within our culture, there's a way around that. Some misinformed 50 year old Christian would start talking about us as "post-moderns" like we're some kind of race that gets by on relational connection and needs to ween ourselves off of it and turn to Christ if they read that little synopsis there. I don't disagree that we love relational connection more than our predecessors, but I don't think it's wrong, I don't think it's unChristian, and I definitely resist the othering "post-moderns" does. Some of the people I respect most in my life say it though, like it's anything but reality. I'm resisting a rant on post-modernity now. I will say though, that we're in a cycle of desiring and probably brokenly trying to fill voids in our lives with people..and they're voids that people can only kind of fill some of the time. There's nothing new about that...it's just that we, as a culture, are finally turning to community, to others, instead of to ourselves to fill that hole...and ultimately, that is good. The truth will always be though, that it's a hole we can't fully fill with others, can't fully fill with anything in the world because nothing here is perfect and we're always already created to be filled with the love of God.
As is par for the course, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of "truth" and how it relates to and is related by notions of the post-modern. I've come up with one line of dialogue: the post-modernism might seem to shun traditional notions of truth, but I don't see that to be the case entirely. Post-modernism is, at its core, a realization that we're not going to find all of truth on our own, and just being honest about that very real fact. Maybe it's a flouting of truth, but ultimately, it's a flouting of the notion of truth in pursuit of the actually attainable notion of honesty.
Maybe that's more than one line.
At the end of the day, I don't think we really know what we haven't felt, what we haven't experienced. Even the most rationalist of Christians will admit that people aren't convinced to come to Christ by arguments...it's always about his drawing us. So, to that end, it all starts with experience. If you ask someone how they know God exists, no matter their long answer about manuscripts, the actual answer, the end answer, is almost always, maybe even always, based on a deep feeling they trust above all else. That's how it is for me. I'm just being honest. I don't put my faith in Christ, my trust in the Bible because there are so many agreeing manuscripts. It's because I've felt my life, my soul, my inner-being being nourished by its words, by encountering God.
Oftentimes, it seems to me, that Christians want less to show the world the love of Christ and so much more to prove a certain rightness. And that when the Gospel falls on deaf ears...when people who don't care about your rightness want to feel love and all you've got at the end is an argument that doesn't matter.
So do I throw all objectivity out the window? Most of it. That's heresy probably. But I don't see any validity in fallen man building anything upon the scriptures as we get them and the truth has always been that people look at scripture differently, person to person. That's a chink in the armor, no matter how we slice it. So I look at scripture as I look at scripture and I think it's as right a way to do it as I can. I know people disagree with me on things, but as far as I can tell, there are enough who agree with me that we can get together and try to change the world. Because I believe it says that's something we're to strive to do...through love.
-Zack
"You're wearing the scars that save"
-Kids in the Way
I've probably mostly lied about being happy for friends that get engaged since I became single. Not totally lied, because I have always been happy for them. But to say that happiness wasn't undercut by at least a little jealousy would have been a total fallacy.
But I experienced what it's like to have a close friend get engaged and have it go FBO on this side of singleness, the less jealous side. I'm not so jealous. I'm about as happy. And it's more of a non-issue.
I'm sorry for all the jealousy, engaged and married friends. It was wrong and I was blinded to it by it.
It's really quite uncanny (although I don't know enough about the past to be certain) how obsessed our culture is with relationships. Even the most affirmed, well-liked single people will feel the sting of singleness in our culture because we look, so often, upon relationships as the ultimate form of interpersonal validation. It doesn't even seem to matter where we stand with God as it goes. Even the most devout Christians seem to look at the world through the lens of romantic relationships, and it just increases more and more as the years go by.
I'm not sure what sort of comment to make on that because I'm right in there in the mix of it all. "It is better not to marry" says Paul, but you wouldn't think that by looking around. And like I said...I'm right there in the middle of it all. Even though, by the time I finally ended my season of singleness, I had decided that desiring a girlfriend was getting me nowhere and to simply live life and let it come as it comes, it would be a lie to say that I don't think life is better on this side of that season. We just want to connect with others as deeply as we can, and that means romantic relationships and I'm not sure, within our culture, there's a way around that. Some misinformed 50 year old Christian would start talking about us as "post-moderns" like we're some kind of race that gets by on relational connection and needs to ween ourselves off of it and turn to Christ if they read that little synopsis there. I don't disagree that we love relational connection more than our predecessors, but I don't think it's wrong, I don't think it's unChristian, and I definitely resist the othering "post-moderns" does. Some of the people I respect most in my life say it though, like it's anything but reality. I'm resisting a rant on post-modernity now. I will say though, that we're in a cycle of desiring and probably brokenly trying to fill voids in our lives with people..and they're voids that people can only kind of fill some of the time. There's nothing new about that...it's just that we, as a culture, are finally turning to community, to others, instead of to ourselves to fill that hole...and ultimately, that is good. The truth will always be though, that it's a hole we can't fully fill with others, can't fully fill with anything in the world because nothing here is perfect and we're always already created to be filled with the love of God.
As is par for the course, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of "truth" and how it relates to and is related by notions of the post-modern. I've come up with one line of dialogue: the post-modernism might seem to shun traditional notions of truth, but I don't see that to be the case entirely. Post-modernism is, at its core, a realization that we're not going to find all of truth on our own, and just being honest about that very real fact. Maybe it's a flouting of truth, but ultimately, it's a flouting of the notion of truth in pursuit of the actually attainable notion of honesty.
Maybe that's more than one line.
At the end of the day, I don't think we really know what we haven't felt, what we haven't experienced. Even the most rationalist of Christians will admit that people aren't convinced to come to Christ by arguments...it's always about his drawing us. So, to that end, it all starts with experience. If you ask someone how they know God exists, no matter their long answer about manuscripts, the actual answer, the end answer, is almost always, maybe even always, based on a deep feeling they trust above all else. That's how it is for me. I'm just being honest. I don't put my faith in Christ, my trust in the Bible because there are so many agreeing manuscripts. It's because I've felt my life, my soul, my inner-being being nourished by its words, by encountering God.
Oftentimes, it seems to me, that Christians want less to show the world the love of Christ and so much more to prove a certain rightness. And that when the Gospel falls on deaf ears...when people who don't care about your rightness want to feel love and all you've got at the end is an argument that doesn't matter.
So do I throw all objectivity out the window? Most of it. That's heresy probably. But I don't see any validity in fallen man building anything upon the scriptures as we get them and the truth has always been that people look at scripture differently, person to person. That's a chink in the armor, no matter how we slice it. So I look at scripture as I look at scripture and I think it's as right a way to do it as I can. I know people disagree with me on things, but as far as I can tell, there are enough who agree with me that we can get together and try to change the world. Because I believe it says that's something we're to strive to do...through love.
-Zack
"You're wearing the scars that save"
-Kids in the Way
Monday, May 31, 2010
Discovery
Late late late.
And up against a wall.
But there I am, writing this again.
I will admit, this is probably a stand in, this blog that is. A stand in for writing I should do that could be more important. I will admit that this is probably not going to be as great of a read as you might have hoped, as you might have wished for when you decided to come see if I updated and might have got a little excited in seeing that I had. But I will also admit that I'm glad you're here, reading this right now, because if I'm going to deflect writing other, better things, I might as well be writing for an audience.
It's a binary I guess, or many of them constructing the larger whole. I could writer other better things for no one (immediately) with no sort of instant gratification at all, or I can write this, for you and others like you to read right away but it's a diversion from the better things I could be spending my time writing.
So why write this if I'm so convinced something else I could write would be so much better? Mostly because I'm lazy and mostly because I enjoy instant gratification...also because I don't feel organized or devoted enough to anything else right now in order to spend the time writing it.
I also kind of feel duty-bound to update this from time to time. That's not the fault of any of you...it's simply 6 years of conditioning. I did, afterall, update my old (ancient really) xanga page daily for something like 8 months when I started it. I'm self indulgent, so here's a shameful link to it if you want to see it: click these words!
I feel like I'm walking on a wall between two gardens right now. Opaque metaphor is my specialty. Luckily it almost always translates into "liminal."
But I digress.
Ever since I joined InterVarsity staff (or really, more correctly, since graduation which is now more than a year ago...wow), I have felt like my life is some kind of uneven collection of colored glass pieces (opaque metaphors about transparent material are really my favorite) that can sometimes pass around by each other and look like something with meaning, but mostly it's all just a jumbled bit of many things, often beautiful, but without any real unity, without specific purpose. I shouldn't say without specific purpose because I haven't felt purposeless...but I have felt like my life, as a whole, is more a collection of things that share but me as me and don't really fit together to form a solidified whole. I wonder if that's how all recent college graduates feel or if it's simply the real form of adult life. I'm not sure but I am sure that if anything, it seems to become more and more the case as time goes on and that doesn't seem like its altogether completely logical. The further I get from college, shouldn't more things fall into place? Maybe that's the case in the long run. But one year out, I'm still in the fracturing phase, or at least have been for awhile. Maybe I'm not anymore. But it was a good phase. It was a good place to be. It's not that I like things kind of seeming to fall apart or at least become disparate, but it seems to me that life is really a set of build ups, orderings, then fallings down and apart so that something somehow more glorious is built in its place. Maybe that means I'm afraid of permanence and have given myself a transient lifestyle because I don't want to become something that will stagnate. But If I think about myself in those terms, then I guess I'm well on my way to losing a bit of that transience, and I'm okay with that...but it's not happening, not yet.
Next year, I will have sort of 3.5 homes, depending on how you count...but all at once, will be somewhat without a permanent residence. I'll be living in a cottage not far from Hillsdale during the week but probably won't spend many weekends north of Ohio, and my weekends will be pretty split up between different places in Ohio, depending on the ebb and flow of life. I wish I had some sort of commentary on all of this, but I don't really. I wish I could divine some deeper meaning from the lot of it, but all it really is is a collection of facts that are.
But from where I stand I stare boldly into that coming future and embrace all of it. It's not time for me to have a home yet, but I will know when it is. Maybe it's because God has brought me this far without any debilitating snags, maybe it's a naive refusal to be tied to places as places, maybe it's a faith that borders on irrationality. I don't know. But I don't fear anything and I don't worry. And that's alright.
I feel like I'm being prideful and arrogant about all of that and I apologize because not only would that be wrong of me, but it's not even really something worth being prideful and arrogant about.
But I look forward to the summer and the coming year richly.
I'm at about 55% of my funding for next year, I think. If anything, it's probably more than that. It's shadow time, wherein the next fiscal year is close, when the new budget kicks in, so it's like a game of waiting and coin-flipping, to see what the final remaining balance will be and how much less I need to raise. I don't know that that's actually how I ought to look at it because we're supposed to be striving for monthly gifts that sustain...I'm something of a one-time-gift magnet though, and I'm not going to insist on any specific form of giving if someone wants to invest in God's work at Hillsdale.
I've been learning and thinking some pretty simplistic stuff about God lately and I think it's simply things we've wanted to overlook: Jesus' commandment is to love God and to love others...and that's all. The entire wealth of Christian morality is derived from that and explicated in Paul's letters, but those are letters to people who are already Christian whom he is urging to act in ways that will best show that love to the world.
That is more radical than it sounds...as love often is.
-Zack
"strange how you fit into me"
-Vienna Teng
And up against a wall.
But there I am, writing this again.
I will admit, this is probably a stand in, this blog that is. A stand in for writing I should do that could be more important. I will admit that this is probably not going to be as great of a read as you might have hoped, as you might have wished for when you decided to come see if I updated and might have got a little excited in seeing that I had. But I will also admit that I'm glad you're here, reading this right now, because if I'm going to deflect writing other, better things, I might as well be writing for an audience.
It's a binary I guess, or many of them constructing the larger whole. I could writer other better things for no one (immediately) with no sort of instant gratification at all, or I can write this, for you and others like you to read right away but it's a diversion from the better things I could be spending my time writing.
So why write this if I'm so convinced something else I could write would be so much better? Mostly because I'm lazy and mostly because I enjoy instant gratification...also because I don't feel organized or devoted enough to anything else right now in order to spend the time writing it.
I also kind of feel duty-bound to update this from time to time. That's not the fault of any of you...it's simply 6 years of conditioning. I did, afterall, update my old (ancient really) xanga page daily for something like 8 months when I started it. I'm self indulgent, so here's a shameful link to it if you want to see it: click these words!
I feel like I'm walking on a wall between two gardens right now. Opaque metaphor is my specialty. Luckily it almost always translates into "liminal."
But I digress.
Ever since I joined InterVarsity staff (or really, more correctly, since graduation which is now more than a year ago...wow), I have felt like my life is some kind of uneven collection of colored glass pieces (opaque metaphors about transparent material are really my favorite) that can sometimes pass around by each other and look like something with meaning, but mostly it's all just a jumbled bit of many things, often beautiful, but without any real unity, without specific purpose. I shouldn't say without specific purpose because I haven't felt purposeless...but I have felt like my life, as a whole, is more a collection of things that share but me as me and don't really fit together to form a solidified whole. I wonder if that's how all recent college graduates feel or if it's simply the real form of adult life. I'm not sure but I am sure that if anything, it seems to become more and more the case as time goes on and that doesn't seem like its altogether completely logical. The further I get from college, shouldn't more things fall into place? Maybe that's the case in the long run. But one year out, I'm still in the fracturing phase, or at least have been for awhile. Maybe I'm not anymore. But it was a good phase. It was a good place to be. It's not that I like things kind of seeming to fall apart or at least become disparate, but it seems to me that life is really a set of build ups, orderings, then fallings down and apart so that something somehow more glorious is built in its place. Maybe that means I'm afraid of permanence and have given myself a transient lifestyle because I don't want to become something that will stagnate. But If I think about myself in those terms, then I guess I'm well on my way to losing a bit of that transience, and I'm okay with that...but it's not happening, not yet.
Next year, I will have sort of 3.5 homes, depending on how you count...but all at once, will be somewhat without a permanent residence. I'll be living in a cottage not far from Hillsdale during the week but probably won't spend many weekends north of Ohio, and my weekends will be pretty split up between different places in Ohio, depending on the ebb and flow of life. I wish I had some sort of commentary on all of this, but I don't really. I wish I could divine some deeper meaning from the lot of it, but all it really is is a collection of facts that are.
But from where I stand I stare boldly into that coming future and embrace all of it. It's not time for me to have a home yet, but I will know when it is. Maybe it's because God has brought me this far without any debilitating snags, maybe it's a naive refusal to be tied to places as places, maybe it's a faith that borders on irrationality. I don't know. But I don't fear anything and I don't worry. And that's alright.
I feel like I'm being prideful and arrogant about all of that and I apologize because not only would that be wrong of me, but it's not even really something worth being prideful and arrogant about.
But I look forward to the summer and the coming year richly.
I'm at about 55% of my funding for next year, I think. If anything, it's probably more than that. It's shadow time, wherein the next fiscal year is close, when the new budget kicks in, so it's like a game of waiting and coin-flipping, to see what the final remaining balance will be and how much less I need to raise. I don't know that that's actually how I ought to look at it because we're supposed to be striving for monthly gifts that sustain...I'm something of a one-time-gift magnet though, and I'm not going to insist on any specific form of giving if someone wants to invest in God's work at Hillsdale.
I've been learning and thinking some pretty simplistic stuff about God lately and I think it's simply things we've wanted to overlook: Jesus' commandment is to love God and to love others...and that's all. The entire wealth of Christian morality is derived from that and explicated in Paul's letters, but those are letters to people who are already Christian whom he is urging to act in ways that will best show that love to the world.
That is more radical than it sounds...as love often is.
-Zack
"strange how you fit into me"
-Vienna Teng
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Back in the Saddle
It's summer. Well, it's the school-year rendered version of summer, per the Hillsdale College academic calendar. There are certain aspects of my job that make it feel more like a job than it often does, and when I think about the summer, that becomes one of them...it's full-time fundraising time once again.
But Fund Raising, I'm learning, isn't as bad as it sounds or seems and Faith goes a long way. It might be the most "job-like" thing I have (depending on how you define "job"), but it can be one of the most exciting. It's a risky, vulnerable business, but it's also highly relational and it's fun to get to catch up with old friends and family members as part of my job. I also kind of like the regularity of my daily schedule. It's not something I could or would want to do full time forever, but I am, at the end of the day, thankful for the seasons of life, even, as it may be, the seasons of fund raising in my life.
It helps, too, that this fund development season has a set end when school starts, unlike last year...of course, that's largely because of the work I had to do during that indeterminate season on my life last year following graduation.
And as I re-enter this season of my life, I remember what life was like this time last year, and even more what became my life by the end of the summer and the end of 2009; it is drastically different, to say the least, and ultimately, it is better.
There's a sort of adolescent growing period immediately following college graduation. There's a lot of adjustment that, at least for me, had to take place in moving back home, but even more, there's an adjustment to the idea that college is over, that life of some sort or another is beginning again, much like it did when college started, but somehow bigger, somehow more powerfully so. At least that's how it felt for me last year...and I'll admit that I simply didn't have the best immediate support network for all of that when it all started after I returned home from Chapter Focus Week last year. Things were changing and things were hard and there was little I could do but turn inward and upward for support because everyone I knew was elsewhere in the world and going through much of the same as me (but, of course different and sometimes including marriage and or coming marriage). Maybe it's ironic, maybe it's just exactly what God wanted for some reason, and probably it's both, but I definitely do have a much stronger immediate support network now, so to speak, and it's much less necessary for my emotional state going into and going through this summer, one summer removed from college...very much the same but intrinsically different from last summer.
Being tied to the school year is like a science experiment; there are certain things that always stay the same, and it's by them that you can measure the changes. In the past year, much has changed, but here I am with some key similarities nonetheless....as I look at where I am now and where I was then, I can look on, look back, look forward even, and say that while the past year was one of the hardest I've ever lived, it's brought me to a great place. God has brought me to a great place. Maybe it's because of that very fact that I feel like things are more than fine right now; God worked in and through so much in the last 365 days, how could I not make it through what feels like so much less (but could very well be so much more if I look from the right angle) if I made it through, better on the other side, everything that has happened in the past year.
Thank you all, to whom this applies, for your prayer and support in the past year. I couldn't have done it without you. If you don't know if it applies to you or not and think it might not...it probably does...knowing my parochial readership.
One of the first students I met at Hillsdale (when I visited before accepting placement during my senior year) got married on Saturday. I don't know if that symbolizes anything but in a way, it makes me feel old. In another way, it makes me feel like Hillsdale only masquerades as a school without religious ties (and it's not the only reason I feel that way...), and in a third way, it makes me simply feel joyful.
This Saturday, a woman is getting married that I met long, long ago, many years before she met most if not all of her wedding party. We used to talk a lot but now, other than the stand-in-for-conversation that a facebook friend request acceptance is, we've not talked since those years (about 8 of them ago). She's mostly a friend of a friend now, even know neither of us knew any of those mutual friends all those years ago. I don't know that any of that means anything at all..it's just interesting and I like writing about interesting things and seeing if something more interesting emerges. I don't think it's happening right now.
This Sunday, I hope not to disappoint. It's a bit of a rigged jury though...I could fail miserably, and I've a feeling I won't disappoint.
I don't know why I share such vagaries. I just do.
-Zack
"He brought me to a spacious place. He rescued me because he delighted in me"
-Psalm 18:19
But Fund Raising, I'm learning, isn't as bad as it sounds or seems and Faith goes a long way. It might be the most "job-like" thing I have (depending on how you define "job"), but it can be one of the most exciting. It's a risky, vulnerable business, but it's also highly relational and it's fun to get to catch up with old friends and family members as part of my job. I also kind of like the regularity of my daily schedule. It's not something I could or would want to do full time forever, but I am, at the end of the day, thankful for the seasons of life, even, as it may be, the seasons of fund raising in my life.
It helps, too, that this fund development season has a set end when school starts, unlike last year...of course, that's largely because of the work I had to do during that indeterminate season on my life last year following graduation.
And as I re-enter this season of my life, I remember what life was like this time last year, and even more what became my life by the end of the summer and the end of 2009; it is drastically different, to say the least, and ultimately, it is better.
There's a sort of adolescent growing period immediately following college graduation. There's a lot of adjustment that, at least for me, had to take place in moving back home, but even more, there's an adjustment to the idea that college is over, that life of some sort or another is beginning again, much like it did when college started, but somehow bigger, somehow more powerfully so. At least that's how it felt for me last year...and I'll admit that I simply didn't have the best immediate support network for all of that when it all started after I returned home from Chapter Focus Week last year. Things were changing and things were hard and there was little I could do but turn inward and upward for support because everyone I knew was elsewhere in the world and going through much of the same as me (but, of course different and sometimes including marriage and or coming marriage). Maybe it's ironic, maybe it's just exactly what God wanted for some reason, and probably it's both, but I definitely do have a much stronger immediate support network now, so to speak, and it's much less necessary for my emotional state going into and going through this summer, one summer removed from college...very much the same but intrinsically different from last summer.
Being tied to the school year is like a science experiment; there are certain things that always stay the same, and it's by them that you can measure the changes. In the past year, much has changed, but here I am with some key similarities nonetheless....as I look at where I am now and where I was then, I can look on, look back, look forward even, and say that while the past year was one of the hardest I've ever lived, it's brought me to a great place. God has brought me to a great place. Maybe it's because of that very fact that I feel like things are more than fine right now; God worked in and through so much in the last 365 days, how could I not make it through what feels like so much less (but could very well be so much more if I look from the right angle) if I made it through, better on the other side, everything that has happened in the past year.
Thank you all, to whom this applies, for your prayer and support in the past year. I couldn't have done it without you. If you don't know if it applies to you or not and think it might not...it probably does...knowing my parochial readership.
One of the first students I met at Hillsdale (when I visited before accepting placement during my senior year) got married on Saturday. I don't know if that symbolizes anything but in a way, it makes me feel old. In another way, it makes me feel like Hillsdale only masquerades as a school without religious ties (and it's not the only reason I feel that way...), and in a third way, it makes me simply feel joyful.
This Saturday, a woman is getting married that I met long, long ago, many years before she met most if not all of her wedding party. We used to talk a lot but now, other than the stand-in-for-conversation that a facebook friend request acceptance is, we've not talked since those years (about 8 of them ago). She's mostly a friend of a friend now, even know neither of us knew any of those mutual friends all those years ago. I don't know that any of that means anything at all..it's just interesting and I like writing about interesting things and seeing if something more interesting emerges. I don't think it's happening right now.
This Sunday, I hope not to disappoint. It's a bit of a rigged jury though...I could fail miserably, and I've a feeling I won't disappoint.
I don't know why I share such vagaries. I just do.
-Zack
"He brought me to a spacious place. He rescued me because he delighted in me"
-Psalm 18:19
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Great Life-giver
The past two weeks evaporated. It often felt like they were going to last forever (and sometimes I hoped they would, just a little at least), but right now, it feels like two weeks were zapped from my life. It's mostly because there's such a difference between being at Cedar Campus and being anywhere else that it almost feels like a dream...like I know it happened but the time it took to happen is unaccounted for in my mind.
Then I think about the physical exhaustion I had to overcome over the weekend and realize that it most definitely did happen.
And it was good. It was very good. Chapter Focus week is kind of more fun to staff when your students aren't there because it feels like you've got a vibrant social life for a week when you get to hang out with all of the other staff that don't have chapters there and, even without my bias, it's probably safe to say that InterVarsity staff are mostly pretty cool people to hang out with. But I do have a bias, so I might be wrong.
That's not to say that the second week, when Hillsdale was there, wasn't great, because it definitely was. Indeed, it was perhaps more great but in all different ways. We had a very small group, by Hillsdale standards, but it seems that many of them at least understand the mission of InterVarsity better now...my main prayer request is that living that out on campus happens and, further, that it spreads. The students we had are influential, but there is always the stark worldview contrast between me and Hillsdale students that translates into very different things from the same or at least seemingly same ideas. There probably shouldn't be such difference between my worldview and that of the typical Hillsdale Christian Fellowship student, because we're all Christians...but sometimes it feels like all similarities end there....indeed, I think they often might...at least most of them.
I've been realizing, especially today and this weekend, that calling God the giver of life means a lot more than we let it. Of course it means eternal life, but so often we act like eternal life is the only thing God wants to give us. Perhaps it is the ultimate thing, but he wants to give us life to live abundantly now, here, in this life. A rich, joyful, hopeful, free life is what he wants to give those who seek him in this life. I think most people settle for so much less. Many christians settle in and decide that this life must be terrible and look heavenward at all times, while non-Christians and especially irreligious people settle for a life that strives to be fulfilled by imperfect love from imperfect people and it can only lead to an unfulfilling life. But God can and will grant a beautiful life to his children, if we would simply seek to see his world as he sees it, deriving joy from the beauty he places around us, in people, in places, in knowing that he loves us more than we can even fathom. There's joy in the life he wants to grant us, if we would be open, and it's a joy that gives strength and hope, because he promises this world will be imperfect in its broken state. But despite its brokenness, he offers hope for a brighter tomorrow and a better today. It's amazing how far hope can get you, when it rests in the creator and sustainer of all things. The best part about it is, perhaps, at least for now, that it's a joy that often, practically, comes from others, in the context of community. God uses people to bless people with a rich life of love and hope. To be close to God is to be close to others; it is some kind of profound, beautiful, mysterious circle that lets us constantly draw more and more and more into the fold of joyful, warm, loving embrace, if only we would stop pursuing the end and take a moment to love in the means.
-Zack
"What happened to the American dream? It came true."
-Watchmen
Then I think about the physical exhaustion I had to overcome over the weekend and realize that it most definitely did happen.
And it was good. It was very good. Chapter Focus week is kind of more fun to staff when your students aren't there because it feels like you've got a vibrant social life for a week when you get to hang out with all of the other staff that don't have chapters there and, even without my bias, it's probably safe to say that InterVarsity staff are mostly pretty cool people to hang out with. But I do have a bias, so I might be wrong.
That's not to say that the second week, when Hillsdale was there, wasn't great, because it definitely was. Indeed, it was perhaps more great but in all different ways. We had a very small group, by Hillsdale standards, but it seems that many of them at least understand the mission of InterVarsity better now...my main prayer request is that living that out on campus happens and, further, that it spreads. The students we had are influential, but there is always the stark worldview contrast between me and Hillsdale students that translates into very different things from the same or at least seemingly same ideas. There probably shouldn't be such difference between my worldview and that of the typical Hillsdale Christian Fellowship student, because we're all Christians...but sometimes it feels like all similarities end there....indeed, I think they often might...at least most of them.
I've been realizing, especially today and this weekend, that calling God the giver of life means a lot more than we let it. Of course it means eternal life, but so often we act like eternal life is the only thing God wants to give us. Perhaps it is the ultimate thing, but he wants to give us life to live abundantly now, here, in this life. A rich, joyful, hopeful, free life is what he wants to give those who seek him in this life. I think most people settle for so much less. Many christians settle in and decide that this life must be terrible and look heavenward at all times, while non-Christians and especially irreligious people settle for a life that strives to be fulfilled by imperfect love from imperfect people and it can only lead to an unfulfilling life. But God can and will grant a beautiful life to his children, if we would simply seek to see his world as he sees it, deriving joy from the beauty he places around us, in people, in places, in knowing that he loves us more than we can even fathom. There's joy in the life he wants to grant us, if we would be open, and it's a joy that gives strength and hope, because he promises this world will be imperfect in its broken state. But despite its brokenness, he offers hope for a brighter tomorrow and a better today. It's amazing how far hope can get you, when it rests in the creator and sustainer of all things. The best part about it is, perhaps, at least for now, that it's a joy that often, practically, comes from others, in the context of community. God uses people to bless people with a rich life of love and hope. To be close to God is to be close to others; it is some kind of profound, beautiful, mysterious circle that lets us constantly draw more and more and more into the fold of joyful, warm, loving embrace, if only we would stop pursuing the end and take a moment to love in the means.
-Zack
"What happened to the American dream? It came true."
-Watchmen
Thursday, April 29, 2010
O'er Yonder
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
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
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
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
L37: Faith
I don't know that I have the faith to encounter God would have me encounter. To believe all he would have me believe. To trust in so many things it seems I've no practical hope of seeing.
But his faithfulness, mercy, and grace run deeper than my own unbelief.
I want to have the deeper faith, the faith required to do, to see, to be, to experience all he would have for me.
I've learned much from a life that, if all set before me, looks much longer than it feels. But perhaps the most important thing I've learned is that God calls us to bold and brilliant things but his grace is big enough that, for the present moment, he simply asks for the faith to take the next step.
And he builds on that.
Faith is not natural, and it is not granted.
It is grown.
-Zack
"Peel back our ribs again and stand inside of our chest. We just wanna love you"
-John Mark McMillan
-
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
L36: Reason
I hate poetry because of the rules, and I probably hate it for that reason because I'm jealous of those who can write it when I can't. I do not, however, hate dance when that is still very much the case. I also don't hate singing or painting or drawing or film or any other art form in which I can engage, even if poorly.
But poetry, I hate, even at its most beautiful, I wish it could be sprung from the confines of meter and the shackles of rhyme and just be beautiful on its own. And maybe it can, and maybe it can't, and I'm doing all I can to actively rip beauty from the prison it inhabited so long ago. I feel justified in doing this, because artistically, poetry is somehow older than prose.
If you study dance, which I've not, you'll encounter post-modern dance, wherein anything is a dance if the dancer decides this to be the case. And I agree (and not just because I have an affinity for the post-modern). That's probably my biggest issue with poetry. Prose exists, and thus the least poetic poems are cast off as not-poems, or, as it's called so derisively "prose."
Perhaps more than I hate poetry, I lament it and my inability to create it. I believe in the ultimate pliability of words, the fact that anyone can do anything they want with a language and the passion, the fury, the beauty, will seep out if it is poured in with enough care. And sometimes that care takes the form of a poetic arrangement, and I don't have the skill to do that, so, perhaps, I lament that it works. Like post-modern dance though, the tenant still remains that artistic creation is more the product of an expressing heart than the end product itself. Sometimes that heart soars, it leaps, it flies, it screams, it cries, it aches, it dies, it beats and pulses with life, sorrow, death, and rage, and love. Perhaps mostly love. And hope. I hate that that heart can effectively be boxed into iambs. But it can.
-Zack
"these days, mercy cuts so deep"
-Jars of Clay
But poetry, I hate, even at its most beautiful, I wish it could be sprung from the confines of meter and the shackles of rhyme and just be beautiful on its own. And maybe it can, and maybe it can't, and I'm doing all I can to actively rip beauty from the prison it inhabited so long ago. I feel justified in doing this, because artistically, poetry is somehow older than prose.
If you study dance, which I've not, you'll encounter post-modern dance, wherein anything is a dance if the dancer decides this to be the case. And I agree (and not just because I have an affinity for the post-modern). That's probably my biggest issue with poetry. Prose exists, and thus the least poetic poems are cast off as not-poems, or, as it's called so derisively "prose."
Perhaps more than I hate poetry, I lament it and my inability to create it. I believe in the ultimate pliability of words, the fact that anyone can do anything they want with a language and the passion, the fury, the beauty, will seep out if it is poured in with enough care. And sometimes that care takes the form of a poetic arrangement, and I don't have the skill to do that, so, perhaps, I lament that it works. Like post-modern dance though, the tenant still remains that artistic creation is more the product of an expressing heart than the end product itself. Sometimes that heart soars, it leaps, it flies, it screams, it cries, it aches, it dies, it beats and pulses with life, sorrow, death, and rage, and love. Perhaps mostly love. And hope. I hate that that heart can effectively be boxed into iambs. But it can.
-Zack
"these days, mercy cuts so deep"
-Jars of Clay
L35: Patience
Uncertainty is both natural and naturally uncomfortable. We do long, I do long, to always know the next step, to know what happens next, to see what's coming, in order to plan or really just to know.
But that's just wanting something I ought not have yet. It's just desiring something that is not mine to desire.
Without uncertainty, there could not be faith, at least not a faith in the promise that the future is brighter, that the future is where we're supposed to be heading, and in the meantime, we're where we're supposed to be in the meantime.
Patience, though, is highly inconvenient when you live in the tunnel of time as we all do, some more than others. I'll admit that I'm highly impatient when it comes to not knowing anything, especially about my future.
That is probably its own form of an unholy lack of contentment, a lack of faith that what is now is what is supposed to be, even just for now.
Sometimes I'm less a fan of the now and throw all of myself into the next because the next might be better than the now.
There's a right place, somewhere in the middle of it all, of positively seeking real change, patiently looking forward to what comes next and being ready for what it may be (not holding too tightly to what is now because it might just be for now), and having the faith God asks of us to simply be where he has placed us and to know he's placed us there for a reason.
I'm not sure how to straddle all of that right now, but I'm trying.
-Zack
"the answer's obvious, we switch the consonants, change the sword to words and lift continents"
-Flobots
But that's just wanting something I ought not have yet. It's just desiring something that is not mine to desire.
Without uncertainty, there could not be faith, at least not a faith in the promise that the future is brighter, that the future is where we're supposed to be heading, and in the meantime, we're where we're supposed to be in the meantime.
Patience, though, is highly inconvenient when you live in the tunnel of time as we all do, some more than others. I'll admit that I'm highly impatient when it comes to not knowing anything, especially about my future.
That is probably its own form of an unholy lack of contentment, a lack of faith that what is now is what is supposed to be, even just for now.
Sometimes I'm less a fan of the now and throw all of myself into the next because the next might be better than the now.
There's a right place, somewhere in the middle of it all, of positively seeking real change, patiently looking forward to what comes next and being ready for what it may be (not holding too tightly to what is now because it might just be for now), and having the faith God asks of us to simply be where he has placed us and to know he's placed us there for a reason.
I'm not sure how to straddle all of that right now, but I'm trying.
-Zack
"the answer's obvious, we switch the consonants, change the sword to words and lift continents"
-Flobots
Sunday, March 28, 2010
L34: Bright
There are so many metaphors for God and for the life lived with him and to him. But there's one particular metaphor that I question in its symbolic use:
"Walk in the light, for you are children of the light and in the light there can be no darkness"
Maybe it's just because I think in metaphor too often that I substitute it for reality, from time to time. But I swear I've seen the light in people, not as something else, but really, as light. Light and darkness are a necessary dichotomy, but it's unfortunate that modern dichotomistic thinking gets to think about this one, because it's only a dichotomy because it has to be. Most of the time, it seems we think about the light as the absence of darkness, and I think it ought to be the other way around. Darkness is the absence of light. Suddenly, walking in the light isn't just a righteous life, but something more glorious, something more than just not sinning...something more than what it's not.
But maybe I just confuse what I want to see for what I actually see, but I know there are those in whom I've seen something, some sort of brightness, some sort of effluvial joy and it's a lot more than simply not doing bad things. There is certainly merit to the pure life, or as pure a life as we can live, but the glory of the gospel isn't that it stops us from sinning, it's that we can live a life no longer bound by the chains of our ultimately flawed personal strivings, and feeling that freedom, breathing in the glory of truth and grace...that is the presence of light.
-Zack
"See the most important parts are the ones that are unseen; the wings don't make you fly and the crown don't make you king"
-Lupe Fiasco
"Walk in the light, for you are children of the light and in the light there can be no darkness"
Maybe it's just because I think in metaphor too often that I substitute it for reality, from time to time. But I swear I've seen the light in people, not as something else, but really, as light. Light and darkness are a necessary dichotomy, but it's unfortunate that modern dichotomistic thinking gets to think about this one, because it's only a dichotomy because it has to be. Most of the time, it seems we think about the light as the absence of darkness, and I think it ought to be the other way around. Darkness is the absence of light. Suddenly, walking in the light isn't just a righteous life, but something more glorious, something more than just not sinning...something more than what it's not.
But maybe I just confuse what I want to see for what I actually see, but I know there are those in whom I've seen something, some sort of brightness, some sort of effluvial joy and it's a lot more than simply not doing bad things. There is certainly merit to the pure life, or as pure a life as we can live, but the glory of the gospel isn't that it stops us from sinning, it's that we can live a life no longer bound by the chains of our ultimately flawed personal strivings, and feeling that freedom, breathing in the glory of truth and grace...that is the presence of light.
-Zack
"See the most important parts are the ones that are unseen; the wings don't make you fly and the crown don't make you king"
-Lupe Fiasco
Saturday, March 27, 2010
L33: Shepherd
"The God of love, my shepherd is."
"What shall I want?"
It's not just that we're being led by the almighty maker and ruler of all. It's not just that we're in the hands of he who holds all in his hands, by whose will and word all came into being and all continues to be.
It's that that God, that maker, that ruler of all, loves us deeply.
I know I'll only ever comprehend the smallest bits of that love. If I could dive the depths of human experience and feel all the love all loving is ever rendered, I imagine I'd still have a very incomplete understanding of God's love.
But there's something reassuring about even knowing that we can't know how much he loves us. It suffices to say that we're, even collectively, too small to understand it.
And to know that someone who loves us that deeply, that completely, that incomprehensibly, is the one directing our paths, if we will follow, is, perhaps the best hope I can muster. Even when things are brilliant and hope seems less necessary, that's but an illusion; things are only brilliant when hope is at its highest.
Above all else, his love, his leading, his very being, compels us to hope.
-Zack
"I was born to shine"
-John Mark McMillan
"What shall I want?"
It's not just that we're being led by the almighty maker and ruler of all. It's not just that we're in the hands of he who holds all in his hands, by whose will and word all came into being and all continues to be.
It's that that God, that maker, that ruler of all, loves us deeply.
I know I'll only ever comprehend the smallest bits of that love. If I could dive the depths of human experience and feel all the love all loving is ever rendered, I imagine I'd still have a very incomplete understanding of God's love.
But there's something reassuring about even knowing that we can't know how much he loves us. It suffices to say that we're, even collectively, too small to understand it.
And to know that someone who loves us that deeply, that completely, that incomprehensibly, is the one directing our paths, if we will follow, is, perhaps the best hope I can muster. Even when things are brilliant and hope seems less necessary, that's but an illusion; things are only brilliant when hope is at its highest.
Above all else, his love, his leading, his very being, compels us to hope.
-Zack
"I was born to shine"
-John Mark McMillan
Thursday, March 25, 2010
L32: Again
They, whomever they may be, say history repeats itself. I'm generally and principally skeptical of maxims, especially reductionist maxims, no matter how true they hold to be; that seems a process of dumb luck or conditioning.
But I do wonder how God uses experiences to prepare us for what's to come, if circumstances are to, at least on some level, repeat.
There are some things I never want to go through again and the Lord has graciously prevented them from repeating and I've gained lessons from those experiences that I don't think I'll need to relearn. But as God is omniscient, as he knows our future, and as he grows us through life experience, there's a certain place where lesson in principal and training intersects with preparation. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if God ever has us learn lessons we don't end up using. I don't know, but I do know he knows a lot more about our future than math teachers who remind students daily that they never know where they might need math in the future. God knows where we'll need what he teaches us in the future.
I don't know if that's exciting or scary. I'm pretty sure it's both. I'm not necessarily excited to need the knowledge I've learned from some life experiences, but I am utterly grateful he's prepared me for what is to come.
-Zack
"'Anyway' she says, 'I'll see you around'"
-Vienna Teng
But I do wonder how God uses experiences to prepare us for what's to come, if circumstances are to, at least on some level, repeat.
There are some things I never want to go through again and the Lord has graciously prevented them from repeating and I've gained lessons from those experiences that I don't think I'll need to relearn. But as God is omniscient, as he knows our future, and as he grows us through life experience, there's a certain place where lesson in principal and training intersects with preparation. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if God ever has us learn lessons we don't end up using. I don't know, but I do know he knows a lot more about our future than math teachers who remind students daily that they never know where they might need math in the future. God knows where we'll need what he teaches us in the future.
I don't know if that's exciting or scary. I'm pretty sure it's both. I'm not necessarily excited to need the knowledge I've learned from some life experiences, but I am utterly grateful he's prepared me for what is to come.
-Zack
"'Anyway' she says, 'I'll see you around'"
-Vienna Teng
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Beneath the Starry Threshold
I was looking back through old entries just now, trying to pinpoint when I did my first blog redesign, about this time last year. Last year I was entering my last full month of college as March unwound. I could go on and on about how I was wrong and right in surprising ways about life now, and about what I know now and didn't then and all that's happened since, and all that. A general catch up reminiscence post, and maybe I'll do one of those someday, but not today, not right now, because, though I resist it as much as I can, I'm realizing a theme to my writing, and I guess, if my writing has to have a theme, I'm honored to have this one: Betweenness. Liminality. Indefiniteness symbolized by spacial uncenteredness. As college came to an end, I felt the betweenness of life's changing tide, the now and not yet of there and the rest of my life. As it turns out, circumstances change but I still feel the sharp pangs of betweenness and I'm kind of a walking example, at least in my own mindset, of the livability of the post-modern ideal. I don't know if there can be such a thing as the post-modern ideal, but if there is, it is the ability to live liminally. That's not to say it is to be tried for- it is to say that we all live liminally and are at our best when we fully acknowledge that we're between centers at all times and can't really know anything about the centers till we step back and let ourselves exist between them. And that's what I do. That's what I've been doing for at least a year, subconsciously and most definitely super-consciously at times. That's not to brag, well, maybe it is a little bit but I don't mean it to be...it's just that I've thought recently, quite a bit, that I've felt the most in-between things in life as I ever have, and reading through what I wrote last year, I wonder if that's true or if I'm simply more aware of it now than ever before (perhaps largely brought on by the forced introspection of forcing myself to average one post per day during lent save for Sundays). I do know I'm living and feeling in between many things now, but I have been for awhile.
But that's life in this world, between many things. Ultimately though, it's a direct analog to the now and not yet that is the Kingdom of God. There are parts of it here, there are elements ongoing. But they pale in comparison to what is to come, and we're constantly between those facts.
There is however, one center that is constant and our own disparateness with it is our own shortcoming. Hope in that, hope in Him, is the fuel to fire the engines of a life stuck between many things thanks to the brokenness of our suffering world. But it's not eternal, and if nothing else, that's where we can get our hope. I'm not positing the value of inbetween living, just pointing out its existence, because we're all always in between and we're all always in process and we always will be til He returns. But He loves us and will not withhold all blessings prior to that day.
Even so, right now, I'm between many things, and he wants me to be that way for the time being, and when that time is up, I'll be between other things.
Last night I went on a very impromptu stargazing trip with 4 students at the University of Findlay. My love for that particular institution and city will have to wait for another hypothetical post that may never take place. I don't know that it matters the context, but looking up at the stars, even in our attempts to objectify them as our own constellations, always makes me feel small and warm and filled with wonder, like a child in his or her mother's arms not long after birth; there's a rightness and a warmth to the smallness and the fulfillment from the experience. Somehow, gazing up, I don't feel inconsequential despite the vastness of the universe. I feel small compared to its largeness, but I feel close to it all the same, and somewhere in that lies the love that passes all understanding, because the God that made all of that still loved us enough to not just die for us, but to come here in the first place, from up there where, even if not literally heaven that is the heavens of outerspace, I'm sure the stars look more brilliant.
-Zack
"I want to know if you feel the same way, cause if you do I want to stay forever"
-Ween
But that's life in this world, between many things. Ultimately though, it's a direct analog to the now and not yet that is the Kingdom of God. There are parts of it here, there are elements ongoing. But they pale in comparison to what is to come, and we're constantly between those facts.
There is however, one center that is constant and our own disparateness with it is our own shortcoming. Hope in that, hope in Him, is the fuel to fire the engines of a life stuck between many things thanks to the brokenness of our suffering world. But it's not eternal, and if nothing else, that's where we can get our hope. I'm not positing the value of inbetween living, just pointing out its existence, because we're all always in between and we're all always in process and we always will be til He returns. But He loves us and will not withhold all blessings prior to that day.
Even so, right now, I'm between many things, and he wants me to be that way for the time being, and when that time is up, I'll be between other things.
Last night I went on a very impromptu stargazing trip with 4 students at the University of Findlay. My love for that particular institution and city will have to wait for another hypothetical post that may never take place. I don't know that it matters the context, but looking up at the stars, even in our attempts to objectify them as our own constellations, always makes me feel small and warm and filled with wonder, like a child in his or her mother's arms not long after birth; there's a rightness and a warmth to the smallness and the fulfillment from the experience. Somehow, gazing up, I don't feel inconsequential despite the vastness of the universe. I feel small compared to its largeness, but I feel close to it all the same, and somewhere in that lies the love that passes all understanding, because the God that made all of that still loved us enough to not just die for us, but to come here in the first place, from up there where, even if not literally heaven that is the heavens of outerspace, I'm sure the stars look more brilliant.
-Zack
"I want to know if you feel the same way, cause if you do I want to stay forever"
-Ween
Redesign
You might notice the new title and the new layout. It's not that I like to redesign my blog every march or anything, but I have decided to make it look and feel more like the aim the posts actually tend to go. Instead of a look inside and through my life (although that's certainly, in a different manner, inherent in everything I write), I've been going in a more "art inspired by hope" direction, so that's kind of the new MO around here. I simply want to create, and as someone who strives to see the world through the hope of the cross, I want to examine the world and this walk we call life through that lens. Sometimes hope is the inspiration for amazing things and sometimes hope is the only thing we can cling to as the world falls around us. But in Christ there is hope, and while I might doubt many things many times (often, indeed), I know the hope and it is through and by that hope that I am all I am and could ever be.
L31: Sun
I know that rain is necessary, to quench the parched Earth and all life to continue. I know storms come and winter is never more than 9 months away, and when winter comes in the north, the skies go overcast for weeks on end.
I know it has to happen, I know the storms and snows and floods come on the Earth and in our lives. I know it's necessary and can't be helped.
But oh to feel the sun, to see it burst forth behind and in front and all around. To feel the warmth dispelling the fog...oh to live in that place where the sun always is.
That would be supreme. Perhaps even and only divine.
But still the storms persist here, in this life and through it.
But I persist despite the storms, because somewhere, on the other side, I will feel the sun.
-Zack
"In an unreliable world, you shine like a star"
-Mat Kearney
I know it has to happen, I know the storms and snows and floods come on the Earth and in our lives. I know it's necessary and can't be helped.
But oh to feel the sun, to see it burst forth behind and in front and all around. To feel the warmth dispelling the fog...oh to live in that place where the sun always is.
That would be supreme. Perhaps even and only divine.
But still the storms persist here, in this life and through it.
But I persist despite the storms, because somewhere, on the other side, I will feel the sun.
-Zack
"In an unreliable world, you shine like a star"
-Mat Kearney
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
L30:Eternity
I wonder what it means, that we live in light of eternity. Do our lives become much more (so much more) than the finite specks they are, while we're still living them? And what does it even mean, that a life lived in light of its own eternity has some kind of eternal consequence past its own self? We must be born as something unique already, if what we do, here and now, in this relative speck of time, matters for the rest of it. It's a great divine mystery I'm sure we're not quire able to comprehend, and I'm sure that's how it's supposed to be. But it makes me wonder, it makes me dream, of what might be on the other side, really literally, what is there? What is there that we can impact it from here but that it could make all of this seem like but a bad dream? There's no logic to that, and perhaps, that's exactly the point.
-Zack
"Surely we can change something"
-David Crowder
Monday, March 22, 2010
L29:Community
If the process of redemption is the process of placing Christ more and more at the center, then something has got to move out of the way. We're born at our own center, and we can't stay there if Christ is to take his rightful place. If we don't make the effort to take ourselves out of the center and put Christ at the center, we run the risk of making life an attempt at being the best at putting Christ at the center. That might not be totally bad, but there's a reason unity is placed at so high a place of priority in the New Testament. There's a reason what we do to the least of these is what we do to Christ, and there's a reason true religion is feeding the hungry. It's not because works have anything to do with our salvation. It's because Christ is most at his right place when we're out of our own center, inside the same periphery we place others, and then we see and feel their needs as if we have them, and helping others, doing things for others, thinking of others ahead of ourselves is the natural outpouring of the worldview Christ calls us to. People often rationalize the James passage as saying that true faith will produce good fruit. But that's still a bit too self-centered because it's placing the emphasis on one's own faith.
-Zack
"And the problem it seems is with you and me not the love Who came to fix everything"
-David Crowder
L29: Exodus
There's something to be said about the call to be a foreigner in the Bible. Throughout Leviticus and Deuteronomy (and elsewhere), God reminds the Israelites to show hospitality to the non-Hebrews they will share space with because "they were once foreigners in Egypt." Further than that, we're called people just on a sojourn here on this Earth, citizens, more truly, of a heavenly Kingdom.
"we're so comfortable now the pioneers have settled in, a perfect blend of progress and pale skin"
In the words of C.S. Lewis, God does not want us to get too comfortable here, to mistake anything here as anything but temporary.
But there are pieces of eternity all around us, and it matters how we treat them...it feels a bit kitsche to say, but the people around us have souls that will last forever and we collide with them everyday.
So there's always a necessry tension. Life as a child of God is by nature always already liminal...because we're living as eternal beings with heavenly citizenship in a world that is nothing but fleeting.
-Zack
"we're so comfortable now the pioneers have settled in, a perfect blend of progress and pale skin"
-John Reuben
L28: Difference
It's funny how it works sometimes, that we intentionally end up in places and with people that aren't quite like us. And it's good too, but its' so far from easy. I don't know how it works for everyone, but I know for me, or well, I'm finding out everyday, that there's something in the difference, something in the places where everything doesn't quite meld, something there that I'll learn from. Every context has it's own levels of dissonance, but for whatever reason I find myself in contexts all of the time that don't resonate with me. Places where difference exists. Right now I'm learning from a place that is different from me due to its samenness in itself. I don't know if that's ironic, but life is rarely if ever dull.
-Zack
"with our hopes and our hearts and our hands, we're the architects of our last stand"
-Flobots
Friday, March 19, 2010
L26: Power
Michel Foucault, more rightfully than most of us would like to admit, claimed that no real truth really exists and people simply believe what they choose to believe because they subconciously believe it gives them more cultural currency to do what they please with their lives. This, in turn, sets up systems where the social deviants are able to operate on the margins; giving up certain things in order to accomplish goals in a sort of short-circuited rendering of reality. Everyone, Foucault claimed, works under an idea of a discourse that they hold to be true.
For the most part, this makes Foucalt both one of the least popular and most important 20th century theorists. He was kind of like Nietzsche for the common man with less memorable statements (although still very potent). I think though, for the most part, Foucalt was probably right, and I think that because I've seen things work how he set them up to work. I believe in truth a little more than he did, but I can't blame him for looking at people and surmising that they are doing what they're doing for reasons of cultural power. Indeed, it's a thin line we all walk, at best, and it explains how two contradictory viewpoints could be as compelling as we often see them- because the truthfulness isn't as important as the cultural power one gains by adhering to a certain perspective. It's a trap I see people fall into all of the time. How many people, afterall, are strong Christians throughout High School because it makes them popular with the cute members of the opposite sex in youth group, but abandon their faith when those cute members of the opposite sex are suddenly members of the party crowd? In the mind of anyone below 25, sexuality is probably our strongest discourse, even though I hate to admit that. Here at Hillsdale, things are a bit different, but I see it, everyday, where people subscribe to a certain morality and a certain sort of ethos because it lends them a sort of cultural currency...and it happened at Wooster too, although it was usually amorality that drove them. In short, that means I run into a lot of cultural Christians who espouse some wonderful and correct things, but they do it for all of the wrong reasons, and I don't know that they realize it.
I'm not quite sure there's a real way out of the cultural conundrum Foucault points out, but he does leave the special room for the cultural margin, the people that work in the opposite direction of the system, but within it, and ultimately, that's what Christ did too. Call it a theology of sedition if you will. I do know Christ never called us to our faith in him out of what we gain from it within this world. Indeed, he calls us to give it all up for him, and that's the opposite of what Foucault says happens with cultural power and discourse theory. Just because something really is true, truer than Foucault says anything can be, doesn't mean our fallenness can't use it as just another discourse.
-Zack
"Bodies die, souls will rise"
-David Crowder
For the most part, this makes Foucalt both one of the least popular and most important 20th century theorists. He was kind of like Nietzsche for the common man with less memorable statements (although still very potent). I think though, for the most part, Foucalt was probably right, and I think that because I've seen things work how he set them up to work. I believe in truth a little more than he did, but I can't blame him for looking at people and surmising that they are doing what they're doing for reasons of cultural power. Indeed, it's a thin line we all walk, at best, and it explains how two contradictory viewpoints could be as compelling as we often see them- because the truthfulness isn't as important as the cultural power one gains by adhering to a certain perspective. It's a trap I see people fall into all of the time. How many people, afterall, are strong Christians throughout High School because it makes them popular with the cute members of the opposite sex in youth group, but abandon their faith when those cute members of the opposite sex are suddenly members of the party crowd? In the mind of anyone below 25, sexuality is probably our strongest discourse, even though I hate to admit that. Here at Hillsdale, things are a bit different, but I see it, everyday, where people subscribe to a certain morality and a certain sort of ethos because it lends them a sort of cultural currency...and it happened at Wooster too, although it was usually amorality that drove them. In short, that means I run into a lot of cultural Christians who espouse some wonderful and correct things, but they do it for all of the wrong reasons, and I don't know that they realize it.
I'm not quite sure there's a real way out of the cultural conundrum Foucault points out, but he does leave the special room for the cultural margin, the people that work in the opposite direction of the system, but within it, and ultimately, that's what Christ did too. Call it a theology of sedition if you will. I do know Christ never called us to our faith in him out of what we gain from it within this world. Indeed, he calls us to give it all up for him, and that's the opposite of what Foucault says happens with cultural power and discourse theory. Just because something really is true, truer than Foucault says anything can be, doesn't mean our fallenness can't use it as just another discourse.
-Zack
"Bodies die, souls will rise"
-David Crowder
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
L25: Green
There aren't many words, especially adjectives, with as many meanings as "green". They all point to the color, of course, but the color means so much: young, inexperienced, alive, envious.
What if they all point to the same thing? I think, perhaps, they do, at least in my own youthful understanding of things. Well, young at least, if not youthful.
For me it just makes sense; to be young is to be quite alive, both in your distance from "natural" death and the energy that goes with it, but it's also to be inexperienced, and I think it is often to be envious because there are still so many things left in the world to experience, to do, to see, to feel, to be. Envy, I think, is the fallen state of adventurous. I suppose it's possible to be some of them but not all, or one of them and not the rest. But it is, at least, to be less "green." Right now, I'd say I'm pretty green, and not just because it's St. Patrick's Day.
I don't know that there is much real importance to a simple accounting and conflation of all the possible meanings of green, but I do like how so much of it comes straight from creation. Green literally means both alive and unripe in the same organisms and, at least in English, often in the same people.
I'm definitely far from "ripe," and even if that means inexperienced to a fault, at least it still means I'm very alive.
-Zack
"Our love was on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing"
-The Fields of Athenry
What if they all point to the same thing? I think, perhaps, they do, at least in my own youthful understanding of things. Well, young at least, if not youthful.
For me it just makes sense; to be young is to be quite alive, both in your distance from "natural" death and the energy that goes with it, but it's also to be inexperienced, and I think it is often to be envious because there are still so many things left in the world to experience, to do, to see, to feel, to be. Envy, I think, is the fallen state of adventurous. I suppose it's possible to be some of them but not all, or one of them and not the rest. But it is, at least, to be less "green." Right now, I'd say I'm pretty green, and not just because it's St. Patrick's Day.
I don't know that there is much real importance to a simple accounting and conflation of all the possible meanings of green, but I do like how so much of it comes straight from creation. Green literally means both alive and unripe in the same organisms and, at least in English, often in the same people.
I'm definitely far from "ripe," and even if that means inexperienced to a fault, at least it still means I'm very alive.
-Zack
"Our love was on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing"
-The Fields of Athenry
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
L24: Terminology
My life has been pretty submersed in C.S. Lewis since late 2009 and joy is a constant theme, especially when you read the highly formalist Christian literature about Narnia I've been reading lately. It's not really terrible, well, I guess most of you don't assume formalist is a pejorative like I do. The biggest issue is really the assumption that formalism is Christian and the Christian approach to a text is formalist. That's modernist arrogance though, and it's rampant in the American church, has been for some time, and continues to cripple us. Literature is probably the least of most of our worries. But it's pretty central to mine, and I couldn't help it if it wasn't.
Most ironically, Lewis' work is steeped in the "ahead of its time" post-modern. All the references to the "numinous," the very nature of unattainable joy in the Earthly realm that drives all of his work (most of all, his own autobiography), and the importance of story over dogma all point to post-modernity. I don't know if it's because he didn't have to mindset to do it or not, but if he could have reduced the centrality of ideas in his thinking, he'd have been the first Christian post-modernist. Indeed, most of his work was a critique on modernist approaches to the faith.
Of course, I opened this talking about literary criticism, and that's where things fall apart. Lewis himself was an almost perfectly formalist critic, and it's unfortunate. It allows for all of those who write about him to fall into his school of thought and, in doing so, to get trapped in it when approaching his writings on faith. I don't think he would have liked it that way. I can't agree with his approach to literature, but he would be the first to tell you that he wrote his criticism about stories and poems, not faith, so approaching his work on faith the same way he approached The Faerie Queen is an unfortunate reversal of what he would have ever wanted. Ironic enough as that is, doing what the author wouldn't have wanted points to non-formalist approaches, and taking the formalist approach would be what he wouldn't want.
It's all a circle, and I'm probably the only one who will ever read this that would ever care about it.
But I miss college sometimes.
-Zack
"We can be redeemed, oh, all of us"
-David Crowder
Most ironically, Lewis' work is steeped in the "ahead of its time" post-modern. All the references to the "numinous," the very nature of unattainable joy in the Earthly realm that drives all of his work (most of all, his own autobiography), and the importance of story over dogma all point to post-modernity. I don't know if it's because he didn't have to mindset to do it or not, but if he could have reduced the centrality of ideas in his thinking, he'd have been the first Christian post-modernist. Indeed, most of his work was a critique on modernist approaches to the faith.
Of course, I opened this talking about literary criticism, and that's where things fall apart. Lewis himself was an almost perfectly formalist critic, and it's unfortunate. It allows for all of those who write about him to fall into his school of thought and, in doing so, to get trapped in it when approaching his writings on faith. I don't think he would have liked it that way. I can't agree with his approach to literature, but he would be the first to tell you that he wrote his criticism about stories and poems, not faith, so approaching his work on faith the same way he approached The Faerie Queen is an unfortunate reversal of what he would have ever wanted. Ironic enough as that is, doing what the author wouldn't have wanted points to non-formalist approaches, and taking the formalist approach would be what he wouldn't want.
It's all a circle, and I'm probably the only one who will ever read this that would ever care about it.
But I miss college sometimes.
-Zack
"We can be redeemed, oh, all of us"
-David Crowder
Monday, March 15, 2010
L23: Theme
I stopped believing in over-arching grand narrative a long time ago. For some people (C.S. Lewis), that's a very unchristian (but not the book) thing to do. Well, I guess I should restate that. I stopped believing in the necessity of Grand Narrative a long time ago. I do know God has a purpose and goal and work everything out for the good and all of history is tending toward his ultimate end reality and all of that. But I don't think we can break that down, at least not on this side of eternity, as much as we would like to. I think it's God's narrative, necessarily, and we can, at best, work within our role and hope to realize what it all means on the other side of here.
So maybe I do believe in grand narrative. But I don't believe in pursuing it, I don't believe in a priori fitting it all together and coming up with what meant what, before we reach the end. That's basically like mapping out a plot (an exercise I don't really believe in either, but it's done "successfully" in many lower-tier English classes all of the time, and probably in even the higher ones at Hillsdale...) before you've finished the book. At best, it's conjecture, and I'd argue it's mostly immoral.
God calls us to abide in him, and part of that is not knowing what's next. "you will hear, to your right and to your left, this is the way, walk in it." To me, that doesn't sound like we can fit it all together on our own before we see where we end up. I've tried that a lot in my life, and I can construct quite the interesting sequence of events, none of them accidental, that get me to where I am today, and it would be, well, interesting to see...but to draw conclusions about the future from it not only often fails, but it is an exercise in small faith. The honest truth is, I can't tell where I'm headed, just by where I've been. But I can tell by where I am, from where I've been, God's got it under control, no matter what.
-Zack
"The low moon helps me sing"
-Feist
So maybe I do believe in grand narrative. But I don't believe in pursuing it, I don't believe in a priori fitting it all together and coming up with what meant what, before we reach the end. That's basically like mapping out a plot (an exercise I don't really believe in either, but it's done "successfully" in many lower-tier English classes all of the time, and probably in even the higher ones at Hillsdale...) before you've finished the book. At best, it's conjecture, and I'd argue it's mostly immoral.
God calls us to abide in him, and part of that is not knowing what's next. "you will hear, to your right and to your left, this is the way, walk in it." To me, that doesn't sound like we can fit it all together on our own before we see where we end up. I've tried that a lot in my life, and I can construct quite the interesting sequence of events, none of them accidental, that get me to where I am today, and it would be, well, interesting to see...but to draw conclusions about the future from it not only often fails, but it is an exercise in small faith. The honest truth is, I can't tell where I'm headed, just by where I've been. But I can tell by where I am, from where I've been, God's got it under control, no matter what.
-Zack
"The low moon helps me sing"
-Feist
Saturday, March 13, 2010
L22: Silence
It is common literary practice, especially among the theorists, to consider a voice a form of agency and thereby personhood. To be able to speak, to have the ability and the presence within a given space to vocalize internal thoughts is the pathway to existence.
This makes sense, because it is in giving up that ability, at least temporarily, that we come closest to our creator. God meets us in the silence, when we stop talking, when we escape the places where everyone and everything is doing all they can to assert their agency by voice and come to a place where there is nothing to be heard but the voice of God.
It is a call to silence and a call to refreshment, but it is largely a call to give up self as well, or at least any claims we might think we have to our own selves, to our own personhood, in contrast to the glory that is the maker and ruler of all. God does not forcibly take our own selves from ourselves, but he will willing receive and renew those who willingly take a step back, and even for a moment, allow for silence to hear his call. Dying to self has always been the key, and he has always been in the resurrection business.
-Zack
"the nearness of there feels more near to here"
-David Crowder
This makes sense, because it is in giving up that ability, at least temporarily, that we come closest to our creator. God meets us in the silence, when we stop talking, when we escape the places where everyone and everything is doing all they can to assert their agency by voice and come to a place where there is nothing to be heard but the voice of God.
It is a call to silence and a call to refreshment, but it is largely a call to give up self as well, or at least any claims we might think we have to our own selves, to our own personhood, in contrast to the glory that is the maker and ruler of all. God does not forcibly take our own selves from ourselves, but he will willing receive and renew those who willingly take a step back, and even for a moment, allow for silence to hear his call. Dying to self has always been the key, and he has always been in the resurrection business.
-Zack
"the nearness of there feels more near to here"
-David Crowder
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